Kuwait has become the first country to make DNA testing mandatory for residents - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/kuwait-has-become-the-first-country-to-make-dna-testing-mandatory-for-all-residents <comment><USER2> >In a controversial move, Kuwait has passed a law making it mandatory for all its 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents to have their DNA entered onto a national database. Anyone who refuses to submit their DNA for testing risks one year in prison and a fine of up to US$33,000, and those who provide a fake sample can be jailed for seven years.

What could go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER3> >This allows police to compare DNA found at a crime scene with any DNA they have on file to look for a match.

Or plant one there.

<comment><USER4> So? Same is true for any kind of evidence.

<comment><USER3> Well... No would doubt (is supposed to) DNA evidence. So if the evidence was planted, it'll be very difficult to prove otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will be useful in the future to identify people's ethnic origins.

</comment><comment><USER6> people are cattle to those in power</comment>


Bad Customer Service Is Profitable - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-is-customer-service-so-bad-because-its-profitable <comment><USER2> Perhaps poor customer service should be considered an indicator that an antitrust breakup is needed. This isn't that far from European Union antitrust guidelines.[1] See Article 102, which has "limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers"

This ties in with the EU warranty obligation.[3] A key point in EU law is that "competition" is encouraged for the benefit of the consumer. US antitrust law is based on protecting smaller sellers from big ones.

Something to look at if Elizabeth Warren becomes president.

[1] [https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/overview_en.html](https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/overview_en.html)

[2] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:12...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:12008E102)

[3] [https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with- customers...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with- customers/consumer-contracts-guarantees/consumer-guarantees/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't look to the EU for innovation or economic policy.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I struggle to see in what we succeed here which is higher tech than making really good croissants and coffee. Even when we are, it usually happens in Eastern European states like Estonia who are definitely not drivers of economic policy.

<comment><USER5> German companies are huge in industrial automation and manufacturing tech. It's not just Siemens, there are lots and lots of companies you have never heard of that are having a significant share of their market niche (or are outright market leaders), precisely because of their innovative products.

Where Europe has fallen far behind is advertising/tracking "innovation".

<comment><USER6> Building technology (not tech-tech, just plain old building materials) is a lot more advanced and environmentally friendly in Europe too.

Matt Risinger on YouTube has a video series from earlier this year where he was sponsored to visit Europe to see how things are done differently to his native Texas. He was amazed by the European tilt-and-turn windows which have been pretty much standard in colder climates (excluding the UK for some reason) for the past 10-15 years. They can open inwards or be securely locked open in a ventilation position, seal airtight with multiple seals and locking points when closed, and are triple glazed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get the feeling the researchers never worked in a call center and don't understand the realities involved in running one.

The reason why you have a first level, and then levels after that, is so Level 1 can be focused on speed for simple issues, or routing for non-simple issues. Level 1 call work is not something the more expensive agents who can solve complex work should be doing.

Another alternative is doing what Sprint did over ten years ago and firing their worst customers ([https://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-breaks-up-with-high- mainten...](https://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-breaks-up-with-high-maintenance- customers/)). It'd probably be better if more companies could do that, though there are companies where it is not possible (e.g. ISPs).

<comment><USER8> That's so horrible. There should be laws to prevent companies from refusing to do business with "high maintenance" customers without proper documentation and regulation. What recourse does the customer have to contest their decision? What if sprint tells other carriers about this customer?

Just like with employees, if you get to fire a customer then how you aquire customers and how you refuse to do business with customers should be subject to regulation. I would even say this should be public record so other customers can see exactly why they blacklist customers.

FYI: I have worked in a call center type environment for a company well reputed for having bad customer service. I have faced horrible customers day in and day out until one reallybad customer pushed me off the edge and I quit. I still stand by my position that consumer rights and fair treatment of the public by businesses is much more important than a company's right to refuse to do business with anyone.

<comment><USER9> From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service despite being a pain in the ass?

Asshole is not a protected class.

As someone who has worked in customer service let me tell you that people already make ridiculous demands.

People start with their nonsensical demands, proceed to threatening to explicitly or implicitly cease future business, move on to threatening to get the employee in trouble, move on to speaking to a manager, to threatening to go to the company about the manager that told them no.

You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a fine?

There is already maximal incentive to make any reasonable accommodations possible because any amount of hassle that costs less than losing the customers business is already a net gain.

If the cost of responding to for example a lawsuit because you declined to do business with someone is thousands of dollars then the equation changes substantially and not for the better.

This only makes sense from a social standpoint if the service you are denied is something one can't do without and then THAT becomes the issue rather than requiring every trivially replaceable company enumerate why they didn't do business with every asshole.

<comment><USER8> > You want to add another layer after the company also tells them to pound > sand where they can go to a government bureaucrat and make the company > litigate the case for why they don't want to do business or what face a > fine?

Sort of,if you ban a customer then you will be forced to provide documentation. The regulation I spoke of will clearly establish when a company crosses the line. This actually saves the company lawsuits because the consumer will not have merit for a suit if the regulatory body cleared the company. If it didn't clear the company then the customer's service will simply be restored and the company will be fined a standard well established fine.

I don't know why you and others are misunderstanding my position. I am not advocating for companies to put up with abusive customers. I am simply stating a company that provides services or goods to the general public should not be allowed to refuse to do business with specific individuals without documenting their defensible reason where a customer being clearly rude,abusive,threatening or acting in bad faith would be a good and allowed reason.

By what right does a company that relies on a business license from a govetnment of the people gets to unfairly treat the public? The peoplr decide what allowed reasons to refuse business are,not companies.

A BBB complaint is nieither sufficient nor effective.

Oh and...

> From what principal do you derive the right to buy cell phone service > despite being a pain in the ass?

The same principal that allows revocation and issuance of a business license. I don't think a "pain in the ass" customer should be tolerated,but rather government bodies overseen by publicly elected officials get to set a standard of what a "pain in the ass" customer constitutes not the company. You can see how a legitimate complaint can be construed as "pain in the ass" because fixing the problem or assisting the customer was a cost too high for the company.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Don't know why youre getting downvoted. If ShitCo can get away with poor customer service because of regulation or licensing protecting them from competition, then ShitCo shouldn't get to decide the line for "pain in the ass".

<comment><USER8> It's probably because many current and potential enterpreneurs are on HN. Regulation is unpleasant and costly for any startup. But just because it is unpleasant does not mean it is not needed. In a utopia,regulations simply allow you to be transparent with the things you would be doing anyways.

I am sure we all appreciate health code regulations on restaurants for example. I am sure it is costly and unpleasant to restauranteurs but it is a neccesity to safeguard the interests of the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > There may be a hidden layer of discrimination at play here as well. Studies > and surveys have shown that some segments of consumers, such as women, > African Americans, and Latinos, may experience higher hassle costs when > dealing with customer service.

Their source for the 'women' part of that claim only says that, given the same treatment, women get more annoyed than men [1]. Not what I would classify as 'discrimination'.

[1] [https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/06/women- get-m...](https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/06/women-get-more- annoyed-than-men-with-aspects-of-bad-customer-service/index.htm)

<comment><USER12> >Not what I would classify as 'discrimination'.

No, but it does classify as different hassle costs as they claim.

The summary words it poorly, but the article is just showing that some groups experience more hassle than others.

<comment><USER11> No, the sourced article says that some groups get more annoyed than others, when exposed to the _same_ hassle.

<comment><USER12> That source doesn't say that they were exposed to the same hassle, the hassle can't be the same in survey accounts. Not really the point though.

<comment><USER11> The source presents a survey asking "How annoyed were you by X", with women answering as more annoyed for the same X. How you interpret that as "hassle can't be the same in survey accounts", I have no idea.

<comment><USER12> Imagine we're both answering the second question mentioned, whether we were "annoyed at not being able to get a human being on the phone."

The previous night one of your loved ones was very sick, and though you called the hospital you were unable to get a human on the phone. Meanwhile, my food delivery came without a side dish, and I was unable to get a human on the phone to get my $3 back.

The survey is now asking both of us the same question, but do you think we're experiencing the same thing while deciding how to answer it? Or would our past experiences cause the hassle to have much different weight for both of us.

We would need to be in a controlled experiment for us to have the same hassle. A survey has us answer from our own experiences of being in similar situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I spent several years in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 support for several companies.

Generally speaking, I found companies that failed to provide a high level of support did so not because it was particularly profitable, but because they either A) Wanted to cut costs and off-shore as much of the operations as possible or B) Were struggling financially and unable to support their product

Working as Tier 2 support for Apple I can tell you that I gave away free products (From the Apple Online Store) constantly. I required no approval for products $300 and under in value. The only caveat being that Apple did not give away ANY of its own products. Some days I would give away more money in free products than I made working that day. Apple is doing fantastic financially.

When I worked for Frontier Communications (Who are currently being investigated on a few fronts for failing to maintain their network and refused to take questions from investors at their last quarterly earnings call) I was basically unable to help anyone who called in unless their problem was user error. Any customer who had an issue with something on our end was basically given the shaft.

I've had much more middle of the road experiences as well, but those are the two polar opposites that I've had in my early working experience.

</comment><comment><USER14> When there's no market pressure in a sector, why would any company do anything but the cheapest possible customer service offerings? I recently had to deal with trying to convince my ISP to cancel a charge for a wifi router that I don't even have, and upon them crediting me for the over billing, I received an email from UPS telling me a router had shipped (which I will have to send back). This all increases revenue for the company and it's not like there are other people who have a fiber line to my house, so what am I to do?

</comment><comment><USER15> Redress payouts aren't everything. I'm currently in the process of changing my primary email and moving all my accounts over to new addresses. Probably 90% were easy to change online myself, but there's a tail of businesses that are trying to tell me it's impossible to either change my email or delete my account, forcing me to escalate to departments that really shouldn't be having their time wasted with either problem.

<comment><USER16> Well, you don't know that.

It could be that developing proper processes, training and tools to handle it costs far more than the rare few times they need to pass it up to someone to manually change it in a DB.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I get that, but these are large corporations where there doesn't even exist any way to "pass it up" to someone in IT from the standard CSR channels. e.g. one of them had $15B in revenue last year and an actual privacy office, which I guess will be my next step to contact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not just companies structuring their customer service to reduce redress payouts. Companies are also using customer service as a sales channel, where "customer support" reps are also marketers trying to up-sell you something. When you have a problem you want to get fixed and you've waited on hold for a long time after navigating a terrible voice-prompt system, you're a great captive audience.

<comment><USER18> I think that's a consequence of the profit-center cost-center dichotomy. Cost centers get budget cuts, downsized and off-shored. Profit centers help grow the business. If there's a way to be a profit center, managers are going to take that route. The consequence is that customers asking for assistance on their existing services are going to get sales pitches for more expensive services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems very much like a 'water is wet' type of study. And to clarify, it's not really a study - the authors just interviewed some call center managers and came to the (pretty obvious conclusion to anyone who has ever called customer service) that companies put up barriers to getting refunds.

I agree with other commenters, though, for me the issue is not often about getting a refund, but more often about getting the information I need to solve my problem.

</comment><comment><USER20> consider a total budget for customer service, why not hire 2 or more customer service subcontractors on the following contract: customer questions are randomly assigned, and money flows proportionally toward the company with the better customer satisfaction scores?

any question a subcontractor has not enough information for will be between the customer service contractor and the original company, and they don't need to be afraid of insisting the original company resolve a real fundamental issue with the product as the other subcontractor faces the same issues, which has the side effect of the subcontractors summarizing a large number of complaints for the original companies product engineers etc

consider how for a long time many manufacturers didn't want to spend the time and effort to fix some linux driver, not because they couldn't but because they didn't want to plough through 10k complaints or requests, of unknown similarity or difference, and having the original high wage engineers plough through them is uneconomical, so have the subcontractor summarize the issue concisely yet precisely

<comment><USER21> What subcontractor would accept this arrangement? I sure wouldn't. It's like an evil genie situation. You're never going to define customer satisfaction metrics in a way that won't end up being gamefied to circumvent the spirit of what you're supposed to do to help customers in order to maximize some metrics.

This issues can also be related to the company itself. What if there's an undisclosed bug in your randomization process based on IP or time zone or something that tilts the satisfaction metrics via an almost impossible to detect skew in the customer distribution routed to subcontractor A instead of B? What if you the company introduce a policy or product change that makes customers unhappy even if the subcontractor is doing exactly what you asked them to do? Or what if subcontractors realize the only way to make people happy is to do something really expensive or unapproved by you?

<comment><USER20> > .. skew in the customer distribution routed to subcontractor A instead of B?

provably rolling a random dice is a solved problem, superstition that fluctuations in a cryptographically verifiable random coin flip would correlate with "pathologically dissatisfied customers" is just that: superstition.

> What if you the company introduce a policy or product change that makes > customers unhappy even if the subcontractor is doing exactly what you asked > them to do?

That would make the customers assigned to the other subcontractors equally unhappy, so the customer satisfaction feedback drop will be the same for the other competing subcontractor, and so the budget division will be unaffected, but still tilted proportional to the gross difference in performance between subcontractor A and B

> Or what if subcontractors realize the only way to make people happy is to do > something really expensive or unapproved by you?

What do you mean? reverse engineer a driver and rewrite a better one?

<comment><USER21> > provably rolling a random dice is a solved problem

You clearly have no experience with setting up randomized trials in reality. It's _very_ hard. You think you're flipping a coin, and totally forget that there are all kinds of things that can creep in to introduce confounding factors that correlate with assignment to one group or the other. Time of day, time of week, operating hours, handling customers waiting in a queue too long by rerouting them, random outage in subcontractor A's cloud service account, geopolitical event causes problems with payment processing to subcontractor B for a certain time period.

How will you isolate the effect on customer satisfaction of each subcontractor, controlling for all effects that could drive the observed satisfaction metric for a given subcontractor that are not in that subcontractor's control? How will you make certain you've done this, as opposed to just making the deeply invalid assumption that some seemingly random assignment mechanism has automatically taken care of it? How will you actually verify the populations of customers sent to each subcontractor are actually probabilistically equivalent across every potential confounding factor?

Acting like it's just going to be a simple coin flip is a woeful lack of imagination.

<comment><USER20> there is no random trial to set up? it's just plain simple provably random assignment

<comment><USER21> Huh? The entire A/B test you are proposing _is_ a randomized trial. You are proposing a random assignment mechanism (what you seem to misunderstand as "provably" random assignment) but you're not explaining how you will verify your assignment mechanism didn't result in a lack of probabilistic equivalence (and thus invalidate a simple comparison between the two groups).

The key part you're missing is that it doesn't matter if you _believe_ you are choosing uniformly between each subcontractor. You might have a perfect random number generator, doesn't matter. The ability to pick "50/50" between them has pretty much nothing to do with the causes for confounding factors to invalidate the comparison.

You might happily go on calling your perfect random number generator and checking if it's less than 0.5 as your decision rule, and yet still be biasing the population directed to one subcontractor vs the other, due to factors you're not accounting for.

<comment><USER20> Unlike organizing a randomized trial -where each extra datapoint to gather would cost money and one tries to get the most unbiased result for the low total number of datapoints- in this economical setting of an endless and continuously growing number of processed customers one is not interested in how fast the relative error decreases, but that it converges on a fair value.

This is just the law of large numbers: the expectation value of the correlation of pesky clients with the output from a provably fair coin is by definition zero. So yes if 1 out of 10 customers is a pesky (say unhelpable by attitude) customer, and we look at the first ~10 customers, then yes, probably it will result in the unfair assignment where one of the subcontractors got a pesky customer and the other didnt. But this is not a randomized trial with a finite low number of customer tickets.

Treat the problem like a poisson process: after a short amount of time the accuracy on gamma is low, but after the millionth ticket the accuracy on gamma is high, and we are effectively discussing fractions of a cent.

I assume you know how to throw a provably random dice: for example both subcontractors generate a secret randon number, hash it, publish the hash, then reveal the nonce, sum the nonces: even -> A, odd -> B

This is not a medical experiment with a limited budget to study most efficiently with the low number of costly datapoints, this is not about the design of experiments.

You seem to believe a lock-in amplifier could never work? That you can't raise a signal from below the noise floor? or is it really just the transient fluctuation that average each other out by the law of large numbers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've found that email support varies wildly, and you don't get the quality you might expect.

I've asked simple questions of a financial institution that I trust with most of my savings, and gotten responses that totally ignored everything I wrote except for a keyword or two, as if they were an Eliza-style AI.

On the other hand, I emailed a question to my health insurer, and I got a completely sensible, intelligent, and helpful response.

Even in person, I frequently ask a simple question and people act like I've got two heads. Sometimes the businesses they work for are objectively honest and competent, but somehow they can't answer a really basic question. Like the other day, I was replacing some fire extinguishers and I realized I had just signed off on new ones without understanding the UL rating. Granted, it wasn't that hard to find an explanation online after a few minutes, but someone who works for a business that sells them to everybody in the area should be able and willing to explain.

I don't think this can all be economically rational optimization.

<comment><USER23> A lender miscalculated my monthly loan payment, so I wrote up a nice email to them, attached an amortization spreadsheet, linked to a public google sheets in case they can't download attachments, and attached a pdf showing them the calculations.

It took 6 weeks and over 10 emails for them to fix it to the correct amortization. This is literally this company's entire purpose, to calculate payment amounts, and they couldn't take 20 seconds to use the PMT() function in a spreadsheet to see they had made a mistake.

I forwarded the account of my experience to as many bosses at the company I could find and never heard back.

<comment><USER24> I've tried to reproduce monthly payment amounts and found it's incredibly difficult to match the bank's calculation.

They could be compounding interest at a different rate. They could calculating the daily rate one of 3 different ways. I believe there can also be differences based on the grace period for making payments.

PMT() doesn't account for any of this - it's just simple interest.

It's worse for commercial real estate loans than residential. In my case I gave up trying to reproduce their calculations.

<comment><USER23> This calculation was way off, not a few dollars or cents. Clearly there was an error with one of the parameters being used to calculate it.

<comment><USER24> My point is less about your specific situation, and more that — in general — it's possible someone doesn't even realize they're one of those "trouble" customers costing the company money and justifying the building of a support moat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Depends on the class of the customer. Poor and middle-class customers are usually screwed.

<comment><USER26> Get what you pay for. I work on some enterprise software with customers paying $1m/year. I assure you they don't get bad customer service.

<comment><USER27> Really? My company pays a lot of money for some support contracts. We get a lot of attention, E-mails and meetings from sales people and evangelists but not too much in terms of actual solutions for problems. Basically a lot of hot air.

<comment><USER28> This indicates that the people using the product are _not_ the same people who are deciding whether to purchase said product. In that case, there are no incentives to give solutions to problems, because it doesn't affect sales.

<comment><USER29> "the people using the product are not the same people who are deciding whether to purchase said product" \- of course, that's pretty much the definition of enterprise product sales.

"That case" is not a rare exception but the default situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Your customer who struggled in order to have your product work tolerably will think twice before trying to switch to a competitor, as he doesn't want to once more live through hassles. You spare money on service/support, and the customer is less prone to abandon you. Yay.

A competitor offering a better service may seem dangerous because his customers will recommend him. However he as to sell for a higher price, therefore most customers will not consider his product. Moreover most of his customers will be picky (easily by the shitty support provided by you and your pairs) or dumb/lazy (totally unable/unwilling to think/act usefully by themselves), and their demands will only grow, leading him tto somewhat reduce his margins (and you will buy him, because he as less customers and less profit per customer) or raise his prices (and enter some high-end/luxury (<=> small) niche).

</comment><comment><USER31> What i do not get, is why there is not a "Lawyer"-Layer between customers and companys shirking customers-service. Basically you dont get to worry and put up with what is essentially a denial on service attack on a person, and these people get you whatever you want if they can and fight for your rights, if necessary with legal actions.

If they want a war of attrition, a war of attrition they could get.

Also likeable, social customers, who get shafted, become basically anti- evanglists of a brand and product. Im pretty sure, if marketing would do some research, these "Warning"-network effects would show up. I had several family dinners, where one or another would tell horror stories about a product they tryied and these are shunned afterwards.

Only companys who can get away with it are entrenched network effect companys like google.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hear anecdotally about these "levels" and it's an obvious strategy, but in my experience, I usually get paid back without escalation (that's not to say they aren't escalating the matter discretely on their side w/o passing me up a level).

The only obvious way they might be masking it is if I have to call back another day but that doesn't seem like I get through to anyone differently than if I'd just called up (thus I suspect it would be level 1)

</comment><comment><USER33> I feel like in the past few years customer service has gotten much better for most companies. I have had reasonably concise and helpful calls with my bank, telecom provider, utilities, phone company, and one product company within the past year and they all went pretty well despite negative reputations for a few.

Online chat windows seem to be the most effective for me.

Curious if this resonates

<comment><USER34> The online chat windows work pretty well for me, the written record usually means at least I don't need to repeat myself to every new person, and often the chat windows are tied to my account so I don't need to identify myself. And, it's much easier for me to multitask while waiting for a response, but we can have a quick back and forth when it gets to that part of the call.

However, what has really helped the most is lowering my expectations. If the other person seems to understand what I'm asking, I'm satisfied, if not happy when they say it can't be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> See also [http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics- of-...](http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/01/21/the-politics-of-call- centres-part-one/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Well, of course, this all makes perfect sense. If a company pushes out a bad product or service or other generally subpar what have you, the first line of defense is to make it as difficult as possible for customers to have any good resolution to their complaints.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ask Adobe

</comment><comment><USER38> Capitalism only works when there is competition.</comment>


Show HN: Accelerate SHA256 Computations in Go Using AVX512 instructions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minio/sha256-simd <comment><USER2> A recent blog post by Vlad Krasnov, author of a bunch of the crypto assembly code in openssl and in golang, about frequency scaling when using AVX-512 making it not worth it: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/on-the-dangers-of-intels- frequen...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/on-the-dangers-of-intels-frequency- scaling/)

He doesn't like the title of the OP and provided links:

> Very misleading title. Could just as well name it "accelerate sha256 up to > 134x". You need to compare apples to apples. If AVX2 was used in the same > way AVX512 is used, the speedup would be 2X at most. Reminds me of two of my > papers > [https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/371.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/371.pdf) > [https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/067.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/067.pdf)

(from [https://twitter.com/thecomp1ler/status/940724783804645376](https://twitter.com/thecomp1ler/status/940724783804645376))

EDIT: Thanks 'delhanty !

<comment><USER3> He's using the "cheap" Xeon Silver chips that clock down all cores immediately and aggressively when any are using AVX-512

Most of the Gold and Platinum series chips don't start frequency scaling down below baseline until around half the cores are using AVX512. The fanciest Platinum chips can use it on all cores with the only limit being that you can't Turbo quite as much: [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/8180m](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/8180m)

Without that capability, cloud providers wouldn't be able to offer multitenant VMs with access to the new instructions

<comment><USER4> Can't turbo as much is still a net loss of performance. Even on Platinum turbo frequency is almost 10% lower with AVX512 on single core, and 30% lower with all cores. So you really want the majority of your software to use AVX512 to gain net benefit. It takes the system 2ms to recover after an AVX512 instruction. But you are correct that the Silvers are way worse. I suspect Intel intentionally killed AVX512 performance on the Silvers. I tested power consumption, and there is no reason to reduce the frequency, except for the sake of it. The sad thing is there is no CPUID flag to distinguish good AVX512 from useless AVX512. Would really be better if they disabled it completely on Silver. The way it is now will just hurt adoption.

<comment><USER5> Of interest regarding this might be: [https://twitter.com/InstLatX64/status/934093081514831872](https://twitter.com/InstLatX64/status/934093081514831872)

> The sad thing is there is no CPUID flag to distinguish good AVX512 from > useless AVX512.

You can read the the avx512_2ndFMA bit from the PIROM, according to this Intel datasheet: [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/scal...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/scalable/xeon- scalable-datasheet-vol-1.html)

Linux doesn't implement reading PIROM over SMBus, but it sure would be nice to expose this flag in /proc/cpuinfo.

In WireGuard we're at the moment just disabling the zmm AVX512F implementation on Skylake-X, falling back to the still-fast-but-not-as-fast AVX512VL implementation that only touches ymm and doesn't downclock as much (following OpenSSL's reasoning on +/\- Andy Polyakov's same implementation):

[https://git.zx2c4.com/WireGuard/tree/src/crypto/chacha20poly...](https://git.zx2c4.com/WireGuard/tree/src/crypto/chacha20poly1305.c#n47)

I may look into trying to read the PIROM so that I can make a more informed decision. I've tested those Platinum boxes, and indeed it's a lot faster there, even with the [lesser] downclocking, whereas a Gold box didn't perform as well, making the ymm-only implementation necessary.

<comment><USER4> If that is an issue for you, you could try using the implementation I wrote for boringssl. It avoids SIMD multiplications altogether and only uses simple AVX2 instructions, so there is no slowdown (AFAICT) although it is not as fast as AVX512VL from OpenSSL in benchmarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is assembly, not pure Go, but it doesn't use CGO which I probably what they mean.

Intel Cannon Lake processors will support the SHA instruction extensions (currently available only on Goldmont). It will be interesting to see how that compares with this approach of running 16 SHA computations in parallel. You would be able to get rid of the scheduling overhead of having to first queue up 16 SHA calculations from other threads.

<comment><USER7> _This is assembly, not pure Go_

Well, if you're going to dip into pedantic mode, couldn't the language maintainers just define Go to include a few relevant Assembly instruction sets? (Not taking a dig at you but rather at the above level of pendantry.)

<comment><USER8> Not without tying Go to one architecture, no.

When C programmers write inline assembly, they don't pretend it's C code.

<comment><USER9> Go has it's own form of assembly which it compiles to multiple architectures.

<comment><USER8> I followed npongratz's link. Interesting read.

Seems the point of it is to enable easier porting of assembly between architectures, by providing a consistent syntax.

I was expecting something akin to LLVM assembly language, but no, they're come up with their own bizarre high-level assembly-language intended to map fairly directly to various different instruction-sets. It's not an abstraction layer in the usual sense; the exposed register-set and instruction-set are faithful to the target architecture.

It's a finite register machine which _isn 't_ just faithfully exposing the underlying architecture. Not something we often see. iirc SPIR and GNU Lightning are both finite register machines, but, to quote Douglas Adams, this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

How is it compiled? Presumably it doesn't get translated to LLVM as an intermediary.

It strikes me as an awful lot of work. Does their high-level assembler really outperform LLVM? Would've thought a project of that sort would deserve to exist in its own right, not just as an obscure component of Go.

<comment><USER7> _It 's a finite register machine which isn't just faithfully exposing the underlying architecture. Not something we often see. iirc SPIR and GNU Lightning are both finite register machines, but, to quote Douglas Adams, this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move._

TAOS operating system used such a virtual ISA, and was able to achieve around 90% efficiency of native code. The worst case was PowerPC which fell to 80%. That's pretty darn good, IMO.

<comment><USER8> Skimreading [http://www.dickpountain.co.uk/home/computing/byte- articles/t...](http://www.dickpountain.co.uk/home/computing/byte-articles/the- taos-operating-system-1991) ( linked from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607) , where you yourself commented )

Interesting OS. Its 'VP code' looks like a precursor to Java bytecode/HotSpot, but much more low-level and RISC-ey.

Inferno OS's 'Dis' VM took a similar to approach to VP code, if I understand correctly.

I presume that, in 1991 when the article was written, "JIT" wasn't yet in the techies' parlance. It's not used anywhere in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing to note is that the benchmark is running on a Skylake Platinum chip which has two AVX512 FMAs.

You need a Gold 6000 series and above to see any benefit from AVX512. In most other cases the CPU throttles down some insane amount and there's no to little benefit.

<comment><USER4> You don't use FMA (or any multiplication) for SHA2. The throttling is a big issue.

<comment><USER10> True.

Did you guys get to test Epyc at CloudFlare?

The 7401P seems pretty special. Like really great $ per perf. I think SuperMicro are coming out with 1 socket Epyc boards/servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I blogged about the SHA instruction support in the x86_64 ISA a few months back, it'll be nice to see it actually happen: [https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/will-amds-ryzen-finally- bring...](https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/will-amds-ryzen-finally-bring-sha- extensions-to-intels-cpus/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this the kind of thing that was missing from the "go on different platforms" benchmark a little while back. The intel platform has crazy optimization for encryption algorithms on Inteil, while ARM was severely lacking.

<comment><USER2> search for "arm" on this list: [https://dev.golang.org/reviews](https://dev.golang.org/reviews)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Possibly I'm confused, but in what sense is this "in Pure Go"?

<comment><USER14> IMO, it's playing fast and loose with that term, but I guess the point is that it's not using CGO (i.e. calling into C code). It is, however, using the assembler packaged with the Go tools, so in that regard it's not "pure" go.

<comment><USER7> _IMO, it 's playing fast and loose with that term_

The terminology in this context is already fast and loose: It is rigorous in a practical engineering sense and is far from a mathematical level of precision. As I pointed out above, the maintainers could just define Go to include a few Assembly languages.</comment></comment></comment>


The 'Tiger Mother' Has a Contract for Her Cubs - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tiger-mother-guide-to-renting-to-your-children-1465570914 <comment><USER2> I literally can't tell if this is parody or not. It's probably not.</comment>


Don't let anyone overpay you - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/bigger-prices-bigger-problems-72820249456f#.rxce608wc <comment><USER2> It seems like this directly goes against the "price for value, not for cost" advice. Value will differ between customers, won't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it varies depending on your space. This article seems to rely on a product based model.</comment></comment>


We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/we-are-nowhere-close-to-the-limits-of-athletic-performance-rp <comment><USER2> This again? Posted 12 times in the last year or so, 4 times by dnetesn, 99 comments just 2 weeks ago.</comment>


New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms - <AUTHOR> http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/22/new-approaches-to-designing-login-forms/

<comment><USER2> Revealing user names (As in "you are trying to log in as Luke") is usually considered a security issue, though.

<comment><USER3> This was my first thought as well. I thought it was bad when it just verified that you had used a correct username after attempting to log in, then I kept reading and saw the auto-complete combobox of usernames...

<comment><USER4> My first thought was: what about duplicate names?

<comment><USER5> Then it just gives you the available passwords as well. You select the right combination. Easy peasy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So for the Quora login form that determines whether someone's email address has already registered on the system... What's to stop me from: \- looking at the source code, \- finding the JavaScript call to the REST service that checks for an account \- writing a script to loop through all well-known domains and usernames?

Tada! Instant email scraping tool.

<comment><USER6> Actually, I re-read the article just to make sure that I wasn't being too critical. I'm not. The author doesn't mention any security risks/benefits associated with the new login form designs.

It reminds me of the time when a former boss asked me to add authentication onto the company intranet. She wanted to know who is logging in and viewing private documents, but she didn't like typing in or remembering passwords so I could only ask users for their username and "trust" that they wouldn't type in someone else's username instead. For some (probably most) users, security isn't on the forefront of their mind, so they need to be reminded of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is another one I've experimented with: No passwords. You get a login key in the first email we send, or you can request a new email to log in.

Your email is the weakest link in a lot of password-based schemes anyways, but this approach is less secure and a bit confusing.

<comment><USER8> This is a great idea, but is it hard to implement with non-technical users?

<comment><USER7> I would just say that people aren't used to it. Also you need to decide how you want to send the email. Once on signup (long-lived token, not recommended), once a day (weird, annoying), or on demand (user gets email instead of entering password).

I think it's interesting but in practice passwords are more secure and people are used to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was always under the impression that security trumps user-experience in the majority of cases - what happened to trying to prevent malicious users from harvesting user names by using captcha, non-specific error messages etc? Maybe I've had my head buried in the security game for too long...

<comment><USER10> Security _should_ trump UX. In practice, though, UX almost always seems to trump security concerns.

<comment><USER11> > Security should trump UX.

In my view, security is just another part of the user experience. For one's bank, it's surely a large one. For most web services, though, it's pretty tiny. As a Quora user, I'm perfectly happy for them to increase usability substantially at the cost of a minor increase in risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't be happy, as a user, if I saw that information like this was made public about me on a site.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you mistype your email address in Facebook, it will suggest your correct account on login fail. I'm not sure if it just does this blindly, or if it tracks where you are logging in from.

</comment><comment><USER14> Didn't Facebook get bad press a while ago for revealing the user's name and profile picture when an incorrect password was entered?</comment>


Pysa: An open source tool to detect and prevent security issues in Python code - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.fb.com/security/pysa/ <comment><USER2> One of the authors of the blog post and software engineer working on Pysa here - happy to answer any questions you may have :)

<comment><USER3> What is the story behind the name?

Was that always the name?

<comment><USER4> My guess: it's an acronym, probably for "Python security analysis" or something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a good idea and the more open source static analyzers the better. (It really tempts me to eventually pay for GitLab high versions.)

Pysa is part of pyre-check and the documentation [0] seems like a lot of work to set up and hope it gets better.

I'm using to using safety [1] and bandit [2] and they are one line drop ins to my builds.

Pysa isn't the same thing and seems much more powerful but I hope they get to a "Just give me something useful out of the box and I'll customize my taint scans later."

[0] [https://pyre-check.org/docs/pysa-running](https://pyre- check.org/docs/pysa-running) [1] [https://pypi.org/project/safety/](https://pypi.org/project/safety/) [2] [https://pypi.org/project/bandit/](https://pypi.org/project/bandit/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can Pysa work on Fastapi. Its fully type-hinted using pydantic</comment>


National Security Archive's complete index of NSA internal Cryptolog periodical - <AUTHOR> https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-04/cyber-brief-cryptolog <comment><USER2> With major redaction in the content that's nearly 50 years old!

I can't believe there is much government secret stuff from 50 years ago that it's still in the public interest to keep secret today.

<comment><USER3> The Cold War never ended. Nor has much else. Further, the importance of cryptology has only intensified - greatly.

<comment><USER4> I feel like a lot of the redacted content is not technical, but could be political too.

<comment><USER3> Anything unprofessional would offend someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would love to have these in downloadable form. Anyone have a torrent or zip file of this? I realize i can go document by document and download the PDF but just wondering if anyone had yet...

<comment><USER6> Right side bar has an "Original Document (PDF)" link that initiates the download of the file you're looking for.</comment></comment>


My startup failed, and this is what it feels like (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/female-founders/my-startup-failed-and-this-is-what-it-feels-like-c5d64b3ae96b <comment><USER2> Here is the previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933155)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but in the first place - why did they move to USA/NYC? Why they couldn't launch the mobile app or website from Australia? Maybe this is related to that solving of chicken and egg problem they mention...

<comment><USER4> Well if their business model was around selling high priced fashion clothes, I suspect NYC has a much much bigger market over Australia.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but as I understand they had an app/website, not a retail shop in NYC, right?

So, maybe I'm naive but why they couldn't upload the mobile app on the app store and website's HTML/CSS/JS/back-end files _from_ Australia?

<comment><USER5> They needed to build buzz in the US. That means talking to people, getting your first traction, people discussing the app on the subway, pitching it to women at bars, college campuses, etc.

<comment><USER6> Could've payed some some student beer money to pitch it in bars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am glad to see female founders getting a little more attention here these days, but I wish more attention were given to _why_ they fail and how to do it better. Here was my take on this piece:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-decade- lat...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-decade-late-and- millions-short.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> What's Nikki up to now?

<comment><USER9> Great question. A quick web search shows that she is giving talks about her start-up that failed about two years ago, but I could not find much else.

In a recent bio her article on medium is listed prominently:

Nikki was the founder & CEO of 99dresses, a Y Combinator-backed startup that allowed women to trade fashion with each other using a virtual currency. She started the business as a naive 18-year-old fresh out of high school, and experienced a roller coaster 4 year journey before shutting down 99dresses in 2014 and writing about it in a wildly popular Medium post entitled 'My Startup Failed And This Is What It Feels Like...'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Needs a [2014] in the title. In light of current discussions about a current startup crunch, it'd be nice to make it clear that this one isn't part of it. Good postmortem, though.

<comment><USER11> Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Startups don't fail. Founders just stop doing their work. You can't succeed if you give up.</comment>


The Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip - <AUTHOR> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/ <comment><USER2> Apparently this happens every 11 years. Nothing to panic, but an interesting astronomical phenomena nevertheless.

<comment><USER3> So this is an alternating current, but with a cycle time of 22 years instead of a fraction of a second?

<comment><USER4> No, it's a chaotic system that is quasistable for an average of 11 years at a time before it flips to the opposite orientation with respect to the spin axis. The Earth's magnetic field, generated by currents in the liquid outer core, is a similar magnetohydrodynamic system that has no apparent periodicity.

<comment><USER5> So astronomical objects are classifiable under a magnetic AC/DC onotology? Wow. Seems like dualism dies hard.

<comment><USER6> How can you get that from that reply? He specifically said they are not.

<comment><USER5> Err, I'm not sure how your brain works but it's obviously different to mine. Fear not, in heterogeneity lies strength!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great, now we can market our app as "solar magnetic field reversal-proof".

<comment><USER8> ... and you have a BOFH-style excuse in case something goes wrong!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article includes the following quotation:

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer.

Does that not suggest that the sun is currently a magnetic monopole? Or is that too simplistic?

<comment><USER10> Of course it's not a monopole, but the dipole idea is also too simplistic, as is the idea of "poles". Presumably, the dipole moment of the Sun has become very small but there are still higher orders at work. Thus, the field of the Sun will look very much more complex than the simple dipole field [0].

A possible configuration would be that both geographicals poles of the same sign, but the field around the equator is of a different sign, like a quadrupole perhaps.

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist but not an astrophysicist.

0: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Ma...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Earths_Magnetic_Field_Confusion.svg)

<comment><USER11> Correct. I'll do some digging around to find the polarity maps we have around the lab here and post them if I find them. At times, there really isn't a clear 'pole' of the sun, and octopoles can sometimes be found.

E: Here's a link to one of those maps. I'll see if I can find any better.

[http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_s...](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_ciencia/ciencia_sol08_03.gif)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How do they measure it? There was nothing in the article about how this is observed?

<comment><USER13> Good question.

The light spectrum emitted by the Sun has "spectral lines", or emission features (deep dips or strong peaks) that are determined by light-absorption or light-emission from specific elements (e.g., Nickel, Iron, and of course Hydrogen) in the Sun's atmosphere.

If the little packet of stuff that was absorbing light is moving toward or away from you, the characteristic frequencies of all its spectral lines will be Doppler shifted. So, you can measure the velocity of that packet of stuff by seeing how much the line is shifted. Since you have a lot of photons, you can do this independently across the Sun's surface and get a spatially- resolved map of velocity ("Dopplergram", [http://solar- center.stanford.edu/dopplergram.html](http://solar- center.stanford.edu/dopplergram.html)).

If the little packet of stuff was in a magnetic field, its spectral lines will be split into sub-lines due to the Zeeman effect. So, you can also measure the spatially-resolved magnetic field of the Sun, and this is called a "magnetogram".

It is kind of surprising that this measurement can be made at all.

<comment><USER14> Doppler shift. One of the simplest and most deeply useful physics principles. Things you learned in high school that are actually useful way down the road. Basic trigonometry (Sohcahtoa) falls in the same category for me.

<comment><USER13> So true. I have been watching an excellent lecture series by Prof. Charles Bailyn (Yale U.) where he goes into some current work in astrophysics (2007) using calculus-free physics. (It's at [http://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/astr-160](http://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/astr-160), and other places like iTunes U.)

It's amazing how deeply useful Doppler shift is; he returns to it thematically at least twice, talking about exoplanets as well as black holes. "We can't see them directly, but we can see them through the way they interact with other things."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do I need to change any settings on my computer?

<comment><USER16>
        > Wow, our sun is BIG...

Even bigger. The solar system you linked to is not even near to having the correct proportions.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Solar- sys...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Solar-system.png)

<comment><USER17> This is pretty misleading. The sun's diameter is much less than 1 AU.

<comment><USER18> Im pretty sure the sun is bigger than 1 Australia.

Sorry had to, for the confused: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will this undo the horrible decade we've had since 9/11 ?

<comment><USER20> For ham radio HF propagation above 20 meters? Well, not really. Enjoy 10M while you can... I hope the next cycle in about a decade has better flux numbers. Es on 6M is fun, but I want some months long round-the-world F2 propagation modes.

(Seriously its interesting the article didn't mention how unusually weak the latest cycle has been. Usually the peak is much higher leading to happier ham radio operators. So the "news" or "journalism" is the unusual weakness of this cycle, but instead we get human interest story...)

Aside from the stereotypical "this individual cycle is weak" most recent solar coverage has contemplated Maunder Minimum effect and stuff like that. The wiki article is pretty good, summary is every time a cycle is wimpy everyone temporarily jumps on the bandwagon that its a semi-permanent long term decline etc etc.

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

In these ways, its a somewhat atypical solar news story. Which is cool.

<comment><USER19> What an awesome answer to my facetious question :-) I know nothing about ham radios or frequencies but it sounds interesting nonetheless.

<comment><USER21> Amateur radio can be rewarding. You can build radios/antennas, explore physics, yak with folks around the world without internet/telecom companies or do public service. Current nifty ham technology is SDR, (Software Defined Radio).

<comment><USER22> Just because you mentioned the internet and "everything must be connected with Snowden," I wonder if the NSA is tapping all short-wave comms? You'd think yes, because that is what spooks on all sides used for encoded messages. But then again, with the focus on internet, maybe the SW-recorder got neglected in a back-room (unlikely, probably just another pipe into that Utah data center).

<comment><USER23> Tapping a thing and understanding what you are listening to are two totally different things. Theoretically broadcasting an encrypted message in which third parties cannot possibly have access to the endpoints is still the safest way to handle sensitive data. This is part of the reason why 'Numbers Stations' are so popular with us geeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this due to our Sun's rotation or because it revolves around the center of the Galaxy?

<comment><USER11> It's caused by the sun's rotation, mostly. There are some complex magnetics that go on inside the sun, but the gist of it is that there is a differential in rotation rates between the poles and the equator of the sun. This causes field lines to be dragged along the equator, which then get knotted up and form coronal holes and other phenomena. Eventually, along an 11-year cycle, the field flips orientation.

Source: I work in a solar research lab at the University of New Hampshire

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> (╯°□°)╯︵ pʃǝıɟ ɔıʇǝuƃɐɯ

</comment><comment><USER26> Some comments in this thread are completely surreal.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just wait until it happens again here on Earth.

<comment><USER15> Birds and people who haven't adopted GPS will be screwed... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_54559main_comparison1...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_54559main_comparison1_strip.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This entire thread has turned into 2005 Slashdot.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nothing to do with global warming people. That's still cow farts. Move along. Nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER30> So the Myans were right all along!

<comment><USER31> Nope.

<comment><USER30> What about homoeopathy - will that still work?

<comment><USER32> Yes, but you'll have to shake it upside down

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I know I'm stating the obvious though these comments are hilarious. Keep'em coming.</comment>


China's lunar probe sends first photo of dark side of the moon - <AUTHOR> https://beta.scmp.com/news/china/article/2180453/chinas-change-4-lunar-spacecraft-poised-touch-down-dark-side-moon <comment><USER2> First? The Soviet Luna 3 probe sent the first photos... In 1959.

<comment><USER3> First taken _on_ the other side of the moon, yes. As the caption says, "The first close-up picture of the dark side of the moon, taken by Chang'e 4 after its historic soft landing."</comment></comment>


Chemists create the brightest-ever fluorescent materials - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-chemists-brightest-ever-fluorescent-materials.html <comment><USER2> The article says, "there are currently more than 100,000 different fluorescent dyes available." How can I learn which are the most lightfast?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Plug-and-Play Optical Materials from Fluorescent Dyes and Macrocycles

[https://www.cell.com/chem/fulltext/S2451-9294(20)30310-7](https://www.cell.com/chem/fulltext/S2451-9294\(20\)30310-7)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this (fluorescent materials) why the lights on laptop power cables now slowly fade out when unplugged, as opposed to suddenly turning off? Just a small question that's been in the back of my mind for awhile.

<comment><USER4> Probably not. Fluorescence occurs on a nanosecond timescale. Phosphorescence (what's used to make white LEDs) can have timescales on the order of seconds.

What's far more likely is that it's a capacitor discharging.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the answer and explaining the difference between the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does that mean we get new kind of lights?

<comment><USER6> Fluorescence means emitting light after absorbing it- higher fluorescence means that less energy is lost.

Fluorescent lightbulbs drop ultraviolet light down to visible light typically via a phosphor coating. White LEDs are also often phosphor (or similar) based.

Note that in neither of these cases is the phosphor considered a "dye". I suspect that any application of a fluorescent dye on the LED itself would still cause a fairly significant luminosity loss and buildup of heat compared to simply coloring the plastic or glass enclosure that the white LEDs are built into.

I am not a materials scientist or engineer, just a person who likes to wildly speculate on the internet when I don't get enough sleep.

<comment><USER7> > I am not a materials scientist or engineer, just a person who likes to > wildly speculate on the internet when I don't get enough sleep.

I remember a series of science fiction stories where the protagonist would have some problem to solve, get wildly drunk and... the next morning there would be some weird device in his living room. It was the solution, but he would have to untangle what his drunk self came up with.

EDIT: Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner

<comment><USER6> If you replace wildly drunk with insomnia, then I have to say that that sounds all too familiar :) Thanks for the recommendation!

<comment><USER7> one note: it is NOT hugo/nebula material, more like old-school pulp scifi. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The pictures of glowing things need something for scale.

<comment><USER9> Hands for scale [https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2020/chemistscrea.jpeg](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2020/chemistscrea.jpeg)</comment></comment>


The story of LifeDiary app - <AUTHOR> https://utemissov.com/lifediary-app-story/ <comment><USER2> I don't get it. "6k-7k monthly active users" is a failure of an app, just because it's outside the U.S.? That's way more than I ever got, I'd say that's a success.</comment>