Ask HN: Laptop that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> I bought a MBP Retina 16gb with AMD M370X a few months ago. When I bought it, it was fast and snappy. Now during the summer the fans won't stop, crappy OSX kernel_task throttles the cpu with no way of turning it off and after a few hours regular programming use it needs a reboot because everything runs at a crawl despite only about 4gb mem used.
I don't know if it's the laptop, or El Capitain, but I'm done. Reinstalled osx from scratch, reset the both rams, even tried the 3 different methods of killing acpi but it made no difference. This laptop was a complete waste of money.
I want a lapop of similar spec - the monitor in particular was fantastic, I've heard good things about the Thinkpad t450 and the Lenovo carbon, are there others, what are your experiences with them? <comment><USER3> I dont care if you go PC or MAC, but this is not typical macbook pro behavior. Ive owned 4 since 2008 and have gotten 3 separate ones in that time frame for work. So Ive had damn near every single macbook pro that has been available in the last 8 years. I currently have a mid 2014 macbook with 16gb 2.5ghz 512. It can get hot on occasion, all of which are totally explainable:

1) I have Windows 10 installed running on Fusion- 'nuff said. Actually Im sort of kidding, win 10 is a lot better than previous versions heating up the mac. I do have SQL Server Developer installed and do a lot of data heavy development which is what really cranks up the heater. 2) I use Logic Pro and have a lot of DSP running in the form of plugins.

Either way, it gets hot, but doesnt slow down or cause me issues. However I would say that the first thing you need to look at is do you have that aluminum case wrapped in a heat blanket/"protective case"? If so you are not letting the aluminum do its job and dissipate the heat. If not, then something is faulty on that macbook and I would have it looked at. Again, the behavior you describe is not normal.

</comment><comment><USER4> That problem you're having with kernel_task is probably due to this¹:

" _Activity Monitor may show that a process named kernel_task is using a large percentage of your CPU, and during this time you may notice a lot of fan activity. This process helps manage temperature by making the CPU less available to processes that are using the CPU intensely. In other words, kernel_task responds to conditions that cause your CPU to become too hot. When the temperature decreases, kernel_task automatically reduces its activity._ "

There's a high chance it's reaching these temperatures so easily due to dust buildup in the MacBook. If it's possible to open it up, I'd recommend doing so and dusting it out. If it's not possible to open it up, you may have to take it to an Apple Retail Store and have them do it for you.

――――――

¹ — [https://support.apple.com/HT203184](https://support.apple.com/HT203184)

<comment><USER5> I doubt it is dust if they've only had the machine "months."

MBPs with discrete graphics cards often overheat and have for literally years, Apple shouldn't even sell them until they resolve the issue but they continue to do so... It is one scenario where the cheaper integrated graphics (Intel Iris Pro) make MBPs better machines.

I've brought this up before and people anecdote me to death, but that's always been my experience, the top end MBP with discrete graphics cannot cool fast enough and throttles like crazy.

<comment><USER6> If the OP smokes there could be enough of a buildup to cause an issue.

> MBPs with discrete graphics cards often overheat and have for literally > years

If you're hammering the GPU of course it's gonna create a lot of heat. Then the system will react to cope with that heat. What else do you expect to happen?

The integrated Intel GPU is slow by comparison. If you're happy with that there are hacks out there to tell the system to always use it and not use the discrete GPU but that seems really silly to me.

<comment><USER7> You're missing the point, of course hammering the GPU creates a lot of heat, but you would expect a high end system that came pre-packaged with the GPU to be able cope with the heat. If the system is _overheating_ , clearly it is not coping very well.

Packaging hardware into a system without sufficient cooling to actually use it at capacity is just bad design.

<comment><USER6> The CPUs work the same way, my friend. If you hammer one core to its full capacity it will get throttled too. It's just how CPUs and GPUs are designed. They give you an option to "overload" them for a short time, and then they scale back to a sustainable level. Would you rather they only let you use them up to the sustainable level?

Desktop GPUs and CPUs work the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious question - what's the ambient air temperature of your working environment? I have a mid 2012 MPB Retina - 1st generation. I've experienced similar problems with it, but only in the Summer. In my case this is a personal machine and is being used at home. I'm the kind of person who doesn't turn on the AC until the ambient air temperature in the house gets into the upper 80s. My MBP will have the fans a whirring and even get hot to the touch in those conditions. When I finally turn on the AC it's behavior goes back to normal. My conclusion is they don't take heat very well. Meanwhile the Macs I use at work never experience these issues since it's a climate-controlled office.

<comment><AUTHOR> about 25-30 degrees celcius

<comment><USER9> > 77F to 86F

that might be your problem. Is there anything else in the room generating heat, besides you and the computer. maybe try throttling down your processor

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in a hot place and I work outside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something weird is going on, my friend. I have been using a 2012 rMBP 15" w/only 8GB of RAM (ordered the day they were announced before we found out the RAM was not upgradeable, whoops) every day, 10 hours+ a day and never have any problems. The only time my fans kick on is when you'd expect; when I'm doing heavy load tasks like playing a game or doing anything using Adobe Flash. I can stream HTML5 video full screen for hours and the fans never become audible. I can run Xcode for hours and as long as my app isn't being a CPU hog, everything's kosher.

So, something is wrong with your machine. The OS X reinstall failing to resolve the issue points away from malware, and towards an environmental or hardware issue. If your machine is only a few months old Apple will take a look at it for free, I'd consider that option to rule out any hardware issues if you can't think of any obvious environmental causes (Do you smoke? High temperature in your working area(s)? etc.)

<comment><USER10> My experience is identical to yours, but with an Early 2013 rMBP 15" 2.4 GHz / 8 GB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not normal for an MBP. Get it replaced. Also make sure an app that you are installing is not triggering this. Oh and there is no better laptop than an MBP.

</comment><comment><USER12> All laptops are tradeoffs, especially with performance versus battery life . I have been very happy with my Dell M3300 which is a MBP clone (15 inch "retina" screen and large buttonless trackpad). Great performance, excellent build quality, everything just works. I believe the current model is the precision 15 5000 which I haven't tried. Battery life leaves a lot to be desired, that's the design tradeoff for the precision line - perf over battery life. Works great for me because I always work plugged in. Not viable for work on a long flight.

</comment><comment><USER13> EXACT same thing happened to mine, 3 visits to the Apple Store later until someone finally opened it up completely and dusted the insides. The computer is running like new again. At home dusting without opening it up didn't work.

MAKE SURE THEY DUST THE INSIDES. They do it for free, even if you don't have AppleCare anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd agree with the Thinkpad T series (namely the T--p range, like T460p) and what used to be the Thinkpad W series which is now the Thinkpad P-- series (like the P50) which are "workstation replacements." Heavier but also much more powerful.

There's also Microsoft's Surface Book, which is wonderful, but a little too expensive in my OPINION.

I've also had personal success with Asus's ROG range of super-heavy laptops (e.g. G752VT), they literally weight 10 pounds(!) but the cooling is incredible. They're designed for "gaming" but due to the raw power and ample cooling, they're wonderful development machines no matter what the workload or workload type. They're definitely only for "around the house" levels of mobility.

<comment><USER14> +1 for the ASUS ROG, I've had one for nearly two years now and very happy with it. The fact that it's built for video games means that pretty much everything else runs fast on it.

<comment><USER15> I'll add a +1 as well. Mine is due for replacing now though and asus isn't helping me pick a replacement. There are far to many sku's available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of my Chromebook Pixel. galliumos.org is my daily driver, which is the best linux experience I've ever had -- everything just works.

<comment><USER17> I have a Pixel LS running Ubuntu natively, it's by far the best laptop I've had, excellent specs, build quality second to none.

<comment><USER18> Would you say it's better than an MBP? Considering trying a linux distro full time, and I've heard good things about the Pixel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All Mac products come with a year of Apple Care, even if they're refurb units. If you purchased it within the past year I highly recommend getting in touch with Apple support about the problem - what you're describing is far outside the normal behavior of a MBP.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have the Lenovo W541 w/ 3K screen, and am VERY hapy with it. Battery life is low, at 1-2 hours, but the 32gb of RAM is essential when running VMs. (though, admittedly, now that we've gone to docker, my memory requirements have drastically reduced.)

The one issue I have is that the keyboard is off-center. (with a number pad on the right). Installing Ubuntu was super easy, no tweaks necessary for the nvidia/intel combo (unlike the W530). Power Management is weak, at 1-2 hours... but I haven't run up against that enough to look up what I can do to make it better.

So, a LONG time user of Lenovo laptops, (10 years)... Still great laptops. I look forward to the P series (which replaces the W series) with the Xeon processors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm liking it, how long have you had it? Does it have loud fans when trashing the cpu?

<comment><USER20> sorry for late reply...

Had it for almost a year. Almost no fan noise whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can recommend the german but english translated site Notebookcheck reviews. All components are checked in great detail. Hint you can search for max 12 months old laptop and order by review score.

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Premium-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Premium-Office-Business-Notebooks.98925.0.html) [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Subnoteb...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s- Top-10-Subnotebooks.98632.0.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd try to put a linux distro on it before I look for options (I guess that's what you'd do with a non-apple laptop too).

</comment><comment><USER23> At the dayjob a little earlier, we were talking about office move and I was asked what kind of laptop I have. I couldn't even _remember_ the brand. It's just a featureless, bland chunk of black plastic that'll die of some mechanical failure within three years. And I got it in February (as a replacement for the previous featureless chunk of black plastic that died).

I thought it was HP. Turns out it was a Dell. C'est la vie.

For the OP, what you're experiencing is not typical MBP behavior. Something toxic in your environment, probably in a browser. If you use Chrome, try switching to Firefox, or vice versa (I find Safari is actually the most robust browser I've used). If you want to be radical, try setting up a partition and booting into Linux or Windows instead of OSX.

Nobody makes better hardware than Apple, period. The only thing I've seen that even comes close is a Microsoft Surface Pro. Most PCs are junk.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hey, I faced the exactly same problem with my MB Pro(late 2013) about a couple of months ago. Tried all the solutions I found on stackexchange/apple forums but with no luck. Then I installed Ubuntu and have had little problems since. Checkout any online tutorial for installing Ubuntu on your Macbook.

You have to download and install the wifi drivers manually, I have written a small tutorial on how to get wifi working [https://medium.com/@afmsayem/installing-linux-on-macbook- pro...](https://medium.com/@afmsayem/installing-linux-on-macbook- pro-4f76addefc86)

</comment><comment><USER25> XPS 13 or 15 are worth looking at

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty happy with my xps 13 but I think it falls short of the MBP in keyboard and trackpad.

The keyboard is a little too shallow and the flat profile of the keys makes it harder to find the center of each key. I've never used an Air so I don't know how it compares but it is better than the Macbook (not the pro, this guy [http://www.apple.com/macbook/](http://www.apple.com/macbook/)).

The touchpad is the single-button kind, it looks like a MBP touchpad but the actuation force is much higher and gets even higher at the top of the pad. The pad is a lever with the fulcrum at the top, clicking on the bottom is easy but much harder at the top. tap-to-click, multifinger gestures and all that work fine.

I've had the laptop for 6 months and I've already seen some physical problems, the screens backlight flickers (black for a millisecond every 5-ish seconds). the touchpad sometimes 'locks' thinking that there is one finger pressed against it, dragging one finger will scroll instead of moving the mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Clean it out? Blow out any dust from the fans, either by simply blowing into the air vents (output vents, of course, you want to blow the dust out through the input vents), using a compressor to do the same (at a reasonable pressure, you want to clean it, not air-cut it nor use the fans as generators) or a can of compressed 'air'. This has restored many a sluggy laptop to working order here.

If OSX is not your thing you might want to consider installing something else on the thing, some Linux of choice or Windows if you so prefer.

Otherwise just get an old Thinkpad, they work and keep on working - <USER2> this on a T42p, 12 years and counting...

</comment><comment> srb- I'm running a 2016 Lenovo X1 Carbon with Mint 18 Linux on a Samsung 950 NVME SSD.

I've never had such a flawless Linux desktop experience. Almost everything just worked out of the box, it's super-zippy, and the laptop is so light and portable. Never heard the fan yet.

But if you want to an external GPU, this is not the system for you. Also, if you get the hi-res screen, you're forced to play the LCD lottery (LG vs. Panasonic, one has PWM, and you don't get to pick.)

Desktop Linux has really come a long way. Just in time too, now that MS is probably gonna force us to 'subscribe' to Windows, send us ads, etc...

<comment><USER28> I got an 2015 X1 carbon, too (used). I have dual boot with win10 and ubuntu xenial. Win10 was just for checking it out and occasionally remote server management (Juniper VPN/Junos Pulse is a nightmare on Linux).

Ubuntu works great despite some problems with the keyboard back light turning on automatically with newer, unsupported kernels.

I love how light the laptop is and the display (got the high res) is great.

Another thing that is just beautiful: the support. I got a pixel error on the display, opened a ticket with lenovo support and two days later a technician showed up at my place and changed the display (worth a few hundred bucks) in 10 minutes, let me verify that it was fixed and took off. And I was in a foreign country at that time. I loved it and tell everybody about this great experience. I don't think the apple store can even remotely compare to that.

 _edit_ : Oh, and the quick charge. THE QUICK CHARGE!! Only 10% battery left (still >1.5 hours) and 10 minutes near a power point? It will charge up to maybe 70-80% in that few minutes. If you travel a lot this is fantastic. Combined with deep sleep (laptop goes from standby to hibernate after a set amount of time, 3 hours for me, great if you don't know how much time before using the computer again) the battery was never a problem.

<comment> srb- I agree, the quick-charge is astonishing sometimes. And I love how with Thinkpads you can limit the max battery charge to 80%, to maximize the lifetime of your battery.

I've been saved by the on-site service a couple of times, it's really good (just wish 3 years of it was still included by default - those were the days!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My daughter has a laptop for school. She's tried Toshiba and HP, and on both she's had the hard drive die after a few months. (In fact, I think she's never _not_ had the hard drive die after a few months - she's never gotten a year out of one.)

She doesn't seem to drop it or step on it or pour liquids in it or any other form of obvious abuse, but the hard drives always die.

I've got a Dell at work, but I use it almost as a second desktop - I (almost) never move it. It's been quite reliable. (If I lugged it around, though, who knows?)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have had heating issues on laptops in the past that were caused by a poor thermal interface between the CPU cooler and the CPU. Either the thermal interface material was insufficient, or just not there at all. I was able to solve it myself by disassembling the laptop, removing the CPU cooler and cleaning the cooler and CPU heat spreader with alcohol before applying an appropriate amount of quality thermal paste (I used Arctic Silver of some sort... IV? V?)

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a fancy MBP that's about a year old and experience similar behavior on warm days when I don't run the AC. It seems that my tolerance for heat is a few degrees higher than my macbook's :/

Propping it's back end up an inch or so (I stick my car keys under it) instead of having it sit flat on my desk seems to make an appreciable difference in performance.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can confirm that I've had the same problem with my El-Cap / 16GB MBP system too. I still suspect it was a faulty USB Network connection that caused it to throttle so much - but in the end, they diagnosed it with a faulty heat-sink on the MB and replaced it out. I've not had any other problems since then.

</comment><comment><USER33> Surface Book: high res display, solid as a brick, and ConEmu + powershell works wonders if you've got Unix skills.

</comment><comment><USER34> It sounds like abnormal behavior and could probably be fixed.

As to your question, I'd recommend the Surface Book. I got one last December and couldn't be more pleased with it. Hi-res screen, good RAM + HD space, fast processor, keys feel nice to type on...the list goes on and on :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Surface Pro / Surface Book. I presume Linux support on them is good enough now, but at least if you're stuck with Windows you can get a proper bash environment now without cygwin that I hear works well.

</comment><comment><USER36> I upgraded to an XPS 15 9550 last December. I'm very happy with the hardware but Windows 10 still has some rough edges.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been really happy with my XPS 13.

</comment><comment><USER38> I highly recommend Lenovo carbon X1/3

</comment><comment><USER39> Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

<comment><USER40> BWAHAHAHAHAHA

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Over the last 2 years, I've used:

\- MBP Retina (13", late 2013)

\- Asus C200MA-DS01 (Chromebook thingy)

\- X1 Carbon (3rd gen, 8GB)

\- iPad Air 2 (WiFi)

They all suck. All of them. Period. End of discussion.

That said, the ones that sucked the least for my lifestyle of web development, writing and email are (in order):

1\. X1 with Ubuntu 14.04

2\. iPad Air 2 paired with a linux VPS w/remote desktop

3\. Chromebook

The X1 takes the cake because of the weight and the ability to have a full OS on it. The iPad A2 comes in as a close second, only because it requires a bluetooth keyboard and internet to be useful. The chromebook takes 3rd because I cheaped out and didn't get one with a 1080p panel in it. I'm convinced that a 6+ hour ultraportable laptop would displace the X1, and can't wait for my budget to let me pick up a refurbished Pixel.

<comment><USER42> > _They all suck. All of them. Period. End of discussion._

It'd be nice if you explained _why_ they sucked

<comment><USER43> laptops overheat :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 1\. Try wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS.

2\. This sounds like it could be a hardware problem—try sending it back to Apple. You can get a hardware lemon from any manufacturer.

3\. Do you want Windows or Linux? If the latter consider a Dell XPS: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell- co...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/the-xps-13-de-dell-continues-to- build-a-reliable-linux-lineage/) or Purism laptop (high DPI version to ship shortly: [https://puri.sm/posts/4k-at-last-purism- librem-15-rev2-4k/](https://puri.sm/posts/4k-at-last-purism- librem-15-rev2-4k/)).

<comment> awinter-py I ordered my librem 13 when the ship date was july 1, it's now mid-august (no laptop) and they're not communicating at all. I love the idea of the librem, I love the fact that they're linux first, I love that they're anti-blob, I'm still excited to get & use it -- but I'm experiencing some cold feet.

<comment><USER45> Are you posting from the future? Kickstarters have a hard enough time fulfilling orders on time without having to worry about time travelers.

<comment> awinter-py I wish I knew the time traveler prepositions from douglas adams, this would be easier to explain.

The ship date on crowdsupply.com changed, in mid-july, from july 1 to mid- august. In other words, it's the edited ship date that is in august. I remain in july.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Scale of the Universe (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://htwins.net/scale2/index.html

<comment><USER2> What are total human height doing there? And what is it?

Btw, US get more tax revenue every year then there are galaxies in the universe ...

</comment><comment><USER3> It really creeps me when it starts to get dark. I don't know what's beyond that. Too scary :(</comment>


Fracking in North America could be partly to blame for methane spike – study - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/fracking-u-s-canada-worldwide-atmospheric-methane-spike-1454205 <comment><USER2> [https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels- are-g...](https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels-are-going-up- and-no-one-knows-why/) is a somewhat older but a much more informative and balanced article.

The td;lr version is that there is a minority that blames fracking, but most have concluded that it doesn't fit the data. There are a bunch of other theories as well. And the isotopes are not definitive. The fact that someone recently wrote an article concluding otherwise doesn't actually change this since neither data nor the line of argument are particularly new.

</comment><comment><USER3> The irony of natural gas is that while it emits half the carbon of coal or gasoline per same amount of energy release, methane is 20 times amore potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So a 3% leakage pretty much erases its green house savings. No fuel company wants to leak and waste that much methane, but stopping leakage is not easy.

One of the few facts the President got right is the US has reduced carbon emission more than any other country be converting from coal electricity to natural gas electricity. That is mainly because the US was highest or second highest carbon emitter for decades with any fractional decrease having impact. The decrease has pretty much stopped withcoal plant closures slowing.

Environmentalist se natural gas as a transition phase to full renewables.

<comment><USER4> > methane is 20 times amore potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide

The 100-year GWP of methane is ~30, but only because it has such a short atmospheric lifetime (~12 years).

Over shorter terms its way worse, the 20-years GWP is >80.

<comment><USER5> The other way of looking at this is how much Methane is removed from the atmosphere every year vs how much is added. In that context, many continuing sources of emissions have negligible net impact year to year.

This is why Methane concentrations where basically flat from 1998 to 2008. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane) Methane does however turn into CO2, but represents a small percentage of overall CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER6> No, that doesn't seem like a useful way to look at it.

The old methane break down into CO2 regardless of our current emissions. Our choices now affect future emissions of methane, the effects of which are essentially independent of the past methane release.

Finding a consistent yardstick (methane = 30x CO2) seems better than pretending it's not a problem just because there's some delayed negative feedback loops already in play.

<comment><USER5> The issue is we already experience climate based on the current methane concentration. If the addition is exactly equal to the removal, we don't get climate change from Methane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fracking is the primary reason a bunch of *nuclear power plants in the USA are shutting down early. The over-supply of gas from fracking, plus the inherent simplicity and efficiency of gas turbines makes them crazy hard to compete with. The carbon-free nuclear plants weren't overly expensive to operate, but when the electricity revenue dropped (especially in deregulated markets), they started struggling mightily.

Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA. As they shut down, they're often replaced with natural gas, which locks in carbon emissions and indirect emissions from pipelines and the wellheads.

It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive.

This is also a big part of why coal is struggling, but this doesn't bother me because coal is high carbon and high in killer air pollution (especially outside the US. Air pollution kills 4 million people/year globally [1]).

[1] [https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/](https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/)

<comment><USER8> I've never heard anyone refer to nuclear power plants as simply "nukes"; just a heads up that that's very confusing as most people will think of "nukes" as nuclear warheads instead.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. In the industry it's common but glad to hear this feedback. I edited above.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely and thanks, I didn't realize it was so common, but sounds like it is very widely used within the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've read about an unorthodox solution [1]. Can anyone comment whether these are actually practical in the field?

[1][https://www.upstreamdata.ca/post/natural-gas-venting-how- bit...](https://www.upstreamdata.ca/post/natural-gas-venting-how-bitcoin- solved-a-160-year-old-problem)

</comment><comment><USER10> Although Methane is far less abundant than carbon dioxide and stays in the air for only a decade or so, molecule for molecule its warming effect (calculated over 100 years) is 25 times higher

[https://archive.is/vThtr](https://archive.is/vThtr)

<comment><USER11> Ahh, but what happens to methane after that decade or so? Doesn't most of it decompose via oxygen into water and carbon dioxide?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fracking also releases radioactive radon from the ground - [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618083347.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618083347.htm)

However, as regulations consider it "natural" (it wasn't man-made, although it was released as a result of human activity), frackers are not required to do anything about it.

So we have a repeat of the tragedy of diluted pollution - as long as your pollution is invisible and evenly distributed (like radioactive waste from coal plants), nobody cares. But concentrate it instead of releasing it to the environment, and there's public outrage (high-level nuclear waste).

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a hypothesis that fracking sometimes causes impermeable rock layers to become permeable, and dissolved methane ends up in water underground. Over years, that water ends up in tapwater/rivers/oceans where it isn't under pressure, and the methane comes out of solution.

Anyone who knows the field better able to comment on my hypothesis?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this widely accepted? if so, why is there no G7 outcry like for the amazon rainforests?

</comment><comment><USER15> The guys over at GHGSat in Montreal are doing great work. They take satellite imagery of methane releasing sites and model their output. Not perfect but for a broad estimate it's not bad.

When I worked in energy we took part in an investment vehicle called the OGCI to invest in them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe I've been listening to too many JRE podcasts, but at this point I think I've accepted that the Earths climate was, and is going to continue to change with or without humans. I'm all for cleaning up our poor environmental behavior, but methods to manipulate the climate at a large scale should be considered if we want to keep pumping out people, consuming resources _and_ enjoying the current temperate climate.

The big issue under all of this, is that we're going to start having to waste resources paying down "climate-debt", and those resources could be better used elsewhere. At the same time environmentalism has a clear and direct value, but it can't be allowed to get in the way of progress as we really don't know how much time we have before a big enough rock falls from the sky and Earth gets another do-over.

<comment><USER17> Things that should not be part of the "Should we work to mitigate climate change" discussion: 1) Meteor strikes 2) Whether or not it'll be hard

Question: You believe climate change is not caused by our actions, but you believe climate change can be stopped by our actions? How does that work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can you please edit swipes like "Wrong." out of your comments to HN? It's unnecessary and makes your comment acerbic when it would be just fine without it.

The way to reply to a wrong comment is to supply correct information, which I assume is what the rest of your comment does.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Edit: detached from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816911).

<comment><USER7> You bet, done. I was responding to the unfounded accusation of being disingenuous. You're totally right that the community is better without that kind of reaction, and the comment is way better with out it. Thanks. Forgive me.

<comment><USER19> I would like to thank you for your replies throughout this thread in general though. It's actually ironic that you got called out for this one, since I was just thinking that you were doing a great job responding to various misconceptions in a positive, informative, and non-judgemental manner. Really enjoyed reading your comments.

<comment><USER7> Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for saying so. I'm sure it's clear that I love doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A couple issues with the science here:

>Between 2005 and 2015, global rates of fracking went from producing 31 billion cubic meters per year to 435 billion

>In the last half of the 20th, century levels of methane in the atmosphere rose. They then plateaued, and spiking in 2008.

So the shale gas revolution started in 2005, but the spike didn't occur until 2008? Also it isn't clear if this was a transient spike or the author is referring to a sudden and sustained increase.

> While methane released in the late 20th century was enriched with the carbon > isotope 13C, Howarth highlights methane released in recent years features > lower levels. That's because the methane in shale gas has depleted levels of > the isotope when compared with conventional natural gas or fossil fuels such > as coal, he explained

First, all conventional gas is "shale gas," except for a tiny minority of highly atypical cases where reservoir sections have experienced prolonged high temperatures and matured further. Thus almost all natural gas ultimately comes from shale - fracking is merely extracting it at the source, where it does not significantly differ in composition from gas which has migrated to reservoir in conventional extraction. So, second, I'm suspcious of the use of c13 to differentiate fracking and non fracking sourced methane, but I'm not a petrophysicist. It should be related to the age of the fluid, and I don't expect shale gas to be substantially younger than reservoir gas in most cases.

<comment><USER21> On the second point, whether ¹³C can be used as a signal to differentiate fracked vs. non-fracked gas, the paper [1] does discuss this a bit. This seems to be the key paragraph:

 _Several studies have suggested that the δ¹³C signal of methane from shale gas can often be lighter (more depleted in ¹³C) than that from conventional natural gas (Golding et al., 2013; Hao and Zou, 2013; Turner et al., 2017; Botner et al., 2018). This should not be surprising. In the case of conventional gas, the methane has migrated over geological time frames from the shale and other source rocks through permeable strata until trapped below a seal (Fig. 2a). During this migration, some of the methane can be oxidized both by bacteria, perhaps using iron (III) or sulfate as the source of the oxidizing power, and by thermochemical sulfate reduction (Whelan et al., 1986; Burruss and Laughrey, 2010; Rooze et al., 2016). This partial oxidation fractionates the methane by preferentially consuming the lighter ¹²C isotope and gradually enriching the remaining methane in ¹³C (Hao and Zou, 2013; Baldassare et al., 2014), resulting in a δ¹³C signal that is less negative. The methane in shales, on the other hand, is tightly held in the highly reducing rock formation and therefore very unlikely to have been subject to oxidation and the resulting fractionation. The expectation, therefore, is that methane in conventional natural gas should be heavier and less depleted in ¹³C than the methane in shale gas._

[1] [https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/](https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There must be solid reasons why fracking isn't at fault.</comment>


C++ braced initializers and type deduction - <AUTHOR> http://scottmeyers.blogspot.ca/2014/03/if-braced-initializers-have-no-type-why.html

<comment><USER2> The entirety of C++ initialization rules has become a byzantine mess of epic proportions and any change is bound to add another level of combinatorial explosion. There's just no way out of it.

I can tell you how C++ will die. It will die because all C++ programmers will soon be dead for one simple reason: Our brains are incapable of knowing C++ well enough to write safe C++ code and knowing something else at the same time.

Knowing all the rules and exceptions to those rules in C++ will overwhelm the neocortex of C++ programmers and start to usurp older parts of the brain to the point where heart rate and body temperature get out of control and they/we all die an agonizing death.

As a C++ programmer I am struggling right now trying to leave this path to seemingly inevitable doom. But the insane complexity of C++ has this addictive allure of making me feel so incredibly competent and important, a bearer of secret knowledge that underpins the world's most important systems.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, writing _safe_ C++ code means just following a few rules of thumb. Most importantly: never do pointer arithmetic, always use smart pointers.

Basically, 99% of your work should use only about 10% of the feature set of C++ explicitly. The vast majority of the time, you shouldn't even write templates (just _use_ the ones in the STL and project-specific ones that make sense).

But it's really nice that those other 90% of features are there when you need them.

<comment><USER4> Their should be a guide about how to write modern and unclutered C++ without the 90% of it.

<comment><USER5> And a compiler that only accepts the 10%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh dear. Scott Meyers calls himself "just a grunt on the ground". I think we're all doomed.

<comment><USER6> (To clarify, Scott is one of my heroes from my days following the ever- evolving C++ standard. Anything that leaves _him_ feeling like a "grunt" is, to a fair approximation, hairier than Chewbacca.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only slightly related, but I feel (I do not yet have the experience) that 'auto' is going to make the lives of those reading code 10x harder, for the benefit of those writing code to have to think and type tiny amounts less, and for the writers of template libraries to have to think 10 times less. Especially that last part concerns me great amounts.

I'm not looking forward to the first time I will have to work myself into a code base build around heavy 'auto' use.

<comment><USER8> Maybe for programmers that are only used to reading C, pre-C++11 and the likes. On the other hand when you are used to read more dynamic languages where typenames are much less written down literally (say C#/Python/Matlab just to name what comes up in my head), it doesn't make much difference. I'm also not sure if it makes that much of a difference for templates? Those are already quite type-agmostic. E.g. if your template typename is T, there's not much difference in writing `auto x = T()` vs `T x = T()`. Except the (imo) improvement that you are not repeating yourself in the auto case.

<comment><USER7> Yes, certainly as you say, which is what concerns me - the notion that types are something that is best buried, by an influx of new users.

And certainly - the case of auto x = T(); is not too bad. It's when the type is determined by template overload, or Koenig lookup, or template traits, that it becomes murky. It will take years for tool to catch up - now when I put my cursor on a variable, it will show me the type in the status bar. For the first few years this will always show 'auto' I'm afraid. In other languages, a collection is a collection (mostly) - in C++ it depends on whether you use a vector, set, hash or list what methods are available. That's quite a difference, from a programming comfort point of view.

<comment><USER8> _the notion that types are something that is best buried_

that was not really my claim though - types should not be buried in C++. Either the context should be clear enough to know what type it is. Or, like for lots of template code, the type simply should not matter. Obviously in those cases auto shines. In other words: if the code is written properly it shouldn't matter if auto is used or not. (and in my experience if all your functions are nice and short, as they should be 99% of the time)

You do have a good point about the tooling though (which tooling is it you use btw? Haven't used anything but VS lately, and it's ok for the way I use it, but I can imagine having to go from clearly seeing all types to not being able to is an awful experience)

<comment><USER7> No I realize you're not saying that, I'm afraid that some people will come to C++ thinking that, that was what I was trying to say.

Visual Studio with Visual Assist is what I'm using - I love it but in the future the only way to deduce some types is by compiling code, I'm afraid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does the C++ committee actually work, if the experts can have these kinds of open questions?

<comment><USER10> Like any ANSI/ISO committee, you need to be a member to seat on those meetings and discuss everything language related.

To become a member you need to pay for it, so most members are employees from compiler vendors.

Everyone else only gets access to what gets published as public information, hence the doubts due to not being present in those meetings.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! (In my naive ways, I would have guessed that perhaps speaking rights were restricted, but that everyone was allowed to read and listen.)

The ANSI/ISO way seems like the opposite of what you'd want in a (open) programming language, doesn't it?

<comment><USER10> You get to know what is going on by posts from members, like this one

[https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/5894415f-...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/5894415f-be62-4bc0-81c5-3956e82276f3/entry/the_view_from_the_c_standard_meeting_september_2013_part_2?lang=en)

The ANSI/ISO way is the best way to standardize technology. The alternative being a reference implementation subject to a benevolent dictator with everyone discussing what the right license should be.

Any implementor knows what is supposed to be compliant with, as long as, its implementation follows a well defined standard, regardless of what license it decides to publish under and what type of implementation (compiler/interpreter/JIT/,...)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the link!

> The ANSI/ISO way is the best way to standardize technology. The alternative > being a reference implementation subject to a benevolent dictator with > everyone discussing what the right license should be.

That's a false dilemma. You can have a standard that's discussed and decided on in a forum that's not ANSI/ISO.

<comment><USER7> That's just nitpicking. Maybe the GP could have said "The _model of_ the ANSI/ISO way is the best way to standardize technology.", but the sentence after that described in a very apt way the vast majority of "standards" not build by a formal committee, with actual travel budgets and a commitment to make things work for the medium term (10 years, at a minimum).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the way i handle c++ complexity is to limit its feature usage to exercise its strength letting it help me solve the problem.

c++ is a big language with big grammar, as such offers a lot of different ways to say the same thing. each different construct is understood by a different set of code-readers, same way as in a complex human language. commenting c++ code is part of writing c++ due to this complexity, in my practice.

in a complex grammar, the order of words makes a difference and certain relation of grammatical constructs must be obeyed to remain comprehensive and understandable by most people.

communications using formal grammar makes it more understandable, versus slang. however both formal and informal convey the same information for the respective group of people.

in a programming language, pondering publicly about good and bad practices and their merit helps reading code, of course, with comments.

<comment><USER12> > c++ is a big language with big grammar, as such offers a lot of different > ways to say the same thing

This is what I hate about Perl, so why do I like C++?

I'm quite willing to admit I'm irrational, but it feels like there's a big difference between the "there's more than one way to do things" style of both languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love Scott's hair. It looks like an exciting blend of a 1970s progressive rock band and one of Robin Hood's merry men. It's cool.</comment>


An Idea to Handle Left-Recursion in Parsing Expression Grammars (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/orlandohill/peg-left-recursion <comment><USER2> This article does not cite any references (and is from 2010) so I can't tell if the author was aware that packrat parsing can support left recursion (PDF, 2008): [http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~todd/research/pepm08.pdf](http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~todd/research/pepm08.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The algorithm in that paper produces incorrect parses for some PEGs: [http://tratt.net/laurie/research/publications/papers/tratt__...](http://tratt.net/laurie/research/publications/papers/tratt__direct_left_recursive_parsing_expression_grammars.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Also worth noting from this paper is this, which is an underappreciated facet of packrat parsing:

> It should be noted that while Packrat parsing obviously adds an extra layer > of complexity over 'pure' PEGs, contrary to expectations it often slows > parsing down when used blindly for every rule.

Especially these days, and really definitely in a lot of dynamic languages (cfe Ruby), the kind of allocation rate that packrat parsing produces has a significantly negative effect on performance. Applied blindly you're just trading n^2 performance for n^2 memory use, and that may not work out the way you think it should.

<comment><USER5> Actually performance is exponential without memoization, so usually some amount of memoization is essential, but memoizing more rules usually does not help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OMeta is PEG that supports left-recursion. Sadly almost nobody cares.</comment>


Now Britains can ask – did you spy on me? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/13866/now-britains-can-ask-spy/

<comment><USER2> Bringing yourself to the attention of GCHQ is _never_ a good idea imho.</comment>


The strange normality of life in a breakaway state - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46510917 <comment><USER2> It is not normal in Abkhazia at all, it is depressingly suffocating for the young generation to survive there with no hope of normal life. There is no longer any Russian financial support, they are broke now. Kids are allowed to drink alcohol at an early age because of their old traditions, drugs and suicide are rampant, even the coach of a football team was caught doing cocaine, and the legal system is broke due to tribalism. I visited Abkhazia last July, they are cut off, no airport, no seaport, just one crossing controlled by Russians.No real economy, just Russian tourists who would generate some business in the summer, now in winter I heard many calls for help. (edited for spelling)

</comment><comment><USER3> Honest question: I don't get what is strange about this normality, can someone share their perspective? Mine is skewed as I grew up in Transnistria and visited a few years ago.

My guess is that it seems strange only if you expected those territories to be in a constant state of war. No, they are not under siege, but life is not exactly dandy there, either.

<comment><USER4> > I grew up in Transnistria

Can I ask, what's the main language? Russian right, not a dialect? Not Ukranian? If I spoke Moscow Russian there would I be understood?

Also is it fairly socialist or...? Just wondering from all the СССР insignia.

<comment><USER3> Russian is the main language. I don't know a word of Moldovan (which is practically Romanian). Yes you'd be understood, minus some slang.

It is not socialist but the older generation seems to wish for those times to return, when food and work were guaranteed.[1] Wealth is concentrated among very few nefarious businessmen and politicians.

[1] Of course this is nonsense; times were just as difficult during the USSR—bread lines, etc—but people's memories are faulty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Abkhazia lost more than half its population. That would change things fairly dramatically.

<comment><USER6> "Lost" obscures the fact that the ethnic Georgian _majority_ of Abkhazia's pre-1993 population was ethnically cleansed, with 20-30 thousand civilians killed (most were brutally murdered, not mere collateral damage of indiscriminate warfare).

This was accomplished against a rag-tag army of the newly independent Georgia because the Abkhazian rebels were controlled (armed, financed, provided with air support and heavy weaponry, and thousands of mercenaries) directly by Russia.

Current breakaway Abkhazia is a byproduct of genocide and imperialism, pure and simple.

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

<comment><USER2> I think the Georgian fascist fervour was behind the drive of Abkhazian for independence.I was told the other side of the story by several Abkhazians, they said they were deprived of jobs, housing and oppressed by the Georgians in their capital Sukhumi. I am saying their capital because Abkhazia was a state before the USSR, they joined and were promised independence in case USSR got dissolved, yet Georgian Stalin obstructed that and got rid of all Abkhazian nationalists in his circle (source in the youtube this documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGyyuxRPws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGyyuxRPws).

<comment><USER6> Nothing justifies ethnic cleansing and mass murder. Abkhazia was not a state before USSR. They were not in a position to bargain with anyone about joining the Soviet Russia (USSR was created later). They were forcibly annexed like all other parts of the former Russian Empire whom the Bolsheviks managed to capture in a civil war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm the BBC didn't mention Kosovo, which, after Cyprus, is maybe the most geopolitically significant quasi-state

<comment><USER8> I thought of that too, but Kosovo has much more recognition: "104 out of 193 (54%) United Nations (UN) member states, 23 out of 28 (82%) European Union (EU) member states, 25 out of 29 (86%) NATO member states, and 35 out of 57 (61%) Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states have recognised Kosovo." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_K...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Kosovo)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What startup news stories should I talk about on Calacanis's show? - <AUTHOR>

On Monday, I'm doing the news on Jason Calacanis's This Week in Startups.
There hasn't been much news since his last episode (on Friday) so I'm trying to be more creative.
Could you recommend startup business news that... ...people would talk about after the show? ...didn't get the coverage it deserved last week? ...points to an important trend? <comment><USER2> Guys, guys.. You need a workshop on basic PR strategies... As a former VP of a tech PR firm, I would be glad to explain the basics:

1) To get any serious media coverage you need to be _newsworthy,_

2) What is _newsworthy?_ Any person, company or event that fits into a large economical, social or political picture can be considered newsworthy.

3)Best way to learn and practice being newsworthy is to read the Wall Street Journal (There are other pubs, but if you have only enough time to read one, make it WSJ)

4) Don't just read an article, but read and answer 3 questions. a) What is the trend(big picture) that this article describes? b) How does my company fits into this trend? c) Where can I find statistics that support my point?

4) Once you see a great fit for yourself, write to the author of that article an e-mail. Most of the WSJ reporters are easy to reach. If you do the 3) practice right, sooner or later, you will be included in those WSJ stories. Just think, companies pay $10,000 and up in monthly retainers to PR firms to get their names in WSJ.

5) Similar strategy applies to getting _coverage_ from Guy Kawasaki & other top tech bloggers.

a) join Twitter, follow Kawasaki <http://twitter.com/guykawasaki> on Twitter b) listen what he is talking about c) join the conversation, d) if your comments(twits) are intelligent, he & others will notice & answer, re-twit your comments. And that is your surest way to get _coverage_ from Kawasaki.

6)One important point to remember.The media(Kawasaki included) always want to post a)educational b) entertaining content.

Give them something new(educate them), be it an idea, a point of view, personal observation & a joke, tie your current work into it for promo benefit. Keep it short and simple. (Twitter is a good way to train yourself in brevity)

P.S. I am here because I a fan of Paul Graham's ideas. Paul, if I can be of any help in your endeavors, you can reach me via my Twitter <http://twitter.com/mylifeandart>

</comment><comment><USER3> Andrew, how about, Should all the cool kids, who have 100,000+ followers/readers (guy kawasaki, louis grey) randomly choose some relatively unknown start up and give them an exposure boost just for the hell of it? What do they have to lose if they promote an up and coming app or site with no expectation of being compensated? Most start-ups need promo as bad as they need cash. I am talking about a real promo, something beyond just a tech crunch or mashable mention. Sort of like Oprah, but in the digital space. Hmmm maybe YOU should do some interviews of someone who has yet to achieve success, every now and then.... I wish I could give you a suggestion of who might---oh, I can! Jeff Wurtz of lymabean.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. The problem I have with interviewing startups is that they're full of sh*t. They talk up their product like it's the next Google.

But what I want to get to is the the honest parts of their stories. I want to hear how they're up nights worrying that they'll go out of business.

I want to hear that one of their motivations is that couldn't get laid in high school and business is their way to finally be someone in this world. And they won't take their eyes off that dream for even a second.

Or something like that. But I'm not a good enough interviewer to draw that out of them. Yet.

<comment><USER4> You must be talking to the wrong startups, then. We've never claimed to be making the next Google. I didn't get laid much in high school, but I quickly made up for lost time afterwards. I already am someone in this world by virtue of existing, so that's covered too.

You seem to want all startups to be depressed and self-loathing. Those stories might be hard to come by since they're two qualities that most entrepreneurs simply do not have, at least not consistently.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

I meant that I wanted more openness, not self-loathing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of people who didn't and have never got mashable/techcrunch/rww mentions didn't get the coverage they deserved.

For example I have been trying to tell people that we now support facebook stream API in FriendBinder and since this is only about a week since facebook released it, it should be semi-interesting, but no one seems interested.

P.S. liked the show, watched it on Friday, live.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rythie one the things that bothers me is that the "cool kids" can add a stupid little feature to their products and get a ton of coverage in blogs and mainstream media.

But anyone who isn't in the "in crowd" can't get heard.

<comment><USER5> Yeah that bothers me too. Though I suspect if I was one of those "cool kids" it would bother me less ;-)

As an aside, dailybooth is really a unique idea, it's in this round of ycombinator. I see it has a picture-twitter that suits vloggers (iJustine is on there for example <http://dailybooth.com/ijustine> )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Andrew,

How about letting the people on here vote for what startup you should talk about each week?

Collectively as a group this bunch is going to be way ahead of the mainstream press as to what's hot.

Saw both shows this weekend and they were strangely compelling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have posted this sooner. Your idea is great, but I didn't leave people enough time to vote.</comment></comment>


On-Chip Network Topology for High Energy Efficiency and Scalability [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~rausavar/pubs/sn-asplos18.pdf <comment><USER2> @Katydid - Don't know if this is the right place to say, but I like all of your submissions related to hardware architectures. Are you on LinkedIn/ Quora/ personal website where I can follow you on a regular basis?</comment>


Inaudible ultrasound commands can be used to control Siri, Alexa, and Google Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16265906/ultrasound-hack-siri-alexa-google <comment><USER2> dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15191640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15191640)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ingenious, but it feels like this should be fairly easy to patch against with a low-pass filter.

<comment><USER4> You need a hardware LPF, though.

The trouble is that the sampler in the ADC down-converts harmonics of the passband into the passband. To make this concrete: you might sample at f0 to capture all frequencies from 0 to f0/2, but you also get all the energy in frequency bands f0 * 3/2 -- f0 * 5/2, f0 * 7/2 -- f0 * 9/2, etc. Unless you pre-filter that before it gets to the sampler, that is.

By the way, a variation of this trick was used by HP and Tektronix in 1960's oscilloscopes to display multi-GHz signals.

Depending on the power of the ultrasonic source, the hardware LPF might need to have a quite fast roll-off, which might imply a large number of stages, which is hard to design and expensive to manufacture.

<comment><USER5> Specifically one good size capacitor would do against it. or a slightly more complex tiny filter.

Unless said "ultrasound" is just high audible data, in which case I'm not impressed. (Similar to "ultrasound" audio Doppler used in some cellphone apps.)

Very loud ultrasound carries badly through air and produces nasty effects in dogs, cats and some people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> hey siri, open www.mynastyhackpage.edu</comment>


Unix Recovery Legend (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/recovery.html <comment><USER3> > Well, for one thing, you must always remember the immortal words, DON'T > PANIC

So true. A colleague of mine managed - on his second or third day on job - <USER2> delete every single user account in our Active Directory. After an hour, we gave up trying to restore the AD (it was an SBS2008, so no AD recycle bin) and simply restored the entire DC (at the time, our domain only had the one DC) from backup. Surprisingly, most of our users took it very well and used the time to get some paperwork done or clean up their desks or something like that. Still, it was one of the most stressful days of my life. So we kind of panicked. In restrospect, I think another hour or so of research might have saved us the eight hours of restoring that server (did I mention that our backup infrastructure really, really sucked at the time?).

In smaller desasters, I've found the ability to remain calm most valuable, though. Having your boss breathing down your neck impatiently can instill a deep desire to simply do _something_ just to show that you are working on the problem. But if you don't understand what's wrong, at best you are wasting time, and possibly making the problem even worse.

<comment><USER4> Amen. I was a new DBA at a company that used a DBMS which used extent based disk allocation with a default extent size of 16kb. That was a problem on a busy table (which this was), because there was a finite limit to the number of extents that could allocated, but that limit was impossible to predict.

The proactive fix was simple. Backup, restore the table in a two hour outage window. I asked for 5 hours, as the previous DBA never tested a restore. "Unacceptable", said the SVP.

Fast forward two weeks. We hit the limit, and the entire company is essentially down. Between lost revenue, SLA fines and payroll, they were losing something like $5k/minute. Recovery at this point required 30 hours of full database restore, including journal recoveries from slooooow DAT tapes.

There were three of us, everyone stayed calm, provided regular updates and handled a few hours of direct observation by the CEO and a board member for a few hours.

<comment><USER5> And the SVP?

<comment><USER4> Master politician... He made it somebody else's problem.

Funny story is that he forgot to pay the phone bill for one of the call centers, and when they went to walk him out, they found him in a "compromising position" with his secretary in the office.

That company was an unlimited source of material! Good times!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many years ago I ran into a similar problem. A technician came in to the office to replace my hard disk with a larger one, and instead of copying my old data to the new one, he started copying the new disk to the old one, resulting in /home now being partially NTFS and partially ext2. ie, it was unreadable in linux and Windows. I documented the recovery process here: [http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/11/home-is- ntfs.html](http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/11/home-is-ntfs.html)

Bonus: a year later, at a different company, I was faced with having to undelete source files on FreeBSD (UFS). I documented that as well here: [http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/08/undelete-in- freebsd.html](http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/08/undelete-in-freebsd.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had to do something similar a long time ago in the mid-90s when Linux switched from libc5 to glibc6. In this case, I hadn't deleted everything, rather I'd stupidly upgraded libc locally.

After learning a valuable lesson in exactly how dynamic library work and the recommended process for live libc upgrade (don't do it if ABI changes) I fixed it by using my IRC client which was already running so unaffected to get a statically linked copy of /bin and /sbin from another machine, via DCC Send...

Recovery then consisted of restoring libc5 from slackware 3.2 install media.

I can't remember how I got root, either su was statically linked (believable since it's setuid) or I had a logged in root session. I did have to used the tcsh "echo *" trick for file listing and the shell built-in cd...

<comment><USER8> "cd" is _always_ a shell built-in. It is not even possible to have a /bin/cd binary which does what "cd" does.

<comment><USER9> Why is impossible? Maybe I've understood why it is always built in: without it the shell wouldn't be able to navigate through the directory tree to find the executables of the commands. But once the shell has it, I think it would be rendundant (so nobody does it) but still possible to have a /bin/cd that navigates directories.

<comment><USER10> You can't change the environment of the parent process, including CWD. `/bin/cd` would either be another process like all executables run by the shell, and not work, or special cased, at which point why make it an executable at all?

<comment><USER11> I can think of one way to write "cd" out-of-process from the shell: exec /bin/cd /some/path, which does chdir("/some/path") and execs your shell. You'd lose your history and similar state, but if you had a shell that didn't even put cd in-process, it probably doesn't have history either.

Sample:

        /tmp$ exec /tmp/cd /bin
        /bin$ exec /tmp/cd /home
        /home$ exec /tmp/cd /usr
        /usr$

Sample code:

        #include <err.h>
        #include <stdlib.h>
        #include <unistd.h>

        int main(int argc, char *argv[])
        {
            char *shell;
            if (argc != 2)
                errx(1, "Usage: exec cd /some/path");
            if (chdir(argv[1]) == -1)
                err(1, "chdir");
            shell = getenv("SHELL");
            if (!shell || !*shell)
                shell = "/bin/sh";
            execl(shell, shell, NULL);
            err(1, "exec");
        }

<comment><USER10> Hah, hadn't thought of that. Kind of CPS for processes. I'm not sure what that would gain you, though, as you'd have to either a) write both the cd and the user of the cd, and there are less awkward ways to do that than exec'ing, or b) you'd have to pass something ELSE to exec to return control after cd finishes.

This seems a little awkward and I'm not sure what is being proven. :P

<comment><USER12> It's how very early version of Unix effectively did stuff, they exceed a program, and when it exited they exceed the shel again.

When they introduced something like the fork/exec model we now have they discovered cd didn't work any more and had to write it as a built in.

Now, for bonus points, work out how goto worked when it wasn't a built in.

<comment><USER11> > It's how very early version of Unix effectively did stuff, they exceed a > program, and when it exited they exceed the shel again.

Makes sense, since those systems might not have enough memory to run the shell and another program at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 6-7 years ago, a co-worker was doing some work on a server that we were phasing out. It wasn't being used for anything of critical importance, so a Jr level person was permitted to have root. He was actually my colleague and equal on the org-chart but he had less experience with *NIX administration.

He was copying directories to the new server and deleting them when he was done. Well...

I don't remember the sub-directory he had just finished copying but when he went to delete it he typed in "rm -rf / SOMEDIR/SOMESUBDIR" and hit enter.

He almost immediately realized what he had done and hit CTRL-C but by that point the damage was done. Our boss had access to the previous week's backups and since the server wasn't critical, he just rebooted it and restored but we had a good laugh about it.

The next day, I made a paper airplane and on the side I wrote in red Sharpie "Linux Air" and then "rm -rf" inside of a red circle with a line through it and taped it to the top of his monitor.

He was a good sport about it and left it up for a couple of months.

<comment><USER14> This particular variation was (finally!) fixed in the 2013 POSIX revision:

"If either of the files dot or dot-dot are specified as the basename portion of an operand (that is, the final pathname component) or if an operand resolves to the root directory, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and do nothing more with such operands."

[http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/rm...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/rm.html)

Warning: not yet widely implemented outside the GNU world.

<comment><USER15> Personally, I wish two things:

1) that rm had a (configurable) number of files / directories above which it'll ask you to double-check.

2) that files had a "pleasedontdelete" flag that rm would check and ask about.

<comment><USER16> > pleasedontdelete flag

For some programs (rm isn't one of them), removing the write permission is sufficient to get an interactive prompt when you try to overwrite/truncate/delete the file.

I really like OSX's current metaphor, where files that haven't been touched in a while get "locked", and must then be "unlocked" to modify them further. Phrasing it in terms of stability rather than permission makes a lot of sense to me. It's too bad the metaphor isn't echoed in the CLI.

<comment><USER17> `rm` is definitely one of them, it's just suppressed by the `-f` flag. (examples from Ubuntu)

        $ touch foo
        $ chmod -w foo
        $ rm foo
        rm: remove write-protected regular empty file 'foo'?

There's also the immutable attribute many modern filesystems support, which prevents the file from being modified unless the attribute is removed.

        $ sudo chattr +i foo
        $ rm foo
        rm: remove write-protected regular empty file 'foo'? y
        rm: cannot remove 'foo': Operation not permitted

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yip had a manager do that on a clients site, bestpart was the kit was so new that only a few in the country and the install set for the OS had not arrived and no backups. Was new machine and been partialy configured, awaiting tapes.

Luckily anotehr client had the same RS/6000 (think 3rd in the country outside IBM) and was able to borrow there install DAT to bring AIX back to life.

Odd as had problem with RT/6150 in which (nobody admitted it) had similiar problem and that involved to get it limping along copying files from a working system onto this holed system to fill the gaps. Which given the eventual reinstall that weekend took most of the weekend only to find that floppy disk 70 odd was corrupt, much fun.

But *nix is great as always more than one way to get things done and on many systems can also be true.

Still good education in not only backups, but backup integrity as you never know when you want to read them back.

</comment><comment><USER19> I first found this story in a collection of Unix horror stories several years ago: [http://www.yak.net/carmen/unix_horror_stories](http://www.yak.net/carmen/unix_horror_stories)

If you enjoyed this one, you'll probably enjoy the others in there as well.

<comment><USER8> See also _COMPUTER-RELATED HORROR STORIES, FOLKLORE, AND ANECDOTES_ :

[http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Techdoc/Lore/rumor.ne...](http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Techdoc/Lore/rumor.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of my coworkers was out in the field trying to fix a problem on a rhel box.

As root, typed in chown -R nobody:nobody / some/dir/somewhere/

Ended up having to re-image the system. We still give him a hard time about it.

Now I'm wondering if he could have tried to find a more creative solution as displayed in TFA.

Thoughts?

Edit: He hard killed the box right after he typed that in.

<comment><USER6> I suppose he could have tried remounting the device read-only, and then using dd to directly update the inode table to change ownership, but, if he was already root, he could have just chown'ed it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awhile back I read another disaster recovery story, along the lines of recovering a long pipeline command from a long-running process by reading the resident memory of the containing shell. I've not managed to find it, but I think it was posted to HN sometime last year or so. Anyone know about it?

</comment><comment><USER22> In the ext2 days, an incident put a _lot_ into lost+found. I had a Tripwire database with file checksums, and wrote a script to checksum the files and move them back into place. I think a handful of files were corrupted, but I got it booting again.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why did they not boot from installation/recovery media, mount the drive, copy what was left, restore and copy back the user and configuration data that was found?

<comment><USER24> > Alternatively, we could get the boot tape out and rebuild the root > filesystem, but neither James nor Neil had done that before, and we weren't > sure that the first thing to happen would be that the whole disk would be > re-formatted, losing all our user files. (We take dumps of the user files > every Thursday; by Murphy's Law this had to happen on a Wednesday). Another > solution might be to borrow a disk from another VAX, boot off that, and tidy > up later, but that would have entailed calling the DEC engineer out, at the > very least. We had a number of users in the final throes of writing up PhD > theses and the loss of a maybe a weeks' work (not to mention the machine > down time) was unthinkable.

<comment><USER23> Yea, I am not buying it. They have a UNIX guru that is building new commands in assembly and transferring the files with uuencoding but no one knows how a recovery tape works? Using a recovery tape was not a rare event in UNIX shops.

<comment><USER25> Mario Wolczko's home page is here: [http://www.wolczko.com/](http://www.wolczko.com/) Feel free to drop him a line and tell him he's a liar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've considered this problem before. If I remember my research, I'd investigate using bash's built-in echo or printf, and paste encoded versions of binaries into the terminal. To speed up the terminal work, get uudecode, base64, or iconv working. Maybe wget or curl, to fetch base packages and unpack them. Then, say, ssh, and rsync, and selectively restore from backups.

</comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off-topic but I am curious: what are the things at the bottom? Are they precursors to email or something?

<comment><USER27> By "things" I assume you mean this stuff:

> ARPA: email@example.com > USENET: mcvax!ukc!man.cs.ux!miw > > JANET: firstname.lastname@example.com

miw is clearly Mario Wolczko's username.

Those will be his email address in different formats. The first would route email to him at email@example.com using cs.ucl.ac.uk first as a gateway. The second address format is what's called a bang path, for UUCP email. The final one is a modern IETF standard email address. JANET is a network provider for UK academic institutions, similar to an ISP but structured differently.

You might find these references interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address) [http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/x-087-2-mail.address....](http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/x-087-2-mail.address.html) [http://www.livinginternet.com/e/ew_addr.htm](http://www.livinginternet.com/e/ew_addr.htm)

<comment><USER28> I think that last one isn't a modern standard email address -- the domain part is reversed. It's a JANET NRS path ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS)). The modern equivalent would be firstname.lastname@example.com.

The first email address (the ARPA one) is presumably using a machine in UCL as the gateway between internet routing and JANET routing, since the part before the % is the JANET NRS component ordering. The obvious conclusion would be that the mail server he was using didn't have an ARPAnet connection at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's way more badass than my own rm -rf disaster: [http://journal.dedasys.com/2006/01/30/disaster- strikes/](http://journal.dedasys.com/2006/01/30/disaster-strikes/)

<comment><USER30> I'm curious to see what your tcl code looks like. Did you keep it around for future disasters or was it just a quick and dirty one-off?

<comment><USER29> It was as quick and dirty as could be. It was pretty simple, really, as it just accepted a connection and wrote a file with no encoding. No security or concurrency or any other niceties.

<comment><USER30> Ah, got it. Sounds like it did the trick though, a clever idea to come up with in the midst of looming disaster! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This somehow always ends up popping up every couple of years, never ceases to astound me...

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks god, nowadays we have extundelete. :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember the before-time, when the GNU lived only in Boston. When beasts like 'adb' and 'fsdb' roamed the earth, and 'fsck' was the wimpy stuff of childrens taunts. When I controlled my horror and revulsion and used them to recover the broken VAX by manually rebuilding inode lists and finding the lost fragments in the dark.

Hard tools for hard admins; the Gods of BSD, McKusick and Joy and the rest, were and are wise. We live in more refined times....</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently started counting down in my head when I need to do something important. When I reach 0, I make myself go and do that thing. While it may sound like a gimmick, it does seem to work well for me. Simply starting to count down is easy to do, and can be done simultaneously with almost anything (except writing perhaps). Counting also gives you time and preparation in order to stop what you're doing (a.k.a. procrastinating). When you reach 0, you have this sense of obligation to stop procrastinating and do the work. The longer you count down for, the more obligated you'll be to do the work. <comment><USER2> To start things off, if it makes you feel better, there has been studies shown that people who have ADD or what they might call ADHD now are more likely to succeed as an entrepreneur than those who don't. This statement is related to the topic because people who are easily distracted are always procrastinating.

To fight procrastination, discipline is the key word here I believe. I've always been bad at time management, but I've improved a lot lately. Now although I attempt to stay productive as much as possible, I still feel like time is not enough.

My approach is that I would start sticky notes on the windows screen, I would make tasklist of the most important things I would have to do today, and bold 2 of the most important things. I force myself to get those things down.

Honestly you can read ALL the books you want. You can use all the productivity apps you want, but when it comes down to it, your own determination is the only factor that will fight this problem. . If you don't discipline yourself and avoid procrastination, don't worry about it because guess what? 95% of the population is just like you. But if you want to become to top 5% of the population, the crim de la crim, then you better start disciplining yourself. That's the self-talk mentality I use nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait until the self-hate level is high enough to make me feel unbearably bad about not doing what I want to be doing. Not a very healthy approach.

I've also been trialling the habit of starting tasks so far ahead of time that the deadline feels irrelevant. It's quite liberating and something I would like to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are two of you. It's all about compromise between the two. If you don't compromise one becomes weak and the other dominant. If one becomes dominant you, as a whole, become unhealthy and unstable. There are a few hacks here and there and yours sounds interesting but all hacks are useless with out having some fundamental balance.

A well rested mind is your best weapon against imbalance. Meditate and stop drinking coffee.

Procrastination I find is a side effect of an discontented and imbalanced mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> I face the same problem. I think it is a "business owner/entrepreneurial" syndrome (if not chronic disease). The shear number of "stupid" (according to our entrepreneurial mindset) tasks that are necessary to accomplish is often discouraging and a turnoff.

My method of getting over this syndrome is made of a few simple steps:

\- make myself unavailable for some time (could be a couple of hours or 2 days). And if this is not possible resort to waking up at odd times like 4:30 or 5:00 AM where you have no chance of being disturbed.

\- I get started by picking the easiest tasks and doing them almost mindlessly. That helps in making you feel good about yourself (i think the fact of achieving tasks must release some "feel good" hormone/chemical in ones brain, i call it the "good job candy") and once you start getting a taste of the good job candy : you effectively start building momentum.

\- Once you build momentum you are usually good for going through the entire list, because having started with the easiest tasks, each next one you complete yields a higher dose of good job candy and thus more drive to dig into the harder tasks.

That being said, an even better (in the sense of it's efficiency) motivator is the near disaster situation during which i suspect most of us become supper efficient.

</comment><comment><USER6> Motivation _follows_ action.

I don't know if this is strictly true in the absolute sense, but we're very programmed to think "ok I need to get motivated so I can get something done", when what seems to work far better is thinking "ok I need to get some things done so that I can get motivated". This follows the "take small steps, any steps" idea.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with you.

Why should you do things you're not motivated to do?

A lot of procrastination and not making progress on tasks has to do with really not wanting to do the task, or really not seeing the value in it. If it's studying for a course, it's a course you don't care about. If it's working on a project, it's a project you don't care about. Maybe you don't care about cleaning up your room, etc.

You really need to think about the whys of doing something, and not just assume that work is good. You can trick yourself and push yourself but you need to have a solid sense of the goal before you will really become involved.

That's the goal, isn't it? To really commit to a task.

<comment><USER6> The implication in my comment is that you _do_ want to do the thing (or that there is some expectation, either personal or external, that you have to do it ex: studying for a course that you need to graduate).

Wanting to do something, or realizing you need to do it does not remove your personal barriers that lead to procrastination: maybe it seems too difficult, you don't know where to start, you're afraid of failure, or maybe you're suffering analysis/paralysis. You're still "motivated" in the "I want/expect to do this thing" sense, but you lack the motivation in the "wow I can do this, get to work" sense that you need to push through and get moving.

This is where "motivation follows action": you start small, identify some easy steps that will begin moving you towards the goal, and do them -- and through this action, motivation often follows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Merlin Mann has written interesting stuff on this topic before: [http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination- hack-102...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025)

What he's suggesting is kind of a mind game, but hey if it helps you then why not right?

</comment><comment><USER9> Have multiple projects that are reasonably different. You can then procrastinate by working on other projects before coming back to your current project as procrastination from those.. Works for me anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> JFDI

<comment><USER11> As pithy as that seems, it really is the best way to overcome procrastination. Just do it. Just do something that moves you closer to your goals. Pick just one little thing and get it done. Then pick something else and get it done. Once you've started getting momentum (even just a little bit of momentum), pick the most important thing and get it done, then rinse and repeat.

It's going to sound like I'm trying to plug my newest app ([http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unbroken- chain/id415158247?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unbroken- chain/id415158247?mt=8)), and I suppose I am, but that's one of the reasons that I wrote it: to help me make sure that I am moving closer to my goals each and every day.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Just do it._

How? How do I do it? Things just don't play out by themselves. What mindset do I need to have in order to do the things that move me closer to my goal? _Just do it_ could answer anything. It doesn't provide any details or make me anymore motivated (despite what Nike may think).

<comment><USER11> Wow. OK, then... You have enough gumption to ask how to get motivation and to argue about it, but not to do anything that will get you closer to your goals.

Forget the "just do it" part, if that so upsets you, about what I said and read the rest. For me the only way to get motivated is to progress on something, that's the "pick one little thing and get it done" part.

If that doesn't work for you, so be it - We all work differently. Use the anger that you directed at me to get motivated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for the tone - I didn't mean to come across so nasty. I simply wanted to hear more about your ideas, past the "just do it" part. Sure, we all think and work differently, but what works for one may also work for another. That's why I originally posted this question.

I did read past the "just do it" part and I see what you're saying about progressing on the work. However, I'd like to know what you (or anyone else) does to get started. How do we get that initial burst of motivation?

Again, I'm sorry about the way I reacted.

<comment><USER11> No worries.

We all have different things that work for us. You have your count mnemonic, to misuse the term. For me it really is as simple as finding something, anything that I can get done. One example: I needed to update the sales copy on one of my landing pages, but for some reason didn't want to get started. What did I do? I started by changing the background color of the site. Something easy that took just a couple of minutes, then when I'd finished testing that and found it to be an improvement, I moved to changing the headline on the page and eventually the whole sales copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For tasks at work that I dread, I set aside a certain time of day to deal with it. If I run into something that is that sort of task at another time of day and I don't feel up to coping with it (and it's not urgent/high priority), I set it aside and deal with it during that time slot the following day. Once my pile of dreaded tasks for the day is done, my head is clear to focus and get on with getting on with it. I also group certain tasks for efficiency, like I try to do all my printing around the same time. It helps me with mental flow/workflow.

At home, it usually is much more about taking a nap, feeding myself, and so on. When my body is properly cared for, then I can be productive. When it is not, I piddle around and "procrastinate". But for me it's really not some mental block or avoidance thing. I have a medical condition and when I am tired and/or under the weather, I just can't be productive. So the piece I focus on is addressing my physical care. Everything else flows from that.

</comment><comment><USER13> have drive to succeed

<comment><AUTHOR> If it was that easy, we'd all be 10x more successful than we are currently. =)

<comment><USER12> Don't be silly. I would be like 30x more successful.</comment></comment></comment>


Serverlessness - <AUTHOR> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/12/09/Serverlessness <comment><USER2> Maybe "run-space" is more appropriate than "server". In the "old days" of the web, one could host many Perl or ASP-classic scripts (applications) on the same server without much problem (if you avoided risky practices). But with bigger stacks with more parts that need version management, we began moving to one-app-per-server. But that got expensive, so virtualization increased. Each app is now basically housed in one virtual server space such that it's not really a server in the original sense such that "run-space" seems a more fitting term. There are other competing terms such as "container", but that may be specific kind or brand. I'm looking for a more generic term.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      $ host tbray.org
      tbray.org has address 126.96.36.199
      $ whois 188.8.131.52
      <snip>
      NetRange:       126.96.36.199 - 184.108.40.206
      CIDR:           220.127.116.11/20
      NetName:        IDIGITAL-01
      NetHandle:      NET-67-231-16-0-1
      Parent:         NET67 (NET-67-0-0-0-0)
      NetType:        Direct Allocation
      OriginAS:       AS54643
      Organization:   Idigital Internet Inc. (II-24)
      RegDate:        2012-05-18
      Updated:        2016-12-14
      Ref:            https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/188.8.131.52

      OrgName:        Idigital Internet Inc.
      OrgId:          II-24
      Address:        705 - 850 West Hastings Street
      City:           Vancouver
      StateProv:      BC
      PostalCode:     V6C 1E1
      Country:        CA
      RegDate:        2012-04-12
      Updated:        2017-01-28
      <snip>

Guess he's not yet hosting his blog from AWS Lambda, or even AWS for that matter.

<comment><USER4> This is Tim's personal blog, that he's been writing for well over a decade (that I recall). And since long before he joined Amazon.

If it makes you feel better, he built his own blogging system, way back when. And sometimes, if ain't broke, don't...

At times, he's talked about his contemporaneous work to various extents; that's been increasingly influenced by NDA's and employment contracts/agreements and whatnot, is my impression, although I haven't been reading him much, lately.

Another reason to keep his personal blog separate from his work life, including perhaps where and how it's hosted.

<comment><USER3> I totally understand and respect the decision to self-host his blog. I'm guessing it's a simple XML file (or set of XML files) statically transformed using XSLT or some hand-written transformer. I self-host my own stuff as well, and have for nearly 20 years.

I just wanted to keep things in perspective. Both in his post and in general discourse regarding "the cloud", the option of _not_ hosting things on AWS (or Azure or GCP) never seems to even enter into the equation.

I would propose that personal blogs is hardly the only scenario where a more traditional hosting approach would be preferable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stop Amazon propaganda. Serverless is when there is no server, for example only clients communicating P2p.</comment>


We (Mozilla) Fight For the User  - <AUTHOR> http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20110721

<comment><USER2> I've sent Mr. Eich an email, I'm very interested to see where Mozilla is going in terms of open social networking. While Google+ might be the next centralized ship that everyone jumps to (after Facebook, Myspace, Friendster), I have no doubt that the future of social networking is decentralized. While there is very interesting work being done (and hopefully my project* would be included in that assessment), it may be the case that an organization with the clout and resources of Mozilla may be the most likely hope for moving away from walled gardens.

* <http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This tweet is apt:

<http://twitter.com/#!/spectralhole/status/69513328166313984>

<comment><USER4> While I agree with at least part of the sentiment in the tweet, I'm not sure it's relevant, for multiple reasons:

1\. The photo's 4 years old, 2\. It's not clear that they're all running Mac OS X 3\. Mozilla actually delivers products on OS X 4\. Mozilla's stated mission is web freedom, not software freedom (though the two are intertwined to a degree). 5\. What nice things are being denied? (The only candidate I can think of is H.264, which again was an issue of web freedom, not software freedom).

Very similar points apply to Mozilla delivering a webkit-based browser on iPhone/iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time I make my browser do what _I_ want, rather than what some cruft- riddled server wants, I'm reminded of this.

Just don't let the designers hollow you out from within.</comment>


Pictonic adds 1000 new font icons, including a free programming language set - <AUTHOR> http://pictonic.co

<comment><USER2> How about <http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/> ?

<comment><USER3> That one has the Github Octocat icon I like, but hasn't updated to the new Twitter icon yet. Also doesn't support creating custom packages of just the icons you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Replacing Unicode shapes with icon font characters that are unrelated strikes me as a bad idea. Why not just use the private use area?

Edit: Another point - not having those lines over _free_ icons would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> hi there, thanks for the feedback! you're right there is no reason to have the lines over free icons. We'll consider this for the next update. Regarding the private use area, actually pictonic font icons are mapped to the private use area for precisely the reasons you describe

<comment><USER4> huh, OK. The ones on the homepage for reddit and youtube and so on weren't.

edit: actually maybe they are but they are used for symbols in the font I'm using

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What sells me on Pictonic? I'm not getting anything from the homepage about why I should choose this over the growing amount of free resources. Constantly adding new ones without charge is great, but there have been rumblings about allowing people to submit their own to FontAwesome and letting the community determine if it sticks.

For those of you interested in making your own like I've been doing recently (ignoring the accessibility issues for now), download Inkscape (free, cross- platform), save your vectors out as SVGs either in Illustrator or Inkscape, import into Inkscape and use their glyph font tool to map to your characters. Take that SVG over to freefontconverter.com and grab the TTF, then bring the TTF over to Font Squirrel to convert for web.

And for those of you keeping score of the nice resources already out there (outside of FontAwesome) -

<http://somerandomdude.com/work/iconic/>

<http://www.entypo.com/>

<http://thedesignoffice.org/project/modern-pictograms/>

<http://www.alessioatzeni.com/meteocons/> (weather-related)

<http://typicons.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Soooo many boxes[1], but that is not really your fault. It is the fault of this font icon fad. I need to write a more intelligent font remapper. Anyone got any suggestions that play nice with these sort of sites?

[1]<http://img.uncod.in/img/04F2C001AAC14424E5A5C8375033B122.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> hi there, what browser are you using there?

<comment><USER6> Chrome. It is a issue that only effects people that remap their fonts. I think I have found a solution though. I need to create a chrome extension that allows me to add certain fonts to a list that won't be remapped to my font of choice.[1]

[1]<http://www.pixelscript.net/gilldyslexic/>

<comment><AUTHOR> ah, yea thanks, that's good to know! that link is fascinating btw

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shame the topic of the link is hidden behind a sign up requirement.

<comment><AUTHOR> hi there, here is a screen shot of the programming language set: [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3737990/Screen%20Shot%202012-08-21%...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3737990/Screen%20Shot%202012-08-21%20at%2014.40.15.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this font, but the prices seem so steep. If I could buy the whole pack for something like $50 I would consider it, but $159 is just too much.

<comment><USER9> You probably won't need 2000 icons on a site? We normally just pick the icons we need rather than the whole pack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why no mention of Firefox in the compatibility list?

<comment><AUTHOR> omg... *facepalm that was an accident. the fonts have been tested extensively also in firefox, we'll update that soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see the programming language set. Is it one of the ones that shows up on the front page?

<comment><USER9> The programming language set are free for download after login!

<comment><USER12> Here is a screenshot, for those who don't want to register: <http://imgur.com/y2nZp>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this is the first I've really heard of Pictonic (or at least clicked through). Looks like a great deal; $150 for the kind of art that I spend maybe 20-30 minutes trying to find a license-free version and then PhotoShopping myself...with 2000 icons and future updates, seems like it'd be worth it.

Has anyone here bought the full set? What were your experiences with it? Any major drawbacks and deficiencies? (I'm interested in knowing how the catalog is organized in the file system...I'm assuming it's just a list of filenames? Or is there a sheet of metadata that contains category/tags?)

* OK, just signed up and tried downloading the free fonts. Very slick and straightforward. However, unless I'm missing something, there's nowhere on the site's icon browser to search by term (doesn't appear there are tags)...for example, I wanted to see if they had symbols for "Exit" (either for real-life situations or for computers).

i.e. I'm basically spoiled by how the Noun Project has catalogued their work. No easy feat, obviously: <http://thenounproject.com/>

<comment><USER9> You are right, the site doesn't support search at the moment. We have plans to add search in our next update, hopefully that'll solve the problem:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> these are great but in my experience don't look nice once font-size is below 20px

</comment><comment><USER13> The license is short and to the point: <https://pictonic.co/license>

> _ONCE PURCHASED You CAN: Use the icons for any personal or commercial > projects. Modify or alter all icons in any way you wish. You CANNOT: Under > any circumstance, you must not reproduce, resell, rent or publish Pictonic > icons. Let's be nice!_

But that last sentence in the license ("Under any circumstance, you must not...publish Pictonic icons") is subject to misinterpretation, no?

<comment><USER15> reproduce: Produce again. Produce a copy or representation of.

Bad wording indeed.

<comment><USER9> I'll make sure that's updated to a clearer version!</comment></comment></comment>


Spotify Announces Launch of Line-In - <AUTHOR> https://news.spotify.com/us/2018/03/12/spotify-announces-launch-of-line-in/ <comment><USER2> Great, another company I can work for without pay!

<comment><USER3> There's always these super salty style comments - everyone is entitled to their perspective I guess-- but I think there's some people that would use and enjoy this tool very much. They'll probably contribute a great deal and they will be draw great satisfaction from the transaction, which was only enabled by the tool existing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a good thing for Spotify. Highlighting how well some dark libraries were organized, I can only imagine this will help AI recommendations in the future.</comment>


Former Google engineer: 'I do not support the alt-right' - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/technology/culture/james-damore-interview/index.html <comment><USER2> Well, they support him.</comment>


You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hamming+research#!/story/sort_by_d...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hamming+research#!/story/sort_by_date/0/hamming%20research)</comment>