Stricken Russian Nuke Sub Crew Prevented 'Planetary Catastrophe' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-08/stricken-russian-nuke-sub-crew-prevented-planetary-catastrophe <comment><USER2> I found the sub-story more fascinating than the nuclear incidence. If I understand it correctly, one purpose of these "research" submarines is to find and possibly sabotage undersea communication lines. Well, talk about national security threat, isn't this a very serious threat to the Internet? I'd love to see more articles about this vector of attack.

<comment><USER3> The primary role of subs has been intelligence for as long as subs have existed. One of the first missions subs carried out in WW1 was cutting undersea cables.

Despite all the undue attention placed on the combat U-Boats and their limited success in sinking merchant ships, the history of submarines is primarily the history of getting in good positions to tap cables or radio frequencies or put people in places.

There is very little need for torpedoes or missiles anymore, outside of creating dramatic scenes in the movies.

<comment><USER4> Well, I mean a third of the US Nuclear arsenal is on Boomer subs, so that is not exactly true.

<comment><USER3> The nuclear deterrence is definitely a capability and something they drill on regularly, but at the end of the day it's a low priority mission, even on a modern nuclear attack sub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sub is unusual, with depth of 2500m (6000m in article). Made from several steel spheres.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how big this sub is. I say that because as far as I know nuclear submarines are all full-sized. But maybe I'm wrong and this is a mini-sub that had a small crew.</comment>


Diabetes: can you really eat to beat it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/23/diabetes-can-you-really-eat-to-beat-it <comment><USER2> I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes about a year and a half ago, at the time I had an HBA1C of 8.2 (6.0 is the top end of normal). The first thing I did when I got home was google "cure for diabetes", the newcastle diet is what came up. After 6 months of the usual medication (metformin etc.) I decided to give it a go. You can see my log, which includes medication, supplements, exercise, total calories per day and BG readings 5 times a day[1]. You can see that it took me just 12 days to come off the medication and that in the following 2 months I was able to maintain excellent BG control.

A year later I'm still off the medication, my last HBA1C was 5.7 which is considered normal. Maintaining that does require daily exercise (and I do mean _every_ day) and good diet management but I've found it a fairly easy regime to follow (half an hour of 80% intensity is enough most days).

My quality of life is now excellent (it was terrible on the medication) and I'm able to eat a little more freely. The only big differences regarding diet are that I now only drink a couple of times a month and I don't go near anything with wheat flour in it.

EDIT: google docs doesn't seem to allow me to share the docs publicly (I can only share with specific email addresses or within my domain) so I've made them available as csv and excel files.

[1]

CSV - [https://www.dropbox.com/s/tr1xwd3l6ziiows/newcastle_diet.csv...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/tr1xwd3l6ziiows/newcastle_diet.csv?dl=0)

Excel - [https://www.dropbox.com/s/12tjf23oz7ihq4d/newcastle_diet.xls...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/12tjf23oz7ihq4d/newcastle_diet.xlsx?dl=0)

<comment><USER3> Given that Type 2 diabetes is generally believed to be caused by diet, it makes sense that diet could fix it as well.

My personal hypothesis is that some people have intestinal bacteria that are really, really good at breaking down sugar very quickly. So when you eat high GI foods, your gut turns them into glucose very quickly releases them into your blood, and your body has to deal accordingly. IMO that would help explain why people who are very obese get type 2 with some regularity, but how otherwise healthy adults who are simply moderately overweight can also develop it.

A corollary to this hypothesis is that the ability of your (personal) intestinal bacteria to break down different types of foods at different rates means that there is no such thing as a "universal diet". Some people will be healthiest eating large amounts of red meat, some will be healthiest on a high-carb diet, while others may need something more fiber-rich (assuming appropriate calorie control, of course). This appears to be borne out anecdotally, with diet plans having different efficacy on different people.

Intestinal flora is something the medical community is just now beginning to research and understand. There's something unique that happens in our intestines, and while there's obviously a genetic component to it, the genes your intestinal flora carry may be just as important. We don't understand the system or the feedback loops (maybe eating too much sugar causes these bacteria to over-populate the intestines in some people and crowd out other bacteria?) The point is, there's a whole lot we don't know about how our bodies process the nutrients we take in. There are a lot of studies underway, but holistic medicine is pretty obviously a real thing -- we just don't understand the science behind it yet.

<comment><USER4> > There are a lot of studies underway, but holistic medicine is pretty > obviously a real thing -- we just don't understand the science behind it > yet.

"[W]e just don't understand the science behind it yet" because there is none. Holistic medicine is quackery that has failed scientific tests if efficacy time and time again.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean that the current "practice" of holistic medicine is quackery -- but that the principles behind it (what you eat can cause/treat certain diseases), when proven with proper scientific methodology, aren't entirely crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Michael Mosley's documentary, "Eat, Fast and Live Longer" (about the health benefits of calorie restriction) is also interesting in the context of this article:

[https://vimeo.com/103656060](https://vimeo.com/103656060)

 _the plank (an exercise to help lose excess fat round the stomach)_

This is incorrect. The plank is an excellent exercise for building core strength (much better than situps), but it does not help lose excess fat around the stomach more or less so than any other exercise does.

<comment> srb- _the plank (an exercise to help lose excess fat round the stomach)_

Cringe. Hard to take the writer seriously after this statement. The rest of the article seemed fine so I googled around to see if there was some stunning new research showing the plank (or any specific movement) spot-reducing fat. Nope.

<comment><USER6> To be honest spot reduction is one of those stubborn myths that persists much like people believing that fat is the boogey man.

Nutrition and fitness seem to be areas which really lack good, hard science behind the many assumptions we make about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is about Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetics are unable to manufacture insulin. No amount of green tea and yoga change that.

<comment><USER8> Came here to ensure that was discussed. It's really kind of a shame that there's as much confusion about the types of diabetes as there is. I've taken to referring to them, in an EXCEEDINGLY reductive manner, as "autoimmune diabetes" and "cheeseburger diabetes."

My brother has autoimmune diabetes (aka Type 1). We give to and volunteer with the JDRF as a result, because its mission is laser focussed on type 1 related research. I do not give to or support the ADA, because their efforts are really diffuse and seem to focus more on the cheeseburger type.

<comment><USER9> You could also just say that one type of diabetes is about people who love cheeseburgers by nature, and the other one about people whose genes are broken in a different way (also by nature). Now, if you want to discuss which one is more important: maybe the one which occurs more commonly and is easier to cure?

<comment><USER10> Just to dispel a common misconception, the cause of type 1 diabetes remains unknown. There is no conclusive proof that the condition is genetic.

AFAIK there are certain correlations with the condition and the presence of certain gene combinations, and hypotheses abound that it is indeed a genetic condition, but they are still just hypotheses - research is ongoing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a quite a few "no more diabetes" stories in /r/keto, ketogenic diet subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/437lyj/nsv_take_that_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/437lyj/nsv_take_that_diabetes/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/1dws7z/nsv_defeated_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/1dws7z/nsv_defeated_diabetes/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3v1nq3/nsv_im_officia...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3v1nq3/nsv_im_officially_diabetes_free_thanks_to_keto/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/41cu92/sv_nsv_pics_lo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/41cu92/sv_nsv_pics_lost_51lbs_and_a_diabetes_diagnosis/)

</comment><comment><USER12> For eight weeks, the patients drank a diet milkshake three times daily and ate some 200 grams of non-starchy vegetables, totaling about 700 calories a day.

The average weight loss among participants was about 14 kg (33 pounds). And in many of them, the diabetes disappeared. Nearly half the participants had no symptoms of diabetes for nearly six months after they went back to eating normally.

[http://qz.com/669254/its-possible-to-reverse- type-2-diabetes...](http://qz.com/669254/its-possible-to-reverse- type-2-diabetes-in-some-people-and-its-not-even-that-difficult/)

</comment><comment><USER13> actually this worked for me, I had high blood sugar and high blood pressure and I solved both with low carbs diet and eating healthy. It's like the article say, eating healthy will help no matter what but yeah it's hard to stop eating junk.

<comment><USER14> high carb diet works too.

there's no junk food.

there's nothing junky in a hamburger. on the other hand, it is unhealthy if you eat hamburger every day or so.

[http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes- basics/myths/](http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/)

here's american diabetes association recommending a normal healthy high-carb diet with low GI foods.

it is also advised, funnily, that fruit consumption shouldn't be restricted.

<comment><USER2> I'd warn people not to pay too much attention to the advice that the american diabetes association provides. The targets it recommends are well known to cause damage to the body (you should be avoiding anything above a BG of 140 at any time) and it's dietary recommendations are contrary to the advice I've ever received from anyone that has had good results maintaining diabetes. Just to pick up on the two points you mention, I would never consume fruit unless accompanied by exercise and a low-carb diet is recommended by any consultant or nutrionist that I've ever spoken to.

<comment><USER15> The mainstream medical community's slowness in coming to grips with the role of simple carbs in the diet has been shameful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is an Indian Facebook group about Paleo diet, where dozens if not hundreds of people followed simple LCHF diet and reversed their type 2 diabetics and got type 1 under control among other improvements. Few physicians also got cured and they started advocating the diet. These doctors are working towards getting Indian Diabetes Association to recognize LCHF diet as a viable remedy.

You can see many medical reports posted by the members for your reference. [https://www.facebook.com/groups/tamilhealth/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/tamilhealth/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit surprised the article didn't come with a "don't try this diet without first consulting a medical professional" warning, since starving yourself for a month is a pretty drastic lifestyle change.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds great, although it seems to me it is not so much curing Diabetes as keeping it in check?

<comment><USER19> Is there a difference? Type II diabetes is largely a lifestyle disease. It develops because of the way we eat and (don't) exercise. If you have chronic wrist problems from typing all day, I'd say that eliminating the typing is a legitimate cure. If you have diabetes because you eat too much and exercise too little, I'd say eating less and exercising more is a legitimate cure as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Worked for my step dad. Though my mom used to be a doctor and she managed his diet.

</comment><comment><USER21> Type 2 Diabetes can 100% be "cured" by a low fat vegan diet. Sorry you don't need a pill, you need to wake up and face the fact that you are poising yourself with your high fat diet.

 __ _FAT causes diabetes (and high blood pressure and heart disease) NOT Sugar. Dietary fat clogs up your bloodstream preventing insulin from effectively doing it 's job. ___

[http://www.amazon.com/Neal-Barnards-Program-Reversing- Diabet...](http://www.amazon.com/Neal-Barnards-Program-Reversing- Diabetes/dp/1594868107)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N636ftTJ10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N636ftTJ10)

<comment><USER22> The current science does not support this position. The current science basically says there is an interplay between fats and carbs, and that fat tends to clog your arteries when consumed in the presence of a caloric surplus, usually brought on via carbs. Low fat diets seem to work provided they are high in fiber, and high fat diets seem to work provided they are low in carbs. High fat, high carb seems to be where we see the biggest issues.

So while you actually might be right, that in many cases a low fat vegan diet helps T2 diabetes, it's only one of many strategies to arrive at a suitable diet.

<comment><USER21> I am not saying it is the only way... but it is the best way to prevent/cure T2 diabetes without causing other issues. If you have T2 diabetes and don't want to adopt a diet that will expose you to high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, kidney issues, gallbladder removal, etc.. a very low fat diet is the solution. Just do it you will be happy you did.

The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling people drugs to offset their lack of will power.

<comment><USER22> > but [a vegan diet] is the best way to prevent/cure T2 diabetes without > causing other issues.

There is basically no science that allows you to state this confidently.

> The fact is: fat tastes good. Nobody want's to give up bacon and cheese so > we keep looking for ways to say it is "OK". Big Pharma really wants you to > keep eating your fats too. They make billions of dollars a year selling > people drugs to offset their lack of will power.

It's been repeatedly shown that basically all fats, even the once thought of as "bad" like saturated fats, do not clog arteries (or raise cholesterol, while we are here) when not in the presence of caloric surplus. I don't follow it, but the success many have had with the keto diet is one great example of this. It's just not as simple as you are saying.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which advert is the best for next's months Hacker Monthly? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am purchasing a full spread advert in Hacker Monthly next month and since I am a shoe string budget I have decided to do the advert myself. However this is the first advert I have ever created and was really looking for some advice I have two potential adverts created ...
http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_1.pdf http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_2.pdf
If you could review these and tell me which one you like I would be very grateful. Also if you could tell me if either advert actual would draw you attention!
I have submitted items to hacker news before, but they rarely go anywhere. Please make this one popular <comment><AUTHOR> links

<http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_1.pdf>

<http://www.venturesocially.com/advert_2.pdf>

<comment><USER2> the first one looks like it was custom done for the ad, so it looks more attractive in my eye. the second one looks like it's using a stock-art image that has nothing to do with the text, so it looks cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you like the wording? would you notice this ad?</comment></comment></comment>


Oracle tells White House: Stop hiring Silicon Valley people, ditch Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170930/00522238319/oracle-tells-white-house-stop-hiring-silicon-valley-people-ditch-open-source.shtml?curator=MediaREDEF <comment><USER2> Previous discussion which was marked as a dupe.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15402905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15402905)

<comment><USER3> ... marked as a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397008)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was a podcast lateley on FLOSS Weekly: [https://twit.tv/shows/floss- weekly/episodes/451](https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/451)

</comment><comment><USER5> f __*k you oracle

</comment><comment><USER6> And.. these folks keep mysql open source community... what a joke!</comment>


Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices? - <AUTHOR> I am curious to know what companies and projects are trying to repurpose old phones, laptops and other tech devices.
I feel this area is not explored as much as it should be.<p>Like converting your phone into a security cam or a radio controlled device, turning laptop into a streaming device etc. <comment><USER2> Not a company, but sharing a personal project: I got a free broken 55" TV and turned it into a big daylight panel. I got a great explanation of why this works well (fresnel lens) from the DIY Perks channel on YouTube: Turning Smashed TVs into Realistic Artificial Daylight ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4)).

The main board had failed so the screen was black and the backlight cycled on and off. After disconnecting the main board, the backlight stayed on. I am using the existing LED lights, but may replace them with the excellent color quality LEDs recommended by DIY Perks.

<comment><USER3> Just FYI, repairing flat panel TVs by replacing the boards is fairly easy. Sometimes it's even an upgrade if you find a newer revision of the same board.

The boards tend to be used in multiple models of TV, so they're easier to find than you might think.

<comment><USER4> Though it's not exactly cheap. Some of the boards are often over one or two hundred dollars

<comment><USER3> Yeah, though most are between 100-200. If you can find a list of what model numbers and revisions will work for your TV, you can watch Ebay for a used one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have my old Galaxy S1 sitting in my cellar listening to the beeps from my washing machine. It sends me an email when the wash finishes. (I can't hear the beeps from upstairs.)

<comment><USER6> What software do you use?

<comment><USER5> I hacked together an Android app specifically for the purpose, so it doesn't really answer the original question about generally available projects. (I haven't got round to releasing the code as it's rather bespoke, but could do if you're interested.)

<comment><USER7> I'd be interested in the general technique, "teach a man to listen for beeps..."

<comment><USER5> I FFT incoming sound buffers, and if the 2KHz band is the highest for a suitable number of consecutive frames, then I send the email and stop listening for a few minutes to avoid double notifications.

2KHz is the frequency of my machine's beep. Just triggering on overall noise level alone would notify me each time the machine goes into spin, but using the FFT allows it to be more discerning.

(I'll try to publish the code soon.)

<comment><USER8> I'd appreciate seeing your code for this - I've intended to write a similar app for listening to an old alarm system I have.

<comment><USER5> I've now put it on GitHub: [https://github.com/martin- stone/AndroidAudioNotifier](https://github.com/martin- stone/AndroidAudioNotifier)

<comment><USER6> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In an attempt to be more present with one another away from our phooes, my partner and I have (ironically) started using old phones as single-app devices.

For example: we have a "spotiphone" which is an old iPhone with a shattered camera that has only Spotify installed that we use in our bedroom to control music/podcasts. Similar thing for where my partner meditates (but it's an old iPod touch).

Our real phones are usually left by the door when we come home.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. I use an old phone specifically for all social media apps. It doesn't have my contacts or other data on it, so they can't steal that. When I want to be distracted by Twitter, I have to find it and turn it on explicitly. Which is enough of a barrier that I do it a lot less.

<comment><USER11> Another way to achieve this is to avoid the native apps for Twitter/FB/etc and just use the mobile websites. No access to camera/photos/contacts/location/etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An old monitor + previous generation Raspberry Pi: hangs on the kitchen wall to display Find My Friends in kiosk mode. Connected to a timer so it's on in the afternoon until dinner so you can see the family come home. Really cute to see your children move as little picture icons across the map towards you from school.

<comment><USER13> At what age do you disable the tracking?

My parents' tracking of me in the 1990s was awful enough. I dread to think what they have set up I were 12 years old today.

<comment><USER12> That discussion has not come up yet. The kids are old enough to be able to switch it off themselves on their phone if they wanted to but so far they seem comfortable with it.

It works both ways: they can see at any moment in time where their parents are, which may be a soothing idea. With one parent travelling a lot for business the screen in the kitchen teaches them a bit about geography too. (What country is mummy in now?)

<comment><USER13> I felt "watched" from age 11 or so, once I saw other children had freedoms I didn't, like stopping by the Warhammer shop on the way home from school.

I worked around some of them — I joined an after school club for a while, but rarely attended which gave me about 45 minutes to wander around the city. One friend's parents thought mine were ridiculous, and would lie for me if I'd said I was at their house but wasn't.

It would have been a lot more difficult with an electronic tracker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a five year old HP laptop. It was an Elite model, top of the line when I bought it with an i7 processor and SSD.

14 months after I bought it the hinge failed and the screen part physically detached from the base, with only the data/power wire holding them together. This also broke the screen beyond repair.

Low and behold there had been a recall issued on that model to fix the dodgy hinge. Despite me having registered my laptop with HP on day one, they never told me - and the refused to fix it now as it was out of warranty.

So I carefully detached what was left of the screen and was able to disconnect the wires with no issues. I built a box to hold the base, with holes to attach an external monitor and plug stuff in. It now functions as part family media server and computer for the children.

Also never buying HP again.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/)

They are attempting to build a os for smartphones based on Alpine linux with the stated goal of supporting a 10 year life cycle. They have a limited list of devices they support but I have heard good things about them.

<comment><USER16> I wish my hardware would last that long. Two previous phones I bought have lasted less than 2 years.

<comment><USER17> If I can get 2 years out of a phone, I'm "happy" (it lasted longer than I expected it would).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know why everyone acts like old laptops aren't usable, my 2011 MacBook Pro has no HD (the cable died _again_ and I'm not replacing it this time) and it runs from ram just fine (with Linux of course, not OSX)

If you're not silly you really don't need much computing power, even then newer laptops aren't big improvements so if your old one still works I don't see why you would replace it.

<comment><USER19> I bought a x230 last year as my non-gaming computer, and I really like it. I bought it for 117€, it was pretty beaten up. The display is the cheap TN panel, has a light spot in the center, and the keyboard doesn't match my locale. However, it has the top-level i5. (i5-3380M, I think). I also bought a docking station at a bargain.

This year, I bought a new IPS display, a matching keyboard and a new screen bezel for it. I'll hopefully be able to use it for some more years - I really love the form factor.

<comment><USER20> Enterprise ThinkPads are amazing machines. They're very sturdy (although the X230 notoriously has a weak screw holder in the top left (or is it right?) corner that will almost always break and make that corner of the case a bit wobbly. Annoying but not critical. And the i7 top of the range version that comes with the 180GB Intel SSD... Well, the SSD is bad and can be thrown out. It has a bug in its firmware that was never fixed by Intel and never acknowledged by Lenovo so no recall, and no fix. Just throw it away and replace with a 256-512 GB SSD.

And the parts are cheap and plentiful. Get the docking station if you can, I paid 30$ for two a few years ago (top of the range dock, the one with all the connectors and 2x video out)

Also, the IPS upgrade is well worth it.

<comment><USER21> IPS upgrade?

Tell me more!

<comment><USER22> [https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294](https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294)

[https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips- scree...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips-screen- upgrade.html)

<comment><USER21> Thanks! Though they seem to be x430s rather than the X230s :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I used my old Moto G1 as a baby camera/monitor. Ingredients:

\- RTSP Camera Server on Moto G

\- Address reservation for Moto G on DHCP server

\- VLC and Shortcut to URL [1]

Worked like a charm. Much better than other solutions I considered trustworthy.

[0] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miv.rtspca...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miv.rtspcamera&hl=en)

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.miotti.Shor...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.miotti.ShortcutToURL&hl=en)

<comment><USER24> Can you provide some more details? I have a Moto G2 laying around. This sounds interesting.

<comment><USER23> It should work with any Android phone. You install RTSP Camera Server on the phone on the baby side. Configure it regarding the microphone use, video quality etc. I think that by default it also records and you may want to disable that, because it may fill up all the storage. To be sure disable battery optimization for it. I recommend enabling time-stamping, so you can see something even if it's quiet and dark, because with full screen VLC it may be confusing if it's still working.

Then on your client device you need VLC. You can manually enter rtsp://PHONES_IP:PORT every time, or make a shortcut and place it on your homescreen. It was certainly easier for my wife. To make a shortcut use the Shortcut to URL app. It's quite easy to use.

For it to work you need to make sure that phone's IP address will not change under you. Your router should give the ability to assign an IP to a mac address. If you have your own home DNS server you probably did not have to read all that.

All apps are free and without ads and seem to be a labor of love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have an old iPhone SE plugged in and running a simple web server via (disclosure: my app) [http://pocketweb.io](http://pocketweb.io)

The two sample pages seen there are hosted from this phone.

Edit: There's an Android version available as well.

<comment><USER26> I still use the iPhone SE as a daily driver and there is an active second-hand market for them. I understand that it's spare tech but this could be done by an SoC board that costs less than $50. The iPhone, even a small one, has an expensive touch screen. You could probably sell an iPhone SE for at least $110, enough for a couple of Raspberry Pi 4 4GB systems. That's a cool project but it is a puzzling use of hardware.

<comment><USER27> Could you say a bit more (provide some links) explaining this active second- hand market? I love my SE!

<comment><USER28> I don't know how active it is now, but last summer I was trying to decide whether to upgrade as I love my SE but it was starting to feel slow (thanks Apple!). Back then, eBay has lots and lots of "new" ones at every spec level, and some foreign shops were still selling new-in-box ones at the lower spec levels.

I ended up buying an 8, by the way, and I like it much much less than I liked my SE, though it is a lot faster and the pictures are a little better. Still have the SE as a backup phone and because my banking software has no option to move between devices once configured. (Thank you Commerzbank!)

If you use your SE with one hand, be aware it is the _last_ model of iPhone that can be used that way. Starting with the 6, all the larger ones have impossible reach from the bottom-right (typing) to the top-left (navigation), unless you have massive hands I suppose. In retrospect I wish I'd bought a couple of refurb SE's and not ever done a major-version iOS upgrade.

<comment><USER29> There are only a few niche phones on the market in the US right now that can be used with one hand. I know because I insist upon it and haven't been able to buy a new phone (I also insist upon being able to run a fully de-googled LineageOS or similar ROM). So I use a Motorola Moto E 2015 model and will continue to indefinitely, until there is a phone that fits my required specifications.

There are a few small phones available, but most of them are _too small_ like the Palm phone or Unihertz Atom. There's nothing that's just normal with a 4" \- 4.5" screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh I run [https://motion-project.github.io/index.html](https://motion- project.github.io/index.html) on a DELL D400 (I think, it's Core 2 ULV), uploads picture to Gdrive. I set it up when leaving for long vacations.

I used to run a 24/7 server (bittorrent, HTTP) on a fanless PC originally built for cash desks. Got it very cheap, ran several years till the Debian repo actually disappeared!! Consumption was 19W with HDD. It was replaced with a RaspPi and a SSD.

BTW almost all the laptops at home have been bought used (usually in Germany where offer is plenty). All the tablets (Google Nexus 7 1st gen) have been bought used. No regret when kids break one.

<comment><USER30> What do you mean the Debian repo disappeared?

<comment> jerome-jh Maybe it was just moved somewhere else, but still it appears they just do not leave the very old versions available on the official ftp's and mirrors. As of now it looks like the oldest available repo is the one for Jessie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm in the process of turning my Toshiba Libretto 110CT (a subnotebook from 1998) into a simple remote terminal (over ssh) with custom server software to handle emails, rss feeds, chats and so on. It runs under FreeDOS and connects to WiFi by a combination of PCMCIA ethernet adapter + mobile router with built-in battery. I love the form factor and the "oldschool" keyboard, I have regenerated the battery and it's quite light so it's really portable and handy.

<comment><USER19> That looks sweet - I did a small search on EBay, and - dang - they are expensive. The only two I could find where around 150€ each.

<comment><USER32> €150 is expensive? From what I remember of that thread a few weeks back, everybody on HN is pulling down $400k + 250k options.

<comment><USER33> The people that comment on those threads are probably by definition the ones in the highest salary brackets.

I'm fairly certain you meant your comment in jest, but figured it was worth pointing out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I set up a home movie system on a very old unused laptop. Installed Linux (Xfce) on it because it is very lightweight and connected it to my TV with HDMI. Now I can watch downloaded movies, but also stream on YouTube, Amazon, Netflix etc. on one device without having to jump between UIs with their various kinks. Very happy with this, because it was free and works better than anything I had before.

<comment><USER23> Does it have HW decoding? Do you use VGA-to-HDMI adapter or just my definition old very-old is very old itself? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This isn't a very creative "repurpose" like many of the others however... I have purchased a few Surface Pro tablets off eBay with badly broken (read completely shattered) screens and bent frames. Seems that once Surface Pros have bad screen and chassis damage their price plummets even though the internals are often fine. One of these is my workbench computer in my shop. The tablet hangs on the wall with a thift store monitor and wireless KB plugged in. Excellent performing computer on the cheap. Another runs as a Plex media server and I just remote desktop into it.

</comment><comment><USER36> The OUYA API server was shut down mid 2019 and rendered the gaming consoles useless.

I reverse engineered the API, documented it and built a re-implementation that makes the OUYAs fully working again: [http://ouya.cweiske.de/](http://ouya.cweiske.de/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I use an old laptop (single core, 1g ram) as a remote desktop client. Since I work regularly in two different locations this allowed me to buy only one workstation which I keep at one location and that old laptop allows me to use it from the other one. TBH I initialy did it as a fun project/experiment but was amazed how well it worked[0] and stayed with it.

[0]That being said both locations have a fibre and the distance between them is below 20 miles so neither bandwidth nor response times cause any issues

<comment><USER38> Is there any specific thing you did apart from having a fiber and being close ?

I tried to set up my home PC as a server with tincVPN and X2go, i couldn't get a usable performance. Well, to be fair i tried using KiCAD remotely but even the XFCE desktop interface felt sluggish. I also had fiber on the three nodes (Vultr server, home server and my local machine).

<comment><USER39> Did you use WiFi? An old Wifi router can easily add half a second of latency. Even high end Wifi endpoint still adds a few ms of latency which can be significant considering that short distances (20 miles) of fiber has sub ms latency. A software router or switch can also add up to a ms of latency. Could also try SSH (tunnel) instead of VPN as SSH encryption might be faster.

<comment><USER38> I don't know what the Vultr instance uses but i had cable connection on both of my devices (home server and local machine).

I suspected ssh over tinc might bring latency since there is an extra layer of encryption, i will try ssh tunneling. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I find it amazing what you can do with old gear. Phones I've used for bluetooth update stations, where a bit of code can read sensors and send emails with the readings (on WiFi). Or small 'stick up' displays where you use the web page widget in Android and just re-read the same web page over and over again.

I used a number of laptops as servers because of the built in battery backup. Less useful when they don't have on board ethernet since USB ethernet can be flakey. Opening them up to disconnect the display backlight insures they don't try to run themselves down by turning on the screen.

I've given away a number of machines to young people who wanted to learn programming and computers but their parents both wouldn't trust them with the "family" computer and they likely could not afford (or know how) to get a free one. Back before WeirdStuff closed in the Bay Area I had an after school activity that would be to take a few students to there and build a machine out of parts, limit $20. Put together some really interesting machines that we would install Linux on and be off and running.

Also have salvaged parts to make things, like PC power supplies to make a benchtop power supply.

</comment><comment><USER41> I had an old laptop with a broken hinge. I ended up flipping the screen all the way around, velcroing it to the keyboard side, loading a bunch of personal pictures into a slide show screen saver and then mounted it on the wall in a picture frame.

I have an old iPhone with an app that uses the camera to watch for motion. If something happens, it takes a bunch of still pictures and stitches them together into a herky-jerky video and stores it for later.

I keep it on top of the kitchen cabinet to make sure the lady I pay to feed and play with my cats when I'm away does both things. So far, so good. It's hard to get people to actually play with pets when you're away, no matter how much you pay them.

I think the app is called "GorillaCam." I don't think it's on the app store anymore. But it reminds me that when the iPhone first came out, it didn't have the horsepower to do video. But not too long after the App Store came out there were third-party apps that would use the phone's still camera to make poor quality videos.

<comment><USER42> Just curious, did your cat-tender consent to remote monitoring as part of the contract for service?

<comment><USER41> It's not remote. It's stored on the camera, and I check it when I come home and then erase the videos because it's an original iPhone and has very limited storage.

I didn't tell her that I record that she's arrived. Legally, I don't have to because she's in my house.

Ethically, it never occurred to me to tell her. But if I did I don't think she'd be surprised since so many of my neighbors have live-streaming cameras in their homes. Most of them not even hidden -- they're right there on the kitchen counter or on the piano with a blinking light.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I repurposed my old Intel Atom powered netbook to be an Emacs server. Until recently, it sat in a corner and would have a half dozen emacs session running screen. Every time I want to resume work on given project from any desktop or laptop in my office or when I'm travelling. I simply open a remote X11 emacs window on the machine, and viola! my entire development sesion is available to me exactly where I left off. Tools used: Emacs, X11 (for windows, mac, and Linux) Emacs tramp, and ssh, putty, and screen. For access from outside my network OpenVPN and Viscosity VPN client on Mac and Windows. Last week I replaced the atom machine with an Raspberry Pi 2.

</comment><comment><USER44> Reusing an old tablet to control the X32 Mixer at church, also using it with a Arduino in a stompbox that emulates a keyboard, to turn pages on my sheet music when playing guitar and both my hands are occupied.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm working on web forum/community software which should be compatible with just about any Web-capable device, regardless of browser.

I've dedicated a lot of time to compatibility, and now it is usable and fully feature-accessible in IE4, IE5.5, IE8, Netscape 3, 4, Opera 3-12, Lynx, w3m, Chrome 1.0, old Safari versions, etc.

I'm still working on a few IE3 issues, will be fixed soon.

<comment><USER46> Who is this intended for? IE3, who would still be using this?

Don't get me wrong. Great achievement, just curious.

<comment><USER45> It's intended for time travelers, retro-computing enthusiasts, and post- apocalyptic users with whatever device they found in the closet of the abandoned building.

It's also intended as inspiration for Web lovers of all kind to show that that it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not sure if this counts, but I stuffed some pumps into old cisco switches and use those as cocktail machines.

[https://beastiebytes.com/robarboter.html](https://beastiebytes.com/robarboter.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4NPNJzPEr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4NPNJzPEr4)

</comment><comment><USER19> I used an old Kindle as an Information display in my home server (no typo) for my home server. I provided a write-up over at the Unraid forum [1].

tl;dr: It got rooted, and was reprogrammed to fetch an image from a local server running on Unraid. As I didn't know how to elegantly create an image from live data, I opted for a svg template. I placed placeholder texts in this svg, and then did a simple search & replace. With each update, I stored a copy of the template as the "live" version, and then used Imagemagick to convert the SVG to a format the Kindle would understand.

It was a nice project, but got replaced with a Grafana dashboard later last year. :)

[1]: [https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75710-meet- zeus/](https://forums.unraid.net/topic/75710-meet-zeus/)

<comment><USER48> That's really cool, might be an idea for my kindle in the future :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's always good to have an old device on hand for performance testing. It's easier to discover performance issues on a slow machine, as you get to experience the lag first hand.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know if this counts as a Project, but a friend of mine is still using her black plastic MacBook[0] interfaced to a ton of audio gear.

I don't know if she uses it for anything other than audio, but she's a musician so I think that part is used pretty seriously.

[0]: [https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook_2.0...](https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook_2.0_black.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> Not very creative: I use my older phone to read books in the hot tub. This way, if I drop it, I don't loose my fancy new expensive phone.

<comment><USER50> you have a fancy new phone that isn't waterproof? mine is and it's not even _that_ expensive.

<comment><USER51> I have learned the hard way that today's fancy waterproof phones can lose that magical property when dropped. And then the warranty might not cover you when it dies after being rained upon.

That's not what I, an old Defy user, had in mind :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I have this for an old iPad 1 [https://xaviesteve.com/pro/weather/](https://xaviesteve.com/pro/weather/)

It tells the weather forecast and time for the next few days and at night it goes into 'dark mode' which is nice, have it in a corner in my living room.

Edit: forgot to mention that if you use it, remember to do the 'Add to Homescreen' so it displays in full screen.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've repurposed a couple old iPhones and a 2nd Gen iPad as baby monitors using the aptly-named Baby Monitor app (no affiliation other than being a satisfied customer). One sits in the kid's room as the mic/camera and the others serve as the speakers/display. The app is fantastic as it works on essentially any version of iOS and any iOS device. The iPad chokes on any website and barely runs anything else, but works perfectly with the Baby Monitor app.

I wish more apps like this worked on older versions of iOS or Android. No need to hack around with some alternative OS (not that there's anything wrong with that) - it's usable by any non-techie with some old iOS devices.

</comment><comment><USER54> Using an old desktop my dad gave me to spin up some websites getting 1,000,000+ unique visitors monthly. It has some basic specs: 12gb RAM and 8 cores from a decade or so ago.

Was using Raspberry Pis before, but given that many Docker containers don't support ARMv7, I'm just utilizing the luxury of AMD64 (and using Docker Compose, Traefik, and Wireguard to do scaling and networking).

<comment><USER55> Really cool! But can you tell us what you use Wireguard for?

<comment><USER54> Well I don't really want my home IP anything to do with my websites (don't want to deal with dynamic IP or whatever) so I just route traffic to a GCP instance (pretty small one) that routes to the internet (meaning cloudflare).

GCP instance is like the main Wireguard peer and I can easily add my laptop to the VPN so I can remotely ssh into my server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Recently I installed CodeServer ([https://github.com/cdr/code- server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)) on one of my old laptops.

Now I can do my coding using VSCode, except I can do it from any computer that has a browser (although Chrome seems to work the best).

I highly recommend checking out CodeServer (no affiliation)

</comment><comment><USER57> I use an old iPad with brightness turned way down as an indoor IP security camera via the free Periscope HD app:

[https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/periscope-hd-h-264-rtsp- cam/id...](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/periscope-hd-h-264-rtsp- cam/id1095600218)

I also use an old iPhone mounted inside the front door as a Touch ID enabled alarm control panel for a DIY HomeKit alarm system. This is using a Homebridge plugin I wrote:

[https://github.com/vectronic/homebridge-alarm- panel](https://github.com/vectronic/homebridge-alarm-panel)

</comment><comment><USER58> I use an old Android smartphone as a replacement wifi antenna for the notebook I use plugged to my 65 inch TV. It's my main workstation, and is a very good machine, but for some reason there's a short circuit on the motherboard and the wifi antenna does not work. This same old phone is also used as a security camera so I can see my pets remotely when I'm traveling. I use the app Alfred to do that, and it works very well.

<comment><USER59> So are you using the phone as a "hot spot" for the machine plugged into the 65 inch TV?

<comment><USER58> It's just sharing the connection it gets from my wifi router over USB to my laptop. Since my laptop's wifi antenna does not work, I have to give it access to the internet through USB tethering.

My laptop is always plugged to my TV via HDMI. It's my multimedia center, I use PopCorn Time every day on it. It has a bluetooth keyboard/mouse set.

It's also my main workstation, I develop Android apps on my spare time at home, and nowadays I'm getting more money from the apps than from my 9to5 corporate job, so this side gig is becoming more and more of a main gig.

I love this setup, it's better than ANY smart tv OS, there's simply no replacement to a full-fledged Linux OS on your big screen TV and a real, full sized keyboard and mouse. And to code sitting on a huge armchair is pretty nice too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Old phones make for rather good CCTV/surveillance cameras. Anything made in the past 4-6 years will have great picture quality (during the day, mostly), Internet connectivity, alarm features, motion sensing, even object recognition.

<comment><USER61> What software do you use to turn a phone into a surveillance camera?

<comment><USER62> Snowden's Haven app: [https://www.rt.com/news/414026-edward-snowden-privacy- app-ha...](https://www.rt.com/news/414026-edward-snowden-privacy-app-haven/)

<comment><USER61> Ah, thanks. I tried this on an old Android phone but it was unusable. Perhaps I'll have better luck with it when my Apple hardware ages out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I got a Raspberry pi 1 B+ for free because it wasn't powerful enough for anything. Put it inside my old but perfectly working laser printer. Got a Google Cloud Print(RIP) enabled printer.

[https://github.com/ProZsolt/runbook/blob/master/raspberry- pi...](https://github.com/ProZsolt/runbook/blob/master/raspberry-pi-cloud- print.md)

<comment><USER64> You could still switch it into a network enabled printserver (usb to the printer and a usb wifi card)

<comment><USER63> I installed CUPS on it so it is a network enabled printer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I spend a lot of time in the backcountry trekking, hiking, snowshoeing, and canoeing.

Over the last couple years I have increasingly started using my iPhone for navigation using GaiaGPS and Avenza PDF Maps.

My old phone, though unpowered for day to day life still functions great for navigation. On long trips I'll bring this second phone as a backup map/gps which is smaller and lighter than the equivalent paper maps and navigation tools.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've built a good ol' web app which runs in fullscreen mode on an old iPad 1, turning it into a "smart" picture frame. Runs on top of Trello, with a small backend in Go for caching and proxying. Works great.

<comment><USER67> I have an original iPad here just waiting around to die. Something like this seems like a perfect use case for it. Thanks.

<comment><USER66> I do intend to release it and also open-source the code at some point. It's not entirely in that state yet, but I'll probably throw it up on a Show HN when the time comes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I use an old laptop to backup data I save in Google Drive, in case my account becomes inaccessible someday.

<comment><USER69> Do you have a script or any automated way to save a backup regularly?

<comment><USER68> I'm using deja-dup [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Using an iPad Mini 2 inside a wall-mount as a control for various home automation tasks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/d7mpgh/ipad...](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/d7mpgh/ipad_mini2_inwall_mount_with_tilt_for_easy/)

It's been fun building custom iOS apps for HA tasks.

</comment><comment><USER32> I put an Apple 4x PCIe AHCI SSD, a Radeon R9 280X, 2 additional SATA SSDs, and a USB 3 card into a 2006 Mac Pro with dual quadcores and 32GB RAM. In doing so, I converted it into a useful computer-cum-space-heater that handles almost any modern workload I can throw at it, except for things requiring AVX extensions that the CPUs don't support.

edit: even games! Even moderately-recent ones!

<comment><USER71> What OS do you run?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I have a very old netbook running FreeDOS. I have installed nothing but nano on it, and I use it as a distraction-free writing device. I also have a black MacBook running Xubuntu, and it works great. Got a new, non-matching battery for it for about CDN$60, and I get three or four hours of use on a charge. Only issue is the wifi is sometimes flakey on newer routers.

</comment><comment><USER73> I took out my old OnePlus phone and I've built my own baby monitor app. We use it with our 5mo and it's been super useful for us so I polished it and a few days ago released it in Play Store so other parents can try it.

The app has some cool and unique features:

        - pink noise to help our baby fall asleep faster and sleep longer
        - works in the background
        - auto-reconnect
        - low baby monitor battery warning

If someone is interested, the app is in the play store here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zzzbabymon...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zzzbabymonitor)

Initially, there are 4 hours of free monitoring time, but as the app is new I'm happy to give promo codes with extra time. Just drop me a message (contact info is the app) and I'll send you one.

</comment><comment><USER74> I run boinc ([https://boinc.berkeley.edu/](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/)) on my old computers, mostly [https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/](https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/) to help with climate and health research

<comment><USER75> Depending on how the electricity is produced in your area and whether you use the heat for home heating, it may be better for the climate to simply turn these computer off.

<comment><USER74> My country have close to 100% green electricity and I need the heat a big part of the year. According to the scientists it is better for the climate to run the projects distributed this way than to use mainframes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I'm working on a software stack that would let you plug a hard drive into an old Android phone and access the files over the cloud in a Google Drive type fashion. My patchbay[0] service is a step in that direction.

[0] [https://patchbay.pub](https://patchbay.pub)

</comment><comment><USER77> I replaced my roku stick with an old laptop and bluetooth keyboard and mouse, it was great having a super fast and responsive smart tv. Ultimately I replaced it with a $20 chromecast which is just as capable but with better ux.

Im using an ex corporate hp dl380e server for my home lab, loads of computing power for dirt cheap because there is no SLA.

The server was cheap but the electricity is not, and while its powerful I could get a modern quad core would be as powerful and use less electricity for about the same cost over three years.

A lot of this stuff is e-waste not because its no longer powerful but because it is no longer economically viable. A lot of e-waste, phones in particular go to Africa to be reused, outside of this I don't see any reuse / recycling thats realistic.

</comment><comment><USER78> Saw a lot of great videos on YouTube about turning old laptop screens into standalone HDMI monitors (with a simple $12 board). That now explains the the stack of taken-apart laptops in the flat where I've been unable to get them to release the screen...

</comment><comment><USER79> I have an ipad mini 1 that I keep wanting to leave plugged into the stereo to use for music but its version of Music is too old to access the copies of my stuff in the cloud and trying to update the OS just spins forever. This post made me decide to look into it and discover this is because it was jailbroken, and that blocks Software Update from working, so I've plugged it into the computer and am updating it from there.

Dunno if it'll actually end up working, right now I'm doing a backup and iTunes is saying it's "over capacity by 634 MB" and pinwheeling, but at least it's an attempt.

edit, an hour later: IT WORKS YAY, thanks for giving me a reason to fool with it.

</comment><comment><USER80> You can contribute to the effort to port [https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/) to old phones and help unify hardware support in the mainline kernel.

</comment><comment><USER81> I use ancient Atom processor laptops to run our home automation servers. Minimal power consumption, built-in battery backups, WOL/power, extremely reliable, $40 on eBay.

</comment><comment><USER82> I have an old hand-me-down laptop from a relative. It's from 2011 and is a Core i5. The screen is terrible, but otherwise it's perfectly capable.

I couldn't call it a "project," but I've installed a music player (Rhythmbox, but pick whatever software you like) and hooked it up to some premium speakers. It's the best music player I could hope for -- it can play literally any format, doesn't phone home, and uses very little energy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I took an old tablet, stuck it to the wall above my desk with 3M's Command picture hanging doodads, and now have an always-on display of my kanban board: [https://kanbanflow.com/](https://kanbanflow.com/)

It's great to have a permanent visible reminder of what I intended to be doing. I used to do that with sticky notes, but that had the big disadvantage of not being visible except right at my desk.

</comment><comment><USER83> I use a spare TV like a kiosk panel for the family calendar, weather, and various RSS feeds.

<comment><USER26> What software do you use for the kiosk? I have been thinking of doing this with Ubuntu Core using the Chromium snap and a custom website which it refreshes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Here is interesting DIY video of things one can create from an old laptop. Inside the video there is a link to creating a daylight lamp/panel from a monitor -- it's really great and looks like a daylight from a window due to specific materials used in monitors to evenly distribute light.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLP_L7Mgz6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLP_L7Mgz6M)

</comment><comment><USER85> If you have an old router with USB 2.0 ports lying around it's fairly straightforward to install OpenWRT and Zerotier and make a VPN with a private cloud attached if you mount a HDD, and as long as your file transfer requirements aren't too intense. Have one running on my LAN and it works well for FTP, SMB shares for backup, and normal VPN stuff. Plus, it doesn't consume much power as it's MIPS chipset.

</comment><comment><USER86> I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but my favorite repurposing of old devices was when I was looking for something to do with the eight Kaypro IIs I had kicking around about 15 years ago.

What I ended up doing was chaining them together to use as a single multiprocessor PC. Those 8, working together, came very close to reaching the same performance as a low-end "modern" PC of the time.

</comment><comment><USER87> I use an old Android phone as a dedicated Kodi remote for a media center PC and my old Nexus 7 is pretty much exclusively for reading Jojo's manga.

</comment><comment><USER88> This is not something I've done, but I've been holding onto this paper from Princeton about using old mobile devices as compute nodes [1] which I think might be of interest here

[1] [https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud17/program/present...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotcloud17/program/presentation/shahrad)

</comment><comment><USER89> Just until recently I was usging an old Nokia N85 for my running sessions. It had dedicated physical buttons for playback, skip song, volume etc, the "Nokia Sports tracker app" also suported polar heart rate monitor.

Some years ago it stop supporting direct upload of workouts and I had to send the gpx file via bluetooth.

Last year battery died and I haven't found cheap replacements.

<comment><USER85> Any Android burner phone with LineageOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I have an iBook G3 that i use to monitor a server and make announcements about current workload, logins , lockouts and database health.

</comment><comment><USER91> My friend had a raspberry pi2, which he didnt want because of lack of bt and wifi, that is my plex server now.

<comment><USER92> Have you noticed any issues? Especially transcoding?

<comment><USER91> I don't use transcoding, as plex asks premium account for internet connectivity and transcoding is not needed over lan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> My stack of old laptops and computers is repurposed into a franken-cluster running various OpenStack services and testing applications on different platforms and performance profiles. Also handy for testing dweb applications and ideas.

Would be interesting to find a way to flash old dumbphones for something.

</comment><comment><USER94> Great platforms for CTF or pen-testing practice if that is something you enjoy. I have a few raspberry pis and old phones that I test out new tools and methods on. If something breaks or something I install looks questionable I can factory reset them (the phones) and its no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER95> Old laptop + USB docks + old hdds made for a pretty respectable home server. Especially since it was a gaming laptop so only the gfx was proper old

...struggling to work out what to do now though as the next generation of laptops needs to retire. Might try donating but I'm not optimistic

</comment><comment><USER96> Still hanging onto that 256MB thumb drive? Turn it into a key for a deniably encrypted operating system: [https://habd.as/post/invisible-arch- linux/](https://habd.as/post/invisible-arch-linux/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a Thinkpad T42p, that I don't use anymore. I wonder how hard would it be to gut it and with a small SBC like Pine64's Rock64 and some additional board make it useful again. Question is how to drive: LVDS display, keyboard, touchpad and trackpoint?

</comment><comment><USER97> \+ Thinkpad X230 (2013 model, i5, 8gb ram, ssd) with docking station as a media center running Kodi[0]

\+ Samsung Galaxy Express I8730 (2013)[1] as a remote control for that media center[2]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_\(software\))

[1] [https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_express_i8730-5271.p...](https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_express_i8730-5271.php)

[2] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore&hl=en)

<comment><USER97> Forgot to add an older entry-level android tablet (7") used as a digital photo frame, running Fotoo:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bo.fotoo&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bo.fotoo&hl=en)

It's a better display and cheaper than any off-the-shelf digital photo frames. Fotoo syncs the photos from cloud storage, so family members can upload to the frame, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> I use a bad Xiaomi Mi A2 for watching preloaded vids during commute, and playing OpenMW !

It was my partner's former phone but she eventually broke the camera, and it was quite sluggish. However, it has a big screen, a big battery life, and had cost me 150€ anyway.

</comment><comment><USER99> Low-hanging fruit, not particularly hacky, but really nice: Android phone on guitar pedalboard. Metronome, tuner, backing track jukebox, etc. I run the headphone jack into a Boss looper pedal. Very handy to have a dedicated android in the effect loop.

</comment><comment><USER100> Old Android phone has LineageOS on it and acts as a remote for my TV and Chromecast.

</comment><comment><USER101> I use my 6 year old OnePlus One as a smart phone.

It runs LineageOS just fine and I can barely tell it from a new phone. The drawback is the camera is not as good as current flagships but I can live with that as photos are still pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER102> Idea: kids go house to house fund raising by collecting old phones plus $10 per phone (ewaste). They factory reset and load with kid friendly apps and sell to Moms via cheepfone.com. Raise money for school tech clubs.

</comment><comment><USER103> I use batocera linux in my old desktop for a very capable retro-games machine. It's a little bulkier than the tipical Raspberry Pi + retropie installation, but beats it's performance and comes for free.

</comment><comment><USER104> We created Viyo.io for this very purpose. With all of the ridiculousness around security system privacy right now, we wanted to build a web-based, privacy-first solution because it's something that we wanted but couldn't find. Basically you can use almost any web-accessible device as a security camera, or to observe your cameras. We've had a super awesome response so far, and we've been able to add a ton of backwards compatibility. Some of our users are using 7+ year old Android devices.

</comment><comment><USER105> Using broken phone (nexus 5x) with nice camera for timelapsing hill for paragliding club

[https://croncam.com/svatobor](https://croncam.com/svatobor)

</comment><comment><USER106> Reminded me of using an old Nokia N900 to watch EdX videos offline while commuting. No cellular, just Using WiFi.

Loved this little Nokia because Maemo OS was Linux-based, had a keyboard and terminal.

</comment><comment><USER107> I'm using an old Asus netbook as a home server. I installed Xubuntu and now I use it as a Docker host for Plex, a torrent server, and other projects. It works surprisingly well!

</comment><comment><USER108> Run BOINC(Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), a distributed, high throughout computing initiative that runs with volunteer computing. It helps solve cutting edge research problems in science.

It is easy to set up (just screate an account with scienceunited.org) and great to contribute to. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and Android!

Link: [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER109> I set up an old iPad as a picture frame that shuffles through all my photos. It's been wonderful reliving memories and vacations! I did have to buy a third party app to do the shuffle since Apple removed it a few OS versions ago though.

</comment><comment><USER110> Q: are there any uses for old Core 2 desktops _without_ onboard GPU that consume ~200W when idle?

I'm wondering if I should just trash my old desktop, especially if it'll be cheaper in the long term to get something more power-efficient.

<comment><USER111> 200W when idle?! That's ridiculous! I'd personally just trash it, unless the upfront cost of something more power efficient is too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> Use old speakers and cellphone to generate random noise to annoy your noisy neighbors

<comment><USER113> You kid but works great for a white noise generator

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> I use an old Ipad (retina screen) with Dakboard free edition stuck to the refrigerator as a family calendar and photo frame. It works really well with open weather and google photos, google calendar integration.

</comment><comment><USER115> My laptop broke at the hinge; now I have two parts. I wanted to convert the screen into a touchscreen for a while now. Not sure what I am going to do with that, tho. Maybe hook it to a Raspi?

</comment><comment><USER116> I built an "autonomous" remote-controlled car using an old iPhone: [http://pyetras.com/car3](http://pyetras.com/car3)

</comment><comment><USER117> I have about 30 Android smartphones I am using for volunteer distributed computing (BOINC). Most are running Android 4.x

</comment><comment><USER118> I made blurb.cloud so that an old phone or tablet could serve as a shared billboard.

</comment><comment><USER119> I turned a Surface 3 (non-pro) into a wall clock that displays the current weather.

<comment><USER16> I find a window a very effective way to monitor the weather.

<comment><USER79> Rooms without windows do exist. So do rooms with their windows blocked off for various reasons.

Windows also can't inform you that while it's lovely right now, there's a storm front that will be pouring rain in a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> use an old laptop to run the opensimulator 3d world server (open source second life)

</comment><comment><USER121> shadow.tech lets me run a Windows 10 gaming spec desktop on all my old devices.

</comment><comment><USER122> Retropie Old Laptop</comment>


Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11177/making-amd-tick-a-very-zen-interview-with-dr-lisa-su-ceo <comment><USER2> It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff.

The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage.

Granted, that answer could be wrong (I know nothing about CPU engineering), but either way it's a really well considered one to be thought up when "put on the spot" in an interview with a question you haven't considered ahead of time. I'm sure that's one of the things which separate good from great in CEOs: an understanding not only of the broad market decisions made by their company but even the details of low level architecture decisions.

<comment><USER3> > Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering

i mean, you could expect someone with that degree from MIT have at least a general idea about the technicalities of her flagship products.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you would expect it, but it's still rather atypical; most people become CEOs because of their business and political acumen, whether or not they understand the technical bits is maybe 10th priority.

They say about companies that you can tell their culture from the outside by who they value and who they promote. Some engineering companies promote MBAs, and some promote engineers. Promotions and who holds high rank is an external cultural signal to the world that is really hard to fake.

This cuts both ways though: if you see a company that hires and promotes engineers, where the CEO is this technically deep, you can probably conclude that (a) they value engineering but also that (b) they're probably not that great in terms of financial management & project management.

They're radically different skill sets, and opportunity cost abounds. Almost no one is awesome at everything, because there are only 24 hours in the day, so being awesome at one thing often does mean you have some trading area where you're weak.

Engineering companies run by MBAs are not always so bad as they sound. It sucks as an engineer if your considerations are not always front and center, but you get other advantages too; better strategy/insight on fundraising, better overall management, and sometimes vision too, many engineers are too narrowly focused on incremental improvements, and are missing the "dreamer" component, aka the "Jobs" not the "Wozniak".

<comment><USER5> And how many MBAs are "dreamers"? Then again, i don't think Jobs was much of a dreamer either, he was just damn good at talking the talk.

If anyone was a dreamer it was Woz back then. Dreaming of having his own computer, dreaming about computers improving life for everyone, etc etc etc.

Jobs are all about appearance. And not just visual. He had a near pathological loathing towards fan noise for example. To the point that one AppleII variant had problems with excessive heat buckling the logicboard and unseating components because he refused the engineers to install even the most unobtrusive of fans.

I suspect we can see this in how he was quite hung up on the GUI but completely missed networked computers while touring Xerox PARC.

<comment><USER6> > Jobs are all about appearance.

Job was all about _design_ , and design for him went from the very simple, raw components to the final packaging and marketing. For him there was no boundary between engineering and design, between software and hardware, they were all part of the same product.

It's easy to dismiss his views as superficial, but when he wanted to have a board look a certain way, or for a case to be a certain size, he'd press for it. When there were technical problems that prevented that from happening he wanted to _understand_ why. He wanted explanations, and he'd listen to them, then make his own judgement based on that information.

> ...but completely missed networked computers while touring Xerox PARC.

The Macintosh famously shipped with very high speed serial ports for that time, up to 230Kbaud, which was vastly faster than any modem or other serial device around in the 1980s. Why?

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

Apple may not have had Ethernet in their early computers, but they were _absolutely_ aware about the importance of networking. Sending files from one Mac to another was as simple as plugging them together. While the Macintosh didn't have a lot of games, it did have multi-player ones over a local network long, long before Windows did.

<comment><USER7> >Job was all about design, and design for him went from the very simple, raw components to the final packaging and marketing. For him there was no boundary between engineering and design, between software and hardware, they were all part of the same product.

+1 Somebody who actually understands Apple and Steve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general.

If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative.

Whatever happens, some competition is bound to be a good thing imo.

<comment><USER9> You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious if you could elaborate on this.

For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.

<comment><USER11> Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in:

\- strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more)

\- RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of awards and with good reason.)

\- platformers (Ori, Shovel Knight), roguelikes (Darkest Dungeon, Don't starve, Spelunky, and more)

\- experimental narrative games (Papers Please, This War of Mine, This is The Police)

\- modern adventure games (Until Dawn, Telltales Wolf Among Us / Walking Dead / Game of Thrones and many more)

And those are only on PC and none of them are first person. Just like movies go beyond just Marvel and Transformers, gaming goes way beyond just Call of Duty and Battlefield. The AA market of smaller but still established companies (Paradox Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Telltale and many more) build great experiences and I don't think gaming market was ever so live and broad as it is these years.

<comment><USER12> I'd recommend Kentucky Route Zero, too, which is finally _almost_ all out (boo episodic release models). It's what you get when people with vision, talent, some real book learnin', a good understanding of video games in general, and _artistic taste_ set out to tell a story in video game form. Brain bleach for the various trying-too-hard, one-note "art" games out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ultimate Go Library Collection - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Xelom/Go-Libraries

<comment><USER2> This is hardly the ultimate go library collection, seeing how it hardly touches anything besides web-related stuff.</comment>


Show HN: Dosycrypt – homemade cipher - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago-coder-0/dosycrypt <comment><AUTHOR> Usual disclaimer / warning applies to non-publicly-vetted crypto. There's no published CA of this. So use at your own discretion / explore at your own interest. Thanks! :)</comment>


Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux  - <AUTHOR> http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html <comment><USER2> On this topic does anyone know of a good article that shows you you can profile your binary size? Say given binary X object Y takes up 60% and in object Y source file Z takes up the most. Or a list of common coding practices in [language] that cause the binary size to significantly increase?

<comment><USER3> try the 'nm' program on your binaries.

<comment><USER4> or better use the 'size' program to give how much each .o/.obj file takes.

You can also use 'strip' to remove debug information not needed (normally appended to the end of the file).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would have been brilliant if he could have reduced the program size to 42 bytes - the same as the result when you run it, and the answer to everything.

<comment><USER6> In the postscript he mentions:

 _[...] Well, actually, it could be made smaller. When Linux starts up a new executable, one of the things it does is zero out the accumulator (as well as most of the other registers). Taking advantage of this fact would have allowed me to remove the xor [...]_

Removing the xor reduces the program size to 43 bytes. Closer, but not there yet :-)

However, neither the original nor the 43-byte version run on my machine [1]. The first is simply _Killed_ , the second doesn't even load: _cannot execute binary file_.

[1] Linux 2.6.28 i686 (Ubuntu 9.04 on Pentium M)

<comment><USER7> The original runs fine for me[1], but if you actually read the last bit of the article, you'll see that there's no way to get it below 45 bytes and convince the kernel to still run it. The 45th byte specifies the number of entries in the program header table, and that can't be zero (or missing).

[1] Linux 2.6.31 x86_64

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The equivalent exercise for the Windows PE file format:

<http://www.phreedom.org/solar/code/tinype/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting, although we are (sadly) past the point where squeezing every byte you can get out of your program matters.

<comment><USER7> I think crazy size optimization like that is a fun exercise, but I completely disagree with your "sadly" there. Avoiding the need to do all this silly micro-optimization means more time to create things that people actually care about and want to use.

Yes, modern software is comparatively huge and bloated, but the less your average programmer has to worry about code size and speed, the larger the the body of useful applications we'll have.

<comment><USER10> Nostalgia is surely as bad a vice as they come, but I can't help be a little nostalgic that marvelous hacks like these no longer have a place in our world.

I've heard there are similar such hacks in the world microbiology, overlapping genes giving bacteria a selective advantage. But in the world of people, genomic code bloat is apparently not a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's unfortunate. The Sidekick II was the best smartphone I ever had in terms of usability, keyboard and speed, and I am still highly partisan to it.

<comment><USER12> Wrong topic. :)</comment></comment>


Hidden-tear: open source ransomware-like file crypter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/utkusen/hidden-tear

<comment><USER2> Having a hard time coming up with a positive use case for this. It's not like cycling through a file list and applying a crypto function is hard, so the educational excuse seems pretty weak.

<comment><USER3> I could find at least a case for educating end users if the payload can be delivered as any genuine ransomware:

I get sick and tired of users finding good excuses to download and open all sort of document on the main server at work and having to fetch a backup of the VM because of their eagerness to disregard all kind of obvious precaution.... At least with this I could organize a surprise training without jeopardizing their work of the last few hours/days.</comment></comment>


Silicon Brain: 100,000 ARM cores [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e06C-yUwlc <comment><USER3> Custom 18 core arm chips (too much for A7-9, too little for M0-4, really weird number of cores), and what looks like 8-12 layer pcbs. This cant be cheap :o

I wonder how it looks at this level of integration (850 cores per board) versus something like Xeon + PHI/GPU. You certainly do gain asynchronous mode of operation, and that might be the winning factor/secret sauce.

<comment><USER4> "Custom 18 core arm chips (too much for A7-9, too little for M0-4, really weird number of cores)"

Could just look at the website instead of speculating [http://apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/SpiNNchip/](http://apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/SpiNNchip/)

<comment><USER3> ARM9E, wow that is ancient, 15 year old nintendo DS ancient. Not even R4 (if they really really need realtime oriented core).

<comment><USER5> AFAIK the Xeon Phi is based on something in between Pentium I and II cores. So the idea is about the same. I'd put my money on ARM when it comes to efficient chip architecture, since efficiency was their goal from the start (x86 was always about backwards compatibility first).

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the Phi is a P6 core, but so is all the modern Core family CPUs.

All Phis are along the lines of modern cores stripped down and simplified. This is also how the modern Avoton and newer Atoms work, but the Phi is stripped down even farther.

<comment><USER5> That's not what I get from Intel's documentation. Intel seems to call it a Pentium I with a P6 programming interface. But maybe you have other sources, if so please share.

> So why not use an older, smaller but still very capable core? And that is > what they did. The designers went back generations, literally back to one of > the first modern cores, the Intel® Pentium® processor. [1]

> The foundation for the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor core PMU is the PMU from > the original Intel® Pentium® processor (aka P54C). Most of the forty - <USER2> > performance events that were available in the original Intel® Pentium® > processor are also available on the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor The core > PMU has been upgraded to an Intel® Pentium® Pro processor - like ("P6 - > style") programming interface.

[1] [https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/03/22/the- intel-...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2013/03/22/the-intel-xeon- phi-coprocessor-what-is-it-and-why-should-i-care-pt-1-fitting-it-all)

[2] [https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/forum/278102/...](https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/forum/278102/intelr- xeon-phitm-pmu-rev1.01.pdf) (section 1.2)

<comment><AUTHOR> All a PMU is, is a performance monitoring unit. It keeps track of CPU utilization and performance counters.

This is an extremely small part of the CPU, and yes, I can imagine they jettisoned a lot of stuff you find on modern cores because it takes up too much room.

<comment><USER5> Good point, that source wasn't really what I thought it is. There's still enough sources to support my argument though.

> The cores at the heart of Intel's first Xeon Phi are based on the P54C > revision of the original Pentium and appear largely unchanged from the > design Intel planned to use for Larrabee. [3]

> Many changes were made to the original 32-bit P54c architecture to make it > into an Intel Xeon Phi 64-bit processor. [4]

\- so, still, they seemed to have started with Pentium I and adding stuff to it rather than stripping out a modern core. Which was always the story they sold about Larrabee, which AFAIK was the direct predecessor project that got salvaged with Intel MIC.

[3] [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133541-intels-64-core- cha...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133541-intels-64-core-champion-in- depth-on-xeon-phi)

[4] [https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-xeon-phi- cor...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-xeon-phi-core-micro- architecture)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is closer like this: ARM, and all the companies that have their own ARM designs, have a library of parts. They assemble those parts as needed to complete designs for themselves and for customers.

What people don't understand is, Intel does the same. Look at how modern E3s, E5s, E7s, i3/5/7s, modern Atoms, etc, all work: similar designed parts, all paired with what is minimally required for that design to work and perform the way they want.

Intel doesn't throw designs out, they keep them and periodically make sure they still work on smaller fab sizes and newer fab techs.

A more striking example than the Phi is the Intel Quark, featured in the Edison platform, which is Intel's equivalent of an ARM Cortex-M series (such as the M4s used in a lot of cell phones as a GPS/motion sub-processor and other things). The Quark really _is_ a modernized P54C (Pentium 1 pre-MMX) core, and more so than the Xeon Phi is (although, obviously, there is shared part design through both of them).

I think the thing with Phi is, its rapidly evolving. Larrabee was closer to this design than first gen Phi was, and now they're shipping second gen Phi, and it looks more like how some GPUs have been historically designed than just x86 core spam (look at how the bus design is evolving, they're getting closer and closer to how AMD and Nvidia design theirs, and also how post-Skylake on- die GPU integration is evolving on multi-socket platforms).

So, yeah. I don't agree that the Phi can be flat out called a P54C, but I agree they have been reusing modernized parts from that era because it is easier to do that than continually strip down existing designs to look like that.

The Quark, however, looks a lot like how embedded family 286 and 486s have been kept alive for the embedded hardware sector, and now they're positioning the Quark for the IoT era (which, hey, they have my interest with that product, so they did something right); the Quark is more of a P54C than the Phi is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who interested in the hardware implementation of neural networks, this project simulates neurons on the software level, however neuromorphic TrueNorth chip does the same job on hardware level which enable faster and more efficient applications.

<comment><USER7> Side note, hardware accelerated doesn't necessarily mean it's faster. For example, Java chips never took off because an x86 with a really good JIT does the job better. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like something Paul Allen's Brain Institute is working on.

[http://youtu.be/Te-SDsb6sHM](http://youtu.be/Te-SDsb6sHM)

[http://youtu.be/EX7wzqAoeQA](http://youtu.be/EX7wzqAoeQA)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Institute_for_Brain_Sc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Institute_for_Brain_Science)

</comment><comment><USER9> Doubling every two years, we will have brain power in a single rack in 13 years, and a brain sized box in less than 20.

</comment><comment><USER10> "With a million cores we only get to about 1% of the scale of the human brain"

Interesting. So in terms of raw computing power, the totality of computers out there is much more powerful than a brain. I wonder when we first passed that level as a whole. (I know that we wouldn't use all our computers to make a "brain", but I think it's interesting to think about :)

<comment><USER11> This is a very inaccurate comparison for many reasons, but to get the sense of complexity of the human brain:

In the human brain, there are almost 100 billion neurons (the project plans to simulate 1000 neurons on one core, hence 1% atm). Each has about 7000 connections, or alternatively there are estimated 10^15 connections or more.

The internet has only about 15-20 billion nodes, only few highly connected, the Internet is more of a tree than a complete mesh.

So in some way, you could say we are nowhere close to obtaining the computing power of the brain, if we, of course, disregard the fact that the nodes, computers, are very powerful on their own. But this is where the comparison breaks. The human brain is powerful due to the complexity of its network, not the sheer amount of "working units" (cores/transistors).

Comment on the project: it is exciting, but it must not be understated that it is still a very gross approximation, since the neuron models used are simple. It might be the case that interesting behavior will arise using this simple model, but it also might be the case that the secret sauce is in the fine behavior of each neuron. The hope is that interesting phenomena can be observed with this simpler model, perhaps a bit like classical physics can often be used without requiring the full model of quantum mechanics.

<comment><USER12> I would extend this to say that when you get down to the level of synapses you're now talking about memory and not CPU. (If you actually want to implement this) 100 trillion synapses is better mapped to 100TB of RAM.

It's also very important to remember how incredibly _slow_ the human brain is. Were talking 100s of ms slow to go from sensory input to motor output. A single neuron might take between 1 and 10 ms to fire, and a single dendrite might take 1/10th that time, so at best your doing computation at 10khz. CPU has 5 orders of magnitude over biology.

The problem is we have only a vague idea of how the network is connected and don't really know the algorithm thats being implemented by that network. So we fall back on things like simulating ion channels which take _way_ more compute resources than necessary. There is a _lot_ of cargo culting going on right now, but of course it's also insanely exciting and fun to find out what does and doesn't work.

<comment><USER13> With 1000 neurons per core running in series, that would eat up a lot of the speed advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's cool that they compare it to mice brains and fractions of human brains, but how similar are they really? Do they operate at the same speed? I'd guess biological neurons trigger slower. Are they as connected? It's nice that it's a hexagonal mapping of a toroids surface, but neurons are connected in true 3d, how much more connected is that?

<comment><USER15> >but neurons are connected in true 3d,

not exactly. The most of the "thinking" neurons form the surface of the brain - that surface is wrinkled into "gyri" to achieve more than 2D, yet it isn't 3D. In the language of Hausdorff dimension it is 2.x something.

And the neuron connections are pretty structured topology that is far from each-to-each. If, for example, you look at this picture [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornix_%28neuroanatomy%29#/med...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornix_%28neuroanatomy%29#/media/File:Gray747.png) you can see how the wires from the neurons of the hippocampus gyrus are bundled together into the "fimbria" and routed through the "fornix".

<comment><USER16> Here's a very short video showing white fibre bundles in a human brain.

[https://youtu.be/6YFG5OnDp-Y](https://youtu.be/6YFG5OnDp-Y)

From:

[http://heliosphan.org/pittsburghbraincomp.html](http://heliosphan.org/pittsburghbraincomp.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also a video of wiring the rack (took 4h) and how the wiring for the whole 10-rack cluster would look like: [http://jhnet.co.uk/projects/spinner](http://jhnet.co.uk/projects/spinner)

</comment><comment><USER18> "with a little bit of mathematics too" how wonderfully understated.

<comment><USER19> He actually said "with quite a lot of mathematics too"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What technology do we have right now to map the connections of the brain? Is there anything that currently exists with enough granularity to take a snapshot of our neurons and their connections?

edit: thanks for the replies, did some research found this TED talk that visualizes the problem pretty well [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0)

<comment><USER6> fMRI I suppose. As far as I know, even if you have all neuron mapping of human brain, you could not achieve basic intelligence as brain constantly alter with these connections and their strengths. Even if you know all the connections, neuron firing types and representation of information over the network would create a big question for you.

<comment><USER20> Yea if you think about it short term memory is necessary for the movement of consciousness from state to state. Otherwise it'd be like flipping a toaster on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do the PCB boards communicate among themselves? The cables don't look like ethernet (CAT6).

<comment><USER22> From the SpiNNaker project page:

>The control interface is two 100Mbps Ethernet connections, one for the Board Management Processor and the second for the SpiNNaker array. There are options to use the six on-board 3.1Gbps high-speed serial interfaces (using SATA cables, but not necessarily the SATA protocol) for I/O...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what software they're using; they mention that the system is event- driven, but I can't see any sign of what they're using to implement this, whether custom or COTS software...

<comment><USER24> Mostly python, their code is at [https://github.com/SpiNNakerManchester](https://github.com/SpiNNakerManchester)

<comment><USER25> That's mostly front-end stuff for using the machines; the actual code running on the custom hardware is generally a lot lower level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Title should say 1 million ARM cores

<comment><USER27> That is the video title on Youtube and is the goal of the project, but the video itself shows a 100K ARM cores machine, not a million.

<comment><USER28> The YouTube title is 1M. They did not put in all the commas we normally expect.

<comment><USER3> yes title is 1m, but they show ONE 100K cores rack, the plan is to have 10 racks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> pretty cool dude. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Furber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Furber)</comment>


The Aims of Education (1916) - <AUTHOR> http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadeducation.htm <comment><USER2> Amazing essay. It's chock–full of good stuff.

I extracted my favourite quotes from it here: [https://minireference.com/blog/the-aims-of-education- accordi...](https://minireference.com/blog/the-aims-of-education-according-to- whitehead/) (warning long post)

<comment><AUTHOR> You might also be interested in "The rhythm of education; an address delivered to the Training college association" (1922).[0] We focus so heavy on what Whitehead calls the precision stage of education without the romance and generalization stages, the first to become interested in the material and the last to use the material new and original ways. When we go forward with using technology in education, it doesn't necessarily mean that teaching jobs are no longer needed or software is replacing teachers. The technology and formative assessment with software is there for the second step, precision, but human interaction needs to be there for the romance and synthesis of the acquired information. 100 years ago I think Whitehead was applying concepts of agile development to education.

>Of course, the stage of precision prolongs itself as recurring in minor cycles which form eddies in the great romance. The perfecting of writing, of spelling, of the elements of arithmetic, and of lists of simple facts, such as the Kings of England, are all elements of precision, very necessary both as training in concentration and as useful acquire- ments. However, these are essentially fragmentary in character, whereas the great romance is the flood which bears on the child towards the life of the spirit.

>The success of the Montessori system is due to its recognition of the dominance of romance at this period of growth. If this be the explanation, it also points to the limitations in the usefulness of that method. It is the system which in some measure is essential for every romantic stage. Its essence is browsing and the encouragement of vivid freshness. But it lacks the restraint which is necessary for the great stages of precision.

[0] [https://archive.org/details/rhythmofeducatio00whitiala](https://archive.org/details/rhythmofeducatio00whitiala)</comment></comment>