Ask HN: Are you planning to leave big cities? - <AUTHOR> I know couple of developers who have already left. They moved to lower cost cities/places with better housing etc. I'm just wondering if this is a bigger trend. What's the point of staying in big cities if most people are now working from home, more focused on their families while spending more time doing outdoor activities instead of going to malls, bars etc. <comment><USER2> Probably not, I lived in rural Florida (40 minutes from a grocery store) and now I live in a major city. One thing you cannot replace about a city is the how reliable EVERYTHING is.

Power? Always working for me, one outage in 3 years. Water? No wells to dry up, also no power required for me to get water (water pump). Sewage? No septic tank maintenance. Internet? Fiber straight to my condo and never have an outage.

Meanwhile in my rural life, I had Verizon wireless internet with a 5gb data cap, one time the cell tower got zapped and no internet for two days. Our well died 3 times in 10 years, which meant no water until we dug a new one. We drove over the septic tank and broke it, so that cost a pretty penny. Every single electronic in the home had a UPS because our power browned out nearly daily.

Then you have things like living near an AWS warehouse, so I get 1 day shipping on a lot of items.

Cities have a life style that I enjoy more, maybe I'll move to the suburbs but I'll always stay in a major metropolitan area.

<comment><USER3> I can understand the lack of high speed internet or lack of sewage if you live in a rural aread, but electricy? If you hadn't said you lived in Florida I would have guessed something in a developing or 3rd world country. How is that possible?

<comment><USER4> (Answering from my Swedish experience) Because electricity is mostly dug in in cities, sheltered from the weather while in the country it goes over poles meeting roads and trees.

<comment><USER3> And if you say sheltered from weather in Sweden, I could understand that. In florida? :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What's the point of staying in big cities if most people are now working > from home

WFH won't be permanent for most people. Cities won't be attractive for the next 6-12 months but eventually people's incentives to live in a big city will be back to where they were pre-COVID19.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yep, NYC lease ended last month and I have not renewed.

Currently with parents in the suburbs. Given how long I estimate it'll take for cities to be appealing again (think: dining, bars, clubs, museums, concerts, and shows) I want to spend the next year optimizing for access to nature, more space, and gardening; preferably with a small group of friends.

See a more verbose plan here:

[https://jborichevskiy.com/posts/friends-in- nature/](https://jborichevskiy.com/posts/friends-in-nature/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some things are hard to replicate outside big cities. There's probably a restaurant from every country in the world in London. I tried Guyanese food last week, a cuisine I'm unlikely to encounter outside a big city. There are great museums and art galleries. There are flights to every place I'd ever want to go.

So personally no plans to move to a less densely populated area.

</comment><comment><USER8> I live an hour's drive from the big city. Towns have the same pleasures - cinemas, restaurants, malls, Starbucks, McDonald's, fast internet, private schools, but more parks and less pollution.

But the big thing is the attitude. As a city friend put it, "Everyone uses each other and that's fine. You use friends. You give them a gift to make yourself happy."

Outside the city, people are less... reciprocal. A neighbor might wash your car because he was in the mood. You can throw a BBQ and just randomly invite neighbors who pool money, offer to buy, cook, or clean. Neighborhood kids come over to hang out and you can serve them tea.

</comment><comment><USER9> I live in a dense suburb (Fairfax county) of a major metropolitan area (D.C.) and like the combo of easy access to both open spaces and city amenities. There are plenty of commuters in my neighborhood, so we have easy access to reliable power, water, and high-speed internet that I couldn't do without.

I have previously lived in both dense urban settings (NYC) and rural areas (Wimberley, TX and Soultz, France) and would not consider moving to an area where I had to deal with septic tanks and satellite internet, even for 100% remote work.

</comment><comment><USER10> I live in Austin & plan to leave in 2-3 years.

* I live in the outskirts, not the city center, and would KILL to have a mass transit option within ~1/2 mile of my house.

* August, etc.

* When I compare property taxes with my HS friends in Appalachia, they're astonished. I pay 3-4X of my friends' rates for similar houses/land. The Texas no-income-tax schtick has worn off with me.

* I didn't grow up here & my friends are scattered around the world. So there's no allegiance to anything here. (With the strong exception to taco trucks.)

<comment><USER11> Land and taxes are cheap in Kentucky. Not many jobs there unless you have a remote option. I would enjoy moving to HCOL to make more money (assuming it goes to a mortgage) and then selling that house to retire early to a rural area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did this 3 years ago. Marketing side, not developer though. I moved form Sydney to rural outskirts of Brisbane. Brisbane is still a major city and we are ~1 hour to CBD.

Where I am its smaller rural blocks often around 40 acres. These quickly get smaller as you head to the city until you hit suburbia 15-20 min closer in.

For myself and family its be absolutely awesome. There a great blend of IT and physical work having a WFH desk job on a farm. Also so much activity is on your doorstep so going for a hike/dirt bike/horse ride etc is something you can do for a quick break and get back to the office. Its a real game changer in doing these things which in city life was often planned weeks ahead and took much of a day. And generally great for family life, just the little things like the other day I build an impromptu flying fox off some wire rope we had around as kids latest hobby is to head into the bush looking for trees to climb.

For me its been incredible, but that said it wouldn't be ever-ones cup of tee. If you go the farm route its like having 2 jobs and your really tied to animal if you want to take holidays, so get friendly with your neighbours. Also having never really done physical work I love this aspect and even bought a bulldozer to do some road works and clearing rather than hire someone, its really cool.

If you like bars and clubs its not going to be ideal either as there no much going for social scene and at least around here some areas are unsavoury that you get with city fringes. But if you have family it probably will give you more quality time together.

If your thinking to would be good, Id say do it fast. The older you get the harder it will be. We see people like us doing it and no-one seems to dislike it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I live in NYC right now, while it is tempting, I'm still pretty young and like being around my friends (who all still live here) and with things opening back up slowly its becoming possible to hang out with people again. Because of this I really see no reason moving. I totally see the value in moving back home and saving an arm and a leg on rent but I guess it just depends on your lifestyle.

<comment><USER14> I'm in a similar boat, but I've found that most of my friends have moved out, so I'm doing the same.

If that social network was still around I'd likely stay, but it's hard to justify the expense when more of my friends are in one place back in my hometown.

It's all temporary, though—I'm planning on coming back once the city starts to open back up in earnest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 10 comments at the time I write this. 3 of them mention people. Either the people I care about are here, so I'm not moving, or the people I care about are _not_ here, so I'm open to moving. I think we underestimate how big a factor that is in these kinds of decisions.

<comment><USER11> There's also my situation - I want to move but my wife refuses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No. I like walking to things still and fully expect cities to be back to normal in a few years. What's a few years in the grand scheme of things? I also highly doubt fully remote work is actually the new normal and company HQs are still where a lot will get done in person.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 I live in Toronto where new cases have pretty much dropped off. Things are more or less back to normal - we just allowed indoor dining at restaurants, the streets are starting to come back to life, patios are bustling, etc.

There is light at the end of the tunnel :)

The only major difference is that offices are still empty - this actually turned out to be a good thing though - less traffic, biking and walking around is really nice.

<comment><USER16> That sounds great. I will be very happy when Seattle can get to that level. For now, I just order food from some restaurants I like and hang out on my roof when it's nice enough out

<comment> doopy-loopy2 Yeah, I was in that mode for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On a longer trend, the full autonomy promised by Level 5 self-driving vehicles will open up interest in "beyond the burbs". Many more remote locations of America have reliable power, and a water well and septic system takes care of your utilities. Heat would be served by either natural gas, or wood. For IT people, while internet may be below broadband in more remote locations, both SpaceX and Amazon are bringing to market high speed space based satellite internet that will in some cases exceed bandwidth or latency requirements for most urban locations. If I had an option to work remotely I would select a location based around these premises.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 Remains to be seen. 3 hours out of the city is still 3 hours out of the city regardless of whether you can "take a nap" or not - which you already can on something called a train or bus.

<comment><USER18> I'm 15 min from city by car and 45 by bus so it makes a huge difference. It's the difference between popping out and something you need to plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Recently moved from Portland, OR, USA (pop. 653,115 (2018)) to Oslo, Norway (pop. 681,067 (2019)). Not sure if it is considered a "big city", but both Oslo and Portland are the biggest cities in their respective state/country. The lifestyle, transportation, and work/life balance in Oslo is much better when compared to Portland, and for that my family and I have no plans to leave anytime soon.

<comment><USER20> I love Oslo! Are you Norwegian? If not, how is it living there as an immigrant/expat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The attractiveness of big cities is more than just proximity of workplaces. Even if a lot of work goes remote, enough people love to live close to bars/theater/friends/etc.

I do see commuter towns getting way less popular if remote works really lifts of.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 Offices/companies came to cities because thats where young people wanted to live, not the other way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No way. Rural areas are over romanticized. I never understood rural life or even suburban.

<comment><USER23> If you can afford a house in the city, great. Otherwise, living in an apartment, you're constantly at the whimsy of your neighbors. They can easily be people who like to blast loud music for hours or who otherwise make a lot of noise. In practice, these people often cannot be reasoned with and the only solution is to move. I've been living in apartments my whole life and, while there were multimonth or even multiyear periods of quiet, on the whole it's purely a lottery (as neighbors change, or their kids grow and turn into obnoxious teenagers etc.). Now I'm planning on escaping it all by building a house in a village outside the city.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 As someone who has lived in the burbs most of my life, this stuff is way more of a problem in suburbs. So escape it you either need to buy a huge lot, or go somewhere really rural.

<comment><USER23> I find it hard to believe that it's more annoying in suburbs.

I currently live in an apartment building of 25 people and am closely surrounded by similar apartment buildings. This means that there are literally a couple hundreds of people than can annoy me at any time - either by listening to loud music, by doing some house renovations, by leaving a constantly barking dog at the apartment, by parking a loud car/motorcycle near my window, by having loud conversations near my window etc. In the suburbs, you get similar factors (+ most likely more lawnmowers and leaf blowers than in my district), but you only need to worry about perhaps 10-20 people creating a nuisance, not hundreds. Not to mention that, in an apartment block, I am often able to hear (over the walls) conversations happening in surrounding apartments, while this is just a nonissue in the burbs.

If burbs people complain more, it might be because they expect perfection (they bear the daily long commute so they want to get real peace and quiet in return), while apartment dwellers just live in resignation.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 In apartments, there is a mutual understanding of common elements and that people are living in a shared space. There is also a mediation process through the building management and the board.

In the burbs, is is a wild west with no mediation/arbitration process. There is a huge sense of entitlement on both sides - "this is my property and I can do what I want" vs. "you are encroaching on my property/rights and I will complain/behave passive aggressively about everything".

Everything you mentioned are issues in suburbs as well - often more so:

\- Neighbors dog in the backyard barking all damn day.

\- Neighbor throwing BBQ/party in the yard w/ music, and loud laughing/talking late into the night.

\- Kids yelling/laughing/screaming.

\- Teenagers revving cars up and down the streets

\- Lawnmower at 6 in the morning

Trust me, I've lived in both. Apartments have a process to handle unacceptable behavior and disputes. Suburbs are way worse - if you are looking for more private space, you need to go rural where houses sit on large lots.

<comment><USER23> > In apartments, there is a mutual understanding of common elements and that > people are living in a shared space. There is also a mediation process > through the building management and the board.

Ok, so that must be the difference between US and my country (Poland). Here, there's often just enough people with "fuck everyone" attitude (drunks, depressed people, teenagers with irresponsible parents etc.) to ruin it for everyone else. And also, because the flats are mostly owned and not rented, there is no building management that is interested in maintaining a decent standard of living for everyone.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 Yeah, I suppose that is true of some buildings here as well. It really depends on the occupants of the building, and whether it is mainly owner occupied or mostly renters.

So I can see your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hamster cages in the middle of crime-ridden, infested cities is definitely a no go any more.

Quality, not that remote, well-established neighborhoods are a way to go.

Also low- or no-personal tax, low crime, clean, low dems states getting consistent inflow of migration

<comment> doopy-loopy2 You realize everything you listed here has been this way since like.. forever right? And nothing has changed.

</comment></comment><comment> pickle-wizard I live in the suburbs of Austin, and plan to stay where I am at. I like having everything I need with in a 5 minute drive.

While my current job has gone permanent WFH, my next one might not. So I wouldn't want to move too far out anyway.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would love to live in a smaller town but still couldn't create good work opportunities there. Maybe two-three years later, I will be able to get to the countryside

</comment><comment><USER26> Certainly not. I just moved _closer_ to downtown, to a neighborhood where I can walk to everything I need. I don't want to go back to a car-dependent life.

<comment> doopy-loopy2 This is really underrated aspect - used to have to drive everywhere, even to the corner store. Being able to walk, or bike everywhere is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I left four years ago. I miss the city, but housing for five persons is way too expensive there. I work in the city though. Long commute but modest mortgage.

</comment><comment> doopy-loopy2 No because I can look ahead more than 6 months...</comment>


FreeBSD 11.3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/announce.html <comment><USER2> So many errata for such a new release... [https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/errata.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.3R/errata.html)

I don't know why freebsd lists things like this. It's confusing.

<comment><USER3> I followed the link expecting to find a huge page full of confusing lists of confusing things, but instead found a very small, concise page of very concise release notes containing links to information about the handful of security/etc. fixes in the release. Not sure what you're even looking at, the link you posted is a super normal minor release errata page. It is errata after all.

<comment><USER2> So if I install 11.3, how many patches do I need to apply?

<comment><USER4> Just run freebsd-update once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does Docker work on FreeBSD these days? I'd be pretty tempted to switch if I knew most of my normal work would continue on working.

<comment><USER6> Docker on FreeBSD works just like on MacOS; you'd use Docker Machine to run the containers on a Linux VM.

containerd is intended to be multiplatform from the start, so hopefully the FreeBSD support will come.

<comment><USER7> Huh, I was under the impression that this was no longer the case and that Hypervisor.Framework removed the need for an intermediate VM.

Am I mistaken? Am I mixing this up with something?

<comment><USER8> Docker for Mac still uses an intermediate VM, it's just mostly transparent to the user and doesn't require you to manually muck around with docker-machine.

You can even connect to the console of the VM if you run into issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is 11.x in maintenance? Because I recall upgrading to the 12-release not too long ago.

<comment><USER10> Until September 2021: [https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup](https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup)

These version numbers are a little confusing because 11.3 now has newer ZFS features than the latest release from the 12.x branch and upgrading from 11.3 to 12.0 might cause issues as noted in the 11.3 Errata page.

<comment><USER11> In Debian/Ubuntu terms: the newest ZFS functionality has been backported to one of the previous releases, but not the other (yet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> freebsd numbering scheme is confusing, when i read the headline, i was 'eoh? didn't i just upgrade to ver 12 last month?'</comment>


When the Internet Nearly Fractured, and How It Could Happen Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/11/02/when-the-internet-nearly-fractured-and-how-it-could-happen-again/71662/ <comment><USER2> Shoot me down if i'm ignorant but isn't this possible even now?

Don't we already have several independent DNS providers who can just make domains resolve as they want and create an alternate web?

Feels like everything works on a consensus and good faith to me. Just imagine if Google with its 126.96.36.199 DNS server configured in many systems can make bing.com resolve to google.com. right?

<comment><USER3> Services such as your ISP's or Google's DNS servers are not "independent" in the same sense as AlterNIC. They still defer to the root DNS servers (the servers named after the letters of the alphabet mentioned in the article) and are basically just proxies or caches.

An alternate DNS /root/ would also mean an alternate place to go to register domain names, which is what is meant by fracturing - google.com may point to different IP addresses depending on your root.

You are correct that widely trusted DNS servers could potentially hijack people even now, but it is a slightly different problem to the one being discussed in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A very interesting read. :-)

At one point, the article seemed to conflate the running of AlterNIC with the hijacking of InterNIC (although it later clarified that the hijacking was done via a vulnerability in BIND). In case anyone else is interested:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlterNIC#Hijacking_of_InterNIC....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlterNIC#Hijacking_of_InterNIC.27s_website)

 _The hijacking was made possible using a DNS cache poisoning attack, exploiting a security vulnerability in versions of BIND earlier than 4.9.6._

</comment><comment><USER5> What are the downsides of the current DNS arrangement? Could any be leveraged to make a serious challenge, to create something that was more independent of government?

Please shoot these ideas down:

\- Find a very liberal nation, create a subdomain, and then subnet it. e.g. reassign.nz

\- Create a wikipedia-like community around a subdomain arrangement. Start with the current world DNS, but immediately fork. Make decisions based on debate around a fixed set of values.

<comment><USER6> It's technically possible for an alternate DNS root to delegate the standard top-level domains (.com, .org, .net, ccTLDs like .ca and .ly, etc.) to the ICANN-managed DNS roots, while supporting extra TLDs of its own. (Which is what was happening with the .42 TLD a few weeks back.)

Of course, you're trusting the people running the alternate root not to mess with the namespace in ways that you _don't_ expect...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need a Google calendar type GUI..But how? (dont have the skills) - <AUTHOR>

So people,
I am building a staff scheduling application and I really need a GUI for adding shifts and all that sort of stuff.
Google's calendar GUI is exactly what I need but I am no good at front end design, its not something i could do.
What I need to know is, what are my best options for getting my hands of a GUI like this?
Are there business's that specialize in this sort of thing? I am willing to pay the right person to get the job done.
Any info would be great!
Cheers <comment><USER2> Have you tried ExtJS? <http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/samples.html>

You can actually contact me through the site listed on my HN profile, and I can build it for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Know of <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/calendar/> already?

EDIT: well reading your question with more attention, you more likely need the entire YUI (grids, etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I do, Cheers anyways!</comment></comment>


What you'll get out of YC's Startup School - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@a13n/a-review-of-y-combinators-startup-school-938b9c003cca <comment><USER2> Can you talk a little about your startup's traction before and after YC startup school. I watched the office hours video were you said you had 25 paying customers, so approx $400/month. What are the numbers looking like now? I also noticed that you did a few show hn submissions but none of them gained traction, so what's your marketing strategy now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! We're at 50+ paying now, so we've more than doubled since then. We also raised prices so our revenue per customer has grown too. Long ways to go, but a good start considering we're bootstrapped.

Here are a few things we're focusing on for marketing.

– SEO: Dominate the long tail of keywords relevant to our business

– Content marketing: Put out content that is valuable to our target customer

– Ads: Experiment with FB retargeting, AdWords, etc.</comment></comment>


Top Windows laptops on the market based on big-data frustration analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.soluto.com/reports

<comment><USER2> Is there a reason screen resolution doesn't seem to be listed almost anywhere anymore? I mean, any reason other than all laptops today seem to only offer 1366x768?

Does anyone know of a sub $700 laptop that offers anything above 1366x768?

<comment><AUTHOR> Roee here, creator of the report. That's very good feedback. We'll add it to the next report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think crashes per week is meaningful--especially on PCs with more than one OS. Crashes per operating hour would make more sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like how the #1 best performing windows 8 laptop is a macbook.

</comment><comment><USER5> Those prices beside the products say it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> No2 is a $400 machine. Whatever do you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish number two was available on Amazon without the preinstalled crapware called windows eight. Having that POS on also means that the motherboard is infected with microsoft's encryption key, making it hard to put a real OS on it - Linux.</comment>


Ask HN: What citizen science projects are you working on? - <AUTHOR> I've been curious lately about what projects out there exist within the realm of Citizen Science. It's kind of hard to find a project that I want to be a part of. I've looked (and still looking) at SciStarter to help me in my search.
The one project that I've found (through the Moon Society Slack channel) that I ended up joining, is Lunar Homestead (http://lunarhomestead.com/). They're working on research involving lunar habitation and the like and they're definitely in the realm of "citizen science".
After a while I figured it might be a good idea to ask the community here to get a better idea of what could exist. So...
What citizen science projects are you working on? Are you looking for others to contribute? What tools besides SciStarter would you recommend for me to find other projects? <comment><USER2> I not sure that it could be something you are interested in but, I'm kinda biased since I'm now part of the team. I would suggest checking out SatNOGS. It's a stack of open-source technologies build to create a global satellite ground-station network. It's using software defined radios to create a global network of satellite ground-stations.

There's a wiki with lots of information about the project. [https://wiki.satnogs.org](https://wiki.satnogs.org)

If you'd like you can check out the network web service: [https://network.satnogs.org](https://network.satnogs.org)

Some of the data collected by the network are visualised in a Grafana instance: [https://dashboard.satnogs.org](https://dashboard.satnogs.org)

All data collected from the network are openly available. So we collect and in many cases decode data that are publicly transmitted, like data from scientific and experimental cubesats, weather satellites and radio amateur communications.

The project is run by Libre Space Foundation ([https://libre.space](https://libre.space)), we interested in building open- space technologies and as such we maintain several open-hardware and free software projects on our repositories ([https://gitlab.com/librespacefoundation](https://gitlab.com/librespacefoundation)).

<comment><AUTHOR> I had actually heard of SatNOGS before but forgot about it. I'm definitely going to look into the project in more detail. Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a "Raspberry Shake & Boom" ([https://raspberryshake.org/products/raspberry-shake- boom/](https://raspberryshake.org/products/raspberry-shake-boom/)) set up in my basement. It's a Raspberry Pi-based seismograph and infrasound detector.

These are its live feeds:

[https://raspberryshake.net/stationview/#?net=AM&sta=R0835](https://raspberryshake.net/stationview/#?net=AM&sta=R0835)

[https://raspberryshake.net/stationview/boom/stationview/#?ne...](https://raspberryshake.net/stationview/boom/stationview/#?net=AM&sta=R0835)

For anyone taking a look at the feeds, depending on the time of day they can show tons of noise from the surrounding neighborhood. But the device is pretty awesome, I can generally detect quakes over 6.0 anywhere in the world. The two links below are a 6.2 in Alaska about 45 minutes ago, and the large quake in Peru last year ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Peru_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Peru_earthquake)).

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/4D69cjA66Y3jAH7q9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/4D69cjA66Y3jAH7q9)

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/yPMRtA7EJstZWx4y7](https://photos.app.goo.gl/yPMRtA7EJstZWx4y7)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty interesting. I started to wonder how seismographs work recently (blame Taal) and how they're used to measure earthquakes as well as monitor volcanic activity. I may be investigating this tech further, soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I participate in or track:

HappyWhale

aloha cabled observatory, orcasound

phjordphyto, icewatch

darksky.org

There are a lot of citizen science projects sponsored by universities. eBird is an example that is very strong

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if this qualifies as Citizen science in the traditional sense, but I'm planning on doing a lot more I'd ependent research in Machine Learning this year. My focus is on Neural Architecture Search, Modularity, and biologically inspired prior in deep learning. I've written a bit about it here: [https://www.harshsikka.me/the-diy-phd/](https://www.harshsikka.me/the- diy-phd/)</comment>


Minnesota and Oregon move to end single-family zoning - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2018/12/oregon-is-looking-at-ending-single-family-zoning.html <comment><USER2> Absolutely yes. I live in the Bay Area and we need regulations to overwrite NIMBY's here, like this. Hopefully if this passes in other states it will make it here eventually. There was one up in legislation last year that would allow apartment development in proximity to public transit that managed to get killed politically. Meanwhile my rent is raised $300 in one year by my malevolent corporate landlord. I can't afford to not live with a roomate and I really wish I could.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am interested in people's take on this.

My gut says yes. Do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, my take is that this is a positive. The three big things that are expensive enough to mess people up these days are medical care, housing, and education. And at least part of what's keeping housing expensive is restrictive zoning. So loosening zoning a bit is a good thing.</comment></comment>


Java VM: Trying a new Garbage Collector for JDK 7 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sun.com/theplanetarium/entry/java_vm_trying_a_new

<comment><USER2> Just to clarify, from the comments: this is not the default GC in the latest build of JDK 7 but can be enabled with

      -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UseG1GC

It's also reportedly slower than the default GC and likely to crash so it's not a good candidate for benchmarks just yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Umm... They started talking about this a while ago. It was in the SVN builds. Its nice.

<comment><USER4> I thought they used mercurial?

<comment><USER3> Both. Sort of. OpenJDK is on mercurial but core java is still on SVN (I think...). Checkouts here: <https://openjdk.dev.java.net/svn/openjdk/jdk/trunk></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best monitoring system in 2018? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Prometheus 2 is out

[https://prometheus.io/blog/2017/11/08/announcing- prometheus-...](https://prometheus.io/blog/2017/11/08/announcing- prometheus-2-0/)

For google cloud, stackdriver is usually sufficient for most queries

[https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/](https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/)

</comment><comment><USER3> We use a combination of splunk, solarwinds' server & application monitoring and new relic. We're about to start using prometheus for monitoring some apps that we've moved into containers. We also have several thousand monitors/alerts that are setup in ipmonitor that we're trying to get moved over to sam.

</comment><comment><USER4> For just logs, LogDNA is fast and cheap.

For everything else, Datadog has the best setup although their agent is old and messy, but they have logging coming soon and some basic APM integration.

If kubernetes, try Sysdig or Netsil.

<comment><USER5> Datadog's agent v6 was rewritten in Go recently:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egSvw7xYw9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egSvw7xYw9s)

The Datadog agent is well built for K8s, amongst many other things.

If you think the Datadog agent is old I have bad news: Sysdig and Netsil rely on v5.x of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has to be PRISM, but I'm not sure if NSA is sharing access. /s

</comment><comment> ha-shine I am not sure about the best, but we use Zabbix at our company.

</comment><comment><USER7> I highly recommend checking out Blue Medora products (full disclosure: I work there). We offer world class monitoring products across a lot products and platforms.</comment>


The password should not contain any special characters, symbols or spaces. - <AUTHOR> http://www.amplitude-studios.com/amplitude_functions/registeruser

<comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot (you have to fill the form for the message to show up): <http://imgur.com/lGlLk>

What do you think about this kind of website design? I wouldn't be suprised if this was some outdated site, but it looks fairly new.

</comment><comment><USER2> Stupid! Your password should just contain ANY character you want. Even if you just want "asd" as your password!</comment>


Restoring YC's Xerox Alto day 8: it boots - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2016/09/restoring-ycs-xerox-alto-day-8-it-boots.html <comment><USER2> I love that the first boot screenshot at [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JB4VOj7FgnU/V-lCHIADrsI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JB4VOj7FgnU/V-lCHIADrsI/AAAAAAAA9Ak/WJgwdr60tqYHWLM7htNMygs1JuuUaEiJwCHM/s9999/boot.jpg) says:

        Date and Time Unknown

Oh, you poor sweet computer, if we told you the answer, it would blow your little mind.

<comment><USER3> I happened to come across the Alto's time handling code [1] while looking for something else. The Alto counts seconds since Jan 1, 1901 and the time can run until 2036 since it uses a 32-bit value. (Unix time in comparison runs from 1970 to 2038; it runs half as long because it loses a bit by using a signed value.)

The point of this is the Alto can handle dates until 2036, but will run into problems two years before Unix self-destructs in 2038.

[1] [http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/AltoSource/TIMES...](http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/AltoSource/TIMESOURCE.DM!2_/.TimeConvB.bcpl.html)

<comment><USER4> Good to see they at least thought some reasonable amount of time into the future; in contrast, the Apple Lisa, released 10 years after the Alto and a few years after the IBM PC, had an RTC that only went to _1995_ :

[https://systemfolder.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/lisaem- date...](https://systemfolder.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/lisaem-date.png)

[http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-io- cop421_clock.html](http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-io-cop421_clock.html)

(Apart from this shortsightedness, the rest of the Lisa's design is also... interesting. Proprietary custom ICs, a pretty much locked-down user-is-an- idiot GUI, and complete separation between users and developers. It failed then, but unfortunately the same strategy is now considered the norm 30 years later...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This series is the best thing on HN in a long time. As a software engineer by trade, I feel like I've been missing out not learning more about electrical engineering. The level of knowledge and skill involved in this restoration is downright awe-inspiring.

<comment><USER6> At my University (Swinburne, Melbourne, Australia) I studied Software Engineering with a minor in Digital Electronics.

They said all along the goal wasn't for us to be as competent as the Electrical/Electronic Engineers, but to teach us their language and the basics so we could work together. It was great.

My degree is accredited by the Australian Institute of Engineers.

<comment><USER7> At ANU I took one of our (quite few) digital electronics courses that taught me how to design simple digital logic on FPGAs. It ended up being probably one of my three favourite courses of my degree.

I think what I got out of it was similar - I'm obviously not nearly as knowledgeable as a fully fledged electronics engineer, but I have some basic knowledge which allows me to cross the gap between software and hardware and truly appreciate the fact that it is actually possible to get from just having a pile of logic gates to having something resembling a processor.

To anyone reading this who's currently a CS major - if you have the opportunity to do a course in digital logic design I'd highly recommend it. Regardless of what layer of the stack you end up working in, it's a lot of fun and very satisfying to understand how this stuff works. If you do end up working fairly low in the stack it's particularly helpful - after uni I ended up working on kernel development at IBM where even though I don't work in hardware engineering I've found it helpful to have some of the background knowledge.

<comment><USER8> _To anyone reading this who 's currently a CS major - if you have the opportunity to do a course in digital logic design I'd highly recommend it. Regardless of what layer of the stack you end up working in, it's a lot of fun and very satisfying to understand how this stuff works._

Seconded.

There wasn't really a Computer Engineering degree back when I was in school, but I made do. As it turned out, some EE classes would qualify for the lab science credit, so I took those instead of more physics or chemistry.

I had been fascinated in electronics for a long time before starting college, so I had a blast in those classes.

And it has all helped me a lot since then. I'm working on radar systems these days, and it would have been useful to take a little more analog and RF design courses. But those weren't my interest way back then. I've picked up a lot on my own since then though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome!

All you need is the white lab coat and Gene Wilder's "It's alive!" in the background. Congrats on getting it to this point, as anyone who has brought up new systems for the first time knows, once you can get your central processor to load and run software of your choice, you can use it to tell you what it not working correctly and bring everything else up. It is always a total rush when the system boots for the first time. (or in this case, "boots again" :-))

I would be particularly keen to insure that the arrow keys work on the keyboard, as a lot of Altos were used to play mazewar and that was hard on the arrow keys.

</comment><comment><USER10> As is said every time this blog updates: This is very interesting stuff and I enjoy reading about the progress.

I can't imagine the excitement these folks felt when the machine finally booted up. All of their skilled trouble shooting and hard work were spot on.

I can't wait to read more.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an amazing milestone! I have to ask, why did we need a separate boot disk sent over instead of flashing the previous disk with the contents of a boot disk? I suppose swapping out parts is an expected part of restoration though.

<comment><USER3> We're building a FPGA-based disk emulator that we could connect to the Drive to rewrite the junk disk, but we don't have that ready yet. The Living Computer Museum could have rewritten our disk for us, but that would have required sending our disk to Seattle first so they just sent us a new disk. (The Living Computer Museum has been extremely helpful, so visit them if you're in the Seattle area!)

<comment><USER2> Their assistance was really shrewd; I've been to the CHM in Mountain View before, but had never heard of the LCM and probably would never have gone before this, but now I'm definitely going to go the next time I'm up in Seattle.

<comment><USER3> I don't think they're assisting because they are shrewd, but because they are genuinely nice and helpful people, and like to see old computers running.

<comment><USER2> Oh, of course! I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I'm just saying, it's also great publicity in addition to everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The disk seek problem didn't mysteriously disappear. You need to bust out some some contact cleaner and clean those header strip connections, both sides.

<comment><USER13> Yes it is mysterious.

Was that drive known good then?

Also what is the track sense mechanism?

Optical shaft encoder? Could have been just a bunch of dust.

Also a lot of drives used a Hall sensor or even an opto-coupler with a slot to detect track zero. First thing was to calibrate the head with a track zero seek.

Another thing. Those flat ribbon cables are prone to a lot of RFI over long distances, especially when you have them hanging around on the bench. Notice some of the other ribbon cables are twisted pair. A lot better!

I've wire wrapped my own disk controllers back in the early 80's. This series is serious nostalgia! <3

Curious to know what the final problem will end up being diagnosed as.

The smell of old hardware like that is literally burned in my brain!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has been a fun series to track. I used an Alto when I was in college. As an EE, we had to wire-wrap a computer using bit-slice and TTL parts. Definitely the hardest lab component course I took (there were much harder theoretical courses).

So a new Broadwell-EP Xeon chip has like 7 billion transistors. I'm trying to imagine this kind of computer hardware archeology as it will be done thirty years from now.

</comment><comment><USER3> The video of the Alto booting is now available: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12590137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12590137)

</comment><comment><USER15> Really neat. I can't wait to see the video!

The pictures of screen look unusual, as if every second scan line is missing. Is the Alto outputting an interlaced video signal? That would be very interesting and unexpected.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the Alto's video is interlaced. I took the photos with my phone (which used 1/60 second speed), which would explain why scan lines are missing. I'll use a real camera next time and see if that helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats to everyone who made this happen. It's so cool!

</comment><comment><USER17> What were the CPU/ ISA used in the Alto?

<comment><USER3> To the programmer, the Alto's instruction set is the same as the 16-bit Data General Nova minicomputer, with the addition of a few crazy instructions such as "copy character bitmap from font file to screen".

The Alto's CPU is built from a whole pile of TTL chips on three boards. The Alto's arithmetic-logic unit, like many computers of that era, uses 74181 ALU chips. The CPU runs a crazy multitasking microcode, with one of the tasks emulating the Nova's instruction set. The hardware manual refers to the "microprocessor", meaning the microcode processor, not a microprocessor chip since microprocessors as such were in their infancy at the time.

There's a picture of the Alto's ALU board in one of my earlier articles [1]. You can see the individual CPU registers, as they are made out of multiple latch chips. For all the details of the Alto's CPU, see the hardware manual [2].

1: [http://www.righto.com/2016/06/y-combinators-xerox-alto- resto...](http://www.righto.com/2016/06/y-combinators-xerox-alto- restoring.html)

2: [http://bitsavers.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/pdf/xerox/alto/...](http://bitsavers.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Hardware_Manual_Aug76.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Just an addition, microcoded processors are conceptually very simple. One can start with considering the 74181 which has four lines to control which operation is performed with the two 4 bit inputs. So each microcode word has four bits to control the ALU. A few bits to select which words out of register file is presented to the inputs of the ALU, etc.

So conceptually a machine like that Alto is actually something you can grasp without a lot of pain. Very much unlike the early 8 bit processors like the 8080, Z80, 6502 where they used lots of ticks to keep the transistor count down.

<comment><USER3> > So conceptually a machine like that Alto is actually something you can grasp > without a lot of pain.

Have you actually looked at the Alto's microcode? It's brain-explodingly bizarre. The first thing is it has 16 tasks (yes, in the microcode) and what an instruction does depends on what task is running. Second, every micro- instruction includes a computed goto, where the hardware can OR bits into the address. And because this is task-dependent, you can't figure out the control flow - maybe this instruction will proceed linearly, or maybe it will branch 4 ways depending on the status of the Ethernet board. Next, the circuitry uses PROMs in various places. You say the microcode has four bits tied to the 74181, but no, the four bits go into a mystery PROM which generates entirely different bits that go to the 74181. And then there's the constant PROM holding all the constant values used by the microcode. And the processor bus has the property that multiple sources can write the bus at the same time, with the values ANDed together. Not to mention the ALU shifter output is modified by a microcode function literally called MAGIC. And I'm just getting started here...

My point is that even by microcode standards, Alto microcode is bizarre and painful. And if you disagree, I have some microcode that needs explaining - MADTEST (Microcode Alto Diagnostic Test) fails on our Alto and nobody understands what it is doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm trying to read the article on an iphone but every time I zoom out to see the full width article I get bounced over to an article about toothbrushes?!

For the better part of a minute I was wondering if they had monkey-patched the disk controller with an electronic toothbrush?!

<comment><USER3> You must have swiped left to my earlier article where I did a teardown of a Sonicare toothbrush.

I've removed Blogger's swipe left/right navigation, which I think is more distracting than useful, and I've re-enabled pinch to zoom, so hopefully the navigation will work better for you now. Also note that you can tap on a photo to get a high-resolution version (better than zooming will give you).

<comment><USER20> It's a little thing, but thankyou for reading feedback and responding like this with blog improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love it that its finally booting. I wonder if they've considered taking all the probes off, and booting without debugging hardware attached ..

<comment><USER3> We'll leave the probes on until we're done debugging since it's pretty tedious to reinstall them. Is there any particular reason you suggest booting without the probes?

<comment><USER22> Probably out of fear that the signals might deteriorate with probes attached.

But with a modern-ish logic-analyzer and the ancient original hardware (huge voltage swings, slow clock, very long busses), I doubt that the probes would make a discernible difference, would they?

<comment><USER3> Yes, you're right about the signals. The Alto has a 5.88 MHz clock which is very slow by modern standards, and the buses are a couple feet of wire-wrapped pins so the probes are unlikely to have any effect.

I'm not sure modern-ish is the right word for the logic analyzer. It's a 1999 Agilent logic analyzer and I don't know how they managed to make it so slow. You can ftp a trace off it over Ethernet at the glacial speed of 10 kilobytes per second, so copying traces for analysis is a big bottleneck.

<comment><USER23> Is it a 16500? If so, you might see if you can scrounge up a 16505A, which might be able to network much faster (plus, it supports VNC and has a nice (for the time) graphical display. The 16505A is basically a PA-RISC pizza box that hooks up to the 16500 via a SCSI cable on the back, and adds some X11/Motif GUI happiness on top. I took a quick look around eBay and saw one for ~$275, but you might be able to get one cheaper if you look.

Side note: it was called a "Prototype Analyzer" because it was meant for analyzing prototypes, but we had more than one customer tell their salesperson to come back later when it was out of the prototype stage.

<comment><USER3> The logic analyzer is a 1670G; Marc collects vintage HP equipment, although technically this is Agilent.

<comment><USER23> You might try mounting it via NFS; it's also quite possible that the serial port might be faster for getting traces off the box than its relatively anemic ethernet support.

<comment><USER3> The serial port is also slow as molasses. If we want a full download, Marc will run it over the serial port overnight. We haven't tried NFS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Really cool stuff. Makes me want to give another go at bringing up my C-64 (much simpler, of course).

If only I had proper tooling and knowledge...

</comment><comment><USER25> This has really been a great series to read. Does anybody know where this will live when they are done restoring it?

<comment><USER3> It will probably be at the YCombinator office for a while but we haven't figured out a long-term plan. Any suggestions?

<comment> david-given Gateway the ethernet from yours to the one in the museum? After all, they are supposed to be _networked_ workstations...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The living computer museum is an amazing place. Highly recommend visiting if you ever come to Seattle.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this the only Alto running today?

<comment><USER28> The Living Computer Museum in Seattle has a fully functioning Alto, as well as a bunch of other vintage systems.

<comment><USER26> I played with it. It was as amazing as I had hoped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> <

</comment><comment><USER29> >></comment>


Worsening UK skills gap will hold the country back - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/96e43c16-f592-11e9-bbe1-4db3476c5ff0 <comment><USER2> Although I see this as a strength Canada could bring in for them.</comment>


A Net Before the Web, Part 5: The Pony - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2017/11/a-net-before-the-web-part-5-the-pony/ <comment><USER2> I've been following Jimmy's blog for a while now and contributing via Patreon. It's just a pleasure to read essays that are well-written and thoroughly- researched. And it helps that the topics are interesting to me as well. :)</comment>


Ask HN: $2K for a lawyer to revise your TOS & privacy statement - <AUTHOR>

Before launching my web app, I spent several days reviewing other sites' privacy statements and terms of service. I noticed [1] while doing this that many sites use the same or similar documents, many of which are based on WordPress's TOS which they make available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license [2].
I took notes on what I liked and what was applicable and came up with a TOS and privacy statement for my site.
I'm working with a local lawyer to take care of some administrative stuff, and he offered to review and rework the TOS and privacy statements for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5K to $2K, depending on how long it takes.
That's a nontrivial amount of money for my relatively small web app so I'm wondering: How important are these documents? What are risks if I miss something by doing it on my own?
I'll also consult with the lawyer on this, but was hoping to your thoughts as well. Appreciate the help.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990375
[2] http://en.wordpress.com/tos/ <comment><USER2> I made our Terms of Service reusable under a creative commons license: <http://www.opendns.com/terms/>

Our Privacy Policy is more specific, but you can rip from it as long as you make it read as if it's yours, clear it is not ours, and it has no reference to OpenDNS: <http://www.opendns.com/privacy/>

_Very expensive valley/startup-savvy lawyers have reviewed both many times over._ :-)

But to answer your question, NO. Don't spend the money. This decision is always about the right thing for the right time. This does not matter right now. Seriously. You are not big and nobody will sue you. Ignore any other advice. Later, you can spend the money to redo it.

That said, make sure YOU understand your privacy policy and ToS. Make sure you think it covers how you'll look and use the customer data. Then make sure you abide by what it says and change it if you need to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I think this is excellent advice, and double thanks for offering your terms of service as a template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've built a few sites that aren't huge but definitely pass the 1 million unique user/month mark. Most were content sites, ad-supported. The only time a privacy policy was ever brought up was when Remnant Ad providers required them.

As suggested in other comments, I'd say put up a generic ToS, apologize for anything that comes in, and pay for a lawyer to analyze it when you really have the money to do it.

And to answer your question, $1.5-2k is fairly standard for a document like this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Save the money, you are not doing anything different than what a lawyer would do (and you would have to explain to a lawyer lengthily what your app/business is all about before he/she can custom-tailor your agreements).

The fee quoted by your lawyer represents a couple of hours of work, which includes at least two hours, understanding what your business is all about.

From a business perspective, do a risk/reward analysis. How likely is it to get sued for having TOS that are not fine tuned ? I consider the risk very low and you can reduce your personal liability further by incorporating (which I always suggest).

Having said that, I am a lawyer, but this does not constitute legal advice.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are probably better things you can spend the money on if it's a nontrivial amount of money for your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate? What things? And how do I decide?

<comment><USER5> Sure!

Judging by your note, you've already spent a good chunk of several days working on this already, and that's not low-brain-usage time, so it's a pretty expensive investment already.

Looks like you're already doing a good bit of this already... Pirate Metrics... look at activation, then retention, then acquisition. cohort analysis. user testing. customer development / talking to customers. Those are going to be higher-leverage investments of resources.

And if you don't have an easy way to spend money in those areas, save it for when you can find something that'll give you great leverage, return on investment in your proj.

Hope this helps, -A

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Be one of the first to draft a Portability policy. <http://portabilitypolicy.org> outlines the questions you answer about your users' power over their data.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't do it. Not worth the $2k IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not?</comment></comment>


Client side vs. server side - <AUTHOR> http://amix.dk/blog/post/19012 <comment><USER2> I think the disadvantage of it being harder to code is subjective. I personally find JavaScript based UI's to be both faster and easier to code. They also offer flexibility that was next to impossible in the old page post model. While I have developed web applications for years, I have always felt that it was disjointed with the old pattern of assemble a page then cram it down the pipe, then for ever event that happens on the client side, send it back to the server to see what to do. I have never liked the pattern and always felt that it made development far more complex than it had to be. It was fine when we where taking a form pushing it across the pipe and handing it off to some simple CGI routine, but we rapidly outgrew it. I prefer what we are doing now, where companies are building data and service platforms and UI's are rapidly assembled independently to take advantage of those platforms.</comment>


DFI GHF51: AMD Ryzen R1000 on a Raspberry Pi Sized Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.dfi.com/product/index/1455 <comment><USER2> It's cool to see more Ryzen embedded boards on the market. Wondering how the price will be, when Ryzen V series was terribly expensive.

However, no NVMe, no regular PCIe, no even a single SATA port...Lack of IO is a serious dealbreaker to me. Feels like it's wasting the CPU's capabilities. I know there must be compromises for the RPi size, but the size itself is already compromised because it requires a cooling system, at least a big heatsink, on the back of the board. This company is hiding it.

I would go for an Odroid H2 for now.

<comment><USER3> I also wish these types of boards (including the Pi itself) would move away from USB-C ports and barrel jacks and move to something a little more suited for industrial embedded purposes. Anything from an XT30 to JST-EH to Molex Mini-Fit Jr. would do.

USB-C ports are flimsy and I've had many just snap right off the board, especially given the massively long cantilevers that most USB-C cables are. They also massively increase the effective footprint of the board when plugged in.

Or at the least, have the USB-C connector but provide something else as an option. I know the Pi can be powered off the GPIO, but it's not ideal as it bypasses all the power filtering circuitry.

<comment><USER4> I am legitimately curious to see if you believe that the PI is suited to actual industrial applications in terms of its reliability (filesystem etc...) and low cost design? Maybe I'm defining industrial as something a lot more PLC based vs something akin to 'monitor the temperature in the warehouse' of course - when I hear industrial, I immediately think steel mills or manufacturing plants.

I would strongly hesitate to recommend the Pi for anything situation where 99% reliability (or above) was required unless I understood the domain back to front and could cover all the failure cases such as the expected operating environment ranges (temperature, power quality, EMI etc...).

<comment><USER5> For example, I put embedded computers on drones and the first thing I do is have to figure out how to get power in that avoids the barrel jack which will almost certainly vibrate itself out. On the Pi (and most boards) that means direct power via the expansion header, but usually that means making a daughter board PCB with a suitable connector plus input protection (fuse, diode, etc). Not industrial, but any situation where you don't want to provide mains power, and you want a reliable connection means avoiding the jack.

<comment><USER6> Can you desolder the barrel connector and put on a locking molex or something?

<comment><USER5> You can, but that's irritating to do. In the case of the Pi there is no barrel connector, it's a USB port. So your only option is the header, either directly into the holes if its unpopulated, or get a 40-way female header and solder to that, or go for a daughter board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Embedded R1000 is up to 2/4 Zen cores/threads and 3 Vega CUs in case anyone else was wondering.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't get why all these "industrial" boards don't also put their USB on pin headers. All the standard USB connectors are not vibration proof at all, and cannot be used reliably in an industrial setting.

<comment><USER9> That stuff is usually done custom order first, for an individual setup, and remaining stock is sold on open market.

So if somebody needs some odd port setup, it's then carried on to boards sold on mass market.

Taiwanese used that "dual track" trick for a long time. Have B2B clients pay for RnD, and tooling, and then make money for free on it in OEM side of your business.

<comment><USER10> "Dual track" is how most enterprise SaaS fund feature development, especially in the early days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would immediately get one of these Pies the moment all the hardware drivers are included in a stock Linux distribution.

<comment><USER12> Support for the newer raspberries are being added to the mainline kernel...5.5 version I think?

<comment><USER13> ARM SBCs are very custom (for example, in RPis, the GPU is actually the main processor...), therefore specialized distros are required for full support.

If the target is full support with standard distros, then one needs to go for x86 SBCs. As far as I know, the only (relatively) cheap one is the ODROID H2.

<comment><USER12> >therefore specialized distros are required for full support.

Once the 5.5 kernel gets wider support I suspect this won't be an issue anymore. Ubuntu already supports ARM and with kernel support on the way it's only a matter of time.

>in RPis, the GPU is actually the main processor.

huh?

<comment><USER14> The VideoCore boots first and has low level control of the SoC. It then turns on the ARM core. I think it is fair to view it as the main processor.

<comment><USER15> While I see what you mean, Isn't it common even in x86 for other cores to boot before and be involved in start-up of the primary CPU?

While that might be a fair view, I think it deserves further qualification as to not just cause extra confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://linuxgizmos.com/files/dfi_ghf51_block.jpg](http://linuxgizmos.com/files/dfi_ghf51_block.jpg)

this block diagram makes no sense

USB 3.1 Gen 2 output made up from ... a Gen 1 and an USB 2.0 link? That's not possible you need to feed Gen 2 signals into the socket to get Gen 2 signals. While the USB standard is a mess, this is crystal clear: Gen 1 is 5gpbs and Gen 2 is 10gbps.

<comment><USER17> That's a typo on the diagram. The R1000 processors have Gen2 built in (and you always need both USB 3 and 2 - which explains the two arrows in the diagram).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't really have a good experience with boards, speaking for the electronic side of things, but it seems it'll need an additional cooling system, no?

<comment><USER19> There's a heat spreader (See quick reference on website)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> very cool! but didn't find pricing info.

<comment><USER21> Atom version is $277-$370 on their online shop

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why they populate MiniPCIe vs an M.2 slot.

Anyone know?

Only thing I can imagine is the key variants for M.2 are more complicated.

<comment><USER23> MiniPCIe allows for adding wifi, network, storage (M.2) and other cards.

M.2 limit to only storage.

<comment><USER24> M.2 can be used for PCIe (including NVMe, wifi+bt, LTE modems, etc), SATA (storage only), or other weird stuff depending on the keying.

<comment> Const-me Afaik large share of embedded WiFi/BT and 3G/4G chips are USB ones?

<comment><USER25> m.2 can have USB lanes aswell

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh wow, DFI!? Where have they been?

<comment><USER27> I remember I made a mini-ITX LANParty build back in 2010. Worked great for so long until I upgraded in 2016. So disappointed when they exited the mainstream consumer MB market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It will probably not be cheap or widely available, as their other boards don't even list a price. A quotation is needed.

Sigh. Hopefully somebody else will do this properly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone know if this made into a Retro gaming emulation handheld, will it perform better than a Pi4 or popular Chinese handhelds on the market?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is no one else going to mention the fact that the link uses an untrusted certificate authority? Did everyone just click through it?

<comment><USER31> Trusted just fine by Mozilla

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> could be a cool companion to iPad Pro for dev work</comment>


How the current crisis compares to the Panic of 1873 - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but there are 2 critical differences :

1/ there was no Federal Reserve in 1873. The 1873 depression was one of the crisis that motivated the creation of the Fed, we thought a centralized bank system would help to stabilize the system.

2/ We are under the Bretton Woods system since 1944. It's the 1929 Great Depression that motivated the agreements of Bretton Woods.

What makes this crisis unique of its kind is that the US autorities are going to unleash 700 friggin billions dollars in the engine. It is a first time in history that such ridiculous numbers are summoned. This challenges at least one assumption of this article :

 _The post-panic winners, even after the bailout, might be those firms — financial and otherwise — that have substantial cash reserves._

In 1873, money was tied to gold. Therefore if you had cash reserves, it meant you could exchange it against sound, physical gold. It was guaranteed. It's not true anymore.

<comment><USER3> >It is a first time in history that such ridiculous numbers are summoned.

Not true. In 1984, in Chile, there was a shitstorm that warranted a 14 billion dollar bailout. Chile's population was ~12M, so the bailout was just over a thousand dollars per capita. Now, the bailout in US is over two thousand dollars per capita (700B/300M), and between 1984 and today, the dollar has lost about half its purchasing power (or more, depending on who you ask). So, it's about the same size. Keep in mind Chileans were, and still are, much poorer than Americans are today. So yes, there have been bailouts this size.

On a side note, the Chilean bailout was a success. But then, the Chilean Ministerio de Hacienda (Fed, basically) was really big on Friedman and the Chicago School in general. Plus, historically, it has always kept its shit together. Don't know if this is the case with the Federal Reserve.

<comment><USER2> This is not comparable because the 14 billions DOLLARS were prolly backed by the FMI wich meant that the United States and Europe were behind the bailout. Even if only the U.S were behind, 14 billions was really not much as we can see today.

But today the United States ARE the heart of the system. It's all a matter of confidence now : will the world trust the U.S banking system enough, will the world trust the dollar enough, in the end : will the world trust the U.S autorities ? The trust must comes directly from the U.S now, because there is no international agency backing up your decisions.

ALL the stability in the system comes from this confidence. The U.S. dollar was the most trusted money in the world.

<comment><USER4> Which brings up an interesting point. I think the number of dollars used outside the US complicates the issue. Because of fractional reserve banking we can't control how fast the rest of the world inflates or deflates the dollar. Also we export 15% of our GDP and import considerably more than that so I think the rate that the rest of the world tanks is going to be vary important to our economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Most important, when banks fall on Wall Street, they stop all the traffic on Main Street — for a very long time."

best part for me, and how people aren't really getting why you would bail out banks.</comment>


Do you agree that Electric Cars will be obsolete? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/If-Apple-is-really-building-an-electric-car-what-does-this-mean-for-Tesla-Is-Apples-product-quality-likely-to-be-dramatically-superior-and-is-there-room-in-the-market-for-both-Tesla-and-Apple/answer/Richard-Muller-3?ch=99&share=3d15f3fd&srid=bcIin <comment><USER2> 4-year-old article already proven wrong. Tesla as a company is healthy and making a profit, battery prices coming down rapidly.

<comment><USER3> > Tesla as a company is healthy and making a profit.

Well they "finally" turned a surprise profit in its 15 year history. It's a bit of a stretch to call them profitable given the insurmountable costs involved manufacturing a electric car at the scale of Tesla.

<comment><USER4> Far as I can tell Tesla's been making a per unit profit on their cars. They take on debt to fund growth not to keep the lights on.</comment></comment></comment>


Offer HN: Free consulting session on your project/idea - <AUTHOR> hey, I'm the founder of Concert Window (www.concertwindow.com), done millions in revenue, grad of Techstars NYC 2014. I'm offering some free consulting sessions for your idea or project. Send me an email at gurney.dan [at] gmail.com. <comment><USER2> I don't mean to sound pessimistic or ungrateful, but _why_? What's in it for _you_?

Edit: this is from, the prospective of someone who is working on something behind mostly closed doors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm learning how to make apps at the moment, but want to stay active on the business side, so this seemed like a fun way to do that and help out at the same time.</comment></comment>