Qualcomm Firmware Vulnerabilities Expose 900M Devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/quadrooter-qualcomm-android-firmware-vulnerabilities,32414.html <comment><USER2> This is the link to their 'whitepaper'. Slightly more information

[https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/resources/quadRooter- vu...](https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/resources/quadRooter- vulnerability-research-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> A non-alarmist article:

[http://www.androidcentral.com/quadrooter-5-things-know- about...](http://www.androidcentral.com/quadrooter-5-things-know-about-latest- android-security-scare)

<comment><USER4> Thank you. This is much more informative on a practical level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone verify this? I don't get the warm fuzzies from the original posted link.

<comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12247998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12247998) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12246349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12246349)</comment></comment>


The reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/21/14683942/pewdiepie-controversy-youtube-drama <comment><USER2> As a subscriber I can attest that YouTube is an _awful_ platform. Your subscriptions stop appearing on your home page, apparently unless you're checking in on a daily basis. So if it's not creating the content creator's needs and it's not supporting the subscriber's needs then who's needs are being served? Is Google the only entity benefiting from this?

<comment><USER3> I have been using [https://www.inoreader.com](https://www.inoreader.com) (I'm not affiliated) to manage all of my YouTube subscriptions, and I deleted my Google account. It used to be Feedly but they butchered the UI and even removed some features. How long until my RSS feeds gets scroogled too? [https://twitter.com/Inoreader/status/829628234337808384](https://twitter.com/Inoreader/status/829628234337808384)

I got tired of videos not showing up, stupid paid promotions that I would NEVER watch or click getting in the way of automated playlists (workaround is: &list=UL). I need extensions just to make the thing not drive me crazy. And now most of the extensions will stop working because of the new material theme.</comment></comment>


Programming is obsolete. This 3D browser game was made in 2 weeks with no coding - <AUTHOR> https://cdn.soft8soft.com/demo/applications/farmers_journey_max/index.html <comment><USER2> If programmers stop writing code, because programming is obsolete.

Who will make the components for you to copy and paste to cobble together more crufty kluge of examples that justifies your over the top assertion?

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't load in Firefox or an older Chromium install. I guess programming isn't obsolete yet?

<comment><USER4> Works for me in FF, most recent, on a Mac.

It's a fancy version of a game I first came across in "BASIC Computer Games", or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Programming != Coding.</comment>


I don't understand how to use Facebook's Sponsored Posts - <AUTHOR> http://edjiang.com/post/36147347378/i-dont-understand-how-to-use-facebooks-sponsored

<comment><USER2> Major props for diplomacy. "We can't seem to use them effectively" is an extremely tactful way to avoid saying the obvious: Facebook appears to be scamming you.

<comment><USER3> It's too bad we don't have a culture/ecosystem of instrumenting our browser to perform mass surveillance on company behavior. It would be interesting to collect data like this across many advertisers and do a proper study. Seems to me that the hub-and-spokes information sharing model that companies have with their customers creates a form of obfuscation of business practice that works to the company's advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Woah. When I went to comment on this post it was on the front page. When I submitted my comment it was nowhere to be found.

There should be a required comment when YC folks bury a story. Otherwise it's pretty sketchy.

<comment><USER4> It's really frustrating that a few single people have the power to remove anything they don't like without any comment. A lot of people here are against the editorial control on cable news, so how is this any different than how cable news operates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have experienced the same with our page. Likes from parts of the world we don't engage in and this seems sketchy. Knowing that there are schemes exist to purchase likes for very cheap from certain parts of the world, one can't help but wonder if there is such a thing going on with these promoted posts. You wouldn't think so but our engagement is at an all time low now, even the promoted posts attract few likes but no comments or spam comments now.

Facebook says you should get 15% organic views if you don't promote a post. We have around 10,000 likes on our page and without promoting a post it gets around 125-150 views now. You do the math.

I stand with Mark Cuban and George Takei on this. Facebook should stop this craziness and just show everybody the full feed instead of trying to adjust it in all weird ways.

<comment><USER6> Even on my personal account it's pretty obvious that certain people don't see some of my posts unless there's some threshold of likes/comments. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, because my news feed would be an uncontrollable firehose if I saw everything.

If I post something, it seems that friends within the network of the place I currently live are the first to see or respond (despite the time I post it) and once it has enough "likes" or comments, I start seeing feedback from college friends or hometown friends.

<comment><USER5> Re: your second paragraph, when you think about it, the FB mission of keeping you connected to your friends doesn't work because your distant friends remain distant and only closer friends show up in your feed. In my personal feed I keep seeing updates from the same 20 people over and over. I have no clue what the other 450 are up to unless I go to their pages.

If all I wanted from FB was a relationship with my closer friends, then Path is much nicer.

Our buddy Mark Cuban was at it again yesterday re: this. [http://www.wired.com/business/2012/11/mark-cuban-facebook- ti...](http://www.wired.com/business/2012/11/mark-cuban-facebook-time-waster/)

<comment><USER6> That's an excellent point. For a while I thought "Man, my new friends in this city sure do use Facebook a lot more than my other friends", but a quick glance at a distant friend's timeline shows that isn't the case.

<comment><USER7> The problem is we'll never really know for sure. We don't know if our friends are just ignoring us or if they've even seen our posts. Edgerank is a good idea, when our friends/likes/subscribes get high, but if implemented incorrectly, you can end up missing a lot of updates that are relevant to you.

<comment><USER6> It's a really hard problem to solve. I wish Facebook would let me choose certain people and say "Put everything this person/band/page posts into my newsfeed".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> User with non-English name and language settings as English-US is very common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotchya. I can understand that fact.

However, our page's followers are mostly students in the Seattle area, and I personally know as we've had slow and steady growth in likes in the last year.

There's no reason promoted posts should be reaching such untargeted users -- and I'm trying to figure out what's going on.</comment></comment>


Equifax Data Breach Update: Backsliding - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/equifax-data-breach-update-backsliding <comment><USER2> Why not have a option for those affected to opt-out of Equifax from having or collecting any of my data. What they have should be removed, and never to be collected again by this company or owners etc. They failed us, they will do it again. I have no trust in Equifax and its leadership.</comment>


Facebook is the next Groupon Clone with "Facebook Deals" - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/deals

<comment><USER2> I tell you that Facebook brews a mighty strong pitcher of Kool-aid.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was pretty humorous being in the Facebook YC Hacker meetup, and a facebookie referred to any non-facebook-hosted page as "only interesting to the Google SEO bots"... With a straight face. It wasn't a joke. (!!)</comment></comment>


Maps of the Roman Empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/8/19/5942585/40-maps-that-explain-the-roman-empire?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=ezraklein&utm_content=tuesday <comment><USER2> The Roman Kingdom/Republic/Empire is a really fascinating period of ancient history. What's really mindblowing is when you realize that the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire didn't fall until 1453.

If you're looking for interesting listening on Rome, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Podcast. The series Death Throes of the Republic focuses on the period where Rome transformed from a Republic to an Empire (maps 13-16). I just finished listening to that a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. Additionally, Thor's Hammer discusses what happened in Europe when Rome fell. There's also an older series on the Punic wars, but I haven't had a chance to listen to that one yet.

<comment><USER3> How connected were the Eastern Romans to the original western ones though?

Would you say it's like the U.S. and Britain, more distinct or less?

<comment><USER4> More distinct, definitely. But the interesting bit is that they themselves would never have recognized this. Walk up to someone calling themselves "Roman" in 1 AD and you could find yourself talking to a pagan born in modern Italy who spoke Latin. Walk up to someone calling themselves "Roman" 500 years later and you could be talking to a Christian born in modern Turkey who spoke Greek, which is a very very different person. But both of them would have insisted that they were "Roman." (The idea of "Byzantium" itself as something distinct from the Roman Empire is a purely modern construction -- no Byzantine would have conceived of themselves as such.) So the idea of "Romanness" was socially constructed; it meant whatever people living in the empire at a particular time collectively decided it meant.

You can see a similar type of socially constructed identity by looking at "whiteness" in American culture. 150 years ago, a "white American" was strictly interpreted as a person of northern European ("Anglo-Saxon") descent. English, French, Germans and Scandinavians were "white people"; Spaniards, Italians, Irish, Poles, Russians and Jews were not. But fast-forward to today, and all those latter ethnicities are now commonly identified as "white" in American culture.

In other words, whiteness, like Romanness, is less a fixed identifier of a particular ethnic/religious/linguistic configuration and more a convenient way for people to divide the world into in-groups and out-groups, "us" and "them."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Traveling around the empire was excruciatingly slow"

"The researchers estimate that it took 7 weeks to travel from Constantinople (at the eastern end of the empire) to London (in the far west)."

What a funny little empire with nice roads :). Check this empire:

"And say, the governor went to Yakutsk, not months, for three years. The first year we reach Tobolsk. The second - to Irkutsk. And in the third year of riding on horseback to the upper reaches of the Lena and floated with water to Yakutsk."

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Tobolsk,+Tyumen+Oblast,+Ru...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Tobolsk,+Tyumen+Oblast,+Russia/Irkutsk+Oblast,+Russia/Yakutsk,+Sakha+Republic,+Russia)

[http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/142600/90/Burovskiii_- _P...](http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/142600/90/Burovskiii_- _Pravda_o__zolotom_veke__Ekateriny.html)

<comment><USER6> Some remarks:

1\. Mercator projection gives Russian empires an unfair advantage.

2\. The Romans ruled over arguably the best lands in the known world at that time, and a much larger part of the world population. Russia ruled/rules over vast empire of vast forests, inhospitable steppes and empty tundra, sprinkled with a few good spots and a few people.

3\. Inefficient travel doesn't make a great empire.

That's not to say the Russian empire wasn't huge, or didn't have a lot of people, or wasn't powerful. It was the largest power pre-World War 1, and its remnant is still a major player. I just wasn't as important or dominant or influential or long lived as the Roman empire was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can easily say that, if we have civilization, we can thank the Romans. Besides many things that they invented or "just" improved there were:

\- Aqueducts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct) \- Roads: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads)

In Italy, the SS1 (Strada Statale 1, that means, State Road #1), is the "evolution" of the Via Aurelia, built by Romans in the year 241 BC: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aurelia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aurelia)

But then the Barbarians from Northern Europe came...

<comment><USER8> I studied Latin and drank the koolaid, but recently read a book about early France which seemed to dispute the commonly held view that the Romans introduced everything technology wise. Bridges, roads and communication were certainly high on the list of "had it beforehand". It even has evidence to suggest that they had a sophisticated pre-internet decentralized voice communications network that operated by shouting down relatively quiet valleys. A review at [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/1037205...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10372050/The- Ancient-Paths-Discovering-the-Lost-Map-of-Celtic-Europe-review.html)

Western-centric histories also frequently forget the hugely significant contributions of Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain), Persia, India and China. Paper was pretty high up there on the list of civilizing factors, and it sure as hell wasn't Roman or northern European! Lenses came from Assyria. Lots of maths the Romans used came from Greece, and the Greeks were present in France before the Romans got there. Caesar himself wrote: _The Celts do have writing: They use written Greek for both public and private transactions. But it is not lawful to commit either their rules or religion to writing._ Thus, one could argue that the true innovation introduced by Romans may have been the liberation of the formerly slave-like commonfolk to glorious Roman pantheism and literary freedom!

<comment><USER9> Al-Andalus was waaaay after the Roman Empire.

<comment><USER8> True, just as Europe was civilized waaaay after the Orient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're interested in this type of thing, be sure to check out the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World [1]. I have a copy, and while it is expensive, it is simple _amazing_. I read Caesar's Gallic Wars again and followed the movements of the army using that book and it was an intellectual orgasm of note. I'll never read a military history book again without a detailed map, it completely changes the appreciation of it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Atlas_of_the_Greek_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Atlas_of_the_Greek_and_Roman_World)

</comment><comment><USER11> For #9, if you'd like to see the tactical differences between Phalanx vs Maniple battle formations, someone made a game simulation:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPq9sIOsuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPq9sIOsuE)

</comment><comment><USER12> Listening to the audiobook of The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar is rich in detail and really grabs you by the throat. The classically trained narrator is superb. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snft290-FRc&list=PLpO7W_VntC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snft290-FRc&list=PLpO7W_VntCvOR4RdjL2zhY6cnNJBYBPN0&index=2)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice one, but I prefer this gif about the decadence of the Spanish Empire... the end is quite funny.

[http://oi58.tinypic.com/sbhoac.jpg](http://oi58.tinypic.com/sbhoac.jpg)

<comment><USER14> The end is funny, but the start is wrong. In 1581, Brazil was Portuguese, due to the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494. It's why Brazil speaks Portuguese instead of Spanish like the rest of Latin America.

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

<comment><USER15> True, but the animation is correct: because of a messed up succession, all of Portugal belonged to the Spanish crown from 1580 to 1640 - Felipe II of Spain was Filipe I of Portugal (followed by III/II and IV/III).

In 1640 Portugal fought for independence, and got a new dynasty going. That's shown in the sequence, Brazil popping out is noticeable ...

<comment><USER14> I stand corrected - I missed seeing Portugal itself painted red.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hank Green and friends produced a lovely set of videos that quickly and humorously go through the basics of the Roman Empire (among other things). It's part of a playlist on the Crash Course YouTube channel on World History.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPf27gAup9U&list=PLBDA2E52FB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPf27gAup9U&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9&index=10)

<comment><USER16> Oops! I meant John Green! Hank is his brother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Error on the legend on the map of the Rise of Constantine (section 31). The campaign against Maxentius should read 312, not 212.

<comment><USER18> Great eye. Will fix. Thanks.

<comment><USER17> No problem! Thank you, that page is interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested in ancient maps, I've found that Geacron[1] very cool. It allows you to see a world map from any year since 3000 BC (of course with varying accuracy).

[1]: [http://geacron.com/home-en/](http://geacron.com/home-en/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The map cdn1.vox-cdn.com/assets/4822180/roman_civil_war.jpg seems to have mixed up labels for Roman Provinces and Client Kingdoms. I feel that about half instances of the word barbaric shouldn't have been used in the article. Also I don't see why unverifiable claims like 'Charlemagne persuaded the Pope to crown him' had to be used. Nice, informative work besides that.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's almost entirely unrelated, but if anyone's interested I would like to plug my current favorite history book: Phillip Sabin's _Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World_. It uses a simple tactical (board) wargame system to explore ancient battles including several from the rise of the Roman Republic and Empire.

</comment><comment><USER22> Lately I've become somewhat addicted to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts. His episodes about the Punic wars can be purchased here: [http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=...](http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1)

</comment><comment><USER23> Excellent and neatly packaged source of information. It would be great to have it translated into other languages.. I know so many people who would love to access this content but do not speak english.. How should I proceed to offer myself for voluntary translation?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm listening to an audiobook of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so this'll be a great companion.

<comment><USER25> Is it the one narrated by Bernard Mayes? I had a really hard time listening to that one because his voice is so unmodulated and relaxing that my thoughts would frequently wander or I'd fall asleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish we had such course in school. I may have paid more attention! Fantastic use of contextual imagery with digestible content.

</comment><comment><USER27> A great page and very interesting light reading on the topic, however a rather loose definition of 'map' is in play.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very interested. shows an easy to understand history lesson with great visuals.

</comment><comment><USER6> A great summary, but I find it annoying people always only mention the Eastern Roman Empire in passing or as a footnote. It was a continuation of the Roman Empire in every way.

They were called "the Roman empire" or "romans" by themselves and the rest of the world. And they lasted another 1000 years, many of those as the dominant regional power, bringing the total lifetime of the Roman state up to a staggering 2181 years.

<comment><USER29> The Greek-speakers of the East kept on speaking Greek after they were folded into the Roman political model, and kept many of their other cultural and economic institutions, rather than being dragged off as slaves. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that Greek civilization lasted from 776 BC to 1453 AD, under various political models. A co-operative system born from the hilly Greek peninsular and jagged Aegean coastlines meeting the hierarchical system of the Romans co-existing.

<comment><USER6> The Roman culture was - for a very significant part - a carbon copy of the Greek. So in a sense, the Romans continued the Greek culture as much as they succeeded it.

I realize that the there are significant differences in the ancient Greek political model, and the Greek and Roman culture, and that the Eastern Roman Empire was for most of its lifetime Greek speaking. But it was still a continuous evolution of the Roman Empire, even if it tilted more towards Greek influences most of the time.

In a sense, you could indeed say the Greeks persisted for the entire era, as they had some form of local self-governance etc during the Roman era, and they dominated Roman politics for the last half of their empire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-err Those maps are good - yet they don't explain the Roman Empire.

It's actually tricky to explain the Empire. Over 7 centuries without _any_ significant technological progress. A political regime that is as archaic as its borders are vast - and it drove Europe's political agenda up until the 19th century.

It's possibly the most successful and devastating face of the plutocracy. When the Empire faded away in the 4-7th century, contemporary archaelogy now thinks that people's life actually improved. The tax and ideological burden of the roman overhead was a toll on entire societies.

<comment><USER30> This is pretty wrong. The view you describe arises from the complete renewal in the history of the Middle Ages that occurred from the 1950s onwards, and which established that the commonly called "Dark Ages" weren't so dark after all.

But that's not to say that there wasn't a precipitous drop in life quality after the end of the Roman Empire. Recent archeological finds have improved our understanding of the details of Roman daily life way beyond what we used to know even thirty years ago.

For a good and accessible overview of the latest finds in Roman archeology, I'd recommend "The Fall of the Roman Empire and the End of Civilization" by archeologist and historian Bryan Ward Perkins.

He highlights how much the Roman world had in common with our own period, most notably in terms of mass production of standardized goods (e.g. pottery), integration and specialization of local economies in a globalized market throughout the Empire.

The breakdown of this Empire-wide integration led to a dramatic decline in standards of living. To take just two examples extracted from the book:

\- pottery finds in Britain reveal that before the Roman conquest, the vessels commonly used were all locally produced and of average quality. The integration in the Empire brought the mass-produced, standardized, high quality Roman pottery into the British economy, so much so that all levels of society had access to it (as illustrated by the archeological finds). This competition drove the British pottery industry out of the market, to the extent that by the time the Romans had to abandon Britain, there was no significant pottery production on the British isles anymore. The outcome is that the potteries found in the tombs of the first Anglo-Saxon kings are of a much poorer quality than those of the British peasants five centuries earlier - to say nothing of the Roman-made pottery a hundred years before.

\- In the Roman Empire, thanks to mass production of roof tiles, almost every house had roofs made of clay tiles. This provides a host of benefits, notably in terms of durability and improved health thanks to increased insulation from humidity. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, European housebuilding went back to starch roofs - which in addition to be a poor way to protect yourself from rain or humidity can be a breeding ground for diseases and pests. It wasn't until the late 15th century that the prevalence of tiled roofs reached an extent comparable to that of the Roman world more than a millennia earlier.

I really recommend this book, it shows how the past 15 years of archeological finds have illuminated how close the Roman society was to a sort of proto- consumer society; and how much was lost when it disappeared.

<comment><USER31> This is interesting stuff, thanks. It's also fun to think about the remarkable advances in things like geared devices, automatons and water wheels in the Hellenistic period through to the end of the Western Empire. Most famously the Antikythera device: [http://hist.science.online.fr/antikythera/MORE- DOCS/Greek%20...](http://hist.science.online.fr/antikythera/MORE- DOCS/Greek%20Gears%20Plasma%20Seminar%208-31-071.pdf)

It's tantalizing to imagine the next steps from these sorts of devices, like windmills, clocks, programmable mechanical looms, steam power, etc. Given the quality of the engineering in the Antikythera mechanism, it might have been within the technological abilities of Greco-Roman society to develop a classical era version of industrialization. Of course, then you get into the whole debate about whether a slave society has an economic impetus to industrialize (I think they do, following Sidney Mintz's point in "Sweetness and Power" that Caribbean sugar plantations in the 18th century were proto- industrial, factory-like spaces, but that's another discussion).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I looked at the map overlaying the US to contrast the relative size of the Roman Empire. I think it might be shown a bit bigger than it was. We vacationed in France and Rome and took a train overnight between them. That train had a ton of stops. I'm pretty sure that even without the stops, it would take longer than a night to travel by rail from approximately Montana (where France would roughly be) to the south-eastern Gulf Coast region (Italy).

Edit: Checking Google maps and more maps on the OP page I think I mis- calculated Italy's position in the purple blob, it would probably be around where Kansas is.

<comment><USER18> Italy is over Wyoming. I think you're confusing it with Egypt, which is in the lower-right of the map.</comment></comment>


I am designing and developing free websites for startups on HN - <AUTHOR>

I am a freelance web designer, and as part of an effort to fill out my portfolio and connect with new people, as well as provide a community service of sorts, I am offering free websites for startups.
This will include a free custom design as well as development using XHTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP/MySQL. I can develop a custom CMS or use Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal based on your requirements.
Any startup that does not have a budget for a professional website can get one. For startups that do have a budget for a website need to pay. However, I won't verify this, I will just take your word for it.
To get your free website, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
PS. You are under no obligation to pay me or provide a back-link or even place an acknowledgment on your website. But if you can do any of them, I would appreciate it. <comment><USER2> _Any startup that does not have a budget for a professional website can get one. For startups that do have a budget for a website need to pay. However, I won't verify this, I will just take your word for it._

That basically guarantees that you will never get paid. There was an article on HN a few months ago where a freelance designer, stopped giving quotes for projects. He just did the project, and at the end, he asked the client to send him payment for whatever amount they thought it was worth. Some clients ended up paying him 5 times what he expected, others half. In the end, it ended up being higher than what he would have made normally.

You could try this approach...just build the website, and ask the client to pay whatever they think is reasonable. You may be surprised, and it is guaranteed to be greater than or equal to $0

<comment><AUTHOR> The main purpose of this "free website offer" is to provide custom designed websites to startups who would normally not be able to afford it.

I AM asking startups with a budget to pay me, but I worded it in such a way so that it does not discourage those seeking $0 designs.

I understand that some people might take advantage of this, but I expect that number to be very low (in fact, I expect it to be zero), simply because people are in general rather honest,

<comment><USER2> I was just suggesting that you change the messaging a bit.

"Free Websites" is a lot different from "Pay What You Want"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want to fill out your portfolio then just create some designs/redesigns of your own. Pick a niche and redesign it, for example online banking. As admirable as it is to do free design work, it's only work if you are getting paid and you will find that many times people will just take advantage of an offer like this.

Let's not forget the headaches of having to tweak to the client's happiness. Who wants to continue working on a site when you aren't getting paid to do so?

If anything offer a 1-2 page deal for $XXX. Better to have 2 paying clients than 10 free ones that you can't keep up with. Get in the habit of charging now so you don't feel weird about it later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could always make designs for 'hypothetical companies' but I felt that it'd be more worthwhile if some startup could benefit from my designs at the same time.

Plus it gives me the experience of working with clients, as well as some exposure.

<comment><USER2> One technique I had success with when I was freelancing is designing on spec. Find a genre of business and look for bad websites. Restaurants and hair salons are good for this because there are usually really good ones, and really bad ones. Redesign one of the sites, using the content from the site (menus, directions, about us, etc). Then contact the business, and offer to sell them the site. Send them examples of their competitors' sites (the good ones) as leverage. If they don't go for it, you can easily swap out the content with another business in the same genre. You can repeat this several times, and when you are done, you'll have a nice portfolio, and several paying customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case you're monitoring replies, you might want to remove the typo from your headline - it doesn't give a good impression.

Apart from that, good luck, and kudos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. Fixed the typo in the heading.

For the curious: It read 'anf' instead of 'and' :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am getting a lot of requests. Too many to handle immediately. I have replied to some and will be working on those design for the next 3-5 days.

Those who have not received a reply from me, I will design the sites for you as well, but will need some time. If your project is urgent, then send me another email with the word 'Urgent' in the subject and I'll try to get your designs done as soon as I can.

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm.

If you're going to sell your work for free... Well, imo, you're making the market of web design worse for every player of that market, which would, consequently, lower the general bar among web design in the long run

But that's a bit far fetched.

The first comment has a point, if you haven't read that article... Well, you should.

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have any examples of your work so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.alexwyser.com/webdev.php>

<comment><USER7> How can you be proposing free work when you have worked for huge companies?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually worked with numerous design agencies, and the big clients are the clients of those agencies. This is because most clients (big and small) prefer working with their local design firm, rather than a freelancer online.

So while I have worked on projects for big companies, I dont have many connections. I am trying to really break out of working as a cheap nameless designer that design firms outsource to, and become a professional freelance designer and developer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Financial Datasets at Wrds Wharton - <AUTHOR> https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/pages/support/data-overview/ <comment><USER2> WRDS is a fantastic resource but it's not cheap

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if it is more expensive than just enrolling in one of their client universities for another degree...</comment></comment>


Omitting first job out of college - <AUTHOR> So I'm at Company A and I'm planning on leaving for Company B for a variety of reasons. I will only be at Company A for 7 months.
After a 5-10 more years of experience I am planning on omitting Company A entirely. So if an employer / investor were to ask about my background, I would say I graduated from School X and then worked at Companies B, C, ...
Is this a permissible thing to do? What do you think about this strategy? <comment><USER2> I would be concerned that there may be some online resume, job sites with old resumes, and etc out there floating around that if a prospective employer found... they'd have questions.

"Hiding" things often looks worse to some folks.

I think leaving it on your resume and simply having an prepared answer as to why Company A "wasn't a good fit at the time" is a far better choice / can actually show a lot of thoughtfulness / growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not concerned about this sort of online discovery. I have a low profile online and I have never posted a resume publicly. My current position at Company A isn't even on my Linkedin.

The major reason I'd be "hiding" it is since it is a short term position.

<comment><USER2> I guess nobody will find it then... probabbly.

Personally I wouldn't leave A off the resume. I would rather just be open about my employment history rather than worry about a sort of facade.

I do wonder why you want to leave them off? Having a short stint at one company isn't an inherently bad thing on a resume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been told by career councilors that you don't need to talk about jobs that are 5-10 years in the past. For instance I am not going to say that I worked at Burger King, Supervalu Supermarkets, as a mesosphere researcher, assistant teaching summer camp, the soup kitchen, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> What happens when someone asks what you did for ~7 months while at company A? Why try and hide it? Seems suspicious....

<comment><AUTHOR> I only needed to explain this to Company B. That isn't an issue. There's little to suggest that anyone after Company B would even know I was at Company A.

Besides, a good reason to hide it is it's a short term position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You haven't explained why.</comment>


Shaky Battery Maker Claims a Breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/energy-environment/a123-us-backed-battery-maker-claims-breakthrough.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I think the criticism misses the point.

The reason why governments make very risky bets in new technology companies (and pure research) is that unlike private investors, the government's upside is spread across the whole industry. They tax them all, no matter which company wins.

So even if A123 fails as a business, if the industry grows then the government wins. No matter who buys A123's technology, the government will still get the tax revenue. Even if A123's specific tech is no good, the employees will still go on to other battery companies and help the industry grow that way. The only way the government loses is if the whole idea of improved batteries turns out to be a dud.

To put it another way, imagine if the government invested in an early solid state laser company. Even if that one went belly up, the laser industry paid out so many tax dollars there is no way the government suffered a net loss.

Some industries will grow no matter what the government does. However others can stand to use the boost of government investment, and I think green energy technologies like solar and batteries qualify.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is from yesterday, the actual announcement is here: [http://www.a123systems.com/lithium-ion-battery- technology.ht...](http://www.a123systems.com/lithium-ion-battery- technology.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> _The success or failure of the new technology may well determine the fate of A123. It will also render an early verdict on Mr. Obama's broader push to promote electric cars and build a domestic industry to develop and manufacture advanced batteries to run them_

This sounds like a pretty good reason not to believe anything you hear, one way or the other, about this new "breakthrough" battery technology until either (a) you see it parked in your driveway or (b) it's 2022 and you don't.</comment>


What is wrong with all those AArch64 desktops? - <AUTHOR> https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2019/10/23/what-is-wrong-with-all-those-aarch64-desktops/ <comment><USER2> We don't have AArch64 desktops because it's not possible to build an AArch64 motherboard. There are no standard sockets -- and every ARM vendor starts their system using a proprietary, inscrutable Rube Goldberg machine. On the Raspberry Pi, the _GPU_ starts the processor for crying out loud.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that the standard socket is so important. I don't remember ever changing the CPU on a motherboard: by the time significantly better CPUs are available, they need a different socket.

An AArch64 desktop could be built in the same way that the Raspberry Pi was built, just with a higher spec CPU and more connectors.

<comment><USER2> You're right about the socket, but the problem is that every chip/board basically needs a custom bootloader - you can't just plug in a USB stick with a Debian AArch64 installer and go to town, you need a custom packaged blob from the vendor, which usually comes with their own blessed Linux distribution (e.g. Raspbian), and you're out of luck if that doesn't meet your needs.

If this model works for you, then yeah, a Raspberry Pi or a similar board could work. I've been hearing pretty great things about the new Pinebook Pro laptop.

<comment><USER3> Anything that requires binary blobs just to boot seems fishy. You'd think one driver per chipset would be sufficient, and it should be open source.

I suppose in the AMD/Intel world, all these binary blobs are built into UEFI.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't UEFI also support aarch64? Why can't vendors use that?

<comment><USER5> Windows 10 requires UEFI support, so any ARM device that supports Windows 10 uses UEFI.

<comment><USER6> Hey, that's wonderful. What I had read before pointed to every device having some weird undocumented mess.

But: Is the bootloader even unlockable to install alternative software?

<comment><USER5> > But: Is the bootloader even unlockable to install alternative software?

IIRC, MS require the device to support Secure Boot, but whether or not you can disable it or whether you can add other signing keys is undefined (and I have no idea what vendors do). (Originally the requirement was it must be always enabled and only the OEM could add keys, but that has since changed.)

<comment><USER7> There's a port of Ubuntu available. It isn't yet complete but it does boot on Windows on Arm devices.

[https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/linux](https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/linux)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author's description of what is a "desktop system" sounded a lot like a "no true Scotsman" to me. I've had several desktop systems that didn't meet all of the author's criteria - in fact, I've had desktop systems that met _none_ of these criteria. And these systems did meet what most people would consider to be "desktop systems": box shaped, designed to be put over or under the desk, tethered (no built-in battery other than the RTC battery), internally expansible (not all-in-ones or NUCs), with a x86-32 or x86-64 processor, and booting with traditional BIOS and/or UEFI.

<comment><USER9> I disagree, the author's description matches the majority of x86 motherboards in production, and if you were to wander in to a random computer store and ask for a standard desktop PC you'd be led to an array of machines that met all of those requirements. If it's not "small form factor" it almost certainly checks all the boxes.

I agree with the author, what AArch64 (or any alternative architecture) really needs to be taken seriously for more than "toy" or "appliance" type use cases is a real desktop board that an interested party could swap in place of the motherboard of one of their old PCs without having to invest in a pile of adapters.

To me, that means the following:

* Standard ATX or MicroATX formfactor * Standard ATX power input * At least two standard DIMM or SODIMM slots, preferably four * At least 32 lanes of PCIe 3.0 or greater, exposed as at least one x16 and one x4 slot plus one x4 M.2, leaving eight lanes for onboard accessories or more slots as desired * At least two SATA channels, preferably four * At least one copper gigabit ethernet interface * At least six USB 3.0 ports, preferably more and faster. * Onboard audio sufficient for watching Youtube or participating in a VoIP/videoconference call.

Since I'm pretty sure that providing video from power on rather than after the OS loads requires support in the video card itself, onboard video of some sort is probably also a requirement for now as well. Specifics don't matter, but it should be able to handle an accelerated desktop and video decoding.

<comment><USER7> So something like this? [https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/kunpeng/kunpeng- des...](https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/kunpeng/kunpeng-desktop- board)

<comment><USER9> Yes, that does seem to be pretty much exactly what I'd want out of an ARM desktop platform. It would be nice if they'd offer more cores in the desktop variant of the board, and anything that has a "contact us for pricing" link annoys the crap out of me, but it does meet the specs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux If you want a non-x86 desktop, but not AArch64 in particular, I'd recommend looking at the Talos POWER9 systems instead. I have a Talos II Lite, and my only two complaints (less pcie slots with only a single socket, and no built in sata) were solved with their new Blackbird motherboard. It's gotten closer to the desktop experience than any AArch64 computer I've tried, and in some ways it's even better (petitboot is awesome).

<comment><USER10> But in all fairness, why would anyone just "want a non-x86 desktop" (as in: "anything but x86"). Doesn't make sense to me...

<comment><USER11> It can be useful to test code that's supposed to be portable on a system with a weaker than x86 memory model.

And a self-synchronizing instruction stream can be a security advantage and a fixed instruction width means Power and AArch64 are trivially self- synchronizing. And really just not having the dominant ISA is a pretty big security advantage in some cases.

I'm pretty sure that neither of those is a huge deal for most people but I can see wanting it.

<comment><USER12> ELI5: How, specifically, does AArch64 have a "weaker than x86" memory model?

<comment><USER13> When multiple cores access the same memory location, it is expensive for one core to invalidate the cache of another or ensure operations don't get re- ordered in either core. These days most architectures when reading or writing shared data require memory barrier instructions to guarantee your core to sees writes from another, or other cores to see your writes, in a timely sequential fashion like we expect when writing code that accesses variables.

Historically there were architectures that would reorder these accesses in a "lax" way, making very few guarantees about what you will see from another core, on the theory that it will cost less to keep things synchronized between cores (most data is not shared anyway, so why waste work trying to create a unified view across cores? The CPU can also reorder work for better efficiency.). Intel is historically one of the most conservative, strict- ordering architectures, requiring fewer barrier instructions and creating the illusion that reads and writes more or less occur on a single timeline.

See also:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the Jetson AGX Xavier is probably a better match out of the box to the requirements than anything listed on that page. The only thing it doesn't meet is the plus on 16+ GB of RAM. For the same price you could get a much better x86 desktop though.

\- 8 core CPU

\- 16 GB LPDDR4x

\- Volta based GPU

\- Gig ethernet (native)

\- PCIe x8 (x16 physical slot)

\- m.2 E key (PCIe wireless or LTE)

\- m.2 M key (PCIe NVMe SSD)

\- 2 USB 3.1

\- HD audio header

\- eSATAp through PCie bridge (allows native 2.5" SATA drives)

But really there isn't really much reason to use ARM on a desktop outside of needs relating to specifically needing to have ARM.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm trialing using AArch64 for desktop use. I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB desktop kit awhile back and it sucked in the beginning. So I did what most people do with their pi; that is to leave it unused and unplugged like a Nintendo Wii.

Finally after the firmware fixes came about to improve cooling a few months ago and it was advised to just run the thing set up on its side, I decided to revisit running a 'desktop' on it.

Raspbian, as most people know, is 32-bit and the idea is you can plug the microsd card it into any model of pi ever made and it'll run. This sucks for performance and you can't run a version of firefox made the past few years. Chromium isn't an option on a 4GB ram system, it's just not.

I eventually settled on using sakaki's gentoo pi64 build and it was fairly painless to get running. Unfortunately, she hasn't kept the build up to date and there's a lot of weird customization she performed to get things running in the early days.

Anyways aside from having it run some compiles overnight and finding a new binhost to pull prebuilt stuff from, it runs pretty well. Actually better than my Intel Atom powered GPD Pocket (as it does not throttle ever). All the hardware works, and I've had no video issues since switching to the 5.4 kernel. It checks most of the boxes that OP asked for aside from the RAM being limited to 4GB. Unlike more powerful options on the market, it's got a wide release and a low price point so developers will be working on it.

So yeah, there's your AArch64 desktop you can buy today that everything works on for around $50. If you want to improve performance a bit more for IO, there's SSD/nvme adapters for it, and while I'm unsure about hooking into pci-e, the device has it...

Oh, and the audio thing is dumb as hell to complain about. Just output the audio through HDMI to your receiver and call it a day. What's the big friggin deal that the desktop lacks a 7.1 analog output. If you want high quality headphone audio, USB audio is practically plug and play on any OS these days. I don't get it.

<comment><USER14> Ubuntu is probably the way to go on the Pi if you're looking for compatibility. The 32 bit version is ARMv7 instead of ARMv6 with HF packages as Raspbian is. The 64 bit version is ARMv8. It's an official version from Canonical so you don't have to worry about some person abandoning their build or compiling your own packages all the time. With the newer CPU in the Pi 4 it's possible for them to support >4G models in the future but they aren't really interested in targeting $100+ use cases so it'll never make a "great" desktop. Useful as a fanless device that can run standard code though.

If you hack into PCIe you'd lose the USB. It's only a single x1 connection. I suppose you could hack a PCIe switch on top of that but even so it's x1 so it was already oversubscribed just hosting the USB 3 interfaces.

<comment><USER16> IIRC, If you hack into PCIe, you only lose USB 3.0, because the USB 2.0 ports are directly connected to the SoC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just wait until Apple releases a Mac mini powered by an A-series CPU. If I had to bet, I'd say this will be the first Arm Mac they will release. This way developers can easily buy one for porting their apps before A-series-based MacBooks are released.

<comment><USER18> I am going to go out on a very short limb and predict that Apple does no such thing in the foreseeable future, say 3 or 4 years. In the past, Apple has only transitioned to a new architecture once it was so powerful that it could easily emulate older hardware. Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility as much as Microsoft on desktops but even they cannot release a new desktop/laptop that doesn't run existing software.

Although ARM processors are fast in certain benchmarks, they cannot compete with x86 for performance and certainly cannot emulate the instruction set at a speed users would find acceptable.

ARM makes great sense for low power devices and _maybe_ servers. Apple already makes tons of the former and seems uninterested in the later.

<comment><USER19> My iPad Pro is as fast on single-thread as all my Intel desktop machines, and 2/3 on multicore. In a non-thermally throttled enclosure, I would expect it to outperform.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/user/122632](https://browser.geekbench.com/user/122632)

<comment><USER20> Right, but 1-2x perf is not nearly enough to naively emulate a system.

<comment><USER21> Rosetta was not a naive emulator. It was a dynamic, optimizing re-compiler.

There's two reasons to think that an ARM transition would be easier:

1\. The endianness is the same. The PPC/Intel transition required processes to share memory while disagreeing on byte order.

2\. Apple controls their ARM CPU designs. They can add whatever they like.

<comment><USER22> right, and

3\. rosetta only emulated the actual app binary; eventually it called in to native libs, so performance for the most part held up really well iirc (for apps, not sure about games)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sigh, no definition of what a "desktop" would be. That would be a start. Does it have to have "on board audio" ? All my early desktops up through the Pentium 3 used an add in card (typically a Soundblaster) to provide audio. So why make it the "requirement" for a desktop? Graphics? All graphics were "plug in" in early desktops until transistors got so cheap you could throw one into the southbridge for "free." The list goes on.

It would a much better exercise to create a systems design document for what an AArch64 desktop should have, required, extras, and nice to have. Start there and work forward, not at a full fledged PC desktop with 30 years of evolution behind it and start there.

<comment><USER24> Extra PCIe x1 slot on mainboard would be fine instead of on-board audio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Desktop and workstations will be the _last_ place to find non-x86 chips. Power use doesn't matter, and critical consumer applications and raw performance are a must.

Its much more exciting to see what will happen with laptops and (in cloud) servers.

</comment><comment><USER26> I had some representatives from ARM and NXP come and give a demo of some ARM boxes.

Now these were in the context of white box customer premises networking equipment, but what I found quite interesting was that these machines all supported UEFI.

There's certainly an effect to have some standardisation for ARM machines.

But who knows when it'll get to the desktop.

<comment><USER27> Yea I think the model here (especially since the article seems to really be conflating "desktop" with "High end desktop" especially in terms of the Arm ecosystem ), will be that we do see these features developed from the server side first, and then given the "content creator" treatment. I don't think that this is bad as the article implies. Rocking the top of the HEDT market is good for magazine covers, but it isn't exactly where the profits are. Filling datacenters will fund the work that we're interested in -- namely the robust, expandable, systems that have the muscle and the mainstream features that make for a cushy desktop experience.

But also, Aren't we still complaining about linux on the desktop?

<comment><USER28> > and then given the "content creator" treatment

Content creation is done almost exclusively through proprietary software that's heavily optimized for a given platform, so this would be one of the worst markets to tackle first with an _architecture change_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> On a related note, I just got my Pine64 Pinebook Pro, and it's much better than my beloved Samsung xe303c12 in all apects. Lightweight, FHD screen resolution. No need to fiddle with the OS.

<comment><USER19> I'm still waiting for mine, it seems like the most viable option for someone who wants to develop for armv8 Linux. I had the original PineBook and found it disappointing, how would the PineBook compare to, say, a MacBook Air?

<comment><USER29> Screen bleeding is an issue. Otherwise, a great small laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, would like to see more RISC-V offerings instead of 64bit arm. Although the ISA is still relatively new. Also some the extensions like bit manip are not finalized. However, the base instructions are.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to have a RISC-V tablet one day, but think ARM will be an intermediate step, which will, through gained experience and already built infrastructure, ease the second switch of ISA.

<comment><USER30> Like on the open source side things, it's already possible to run a RISC-V desktop. Problem is no cheap hardware outside some expensive dev boards.

[https://abopen.com/news/building-a-risc-v- pc/](https://abopen.com/news/building-a-risc-v-pc/)

Also that thing does not have up-gradable RAM, but you do have PCI-E.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> His list of requirements for a "desktop system" is ok for a developer desktop PC, but for most people it's complete overkill.

The RPi4 running Raspbian is just a tad short of being perfectly acceptable for users like my GF. It's just a tad sluggish, so either a bit more streamlining of the platform, or a bit beefier CPU and GPU and it would be just fine for her.

<comment><USER14> The lack of quality storage interfaces is a killer too. Pi 4's still eat SD cards and even when they don't it's not exactly speedy. USB to mSATA/m.2 SATA adapters provide a step up but it's still quirky and you still need a functioning SD card to boot to it with the current firmware.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Needing an SD card to boot is especially annoying because the pi 3 did have the ability to boot from USB and I _think_ network with no SD card present.

EDIT: To be clear, non-SD boot on the pi 4 "will be added in the future via optional bootloader updates"[0], so hopefully this is a temporary complaint.

[0] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md)

<comment> T3OU-736 Not for everyone's setup, but network booting the Pi's is an option [1]. Probably not wireless, but it may be something.

Bonus points for the instructions using a Pi as a server for this setup.

[1] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/net_tutorial.md)

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h That's for pi 3; I don't think it works on 4 (yet)

<comment><USER14> Network boot is in the beta firmware now. USB boot is still a ways off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like Odroid N2 is as close as it gets to an AArch64 desktop. (Still not a true Scotsman though.)

<comment><USER32> I've recently been recommended YouTube videos by ExplainingComputers and that channel introduced me to the new breed of SBC (single-board computers) including the Odroid. One of the more recent videos is for the Khadas VIM3 [1] which was a very interesting ARM based SBC.

I am blown away these days by the power of these cheap and small boards. I just don't have any use for them right now and I know I would tinker with them for a few days then they would end up in a drawer collecting dust.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > 4U rack/tower case sounds clearly like "we know it is server but will try to > sell it as a desktop". No m.2, no audio, no mention about USB ports, no 1GbE > network.

Isn't every server meant to have a 1GbE port nowadays? Dont most of the servers have m.2?

And for PCIe slots - aren't those extensible with raisers?

> That system was kind of Frankenstein's monster. Audio over some USB stereo- > only dongle, all USB devices plugged into hubs due to only two ports on > mainboard I/O panel.

Perhaps one could just put a USB hub and the audio dongle inside the actual case?

<comment><USER34> Maybe some of these have SFP+? 10G only interfaces that need a transceiver. That would be a pain in a home setup.

<comment><USER33> Perhaps. But I haven't actually seen servers with SFP+ 10G on-board. All the servers we buy have a classic 1GbE RJ-45 built-in and we extend them with SFP+ 10G PCIe adapters when needed.

<comment><USER24> AArch64 servers tend to have 10G (or faster) SFP+ ports rather than 1GbE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't be afraid to get in touch with Avantek to ask what you need to know. They're very friendly, in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER35> Every time I've tried to run AArch64 like a desktop (mostly via ODROIDs), it's been an exercise in misery. Endless tweaking, and almost always an important service, like 3D graphics or audio, doesn't work. Last I checked the driver situation there is just lacking

<comment><USER36> Support for the Rockchip RK3399-based boards seems pretty good. Audio and wireless on my NanoPi M4 have worked flawlessly for me. No problem playing YouTube videos, either, even at 1.5x speed. Editing 3D CAD files using Freecad in Debian 10 has also worked great.

The only things I miss are being able to run the latest versions of some software, which are often compiled only for x86 or MacOS. For instance, I'm currently stuck on Debian's Firefox ESR (currently Firefox 68.4) because Firefox doesn't offer precompiled binaries for AArch64 on Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why would one want an ARM desktop system (except if (s)he is an ARM developer)?

For my desktop I want as much power as money permits. And the most important thing is ergonomy, since I rather invest into my eyes and wrists than into the silicon.

<comment><USER36> I use a pedal-powered computer. For me, every watt counts.

My desktop system is a NanoPi M4 and a 16" Sceptre monitor. The combined system draws a total of about 6.5 W. Granted, there are some laptops that come near that level of power consumption. I simply like the form factor of a desktop PC.

<comment><USER38> That sounds really interesting. Would you have more information on such a setup?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I really wish somebody would produce a single-board system with a Qualcomm 865 or 8cx processor, NVM support, and PCIe.

</comment><comment><USER40> No OpenFirmware? No good!

</comment><comment><USER41> Raspberry PI 4 runs with 1 4k monitor pretty well and has audio and you can attach peripherals.

It is desktop like.

Arm desktops are just single board computers. Why? Because that is all you need.

If you want to assemble overprice parts yourself to get marginal benefits stick with x86.

The truth is the market for desktops even in the x86 market has shrunk considerably because there are few benefits except if you are rendering and even then you should be using cloud compute in that case.

<comment><USER26> If I'm rendering, I should use cloud computing?

Like an artist is supposed to use a remote desktop to do 3D modelling? Or an engineer doing CAD? Or a video editor creating 4k video?

There are a lot of professionals that need powerful computers. Not everyone just needs a text editor to write their SaaS application.

<comment><USER42> _> If I'm rendering, I should use cloud computing?

Like an artist is supposed to use a remote desktop to do 3D modelling? Or an engineer doing CAD? Or a video editor creating 4k video?_

Yes. High-end workstations are effectively obsolete for professionals rather than prosumers, it's just taking some IT departments a while to catch on. All those workloads are highly bursty and involve substantial collaboration, which makes virtualization a natural fit. I haven't tested and wouldn't necessarily recommend a Raspberry Pi as a client terminal, but it just doesn't make sense any more to put a really powerful machine under everyone's desk rather than having a rackload of servers as a pooled resource.

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro- vdw...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/quadro-vdws/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Without mention of Apple's plans for MacBooks, I don't buy this doom-and-gloom prediction. Remember that everyone thought AArch64 was DOA right up until Apple released an iPhone using it, and then all the other manufacturers instantly followed suit. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is the first to release a mainstream AArch64 desktop/laptop, and then everyone else follows them.

<comment><USER44> It's vaporware until it exists. Sure, Apple seems to have the strongest ARM CPU at this time. It remains to be seen if they can single-handedly create an entire arm64 PC ecosystem.

<comment><USER19> I suspect they'd start with their server farms, just as Amazon is doing with its own ARM AWS instances based on the Graviton SOC it bought when it acquired Annapurna. Amazon is on record saying they are going to migrate their internal services like ELB over to ARM.</comment></comment></comment>


NSA's Social Network Mapping Is More Vast, Omnipresent and Horrifying - <AUTHOR> https://themindunleashed.com/2020/05/nsas-social-network-mapping-is-more-vast-omnipresent-and-horrifying-than-snowden-revealed.html <comment><USER2> The referenced _Wired_ article may be a more appropriate source:

"Inside the NSA's Secret Tool for Mapping Your Social Network"

[https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-nsas-secret-tool- for-...](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-nsas-secret-tool-for-mapping- your-social-network/)

It's the original material, more substantive, and on whole far superior.

(Rather than NSA's Social Network Mapping Is More Vast, Omnipresent and Horrifying, as submitted.)

I've contacted mods by email.

<comment><USER3> Normally we'd change the URL but that article was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23291589). So this one is more of a dupe than anything.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I missed that in my search (!hn <url> DDG bangsearch / Algolia).</comment></comment></comment>


An inside look at the app that powers Sesame - <AUTHOR> http://plusbryan.com/rocket/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4902649></comment>


Show HN: App for sharing your weekly schedule - <AUTHOR> http://thesetimes.info Howdy HN,
As a small side project, I built a small app to share weekly time schedules. It's been useful for me to help schedule meeting and share semester schedules with friends. I hope some others find some use with it.
I have a few more simple ideas to implement with it, and any suggestions are encouraged.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I'd definitely use it... IF it had a key feature that I think it's missing. I envision myself using something like this to plan a meeting. So say I'm a boss and I want to see when my employees are free. Right now as the site stands, they all send me their "thesetimes" and then I have to look at each one and then figure out where the free time slots are. What it should be is that as a boss, I send one out to all the employees, they fill out their busy times, and then as the boss I can see all the total busy times of all my employees overlaid so I know when I can schedule the meeting. At least this is how I envision something like this being useful, not just simply sending one persons free/open times, but that is definitely a good use case also.

Some bugs:

\- click and drag a time down, but while moving your cursor to the right of the actual day you clicked on, let go, then click and drag down again real quick. You made two times, but they are linked now for some reason. They also delete together.

\- permalink is not working

\- i can drag outside the borders

\- some other real weird funky stuff going on with the dragging. probably have to clean up a buncha bugs in your jquery

Other nice to haves/things to consider:

\- drag up

\- a line that shows where your cursor is hovering over with the time tooltipped or something like that, it's all approximate right now

\- i never liked the term permalink. i think just link works better. but this is just my personal opinion.

Good start though! Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I have a middle of the road solution, what if the site had a feature where you could paste multiple unique "thesetimes" URLs and it would show you a resultant figure with only the overlapped areas?

<comment><USER2> Although this is definitely a solution, the usage case I detailed in my original post seems much more likely (at least to me). I see your idea useful in the case that many of your groups/circles of friends use it and you just make one for the week and send it out to anyone who wants to organize an event. Whatever you end up doing though, just think about the most common usage cases and how to best implement to suit those cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whoa, this is exactly an idea I had for Timeslot, the day planner app I posted on HN yesterday. Nice job, you beat me to it :)

It's a good idea, and this is a great start. Things that would make this invaluable:

\- The ability to combine multiple schedules together to find free time overlaps (so that, for example, three people can find a good time to meet during the week)

\- User accounts, so users can search for their friends by name and schedule meet ups

\- Ability to extend before 6am and past 9pm at the click of a button

</comment><comment><USER5> I was actually planning to build something like this for a different purpose. I am a freelancer and wanted to use it to tell other people "when I am online". The app would basically do the same, but convert the timezones properly to the users timezone. So, if anyone asks me when I am online I could just give them a link and they would be able to see the times localized to their timezones.

<comment><AUTHOR> Building a timezone friendly version is something I hadn't considered, but I like this idea. Embracing internationalization is most often beneficial. This functionality is something that I could see implementing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure you are working towards a competing product but just in case you aren't google apps calendar can share a schedule minus the details and as an admin (of apps) I can click on each employees calendar and overlay each calendar so I can quickly see an exact time.

\- I agree with others though that being able to create a user account is a must (from there if I have a repeating schedule I could copy my times from last week for example).

\- And for an admin being able to easily overlay all of the calendars is a must.

Lastly I read as a last resort, as I suspect of others, so I would give some visual indicator that you have to drag as I didn't immediately get it. Lastly

</comment><comment><USER7> This is actually what I use Tungle.me for (especially since it syncs with Google Calendar), but if RIM kills it you might have a golden opportunity :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Some tags/different colours would be cool. Also there's a bit of a mouse bug if you click on one column, drag, then reclick on another in the same sort of motion (you get two columns/days drawing at the same time).

Would be useful to have some borders or something too (I had no idea where to click or what I was dragging first go).

Nevertheless, conceptually it's sound.

<comment><USER9> I agree with the tags/colors suggestion.

For example, I am in the office all week, except tuesdays, when I'm available by conference call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool app, I like how you're doing one very simple thing in an easy to understand way.

I've found a bug: when I set a load of times on the calendar then click the "permalink" link it sometimes loses the last few times I set. I guess it takes a moment to sync and get a new permalink or something.

</comment><comment><USER11> My feature request is to bind touch swipe events. I tried this from my ipad and it didn't work. I know jQuery mobile ships with a swipe event - <http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.0a4.1/#docs/api/events.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that the mouse events it uses have no context for mobile users, and I'm planning to fix this. Thanks for your suggestion with jQuery Mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would really enjoy:

* Syncing with google calendar

* being able to add tags, and/or labels.

* different colors.

However I do like the simplicity of it all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Simplicity is the key. Tags and labels may make it heavy and overwhelming. Syncing with Google Calendar sounds promising, but I like the idea of exporting to .ics so that it would cover more applications. (though I do love GoogleCal)

I've also considered the different colors idea, and this might be implemented if I decide to build something like a comparator of schedules.

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

<comment><USER13> Definitely colours.

Work != play and it's nice to see the difference at a glance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would be cool to put some sort of label on time sections. Editable ones that is.

</comment><comment><USER15> It looks exactly like WhenIsGood. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER16> a cool feature for this would be if you could send an email to update it. pretty cool though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It needs some functionality to be able to edit it from a distance and, more importantly, without a mouse. This could be a good way to achieve that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just a suggestion, you might want to register your new project with <http://projectilo.com> to get continued feedback from other developers</comment>


Concurrency in Python: Functional Programming - <AUTHOR> https://bytes.yingw787.com/posts/2019/01/19/concurrency_with_python_functional_programming/ <comment><USER2> @yingw787 This is great! Far more comprehensive and well-argued than most typical personal technical posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks TuringNYC!</comment></comment>


The surprising anthropology of group identity - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/are-suicide-bombings-really-driven-by-ideology <comment><USER2> Whereas chimps will usually only copy something if they completely see how doing that action will produce this desirable outcome, human infants will copy whole sequences of actions even though they haven't a clue what the value is of the thing that they're copying.

You could have quite elaborate and effective medical procedures, for example, and no one has a clue how they work. It could be that rituals also become widespread as a byproduct. If we're the kind of species that will copy all kinds of causally opaque behaviors, then that would help explain why we get the profusion of ritual behaviors as well as instrumental behaviors that we don't understand.

Seems like a profound observation.

<comment><USER3> > You could have quite elaborate and effective medical procedures, for > example, and no one has a clue how they work.

This isn't a hypothetical; it is the norm for humans. Most obviously, traditional methods of food preparation often coincidentally ensure that the food is digestible and not poisonous, where the most obvious way of preparing the food would be missing one or both of those properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Group think explains most irrational behavior like politics. It explains why Trump supporters let him lie and gaslight and can't admit he is an idiot.

On the other side super nutty liberals (and media, but I repeat myself) can't accept he is the actual president. Nor can they admit the Democratic party really 'bent' some laws and several federal agencies probably broke laws somehow and has already directly caused a couple shooting incidents (if not more). It has been two years of investigation and the continuation just makes them mentally sicker just like racists and Obama.

We knew what Clinton specifically did and how he lied about it before there was even an investigation. The only question was whether it rose to impeachment(it didn't, though he definitely should be in jail for all the harassment/rape). Liberals protect the same agencies that they hated and would believe any conspiracy theory about 20-50 years ago (and most were true just as now).

I don't trust anyone in power and don't 'have to believe' in any group. I believe in megalomania and greed (heck the legislature's pension alone is insane) and that power corrupts and no one healthy or smart wants to be a politician.

<comment><USER5> >no one healthy or smart wants to be a politician

This is probably more true on the national level than on the state and local level. Plenty of people get involved at the local levels because they see problems with their community that government could fix. Given that many national politicians started as state and local politicians, one would think at least some of them started with a good moral system

<comment><USER4> I agree it does happen, though the party system really limits the possibility. It keeps nationally popular but not moderate idealists like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders sidelined and picks winners long before primaries in local elections.

I live in a state with caucus primaries and it prevents any non-party candidates. Even at the local level you get some horrible choices of picking the least bad, corrupt, or even crazy guy.

Luckily, for at least some positions there is not enough party interest and there are 3 or more candidates that have to explain their platform and reasoning. If only that was the case with the more important positions.

<comment><USER4> Also the national parties groom way too much. It is one thing to have Hillary move to an easy to win seated state in national politics. However, it appears that Obama's local efforts were all organized to get him to President asap. That left quite a mess locally.

Similarly, the Republicans where I live are always sending DC interns to us for state legislature. I guess it is an attempt to give the intern running experience. The campaigns hardly ever seem to be an actual attempt to win.

The area is full of good paying jobs. What that means is the local politicians are usually some rich person's partner. Otherwise the crop is usually public employees with an ax to grind or personal trainers/masseuses looking for a steady income.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IE9 rendering engine available for testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.IETestDrive.com/

<comment><USER2> I find myself respecting Microsoft more and more of late (say the last year or so). It really is starting to feel as if they are reaching out from their closet and is realizing that they have to cooperate with the rest of the world. I guess you could argue that is a natural side-effect of not being the biggest bully on the block in every market are in (or enter).

An example of what I mean is the fact that on this Microsoft site you actually see images* of other browsers (gasp -- FF, Opera, Chrome all exist) in places where it's not necessary at all. This is something that caught me a bit by surprise.

(I guess I will now get all kinds of anecdotal evidence that they have been doing things like this all along or are downright evil. Point still stands: I am starting to get a bit more respect for the company, and not only the new IE team)

* [http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/01FlyingImages...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/01FlyingImages/Default.html)

Edit: When reading the other threads on the IE9 topic I realize I might be pretty alone in feeling this way :)

</comment><comment><USER3> What, no support for Linux? I'm only half-joking, I really wish that I could test IE compatibility without having to find a Windows box. (This wouldn't help me test IE<9 though.)

Yes, I know about <http://browsershots.org>, but that doesn't help with check interactive javascript.

<comment><USER4> What about using <http://www.virtualbox.org/> to run windows in a VM?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I kind of wish they made a Mac version.

Not because I want to use it, but because of more rendering engine on the platform can only be healthy competition, and consumers will win in the end.

<comment><USER6> Like IE 5.5? Microsoft doesn't do cross platform 'right'. If they did make a Mac version, it would render things differently than the Windows version and give developers yet another browser to test for bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow! It gets a 55/100 on the Acid 3 test.

Sign me up.</comment>


A (fab) Approach To Web Apps - <AUTHOR> http://jsconf.blip.tv/file/3745736/ <comment><USER2> see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1458717>

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry didn't know it was a dupe.</comment></comment>


Dev hiring matrix for nontechnical founders - awinter-py https://abe-winter.github.io/hr/2017/07/16/hiring.html <comment><AUTHOR> What a waste of time adding absolutely no value to the community. You may be good at helping people scale and even a decent engineer but you, Sir, are definitely a shitty consultant. It's much more common that the founders don't know what they are doing which is the reason you are building a business helping non-technical founders scale. Using the word shitty though in reference to the developer is a laugh like all the sudden engineers are the problem with the world vs. overly ambitious founders that failed to make a solid decision early on when deciding (or not in many cases) on a technical co-founder.</comment>


LinkedIn shuts down Cubeduel, the viral co-worker rating service - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/01/linkedin-shut-downs-cubeduel-co-worker.html <comment><USER2> Adam (I have since learned) had seen the limits and the LinkedIn folks actually raised them for us before we launched... But I don't think ANY of us thought that we'd hit the higher limit.

But don't judge us too harshly! :-) Remember, this started as a side- project... And certainly don't judge LinkedIn. Other than not being instantly responsive on a Friday afternoon (which I think wouldn't be a fair expectation), they've been super friendly and pretty accommodating.

<comment><USER3> __You __are the creator of this "cubeduel" thing?!??

Wow... hadn't seen it, glad it stopped here or least hoping it did...

I really couldn't imagine a more pernicious effort to poison already strained interpersonal relations in America if I tried.

I don't think your project is illegal but it is clearly, morally, reprehensible. You should be ashamed of yourself. What you are doing is a "bad thing" - on a pretty high scale of "bad thing".

A while back yummyfajitas asked how Wikileaks would be judged if someone died because of their revelations. Can I ask you the same question? What would you do if one coworker initiated violence against another because of _your_ rating site? What?

Not only do I want this to fail but I think it should rebound on your other projects ... hard. I don't quote The-Jesus much here but here, _"Judge not, that ye be not judged"_ comes very much to my mind.

Seriously, this is so bad that you need to take it down NOW _and_ apologize.

<comment><USER4> you provided more condemnation than analysis. In my reading of the Book, He reached out to people as an educator and provided guidance about a path that offers help to people that followed other ways. Do you see the irony in your quote?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, the analysis seemed rather clear. Offering people a chance to fight arena-style fights against their fellows is rather unscrupulous to say the least. Do you defend doing this?

Taking down the site and apologizing seems like a pretty clear guidance to ending the problem. What else would you suggest?

Does your reading of the bible or religious texts support sites like 'cubeduel'?

The point is also don't judge _unless_ you want to expose yourself to judgment. I don't mind being judged for condemning this 'cubeduel'. Who wants to judged for supporting it?

One has an obligation to speak out against despicable acts. Do you think this is something other than that?

<comment><USER5> I agree with you 100% and am willing to take the down votes. This is extremely obnoxious and I would think that LinkedIn is afraid that people will leave the site in droves if this is allowed to continue...

<comment><USER3> I suspect I've got plenty of supporters. The number of down votes is ... interesting. But I'm not terribly concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a great idea (from the point of view of virality) but it seems like it would be poisonous to the atmosphere in most teams. Would I want to stay back late to help someone who'd ranked me lower than my coworkers? I'd love to say yes, but probably not.

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, it's nigh impossible to see who voted on you. And even if you're losing duels-- it's not necessarily a reflection on you, but rather a reflection on you vs. a particular coworker. In other words, there'd be no shame in losing a duel to someone awesome, right?

However, if you find that you're losing duels against people who you think poorly of consistently, or losing ALL of your duels, that might create ugly feelings I guess!

<comment><USER7> "For what it's worth, it's nigh impossible to see who voted on you."

... for now. They could release that data at ANY time. Imagine the damage that will have on co-worker relationships.

<comment><USER8> Running a web vulnerability scanner at their page could be... interesting. Illegal, probably, but interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised to see that it might just be an API issue. I have to think that many of LinkedIn's users don't like being rated, and having those ratings be made available without their users' opt-in. For a service like LinkedIn, dealing with people's professional reputations (and potential job prospects), this seems like it might have crossed the line in some users' minds.

All of that aside, it is a really interesting idea, although I do have concerns that Cubeduel is getting a lot of really personal (and valuable) info from this. As a project, it's very intriguing nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a co-worker complaint system for fun once (at the request of my co- workers), and I was really worried it was going to go downhill fast. Surprisingly, they stopped using it before that happened.

Basically, you could complain (publicly!) about any co-worker who had registered on the system, and assign them a number of points. The person with the highest points at the end of the month had to put a trophy on their desk for a month.

That Cubeduel doesn't blow up also surprises me. I think the team has to already be really close to survive that kind of thing, and cubeduel sounds like even less fun than my system.

</comment><comment><USER11> LinkedIn is pretty stingy about their ToS. You even agree to a on-site code audit if they feel your app is in violation (Section 1.8).

I haven't used Cubeduel, but I wonder if they're displaying user info in violation of: "Data gathered from one user's LinkedIn account/network may not be exposed to another user"

Given the huge traffic, not surprised if they're just throttled though.

</comment><comment><USER12> So this is the norm now?

From the FAQ:

Can I delete my cubeduel page?

You can "deactivate" your account and it will stop showing up on cubeduel. Login, click on Your Rank, then click on Account Settings, then Deactivate Account.

<comment><USER3> Yeah,

Providing "opt-out libel" when you're about to IPO is a great idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I havn't looked at this, but I guess if you allow co-workers to rate each other then all that's going to happen is that the office politics gets transferred onto the site, with a lot of people bitching about each other, which might not be such a great idea. Also if you're rating co-workers from previous companies then old animosities could be perpetuated online.

I'm only cautious because in a couple of places that I've worked at in the past the office politics was occasionally quite toxic, and amplification of that via the internet could have quite serious consequences.

</comment><comment><USER14> They have a really great attitude, even when not knowing if it is just a limit or an actual ban.

</comment><comment><USER15> were they trying to emulate zuckerburg's facemash?

</comment><comment><USER16> WTF? This was awesome!

LinkedIn, please allow Cubeduel to use your API. This is the most fun I've EVER had with my data (that you happen to keep safe for me).

</comment><comment><USER17> WTF? 600 + duels and very addicting.</comment>


How we serve 150 free meals every week for less than $30 - <AUTHOR> http://izbicki.me/blog/how-i-serve-150-free-lunches-for-less-than-20-cents-each-using-homebrew-equipment

<comment><USER2> As I'm dabbling in $1/plate meals at abuckaplate.blogspot.com I find this awesome.

<comment><USER3> Some months ago, I googled up a number of "dollar a day" type food sites. There is lots of good stuff out there on the topic. I also like this one and have posted it elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> Care to share any of the ones that stood out? I recently paid off my car and realized that paying off debts feels awesome. So I've switching into hardcore save mode so I can dump as much money per month on my student load as I can manage.

Food is one area in which I definitely need to cut down on my spending.

<comment><USER3> I am on a tablet, so everything is a pain. Here are links to some notes to myself that I made with at least some of what I found:

<http://talithamichele.posterous.com/dollar-a-day-websites>

<http://talithamichele.posterous.com/more-dollar-a-day-sites>

[http://talithamichele.posterous.com/hungry-for-a-month- and-b...](http://talithamichele.posterous.com/hungry-for-a-month-and- bargaineering)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great task. The world needs more people with the feeling of giving back to society.</comment>


Machine Learning: Neural Network vs Support Vector Machine - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11632516/machine-learning-neural-network-vs-support-vector-machine

<comment><USER2> SVMs are good if you want high accuracy without much fiddling and don't have many training examples. It is pretty simple to get off-the-shelf results from SVMs. However, SVM training is quadratic in the number of examples, and you have to get really hacky to train >10K examples.

Neural networks are good if you have many training examples, and don't mind doing hyperparameter tuning. I have trained neural networks over 1B examples on a single core. (Took a month.) However, you have to tune your learning rate and regularization, and there don't yet exist good packages to do this automatically.

It is also much simpler with neural networks to learn over custom data, e.g. mixing supervised and unsupervised learning (labeled and unlabeled examples), transfer learning, etc., because you can change your evaluation criterion and minimize it.

If you want to do deep learning, we have a much better understanding of how to do training using neural networks, particularly because we can train on such large datasets.

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to add that hyperparameter tuning is vital for SVMs as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SVMs require a linearly separable dataset. That would make them seem quite useless, but often that's not a huge problem, and sometimes when it is you can add basis functions as you wish, like on this data:

        1  1
        2  1
        3 -1
        4 -1
        5  1
        6  1
        7 -1

This data set becomes linearly separable with the basis expansion {X^2, X^3} because there's a cubic function that matches the data perfectly for signs (e.g. f(x) > 0 on all the x's mapped to 1, and f(x) < 0 on all the -1's). This doubles the size of your data matrix (4 columns, for 1, X, X^2, and X^3} in comparison to the more typical basis.

The problem is that if your data are noisy, you can end up needing a lot of basis expansions to get separation, and then you have the typical problems of complexity.

As far as I understand it, SVMs are good when you know there aren't misclassifications in the data and believe the separating surfaces (which will separate the data perfectly) will be simple because you're not going to need to add a lot of basis expansions. It seems to expect a certain orderliness in the data.

Neural nets are extremely flexible on account of their large number of degrees of freedom, but rarely achieve "perfect" classification and it's often not desirable that they do (overfitting). What they seem to be strong at is finding a very good (but not perfect) answer, and unlike SVMs which don't work well in a noisy world (can't achieve separation) they seem to handle it well. Neural nets, in my experience, will learn something in a lot of different types of environments. The major negative of neural nets is that they take a very long time to converge, and if you use stochastic gradient descent (which becomes necessary on a large data set) they will actually never converge. Also, neural net problems often require extensive cross-validation.

<comment><USER5> Your description of SVMs is a bit misleading. It matches with what are typically called "hard margin" SVMs, which do require linearly separable data. However, people talking about SVMs are typically talking about "soft margin" SVMs, which don't require linearly separable data. Soft margin SVMs are the kind implemented in practically any off-the-shelf machine learning library you might pick up online.

A concise description of the "mode of action" for soft margin SVMs would be: project the training data into an alternate space and then perform L2-regularized regression with hinge loss in that space. The trick is that, by using (valid Mercer) kernels, the solution to the regularized regression in the alternate space can be represented by a weighted sum of kernel functions evaluated at points in the training set (i.e. the support vectors). Thus, the solution can be learned without having to explicitly represent the points in the alternate space, which permits the use of very high, or even "infinite" dimensional spaces for the alternate representation.

In the context of the alternative space, the use of strong L2 regularization (formally effected by an L2 constraint on the implicitly learned parameters) dramatically reduces the risk of overfitting. Additionally, the combination of L2 regularization and hinge loss leads to a convex optimization problem which, to some people, constitutes one of the key advantages of SVMs.

I tried to avoid too much jargon, though the term "L2-regularized regression with hinge loss" may merit further expansion (if you're interested).

<comment><USER4> Thanks. That's really cool. I would be interested in getting some pointers regarding the soft-margin SVM.

I've used neural nets a fair bit, but I've never built an SVM, although I'll probably get to them soon in my ML study (I'm using Bishop's book and Hastie's, as well as the online course videos).

<comment><USER6> Read Andrew Ng's lecture notes (really more book-level quality) for the version of cs291 he wrote _before_ he created the simplified/less-mathematical corsera version. They are floating around online.

Also, Elements of Statistical Learning is available online for free (previous edition, maybe?) , which covers a lot more standard/traditional statistical curve/surface fitting topics as well, all with high mathematical rigor.

<comment><USER5> Elements of Statistical Learning is Hastie's book. Between it and Bishop's book (i.e. Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning), I prefer Hastie's for clarity of exposition. In particular, I find that ESL better conveys the sort of intuitive understanding of _why_ a method works that facilitates practical applications and extensions to novel contexts. Though, there are topics for which the increased equations/explanations ratio of Bishop's book is useful.

I've TAed my university's graduate ML course for the past couple of years, so I've read most chapters of these books in some detail and have hands-on experience using them to help people who are looking closely at these topics for the first time. Interestingly, SVMs are actually a good example of when I'd suggest both books.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The unofficial Apple Archive is on death's door once more - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/26/21082832/apple-archive-dmca-takedown-sam-gold <comment><USER2> Again, this is hardly surprising. Republishing official Apple videos requires their permission otherwise its an unauthorized republishment and you will summon the Apple Legal Team to tear you apart.

This notice is literally shown at the start of every Apple event video, if not, they own the copyright to that material anyway.

<comment><USER3> There's an exception for libraries and archives by law, title 17 section 108.

Unlike sane countries though this exception is worded in a very interesting way causing serious problems when archiving non-literary media. (Plus you first have to ask for a license anyway. Only when licensing is impossible or perhaps denied repeatedly you could argue it's still applicable.)

In most EU countries the exception works in a much saner way. Move the archive there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was fast. Just 12 days ago it was featured here[0].

0\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22066177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22066177)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a mirror somewhere?

<comment><USER6> That's what I'm wondering too. Anyone know if there's a torrent of the entire archive?

<comment><USER7> The users of /r/DataHoarder have been pleading with the curator to release the source files (torrent or archive.org), but he has refused so far</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Y Combinator deal with conflict of interests? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose you submit an idea that might compete (indirectly) with an existing YCombinator venture.<p>What happens then? <comment><USER2> It already happens. If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. So the way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing.

In practice it turns out not to be as big a problem as one might think, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would end up doing precisely the same thing.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to see two groups get accepted with absolutely identical ideas and see how different they finally end up.</comment></comment>