Before you Dual Boot – MS, OEMs and Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/19739-before-you-dual-boot-truth-about-ms-oem-s-linux.html <comment><USER2> I'm now happier than ever that I bought one of the last pure-BIOS motherboards of the i7 era, and a laptop (Thinkpad X60) that can run completely free software ([https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/gluglug](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/gluglug) , although I didn't know that when I bought it several years ago ), and I plan on holding on to these machines and making the most of them for as long as I can, because the future of the PC is looking more and more closed with each new change.

It was only a few decades ago when IBM released the PC AT, complete with a full set of documentation, even the full source code of the BIOS. Now you're lucky if you can even get a datasheet for the SuperI/O chip or processor VRM controller. I've observed this decrease in openness through the years, but it's only most recently (post-Nehalem?) I've noticed this happening at an accelerated pace.

Throughout this time, all the changes that have been made for "security" appear to me as more and more like attempts to secure systems against their users, taking control away from them and forcing them to trust some authority instead. Code signing, secure boot, TPM, patch protection, etc. It is becoming more difficult to stay in control of the hardware you bought.

It is true that several years ago, it was probably much easier to infect systems with malware, but at the same time, the users had more freedom; including the freedom to explore, use, and modify the OSes of their choosing. Is this freedom something we should really be sacrificing? The well-known quote comes to mind: "Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."

<comment><USER3> I think it all comes down to the death of what was, in the 90s, called the "power user."

There have always been two kinds of computer users: Administrators--those who can be trusted to administer their own systems; and Users--those who cannot, who need someone else to Administer their system for them.

The Power User emerged as a gross hybrid because of the limitations of Personal Computer OSes. In Windows 98, for example, everyone was implicitly considered an Administrator, even if they had no idea how to Administer anything. (They were _Users_ with the full _Power_ of an Administrator.)

What would frequently happen is that one person in an extended family would have such knowledge as to be capable of actually Administering computers, and would frequently have to drop in to perform Administrative maintenance for relatives, who had no idea they had to do such things themselves. Nobody would be looking out for the computer in the interstice.

This era is thankfully over. What do we have now? No greater number of people capable of Administering their own computers, certainly.

Instead, what happens now is that the hardware manufacturer provides hooks (the Secure Boot certificate store et al.) such that the computer's Owner can delegate Administrative power to the OS distributor (Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, etc.), leaving the Owner as a plain User. "That guy in the family who knows computers" no longer has to be involved--effectively, the OS distributor _is_ "that guy."

This is only really a problem for people who _want_ to Administer their own computers (though in any form-factor where you can buy a motherboard separately, all these protections _can_ be disabled.)

Frankly, though, I see less and less of a need for people to Administer personal computers. PCs (I'm including both desktops and mobiles in this set), these days, are basically the equivalent of VT-100 terminals: fancy screens you buy, take out of the box, and plug directly into the internet.

This is what I would call the "modern tinkerer mindset":

• "Real Software" runs on Impersonal Computers: servers, either racked in your office, or existing nebulously in "the cloud." When you are developing this software, you keep a VM that simulates such an Impersonal Computer running on your Personal Computer, and interact with it as if it were a network resource.

• Development of new Operating Systems occurs using a hardware emulator (really a more precise VM), like qemu. It then moves to ordinary VM software. Everyone else who tries your hobbyist OS will only want to run it in a VM themselves. Getting it running on Real Hardware is a 1.0 feature.

• If you want to fiddle with hardware yourself, you get a Raspberry Pi, or any of innumerable other devices aimed squarely at tinkerers. You could develop an OS using these, too, although it's a much greater hassle than just using emulation software. These devices are open in ways Personal Computers never were, having everything from schematics to JTAG pins available.

Given that mindset, what do you _gain_ by having Administration rights to your new-age VT-100 Personal Computer?

You might answer "the surety that Microsoft/Apple/etc. will never ban VM software from its platform", but no OS distributor would dream of doing this: after all, how, then, would its first- and third-party developers do their jobs? They rely on VM software just like the rest of us.

<comment><USER2> > Given that mindset, what do you _gain_ by having Administration rights to > your new-age VT-100 Personal Computer?

The freedom and power to control what's yours. A chance to explore, to learn more about the system you're using and possibly adapt it to fit your needs. IMHO giving users that _chance_ is very important: how many experienced developers started out as power users - who also were originally only users? By taking away these chances, keeping regular users relatively oblivious, fewer of them will want to go through the increasing hassle of "becoming a developer"; it becomes an abrupt decision instead of the continuum of knowledge it once was. This divide between "users" and "developers/administrators" only makes it harder for users to cross that gap, and takes control away from them.

> If you want to fiddle with hardware yourself, you get a Raspberry Pi [...] > These devices are open in ways Personal Computers never were, having > everything from schematics to JTAG pins available.

Funny you mention the RPi, as it's nowhere close to being as open as the PC/AT was.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be conflating "developer" with "administrator", which I just don't understand.

Want to be a developer? Download [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/), open Notepad and write some Lua, save it in the same directory and run the executable. Or write some text that starts "<script>", save it as HTML, and double-click it. Or download Racket and follow the tutorials. Or, if you really insist on writing low-level code, download {Visual Studio Express, XCode Command Line Tools, Debian build-essential} and open up a shell. Learning to program has only gotten easier and easier over the decades.

But wanting to be an Administrator? What for?

Do you want to Administer your DVD player? It's an appliance. It plays DVDs. It works well _because_ it only plays DVDs.

PCs are appliances. They run, in sandboxed environments, "application software", which are binary packages code-signed-by-proxy by the OS developer. They work well _because_ they only do this. And _within_ the framework of these restrictions, you can still program new software, or an entirely new OS. These are tasks this appliance lets you perform.

You can build your own computer. It won't be an appliance. You can also build your own DVD player. It won't be an appliance either. Is it so bad, then, that DVD players exist for playing DVDs? Is it so bad, then, that PCs exist for running sandboxed code-signed applications?

<comment><USER4> <sarcasm> What do you have a kitchen for? You can microwave TV dinners all you want. If you want to make your own recipe, say because you want to be healthy, or don't like the flavor of TV dinners, you can just make a simulated Real Recipe out of pieces of TV dinners. It's almost as good.

Just let someone else more qualified than you, or well maybe not more qualified, but more in charge than you, decide what you should eat. Selecting a restaurant or frozen dinner has only gotten easier and easier over the decades. But wanting to be a cook? What for?

And why do you need a camera? People should be able to sell you pictures of whatever you want a picture of. There should be enough pictures of everyone on Facebook already. Or, if you really insist on having a picture of something or someone that a Big Corporation doesn't have, just get out some crayons and sketch them. Buying crayons and coloring books has only gotten easier and easier over the decades. But why take your own pictures, what for?

And what do you need musical instruments for? Want to be a musician? Just download some songs that have already been written and play them in a different order on your DRM-closed player. Or, if you really insist on having your own choice in music, just call a radio station and request something. Calling and requesting songs has only gotten easier and easier over the decades. But wanting to make your own music or start your own band? What for?

And that address bar on your web browser? Just go to yahoo.com, and click all the links there. They already know what's good for you. If you really insist on having your own, post to a social network. Starting a web page on Facebook/google has only gotten easier and easier over the decades.

But wanting to go to whatever websites you want - or make your own websites? What for? </sarcasm>

<comment><USER3> Er, did you miss the part where I said "You can build your own computer. It won't be an appliance"?

Most kitchens have microwaves in them. Sometimes a microwave is the best tool for a job. (For defrosting red meat, for example.) But chefs don't insist on forcing their microwave to somehow do all their kitchen-related tasks; they use other tools, each with its own affordances, each with a best-suited task, together, to get done what they want done.

Likewise, a home-entertainment system usually has a DVD player in it. You don't try to use your DVD player as a PVR, or a video-game machine. You use separate devices for each of those tasks.

A capital-c-Computer is an amazing machine that can do many things equally well--it's sort of like an undifferentiated stem-cell. I completely understand wanting to use a capital-c-Computer, just for the sheer neatness-factor of it.

But a PC? The modern PC _isn 't_ a capital-c-Computer. The modern PC is a microwave, a DVD player. Like the microwave, like the DVD player, you likely have one _in your toolkit_ \--in fact, you likely use it for a lot of things. But it'd be silly to expect it to do everything.

You can have your capital-C-Computer and a PC too. Neither of them is going anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never dual boot. It's a PITA with UEFI or not and has been since the dawn of time. It's Linux -or- Windows. UEFI is not a problem though - people need to stop badmouthing something they really don't understand.

I settled on using Windows as a host OS[1] and use Linux on VMs because to be fair, Windows power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support is miles better i.e. it actually works more than once. Oh and they really don't fuck up the kernel every 2 minutes like on Ubuntu and don't throw out buggy shit like Apple do.

I used a 2011 MBP for the last 6 months or so however (with virtualbox) and I had to go back to an older and slower T400 as it was more reliable as well.

So virtualbox on windows 7 it is. And it works _really_ well. I'm pretty happy and I'm a picky as they come when it comes to hardware and software.

On my desktop (a Dell T3500 with piles of RAM), it's 8.1 with Hyper-V with Linux in it as that works pretty damn well too.

Is suspect the problem here is _users_ rather than _hardware_ and _vendors_.

[1] On my Lenovo T400.

<comment><USER6> Generalization that Windows has better "power management, suspend/resume and hibernate and driver support" is grossly wrong. Noob friendly Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide excellent support of all the points you mention.

<comment><USER5> They really don't. Suspend doesn't always wake up all devices, different kernel releases break hibernate completely. Also Ubuntu just disabled hibernate for a vast chunk of time. It's never worked properly. And don't get me started on all the playing around you have to do with powertop to get usable battery life.

And that is Ubuntu (12.04 LTS) noob friendly edition on standard Intel Centrino hardware.

<comment><USER7> Hibernate is a good point. But on my Samsung Series 5 ultrabook, Ubuntu 13.04 got better battery life, out of the box, than Windows 8 did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hear my fucked up story of UEFI, Secure Boot and Windows 8:

I have a Windows 8 laptop. It had 2 HDDs, so I easily installed Ubuntu 13.04 to second HDD. However, during a Win8 update process, it hanged for hours and I force closed. Then even my recovery partition was corrupted. So, I wiped my first HDD, and since the OEMs don't give DVDs anymore, I could not install it. I live in Turkey, and there is a special version of Win8 Single Language, not found on internet. You cannot confirm checksum of them because it is not widely used, and depends on the region I think (maybe wrong). Therefore, even If I found a iso on Turkish forum I could not verify it, but tried to install Single Language version anyways. But It could not verify my key, that is burried in my motherboard. I tried to install Windows 8 Pro from MSDNAA, and it said it cannot because of the internal license on my pc. I tried dozens of way to disable it. When I got Windows 8.1 Pro from MSDNAA as well, It installed without problems. That is really f*cked up. I did not like flatness of even windows, I disabled Secure Boot, removed my partioning from GPT to MBR, installed my Ubuntu with Windows 7 as it is used to be, before these dark times.

Now I'm a teaching assitant of operating systems course, students need to use Linux for assignments, and almost all of them uses VirtualBox, which is not a very good replacement for native experience. It is fast, but not fast enough.

<comment><USER9> What has this got to do with Secure Boot?

<comment><USER10> > _What has this got to do with Secure Boot?_

It's got nothing to do with Secure Boot. If he had gone into the UEFI and disabled Secure Boot, the problem would still have occurred.

Secure Boot has become this scapegoat for everything that could possibly go wrong.

As its name suggests, Secure Boot prevents the OS from booting. If the _installer_ is complaining about a product key mismatch, then it's got everything to do with the installer and nothing to do with Secure Boot.

<comment><USER8> I did not say Secure Boot causes this, the UEFI contains product key, and it does not allow to be deleted, modified or extracted. Since it is permanent there, Windows installer fails to accept another key, or even a legitimate higher edition Windows installation.

<comment><USER10> > _I did not say Secure Boot causes this,_

Here's what you said:

> _Hear my fucked up story of UEFI, Secure Boot and Windows 8:_

Why mention Secure Boot at all? It's got absolutely nothing to do with your situation.

<comment><USER8> It is a story about all of them, I did not say Secure Boot caused this problem, I said I disabled it to be able to install Windows 7.

<comment><USER10> > _It is a story about all of them, I did not say Secure Boot caused this > problem, I said I disabled it to be able to install Windows 7._

Suppose that a user buys a Windows 8 machine, goes to a website, and downloads malware that slows down the machine and makes it unusable. Finally, a local teenager wipes the machine, disables Secure Boot, and installs Windows 7.

One would hardly say that this is a "f-cked up story of" malware, Secure Boot, and Windows 8. Secure Boot is merely incidental, and has nothing to do with the issue of malware on Windows 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yc-kjh OpenBSD does not support UEFI, and probably never will. [http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/196288](http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/196288)

Please note that OpenBSD has no problem handling large disks, greater than 2 TB. The problem is with the horrible Restricted Boot (UEFI) system.

The Asus model 1015E is in violation of the requirement that UEFI (Restricted Boot) can be disabled, and that Legacy Boot can be enabled. I am boycotting all future Asus products, because I had to deal with this problem _after_ I had already purchased one. It was difficult and painful to get my money back.

If any manufacturer purposely builds systems without Restricted Boot, I will patronize them (even for non-Arm products). I am hoping that some manufacturer will build a line of Arm-based devices without Restricted Boot. (Yes, I know about BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, etc. But these are not full-featured laptops. They are embedded machines aimed at embedded uses. I _do_ use them for that purpose. Also note that the Raspberry Pi has the craptastic Broadcom chip, and it is _anything but free [as in liberty] and open_. [http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/192942](http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/192942) Also, the recent release of source code from Broadcom is only open source wrappers that call proprietary binary blobs. Fsck Broadcom.)

<comment><USER11> Please post a blog link to your Asus 1015E and Broadcom experiences. I want to reshare and help build community awareness.

<comment> yc-kjh I don't blog.

<comment><USER11> Ok. I can respect that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With the locked down antics that manufacturers are pulling these days, the only way to protect yourself is to root your device and install your preferred environment on it _immediately after you obtain the device_. Don't delay or procrastinate with excuses like wanting to try out the manufacturer's experience, waiting until you need the functionality, or wanting to prepare more. Every day you put it off, the more likely you will end up stuck with and dependent on a user-hostile device that you were tricked into.

You need to run into every possible incompatibility or bricking while you're still well within the return and credit card dispute periods. And if you're actually unsure of how to proceed in making sure that shiny new device actually works for you, please please ask a technical friend for help. The future of society very much depends on it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Actually, it is not that difficult to dual boot Windows/Linux with UEFI. You just need more understanding about this whole thing. I can recommend Arch wiki article: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firm...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface)

And [http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/](http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi- bootloaders/)

Kernels 3.3+ can be loaded from EFI partition directly without additional bootloader, no need to wrestle with grub-efi. This blog explains required configuration: [http://wolfwings.dreamwidth.org/224805.html](http://wolfwings.dreamwidth.org/224805.html)

<comment><USER14> efibootmgr makes it really simple to set up. When I get a new computer with Arch, once I install the base system, my bootloader is literally just:

efibootmgr -c -l /vmlinuz-linux -L "Archlinux" -u "initrd=/initramfs-linux.img root=<root partition uuid> ro quiet splash security=tomoyo"

Assuming /boot is my efi system partition.

The real problem is that most motherboard manufacturers have absolute garbage bloated proprietary messes of EFI implementations, and we are stuck with Intel jamming this shit down our throats in the first place rather than opening up their chipset documentation so we could have coreboot support on these boards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I learned my lesson long ago. Linux is for VMs. I run vanilla Windows as my boot OS and then use Linux from within a VM, thus getting the benefits of Windows hardware compatibility where I need it. This lets me do things like run nine monitors when my laptop is docked by chaining DisplayLink adapters. Note that Windows with DisplayLink will only support eight monitors so for the ninth I bind the DisplayLink adapter to the VM for dual monitors with my Linux VM. Going above more than two monitors with a Linux host OS is akin to beating one's head into a wall, especially if you move between monitor configurations often, but just works in Windows.

Thus far, with the ability for the VM to bind specific hardware directly and not shared via the host OS I get all the benefits of a Linux host OS without the hassle of broken driver implementations taking me down for long stretches at a time. As an example, I can bind my ALFA WiFi adapter directly to the Linux VM and run aircrack-ng all day long.

Yes, there are drawbacks. You will need a bigger hard-drive (best if you can fit two in your laptop) and more memory, but those are cheap these days. The benefits, however are massive. I keep multiple VM versions and can instantly recover from anything stupid that I might do in the Linux kernel without impacting my ability to actually get my work done.

<comment><USER16> I have the problem that in my windows os I need to run hyper-v to use the emulator of windowsphone and windowstablets for work purposes.

Why is it a problem? Because if you active hyper-v (and you need a reboot to change from active/deactive) all other VM, if started, will crash your os, show a blue page of death, restart your machine and show a "I am trying to recover your system" for like 20 minutes.

And hyperv is like the shittest VMm ever to run linux over it, also with the "officially supported" linux versions.

<comment><USER5> Hyper-V user here. It's fine - I run 12-15 VMs (4 of which are Linux) at a time (full production environment with virtual networking) on a 4 year old Dell T3500 Quad Xeon with 32Gb of RAM. Sounds like your hardware is broken/crap.

<comment><USER17> On server, it is fine.

On notebook? Trying to combine Hyper-V (for WP dev) and Intel HAXM (for Android dev) is BSOD nightmare. It stopped after I got rid of Hyper-V...

<comment><USER5> It's fine on a notebook too.

More than one hypervisor per machine is not a good idea. You'll get the same problem with Intel HAXM and VMware as well.

To be fair the problem with this is that the whole Intel virtualization architecture is hacked on the side (as is every other damn feature since the 80186).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really don't understand all these people having issues booting in UEFI mode. Fine, disable Secure Boot (or boot Fedora/Ubuntu if you care about it), load a recent distro and get on with your work/play.

<comment><USER8> If you disable UEFI, you need to install your system again, and you cannot use your old license to install it, at least in Win8. So you either buy another Win8. So disabling UEFI is not an option, for dual boot.

<comment><USER19> Holy cow, how are we just now finding out about this? So Microsoft is forcing you to buy yet another Windows license, after you already paid for the one included with the laptop, if you want to dual-boot?

This should been a scandal when Windows 8 launched.

<comment><USER20> Not really. Installing Linux on a computer running UEFI is perfectly possible. It's just really hard. I'm typing this on just such a machine and it involved activating BIOS emulation and then when the Ubuntu purple loading disk screen came I needed to do a magic key-combo and set some options I don't remember. Then I needed to run bootrepair and instruct it to make Ubuntu UEFI bootable and finally I could turn off BIOS emulation.

It's hard as fucking hell.

<comment><USER14> My last two systems (desktops, I don't even have a working notebook right now, waiting for Broadwell) used Asrock and ASUS boards with EFI implementations that worked pretty well out of the box under Linux. One runs Suse 13.1, the other runs Arch. They both have their bugs - the Asrock system wipes the EFI boot table every firmware update, and the ASUS one can only have one entry in the EFI boot table, and neither has a working EFI shell - but I did my research to know they worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's another insane thing I've recently heard about - that Intel intends to lock the OS to their own (new) chips, and you can't dual-boot or install another OS. If they do this, yes I expect them to say that "the OEM has the choice" to allow for dual-booting or whatever, but I bet you 90 percent of PCs will be locked to Windows, when this arrives on Windows machines:

[https://plus.google.com/+GuidoStepken/posts/bD2VHB4LcEU](https://plus.google.com/+GuidoStepken/posts/bD2VHB4LcEU)

<comment><USER21> Well, once they do that, the same way that one should avoid Windows 8 if he wants to have a chance of running Linux, one will also be recommended to avoid an Intel processor if he wants control of his system.

Except that Intel has less of a monopoly than Microsoft, so that's way easier.

<comment><USER22> This would be worse on laptops. It's braindead easy to just snag an Intel- based laptop and know everything will work out of the box. (Other than the Poulsbo netbooks generally speaking they've done a great job supporting Linux on their hardware).

With AMD laptops you might end up with a Broadcom wireless card and an AMD GPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article claims: "One reason all PC's that come preinstalled with a Microsoft operating system is cheaper than regular laptop is that Microsoft subsidizes the cost of the hardware."

I had always thought that PC makers paid Microsoft for Windows. The article claims that, instead, Microsoft pays the PC makers to install Windows. I don't see how this could possibly be true if most copies of Windows are sold pre- installed on PCs.

<comment><USER24> I've never heard that Microsoft pays OEMs but they certainly do give them a discounted price. Also it is my understanding that they do have some contract terms that either forbid sale of the same hardware with other OSes preinstalled or forbid sale at a lower price with other OS or no OS.

This is all from years ago, I don't know what terms are these days. Obviously Dell, HP, etc. do have a few preinstalled Linux systems in their catalogs now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's my rant on how Secure boot should be done. Currently, you have Microsoft's public key certificates in the firmware, and you can either boot with secure boot on or off. I would rather that the certificates be treated similar to a web browsers, where you have a list of "official" certs belonging to multiple independent entities. In addition, when in secure mode, you shouldn't be able to boot from unsigned media.

Now here's where I think this can be improved. Usually, hitting something like F12 at boot time gives you a list of devices to boot from (internal drive, USB devices, DVD, network, etc). What I'd like to see added to this is an item labeled "Boot from unsigned DVD/USB/Network [for OS installation mode]". Once this is selected, whatever you boot would have access to adding additional certificates to the firmware. Or, more appropriately, you should be able to select 3 boot options: 1) boot from signed media; 2) boot from unsigned media; 3) boot from unsigned media with write access to certificate key store [OS installation mode]. That way, the end user can still maintain complete control over their hardware, yet still get the benefits of protection against boot sector malware / low level root kits.

<comment><USER26> This sounds like secure boot's "Custom Mode." 'Certified for Win8' requires that all non-ARM machines support either Secure Boot Custom Mode or SB disabled. I would hope they would support custom, but that's the manufacturer's prerogative.

<comment> yc-kjh Asus does _not_ support disabling Restricted Boot for their model 1015E.

<comment><USER26> Cite?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In this thread: a bunch of people who know nothing about computers spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

The reality is: Windows boots fine with Secure Boot disabled. Linux boots fine from UEFI; the Debian installer sets everything up perfectly.

<comment> yc-kjh OpenBSD doesn't support UEFI, and will never boot from it.

UEFI (better called Restricted Boot) takes away the user's freedom.

I want to own my hardware. I don't want the manufacturer to own it. I don't truly own it unless I can run whatever software I want on it. I don't own it if it prevents me from doing anything I want to do -- no matter what that is.

<comment><USER28> I guess I don't understand how UEFI is inherently less free than BIOS. I assume most of of the opposition is due to secure boot, but every implementation I've used let the user manage keys for secure boot or disable it entirely. Are there other reasons that UEFI is a threat to computing freedom?

<comment> yc-kjh The Asus model 1015E does not let you disable Restricted Boot, nor does it allow you to re-enable Legacy Boot.

I don't have direct proof or experience, but I understand that many other models (and manufacturers) are similarly broken.

<comment><USER27> Buggy BIOS is nothing new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For me precisely this was the final reason I needed to simply erase Windows 8 64bit Professional (which I paid for half a year earlier) and install Ubuntu 13.10.

I was worried about driver issues and spending too much time adminstering my system instead of using it for being productive. I cannot emphasize enough how unnecessary those worries were - I f __ __ __love it! As an IT guy using R, Git, Python and further Linux tools this made actually a lot of tasks way easier!

My recommendation - f __* dual boot - get rid of Windows and switch to Linux!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you mention what your system is, then it could help others in making buying decisions. This would then send a message to hardware vendors that linux support gives them visibility and appreciation.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.system76.com/](https://www.system76.com/)

[https://www.thinkpenguin.com/](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/)

[https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd](https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd)

And others. Really, if you are buying a new system for Linux, and it isn't a custom desktop, just buy a notebook from a Linux provider so you know modern kernels support the thing out of the box flawlessly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "My journey into hell began about two months ago when I purchased a new HP laptop computer..." That'll teach you. Next time don't buy HP. Those super cheap laptops come at the price of quality and decent support. You pay for it one way or another. As for the UEFI being bad or not working well with Linux, I disagree. I think you just don't know what you're doing and HP support is bad with no documentation.

</comment><comment><USER31> I currently use a couple of recycled core duo 2 thinkpads. BIOS so of course GNU/Linux installs easy either whole disk or dual boot with windows.

In the future, I suppose I'll need to look to a Chromebook as a cheap platform for my GNU/Linux.

Unless people actually start making open hardware...

<comment><USER32> No need to fear. I have a recent Thinkpad (T530) and it boots ArchLinux painlessly from USB or internal 32gig ssd. Also boots into windows8 from the main 120gig ssd if necessary. It's UEFI with secureboot disabled.

<comment><USER33> Yeah I did something similar on my T530. Booting into Windows is a pain, compared to Mint. Everything wants to update and reboot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This isn't about UEFI, I've had no issues with it. Primarily because I don't use Windows on it. Microsoft is up to it's old tricks here. Then again, try to run OSX on a Dell. I just wish all these guys would get their heads out of there asses.

<comment><USER35> > try to run OSX on a Dell

I don't get what you're trying to say here, so pardon me if this response is totally orthogonal to your point.

OS X isn't supposed to be run on PC's (laptop+desktop). Nor is it expected. Desktop Linux, however, is.

<comment><USER36> Except that OSX does run on PC's. The architectures are identical now. My MacBook Pro can run windows natively because it is an x86/x64 architecture from the ground up.

<comment><USER35> I am aware of the architecture of Mac hardware. But OS X doesn't have driver (thus hardware) support for all (or even a large range of) hardware that conform to the architecture. Apple develops (espcially when it comes to optimizations) OS X expressly for it's own selection of (as opposed to general purpose) hardware. Apple also goes so far as to actively try to prevent OS X running on non-Mac hardware[0]. Contrast this with Linux, *BSDs that are developed on and for a wide range of (and general purpose) hardware.

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture#Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X.kext)

<comment><USER34> If there wasn't a legal constraint, then hardware manufacturers and the community would make those drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have come to the decision just not to buy anything HP. I had two horrid experiences with two HP laptops, and two printers that went too soon--1 less than a year--the other less than a week. Off subject, but when ever I hear HP I cringe.

<comment><USER38> The key there is to only buy expensive HP stuff.

Their office laser printers are great, and their workstations (e.g. the Z820) are pretty awesome.

Their cheap stuff on the other hand... I agree with you on every point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Back when I did dual boot, I found I seldom used the Windows partition because, for the reasons I'd need a Windows machine, it wasn't a very good one.

If you boot Windows for games, you are far better off buying or building a rig designed for gaming. Conversely, if you need a fast Linux software development system, swap out the hard disk of any decent Core i7 machine for an SSD, which will usually be smaller than the rotating media, which makes dual booting less attractive. And if you are shopping for a Linux machine that's less likely to be a hassle in any way, look for one that uses Intel graphics and has no 3rd party GPU.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why you should buy machines meant to run Linux, or known to run it well... System76, Dell dev laptop, ThinkPads, and custom parts for a desktop.

If you do your homework, you'll always have a perfectly functioning system. My ThinkPad runs Ubuntu (and Suse) like they were meant for each other.

And dual booting is always a PITA... Just delete Windows...

</comment><comment><USER41> I want to make this very clear:

Dual-booting with UEFI is entirely possible, provided that your hardware allows entering EFI vars manually, in a SIGNED OS ENVIRONMENT. Every comment I've seen thus far doesn't seem to grasp that this is MANDATORY before you have the ability to finish installing a new bootloader. This is how UEFI _protects itself_ from unauthorized OS signing!

I have my own custom EFI vars set up with grub2 running on a GPT partition table, all booting beside windows, as purely as the air you breathe, and I'm loading custom Linux kernels daily and haven't ran into an issue since I originally set it up. Grub2 itself is my primary boot partition, which can then jump into the windows boot manager on the other disk.

Grub2 itself has the capacity to act as a custom-signed EFI boot partition (Not sure if I've got the wording on that correct -- but the gist is there!). This means grub can be what your bios looks for the signature from. You don't absolutely need your kernel to be signed, provided you can get a signature produced from grub, OR you have the ability to write one while in a signed O/S.

IF you want the easiest approach, look no further than any Linux distribution that purchased a key to find such a signed environment that permits the further writing of EFI variables.

Or, even easier -- just write then boot grub 2's EFI-signed bootloader to a usb key to get started. After that, writing a new OS entry to UEFI should be the most straightforward thing to do in the world!

*(You can even boot any kernel in the world with such a signed grub2 USB disk!)

</comment><comment><USER42> The other part that really bugs me is that I cannot buy laptops without Windows from a lot of vendors.

First thing I do is wipe any Windows/Recovery partition from the drive and install Linux. Yet, I know that Microsoft got their cut and there is nothing I can do about it.

How this passes any reasonable antitrust test is beyond my comprehension; on the other hand what we call capitalism these days has not much to do with actual capitalism, so maybe I should not be surprised.

</comment><comment><USER7> All of this faff is the reason why my next laptop will be purchased with Linux already on it. System76, most likely, although I want the Dell XPS 13 Developer edition--you can't buy one from Australia. Which annoys me to no end (and if any lovely soul in the US feels like helping me...)

For me, day to day, Linux makes an amazing desktop and development machine. It's been 7 years since I ran a Windows computer daily (although my iMac has a Bootcamp partition for DayZ), and I don't miss it, so I'm voting with my wallet. If you'd told me I could do that a decade ago, I would have thought you were nuts, but I'm happy that's the case now. I understand the Secure boot frustration, but without needing to dual boot it's a lot easier.

We've ceded a lot of control, and yet I wonder if we ever had a real say in the matter. Oh well, I can buy Linux laptops, and that's what matters to me. Heck, it might be easier to get _them_ to dual boot than a Windows laptop ;)

</comment><comment><USER43> Girlfriends laptop is an HP pavilion g7 and no number of tutorials can get grub to load up on boot. She wants to boot to Ubuntu? Gotta remember to F12 into the bios and manually select it...

But it seems like this is less of a UEFI issue and more of an HP shitty UEFI issue, since plenty of other manufacturers don't cause any problems.

</comment><comment><USER44> This seems to be an explanation of how to install Ubuntu on an Acer laptop with Windows 8 - [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2176273&s=3a5c2ecb6...](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2176273&s=3a5c2ecb6245df86e17a7e1536084324&p=12800489#post12800489)

I can't believe how convoluted and snafu-prone the process appears to be. I bought my Aspire V7 laptop in December and have never gotten around to installing Ubuntu on it simply because I dread the almost-guaranteed loss of 1-2 working days trying to undo whatever screwups happen.

I can't imagine even one lay, non-Linux lover even thinking of attempting something like this.

</comment><comment><USER45> I guess you get what you pay for; [http://i.imgur.com/wZcxCGZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wZcxCGZ.jpg)

<comment><USER46> Or more appropriately, you get what you don't pay for! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Strange.

When I built my current PC, I specifically set it up to boot in UEFI mode with secureboot disabled, so that windows won't thrash the mbr. Then I happily installed arch, everything worked fine (even though the double-bootloader, i.e. UEFI->grub->linux still makes me queasy).

The only trouble was when afterwards I tried installing windows. At least at the time, windows 7 DVDs weren't able to boot in UEFI mode, therefore weren't able to use the GPT-partitioned hard-disk. The fix was easy enough at least - just copy the bootloader to the correct location on the DVD and it boots just fine.

</comment><comment><USER48> I plan to buy Microsoft Surface Pro 2 [http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en- us/products/surface-pro-...](http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en- us/products/surface-pro-2) and install Ubuntu 14.04 on it, however idiosyncratic that may sound: from reading the reviews, I like this hardware and I want its features (note that 64/12). I choose a model with 256GB SSD because it has 8GB RAM. I'm aware of numerous issues with Surface Pro 2 and Ubuntu [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183946](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183946) but I'm counting on 1) making it all work with community's support, as have some people in that thread 2) things improving in 14.04.

I would use it solely with Ubuntu, but I'm not sure whether I can make Ubuntu run in a usable state right away, so I might dual-boot.

What should I know beforehand about running Linux on UEFI computers before my Surface Pro 2 arrives?

</comment><comment><USER49> A lot of commentary here and in the article was worrying to me. Directly relevant since I bought a cheap (good value) Lenovo G510 laptop today that came with Win 8.1.

I didn't want to use Windows at all, just boot Clonezilla straightaway, clone the HDD and then install Debian. No go on booting from CD - "not allowed" due to the security setup. Ah, OK .. so it then boots Win 8.1 and I had to go through various Windows setups I wanted to avoid before rebooting and trying again.

It was then I had to figure out the BIOS side of things and saw it was all UEFI. I just turned it off and switched to "legacy" mode (BIOS legacy I assume) and disabled secure boot. Cloned the HDD, booted the Debian Testing CDROM and now have a "Jessie" install on it.

<comment><USER18> Lenovo laptops will boot the beta/new Clonezilla fine. Just disable Secure Boot. Debian will boot in about 5 seconds with UEFI and an SSD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> So, I have a Lenovo laptop, running dual boot (formerly Gentoo, now Ubuntu) with Windows on UEFI using rEFInd. Zero problems so far. Am I lucky or what?!

<comment><USER51> You are at least lucky that you didn't run into this issue [https://plus.google.com/+MarcMERLIN/posts/4RDPCGYCDWq](https://plus.google.com/+MarcMERLIN/posts/4RDPCGYCDWq) where booting linux on certain UEFI enabled Thinkpads would reproducibly brick the machine.

<comment><USER52> I have that machine, and I run Linux on it. His post was quite valuable, and that was obviously a bit of a horror on Lenovo's part, but it looks as if a subsequent BIOS update fixed it -- or at least I got a newer version of the BIOS than he refers to and I didn't get bricked.

The machine has a terrible single-button trackpad arrangement, but is otherwise fabulously good as a Linux development box.

(I do also run Windows, in a VM rather than dual-booting)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm still using a BIOS-based i7 system with a successful and stable triple- boot setup with XP (for some old music software), W7 (for games), and Linux (for work and everything else). It sounds from comments here I may be in for an adventure when I upgrade to a UEFI system, though the UEFI workstation I have at work seems to handle dual-booting fine.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't get how UEFI is still "getting the kinks worked out." Hasn't Apple been using it since they converted to Intel? How many years ago was that? How long does it take to "get the kinks worked out?" Or is this more of an issue between Windows / Linux implementations of UEFI support?

<comment><USER55> It's the classical problem of a standard that nobody actually follows. Every UEFI firmware that I have come across has behaved differently.

My current laptop has an UEFI implementation that only boots from a hardcoded path in the EFI partition. You guessed right, the path of the windows 8 bootloader.

The UEFI in my home server overwrites the UEFI boot manager list every time you save & exit the configuration tool.

If I remember correctly, the UEFI implementation of a MBP that my friend and I tried to make dual boot Ubuntu required a blessed HFS boot partition for every OS.

<comment><USER14> I'm really biased against Intel processors now because of this - I endure my distaste for how horribly documented and black box their parts are, but the fact their firmware for going on 6 generations has no documentation to enable coreboot on these boards drives me to AMD.

Yea, they don't open up all their stuff, but if you dig around you can usually find a board on most chipsets that works with coreboot. That gets my purchase. Plus they are doing good work with the radeonSI mesa driver, even if they still pack binary power firmware with it (I've read a few articles decompiling and inspecting it to know it is mostly just init command code to start the hardware).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I ran into this problem with an Acer laptop, somehow I got it working by disabling something in the bios (think legacy mode) then installed ubuntu from live cd and made that my boot loader. Ended up returning the laptop since I didn't like win8 and got a thinkpad T530 and mostly use ubuntu on it.

</comment><comment><USER57> No problems here, I just don't dual boot. I recently got a new machine at work and the first thing I did was wipe it and install Slackware. It was my maiden voyage with UEFI which was a pain in the ass but no big deal.

</comment><comment><USER58> I am forced to dual boot because my colleagues use Skype. Luckily, my laptop has a mSata slot , so a 128 Gb card dedicated to Linux. Never been an issue with dual booting my Thinkpad.

<comment><USER59> Skype is available on Linux. On Ubuntu, it's in the "partner" repo.

<comment><USER48> Yep, my only problem with Skype on Linux is that is an older version. Mumble taught me to use Push-to-talk, but it is only available on a newer version of Skype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Seems like a business opportunity: for companies to make their own linux friendly hardware ... or to modify existing laptops to be linux friendly.

</comment><comment><USER61> Restricted Boot has been worked around for some time with Shim.</comment>


A new comprehensive report shows how women in STEM face huge disadvantages - <AUTHOR> https://massivesci.com/articles/lancet-women-stem-inequality-sex-discrimination/ <comment><USER2> Not STEM, but rather science and medicine.

Instead of this clickbait article, how about linking to the actual Lancet issue: [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/vol393no1017...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/vol393no10171/PIIS0140-6736\(19\)X0006-9)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about we stop glorifying STEM careers and focus on ALL jobs. I'm in STEM, and it's not always a smooth road. For one, while STEM pays relatively well out of college, your salary and opportunities will often flatten out unless you go into management. IT "doesn't like old people"; I'm just the messenger. You also risk RSI injuries after years at the keyboard/mouse. And while IT has paid well for the last decade or so, I've seen two IT bubbles in my life, and thus a 3rd seems certainly possible. Demand changes.</comment>


Nuclear Fusion Could Rescue the Planet from Climate Catastrophe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-28/startups-take-aim-at-nuclear-fusion-energy-s-biggest-challenge <comment><USER2> Consuming less would definitely rescue the planet but everyone not having a 1.5 ton hunk of steel to ferry a 70kg person from robot to robot while throwing away 40% of food produced goes against our hardwiring of having more and more. instead we hold out for some unproven brilliant technical innovation to save us instead of thinking about using resources rationally.

<comment><USER3> Lots of mindsets to overcome, but I'm sure, sooner or later we will forced to get rid of automobile and completely relay on public transport. May be in 50 to 100 years, but there isn't any alternative.

<comment><USER4> Honesty question for everyone proposing bicycling and public transit: are these feasible in rural environments? (Especially WRT cycling if you have a disability or young children and/or have to commute long distances in very cold or very hot weather)

<comment><USER5> Bicycling and transit doesn't have to be feasible for everyone, it just has to be made an option for trips where it makes sense, which is most trips. Nearly half of trips in the US were under 3 miles, 72% of those where done in a car. 60% of trips under a mile were made in a car or truck (!). Accommodating all those trips requires a ton of pavement, parking, gas stations to be built.

[https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household- travel...](https://www.bikeleague.org/content/national-household-travel- survey-short-trips-analysis)

The vast majority of people making those trips are able-bodied people in urbanized areas (80% of the US lived in an urbanized area as of 2010).

[https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct- sta...](https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states)

So if you can get bike infrastructure to where people are living, you've attacked a big chunk of the auto problem.

Per your second point, yes, it can be feasible. The modern rural US is very sprawling in terms of the built environment but it wasn't always that way. Rural areas in the US used to revolve around small villages and points of density that service a wide area, complete with transit connections. Many German rural villages are extremely bikeable and have regular transit through their regions and to larger cities.

You still can accommodate people who need vehicles, just the demand on infrastructure (parking, number of lane miles, subsidies and costs) would be greatly reduced. As it is now, the children, the disabled, and frequently the poor can't drive themselves and rely on other people driving them. Cycling can be done by almost anyone, is much cheaper and therefore much more accessible than driving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nuclear fission could, obviously -- I've yet to see anybody propose a reasonable alternative (with a known tech, not just hypothetical handwaving) to cover our enormous energy needs -- and even then some work is needed to migrate direct fossil consumption to electric. Wind and solar consumes ridiculous amount of spaces and the storage is not solved (we need it for too for other purposes, maybe not in the same form, but that does not make the problem disappear for existing usages...). Without storage, it is not a solution (it does not prevent it from becoming one in the future, but we need to start to build things _now_ , while storage is being studied). Hydro is used already, and developing it to the max will not be enough. Nuclear fusion is not there yet.

So even with pervasive nuclear fission we would have a shitload of problem to solve, but at least that would be an immediate first step, and could be replaced _if_ we eventually figure out how to replace it. We haven't figured out that yet.

<comment><USER7> Storage isn't the problem. The problem is that the governments 'own' all the nuclear material and anybody operating a nuclear plant is utterly dependent on government actors to do something with the 'waste'. It is illegal if the plant operators went about fixing the problem on their own.

And since the government refuses to solve the problem or even really look deeply into solutions then it's not getting solved and it isn't ever going to get solved.

Because of this the solutions to recycle spent fuel is still in it's infancy. Nobody is allowed to do anything, the government isn't really interested in allowing nuclear power to be competitive, so it's just not happening. No money, no motivation.

People in the industry are not going to invest millions in developing these breeder reactors and other ways to recycle fuel if they will never be allowed to use them.

Theoretically you could recycle the fuel to the point to where most of it is spent and isn't much of a danger. Recycle the fuel 60 or a 100 times. Then mix it with clay and cook into into a ceramic so that they are safe to handle, transport, and store. Massively reduce the danger and radiation levels.

Despite all the talk and rhetoric about CO2 emmissions you see coming from the state the petroleum industry is still king. People inside and outside of government are making a lot of money and they have no interest in seeing that go away.

The dirty secret with things like solar and wind is that in order for them to work reliably they need to have large number of natural gas generators. Because of this and other issues they really pose little threat to total fossil fuel consumption.

<comment><USER8> Nicely said. That last point tells you why they get support from oil companies. It's empty climate signaling. I'd like to see an oil company bet on nuclear.

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that models show that with a large enough geographically diverse combination of wind and solar almost no storage is required. Furthermore, with the cost of HVDC transmission lines dropping so quickly it's becoming economic to build such large networks.

<comment><USER6> Models shows precisely the inverse at least in Europe (there is mostly no independent abundance of wind/solar, at least way not enough)

It even shows today with even quite small capacity disturbing market prices. That's why even "low" production costs can make wind not profitable; you end up selling your production with very low prices (because there is some overproduction), in some cases even negatives. You would not have that problem with storage. But then the production costs of wind+storage are already high...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Adding another voice to the chorus of fission works, people are irrational, etc.

If you say to me that science proves the world is in grave danger, _but_ we can't use nuclear fission because it is "dirty" or "dangerous" (or even better, "solving one thing doesn't matter because the real problem is our culture/capitalism"), I will immediately stop taking you seriously.

<comment><USER11> Maybe because TEPCO lies? And the history of other nuclear companies or agencies supposed to have fidelity to the public and not betray their trust is also poor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Successful large scale fusion energy is not enough. It must be cheap enough to replace hydrocarbons and be viable within reasonable time scale.

If the cost and time scale does not matter, fission is already good enough. People are just irrational and can't compare things. Fukushima type accident every few years would be completely acceptable and compared to coal and hydrocarbons.

<comment><USER13> > Fukushima type accident every few years would be completely acceptable and > compared to coal and hydrocarbons.

This is the most delusional thing I've ever read about nuclear feasibility. No country will ever accept more than one of those.

<comment><USER14> > No country will ever accept more than one of those.

And yet most countries accept death toll and land area denial orders of magnitude higher every single year to keep operating coal plants and ICEs. As a randomly sampled person, you are almost certainly going to live less because of the use of hydrocarbons and you are almost certainly completely unaffected by the use of nuclear power.

This is the same effect as car crashes being just a death toll yearly statistic that everyone accepts, meanwhile each individual plane crash is subjected to news theatrics despite flying being orders of magnitude safer than driving.

Australian mining industry destroys one of the natural wonders of the world spanning 344,400 square kilometres just while doing business as usual? Meh. Second worst nuclear disaster of all time results in 371 square km exclusion zone where people are still safe and wildlife is thriving and with 0 casualties? Stop everything. Ban nuclear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great. I hope they succeed, but the climate crisis isn't solely about emissions.

Yes it's the largest most immediate threat. But we will continue to have the dust bowl, ozone crisis, emissions crisis, microplastic crisis, etc. Unless we fundamentally address our relationship to this planet.

There's an incredible documentary that was way before it's time called "Who's Counting?" by Marilyn Waring. I think it addresses some of the fundamental causes of each crisis that comes up every so often. We're not accounting for the economic value or the "jobs of nature". We might not even be able to, because we really don't fully understand it.

</comment><comment><USER8> A new theory on fusion. It's actually a government organized strategy to keep nuclear scientists/engineers occupied on a sisyphean task that can never be completed. If they're hard at work on fusion, they're not taking payments from foreign governments to work on weapons or subs. It's pretty great because the cause is so high minded and noble that it can attract all the engineers and it's very difficult so it attracts the brightest too (those suckers are smart). Indeed, it's so difficult that they (the government non-proliferation people) may never have to think up a new way to keep the nuclear scientists occupied. US did something similar in the 90s after the Cold War by hiring/importing all the Soviet scientists, after WWII by hiring/importing German engineers. If you're working for us, you're not working for them.

At some point, maybe weapons engineers could start getting paid to just sit on their hands. Learn to make the bomb, get paid to not make it.

Is fusion a brain sink designed for non-proliferation? It's a pretty effective non-proliferation tool with total US fusion research at less than $1B/yr. Compared to a trillion dollar war or 10s of billions in monitoring etc.

<comment> V-2 That's a fun idea, but extraordinary theories require extraordinary (even if circumstantial) evidence.

<comment><USER8> The evidence is that 10s of 1000s of plasma physicists and nuclear scientists have fruitlessly consumed careers without any result since the 1970s. And, nuclear weapons and tech have not proliferated substantially.

<comment> V-2 This might point towards cold fusion being indeed a dead end, but not the existence of a conspiracy behind a "government organized strategy" you hypothesized. That's quite a leap.

By the way, the idea reminded me of "The Dead Past" by Asimov.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yup, as much as things like magic wand, warp drive, aliens or parallel worlds colonization, they all can save us.

How dare people say just limiting consumption and CO2 pollution could have any effect. Let's just bet everything on zero.

<comment><USER17> Of course, but in a world where, practically, we aren't and won't be able to reduce emissions in time, what do we do? All approaches need to be looked into simultaneously. And it seems like that might be the world we live in.

In many cases it may be far easier to get billions funneled to researchers and scientists for moonshot projects like this than to get world leaders to agree to and enforce billions/trillions of dollars' worth of emissions reductions.

As mentioned in other comments, even if the warming issue itself is solved "out-of-band", there are still lots of other issues associated with what's being released. But it's a start, and might be the difference between turmoil and utter catastrophe. Countless human and non-human animal lives could potentially be saved which might otherwise not be if moonshot projects like this didn't exist. Reducing suffering and death, for all time scales, is the only metric we should be optimizing for at the end of the day.

This problem has to be viewed in terms of what will actually help, not what we "should" be doing. I'd certainly wish the president of my country would sign the Paris Agreement; obviously, we should. But a scientist won't be able to influence that, and probably otherwise won't be able to have much impact lobbying politicians, so they need to find a way to help any way they can.

<comment><USER16> My point is, we are trying to get workaround for the impossibility of reaching consensus and absence of political will with some complex tech. Probably we'll manage to do it this time with fusion. But this is a dead end in the long run.

<comment><USER18> It's hard to see fusion as a dead end, when it could produce as much zero- emissions energy as we need, and last until the sun goes out.

I hope we do fix the political situation, but doing that may be harder than achieving fusion, so I wouldn't want to bet entirely on that. And even if we accomplish it, fusion could still make our task easier if it's cheap enough. There's no merit to making things harder than they need to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fusion is not necessary at all, thorium is a sufficent holy grail, currently underfunded because of humanity irrationallity.

<comment><USER20> Thorium also has its issues. Germany had a commercial reactor in the 80s, but it was abandoned.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300)

<comment><USER21> "Modern" Thorium designs (not really modern, but what people are talking about today) use liquid fuel, where as THTR-300 used pebble fuel. If you are comparing a uranium solid fuel reactor to a thorium solid fuel reactor, the differences are indeed marginal.

Most of the benefits people talk about with thorium are related to using a liquid fuel in the form of a molten salt (LFTR), which allows for things like continuous operation, 100% fuel utilization, and "meltdown-proof" designs.

<comment><USER22> The problem with nuclear is that people constantly talk about how designs that currently don't exist will solve all the problems. Cost overruns by nuclear power plants is primarily caused by the fact that almost every plant is redesigned from the ground up, yet somehow magically every project fails to consider these modern reactor designs.

<comment><USER21> LFTR designs currently do exist. There are a variety of reasons they haven't been built and used for large-scale energy production, some of them more conspiratorial than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Suspending disbelief for a moment:

Future perfect nuclear fusion helps us become carbon neutral. Transportation, structures, agriculture, power generation are now carbon free. Yay!

But it's still not enough.

Carbon is now being added by "natural" causes, in a positive feedback loop. Thawing tundra, burning forests, ocean acidification. With the imminent threat of the ocean burping up all that the frozen methane currently stored on its floor.

Whatever is needed for humanity to become carbon neutral, we need much more to become carbon negative, to remove carbon faster than nature adds it.

<comment><USER24> > Whatever is needed for humanity to become carbon neutral, we need much more > to become carbon negative, to remove carbon faster than nature adds it.

We have processes to do this, cheap electricity would really help there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Fusion will be available to all in 20 years."

Unfortunately, they've kept saying that every year since the 1950s. If it were truly possible, we'd be doing it already.

</comment><comment><USER20> Another article from five days ago:

Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy- nuclearpower/nucle...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy- nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report- idUSKBN1W909J)

Fusion is even further out than fission.

<comment><USER14> Fission isn't far out. Fission has been a readily available solution for decades. The only obstacle is political. The only reason fission is expensive is political.

As the climate situation worsens, more and more nations will overlook that obstacle and roll out large scale nuclear. The only question is, will they be able to do it quickly enough.

I feel like I'm the only person in the room missing something when watching the world focus on 'renewable' technology when a much less resource/labour intensive and much higher energy dense power source is already available. And it's safer too. [1]

Why is renewable in quotes? Because we don't actually have a way to recycle solar and wind installations[2][3]. Nuclear is the only currently available large scale power source that doesn't require a large and continuous supply of mined materials.

Am I missing something? Am I an idiot? Why is everyone so anti nuclear and pro 'renewable' when nuclear is significantly better by every objective metric? Looks like the 'ban plastic straws' activism which ignored that straws make up an insignificant fraction of ocean waste and the vast majority of it is discarded fishing equipment. Inconsequential feel-good activism is a higher priority goal than more difficult but effective solutions?

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys- deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#453cd006709b)

[2] [https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top- picks/critica...](https://recyclinginternational.com/editors-top- picks/critical-question-how-to-recycle-12-000-wind-turbines/26883/)

[3] [https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis- looms-a...](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/waste-crisis-looms-as- thousands-of-solar-panels-reach-end-of-life-20190112-p50qzd.html)

<comment><USER26> You're not the only one missing this. It seems very common to miss, but I can point out what you're missing.

Your link number 1 is supposed to support nuclear being safer than renewables, and it simply doesn't do that.

There's a few links that regularly get shared, intending to make that point and they all don't actually make it.

The list of things that nuclear is safer than, is notably missing grid scale wind and solar. What a mysterious ommision from something that is trying to argue they are not safe.

Having read your link 2 and 3, I see they also don't support the point you are making (the first describes how to recycle turbine blades into concrete and is looking for more applications, the second says solar panels are 90% recyclable and just wants some government policies to ensure this happens), which makes me wonder if you're arguing in good faith here?

<comment><USER14> How does the first link not demonstrate that nuclear, at 90 deaths per trillion kWh (and this includes all the deaths from the earliest incidents when humanity was just figuring out how to harness nuclear power), is not safer than wind at 150, solar at 440, or coal at 100k?

Are you disputing the article? My interpretation of it? The sources it cites? The error bounds on the estimates? What?

<comment><USER13> The deaths figure is not the whole story? The areas rendered uninhabitable matter as well.

<comment><USER27> Chernobyl is a wildlife haven. Its got one of the highest levels of biodiversity in Eastern Europe.

<comment><USER28> Yes, it's a wildlife haven because we decided to let animals instead of humans enjoy the tumors (see e.g. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994720/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994720/)). And it turns out that humans are even worse than nuclear fallout for wildlife. I'm not sure if that means that nuclear fallout is good. It most likely means simply that humans are bad.

<comment><USER14> What are you talking about? Not only is wildlife thriving there[1], there are multiple permanent human settlements in the area, a growing hospitality sector[2], and a booming tourism industry[3]. If you're looking at elevated frequency of minor abnormalities, you have a few hundred papers relating those to agriculture and mining to sift through.

You sound like you've watched too many Hollywood horror films. The only place to get a meaningful dose is inside the sarcophagus or to venture deep into buildings that contain dumped cleanup equipment. Both are fairly difficult to access to wildlife or civilians.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/wildlife-near-nuclear- reacto...](https://www.businessinsider.com/wildlife-near-nuclear-reactor- chernobyl-2016-4/?r=AU&IR=T)

[2] [https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g298058-d10...](https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g298058-d10441517-Reviews- Desyatka_Cafe-Chernobyl_Kiev_Oblast.html)

[3] [http://www.travelweekly.com.au/article/chernobyl-sees- touris...](http://www.travelweekly.com.au/article/chernobyl-sees-tourism-boom- thanks-to-tv-series-on-nuclear-disaster/)

<comment><USER28> It's not a contradiction that wildlife is thriving there, since, _as I pointed out_ , humans were even worse for the wildlife. That means obviously nothing for what effect it would have for humans themselves.

I'm in contact with people from our nuclear physics faculty that are doing actual research on this, I don't need to read random articles from your generic newspapers. If I need to know something, I can just go down the hall and ask them. That the exclusion zone still has significant hot spots is what they told me.

[EDIT: Your article [1] says basically the same things that I did, most notably the _" Nature flourishes when humans are removed from the equation, even after the world's worst nuclear accident"_ and _" The Chernobyl exclusion zone is still considered an unsafe region for humans due to the high levels of radiation"_. Thanks for that corroboration.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The real irony is if we truly did solve Global Warming, the propaganda machine would either decide we are creating carbon emissions from something else, or go create a new global crisis to panic about.

IE - the words will change, but the freak out will be the same.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well yes that would be great, fusion is the holy grail, but it is always 50 years away.

<comment><USER31> This attitude probably doesn't help it in securing funding. Not everything can be solved with more money, obviously, but if we were putting a fraction of the money into basic research that we are putting into the petroleum industry I'm pretty confident we would see that timeline jump very suddenly.

<comment><USER32> Check how much the fusion projects got in financing like ITER, Wendelstein 7-X and others received

The National Ignition Facility also got a lot of funding but it has goals beyond the study of fusion

<comment><USER31> It's a lot of money, I'll admit, but compared to the military budget it's chump change.

<comment><USER33> Sure but the military... works.

<comment><USER31> For certain definitions of "works"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The problem is that Nuclear Fusion is always 30 years away. It was 30 years away in the 1970s and it's still 30 years away today. Can't rely on a solution that would probably not be available in time.

<comment><USER35> First we must discover time travel.

<comment><USER36> The only good thing about time travel is that once we discover it we always had known it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Fusion or not, only an abundance of incredibly cheap clean energy is going to turn back the tide on CO2 and other pollutants, and who knows what problems that may bring.

</comment><comment><USER38> fission is already good enough. Let's just adopt and build safe designs at scale

<comment><USER8> are you investing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If it was that easy we would have built them already.

</comment><comment><USER8> Fusion is cool and it would be a very nice accomplishment for mankind. But it's kind of like going to the moon. The benefits will be offshoots of the journey rather than the journey and goal itself. Basically, if we want commercially viable and global use of fusion, someone needs to fix the problems below (talking here about D-T fusion designs and not aneutronic concepts). Not being negative, just pointing at the walls that need to be scaled.

1\. Cost. The big problem here is that fusion does not address the main impediment of current nuclear fission. It's going to be really expensive to build power plants that are about similarly sized to fission power plants and more complicated (ITER is $65B... other projects are in the $5B range). They will still be massive construction projects. Renewables have proven that you have to manufacture your power systems in factories to lower costs rapidly. At the end of the day, fusion is going to be construction with all its associated delays, cost overruns, and low productivity. Can't really fix this without going much smaller and simpler, and that's not really an option based on physical/engineering requirements.

2\. No current functional prototype. How long does it take from functional prototype to large-scale deployment, especially considering the massive regulatory overhaul required? eg. 50 years for aircraft? That might be fast enough.

3\. Lots of very difficult engineering to deal with all the neutron damage and extreme temperature gradients. Million degree plasmas, 600 degree coolants, -40 degree super magnets, all within a few meters = nightmare. It's quite a hassle, but there are lots of smart people working on this. Can probably throw more money at this.

4\. Not safer than fission. Yes, no long lived fission products for fusion and meltdowns are more difficult. But reactor damage and tritium release are probably more likely than in fission. Fusion power plant would be a lot more complex (more parts and systems) and has lots of tritium (tritium likes to escape from where you put it and diffuses through metals) with tritium processing facility to breed and fuel the reactor. Tritium has 10 year half life and not good for you when ingested. Essentially, lots of radioactive material handling + lots of equipment to maintain = higher chance of small accidents. See page 10 in link at bottom. Can probably throw more money at this.

5\. Proliferation. Fusion reactors have lots of neutrons and tritium. Neutrons can be used to breed weapons material simply by placing normal uranium or thorium in the neutron flux. Tritium is used to boost nuclear weapons (just a bit of tritium drastically lowers the plutonium required). Is the only we to solve this state controlled fusion power? How can that be market competitive?

6\. Probably only good for electrical power. While this is really just a limitation, it illustrates that fusion, should 1-5 be resolved, is not a magic bullet. You can't do much with it other than make electrical power. The power plants are too big to use for distributed process heat or hydrogen production.

Lidsky's often ignored 1984 paper: [http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trou...](http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/The-Trouble-With-Fusion_MIT_Tech_Review_1983.pdf)

<comment><USER39> > lots of tritium

I think (combined with the statement about hot things next to cold things) you're overestimating how much fuel there is in the plasma. It's density is about a million times less than air. In most other contexts, that's a very good vacuum. I don't think there are any consequences to a fuel leak, but I could be wrong.

The primary issue is neutron activation. The neutrons from the fusion reaction tends to make inert components of the machine radioactive. Again, short half- lifes, but a concern that needs to be mitigated.

<comment><USER18> In fact, the article quotes one of the fusion researchers saying if he stuck his arm in his 35 million degree plasma, he wouldn't even be burned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Let's just use whatever tech saved us from the climate catastrophe everyone was preaching was coming 20 years ago. Or the ones before that I heard tell of</comment>


The Future of Programming: Changing Technology's Easy; How People Think's Hard - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/TheFutureOfProgramming/ <comment><USER2> Discussion from 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129148)</comment>


YC: The new grad school - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattbrezina.com/blog/2011/04/yc-the-new-grad-school/ <comment><USER2> This is dubious; the whole "higher education vs. entrepreneurship" discourse is a false dichotomy. What has happened is that capitalism has degraded most peoples' perceptions of the goals of higher education: they think it is meant to give them skills for a job or something. Higher education is meant to transform the student's ability to think, such that they can contribute truly new knowledge to society. This often involves less than spectacular monetary compensation for long and painful hours.

The tension between the job training mission imposed by a capitalist society and the more traditional humanist "transformational" mission has watered down the educational system.

As someone who chose education for the sake of education with my eyes wide open and not expecting much in the way of dollars afterward, I applaud the decisions of entrepreneurs to recognize the mission confusion of colleges and simply leave.

Institutions should be like UNIX programs: they should do one thing and do it well. I think that it would be in everyone's best interest to pull job training right out of colleges and use the YC model.

<comment><USER3> While I would never have called YC the new grad school myself, I think you have a mistakenly utopian view of the origins of western higher education. The "traditional" idea of a liberal education you're describing is largely a creation of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally higher education was about training priests, lawyers, and doctors.

As learning became more prestigious, rich kids started going to universities as well. They were not there for vocational training. But they were the newcomers. The original model of university student was the one Westfall described in his excellent biography of Newton: "a plodding group, narrowly vocational in outlook, lower-class youths grimly intent on ecclesiastical preferment as the means to advancement."

If anyone wants to learn more about the origins of universities, I'd recommend Haskins's _Rise of the Universities_.

<comment><USER4> Off-topic, but how do you always know the best books for each historical topic? I've tried looking for books on specific topics but there seems to be no good way of finding the gems (amazon and other recommendation sites of its ilk have not yielded any successes for me).

Also, how do I know which books are most accurate? Looking at current political or biographical books, I see how slanted almost all books are because I have many other sources to go on and the relevant context to judge a book's accuracy. But all of this context is missing for historical books so I have no way of judging how biased or inaccurate they are.

What if I were learning history from the equivalent of a Glenn Beck?

<comment><USER3> It's somewhat of an illusion. I only know the best books about subjects I understand fairly well, and I also try only to comment about subjects I understand.

Interesting question how to tell whether you're reading a biased account. It would take an essay to answer that. After you know some history, you can tell because biases causes their owners to make mistakes. But there's probably also internal evidence too. Never seeming surprised would be a bad sign, for example.

<comment><USER5> "After you know some history, you can tell because biases causes their owners to make mistakes."

The catch--

"History is a set of lies agreed upon" - Napoleon Bonaparte

The whole "after you know some history" demands a framework of a macrocosm to which one must depend entirely upon second-hand, at best, accounts. The glue that holds it all together is so tied to so many handles for bias both at the hands of the proxy observers as well as within the very bonding agents in the mind of the aggregator that the whole enterprise is rife with corruptive feedback potential that the anomalies that can be conclusively nailed as bona fide mistakes tend to be, for the most part, minimally useful for bias detection that tells you something you didn't already have a rather high certainty of.

<comment><USER4> _The glue that holds it all together is so tied to so many handles for bias both at the hands of the proxy observers as well as within the very bonding agents in the mind of the aggregator that the whole enterprise is rife with corruptive feedback potential that the anomalies that can be conclusively nailed as bona fide mistakes tend to be, for the most part, minimally useful for bias detection that tells you something you didn't already have a rather high certainty of._

wat.

Seriously, it took me something like 4 minutes to understand what you wrote there. Maybe I'm just tired.

<comment><USER5> No. I was tired. Hence my failure to properly punctuate and clearly enunciate.

My apologies, to all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If YC is grad school, then Hacker News is on-line university.

The links to good articles are the curriculum.

The links to good references are the text books.

The debates and discussions are the study groups.

The "Ask HN" posts are the mentorships.

The projects we push each other to do are independent studies.

The community is my adult fraternity.

I've been here 4 years - I oughta try to get my diploma.

[Aside: Kinda ironic that your blog banner has a picture of my graduate school. The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Business was in the 42 story Cathedral of Learning (the tall building on the right) where we took higher education quite literally.]

<comment><USER7> If YC is a grad school, then doing a startup is a way to learn and graduate. Hanging around on HN should be viewed as entertainment. That's at least my experience (I have been on HN for the past 3.5+ years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the past grad students gave us : -> Relational databases -> Polynomial time deterministic algorithms for testing primality -> Shannon's masters thesis etc. etc.

I still don't believe that Google itself could have produced so excellent a product outside an environment that a top graduate school offers.

The concept of advancing the boundaries of the field is noble - the idea of making $$ out of it should hardly be the motivation IMO.

</comment><comment><USER9> * The practicum is launching your first product.

* The Tuesday dinners are the weekly lectures.

* The coursework is Hacker News.

* Your fraternity brothers are the YC alums

* And unlike contributions to your university's general fund – when you invest in Y Combinator you get a return.

Wow!

<comment><USER10> And $150K is your student loan (at least for the new enrollments)

If it's not a gift and you haven't earned it, it's a loan.

<comment><USER11> Convertible notes are a type of loan -- doesnt have anything to do with "earning it"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a pretty good characterization.

In CS at least, YC is very similar.

In both, most students don't pay to attend.

In both, most students get some funding -- a small amount of pocket change to buy ramen.

In both you'll work heads down in a way you've likely never done before, nor will do after.

In both your output, will hopefully, have you set for life.

In both you're surrounded by some of the best talent you'll likely see again doing the same thing you're doing.

Just about the only major difference is coursework (HN is really isn't equivalent). Of course, I've probably made some big assumptions and missed things having never gone through YC, but my short take.

<comment><USER13> I really enjoy your rational comments when it comes to this whole higher education vs. dropout ("uncollege") debate, which seems to have engulfed HN lately. Thanks for being a voice of reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From an outsider - I feel the parallels are closer to being punched into an elite Finals Club than a grad school.

The alumni network is smaller and likely more powerful.

Admittance into the club will carry more weight in future endeavors.

A very small percentage of hopefuls are accepted.

This isn't meant to be negative - I just feel it is a more apt comparison.

</comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps a new _business_ school...certainly not all of grad education.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll argue that the most important part of grad school is/was the people. And that is the element YC nailed for me.

I also had to teach myself a bunch of technical stuff to get xobni off the ground. Unlike grad courses this stuff was practical by definition.

For me YC and YC alums more closely fit the profile of an engineering grad program than a MBA program.

<comment><USER15> Are we talking about masters or PhD version of grad school? I could buy it for a masters-replacement. But an engineering PhD is supposed to be _producing_ new basic technology, not _learning_ existing technology, and ideally producing new technology that requires multi-year research to produce.

That's also possible to do in a more innovation/research-focused startup (biotech does this all the time), but it's not particularly common in tech startups afaik, mostly because "multi-year research 'til product" is not what investors want to hear.

Granted, the results are not always amazing in grad-school either, but quite a bit of basic research in PLs, systems, algorithms, etc. does come out of PhD theses. Could you really do something like Okasaki's "Purely Functional Data Structures" within the YC program?

Graham himself is actually doing an outside-of-academia version of PLs research with Arc. But most of the YC companies don't seem to be embarking on Arc-type projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> apologies in advance for the self-post, but i wrote a somewhat-related article a few years ago about how the grad school research world can actually be similar to the start-up world, even though they seem like polar opposites at first glance: <http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/research-and-startup.htm>

<comment><USER17> thanks for sharing the link. nicely written article. apart from "formulating", "executing", and "selling" i would like to add two more steps in the beginning "survey" and "identify open problems". i would say in startup world also survey (competitive research) and "open problems" (novelty) are important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "And unlike contributions to your university's general fund – when you invest in Y Combinator you get a return"

Interesting concept. Why _aren't_ there schools who teach a specific job, which don't take money, but instead take a percentage of salary from the students for some fixed time? That way they have incentive to be good teachers.

<comment><USER19> Because Stanford can charge a huge tuition and _still_ get incredible endowments from alumn.

<comment><USER20> I wonder to what extent will programs like YC be funded by "donation" investments in the future? You only need a few Herokus to make enough successful founders for quite an "alumni" investment fund...and unlike my college alumni progam, few alumni would argue about "how their money is being spent". The only real problem I see in this is that it scales exponentially faster than PG is able to scale the number of companies he advises - but that might be solvable by, say, reducing the return of "donation" investments to make them more like pure "donations".

Just like regular colleges, you can focus on alumni while still taking money and guidance from other interested organizations (like Sequoia) for the benefit of the participants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting. I'm curious as to how you would get into this grad school as a single founder?

It was easy for me to get into grad school (I'm there now), but without a co- founder, I feel as though it would be very difficult to get into YCombinator, and I'll most likely meet my future co-founder here at grad school.

</comment><comment><USER22> aaahhhhh you guys are going collectively insane.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have to agree with you regarding the way everything is going. Grad school is a very common for everyone to have so being part of something like YC or TS is just another avenue to expand your education in exchange for a piece of equity.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, well, the University of Maryland hates you too.

But, good article.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha - it wasn't all bad. Just nothing, i repeat nothing like my experience with YC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> sidenote: went to penn state... lives in SF ... has Pitt's cathedral of learning as header??

</comment><comment><USER26> in practicum, YC may be simliar to CS but in theory, i doubt it gets anywhere near the breadth or the depth of a CS grad school curriculum

</comment><comment><USER27> Something, the new something unrelated.</comment>


How to recognize what is burning in server room - <AUTHOR> http://serverfault.com/questions/496139/something-is-burning-in-the-server-room-how-can-i-quickly-identify-what-it-is

<comment><USER2> dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5497253></comment>