The Nerve Agent Poisoning in England Was a Message to the Rest of the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/17139338/sergei-skripal-poison-russian-spy-uk <comment><USER2> I suppose this explains the rather weak response to Russia's numerous transgressions over the years. I mean, they shot down a fucking passenger flight full of civilians and the best response that we could muster was to file a "claim" against Putin with the European Court of Human rights.

Their message is pretty clear: they can cause mass civilian casualties anywhere they want, and probably get away with it. So it's best not to push Russia too hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> > that the power behind the attack — Russia, according to the UK — doesn't > think anyone else is ruthless enough to retaliate effectively.

I thought that applies even more to the USA running assassination programs[0] in over 76 countries now.

[0]: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/the-drone- preside...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/the-drone-presidency/)</comment>


Climate scientist gets compared to Jerry Sandusky, files libel suit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/climate-scientist-gets-compared-to-jerry-sandusky-files-libel-suit/ <comment><USER2> Some days, living in America is incredibly depressing. Not because idiots have the ability to say stupid stuff, but because so many people are there ready to believe and proselytize.

</comment><comment><USER3> The same corrupt system which covered up Sandusky's crimes also covered up Mann's academic malfeasance. Michael Mann IS a fraud, and I would expect definitive evidence to come out that will blow up this little libel suit. :-)

There are groups and people at Penn State, long dissenters of the culture of corruption there, who have been investigating and assembling evidence behind the scenes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you give me some sources regarding your statements?

I researched myself, but most - including highly respected news organizations - report about him being a good scientist and unjustified victim.

<comment><USER3> highly respected news organizations don't have access to the bowels of Old Main. Current and former trustees, current and former student government members, current and former campus activists, on the other hand, have been compiling things at least as long as my time at PSU in the 90s.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly if you are so sure about this you can at least point out some source on the web where this is explained in more detail? [The web is big]

I don't want to be rude, nor is it the case that i don't believe you.

<comment><USER3> Here's one, written by a very close friend of mine:

[http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/19/autopsy-of-an-innocent- man...](http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/19/autopsy-of-an-innocent-mann-at-penn- state/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your Luck Surface Area - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/blogging-luck-surface-area/

<comment><USER2> This is a great point, and one of the many reasons I have a blog. I'm always left rather bemused when I do a google search for someone and come up with nothing. If the person had put up a blog (or really, I suppose, a public web presence of any kind), then we might have mutually benefitted from an interaction.

It's the same reason I share all of my (non-proprietary) code on github, even the "useless" stuff. You just never know what might serve as the focal point of a valuable connection.</comment>


Let's Take This Open Floor Plan to the Next Level - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/lets-take-this-open-floor-plan-to-the-next-level

<comment><USER2> Open floor plan mimicry is a physical equivalent to those management bibles read, or at least propped on the desks, by management.

Take successful company, ignore the root causes and context ov their success, and mimic those things they did and used during their successful run because transplanting those wholesale without much thought or understanding should definitely result in our own success, or, in the least, we did something different to try to succeed. And if we failed, well, we just didn't try hard enough. Obviously there wasn't enough buyin.

It could be time to overhaul the team with new members who don't have the baggage of how it was before and start anew.

<comment><USER3> That's a common fallacy. "Our business is profitable. Therefore, every decision we make is correct."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could see the idea of randomly projecting employee desktops to a large, central screen gaining traction in management circles.

<comment><USER5> What if we collage ALL employee desktops up on several projectors so we can see them all at once. Then throughout the day a (or a few) main projector brings up random / important ones for easier viewing.

Kind of like a sports bar, but for spying on people's desktops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well written and funny! ...but I'm weary of the first world whining about open plans. I spent many years in traditional floor plans and many with open. I prefer open and find that headphones and slack provide 90% of the privacy I need without sterile cubes or isolated offices. YMMV. It also makes business sense: it's cheap and flexible like cubes without feeling like a filing cabinet for people. Again, just my opinion, but if the worst part of your job is that you don't like the floor plan, you should count yourself as very lucky.

<comment><USER7> Clearly you don't have the issues other people have. There are real productivity hits to being interrupted constantly, and we can't all substitute music/headphones because that's just as disruptive for some. Its disingenuous to imply they're just lazy whiners.

<comment><USER6> Nope, I'm not calling anyone lazy! It is certainly whining. Maybe it is justified whining for some, but in my experience it is not. Either way, I think there needs to be some perspective here.

To your point: there are noise-cancelling headphones that don't require music. Constant disruption is a cultural issue. I work in an open layout where I am rarely disrupted because people know better than to bug that guy with the intense look on his face and his headphones clamped on. The open layout means that they can see clearly when it is ok to engage me and when it is not.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I work in a 4-person office and its ok. Definitely more chatter than being alone. I can live with it. Not a private-office guy. But a big room is very different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forget valuations, perhaps the best sign of a bubble is when satire begins to resemble reality.....

"The CEO will prod creativity with a designated creativity prod."

<comment><USER9> This is great! CEO now stands for "Creative Energy Oracle."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I lost it at DJ Deliverables.

</comment><comment><USER11> The text in the article could use its own open floor plan, so it isn't smothered by blank walls.</comment>


Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Tablet – Pre-order - <AUTHOR> http://www.bq.com/uk/aquaris-m10-ubuntu-edition <comment><USER2> Just ordered one. I had a chat to the BQ team in London recently. They're selling CyanogenMod Android phones as well. The CEO was quite clear that flashing a new OS wasn't going to void the warranty.

I didn't get to play with their Ubuntu tablets, but their Android ones are well built, responsive, and have very clear screens.

This isn't going to replace your totally tricked-out MacBook - but as a portable web-browser / word processor / coding machine, I have high hopes for it.

<comment><USER3> So you can install and run nginx, redis, Atom.io, postgres etc. on this?

<comment><USER4> Not in a "supported" way. If it's anything like Ubuntu on phones, it will be a read-only filesystem with image-based updates. apt is available, but only if you remount the system read-write (you do have root via sudo). If you do that, then you can't use image-based updates any more, since that'll stomp over your changes.

I'm in favour of this arrangement, since I think it's the only way to get updates to work reliably, and I think that's essential. Android and iOS also do it this way, for example. But don't expect a traditional Linux-based desktop but on a tablet, since that's not what you'll get.

On the other hand, if you package up nginx, redis, Atom.io, postgres etc. via Ubuntu's app store, then sure.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for this informative comment (where do you learn more about the interesting stuff?).

Isn't there a nice way to have it both ways, i.e. automate all changes in a script, and roll it after each image update? Assuming most things that may need to be hacked away don't see breaking changes after each update?

<comment><USER4> Sure, you could do that. Ubuntu is Free Software, and you have root and the source code on the phone, and presumably will have the same on the tablet. So you can customise it at your will, including automation, if you're prepared to put in that effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _A tablet when you want it, a PC when you need it_ "

I'm not sure if I'm being naive, but it seems to me that for a decade, the _laptop_ market has had a ridiculous hole. There is a market for something which is not windows, at a sub $500-$600 price that is good. Tablet UI, desktop, whatever. Something that can run skype, whatsapp, tinder and the other network-effect apps that can replace their 3 year old home laptop and be an improvement.

How is it possible that all the mobile stuff from the last decade has not opened up real and substantial competition to Windows in that bracket.

Anyway, this looks easily worth €259 if think you may want one.

<comment><USER7> Isn't this exactly what all those Chromebooks are? I mean they haven't exactly set the world on fire, but they exist.

<comment><USER8> The Chromebooks replaced a bunch of Ubuntu-powered machines, and they are significantly inferior in all and every aspects, unless you're using Crouton or Gallium. File management is abysmal, and the OS is overall pretty buggy, in the last week I've met: impossible to clear browsing history, Chromecast extension keeps disappearing between reboots, problems with volume or brightness settings, Wifi woes...

Chrome OS feels really unpolished and a bit forgotten.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The linked page states it's using Ubuntu 15.04 as OS, however 15.04 is marked as EOL-ed on [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases) Is there an easy OS upgrade path? I wonder why they did not go with an LTS release, 16.04 is just around the corner in April and would probably serve their release better.

<comment><USER10> 15.04 is EOL on desktops (unity7) not on Phones/Tablets (unity8).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want to be really excited by this because this seems very cool but the mediatek processor and the 2 GB of RAM makes this a lot less interesting. Mediatek usually provides a closed off, low price, low performance chip which kind of clashes with what I want from an Ubuntu device.

<comment><USER12> I felt the same, especially after the ubuntu phone stunt on kickstarter which had 4GB of ram.

Maybe what we are both looking for is a tablet like the microsoft surface, but running essentially ubuntu.

For that matter, any tablet that can compete with the microsoft surface and run an operating system that is both great for developing and great for touch and mobility.

Apple is only a few steps away in my opinion. If only they would open up the iPad Pro so that developers could use if for development. It might even bring with it a new shift in UI for developers :)

<comment><USER13> They likely won't open up any iPad. It seems they will merge (replace) OSX with iOS. I saw this coming years ago. If I were a developer using OSX I would seriously ocnsider a switch to another unrestricted OS.

[http://www.osnews.com/story/29134/Today_s_Apple_event_spells...](http://www.osnews.com/story/29134/Today_s_Apple_event_spells_the_end_for_OS_X)

<comment><USER12> I really hope this doesn't happen.

I love Apple hardware, and OSX is much nicer to use as a polyglot developer than Windows. A workmate of mine runs linux on his macbook pro, and it's really a pain. Apple has put so many thousands of hours into getting the trackpad working smoothly, while the linux drivers seem to have been hacked together during a weekend and are truly awful. Things like ignoring thumb input, scroll speed and tracking speed are terrible, just to mention a few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've seen a lot of Linux tablets, and so far they've always been a touchscreen added to an early 2000's desktop-style interface: small touch targets, gestures don't work in obvious places etc.

That said, it's been a while so I could be out of date: is the Linux desktop UI and apps used by the Ubuntu tablet touch focused?

Edit: Linux as in the common usage of 'Linux kernel, glibc, X', not Android. Which you knew.

<comment><USER15> This is not a Linux tablet in that hacked-up sense. It's Ubuntu Phone. I've been using this for a year now on my Aquaris E5 and while it's not _quite_ as smooth as IOS and Android quite yet, and that's only because my hardware is a little slow, it's definitely a full touch-oriented design from the ground up. I actually like the design better than the grid-of-icons approach. It's more sophisticated. And I'm not a zealot: I am highly critical of the buggy browser and the lack of apps, especially whatsapp.

But OS design-wise, this is absolutely not some kind of desktop UI squeezed into tablet form with a cranky layer of touch glued on top.

<comment><USER16> Can you please share (if you have the possibility to compare) how's the battery life compared with other tablets?

<comment><USER15> As per my post, mine is a phone, not a tablet. But it's the same OS. As far as the phone is concerned, I get 2 days easily in normal use (lots of browsing), and 3 days if light use. I would estimate it at 1.5-2x longer battery life than an iphone. It's definitely impressive. But again, I can only speak for the BQ Aquaris E5 phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm happy to see an Ubuntu tablet but about "A tablet when you want it, a PC when you need it.", who wants a PC with 2 GB of RAM?

<comment><USER18> Plenty of people only need 2 GB of ram. See all the notebooks which have tiny SSDs (64 GB) and small amounts of ram (less than 4 GB).

That's fine for email, youtube, streaming movies, listening to music, doing a bit of light word processing or spreadsheeting. It's great for social media and most website use.

And these machines are very cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anybody know if a "normal" Android BQ M10 can be converted to a fully Ubuntu tablet? When yes, how to install Ubuntu there?

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone have experience with BQ HW? Is it any good?

For the price (300eur) I'd actually be willing to try the HD 1920 x 1200 version, IF the HW and battery life turn out to be solid.

<comment><USER21> I recently bought my first smartphone(!), a BQ A4.5, pure android, always updated, with 5 years of guarantee(!) by 150€. I recommend it: good battery, good western design and enough performance for me (low resolution with a good screen improves performance).

<comment><USER22> Curious, what do you mean by "western design"?

Had a look at images of "BQ A4.5" \- but I can't really tell what's "western" about it.

<comment><USER21> By western design I mean that it looks more like an iPhone 5 than with a typical chinese phone. Its size is also smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As per usual; I wonder what the battery life is like. That is really / still the only thing I look for. If it's good enough I would pre-order.

<comment><USER24> Do you buy a lot of tablets or do you find most to have unacceptable battery life? The battery on my 2013 Nexus 7 is crazy good as far as I can tell and lasts for days of moderate use even two years into its life span. Compared to my phone which likes to die partway through the day even without me touching it.

<comment><USER25> I imagine it's Linux that causes the concern. Android and iOS are very highly optimized for mobile power management while Ubuntu is not.

<comment><USER23> As it says I can leave my laptop at home so then I would hope it rivals my x220 or t100 both of which get 12-14 hours with me coding and browsing under Ubuntu. I do not care too much about performance usually as long as it is not annoyingly slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seriously? 2 gigs of ram! I wonder how much Unity will be hogging when running in PC mode.

<comment><USER27> Unity 8 unlike previous version isn't based on Compiz, but Qt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's exciting that Ubuntu offers phones and tablets. But what's the gain to have a PC frontend while not having a real PC? Ubuntu should seriously consider to offer an additional Tablet with 4 GB RAM and real Linux, at least in a docker like vm.

Only such a device would be really interesting for Linux developers and sys admins. 2 GB are good for basic things (surfing, emails, office) but compilation, simulation, testing etc. would be problematic. If such things are not possible then a notebook remains the better choice.

</comment><comment><USER28> Time to spend the Jolla Tablet refund money I suppose :)

</comment><comment><USER29> All looks really interesting but only 16 GB internal memory? I mean if I could move my user directory in it's entirety to the MicroSD I could see that working as 16 would be way more than enough for system, but that seems hackey. I feel like they could easily get that to 64 GB and add a few bucks to the price tag, I would buy one of these in a hot second if they did.

</comment><comment><USER30> IT says it has external memory expansion. Does this mean that there's a micro SD card slot anywhere? The only real issue I see is that (after the OS) I'd only have about 10 gig for applications and files. If I could put an sd card in there, no problem, otherwise it would hardly suffice as a PC.

<comment><USER31> Yep, I'd rather lug around a laptop with a 500GB SSD than have to deal with an external usb drive, just so I could have a tablet.

<comment><USER32> States MicroSD (200gb current cap; 2tb future)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> interesting. Think Webstorm/Intellij would run decently on this? I've been looking for a new tablet; and have been dreading getting an Ipad...

</comment><comment><USER33> Looks like it's ARM. I suppose that's okay for many, but if you need programs like R, you're out of luck. I'd immediately buy one if it had an Intel or AMD processor.

<comment><USER34> What are you talking about? I am using R on Slackware 14.1 on an ARM device. It works perfectly once you compile it.

<comment><USER33> You can use base R but (unless something has recently changed) not all packages are going to work. I also program in D - including interacting with R - and that won't currently work.

<comment><USER34> I have compiled numerous R packages as well (dplyr, ggplot2, FactoMineR) and they all work fine on ARM. I agree that you may face issues when it comes to packages relying on JAVA, but otherwise never seen any other problem so far on ARM.

<comment><USER35> Java 8 builds on all the 3 Debian ARM platforms so it probably works on Ubuntu too.

[https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=openjdk-8&sui...](https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=openjdk-8&suite=sid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why would I buy this over a laptop?

<comment><USER37> Weight is fairly important factor for me. This beats my travel laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Archive: [http://archive.is/J0Yj4](http://archive.is/J0Yj4)

</comment><comment><USER39> Ask HN

Can I install something like this on my Windows 10 tablet, and could it run jupyter/Python?

<comment><USER35> If your tablet is ARM and running Windows RT then you probably need a Windows exploit to be able to run your own code.

[http://www.wpinternals.net/](http://www.wpinternals.net/)

If your tablet is a PC (Intel/AMD/x86 etc) then turning off UEFI Secure Boot and booting from USB should let you run your own code.

Once you can run your own code you should be able to install Python/jupyter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> But... why?

<comment><USER41> There's lot of talk of people moving away from laptops and full computers, and just buying a tablet instead. If you only want a device for watching videos, reading articles, online shopping, social media and email, a tablet is probably fine.

This concept in principle allows you to have a tablet, which is relatively cheap and can be used on the sofa and in bed, but retain the option of adding a keyboard, and/or using desktop applications on occasion, when you might need them. The drawback is that you lose access to Android/iOS native apps, and also that ARM processors are slow.

I would say it's not a million miles behind Chromebooks or Android tablets (given that Chromebooks are quite limited, and Android tablet apps don't have a great reputation). If ARM processors take a step forward over the next year or two, companies continue to develop for the mobile web rather than shift towards native apps, and Linux userspace software stacks (and developers) become more tolerant of touch, something like this could be a serious competitor.

<comment><USER42> > If you only want a device for watching videos, reading articles, online > shopping, social media and email, a tablet is probably fine.

Will this tablet do all that? The video part is what I'd be most worried about. Netflix will probably be there, but what about Hulu, HBO, and other popular services?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> how about that ubuntu phone

</comment><comment><USER44> >no dedicated full sized USB port

Why is the surface the only tablet to have a dedicated full sized USB port? It seems like one of the most important things to have in any tablet.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wrong title, missing: in UK.

<comment><USER46> Everywhere: [https://store.bq.com/gl/delivery- information/](https://store.bq.com/gl/delivery-information/)

<comment><USER47> In a lot of countries, but not everywhere. My country (Bosnia & Herzegovina) is not listed anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > The world's first convergent tablet

Sorry guys, M$FT had you beat to market by about... what, four years?

> 16 GB internal memory

Come the fuck on, now. I don't want to deal with the atrocious read/write speeds of MicroSD. 16 GB internal memory hasn't been impressive since sometime around 2007.

This looks promising but it's definitely not for me. I hope someone uses it and likes it, but I think it still has a ways to go before it's more than a novelty.

<comment><USER34> Oh is there a Microsoft tablet available for 300 USD? I thought so. And there's nothing convergent about the Surface. Without a keyboard what can you really do with it?

<comment><USER49> > Oh is there a Microsoft tablet available for 300 USD? I thought so.

If they wanted to say "The first convergent tablet for 300 USD," then maybe they should have said that.

> And there's nothing convergent about the Surface. Without a keyboard what > can you really do with it?

Netflix? Internet? Read emails? Write with its pretty fantastic handwriting recognition?

What can the Aquaris M10 do without a keyboard that the Surface Pro can't? Is it somehow "more convergent"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I even don't hope it is free of closed-source drivers. Thus I won't even look at buying it.

</comment><comment><USER51> As a consumer, I find it completely uninteresting unless it can run Android apps. If Play Store is an impossibility, support alternative apps stores such as F-Droid or 9apps.

<comment><USER31> I'm completely the opposite. I was always disappointed that Android can't run normal Linux apps.

<comment><USER52> [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=champion.gnuro...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=champion.gnuroot)

<comment><USER53> I suspect that [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gnuroot.de...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gnuroot.debian) is the newer version?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fortune: RIP Facebook? "...watching it now is like watching an unattended child play with a pack of matches in a wooden house." - <AUTHOR> http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/12/04/rip-facebook/

<comment><USER2> The problem with Facebook is that their valuation was too high. Now in order to justify their hundreds of millions of dollars they've taken they are going to have to keep upping the ante in terms of selling personal data and implementing crazy marketing schemes. This will ultimately be their undoing. It wouldn't surprise me if Zuck's new investors won't let him cash out until he hits certain numbers, so now he's pretty much stuck going for broke.

<comment><USER3> The hundreds of millions they took from Microsoft should not be thought of as a venture capital investment. It isn't made by people that are engineering a 5x + ROI and that maneuvered for the power to prevent Facebook from exiting with anything less. As I understand it, it was largely an advertising deal.

I think Beacon is a lot like the news/mini feeds. Both were radical ideas that faced heavy privacy opposition. Facebook rode out the wave once and seemed to be planning to do it again, but I think they miscalculated on one thing: since Beacon is openly commercial, Facebook looks more evil than misguided. I think there's a new idea behind Beacon that is plainly good: aggregating stuff about your friends that's happening in the general internet. (Paul Buchheit's new company is doing this.) The right move would have been to release that function with no commercial facet, and work that in later when this idea is no longer new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _watching it now is like watching an unattended child play with a pack of matches in a wooden house_

Actually it's like watching a typical startup founder. Which to someone used to the way big companies do things is indistinguishable from watching a child play with matches.

Zuckerberg didn't get where he is now by accident.</comment>


CUDA to x86 compiler, project Ocelot - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/gpuocelot/ <comment><USER2> For those not familiar with CUDA vocabulary:

PTX = Parallel Thread Execution is a pseudo-assembly language used in nVidia's CUDA programming environment. The 'nvcc' compiler translates code written in CUDA, a C-like language, into PTX, and the graphics driver contains a compiler which translates the PTX into something which can be run on the processing cores.

(source - wikipedia)

</comment><comment><USER3> so what happens if you go ptx -> llvm -> opencl -> nvidia gpu? how does the speed change?

<comment><USER4> this shouldn't happen but it would be an interresting comparison nevertheless

<comment><USER3> it seems possible from the diagram on the linked page. why shouldn't it happen?

i am curious whether the analysis stages can improve the code.

<comment><USER5> I see that "OpenCL" is listed above the LLVM box on the Ocelot page, but I'm not sure why; It is known that several OpenCL toolchains (Nvidia, ATI, RapidMind) make use of LLVM, but it is unclear in what capacity they are used. For the sequence you described (PTX->OpenCL->GPU), there would have to be an OpenCL backend for LLVM. As far as I know, no such backend is publically available, and another compiler would be necessary to take the OpenCL source code down to PTX (from whence it came) and then the driver would JIT that PTX for your specific GPU model.

> i am curious whether the analysis stages can improve the code.

Ihe conventional wisdom is that any series of analyses that takes you from representation X, through one or more other representations, and back to X can only make things worse, assuming that the JIT from PTX to GPU machine code isn't horrendous. This is because any analyses, optimizations, and transformations need to be conservative to maintain correctness, and high- level semantic information about the parallelism inherent in the application is usually lost in each translation step. In this particular case it might not be so bad, as long as the LLVM IR is rich enough to faithfully represent the Cooperative Thread Array (CTA) semantics in PTX and not flatten them to SPMD code. My intuition, however, is that it's not; LLVM was designed as a fairly generic virtual machine that would faithfully represent most CPU-like execution models, and hardware CTAs (also called 'warps' in Nvidia parliance) are mostly a GPU-only phenomenon. CPUs have SIMD units (e.g. SSE, MMX, Altivec, NEON), but the execution model there is fundamentally different than the GPU.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once the GT300 series hits the shelves that problem will be largely mitigated though, they're supposed to be mostly independent, with a 'variable warp' size.

Of course that will introduce a new level of complexity to the optimization problem.

<comment><USER3> i don't understand this either. "wariable warp size" sounds like a small efficiency fix for when things aren't multiples of 32, or when they exceed 512. a "variable warp size" doesn't alter the fundamental problem SIMD approach - you've still got a multiprocessor with slave processors that are doing very similar work.

for me, the big advances in fermi are a unified address space and some kind of cache for the global memory. neither of those change the paradigm, but they may make life significantly simpler when programming the thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Multiples of 32 are nice, multiples of _1_ are better :)

(and let's hope it goes that far down), that would make things a lot easier as well.

Unified address space I assume you mean across multiple GPUs ? Global memory cache is a double edged sword, that eats in to the transistor budget at a very rapid pace, effectively you already have a cache, you just have to fill it yourself.

GPU programming is definitely a step back in the ease with which you can write programs, but _if_ your problem maps well on to a GPU the speed increases are simply astounding. What would have taken you a cluster with 100 boxes now sits under your desk and consumes 250 watt tops. That's really very impressive.

The way intel seems to edge in to gpu territory and nvidia into cpu territory will make for some interesting stuff happening in the next couple of years.

<comment><USER6> I believe the reference to unified address space is in reference to #6 in the PDF linked below and caches #4. I agree that the unified memory address space will be wonderful as managing all the various hierarchies by hand is a pain.

[http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/D.Patte...](http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/D.Patterson_Top10InnovationsInNVIDIAFermi.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's going to be really hard to graft that on there given the fact that a lot of the computational horsepower is directly related to the bandwidth to the 'local' memory store. That would mean that the local memory store somehow has to be turned in to a cache that stays coherent across many 100's of processing units.

I'm not sure that's impossible, it just seems very hard.

If nvidia manages to crack that nut then the only thing you'll still need to keep in mind is how big your cache footprint is (as on every other cpu with a cache) in order to maximize throughput.

<comment><USER3> my original comment (about unified address space) was poorly thought out (it's not clear how much fermi will help, and how much is down to opencl being "cross-platform"). but the ideas isn't that you no longer need to care about the memory hierarchy; only that pointers can be expected to work correctly. currently (particularly in opencl) there are various restrictions on pointers that make some code more complex than it needs to be. for example, you can only allocate 1/4 of the memory in a single chunk, and pointers are local to chunks, so patching together chunks of memory to get one large array is messy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I see what you're getting at now.

That would definitely be a good thing.

I've spent in total about 2 months now (spread out over the last year) understanding how this whole GPGPU thing fits in with the rest of computing, it is much like a specialty tool. It is harder to master, more work to get it right once you have mastered it, subject to change on shorter notice than most other solutions (because of the close tie to the hardware) but if you need it, you need it bad and the pay-off is tremendous.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Docker 0.11 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#0110-2014-05-07

<comment><USER3> The first thing I wanted to do with docker was cleanup the mess I made walking through the examples. Turns out there is no built-in command to do that, and it looks like it is going to stay that way.

[https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/928](https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/928)

I was surprised to see that nothing had been done about this; a comment there mentioned that someone was able to clean up 19GB of space once he figured out what was going on. The solution is easily google-able since so many have run into it, but cleanup of unused resources should be a first-class operation in every virtualization solution.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17236796/how-to-remove- ol...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17236796/how-to-remove-old-docker- io-containers)

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm a Docker maintainer.

We don't plan on "keeping it that way". Disk clutter after lots of builds is a problem which we're very much addressing. It's specifically a top-level _docker clean_ command that I'm not a fan of, because it doesn't capture a clear intent - what are you cleaning, and who determines what should be kept and what shouldn't? In general I like to avoid Docker having to guess what you want - the proverbial "magic".

A few notes:

* The reason Docker can clutter your disk is because we made an explicit tradeoff: it's better to keep too much data than to remove too much. That is why we're able to say "yes, you can run a database on Docker. Neither the container nor its data will be removed, at any point, unless you explicitly request it". Everytime I hear someone complain "there's too much stuff on my disk", I rejoice that I am not instead hearing "Docker ate my data".

* We have already introduced a few improvements. For example Docker used to keep the intermediary container for each build step (for later inspection of the build output, transient state etc). Now, by default, we don't.

* The most elegant fix, I believe, is to use naming and tagging as an indication of interest. If you are interested in keeping an image, give it a name (for example with 'docker build -t'). When an image no longer has a name referencing it, instead of keeping it around as an anonymous image like it does today, Docker can remove garbage collect it. That should take care of the problem elegantly and without requiring a new, clunky top-level command.

TLDR: the "disk clutter" problem is the result of a conscious tradeoff which we are glad we made. We have started fixing it, and there are more fixes to come.

<comment><USER5> It's a real PITA that the first thing you do when you start experimenting with docker is to have to find out about this missing clean command and to design a custom alias to fit your needs. In my case, I was expecting it (eg. `bower cache clean`, `npm cache clean`). Regarding the unclear intent, that's what cli help is for! `docker clean` could output it by default.

<comment><USER4> What would you expect it to do exactly? Remove all untagged images?

<comment><USER6> That's a good starting point.

I have a docker-cleanup script, which removes untagged images and containers: [https://github.com/blueyed/dotfiles/blob/master/usr/bin/dock...](https://github.com/blueyed/dotfiles/blob/master/usr/bin/docker- cleanup)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this is an RC, will docker have a way in 1.0 to properly handle stdout/stderr logs captured on the host without just allowing a giant json file to fill up? I'm not aware of a way to do it right now without handling logs in the container and avoiding the container's stdout/stderr.

<comment><USER8> There was quite a bit of discussion on this topic in the Docker-dev group. The comment I found the most informative was by the creator of Docker -> [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/docker- dev/3paGTWD6xyw/xj2Xa...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/docker- dev/3paGTWD6xyw/xj2XakbfdnoJ)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I've read all of that. I consider this a blocker for production use of docker and releasing a 1.0 RC without solving this is disconcerting (at least as a process wrapper, it still works fine for wrapping an init system that handles everything itself). Especially since, in that thread, shykes said it will be solved prior to 1.0.

<comment><USER4> You're right, the logging subsystem still needs work before 1.0. We're using the RC label to indicate that we don't plan on breaking APIs and file formats in any major way between now and 1.0, so toolmakers and integrators can start locking down their schedule, and trust that their tools won't be deprecated in a couple months.

If it were entirely up to me I would never call it 1.0, because part of me wants it to be flawless before anybody uses it in production. But it's not up to me - a lot of people are already using Docker in production, and there are many organizations already in process of offering commercial support and services for it. Clearly they consider Docker acceptable for their needs at some level - and at some point we'll need to acknowledge that by releasing 1.0, no matter how flawed I find it to be. The improvements won't stop at 1.0 :)

<comment><USER7> That's great to hear - I've dove pretty hard into docker and love it but the logging story has been a dealbreaker for production. Decoupling "create" and "start" has been great when using the Remote API because I can create a container, attach my IO handlers, and then start, removing the need for docker to handle the logs at all (if it supported that). Possibly something like this can be done via the CLI such that docker can just forward the streams into a custom script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks to everyone who contributes to Docker for all your hard work that we benefit from. You guys really are pushing Linux forward more than almost any project.

My biggest outstanding issue with Docker (Linux really) is the storage system. None of the three options make me feel like I'll be able to sleep at night. Aufs seems broken[1] and will never make it into the kernel. DeviceMapper seems okay, but I'm not sure how well tested the Docker usage is or how it performs. Btrfs seems ideal, but again, that's still an "experimental" file system.

I was even toying with the idea of implementing a Docker storage driver using rsync (rsnapshot?), for simplicity/stability, but not sure if that would even be possible.

Obviously something that will inevitably get resolved, but my biggest stumbling block so far.

1\. [https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/783](https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/783)

<comment><USER10> What about the VFS driver?

<comment><USER9> Might end up being my best option.

<comment><USER9> BTW, I checked it out again, definitely not a real option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Blog post coming soon with more information. This is the RC for 1.0. Amazing work.

<comment><USER12> [http://blog.docker.io/2014/05/docker-0-11-release- candidate-...](http://blog.docker.io/2014/05/docker-0-11-release-candidate- for-1-0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Blog post: [http://blog.docker.io/2014/05/docker-0-11-release- candidate-...](http://blog.docker.io/2014/05/docker-0-11-release-candidate- for-1-0/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks good, particularly the support for host networking; this will be a boon (I think) for those of us using Docker to run lightweight VM style containers which we wish to have directly accessible on the network by other machines/devices, and resolved via an existing router's DHCP/DNS. Is there a way to assign a MAC address to a container under this mechanism so I can setup the corresponding DNS via my router (or dnsmasq)?

(comment copied from the other item about Docker today)

<comment><USER15> Agree. Couldn't believe this wasn't in there when I checked it out before. Isn't using bridged interfaces with VMs/containers a major use case? It's certainly my primary config, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

<comment><USER10> I think Docker was originally designed for PaaS "app container" usage where containers are too cheap to waste an IP address on, hence the NATing and port forwarding. For VMs or "system containers" it makes sense to give each one its own MAC and IP address.

<comment><USER16> I'd also consider it very important to be able to run Docker on any host - <USER2> instance a small VPS server that only has its own single IP address.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nexus 5 is available in bright red now - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5378232/red-nexus-5-available-now

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally find it ugly :)

(own a black one)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's pretty.

(Own a black one)

:-)</comment>


Compulsory Licensing of Backroom IT? - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/07/compulsory-licensing-of-backroom-it.html <comment><USER2> Almost all of the software I've written is as useless outside of the company as air pockets taken out of a loaf of bread.

The big-rectangle diagram of what I do is fetch data from A, apply B(A), and send the result to Z. This is great when A is a proprietary API delivered over long-poll HTTP, B(A) converts it into a vocabulary common to just our products, and Z is Websockets to a mobile app. When we add a new customer who uses A2 all I do is write B2() and the rest stays the same.

Outside of the company, it's useless. There are thousands of products that do the same thing for different flavours of A, B and C. However, we can get our particular product to our target markets a year earlier than someone starting from scratch.

Compulsorily licensed to a competitor, they'd barely be able to install it because it's not packaged like a product. There's an old database that has evolved over more than a decade that's as crusty as an old fishing boat's keel. If a "good compulsory licensing scheme" would compensate the company for packaging it and writing manuals for it, then it's looking at millions of dollars just in the opportunity costs of taking the lead developers off other projects.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I actually have time to maintain that thing so it looks like any other program in some Linux distribution.

That way it's as boring as possible, which is good for the focus on the real function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > It seems that making good backroom software, to use internally, has become > something of a natural monopoly. Creating such IT has large fixed costs and > big random factors.

I can't understand this. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, countless others, all have their own huge backroom IT software projects.

Which one of them is supposed to have a monopoly on it?

People just seem to throw around 'monopoly' to mean nothing more than 'some large number of companies are able to achieve some things that others aren't'. Some other people just seem to use it for 'company that I think is too successful'.

There's no point in the word any more.

I think part of the problem is people feel free to define the group that can have a monopoly in any way they want. Is the intention here that 'large talented companies' have a monopoly on backroom IT software? If we're going to define groups however we want I can say things like 'people who are good at football have a monopoly on playing football professionally'.

<comment><USER5> I thought the article was pretty clear on what the issue is. A lot of capital is going into building proprietary IT and society would benefit if more people could make use of it.

<comment><USER6> It's a bit silly. That's like saying a lot of capital is going into proprietary plumbing and society would benefit if more people could make use of it. The software is implicitly linked to the people and processes.

Open source software development absolutely has a purpose. Licensing absolutely has a purpose. But generalization is a well-known cost for those in tech, and marketing is a well-known cost at general.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that anyone is claiming that there aren't tradeoffs. You seem to agree that there are times when licensing provides a benefit to society that outweighs the cost of generalization. I don't think it's silly to suggest that companies aren't always in the best position to weigh their own costs against the larger benefits to society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Addendum: "Okay, so far the pretty consistent answer I've heard is that it > is very hard to take software written for internal use and make it available > for outside use. Even if you insist outsiders do things your way."

Yes, largely these days process software _is_ the business - it defines the structure, employee roles, how business units interact, how internal accountability works, and so on.

That's why modern startups can contract out in a pure Coase style both employees (Uber etc) and capital assets (AirBnB); only the software is the irreducible core of the business.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _Note that while compulsory licensing of patents is rare in the US, it is > common worldwide, and it one of the reasons that US drug firms get > proportionally less of their revenue from outside the US_

Wow. I was totally unaware of this. Short term exclusivity is common but I didn't realise that in the US it was commonly for the duration of the patent!

</comment><comment><USER9> This rings true to me. I think Google's biggest competitive advantage is not network effects, brand awareness, or eyeballs for advertisers. Their biggest advantage is that no one runs datacenters better than Google. Amazon is a close second but I would be willing to bet that Google is more efficient by potentially as much as an order of magnitude.

Similarly they invest heavily in development and IT tooling. It allows them to scale in ways that very few other companies can.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it practically would be very challenging to achieve something like this, unless the company is interested in selling the service/product it is probably very hard to force them to make a compelling offer to the market. The Walmart bar code reader for example, what was really the inovation/edge there? I guess that is was probably not the physical hardware but rather a deep and complex integration into the internal systems, which would be next to useless for anyone but Walmart.

We also see some voluntary licensing of at least software, not seldomly free of charge (and open source). It's probably easier to build something like Facebook today, thanks to frameworks open sourced by Facebook themselves (i.e React). Getting access to hosting at scale is also easier and importantly less capital intensive than before, thanks to the cloud providers, who at least partly, make their internal hosting infra accessible for outsiders.

However, it's not like the big players are open sourcing/selling their most important stuff. AirBnb is not successful thanks to their server side javascript rendering library, but them giving it away is nevertheless helpful for someone trying to disrupt them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Patents ostensibly offer a tradeoff - you have the right to a temporary monopoly on your invention, on the condition that you publish an explanation of your invention sufficient for a third-party to re-create it. It is not a unilateral gift to inventors, but a quid-pro-quo to encourage the public dissemination of new technologies.

Modern patent practices have diminished the latter part of that tradeoff; many contemporary patents protect only one small part of an invention, or are sufficiently obscure and complex to provide little value to a third party. The rate of technological change has greatly accelerated, which has drastically changed the value of a twenty-year monopoly; many computer-related patents become obsolete long before the patent expires.

I think there is a serious need to review the basic mechanisms of the patent system, because it has gradually transmuted into something fundamentally different. In a great many cases, patents inhibit rather than encourage innovation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't public IaaS and PaaS exactly what he is talking about? Amazon, Google, Microsoft selling the exact software and infrastructure they use to operate at scale. So maybe regulated prices for Cloud services? But they already seem pretty low because of competition.

Access to massive data is the real value that these companies have exclusive access to, not IT infrastructure

</comment><comment><USER13> To create true competitors to Google, give them access to Google's running datacenters and codebase, just as Google employees have. They need the data even more than code, and the only practical mechanism is (readonly) access to the running systems. Let them hire Google employees too. Ditto for Facebook, Twitter, etc.

(I'm not advocating for this, just trying to interpret a practical means for what he's suggesting. This could be a direction for antitrust)

As stated, "backroom IT" sounds like random crap middleware plumbing. But I don't think that's what he means to refer to.</comment>


Y Combinator Challenge #7 - Something your company needs that doesn't exist - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/y-combinator-challenge-7-something-your-company-needs-that-doesnt-exist/

<comment><USER2> You could kind of do it in Outlook by creating a public folder with tasks in it, and having the boss set the priority level.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use Slinkset to do democratic prioritization.

slinkset.com

<comment><USER4> Slinkset is very cool, I was playing with it earlier today but probably should dive into it a bit more to see what all it can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you not do it with Google Docs? You can share a document with the employee and use a different font for your comments.

<comment><USER4> Good idea...but not quite sure that would work for my company... :) <http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/about></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many startups should an Entrepreneur run at the same time? - <AUTHOR>

I have one main startup that I run at the moment, but I'm getting opportunities to partner with other startups as well. How many startups should an entrepreneur invest time in to when you only have 5 days in a working week?<p>You can read about my startup at www.stugreen.com <comment><USER2> The answer varies from "1" to "as many as you want".

The answer also depends on what you define as "startup".

From the business's point of view the best thing is to have your whole time, attention, and commitment. Most businesses do not benefit from their founders' attention being divided (on the contrary, they suffer critically from this).

But from a personal point of view, having your fingers in many pies is clearly beneficial, especially before you know which of your businesses will "stick".

I think the answer to this is changing as the tools available become better at allowing us to be very effective with short bursts of work, but what's certainly correct is that you should not say no to opportunities - but be conscious of how much you can contribute to each and what it's costing you in terms of work not done on others.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's good to try out different ideas, but be careful not to give up on one and switch to something else too easily. Every project is going to have a period where it sucks, nobody's using it, and you don't want to work on it anymore. If you give up and switch to another project every time that happens, you're probably never going to succeed. When I've been working on too many things, I find it way too easy to switch over to another unstarted project rather than develop something that's out but not succeeding. See Seth Godin's book The Dip for more about it.

Where this gets difficult is being able to tell the difference between a failure that isn't worth more effort and a failure that needs more work to become a success. ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi Stu,

looking at your website gives me more convidence in your person then looking at your HN question. You seem to be veeery unsure about the way you want to walk the next months. From my experience the best way to find out is to follow people who do great what you want to do. That means reading blogs, HN but also working together with people you admire. Maybe you can find some great people on the net or around you in the UK to work with.

Btw. I really like the design of your websites! Did you do it yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hiya, Sorry if I sounded vague! Yes I'm going through a transition period in my life. I have one main startup that's doing well, but not yet in the position to pay me a full time salary, so I'm looking at whether I invest time in other startups as well, do contract work, or invest in my main startup and just stick it out for a bit longer, or get investment.

So was just curious as to what people thought. Yes I designed it all myself. Had a guy do the Halogy logo and Project Bubble logo though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Run? Probably one. Help advise and the like? Maybe a couple others. You aren't really hedging your bets as much as you are dividing your efforts.

Note, if you can get something started, (possibly also funded,) and operating largely without your intercession, then iterating on that model quickly can be completely awesome. But get something going first and don't try twelve things simultaneously - been burned by that one myself.

</comment><comment><USER6> I run 3 sites which could be thought of as startups (each has employees). 3 is too many. :) I definitely feel overextended and that things are progressing slower than they ideally would if I had full time commitment to any one.

</comment><comment><USER7> One main one.</comment>


The Kings of Concentration - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/brian-dumaine/how-leaders-focus-with-distractions.html

<comment><USER2> Very good article.

I like the portion on inner focus. Have never heard that concept before.</comment>


A hell of a straw man - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/09/10/bullies-with-blogs <comment><USER2> I hadn't seen the Spectre yet, but wow is that blatant, and that's coming from someone who thinks Samsung should NOT be getting in trouble with Apple right now. This would seem a case for trademark infringement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but I have to agree with Josh. This has been going on for a while now so does it really need to be mentioned in every article?</comment>


The Deadly Truth about a World Built for Men – From Stab Vests to Car Crashes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes <comment><USER2> > In the early 1900s, about 4,400 people in the UK died at work every year. By > 2016, that figure had fallen to 135. But while serious injuries at work have > been decreasing for men, there is evidence that they have been increasing > among women.

Typical guardian. Workplace fatalities are something like 12X greater for men than women, but the mere possibility that gap may be closing is portrayed as inequality. Male longevity is much poorer than female longevity in general, but to object to an issue as starkly favorable for women as the workplace fatality gap is just too woke.

<comment><USER3> More than that it seems:

>In 2017/18, 138 (96%) of all worker fatalities were to male workers, a similar proportion to earlier years. [1]

Assume thats related to the disproportionate % of males in the trades / farming? Perhaps compounded by age, seems 60+ bracket has a disproportionate number of fatalities. There isnt that many women over 60 in farming or construction (though unfortunately I knew personally one person in that bracket in 2018).

They have detailed stats [2], seems the injuries requiring more than 7 days off are a little different, with around a 30/60 female : male split.

[1] [http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf](http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf)

[2] [http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/tables/ridagegen.xlsx](http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/tables/ridagegen.xlsx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't help but notice that sometimes the language is seen as a reason to shout "discrimination".

> "This," said the professor, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a > calendar."

> "what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is > woman's first attempt at a calendar."

I'm pretty sure nobody ever implied (or could support in any way) that a certain archaic invention definitely came from males. As a non-native English speaker I always took " _man_ " to be a synonym for "hu _man_ ". As in " _man_ kind". Would the objection made by the professor above imply the terms should be changed to something like "personkind"?

<comment><USER5> This happens in my native language as well. I really think it's time we should drop the use of the word "man" referring to "mankind". I simply say "humans" or "humanity".

<comment><USER4> I'm for (or rather "not against" seeing how I have no stake in English language matters). But think about it, how would you in good faith interpret a sentence like "Ever since _man_ discovered fire..."? Humanity or male?

Does it still seem good faith when someone goes to the implausible but shockingly discriminatory interpretation? And do you think such a reaction helps the image of those fighting against discrimination?</comment></comment></comment>


UBlock vs. ABP: efficiency compared - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared <comment><USER2> Since deep learning is dominating the news these days, this might be the opportunity to point to the potential new ways of dealing with ad blocking. One is using character-based convolutional (or recurrent) networks that read the URL characters and classify it as legit or ad.

The interesting gain here is that there's no more conflicting regex nor optimization to work on huge lists of blocking rules. Instead, URLs can be passed to the network in batches.

I have conducted my own set of experiments and a usable deep model is available (see [http://www.deepdetect.com/applications/text_model/](http://www.deepdetect.com/applications/text_model/) ).

This is kinda shameful plug, but I'm really interested in feedback on these new ways of ad blocking with high accuracy.

For sure running a deep net service is not as easy as installing ublock but there are ways. The whole source code is Open Source, as is the model. I have more data at hand, and some larger models could be built. Performance assessment would be a good next step as well.

EDIT: the linked page is rather long, lookup 'Novel task' to get to a quick classification example

<comment><USER3> Part of the requirement of adblock software is to inject itself into the request pipeline in realtime and reject ad requests while at the same time causing as small a stall as possible and also using the least amount of resources. NN's running inside a browser don't satisfy any of those criterias.

<comment><USER2> Not inside a browser of course. If you consider enterprise-wide applications, NN would be better and possibly faster (with GPU) than a bluecoat proxy.

<comment><USER3> I am still unconvinced if NN provide any advantage over regular expressions in this domain since it's not a hard problem to solve. Also, the request needs to be rejected before the connection is made so the only data to work with is the HTTP request headers.

On an enterprise level, a better challenge to solve with NN would be to create a asic accelerated neural net hardware to filter packets/connections of IPS/IDS and firewall purpose with an extra ability of also possibly blocking advert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apart from efficiency the most important difference between these two is that Adblock has a default Whitelist which allows certain type of ads to pass (i.e. by charging advertisers like Google and Taboola millions of dollars to unblock their ads).

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon- taboo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay- adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2)

<comment><USER5> And reversely uBlock Origin doesn't block ads on Twitter and Tumblr, which makes it much less useful to me than Adblock Plus.

<comment><USER6> I don't see any ads on these sites using uBlock Origin. Maybe it is your problem?

Time to update filter lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would there be a difference between the UBlock mentioned here and the UBlock Origin that's notably separate?

<comment><USER8> Yes. This is Ublock Origin.

The other one is simply Ublock

[https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock](https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock)

<comment><USER7> Ah, the article itself didn't say origin anywhere. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> uBlock Origin is also available on Firefox for Android. It's by far my favourite mobile browsing combo.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, Firefox for Android isn't quite as slick as Chrome (yet) but not having to deal with obnoxious full page adds with tiny tap targets is a massive win.

<comment><USER11> I use adguard vpn to add an extra layer of ad blocking on my phone. Also I block ads at the router at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is from a year ago. It's most likely out of date.

<comment><USER13> Yes. uBlock Origin wins by an even bigger margin now, because it's being optimized further while the folks at Adblock are busy counting money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Funny that they are using HN for an exemplary web page for their benchmarks.

HN does not require JavaScript.

Even without using an ad blocker, if the user disables JavaScript, a large percentage of "ad tech" will not work. And ads will not be served.

Then the game becomes how to get the user to turn on JavaScript for some other functionality.

<comment><USER15> Mostly, the 'game' is the fact that the site just doesn't work without Javascript.

HN is a very nice exception of keeping things simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, what is the cause of this improved efficiency?

</comment><comment><USER17> I use the original AdBlock for Chrome (not ABP). One of its features that I find indispensable is the ability to sync custom filters, filter lists and settings via Dropbox as I use Chrome on at least 3 different machines. I'd be willing to switch to uBlock Origin if it had a sync feature.

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud- storage](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage)

It does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Efficiency as in resource usage, not in blocked items.

<comment><USER17> Also, not in terms of speed; ad blockers tend to slow down web page rendering especially on pages where there are a lot of ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> * UBlock Origin

</comment><comment><USER21> A bit more recent comparison

"10 Ad Blocking Extensions Tested for Performance" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10127971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10127971)

</comment><comment><USER22> Why is blocking as a browser extension common but blocking with a proxy not? I use a proxy[ _] which means I get ad blocking in my mail client, RSS reader etc. Is a proxy too much work?

[_] I use glimmerblocker. It's OK, the biggest "problem" is that I had to do a lot of tuning -- I think it's just one developer. And I had to write some code to get it to support HTTPS traffic (basically my proxy on my own machine had to perform a MITM "attack" on my behalf).

<comment><USER23> Because there is more friction in setting up an ad blocking proxy, secondly your usage patterns differ from the normal where a majority are almost completely browser dependent

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be interesting to see if ABP has improved since this benchmark was done.

They seemed to be making honest strides to improve it.

</comment><comment><USER25> UBlock breaks Youtube for me.

<comment><USER26> With UBlock Origin, I can see Youtube without problem.

<comment><USER27> I've started having this problem as well. YouTube videos with ads return an error for about a minute, then start. I've started just disabling it on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What are the findings?

</comment><comment><USER29> UBlock Origin might be faster, but after I installed it, several websites lost their css formating... ABP just works well enough.

<comment><USER30> I've used UO for over a year and never had a single css file get removed. Any specific sites you mind mentioning?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> [http://www.alternate-dns.com/](http://www.alternate-dns.com/) can filter ads at dns level

<comment><AUTHOR> I would go with a hosts file solution as it is something you can control yourself in case you need to.

<comment><USER32> It solves a lot of efficiency problems, but is hell for debugging a broken webpage. For that reason I feel the browser extension justifies its footprint.</comment></comment></comment>


Inside a Google data center - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZmGGAbHqa0 <comment><USER2> pretty cool, and kind of reminds me of the movie Transcendence</comment>


Show HN: Fast parallel file size scanner (MIT licensed) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yamadapc/filesaver <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a C++ developer so the code can need improvements</comment>


The most common zodiac sign among the world's richest billionaires - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/zodiac-signs-with-the-most-billionaires-2019-4 <comment><USER2> Assuming that the probability of finding a particular zodiac sign is 1/12, the probability of randomly seeing 27 or more of 250 people being libra is still 10%. So: no, this does not mean anything.

(This does not take into account that the fraction of zodiac signs of a year might not exactly be 1/12 and does not deal with variations in numbers of births over the month of a year but from what I have seen, October seems to be seeing more births than other month (might be because of it having 31 days?). Libra starts at end of September already though, so ... whatever)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes the fault is in our stars, but not in ourselves.</comment>


Ask HN: Do headphones exist with noise muffling capabilities? - Kepler-295c People constantly post about how distracting open-plan offices are. The solution that is often proposed, noise cancelling headphones, don't really work because noise cancelling headphones stop background hums, not the sound of talking. Actual earmuffs DO block sporadic sounds like talking. However you can't really wear earmuffs in an open plan office (that would be weird, and also earmuffs don't play music).
What would be amazing, would be headphones with earmuff material between the earpiece and the outside of the headphones. Then you can listen to music without any sound bleeding in.
If anyone is looking for a hardware startup this may be a good idea. I would pay good money for this. I've tried the usual recommendations eg Sennheiser HD280's but the sound muffling isn't that high. <comment><AUTHOR> There are some hearing protection earmuffs that allow you to plug in music players such as these: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001T7QJ9O/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001T7QJ9O/)

I bought these a while ago and while the sound quality is not the greatest they will block a lot of sound. They also have microphones so you can listen to conversations without taking them off (useful for protecting hearing in dangerously noisy environments - not that useful in an office).

</comment><comment><USER2> You want a good pair of 'closed' studio headphones. [http://www.wirerealm.com/guides/top-10-best-studio- headphone...](http://www.wirerealm.com/guides/top-10-best-studio-headphones)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you used good or custom IEMs? I have fairly standard Westone IEMs and I do not notice anything on a flight, talking or otherwise

</comment><comment><USER4> We have Bose at work, with those on i can hear the conversation in the next room much better, they do the opposite.</comment>


Notre Dame is unstable: a strong wind could make the walls collapse, report says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theartnewspaper.com/analysis/notre-dame-is-unstable <comment><USER2> I was up on the rooftop three weeks ago. What is more incredible is how untouched everything that was not directly touched by the fire is. Inside the church itself, the wood, the chairs, the organs.. incredible condition.

There is massive consolidation work to do, but at least from what I saw, the news is better than you would probably believe.

The guys doing the consolidation are working "real time" on the structure, shoring up what is necessary as soon as they notice. Rapidly shifting priorities and tasks.

There were definitely parts that could easily collapse, bit again, compared to the rest of the structure, they appear to be minimal.

The overriding feeling I had was: Hats off to the firemen for the incredible restraint and foresight that they applied.

<comment><USER3> Hey, I remember your comments from the day of the fire. Your photos from the top of the spire are amazing. My father went to the rooftop probably at the same time as you, so he had the same conclusion; the structure is quickly being shored up and the teams know what they're doing.

I don't understand what report the article is reacting to, because Vannucci's study is three years old and I haven't heard anything concerning on that topic lately.

Oh and if you don't mind me asking, were you invited to the rooftop because you were involved in the spire study before? Or did you take part in the operations?

<comment><USER2> We had contacted the DRAC (governing body for patrimony and culture), but things were on lockdown because someone had leaked photos to the press, which had caused all sorts of chaos.

One of the managers of the consolidation companies is a close friend, so we were able to head up under their jurisdiction.

Again, the south and north towers are spotless inside, as is the nave (apart from the obvious 3 holes in the roof..).

The stained glass, even directly under the collapsed sections were intact (and being meticulously removed)

The wall sections on the shorter arms of the roof section were the most unstable parts, as the roof and beams are obviously gone. The North wall was already reinforced, and they were in the process of doing the same on the south wall.

One of the biggest challenges will be removing the scaffolding, which is melted, twisted and a general mess.

It was also incredible to see cooled lead flows from the mouths of the gargoyles.

Again, the resounding feeling from the visit and the workers was one of hope and relief.

<comment><USER4> That's so cool. Do you have a photo of the gargoyles? Or anything else?

<comment><USER2> I was able to take a few under strict "eyes only" conditions. There had been photo leaks a few days prior of someone who had bluffed through the security and sold photos to the press.

The press were going through the same day I was there, there are surely similar / better images that mine online.

<comment><USER5> Why is there an issue with photos of a public structure being released to the public? Have the rights to professional photos of Notre Dame been sold to a private entity a la the Eiffel Tower?

<comment><USER6> The rights to the Eiffel Tower have never been sold to a private entity, but the private entity that designed the night lighting _kept_ their rights on it (which is the default, if the city didn't specifically ask for the rights to be transferred in the contract).

I don't think that's a good situation, but it has nothing to do with selling rights to a private entity.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I follow, to my understanding it is not legal to take professional photographs of the Eiffel tower at night, is that wrong?

<comment><USER7> Yes, because copyright remains with the original lighting designer and was never transferred - to or from - the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My parents were both involved in post-fire salvage operations at Notre-Dame and though I'm necessarily a bit biased towards their opinions, I wish we wouldn't share any self-branded expert's take on what went wrong or how things should be done. Some of the most qualified people in the country are working on the site and aren't being interviewed. As the article states, the man in charge of the restoration is an Architecte en chef des monuments historiques; preserving and restoring state-owned monuments is his job and he's accompanied by other architects of the same training. I fully agree with the author in that they should be the ones designing the reconstructed spire, not a worldwide art project as the president suggests. As far as the "independent report" about the stability of the building, it has not made the news here so far.

<comment><USER8> > the man in charge of the restoration is an Architecte en chef des monuments > historiques

That's the professional bureaucrat overseeing the work e.g. an architect who chose to do his career in the civil service and is suffisently adept at navigating it/old enough to have been promoted. That is not in itself particularly reassuring.

Where I agree with you is that France most likely has both access to good experts and the technical know-how and means necessary to secure such a building.

> fully agree with the author in that they should be the ones designing the > reconstructed spire

I completely disagree. The spire is gone. The original one is never going back. What's the point of making a copy ?

Since we have to build something, let's at least build something reflecting our time. It will be old soon enough. A worldwide art project will surely bring a lot more new and bold ideas to the table.

<comment> core-questions >Since we have to build something, let's at least build something reflecting our time.

I don't buy this idea. The original design was so beautiful that it inspired pilgrims for hundreds of years to make a trek to see it. Modern architecture is bland, glass-and-metal, uninspired crap; shiny jewels with no staying power that will be torn down within a century to make room for something else, or brutalist monstrosities put here to punish us with their brooding ugliness.

<comment><USER9> The spire that collapsed had been inaugurated in 1859, so it's relatively recent compared to the age of the cathedral. I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject but dismissing modern architecture as a whole before we've even seen the first proposals doesn't seem very... constructive.

<comment><USER10> 1) The spire rebuilt in 1859 by Viollet-Le-Duc didn't have XIXe century look, it was heavily inspired by the one of the Orleans cathedral

2) Even with that, Viollet-Le-Duc is somewhat criticized for it's restoration works as he generally chose what looked "nice" as opposed to historical accuracy or significance.

Rebuilding the spire in a modern style would be a mistake in my opinion, or at the very least, a huge risk of style disunity of the building, rebuilding in Gothic style maybe boring but it's safe.

As to which technics could be used, that's another matter. Notre-Dame would not be the first cathedral to be rebuilt using the technics of the day.

Reims was rebuilt using concret, and the result is actually quite beautiful:

[https://img.aws.la- croix.com/2019/04/17/1301016385/charpente...](https://img.aws.la- croix.com/2019/04/17/1301016385/charpente-beton-cathedrale- Reims-17-avril-2019_0_729_486.jpg)

Others were rebuilt using steel, Metz Cathedral for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most of the "entries" that people are making for designs for the roof/spire replacement, and many of the posts on here, suggest that many people think that when you were looking up in the pre-fire Notre Dame, or any other church building of similar construction, what you were/are seeing is the underside of the roof.

It isn't!

What you are seeing is stone vaulting, essentially a great big three- dimensional arch, related to a hemispherical dome in somewhat the same way as a gothic arch is related to a Romanesque rounded arch. It may or may not be painted or plastered or frescoed (ND's wasn't, I think) but the actual "ceiling" of the church—and, crucially, the _structural_ part of what's over your head—was/is stone. The roof in a modern building is often structurally keeping the tops of the walls at a fixed distance as well as holding itself up, but in a stone cathedral, the roof was an extra layer over the top of the stonework, primarily to shed rainwater.

All of which is to say, the loss of the wooden roof structure is a lot less threatening than the loss of (some of) the vaulting; and replacing the roof with glass or stained glass would be utterly invisible from inside the church, whose ceiling would still be the stone vaulting.

<comment><USER12> I think most people understand that the stone vaults are what is seen from the inside. At least most people who have given it a tiny bit of thought or looked at any pictures. Most, but not all, of the stone vaulting remains intact, although some of it may be weakened.

While they may comprise the bulk of the structure, I don't think it is correct to say suggest that the roof and roof supports (all that timber) is merely to keep the rain off. It plays a significant role in the structure as well. Sure, without an earthquake or strong wind the valuting is strong enough, but with the roof supports gone the building is substantially less able to stand up to extreme conditions.

As for replacing the roof with something else, it would have to be done where it contributes to the structure, not just sits on top. Glass can actually be structural, in fact. I like some of the new ideas, and don't think the ones I've seen are unfeasible, but they would simply (or not so simply) be done with a whole lot of regard for adding to the structure.

<comment><USER11> I think your middle paragraph is much more true for modern (last 100-150 years) buildings than older ones, though I'm not an architectural engineer.

When you say "glass can actually be structural", what meaning of "structural" are you using?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gothic architecture is fascinating because they are not only aesthetically appealing, but also very advanced (at their time) in terms of engineering. Stones are heavy, but the pointed arches and flying buttresses make Gothic churches feel light and nimble. Advanced structural design also allows Gothic churches to have larger windows as the structure is no longer solely supported by the walls, inviting more natural light into the church which contributes aesthetically and spiritually.

For me, the above statement is the reason why I would prefer the roof and spite of Notre Dame to be reconstructed in a modern design that utilizes all the advancements in architecture. The Gothic churches were built using state- of-the-art technologies hundreds of years ago, and they deserve to be rebuilt with the state-of-the-art technologies we have nowadays. If the medieval French could, they would certainly build Notre Dame with steel and glass.

<comment><USER14> The glass roof is not a bad idea. It would be very French to do that. Like the I. M. Pei pyramid at the Louvre. If it's done, it will be done competently. So many people are watching.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't that drastically increase the sun exposure on the internal elements and artifacts in the church? Sun damage is noticeable in just a few years, let alone on a time scale of centuries...

<comment><USER16> See this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994844)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If i'm not mistaken, this is by design for Gothic buildings. I forget what the proper term is, but Gothic architecture exploits dynamic tension really thoroughly. The whole building is fighting against itself to destroy itself, and so remains balanced and static.

Take a component out, and the result is unstable.

Appropirately for a cathedral, the sermons practically write themselves.

<comment><USER18> Now I'm curious how, hundreds of years ago, engineers and architects determined what designs were viable.

Did they have quantitative data about materials' tensile strength, shear strength, etc.? If yes, what kind of math did they have for applying those data? If no, how did they safely design first-of-a-kind structures?

<comment><USER19> This is at least partially survivor bias. Sometimes they miscalculated and buildings fell down.

<comment><USER20> Even the ones still standing often aren't because of fantastic original engineering but because they are the ones people have cared to carefully maintain and to perform renovations on to compensate for original engineering flaws.

<comment><USER21> And sometimes simply by sheer mistake; the leaning tower of Pisa was supposed to be supported by the Corinthian columns and limestone internal blocks, but it turns out that its structure is actually supported significantly by the marble façade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This English-language article gets a lot mixed-up, Cathédrale durable was the report, it's from 2016, it correctly predicted the danger of fire in the roof, it was largely ignored by the people that mattered in France, it contained the details about wind, Vannucci recently spoke with an Italian journalist and highlighted this plus provided some additional context: [https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2019/05/20/news/paolo_vannu...](https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2019/05/20/news/paolo_vannucci_notre- dame_non_e_ancora_salva_secondo_i_miei_calcoli_i_rischi_di_un_collasso_al_livello_della_volta_sono_a-226710639)

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know of a kit for building a gothic architecture building consisting of small stones with pre-cut geometry? Seems like it would be fun to put together - could you use it like a puzzle and assemble with no adhesive, throw the pieces back into the box when you're done?

Presumably could be manufactured from concrete in molds, so incremental cost could be quite low.

<comment><USER24> "Anker stones" ([http://www.ankerstein.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=v...](http://www.ankerstein.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=18), [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Stone_Blocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Stone_Blocks)) aren't quite that, but also are better in the sense that you can build different buildings with them.

For example gothic architecture, see for example [https://www.ankerwiki.de/Neue-Modelle-bis- Kasten-34/Kasten-N...](https://www.ankerwiki.de/Neue-Modelle-bis- Kasten-34/Kasten-NF-34-plus/Gotische-Kirche/) or [https://www.nikhef.nl/~i56/Anker.html](https://www.nikhef.nl/~i56/Anker.html) (front of Chartres cathedral, gothic villa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Whether the government now launches an architectural competition or decides > to rely on the highly professional bodies in charge of French monuments (in > particular, the Compagnie des Architects en Chef, to which Philippe > Villeneuve, the architect in charge of Notre Dame, belongs), it should > demand an integrated project for the entire structure and not allow the > design and implementation processes to be fragmented.

It seems to me like the author is concerned about not "updating" the building (as was done several times in the past, like the 1860 spire). It's hard to separate those concerns about his attitude about preservation from the true needs of the project.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was thinking jokingly that this is a chance to replace that old fashioned Gothic design with a nice Modern Brutalist one. Well sure enough, there is such a cathedral:

[https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/brutalist-clifton- cat...](https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/brutalist-clifton-cathedral- bristol-purcell-renovation)

oh, and another: it looks like a nuclear power station:

[https://www.e-architect.co.uk/liverpool/liverpool- catholic-c...](https://www.e-architect.co.uk/liverpool/liverpool-catholic- cathedral)

<comment><USER27> There's also 'Paddy's Wigwam' as we used to call it, not very nicely I now see as an adult, as kids.

Liverpool famously has two cathedrals very close to each other, within a mile, Church of England and Catholic Church.

Nice pic link below shows both together with further individual pictures further down that page.

[https://images.app.goo.gl/vy5ZJ43FBx9Y1S5A7](https://images.app.goo.gl/vy5ZJ43FBx9Y1S5A7)

<comment><USER28> Something about this reminds me of the Witch-King of Angmar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > The current approach to its restoration fails to take account of the > interconnected structural "engineering" of Gothic architecture

Why is engineering in scare quotes?

<comment><USER30> I suppose because it wasn't highly quantitative or firmly within the range of known physics, back then. But since "engineering" originally referred to the building, operation and repair of siege engines, in ancient Rome; I'm with you. It was just plain engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A very old (DOS days) VRML navigable fly-through Notre Dame is somewhere on my hoarde of data. I wish it had been carried forward as a thing to self navigate. The same people did a virtual cluny I think.

If anyone has the data brought into the 21st C I'd love to re-fly the nave.

</comment><comment><USER32> if humankind (best minds) is not able to build something better in every aspect today, we as a species are on the wrong trail and should change.

We already need to change a lot (carbon free and many other problem areas) and like the Apollo program was a challenge for engineering we could start an effort in the domains of architecture and arts (and maybe others) to build something better, spiritual etc. ...

<comment><USER33> Why not just leave the cathedral as it was and build a whole new cathedral if people really want some modern masterpiece?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> i'm sure 600+million collected can help to stabilise it... or where did that money go? ....

</comment><comment><USER35> Really, sir. A strong breeze...

</comment><comment><USER36> If these churches weren't churches they would have been condemned for not being up to code.

Lets put our nation's most prized and irreplaceable artifacts in it!

<comment><USER37> Sure, if you ignore all the non-church historic buildings all over Europe massively outnumber them.

<comment><USER36> > if you ignore

naturally

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm reserving judgement until I can hear Elon Musk's take on how to save the cathedral, and whether the chief architect on the project is a pedo.

<comment><USER39> Nice!</comment></comment>


Hosting Web Applications - <AUTHOR> https://serversforhackers.com/articles/2014/10/21/web-apps/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a free chapter from my Servers for Hackers book. I find a lot of confusion around the topic of application gateways when it comes to hosting a real application.

I'm hoping this article clears that up a bit.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you worried about the coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> I'm having a very hard time figuring out what to believe. Are you personally concerned at all about the coronavirus? What are you doing, if anything, to prepare? <comment><USER2> Considering that there hasn't, last I checked, been a single confirmed case yet in my state (North Carolina), I'm not _too_ concerned right this minute. My concern is also tempered by the knowledge that this virus, so far, does not seem to be exceptionally deadly. That said, I'll be keeping my eye out on the news reports as things progress, for sure.

Prepare? Well, I'm admittedly a little bit of a "prepper" anyway. Not to an extreme degree, but I stockpile certain supplies, practice some bushcraft / wilderness survival techniques, and read the occasional book/magazine/website on the topic of survival and prepping. So far, not taking any specific extra actions related directly to the coronavirus thing. But I may make it a point to stock up on some over-the-counter medicines... the kind of things that don't cure any disease, but can at least treat some of the symptoms so you can sleep - e.g. Nyquil, Mucinex, etc., as well as disinfectant wipes, and things of that ilk.

I can't imagine this getting so bad that I'd be tempted to flee into the wilderness just to try and avoid human contact until it blows over, so I'm not going out and stocking up on trail mix, ammo, snare wire, waterproof matches, Bic lighters, etc., etc., yadda yadda yadda.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm kinda concerned. I'm in Singapore and there have been cases quite near though it's still a small percentage of the population. I'm near the biggest red blobs on the ourbreak map: [https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus- singapore-map-sh...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-singapore- map-shows-spread-worst-hit-outside-china-2020-2?IR=T)

Slightly eccentrically I ordered some chloroquine (because [https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359446/anti- mala...](https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359446/anti-malaria-drug- prevents-coronavirus-infection))

Re whether to worry in the west I'd keep an eye on Singapore because they have pretty good controls here. If it levels out things will likely be ok. If it goes exponential the the rest of the world will probably follow.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in Taiwan and for various reasons don't want to move, so somewhat concerned. I don't think I'll be able to avoid it, so I'm exercising more so my body is in better condition to fight it.

I'm also making sure to be stocked in non perishable food, rice, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> New England area of United States. Planning on minimal stocking basic items such as bottled water and foodstuffs. Maybe 1 weeks worth. No panic but my gut tells me to be prepared for something. It just makes me feel better

</comment><comment><USER6> The worst thing you can do is panic. The second worst thing is read indirect sources. I suggest you avoid social media which is full of a lot of toxic hidden agenda and stick to things like promedmail.org and virological.org. they cite prime sources.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm quite concerned about it. I went to the hardware store to pick up some N95 masks, and I made sure that I have things in the kitchen that won't rot (rice, beans, meat in the freezer).</comment>