MacLight: Ambient Arduino Lighting For Your Mac - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/12/12/maclight-ambient-arduino-lighting-for-your-mac/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=MacLight%3A%20Ambient%20Arduino%20Lighting%20For%20Your%20Mac&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> I wonder if this scales up to extra-large screens.

I've got a 120+" projector screen that I use via Mac & Plex. I'd love to mount some LEDs behind the screen.

Guess we'll have to wait for GitHub to come back online before checking out the specs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I made this. Just so you don't get your hopes up, this hasn't been 'released' as such, it was made to work for me as a learning project. That said, if there's interest I'll tidy it up and post a tutorial.

GitHub only contains a Mac application and an Arduino sketch. Both of those will be fine with your screen. Hardware-wise I've used a ULN2003 array (very simple and inexpensive chip) to power the LEDs from the Arduino. You should be able to do the same as I did, but just with more LEDs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see a parts-list and build instructions (for dummies).

</comment><comment><USER4> Why isn't this a commercial product?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.philips.co.uk/c/televisions/33092/cat/#/overview></comment></comment>


Hercules: CI for Nix users in development - <AUTHOR> https://hercules-ci.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

Domen Kožar and I (Robert Hensing) are working on a brand new Continuous Integration service for Nix users.

Some distinguishing features:

* First class integration with Nix

* Host build agents where you want

* Free plan for open source

We would love to hear your thoughts!</comment>


Google's AMP is a gilded cage - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-amp/ <comment><USER5> I did a technical review of what I felt were the major pros/cons of implementing AMP pages:

[http://blog.robertelder.org/adding-support-for-amp- pages/](http://blog.robertelder.org/adding-support-for-amp-pages/)

Edit: To save you a click, here are some of the key points:

\- You can't use Javascript on AMP pages, but you can put Javascript in iframes or substitute the javascript feature for an existing amp-component.

\- AMP pages require that Javascript is enabled.

\- In order for pages to pass AMP validation you must include the "[https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"](https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js") script on AMP pages. Furthermore, I believe you are required to hotlink to the ampproject version as I have been unable to pass validation with a locally served copy of these scripts.

\- You can't use inline 'style="..."' tags

\- AMP uses inline 'style="..."' tags on rendered markup

\- External stylesheets are not allowed

\- You will likely want to maintain a separate AMP view and a non-amp version of your pages.

\- The DOM structure of AMP pages will be slightly different than for desktop pages.

I wouldn't say that I like AMP, but since the world is going mobile I figured I should try to become and early adopter for AMP. In a way, I kind of hope that the AMP projects gets abandoned, but if that happens then I'll have wasted a bunch of time adopting it.

<comment><USER6> Have you looked at and 'reviewed' alternatives, such as Facebook Instant Articles or Apple News Format?

Why is passing validation an important thing for AMP? The main complaint I hear about it is the AMP CDN, where Google caches and hosts your page for you. If you're failing validation then they wouldn't do this, right? So you get the advantages of a fast page without the disadvantage of Google reposting your content.

<comment><USER7> The main advantage of validation is prioritisation in Google's search results, the AMP logo next to your search result on Google (which for most Google users has come to mean "fast"), and the extra speed-up of Google's CDN.

<comment><USER6> Herein lies the 'confusion' with AMP - its actually two completely different things:

\- news distribution platform

\- framework and guidelines for making fast webpages

If you want Google to distribute and prioritise your content, you'll have to play by their rules, just in the same way if you want Apple's help as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AMP is the result of webmasters being unable to provide any kind of reasonable site performance. Which isn't hard. Don't include content from dozens or hundreds of thirdparty hosts. Don't do crazy amounts of super slow javascript.

If people would do that there would be no need for AMP. The whole concept is mostly "Google tells people their webpages suck and puts them into a cage where they can guarantee that they don't suck".

<comment><USER9> It's worth pointing out, though, that the source of a lot of this performance drain is ads. And Google are the main provider of ads across the internet.

To me, AMP feels like a method for Google to sidestep the real issue at hand.

<comment><USER10> Are google ads that slow? When I look at the dozens of requests issued by slow sites, I don't see google domains. I see every other fucking tracker, suggester, sharer, and optimizer, but not google.

<comment><USER11> Ah, but just because you see Google ads, it doesn't mean that was all the website tried to serve.

They probably ran a waterfall, asking AppNexus, Pubmatic, TradeDesk and 40 other ad providers for an ad at $5, $2, $1, etc. before giving up and serving a Google ad...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't help but feel AMP is a step in the wrong direction and was quite possibly a disingenuous play from Google from the get-go.

URL highjacking is harmful for the web and I can't for the life of me understand how this project could get past the initial stages without that drawback being understood.

<comment><USER13> In a world where CloudFlare MITM is so openly embraced, I'm not surprised at all that AMP is at least somewhat popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think everyone is missing the point of AMP. Google could have just as easily SEO punished slow sites and had the same effect as amp. If a site was slow you wouldn't see it in search results anyway. Nothing inherent in AMP makes the web any faster than an optimized site.

The whole point of AMP is so that nobody ever really leaves Google. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve, and it's pretty fucking obvious with how the AMP UI is setup. People are saying "oh it's okay they'll change the UI when they improve AMP, V2". I doubt it, the UI was built the way it is intentionally to see if they can get away with it. "making the web faster" is just their marketing to get everyone to buy in.

Look, Google made my phone and my web browser. They are my main source of email, news, videos, and content. I spend most of my day using google devices and Google software on Google sites. Now google wants to host every site in the search results for "speed". Seem like a disturbing pattern? The internet needs to push back or be owned by Google. AMP has gone too far.

<comment><USER15> I am concerned with how they have "nudged" sites to use AMP with the consequence being worse mobile rankings combined with them essentially getting final say around who gets to be an ad partner that is white listed.

As an example of where this is concerning...look at the importance of the GDN and other exchange inventory to Google. Now look at FB trying to grow its offsite presence with Facebook Audience Network. Hmmm...doesn't seem to be supported by AMP tags. Interesting.

It also looks like it severely hinders analytics efforts for everyone but Google due to the JS limitations.

As a business move it is fascinating to wTch this play out. However I really do worry about how much control Google is trying to exert here...it is rather unprecedented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a user, I can't stand amp -- issues are 1.) no link to original site. 2.) top banner plague 3.) weird smooth scrolling that messes with my muscle memory.

There are two workarounds to avoid amp all together: 1.) use DDG and prefix all queries with "!g" or 2.) visit encrypted.google.com that does not use amp.

Given that I tend to stay on a page for 2-10 minutes, shaving off 1sec is less than 0.8% improvement. This is not worth it given the horrible drawbacks and UX.

<comment><USER17> >2.) top banner plague

the top banner is something that Google adds, and isn't, strictly speaking, part of AMP.

<comment><USER18> Is there any use of AMP which isn't driven by Google? I've never seen it referenced except in Google search results.

<comment><USER17> Well, you can access the AMP version of the page from anywhere, not just Google search results. I could see apps that use an in-app browser serving the AMP version of a page, instead of the full version, for instance. I guess we'll see?

<comment><USER18> I'm aware that it's technically possible but was realizing that, as a fairly active mobile web user, I had never noticed AMP in use except for Google search results.

<comment><USER17> i could see other apps that use a native browser preferring the AMP version. something like yelp, that lets you click through to the source page, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow this is crazy. I remember PayPal used to freeze your account when they detect a pattern they're not familiar with, and make you send a fax of your identity and all the documents and you wouldn't be able to touch your own money for a while.

This feels like a website version of that same bullshit process.

More and more I don't like how these "open" projects are coming from some of the largest companies. It's a huge conflict of interest, and people should know more about this.

It's important to realize that: The primary goal of Google AMP and the friends is NOT to make the web better and faster.

It's to become the AT&T/Verizon/Comcast of the content distribution. Facebook (Facebook Instant) and Google (AMP) and Apple (Apple News) want to own the low stack distribution channels as well as the application level (facebook.com, google.com, iOS devices) If one of these companies manage to control that level of the stack, they can use that as their huge advantage in competing with others.

</comment><comment><USER20> AMP is of course mostly meant for articles - but we wanted to see how it did for complex(er) layouts. Had a weekend hackathon to recode our main one-pager for performance and SEO recently + we also did an AMP version of the page at [http://pag.es](http://pag.es)

The AMP version of the site is (as expected) not as performant as our custom optimised one. AMP version will load 1.2MB+ of data with 28+ requests, while ours makes due with half of that and 0.6MB with 17 requests. Some of that is due to AMP components that could be a bit more optimised (like we have a hidden youtube video that launches on click - and the youtube AMP component will load all of it dependencies on first start which is not ideal - <USER2> custom version does this when the user clicks/launches the video).

However - the new site release did wonders for SEO. Its probably not all due to just having an AMP version, but also just having a good mobile/optimised site - we still landed on 1./2./3\. google search page results for some fairly generic terms. Really surprised us - kind of shocking actually, especially since we did little with the page before and didn't have that many inbound links, etc...

<comment><USER21> Comparing cold loading doesn't seem appropriate - one of the points of AMP is requiring you to hotlink to their specific resources, so as to benefit fully from cache, as more website get AMP'ed.

<comment><USER20> Sure it does - even if you totally ignore the fact that the same AMP page is loading quite a bit of JS, that its almost double the size and double the number of requests - you're assuming that all requests are cached and thats not correct.

For the Youtube AMP component alone some of those requests are "no-cache" cookie/ads/other types + if nothing else, its also loading the video cover image i.e. effectively starting the video iframe in the background.

Which is as mentioned not ideal since the video is in a hidden inline popup thats used only by 40% of the visitors. Our main page loads and executes all of this on click/user-interaction first so ideally I'd like to be able to set how this behaves in an AMP component too. If that loads from cache afterwards - even better. But it shouldn't upfront and I can't influence it easily.

BTW fun fact - all popups/galleries/sliders/menus/animations on the page are done without JavaScript - none whatsoever (excluding pre-loading large images). They use clever new CSS techniques instead. Just for fun - we tried to go completely JS-free, but Youtube/iframe was the only problem because it was preloading everything on start (and we tried various hacks from various nested display:none; stuff to switching iframes for objects, etc.). Plus/minus Google Analytics of course.

So its quite a contrast - on one hand going JS-free, but then on another loading an insane amount of JS for the AMPed version :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> AMP is yet another good idea that Google didn't test properly or think through. As far as I can see, you can't click through to the actual page from an AMP page, which sucks if you want to share the link or something.

<comment><USER23> > AMP is yet another good idea

Can you explain why AMP is a good idea? I still don't really understand it, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER24> Serving everything from one hostname means (i) you don't get 20 DNS lookups to serve a page, one of which might hang up for 5 seconds; (ii) you can use a protocol like http/2 to avoid TCP and SSL renegotiations; (iii) you can stop people from loading up pages with 20MB of Javascript.

There is no doubt that AMP is fast.

The other angle is how it reinforces Google's position for advertising, analytics, search, video and such. On one hand you could say it is "evil" because they are a monopolist, but the status quo is so bad when ad networks are weighing you down with multiple tracking pixels, malware service, etc.

<comment><USER23> I guess my question then becomes "why does this require AMP?". I mean, I can build a site using standard technologies that doesn't perform 20 DNS lookups or require 20MB of javascript to display. I can do it with 0B Javascript if you _really_ want. Is AMP really about encouraging best practises rather than introducing some new revolutionary technology?

<comment><USER25> AMP allows google to prefetch and pre-render AMP content before a user clicks given it can ensure the content does not do malicious things because the AMP format is tightly controlled. The end result is that when clicking on an AMP result, it loads instantly.

<comment><USER18> Prefetching is possible using standard web technologies and that improves the security footing since it follows the normal browser origin policies.

The actual reason for AMP is that it gives Google control: the good side of that is that companies have an outside check on performance — think about how many companies exist where internal politics means that "this will hurt SEO" will be listened to but "this page is too heavy" coming from inside will be ignored — and the bad side is that anyone who adopts it is binding their technical capabilities closely to Google's decisions.

<comment><USER25> Pre rendering is not possible on iOS Safari and pre fetching is dangerous given you don't know if the origin can support it or not.

AMP is faster than the alternative.

<comment><USER18> > pre fetching is dangerous given you don't know if the origin can support it > or not.

That's not true unless your site already has a huge exposed vulnerability. It's also irrelevant to the discussion of how a search engine could provide an opt-in feature which you could choose to enable.

> AMP is faster than the alternative.

Do you have any data to support that assertion? Remember, you're replying to a thread about possible standards-based alternatives but Google has never implemented that, so we all we can say is that AMP is faster than not doing anything at all. We don't have any data saying that the solution to web performance problems is a bunch of proprietary markup and JavaScript. I've certainly found AMP to be slower as often as it is faster, because the proprietary markup means you have a bunch of resource requests which will be delayed until ~125KB of JavaScript loads and executes whereas a standard <img> tag would have started the same transfer without that delay (see e.g. [https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=161129_X...](https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=161129_XR_YEQ,161129_GZ_YEC) where the non-AMP version starts rendering over a second faster on an iPhone 6 over LTE).

As an example of how this could be different, imagine if Google simply started aggressively using measured page-load times and transfer size with the same weight they currently give to AMP, giving all publishers the same incentive to reduce things like the massive amount of ad-related JavaScript they traditionally serve, and started serving rel=dns-prefetch/preconnect/preload hints for the top-n search results (or on mouse hover states, etc.). That might not be quite as fast as the best-case for AMP but I suspect it would rapidly get into the territory where the user benefit is diminishing compared to the benefits of not dictating a restricted tech stack.

That last part is pretty important because AMP is not without cost: it breaks the sharing UX on mobile devices, desktop users get a mobile-optimized page which isn't as good for their devices, and most importantly it limits you to the subset of functionality which they choose to implement. It seems risky to push everyone towards a single company's view of how the web should work rather than allowing independent experimentation and optimization for different types of content and users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> AMP should be an optimization for browsers that support it, that way:

1\. They don't have to hijack the URL. I understand the technical reasons for this, but it's unforgivable.

2\. Browsers can provide an easy way to view the original/full content.

3\. Users can easily disable AMP in their browser if they want.

<comment><USER27> It's not like Google particularly cares for 1. I still get a ridiculous Google-redirector URL when copying a link from the search results that has enough entropy to uniquely identify every single atom in the universe 2^128 times over.

Despite showing the correct link in the status bar. It's a scummy dark pattern that needs to die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> @edent - what web server are you using? I wouldn't bother with any Wordpress plugins, but if you're using Apache or something you should be able to `mod_rewrite` pages ending in `/amp` to the same page minus the `/amp`, which _should_ work right? Hopefully then Google will notice the 301s and catch up.

Posting this here because in the comments on the blog post he asked for any code that might help with that, I think something like:

`RewriteRule (.+)/amp/$ $1`

might work

<comment><USER29> Thank you for that. Not to seem ungrateful, but I'm wary of pasting "might work" code onto my blog.

What if it goes wrong? What if it has unexpected side effects? What if Google crawls it and makes things worse?

There are currently 3 variants of the above posted in the comments. I've no idea which to choose...

I guess I'll try and hope that it doesn't make things worse :-)

<comment><USER28> It's a very understandable worry :) Writing rules that when they fail just go into server error logs is sub-optimal at best. The real solution would be Google allowing per-site AMP de-registration, but that's a fantasy I bet.

This is a good article on Apache URL rewriting, if you want to go down that path: [https://24ways.org/2013/url-rewriting-for-the- fearful/](https://24ways.org/2013/url-rewriting-for-the-fearful/)

I believe in your use case you want to transform `all/urls/of/any/sort/that/end/in/amp/` and simply redirect to everything minus the `/amp/`, so the rewrite rule shouldn't be too bad to write (and test).

I wouldn't use the "might work" in my comment since I wrote it without even seeing if the regex works, but if you get an Apache test domain running off your blog you can test the redirect rules in isolation before putting them on your blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Earlier this year I spent some time moving my blog to AMP and so far I'm pretty happy with the move. It's hosted on GitHub pages and I made the decision to go full AMP (including Desktop so I never went the /amp/ subfolder route) and allowed me to convert every existing page to AMP without having to have a new set of URLs.

It's noticeably faster but there are a few hiccups I had to deal with - <USER3> needs to be in isolated iframes and getting Disqus comments took a bit of time but in my case the performance benefit outweighs it. At the same time I could just simplified my design without going full AMP and it probably would have been just as quick. The biggest frustration is that if you make any CSS changes it has to rebuild every single page since the style needs to be declared inline rather than as a link to a CSS file.

For those interested: [http://dangoldin.com/](http://dangoldin.com/)

<comment><USER31> I don't know what you did there, but it takes about 8 seconds on my desktop before it displays _anything_. Talk about "accelerated".

Edit: I checked with the Developer Tools, but I have no idea what is going on there. Assets are fully loaded within 500 ms, and then it just sits there for another 7.5 s before rendering anything at all. (I will note that cdn.ampproject.org is blocked by default in my uMatrix.)

<comment><USER32> Does it get faster when you don't block it?

<comment><USER31> Apparently yes. (Not on the same machine, but I just checked on my work notebook where I have uBlock rather than uMatrix, and cdn.ampproject.org is let through.)

<comment><USER30> Ah interesting. Thanks for bringing this up. I use uBlock but didn't have any issues rendering it. Since I don't really care about the SEO/Google hosting it it might make sense to just link to my own locally hosted version to avoid the adblocking block.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This experience basically ruined mobile Google for me and caused me to switch my entire search engine to avoid it.

It is completely wrong to optimize for viewing while breaking expectations for anything else. COPYING THE URL is very frequently the next thing I want to do, and AMP destroys this. For example, when looking up recipes, I often create a multi-device-sync note containing the URL, where I add a shopping list and whatever other notes I want to make; it makes no sense to be forced to copy a mobile-only, Google-domain link for almost every search result when next time I might be opening the page from my desktop machine!

Another major problem is that the _only_ indication of this hijack is a little lightning-bolt and "AMP" next to certain links. I guarantee _most_ users don't know what that even means so problems will be blamed on "the site I clicked" and not "Google".

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems like a mixed blessing for users. I just started too realize that I'm getting links like

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/06/germany- extend-nuclear-power-stations?client=safari)

from Google. Sites load fast and webmasters seem to like it (1), but I think it's a terrible user experience if you want to share the link etc. Apparently, Google will address this someday (2).

Regarding the issue mentioned here, of course Google can't give direct support to all webmasters. But in my experience, the Webmaster forum is a great place to get help as it is full of smart users (and Googlers). Then I would say that, as I used to work for Google.

(1) [http://digiday.com/publishers/publishers-excited-google- amp-...](http://digiday.com/publishers/publishers-excited-google-amp-traffic- wonder-revenue-will-follow/)

(2) [https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disable-amp- feedback-221...](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disable-amp- feedback-22173.html)

(3) [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters)

<comment><USER35> What is the problem with sharing an amp link?

<comment><USER34> looks ugly, you cannot see where the link goes to on sites that shorten links (e.g. Hacker News), and the link may break eventually, e.g. if Google decides to change/ discontinue the service.

<comment><USER36>
      > the link may break eventually

Or, more likely, _Google_ may _break the link_ eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a developer type, I don't like AMP for a variety of reasons. As mobile browser user...

Webmasters: you had your chance and you blew it. Your website is completely unusable on my phone. AMP exists because of your indifference and incompetence.

<comment><USER38> I feel exactly the opposite as a browser user.

AMP breaks the back button and makes it so I can't swipe to navigate back. It puts google.com in the address bar so that I can't easily copy the link and paste it to someone else. It puts a permanent, excessively tall border on top of every page that I can't get rid of, making the usable viewing area much much smaller. (Oh and that X button that looks like it would close it? That takes you _back_ to the search results. Figure that one out.) It breaks nearly every convention my device has for webpages and is totally nonstandard.

I really really wish google gave a way to disable AMP links in their results but they don't listen to people like me.

<comment><USER39> I realised reading these comments that I've never actually seen an AMP page in search results.

Somebody mentioned that if you use duckduckgo and prefix your search with "!g" (to search on Google), you don't get AMP results. That's what I do, so I guess it's working for me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This thing breaks the internet hard. What is the meaning of an URL now?

<comment><USER36> It's one of those long weird words that you see sometimes when you don't Google for GMail like what you ought to.

Honestly, it's only a matter of time before we start getting proprietary locators again. Remember print and TV adverts plastered with AOL Keywords?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Amp is like the Roach Motel, "they check in - but they don't check out".

</comment><comment><USER42> Disclosure: I work at Google. Opinions are my own.

I'm surprised when I read discussions about AMP on HN (typically carrying a negative tone regarding AMP) without anyone mentioning an obvious competing concept: Facebook Instant Articles.

Here is an excerpt from Facebook's FAQ on instant articles:

> Rather than loading an article using a web browser, which takes over 8 > seconds on average, Instant Articles load using the same fast tools we use > to load photos and videos in the Facebook app

Facebook has drawn a line around the open web and stamped it as slow compared to Facebook's proprietary content delivery system. If nothing else, AMP is a timely wakeup call for content publishers: if you like the open web, better start producing content that loads quickly on a phone over a 3G network. Otherwise, we will incrementally lose openness at the behest of users who will demand the superior experience of channels like Facebook Instant Articles.

<comment><USER14> Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP? I mean with AMP I'm literally browsing a site hosted at Google with a Google top bar on my page. If a user hits the 'x' on my page it takes them back to google.

AMP is a competitor of instant articles rather than the 'cure'.

If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow sites. I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

<comment><USER42> > Isn't google drawing it's own line around the open web with AMP?

Yes, I mean, AMP isn't the solution I might build independently. But, it is built on standard, open web platform features. You can render an AMP article from any source in a manner of your choosing, using the features available in a web browser.

> If google really cared that much about speed they would just punish slow > sites.

They have started doing this as well, I believe, by rewarding sites that are optimized for mobile devices.

> I see amp as a land grab in cute packaging.

There is a land grab taking place, whether AMP exists or not. The territory at stake is the growing mindshare of users who browse published content (sometimes exclusively) on mobile devices. I would personally love to see a more open movement than AMP or Facebook Instant Articles participating, but I would take AMP over Instant Articles without much consideration.

<comment><USER12> > But, it is built on standard, open web platform features.

\- url highjacking isn't standard, or open, or a feature.

\- forcing javascript to load from a specific domain is not standard either.

<comment><USER42> Let's not conflate the text/HTML-based syntax and the distribution channel implemented by Google. You can render an AMP document with your own implementation of the AMP custom elements. Can I do anything remotely similar with Instant Articles?

<comment><USER14> The problem is that for amp pages to work with Google search, which everyone uses, it needs to use Google's flavor.

Google should just stop pretending that AMP is any different than fb instant articles. Yeah it gives you more syntactical freedom and you can run some scripts in iframes, the lock in factor is the same.

Not sure why it matters that the scripts are hosted by Google, you can easily add hashes to external scripts to guarantee they haven't been altered.

Yes it's more open than fb instant articles but both act to build a fence around open web

<comment><USER42> That's all totally fair. But in my original comment, I tried to center my observation on how Facebook has threatened the openness of the web with a proprietary alternative. Is it even possible for Google to deliver the same features without drawing a line around something? If so, how does that hypothetical thing differ from AMP?

<comment><USER14> Probably not. It's just the marketing that gets me. Google should say "use AMP, a Google alternative to fb instant articles!" Not "use amp it will make your site faster!" Which isn't true.

Worse is that users will start associating the amp icon with fast sites, forcing everyone to start using amp or suffer lower conversions even if their normal site is just as fast or faster. This is because google forces amp sites to be fast, but doesn't punish slow sites in their other search results. Suddenly this amp thing starts to look less innocent.

There is absolutely nothing stopping google from putting an icon next to fast sites that don't use amp. They used slow sites as an artificial crisis to market a fence they're building around the open web.

Pretty dark for the "don't be evil" google. Facebook isn't doing anything better but at least their platform doesn't pollute search engine results

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The criticism on AMP is imo absolutely justified, but for the current case: Couldn't you at least solve the broken link by redirecting the AMP url to your actual page?

Taking this a step further, you could serve a minimal AMP page that contains just a link back to your original page.

</comment><comment><USER44> All the discussions focus on AMP in isolation, but I keep wondering - is AMP just a knee-jerk reaction to the utter absurdity of current bloat proliferation on webpages, or is it a part of a bigger idea for reshaping the web? If it is the latter, I'd love to learn what the idea is, so it can be discussed in full.

</comment><comment><USER45> This post seems to conflate two ideas (1) AMP being an insufficient implementation (update-ping not working, and that being an awkward pattern anyways) and (2) AMP being actively harmful to the web ecosystem _in principle._

(1) Comments on the implementation I don't know nearly enough to contest. It's a new technology, and will take a lot of changes in and out of Google to get right. It's also early days - continue raising a stink about things like this and I expect it to get better quick.

(2) The principle of AMP leads to a very interesting discussion. The fact that the top-level URL users go to is not the canonical URL for the page does stray into "breaking the web" territory, at least until it's better supported in browsers. On the other hand, as I understand it that's a technical requirement for AMP to be able to verify the content served through it, which is a requirement in turn for keeping AMP page quality high (in terms of latency, etc, rather than content judgements). Which I think is the most enticing part of AMP, and not something that should be given up lightly.

I see AMP as a possible answer to the tragedy-of-the-commons problems that have resulted from standardizing on third party display ads for monetization, third party scripts for analytics, etc. Giving someone else a hook into your page that _isn 't_ incentivized to keep it fast and reliable leads to an end state where publishers have no reason to clean up the experience on their own sites because that'd cost them money, and because the bad experience on _every other site_ prevents them from being commensurately rewarded for being a good player. (E.g. adblockers affect every site equally). And the third party tech providers have no incentive to fix things for similar reasons - <USER4> providers out there would cause the same poor user experiences anyways, and make more money from doing so and enabling them to sell to publishers better. If we cannot rely on principled actions from publishers or tech providers, how does the experience of the web get better enough broadly?

AMP to me is an answer to that - maybe not the best answer, but the most viable one I've seen so far. It allows for direct control of what is/isn't possible, and if it gains traction may have enough clout to push for some of those better experiences that aren't arising naturally.

The other possible answers I see don't seem to be working better. Relying on regulation seems destined to failure; user experience is too messy to craft rules around, and nobody is placed to enforce them globally. Relying on common gatekeepers seems to be failing - Google algorithm changes worked for a while to incentivize page quality, but I don't think Facebook is (or should?) making equivalent judgements about the quality of content users link to for ranking purposes, and it seems even harder to enforce in other direct-user-sharing sites like Twitter.

[Edit] Disclaimer: I work for Google, in Technical Infrastructure. I used to be in Ads, though not related to AMP.

<comment><USER46> Although in theory AMP makes sense, I think the issue is actually more broad than just mobile. On desktop, lots of people rely on an ad blocker to make sites usable again. That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, Apple and other players to allow extensions.

Google has a majority share of the first impression for ads so it's hard for me to really understand how they can't just strong arm other advertisers and other networks into having better ads. Maybe that's the AMP play but it's a pretty weak appeal to consumers and (as evident from this thread) publishers. Ad blockers proliferating are a response to this inaction in my mind.

<comment><USER45> > That mobile doesn't have a way to block ads is probably a failure of Google, > Apple and other players to allow extensions.

To be honest, I see this as short-term painful, long-term desirable. Ad blockers make the incentives of the web worse - they mean that publishers get punished for bad behaviour of _other_ sites. Whereas without, users make more direct value judgements...if your site is covered in ads and a terrible experience, I'll stop visiting it. (I'd accept arguments that 100% ad blocker adoption could push us to a better place so we should let this run its course instead, but when I think it through I think it more likely pushes towards walled gardens and the death of the open web, so I'm skeptical.)

To your second point, I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm other ad networks, and that'd be a really dangerous thing for Google to consider doing anyways. Publishers are often struggling right now (especially newspapers), and so revenue is their only thought. They'll go with whoever brings in the most money, because otherwise hastens the death of their company. This is why I like the AMP argument - it isn't _forcing_ anyone, but it makes the argument that "if users can expect a good experience, you'll make more money, in spite of not being able to be as free with the technologies you jam onto the page". Yes, it's a weaker appeal, but that's what I like about it...because it has to be predicated on _actually working better_ , rather than about pushing people around.

<comment><USER47> > I don't think that Google has the power you think it does to strong-arm > other ad networks

Not strong arm per se, but just having _any_ built in enforcement of technical standards built into DFP would solve the lionshare of the problem. At the moment, publishers have to play whack-a-mole with poorly-built creatives.

IAB's LEAN standard would be a fine place to start. (To your point about not pushing people around, I agree, we should be talking about performance as an industry standard, like viewability or HTTPS.)

<comment><USER45> The catch here is that if DFP were to enforce technical standards to the extent of including performance, publishers would leave en masse. What they want from DFP (as I understand it) is hosting that just works; they don't want anyone in the way causing some ad campaigns to not get trafficked at the right time, or killed after serving for a while, or anything else. And worse, I think that you'd find that a very large number of ads wouldn't comply with any such standard - display ads aren't good, by and large. So even with a perfect offering publishers would look at the numbers and say "you know what, nevermind...turn the crappy ads back on." A pretty good approximation for publishers I've found was to say "if you give them a knob between anything and revenue, they'll turn it towards revenue." That by and large includes sacrificing user-first principles.

So one difference to your example is that viewability is desired - it's a direct metric that helps to approximate value, which advertisers like. But performance is not. Users cannot generally tell _which_ ad made their browser lag, or that it wasn't the page's fault. The best you could possibly do is to measure long-term-value, but because any given publisher only gets a tiny fraction of a user's time, and any single ad that much less, my recollection is that the LTV isn't really moved at all regardless of experience. It's going to take an industry-wide shift to move the needle here.

HTTPS is a closer comparison, except that it takes big parties again to force the issue - it's user positive but revenue negative and lots of work. So it comes back to the issue of who can get this change pushed through, without some party (pubs, advertiser, or users) just walking away. Look at examples of where/why HTTPS has been adopted if you want to see more.

AMP _may_ get to that point, we'll see, but I like it as a possibility. And it's doing more to simply not show ads if they're taking too many resources (with browser assistance iirc? Delay loading? Don't recall what I've read), which is good in other ways.

Which reminds me, that's another plausible solution that I'm liking...if browsers can be more involved in aborting rendering bad iframe'd content, or preventing them from janking the page, etc, then the burden is squarely on the advertisers to fix or suffer reduced impact, irrespective of publisher/ad network. That's great, it puts the incentives cleanly where they should be. So I'm also hopeful that browsers can push through positive results here. Doesn't help with content badness (only latency and other such browser-measurable "bad ad" issues), but is a great starting place. (And to be fair, I don't think AMP solves for content badness either).

<comment><USER47> That's interesting. I've been working on the publisher side for a long time, and we definitely want technical enforcement. (The devil is in the details. It'd be dumb to automatically block an ad that's 5kb too heavy, but if something is never going to serve because it has mixed content warnings, I'd rather it get switched off and flagged to staff automatically. Otherwise it just wastes inventory until a person notices it.) I can talk in more detail over email if you're interested.

The browser approach is a good idea. It wouldn't even have to break anything, just limit their allotted resources.

<comment><USER46> I hate to +1 these things but I have had similar experiences with 0 control over the ads that were showing up on a platform. It was a single page app and performance was a huge deal. Often ads didn't even load because of the quality.

Maybe it shouldn't be DFP forcing things as I said, but I think if the controls even existed for publishers it might mean that they tune things to be pleasant for their users such that they get more impressions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Has anyone else struggled with getting to the original page/article in Chrome? If anything, this is my biggest gripe.

</comment><comment><USER49> Google just place the opt-out for AMP search results in the search settings - thank you.

<comment><USER50> > Google just place the opt-out for AMP search results in the search settings > - thank you.

Which means it's unavailable to people who use anonymous browsing.

AMP should be opt-in only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Slightly off topic, but does anyone else have trouble loading AMP pages on their iPhone Safari browser? Almost any AMP page I try to load is blank with a banner on top containing the address of the page, and then my only solution is to load the desktop version to see the page.

<comment><USER52> Content blocker problem? They load fine on my iPhone, but if you're blocking the AMP JS library you may have problems.</comment></comment>


Google Account log in requires youtube.com access. Why? - <AUTHOR> https://gae123.com/article/google-accounts-youtube <comment><USER2> Single sign on to set cookie</comment>


What JS devs seem to care about - <AUTHOR> http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/what-js-devs-seem-to-care-about/ <comment><USER2> The thing that strikes me, as an outsider, about the JS community is that most of their arguments and discussions tend to revolve around specific tools or libraries (Knockout vs. Backbone, for example), rather than around concepts.

As a result, many of the JS devs _that I have worked with_ are good at using these tools, but are often deficient in knowledge of general good software development techniques. This includes testing, writing readable and maintainable code, design patterns, architectural principles, etc.

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. This has been my experience only.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Millisecond performance differences_

I guess that's what happens when you have a community where a substantial part believe JavaScript is 'close to the metal'

<comment><USER4> Do they really ? And why the heck would they believe that ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought the article was just going to be two words: "associative arrays".

Instead it was about scene garbage that self-described "ninjas" blather about.</comment>


Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://derrenbrownart.com/blog/2009/08/scientific-speed-reading-read-300-faster-20-minutes/ <comment><USER2> For a long time I was really into the idea of speed reading, and I worked through one of the original books on it:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/073520019X>

After a lot of practice I ultimately came to the conclusion that it doesn't really work. I could 'read' the pages really fast, but it's not what I'd call reading. It's skimming. Sure, the speed of fixation and regressions limit your theoretical maximum reading speed, but — for me at least — the real bottleneck was how fast I could understand what I was reading. You may be able to look at 10 pages of words per minute, but understanding 10 pages of material per minute just doesn't really work.

Another thing I learned is that there's no good metric for what constitutes 'retention'. It's usually measured by making a list of how many 'things' you can remember from what you read. It's arguable whether remembering a list of words from what you've read relates in any meaningful way to whether you comprehended what you read. Having the word 'scientific' in the title of the article is misleading at best.

<comment><USER3> _After a lot of practice I ultimately came to the conclusion that it doesn't really work. I could 'read' the pages really fast, but it's not what I'd call reading. It's skimming._

I believe this was shown in a study where experimenters gave reading selections to self-proclaimed speed-readers without telling them that the text was actually two separate texts mixed together (i.e. so that line 1 was from book A, line 2 was from book B, line 3 from book A, and so on). The idea being, of course, to see if they could really comprehend what they were reading, since the fact that this was a jumbled mess would be apparent to any careful reader within seconds.

Of course, the punchline is that none of the speed-readers even noticed it, which should give some indication as to the level of comprehension that can be achieved via speed-reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was just at my friendly public library, and saw this Woody Allen quotation about speed-reading:

"I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

Any claim that a method of speed-reading is scientific should trigger interest in testing how scientifically the reading speed and comprehension was measured.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

But for this claim here, maybe we can go right to the conclusion of the expanded blog post

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed- readin...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and- accelerated-learning/)

to see that the claim is bogus:

"Final recommendations: If used for study, it is recommended that you not read 3 assignments in the time it would take you to read one, but rather, read the same assignment 3 times for exposure and recall improvement, depending on relevancy to testing."

On my part, I'd rather read three different writings about the same subject, rather than the same writing three times, if I'm studying to thoroughly learn a new subject. And I do that just fine with my current reading speed, which allows me time to THINK as I read. (I did a lot of study of speed-reading techniques when I was an undergraduate student, but ultimately concluded that they get Woody-Allen-style results, and that other techniques for improved studying work better.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Read slower.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_reading>

</comment><comment><USER6> The bottleneck when I read is not the time it takes to recognize the words, but the time to understand the ideas and relate them to my experience. It can cost me an hour to read a page of a computer science research paper involving enough mathematics.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, reading papers with math gets a lot faster as you get used to the conventions. It used to take me almost a whole day to digest a single math or CS paper in a field I was familiar with, but now I can get through a couple in an afternoon, provided that I am not interrupted.

The "chunking" that you develop is like that in chess, or programming for that matter. This seems to be one of the primary reasons why journals will reject papers with unconventional notation. Unfortunately, the notation doesn't seem to stay uniform across disciplines (math <-> physics) or even languages (english <-> french) even when using the same mathematical structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The actual article is here: [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed- readin...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and- accelerated-learning/)

<comment><USER9> I don't actually think the two are exactly the same. Tim's blog talks about how to read faster by increasing various parameters of conventional reading. On the other hand, the article (mainly the video) talks about how to turn off one particular mechanism (vocal cord) and utilize another (visual perception). Both seems very nice techniques to try :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, I studied speed reading a lot and you'll read 1000 words/minute by using this method, but how will this method affect your memory? I remember scientists suggesting to use multi sense while studying, so I wonder if this method is actually cutting one sense.

Some speed readers are also suggesting to read the stuff one more time with the time saved, but I don't see how this is smarter than going deep the first time.

<comment><USER11> Several study's have shown you remember more with speed reading. Up to the point where you are skipping content. The advantage seems to be pre-filtering the useless content which let's you focus on the important details. You can also make connections between larger sections of the text because it's fresher in your memory.

<comment><USER12> What are the names of the studies that demonstrate that?

<comment><USER11> Honestly, this is not my areas of research. My mother, who as a PHD in education was vary clear on the point. Going from 100 WPM vs 400-500 WPM increased average retention.

Maximum retention for history textbooks where people who skimmed the topic, speed read the subject text, and then skimmed over it again. Slowing down was not useful for retention but re reading even if skimming was useful. If you are interested there was a fair amount of research into this in the 60's and 70's but, it's an outdated topic and I can't find anything on Google.

PS: I only learned this when asking for advice on how to study history textbooks in collage. It's apparently a large and complex topic, but most of the research is fairly old.

Edit:2 "Slow reading as a problem for learners has been defined by Brown & Hirst (1983:140) as a "weakness independent of the purpose of reading", involving the processing of information at such a slow rate that the reader is unable to hold enough detail in short-term memory to permit decoding of the overall message of the text" <http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/bell/article.pdf>.

Background Studies on that link has an overview.

<comment><USER13> does 400wpm really count as speed reading? christ. much slower than that and you are moving your lips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _It was tested with speakers of five languages, and even dyslexics were conditioned to read technical material at more than 3,000 words-per-minute (wpm), or 10 pages per minute. One page every 6 seconds_

Do we even need to officially call "bullshit" when Tim Ferriss posts something, or is it just assumed now?

If you read 10 pages of technical material per minute, you will not have anywhere _near_ as good an understanding of it as someone who read it slowly and carefully. Reading dense technical material at this rate is almost completely worthless (perhaps even worse than worthless, because there is a non-zero probability of the reader fooling himself into thinking he actually does understand it)

</comment><comment><USER14> I speed read the Tribes book by Seth Godin. That was my first ever speed- reading attempt, and i have to say, it was rather exhausting, even though i got through the book in just a few hours.

On the other hand, when ive used techniques from "How to read a book", the process has been much slower but i've felt ive gotten a lot more from the book on first read without having to go back a number of times. Its a pretty difficult artform though.

<comment><USER15> Great suggestion. I just added "How to read a book" to my books to read list.

<comment><USER16> It is a great book, with a very disciplined method of reading. It makes reading take too long though, and you'll get frustrated with how little books you've read and start skipping steps and adapt your own reading method.

Well, that's what I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> But really, is it a _good_ thing that you can read "For Whom The Bell Tolls" in 25 minutes? Do you really get the same benefit and enjoyment out of the book from reading it that fast that I do when I soak it in over the span of a week?

I read for pleasure, not for speed. I'll sometimes re-read a section of good literature several times just to appreciate the turn of phrase. Scanning the entire page in 5 seconds would completely remove that experience. It'd be like swallowing a bar of 70% cocoa Spanish artisan chocolate in three bites. Why would you do that?

So yeah, while I can appreciate that there are cases where you'd just want to skim through something as quickly as possible to suck in some information, I think I'll pass. Increasing my reading speed would actually lessen the enjoyment I get from reading.

</comment><comment><USER18> Generally,the more worthwhile something is, the less we gain from skimming it.

Not that I thought that thermodynamics text was worthwhile.

On the other hand, skimming will sometimes get you to the good stuff. In the case of Anathem, about 150 pages of skimming.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a fascinating visual example of a conversation I had with my wife the other day. She referred to an "inner narrator", when reading, and was very confused when I didn't understand what she meant. Apparently I've always done this and never realized others didn't.

Note: I don't consider myself to be a "speed reader" by any stretch. I seem to read about 50% faster than my wife if we're scrolling through text on a page (judging by how often she complains I need to slow down ;), but I have no idea how either of us compares to "average"

<comment><USER20> I also do this naturally. I call it "reading a movie" and it works best for: fiction, computer stuff, and to a lesser extend where I already have some knowledge. It also works when I'm not tired. When I start 'reading words' (your wife's inner narrator), I have to give up and stop for a while. When reading new and difficult stuff I'll usually read each chunk[1] twice, once for the words and once for the picture. This seems to be the best. I do notice that I have an above average reading retention in my peer group, but at a conceptual level. I am absolutely terrible at quoting, since the ideas are transferred, not words.

Does the your experience match mine?

[1] The groupings can be a couple sentences or a couple of paragraphs per chunk, depending on how unfamiliar I am with the topic.

<comment><USER21> I also don't subvocalise when reading (repeating aeiou or 1234 to myself when reading didn't slow me down at all), but I also don't form movies, or even static images, when reading. I actually have no ability to visualise at all, despite the claims in many medical textbooks that such ability is essential. The first source I ever found that took this seriously was an Oliver Sachs article in the New Yorker a few years back on on visual imagery in the blind, where he revealed that he also has no "inner eye": http:://www.truncheon.net/newyorker/20030728_sacks.html - scroll to "visual imagery in the sighted"

I've also found that my retention is entirely conceptual — I soak up ideas, but rarely remember the details. I never remember quotes, and with fiction I often can't even remember the names of the main characters. I don't really read much fiction, though. I particularly dislike books that go into huge depth of description: like Tolkien who couldn't even mention walking past a tree without taking 3 pages to describe it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hm. I found it far more efficient to trim what you read instead of trying to read faster.

At first, filtering at a paragraph level is something I found myself to do. Usually, I just read the first few words of the sentences in the paragraph (most of the time even just some sentences in the paragraph) until I mostly see what the purpose of the paragraph is about ("Ah, he is telling me about injective", for example). Once I know this, I either skip the entire paragraph or read it slower and deeper.

Second, it is sometimes a good idea to rather start in the middle of something and read to the end, just backpatching from the first chapters whatever you still need. This works well if you are reading papers about things you are familiar with. You usually just don't need those 12 definitions again, and again, and again. I think, this is also what Knuth referred to as 'batch reading' of papers (and it being much more efficient).

</comment><comment><USER23> Since when does my larynx do a goddamn thing when I read silently?

</comment><comment><USER24> According to "Reading rate: a review of research and theory" by Ronald P. Carver, speed reading (not to be confused with mere skimming) doesn't work.

See: [http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Rate-Review-Research- Theory/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Rate-Review-Research- Theory/dp/012162420X)</comment>


Spotify Play Button - <AUTHOR> https://developer.spotify.com/technologies/spotify-play-button/

<comment><USER2> Works horribly.

I'm used to:

        1. Click "Play"
        2. Hear music

Now, I get:

        1. Click "Play"
        2. Get to a screen that tells me to download Spotify

<comment><USER3> Rdio offers a 30 second clip before asking you to sign up for sign in.

<http://blog.rdio.com/us/2010/10/now-live-embedding-rdio.html>

This isn't a totally open, perfect tool, but Spotify is constrained by the major labels it works with, and I think its good to see them pushing out beyond Facebook.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, neither rdio's or Spotify's embed works for iDevices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If devs/bloggers start using these everywhere it means people like me in Canada (and other countries where Spotify is not available) won't be able to hear any music on the web. Soundcloud wins here for me - they may not have a huge major label catalog, but they don't have the restrictive licensing problems that Spotify has.

<comment><USER6> Soundcloud is greatly preferred for the stuff that's on Soundcloud. This is not for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh Cool!!! .. a button that works only in 13 countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> By making their content embeddable, Spotify is finnally filling the gap between them and other Flash-based competitors like Youtube/Deezer/SoundCloud. They are really prooving that the old Desktop App vs Browser Apps schism is no longer valid. Does anyone with a non-premium Spotify account can confirm they still have ads using the embeddable play button ?

<comment><USER9> Why wouldn't ads play? Isn't it just telling the spotify app to play a song?

<comment><USER8> Yes I'm thinking it's the way it should work, but having a premium account I can't check how they implemented it, e.g. does the embedded cover is replaced by a ad banner?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since I moved to Belgium I have being using Spotify again. But It's getting annoying the loads of ads per song played. So, I think I will go back to use Grooveshark on a daily basis. I refuse to pay a premium Spotify at the moment.

I suppose It is gonna be the same for this "Spotify Play Button" button, tons of ads and less music.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great, it means I can run a music blog without breaking any laws because without illegally uploaded the tracks to soundcloud / blogger / tumblr.

It also means that you could rigup a Spotify powered muxtape.

Now if only we had a Web API for adding tracks to playlists etc

<comment><USER12> it also means your blog is useless to any people who aren't in a country that has permission to access spotify.

<comment><USER13> Which sucks, but how do you accomplish this legally?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Spotify desktop client is running a server and the play button acts as a remote. It's using regular get requests and seems to require a CORS-compatible browser. It's the same as typing a Spotify URI in your address bar. I think that means non premium users will have ads.

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone should do this with the itunes affiliate API and let people make money as well.

I'm doubtful this will take over the current YouTube/SoundCloud/Grooveshark embeds.

<comment><USER8> If you have a Spotify player opened the user experience of the play button is similar if not better than a Youtube widget (music does not stop if you close your browser).

<comment><USER9> The experience isn't better, in fact I'd say it's worse since I'm missing the video and I have to have spotify open AND the song has to be available on spotify.

It also makes no sense for the person embedding this to choose this over YouTube.

Makes more sense as an alternative/backup option for those who do have spotify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also important to note - every user that has Spotify open and running is also a node on their P2P CDN. Hugely valuable asset

<comment><USER5> i hope you are one and the same person - otherwise someone is a copycat. <https://twitter.com/#!/jherskowitz/status/190046053389697024>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can you play songs without a Spotify account?

<comment><USER16> No: it doesn't even seem to play back embedded in the page. It _launches_ Spotify and then starts playing the selected track. If you don't have Spotify you're prompted to download it.

<comment><USER15> OK so it's basically the same as on Facebook then. Not very exciting...

<comment><USER17> You actually need a Facebook account to use Spotify. Not very exciting at all.

<comment><USER18> I use Spotify without a Facebook account. You have the option of logging in with your Facebook account, or creating a Spotify account.

<comment><USER19> It's no longer possible to create a Spotify account, you have to login using a Facebook account.

<comment><USER17> Now that's just messed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how they plan to recoup royalty losses from this? Is this just a marketing investment?

<comment><USER21> It's simply a remote control for the spotify app. They're repaying royalties using subscription payers and ad plays.</comment></comment>


QML support for the Go language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/niemeyer/qml <comment><USER2> If you're familiar with Windows MinGW development and would like to help this project, _please_ write up detailed instructions which cover the installation of this project's Windows prerequisites as well as compiling the sparkle QML example and submit said instructions to the project's maintainer. Several people have spent hours trying to set up MinGW/Qt/Glib when using the existing Windows setup instructions as found on the project page. The issues with Windows installation have been recorded in the project's newsgroup:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/go- qml/s3nPxytmXwk](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/go-qml/s3nPxytmXwk) [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/go- qml/x6b6lvd83aU](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/go-qml/x6b6lvd83aU)

Also, a tutorial which walks through QML's native controls would help speed adoption. Below is a great tutorial on Tk which could serve as a template for someone with the time and energy to evangelize go-qml:

[http://www.tkdocs.com/tutorial/index.html](http://www.tkdocs.com/tutorial/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would've backed Ubuntu Edge if I knew this existed back then. Being able to use Go for mobile dev would be so fun.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if this qualifies, but you can develop Go programs for yourself on Android by targeting arm (CGO_ENABLED=0 GOARCH=arm) and running the binary in "Terminal IDE" ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside)).

Of course, I've only done this with pure Go command line applications. Although I can't seem to get anything that requires DNS to work yet.

Plus there's goandroid ([https://github.com/eliasnaur/goandroid](https://github.com/eliasnaur/goandroid)) which some people like.

<comment><USER5> Can you make Android apps with this and distribute them, or is it just dicking around with a phone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Been wanting something like this. Thx!!

</comment><comment><USER7> earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412409)</comment>


How to Compete - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-compete/ <comment><USER2> Scratch the fact that your company is smaller and has an even smaller budget. Focus on solving a problem and creating something that people want, in the way that they want it. And success will come. Anyone and any company can conpete if given the correct platform in which to do so. Eventhough they may be extremely large, have deep pockets, and even deeper connections, even the "Big Boys", skip a beat sometimes. The larger you are, the more greedy you may become, and the less focus you put on the consumer's needs, and your original business model. And when that ball is dropped, and that opportunity presents itself, that's when your small company with a strong foundation will be able to swoop in, offer the consumer exactly what they want, and how they want it, and become a viable competitor in your market.</comment>


Chrome "Back" bug breaks HTTP content negotiation; marked WontFix for 1+ years - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=94369

<comment><AUTHOR> It's very troubling, because the decoupling of resources from their representations is so core to HTTP.

A year ago, the maintainers defended Chrome's behavior as consistent with Firefox, and vaguely as consistent with the spec. Since then, more complaints have piled up and those original defenses have been deconstructed (Firefox no longer exhibits this spec-breaking behavior, multiple unmet sections of the spec have been cited). But for the last 9 months, the maintainers have not said a thing, despite doing various house-cleaning chores on the bug report itself.

One can't help but wonder if there's some ulterior motive for ignoring the community and keeping the WontFix status, though nothing obvious comes to mind... The impact this could have and the way they've handled this is reminiscent of how the downfall of a different browser began.

<comment><USER2> I havent looked at the source code, but it might be a difficult overhaul to fix this issue. There is plenty of theories floating around on how to fix this, but they seem to be pure speculation.

I dont think you can compare this to the downfall of IE, since you yourself could pull the chromium code and fix the issue yourself.... When i see some actual real code fixes in the comments, and the Chromium team STILL hasnt fixed this bug, then i'll call shenanigans.

Until then, everyone in that thread needs to submit patches or GTFO.

If its so easy to fix in theory, then why dont I see someone just submiting a patch, or forking Chromium w/ the correct behavior?

I think its stubborn of them to leave the issue as "WONTFIX" but people whining about it without real-world code example fixes isnt really any more useful.

<comment><USER3> Nobody wants to spend time researching other people's code and writing a patch only to see that effort go to waste. In this case, the fact that the bug is closed and marked as WONTFIX is a strong indication that patches would not be accepted. Before people can get to code, the maintainers would at least have to say "we've only marked this as WONTFIX because we don't have the resources to deal with this, but we'd actually like to see this fixed if someone else provided a patch". But they haven't said that.</comment></comment></comment>


OfferLetter.io helps you get what you're worth. Free for Microsoft employees - <AUTHOR> http://offerletter.io/blog/201410-freemsft.html

<comment><USER2> HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8437470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8437470)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a backstory here on some Microsoft issues I might have missed?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin- rowefinkbeiner/thank-y...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin- rowefinkbeiner/thank-you-mr-satya-nadell_b_5979000.html)</comment></comment>


Sublime Package Control – a Sublime Text 2 Package Manager - <AUTHOR> http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control# <comment><USER2> If this could become the centralized way to handle packages for Sublime Text like npm has become for Node I think it would be a big step forwards towards Sublime Text replacing TextMate.

Maybe I've just not kept up to date with what goes on with TextMate but to my knowledge there is nothing like this for TextMate and looking for packages for TextMate always becomes a googling quest for me.

Now of course, with TextMate, there's hundreds of packages doing more or less the same thing to different authors tastes, if the same thing happens with Sublime Text, there would need to be some sort of filtering in this package manager?

<comment><USER3> For package management in TextMate I use GetBundles (not to be confused with GetBundle). It looks for bundles in not only the official TextMate bundle directory but also on GitHub, and it allows searching in the list. However, it only handles bundles - not color themes or plugins.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=GetBundles+TextMate>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This package manager has almost single handedly converted me to a Sublime Text 2 user. The simplicity of adding packages is a huge convenience of having to track down and install TextMate bundles or plugins for any other editor.

Huge win for Sublime.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone have suggestions for helpful packages? I'm currently using Sublimelinter ( <https://github.com/Kronuz/SublimeLinter> ), but that's it, would love to know about more.

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anything changed since the last time this was discussed on HN?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2887974>

I'm surprised Sublime Text 2 doesn't have its own official plugin repository. Glad to see the community is filling in the gaps.

<comment><USER7> There have been some updates, including support for utilizing git and hg to update packages that were cloned. This is pretty useful when hacking on a package or customizing it. There are also a bunch more packages in the default channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Textmate users never learn? - "Yay let's use another proprietary editor as our most important tool" :-/

<comment><USER9> I don't care. And neither should any other programmer. If ST2 is going to be abandonware a few years down the line like Textmate is right now, that doesn't matter at all to me. $60 for a piece of software that I spend 1500+ hours a year working from is a steal. If it gives me a 5% performance boost, I'll gladly take the afternoon and convert to it, whether it's open source or proprietary.

I currently use vim & MacVim for all my programming needs, because I'm at my peak of programming performance while using them. With the very quick turn- around on ST2's builds, and tons of features coming out every month, I'm strongly reconsidering a switch. Knowing vim is still invaluable knowledge for general sysops, but like I said, I'd gladly give it up in daily usage for something better.</comment></comment>


The Growing Trend of No-Tech - <AUTHOR> http://skim.me/home/2012/10/10/the-growing-trend-of-no-tech/

<comment><USER2> I'm waiting for the carrier-tracking paranoia to collide with the no-tech fad. All kinds of hipsters will cancel their mobile internet plans and live off wifi.

(I've been wifi-only for more than 6 months. With wifi everywhere, I'm only without internet in some grocery and clothing stores. I've saved around $500 from this, and my 2-year old Incredible lasts more than 48 hours on a charge. I rarely voice-chat with others so GrooVe IP works well for free.)

<comment><USER3> Except companies like Sprint force you to get a data plan with new phones. So you don't really get to choose to go Wifi only.

<comment><USER2> Let's break apart these misconceptions:

1\. You can buy phones from retailers who aren't carriers.

2\. You can buy phones from carriers without signing up for a contract. If Sprint won't sell what you want to buy, then goto Verizon or another who will.

3\. You don't need a phone to go wifi-only. This would work with almost any internet device, including tablets and laptops. The concept is the same.

<comment><USER3> Sure, it's possible but not convenient. Obviously phone carries do not want you to do this and are going to do anything they can to lock you into plans. Their current fear is being a 'dumb pipe' for wireless internet. This next level we're talking about basically makes them obsolete once wifi his a certain saturation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing OpenCellular: An open source wireless access platform - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/1754757044806180/introducing-opencellular-an-open-source-wireless-access-platform <comment><USER2> The obvious question is "what about licensing"?

The modules will need to pass EMC Compliance testing and be issued Compliance Certificates (expensive!).

A suitable Cell frequency plan will need to be created, approved by the local government, and then (expensive!) Radio Licenses issued.

Licensing as a Carrier and approval to connect with the local Telcom provider will need to be arranged, along with the (expensive!) registration fees.

Then when you have it running you'll suddenly run into interference problems from all the unlicensed boxes already installed by well meaning NGO's and private organisations. Not to mention clashes with networks in neighboring countries.

Bottom line: It's not as simple as just mounting radio box on a post and switching it on.

Open Source phone towers are not a new concept. Has been already done in a number of third world and island states. But without government licensing and approval to back you up, a bunch of soldiers will arrive and simply rip out your gear.

The above questions/comments are based on actual field experience in third world countries...

<comment><USER3> Honest question, what are the purposes of these licenses/fees other than to take money from citizens? If a village in the middle of nowhere builds this infrastructure to serve their own community what could go wrong without licensing?

<comment><USER4> The spectrum is a public good, and it is scarce. License fees benefit the public.

Of course, content providers and infrastructure providers do not buy licenses altruistically.

I think we're seeing Facebook being willing to invest in tech and potentially license fees _because_ the ROI of having Facebook in a village can be estimated and offering this hardware looks like a worthwhile investment.

While this sounds like a cynical perspective, it is not. Suppose a typical company would analyze the ROI and conclude that if the payout doesn't happen in 2 years it is not worth it.

Facebook may be considering a 10 year ROI and thus may be acting both selfishly and also taking on infrastructure risk that has suffered from market failure until 2016 since no providers of first world infrastructure have opted to invest.

In a capitalist utopia, anything with positive ROI would receive investment, and all risks could be accurately hedged, allowing all available capital to be fully utilized.

<comment><USER5> >The spectrum is a public good, and it is scarce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra- wideband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband)

<comment><USER6> I assume that you consider the link to refute the 'scarce' part.

It doesn't.

<comment><USER7> It is often useful to support statements such as these.

<comment><USER2> A fellow by the name of Claude Shannon wrote a book about it.

Ultra-Wideband doesn't create new bandwidth. It just re-uses the existing spectrum in a different way.

And by raising the general background noise it steals bandwidth from all the other users, so everybody is worse off.

Or to put it another way "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".

<comment><USER5> Scarcity by itself doesn't seem a significant enough aspect to warrant the FCC regulation that we have though. Think of other scarce resources like platinum. If ultra-wide band (or similar) technology was used back in the 1920's, I don't think the push for regulation would have been as strong, since jamming / interference wouldn't have been a driver. I think we've got a technical solution to the original social problem, it is just that it arrived 100 years later.

[https://www.shoretel.com/history-federal-communications- comm...](https://www.shoretel.com/history-federal-communications-commission- fcc)

<comment><USER6> Scarcity in physical objects is rather different than spectrum. For one, market demand encourages things like recycling, more exploration, etc. for platinum. Spectrum scarcity encourages more efficient use, but until we get our promised physics-violation-devices, can't make/find more.

With spectrum, there's also a real-time use component. People who consume platinum generally don't consume it in a way that in any way resembles communication use. This is related to another key reason governments hold on to the control of spectrum allocation: military interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this seems cool.

Has there been any research into OpenBTS, Osmocom, OpenLTE ?

This is really an opportunity for Facebook to show that they are serious with their efforts to bring Internet to developing regions.

Especially with the delayed adoption of Cellular tech generations on the cellphone side, I think an open source Stack is the only way to go.

If the networks are built using decommissioned tech from somewhere else, it will be brittle and won't be cost effective in the long run, especially considering energy consumption.

The only missing part now is a baseband implementation with GSM/UMTS/(LTE) support.

<comment><USER9> "This is really an opportunity for Facebook to show that they are serious with their efforts to bring Internet to developing regions."

Facebook is not interested in bringing Internet to developing regions.

Facebook is interested in _bringing facebook_ to developing regions.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Just as Uber only hires human drivers as a means of bootstrapping to self-driving Teslas, Facebook only expands Internet access as a means of bootstrapping to more of itself.

<comment><USER11> Except that Uber controls the relationship with the consumer.

For Facebook, using open source to increase internet density is really just a PR stunt, as they won't own anything with the customer.

That said, their WhatsApp investment is more relevant in the third world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The more that I think about this, the crazier it seems:

The argument seems to be that the cost of phone base stations is holding back development in 3rd world countries, but no evidence for this is offered.

Firstly, the world-wide mobile phone market is huge and fiercely competitive. You can now buy a 2G Chinese base station surprisingly cheaply.

Secondly, there are thousands of tons of secondhand gear lying idle. An example: Australia is about to rip out all of its 2G network. This will mean umpteen thousands of GSM/GPRS base stations being dumped for scrap.

Thirdly, the cost of the radio gear is a small part of the total cost of a base station. The cost of the Shed, Power Supply, Solar Panels and Batteries, Mast and footings, Coax, Diplexers, Antennas, etc, will be far more. Just the expense of running power to the top of the hill will likely exceed that of the electronics.

But the big cost will be extending a dozen or so outside lines to the national telephone network. Just setting up the billing arrangements, etc, will be a huge job.

The bit that really worries me would be staffing. I can imaging a bunch of enthusiastic western hobbyists turning up to install the gear, then departing leaving no-one to maintain it. I'm betting that after a week or three the whole system will be down.

But lastly is the assumption that the locals can't do all this. In any remote community there will be skilled local entrepreneurs who are selling and repairing electronic equipment. It is these people who need to be the ones who install a phone system. If they haven't yet, it will not be because of lack of cheap gear, but because of the non-existence of basic infrastructure, eg a national phone network to connect to.

And you can be sure that if there is no local phone tower, there will already be a VHF mobile radio network used by police and businessmen (eg the "red radio" VHF CBs in remote Thailand).

<comment><USER11> I agree. Crazy.

To quote:

"In many cellular network deployments, the cost of the civil and supporting infrastructure (land, tower, security, power, and backhaul) is often much greater than the cost of the cellular access point itself."

Indeed, this is not an order of magnitude question - several orders of magnitude.

"One of our goals was to make architectural and design improvements that would result in lower costs associated with the civil and supporting infrastructure."

Hmm, really? Facebook don't think that the established players in the market are not aggressively pursuing the same design improvements?

Will this spur them on? Marginally, yes.

This is not a hard market to get into, with commodity off the shelf chips for cells being available (e.g. from Intel via MindSpeed via PicoChip).

It's good to see Facebook investing in fundamental R&D. I just can't shake the feeling they are struggling to find areas to make strategic plays if this is the best that they can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There seems to be a lot of negativity in this thread. So, I'll attempt to provide a positive spin.

I think of this (and other open source hardware and software projects) similar to how I think of mathematic theorems or tools at Home Depot. These are good building blocks to learn, prototype and build. If you want to take it commercial, then you have to bear licensing costs etc. but it is a great way for hobbyists to build things on top of these blocks rather than start from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER13> No code == no sale.

I don't like the eventual promise of opensourceness. Just make it FOSS out the gate.

<comment><USER14> Well the trouble with open-sourcing incomplete or very immature solutions out of the gate is that they'll get forked because people will see a need to fix what they see as fundamental flaws with an as yet unvetted or incomplete design. You'll also have people implement in production solutions based on the half-baked designs that may not be forward compatible with the ultimate 1.0 release. In either scenario you've fractured your community and diluted your effort.

By announcing a solution before it's released you can attract the attention of SMEs who might evaluate the solution and provide valuable insights and offer you the opportunity to resolve concerns before users start adopting your solution.

<comment><USER13> That's more of an open source problem than a free software problem. I recognize the concern as valid in business, but ideally it would not be relevant.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure I understand how that distinction changes anything. You outright dismissed the project and any of it's potential merits on the grounds that it only promised to be FOSS eventually instead of initially.

Ideals are great to have but you can't dismiss something of merit simply because it's less than ideal. Ideally all medicine would be free and open source but the fact that they're not doesn't mean we should be turning our backs on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is just amazing stuff. With this, Facebook is going to revolutionize telecom in developing countries. Villagers will be able to get together and run 'bandit' networks and provide coverage to all. Laws dont apply much to startups like facebook and Airbnb, and liability is definitely not on FB.

Amazing. Just Amazing work from Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER16> Did anyone use the BRCK from Ushahidi? I think it had some similar goals and features. It would be interesting to compare these and see how Facebook have advanced the state-of-the-art.

[http://www.brck.com/](http://www.brck.com/)

<comment><USER17> These are two different things.

BRCK == A rugged WiFi hotspot that uses cellular data as a back haul to provide WiFi connectivity up to 20 devices

Facebook TIP == A base station that provides LTE connectivity to handsets.

So with Facebook device, you'll be able to set up your own LTE network and be a mobile operator whereas BRCK has no such capability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will they open hardware for this platform? If no, then it does not look very useful, just PR.

<comment><USER19> They sure will! "Facebook plans to open-source the hardware design, along with necessary firmware and control software"

Seems to be right in line with the open compute project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Open and Facebook is an oxymoron

<comment><USER21> I hate facebook as much as anyone, but they do put out a lot of open software.

<comment><USER20> Ok, let me switch off sarcasm and put it differently:

Facebook is to OpenCellular what Google is to Android: they do not really care for the _disconnected_ , they just want a bigger market and are willing to invest in infra rather than waiting for telcos to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whose frequency spectrum does OpenCellular use? I took a quick peak at Telecom Infra Project (TIP) members page, looks like T-Mobile is participating. So can we assume OpenCellular access points RF uses T-Mobile's spectrum?

<comment><USER23> I imagine that will be up to the individual operators. This is a hardware platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Top players: [https://telecominfraproject.com/members/](https://telecominfraproject.com/members/)

<comment><USER17> I am an individual member of TIP. You can join for free if interested. The project groups are forming right now so good time to get in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting project. No mention of what can be used as the backhaul, though.

How do these boxes connect to the rest of the Internet or public phone network?

</comment><comment><USER10> One step closer to Facebook's second billion.

</comment><comment><USER24> One more step towards free internet!

<comment><USER26> in which the principal freedom is the freedom to track your every action!

<comment><USER27> we will track your reaction to tracking, citizen!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wonder how they manage SIM distribution / authentication?

</comment><comment><USER29> Facebook + politics = ultraViolence/Fascism</comment>


Better password protections in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/chrome/better-password-protections/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758388)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't help but notice how few upvotes this has received. If something similar was done in Firefox it would usually be the top news on HN. This much hatred towards Chrome on HN is both unbelievable and justifiable (given Chrome's recent changes which affect the privacy of its users).

<comment><USER4> There's another discussion here that has more upvotes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758388)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google collecting more personal data on it's users and passing it off as a helpful service? I never would have guessed. /s

I wonder if their data sets contain entries for non-Google users too?

</comment><comment><USER6> You know, I'd be impressed if it weren't for Google deliberately tracking people. I'd be even more impressed if Chrome started actively working on privacy, like Brave and Mozilla are doing.

Right now Firefox already has monitor that does all of what this does. Seems to me they are playing a sort of partial catchup.

<comment><USER7> _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."_ \- Upton Sinclair</comment></comment>


Building a 32-Thread Xeon Monster PC for Cheaper Than a Haswell-E Core I7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techspot.com/review/1155-affordable-dual-xeon-pc/ <comment><USER2> This completely overlooks the wonderful D-1541 (only 8 cores/16 threads) through D-1587 (16 cores/32 threads) series of embedded xeons that run at ~45W to ~65W compared to 115W of the E5-2670 (which this article says to run 2x of!).

[http://ark.intel.com/products/93365/Intel-Xeon- Processor-D-1...](http://ark.intel.com/products/93365/Intel-Xeon- Processor-D-1587-24M-Cache-1_70-GHz?q=D-1587)

If you need just a ton of cores there are more efficient things out there! Not to mention that the D-1541 is available in Mini-ITX with 6 SATA 6.0GBps.

While I am not selling these things I have been drooling over them for a while, there are some great guides on tinkertry.com where they demonstrate this server: [https://tinkertry.com/superserver-first- impressions](https://tinkertry.com/superserver-first-impressions).

<comment><USER3> A D-1587 setup like this won't cost you ~$1k in hardware.

It might save you $200 a year in electricity costs, but if it costs me +$2k, well, yeah. I'm not going to run this setup 10 years.

<comment><USER2> I am definitely more an outlier here. I am very happy to run machines 6 or 7 years as they move from primary system to network appliance. The other main feature I really like about the D-1541 and D-1587 is that they are mini ITX form factor (which fits in most ATX derivative cases) and it is small enough to easily transport from place to place, where the i7 is much too cumbersome to do. My goal is to have a system I am completely comfortable throwing in a backpack or the back of my car and move my entire VM infrastructure to the job at hand- A cloud in the pocket if you will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I built a workstation using 2 E5-2670s about a month ago. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I did need to repin to get the second EPS connector on my power supply, but my power supply wattage was overkill otherwise.

One nice thing is that DDR3 ECC RAM is extremely cheap. I bought 32GB of RAM for $60, and have since seen 64GB for $85.

Also, it will boost to 3GHz on all cores at once, as long as it stays cool enough.

<comment><USER5> I did a similar build. I had no clue other people were thinking the same. The entire build I was super nervous. I kept worry I was buying components for a system that wouldn't be worth it. "How can this be so cheap?" I kept wondering. Admittedly, I went for _used_ E5-2687Ws from ebay. Which increased the risk IMO.

My experience mirrors the article and your experience. Fantastic value for a really great workstation! I happily run several VMs for dev work, the usual IDEs and switch between games with zero issues. I picked Noctua coolers, same as the article, and the noise level is also excellent.

<comment><USER4> My motherboard, RAM, and processors were all used. I wasn't concerned too much about the RAM or processors, but I've seen a lot of posts about people getting bent CPU pins on used motherboards. Luckily, everything was working for me when I got it.

I was initially considering a new Xeon E3 system, because I wanted to have ECC memory, but the price on these used components had a significantly better price/performance ratio. Whenever I decide to update to a new system, I'll be looking at something like this again before I consider something new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I went down a similar route last year. Bought a used 2009 Mac Pro, firmware upgrade to make it just like the 2012. Took out the two quad core, (and thanks to the firmware update) put in two x5675. Two GTX 970s (flashed to thermal limit of 150W) and 4x HGST 6TB. Fast PCIe SSD. Ubuntu 14.04 and ZFS.

It's a really interesting box to program concurrent and distributed algorithms on. Latency between 2 processors vs 1, HT, etc.

But the power consumption is bad. I want to switch to a new Xeon D if/when this system dies. Or maybe 4x ODROID 8 cores so I can play with networking.

<comment><USER7> I also did a slightly less ambitious build myself, my craigslisted Mac Pro only had the single CPU tray, so I have to be content with a single hex-core upgrade (and only a single GTX 750 Ti SC). 32GB of ECC is nice, but the lights flicker when it powers up, which makes the lower-power Xeons look appealing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who want pre-built system, the first gen HP z620s use the E5-26 __series of procs.

ebay is your friend here.

Lots of USB, really solid case and PSU.

</comment><comment><USER9> Funny how prices are region-dependent. I just checked and E5-2670 retails for… wait for it — between $2000 and $2150 here (EU, or more precisely Poland).

No cheap workstation for me, I'm afraid.

<comment> ju-st It's the same with used Thinkpads, they are dirt cheap in the US too. I suppose European companies don't do four year leases on their hardware...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> the keys here are these xeon cpus are "used" and their power consumption is also monstrous, compared to new-gen cpus (along with mb or other components)

also i'm always suspicious about the life span of these used cpus as cpu gets busted much more often than any other components (next to hd, my experience).

at the end i guess the total cost for such xeon monster pc might be much higher (including replacement, power consumption....) compared to new systems.

<comment><USER11> What are you doing to your CPUs? In my experience, CPUs are reliable enough to be nearly beyond reproach when troubleshooting a broken machine.

<comment><USER12> There are things such as electromigration that mean that solid-state stuff _can_ wear out.

(Electrons are being pushed around by electric fields higher than 1 MV/m, and do smash into things ...)

I'm not complaining about my seven year old machines, but I'm not too sanguine about the current crop lasting as long ...

<comment><USER13> Indeed - and smaller feature sizes increase that risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Niiice!

I wonder how it behaves in games. Did anyone try it yet?

Also, the Xeon E5-2670 is still priced at 1900+ euros in Europe at the moment...

<comment><USER15> There are benchmarks on page 7. To summarize, it's slower than a 4690K in all cases, and running it in 2-CPU mode is slower than 1-CPU mode in all cases. Still beats AMD's high-end FX-8350 processor in all cases, amusingly enough.

That's pretty much what you'd expect. Gaming performance is strongly correlated with single-threaded performance. Many games are essentially single-threaded and even when they're multi-threaded they are still subject to Amdahl's Law. Certain parts of games cannot be multithreaded (eg all draw- calls must be made from a single thread in all APIs prior to DX12 and Vulkan) and they tend to limit overall performance.

So with narrow exceptions, single-thread performance is king. The best example of this is the G3258 - it's not really that powerful a processor, but it can be overclocked to really extreme levels and keep up in many games just through sheer single-threaded performance.

Going across multiple processors is also particularly brutal because of greatly increased thread and cache synchronization costs. So again, not really a surprise that it's actually slower.

If you need more than a 4790K or 6700K can deliver, your next stop is the 5820K or other -E series processors. But not many games really need or can make good advantage of more than 4 threads, and even fewer need more than 8.

<comment><USER16> > Still beats AMD's high-end FX-8350 processor in all cases, amusingly enough.

A brand-new AMD FX-8350 costs around $160, while a Intel Xeon e5 2670 is sold for $1560 (newegg prices)

The Xeon isn't 10x the processor that the AMD FX is. Not by a long shot.

<comment><USER15> Yes, while workstation chips are insanely expensive (from a consumer perspective) they do often underperform enthusiast chips like the Core i5 series.

The point here is that the FX-8350 _does not_. An older workstation-class chip outperforms it pretty handily. And once we move into consumer-class chips, its Ivy Bridge class equivalents totally outclass it, as do even its Sandy Bridge class predecessors. The Bulldozer architecture is absurdly bad for gaming usage, and should never be recommended, full stop. Single-threaded performance pushes frames, not multi-core performance.

The AMD equivalent is likely several times as much as the FX processor as well. Not quite as much as the Intel, certainly, but not $160.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> cpu is $60, but mobo will kill you :(

</comment><comment><USER18> But can it run Crysis?</comment>