Truly Ergonomic keyboard available for preorder - <AUTHOR> http://www.trulyergonomic.com/preorder_us.html

<comment><USER2> I have a Kinesis keyboard and used a Microsoft Natural before that. If I were looking for a replacement keyboard, I would base most of my evaluation on three things:

\- Does it separate out the hands? This one does to some extent, but it looks like less than the Microsoft or Kinesis.

\- How many keys do you need to press with your pinky? What I like most about the Kinesis is that it moves many keys traditionally pressed with the pinky finger - control, alt, enter, backspace, delete - to under the thumbs. It's much easier to hold the modifiers down with your thumb because the muscle is so much bigger, and it's nicer to hit enter/backspace because you don't have to stretch your finger.

\- Does it have mechanical key switches instead of the plastic bubbles? I don't know how good this one's are, but it's noticeably less work to press the switches and requires a constant/predictable amount of force on the Kinesis compared to the Microsoft and others. This really adds up over a day of typing.

<comment><USER3> You can see from the page that it has Cherry switches. My current keyboard uses Cherry switches, and I found it to be a vast improvement over previous keyboards (I like it a fair bit more than the IBM Model M, for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I look at where the slash and backslash keys are (along with the pipe and question mark), and I realize I would smash this thing to bits within about two minutes of using it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like it. I just wish it was available for cheaper. To drop $200 and possibly not like it would suck. But bravo for an ergonomic keyboard without the number pad. If I come into some extra dough I may just go for it.

Also a big + for the blank versions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any keyboard is truly ergonomic as long as you rest your elbows on the desk...

<comment><USER7> most desks are really too high to rest your elbows on- it tends to bring the shoulders up and forward instead of being able to keep them rolled back. Under the desk is often preferable.

<comment><USER6> I contend that this doesn't matter, as long as all the arm muscles are relaxed. I type lying back in my chair, with the shoulders almost at keyboard height, and I've found it very comfortable...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sigh, Cherry keyswitches. I've tried them all and am just not a fan.

I wish I could get a Topre-based ergonomic keyboard without going to Japan. (Yes, I'll pay the $700.)

<comment><USER9> So bribe somebody going to YAPC::Asia (or other japan-hosted conference)

<comment><USER8> What if I like it and want a second for work? :)

<comment><USER10> Talk patio11 into starting a side business?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Odd that the backspace key still has to be used by the pinkie finger. I'll be sticking with my Kinesis Advantage for now.

<comment><USER12> The website states that you can reprogram any key you wish, even having the Backspace instead of the left spacebar.

<http://www.trulyergonomic.com/benefits.html#Programmability> <http://www.trulyergonomic.com/options.html#Model-109>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My worry on these is that my hands are much larger than average so it may be extremely annoying to adjust to, but I feel like ergonomics in general is worth optimizing for...

</comment><comment><USER14> as an emacs user, I don't like the ctrl alt placement. the kinesis looks to do a good job at that (i haven't bought one yet but i want to)

<comment><USER8> Well, just swap Ctrl and Shift and it's back to normal. It's that Tab key up in the middle of nowhere that's a real problem. This keyboard must be aimed at book authors rather than code authors.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks really interesting, but it seems it's not Mac-compatible.

<comment><USER15> Take 5 seconds to actually read the page:

> Windows, Mac, and Linux compatible

<comment><USER16> It might work with Mac, but it looks like you'd have to sacrifice a modifier key.

<comment><USER15> Just use Caps Lock as a modifier.

<comment><USER16> Good idea, but I don't see a Caps Lock either...

<comment><USER15> That's true, didn't realize that. Guess you could get the international version and use AltGr as an additional modifier. Or you could maybe use the left and right Ctrl or Alt as different modifiers...I don't use Macs, so I have no idea whether that would work in practice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chromium for Android patch lands to supports background playback - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=121898 <comment><AUTHOR> This has been a long-standing issue for mobile web apps like Grooveshark and Player FM which play full-length audio inside the browser. Unlike iOS and stock Android browser, Chrome has always shut down the audio when switching tabs, switching apps, or turning off the screen.

It's particularly been a problem as stock Android browser has a whole range of other issues. Finally, it will be viable to play long audio tracks inside Chrome for Android.</comment>


The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.   - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1588727></comment>


Show HN: Spam Or Ham? Analysing Text/Ad Ratio On Websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.spam-or-ham.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a work in progress and early beta but maybe a useful experiment. I came up with it after Google announced they would be looking at ad placements on websites.

I hope you won't find any embarassing errors :-)

I'm very happy to hear your feedback on what could be improved (like looking at multi-multi-word links, following cloaked affiliate links, etc.)</comment>


YC Facelift: Instacart - <AUTHOR> http://kyrobeshay.com/post/33771800624/yc-facelift-instacart

<comment><USER2> Interesting stuff! Would love to see screenshots of the original app, so I could see how they think about their app and get a better sense for what you've changed!</comment>


Remlok, miniature Clojure UI framework with optimistic updates and all that - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gumvic/remlok <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It definitely meets, so I'll put it there.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Movie of Voyager's Neptune flyby from raw images - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF3UCo2P-4Y <comment><AUTHOR> This was made by PyVoyager [1], an attempt at automating the process of generating movies from the 70k+ images the Voyagers returned.

The Voyagers didn't have accurate camera position information, so the images are haphazardly centered on their targets. PyVoyager attempts to center the images on the target when they are fully in view, though there are still jitters.

One of these days I'd like to pick it up again and complete the movies - <USER2> filters can be combined of course to make color movies, as here [2]. There are some more movies here [3].

[1] [https://github.com/bburns/PyVoyager](https://github.com/bburns/PyVoyager)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f71KSLq4s0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f71KSLq4s0)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- xg0iQIJ_TEusVPNqre32A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- xg0iQIJ_TEusVPNqre32A)</comment>


Sinatra in 8 lines - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rkh/almost-sinatra <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the old bash.org joke:

        <@insomnia> it only takes three commands to install Gentoo
        <@insomnia> cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6
        <@insomnia> that's the first one

<comment><USER3> It's been a long time, but I'd forgotten how easy Gentoo was to install!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        ['rack', 'tilt', 'backports', :INT, :TERM].map{|l|(l==l.to_s)?(require(l)):(trap(l){$r.stop})}
        $n=Sinatra=Module.new{$a,$o,$d,$h,$s,$f,$p=Rack::Builder.new,Object,:define_method,Hash,/@@ *([^\n]+)\n(((?!@@)[^\n]*\n)*)/m,File,4567;Application=$a}
        %w[get post put delete].map{|m|$o.send($d,m){|u,&b|$a.map(u){run->(e){[200,{"Content-Type"=>"text/html"},[$a.instance_eval(&b)]]}}}}
        Tilt.mappings.map{|k,v|$o.send($d,k){|n,*o|$t||=$f.read(caller.first[/^[^:]+/]).scan($s).inject({}){|h,(a,b,c)|h[a]=b;h};v.new(*o){(n.to_s==n)?(n):($t[n.to_s])}.render($a,o[0].try(:[],:locals)||{})}}
        %w[set enable disable configure helpers use register].map{|m|$o.send($d,m){|*_,&b|b.try(:[])}};at_exit{Rack::Handler.get("webrick").run($a,:Port=>$p){|s|$r=s}}
        ['params', 'session', Rack::Session::Cookie, Rack::Lock].map{|m|(m==m.to_s)?($o.send($d,m){$q.send(m)}):($a.use(m))}
        $o.send($d,:before){|&b|$a.use(Rack::Config,&b)};before{|e|$q=Rack::Request.new(e);$q.params.dup.map{|k,v|params[k.to_sym]=v}}
        puts "== Almost #$n/No Version has taken the stage on #$p for development with backup from Webrick"

</comment><comment><USER5> The best part of this is one of their coding guidelines: "don't include tests. tests just bloat the code base. just commit, the users will complain if you break anything."

<comment><USER3> I was partial to:

> wrap at 200 characters to make it readable on a terminal

What happened to the days of 80 character line limits?

<comment><USER6> I've got a 27" iMac, and I've recently moved to a 79 character limit on Python, Ruby, shell scripts, Sass, Javascript, and pretty much everything else but HTML/Haml.

I now write better (i.e. flatter) code that is easier to compare to my other (better :-P) code.

Highly recommended.

<comment><USER3> I'm almost the same way. I don't however used 79, it's normally like 75.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, how I miss _why.

<comment><USER8> I miss the days when Zed Shaw was a Rubyist.

<comment><USER7> I think Zed Shaw is quite the opposite of _why. I can see _why playing with kittens and making chalk drawings on the asphalt in a torrid calm summer day and Zed driving through in a camo Hummer, smoking a big cigar and listening to industrial metal. All the kittens run scared and _why goes hiding behind a bush where he meets a new imaginary friend.

I much prefer _why.

<comment><USER9> Except _why and Zed got along fine. Zed is a perfectly cool dude in person. And regardless of what you think of Zed he builds good tech, shares it with others, takes contributions from other people.

<comment><USER7> Of course I haven't met either one of them and I can't really talk about the kind of person they are, just about their personas and the way that I perceive them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not being a rubyist, I don't get the joke (if it is one...!) Can someone explain?

<comment><USER11> Sinatra is a minimalist Ruby web framework, this is a Perl Golf-style super- minimalist clone of it, with lots of tongue-in-cheek comments in the docs, e.g. "If your app does not run with Almost Sinatra, please open a Sinatra issue."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> there are some low hanging fruits, I'll send a pull request :)

</comment><comment><USER13> The guidelines break the contract of being under 10 lines of code, maybe not directly, but in spirit.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've printed it and post it on the office wall.</comment>


Pretty Perl - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/su-shee/2010/01/perl-made-all-pretty.html <comment><USER2> There are also decent SDL bindings for Perl. <http://sdl.perl.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> For simple CGI-generated charts and graphics I use GD::Graph an awful lot:

<http://gdgraph.com/samples.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any GUI layout builder tools? Like qtbuilder?

<comment><USER5> Uh, if you use gtk2 you can use glade. That really has nothing to do with Perl, though, except that the Perl API supports the same features of gtk2 that the C API does.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for pointing to Glade. It looks like that GTK2 is the best way to go with desktop apps and perl now. Just make sure you look at Gtk2 module, not Gtk (this one was never updated and linked against old GTK library).</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Emotions for HN - <AUTHOR> https://hn-emotions.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> While I love the idea, I feel like it'd take away from HN's basic/clean slate idea

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for making this. I've wanted similar labelling for some time.</comment>


Amazon Is Seeking $16B Bond Sale for Whole Foods - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-15/amazon-is-said-to-sell-bonds-to-finance-whole-foods-acquisition <comment><USER2> I'm still surprised more companies aren't doing it. Investment grade companies can get 0% in the Eurozone, and eurozone junk bonds have lower yields than US treasuries. Because they're safer? Who cares just sell the bonds.

<comment><USER3> Even at 0% it's not risk free on the part of the company. Unless you have EUR cash inflows, you'll be shouldering FX risk to convert to EUR (say from USD) to make the loan payments.

This past year alone has seen a range of about 13% for USD/EUR. A shift like that would wipe out any interest related savings.

<comment><USER4> FX risk is extraordinarily cheap to hedge against, the futures market is _really_ deep.

<comment><USER5> The cost of hedging forex is at least equal to the interest rate difference between the currencies.

<comment><USER6> Can someone who knows how that works do the math for us?

<comment><USER7> It's an arbitrage issue. If you can borrow EUR for 1% and it costs %1 to get a USD/EUR hedge, you can turn around and loan USD for 2% and be guaranteed to not lose money. The market eliminates arbitrage opportunities whenever they appear; so if the cost of borrowing EUR is less than the cost of borrowing USD, you'll have to pay at least the difference in order to get someone to guarantee a rate for converting USD back to EUR later.

<comment><USER6> There could in theory be other risks in EUR which prevent the arbitrage (legal? liquidity? cost of initial transaction being high?) which is why I'd prefer to see actual numbers bearing that out instead of just a derivation from first principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Plus some companies (which will remain unnamed) are unable to use cash parked overseas for US purposes. But they can borrow against it at low interest rates for capital.

<comment><USER9> > are unable to use cash parked overseas for US purposes

"Unable."

<comment><USER10> Unable without incurring costs that make Bonds/Loans vastly more economical.

The US situation with repatriation is silly. I'm all for some level of taxation but right now it provides a negative incentive due to interest rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whole foods, as a stable profitable business, is the perfect kind of candidate for this type of funding. Not sure why this would ever be scrutinized.

</comment><comment><USER12> Excuse my ignorance, 1.4 + US 10Yr Treasury is ~ 4%.

Would it not be better if they issue it with much shorter terms and hence the lower interest rate? ( Penny Saving not worth it ? )

Could the Interest or repayment be counted against Profit? ( Amazon dont like Profits anyway ). And hence no tax.

I have always wonder why some companies dont go Private. I suspect these bonds could only be issued with a Listed Stock Company? How much more, in terms of Interest rate would a private company have to paid to these bonds sold?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interest rates are low and rising. Compared to any other type of financing, corporate bond issues just make sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> Next stop: Amazon offering their own credit card, outside of MasterCard/visa, with a bond offering being a way to dip into it.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't make any sense. Visa & MasterCard are the intermediaries, not the actual source of the cash. They sell their merchant network, and recreating it would be hard (not impossible, but a lot of work not in Amazon's wheelhouse).

Chase or Citi or Wells Fargo or whoever is the bank that needs reserves and fronts the cash to the merchant, and earns on the interest rate and fees and takes the risk on defaults.

<comment><USER14> "Earning the interest rate" is the key phrase here. With that and paying 2% in fees Amazon is leaving money on the table. Why not become the next Citi?

<comment><USER7> I'd bet that Amazon is paying far less than 2% in card processing fees.

<comment><USER16> I'd take the other side of that bet. Walmart & Costco get those rates because they can and have played hardball in negotiations with the network, they've shown a willingness to go without credit cards.

Amazon needs credit cards more than the credit card networks need Amazon.

Also, Amazon transactions are virtually all card not present transactions.

<comment><USER17> If they're made on-Amazon, and to someone with a 5-15 year Amazon profile, Prime, etc., shipped to home, etc., and with Amazon as the merchant (so they're going to handle CS rather than chargeback), yes, I'd take the bet that Amazon pays <2% for the Amazon Prime Chase Visa transactions for Prime customers on amazon.com. It's pretty low risk for MOTO compared to a card used at a random merchant online.

(Unless Amazon pays a higher fee but considers the 5% return to customers as some kind of "increase net spend on Amazon" benefit, but I think that's just Chase trying to kill Discover)

<comment><USER18> I've also wondered if the 5% back isn't something of an offset for the sales tax they've agreed to collect in some states. It doesn't totally cover the difference in high tax states versus ordering from someone else with free shipping with a 1-2% rebate card but it makes the delta small enough that many people may just default to Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to think of the bond market as the original kickstarter.

Also, the 40-year notes having ~4% interest seems like a pretty good deal for Amazon.

<comment><USER20> Isn't equity markets the kickstarter? You don't issue bonds to non-existent companies with a fresh idea. That's what equity (usually via VC) does.

<comment><USER19> I should have better qualified my statement as Kickstarter is used by both new companies and ones with established revenue.

<comment><USER21> > _Kickstarter is used by both new companies and ones with established > revenue_

Sure, Kickstarter is like the capital markets in that both give companies money in exchange for promises, not goods or services. Not sure how useful this analogy is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Your Brokers Can Make 10 Times More on Your Cash Than You Do - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/08/03/how-your-brokers-can-make-10-times-more-on-your-cash-than-you-do/ <comment><AUTHOR> The bottom line: Brokerages are getting rich on your money. You have the right to change how they handle your cash, and you should.</comment>


LiquiGlide: Nonstick coatings leave zero waste behind - <AUTHOR> http://video.mit.edu/watch/liquiglide-nonstick-coatings-leave-zero-waste-behind-30504/ <comment><USER2> Arguably, the nonstick coating is the waste that is forever left behind because nothing can degrade it.</comment>


5 ways I justify my iPad investment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.knolcano.com/5-ways-i-justify-my-ipad-investment

<comment><USER2> One of the best ways to justify an iPad purchase is knowing that you can easily sell it for 50-80 cents on the dollar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask your doctor if iPad is right for you. Ask for the free brochure.</comment>


Ask HN: Good NLP Books for an experienced programmer - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>What Natural Language Processing books can you suggest to an experienced programmer? <comment><USER2> Natural Language Processing With Python - <http://www.nltk.org/book>

Handbook of Natural Language Processing - [http://www.amazon.com/Handbook- Language-Processing-Learning-...](http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Language- Processing-Learning-Recognition/dp/1420085921)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Natural Language Processing & Knowledge Representation" by Iwanska & Shapiro

</comment><comment><USER4> Whew, I thought this was about something else.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. I thought it is about Neuro-Linguistic Programming.</comment></comment>


A/NES is a NES/Famicom 8-bit emulator for Classic Amigas - <AUTHOR> http://nes.goondocks.se/anes.php <comment><USER2> Aminet (an online software repository for AmigaOS) has a whole section called misc/emu [1] - a lot of interesting emulators can be found there.

Probably the most famous and useful is the Shapeshifter [2], which emulates MacOS on Amiga. It was incredible popular in the 90's, as it allowed to run software otherwise unavailable on AmigaOS (eg. MS Office, Photoshop or games like Warcraft II or Settlers II). What's interesting, Shapeshifter performance was comparable to the real Macintosh running on the same 680x0 as the host Amiga.

PC emulator was called PC-Task [3] and it wasn't that fast, but I think Windows 3.11 was quite on a 68060-based system.

There's also C64 emulator Frodo [4] (written by the same developer as Shapeshifter), open source apps ported to Amiga (eg. a800 [5]) and many others - including all the popular 16-bit console emulators.

Most of these emulators were written in the 90's, so I wouldn't treat them just as a curiosity (as freeflight comment suggest) - they were used and popular amongst Amiga owners, looking for ways to get access to the mainstream software 20 years ago. Usually they required accelerators, as Amiga 1200 with its 68020EC (no FPU) and 2MB RAM was too slow (and forget about A500 or A600).

[1] [http://aminet.net/misc/emu](http://aminet.net/misc/emu) [2] [http://shapeshifter.cebix.net/](http://shapeshifter.cebix.net/) [3] [http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/PC- Task44](http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/PC-Task44) [4] [https://frodo.cebix.net/](https://frodo.cebix.net/) [5] [http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/A800](http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/A800)

<comment><USER3> It's amazing that Aminet still gets new releases every day. It's of course nowhere near its peak, but the fact that the Amiga refuses to die is still inspiring:

[http://aminet.net/recent](http://aminet.net/recent)

<comment><USER4> Sadly, the other side of the coin is the train wreck of flash-in-the-pan Amiga "successor" hardware, the Amiga IP situation, and the acrimony around AmigaOS 4.

<comment><USER3> It's not so bad if you look across all Amiga-related development.

Is the PowerPC hardware for OS4 expensive? The high end devices like the X5000 certainly are, but entry level devices like the A1222 are coming out soon, and are priced around £500, which seems like a level many hobbyists would feel comfortable with:

[https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview- amigaone-...](https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview- amigaone-a1222/)

It's also possible to run OS4 in WinUAE, so it's possible to try out OS4 before buying new hardware.

For an even cheaper route, the other two next-gen Amiga-related operating systems, AROS and MorphOS, offer cheaper hardware options than OS4. MorphOS runs (aside from a few niche devices) on PowerPC Mac hardware:

[http://www.morphos.de/hardware](http://www.morphos.de/hardware)

You can easily get a working PowerPC Mac for less than £100 on eBay.

AROS is even cheaper still, as it's open source and runs on standard x86 hardware. You might spend a bit of money on a supported network/sound/graphics card if the devices that came with a PC aren't fully supported, but otherwise it's essentially zero cost to get into.

With regards to the Amiga IP, things are looking up, the rights have mostly been acquired by Cloanto now, which is one of the few companies actively supporting the Amiga:

[http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html](http://www.amiga- news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html)

<comment><USER5> The cool thing about AROS IMHO, is that it can run on Amiga hardware... that means you can sell Amiga clones, such as Minimig, with basically Amiga OS out of the box, open source and all. Before that you had to get ROMs from random places.

Another Amazing development is the FGPA 68000 compatible CPU board for Amiga 500, 600 and 1200, the "Vampire" board.

It is four times faster than the fastest 68060 accelerator back in the day.

It also adds SD card reader (for storage, instead of hard drive), 128 megs of RAM. (A tricked out Amiga back in the day had maybe 8 megs. 2 megs was standard in the A1200 and 1 meg was standard in the A500.)

It also adds a DVI/HDMI connector so you can connect it to modern monitors/projectors easily.

[http://www.apollo-accelerators.com](http://www.apollo-accelerators.com)

Actually, the Vampire is almost a complete reimplementation of an Amiga. I expect them to release a complete "PC", so you don't need an old Amiga to plug the Vampire into.

<comment><USER4> I think they've said that the Vampire V4 will run standalone. Presumably the only non-crappy way to support HDMI was to implement Paula and Denise equivalents in the FPGA (a similar project exists for NES HDMI output, basically cloning the entire PPU and just snooping the bus of the original one for the raw timing and input data).

<comment><USER5> I can imagine.

I hope they keep going, first give the Amiga chipset clones higher internal bandwidth (probably already on the table), then add instructions to the copper or something...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I heard you like retro video gaming, so I put a retro video game system in your retro computer system so you can retro game while you retro compute.

Sorry about that, I just couldn't resist ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this a new project? I vaguely recall seeing A/NES a while back, but maybe I'm thinking of a different emulator.

EDIT: Cached version for those that can't open the live link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20161229084552/http://nes.goondo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161229084552/http://nes.goondocks.se/anes.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a new software, but version 1.19.1 is a new release. [http://nes.goondocks.se/anesfiles/anespro_v1.19.lha](http://nes.goondocks.se/anesfiles/anespro_v1.19.lha)

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys is there any NES port of DOOM that I can try on this emulator?</comment>


Will the Internet Doom the Planet? - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/will_the_internet_doom_the_planet/

<comment><USER2> I see that the notion that universities, charities, unions, clubs, political organizations, and other communities will collect donations and solicit subscriptions to subsidize news gathering and reporting didn't make the essay. Nor did the rather obvious notion of publicly funded media, like the BBC.</comment>


Collection of Software Bugs - <AUTHOR> https://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/bugse.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone explain how the bridge collapse in Miami was a software bug?

<comment><USER3> I'm going to go ahead and commit to saying it wasn't. I believe they are misinterpreting the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board. It sounds like, among other errors, they used inappropriate load parameters in the modeling software they were using. That's not the software's fault.

The reality is that despite the fact that we have decent software tools for structural design and analysis, they depend heavily on intelligent initialization of inputs from a human. While naively, that may sound like a software failing to non-civil/structural engineers, it would, IMO, be a nearly unsolvable problem to create software that can do it all for you.

For example, in this case, I believe one of the several failings that led to the collapse was related to inadequate structural analysis of construction staging. So the loading on the failed nodal connection was much greater during one phase of partial construction, and most of the analysis occured on the final, fully constructed design. (Though even in that state there were design failings.)

You can have a perfect model, but if you fail to actually use it correctly to assess for all the scenarios it won't help you.

<comment><USER4> Is there some traceability on what input parameters were used in testing computer models?

Is there a hypothetical world where the modeling software failed to show this scenario for the correct input parameters?

Either way, I agree, based on the links presented in the OP, there is no evidence presented of it being a software bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have randomly selected 3 links and 2 were dead. Using some king of webarchive might be a good idea for sites like this one.

</comment><comment><USER6> Definitely incorporating this into my software engineering course. Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd sure hate to be the guy who lost $460M lol "Knight Capital Group realized a $460 million loss in 45-minutes."

<comment><USER8> Eh, that kind of money is more or less pocket change to a Capital Group.

<comment><USER9> For some of the biggest capital groups maybe, but that loss actually destroyed Knight Capital Group: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_st...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption)

<comment><USER8> Which means they were something of a penny-ante company by the standards of the street.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Eclipse to Textmate: An IDEological Change - <AUTHOR> http://particletree.com/features/eclipse-to-textmate-an-ideological-change/

<comment><USER2> TextMate is a great editor, but I do find that it's support for any given language lacks the depth you might find in IDEs, even multi-language IDEs.

So I find myself wanting to use TM, because as a pure editor it is very nice - but for example find that the Ruby specific features in Netbeans* are such huge timesavers that it is impossible to justify sticking with TM. I found the same to be true with Objective-C and Xcode as well.

(*I have been no fan of NB in the past, and there are many things about it that suck, but they have done an amazing job with Ruby, nothing else I've seen comes close.)

That said, whatever you do, do NOT tie your development/build process to an IDE. You need to allow every developer to use the tools they prefer, and you want the freedom to be able to switch these tools quickly.

<comment><USER3> I agree that Xcode beats TextMate in several areas when it comes to C and Objective-C (mainly the CodeSense completion). What I find compelling, however, is the extensibility of TextMate. I'm fairly certain that it is possible to build something along the lines of CodeSense as a TextMate bundle, if it does not already exist. I've been really falling behind when it comes to coding in my spare time (something I'm ashamed of), so I haven't kept up with the latest TM bundles.

<comment><USER2> If you get the latest Objective-C bundle from TextMate's SVN it does a reasonable job of codesense completion - but XCode is still a little better at it. The other thing that drives me nuts in TM with Obj-C is that building is an order of magnitude slower than doing it from XCode directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it funny (from the perspective of a vim user) that all of these people who have been using heavyweight IDEs and scoffing at us with our "basic" editors are slowly coming our way. I'm not sure exactly whom I mean by "all of these people," but there are certainly a lot of Mac users and Java programmers who are singing the praises of lightweight editors like TextMate when vim and emacs have been around for decades.

On the topic of vim, I highly recommend it for those who haven't tried it out. Sit me in front of vim and a unix terminal and I can quickly do any refactoring task that needs done. I have used vim macros to turn an HTML table into a C array in a few seconds. Seriously, once you _get_ a powerful editor, it is so flexible and applicable that you will never want to be without it. Navigating text in an editor without vim's movement commands (W, w, B, b, {, }, *, #, and so many more) is simply painful.

<comment><USER5> Any good introductions to vim? I did the odd editing with vim with a cheat sheet side by side, but I never heard about the "cool features" before reading Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> I used <http://jmcpherson.org/editing.html> as well as a cheat sheet. There's also <http://vim.org/tips/> which seems to come up a lot whenever I'm searching for specific functionality. Other than that, simply immerse yourself in vim and deal with the pain for no more than a week before you'll find that you're already becoming more efficient.

Some less-commonly-used-but-awesome features:

      C-X C-F in insert mode: complete file names
      C-X C-L in insert mode: complete entire lines of code
      C-N, C-P in insert mode: complete word forward, previous
      v (V) in edit mode: entire visual mode (visual line)
      gq in visual mode: rewrap selection
      >> in edit/visual mode: indent current line/selection
      gg=G in edit mode: reformat indentation of entire file
      @@ in edit mode: repeat last keyboard macro

There's a lot I've left out (obviously), but that's a little teaser. One paradigm I use a lot is when I need to change a variable name... this is very easy. While on the variable itself, press * to search forward for it. Then type cw to erase the word and type in the replacement, followed by ESCAPE (of course). From then on, you can use n to find the next occurrence and then type . to change the name, because . repeats the last command.

Oh, and one last thing. Remap ESCAPE to CAPS LOCK, or get used to using C-[. Both are more convenient than reaching for the top corner; CAPS LOCK is superior in my experience, but it will kill you when you're on a non-mapped system.

<comment><USER4> One more good link: <http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only there was a real PC equivalent to TextMate. I find myself using eclipse due to the Remote Systems Plugin. Unfortunately, Eclipse is insanely buggy and has cost me countless hours of development time. One issue that keeps cropping up from time to time is that when I think I"m saving my file, it actually doesn't, and then I spend the next few minutes trying to figure out what's going on.

From time to time I look for alternatives, and sometimes find myself back in Notepad++. I guess that's the punishment I get for liking my ThinkPad hardware.

<comment><USER7> How about installing OS X on your ThinkPad? Which model do you have?

<comment><USER6> ThinkPad T61p, I couldn't find any decent hackintosh post on that. I wouldn't mind running it in some VM either.

<comment><USER8> I have a T61p. I use Emacs on it. TM may be easier to use, but my .emacs file is cross platform and is just a malleable if not more. Perhaps it could make a decent substitute?

<comment><USER9> TextMate is easier to _learn_. Once you know emacs or vim, there really aren't any tools that are more productive to use. But the trick is that you have to _really_ know the tools. It's not enough to fire it up and try it for a while. You need to use it full time (for everything: mail, documentation, notes, poetry -- editors aren't just for code) for a good while. Get the keystrokes into your fingers. Emacs users should think seriously about remapping Ctrl to the left of "A" where it was when the bindings were designed. Keep your hands off the mouse as much as possible. Learn the various tools and modes if you like, but above all get used to the idea of living in your editor.

What you'll find is that the modern GUI mechanisms for interacting with code are just terribly awkward. You'll start using keystrokes for other stuff too (like Alt-Tabbing to your command line), and everything will fall into place. Eventually, you'll start writing rants like this one trying to convince all the young'uns about how wrong they are about what they want in their tools.

<comment><USER10> I guess it's a question of how much you want to invest in your tools. Learning vi and emacs is like a lifetime of compound interest.

I agree that if you just want to code something yesterday, you probably won't reach for these most powerful tools. I'd say that if you're committed to programming over the long-term, though, you'd be hamstringing yourself by not starting on them now.

Long story short, I started Emacs a few months ago and I'm never going back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So in other words, if you have an extensible editor you can keep extending it until you've built an IDE.

</comment><comment><USER12> For java development I actually like IntelliJ IDEA (<http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/>) more than Eclipse as in many ways it is much more productive and puts the fun back in programming.

Its not free, but you get what you pay for.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a heavy TextMate user but had no idea about these awesome plugins. Excellent.

<comment><USER14> Speaking of Mac only editor's, I cannot wait to try Coda from Panic.</comment></comment>


All I Want for Christmas Is a Revolutionary Apple TV - <AUTHOR> http://tolmasky.com/2017/12/29/apple-tv <comment><USER2> One of the things I like the least about all of these boxes (Apple TV, Xbox, Roku) is the need to type in a password in front of everyone in the room using a joystick or the arrows. The whole concept of a keyboard on a screen that's used by only 4 buttons reminds me of the parody onion article when they discussed removing the keyboard on the MacBook in favor of a click wheel. It doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER3> The Roku devices support a mobile app that allows for keyboard input on your phone in most situations.</comment></comment>


Enterprise Social Networking Company Jive Software Files S-1 For IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/08/24/enterprise-social-networking-company-jive-software-files-s-1-for-ipo/ <comment><USER2> I've used Jive Clearspace/SBS for more than 3+ years (both internal and external), and I can honestly say it is one of the most extensible/agile pieces of Java-based technology I've used in my 12+ year industry career. It has been my experience that people who walk away from Jive with a negative experience tend to be 1 of 2 use-cases. 1.) Over customization of the product (as drivebyacct2 stated) or 2.) Those trying to make it something it is not, which is usually a Document Management system. In both these scenarios, Jive has made tremendous leaps forward in making extensions easier and more robust, while also partnering with platforms like Alfresco/Sharepoint for better Document Management capabilities. I strongly recommend those that haven't seen the product first-hand in the last 12 months, to check out the new Jive 5 Engage platform with What Matters. The difference maker (IMO) is that Jive has the best 6-12+ month user story when it comes to ramping up user collaboration and keeping them efficient in that collaboration as their social responsibilities grow in the face of exponentially louder activity streams and notification management complications. Those are my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll go out on a limb and comment. I used to be a huge fan of their "Clearspace" product and it got steadily and consistently worse over the years. They seem like a good company, but man, their products went downhill.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone use Jive's product at work and care to comment?

<comment><USER5> I worked for a company that over customized it, but I was not a huge fan of it. I don't think that the support or the quality of software justified the price tag.</comment></comment>


MCL as Swank Client: an IDE for other Common LISP environments - <AUTHOR> http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/04/mcl_as_swank_client.html

<comment><USER2> _"This might be what helps us escape from the emacs ghetto."_

Wow, I guess I have no idea what this means. Emacs/Slime has been truly enjoyable to work with.

<comment><USER3> Some people think "a good user interface" is one that they see a lot of. Lots of clicky buttons and a small area where you type your program is their idea of perfection.

Emacs takes the opposite approach (a black screen where you type stuff) and apparently this annoys some people. You can pry emacs out of my cold, dead hands.</comment></comment>


Statistics Done Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/statistics.html

<comment><USER2> Though the points made in this article are true, it is basically making the "frequentist vs. bayesianism" argument without mentioning Bayes' Theorem.

In other words, using the included XKCD picture as an example, the likelihood before any experiments were done that "green jelly beans, specifically, cause acne" is very very very small, because it's just a silly idea without an obvious causal mechanism. Therefore, even after the experiment is done, this likelihood is still vanishingly small (though larger than before.) The fact that it had "power" as per the p test is a red herring.</comment>


APLPrimeCheck – An entry into the Facepunch Obfuscation Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benjojo/APLPrimeCheck

<comment><USER2> Looking at the source code.. wow.. just wow [https://github.com/benjojo/APLPrimeCheck/blob/master/prime.a...](https://github.com/benjojo/APLPrimeCheck/blob/master/prime.apl)

</comment><comment><USER3> It almost seems like it'd be more of a challenge to use APL to write a _comprehensible_ program.</comment>


Air pollution is the new tobacco, WHO says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/27/air-pollution-is-the-new-tobacco-warns-who-head <comment><USER2> This is not surprising. Every day on our commute, we inhale toxic smoke from vehicles, or manufacturers and other places and we don't even realize that it's affecting our health. Worse, it'd be too late when we realized it's the source of our dwindling health.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've looked into purchasing a face mask to filter pollution whilst commuting to and from work but I feel as though it's not social acceptable to obscure your face in public. Has anyone else had similar concerns?</comment>


PromCon 2019 Live Stream - <AUTHOR> https://promcon.io/2019-munich/stream/ <comment><USER2> Awesome to see that Grafana Labs is offsetting all PromCon travel and food for all attendees by 200%.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for streaming this again!</comment>


Jeremy Rifkin On "The Empathic Civilization" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/jeremy-rifkin-on-the-empathic-civilization

<comment><USER2> Interesting view on empathy, but he doesn't really take into account how much of our identity/empathy springs from there being an 'other', someone to oppose or be different from. Having a global empathy seems possible but I would argue that different 'regional empathies' will always win out when we really have to make a tough choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting video. The RSA really puts out some good videos. Their other one on drive and motivation is also excellent.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of Rifkin. His book "The end of work" really made me think about what the future of employing people will look like.</comment>


Leaky Ships: Ocean Carriers and the Age of Profitless Shipping - <AUTHOR> https://www.flexport.com/blog/why-are-ocean-freight-rates-so-low/ <comment><USER3> The pollution shipping causes is really not taken seriously enough. Much of overseas production of cheap products is possible because of cheap shipping, but the environmental impact of this is going to cost us dearly.

One report say 16 of the biggest container ships produce as much pollution as all the cars in the world: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships- create-pollution-cars-world.html)

<comment><USER4> While I agree that it's horrible (but also presumably comparatively easy to fix), I think they only measure pollution by certain pollutants, not total pollution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Let's say that you want to travel for a year; it's cheaper to put your personal belongings in a shipping container as it sails around the world than to keep it at a local mini-storage facility."

Yow.

<comment><USER6> My collegue repatriated back to the US earlier this year from Europe, and I'll be following shortly. I was stunned at how cheap it was (relatively speaking) to ship our things back.

The moving company brings a 40ft container to your house, and starts packing it up. Then it's right off to the port. It amazes me, perhaps more so than it should, that moving an entire household full of items across the ocean is so economical.

<comment><USER7> If it wouldn't be that economical then the whole 'made in China' phenomenon would not exist.

The biggest problem I had in moving back from Canada to NL was to pick up the container in Rotterdam harbor and to have it delivered at our house. The rest of the 6500 km journey was trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Expect the prices to spike horribly in a few years, it sounds like a classic oligopoly in the making.

Small & mid-sized carriers are being killed off, and the big carriers are forming consortiums.

Once that consolidation is complete, it'll be a closed field with massive barriers to entry: the immense amounts of capital necessary to build those huge ships, plus the need to secure the necessary docking slots.

<comment><USER9> This has been taking place since the beginning of containerization and it has resulted in ever lower prices per container.

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's a classic pattern. Companies get bigger and more efficient, driving down prices until there's only 2 or 3 left and they can start enjoying their oligopoly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rates are very low, but the example given of Rotterdam to Shanghai is a bit misleading. There is much less demand in that direction than the other way, but the ships still need to get to Shanghai to pick up all those toys for the children of Europe. I'd expect the price the other direction to be more than double that.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. The carriers are happy to get any money at all on the Europe to Asia route, because most of their containers are moving back to Shanghai empty.

<comment><USER10> One common cargo from Europe to China is waste cardboard. Think how cheap shipping would have to be for that to be worth shipping. Many of these will be the boxes from goods shipped to Europe from China, and will be recycled into more boxes for more goods to send back to Europe. It's like the circle of life, but with cardboard.

<comment><USER12> Scape metal has also become common to ship to China to be smelted back down shipped back to the U.S.

<comment><USER11> Chinese Customs has started banning a lot of these commodities because of the pollution that recycling them creates. Used tires for example. But apparently it is _still_ somehow profitable to ship them to Vietnam and smuggle them across the border into China for recycling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I smell a credit bubble that has put too many ships on the market.

See also this Article about an advertising bubble where there is "There's more money being made from advertising than consumers are putting in." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572863)

</comment><comment><USER14> Crazy idea: what if cargo ships towed behind them a "cruise barge" \- basically a section of cruise ship that people can rent cabins on to go from point A to point B -- its basically like a cruise ship - but its only on the barge behind the cargo ship - maybe not as luxurious as a cruise ship - <USER2> might be another way to charge given that no matter what the cargo ships will always be traversing these routes on the seas.

<comment><USER15> I guess if a cruise ship is a package holiday what you're describing is a self catering cruise ship?

What if an operator sourced high-speed internet for a trip and rented a good few months of container space to programmers who want a working holiday ha.

Or rent out kitted out livable containers to go on ships with an occupant for x time of the trip.

<comment> david-given This are some pretty terrible pictures, but they show you how densely packed the containers are:

[http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Li...](http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Library/Freighter- Travel/Container-Hold.jpg) [http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Li...](http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Library/Freighter- Travel/Hanjin-Container-Ship-Seattle.jpg)

That's 14 layers of containers, eight below deck and six above. Some contains will need power hookups because they're refridgerated, so it's feasible that those are accessible, but most won't be.

Plus, containers _do_ get lost overboard occasionally. Cabins would be rather safer...</comment></comment></comment>


Final Fantasy VII: The Web Series (Kickstarter) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ffviiwebseries/final-fantasy-vii-the-web-series-unofficial-fan-pr

<comment><USER2> A lot of "unofficial fan based" projects seem to be tolerated by the IP owners while there's no money involved, even if they get quite large.

These guys are asking for $400,000.

Anyone taking bets on how long until we see some sort of takedown notice?

<comment><USER3> Isn't it very naive of them to think they can do this unlicensed? They are basically using SquareEnix's IP to raise money for their project - that is not going to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That looks like a very poor, straight-up bad idea. The story was fun as a game, but I feel a lot of doubt that it would anything beyond laughable as a film.

I wish them luck if they really want to do it, but I certainly won't be backing it.

</comment><comment><USER5> So how soon till Square shuts this down with a C&D?

</comment><comment><USER6> At first I was like ehhh... but the video is quite good. I look forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah that was a nice game, but really. Take your money and put it into something useful. There's diseases to be cured, politicians to be lobbied, philosophical questions to be investigated, space to explore.. There's poverty and war.

We used to like games when we were kids, of course. But we are adults now. (I assume that most HN-readers are adults.) Shouldn't we care about different things?

<comment><USER8> I care about poverty and war and politics and curing cancer, of course, but that's not all I think about 100% of the time. I can only speak so definitely for myself, but I'd be willing to bet that you don't either. You could apply your logic to all sorts of things, and look down your nose at having a drink with friends, or walks along the beach, or painting, or playing the piano. Why play with your kids, there are diseases to be cured, come on! None of really live our lives like that.

Actually, my main problem with this particular Kickstarter is the blatant copyright infringement, which Kickstarter usually takes down.</comment></comment>


The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/asus-tinker-board-compelling-upgrade-raspberry-pi-3-b <comment><USER2> Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks:

\- BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): [http://www.banana- pi.org/](http://www.banana-pi.org/)

\- Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): [https://libre.computer/](https://libre.computer/)

\- NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : [http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&...](http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=69)

\- OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): [https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/](https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/)

\- Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): [http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php)

\- OrangePi (Allwinner): [http://www.orangepi.org/](http://www.orangepi.org/)

\- Pine64 (Allwinner) and Rock64 (Rockchip): [https://www.pine64.org/](https://www.pine64.org/)

<comment><USER3> Any of those x86? or is that mutually exclusive with "cheap"?

<comment><USER4> $20 [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-04W1431-ThinkPad-X220-i3-231...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-04W1431-ThinkPad-X220-i3-2310M-2-1GHz- DDR3-Laptop-Motherboard/382431381403)

$30 [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Motherboard- FR...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Motherboard- FRU-04W3287-w-i5-2520M-2-50GHz-CPU/322591520726)

~4-10x Raspberry pee 3 speed, SATA, pcie, 1Gbit ethernet, battery backup. Can get them as low as $10 with one USB port broken (either mechanical or fried).

<comment><USER5> This is an interesting option. Is it possible run that bare motherboard attached to a compatible power supply and nothing else? I don't see heat sinks on the first link, or RAM, or storage on either.

<comment><USER4> 1GB ddr3 sodimms are pretty much free/garbage(friends, IT at work) due to being outdated and too small for anything, or $4 on ebay including shipping if you cant be bothered to ask around.

Those were just first random links from ebay, you can get better deals if you search harder, for example EU $15 [http://allegro.pl/org-sprawna-plyta-glowna- lenovo-x220-core-...](http://allegro.pl/org-sprawna-plyta-glowna- lenovo-x220-core-i5-gw-fv-i7043900717.html) whole lower case +wifi +bt +cooling, one usb mechanically broken (out of 3 sockets, 9 more usb available if you solder directly to motherboard in strategic places like camera/mpcie/fingerprint/expresscard/dock connectors). Thinkpads can boot from SD card just like raspberry pee. You boot without keyboard by shorting one pin on keyboard/dock/debug connector.

did I mention full schematic? [http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/hardware/thinkpad/x220/x220.s...](http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/hardware/thinkpad/x220/x220.schematics.pdf)

mostly open source firmware is also available [https://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x220](https://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x220)

<comment><USER5> Thank you for your reply. I made some off-topic comment a couple of months ago on HN about the lack of inexpensive, full x86 compatible SBCs. This gets close to the mark, especially if I can run the bare motherboard or something close to it.

As an aside, the schematics really take me back to a moment in the late 1980s. Radio Shack sold Tandys and TRS-80s at one point, and I remember an especially thick series of binders full of the system schematics for one (or some) of the computers they sold. I was too young with no money of my own then to buy them, and now I really wish I knew what that was so I could find it on eBay. Little did I know that was the end of an era, and not something I'd see the likes of again until today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For something called the "Tinker Board" you'd expect there to be lots of documentation, and for the RK3288, it does not disappoint:

Datasheet: [http://opensource.rock- chips.com/images/4/4e/Rockchip_RK3288...](http://opensource.rock- chips.com/images/4/4e/Rockchip_RK3288_Datasheet_V2.2-20170301.pdf)

Technical Reference Manual: [http://rockchip.fr/RK3288%20TRM/](http://rockchip.fr/RK3288%20TRM/)

This is on par with what TI offers for its OMAP series, and a great deal better than anything Broadcom has ever released for its RPi SoCs.

I remember around a decade or so ago, Rockchip was one of the main producers of PMP SoCs, mainly the RK26xx and RK27xx series (Actions was the other popular one), and there was a community around firmware-modding those PMPs, including, appropriately enough, porting RockBox to run on them. It's interesting to see them "growing up" in the market.

<comment><USER7> 4k60p too!

I'm working on a simply Yocto image that will autoplay a music video. It will serve as a nice test camera source for the medical device recorders I develop.

[https://github.com/pauldotknopf/rockchip-camera- source](https://github.com/pauldotknopf/rockchip-camera-source)

I still got to work out some kernel panics, but when it's done, I can just dd an image to an SD card. It beats the $10,000 medical camera I currently use :)

I am currently using a Yocto image for Raspberry Pi for 1080p60.

[https://github.com/pauldotknopf/raspberry-pi-camera- source](https://github.com/pauldotknopf/raspberry-pi-camera-source)

<comment><USER8> What camera do you use with the Tinker?

<comment><USER7> Tinker only does 4k30, I need 4k60. I'm currently using a RaspPi for 1080p60, but I am configuring the ROCK64 now.

Also, in case you misunderstood, I'm not using a camera _with_ these devices, I am using these devices _as_ a camera. I plug the HDMI out directly into my capture device to test capture/rendering/encoding/etc. Previously, I had to use a real camera and point it at a move to get some nice motion and color. Now, I just power on my RaspPi and use the HDMI out. Our assembly line now also uses them to burn in our devices.

<comment><USER9> I think you mean to say you are using these devices to simulate a camera?

<comment><USER10> OP is probably talking about something like this:

[http://www.lcdracks.com/racks/DLW/V-SG4K-HDI-signal- generato...](http://www.lcdracks.com/racks/DLW/V-SG4K-HDI-signal- generator.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the main issues with all of these rasbi alternatives is the software. As ... quirky ... as the rasbi is, the software support and optimisation is excellent. There are several speed comparisons on youtube where the rasbi beats a lot of the competition through sheer software optimisation. Honestly, without complete Upstream Kernel support and Open Sourcing of all necessary drivers, none of these Boards is really useful.

<comment><USER12> Allwinner based boards have mainline kernel support for most features, they're one of a handful of vendors that has mainline support (primarily due to community efforts). I personally like the OrangePi boards due to price & reliability, easy to set and forget without worrying about mSD corruption.

[http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page](http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page) is pretty useful for a list of boards and info.

<comment><USER13> That hasn't been my experience during the design our last product. Allwinner was the vendor we had to pass on because their then-best-offering (H5) had poor mainline support and fragile, crappy code in the kernel dump. We decided to go with the slightly more expensive RPi 3B precisely because it had both usable mainline support and the handful of patches in the RaspberryPi Foundation's kernel were much better written and maintained.

<comment><USER12> We use H3 based boards, but the H5 seems to be fairly mature. I know its been under heavy development wrt mainline kernel support for the last year, might want to take a peek at the status matrix: [https://linux- sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matri...](https://linux- sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix)

<comment><USER13> H3 was already quite old back when we looked. The support offered by Allwinner for old chips (like the H3) back then was basically "If you're buying a ton, sure we'll support!", which was very off-putting.

H5's mainline support is still lacking in key areas. I2C, I2S, and cpufreq are deal-breakers for our product. Of course, combined with the fact that it will soon be out of support for a not-huge-buyer like us, it is out-of-question.

The status of their latest offering, the H6, in that matrix shows how bleak it was when we were looking at H5 for our board design. It was when the latest release of Linux was 4.4. You can see how few H5 features were supported with 4.4, almost exactly like how few are supported on the H6 today.

<comment><USER12> Sure, none of these chips are new, and the older models (which are easily & cheaply accessible) have mainline support. I wouldn't expect jack from Allwinner besides their crummy kernel 3.4 branch, but that is the beauty in mainline support, you aren't limited to what Allwinner supports!

<comment><USER13> > Sure, none of these chips are new, and the older models (which are easily & > cheaply accessible...

The then-older chips were not available with the future volume we needed, unless we increased our volumes a few times. We had little choice but to build on their newer chips for the volume bracket we fell into. Perhaps the situation has changed in two years.

> I wouldn't expect jack from Allwinner besides their crummy kernel 3.4 > branch, but that is the beauty in mainline support, you aren't limited to > what Allwinner supports!

You can see how that is off-putting, especially when other vendors (e.g., the Raspberry Pi Foundation) themselves support the latest LTS (and non-LTS) kernel with maintained patches, and upstream their patches. And their code is not utter garbage. New RPis have a much easier time getting mainlined precisely because of these reasons.

<comment><USER14> I'd have thought they'd still be better than the chip in the Pi, which last I checked wasn't available at all to anyone but the Pi Foundation (and the proprietary bootloader license didn't allow you to run it on anything non-Pi anyway).

<comment><USER12> The licensing and supply for the RasPi were pretty off-putting to us. Sure, we aren't making a custom board, but I don't want to be held captive to a single supplier that can stop producing boards at any time, whether that is due to a lack of chips or a lack of desire.

<comment><USER13> We were afraid of that too. But Allwinner wasn't willing to give us any guarantees they'd even continue to make the H5 two years later. Nor was the H5 backwards compatible with either of its predecessors H3 and A64, giving us more reason to worry about the future.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation (and Broadcom, in contract partnership), on the other hand, had a proven track record of both continuing to manufacture RPis 1 and 2 and to maintain backwards compatibility when putting out new RPi SoCs and boards.

Perhaps the situation with Allwinner has changed now. Perhaps they're willing to support their products for longer for smaller clients. We'd have to look into that again. But, of course, without mainline support anytime soon (and the quality of their past code doesn't help a bit) it's very hard for us to actually build a good product with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are plenty of boards that are much more powerful than the RPi and have comparable price (ODROID-C2 comes to mind). But the devil is in wether or not they run the mainline Linux kernel.

I have several ODROID-C2 that I have replaced with RPis because of the poor hardware support (Amlogic kernel was way late at the time, may still is).

Stick to mainline.

<comment><USER16> I got my odroid c2 running with the rc kernel for a while now. There were some problems at first, but it now runs my home automation and DHCP server without a hitch. I'm running archlinuxarm btw but I will soon try voidlinux as well on it

(I tried kodi as well and it kinda could play h256 in software, but I now stick to my raspberry pi as a media center)

<comment><USER17> You've gotta mean hardware. There is no way that arm chip could do h265 at any useful speed. The amlogic in the c2 can do hardware h265 (not hdr) and it works with Kodi. I use one this way and have been overall pleased with it though especially since I didn't buy the board for this in the first place. It was a repurpose. I would only get something with 10 bit these days if media is the primary concern.

<comment><USER16> Nope I meant software I don't think h265 hardware decoding is in mainline yet (could be wrong thought)

And yes I explicity tested software decoding and my 720p sample played without noticeable delay/framedrop and 1080p was uhm kinda running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whether or not ever more powerful Raspberry Pi computers is a good thing depends on why you are using them.

If you're wanting to put it to some practical application then probably more power is better.

If, like me, it's a hobby, and you enjoy the idea of tiny machines, and the challenge of pushing a computer to do things a resource constrained environment, then tiny and powerful machines like RPi that can run full Linux distros are no more interesting than any other computer. There's nothing particularly interesting about loading and running Linux.

So for the hobbyist wanting to be challenged, tiny machines/CPUs like the esp8266 and esp32 are where the fun is really at.

It's a strange inversion because for 40 years I've always found that the most interesting computer is one that is more powerful than anything else - not so now when pursuing that old school feel.

<comment><USER19> > So for the hobbyist wanting to be challenged, tiny machines/CPUs like the > esp8266 and esp32 are where the fun is really at.

While I agree with you, ESP32 is over 1000 times more powerful than C64 and has more RAM than unexpanded Amiga 500. (Can't wait when my ESP32 arrives in mail soon. :-))

Doom for ESP32 (running from RAM connected over SPI of all things...!): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_JFDa0AIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_JFDa0AIo)

<comment><USER20> re: your earlier comment about lightweight embedded crypto libs, [https://github.com/GaloisInc/gec](https://github.com/GaloisInc/gec) is an example

<comment><USER19> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Our IoT service uses the RPi2. We will move to the RPi3 when our stock runs out.

In our B2B application, the Pi's are just headless data collectors and all C code and data normally runs in RAM with the SSD card only written to as a backup if the device loses Internet connectivity (rare). The SSD card's system partition is configured as read only and we have had no problems with data corruption.

I think many people are trying to use these small computers for things that were not intended. The RPi's are cheap, well supported, and more than powerful enough for the price. If you need more power, spend more on some of the other options or step up to a full computer.

</comment><comment><USER22> what kind of projects does the Raspberry Pi shine in which a 35-50$ phone cant do ? let's say this one - [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3000mAh-Homtom- HT16-5-0-inch...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3000mAh-Homtom- HT16-5-0-inch-3G-Smartphone-MTK6580-Quad-Core-1GB-RAM-8GB-ROM- Wakeup/32814472811.html)) running Android 6.0 in a 1GB RAM package. You have access to battery, GPS, wifi, USB, acclerometer and a display out of the box (which you typically pay extra for on rpi). And obviously... Android.

P.S. remember Android 6.0 has COSU mode to set your device in a single-purpose single-app mode ([https://developer.android.com/work/cosu.html](https://developer.android.com/work/cosu.html)) just like the rpi3. Which has the pleasant side-effect that you can manage a ton of these devices using a central enterprise-grade management system.

In addition, you can build custom hardware that interfaces with Android in a standard way (the AOA protocol) - [https://source.android.com/devices/accessories/custom](https://source.android.com/devices/accessories/custom). Which makes doing a hardware startup prototyping easier on the android platform than rpi.

Is the rpi (or the Asus Tinker Board) merely a consequence of what was possible at a particular price point some time back ?

<comment><USER23> \- RPi isn't Chinese, as in, I'm not locked in (by default) into a Chinese stock OS with god-knows-what spyware installed.

\- It runs Linux as a first-party-sanctioned OS. Great ecosystem for tinkering. Not locked in to the whims of the manufacturer OS updates.

\- GPIO pins.

\- No built-in screen (which I guess draws less power).

\- HDMI, USB and Ethernet ports.

<comment><USER22> Any Android phone can be rooted and flashed to Lineage os atleast.

For other points, I have mentioned in other comments.

<comment><USER23> Yes but that's not first party, voids the warranty (messing with bootloaders, yuck), in my experience has tons of problems with propietary drivers, is still Android (which is an awful OS/ecosystem for anything that isn't a phone), eventually stops being updated (as many of my not-so-old phones can attest)...

RPi and Android phones might overlap for some applications but I see them as very distinct devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, they're down to $50 now? I remember seeing these and thinking they looked cool, but hard to justify at (iirc) $80.

The ODroid-C2 is also mentioned; those look nice. That company also sells raw EMMC modules as an alternative option to microSD cards, which seems like it could be useful. Does anyone know if those EMMC modules are less likely to spuriously corrupt themselves? I haven't run them for any length of time, but it looks like an ODroid with EMMC would be on a similar price point.

<comment><USER25> I own an ODROID-XU3. Haven't used it for a while now but back when I did — including using it as desktop computer for several months — I did not have any data corruption issues with the eMMC module. Meanwhile with Raspberry Pi I've had several instances of data corruption with different SD cards.

<comment><USER26> The eMMC for me is worth the price. Too many corrupt SD cards.

<comment><USER12> I've only ever had corruption issues on Raspi's, versus with the OrangePi's we have in production at customers sites, I have yet to see any mSD card issues. We do screen our Evo+ mSD cards pretty aggressively for issues though!

One nice thing about Allwinner based SBCs is the strong development community that mainlines support for their chips in short order. Few other chip vendors have mainline support, which makes their boards abandonware in short order.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a common theme in these SBC threads, but I've also had a pretty good experience with microSD cards in the Pi—one time I had corruption after unplugging the Pi.

Two things that are immensely helpful if you want a stable experience with the Pi:

        1. A good power supply.
        2. A good microSD card.

Most cheap power supplies (like those you get free with a phone) don't supply 2A or more consistently, which the newer Pis need to run stable.

And as far as microSD cards go, [I wrote an article on that last week]([https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/raspberry-pi- microsd-...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/raspberry-pi-microsd-card- performance-comparison-2018\);) there's a huge gulf between the best and worst cards, even from name-brand manufacturers.

<comment><USER27> Indeed, I've had nothing but good experiences with Samsung EVO and SanDisk Ultra cards.

BTW, your link seems to end up on your front page, rather than the card comparison article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, it gets cut off if I paste the whole thing. Here's a [text link]([https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/raspberry-pi- microsd-...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/raspberry-pi-microsd-card- performance-comparison-2018)) instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been looking at the new Rockchip RK3399 based devboards. Of note is the $99 Rock960[1]. The major draws for me are the DisplayPort support, so I can use it with my iPad 3/4 display controller board, M.2 PCIe 4-lane, eMMC, 802.11ac. Firefly makes a similar one as well. [2]

1\. [https://www.96boards.org/product/rock960/](https://www.96boards.org/product/rock960/)

2\. [http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=45](http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=45)

<comment><USER29> I wonder what wifi chipset it has. Supports 802.11ac which I need. I should investigate this board, see if it allows monitor mode (low level wifi packet access). The RasPiB+ supports 802.11ac but the Broadcom based wifi doesn't allow monitor mode.

<comment><USER29> "The wifi/bt module used on ROCK960s is AP6356s from AMPAK Technology." [https://www.96boards.org/documentation/consumer/rock960/hard...](https://www.96boards.org/documentation/consumer/rock960/hardware- docs/hardware-user-manual.md.html#key-components)

"AMPAK combines Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips in single modules." [https://wikidevi.com/wiki/AMPAK](https://wikidevi.com/wiki/AMPAK)

Broadcom + Linux is a very mixed bag. Would require more investigation.

<comment><USER30> The Raspberry Pi uses Broadcom WiFi and Bluetooth chips too. You need to install the linux-firmware package though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Const-me Tinkerboard has amazingly performant GPU. Peak performance is 81.6GFlops, comparable to mid-range desktop GPUs from 2007 (e.g. GeForce 8400 GS had 67 GFlops, GeForce 8600 GT had 114 GFlops). It also supports 4k HDMI output resolution.

RPi is more compatible i.e. the software stack supports OpenGL.

But for cases where it's OK to code against GLES, Mali-T764 is awesome. I once used NanoVG to build a very nice looking rich GUI, with alpha transparency, animated state transitions, etc. Moreover, it consumes practically no CPU time, because everything is hardware accelerated.

<comment><USER31> does it require codes to unlock native x264 processing, like the RBP does (or did, back when I used it)?

Also, does it have hardware support for HEVC? My poor RBP 2 can't handle HEVC at all.

<comment><USER27> In my experience with the Pi, H.264 is baked-in, but you need a license key for MPEG-2 (a necessity if you're dealing with ATSC footage) or VC-1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Once an SBC approaches $100 or so, there are other options (like a used Intel core i5 desktop) which offer 10-100x the performance and infinite expansion options"

Anyone knows what kind of board he means? I have been searching and it seems that the next step from the pi would be something like the Intel NUC, which is quite a lot more than $100 when considering a full, minimum system build.

Edit: totally missed the "used" in that sentence, which totally changes things. Thanks for the tips though!

<comment><USER33> "Used Core i5" is not buying a NUC. At least, I don't think there's a huge aftermarket of NUCs at this point. I don't think they sell in the volume that leads to large aftermarkets, like your average Dell business machine.

A five year old OptiPlex SFF PC though is available for around $100 or so, and capable of much more than any single-board PC.

<comment><AUTHOR> > A five year old OptiPlex SFF PC

This is more what I'm talking about; I needed a faster option with much more RAM and a proper SATA SSD for one project. I bought a used Lenovo ThinkCentre for about $80, put in a small SSD I had on hand, upgraded the RAM to 8 GB for $20 (one 4GB stick on eBay), and had an i5 with about 100x better overall performance than a Pi 3 B+ (and maybe 10x more power consumption, so not a bad tradeoff). All-in $100 for me, though if you didn't have an SSD you can pick one up for $35-45 if you just need 32 or 64 GB.

Basically, once you hit the $100 threshold, you have to really ask if an SBC is the right solution—unless you really, really need the small footprint. And if you need I/O for project stuff, an Arduino or similar project board is only a few bucks more and connects via USB.

<comment><USER34> How do you interface with arduino? serial?

<comment><USER35> CDC/ACM, so straight bytestream serial over USB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know. I think I take the Hackaday view that the software and community is way more important than the hardware in this field, and Raspberry Pi has it all.

<comment><USER37> It completely depends on what you want to do with it. If it involves a some quirky sensors etc then certainly. If the IO is simple and the workload is more traditional server style, then the Raspberry isn't particularity interesting.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Unfortunately this is not aarch64. There is something to be said for having a single instruction set, makes package building and distribution simpler.

<comment><USER38> First thing I checked, I've been looking for a small and cheap aarch64 board for hacking around. Do you know of one?

I guess as long as they won't ship more than a couple GB of RAM they won't bother with it.

<comment><USER39> Pine64 are pretty good for CPU and RAM, but you will be loosing out on the great support things like Raspberry Pi SBCs have

Edit: forgot to mention Pine64 starts at like 15 usd for 512Mb Ram or 19 usd for 1GB and like 29USd for 2Gb also from 19 usd up they have gigabit(can be hard to max out due to various issues IIRC, check forum), and the high end version is still cheaper than a RPi3 IIRC

<comment><USER40> Anecdote warning: As the happy owner of quite a few RPi, I had a really poor experience with the Rock64 (I know, it's not technically a Pine64). Multiple SD cards, mulitple power supplies and I can't get it to run for more than 5 minutes at a time without locking up. Doesn't appear to be a thermal issue as far as I can tell. Of course I probably just got a bad board, unfortunately after multiple emails I can't get a response from their customer service. I'm ready to just throw it in the trash. Really disppointed because I really just wanted an RPi with usb 3.0 and gigaibit ethernet, it seemed perfect.

edit: tried both armbian and android

<comment><USER39> On my Pine64 I use Dietpi from [http://dietpi.com/](http://dietpi.com/) and it just works, it even has a setup gui where you can install to USB Drive and it will have bootloader on SD Card IIRC

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Also of note:

Tinkerboard has b/g/n 2.4Ghz wifi. Pi 3B+ also has 802.11ac 5Ghz wifi.

Tinkerboard has a superior sound chip, supporting 24-bit, 192kHz audio. Pi 3B+ has a totally garbage mono only analog sound (and presumably fine HDMI digital sound).

<comment><USER42> RPi is garbage hardware propped up by overcompensated OS support. Sooner or later you regret putting the effort in because it's just mediocre at everything.

<comment><USER43> Even though you're gray (modded down), there's significant issues with the RPi. Here's some.

1\. Boot is still a mystery. It boots from the GPU with "magic registers", then passes to the CPU...?

2\. There's no specs available for the GPIOs. 5v tolerant? SPI max speed? Pullups/downs? Nada..

3\. DRM baked in. RasPi foundation cheaped out on the MPEG2 decoder, and you need to pay $5 to enable hardware decoding.

4\. Needs mystery black box kernel blobs.

5\. No power management. No low voltage detection. Hope and pray method

6\. Everything is on the USB. Bandwidth ends up sucking. They could have did ethernet on SPI.

<comment><USER3> 1\. boot is a mystery with all commercial SoCs? Show me one that doesn't have an untouchable binary blob in onboard memory.

3\. MPEG2 decoding can be done with software just fine?

4\. Again, show me one without driver blobs. This is mostly the fault of the chip makers and not the RPi foundation.

5\. Power management is a kernel feature?

6\. agree

<comment><USER14> There's nothing mysterious about the Allwinner boot process at least. While there's an on-chip boot ROM that can't be modified, it just loads a chunk of code into SRAM from the boot device and jumps to it at the highest privilege level supported by the hardware. It's not uncommon for everything after the boot ROM to be 100% open source code. That simply isn't possible on the Pi, which is why Debian doesn't support it out the box.

Also, the lack of power management on the Pi is mostly a hardware limitation. The hardware simply doesn't support any kind of software-controlled shutdown or suspend.

<comment><USER3> How is a blob not mysterious. The fact that it doesn't use some exotic gpu- based bootstrap is irrelevant. A black box is a black box. Also I'd argue it _is_ uncommon for everything the kernel uses to be open source, I don't know of one where all the drivers are open source (without losing functionality).

<comment><USER14> The Allwinner BROM is about 32KB, almost completely reverse-engineered at least for the earlier chips, and in any case the only thing it does during a normal boot is to load a chunk of code from a fixed location on the SD card to a fixed location in SRAM and immediately jump to it. It's nothing the Raspberry Pi boot process, where even the initial boot ROM has FAT filesystem support and it loads a proprietary blob which runs continually on the "GPU" co-processor with full access to RAM handling various important runtime functionality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I looked at the Tinkerboard when it was released but it is limited to USB 2.0. The Rock64 is a better option with the same SOC as the Tinkerboard but USB 3.0 ports and decent Linux support.

Even more interesting Odroid is releasing a new board the N1 based on the Rockchip 3399 SOC that has 2 A72 + 4 A53 processors. It also has 2 SATA ports, USB 3.0 and 2 Gigabit lan ports. And Odroid software support is significantly better than most other vendors except the Pi.

Their previous C2 board based on the Amlogic 905 was a great buy at $45 and plays 4k content without missing a beat while my kabylake desktop on Linux seems to struggle.

<comment><USER40> > The Rock64 is a better option with the same SOC as the Tinkerboard but USB > 3.0 ports and decent Linux support.

I've had a rough time with the Rock64, personally. Also I like to mention that you cannot power the Rock64 over MicroUSB like you can an RPi, which is really annoying to me.

</comment></comment><comment> concrete-faucet The thing that gets me most of all with the SBCs is that I need to go out and buy another power supply. I know - they aren't really that expensive, but I just don't want to do it. I already have so many 5V USB power supplies that I don't even know what to do with them all. I doubt I am the only one.

I like that the Pi Zero seems to be perfectly stable with any old phone charger I've used, and they seem to range from 800mA to 1mA. I have a couple iPad chargers that go up to 2.1A, so I'd be really happy if I could find a multicore SBC that was good to go with one of those.

</comment><comment><USER45> This website has useful information about the Tinker board and links to some alternative software distributions:

[https://tinkerboarding.co.uk/](https://tinkerboarding.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER46> It would really compete against the RPi if it was on the same price category.

Being 15 dollars more expensive breaks the whole purpose of having a descent, small and cheap computer/board as the RPi has been all this time.

<comment><USER47> I'd pay $10 extra just for the Gigabit functionality. 100Mbps is unacceptable for any sort of media/file server applications and 230Mbps is only 1/4 of my Internet connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> At that price you should get an Odroid C2. A53 is a better core and C2 also offers 2GB of RAM and a rather large heat sink to avoid thermal throttling. It's a no brainer IMO.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm currently prototyping a product using the Raspberry Pi + GPIO. I've often wondered - if the thing makes it to market - how I would substitute the Rpi in mass production (1000+). The SD card is a big point of failure for many Rpi users for example. So storage is probably something I would change.

Does anyone have experience with a mass produced product that used the Rpi in prototypes?

I know element14 is offering Raspberry Pi customization for mass production.

<comment><USER50> The compute module has eMMC instead of an SD card, and there should be a few products based around that to look at.

<comment><USER49> I've looked at the compute module. It is positioned as the way to go for mass production - but the price point seems higher than the Rpi as you still need a base board for it to function.

<comment><USER50> Yeah, if you don't have a custom PCB otherwise it's probably not the best fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone got any experience with this one?

[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G151505170472)

I'm thinking about buying two of them and using them as a NAS with offsite mirroring for critical data/important documents.

<comment><USER51> If you are building NAS for critical data just get a proper NAS board.

If you don't want to go for an embedded X86 then this one is a good option it comes with ECC memory and decent enough crypto acceleration for full encryption.

[https://kobol.io/helios4/](https://kobol.io/helios4/)

<comment><USER52> Or use S3 or equivalent. Who will know how how to take care of your personal NAS when you're dead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The tinkerboard, being backed by a big name like Asus, seems to at least have as good a distribution network as the RPi has built up.

Many of the alternative boards, for all their improvements over he RPi, are virtually impossible to get hold of beyond directly importing from the OEM.

That said, i already have an RPI3B sitting around that i have yet to do anything with.

</comment><comment><USER54> I actually won a Tinker Board recently and was disappointed to find out that, unlike the Raspberry Pi, it has no composite port.

I guess that's something to be expected, it's probably not a very used feature, but I really enjoy being able to play old video games on a CRT, as they were meant to be played.

</comment><comment><USER55> After days of looking around, I purchased the Pi 3 B+ for one simple reason: cost. The price of the other boards like the Tinker or BeagleBoard Black is almost twice the price of the Pi here in Australia.

</comment><comment><USER56> Say, how well are the various hardware features supported on this tinker board? For example, I've had trouble with enabling I2C on an Orange Pi and there's precious little documentation about this niche-ish use.

Since the reason for using these boards is ease of development, as in not doing a custom kernel, how well the SOC specific bits work is pretty important.

Note: while externally these boards are all similar (same expansion connector etc), internally they use different SoCs and different kernels and configuration utilities. And this sometimes bites.

</comment><comment><USER57> I was using a Raspberry Pi 2 as my home webserver for a long time but I recently switched to a Tinker Board and was really pleased with the process.

Same form factor was very convenient since I could use my old case and hats. ASUS ported WiringPi as well, so all my Rpi scripts worked without modification. And finally, a dedicated Ethernet controller means I get way better speeds than my old Pi 2 could even dream about.

If you care about Ethernet speeds the decision is pretty much a no-brainer.

<comment><USER58> This article compares the tinkerboard with the raspi3+, which bums the ethernet wprformancw by a degree of magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is anyone running mainline Debian, with the linux-image-armmp kernel package, on the Tinker Board yet? If so, what hardware is supported and what is not?

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm surprised nobody mentioned CHIP from [https://getchip.com/](https://getchip.com/) \- when they where available I paid 10 euros for each including shipping.

It came with WiFi, bluetooth, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of flash, plenty of GPIO

<comment><USER61> Nobody mentions them anymore because that platform sadly is gone. [https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/chip-pro-officially- dead/20285](https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/chip-pro-officially-dead/20285)

</comment></comment><comment> noir-york Maybe someone can help: is it possible to build an SBC can boot Linux and has just a CPU, gig ethernet and gobs of RAM (at least 8gb)?

Don't need display port, GPU, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPIO pins, etc - just a CPU + lots of RAM + an ethernet port to get stuff in/out.

<comment><USER62> Are you asking if it's possible, or asking for advice on a practical way to get it done?

<comment> noir-york If its at all possible, and if so, has someone built such an SBC?

Alternatively, is there a practical way to attach external DDRAM to an existing 64-bit SBC, perhaps using the GPIO pins?

I have zero electronics knowledge so forgive my questions if they are stupid.

<comment><USER62> It's definitely possible. Has someone built exactly that? I don't know; there are hundreds of variants of single-board computers, and I'm only familiar with a few. It's not something that you'd build by buying a couple of parts and soldering them to a breadboard.

As for attaching memory, GPIO probably gives you a transfer rate on the order of a few MB/s. There are various things like SPI-connected SRAM chips, but those don't provide a lot of memory (think KB, not GB).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I use one on my TV.

HW acceleration (its USP) only works with TinkerOS and it is buggy as hell :/

</comment><comment><USER64> Is there a reason why everybody just _HAS_ to stick to the RPi's when the BeagleBone Black/Green/Blue/etc. are:

1) Far more open (you can get documentation and chip supply to build your own BeagleBone)

2) No more expensive

3) Mainline Debian

<comment><USER65> Well, they are more expensive, though by just a little. The low price really seems to be the deciding factor for most people. I'm likewise baffled by the lack of popularity of some of these other boards. Thr RPi is honestly getting quite long in the tooth and just $10-15 more can get you a way better board.

<comment><USER66> Couple of years ago we were looking for an board to run embedded Linux. Anything relying on an SD card was a no go for us. Talking to a few friends with a bunch of experience with SD cards in industrial settings say they purchase high end ones from specific vendors. Otherwise it's just a question when it will fail. Industrial grade SD cards cost more than the $10-15 needed to get an SBC with eMMC.

Bit of warning about the Beaglebone Black. The power controller doesn't have proper brownout detection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is fantastic. I'm running two Pi 3 Bs with two O-Droids in a docker swarm cluster. The O-Droids feel a bit experimental.

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/wWTKOLbiXooyYmkA3](https://photos.app.goo.gl/wWTKOLbiXooyYmkA3)

I was disappointed to see that the folks at Raspberry are not interested in upping the specs by much. For my workloads I wanted to get more RAM on each node as my processors were not working all that hard.

I've bought ASUS products with confidence for years and I'm glad they have an offering in this space.

</comment><comment><USER68> Has anyone of you seen such fan-less board with PCI express slot? I'd like to use it in a mining rig.

<comment><USER39> Some might arrive later this year [https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5614](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5614)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Their website is confusing on this part, does this support Windows IoT Core as the OS?

<comment><USER70> > 22\. What OS does the tinker board support?

> Currently Debian is the only available OS for tinker board. [0]

[0] Tinkerboard FAQ (PDF): [http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Linux/Tinker_Board_2GB/F...](http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Linux/Tinker_Board_2GB/FAQ- Tinkerboard_20170425.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> With that network speed it looks as if mounting a remote / is a good option.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does the Tinker board have a pinhole camera module like the Raspberry Pi?

</comment><comment><USER71> Are you able to use the GPU with OMXplayer (do the drivers work) ?

<comment><USER72> No. Omxplayer is specific to the VideoCore GPU -- it only works on the Raspberry Pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> While searching for it on Amazon, I noticed I have misspelled it as 'Thinker Board' :-D

</comment><comment><USER74> Can it network boot ?

</comment><comment><USER75> What is the cheapest RPi kit containing everything needed to get started?

<comment><USER76> If you are willing to splurge a little bit (in the context of rpi) this is absolutely the best case I've used for them.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07349HT26/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?ie=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07349HT26/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1524099489&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=raspberry+pi+metal+case+aluminum+case)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Chromium for Windows (64) from an official and secure source - <AUTHOR> I went to https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html and searched for the last stable release on https://omahaproxy.appspot.com/viewer (386251 => win64/stable/51.0.2704.84) but the [386251] folder doesn't exist.
https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html?prefix=Win_x64/386251/
Am I doing something wrong?
Also, is Chromium as secure as Chrome regarding sandbox and everything else? And IIUC I need to install pepper flash directly from Adobe. <comment><USER2> This is a FOSS Chromium launcher/updater: [http://www.henrypp.org/product/chrlauncher](http://www.henrypp.org/product/chrlauncher)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you but I'm looking for builds from an official and secure source. At the moment I just don't know how to grab the latest stable Windows 64 binaries.

The tool you linked points to "[http://chromium.woolyss.com/"](http://chromium.woolyss.com/") who is also showing the build I mentioned (386251 51.0.2704.84) but it's not available on Google's official storage.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And I know about [https://download- chromium.appspot.com/?platform=Win&type=con...](https://download- chromium.appspot.com/?platform=Win&type=continuous)

But there's no Win64 and even the latest 32 bits stable release is not there yet ("Updated 2 months ago"). I don't want bleeding edge.</comment>


How to build a basic Salesforce REST API integration - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.gosquared.com/salesforce-rest-api-integration <comment><USER2> The product they're describing/selling is very creepy - I don't want anyone to be notified when I'm browsing a pricing page. Are you serious?</comment>


I can't think of a good name for my upcoming game. [video] - <AUTHOR>

Check it out. Your initial impressions may help me come up with a name for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPhANp8_4xM
This game is a work in progress and may not be representative of the release version.
Instructions:
* Horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines connect circles of the same color.
* A move is made by selecting a column. Any color match with at least one of its two circles in that column will have them shrunk.
* Roughly, circles in between will change to that color and gaps in between will create circles of that color.
* When a stack of circles lands, it will be automatically selected with behavior as above. <comment><USER2> Looks like a cross between connect four and tetris.

Beyond calling it `blue balls` I'd suggest making up a name which has a domain available.

Or just call it Connectris.

Also reminds me of a Star Trek TNG episode (The Game iirc) which had this game that just played itself if you let it, it almost seems to be like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> A few random suggestions

Circuit breaker - You could rename the points to volts/amps, so the user is collecting the "electricity" that they've zapped.

BallFall Synapse SparkTap TrackAttack BondBreaker

Once you start throwing round the right kind of words you'll find one you like.

</comment><comment><USER4> I LOVE your earlier game Dropzap. This one looks even more fun. You could call it anything really. Here are a few random ones that come to mind:

Zaptron

CrossZap

ZapX

CrossTalk

ZipZap

ZingZap

</comment><comment><USER5> May I suggest a portmanteau of Linear and Arc ... LineArc? The way that the gaps create circles reminded me of electrical arcing. Best of luck to you!

<comment><USER2> "portmanteau" What a brilliant word, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> BubbleBalls.

Also, the mechanics of the game are hard to understand at first.

</comment><comment><USER7> ColorLink ConnectColor ColorGrid

</comment><comment><USER8> Fingerballs.

</comment><comment><USER9> BubbleColor

</comment><comment><USER10> Fallicle (falling circle?)

</comment><comment><USER11> Two words: Ball Blaster</comment>