What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/decentralizing-everything-never-seems-to-work-2bb0461bd168 <comment><USER2> One thing I don't see argued very much is that lowering barriers to entry and providing more frictionless access usually inevitably leads to _more_ consolidation, not less. When there is very open access (e.g. "Anyone with a computer can spin up a website!") it means that users will choose services that even have small improvements or advantages, until those services build up so much market share that they inevitably have huge moats to competition. I've heard lots of comments along the lines of "I wish Amazon had more competition!", but then those same folks will choose a service if it's 10c cheaper or if a product can arrive an hour faster.

On the contrary, if you look at businesses where there is _not_ huge consolidation, it is often because there is "market unfriendly" regulation. E.g. there are many rich car dealers spread throughout the US because they've put in place so many anti-competitive regulations. While I'd love it if Tesla could sell direct everywhere, it also means a lot of this wealth that currently stays relatively local would get sucked up by a Silicon Valley corporation. Same thing goes for Realtors and the real estate business.

As a consumer I love more open markets, but I don't think we've fully addressed the consequences of how this leads to greater inequality and consolidation of services.

<comment><USER3> The car dealer model is extremely bad for consumers. It seems weird to herald it as some kind of achievement.

<comment><USER4> Enlightenment comes when you realize that being a consumer is not a 24/7 occupation.

The same people who consume also need to be either small business owners, freelancers, or employees. In fact without the money from that, they couldn't be consumers in the first place.

So what's bad for a consumer role can balance out or be very good if it helps keep more people making money as opposed to the "efficient single corporation with the minimal workforce" selling everything". Such corporations are how many small towns in America turned into wastelands...

You need middlemen, even if it's not the most efficient productivity wise, because it helps make more money go around, stay local, and keep communities livable.

The alternative is a future with a 20% working, a 0.01% corporate overlords with the top end having Bezos style riches, and 80% barely making ends meet, living in slums, and we're getting there...

<comment><USER5> Nearly every law in the US is a weaponized corporate action to prevent competition and secure market hold. That already happened. That is the root cause of the wealth disparity. You argue for more of the same. The government will not be able to fix problems it created. It will only make them worse.

<comment><USER6> This Friedman-like thinking and cute propaganda sound bytes just doesn't work tho

Chile during the Pinochet Regime is an excellent example of the Neoliberal system not delivering on the promises, as hn_throwaway_99 mentioned, economies of scale simply take over any benefit of low gov friction "free markets", and any small advantage over time becomes an overwhelming one. At which point it simply becomes a mathematical snowball effect, reducing or removing government barriers of entry won't make your particular gadget or doodad be able to compete in quality nor cost against one produced by a huge mega-conglomerate, if anything that mega-conglomerate will see if it can steal your idea or buy the patent (gov!) so it can improve its own. It is the same thing that happens in South Korea with the Chaebols

Anyhow, point being, the Kansas Experiment failed[1], Chilean Chicago Boys Experiment failed to deliver after ~17 years of authoritarian rule(When Pinochet left power country had a ~40% poverty rate)[2]

This leads to the simple idea that the less friction your system has to accrue wealth the higher wealth inequality will be, and then the goal should be to make it as easy as possible for everybody to make their own start ups, but to create as much friction as possible for said startups to gain too much economy of scale momentum. Where the threshold of where that line would be, be left to policy makers, and ideally something politically independent, akin to the central bank

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump- proposes-t...](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax- cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment)

[2] [https://imgur.com/BpwMlBy](https://imgur.com/BpwMlBy)

Pg17 United Nations Document [https://www.undp.org/content/dam/chile/docs/pobreza/undp_cl_...](https://www.undp.org/content/dam/chile/docs/pobreza/undp_cl_pobreza_cap_7_desiguypob.pdf)

<comment><USER7> But... Like... Economies of scale are literally what gave the capitalist West it's unthinkably high standard of living.

<comment><USER4> Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but the US doesn't have some "unthinkably high standard of living".

It's actually below most western European countries in most global metrics, including such basics as infant mortality. It trumps most in gun deaths and incarceration rates though, so there's that...

E.g.

[http://premieroffshore.com/usa-is-best-country-in-the- world/](http://premieroffshore.com/usa-is-best-country-in-the-world/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_United_States)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180924190303.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180924190303.htm)

[https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s- student...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students- internationally-math-science/)

And those countries have much less megacorps and "economies of scale"....

<comment><USER8> The World Bank[1] says in 2018, US GDP per capita was over $62K while the EU was under $37K. That seems like a huge difference to me and I don't think anybody really understands why it exists - American or not. It's salient not because it _disproves_ your judgment (and that of many others) that the US is a dysfunctional hellhole, but because it is what people are compelled to rationalize away and obviously don't succeed on their own terms.

[1][https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=EU- US)

<comment><USER6> >The World Bank[1] says in 2018, US GDP per capita was over $62K while the EU was under $37K

This is meaningless because it is not normalized, the EU has a higher purchasing power parity than the US which is what your average citizen truly cares about

[https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/few-see- eu-...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/few-see-eu-as-worlds- top-economic-power-despite-its-relative-might/)

Post-Hard Brexit it will probably change, EU PPP has already been damaged by the current Brexit scandals, and the last few years of increased US Dollar interest rate has increased relative US PPP, but because of income inequality those financial changes aren't really transferred to the everyday US citizen

Also, the difference in raw incomes is mostly based of the so called "Exorbitant Privilege" the US has for having its currency be the default world reserve currency, it is quite easy to understand when one comprehends that the US central bank basically "prints gold", and that like ~60% of all international transactions are done abroad but with the US dollar as transaction medium

<comment><USER8> "This is meaningless because it is not normalized, the EU has a higher purchasing power parity than the US"

I find it rather unbelievable that things are cheaper in Europe. A few years back, I used to work for a multinational, which opened an office there, and some people I knew went and at least one or two stayed, which lead me to idly consider the idea of being an expat, and my cursory research indicated salaries are lower _and_ the cost of living is higher.

<comment><USER6> I mean, from my perspective, just the fact that you had the chance to work abroad for a multinational would put you _way_ ahead of the wage the median US citizen has to survive on, so your experience is not representative of the median, let alone PPP stats

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Decentralization the way the crypto crowd wants can only happen if everyone has a server at home, some consumer-grade ARM box that you plug in and forget. It should be configured to work out of the box without the customer ever having to use the shell.

• your own Nextcloud server to replace Dropbox, GCal

• email server (replace Gmail)

• torrent seedbox (replace Netflix, Spotify, etc.)

• personal Bitcoin node (replace banking and reliance on centralized Bitcoin miners)

• ActivityPub/Mastodon (replace FB/TWTR)

If you want to message someone, you don't use WhatsApp--you talk directly to their self-hosted XMPP server. You verify your own monetary transactions on your Bitcoin node without having to rely on a third-party service. You and your friends participate in your own ActivityPub social network.

There are a lot of problems with this obviously. You lose out on the discoverability that centralized hubs give you. On centralized networks, you can find someone on the other side of the world just as easily as you could find your neighbor. A decentralized world brings you back in time to where you are more limited to the people in your physical area or the online niches you run in. Do you want to sacrifice globalization to have decentralization?

<comment><USER10> Fraud is probably a harder problem than discoverability. You can always exchange (maybe through an automated pairing) IPv6 addresses if nothing else. Supporting chargebacks, eliminating spam, blocking phishing, etc. if both harder and more important to a functioning culture.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. More broadly, decentralization is less equipped to counteract bad actors. You really are on your own, but isn't that what you asked for when you wanted to abandon Facebook/Google/government.

A decentralized network cannot be trusted by nature. Anyone can join and lie. Successful decentralized networks need some cryptographically-secure checksum to verify its inputs: BitTorrent uses SHA-1; Bitcoin uses Merkle trees. The network participants are just dumb mirrors to provide redundancy and compute. This solves the problem of the integrity of the information, but there is no such analogue for verifying the behavior of humans using the network. For example, you can download a valid BitTorrent file that is also a trojan (virus databases are centralized), or you could send Bitcoin to a Nigerian prince (third-party escrow layers are centralized). There is no algorithm to make sure what you're doing is ethical.

Imagine running reCAPTCHA as a decentralized service that runs on random people's machines. Impossible.

There is no way to flip a switch and change everything from centralized to decentralized without making major sacrifices. No one wants to go back to the dial-up era. Much of the lauded results of the internet are actually a result of its centralization.

<comment><USER11> Decentralized networks lend themselves to far better moderation than centralized. Private forums have always had better moderation than something like reddit. Well, not all, but you can ignore those ;)

<comment><USER8> Usenet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Decentralization is good when there is no need for coordination. We sometimes like to collaborate - but we don't like the constant requirement of mandatory coordination. Unfortunately technology connects us more and more and that means that coordination and un-coordination brings more and more externalities (positive and negative respectively).

Decentralization works in cases that are like we were back to the near empty savannah and where everybody could just go in his own direction. The Internet was once like that - but it is not any more, it is rather the reverse.

By the way, just a few hours ago I submitted to HN this article: [https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7230.html](https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7230.html) \- it is about these tensions between our freedom to do whatever we like and the need for coordination in a more and more connected world.

</comment><comment><USER13> >Such centralized government power, too, may be the only force capable of counteracting the centralized power of corporations that are less accountable to the people whose lives they affect. In ways like this, most effective forms of decentralization actually imply some form of balance between centralized and decentralized power.

A previous HN post said it best: what decentralists want is to reclaim power from larger organizations—power over their data and identity, power to switch to a competitor's client or build their own, etc. It's similar to the right- to-repair movement that way.

The problem is that governments, corporations—groups really—can always be more powerful than an individual. That makes it advantageous to join one against your fellow individual. Plus once you pay your initiation fee to the group (usually giving up some autonomy), the marginal cost to you for additional members is often very low, or may even be outweighed by the marginal benefits, so you'll stay and the group aggregates members.

Perhaps a field of individuals constantly vigilant could band together to sunder any proto-group before it gains traction (and then they'd have to disband themselves before becoming the target). Though I imagine that would be a constant arms race to detect group formation, and we've all see how apathetic people are toward even flagrant digital malpractice.

Or maybe the government decrees that no company can have more than 10% market share. Bring on the conglomerates and umbrella corps.

Perhaps resources can't be efficiently decentralized, only stateless protocols. Is that alone worth the effort? There would still be vendor lock- in.

All I know is I want to wrest more power from corporations than I currently have over my digital experience without losing access to the resources they cloister.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author of the article wrote a book 'Everything for Everyone' that looks interesting. It is about organizing coops as a push back against the gig economy or large corporations.

My first job was at what was essentially a huge coop: the 100% employee owned defense contractor SAIC. SAIC spoiled me for all other jobs I had because there was a good vibe and efficiency that came with all employees having a strong motivation for the long term success of the company. After I left SAIC, it eventually became a public company and changed its name to Leidos.

<comment><USER15> I worked for SAIC before and after the Leidos split. It may have been a 100% employee-owned "coop", but it was clear that some employees got more out of the success than others. And it was always a government contractor like all of the other contractors out there.

<comment><USER8> I'd be curious to hear what Sun Hydraulics or King Arthur Flour were like from someone who worked there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), for instance, has been a > critical governance body for the Web's technical standards, enabling similar > user experience across servers and browsers_

I'm all for real standards, and believe W3C has acted in good faith, but in what shape is W3C's standardization process now (hint: they cancelled the HTML 5.3 and SVG 2 spec) and where has it lead us?

<comment><USER17> You know _why_ they cancelled HTML 5.3, right? A different group had (what the world at least concluded was) better ideas for HTML5, took the spec, declared it "living" rather than versioned, and declared itself the authority on HTML. For a while that meant we had _two_ HTML 5 specs, at odds with each other, and eventually W3C had no choice but to acknowledge their coup had succeeded (for better or for worse) because the world ended up siding with WhatWG instead of W3C.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Transition_of_HTML_Public...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Transition_of_HTML_Publication_to_WHATWG)

<comment><USER16> WHATWG formed as an initiative of browser vendors to collaborate on new browser functionality and other stuff that needed coordination, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem now is this has led the web stack to be defined by a closed club with fewer and fewer members, with incentives not necessarily aligned with users.

But the web isn't just a browser vendor's gamble; it's used for vital communication and documentation in business, education, administration, media, science, law, medicine, etc. If we want to depend on the web (and spend billions on it), then there ought to be some representation and participation, since there clearly is public interest, and possibly funding. Maybe people looked at W3C to organize these interests, but indeed W3C has failed this expectation by statue.

What they're doing instead is publishing redacted WHATWG snapshots (and have announced to not even do any redaction in the future). In other words, they're publishing work-in-progress collaborative documents without significant contributions and editorial. Having a point of reference is still something I guess (I'm even basing my HTML 5.x SGML DTDs on W3C's snapshots [1]) but not advancing the interest of web users, which W3C should have made their goal.

[1]: [http://sgmljs.net/docs/html52.html](http://sgmljs.net/docs/html52.html)

<comment><USER17> This seems a false, or at least uninformed, statement. WhatWG is just as closed as W3C was: the discussions are public, and anyone can contribute to them. Is there a hurdle that you need to overcome to show you actually care enough before you're allowed to participate? Sure. But it's the kind of hurdle that anyone with an email address can overcome. You're not excluded just because you don't work for "a browser vendor".

Also, it feels like you're confusing the end user with the developers. Business, education, admininstration, media, science, law, medicine, etc. are all fields that rely on the web _through_ browsers and browser components, made by browser vendors. Whether that's IE6, or WebKit, or Electron, or Android Webview. So yes: the browser vendors are absolutely the people primarily pulling the strings, and pushing the envelope, which makes a whole lot of sense: it's their collective product they're curating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are many market participants that push against decentralization at all cost (e.g. one of the reasons Google shut down Google Reader is that RSS does not fit in their business model). Decentralization is always bad news for those who like to control things, own present centralized infrastructure or use gate keeping as a measure to make money.

So just because decentralization is constantly under attack doesn't mean it's bad or even that it "doesn't work" as the author claims. If it works or not can be determined by cryptologists and mathematicians on a case by case basis and not by some "assistant professor of Media Studies" who has actually zero authority in this field.

Of course the protocols that are required to make decentralization possible need to be centralized. But that is a stupid argument. The laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe. That doesn't mean the universe is centralized.

</comment><comment><USER19> Decentralization and devolution are often confused. For instance, in the US Civil War, the splintering could be described as devolution. But it certainly wasn't decentralizing power to the slaves. Which side was the side of "decentralization?" It's almost a meaningless question, unless being very well defined.

Obviously, the Pareto Principle is usually at work, even if protocols are decentralized by design. Email is decentralized by design, but centralized in practice.

Even if one were to capture political control and attempt to redesign governance to be decentralized, there would still be a type of natural selection process for systems which seek to reproduce and expand, by all possible means including violence.

And decentralization and non-violence are also different, as well. Decentralized collective violence is common.

<comment><USER20> >For instance, in the US Civil War, the splintering could be described as devolution. But it certainly wasn't decentralizing power to the slaves.

it was decentralizing in the sense that secession was meant to grant political authority to local elites. 'devolution' just sounds like a moral judgment, which while fair is not very useful for these purposes.

<comment><USER21> In what way does it sound like a moral judgement?

<comment><USER20> devolution implies a return to a previous, lower level of sophistication. since the US was not previously split into two regional political structures, it's not an accurate descriptor, so it sounds more like an attack on the legitimacy of such an order. critiques of the legitimacy of the confederacy are typically moral in nature.

<comment><USER21> I thought it just meant to delegate power from a higher level of government to more local governments. I don't recall ever seeing it used to imply any sort of backward movement.

<comment><USER20> ha! you're right, i'd never come across the term and thought it was simply being used as the inverse of evolution. i rescind.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough. This stupid language can be confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux Decentralisation will never happen on a scale that will affect significant web traffic.

However, there is another model for web apps, not purely decentralised, but a practical option where traffic is not funnelled through a small number of big players. Let's call it the WordPress model.

Consider the following: WordPress is an example of a profitable open source app that can easily be installed on countless shared hosting platforms or on a VPS. It's easy to switch hosting providers when you want to (rather than be locked into one provider). You can take your data with you when you switch. The popularity of WordPress means that one-click installs are widespread. Many providers also offer a 'managed' service where they take care of back-up and updates. But crucially you're still not tied to a single provider.

Now imagine if all web apps were as easy to install on the server via a one- click installation like WordPress. Unfortunately, there is no common standard or API for software installation on the server side, and this lack of an easy installation process for everyone severely limits self-hosting websites and apps.

Many developers think deploying a server-side web app is a non-issue, or they erroneously think that installing Cloudron/providing Docker instances/typing command line instructions are all "easy". Have you seen the server deployment instructions for "web friendly" languages like Ruby and Python? They're ludicrously complicated. Developers are completely blind to the complexity and see nothing wrong in such installation procedures.

The result is ever-growing centralised software through the SaaS model which beats the self-hosting alternative in simplicity every single time. Imagine if your local desktop apps were completely controlled, tracked and even terminated remotely by one provider - don't like the though of that? Yet, that is exactly what the centralised Saas model enables and nobody blinks an eye.

I wish there was some momentum or traction in making server-side web app installation as universally simple as a one-click WordPress install for all for all web apps. It would unlock countless opportunities for developers to reach more users or customers. I'm not one for conspiracies, but I wonder sometimes if developers actually prefer the complexity of server-side installation because it makes selling a SaaS solution much more attractive over the ludicrously complicated self-hosting option.

<comment><USER22> I find the steps I have to go through to install stuff that I expect thousands of other people must be installing at the same time on a cloud service ridiculously complicated. The same with most tasks.

I do however find them doable and maybe also a kind of job security for that reason. But I don't prefer them. I want to build stuff, not do a bunch of prep work every time I want to build stuff.

<comment><USER23> Decentralisation isn't a collection of technology. Rather, it's a set of principles or tenets. It's above all the by-product of the choices one makes.

Sure, you can install a gazillion packages, use serverless, static site generators, SaaS platforms, install CMS x, y or z.

But then again, you can still use a simple FTP program, copy HTML files over TCP/IP to a remote server with a process running in the background that listens for incoming HTTP requests. Your browser will still be able to from the HTML it receives via a HTTP response. In fact, you don't need a browser. Curl or Telnet will yield a string of text characters any human can read.

Those basic protocols still exist after 30 years and underpin the Web. Nothing changed fundamentally, when you dig deep.

As such, you could lease a shared hosting somewhere and put up your own set of HTML pages and slap a DNS domain to the IP of the server. Boom. Congratulations. You own a website now.

Decentralisation - at it's core - is about ownership. If you put content and data on a host, who owns that? You or the owner of the host? This is where the entire discussion becomes a legal debate.

The big shift of the past decade is that social media offer easy access to centralised hosts they own. This has caused a massive influx of users to publish stuff on hosts that are owned by others.

Meanwhile, there's this perception that you need a gazillion tools to build a website. That you need deep knowledge of languages and such to publish HTML formatted content on a host you own.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Unless you are a business, or an organisation and you need to manage tons HTML formatted content, you can do away with a text editor, basic HTML and shared hosting you pay a tuppence for.

The only reason why things got complex because of business reasons.

<comment><USER24> _> Decentralisation - at it's core - is about ownership. If you put content and data on a host, who owns that? You or the owner of the host? This is where the entire discussion becomes a legal debate._

Your analysis that _" ownership of data"_ being the core tenet of decentralization is incorrect. Consider the 3 major examples of centralization complaints:

\- Youtube is too centralized. A decentralized alternative is PeerTube. Is this about _ownership_? No because Youtube's TOS specifically says the uploader to Youtube _retains ownership_ of the content.[1]

\- Twitter is too centralized. A decentralized alternative is Mastodon. But it's not about ownership of data. The Twitter TOS says the user retains copyright ownership of the tweets.[2]

\- Facebook is too centralized. But again, the various decentralized alternatives do not change the terms of content ownership. Facebook TOS says the user keeps ownership.[3]

What the 3 examples show is that _data ownership_ isn't the issue. The real issues of centralized services are _power_ and _audience reach_.

If a musician writes an original song and films an music video, and then uploads it to Youtube, the musician retains the data ownership and the intellectual copyrights. Because _intellectual property ownership_ wasn't transferred, Youtube can be seen as a glorified content-delivery-network cache. (And there's the rub... that so-called "cdn" of Youtube has attracted a billion eyeballs.) That means there are different issues that motivates decentralisation; e.g. the _power_ to filter/rank/recommend/censor/demonetize videos. The concentration of _massive audience reach_ in Youtube's centralized service that makes the musician's decision to host his music video on his own home server _irrelevant_.

I think those 3 examples should trigger a rethink of your mental framework that led you to conclude data ownership is the main issue.

[1] excerpt from [https://www.youtube.com/t/terms](https://www.youtube.com/t/terms) : _6.C - For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non- exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, [...]_

[2] excerpt from [https://twitter.com/en/tos](https://twitter.com/en/tos) : _You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What's yours is yours — you own your Content (and your incorporated audio, photos and videos are considered part of the Content). By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, [...]_

[3] excerpt from [https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms) : _" You own the intellectual property rights (things like copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on Facebook and the other Facebook Company Products you use. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, to provide our services we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a 'license') to use this content. This is solely for the purposes of providing and improving our Products and services as described in Section 1 above. Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub- licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, [...]_

<comment><USER25> I disagree with your assertion that this is not about ownership.

Each of those TOS agreements has the same canned phrase:

[...] you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free [...]

This is a weasel clause. "Yeah, you retain ownership, but you must also give us a license. But you still own it!"

Rightttttttttttt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been reading Robert Anton Wilson this morning, so I'm all hopped up on conspiracy theory (what do you call it when the conspiracies are real?)

Anyhow, the system is "works as intended", in re: mass automation of society.

You want decentralization because you want power.

Let me tell you a story about power and decentralization:

Many years ago a friend of mine an I were rambling in the Mission district (of SF) late at night. He said, "Hey, check this out." and made a kind of bird call. It was answered from several places within a few blocks around us, and we could hear other echoes further out as the call propagated. "Those are the people in the gangs."

Most of us just aren't that motivated.

"the history of the world is the history of warfare between secret societies" ~Ishmael Reed

<comment><USER27> > _Anyhow, the system is "works as intended", in re: mass automation of > society._

Wait, what is the idea that "the system has an intent" based on?

<comment><USER26> That's actually several interesting questions.

One aspect is the existential angst of the species, i.e. "Which is worse? That the world is ruled by the Iluminati. or that it isn't?" Is there a God or do we really have to do the job ourselves? Are we the victims of chance in an uncaring universe, and the sweep of progress merely an illusion? Or are we in fact the self-creating Telos of a sentient Universe?

Does Humanity have a Soul? If not, can we _Create_ one?

\- - - -

Even if we suppose that "the system" is ruled by an elite (which is arguably true†) can we suppose that the elite is unified and harmonious in their intent? Or are we caught up in "warfare between secret societies" after all? Certainly the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 can't be part of any sane plan, can it?

\- - - -

In one of the Subgenius books there's a story about how humanity is actually a biological weapon of the anaerobic microbes used in their ancient war with the oxygen-breathers, and the current climate crisis is their gambit, we're doing our jobs.

\- - - -

All I'm really saying is that both "system" and "intent" are open-ended terms...

"What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698)

\- - - -

But yeah, the Internet et. al. are basically working in the way that the elite want them to to keep control of the masses, however imperfectly. Watch Hong Kong and you can see "the system" adapt in near-real-time. The next episode is happening _right now_.

† "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens"

> Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups > representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. > government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups > have little or no independent influence.

[https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > decentralization never seems to work

Not true, and there is many technologies, both new and established, which are fundamentally decentralized. Bittorrent is the first example that springs to mind. Cryptocurrencies are another example, etc.

<comment><USER29> BitTorrent the protocol is decentralized but again when one of the largest torrent sites goes down it shows. That the protocol was decentralized didn't make the usage pattern decentralized because it's so convenient with centralization. And the same again with git: when github goes down we see that a distributed version control protocol isn't very different from a centralized one if we all use centralized servers and usage patterns (which almost everyone does).

<comment><USER30> On the github point, agree that I've never come across a non centralised workflow with git - what are the decentralised git workflows?

The issues involved with everyone pulling from everyone, dealing with merge conflicts, etc in a distributed way with no agreed upon, central, source of truth seems fairly implausible for any reasonably sized team but I'd love to know if there are gitflow style workflows for this that make it easier than it first appears.

<comment><USER31> > I've never come across a non centralised workflow with git

Even in centralized workflows, the decentralized core of Git makes things better.

You've never had a central repository go down and then pulled from the person sitting next to you? At the last organization I worked with, this happened multiple times. And when Microsoft bought Github and a bunch of people panicked, a lot of them were able to move to Gitlab (even without deleting their Github repos) specifically because the technology behind Git allowed you to add multiple remotes.

The article makes the point:

> No system is simply decentralized, full-stop. We shouldn't expect any to be.

Git is the same way. Even with Linux, where patches are sent around using Email and there is no central repository that has every in-progress effort, there's still ultimately one person signing off on the final release. But that doesn't mean that there aren't decentralized _parts_ of Git that are very, very useful, specifically because they are decentralized or because they allow you to fall back to decentralized workflows when necessary.

One of the things this article is getting at is that people treat decentralized as a binary state -- you either have one source of truth that coordinates everything, or you have complete chaos. Most decentralized systems are in the middle; they _allow_ centralization, but also support fallbacks for when that centralization fails.

Git's branch strategy is another good example of this. Most Git systems use a master branch. But the value of branching is that you _can_ have diverging code states that aren't yet centralized into a single location. You can fork off of master and have a completely parallel codebase, if for some reason you need to. You can have your release in a decentralized state for a week, where multiple people are working on separate branches and there is no single branch that has everyone's changes, and then you can re-centralize everything to master or a staging once you feel comfortable with the features you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have read "everything for everyone" and agree on some of the major points it and this article raises. I do think that there might be a bit of context missing from this thread and the article in general.

I think someone pointed out that "decentralization" is different from "democratization" and I would wholeheartedly agree. I think of both as independent variables which can be tuned in the construction of any organizational structure. Also to me the idea that democracy, as it pertains to business structures, should also be something that is tunable.

Projects like DAO's are great examples if highly distributed yet fairly undemocratic structures. As the core team creating them (and often monetizing them) do not nessecarily share power in the direction of the project. I am not advocating for or against that but just pointing it out.

But as history has shown there are real tradeoffs when you try and reach scale (in whatever metric) when you centralize democracy. It's my view that there is a sweet spot (and serious upside) for introducing decentralization and democratization into most projects, but it all depends on the use case. As a few examples take a look at the success of projects like stocksy.com (royalty based stock images company owned by the contributors), smart.coop (freelancers cooperative that handles contracts and billing). And of course Mondragon ([https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/](https://www.mondragon- corporation.com/)) which takes democracy in the workplace to an industrial scale.

At my current company ([https://www.staffing.coop](https://www.staffing.coop) and [https://www.tribeworks.io](https://www.tribeworks.io)) we decided to form as a cooperative (instead of using a DAO) because it better fit our current needs. But we don't see this as a static choice.

</comment><comment><USER33> It seems we're getting bogged down by conflating decentralization with democratization. Email is certainly decentralized but its not something every layperson can run and maintain.

<comment><USER34> Even true democratization generally still only serves to multiply starting advantages unfortunately.

Give a laptop to a 12 y/o upper middle class kid in a healthy home, and you could make the next Zuckerberg. Give one to a poor kid in the ghetto with a violent home life, and you make get some improvements, but the net effect will be widening inequality.

This is why redistributive policies are always going to be required. Democratizing the means of production, or even capital ownership itself, is never enough.

<comment><USER35> > Give a laptop to a 12 y/o upper middle class kid in a healthy home, and you > could make the next Zuckerberg. Give one to a poor kid in the ghetto with a > violent home life, and you make get some improvements, but the net effect > will be widening inequality.

I'm not quite sure I get your example: so if you give it to the former you're more likely to produce closer to the extremely rich man with the socially corrosive advertising platform that has clear, real, marked destructive effects on entire country's political structures, the one that vapourised entire media businesses due to misinterpreted analytics, etc etc. The net negative effect of the hypothetical latter seems vastly less?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > You lose out on the discoverability that centralized hubs give you.

Obviously you can have decentralized services that address this important 'presence' issue.

IMO the issue is that we have conflated the 'functional goal' with 'architecture'. The 'goal', for me at least, is public information systems that protect civil rights and resist the rise of tyranny. That goal, after thinking about this space for the past 25 years, can be served with a combination of centralized and decentralized services, and a mix of grassroots and corporate players.

To get there, we need (a) societal consensus that privacy in fact matters quite a lot to, and is a bedrock of, our civilization, and (b) [the recognition that] ideological bias is a deadly sin for a system architect.

<comment><USER37> I was going to say something similar, or at least related.

Centralization processes can occur on a decentralized architecture, but I don't think that means the decentralized architecture has failed. I think people need to distinguish decentralization as a network system state, and decentralization as an affordance. Centralized structures on a decentralized protocol can reorganize themselves, but if you build the system as centralized, it's much harder, if not impossible, barring some implicit decentralized aspect of the architecture.

The question isn't so much "do decentralized systems end up as centralized," it is "can a disrupted decentralized system reorganize itself?"

It's obviously relevant to your point in that the reason for decentralized architectures, as you say, is to maintain communication in the presence of threats, especially to free exchange of information. It's not necessarily to maintain a given network structure state.

I couldn't care less if a handful of servers become dominant on Mastodon or IPFS or whatever, if it's easy to change which handful of servers they are should they start to become compromised in some way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "The apparently free, participatory open-source software communities have frequently depended on the charismatic and arbitrary authority of a "benevolent dictator for life," from Linus Torvalds of Linux (who is not always so benevolent) to Guido van Rossum of Python"

GRAB. FORK. It's all there. Nothing stops you. Sleepless nights, stay on your toes.

Nothing stops people from complaining either. And if you fork, people who didn't will begin complaining about you.

<comment><USER39> Are you arguing about the centralized role Linus or Guido have? I think what you point out, the lack of a formal requirement for centralization just makes the point that centralization emerges from these networks anyways a bit stronger. And hence the point that we need to build accountability (git annotate for source) into the new systems is strengthened.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Didn't Guido just recently remove himself as a central authority?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm surprised IPFS hasn't been mentioned. It's a great example of compromise. IPNS tries to replace DNS but it's slow so the compromised and allowed DNSLink. It's a great application of decentralization. I want some bits that hash to X and I don't care who gives them to me.

<comment><USER27> Nobody has ever been able to describe the use case for IPFS in simple terms, much less how discoverability works in that environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> We already have a decentralized/federated social network with millions (probably billions) of users. It's called email, and it works pretty well-- though not perfect, email illustrates that there's nothing intrinsically impossible about such systems.

<comment><USER42> Messaging systems (like emails) and social networks are not the same thing. Maybe mailing lists would be closer, but those are actually centralised.

<comment><USER41> They're not centralized in the way Facebook is, since your mailing lists may come from a wide variety of sources running separate servers & software.

Also: messaging is actually a very important part of social media companies' strategy (e.g. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.).

<comment><USER42> Messaging is an important part and most social networks contain messaging. But messaging on its own is not a social network. (no contact discovery, subscription to events, persistent connection with other users)

<comment><USER41> Yes! Which is why we need other decentralized social networks that can follow email's route to success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It seems to be workin' well enough for the folks over at mastodon.social, JS.

I've never really been a huge fan of twitter, and I got rid of failbook years ago, but masto fills the void without all the pain of the aforementioned other 'platforms'.

</comment><comment><USER27> My fantasy solution to all this is to separate PII from functionality.

You would have profile providers and interaction providers, and any of us would subscribe ourselves into the services we want to use, disconnecting whenever we didn't want to use e.g. Twitter or wanted to take a break. Within these joins, a person could control which of their PII they want to allow the service to have access to. You could run your own PII provider or join/pay for someone else to run it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Democracy is decentralisation. It doesn't 'work'. It's what Churchill called 'the worst form of government'. Except for all the others. Its most egregious failure is that it often fails to undermine things that can and do subvert it. Decentralisation is like a Yin-Yang kind of thing, constantly challenged by its nemesis 'the forces of centralisation'. Ultimately decentralisation, just like democracy, is more resilient over time. At any one time, centralised systems can potentially bring more resources to bear upon a problem more quickly. But because decentralised systems can be designed to 'temporarily centralise' this 'emergency response capability shortfall of decentralised systems' is just a design problem. It turns out that it is also probably the most serious challenge to decentralisation. But because resilience, in the light of the challenges we currently face, is something we are all committing ourselves to tackling, expect 'designing decentralised systems' to stay at the top of the process design agenda for the forseeable future, notwithstanding any yet-to-be-experienced shortcomings and failings of decentralised systems that appear on the horizon.

<comment><USER45> Democracy is just decentralized decision making. And even that decision making is incredibly low level, and information of what people want gets mostly lost in the process.

You have very heavily centralized bureaucratic state makes all the choice and the majority of people making those choices are not elected.

Democracy has some decentralized elements, but its far, far, far away from what we would consider a decentralized system of government.

In an old 10th town in the middle east you might have 4 different legal systems for different communities, and then special extra layer of law and common practice for issues between these community (different for each set). Plus different higher imperial laws and so on. Each of these system had a variety of different systems of enforcement and financing. Non-centralized provision of every-thing we now call a public-service.

Democracies can and will bring 'more resources' to a war when the population is mostly behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's an advertisement for a book. Headline: "X never works" Article: "This is not an indictment of X" Goes on to list numerous examples of X working.

</comment><comment><USER47> The author seems to be too focused on cryptocurrency and perhaps unaware of a lot of successfully decentralized protocols such as DAT, Scuttlebutt, GUN and IPFS.

<comment><USER48> Cryptocurrencies are interesting (in the context of this essay/discussion) because they're a well-known instance of a technology aimed at decentralisation, for a specific reason (to eliminate reliance on trust in the monetary system), which has to some extent succeeded, and in numerous others, failed.

The points made generally (not limited to cryptocurrencies) are very well made. They parallel thinking I and others have been arriving at independently in recent years, after long swallowing the decentralised, crowdsourced, open source, distributed, mantra.

I won't say that that's failed _entirely_. But it's definitely failed to deliver what it promised.

DAT, Scuttlebutt, GUN, and IPFS have negligible take-up so far as I'm aware, and I keep reasonable tabs on the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> TLDR: Centralization (winner takes all) is the result of preferential attachment. Some kind of downward pressure is required to counterbalance, counteract.

<comment><USER50> I dug into this topic in this talk in 2017. 'Moving Past the Scaling Myth' The core observation is that minimal spanning trees have less edge cost than fully connected graph - if you pay for the difference you can have decentralization.

Centralization is a cost reduction maneuver.

[https://youtu.be/MgbmGQVa4wc?t=700](https://youtu.be/MgbmGQVa4wc?t=700)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Missing in the critique: how can an important decentralized system survive within capitalism? Most important infrastructure is bought by large market participants and exploited maximally to make money. Even the internet was turned from an aggressively non-commercial entity into one that is aggressively commercial.

</comment><comment><USER52> Idk what the author is talking about.

Bittorrent was 40% of the world's traffic, more than Google's at that point!

And we, my decentralized protocol, just grew from 2M to 15M monthly active users. ( [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) )

It seems to be working.

<comment><USER33> Torrent links are centralized in trackers and you'd see a single tracker site dominate if the legal atmosphere allowed for it.

And honestly, it doesn't work as well. If you don't care about decentralization for decentralization sake its not ideal. Streaming websites don't use it. Netflix doesn't torrent a video to you.

<comment><USER27> Can't collections of tracker links themselves be federated?

<comment><USER33> Sure they could but the point is its a lot easier to just centralize.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


More than just snippets. Deploy example code to Dropbox with HelloJS - <AUTHOR> http://hellojs.backliftapp.com

<comment><USER2> The parent site backliftapp.com looks really interesting, like Parse for front-end devs.

<comment><USER3> I don't Parse well enough to know if the analogy holds, but yeah, I agree that Backflip looks really interesting: Click a button, sync stuff to my local disk, hack at the local files, See the changes automatically at a temporary url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Initially I thought that the same sort of thing can be accomplished with something like JsFiddle, but then I realized that for more complex libraries or frameworks that require multiple files this would be much better.

<comment><USER5> Plunker is another good alternative for multi-file code: <http://plnkr.co/></comment></comment>


Investors with $34T demand urgent climate change action - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-climatechange-investment-letter-exclu/exclusive-investors-with-34-trillion-demand-urgent-climate-change-action-idUKKCN1TQ31S <comment><USER2> If $34T can't buy enough politicians to stop coal and subsidies and create carbon taxes, we're toast.

<comment><USER3> Why don't those investors just buy up the coal companies and shut them down? Put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.</comment></comment>


Porting LibreOffice to GTK3 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.skynet.ie/~caolan/guadec2015/GUADEC-2015-GTK3.pdf <comment><USER2> Honestly I would like to know what the overhead is in continually maintaining a custom cross platform UI toolkit for one application is versus just rewriting the UI using an existing framework like Qt. It seems like an awful lot of effort must be duplicated here.

<comment> TD-Linux Libreoffice looks far more native than Qt does on Windows or Mac IMHO. So it still seems to be worth it.

<comment><USER3> LibreOffice looks fine on Windows, but anything but native on Mac.

Honestly I kind of wonder why nobody has written a library that acts as a thin layer around and abstraction of native UI toolkits (AppKit, .NET, GTK+, etc) instead of a monolithic do-most-things-or-everything-yourself sort of approach like Qt and GTK take. It'd prioritize feeling native over being consistent and would only write in new functionality to fill in platform gaps (for instance, .NET has no notion of an OS X/AppKit popover, so the .NET portion would have a custom popover implementation that was functionally equivalent yet adherent to typical Windows UI conventions).

<comment><USER4> > I kind of wonder why nobody has written a library that acts as a thin layer > around and abstraction of native UI toolkits

That's what I'm working on. Targeting C++, calling it hiro. So far, I have Windows, GTK, Qt and a dormant Cocoa layer. It truly uses native widgets (although I had no choice but to use custom draw on the Windows ListView), it compiles to ~50-100KB, it uses a fully shared memory model (reference counted) so you never have to call new or delete on anything, uses C++11 so you can bind lambda callbacks, and it uses UTF-8 ubiquitously, even on Windows. So no more L"foo" strings and W function variants.

I've been working on it for several years now, but it's still somewhat in flux. I hope to get a stable API version along with documentation out this year. If anyone really wants to see it right now, take a look at higan and the source to its UI.

<comment><USER5> I actually downloaded and tried it out as a test. It worked pretty well (for the window and button I created). Keep up the good work! Modern C++ makes a lot of old things new again. Also, although you probably know of it, look up fltk, it was originally written with same goals (and it accomplished them) albeit in C.

<comment><USER4> Neat, thank you for trying it! It's in a bad state right now with zero examples/documentation. Plus the move to shared ownership was done this year, and has required massive rewrites (Windows/GTK finished, Qt underway, Cocoa not started.)

(I can't begin to express how unbelievably difficult it was to force a fully shared ownership model onto Windows, GTK, Qt, etc. That took several months of effort and is _really_ complex behind the scenes.)

So I don't have much to show off, but I'd really like to get feedback on making the API cleaner and more consistent; as once a stable 1.x series is released, we'll be stuck with any poor choices that were missed for a long time.

I'll try and finish the Qt port, get some basic documentation up, and share it on HN then as a 0.x beta release.

FLTK definitely seems interesting, but seems to use its own widgets instead of being a wrapper around the native platform ones. This has pros (consistency and flexibility) and cons (they stand out as looking non-native.)

I've strongly considered a raster-based backend to my toolkit as well (for things like running apps directly on a framebuffer, or what have you), but have held off so far because it's undoubtedly a massive undertaking. Even if I do go this route, I'll surely write a hiro wrapper for this as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also this nice summary by Michael Meeks of under-the-hood changes in LibreOffice 5.0: [https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under- the-...](https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the- hood-5-0.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm pondering making a port of LibreOffice without the Java dependency (to avoid the runtime and language model overhead) with my own custom user interface/UI framework.

From this I guess I need to take and port SalInstance and write my frontend for it.

<comment><USER8> Just build with --without-java

<comment><USER7> Thanks, now the only question is how hard will it be to use my own UI framework instead of VCL (to avoid complexity and overhead)?

<comment> TD-Linux I feel like if you have to ask this question, the answer is "too hard".

<comment><USER7> Because building a frontend and other missing components from scratch is hard or because the backend is tied too closely with VCL?

<comment> TD-Linux Just because writing a whole new GUI would be a huge undertaking.

I mean, if you need to do it, don't let me stop you. But I don't think it makes sense if your goal is simply "lighter weight" (I don't even know what that means exactly)

<comment><USER7> I might not need to. I just have a feeling that layering my existing framework over VCL would mean a lot of redundant and unoptimized things happening during runtime.

I basically just want LibreOffice for it's mature support for Microsoft Office files. I think if I can just have that as a standalone library that would be ideal.

<comment><USER9> Microsoft has released an SDK for reading and writing Office files, under the Apache 2 license: [https://github.com/OfficeDev/Open-Xml- Sdk](https://github.com/OfficeDev/Open-Xml-Sdk)

It's in C#, but it builds on Mono, and it's probably still easier than hacking LO to act as a library.

<comment><USER7> That might be better for compatibility. Except the mono/coreclr runtime requirement adds a bit of complexity. I'd have to port and optimize that as well as call into and from C# code. So for right now it's just not a good solution.

Also, I'm not sure if it can be used to open all MS Office files or just Office 2007+ or any files for that matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Cheater - <AUTHOR>

I'm a hoste. I have no problem, many real positive reviews... one of last guest extend her stay and I accept because the room was free. Unfortunately, She doesn't want to pay immediately (it was 109§ only for one week). I was patient during one week When I asked her to book because one guest need the room she did, the same day she lived home at 3am without informing me and cancelled the booking. what does airbnb do, they quarantined my account without any evidence, because she said that I upset her . I just asked the guest to pay or I will inform the authorities. Very bad Customer service on airbnb. I have still no answer. My payment for the booking is still pending. So my guest stayed for free and no payment for the cancellation she did. I lost 15 days rent. Airbnb want only to take money from guests and hosts. You can try Bedycasa it's better service and their phone is well working. paying cash is better for travellers. so you have to see the room and agree with all without getting the complicated system of cancellation vai airbnb <comment><USER2> The phone lines at AirBnB customer service are always very responsive when I ring through. Not having to hand money over to the host , but rather go through a third party also makes more sense because if an issue does arise the money isn't lost.</comment>


Articles on fractals, computer graphics, mathematics, demoscene and more - <AUTHOR> http://iquilezles.org/www/index.htm <comment><USER2> Inigo Quilez was responsible for modeling vegetation procedurally in Brave:

 _"If you just render the geometry, it's pretty, but it doesn't look lush and furry," says supervising technical director Bill Wise. "We wanted Spanish moss hanging from tree limbs, and clumps and hummocks of moss. The Highlands of Scotland were like another character in the film, a living backdrop for what was going on. We had never tackled as vast an outdoor landscape, but we were able to generate it using insane procedural geometry developed by Inigo Quilez. He's a magician."_ ([http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-J...](http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-June- July-2012/The-Royal-Treatment.aspx), section "Painting with Code")

He contributed some basic lessons about it to Khan Academy's "Pixar in a Box" section on Environment modeling ([https://www.khanacademy.org/partner- content/pixar/environmen...](https://www.khanacademy.org/partner- content/pixar/environment-modeling-2), direct link to first video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuwUltMAdYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuwUltMAdYQ)).

Also worth checking out is "Elevated", one of the coolest 4066-byte programs you'll ever see: [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938).

<comment><USER3> Here's a direct YouTube link for Elevated:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I met Inigo at an internship when I was just starting out my CS career and he was kind and patient enough to mentor me on all sorts of cool computer graphics. A quote from "The Prestige" comes to mind:

 _Oh, no, sir. This wasn 't built by a magician. This was built by a wizard. A man who can actually do what magicians pretend to do._

He does things that I wouldn't have dreamed possible with fragment shaders and implicit geometry. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMpG6qEb8js](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMpG6qEb8js)

IQ is a wizard and really inspired my interest in programming and math.

<comment><USER5> His snail animation is amazing too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__G43hELHL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__G43hELHL0)

...and you can see how it was made from basic shapes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuSnLbB1j6E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuSnLbB1j6E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting timing as I've recently become mildly obsessed with signed distance fields - it seems a much more elegant way of describing 3d forms than piles of polygons.

This page has a great cache of formulae for various primitives, patterns and blend functions: [http://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/](http://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/)

The boolean and domain stuff there blew my mind. It's incredible how concise the descriptions are - goes a long way to explaining some of the more magical stuff that came out of the Shaderlab/Demoscene world.

Question - are many people using SDF/Ray marching in games outside of very niche uses? (clouds etc)?

The performance benefits only seem to kick in for very specific applications but I'd like to see whole levels/environments built like this. Maybe as the current gen of GPUs drops in price and become ubiquitous it will become a more feasible approach all round.

PS If anyone has access to a Rift (or a Vive via ReVive with a bit of fiddling) try out [https://github.com/jimbo00000/RiftRay](https://github.com/jimbo00000/RiftRay)

It's a lot of Shaderlab stuff in VR and some of it is truly astonishing in a headset. (I know you can run the website itself in WebVR but it's clunky as hell and performance isn't great)

<comment><USER7> XRA is using SDF's in his game, Memory of a Broken Dimension, for a few different effects. He generates an SDF for the whole level and uses it as a sort of external structure for it, as well as a container for some particle cloud effects. I'd recommend checking out some of his dev streams sometime, they're rather interesting if you're into graphics programming: [http://brokendimension.com/](http://brokendimension.com/)

<comment><USER6> Link: [https://xra.itch.io/memory-of-a-broken- dimension](https://xra.itch.io/memory-of-a-broken-dimension)

Downloading now. Itch is becoming a very interesting platform for discovering experimental games and interactive experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> His YouTube tutorial where he creates the beating heart composited on live video as he explains it is a great introduction for beginners and younger people [1]. I've learned so much from his sharing of his techniques and knowledge. Thanks Inigo!

      [1]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNR4n0i2ZlM

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inigo Quilez is the person behind [https://shadertoy.com](https://shadertoy.com).

<comment><USER2> Both he and Pol Jeremias, I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recently I came across [http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/ibilinear/ibilinear.htm](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/ibilinear/ibilinear.htm) when researching how to draw textured non-parallelogram quadrilaterals, without affine texture mapping, with WebGL / OpenGL ES 2.

I was disappointed to learn that OpenGL wouldn't do it and we have to calculate it on our own and send in a 3rd texture coordinate to each vertex for extra calculation on the shader.

Sadly, there isn't much useful info on this subject on the internet (I'm not talking about projective mapping, but bilinear interpolation). I've found this: [http://www.reedbeta.com/blog/quadrilateral-interpolation- par...](http://www.reedbeta.com/blog/quadrilateral-interpolation-part-2/) that I think will work for my case.

My problem is that I also use normals to do "fake" parallel lighting on quads and it accentuates even more the affine errors on non parallelogram quadrilaterals. It's easier to just subdivide the quad to minimize the affine artifacts.

If anyone knows a better way to solve it, I'd love to learn.

</comment><comment><USER10> A number of articles seem to sadly be in the vein of dry "so I did a thing once and it worked". Kind of missed opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER11> The information is great but the website design is truly obnoxious (at least on mobile). What is the point of replacing the browsers scrolling with your own crappy version of scrolling while adding nothing?

</comment><comment><USER12> Obligatory calling out for scrolljacking.</comment>


Appeasement: How the UK government failed to fight the coronavirus - cirrus-clouds https://appeasement.org/ <comment><USER2> So, for context

this is an advertisement/propaganda by an anti brexit/anti tory political organisation and has absolutely no place on HN

They will grind any axe, stretch any truth to meet their spurious goals. Given they woefully failed regarding brexit this is a new hook to perpetuate their organisation's income streams.

Furthermore the user posting this has a history* of pushing politically sectarian posts/propaganda based on a warped view of reality on HN - <AUTHOR> pretty much nothing else.

*

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530197)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17493623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17493623)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20568804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20568804)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19963160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19963160)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501394)</comment>


Dragonblood: Analysing WPA3's Dragonfly Handshake - <AUTHOR> https://wpa3.mathyvanhoef.com/ <comment><USER2> > Due to the severity of some of our (implementation-specific) attacks against > EAP-pwd, we will briefly delay the release of the full details of the > vulnerabilities that we discovered. Please use this short time window to > update your devices, we plan to provide the full details in as little as a > few hours.

Scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just wake me up when vulnerability names straight up resemble grindcore titles.</comment>


SolarCity didn't invent solar panel, but it invented something more important - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/07/solarcity_the_company_didn_t_invent_the_solar_panel_but_it_invented_something.single.html <comment><USER2> Holy hell is this a puff piece. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of SolarCity, but this story is written as if they invented the solar boom that's happening now.

Three major factors contributed to making solar as viable as it is now, none of which Solar City invented (but it is executing on them better).

1\. Germany basically subsidizing China (and others) to build the massive solar panel production pipeline it has now that are producing ridiculously cheap panels[1].

2\. Financial innovation to allow consumers and installers to pay for panels over time (PPA, leases, loans, etc.). These were originally pioneered by SunEdison[2], and the industry has been innovating on them since (including SolarCity with its MyPower Loan).

3\. The California Solar Initiative[3] and Department of Energy's Sunshot Initiative[4]. Both were incredibly well designed to gradually wean solar off of subsidies and foster innovation through strategic grants, and they have worked incredibly well at teaching the solar industry to stand on its own two feet. We are well on our way to $1/watt[5].

SolarCity has executed incredibly well in this industry, so they definitely deserve tons of credit for installing so much solar. But it's a disservice to the rest of the companies, governments, and financiers to say they invented the recent growth. Everyone, including SolarCity, has come together to build a mature and exponentially growing industry that was 1 out of every 78 jobs last year.

[1]: [http://qz.com/41166/how-germanys-energy-transformation- has-t...](http://qz.com/41166/how-germanys-energy-transformation-has-turned- into-a-crisis/)

[2]: [http://archive.onearth.org/article/selling-the- sun](http://archive.onearth.org/article/selling-the-sun)

[3]: [http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/csi/index.php](http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/csi/index.php)

[4]: [http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/sunshot- initiative](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/sunshot-initiative)

[5]: [http://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/10/price-solar-hits- record-...](http://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/10/price-solar-hits-record-low/)

<comment><USER3> Fictional myth building around Elon Musk is a recurring activity.For example, the hyperloop:

"Two weeks before his Hyperloop announcement, Musk quietly met with the founder of ET3, an even-faster, already patented[since 1999] tube transport system."[1].

That's not to say Elon didn't help the hyperloop - he helped greatly by exciting the public's and investors imagination. But he didn't invent the thing.

[1][http://www.fastcoexist.com/3015704/futurist-forum/how- much-d...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3015704/futurist-forum/how-much-did- this-hyperloop-lookalike-inspire-elon-musk)

<comment><USER4> "Well I say you are the messiah, and I should know, I've followed a few."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From Wikipedia: In 2008, SolarCity introduced a new solar lease option for homeowners that significantly reduces or eliminates the upfront cost of installing solar power.

Several companies were offering Solar lease in 2007.

The article seem to imply that SolarCity invented Solar Leasing which is inaccurate.

<comment><USER6> Be that as it may, leasing vs buying is always bad, IMO. We just installed our PV system in SoCal - I get the rebate, I own the system, when selling the home eventually the new owner knows what he/she is getting and isn't encumbered by the lease.... However you slice it, biting the bullet and buying your own PV system is way way better than leasing it.

Maybe there are cases where leasing makes sense...but those are few and far between...or maybe SolarCity counts on people being uninformed/clueless, which is why this 'lease' model works. IMHO, it's total ripoff.

<comment><USER7> I've always preferred to buy vs. lease rationalizing that I'm taking the profit away from the middle-man for myself. And I'm interested in solar, but I've been hesitant to contact any solar installation outfit because I fear the installer's sales pitches, confusing contracts, phone calls, etc. Can I ask ballpark figure what it costs to outright purchase panels for a typical house? I realize that there are lots of variables such as house orientation, roof size, electric usage, etc.

<comment><USER6> The guy who did it for me is one of my best friends and he's been at it for a few years - he's been in sales overall for 20+ years, but lately he's been doing PV installations. He's fully licensed and bonded in CA. If you are in the SoCal area, I can send you to him for a friendly rate and I am 99% certain he will beat any other quote you get. Mine was 18k for a 5k system, using Solarworld's Sumodule Protect ... Everyone else quoted me higher.

Post a (disposable) email address where I can reach you with his info if you're in SoCal.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the $ info, but I'm in the Denver area. We get lots of sun too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Big deal. They introduced the what is now called the "Financialization" of the solar panel. They weren't even the first to do this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization) You can do this to almost anything, here's a goofy example. I hate tying my shoelaces and they always come undone, but I can't justify spending $70 on Velcro shoes because of personal preference: basically I'd rather deal with the annoyances of tying my shoe then to fork out $70 for Velcro shoes at the moment. But, Wal-Mart sells a low quality Velcro tennis shoe for $10. The problem is it only lasts about 6-8 weeks before the it falls apart. But by converting the $10 shoe into a subscription service at $5 a month, a company can turn a shoe into financial instrument, and _poof_ , magically it matches my lower price point and I can justify a $5 subscription instead of a $70 sale. So, for $5 a month, or $60 a year, I will receive replacement shoes in the mail every eight weeks. Like I said, that was a goofy example. Replace shoes with solar panels and subscription with a lease agreement.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I don't really understand, "Financialization" of solar pannels has always been quite obvious (because it's an expensive and long term product) and almost every solar company has always proposed some options for that, I has been there since the birth of the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> California plans to change to "time-of-use" pricing of electricity [1]. How will that affect the savings currently seen by folks who lease from SolarCity and other providers?

[1] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/20/califor...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/20/california- electricity-rates/27688891/)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a lot of negativity around this piece usually in the form of "some other company had a lease program" etc. The author's main point to me was that SolarCity is executing best _across a wide range_ of areas to bring solar to the masses and growing TAM via new markets etc. Pointing out they weren't the first with X is like poo poohing MSFT in the 90's because Apple had a GUI first.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am interested in what is going to happen to the housing market. These systems typically have a 20 year contract. If the house is sold before that, then the purchaser has to assume the contract and the solar system. Those contracts could be extremely undesirable if the energy rates change a lot, better panels come out, financing/subsidies differs, it is better to use solar for hot water instead of electricity, battery storage turns out better, or a whole host of other scenarios.

If you were looking to buy a house, and it was 7 years into a 20 year solar contract (hence locking in the rates/financing of 7 years ago), wouldn't you want it either removed so you can put in something better, or be compensated for taking on such obligations?

I can't find out how often houses are sold in California, but it seems like ~7 years is normal.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I have a small investment in SolarCity and I keep meaning to find out how they handle this situation. Imagine in 5 years some stories coming out regarding home owners having trouble selling (or losing value on) homes they equipped under a solar loan. That would likely affect future sign-ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody know how these companies continue to get money from investors? SolarCity, Tesla, Sun Edison lose money year after year. None of them are profitable. And they won't be for years. I guess the thinking is that once, or if, they get profitable they will benefit from being the established players.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it's called a startup. Amazon has similarly avoided making profits while it can roll money back into expanding its dominance. The key is to articulate and stick to a long-term plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To quote Schlock Mercenary:

> "Your kind began as self-repairing distributed storage systems for our > supercomputers. [...] No, I didn't create you. Engineers did.

> I created something far more powerful... _The marketing campaign that made > you profitable._ "

</comment><comment><USER17> The processes mentioned still sorta basic but I think it's always useful to point out that innovation extends beyond tech.

Also, I wonder where any of this (solar city, spacex and tesla) would be without government help?

<comment><USER18> Musk has said Tesla didn't need the government money, it was just used as a cash buffer (which of course was repaid early with interest). As for SpaceX, they've been profitable for 7+ years and NASA is a client so not sure. As for Solar City unsure, but government money doesn't make a business succeed. No matter how much. (Solyndra) c

<comment><USER19> Federal Credits are crucial for SolarCity. Most of the SolarCity customers do not own their Solar plants and SolarCity quotes a "very high" price if any one asks for a SolarPV to own.

<comment><USER20> > _" SolarCity quotes a "very high" price if any one asks for a SolarPV to > own"_

My rooftop solar (I believe it'll be ~6kw; installation is soon) is around $20,000 to own outright, which includes 30 years of maintenance, whether or not I pay it off early. Once it's paid, it's mine.

That's actually not a "very high" price compared to decades of electricity, particularly not once you include the federal tax credit (30% of the system price). So you're right that the federal tax credit is a big deal, but I wouldn't have described the system as a "very high" price (it's around the same amount as the average "minor" kitchen remodel.)

EDIT: the big deal with the federal tax credit is that it can be used as a down payment, which makes the overall system payments begin at a lower price than grid electricity rather than a slightly higher price. This means monetary savings is immediate.

<comment><USER19> In 2013, for 10.5KW plant I was quoted $40K+ and I ended up with 20 year leasing (paying entire amount upfront) for a notch less than $10K. Even adding all the credits the ownership would have cost me 25K+. That is a huge difference.

Of course the numbers vary a bit by state.

<comment><USER21> So California has a capacity factor of about 17.5% as far as I can find, and a residential cost per kwh of 17c roughly. Considering that, a 10.5KW system saves you $2.65k per year, that is if you use that much energy, if not you sell some at a slightly lower feed in tariff than the 17c retail rate.

That's pretty sweet. It kind of boggles my mind why this stuff isn't more popular...

For example, imagine instead of using the $25k to cover your entire electricity budget (let's assume it's $2.5k a year) for decades to come, you earmarked it to be invested in a different project, with the returns going towards paying the utility bill.

Had you invested the same $25k and got a typical long-term average stock return of 7%, you'd net $1.75k every year, assuming your utility bill was say $2500 and it was 100% covered by your $25k, 10.5KW system, you'd be short $750 on the first year compared to having put that money into a solar installation.

Which would mean it'd have to be made up, so you reduce the $25k stock investment by $750, added to the $1.75k stock return, to pay for your annual bill, and go into year two. Same story for year two, only now instead of making 7% on $25k, you make it on $24.25k, and so your return drops from $1.75k to $1.7k. As the years go on, your $25k cash becomes smaller and smaller, and by year 17 it has evaporated entirely, and you start the bear the full cost of paying $2.5k a year to your utility, without any equity or investment or $25k cash left.

Instead, the solar installation of $25k probably still has $10k of equity locked up in the value of your home, and is still generating about 85-90% of your annual bill two decades in.

Not to mention electricity prices have gone up every decade (not necessarily in real terms, but in nominal terms still), meaning your 10 KW system will save more and more in nominal terms, while the $25k investment isn't inflation adjusted. (it it was, the 7% return would probably drop to about 5%, making it even worse off). -- edit: the 7% return is already inflation adjusted actually, sorry.

And none of this even mentions the taxes that cut into your stock returns, again making it a worse off venture, while it appears saving money on your utilities with self-production is largely untaxed (?), just like making a sandwich at home or doing your own laundry isn't taxed.

I know you ended up leasing but I don't know the terms of your lease, but simply running some numbers for a buy scenario looks really appealing.

Of course it is very contextual. In cities where the kwh rate is just 9c instead of 17c, and where the credits, rebates and tariffs aren't very appealing, and where the capacity factor due to fewer sunshine hours is a third lower (e.g. in the UK it's closer to 10%, as opposed to 17% in places like California or Hawaii), it's a totally, totally different story. But it feels like in California it's a giant no-brainer. I mean I know solar is rapidly growing as an industry but we're also hearing of bankruptcies, of Solar City having lost hundreds of millions this year and last year, of solar still being a moral rather than a financial decision etc. And I can't seem to square it with the numbers I'm seeing which look really appealing.

Let me know if you'd like to share some of the terms, numbers, expenses etc for your lease by the way, would be curious to hear some real life cases!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The amazing part of it imo is that no matter the industry, a high tech company with the high tech standards of IT, customer service and efficiency will win, as long as it completes against classic industrial/commercial companies</comment>


Ask HN: Where to Get Involved in Cybersecurity - <AUTHOR> I have a good technical background, networking, some programming/scripting, extensive telecom (2G-3G-VoIP), arduino. I can play with anything mostly (working alone). I have my own LLC (also working alone) but also employee at one of the big tech companies.
I am looking for a company/organization where I could investigate cyberattacks, threats and cybercrime in general. Looking to learn more and more and would like be part of a team, to discover things and do interesting stuff.
Edit: doesn't have to pay, I would work pro bono gladly. <comment><USER2> Hi, Our company is developing Safemails.Net, a network where companies and individuals can exchange safe emails end-to-end and making this activity PAINLESS, secure and fast on all devices. If you want to deeply impact cyber crime and making world better place, contact us in twitter @safemails, www.safemails.net</comment>


FreeBSD 10.3 - <AUTHOR> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2016-April/001713.html <comment><USER2> Of particular note: This release brings 64 bit support to the Linux compatibility layer.

I suppose when windows caught up Bash on Windows, FreeBSD needed to do something to keep one step ahead =].

<comment><USER3> >The Linux® compatibility layer has been substantially improved and now is capable of running 64-bit applications on amd64 (x86_64), 1:1 threading

What does 1:1 threading mean?

<comment><USER4> There are at least three theoretical implementations of userland threads in an Operating System:

* 1:1, where each userland thread maps directly to a kernel thread

* 1:N, where several userland threads map directly to one kernel thread

* M:N, where the kernel maintains a pool of threads and dispatches userland threads to them

History has shown that 1:1 threading has the best trade offs. It's worth more independent research if you are interested in Operating Systems.

<comment><USER5> That's reminds me of database record relations.

<comment><USER3> Or just re-use of basic structures ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An Honest question, which of the large Startup / Internet Giant are using BSD? Whether it is FreeBSD or OpenBSD or others.

Judging from some previous Facebook post, it is likely Whatsapp will be moving to linux based as well instead of on FreeBSD. Yahoo used to be a FreeBSD shop, but Marisa Mayer has since converted all to Linux. Microsoft had some FreeBSD long ago but has since converted all to Windows or Linux. The only FreeBSD on Netflix are their Open Connect Appliance, their main AWS instances, which is the majority of their servers are all Linux. Both Cisco and Juniper are using less FreeBSD as we speak. Even Apple, with many parts of their OS based on FreeBSD, are using Linux for iCloud as well.

So who is using BSD?

<comment><USER4> Where did you see that WhatsApp is converting to Linux? At MeetBSD Rick Reed claimed they had full autonomy from Facebook on that kind of thing ([http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/rick- reed-600-m-unsuspec...](http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/rick- reed-600-m-unsuspecting-freebsd-users)), and FB was looking at them to learn how they did so much with so little engineers and servers.

Netflix is doing 100Gbit HTTP and > 60Gbit HTTPS on a single socket Xeon E5 with FreeBSD. These servers are about 1/3 North American Internet by volume. In comparison to OCA team their AWS team sounds like a total tire fire to me in terms of engineer count and monthly spend.

I run the OS team at Limelight Networks, one of the largest CDNs. We can peak beyond 10Tbit/s on our current network and have to deal with a more demanding/unknown workload compared to NF OCA. This is all courtesy of FreeBSD. My entire management chain agrees that the cost of entry is lower to influencing and driving development in FreeBSD vs other kernels, and we collaborate with the other well known players on projects that are mutually beneficial such as TCP and filesystems.

Companies switching from FreeBSD to Linux usually are victim of the decision from bad VP-level management looking for a scapegoat rather than solving actual business and culture problems. Yahoo began transitioning to RHEL in 2005 and AFAIK are still at least two years from conceivably being off of FreeBSD. A 12 year _free_ OS transition is an embarrassing use of engineering effort and total management failure.

There are a lot of companies satisfied with FreeBSD, especially in the appliance space and small business, but they are not vocal because it just works and is often rebranded.

<comment><USER7> > Netflix is doing 100Gbit HTTP and > 60Gbit HTTPS on a single socket Xeon E5 > with FreeBSD. These servers are about 1/3 North American Internet by volume. > In comparison to OCA team their AWS team sounds like a total tire fire to me > in terms of engineer count and monthly spend.

Have any idea how many cores and what kind of network hardware they use push those impressive figures? I would guess there is some network offload involved, as this comparable to memory bandwidth of a single core of that Xeon if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER8> For those numbers, it was around 18 real cores with hyper threading enabled. Crypto is a great workload for hyper threads. These systems are currently being built up and aren't yet in production. These are with last year's CPUs.

[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/) has the currently deployed system specs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Idle question sort-of-related but I'm asking it here because those who know the answer will be here:

The bge(4) driver by default doesn't support WoL, but a number of people have managed to take the driver from FreeNAS 9.x which includes a patched driver that does make it work and added it to FreeBSD 9.x. This was released as a .patch file so you could patch the driver and recompile and is of interest because it's the onboard NIC for the HP Proliant microservers that many people use for their own custom file storage servers.

The upgrade from 9 to 10 broke this patch because the lines changed too dramatically, but you can easily copy/paste it in to the driver source at the right places and it works (I did it on 10.1 or 10.2).

My question is: Specifically what process does one need to go through to provide a patched bge(4) driver to 'the appropriate people' so that the patch is included in FreeBSD's default driver and is not broken with each major change to the driver? How does one go from 'we have functioning code that enables WoL support' to 'this is a tested, certified driver included in the default FreeBSD install'? What licensing issues are there in contributing the patch upstream from FreeNAS to FreeBSD?

This is all new territory for me, so some guidance would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER10> Assuming the patch is BSD licensed, there should be no legal/licensing issues.

Have you submitted a FreeBSD bug report with the patch? If not, do that first: [https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Base...](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Base%20System)

If you've done that already, or after you've waited a few weeks without anyone noticing it, the usual tactic is to email people who have worked on the driver in question recently; the SVN logs are useful here: [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/bge/if_bge.c?vi...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/bge/if_bge.c?view=log)

Feel free to send me an email if you need more help.

<comment><USER9> Thanks. I've not done any of that as I didn't come up with the patch to begin with. I'll do some research and work out where the legalities fall.

<comment><USER11> I'm halfway down the rabbit hole - I have to create an account to view the original patch. No license header. [https://gist.github.com/voltagex/160980fc680d830b8b7e68199a3...](https://gist.github.com/voltagex/160980fc680d830b8b7e68199a3dca02) (sorry about Windows line endings)

[http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2974](http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2974)

Does the BSD license apply to a patch to a BSD licensed file?

<comment><USER12> > Does the BSD license apply to a patch to a BSD licensed file?

No, because the BSD License isn't copyleft. You'll have to contact the original author as well as any contributors.

<comment><USER11> Good luck! 6 posts on that forum then disappeared forever.

<comment><USER13> Not that hard. Google "hcb nas4free" and get: [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- bugs/2013-March/...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- bugs/2013-March/052180.html) (Hielke Christian Braun)

The author already submitted this patch in 2013 - since it was contributed to the project, it should be fine regarding the license.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I shouldn't have posted the flippant comment. Sorry. I've posted the bug tracker links in another comment - looks like there's some concerns about the effects of the patch on high-end networking gear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know FreeBSD (or *BSD in general) is still used heavily in server environments.

Is anyone using it on the desktop as well?

I always wanted to give it a try, but then I'm hesitant because of lacking hardware support. I remember struggling with Intel KMS support in one of the earlier releases. Is this still a problem?

<comment><USER4> I run FreeBSD -CURRENT on a Lenovo C30, which is a dual Xeon E5 workstation platform. Key to my use for the past 1-2 years with a 30" and 3 24" monitors is the nvidia binary video driver. Prior to this setup I ran Gentoo. I find FreeBSD more conductive toward the things I want to work on, but I am also much more interested in working on FreeBSD src than I was Linux kernel. I maintain a small repo that does everything I want at [https://github.com/kev009/digital-life](https://github.com/kev009/digital- life)

On my laptop, a Lenovo T420, I run PC-BSD -CURRENT ([http://iso.cdn.pcbsd.org/11.0-CURRENTMAR2016/edge/amd64/](http://iso.cdn.pcbsd.org/11.0-CURRENTMAR2016/edge/amd64/)), which eliminates the need to build src and packages. I also run PC-BSD -CURRENT on my work desktop with a Radeon card and two monitors. I could potentially expand my workstation builds to these with pkg, but PC-BSD is more or less hands off which I want on these devices.

Open source video needs work, but as of this week that has started heating up and we may start closing in toward DragonflyBSD in terms of Freedesktop/Linux equivalence by the time FreeBSD 11.0 ships [https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base- graphics/tree/dr...](https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base- graphics/tree/drm-next-3.9)

<comment><USER15> Does it work fine for you as a laptop OS?

Battery time, suspend/hibernate, etc?

<comment><USER16> I've an elderly Asus notebook nowadays as my PC, with 10.2 on it that I installed rather recently. It's battery is long-dead (I use it as a workstation mostly), so I can't comment on that, but suspend/hibernate does not work for me. FreeBSD does not have hibernate, and suspend, AFAIK, does not work with Xorg, so it's practically useless. There are some posts that demo how to do it, by unloading troublesome stuff before suspend and reloading them later, but I didn't get around to trying that yet, because suspend does not resume, and hard reboots give me the shakes without a backup, I couldn't port my backup script to't yet.

Performance-wise, I did not notice much between Arch linux, what I was using before, and this. My setup is very light, Emacs+Xombrero on TWM. I notice, though, a certain performance problem with video in browser, but that may well be Gstreamer plugins that run slower than Linux on *BSD, I can't comment, as I don't know the internals. But VLC works just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have YOU donated to FreeBSD yet? [https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a first time user of FreeBSD, I jumped in on 10.3RC2 and ended up with a "custom" kernel to enable vnet support. How do I upgrade _and_ keep the custom kernel in-tact?

<comment><USER4> Sorry for this pain point :( we will hopefully have VNET default in 11.0.

Slightly risky way: you can run freebsd-update fetch and then install twice, and you will notice it updates /usr/src.. it will instruct you to reboot after the first install, but instead do another install and you will notice that /usr/src has been updated. Rebuild your custom kernel and reboot. You risk changed ABIs during this, in practice it may be fine but depends how much you care about the box and whether you are comfortable cleaning up from a chroot if things go really bad.

Better: use svnlite in base or real SVN to update /usr/src to the releng/10.3 branch. Build your kernel, reboot, do freebsd update to get the base updates and make sure your kernel is intact.

Best: use svnlite to update /usr/src. Do buildkernel, reboot. Do buildworld and follow [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/makeworld.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/makeworld.html). The more you run FreeBSD, the more you will want to follow -STABLE or -CURRENT and do your own release engineering.

Future best: Use any method to derive custom kernel, use packaged base to update base. Or again hopefully common use wont need a custom kernel.

<comment><USER11> I'm normally a Linux user but found FreeNAS too restrictive and then spent 2 months worth of spare time fiddling with this thing.

The learning curve seems vertical at times but I'm finding FreeBSD quite refreshing. Ports and pkg-ng are great (although Australia really, really needs a local mirror).

The files I need to boot from live on a USB thumbdrive and I've got IPMI to the box so I'm not too worried. I think buildworld would be pretty slow on this box (Atom C2758). I'll give it a shot.

I don't _really_ need vnet but having IPs per jail and some kind of network seperation made more sense to my brain.

<comment><USER4> Yeah VNET is a pretty advanced feature at this point, hopefully once it's in 11 it will be more approachable to new users without any drawbacks.

<comment><USER11> _jails_ seem like an advanced feature to me - so much manual configuration. Docker has ruined me by hiding the complexity.

<comment><USER18> Hah, weird. For me, Docker seems to _create_ complexity. Daemon, API, registry…

I made a tiny tool that spins up a jail with nullfs/unionfs mounts and RCTL resource limits from a single JSON/UCL file: [https://github.com/myfreeweb/sandblast](https://github.com/myfreeweb/sandblast)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An off-topic question: Does anybody know anything about the status of ath5k on OpenBSD? My laptop has a AR242x/AR542x driver, can it be run on OpenBSD somehow? There are a lot of articles on the web about it, but I can't find actual information about whether it is possible or not to use that indeed.

</comment><comment><USER19> S</comment>


Web design at my site, a sneak preview - <AUTHOR>

www.noelvock.com Part I <comment><USER2> Hey I sent you a message through your site. My email is on my profile as a back-up.</comment>


Huawei Just Copied the iPhone–Down to the Last Screw - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/05/huawei-iphone-screws-ifixit/ <comment><USER2> no they didn't

</comment><comment><USER3> They look at best similar, like many competing consumer products. Sony and Blackberry, at least, also used pentalobe screws. Anyone can buy a pentalobe driver. Must be a really, really slow week at Wired to contrive this sad an attempt at manufactured outrage.</comment>