A small notebook for a system administrator - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/437912/ <comment><USER2> Mostly reminds me of [https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer)

On a serious note, I mostly disagree about the small size. The author mentioned his preferred size being A5, which is about half a letter. Having to type commands on machine that just fits under your palms is painful. I'd rather have a large keyboard, large screen and a large battery.

My current EDC setup is an X250 with a huge bag of adapter dongles, carried in a Falcon II.

<comment><USER3> Some of us (I assume OP is one of them) think that since your screen won't be _large_ anyway, there is little point to having a screen bigger than your preferred keyboard size.

And since your battery won't be large enough to support compiling LLVM in reasonable time anyway, it's better to just get used to do CPU-heavy stuff by ssh-ing to a rackmount somewhere use the laptop for terminal-ish tasks.

<comment><USER4> If your goal is a portable SSH client, even an _original_ iPad mini with a bluetooth keyboard would be a better option than this thing.

<comment><USER5> I've been using iSH on the iPhone for my portable SSH client, it works pretty great for server maintenance even with the on-screen keyboard.

[https://github.com/tbodt/ish](https://github.com/tbodt/ish)

<comment><USER6> I use Prompt these days, but iSSH's Remote Desktop client was super useful back when I was doing admin work and didn't have the luxury of never needing to work on a Windows server!

As I recall, I also used its X server for remote display from an OpenGenera instance running on a Tru64 VM, back when I was still indulging my hobby for Lisp system archaeology, and network problems were stopping me displaying to the VM host's X server. Good times...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Such notebook is suitable for posting photos on Instagram, but not for work.

There's something about that statement that put me off the entire article. Maybe the author truly is 3l337, but it just comes off as condescending. Plus, who uses a notebook for Instagram? The author managed to be simultaneously derisive and clueless.

<comment><USER8> > All of them imitate the MacBook Air: thin, shiny, glamorous, and they all > critically lack ports.

This is the sentence before. IMO you're being way too harsh. He is clearly trying to emphasize that the average consumers has lost their need for ports, thus, most lightweight computers aren't sufficient for the author's line of work. But OMG the author doesn't know the proper context of Instagram! This whole article loses credibility! Listen to yourself.

<comment><USER9> Why do people who don't need multiple serial ports stop being real users?

<comment><USER10> What does it matter who real users are and aren't ? The author has requirements which are not met. Judging by the fact that it's a popular post, several others have similar requirements too. That someone may not have such requirements is quite obvious. Hence the current state of affairs and the post in the first place. The author's jokes may be a bit off, but this sub thread in this discussion that has devolved into whether or not instagram users are real users or if you need a laptop to use instagram is utterly useless. Like what does it add ?

<comment><USER9> I'm just kidding, man. Why can't anybody take a joke? Why be so uptight all the time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately something like this would never come to market, but I use a laptop that comes close enough for my needs. My current portable is a HP Elite X2 1011 G1 (yep that's a mouthful), it's a previous generation version of their current 1012 G2 product. It's a Surface-style convertible that is as fast as a typical business desktop machine, with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB M.2 SSD onboard. The keyboard base has 2x USB3, a SmartCard slot, full size DisplayPort output, some sort of HP proprietary dock connector, a TRRS headset jack, and an internal battery. The tablet portion doesn't have any ports other than a TRRS headset jack, but it does have a Wacom stylus as well as a MicroSD slot and onboard LTE celluar data (I'm using a Ting GSM SIM with that).

Using it as a laptop I get 12+ hours of battery life. It draws from the keyboard battery first, so you can run that dry and still have 5 to 6 hours of battery in the tablet, making it an all day machine. It's only slightly bigger than my last convertible, an ASUS Transformer Pad, and much more powerful.

It doesn't have the wide range of ports in this article, but then nothing out there does. If I need VGA/DVI/HDMI I can carry a DisplayPort cable with those ends, and if I need Ethernet I can carry a USB3 to Gigabit adapter. Both would fit in the slim case I kept from the Transformer.

<comment><USER12> There is _every_ possibility of something _close to_ this coming to market. Not every device needs to sell in the millions.

<comment><USER11> You're right, and I've owned an example device recently, the GPD Win. In theory it was awesome, a portable x86 Windows 10 gaming device. But in practice, nothing about it was good enough to make it worth the money. The screen was a phone screen that tried desperately to be portrait by default, the keyboard was horrible, and the overall build quality was lacking.

Honestly yes, a device like the one in the article might get a Kickstarter or Indiegogo one day, but it will either be too expensive for what it is, or it will fall short of the list of OP's desired features.

<comment><USER13> FWIW, I have a GPD Win 2 and I love it. I never had a Win 1, but the reports I've heard from people who have had both is that the build quality and keyboard layout were both significantly improved.

They're also working on a new device that is more sysadmin oriented.

<comment><USER11> I will say this, their customer support was top-notch for the Win 1. They were known to send replacement keyboards, fans, and even system boards, well past the original warranty date. They also still give out proper Windows 10 license keys for devices that came with invalid keys, even years later. I know this because the one I bought from eBay was not activated, and when I tried to activate with the supplied key it refused. I emailed their support and within a few hours had a working valid key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love the exercise of this — it reminds me of the hours I spent as a kid, drawing multi-angle views of what I hoped would be the "Commodore 256" or "Amiga 5000". The loving inclusion of each port, paragraphs of explanation — it's just great.

<comment><USER15> Ha, I love that you were a childhood product designer for home computers. I used to do similar for cars, lots of arrows with text descriptions of what the "novel" parts were.

Wonder what things other people did? I know of people who were obsessed with inventing dinosaurs, and monsters/aliens.

<comment><USER16> I used to spend hours and days designing ships for _Elite, Carrier Command, and Starglider 2_

I was a terrible artist, but loved detailing every console and chair and storage space (seriously, I loved drawing storage spaces! I think it stems from seeing the Millennium Falcon in Empire Strikes Back with all its open crawlspaces and falling-apart-awesomeness)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is SUCH a niche system, that I don't understand why carrying adapter is a bad thing. There are already laptops that kinda fit his keyboard/pointer/size requirements.

\- His "video subsystem" idea already has a solution for many years. KVM2USB. [https://www.epiphan.com/products/kvm2usb-3-0/](https://www.epiphan.com/products/kvm2usb-3-0/)

\- His "let me turn this into a boot device" also has a solution. Many virtual cd rom devices exist, for example [https://www.amazon.com/Iodd-Iodd2531-Black- Virtual-Enclosure...](https://www.amazon.com/Iodd-Iodd2531-Black-Virtual- Enclosures/dp/B00TDJ4BJU)

If you're in such a niche requirements.. either you pay a ton ( military laptops), or you're ok with adapters :)

<comment><USER18> I used to think it was an absolutely awesome for a laptop to have an rj45 - something missing from the VAST majority of thin & light ultrabooks. I still think it's useful. This week I used a laptops rj45 to figure out that the connection to a switch was working but not the connection from the switch.

However one thing I realised is that if I'm ever repairing computers I'm going to be carrying a toolkit with me regardless. If there's an issue with some locations network and/or devices I'm going to want a console cable, an ethernet cable, cable crimpers, a drill, screwdriver set, usb drive, velcro ties, spare parts, label maker, a whole bunch of useful things. I have a backpack just full of useful stuff. If I'm always going to have tools with me adapters aren't a huge burden.

Additionally most of my clients exist at geographically disparate locations. If I ever find myself physically connecting my laptop to stuff I ask myself where I fucked up. If you have to physically move yourself to a broken device and plug a laptop in to figure out what's wrong 90% of the time it's reflective of not setting up proper remote management tools. It means you have a more fundamental issue that wastes money on expensive labour and risks downtime. If I can't fix your systems with an instagram machine with zero adapters it's reflective of a deeper issue. Personally I'd rather use an off- the-shelf thin and light that's portable and inexpensive.

<comment><USER19> My intuition agrees. The threshold of features that OP is looking for amounts to "multiple devices all crammed into one". That is going to lead to a compromised workflow - there's more to configure on your end and you'll lose track of it in a digital sense instead of a physical one. Like with the actual Swiss Army Knife, most of the end result is likely to be unsatisfying as a professional tool.

For ordinary tasks, a consumer device that can SSH in, and ideally do some USB, probably is the right thing. Last week I put together a $50 vest-pocket writing kit with a smartphone stand and a folding Bluetooth keyboard(iClever brand, if you care). And in just a week of use, I've already had multiple strangers remark "I want that" \- I can easily imagine using it for coding and sysadmin too. The real limits to client computing these days mostly revolve around operating system and I/O, and you do want to have lots of ports...but mostly on your desktops and servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well now. I'd probably buy one for novelty if the price wasn't absurd. Bonus points for trackpoint. More bonus points for the USB in power supply brick. I do wish that was standard rather than usually one "power" USB port in the laptop.

Lots of interesting ideas, many of which simply don't seem that useful any more. Having to carry around a bag of gender changers, PS2<\-->USB and all the rest is thankfully becoming rarer. I'm not the target though, as I don't need a lot more than ability to ssh somewhere these days.

If I wanted that small I'd probably go with a Gemini, the Psion 5 spritual successor, with proven great but tiny keyboard. Even that has proved too niche to part me from actual money: [https://jmcomms.com/2017/11/29/gemini- pda-20-years-on-meet-t...](https://jmcomms.com/2017/11/29/gemini-pda-20-years- on-meet-the-all-new-psion-series-5/)

<comment><USER21> > Well now. I'd probably buy one for novelty if the price wasn't absurd. Bonus > points for trackpoint. More bonus points for the USB in power supply brick. > I do wish that was standard rather than usually one "power" USB port in the > laptop.

The Surface Book 2 has a USB slot on the charge brick.

<comment><USER22> Last I checked, the surface book 2 under load consumed more power than the brick could provide. If it functions anything like my sp3 brick did, if there's a phone or whatever plugged in in such situations, they don't get enough juice to charge.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but you gotta get to serious load. If you use it as a mining rig it might go flat, but I've trained ML models, done 3d rendering, and played some demanding games on mine without any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I submitted this link for the new Pinebook Pro which was released a couple of days ago. It didn't get much traction but here goes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038420) It doesn't have the crazy keyboard or "sunshade", but it's fairly similar in other ways and only costs $199 so I guess you have money left over to drill extra holes for indicators and extra external ports.

<comment><USER25> Killer feature of the TFA notebook IMO is the VGA input. It was actually the feature I first thought of reading the title before clicking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the TempleOS of computer hardware.

I don't know whether to be impressed or weirded out.

I am also a network engineer, and I have an X200 and an 11" Chromebook (yeah ChromeOS can do FTDI serial) set up as rudimentary on-the-go engineers stations but they're still not at flexible as my 15" MacBook Pro -- so I just end up lugging my 15" MBP around and propping it up precariously in racks.

I still dream, though.

<comment><USER27> Not sure what you mean by that, given that TempleOS actually exists but is very impractical, unlike this (on both counts).

<comment><USER26> That was what I meant. I don't find this practical at all. The author means well, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just want a company to keep making the previous generation MacBook Air.

Keep the ports. Keep the MagSafe. Don't screw with the keyboard.

More memory and disk space would be nice, but it's not a deal-breaker. I don't mind going for a walk or enjoying a cup of coffee while I wait for GHC to compile.

It's a good machine. Now leave it alone.

<comment><USER29> Preferably the 11" Macbook Air.

<comment><USER30> I'm on one right now, it has magsafe (good), 3.5mm (good), 2 usb and a thunderbolt

I'd rather it was a little thicker and had two ethernets and a second thunderbolt, but aside from that it's a great alternative to a chromebook. I wouldn't do real work on it though

<comment><USER31> I do lots of real work on mine. I wish it could do 4K output to an external monitor. But I run things like Emacs and VS Code for smaller projects, iTerm for SSHing into all my beefier machines. Battery life is still great for a machine almost 5 years old now: I still get about 5 hours. And then, I can also do writing with the keyboard I prefer, over the newer style.

I'm even keeping my eyes open for a used MB Air 11" with 8 GB ram, and 128 GB storage for when this one breaks, unles I find something more suitable.

Like the people talking about using old Surface Pros from eBay, I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care about, especially since most my tool-chain is legacy at this point....

<comment><USER32> > I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care > about

I use the X220 for that; it's a nice, robust device, great keyboard, I like a trackpoint better than a trackpad, runs Linux well and excellent battery life with the 9 cell battery (which you can still buy on Ebay & Amazon). And it's cheap enough now to just rip everything out and get a new one without even thinking about it.

<comment><USER33> Seconded on the x220. Makes a great Hackintosh with minimal fiddling. Can be upgraded to 16GB RAM for practically nothing and genuine power adaptors are only a few dollars each. More than fast enough to get real work done.

<comment><USER32> > Makes a great Hackintosh

Hmm, I did not know that (never searched for it) but that's a good plan. I currently have an air 13 and x220; I do 90% of everything on my x220 (because it has far greater battery life and I prefer the keyboard and trackpoint), but when I need to do iOS app work I use my air. Better if I did not need to bring both on my travels.

Edit: Ah, just see [0]; I need the latest because everything stops working in app development if you don't and that seems to not workable anymore.

[0] [http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/mojave/](http://x220.mcdonnelltech.com/mojave/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of good ideas. I have on more than one occasion wished for the laptop's monitor, keyboard and mouse to double up as peripherals for another computer. Another niche thing I've wished for is this: An input selector on the laptop's monitor to select b/w igpu and dgpu. The use case if for gpu passthrough to vms so that you switch between host and guest and still get good gpu performance in the guest. Current optimus setups on laptops are all over the place in their implementation, although some of them do allow passthrough of the dgpu. The main blocker though is that dgpu is only connected to external ports. So if you mux it to the internal panel, you can achieve this without complicated software hacks or copying of framebuffer from one gpu to another. The only additional software support you'd need is to capture the keyboard and mouse for the host or guest based on the context.

</comment><comment><USER34> I use a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 for all my mobile needs. I bought it on eBay for ~$200 two years ago, and it's now 5 years old. It's light as all get up, runs Linux perfectly _out of the box_ and I bought it to run a browser and SSH into things. It also has a displayport, and a single USB, and I can ultimately connect it to everything I need. It's literally the best piece of technology I've ever owned.

I use it for so much more than I intended - but at $200, when the thing dies, I'm just going to throw it out and buy a newer one on eBay. I'm blown away by how much more useful this is than every other thing I've had over the last 20 years.

<comment><USER35> > runs Linux perfectly out of the box

When did that happen? I admittedly haven't looked in a while but I thought the SP2 had some basic issues with Linux (keyboard docking, wifi; the expected things).

<comment><USER34> It's all about the latest kernel. I installed Bodhi (Ubuntu derivative, not a fan). Then I added Ubuntu repos and promptly picked everything else up to latest.

Admittedly I have a script to allow screen rotation to be gangster, and to pop up a virtual keyboard when I rip off the Surface KB (and hide it when reattached). I consider that 100% working.

<comment><USER36> > I have a script to allow screen rotation to be gangster

What does that mean? You need to use a script to get it to rotate?

<comment><USER34> Correct. On login I run a python script that polls the accelerometer. For the virtual keyboard I equally poll the HIDS devices. Quick bit of python, life went on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This feels like it's an unrealistic Christmas present list. By that I mean having a laptop with everything in this article would be absolutely amazing, but is it even possible to mass produce something like that, let alone even build the thing as a one-off?

What would a more realistic sysadmin notebook look like?

<comment><USER38> The GPD MicroPC actually exists and is not too far off of this thing in terms of ports, sadly it lacks the trackpoint. Especially sad since GPD has already released a system with a trackpoint.

<comment><USER39> But the GPD Pocket have the trackpoint. There is also a Pocket 2 and a new one still on design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I recently found my old netbook while going through some stuff. The netbook trend was short lived, but I really like this machine (Acer Aspire One ZG5). Ethernet and card ports, plenty of USBs. And it has VGA, which for some reason I still have more use for than HDMI. They keyboard and mouse were better than my current laptop, a Lenovo Yoga 2 that I can't seem to get the hang of. And it has an Atom processor and really good battery life.

Sadly I slipped on ice in a parking lot and broke the screen. I ordered a new one on ebay a few days ago, so hopefully I can revive it.

<comment><USER41> I have very fond memories of my old Asus Eee PC 1000 netbook (see [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2532501/mobile- wireles...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2532501/mobile-wireless/the- asus-eee-1000----more-power--still-portable.html)).

I miss netbooks. It's too bad that we let Intel and Microsoft kill them.

<comment><USER40> I remember when Eee PC's came out and all the buzz about them. What do you mean by Microsoft and Intel killed them? I just assumed it was lack of market interest.

<comment><USER41> Microsoft hated netbooks because they ran on Linux and low-spec older versions of Windows, rather than the latest full-price versions. Intel hated netbooks because they used low-end, low-margin Atom CPUs.

Microsoft's response was to put a variety of netbook-gimping restrictions on the things they allowed OEMs to do if they wanted to be able to sell machines with Windows preinstalled. Some of those tactics are recounted in this 2009 article from _PC World_ : [https://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_has_crushed.html)

Intel's response was to develop and drive OEMs to the competing Ultrabook ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook)) standard, which kept the netbook's focus on "small and light" but replaced the "inexpensive" part with premium materials and full-fat Core processors.

The release of the iPad put the final _coup de grâce_ on the netbook market, but its success there was driven at least in part by the ways MS and Intel had forced OEMs to kneecap their netbook products in order to stay in good graces with the two companies you absolutely had to be in good graces with to make any products (netbook or otherwise) in the PC business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you want something that you can buy now, or soon... here are some options:

\- GPD Micro [https://liliputing.com/2019/01/first-look-gpd-micro-pc- handh...](https://liliputing.com/2019/01/first-look-gpd-micro-pc-handheld- computer-with-intel-gemini-lake-ces-2019.html)

\- GPD Pocket 2 Mini [https://liliputing.com/2018/12/gpd-launches-a-cheaper- pocket...](https://liliputing.com/2018/12/gpd-launches-a-cheaper- pocket-2-mini-laptop-with-celeron-3965y.html)

\- Clones / look alike of the GPD Pocket

<comment><USER43> Whatever happened to the 'netbook' form factor? That just seemed to disappear overnight.

<comment><USER44> Thin margins and the realization that if netbooks became popular most people would likely not buy normal laptops. Why make the one thing that kills the rest of your product line?

<comment><USER45> If that were the case, then companies would be tripping over each other to build netbooks and torch their existing laptop lines, lest some other company beats them to the punch and steals the market from under them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It seems like this would be better as two laptops: An ultra-compact for carrying in your pocket, and a bigger one with tons of accessories that you carry in a Pelican for work in the field.

If you are climbing a mast or the like, you are probably out in the field with a kit. You probably don't need a laptop that can fit in your coat pocket. You probably want various cables and dongles and mounting brackets for tripod or pipe mount, etc...

For on-call, I'd be tempted to just use my phone. I can set up Android with SSH and VPN, I can use a bluetooth keyboard if I need to type a lot, or if I just need to get in and run some commands to investigate, I can use the on screen keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER47> Doesn't have coaxial propellers option to double as a camera drone. A show stopper for me!

Seriously, this is computer nerds' version of prepping, starting with a diss at clueless commoners and gradually piling up the levels of ridiculous.

<comment><USER48> The author wrote "But I hope you will find a couple of interesting thoughts here." They're asking notebook makers to see it as a grab bag of ideas, not a unified whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Articles like this are what i love about HN. You may call it some techies wet dream, but the dedication to detail for this dream embodies this community for me.

</comment><comment><USER46> This design reminds me of the original OLPC XO with the hand crank generator. One of the OLPC people gave a talk to our Linux Users Group and told the story:

We realized that the hand crank put a lot of stress on the chassis of the XO. The materials design people came to us and said "We can totally solve this! We just machine this part of the chassis out of titanium!" And we were like "Thanks guys, but that's not even close to being in budget."

Thinking about the tripod mount: That seems like it's going to create a lot of stress on the body of the laptop.

Some of the ideas of this Admin Book remind me of that: sure you could probably make it happen, but the cost would probably be eye-watering. Like top of the line MacBook Pro pricing. He says he is interested in doing a Kickstarter but doesn't know how, I think there's a reality check that needs to go into it as the first step.

It's an interesting idea, and something I would have liked in the past for on- call EDC. But in the end I decided on a ThinkPad T520 and just carried it with me in a bag if I was using it, or in the car if I was not working. I kept looking at those Sony Vaio P laptops, but never ended up buying one.

</comment><comment><USER50> I went with a Dell Latitude 3180, which is basically a Chromebook that comes with Windows instead. I wanted something 10+ hours battery life, small (11-13" screen), fanless so that it'd be quiet.

\--Linux works 100%

\--11 hour in-use battery life so it doesn't live plugged in

\--Dead quiet (no fan)

\--Has good enough specs to get by (N4000 cpu, 4gb ram, edit: also a ssd rather than flash storage, which makes a big difference, and I have a 256gb microsd for extra storage)

\--Not a convertible and has a real keyboard

I paid about $200 for it. It gets used more than my $1k laptop.

</comment><comment><USER51> Using the laptop monitor as a display for external sources (and the video input port) is a good idea, I'm not sure why nobody is implementing it these days. Are there any technical challenges to this, or is it a feature considered useless by all of the laptop producers?

<comment><USER52> [https://www.startech.com/Server-Management/KVM- Switches/USB-...](https://www.startech.com/Server-Management/KVM-Switches/USB- Crash-Cart-Adapter~NOTECONS02X)

<comment><USER53> $560? What the hell is in that thing?

<comment><USER54> Just sold a non-rugged version on ebay for ~$250 IIRC. They're $320ish new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> My geek sense goes a tingling for everything small and compact. BUT I used to be a sysadmin, still perform some of those duties, and I don't really need a tiny laptop. I have no issue with carrying a laptop bag containing a Thinkpad X1 anywhere I might need it.

So outside of geekvalue I fail to see the market for this if the market is supposed to be sysadmins. Who thinks modern ultrabooks are too heavy? Considering it's a trade-off for having a full size keyboard and screen.

If the author thinks their x200 is too heavy I can heartily recommend the x260 or even x280 which I saw recently at a friends place.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm in the market for something like this for on call purposes. Something small/light enough to stow in a coat pocket but which has a physical keyboard and enough functionality for me to be able to triage most issues without having to resort to a laptop.

I've been trying the Gemini which almost fits the bill but doesn't quite cut it - the keyboard is OK but not backlit (I didn't think about how often that comes in handy when purchasing). I'll probably try the follow up 'Cosmo' when that comes out.

Would love to see any other suggestions.

<comment><USER19> In another reply thread I mentioned that I'm using a $50 smartphone kit consisting of a smartphone stand(Nulaxy brand, but there are dozens of similar designs) and iClever folding Bluetooth keyboard for writing. I think this is roughly along the lines of what you might want. The keyboard fits snugly in a vest pocket(it comes in two versions - I'm using the larger version with full- size keys and backlight) and gives a decent - not amazing, but good enough that I don't care - typing experience. There are many folding Bluetooth keyboards on Amazon, but this one stood out from the pack.

Combined with the stand to raise my phone I have something a bit more ergonomic than most integrated-device experiences, definitely better than what I would get from a Gemini when a flat surface is available, and I can literally throw on my vest and go for a jog and then take out the kit at a coffeeshop and lose myself in writing without difficulty. You might also need more I/O or a full PC architecture, but this setup was like a "my search is over" moment for me.

<comment><USER56> I'll check that keyboard out! Many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Anyone who works in the field or tough conditions just goes for toughbooks. These things can withstand pretty much anything you throw at it.

[https://na.panasonic.com/us/computers-tablets- handhelds/comp...](https://na.panasonic.com/us/computers-tablets- handhelds/computers/laptops/toughbook-31)

</comment><comment><USER58> Soooo, when is the kickstarter?

I have had so many countless sysadmins ask for a keyboard similar to that one (perhaps not the keyboard layout). I think the primary interests are:

serial port (yes, even today not having to carry a dongle is great)

ability to use kb/vid/mouse as a kb/vid/mouse for servers

multiple network connections

I would probably pitch into a kickstarter for that laptop.

</comment><comment><USER59> I remember when laptops had all sorts of legacy ports all over them. Good times! While getting this thing built seems somewhat unrealistic, perhaps someone could build a USB-C dock that basically replicates the back of a late-90s ATX PC - if only for the geek value alone.

<comment><USER60> Sounds like something one of the better-known retro hardware geeks could do a kickstarter for. I'd buy one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> A bit small as others have commented but I like the 'Swiss army knife' approach. Perhaps a slightly larger version could be the future for the 'non- endpoint' laptop? Sound artists and so forth might find a use for such a thing.

I find my ancient Thinkpad X61s is the one I actually take around, even though my slightly newer X220 is faster, has more memory and has a brighter screen.

<comment><USER62> >I find my ancient Thinkpad X61s is the one I actually take around, even though my slightly newer X220 is faster, has more memory and has a brighter screen.

You may be interested in the x62: [https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/](https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I think a mobile/phablet with usb adapter(s) could do the job. I'm currently working on an IDE with built in terminal emulator for mobile phones, where the hard lifting is done by the IDE backend running on a server. I think you either want a "full" laptop experience, or something more mobile, that fits in your pocket. Not something in-between. But it would look cool in a hacker movie!

<comment><USER64> Do you have your mobile IDE available somewhere? I am looking for a way to code from my cellphone and I can't user Termux without a code keyboard (to get ctrl, tab, etc.) which takes most of the screen space on my phone.

<comment><USER65> The volume buttons become control and alt in Termux, and if you swipe from the left and open the keyboard menu, you can enable a little overlay that includes keys like tab and escape.

See more info at the Termux wiki: [https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Touch_Keyboard](https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Touch_Keyboard)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> amiga-workbench I really do empathise with the authors sentiment, even the supposedly business grade lines of laptops are being consumerized with soldered RAM, no ports, no swappable batteries and cruddy 16:9 displays.

I wish Panasonic actually sold their gear outside Japan, they still build tools first and foremost, fashion accessories second. The Lets Note RZ6 looks fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER66> Like a lot of people mentioned, there are some obvious shortcomings. What I really like is all the thoughts are original ideas the author came up for this render. So many amazing little details.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of the GPD MicroPC - [https://www.gpd.hk/gpdmicropc](https://www.gpd.hk/gpdmicropc) \- it's not available yet, but they should begin taking orders pretty soon.

This is a review of a pre-production model: [https://liliputing.com/2019/01/first-look-gpd-micro-pc- handh...](https://liliputing.com/2019/01/first-look-gpd-micro-pc-handheld- computer-with-intel-gemini-lake-ces-2019.html) & [https://liliputing.com/2019/01/gpd-micropc- benchmarks.html](https://liliputing.com/2019/01/gpd-micropc-benchmarks.html)

I have one of their previous devices, the Win 2, which is more gaming- oriented, and I love it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Not sure what I'll find to replace my T420 with classic keyboard when it dies.

What laptops do T420 users migrate to that has a non-terrible keyboard?

(I am not a big fan of the new Thinkpad keyboards)

Can I put a t420 classic keyboard on a new-gen Thinkpad? Is it a good idea?

<comment><USER68> There are basically no laptops with good keyboards anymore. I've given up on trying to find one. Thinkpads have gone down the drain. Lenovo aren't even offering on-site support or extended warranty on all models anymore (even if you want to pay more!). They've gone from quality business models to, well, slightly better than garbage.

<comment><USER69> Run of the mill Dell's suck, but the latitude line of laptops are pretty good. They are easier to service and find parts for as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The Apple eMate 300 had a tripod stand in the base.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/48126477@N05/8463211826](https://www.flickr.com/photos/48126477@N05/8463211826)

</comment><comment><USER71> Corporate GUIs: The laptop.

<comment><USER72> You mean: designed to be useful, not pretty?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I'm needing a clamp or solution to hold/lock usb-c cables into a macbook pro typically, or IBM X1. I was going to just 3d print something, but was hoping for something a bit more polished/form fitting. Having issues in the lab/shop with cables coming out during sensitive processes/data collection etc. Especially since a usb/ethernet dongle is heavier with multiple cables plugged in.

<comment><USER74> Yeah keeping cables in can be an issue, and I don't know of any polished solutions.

I have occasionally used high quality adhesive hook and loop tape to affix USB hubs and hard drives to the backside of my laptop screen to help avoid similar issues.

I taped a few strips of the soft loops on the lid which I replace when they get dirty, and then hooks on the accessories.

So while it won't lock the cable in the USB slot, maybe it could help to use an industrial hub with either lockable, or high-retention USB ports affixed to the computer, and then only have a very short and soft cable to the laptop USB-C port?

Sample lockable ports hub: [https://buy.advantech-bb.com/USB- Communications/USB-Hubs/mod...](https://buy.advantech-bb.com/USB- Communications/USB-Hubs/model-BB-USH304.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I'll make this simpler: I want a 4:3 ThinkPad T61 with modern hardware. Same thickness, same keyboard, same everything. Widescreen sucks for code.

<comment> amiga-workbench Take a look at the 51nb X62.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Isn't small or light, but Getac ruggedized laptops seem to cover the high number of ports requirement: [https://thecomputermarket.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/...](https://thecomputermarket.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/getacx500_backside.jpg)

And, there's more ports on the sides too.

<comment><USER77> Isn't it too expensive and heavy for daily tasks? If your work needs carry it around DC or similar, the rugged laptop is overkill.

<comment><USER76> I shared because it's the only thing I've seen that approaches the port density in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> What about a touchscreen? Are matte touchscreens a thing? I didn't think I'd ever use the touchscreen on my laptop but I have found myself finding it convenient for quick actions when I'm not seated in front of it. I can imagine only having the TrackPoint to navigate menus to be annoying when you're standing.

</comment><comment><USER79> > The notebook has 2 webcams. The front-facing one is 8MP (4K / UltraHD), > while the "selfie" one is 2MP (FullHD).

Naive question from a software engineer: What does a sysadmin need a forward- facing camera for? I personally only ever use my laptop camera for Zoom meetings.

<comment><USER80> > What does a sysadmin need a forward-facing camera for?

Photographing server racks for documentation comes to my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I use a ThinkPad T470 at work and it's served me quite well. Not really sure I'd want to go much smaller. I do agree that it's silly to have Print Screen where it is (though it's actually kinda handy, too, when I need to take a whole bunch of screenshots, e.g. when writing documentation).

The idea of being able to plug a laptop into a server or something and instantly transform said laptop into a console is pretty neat. Sure, that's what SSH and RDP are for, until the server falls off the network. This would be a great application for USB Type-C; just plug into the C connector on the front of the server, switch to "console" mode on the laptop, and you're in business.

<comment><USER81> They should just put those Sheevaplug USB serials in servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I recently came across this cool DYI laptop that is in the works:

[http://mntmn.com/reform/](http://mntmn.com/reform/)

It doesn't fit exactly with the OP's needs but it comes pretty close I think.

<comment><USER82> Here is a recent status update with pictures of the beta unit:

[https://mntmn.com/media/news_md/2019-01-14-status_update_on_...](https://mntmn.com/media/news_md/2019-01-14-status_update_on_reform.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I'd buy one in a heartbeat, although in a form factor a bit larger... an DIN A5 sized device is a bit small for my needs, but DIN A4? Count me in.

What I'd add though is support for PS2 mouse/keyboard. Much old stuff still uses that...

</comment><comment><USER83> I've been staring at a surface go for a while now which I think meets all these needs. The one thing I'd like is a case with an attached keyboard (like the old clamcase) rather than the soft keyboard/stand.

<comment><USER84> I have a surface go, the 8gb version, and am very happy with it. I've left it running Windows 10 home, but installed the linux subsystem which works quite nicely. You'd think the keyboard would be a weak point, but it's not as bad to use as it looks like it would be. And it runs the games I care about (Civ 6, Kerbal, Subnautica, etc) well enough that I can enjoy them. It's lacking in ports, having just a single USB C, but a hub with a couple of USB A ports, a USB C, HDMI and ethernet only runs about $60 and isn't very big. All in all, I've been really happy with it, it fits in a small bag, will charge off the same USB C charger my phone uses if needed (albeit slowly) and is useful as a tablet for just surfing the web on or watching Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Hilarious! Would love to see something like this. I have the Thinkpad X220, and it is really a nice size for getting something serious done while still on the small side.

</comment><comment><USER86> Love this concept! The comment thread is fantastic as well.

</comment><comment><USER87> I use an 8" Windows 10 tablet with a USB hub and random keyboards and mice. There's always a keyboard and a mouse somewhere in the data center. If not, I have my bluetooth keyboard with a touchpad. I have it configured with all necessary tools. It works great as a Cisco console.

Oh yeah, it cost me $48 at Fry's. I have two of them. Battery life is more than 5 hours.

</comment><comment><USER88> HP x360, Intel i3, 6GB ram.

Affordable, durable, works well with multiple flavors of Linux and dual boots just fine.

Been administrating systems for years with this baby.

<comment><USER89> I know HP takes a lot of flak for their consumer laptops, but some of their Pavilion x360 are good in an almost unreasonable way, if you want them to be. I got a 13'' one, with an i5, at a Cyber monday sale and used the extra money to put in a good SSD and double the RAM to 16 GB. Just a lovely machine, which is also quite repair-friendly: I had to replace the fan after ~2 years and everything I needed was readily available online (parts list, service manual, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> The color coded keyboard seems like a neat and readily achievable idea. Are there any laptops with that available on market now?

</comment><comment><USER91> Get a Surface Go with LTE (or if you need TPM a Surface Pro). Then get a small bag of usb-a dongles for your needs. For the head unit issue, something like [https://www.epiphan.com/products/kvm2usb-3-0/](https://www.epiphan.com/products/kvm2usb-3-0/) could work.

</comment><comment><USER92> It's the antonym of "MacBook".

</comment><comment><USER93> I'm keen to see the phone evolve into a useful computer. Physical connections could be achieved with bluetooth adapters and the like. Keyboard either virtual/projected, or tacktile foldout for touchtyping. Screen could be a tiny projector, or google glass style. Anyone got links to this type of system?

</comment><comment><USER94> If you want modern hardware, mate a 7" tablet to a Cherry G84 compact keyboard. Otherwise resurrect a netbook.

</comment><comment><USER95> Since most of my work is command line / cloud I just really want to see something like the Sony Vaio P form factor that runs a really great terminal emulator. I'm ok with USB-C and dongles for when I need to hook something up, but a laptop the size of an iPad mini would make me very happy

</comment><comment><USER96> My guess is there's way too much stuff in terms of I/O for this form factor to even be feasible.

</comment><comment><USER97> oh my good I just need something like this!

<comment><USER98> There is the GPD MicroPC if you can handle a terrible keyboard

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I was going to suggest him to get the smallest macbook pro ...

</comment><comment><USER100> Reminds me of a GPD Pocket (2) Laptop minus the peripheral interface and custom key colors.

E: Probably would be cheaper to make a USB-C interface board to work with the GPD.

</comment><comment><USER101> This was a very interesting read. I'd love to see a similar write-up for a developer laptop.

This is a small nitpick but the battery should be listed as 42 Wh, not W/h.

</comment><comment><USER102> I love the thought experiment however putting all those connectors in there + a decent battery is not going to be simple (if even possible at all).

</comment><comment><USER103> For me aluminum is a no-go. I get electric discharges every time I touch it. Independently if I am at the office, at home, or at the beach.

</comment><comment><USER104> I love it (though it's like Homer's car).

</comment><comment><USER105> If you ever build this thing I will buy one.

</comment><comment><USER106> This would make my life easier in many situations. If it has enough RAM I would use it as my main computer even.

</comment><comment><USER107> This set of ideas is probably most easily commercialized as a USB-C dongle with a fuckload of ports (including display inputs) that you can then connect to any laptop you want. For bonus points, the dongle could include port- testing functionality, and a webserver, so you plug it in, browse to [http://dongle](http://dongle), and see that your Ethernet port is fucked.

</comment><comment><USER108> The folding blinds are a very nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER109> This largely speaks to the hardware issue of managing racks, but... is there actually a hardware issue?

</comment><comment><USER110> honestly I'd be really happy with a keyboard that folded out to around the size of one of the smallish bluetooth keyboards, X emacs a browser and a terminal on my phablet.

The closest I've come was a nexus 7 with a keyboard case and bluetooth mouse and remote desktop.

</comment><comment><USER111> Small change proposal for the UART<->USB bridge: make Vio selectable between 3.3V/5V

</comment><comment><USER112> It's literally an X200s

</comment><comment><USER113> The MacBook 12" is still pretty strong if you don't need a CPU.

</comment><comment><USER114> Like mac but for support carbon x1 with SIM card

</comment><comment><USER115> Incredible. This is real? It's like a fantasy wish list come to life.

<comment><USER116> It's a fantasy wish list brought to 3D rendering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> And that's when we knew he had way, way too much time on his hands.

</comment><comment><USER118> sad this doesn't exist. it's so cute

</comment><comment><USER119> Lenovo Yoga!

</comment><comment> 5874-4b22-a4e0 This looks really good, can I paypal you a preorder deposit for 10 machines?

</comment><comment><USER43> > Such notebook is suitable for posting photos on Instagram, but not for work. > At least not for mine.

Why do people feel the need to be so snide and put down what other people do as 'not work'?

<comment><USER120> Probably because it's much easier to post pictures on Instagram than to be a sysadmin? Or requires different hardware (in the author's opinion, anyway, not mine, I don't get why you need any of this to admin a system).

Do you think that being a social media person is equally valuable to being a sysadmin? If so, why do sysadmins get paid more? It's because fewer people have those skills, and everyone and their mother can most pictures on Instagram. There's no reason to put people down, but the answer to your question is also pretty straightforward.

Also, in Russia, people don't coddle each other like they do in The States, so if they think uploading things to social media isn't skilled work, they just go out and say it. I personally find that refreshing on some level, because then you can actually talk to people straightforwardly. Russia sucks in lots of ways, but at least you can communicate with people directly there.

<comment><USER43> The original comment didn't say it was worth less - they said it wasn't real work at all. If someone's willing to pay you for it then it's real work.

So saying it pays less is irrelevant. It's not a competition to see how can look down on whom.

And it's not just Instagram. They said that the MacBook Air wasn't suitable for work, and just gave Instagram as one example of what it is suitable for. I could do my job (programming language research) on a MacBook Air. I know someone who writes medical text books on a MacBook Air. Are these things not real work?

I don't know why the author couldn't just say 'A MacBook Air wouldn't be suitable for my work'? Why add the extra snide bit that if you could then you aren't doing real work? Why communicate that idea at all, directly or indirectly?

<comment><USER120> Yes, I agree it is inane. I think he's trying to set up a vibe wherein this whole thing is separate from the "Mac people" scene. Doesn't that make sense? The author is trying to establish his or her audience. He does this snidely, but I think that's the goal: to exclude a certain cohort and to cozy up with another. I mean MacBook Air people wouldn't find this compelling, and the author clearly doesn't find the MacBook Air compelling, so he or she just nukes the whole platform to establish a niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> How were the illustrations in this post created?</comment>


How to have a nation's infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22524274

<comment><USER2> ShodanHQ and ERIPP are highlighting how easy some of these targets are to hit. Its ridiculous how poorly setup the world's infrastructure is.</comment>


Writing Reusable Code Feedback at Scale with Mixed-Initiative Program Synthesis [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~loris/papers/las17.pdf <comment><USER2> Summery: This research paper investigates how introductory computer science students can learn better, and how teachers can coach better, especially in large classes.

The paper describes "a technique for clustering incorrect submissions by the code transformations that correct them."

The clustering of transformations helps teachers create better feedback that helps more students.</comment>


Party with the Patent Judges - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/party-with-the-patent-judges/ <comment><USER2> Assuming the attendee list is public, it should be pretty easy to get the judges attending the "conference" recused from IP related cases from now on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always been on the fenice bout patents. At a very ignorant level, they are instruments of unfair revenue. But give it some thought and they make so much practical sense. They spur private innovation.

Without patent protection, what incentive do pharmaceuticals have to spend millions of $ on vaccines? As noble a cause as greater good is, greater good doesn't put food on the table.

Secondly, patents promote the spread of knowledge - you have to reveal your secret in order to protect it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The list of speaking judges is public - including the chief judge of the patent circuit

</comment><comment><USER5> From the comments: _"It is discouraging for many large companies who have invested large sums of money in buying legislators to pass the laws they need to generate large profits to have these laws upended by some random judge. It is easy enough to buy the executive and legislative branches of government but the judicial branch is more difficult. This looks like a creative way of bridging this gap and preserving profits."_

Score one for those who viewing the state as a rent-seeking entity focused on dividing the spoils...</comment>


Farmland Birds in France Are in Steep Decline - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/science/farmland-birds-decline.html <comment><USER2> A similar article on one of the same studies was discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16636791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16636791).</comment>


Is another human living inside of you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150917-is-another-human-living-inside-you <comment><USER2> tl;dr: no

You may have cells from a twin e.g. produce two blood types. But nothing like another whole person.</comment>


This bicycle saddle that turns into a lock is sure to win over cyclists - <AUTHOR> http://nocamels.com/2014/09/seatylock-this-bicycle-saddle-that-turns-into-a-lock-is-the-coolest-thing-weve-seen-in-a-while/

<comment><USER2> Nice idea but you're stuck with their saddle (which looks not great and vertically bulky) and you still need to carry another N locks to be safe. It'll sell thousands.</comment>


Ludwig – Clarify your thoughts in English - <AUTHOR> https://ludwig.guru/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, My name is Antonio and I'm CEO and Co-Founder at Ludwig.

Ludwig is the linguistic search engine that boosts your English writing. It lets you search and resolve your linguistic doubts, helps you to turn your ideas into well-written texts and makes you incredibly more independent and confident at your job.

We started this project because Writing in good English is a daily challenge for millions of non-native English users, faced with linguistic barriers, misunderstandings and a sense of inferiority (converting an idea into a sentence takes an English-as-a-Foreign-Language user on average 4 times longer than a native English speaker, with worse results). We perfectly know how it feels and decided to build the product we always wanted to have.

How can you use it?

To get reliable English translations, with contextualized examples To check your English sentences by comparing them side by side with reliable examples To find the inspiration to express your ideas with ease and learn how to write more effectively

We are looking for people who use and give feedback on our desktop app. If you are willing to claim 3 months of Ludwig premium for free, apply here, download the app and give us your feedback.

You can find out more about Ludwig on TechCrunch ([https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/05/online-linguistic- search-e...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/05/online-linguistic-search- engine-ludwig-helps-get-your-english-on/))

Let me know what you think of it and (if you want) le me have your feedback. Thanks a lot, Antonio

</comment><comment><USER2> Ludwig is the best tool for English writing I've ever used. It always give me valuable suggestions on how to reshape more correctly my sentences and on how to express my ideas. Definitely a priceless service for anyone who is struggling with English writing!</comment>


BlockBlock 1.0.0 beta – rewritten and open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/objective-see/BlockBlock <comment><USER2> What does this do?

<comment><USER3> Found this:

[https://objective-see.com/products/blockblock.html](https://objective- see.com/products/blockblock.html)

"Malware installs itself persistently, to ensure it's automatically re- executed at reboot. BlockBlock continually monitors common persistence locations and displays an alert whenever a persistent component is added to the OS."

<comment><USER4> And it seams to be for MacOS, at least. May be portable, but don't know.

Worst project-documentation 2020, so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there same thing for Linux?

<comment><USER6> No. But we should make a one for systemd now that it has provided similar common persistence mechanisms. Prior to the wide availability of user services, I'd have said that mechanisms for (especially non-root) persistence were too fragmented for a thing like this to be useful for Linux.

One that did nothing but scan systemd would probably be worthwhile now, though.

<comment><USER5> > one for systemd

Is it possible to create for non-systemd?

<comment><USER6> You could try and detect some percent of persistent installs. The linked item is scanning launchd. Systemd is very similar for Linux. Non-systemd things are so diverse (IMO) that an attempt would devolve into a generic IPS. Which exist already, kind of suck, and find crapware with varying degrees of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, if you want something more passive, KnockKnock by the same developer is also great:

[https://objective-see.com/products/knockknock.html](https://objective- see.com/products/knockknock.html)</comment>


One Story of Nikola Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://flyingmoose.org/truthfic/tesla.htm <comment><USER2> Has anyone read the Nikola Tesla's biography "My Inventions"? The guy makes some absolutely mind-blowing predictions. For example, in Tesla's book he predicts drone based warfare and the global electronic distribution of music almost 100 years ahead of time.

In the recent book about Google, "In The Plex", the author comments that reading the biography of Tesla was a major influence on Larry Page and made him mindful that he didn't get cheated out of realizing his vision by an Edison or a Morgan.

<comment><USER3> Also the "end" of war to be the utter connectedness of humanity via free communication :) Its a great book, if somewhat dry in writing (constant referalls to "I did _ and _," etc.)

He had strange from-childhood debilitating migraines and white flashes blinding him, built models of his inventions in his mind (which I find fascinating, I don't think most people can think in three-dimensions), sometimes due to being debilitated.

He admits toward the end of his book he was not a good "business" man but was "happy" that his patents may "eventually" cause the betternment of mankind. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0910077002/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0910077002/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=xlracom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0910077002)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sad. Growing up, Edison came across to me as a man worthy of idolizing. Edison was inferior to Tesla not only in terms of intellect, but also as a human being. Edison may have been a great businessman, but Tesla was the genius who was far ahead of his time. I'm glad to see his story told.

<comment><USER5> Did you know that the electric chair "invention" was funded by Edison in the "war of currents" again Tesla:

[http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Electric_Ch...](http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Electric_Chair.htm)

Edison also organized electrocutions of animals:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3582295>

<comment><USER4> Yes I did, but I found this stuff out when I was 15(I'm 19 now). Before that, from what I had been taught, we used to count Edison among the greatest minds of all time. Sad. Nobody knew about/bothered to even mention the great mind that was Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tesla's work on wireless power transmission [1] was particularly fascinating. Apparently he figured out that electricity could be propagated through the atmosphere in waves, and the inherent efficiency (or lack thereof) problem could be solved by amplifying it using its magnetic resonant frequency, the same way sound and physical vibrations can be amplified via application of their resonant frequency. The result would be efficient wireless electricity transmission from any spot on the planet to any other.

His Wardenclyffe Tower project [2] in Long Island was an attempt to implement the idea, but was never completed due to financial problems. It overran its budget, and investors weren't willing to continue funding it. One of his primary patrons, John Jacob Astor, also died on the Titanic a few years later. I can't help but imagine what the world would look like today had Astor survived, funded Tesla, and Wardenclyffe successfully proven the concept.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower>

</comment><comment><USER7> Tesla is the real genius of our time. I'd want to meet him before Einstein, or any other thinker of the last 100 years.

Edison couldn't spell Tesla, but even in those days, he who told the story best, won.

<comment><USER8> I'd want to meet both. Tesla is to electrical engineering, as Einstein is to physics.

<comment><USER7> Totally. If you had to pick one.. what then? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Niagara Falls, NY has a statue of Tesla: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajays/245729699/in/set-72057594...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajays/245729699/in/set-72057594081822346)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nikola Tesla is a true genius. We take many of his inventions and contributions to the world of engineering for granted. His works continue to astound us even today...

Edison, on the other hand was always a scumbag.. More of a marketeer than a scientist..

</comment><comment><USER11> "Tesla," Edison replied, "you don't understand that I'm an asshole."

<comment><USER12> Edison sounds like a blowhard with the initials JC :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a pretty good museum of Nikola Tesla in Belgrade. Worth visiting.

<http://www.tesla-museum.org/meni_en.htm>

</comment><comment><USER14> As an electrical engineering student, and having Tesla as personal hero, I love seeing people talk about him in the mainstream. A movie was made about Tesla and all the crap he had to go through from his childhood to his death. Check it out: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079985/>

</comment><comment><USER15> I hadn't realized that Tesla had anything to do with logic gates, so I looked it up and found this patent: <http://www.google.com/patents?vid=613809>

However, I'll admit that the prose is too Victorian and patent-y for me to decipher where he actually describes an AND gate.

<comment><USER16> Funny how Sony references that patent for "Remote control of VCR with electronic mail".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great PBS documentary of him. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQC1lOZpsjQ>

</comment><comment><USER18> Just think how many inventions aren't seeing the light of day because of existing monopolies, political legislation, ...

</comment><comment><USER19> Lets not forget Topsy. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)>

</comment><comment><USER20> Be a Tesla and hire an Edison

</comment><comment><USER21> there was a fascinating podcast about Tesla 2 weeks ago in Studio360: <http://www.studio360.org/2012/jan/27/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Adjusted for inflation that $50,000 is over $1,100,000 ...

<comment><USER23> Or $0 adjusted for inflation is still $0 when you get screwed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While Tesla was researching wireless electricity, he was being supported by JP Morgan. Morgan had an interest in what was then a monopoly on copper. That monopoly wanted their copper wires to rule the world, not free wireless power. Tesla's vision of helping humanity didn't fit into the designs of a monopoly, so Morgan made sure Tesla's research went nowhere.

As Morgan said, "If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter?" Tesla's mistake, as brilliant as he was, was his inability or unwillingness to see how the Dogs of Money keep all the good scraps for themselves. I know many brilliant people today with the same difficulty.

<comment><USER16> I see the same with wireless Internet. Every wifi device should be programmed to contribute to ad-hoc networks for eventual near-universal free access, but ISPs would never stand for it.

<comment><USER24> As nanotech increases in dominance, perhaps someday we can just make our own wireless ad hoc hardware as you describe. As the overall push is toward decentralized services and utilities, hardware is already starting to mirror reality, slow as it may be.

<comment><USER25> If you can do arbitrary manufacturing, why not just build fiber trunks that are completely open?

It would probably only work if the manufacturing could be done in place, and it might get exciting if things started growing defense systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I never liked Edison. He always came off as a simple and lucky hack; just a businessman, while Tesla was the genius and inventor the world still owes all to.

<comment><USER27> Remember how many compared Steve Jobs to Edison when he died? Maybe they weren't so wrong after all.

<comment><USER28> Well, this (quote from Wikipedia)… > Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure.

… seems pretty Jobsian to me. And you bet when Bill Gates is dead (hopefully far far away in the future) he will also be compared to Edison.

Because, maybe, these kind of comparison just doesn't make sense. Because great men and times are most of the times not alike. Because we are just stupid with our stupid simplifications.

Geeks and Nerds have certainly a hard on for Tesla, the misunderstood underdog, with all his complicated character of scientific genius and OCD/phobia/celibacy. But I wouldn't diminish the achievements of Edison. And Edison was (surprisiningly) never one of the super-rich of his time. There is a reason he needed J.P.Morgan. He only had shares in companies, but never controlled them, even if they did bear his name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Take a look at this documentary: The eye of the storm - the inventions of Nicola Tesla.

Two parts: 1) Tesla and the war effort 2) Tesla and Alien visitors</comment>


ACE Submarine Cable Cut Impacts Ten Countries - <AUTHOR> https://dyn.com/blog/ace-submarine-cable-cut-impacts-ten-countries/ <comment><USER3> Internet down for just 2 days - "Huge African Internet Outage"

Still no power in many network blocks in Puerto Rico after months - <USER2>

EDIT: Thanks for the title edit! It's more accurate that way.

<comment><USER4> This internet outage looks like it affects 22 countries (some more than others) and covers a much more expansive area. I don't mean to detract from the tragedy in Puerto Rico but these events aren't comparable because their causes are completely different.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. No power for months is quite a bit worse than 2 days without the Internet, no matter what the scale or the cause is. 100k people without power is far worse than 100k or 1M without Internet.

On the scale of Internet outages, I agree, it's a whopper. Potentially affecting two dozens of African countries even just for 2 days is a big deal. It's still less important than several hundreds of thousands of people not having power for months. Which is reeeaaally bad. It blows my mind, actually, that such a thing is even possible on US territory.

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean this internet outage is worse than the Puerto Rico situation. That's why I said they're not comparable. The expanse of the internet outage is simply what makes it news worthy.

<comment><USER5> Also the novelty, it is a recent event. Puerto Rico's event has been happening for a while and is therefore less likely to be headline news.

<comment><USER6> It's still hard back in PR. They're showing Power generation and usage statistics. They're not showing how many houses/businesses are really up.

While things are better, they're not great.

My mom is leaving her house open and our family further away and people she know that they can show up and load the washer and dryer. My grandpa brought his washer from his house. So that's 2 washers, 1 dryer running almost all day long. She's spending almost $200 more a month in power than she used to.

So Percent of Power Generation or Percent of Power Usage != Percent of People connected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how vulnerable these under sea cables are. IE if there was a war, surely a few subs could snip a dozen cables and break the internet into pieces. Is that wrong?

<comment><USER8> Submarine cables have actually been tapped in the past, so cutting them should not be much of a challenge. Blind Man's Bluff [1] is a book about this kind of thing (and all sorts of weird things that involve intelligence operations performed with submarines). It is one of those books that would not work if it were fiction: too unrealistic.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42343.Blind_Man_s_Bluff](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42343.Blind_Man_s_Bluff)

<comment><USER9> I have a buddy who is working on a sub. He couldn't really say what he was doing with much detail, but recommended this book. He says it contains a lot of secret info which was acquired by the author basically becoming friends with lots of submariners and them over time mentioning things.

I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter)

it's been modified to do _something_ interesting, though whether that involves messing with the russian version of the SOSUS network, or tapping undersea fiber cables, is certainly classified at a very high level.

<comment><USER11> Kind of ironic considering Carter has a Nobel Peace Prize.

<comment><USER10> Not really - he was a submarine nuke engineer before going into politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The scale sounds big, but isn't this kind of thing routine? I've had a line across the Channel that kept getting cut. You'd get this series of emails (more like a dozen):

\- Investigating outage

\- Cable ship being provisioned

\- Cable ship sailing to site

\- Cable spliced

\- Back online

Pretty annoying when it happens, but it seemed to me like there was a whole infrastructure to deal with cable snaps.

<comment><USER7> Nice to have someone

> Cable spliced

How does that happen, is there a submersible that goes down or is the cable hoisted up? It doesn't sound trivial.

<comment><USER13> They haul it up: [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/200...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/2008/02/how_do_you_fix_an_undersea_cable.html)

<comment><USER14> An awesome and surprising answer to a question I didn't know I had... Thanks for sharing that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, this hit me! Really annoying, especially since it was over the Easter weekend so getting a backup provider was next to impossible. I ended up having to manage my phone's data plan.

</comment><comment><USER10> the business plans for how cables are financed have changed significantly since this was published, but the actual construction work is much the same.

[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

<comment><USER16> That URL is 404 atm.

Stephenson's "Mother Earth, Mother Board" is the longest article in Wired afaik. It is a masterpiece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those that care about this sort of thing on a regular basis, are there any services that publish cable cuts/large scale outage information? It'd be terribly useful find out about major internet events on a more consistent basis.

I see mentions of "Oracle Internet Intelligence" but not any sort of product behind it. One of their other blog entries mentions Akamai mPulse which is more performance based than outages (though it can be useful).

<comment><USER10> dyn is primarily concerned with the internet at OSI layer 3: they are tracking the number of prefixes announced, from which particular ASes, and the impact that cuts, political interference and other events have on the global BGP routing table.

they have considerably less of a view into what's going on at layer 1. What it looks like from their post is that if the cable is actually cut north of sierra leone, that a protection system was activated and traffic was re-routed via cape town, and then other, physically diverse routes which go from cape town to the global internet. (edit: possibly re-routed via physical diversity from Accra, Ghana or from Nigeria, both of which have a lot more unique cables connecting them to Portugal, Spain and France. Not necessarily a round trip all the way to Cape Town).

what is actually going on with a particular cable at layer 1 is considerably more opaque. telecoms consider some of this information to be proprietary or guarded information. if you're a carrier with an IRU in a cable or a leased 10 Gbps circuit from city N in africa to a POP in France or the UK you will likely get periodic NOC updates, and eventually an RFO.

other people who are not direct participants in the cable are not usually high on the priority list of the repair/maintenance operators.

one of the things that major carrier and ISPs care about is knowing the truly physical diversity of their routes in and out of every POP. Knowing where stuff is "collapsed" (eg: two cables running together in the same duct bank to get to a carrier POP such as one wilshire), and where it is not. this is in the realm of GIS data that is usually not made public unless you need to know.

<comment><USER18> This guy networks.

But yes, generally the actual physical location and routing of fiber optic cables is not made public by the companies that run it for a number of reasons. If you're leasing fiber you can request maps of the circuits from the company providing it, but there's generally no way to obtain this info outside of this type of business relationship.

Additionally, when purchasing a long-distance circuit, the provider selling you the circuit may not be the company that actually ran the cable. You might have to go several layers deeper until you get to whoever actually owns the fiber. For example, connections like MPLS VLLs present as a direct layer 2 connection but can pass through numerous other network providers' core networks underneath.

This all means that keeping track of layer 1 is pretty much impossible outside of the circuits you pay for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > While it may not have been completely problem-free over the last 5+ years, > online searches do not return any published reports of significant outages > caused by damage to the cable.

That's some solid journalism right there. "Well, I googled it and didn't see anything."

</comment><comment><USER20> About the internet the runs through the sea. [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/05/how-t...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last- mile/)

</comment><comment><USER21> The oceanic version of "back hoe fade"

</comment><comment><USER22> Of course, this cable cut has nothing to do with this:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russian- submarin...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russian-submarines- are-prowling-around-vital-undersea-cables-its-making-nato- nervous/2017/12/22/d4c1f3da-e5d0-11e7-927a-e72eac1e73b6_story.html)

<comment><USER10> it is usually fishing trawlers and anchors. not saying that russia and the usa don't have submarines with the capability to do so, but that everyone knows deep ocean submarine cables are vulnerable, and nobody wants to open up their own vulnerable infrastructure to retaliation.

<comment><USER22> hmmm...

[https://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/07/19/how-the-nsa-taps- un...](https://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/07/19/how-the-nsa-taps-undersea- fiber-optic-cables/)

<comment><USER10> I admin some long distance DWDM systems... Cutting a cable and inserting a MEMS optical switch into a path would introduce a noticeable degradation in signal level on the Rx end. Not saying it isn't possible, or that they can't make it look like minor cable damage from being hit by an anchor. The far more likely scenario is that the NSA has per-circuit taps at major cable landing stations (New Jersey/New York area, in Cornwall, etc). The GCHQ has a huge facility very close to where a number of submarine cables land in Cornwall.

Trying to tap and store the data from every wavelength in a 80-channel DWDM system is like drinking from a firehose of data.

<comment><USER22> Agreed on the difficulty: you would aim first at the low hanging fruit for placing the taps, the easiest being the onshoring spots.

But... for the MEMS, I consider this as one way only (public, probably crude/basic) and very possibly we'll learn of other techniques that are usable in say, 5, 10 or 20 years. That's what our taxes are financing in the end ;-) research on fundamental new ways to tap the neighbour/hostile country's fiber.

Lastly, I wouldn't sweat it too much on data/speed capacity but more on power needed to process and Y-split this datafeed to exfil. If in the future we got to learn that micro/nano-nuclear powerstations were tied to submarine interception points, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

The data/speed capacity is probably the less difficult part compared to seamless insertion, power and exfil system.

Now all these are just guesses based on what's public so far thanks to Snowden & al.

<comment><USER10> the glimmerglass MEMS product is not really intended for tapping anything. it's a good example of non classified technology. in real world use by telecoms and ISPs it's used as a light-path crossconnect builder for 1 to 1 paths between arbitrary fibers in a meet-me room... something like a labor/time saver for automated testing and lab setups, or to remove the labor and time involved in running a 15 meter two strand fiber crossconnect across a room between two fiber patch panels. If I recall correctly there's four or five companies that make very similar motorized-mirror optical crossconnect boxes similar to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a real shame Puerto Rico is plagued with corruption resulting in poor infrastructure.

<comment><USER24> ...and ungodly debt. The situation is massively worse than Hurricane Katrina ever was.

<comment><USER25> Less debt per capita than the US.

The sad thing is most of the debt was post the 1996 US tax change when the US Government (President Clinton + Republican Congress) decided to phase out the pharma/manufacturing special deal for Puerto Rico. The government of PR basically didn't do much to try to replace that industry until 2006 when it actually left, then started massive borrowing to make up for the shortfall (operating expenses, not capital spending), then 2008 financial problems happened and it kept compounding. The hurricane was comparatively minor.

PR people also engaged in protests bordering on terrorism (and some in outright terrorism) in the US or against US entities in the 20th century, and this colored the US-PR relationship. Most recently the Puerto Rico Vieques range protests caused the entire US military to basically pull out of PR, costing 6000+ jobs.

In 2012 they put in place a bunch of new tax credits for businesses and individuals, and enhanced them in 2017. It may be too little, too late, but combined with privatizing the power grid and a bunch of other capital investment, it's a better outlook today than it was in 2006. The ~$70B in debt is a big problem but it can be restructured; what matters the most is that the economy actually works so there is some surplus to service and pay down the debt.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry's co-founder. AMA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1gzhuj/im_ben_cohen_ben_jerrys_cofounder_and_head/

<comment><USER2> I never heard of such a tactic but I think it's genius.

Also the money will have to be re-printed. If enough citizens declare their message on the money then ignoring the message will be very costly.

Edit: Turns out to be legal!</comment>


Reverse Network Effects: Why Todays Social Networks Can Fail as They Grow Larger - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/03/reverse-network-effects-todays-social-networks-can-fail-grow-larger/ <comment><USER2> This partially explains Reddit's staying power. A popular subreddit that hits the point of degeneracy spawns new subreddits that aim to return to it's roots. No-one leaves the platform and the cycle continues.

<comment><USER3> I still say that the smartest thing we ever did at reddit was allow users to create their own subreddits and then decorate them how they choose. The second smartest thing was making text posts official.

Both of those features differentiated us from the competitors, and as you aptly point out, it has a nice side effect of keeping people on the platform who might otherwise leave (although that wasn't an intended consequence).

<comment><USER4> I always thought the smartest thing was keeping the frontpage unappealing enough to scare off anyone who hadn't already been told by a good friend it was worth checking out. It is sort of this pseudo invite-only filter.

<comment><USER5> I would love to see a "defluffing" filter for reddit. Just remove low effort comments, memes and low effort content such as images and short videos under 3 minutes. I'd like it to be easier to locate the comments and articles that are worth reading.

<comment><USER6> > _I 'd like it to be easier to locate the comments and articles that are > worth reading._

This is done by joining better subreddits, and/or adding them to multis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The writer (Sangeet Paul Choudary) doesn't mention Clay Shirky but as far as I can tell, Clay has written the most essays about web communities and scaling problems:

[http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html](http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html)

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/herecomese...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/herecomeseverybody/group_politics.html)

[https://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing- Organ...](https://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing- Organizations/dp/0143114948)

</comment><comment><USER8> This quote made me laugh -

"LinkedIn creates friction by preventing users from communicating with distant connections. This ensures that users do not receive unsolicited messages. This also allows LinkedIn to offer frictionless access (OpenMail) as a premium value proposition."

I'd say my inmail is 95% unsolicited messages from people who have bought access.

<comment><USER9> Then it's working as intended. The only unsolicited messages you get are ones that were paid for.

<comment><USER8> I read that phrase as meaning the degrees of connection feature is a way to stop users receiving unsolicited messages, something which contributes to the reverse network effects the author talks about.

Having the paid, 'message indiscriminately' feature undermines that. So if the intention is to reduce unsolicited messages to reduce spam then it doesn't work.

I think the intention actually is to reduce spam from those who don't pay for it. So yes, working as intended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The real social network is the one you create on your own, with people you wish to network with. And it has to be small by design, otherwise it doesn't work.

Now, it doesn't matter what you use to create such a network, be that email list, facebook group, whatsapp, or fill in the blank.

No company or platform have been able to "create" such a social network for you. The best they can do, is provide appropriate tools for you to create your network.

And as far as I can tell, email lists still serve that purpose, irrespective of the hype the platforms like Facebook, Slack etc may generate.

<comment><USER11> > No company or platform have been able to "create" such a social network for > you.

This is not quite true. For many people you go to facebook and your friends are already there ... you friend a few and others friend you.

> The best they can do, is provide appropriate tools for you to create your > network.

or perhaps they "provide appropriate tools for your friends to create your network"

<comment><USER10> > you go to facebook....

As I mentioned in my first comment, you create network with whom you wish to create network with. So it doesn't matter where your friends are (be that Facebook, or at home, just a phone call away); it is you who is going to reach out to them, to create a social network.

> provide appropriate tools for your friends to create your network

Each individual creates his or her own network. So if someone reaches you first, seeking your company to get you into their network, it is as same as you reaching them, asking them to join yours.

My ultimate point is, that the "platform" does not create a social network (for humans). The best they can do, is create bells, whistles and tools. Humans create their own social network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> YouTube long ago reached the failure point for me in delivering recommended content. Their recommendations frequently include things I've already watched, and the tangentially related items they recommend miss the salient point more often than not. I still use it, but only when searching for specific things.

<comment><USER13> A browser add-on to remove the right column from Facebook would be a win. Youtube apparently needs this as well. So do a lot of "social" sites. It's become a convention - that's where the crap links are.

<comment><USER14> You can do this with uBlock Origin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article makes a halfway decent attempt at the pitfalls of large-scale networks. However, the article doesn't come close (in my opinion) to making a case that this will lead them to "fail".

Facebook has become massively popular and is still growing. While I am not particularly active on it, I recognize this is atypical. Think about how many devs ise FB OAuth for example, as it is insanely prolific.

Networks _can_ fail at any time, but very few have after reaching escape velocity. Probably the most notable was AOL/IM and more recently the significant degradation of reddit. Networks must seriously mess up accross the 3 main identified categories, and not keep any pace with their users changing needs.

I would say the biggest threat to networks at scale, which oddly wasnt really discussed, is a failure to monetize or convert their network into value. Many people find twitter useful, for example, but it is rumored to be shopping itself around. If anything, the danger of networks is expecting data and adrevenue to be a sustainable business at scale. Obviously, it is a good problem to have 500million plus active users, but it is expensive and difficult. It is harder, one might inagine, to have 50m paying users.

<comment><USER16> > Facebook has become massively popular and is still growing. While I am not > particularly active on it, I recognize this is atypical. Think about how > many devs ise FB OAuth for example, as it is insanely prolific.

But are they real users? There are lots of reports of many "users" being bots or sharecroppers on click farms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's this social network that all of us readers have been using since birth and will continue to use for life: the city. It also delivers connections, content and clout. It keeps growing the userbase eventhough friction is huge, content quality mostly sucks and clout for new users is a far-fetched dream.

My point: maybe Facebook is the first online-city and is here forever.

Ps: so far I am the only e-hermit I know that has left FB. Yet, once my kids grow and join FB I may need to re-join to go _visit_ them.

<comment><USER18> The first 'online city' was definitely geocities. FB is quite enduring but not guaranteed to last, especially across generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Facebook is cool until your mom wants to friend you."

 _\-- My daughters 10 year old friend on the merits of social networking_

<comment><USER20> I'm amazed at the failure of Facebook in this regard.

They were in a unique position to make it work, and then failed.

With make it work, I mean that everybody moves in different circles, family, work, friends, hobbies, etc. And you need to have easy control over who sees what.

And Facebook has most of it, except that last bit of UI to make it work.

(Not that I like Facebook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, stating that the "value to a user increases as more users use it" seems incorrect for Skype and Facebook at least (not familiar with WhatsApp).

In fact, I'd say the more people around that you don't know or relate to is actually detrimental to community spirit.

<comment><USER22> That statement might lack nuance, but it's not wrong. Skype and Facebook only have value to me because my friends and family use them. The value to me increases as more friends use those platforms, and would decrease if my friends left.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but you can also get reverse network effects, e.g. young people not being active on Facebook because their parents are there (and denying a friend request would be awkward).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, it would be ok with me of some of those bigger networks die.

<comment><USER25> They will die only to be replaced by another Leviathan

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised that HN hasn't acknowledged the rise of musical.ly or live.ly. It's already the next big thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Investors like big markets, just like users chose the biggest platform.</comment>


Stripe Sessions 2019 – Tackling the Conversion Challenge with ML - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=upQiW3IUFAg <comment><AUTHOR> via [https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1188890271854915586?s=21](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1188890271854915586?s=21)</comment>


Rustler is a library for writing Erlang NIFs in safe Rust code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler <comment><USER2> I've been trying to decide between learning Elixir and learning Rust and Elixir had a narrow lead because of employment potential and my growing dissatisfaction with Docker (container orchestration contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Erlang).

Then I learned that the Achilles' heel of the BEAM VM is that if native code crashes it takes the whole thing with it, so people have been using Rust for native code (NIFs). So now the plan is Elixir _then_ Rust which is easing my FOMO quite a bit.

<comment><USER3> > Then I learned that the Achilles' heel of the BEAM VM is that if native code > crashes it takes the whole thing with it,

That's not really an 'Achilles heel' any more than most other languages that allow you to load C code that could segfault or - maybe even worse - get stuck in an infinite loop.

Indeed, the fact that BEAM focuses on and acknowledges this is an advantage for people trying to create robust systems. They've had workarounds in place for years, like running stuff in a separate system process.

<comment><USER4> This is actually the point of Rustler, rust can make guarantees about crashes and as such you can write safe low level code that never crashes the VM.

<comment><USER3> They ought to point out the notion of dirty NIFs a bit more prominently: [https://bgmarx.com/2018/08/15/using-dirty-schedulers-with- ru...](https://bgmarx.com/2018/08/15/using-dirty-schedulers-with-rustler/)

Not crashing is good, but not sufficient to play nicely with the BEAM scheduler. You need to also ensure you're not using up a lot of time in some long-running operation, unless it's a "dirty NIF".

<comment><USER5> Yes. I write NIFs all the time, and it isn't crashing that's the problem for me (I'm a good programmer!) -- it's taking too much time. We have a NIF that does CUDA computations and we have to make sure we break them up right. Rust won't help me on this. I need C++ for CUDA.

<comment><USER6> 1) I'm helping out with a project to bring some nice deep learning semantics to the BEAM. Can you share the CUDA nifs?

2) I'm considering taking up Zig as a better (well simpler, because my poor brain can't handle rust) safe language for NIFs. Do you think that zig might make a better fit as it can easily integrate C headers into itself?

3) are dirty nifs not ok?

<comment><USER5> We do plan to make the NIFs open source! Keep searching on github.

We use ours for signal processing, not "deep learning" so it may not be completely applicable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For an example of this library used in production: [https://blog.discordapp.com/using-rust-to-scale-elixir- for-1...](https://blog.discordapp.com/using-rust-to-scale-elixir- for-11-million-concurrent-users-c6f19fc029d3)

</comment><comment><USER8> Related: I've found that to run time-consuming number-crunching code from Elixir, the most convenient approach is to call a Python script via ports. It's super easy and can't crash your VM.

To convert from/to Erlang terms in your Python script, you can use a library like [https://github.com/skosch/python- erlastic](https://github.com/skosch/python-erlastic) (a fork I maintain, the original project was abandoned).

</comment><comment><USER3>
        fn add<'a>(env: Env<'a>, args: &[Term<'a>]) -> Result<Term<'a>, Error> {

As someone not familiar with Rust, I'm curious what all the symbols there mean. What it's doing is of course obvious, just wondering about the details.

<comment><USER9> `'a` is a "lifetime parameter"; syntactically, it's like a generic parameter, only it's use to denote how long a given reference stays alive. This is one of the important mechanisms that Rust uses to ensure memory safety without a GC. Every reference in Rust has a lifetime, but many of them can be elided.

`fn add<'a>` just means `define a function with a lifetime parameter called `'a`. This is analogous to if you defined a function as `fn add<T>` with a generic parameter T.

`Env<'a>` means that the type `Env` is parametrized by a lifetime. As before, this is similar to a type being parametrized by a generic parameter. This is usually done when a type contains a reference; Rust requires that references stored in a type must have explicit lifetimes specified. In this case, we're specifying that the lifetime that Env is parametrized over is the lifetime parameter that the function defines. This doesn't mean anything in particular on it's own, but when we use `'a` elsewhere in the signature, it means that the two places use the same lifetime, which is necessary to specify sometimes to clarify to the compiler that something is safe.

`&[Term<'a>]` is a slice of `Term<'a>` values; any type can go between the `[]`, e.g. `&[i32]` for a slice of 32-bit integers. A slice is a view into a sequence of values in memory. One of the things Rust does to aid the programmer in low-level optimizations is define separate types for sequences, namely slices, arrays, and vectors. A slice is a reference to another sequence type (which could be another slice); they're very cheap to make, but cannot be resized. An array is a value type (i.e. not a reference) and must be constant- sized. Finally, a `Vec` is resizable and heap-allocated, so it's expensive to create and copy (relative to slices).

Finally, `Result<Term<'a>, Error>` means that the function returns a `Result` (i.e. either a success or an error); if no error occurs, it will return a `Term<'a>; otherwise, it will return the type `Error` (which is generally custom-defined in a given package, but could be an instance of a standard library error like `std::io::Error`. This is roughly analogous to returning a `Term<'a>` and marking that an exception of type `Error` may be thrown.

One thing to note is that Rust's return values with lifetimes tend be tied to one of the parameters. In this case, the compiler's rules aren't sufficient to infer which of `Env` and `Term` to tie it to, so the programmer needs to disambiguate. The programmer chose to tie them all together, which presumably indicates that the output will reference both parameters in some way (although it's impossible to figure out more precisely how it will from the signature alone).

Lifetimes are definitely the hardest part of Rust in my opinion; the important thing to realize is that changing the lifetime parameters in a function will never change the user-visible semantics of the code. If the lifetimes are invalid, the compiler will error, and if they are valid but not optimal, then the worst case is that that memory might be kept around longer than needed. Unless you're programming something that is super performance critical or will be long running, you generally won't have huge issues if you fix the lifetime compiler errors with trial and error when they come up (which is much less often than you might expect due to the compiler being able to infer them most of the time).

<comment><USER10> > the important thing to realize is that changing the lifetime parameters in a > function will never change the user-visible semantics of the code

To reiterate: the lifetime parameters are used only to check the code for errors, they are discarded after that and don't affect the code generation. There's even an alternative compiler for Rust (mrustc) which completely ignores them and the rest of the borrow checking stuff, assuming the code is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know of an example of a rust library or function that's been turned into a NIF? Ideally available on GitHub both before and after the conversion?

Also, the "nerves" framework is basically 80% NIFS of embedded C code.

<comment><USER12> Nerves overall has a much smaller portion of C nifs than 80%, probably < 10%. Mainly for properly trapping and cleaning up subprocesses. There's some nifs too setup Linux specific sockets/ioctls. Still surprises me that almost every Linux kernel interface essentially overloads `ioctl`.

Not sure of an example. Really just wrap any rust function with appropriate code to convert Erlang terms to rust and back... There's a few elixir rustler howtos: [https://email@example.com/writing-rust-nifs-for- your-...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/writing-rust-nifs-for-your-elixir- code-with-the-rustler-package-d884a7c0dbe3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a professional Erlang developer I don't trust libraries that are heavy on NIFs, and Rust isn't going to change this. Key feature of BEAM VM is process preemption. It makes NIF development harder than it looks, and typically performance of NIF-based libraries looks best in synthetic benchmarks.</comment>