All Norwegians become crown millionaires, in oil saving landmark - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/us-norway-millionaires-idUSBREA0710U20140108 <comment><USER2> i lived in Norway for a little over one year; for anyone who has every lived there, you become aware of the outrageously high cost of just about everything. During my time there i felt like i everything i purchased was from a New York City hotel mini-bar.

The high cost is largely due to the very steep VAT (unlike the US, but like almost most everywhere else, the prices of goods in the shops include VAT) which is 25%.

the cost of a private university is prohibitive for many if not most families.

in addition, the personal income tax has a high lowest-rate (which i believe is 28%, and a max rate of 50%).

personal accounts for frequent-flier points are taxed; the tax paid on a new car can easily exceed 85% (that's 80 + 5 not 8.5!); gasoline prices are silly --about $13 per gallon (if i did my maths correctly).

i just checked a cost-of-living Site (Numbeo.com) and sure enough, Norway is #1 in Consumer Price Index with 173.85, over 22 points above second place Switzerland.

How does this compare with other countries of similar oil wealth? For instance, Kuwait's oil annual oil exports are about the same as Norway's (though the lifting costs differ significantly).

In Kuwait, education is free, all the way through university and there is no VAT (sales tax).

<comment><USER3> _> the cost of a private university is prohibitive for many if not most families_

The public universities are free and of good quality. Most of the private universities tend to be more specialized. Some are for students that can't get in to regular studies, and others provide different subjects, such as bachelor degrees in real estate etc.

A degree from a public university is not looked down upon because your employer probably studied at a public university too. The only exception I can think of are those who want an MBA. Many of the MBAs I have met went to a private school ("BI"). Education at "BI" in Oslo costs less than $6000 a year and is not out of reach for most families.

 _> the personal income tax has a high lowest-rate (which i believe is 28%_

The tax pays for public health care, welfare, free education, 49 week paid parental leave (100% of salary) and other benefits. If you compare with another country you need to include this in the cost of living.

 _> gasoline prices are silly--about $13 per gallon (if i did my maths correctly)_

The price of gasoline is closer to $9 per gallon (15kr per litre), but still too high.

<comment><USER4> >The tax pays for public health care, welfare, free education, 49 week paid parental leave (100% of salary) and other benefits. If you compare with another country you need to include this in the cost of living.

None of those things would really benefit someone who only lived there for a year though.

<comment><USER5> That's like saying that owning a Mac didn't benefit you, because you needed a playstation to play some game. Then you go on implying that the Mac is _not a good computer_.

<comment><USER4> I never implied it wasn't a good computer, er, country. I'm saying it's completely understandable why GP would be upset at the country's absurdly high prices and saying "but look at all the stuff it pays for" isn't really relevant to him because he is not a citizen. Most countries do not tax foreigners that much unless they are working in the country.

To take the argument further, you could say may actual citizens don't benefit from it, for example if they live healthy, or don't have children, or pay for a private education, etc. Subsidies are rarely fair and create bad incentives.

<comment><USER6> > To take the argument further, you could say may actual citizens don't > benefit from it, for example if they live healthy, or don't have children, > or pay for a private education, etc. Subsidies are rarely fair and create > bad incentives.

"Many citizens" and "Subsidies are rarely fair" seems horribly distorted in the context of free education and health care in Norway.

IMNHO you have a rather distorted idea of "fair" if you think that everyone should get the _same_ , rather than that everyone should get what they _need_ (or could benefit from). The two would only ever be the same in some fantasy realm where everyone started out on equal footing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title is misleading. While an amazing milestone, Norwegians can't head down to their local central bank branch and draw down their share of the fund. It's a bit like saying every man, woman, and child in the United States owes $200K because of the national debt.

<comment><USER8> Sure, it's not like an individual citizen could go to his bank and withdraw the funds, but it's a national wealth and is being expressed as an amount per person.

It's the same with your $200k debt per US citizen number. The Norwegian government just happens to have $160k in an investment fund per citizen.

I'm not sure what the overall budget for Norway looks like, but I'd guess it's a bit better than the US budget.

<comment><USER9> Just for reference (these aren't exact, but close enough):

2013 Norway Govt expenditures: $182 billion, per person: $36,000

2013 US Govt expenditures: $3.93 trillion, per person: $13,000 ($22,000 counting local + state; I have no idea how Norway's government spending looks locally)

<comment><USER10> Keep in mind that the price level in Norway is very high. Depending on how the NOK numbers are converted in USD, the numbers might be misleading.

<comment><USER9> I understand, it's just meant to put numbers to the parent's reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Still, in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere. Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic.

and the alternative? Milking polar bears?

To compare, Canada has 1M dairy cows for 35M population, Norway - 300K for 5M population (Norway is self-sufficient milk producer and exporter of dairy products). Giving the health benefits of dairy (incl. in cold climate areas, for children and elderly) i'd say it is good investment, not "unthinkable subsidy".

More on the Canada's (usually one would think of it as a pretty reasonable country) "subsidy-less" approach - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_farming_in_Canada#Supply_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_farming_in_Canada#Supply_management) :

"Dairy farming has been subject to the system of supply management since the 1970s. It restricts the supply of milk by limiting and controlling the amount produced domestically and starkly limiting imports with high tariffs. With a restricted supply, the prices increase, increasing profits for the farmers.[4] Though this system allows the federal and provincial governments to avoid subsidizing the farmers directly, consumers instead subsidize dairy farmers in through artificially high prices paid for groceries.

...

To keep supply low and prices high, it has been made deliberately difficult to become a new dairy farmer in Canada. Because the dairy industry is so lucrative, the right to own a single dairy cow is worth $28,000 (this does not include the actual price or value of the cow itself)

"

<comment><USER12> > _and the alternative? Milking polar bears?_

Understanding Ricardian/comparative advantage, recognising that dairy is not a matter of national security, and importing it.

<comment><USER11> >Understanding Ricardian/comparative advantage, recognising that dairy is not a matter of national security, and importing it.

A country can do without uranium, it can't do without dairy. As another example of food security being a matter of national security - look what happened to Egypt 2+ years ago once wheat prices rose - for years before that Egypt was geared ("international specialization") toward fruits/strawberries/etc... production for export while becoming world's biggest wheat importer.

<comment><USER13> I absolutely guarantee you that you can live quite healthily without dairy. You're essentially arguing against all free trade. Should Norway policy ensure it can build its own computers, phones, or shoes?

A world that relies on trade is a world at peace.

<comment><USER11> >You're essentially arguing against all free trade.

it is a stretch. Free trade just isn't always the best approach to every situation.

>A world that relies on trade is a world at peace.

again, big stretch. Just for example:

[http://www.economist.com/news/books-and- arts/21578978-world-...](http://www.economist.com/news/books-and- arts/21578978-world-1913-was-worryingly-similar-world-today-year-sky-fell)

"Rather, the world of 1913 was quite like that of 2013: modern, substantially urbanised and, even as Woodrow Wilson set about slashing import tariffs, thriving on global trade. "

<comment><USER14> > "Rather, the world of 1913 was quite like that of 2013: modern, > substantially urbanised and, even as Woodrow Wilson set about slashing > import tariffs, thriving on global trade. "

Good point - people were in fact using the argument that the extent of international trade made large wars between powers like Germany and the UK unlikely...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not related to Norway. But when I went for a tour in the salt mine in Hallstatt it was explained that this much has been mined, this much for now, and this large amount here is for our children. In stark contrast to what I see in Australia where they'll rape the environment for short term gain and an elite few benefit.

<comment><USER16> Australia is an interesting contrast to Norway. Efforts to increase revenues from resources failed due to pressure from a mega rich elite. There is no equivalent fund to invest windfalls from resources. As a result once Australia's mining boom is over there will be nothing for future generations.

<comment><USER17> > As a result once Australia's mining boom is over there will be nothing for > future generations.

South Korea was traditionally (mid-20th-century) viewed as cursed by a lack of natural resources. In this sense, it has already reached the phase of "nothing left for future generations". What's so bad about this?

<comment><USER18> The South Korean people achieved their economic success at great personal sacrifice. I can't see the laid-back Australians being able to do the same when they run out of resources.

<comment><USER19> _Australians on average work 1855 hours a year, or 38.6 hours a week if you assume they work 48 weeks a year.... US workers are second, averaging 1835 hours a year, followed by Japan (1821) and New Zealand (1817). Finland (1730) led the table in Western Europe, followed by the much-maligned British workers, who put in 1708 hours a year - three hours a week less than Australians._ [1]

Hmm. Stereotypes, hey?

[1] [http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/give-us-a-break- austr...](http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/give-us-a-break-australia-is- hard-at-work/2005/07/06/1120329502555.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is anyone familiar with emigrating to these countries, especially if you have a tech skillset? Good idea, bad idea, horrid idea?

EDIT:

Let me refine that query--emigrating as an English-speaking American software engineer and tech, without dependents.

<comment><USER21> The weather might be something to take into account. Personally, I wouldn't want to live in far northern countries like Norway because of the limited sunlight hours in winter. I've found that more than the temperature, it's sunlight exposure that has a strong influence on the way I feel.

Living in a country that may get a few hours of weak sunlight in winter doesn't appeal to me, no matter how high the standard of living might be otherwise.

Your personal preferences will vary, of course.

<comment><USER22> When I worked in Stockholm, I had a few colleagues who preferred to take a large portion of their generous (32 day) annual holiday in february or so and go someplace warm. Working through the summer is not unpleasant: the pace is slower, the office is quiet, the evenings are long, and you could still have a week or two off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one amazed at the level of foresight the Norwegian politicians are displaying here?

In comparison, the US government seems so....mismanaged.

<comment><USER4> I'm very confused. (Some) economists say governments going absurdly deep into debt is a good thing, and here Norway is doing the exact opposite.

<comment><USER9> The economists that say the US going deep into debt is a good thing, are simply wrong, and their theories are based on wrong economics (the very wrong economics that have been eroding the US economy for decades). Their scenarios assume low interest rates forever, which is about the dumbest notion one could ever assume in nation-state economics when a lot of debt is involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was a great podcast by NPR's Planet Money[1] about how Norway avoided the "resource curse"[2], or paradox of the plenty, whereby countries with bountiful resources tend to be less developed than vice-verse. Highly recommended! Please comment below if you would like to discuss.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/06/140110346/how- to-a...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/06/140110346/how-to-avoid-the- oil-curse)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

<comment><USER25> An interesting plot twist: an Iraqi set up Norway's Sovereign Fund ( Farouk al-Kasim ).

[http://pri.org/stories/2012-06-06/norways-example-oil-and- ga...](http://pri.org/stories/2012-06-06/norways-example-oil-and-gas-boom- done-right)

<comment><USER26> Financial Times have a very interesting article about Farouk al-Kasim, "The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil" (link requires registration, but it's free):

[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2pz6wTL3K)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If they want to create a fund to save their future, why are they drilling and pumping their oil like crazy and exchanging it for world's financial junk? They should leave the oil in the earth, it would make much better investment.

<comment><USER9> That assumes oil remains a top energy source in the future, and that it's still widely accepted / usable in the future (that there are still _very_ large markets for buying, selling, processing, trading, and burning it).

If the global economy moves to electric vehicles - which is all but guaranteed at this point - the existing hyper scale market for oil will disappear.

Speaking financially, they should drill and sell as much of it as possible as fast as possible, particularly with today's excellent prices.

Leaving it in the ground is as good as destroying the wealth it represents here and now.

The best conversion they could do is to build the world's best renewable energy infrastructure, and drive it to a large surplus that they can export. Build the best education system, so all of their 5 million people get top notch educations. Build the best commercial infrastructure to keep their economy competitive. Invest into robotics and really any IT and R&D, and perhaps compete in new forms of automation based high value manufacturing.

<comment><USER6> It seems unlikely that oil and gas wouldn't be valued for both use as energy source and for chemical processes in the future as well. With an added benefit of less oil burnt now, might decrease the chances of a cataclysmic climate event in the near future.

<comment><USER9> It's more likely in environmental regards, that oil and gasoline will be nearly regulated out of use in the future (if they're not simply stamped out by superior energy infrastructure). The death by regulation scenario becomes more likely as the world becomes less dependent on oil / gasoline. That's why the Obama Admin dares to hammer coal now, because natural gas has come online via fracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is impressive. They may want to work on being a little more secretive about it. Or else we will hear of a group of extremist Norwegian terrorists forming a scary group that will kill Americans, hate god, hurt children, etc etc. which will of coarse force the US to invade.

I kid, I kid, but no really, I am glad someone is getting it right.

</comment><comment><USER29> "It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work. "One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working," Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent."

20% unemployment rate or 3.3%? Can't figure that one out.

<comment><USER30> Unemployment, at least in the US, refers to people who are able to work and who are also actively looking for employment. Unemployment rates don't factor in people who have completely given up on finding a job.

I don't know if this is the same in Norway, but if it is, it might help explain the discrepancy.

<comment><USER31> that's a strange way to classify unemployment. I wonder why that is used?

<comment><USER32> It's accurate measure for the supply side of the markets. If that number reaches 0% then there isn't any available workforce and wages rise sky high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hesitate before drawing broad conclusions - they discovered oil in their back yard, are now rich. Not a reflection on their great foresight or thriftiness.

<comment><USER34> Their foresight is in saving it instead of spending it immediately. (Also in having a fund that spreads out the wealth generated by natural resources instead of letting a few people get all the money!)

<comment><USER35> > _Their foresight is in saving it instead of spending it immediately_

Not only that, but also in establishing a national oil company instead of privatizing everything to funnel profits to some large corporations.

I'd like to know how they manage to prevent corruption in these areas, in Austria (where I live) it's quite common to rob the taxpayer blind and line politicians' pockets while privatizing assets.

<comment><USER36> That's no silver bullet, Pemex being the obvious counter-example. They might have done equally well (or better) with competing companies that were taxed to pay into this fund.

<comment><USER37> It's likely the case that Norwegian civil society would have been strong enough to produce good results regardless of the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That's what would happen in most african countries if wealth from natural resources were managed correctly (oil,gold,uranium,...).

Unfortunatly it will NEVER happen.

</comment><comment><USER39> They're like the dwarves of Erebor. I would be very worried if I were them, considering the fact that they're the home of the Norwegian Ridheback.

</comment><comment><USER40> What would happen if they started spending all the money?

<comment><USER41> It's not ours to spend. It belongs to future generations as much as it does ours.

The money is invested and some of the yearly return on that investment is spent each year. At present the government is at liberty to spend up to 4% of the fund each year (though they don't always do this, due to risk of creating inflation, heating up the real-estate market etc). The investment fund is well-managed, but some argue that spending 4% each year might mean we're eating into the principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Australia, in the 1980-90s established a social welfare retirement fund. It is now worth more than their GDP!

<comment><USER43> I presume you are talking about the "Superannuation Guarantee", whereby 9.25% of everyone's salary gets diverted to an account, which can't be accessed until retirement at age 60+ ? One difference between the Norwegian fund and Australia's superannuation is that superannuation accounts are personal, so people without a salary don't get any benefit. The total value of Australia's superannuation is about AUD1.7e12, about AUD74,000 per person, a bit under half the Norgegian figure. This is inequitably distributed though, with an awful lot of people (anyone that doesn't receive a wage/salary) having virtually none.

<comment><USER44> Yep, this is a problem particularly for women, who tend to get paid less than men and take time off to care for children -- for example, half of all women aged 45 to 59 have $8,000 or less in their superannuation funds. [http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/gender-gap- retire...](http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/gender-gap-retirement- savings)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So what are they going to do when the oil runs out?

<comment><USER14> Go back to living on the 80% of GDP that is not from the oil + the returns of the wealth fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I hate to be the bad guy, but they earn that money from the people who pay the price of the high oil prices. A real act of altruism is to actually do something to reduce those prices.

<comment><USER47> The real act of altruism is to do something to avoid burning oil at all. This way you get to be altruistic towards your posterity as well.

The interesting question is, do high oil prices help this cause or not?

<comment><USER48> Use high oil prices to invest in renewables and electric vehicle companies with your sovereign oil fund.

High oil prices definitely cause people to adjust their behavior (consider EVs, use public transit,etc [demand destruction]).

<comment><USER49> On the other hand, high oil prices also lead to more oil exploration.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Not WireGuard - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ipfire.org/post/why-not-wireguard <comment><USER2> The article is obviously a promotional piece for ipfire and so exists to promote a certain angle on the topic. Even understanding this, though, it's strikes me as pretty questionable.

The section discussing dynamic IP addresses seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Wireguard. The IP addresses that must be statically established in Wireguard are the addresses used inside of the tunnel, and are independent of the public (internet) IPs of the machines involved. The wg- dynamic daemon mentioned is a system for dynamically allocating IP addresses _in_ the tunnel, and has so far not been completed, at least in part because it's not very obvious why you would want to do this (although in general the development of an in-band configuration standard for Wireguard has useful implications).

Wireguard allows you to identify the endpoint using a DNS name, which means you can handle a 'server' with a dynamic IP address by dynamically updating the DNS record - a common approach that is no doubt exactly what ipfire supports doing for ipsec.

In the end, though, the article just suffers from being an apples-to-oranges comparison. Wireguard is a VPN tunnel protocol implementation, ipfire is some sort of GUI frontend for managing a bunch of network tools. Of course ipfire has quite a few more features than wireguard.

<comment><USER3> Although the article is confused regarding dynamic IP addresses your solution of identifying the endpoint using a DNS name is also not a complete solution when using Wireguard. The Wireguard tool, wg, resolves the DNS name and then sets the ip address for the endpoint which the wireguard protocol implementation then uses. Since the wireguard protocol implementation doesn't do any DNS resolution if the endpoint address changes even if the DNS record is updated wireguard will never know. Instead another tool needs to check the DNS record of the endpoint periodically either at some fixed interval and/or based upon the TTL of the DNS record. If the record changes it then needs to update the configuration of the wireguard protocol implementation.

<comment><USER4> This is not always required. WireGuard peers can roam freely very similarly to Mosh (if one peer receives an authenticated message from one of its peers from a different IP address, it will update the gateway of that peer and will send all subsequent packets to that IP address).

But to be fair, this doesn't work _perfectly_ (especially if you have certain firewall rules that block UDP packets if they're not part of the what the firewall thinks is the same "connection", if both peers change their IP at the same time, or if the peer whose IP changed was rebooted or reconfigured before the other peer received a packet from its new IP addreds) but it really does work surprisingly well. For those (important) corner-cases, I would imagine that higher-level tooling such as NetworkManager would do the DNS checks you're talking about.

<comment><USER2> Right, the free roaming tends to be on "the other side" though. This is a bit confusing to talk about because Wireguard does not have a concept of "client" and "server" and either side can nominally initiate the tunnel. However, in roaming configurations, typically only one side will have the information to initiate the connection (endpoint) and so there's a tendency to call this the "client."

The non-roaming end (end with a known endpoint) will update the IP of the roaming end every time a handshake occurs. The issue the OP is getting at though is when _both_ ends are roaming. In this case the, er, "more roaming" peer needs some way to find the other peer. There are a lot of technically interesting ways that we _could_ solve this problem, but in practice it's pretty much always solved by dynamically updating a DNS record. I would say Wireguard handles this scenario about as well as anything else (maybe a little worse, see sibling comment).

Another approach would be using a "meet-me" relay with a fixed IP, such as TURN. This also has the advantage of handling NAT on both sides (which would be a common issue with a roaming-to-roaming situation). I can't think of any reason it's impossible to run Wireguard through TURN but I can't find any examples of anyone doing so, likely in part because the TURN client is usually embedded in the application and is a bit complicated. Still, might be a hobby project to implement it for Wireguard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "ChaCha20 is a stream cipher which are easier to implement in software. They encrypt one bit at a time. Block ciphers like AES encrypt a block of 128 bits at a time. That would need many more transistors when implemented in hardware, so larger processors come with AES-NI - an instruction set extension that performs some tasks of the encryption process to speed it up."

This entire paragraph is nonsense—that isn't what a stream cipher means. ChaCha20 encrypts 512 bits at a time.

The rest of that section goes on to describe how AES-NI is available everywhere except where it isn't, and ChaCha20 can't take advantage of hardware acceleration except where it can—then makes a blanket conclusion that AES will "outperform ChaCha20 in every single scenario" with all those exceptions conveniently ignored.

(Are there correct, nuanced arguments to be made here one way or the other? Of course. But this article isn't one of them.)

<comment><USER6> The first paragraph makes no sense that's true, but what follows is a good point. AES-GCM is much much faster than ChaCha20-Poly1305.

If:

1) your market is fragmented

2) many clients are cheap phones that don't support AES-NI

3) you can differentiate them so that you don't penalize better clients

Then yeah it makes sense to use Chacha20-Poly1305 for some of these clients.

But choosing Chacha20-Poly1305 over AES-GCM all the time doesn't, and I'm not sure why Wireguard does that (besides trying to be trendy).

<comment><USER4> It's to make the design simpler. If you only use one crypto algorithm there's no cipher suite negotiation in the protocol (and thus no downgrade attacks). And while AES-GCM is faster with AES-NI, ChaCha20-Poly1305 is constructed to avoid timing side-channels (so software implementations are automatically much safer by default).

<comment><USER6> I would expect most clients to have hardware support for AES-GCM.

<comment><USER4> That's only true if most of your clients aren't mobile devices. That's why Google pushed for ChaCha20-Poly1305 standardisation and usage with TLS several years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are two things that bug me:

1\. The insistence that because complicated protocols are still in wide use, that complications are not a big deal. This is weird. Are we just not acknowledging all of the costs from complicated protocols? Look at TLS.

2\. Focusing on a broken benchmark and encryption algorithms and coming to the conclusion that Wireguard is not faster seemingly with no actual testing. Well, maybe it somehow isn't, but in my experience I get significantly better performance using WireGuard as a drop-in replacement for OpenVPN in a couple of circumstances, on top of better latency. I am no expert but I'd be willing to bet there is some truth to the performance claims.

IPSec, of course, has its issues too, but that's an entirely different story.

<comment><USER8> Wireguard will likely replace OpenVPN.

But it won't be faster than IPsec (basically the same framing overhead), and won't be replacing IPsec.

<comment><USER9> I've been using wireguard lately on my phone and laptop. I can tell that it's leaps and bounds faster than openVPN in terms of pure network throughput but also in terms how fast it establishes a channel. With such performance it is a viable always-on VPN solution. In other words, it's a game changer.

Regarding IPSEC: I have never been able to reliably configure and use IPSEC, and I'm in IT for several decades. Not that it can't be done, it's just too complex, so much so that it only makes sense for large companies to hire and train specialists who can do it. If wireguard offers similar throughput but eliminates complexity, I'd say it makes sense to replace IPSEC with it, if only to reduce complexity

<comment><USER10> It's much easier on the OpenBSD OpenIKEd (IKEv2) server that competes with theirs and that they denigrate, at least with iOS and macOS clients. Where WG wins massively over IPSec is in ease of configuration.

<comment><USER11> Single client implementation is the easy part. The hell starts when you need to use several different clients (think iOS, Android-built in or Strongswan, Windows, Linux Libreswan or Strongswan, also throw in several appliances by different vendors) and each of them has different ideas about what is acceptable in their algo list[1].

And that's just cipher negotiation. Don't get me started, what the clients expect to be in the certificates as CN and SAN. You have IPSec gateway behind NAT (so the internal IP of the gateway is different than the public IP), with dynamic IP, so you need to use DNS instead of fixed IP? Good luck with configuring your Windows clients.

[1] I.e. libreswan has deprecated MD5 and SHA1 in their default algo list; if you need them, you must find out how to configure the client that uses it as a backed. Ubiquiti routers on the other hand support SHA1 as their strongest auth algorithm, so there is no match, leading to forum posts like this: [https://community.ui.com/questions/L2TP-unusable-on- Fedora/d...](https://community.ui.com/questions/L2TP-unusable-on- Fedora/d91fb0a7-0507-4c6d-be7f-259d2df8edc4), where people butcher it and end up using 3DES and DH group 2. Yay, great for security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Imagine you have a VPN server with 200 road warrior clients somewhere out > there in the world - which is a very normal use-case. If you were to change > the cipher you are using from one day to the next one, you would need to > upgrade your WireGuard software on all those laptops, phones, etc. at the > same time. That is literally impossible. Administrators who have tried this > needed months to deploy configuration changes. Sometimes even middle-sized > companies need years to conduce a process like this._

In a world where _Mario Kart Tour_ can get millions of people on all sorts of smartphones to update within a day of release, there is no actual reason why anyone else should be unable to.

All of these businesses have painted themselves into a corner - they've said that they don't care about being able to update software within a year, and they've built processes around that, and now they whine that they can't update software within a year. Tough. Design things from day one with the assumption that updates will happen.

Then you can patch software vulnerabilities in a timely fashion and not get attacked via well-known VPN software flaws like Travelex did. If you genuinely care about your business, you'll already want to figure this out.

(Which is the other problem with this article: "secure" isn't really about cryptographic algorithms, these days. There are tons of good cryptographic algorithms. Just don't use the bad ones. "Secure" is about whether you're using them right, whether you've got memory safety vulnerabilities, whether you've got logic flaws, etc. Every piece of complexity in your software - including cryptographic agility - imperils "secure," and the best defense is being able to confidently apply patches to your software wherever it's being run.)

<comment><USER13> You can also setup the new version as a new instance on a different port and run them in parallel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an excellent example of motivated reasoning. The author wants to keep selling his IPSec tool and thus throws together a word salad loaded with conjecture and theoretical concerns.

It appears he's not even tried WireGuard. The argument that it does not work for road warriors is a misunderstanding of where static IPs are required (inside the tunnel, not outside).

As one who has tried WireGuard, I'm happy to say it can already replace OpenVPN and IPSec for the 80% case. And not only that, it is in practical experience much easier to install and set up, and much faster to connect and has excellent latency and bandwidth. It is great for road warriors, I've been using it for that purpose for six months or so and have never had any problems with it.

Sure, there are some VPN features WG will not implement, for those you'll have to stick with legacy VPNs like IPSec or OpenVPN.

The rest is just FUD.

<comment><USER15> Static IP addressing inside the tunnel is still a major pain point for significant use-cases, e.g. company-wide VPN access for all employees. How do you do static addressing for 200+ people with their own devices?

<comment><USER16> You provision them. How do you create user accounts for 200+ people?

These end users likely do not already have wireguard on their devices so as part of the software rollout you assign them an ip. A /24 gives you enough addresses for over 200 people and a /8 future proofs you for a much larger company size. You can also just spin up different wireguard networks for different departments or even think about using IPV6.

This is the same for any large rollout of technology really. There may be some hands on effort but nothing that couldn't be automated with a spreadsheet and a script.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Several of the criticisms in this article seem fair, some less so to me, but this does really hit the problem on the head:

> It is not very hard for me to conclude that WireGuard is not ready - yet.

> It has been drafted as a lightweight and fast solution to some problems of > the existing solutions. Unfortunately it has sacrificed many features that > will be relevant for many users and therefore will not be able to replace > IPsec and OpenVPN.

> For that we need to add at least IP address assignment, pushing > configuration like DNS servers and routes.

This has certainly been the case for me. My use case for a VPN is a typical road warrior set-up. In my experience Wireguard seems like it's probably great for people who are accustomed to setting up custom VPN configurations already, and in fact probably simplifies the steps in doing so. But as someone who just needs a set-it-and-forget-it configuration to remote in and forward my connections that just consistently works, trying to get Wireguard working was hours of misery.

There's enough tooling built around OpenVPN that you can generate a simple .ovpn configuration that just works and does everything you want in a few minutes. You don't need to be a professional network admin or have a lot of experience configuring VPNs. I hope Wireguard gets to that point because I really do believe in its technical superiority.

<comment><USER18> I was in the same boat as you, so I wrote stuff up so you don't have to wonder:

[https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-to-configure- wireguard/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-to-configure-wireguard/)

It takes hours to set up if you don't know how (and the docs aren't amazing), but it should take you ten minutes using my article.

<comment><USER19> Do you know of anything like this available for windows? all the guides are for linux, but I use windows for my every day laptop, I'd also like to set this up for my phone and obviously iOS doesn't really have a cli.

For what it's worth this did seem easy to follow, I just know that when I tried to follow a guide similar to this one a while back I couldn't get it to work for a windows client.

<comment><USER20> Are you just looking to set it up with iOS and Windows clients? If the Wireguard server is running Linux, an easy way to copy the config over to an iOS or Android device is to use qrencode. For example, `qrencode -t ansiutf8 < $config_file` will output a QR code that can be scanned from the Wireguard app to automatically import as a new tunnel.

I used StavrosK's guide (thank you!) to put together two scripts a while back, one for generating a new server config file, and one to generate a new client config, outputting the config to a file as well as to a QR code on stdout. You can copy the client.conf file over to the Windows machine and import the configuration via the "Import tunnel(s) from file..." option in the Wireguard client, or scan the QR code output from the mobile device clients via "Create from QR code".

Here's my script for generating a client cert: [https://cdn.seedno.de/txt/wireguard- certgen](https://cdn.seedno.de/txt/wireguard-certgen). It assumes Wireguard is already configured on the server on interface wg0, and is using the default port of 51820/UDP, though both are configurable via variables. For reference, the accompanying setup script is [https://cdn.seedno.de/txt/wireguard- setup](https://cdn.seedno.de/txt/wireguard-setup). Both scripts require a bit of customization to match your environment (you may want to be particularly careful with the iptables firewall PostUp/PostDown commands), but hopefully they can serve as a starting point to figure out any issues you encountered last time you tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Frankly, my takeaway is that if one can use WireGuard, use it. If one can make small changes to use WireGuard, make those changes and use it. If one _must_ use a feature only OpenVPN or IPSec provide, don't use WireGuard.

That's a compelling pitch for WireGuard. (And VPNs as a whole.)

<comment><USER22> At this point I'd only be using ovpn for tcp state caching which is amazing on poor mobile links. You can have your ovpn link resetting every 30 seconds and the tcp connections just continue like nothing happened, and I'd still use it on top of WireGuard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wireguard is early, agreed, but I totally disagree with this attitude that "real world IPSec works fine". When I have to set up an IPSec tunnel where at least one side is a vendor I haven't already suffered through, I always allocate at least a full day to getting it to work. Perhaps it's because I've chosen obscure fly-by-night vendors like Cisco, VMWare, Microsoft, and Google. Or...maybe IPSec, in theory and practice, is a nightmare of unnecessary complexity that should be killed with fire.

<comment><USER24> A substantial fraction of the complexity of IPsec actually is the fault of the various vendors and implementations -- and is technically the complexity of IKE rather than IPsec in most cases.

It's actually quite simple under the hood and frankly can't be made much simpler while still achieving the security objectives. The often wildly overcomplicated configuration syntax together with subtle differences in implementation defaults, cipher and parameter naming are what I see creating challenges for vendor interoperability.

<comment><USER23> The distinction between IKE and IPsec is the last thing on my mind when I'm in the fourth hour of debugging a connection. :)

The existence of all the configuration options is the underlying problem. Well, the wealth of options plus the near-universal behavior when you have a mismatched configuration: either a vague yet misleading error message or just a silent refusal to work.

Combine that with arbitrary vendor restrictions on that wealth of options and it's just a guaranteed waste of time, E.g., neither GCP nor VMWare VeloCloud let you configure key lifetimes, so they can never connect to each other. Aside from the vendor stupidity, that's a protocol problem: how does refusing to connect when the two sides disagree on key lifetime help security?

<comment><USER24> Permitting key lifetime to disagree can allow an attacker to manipulate key lifetime, which could defeat perfect forward secrecy if the key lifetime is manipulated towards infinity or used to gather data for a known plaintext attack if the key lifetime is manipulated towards 0. Replay attacks also come to mind.

<comment><USER23> Or just have both sides pick the lowest/highest proposed lifetime with a fixed minimum/maximum. Or just don't have lifetime be configurable, because what is the point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmm, I really wonder what mess he is talking about: "and here we are in the middle of this mess."

It takes an experienced sysadmin a whole 20 min of his life to install the program, play with it and judge it (I guess, it took me a whole evening before I understood that the client needed its own config which can be created on the server, it's nice that you can then just scan a QR code with your phone though to configure it). Or even less when he talks to colleagues. This whole sentence immediately puts me off.

I'm just a home server guy, no vpn experience. Messed with WireGuard for a night and left it installed. Have been using it ever since with no issues. How _did_ I get in the middle of this mess?

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, I can see that I am outgunned as far as advanced networking knowledge goes. I would just like to say that I did a head to head comparison between openvpn and wireguard using the same hardware, server and client endpoints. Connection from Montreal to Amsterdam. Result was that something like this: novpn=100% wireguard=95% speed, openvpn=25% speed. Enough to convince me that for my use case (simple, steady point to point) wireguard is very much the superior option.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most of this is silly, but there is one correct point: large enterprises will never use WG unless we can get NIST to approve ChaCha and C25519 under FIPS.

Yes it's mostly bullshit. No it won't ever change. FIPS is a check box and its all about liability and things like insurance. It has zero to do with tech and everything to do with standards and bureaucratic and legal requirements. Nobody ever got fired for using FIPS approved stuff. Use something different like WG and it (and you) will be blamed for any breach.

Note that I'm not sure to what extent this is true in Europe, but there you have another problem. In my experience European industry is just culturally super conservative and does not like to adopt new things. So even if they don't have the FIPS boat anchor, they're just terribly change-averse.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think there are good points made here, but for the most part WireGuard is a massive upgrade compared to OpenVPN for most users, and I think it's set up really well for that use case (especially in a setting where you have control of the endpoints).

There are other things for other use cases, I'm looking at glorytun [0] right now as a start. I particularly want the multipath stuff. Right now, it has the ability to do AEGIS where AES extensions are available, and fall back to ChaCha20-Poly1305. I personally think libsodium should look at adding a ChaCha12, and maybe ChaCha8, mode; 20 rounds seems pretty excessive, all things considered, and it has a considerable performance cost.

By the way, given that the hardware would probably have dramatically more throughput and less complexity, I do wonder why CPU vendors aren't looking at ChaCha acceleration. It's not strictly necessary for timing attack reasons, since ChaCha doesn't really have these problems in software, but it seems to be better in every way than AES, given equal effort.

RE: the multipath functionality is interesting to me, because I want to set up in some locations where directional radio could degrade in one direction or another, or maybe only satellite is available sometimes. I think probably the mad/glorytun multipath stuff is not _that_ smart yet, but it's a start.

[0]: [https://github.com/angt/glorytun](https://github.com/angt/glorytun)

</comment><comment><USER29> The "cypher upgrades are too hard" claim is ridiculous. Deploy a new endpoint on the new ciphers, update clients to use it, shut off the old one (optionally, limit its access initially then shut it off later).

</comment><comment><USER30> >Obviously virtually every desktop/server CPU bought in the last couple of years has AES-NI.

Except raspberry pis. Exactly the type of crowd attracted by simple home- rolled tunnels like wg

<comment><USER31> How fast can it do with without native support?

EDIT: Seems like >700 Mbps is possible with the pi4. Not bad, IMO: [https://www.reddit.com/r/WireGuard/comments/d8k605/gigabit_w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/WireGuard/comments/d8k605/gigabit_wireguard_performance_on_sbcs/)

<comment><USER30> Yeah the rasp 4s are pretty insane. You can also use them as a router/firewall if you're sufficiently insane via a USB3 network adapter.

<comment><USER31> Honestly, I use a pi 3b as a router/firewall and it works pretty well for up to ~90 Mbs of traffic. That is just enough for me right now.

Its an unexpected use case, but it is much more stable and flexible than a lot of "better" solutions.

<comment><USER30> Managed 250 with a rasp4. Mostly because that was fiber line speed at the time. I suspect they can do 500ish

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There seems to be a misunderstanding of what "cryptographic agility" is, as well. Usually cryptographic agility means the ability to mix-and-match different protocols/options, e.g. use a certain key exchange algorithm with a certain symmetric encryption algorithm and/or MAC/HMAC; keysize, handshakes, options, things - everything can be negotiated by different clients, and sometimes a bad option (or a bad combination of options) can be negotiated. If you've got five key exchange algorithms, ten encryption algorithms with different key and block sizes, and ten MAC/HMAC algorithms - I'll let you calculate how many possible outcomes are there.

Without cryptographic agility, this is not possible. In TLS, you would have a very specific key exchange algorithm with a very specific encryption and auth algorithm.

But this does not mean that versioning is not supported. When some primitive is too old, a V2 API (again with a precise algorithm combination) can be created, and clients and servers can keep using both V1 and V2 for some time.

</comment><comment><USER33> > There is a sub-project called "wg-dynamic" which adds a user-space daemon to > overcome this shortcoming. A massive design flaw because of the use-cases > stated above, but it is even worse that IPv6 is all about dynamic > addressing.

"massive"? Citation needed. I never used a dynamic IP address on a server, for obvious security and reliability reasons.

</comment><comment><USER33> > If you were to change the cipher you are using from one day to the next one, > you would need to upgrade your WireGuard software on all those laptops, > phones, etc. at the same time. That is literally impossible. Administrators > who have tried this needed months to deploy configuration changes.

Nonsense. That's what userspace tooling is for. You automatically deploy a new version with a new configuration file to use a new server. Over time, laptops & co migrate to it. Later on you revoke the previous version and shut down the server.

It's done all the time.

</comment><comment><USER34> WireGuard is very hard to manage with a pool of connected devices, especially if you don't know how many will connect ahead of time, it really needs Dynamic IPs, Routes & DNS to compete against OpenVPN. You should be able to add in hostname & credentials on the client end and let it do its magic.

I also feel like the language used in wg-dynamic is very dismissive and counter productive:

> WireGuard currently uses static addresses everywhere. This is because that > is mostly a better way to design your network. But in some cases, insane > people want dynamic IP addresses or other dynamic configuration.

[https://github.com/WireGuard/wg- dynamic/blob/master/docs/ide...](https://github.com/WireGuard/wg- dynamic/blob/master/docs/idea.md)

So now I'm insane for not wanting to configure every connected client?

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been looking at WireGuard on and off but so far I'm sticking with IPSec.

I currently have two use cases:

1) A road-warrior setup for iOS and MacOS devices with connect-on-demand if needed. Authentication is done using user certificates issued by an internal CA. This gives me secure access to check my security cameras, etc, and makes it completely frictionless.

2) A persistent tunnel to a cloud provider's network. The cloud provider only supports IPSec, so WireGuard isn't even an option here. This is mainly just homelab-type playing around, not serious work.

I think WireGuard can do the first use case, but without centralized control over what routes, split tunnels, DNS, IP address assignments, etc, are pushed to the clients. I'd have to manage deploying all of this to the clients by hand instead of letting StrongSwan do it for me.

On the IPSec side, setting everything up was a huge amount of effort. My first use case probably took a total of a day and a half (over the course of a couple of years as the solution changed and evolved) to get it into its current state. I'm not including getting the PKI stuff figured out since I wanted that for other stuff anyway.

The second use case took me about three days to get set up satisfactorily. Most of this is because I can't see the logs on the cloud provider side, so debugging it is a matter of waiting, sometimes for six hours, for the tunnel to stop passing traffic, followed by tweaking settings based on what the error might be, and repeating. IPSec's complexity[0] really works against it here. I expect that WireGuard would be significantly easier for this use case if the cloud provider supported it.

[0] [https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/ConnSec...](https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/ConnSection) \- I've been staring at this page way too much lately.

</comment><comment><USER36> Blah, WireGuard ain't necessarily superior by technical means, but being open source & easy to use solution, its efforts are crucial for the secure communications sector to go forward. All this FUD is just telling there is a strong need for tools like WireGuard.

</comment><comment><USER37> Having to update all clients at the same time when deploying a Wireguard with different ciphers is solvable with just deploying another Wireguard server alongside the new one, right?

I mean it's debatable whether one likes this approach better than more complex cipher negotiation protocols -- clearly these things should not be thought about in absolutes or "best practices", but as tradeoffs with different pros and cons. Wireguard seems to prioritize protocol complexity above upgradeability, that's not to say one is better than the other.

</comment><comment><USER38> >Is WireGuard faster than other VPN solutions?

>Simple answer: It isn't.

It's really hard to not dismiss this guy as an utter clown when it's so obvious he's making these claims without even trying wireguard.

<comment><USER39> The author seems to have enough experience with IPSec that people would dismiss his first-hand experience or benchmarks as biased anyway.

<comment><USER8> > The author seems to have enough experience with IPSec that people would > dismiss his first-hand experience or benchmarks as biased anyway.

OK, if you want to claim bias...

I own the company behind pfSense, and am sponsoring the work to put wireguard in the FreeBSD kernel (and will pay for the additional work to put this work in pfSense.)

He's right, wireguard will be no faster than IPsec given equivalent encryption schemes (say, if IPsec were to use ChaCha20-Poly1305 for the bulk encryption) because the framing overheads are within a few bytes of each other.

And if you're willing to compare AES-GCM to ChaCha20+Poly1305, then AES will, indeed, almost always be faster. The author makes note of the AES-NI instructions, and Wireguard's claim to be able to use the vector (AVX512) instructions,

> The WireGuard whitepaper mentions due to AVX512, ChaCha20-Poly1305 will > outperform AES-NI1, but that instruction set extension will only be > available on large processors which again won't help with smaller and mobile > hardware that will always be faster with AES-NI.

However:

1) using the vector units from inside the kernel will involve a lot more overhead if anything else (say, in user land) is using the vector unit(s). Welcome to vector context switch overhead. Tons of huge registers to save and restore.

2) near future versions of AVX512 [[https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/392.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/392.pdf)] will support vector versions of the AES-NI (VAES) and PCLMULDQD (VPCLMULDQD) instructions. These have been timed at over 150Gbps. Yes, that's correct.

<comment><USER40> > 1) using the vector units from inside the kernel will involve a lot more > overhead if anything else (say, in user land) is using the vector unit(s). > Welcome to vector context switch overhead. Tons of huge registers to save > and restore.

FWIW, x86 AESNI instructions also operate on the XMM vector units. Doing AESNI in the kernel involves much of the same overhead as accelerated Chacha.

(No comment on AVX512 and future directions — I'll take your word for that part.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's hard to see how you can focus on security _and_ implement something as a kernel module.

A kernel module give it the highest amount of privileges it can have. Meanwhile, we all know of the "principle of least privilege". Not to mention any potential bugs can kill the entire system.

While a kernel module may have some performance gains, I'm sceptical about the trade-offs here. And I definitely don't think "VPN" falls into what we usually think a kernel should be responsible for.

<comment><USER42> The kernel part is tiny. AFAIK, this is just like Netflix's KTLS — configuration stuff and handshakes are in userspace, only the bulk transport crypto is in kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Does anyone have a breakdown of the different open source licenses for the other projects apart from the kernel?

from wireguard.com

License The kernel components are released under the GPLv2, as is the Linux kernel itself. Other projects are licensed under MIT, BSD, Apache 2.0, or GPL, depending on context.

</comment><comment><USER44> (Disclosure: we use wireguard heavily at fly.io to handle backhaul between customer apps)

The tldr of this seems to be "wireguard isn't as complicated as openvpn / ipsec infrastructure". Which is true. It's not, it has a much smaller scope.

</comment><comment><USER45> Slightly off topic, but does anyone know how you could configure user groups with Wireguard? So a common set of ACLs, permissions etc. It seems more geared towards a single user.

<comment><USER46> What do you mean by "user groups" and "ACL" in the context of VPN? In any case, the answer is most probably "write some firewall rules" (discriminating on the source IP, the ones you configured as allowed IPs in wireguard).

<comment><USER45> I was trying to work out whether I could replace a VPN server like OpenVPN or SoftEther with Wireguard. Both of those allow you to create multiple client/users that share a set of rules. E.g. roaming Developers can connect via VPN to this resource, but not that one. WireGuard looks to be a lot lower level and probably not well suited to that task.

<comment><USER47> WireGuard is a protocol with some tools to setup basic connections. What you probably want is some way to manage Wireguard peers and network zones with firewall and routing rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I know Wireguard is better but how do I get my work to use it instead of openvpn?

<comment><USER49> I think one of the points the author is getting at is that there is a lack of (enterprise-level?) tooling around wireguard at the moment. Something that supports 2fa to connect would be nice, etc.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, the setup really needs to find a way to not require manually adding the actual private keys to each side to set it up.

<comment><USER50> But that is precisely what makes it so easy and yet remain secure. When I add a new client, it takes just a minute to generate the keys and send over the QR code to the person via an already secure side channel, if we aren't already meeting face to face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> paid advertising?</comment>


Show HN: Car Cost Calculator – my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://car-cost-calculator.com

<comment><USER2> You might add a parking cost field, because for anyone in a city, parking's unlikely to be free

</comment><comment><USER3> Where did you get a 20-30% average depreciation on cars? Depreciation is not linear on vehicles. Most of the depreciation occurs in the first few years and then tapers off. Is this calculated into your algorithm?

<comment><USER4> While I'm fine with exponential depreciation, the rates are very high (or maybe just variable by car). My RAV4 has closer to 9-10% depreciation (assuming 15k miles/year) per the Edmunds TCO mentioned elsewhere. May be constructive to look up your individual car and input it into _khet_ 's calculator.

Kudos for giving us the option. May be helpful flag inputs that are highly deterministic of the output and suggest look-ups.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I actually have an outlier that has negative depreciation. Got it used for 26k with 44k miles. 6 Months later my insurance company informed me that they had to put my car value closer to 32k due to replacement costs and that this may go up over my ownership of the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like someone else mentioned, there are better tools to calculate static ownership costs. This is definitely a good start.

I'm working on [https://www.maintenr.com](https://www.maintenr.com) and we allow you to calculate your service and fuel expenses dynamicly.

<comment><USER7> Could you explain what your planned features are & who your target audience is? The 'tutorials', will you have any generic ones for people to use or a repository of them? Can the tutorials be made public vs private? This is interesting & I signed up just to see what it's about. I don't do my own work on my car but I knew a few mechanics & I understand the 'process' of how to do certain things with my vehicle. I also keep a pretty detailed record of the work I do on my car. Neat!

<comment><USER6> Target audience will be shifting towards general market. I focused on enthusiasts at first as I know that market very well.

Tutorials can be private and could be shared if you wish; we offer 'export' functionality.

Down the line, as we collect more data (makes things interesting) there is a plan to introduce some sort of crowd sourcing aspect.

Feel free to bug me if you have any questions! Thanks for checking it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The other week I was thinking about buying a car to save money on commuting... And I'm sure I am not the only one.

I definitely see value in this tool. I have 0 experience with cars, and I am sure I have no idea how much does it cost to maintain, repair. Again, I don't think I am the only one. So is £20 or so worth paying to get accurate numbers, tweaked for a specific country, with nice explanations why and how? I think so ;)

I would really consider experimenting to see if this could be monetized, whether people are willing to pay. It won't make millions, but as a passive income source? That might work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't the maintenance costs go up after a while. Otherwise people would only buy 10 year old cars as they'd be like 20-30k cheaper :D

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem there is, I have no idea how to model maintenance costs! The field is basically a hack. If there is a better way, I'd like to do that.

<comment><USER4> Depends on how deep you want to go, but you could set up a table with common considerations and let users set frequency...

Most maintenance is mileage-dependent, so if you base your schedule on their monthly mileage, it could look like:

      Repair           Cost           Frequency
      </comment></comment></comment><comment>           ----           </comment><comment>---
      Oil Change        $30             5000 mi
      Tires            $500            45000 mi
      Battery          $150            30000 mi
      Timing Belt     $1500            60000 mi
      Misc             $200            15000 mi

Do the math in impact/year and input that cost into your table...

<comment><USER10> To complicate matters, some of those items are time or distance items. Oil and battery, for instance, need to be changed after a certain amount of time regardless of the miles driven. Not too hard to work into the pricing algorithm, though.

If you wanted go get even more creative, you could get users to crowdsource scheduled maintenance tables for their vehicles. It's all in the owner's manual and just a matter of transcribing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a great tool! It'd be awesome to add lease information into it as well, to help with the lease-vs-buy decision.

<comment><USER12> I too would like to evaluate lease versus buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The default gas price is shown as $3.40/gallon. Where are you getting gas that cheap??

<comment><USER14> That's pretty typical for Houston at least.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that's amazing. Was $4.17 in Chicago when I filled up a few days ago.

<comment><USER15> Ah, the 8$ per gallon price in Europe. And I find it affordable…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks!

Feature suggestion: Metric units (for every other country that is not the USA)

<comment><USER17> I completely agree. This tool is useless to me in Australia, unless I convert all the units.

Even within the same measurement system different countries express units in different ways (e.g. Imperial Gallon vs US Gallon; and MPG, L/100km & Km/Litre).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would be curious to see this versus an electric car cost calculator

<comment><USER19> You could approximate by saying that a gallon is a kWh of energy. set up the Fuel Price per Gallon to electricity cost $0.1(a), 3(b) MPG, and a much lower maintenance cost...

(a) 10 cents per kWh (depends on where you live), (b) 3 miles per kWh (or 333Wh/mile, depends on the actual EV)

<comment><USER20> > and a much lower maintenance cost...

As long as your figures include replacing the batteries every so often....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good idea, unfortunately barely usable on my ipad - entry text fields are too slow

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice idea, but I actually think Edmund's TCO is a bit more comprehensive and uses real world data for each car.

[http://www.edmunds.com/porsche/911/2011/tco.html?style=10138...](http://www.edmunds.com/porsche/911/2011/tco.html?style=101380348)

<comment><USER4> Nice aspirational example there with the 911...

Didn't know about TCO, but I like the idea. First glance impressions of the Edmunds tool:

      - Mileage assumes 15k/year, which may not be accurate for a
      large part of the population (I only drive 10k/year, which
      affects depreciation, maintenance, etc.)

      - The math governing financing is opaque, as is maintenance
      and repairs. I'd like to know what they're assuming will
      break, need service, etc. Esp. because it's non-linear. Not
      sure how I'm going to accrue $500 in maintenance in the first
      year on my 2012 Rav4 - all it needs are oil changes (3 x $30).

      - Insurance also strikes me as astonishingly high (over
      double what I'd pay/year).

All of this is to say, I see the value of a more flexible and transparent calculator to meet individual needs...

<comment><USER23> There's a reasonably high chance that you will need to replace the tires fairly soon after buying a used car (which is how I read it working). That's most of that $500.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> such caclulator. very caclate.</comment>


Rainbow Lollipop: an experimental visual history web browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grindhold/rainbow-lollipop

<comment><USER2> The way I understand that image: Each bar is the equivalent of a tab, and the linked circles are the visiting history for that tab.

The busy blue bar near the bottom shows that you visited six links, went back to the third link and visited four from there, then went back to the second of those four and visited one. The large size and white color of that one last circle means that it's what you're visiting now?

Or I'm totally off, and this is an alien interface in need of interpretation by Hoshi Sato.

<comment><USER3> Yup except for the large image, you got everything right. The large image _was_ the topmost suggestion of autocompletion at the time. This one in particular was "search the string in the url-bar with duckduckgo". It does not exist anymore. It has been replaced with three neat columns that organize suggestions in a better way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you post some video or something? The screenshot doesn't give too much.

</comment><comment><USER5> I always wanted non linear history. Often a bookmark is not enough, I'd love to rewalk on the discovery of a particular page. Similarly, on linux, curl (IIRC) adds the source url to a downloaded file metadata.

<comment><USER6> I remember using Voyage [1], a Firefox addon to get timeline-like history view. Seems like it hasn't been updated in a while though.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/voyage/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/voyage/)

<comment><USER5> I didn't think someone would wrote a plugin for that. Thanks. I would be good to revive it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's an interesting approach to tabs

[https://vimeo.com/9019483](https://vimeo.com/9019483)

Watching the video makes a lot more sense than my explanation!

Along with the usage of tabs, you have the concept of "sessions" A session is a collection of any tabs opened before starting a new session, by using ctrl+t. Using this will naturally result in collections of related tabs... You can then switch between sessions in a tree-style-tabs kind of way.

Watching the video makes a lot more sense than my explanation!

<comment><USER5> Firefox has, except for the vertical foldable list UI, Panorama (ctrl+shift+e to toggle between).

[http://imgur.com/SNRLpxx](http://imgur.com/SNRLpxx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always thought that nobody really used Vala anymore. Kind of neat to see it in use.

<comment><USER9> Most GNOME apps started today are done in Vala afaik. It's just starting to get traction. Maybe not at fast as $HipsterLang, but steadily.

<comment><USER10> Didn't they choose JavaScript as their preferred language to write new applications?

<comment><USER3> Correct. Regular applications are still mostly written in C, but newer projects tend to use Vala more and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ask me anything about rainbow-lollipop

<comment><USER11> Well, I cannot compile the current version, nor install the deb. Using latest Linux Mint. It took some effort getting all the dependencies right, and it wasn't clear that I had to install the httpseverywhere plugin also provided on your Github account :)

While building, I get the following error that I cannot seem to solve:

CMakeFiles/rainbow-lollipop.dir/src/config_dialog.c.o: In function `rainbow_lollipop_config_dialog_construct': config_dialog.c:(.text+0x265e): undefined reference to `gtk_switch_set_state'

<comment><USER3> if by "latest" you mean the "rebecca"-release they advertise on their homepage, i got bad news for you. They ship with gtk version 3.10.x. The minimum api needed is 3.14.x . This dependency is available in mint since the "betsy"-release.

i just pushed a fix, so older APIs should work, too. Please pull the git and try to build again. Thanks for the hint :)

<comment><USER11> It worked, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you know when it's time to drop your specialty? - <AUTHOR> We've all had good career runs (for varying values of "all" and "good") working with one particular technology or another. But at much as we may have loved it, there comes a time when it becomes apparent that that particular string has played out, and it's time to figure out what's next. How do you know when that time has come -- and how do you figure out what your Next Thing is?
Case in point: I was once the "OS/2 goddess." I taught classes in operating systems internals, I wrote books about how to use it, I was OS/2 network administrator for the electric company, I was a lead perpetrator in the user group community.
But when OS/2 went away, so did my career. I didn't want to admit it; after all, I was comfortable with that technology; I had great contacts and it was easy to do what I needed to; and I loved doing it.
However, at some point, there's a "come to Jesus" moment. You tell yourself, "It's been a good run, but now it's time to move on." In my case, it was when I realized I was getting gigs where I was paid to remove OS/2 from a business, not install or maintain it.
...And then you have to think about what to do _instead_, and the lessons you should take away ("I'm not going to hitch my career again to any company's single product").
Sometimes the path is an obvious one (if you can write about one technical topic, you have enough cred to write about another). Sometimes, not so much.
What caused you to recognize "I need to change my specialty" and how did you decide what to do next? <comment><USER2> I haven't had a distinguished career in tech, actually I've never even had a job (I build and ship software as an entrepreneur).

I think your perspective of needing to have a "specialization" is a bit overweighted. First, how did you become a "specialist" in the first place? Go back to the beginning of the path. You probably toyed around with some technology, enjoyed it, and kept doing it. You ended up building a relative knowledge advantage over your peers and fulfilled roles accordingly. However, if you were sufficiently educated, you know that the fundamentals of CS/technology always stay the same. That means even if you specialize, you should be able to catch up to anything else without issue.

So rather than looking externally for signals about whether something is becoming dated, it might be easiest to just have a breadth of toys and side projects. You will see things you like, and they will pull more of your time and attention. If those technologies compete directly with your legacy frameworks, you'll know why X is better because you've used both.

Being flexible and broad like this allows you to change direction quickly, at the expense of being a single-minded, deep specialist.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if many people who experience this make a switch or just leave the field entirely. I started in mainframe cobol around y2k via a financial services companies boot camp program. Switched to java and j2ee not long after. It was a pretty good gig for someone with bs in "field that no one hires for". The thing that prompted me to jump was the company starting an offshoring initiative. I left, retrained myself, and have a career for 15 years after most onshore devs at that company were laid off long ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm probably not a good example, I've usually been a "jack-of-all-trades" kind, but it's very often the very same way you did - you see jobs stop asking for a particular tech and start asking for others (and it's probably too late to make a killing by then).

No-one is asking me about my Novell NetWare experience these days :P . I do however work mostly with Microsoft products and they've given me a good run (from vb6 to .NET and my old SQL skills still serve me well).

I do sometimes wish I'd picked up a fad faster (Ruby several years ago, React a few years ago, Blockchain last year and AI/ML this year).

</comment><comment><USER5> I used OS/2 back in the day, when windows 95 came out, most people knew it was over for OS/2.

Generally you should already know its on the downslide. Easiest method IMHO is job listings. Search on Keywords of what you know.

As for what to do next, is a very tough. Anything you hitch up to can turn south. FWIW I looked at relational databases (before I was using OS/2) and decided there was not enough future in it. OMG was I wrong!

That being said, I suspect the real issue is how do you keep moving? The ideal answer is pick something broad, then hon in on a part, but be able to move to other parts. You were OS/2, can you leap forward to Windows or Linux, then specialize in a particular version of either? Everything you know about OS/2 is not dead knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER6> From time to time, my wife asks me "What's the next thing you need to learn for the next five years of your career?" It's a good question to ask, say, every five years. (BTW, my current answer is "Android", but I haven't gotten very far on learning it...)

<comment><USER4> I learned Android but it hasn't served me much (I had no plans on how to use it !!!). I do recommend the Coursera course.

It's a good question to ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a J2ME Developer when the iPhone launched. Now I'm an iOS developer.

<comment><AUTHOR> At what point did you say, "I'd better pick up iOS, if I want to have a career"? Was there a moment, or did it just make sense to add another tool to the tool belt?</comment></comment>


Why The TSA Fears Thirteen-Inch Laptops, But Not Eleven-Inch Ones - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120404/17021118376/size-matters-why-tsa-fears-thirteen-inch-laptops-not-eleven-inch-ones.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm not the best person in the world to write about TSA experiences, given that I have a prosthetic, and so the TSA's general assumption is that I'm a futuristic cyborg capable of firing bolts of directed energy from it.

That said, I've actually had different iPad experiences based on the particular iPad case I used at the time. n = oh, about 4, so take this with a grain of salt. But when I used a generic, black leather case, I had no problems leaving it in the bag. After awhile I became a bit more stylish, and I bought a case resembling an old-school composition notepad (by Portenzo, makers of awesome iPad cases). That flashy little number got my bag searched on a consistent basis, until I developed the good sense to just take it out of the bag and put it in a separate bin. Seems that the case is just clever and novel enough to set off the "This guy is up to something" alarm with TSA agents.

All of which makes me think that they're looking for anomalies. If something becomes standard enough, they gradually start to let it slip into the background. If they've never seen something before, they'll on it like flies on a dungheap. To me, this seems like a frighteningly simplistic security stance -- but what do I know?

<comment><USER3> Yes, they seem to look for "fingerprints." Your second cover may have interfered with the fingerprint just enough.

I overheard one TSA agent mentoring another on the x-ray machine just a couple days after the iPad 2 was available. The first TSA agent got confused looking at the new iPad2, and the second agent explained how many batteries each had. I overheard something like "iPad 1 had 2 batteries and the iPad 2 had 3, and the batteries should be in these spots." Did you know there were multiple batteries a few days after shipping?

I was impressed. My expectations were low to begin with, but the second TSA agent had legitimate technical knowledge.

Edit: I'm not supporting TSA or saying this is the _right_ approach. This anecdote seemed to support your supposition for how they screened items. I still was impressed an x-ray tech knew the insides of an iPad 2 better than even engadget. Thank you for making your point, though :)

<comment><USER2> That seems impressive, I agree, and I'm all for giving credit where it's due. But the problem with looking only for "fingerprints" is that you're inherently narrowing your search spectrum. By doing so, you're actually making the job _easier_ for terrorists -- whose goal, roughly speaking, is to move to wherever the spotlight isn't shining.

Bruce Schneier does a much better job explaining this phenomenon than I can ever hope to. But essentially, there's a good argument to be made that _totally random_ searches are superior to fingerprint searches. Terrorists operate on probabilistic scenario analysis. They will only attempt a plot if they're close to 100% sure that they can pull it off, because a failure embarrasses them in the eyes of their sympathizers and would-be financial benefactors. It makes them look like amateurs, and nobody wants to fund an amateurish organization. So even doing something like randomly screening every Nth passenger (where N changes daily) inherently reduces the odds of success by a fixed daily percentage. Terrorists are more scared of dice rolls than they are of fingerprint searches.

I'm no security expert, and for all I know, some combination of random searches and fingerprint searches is the optimal portfolio. I can, at least, understand the logic there, and it makes some sense. But focusing solely on fingerprints creates loopholes everywhere else. And it seems that the TSA has become more and more laser-focused on fingerprints in recent years.

<comment><USER4> Not long ago some Israeli security hard cases explained how they handle this issue at Ben Gurion. You can probably still find it online somewhere, basically their monitors are highly trained in profiling and they use psychology and hyper profiling to spot potential threats.

I want to say it works like a bomb but...

<comment><USER2> I've heard bits and pieces about the Israeli methodology, and I've also heard critiques of its potential for application in the US (mostly, centering on the idea that our population is too big, too diverse, and too spread out to accommodate the training and consistency of the Israeli program).

Whatever the case, one thing _does_ seem fairly clear: that the Israeli investment in people, rather than machines, seems to be paying a good dividend. And I'm tempted to say that we'd be better off staffing airports with better people and slightly older / less intrusive machines, rather than cutting-edge machines and bottom-of-the-barrel staff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _our officers are trained to look for anomalies to help keep air travel safe_

Number of times air travel kept safe by TSA: zero.

Please show me the list of incidents they have saved anyone from. It would be a huge public relations bonus so that list must be somewhere right? I mean you cannot take hundreds of millions of dollars and criminally hassle that many people without results - or can you?

<comment><USER6> I think most of us agree that the TSA is very ineffective at what it tries to achieve. That being said, saying they've had zero success is a little unfair, because this would be very hard to measure. After all, in the case of 'success', nothing happens - had they not been successful, something _might_ have happened. We can't even compare the number of things that happened before and after a change was made by the TSA, because that presumes that there are always an equal number of people trying to make things happen.

<comment><USER5> Oh come on, if they stopped an actual weapon they would certainly do a full press release about it. In all the years with all the money spent, there is NOTHING?

What you are saying is they are awesome at stopping invisible pink elephants, they just cannot show them to us because they are invisible.

Every place in the USA has city, county, state and federal police with incredible laws that let they do almost anything they want, yet there is still crime. Somehow the TSA magically has no crime to show for their presence.

<comment><USER7> > _if they stopped an actual weapon they would certainly do a full press > release about it._

They stop about 20 to 30 handguns each week. I don't know how many guns they don't stop.

Some of those are loaded. TSA doesn't care about handguns in checked in baggage, they even advise people how to travel with guns. They do care about handguns in carry on bags.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, where are the auctions for all these weapons?

I mean since they are seizing thousands of nailclippers each month across the country and then auctioning them, they must be seizing the handguns too.

<comment><USER8> Where the TSA sells seized goods by state: [http://www.eyeflare.com/article/where-buy-goods- confiscated-...](http://www.eyeflare.com/article/where-buy-goods-confiscated- tsa/)

This articles says they don't sell the handguns (perhaps that varies by state?): [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46934445/ns/local_news- lancaster...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46934445/ns/local_news- lancaster_pa/t/tsa-auctions-items-confiscated-airports/#.T4BFfIMgdtI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This adds hardly anything to the original, which is here:

[http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/travel/the-mystery- of-t...](http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/travel/the-mystery-of-the- flying-laptop.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER10> These rules would mean something if they bothered to train their screeners. Just this week I got conflicting direction about iPads, and that was at Chicago O'Hare and Detroit Metro, two busy airports.

It seems that nobody worries about phones and kindles, and anything that is laptop-sized has to come out. The iPad seems to be the point where the confusion starts.

Considering how popular the iPad is, it would be nice if there was a consistent, definitive answer.

<comment><USER11> Yes. I've got a so-called "TSA-friendly" laptop bag that supposedly allows the computer to go through the machine without taking it out. It turned out to be a 50-50 proposition as to whether it went through with no problem or whether I got yelled at for not the computer out, so I started just taking it out. Irritating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The TSA also fears a 300ml container of liquid but not 3 100ml containers and an empty 300ml one. What's new?

</comment><comment><USER13> I traveled to Romania and Turkey last week, and airports in both countries required me to remove my iPad from my backpack after I had put it through the X-Ray machine and put it through separately (I also had a laptop that I had already removed). Of course, my iPhone was in my backpack and they didn't ask me to remove that. So maybe international screen sizes vary from the US?

The "metric system of security theater"?

<comment><USER14> I don't think there are specific written rules for many countries. One hyperactive Romanian border officer requested me (in a threatening tone) to remove all the "large electronic equipment" from my backpack - even my SLR camera and all the lenses. This never happened in ~10 other countries where I traveled with the same backpack and contents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I travel with an 11" Air and iPad in a backpack very frequently. The article does explain some confusion I've encountered when dealing with the tray stackers association, but I wouldn't limit to them since I've encountered the same confusion abroad.

The iPad has been examined several times (in particular, the first couple of weeks after release), whereas the laptop has only been inspected going into a State Department building.

"Please boot the laptop so that I can see that it works normally," was a bit of a problem because it booted so fast off of the SSD. I had to restart 3 times to convince them that it was normal. The first two times, the guard thought I had just done a sleep/wake cycle.

</comment><comment><USER16> "The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey" - Christopher Hitchens

<comment><USER17> Aside from a few well-publicized cases of TSA shenaniganery which could easily be chalked up to incompetence, the rules are not difficult to understand, or follow for that matter.

The rules are stupid, arbitrary, pointless, and irritating, but hard to follow? No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The headline claims to explain _why_ the TSA "fears" 13 in laptops, but does not do that.

<comment><USER19> Yeah they do, there is a part approx. 3/4 of the way down, where they say something to the effect of (supposedly as a result of TSA interviewing):

You have to give people the impression that you are doing something, and with rules, essentially the reason is security theatre.

<comment><USER18> No, that sort of says something about why they differentiate, but it doesn't say anything at all about why they fear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Some years before 9/11 I was doing a fair amount of international travel for work. On one return trip from Germany I was bringing back a small, 12" replica crossbow. I had it in my checked luggage but still made the point to declare it was there to avoid the hassle of an untimely search later. They took my bag to a spot off to the side to open it up. They glanced at the crossbow for about 5 sec. However, they were much more interested in the alarm clock I also had. (With as much travel as I did to Europe, I had purchased one there that had the correct electrical plug) They spent a good 15 minutes scanning and weighing it to determine that it was just a standard alarm clock. But I don't even want to think about what that same bag I had back then would do to security today.

Also, the rules are not followed with any sort of consistency. I've forgotten to take that Ziploc baggie of liquids out of my carry-on so many times and not been questioned about it that I hardly even _try_ to remember any more.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've always assumed that the laptop rule was because it blocked X-rays, and so you could hide something under it. In that case, the size is irrelevant. It's just to prevent having to check manually too much.

Besides, rules just change depending on the airport/country, simple as that. I've had situations where I've been asked to take out "all electronic devices" (phones, tablets, ipods, I had like ten of those). In other cases, I passed with the laptop still inside (or even a bottle of water in my jacket ! I'm definitely a terrorist).

I wonder why people care about this, though. Can't you just accept that you will spend five or ten minutes taking out your laptop ?

I find the interdiction of liquid/razors _much_ more annoying, because it actually costs me money. The inconvenience of empty your bag is pretty harmless.

<comment><USER21> Any complex equipment could have stuff hidden inside it, e.g replace the battery with a brick of explosive. That's why the Israelis commonly ask you to switch computers on in front of them. Putting them in a separate box makes sure there aren't two items superimposed on top of each other in the scanner image, so it's easier to inspect.

If you've never been through Ben Gurion or any Israeli checkpoints, it's a real experience. They are very thorough, sometimes requiring items be disassembled as far as is possible without tools. I don't find it annoying though, it's for everyone's safety and they are very professional. I understand that the main purpose of the checks is to allow them to observe your behaviour and reactions. They know that even with all their check stuff can get through, so they put a strong emphasis on psychological profiling. Honestly, that makes me less upset about the checks themselves. If I have confidence these people really do know what they are doing, and it is effective, then I will put up with the procedure even if it's mainly a ruse. The problem with the TSA is the public isn't confident that the procedures are effective, so if thats the case who wants to put up with the process?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One can only imagine what kind of inane ridiculousness we'll be put through as they race to keep security theater entertaining and fresh.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have an 11'' laptop that I never take out. 80% of the time I'm okay. 20% of the time they make me take it out and when I tell them that according to their own rules I do not have to, they ignore me.

</comment><comment><USER24> And repraps really upset them...

[http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap- child...](http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap-child.html)</comment>


Case study: measuring power consumption of wireless systems (iCub robot) - <AUTHOR> http://community.arm.com/groups/embedded/blog/2015/01/13/case-study-measuring-power-consumption-of-wireless-systems-icub-robot

<comment><AUTHOR> The widely varying current needs of microcontrollers as they transition from wake to sleep and back again can be difficult to estimate accurately.

Here is a simple trick we use to measure _average_ current consumption on our battery powered microcontroller designs.

(It's an important number, because that's what tells you how long your batteries will last.)

We replace the batteries with a huge capacitor, like 10,000uF or 20,000uF (whatever it takes to give you a few minutes of run time).

We charge up the capacitor with a variable power supply to the high end of the battery voltage, then we start a stopwatch and disconnect the variable power supply.

We watch the voltage drop to the typical minimum battery voltage, and then stop the stopwatch.

Then we remove our board, replace it with a variable resistor decade box, and repeat the experiment.

We repeat that, adjusting the resistor box until we find the exact resistance that discharges that huge capacitor in the same amount of time as our board.

(We measure the resistance of the box at the end with an ohmmeter, because they are always off a bit.)

Then we use that resistance (and the mid-value of the voltage drop) to calculate the average current drain of our board.</comment>


Arguman: An open-source platform for organized discussions - <AUTHOR> http://en.arguman.org/channels/programming <comment><USER2> It looks like an interesting attempt at structuring debate. It might be a useful tool to have for discussions within a company or organization. I am missing a way to 'resolve' arguments and to order the arguments by 'strength' (i.e., the number of supporters/detractors).

Gripe: It is not possible to select and copy the text of arguments posited by users. The sources and fallacies however can be selected.</comment>


Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley Is a Totalitarian Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5511987/Peter-Thiel-says-Silicon-Valley-totalitarian-place.html <comment><USER2> "Silicon Valley is a 'tyranny' because it's the only place where innovation in the United States really happened."

Wait, what? "Happened" is the past tense, right? As in, over ~250 years of American history?

So, including Boston's Route 128, AT&T Bell Labs, and Edison's research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ (and GE)?

I assume that's only a certain type of technical innovation, as Hollywood and Detroit are/were known for different types of technical innovations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thiel's opening statement to Fox Business:

"When people are unanimously on one side, that tells you not that they've all figured out the truth but that they're in a sort of totalitarian place, that they're in a one party state where they're not allowed to have dissenting views. I think somehow Silicon Valley shifted from being quite liberal to being a one party state. Those are two very different things."

<comment><USER2> WTF?

Look at all those people not calling for a return to chattel slavery. Look at all those people not calling for Venezuela to invade and take over. Look at all those people not calling for mass suicides. Look at all those billionaires not calling for a return to 90% taxation for the highest tax bracket and the institution of a global wealth tax.

Indeed it is a totalitarian land.

/sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> While the arcs of liberalism and conservatism bend apart from one another for a time they eventually meet at same point.

<comment><USER2> Could you elaborate?

The Nordic countries are often seen as some of the most liberal ones. How much more liberal does (say) Sweden need to become before it meets conservatism, and what would that look like?

<comment><USER3> It's about the means different political forces use to assert their beliefs on society. Both sides are capable of authoritarianism.

<comment><USER2> No country or society exists without some aspects of authoritarianism, and there are far more than two types of authoritarianism, so this doesn't help me much.

How much more liberal does (say) Sweden need to become before it meets conservatism, and what would that look like?

<comment><USER3> Let me clarify what I meant in my original post. The aims of conservatism and liberalism differ, clearly. Extreme forms of these dogmas still have divergent aims.

But extreme liberalism/conservatism is by definition forced upon a society, because it is extremism. In asserting their beliefs, the extremists mirror one another in means and action even if their ends differ.

As we have seen, both Fascists and Communists are capable of delivering up human suffering. In the midst of this suffering, the two groups use similar means to achieve their ends.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the clarification.

Do I understand you right that Sweden is not an extremely liberal country, and that it won't be extremely liberal until it becomes communist?

What I still don't see is how "forced upon a society" (or "authoritarianism") is something which only holds for extreme positions.

We see that the US does good job of delivering up human suffering (high prison rates, effective wage slavery such that people start their careers deeply in debt just to get the required education, many ongoing military bombing campaigns, etc.).

But the US is neither fascist nor communist.

In Sweden (to use the earlier example), companies are not allowed to discriminate on sex, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, etc. This is something forced on society, yes?

There are 13 countries where atheists potentially face the death penalty. They are not fascist countries.

I can't think of any country where some laws, based on the beliefs of lawmakers, aren't forced upon a society. Including laws that a majority of the population do not want.

So while I agree that what you say is true, it doesn't seem to be diagnostic. "The tallest people and the shortest people breath" is true, but that's because all people breath.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>