The future of college is online, and it's cheaper - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/online-college-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> I remember this quote from Larry Sabato, famous political science professor from UVA: "online education is something you want _other_ parents' children to do".

People who think college is just about, or honestly even primarily about, learning various subjects show a deep misunderstanding of what college is in my opinion. Online learning will of course have a place, but in a world where there are both in-person and exclusively online options it's not hard to imagine which experience top students (not to mention the rich and connected) will prefer, and this will only lead to more inequality in higher education.

<comment><USER3> I agree — it's not that online-learning _has_ to be intrinsically, objectively of lower quality than traditional college education (indeed, some online-first courses I took for fun now offered on Coursera were better than I remember some of my in-person courses), but to think that college is only courses misses the point: it's the opportunity to grow not just academically, but, just as important, socially and independently — at most schools, you're meeting with peers from all over the world (or at least from outside your hometown), have direct interactions with professors renowned in their field who are (in my experience) eager to personally introduce you to opportunities you wouldn't know about from searching the internet, and access to a vast collection of resources much more restricted to the public. To say college is just getting a degree is to miss out on all of the non-purely academic opportunities colleges offer.

But aside from all of that — it's also where many (not all) young adults go after high school to figure out who they are, who they want their friends to be, and what they want to do, as for most of them it's their first taste of living as their own fully independent person. Something has to fill that vacuum.

<comment><USER4> > Something has to fill that vacuum.

There's always the military or a peacetime national service program.

<comment><USER3> Both of those would seem to imply the virtual exclusion of anyone who is not a US-citizen

<comment><USER4> Non-citizens are free to join the military for the record. It's one of the more accessible ways of becoming a citizen on an accelerated timeframe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've sat through so many lectures where it's just one dude talking, with a sprinkle of a question here and there.

Higher education just has this weird power, they are held in such reverence that they are actually able to say 'no, this magical monologue can only be heard in person'.

Make it mostly remote, bring the kids in for proctored exams, enable insane flexibility with respect to people's time. Enable all types of schedules and accommodations, which believe it or not is also a barrier, not just money.

My college simply did not offer any of it's science classes after work hours, definitely no chance to catch one on a weekend. We had to be there for the magical in person monologue.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, lectures are cheap (and entirely worthless) but labs and recitations are somewhat expensive and tailored (to varying degrees) to each student.

Not saying college shouldn't die - it's a racket. However, I can't imagine performing any of my magnetism or optics labs remotely.

<comment><USER7> How about all lectures go online and you come in for a couple of days a week for labs? Lets cut the price in half and stop the insanity.

There was a time a kid could get a summer job and put himself through medical or law school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I teach at a university. We aren't (completely) evil sith lords who have somehow tricked everyone with our big conspiracy. And students aren't irrational fools who love to waste their money. We'd love to do more online programs. Everyone has been trying to get them or two going, including us. The problem is most students can't handle them. It's like buying a home exercise device. They usually just gather dust if you aren't surrounded by peers and trainers pushing you to use them.

Over the years I'd say student self-motivation has gone down not up for a variety of reasons, requiring a lot more hand-holding. More people go to college than before, plus in STEM most of our students come from countries where school consists of watching lectures passively then cramming the night before exams.

<comment><USER9> I know that I needed hand-holding to get through college. Oddly enough, there were some subjects that I was able to learn easily on my own, including programming and electronics. Other subjects, such as math and physics, I just didn't have the self discipline to keep up on my own, even though I was sincerely interested in them. I majored in those subjects, but continue to use programming and electronics in my work.

I don't know anybody who has brought themselves up to a useful level of competence in math or physics, through self-study.

</comment></comment><comment> non-entity I'm not convinced. The response I've seen from traditional students has been overwhelming negative. Added to that is the negative legacy of online education (which is of course a whole story itself)

Education is just one part of attending a college. Credentialling is another really big one, and beyond that theres a ton of various social components that add to the value of attending a school. With online schools, you either lose out or get a degraded version of those.

I've seen a lot of arguments from people in non-software fields doubt online degrees, including engineers say they'd be wary of an online degree regardless of its accreditation and physics graduates raise question about not having access to extremely expensive equipment for labs.

And yes, a legitimate online degree wont indicate its online (although it can be deduced in some circumstances), so ideally the credentialling remains valid at least.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am not sure why professors still think college is about education (as the author in this article who is a professor is assuming). And that students learn in the class. No - that is not what it is about. Most students in top tier universities are smart enough to learn themselves. There are already tons of online education courses for them to get this done. The goal of college is more about networking, having a good time and credentialism. And that is what they pay for. You are not going to Harvard MBA to get their education - it is all about the people you will get to know and credential you will get once you graduate. That is worth $200k. Not a Zoom class sitting in front of a computer in a far off corner of the world with nothing else to do.

<comment><USER11> Not even that it's about signaling. A Harvard education is no better than the other top 50 schools but it signals elite status to future employers and clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked for CTLT at WSU for two years - 2003[0] - 2005. Distance learning is hard, and I feel like people are not appreciating how difficult assessment is. There is a book on this[1] which covers a bunch of finicky stuff; we used a much earlier version for our designs.

CTLT is no more; I'm sure WSU is still working[2] on distance learning.

[0]: [https://blog.ryjones.org/2003/09/18/For-want-of-a- nail](https://blog.ryjones.org/2003/09/18/For-want-of-a-nail)

[1]: [https://www.powells.com/book/-9781118456149](https://www.powells.com/book/-9781118456149)

[2]: [https://online.wsu.edu](https://online.wsu.edu)

</comment><comment><USER13> I definitely believe that there is a need to transition college programs into an online format, or at least present the option to college students. It is, however, tricky for various fields of study. While for computer science it's definitely easy to offer an online curriculum, I would say the value for a lot of the physical sciences comes from the hands on experience. This is the case for business students as well, where most of the value of in person classes is derived from the network that one builds. It's much harder to build those kinds of relationships without engaging with other students face to face.

That being said, in my experience regarding the computer science perspective, having mandatory in person lectures added little to no value in terms of actual knowledge gained. In fact, I would argue that not being able to participate online was a detriment to my personal college experience. In order to avoid taking on massive amounts of debt, I had to work full-time while doing my undergrad. I was lucky enough to land a full time development gig my sophomore year, but it required being in the office 80% of the week. Between work, commuting, and sitting in a lecture hall, I had very few hours left in the day to actually work on my assignments and this caused me to make sacrifices in order to manage my time.

There was nothing communicated in our lectures that could not have been communicated in a pre-recorded video or via a class forum. The option to participate online will open up doors for many individuals who might not have been able to pursue higher education before, such as those who have to work or take care of their families.

The article mentions the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech [1], and I can't recommend this program enough. I'm currently about half way through the curriculum, and the format of the program alone addresses almost every issue I've had with my undergrad. I am able to watch lectures and do projects at my own pace which makes managing my time significantly easier. It also comes at 10% of the cost of my undergrad and that's a price that's hard to beat.

[1] [https://omscs.gatech.edu/](https://omscs.gatech.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Teaching second semester CS students atm I unfortunately see that many students just can't handle it remotely. Although I admit that I'm skeptical if students unable to do some work independently are... a good fit.

I live in a European country where things are different of course. With university being basically free, this piece is a non-issue. Also people trust public institutions much more - for a reason. The university where I studied had no problem kicking out 70% of the students. I teach at a private institution and every year I have to dumb down things because they pay and controlling and management and blah. We're now sooo far away from the material taught at the comparable university course. And with this remote semester even much worse.

Furthermore, traditionally out university studies were already organized in a very "free" way - no specifically enforced order or lots of mandatory presence. Do your exams and in the end show all your certificates. Most lab courses were a meeting once and then everyone working on their own at home anyway. It was mostly the first 2 years with the math whiteboard sessions with mandatory presence. The rest I did mostly from home anyway and skipped most lectures.

Lastly, many companies are still reluctant to hire graduates with "only a bachelor" as it's still often seen as a dropout degree (we made the switch from out classic 5 years diploma studies just a decade ago or so). So go figure what the opinion on some MOOC certificate.

So to to sum up I don't see much chance here because: \- many can:t handle it \- university cheaper than udacity nanodegrees \- good job compatibility anyway (at least for studies like CS anyway but if not you can't do a MOOC either) \- no trust by companies in private edu providers

</comment><comment><USER15> Two interesting examples of viable, accredited, online schools:

Western Governors University: [https://www.wgu.edu/](https://www.wgu.edu/) (also mentioned in wikipedia): state aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp).

BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I think there is good personal support, interaction, tuition is much lower, bachelors programs (like IT, business, others) are available, programs excellent, and is also suitable for those who need to first become qualified for entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used in curriculum, and other basic skills), then provides that university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news article that explains it well I think, here: [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html) .

</comment><comment><USER16> The two degrees in the articles are examples of "MOOC-based degrees". These are launched by MOOC providers like Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn.

In all 50+ such degrees have been announced [1]. ~30 of these were announced in 2018, but there was a slow down in 2019 with only 11 announced [2].

A majority of degrees tend to be Master's, but there are few bachelors. Most recently Coursera announced that their Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of London had 2,000+ students enrolled. It was announced last year and costs 10,088 – 15,132 GBP.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of Class Central, a Tripadvisor for Online Education. But we also write about the MOOC industry in depth.

[1] [https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-based-masters- degre...](https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-based-masters-degree/)

[2] [https://www.classcentral.com/report/moocs-stats-and- trends-2...](https://www.classcentral.com/report/moocs-stats-and-trends-2019/)

<comment> non-entity One interesting thing I've noticed in a handful of the MOOC degrees (only a few of them at the moment offer this) is alternative pathways. I've seen masters degrees offer pathways for literally anyone, even with no prior education to be admitted into them and acquire a masters degree.

On one hand, I'm all for democratizing education, and have taken some courses from said programs individually (typically the offer a "preview") and from what I've seenb hey aren't something anyone without prior subjects knowledge can just fake themselves through.

On the other hand, a lot of the advertising from the schools themselves read like something from a for-profit and I wonder whether programs like these will weaken the reputation of the degrees or even that of the schools themselves. Paraphrasing something I've read on here before, sometimes, the degree is more about signalling than education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like if college study is going to move online there will still need to be opportunities for young people to come together and network in a way that will be functionally similar to a college campus. I could see some sort of cooperative college town without the college emerging...

<comment><USER18> Youth hostels. It is a becoming a trend to put work spaces and decent chairs in the hostel for remote workers and students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not in-class interactions (party? Networking? Labs?) versus being alone in a room watching lecture videos.

If students don't have to live on campus to get the credits and the degree, it opens a world of possibilities. They can work part-time/intern in a real company and network while completing their online courses. Receive salary at 18, network with other interns and older employees at the company, participate in industrial grade lab experiments if that happens at the company.

Say Google would open "3y part time internships" allowing students to enroll in a credentialing University and complete courses and get a degree online while working at the company. The in-campus experience doesn't sound very compelling now.

<comment><USER20> Shopify actually has a program like this: [https://devdegree.ca](https://devdegree.ca)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Probably the single best course I took in college was an advanced course on Metaphysics (my degree is in philosophy.) It was during the summer, so the class was about 3 hours long, and there were only 3 other students and the professor. The level of discussion and feedback was incredible - there was very little lecturing and essentially just discussion and Socratic-style investigation into the paper of the day.

I'm not sure how this experience can be replicated by an online lecture. Even group video chat is a poor replacement for a small in-person discussion group. I can see online videos replacing the lecture format for larger or general education classes, but to me personally, the real value was in the small discussion groups.

<comment><USER18> What did you read?

<comment><USER21> Pretty much just a different paper on metaphysics every week. It's been a decade and I don't remember exactly, but most of the names listed here sound familiar (Quine, Carnap, Ayer, etc.):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy#Analytic_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy#Analytic_metaphysics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What folly! Would you hire a chemist, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer or aeronautical engineer who didn't have any lab experience? Never mind doctors, nurses, dentists, dental hygienists - and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on. The biggest thing separating college from high school is _hands-on experience._ The degrees that can be learned entirely online are the ones most-likely destined for the trash bin as it's going to be expected that _everyone_ has that knowledge since it's so readily available and accessible.

It's about _doing_ , not just learning.

</comment><comment><USER23> It is indeed very cheap and convenient for colleges. For students, it will just mean the loss of a community, of a network and even more isolation in an already deeply solitary society.

There are other way that can make education cheaper, ways that do not involve the commoditization of classes and the destruction of the student experience.

</comment><comment><USER24> If higher education is all about networking then why they've not been disrupted by cheaper ways to network?

Why there exists nothing other than higher education institute charging arm and leg for people to network?

Can't we have simple institute where people simply go to brainstorm on random stuff and with no focus on grades or anything at all.

<comment><USER25> Higher education doesn't have to be expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A lot of people are thinking of starting the university education as the primary means to make some money off of your work. They don't make that as a side effect of the cost of the college degree.

A lot of the "higher education", and the "college", are just "people who get to keep that kind of money" as we see in the article (I know there is a lot of money in universities around the world). I wish I'd see the financial returns for such programs as the ones with the most money, but it doesn't make sense to me to go to one without being very rich. Sure we have a good business model and we can afford a college degree, but there's no guarantee that the people with the least money are the ones spending the most money.

</comment><comment><USER27> Parallel online degrees programs as mentioned in the article already exist. However, they are not necessarily cheaper. Harvard Extension School costs $2,840 per course even when taking it online

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a friend whose daughter had a baby while in high school, was allowed to graduate early (i.e., got kicked out), and enrolled in online college. It was an online program from a state university.

According to my friend, her daughter's biggest challenge was the boredom: Sitting all day long in front of a computer in a small rural town.

She graduated with a major in some meaty subject like biology, and has made a decent life for herself. But I can see how there's a lot of attrition.

</comment><comment><USER28> The most valuable aspect of university for me wasn't going to lectures and learning things, but learning how to get myself to important classes on time and other "adult" stuff.

When you get to uni you've spent 13 years in the education system, but you're probably only just starting to be responsible for yourself. Learning that in a slightly more forgiving environment is useful and missed by online classes.

</comment><comment><USER29> The reason why you want to go in person to college is to meet your peers in ability and get to know them up front.

Otherwise, you can just pick up a book and start reading.

<comment><USER30> There is something about immersion. Not everyone has the discipline to study independently for hours a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Getting away from one's home life has to have value for a lot of kids, either escaping a bad situation or getting free of an overbearing parent. I think the nytimes had an earlier article about the inequalities that are suddenly on display when students are on camera in their homes.

Also, I just finished "Educated", and can't imagine the story working online.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't understand why there are so many 4-year and Masters programs that are so expensive. Who has $60,000 for a degree? They are priced with the expectation that you will take on debt and slave away for 30 years at the profession for which you're now trained, to pay it off. Community colleges look like a huge advantage.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there any need not to have, online, in person discussions and learn for yourself, mixed to suit you and the institution? I think not.

Neither a one size fits all online lecture nor a physical lecture with a lot of students, is tailored to the individual student very much, or interactive. I'd prefer to see education that is personalised.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nobody seems to be acknowledging how schedules and in person classes are motivating. For instance I would not understand calculus to the degree I do if I didn't have some kind of irl accountability. And there have been many times when a good instructor has galvanized intense interest in something new.

</comment><comment><USER35> Online learning removes two major barriers, accessibility and classroom limitations.

Harvard has no limit on how many students it accepts in its online program. Once they realize that and offer it, why would I go to the local state school if I can go to Harvard instead?

<comment><USER11> Because Harvard doesn't want that. The value of that degree is 90% signaling and 10% networking. If anyone could go that would remove most of the value.

<comment><USER35> Don't get me wrong, campus enrollment will still be limited. Online certifications have no limits. All Harvard has to do is internally stratify their degrees, online vs on-campus, and have it say so right on the diploma. They could serve 100x the current enrollment count and still remain exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It may get cheaper for the organizations that control the resource to distribute it, but it will not get especially cheaper for the people who want the resource, the difference will of course be pocketed by the organization.

<comment><USER36> although I could conceive of some sort of tiered service based on your ability to pay, so you can buy the Harvard-lite package. But I think that is going to need a few years of them figuring out how to package and sell it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> My suggestion: wait twenty or thirty years and look at the resumes of the 30-somethings at the New York Times. I suspect their colleges will be much what you'd find now.

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://pastebin.com/EUF0Y9PV](https://pastebin.com/EUF0Y9PV)

</comment><comment><USER39> The University of Texas System tried to do this in the late 90s/early 00s. They concluded _Web-based distance education is not appropriate for every student._ [0] (There also exists a long form narrative about the origins of this, but I can't seem to find it again)

The opinion columnist misses crucially what college is. It's not really about lectures. Rather, it's an incubator for young people to intellectually grow. Online courses don't give you the ability to drop in on a hundred different clubs, go to the library, party, date, drop in the office of some very smart people.

A college campus drops some thousands of young people in the same proximity, and gives them a collective experience. It situates them amongst a litany of highly intellectual adults and gives them a way to try news things. I just graduated from university, and I was leaving the core curriculum had become under conflict. I attended a Jesuit university, so there was a large philosophical/religious portion of curriculum. Opponents say this leads to no meaning job skills, and it's hard to disagree.

College isn't just about getting a job, at least it shouldn't be. We have culturally deemed the degree necessary for employment, and that's the bigger issue. I grew philosophically and theoretically in the classroom, but it was everything outside of the classroom that made me readily employable. Frankly, it was a privilege that I had four years to figure out who I was and what I enjoyed.

I recognize that not everyone is this fortunate. Some go to college just because they need to find jobs. That is where I think online learning has potential. We must acknowledge it will lead to a bifurcation in higher education. Online degrees are already less respected than degrees from high- ranking private universities or good public systems (UC/UT/UM). This bifurcation is not necessarily a bad thing. Those who want job skill training should be able to opt for online programs and be able to land jobs (Think like what Lambda aims to achieve).

The wealthy and high-achieving will still go to expensive private universities in person. For everyone else, there should be an accessible means for gainful employment at a fraction of the cost.

I see the fundamental issue in higher education being that colleges have become more expensive as they become more comprehensive experiences, but the market forces bachelors degree attainment for even basic employment. The result is that those who don't need, or don't want, all the luxuries have to subsidize the cost.

[0] [http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/53/110](http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/53/110)

</comment><comment><USER40> I can see it happening for computer science, law and business, but anything that involves dealing with real physical matter (think rocket propulsion labs, molecular biology labs or even just welding/machining shops), we will need physical spaces. The signalling value might just move there: "We have the most sophisticated lab equipment for you to learn with world-class researchers to assist you"

Still, the great unbundling of education has begun. We at learnawesome.org are contributing to that as we recently launched a project-based learning program with a peer group and practitioners as mentors. The mentors will curate a "syllabus" using online resources, but the goal is for you to learn by accomplishing meaning projects: [https://learnawesome.org/project-based- learning.html](https://learnawesome.org/project-based-learning.html)</comment>


Broccoli for breakfast is team's recipe for success - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/rugby_union/article2681683.ece

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if appropriate, but thought it could interest the GTD/health geeks around here.</comment>


Beezid 60 Second TV Commercial (YouTube) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GQghW2nZ5A <comment><AUTHOR> I just saw this while watching Bond reruns on Syfy channel. Kind of made me throw up my Thanksgiving dinner a little...</comment>


Show HN: CNC Engraving Toolpath Generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/built1n/rastercarve <comment><USER2> It would be nice if the tool path was customisable so you could create something like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Mellan#/media/File:Clau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Mellan#/media/File:Claude_Mellan_- _Face_of_Christ_-_WGA14764.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea! I'm not sure that's easily achievable with my current architecture, though.</comment></comment>


AT&T Breaks the Apple SIM's Best Feature, Locks It Down If You Pick AT&T - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/24/att-breaks-the-apple-sims-best-feature-locks-it-down-if-you-pick-att/

<comment><USER2> AT&T seems at fault there but it is apparently a feature that Apple decided to implement, so is it really entirely AT&T's fault

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8504948)</comment>


Lets Talk about Object Oriented Programming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@agent47darksoul/lets-talk-about-object-oriented-programming-d9f1602ebaa7#.tqkldvb8w <comment><USER2> To me this seems to be a flawed response to the article critical of OO.

For example, the author seems to have consulted Wikipedia for a definition of OO, found the "Inheritance vs subtyping", and decided (mistakenly) that inheritance is orthogonal to subtyping.

As I understand it, inheritance is inseparable from subtyping, because inheritance IS-A kind of subtyping (meta irony!)

This leads the author to make erroneous statements, e.g. "In a lot of languages, inheritance is implemented as a subtyping mechanism, eg. Java/C# etc, but in some languages its not. These languages decouple inheritance and subtyping, e.g. Go."

But Go actually does not have inheritance. This is why the Go FAQ answers the question, "Why is there no type inheritance?" by stating that, "Object- oriented programming, at least in the best-known languages, involves too much discussion of the relationships between types, relationships that often could be derived automatically. Go takes a different approach."

Go is based on criticism of OO similar to the one that this author is defending.

The author cites mixins as a better way to get inheritance, but mixins aren't inheritance (Wikipedia: "Mixins are sometimes described as being 'included' rather than 'inherited'.) So how does this exonerate the OO pillar of inheritance?

However, if I am not mistaken, mixins are effectively a subtyping mechanism. I thought we needed to remove the subtyping to make inheritance work?</comment>


Maturity - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/direction/maturity/ <comment><USER3> I was sucked in by Gitlab's feature list and marketing. But holy shit so many things are half assed and so many features are buggy and broken. Like their wikis would sometimes just straight up delete text and their webhooks would break images. I started a bunch of issues but they really have no chance of getting fixed anytime soon. Just shows how different your impression of something is after actually using it.

<comment><USER4> The wiki is GitLab should not delete text, please file a bug if you had dataloss.

The current state of the wiki isn't great but we're also not seeing a lot of people care about it. Many people are switching to static websites. Therefore we're not investing to get the wiki better than the current state of a half circle.

BTW We've recently measured experience baselines in GitLab and we agree we still have a lot of work to do [https://about.gitlab.com/2019/09/05/refining- gitlab-product-...](https://about.gitlab.com/2019/09/05/refining-gitlab- product-experience/)

<comment><USER3> A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration.

It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/67132](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132) This basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog".

If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly marked in your marketing. I read about your "integrated devops experience" and was onboard, but if your intent is as you say then you need to put parentheses next to the wiki feature item list that says "this is crap and we intend for it to stay crap" and we'll know to value it appropriately when choosing a provider.

<comment><USER5> > A wiki's not the same usecase as static site, a static site is for marketing > and wikis are for project management. I mean maybe people would use it if it > weren't crappy? I would've been happier if the wiki didn't exist and I > didn't invest time into wrangling it. ATM it's just a frustration.

Hi! I'm the current PM for our wiki's and I agree that the experience isn't up to par at the moment. As Sid mentioned, historically wiki's were not a priority as many users weren't coming to GitLab for those features. We're starting to see shifts in that thinking as we've penetrated deeper in to some markets so we're working to adjust accordingly.

> It's not dataloss but it deletes text in the same line as wiki internal > links. And what kind of wiki doesn't use lots of internal links. > [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- > ce/issues/67132](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/67132) This > basically makes the wiki unusable but it's marked as "backlog".

That issue is interesting because it's a link mechanism that relies on the underlying wiki project that we use. (i.e. that's no common markdown syntax). Discoverability of things like that is limited to some power users who know that we're using Gollum underneath and know of some of the supported syntax. What we've seen is that most users don't use that functionality and instead just use absolute links in markdown. This likely explains why the upvotes are so low on the bug report as well.

For comparison, we've seen more demand to support linking to projects: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/20726](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/20726), than within the wiki itself.

As an FYI, I've also asked a couple of our engineers to take a look at that specific issue to see if it's something that can be relatively easy to fix. No guarantees on anything here, but we'll try to get a bit more relevant engineering information to assist in understanding scope.

> If you really do feel this way about the wiki then it should be clearly > marked in your marketing.

That's a lot of what our maturity pages are trying to do. We're being honest with ourselves and with our users about where we think the functionality of certain features are. In fact, when I started we had the Wiki listed at a `Complete` maturity which I reduced to viable: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www- gitlab-com/merge_requests/23525)

If you take a look at the wiki strategy ([https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/wiki/)) our next focus is going to be on making editing easier and improving navigation. We think these things will start to move the conversation forward for users and we'll see more adoption.

Even more, if you think we're not moving in the right direction with the Wiki's please be vocal on the issue tracker, or open an issue for the Wiki Strategy or even a merge request to change something. We're happy to have the feedback, and don't hesitate to tag me on wiki issues I'm @phikai on GitLab as well.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for explaining and for taking another look at the issue. Your comment makes sense to me in context of your company's strategy. I'm not saying that's wrong, as surely the breath allows you to gain an niche that is less competitive and less risky than a depth strategy that forces you to compete head to head with great products like notion... but as this thread shows it has enormous downside.

But anyway the double brackets is not a Gollum feature. It's a wiki thing, going back to wikipedia.

Since you're here I think this issue is also misprioritized: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/66898](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/66898) You should reconsider as a lot of integrations rely on webhooks and broken images make the whole thing impossible.

<comment><USER5> > But anyway the double brackets is not a Gollum feature. It's a wiki thing, > going back to wikipedia.

That's fair, the point was that it's syntax specific to the wiki system vs. the rest of our markdown filters.

> Since you're here I think this issue is also misprioritized: > [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- > ce/issues/66898](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/66898) You > should reconsider as a lot of integrations rely on webhooks and broken > images make the whole thing impossible.

I'll take a look at this - it popped on to my radar recently but I need to dig in further to understand the use case and functionality here. Thanks for bringing it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jon-wood Somewhat unrelated, but I'd like to give a shout out to whoever designed Gitlab's cookie consent interface. Rather than the usual "accept or gtfo" modal they allow you to choose which categories to select, and even list every individual cookie that will be issued, along with the origin, purpose, and expiry. My only criticism would be classifying a few cookies from Slideshare and/or LinkedIn as necessary because they share a name with Gitlab's own Cloudflare cookies.

At some point tomorrow once I'm on an actual computer I'm going to have a dig and verify that they also don't cookie you until you've consented - if that the case then I'm deeply impressed.

<comment><USER6> They use Cookiebot: [https://www.cookiebot.com/fr/](https://www.cookiebot.com/fr/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love using Gitlab SCM, but I'm surprised that Gitlab CI is described as "Lovable" while major bug fixes are gated for months on an uncertain future feature release:

"Job marked as success when job terminate midway in Kubernetes" [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- runner/issues/4119](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/4119)

IMO a production CI bug that falsely reports success merits a high priority patch release but Gitlab doesn't seem to see it that way.

<comment><USER4> This bug took too long to fix. We are not happy how we prioritized the last few releases for CI. In 12.4 we'll focus on fixing 8 of outstanding CI bugs [https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/issues?scope=all&utf8...](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&milestone_title=12.4&label_name\[\]=Category%3AContinuous%20Integration&label_name\[\]=bug)

<comment><USER8> So, can you shed some light on how the actual prioritization works? There are some bugs, one specifically I've mentioned elsewhere, that just get infinitely shoved into the void.

<comment><USER4> The Product Manager (in the case Jason Lenny who is out of office today) prioritizes between bugs, vulnerabilities, new features, and tech debt. He or she uses customer input, user input, and company input. Read more on [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/#prioritization](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/#prioritization)

To find the relevant Product Manager see [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/categories/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/categories/)

<comment><USER8> So, the unfortunate reality of prioritizing customer wants like this is that you're always going to focus on big shiny new features, and not quite so much the smaller (while still important) bug fixes that really need consideration I feel. I felt like I got shoved into a black hole, and it does not inspire faith in your product anymore. Even if I did become a customer, which I was seriously considering before this, we're going to be "too small" to make a dent compared to your bigger customer base.

<comment><USER4> Existing customers tend to prioritize stability (fixing bugs) over new features.

Please note that even if you're not a customer our issue trackers are open so you can @mention the Product Manager to help them understand the severity and help to diagnose and fix things if you're so inclined.

<comment><USER8> As seen in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- runner/issues/4029](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/4029), a few people did show frustration, and why. And then began the never ending push back after push back.

<comment><USER4> I agree this issue hasn't been prioritized as high as it should. I meant to indicate that with "This bug took too long to fix." but I should have said it took to long to schedule.

We concluded the same internally recently and hence the focus on bugs and wider community contributions in 12.4. We overly focussed on getting the DAG [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/directed_acyclic_graph/) and Merge Trains [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/merge_request_pipelines/pipeli...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/merge_request_pipelines/pipelines_for_merged_results/merge_trains/) out the door and missed a bad bug, we're sorry.

<comment><USER9> Not a GitLab user, but I'm deeply impressed with your openness in handling issues on this thread.

<comment><USER8> I've always appreciated how open he is, I just wish it never came down to having to flag him down on Hacker News to get something properly fixed (although, I appreciate that is still something I can do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gitlab isn't big company, 100 devs or so, they try to target much bigger fish (>2000 devs) with their product, yet they can't make it work even for their scale: Kubernetes , monitoring, CI workflows like merge trains and others. So when it comes to putting you money (gitlab.com subscribers) where you mouth is (gitlab.com/features page) they are not there yet.

Kubernetes story is quite telling. They released "cloud native charts" a year or so ago , that is their official way to run Gitlab on Kubernetes, yet when they just dip their toes into kubernetes world, when they switched their docker image registry to run on kube, they've quickly discovered glaring omissions like missing liveness probe and storm of errors on any version update. That is what their customers were sold under the label "ready for Kubernetes".

Same goes for almost every feature.

<comment><USER11> > Gitlab isn't big company, 100 devs or so

384 engineers, out of a total of 873 employees. I'd say that's a pretty reasonable size.

<comment><USER12> Hi! GitLab employee, since the OP mentioned something from a year ago I thought it might be worth mentioning that we haven't been this size for very long. Around this time last year we were at 300ish employees, but we've almost tripled this year thanks to a huge hiring push.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gitlab is slow. It's so unbearably slow, even their official server. Guys, why should a static content load after page loading is done? Page loading done, and the code still loads with a loading circle. Why? Just compare it with github. Average 500ms makes a huge difference.

Also gitlab UI is a huge mess. It got all the features, sure. But the UI is not that user friendly. Don't use flat the wrong way. Use contrasts for buttons PLEASE. Github is sort of flat and their interface is great with adequate use of contrasts.

[https://imgur.com/a/EIlV7ri](https://imgur.com/a/EIlV7ri)

<comment><USER14> Thank you for the feedback. We aren't happy with performance and we are working hard to improve it. We have two major projects under way, switching to Puma ([https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/puma.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/settings/puma.html)) as well as reducing the overall memory consumption of GitLab ([https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/en...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/development/enablement/memory/)).

You can follow along on some of the progress we are making in each release post in the "Performance Improvements" section. For 12.2 you can see we had 58 MR's related to performance: [https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/merge_requests?scope=...](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/merge_requests?scope=all&utf8=&state=merged&label_name%5B%5D=performance&milestone_title=12.2).

On the UX front, two efforts under way are establishing experience baselines ([https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience-...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience- baseline-recommendations/)) as well as a common design system ([https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas- des...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas-design- system/)). Hopefully these efforts allow us to look at our UX holistically, and to focus on making high quality components that are used throughout the product.

Again thanks for the feedback, and hopefully we will have some more concrete improvements here soon.

<comment><USER13> With those harsh comments being said, I use self hosted gitlab and I am thrilled to see your product improve.

Keep up the good work.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, and please keep up the feedback. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Gitlab is a great product for self-hosting a GitHub-like service and I'm grateful for its existence. Having said that, I'm not a big fan of their bait and switch approach to feature creep. Every time I try to update our GL I end up in a world of hurt.

No straight upgrade path when you skip major-ish releases. I end up wasting a day sifting through cryptic issues and docs from vague error messages.

Suddenly can't commit because now my branch is "protected" and failed a deploy pipeline I didn't implement courtesy of GL's "vision".

Not to mention all this comes at the cost of increased complexity and resource usage.

I wish there was a "thanks but no thanks" setting to keep our instance the bare minimum without having to adopt features whole hog every time they get inspired to incorporate the next "big" thing.

<comment><USER14> Hi, I'm a PM for our linux packages. I'd love to learn more about the cryptic issues and vague errors mention.

We've put a lot of effort towards making the upgrades as painless as possible, with few surprises. One way we've achieved this is by requiring users to update to the last minor version, before making the jump to the next major version, as you note. The reason for doing this, is that we add a lot of validation to that last minor package which checks for any deprecated features/configuration.

This way if you try to upgrade with a configuration that would result in GitLab no longer functioning, we abort the upgrade and tell you exactly why, leaving you with a functional instance in the interim.

<comment><USER15> It was a while ago but the upgrade was from 9 to 11. The first problem was the error message didn't give me a simple command to go step wise through the upgrade like:

\---- Please upgrade to the next GitLab version before trying to upgrade to the latest. The command for upgrading to a previous version is as follows:

sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce=10.8.7-ce.0 -V

See the url below for available releases:

\----

Going from 10 to 11 was even more difficult because the gitlab.rb file format changed and I was missing required information that was not apparent from the error messages after running "gitlab-ctl reconfigure" (I think the error was Chef related but my memory is hazy, below are the GitLab issues that finally provided a hint). This wouldn't be so bad if my GitLab 10 instance was working but after going from 9 to 10, all I got was a blank page so at this point I had no choice but to go all the way.

After finally replacing the gitlab.rb file with the template and adding back info from the old file, I was able to finally run reconfigure and update as needed. Of course, I was soon alerted by coworkers that their commits were suddenly being blocked for failing a commit pipeline. Overall it was not a fun experience and I'd rather not upgrade GL unless I have to but I also don't want to skip versions if I have to repeat the hellish upgrade process by manually babying the upgrade.

Issues referenced: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus- gitlab/issues/3610](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/3610) [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/46219](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/46219) [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus- gitlab/issues/2153](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/2153)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the additional information. The `git_data_dir` and gitaly configuration changes are indeed why we've started requiring moving to the last minor version first. The 10.x to 11.x upgrade was the first major upgrade with these checks, but it doesn't look like we captured all the possible scenarios. (We did prevent a few upgrade failures though, based on customer feedback.)

It is very important for the team to ensure upgrades are smooth. Right around 50% of our installations are running a version at most 3 months old, and we want to continue to improve that number so everyone can take advantage of the latest fixes, features, and security updates.

The team has opened another issue to explore ways to make it more apparent which version should be upgraded to: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/distribution/team-tasks/issues...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/distribution/team-tasks/issues/484).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I moved all my repos to GitLab almost 2 years ago. I just use the online version.

One of the main reasons I moved was because of price (free), and the available CI. I use a $5 DO droplet to do all my CI running - which gets me unlimited usage. It's awesome, and has only had to be rebuilt once it 2 years due to unresponsiveness.

I've been a big fan of the CI - I use it to build my Docker images, then they get run on k8s. Note - I do not use the AutoDevops feature - so I really don't know how that works for people.

I pack the `gitlab-ci.yml` file with my main building steps and all the other tasks I need to run: deploying to k8s, deleting pods if necessary, running db migrations, stuff like that. It works great - everything just works at the push of a button. And now that I've ironed out the `gitlab-ci.yml` file, I don't even have to think about it anymore when it comes to a new project.

Honestly - I like GitHub's UI a bit better as it's a little more modern, but with GitLab's free private repos - it just lured me at first and I'm content for now.

<comment><USER17> Since MS acquired GitHub, GitHub also has free private repos

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm growing a bit frustrated with GitLab myself. There's a bug in their runner that they've pushed back god knows how many releases now that causes the runner to spam a ton of (incorrect) warnings into our logs. I get it, we don't pay for support or the product, but I was sure hoping after many months that they'd either roll back the change that caused this or given us a work around or something ... I guess it's time I try to learn the code base and hope they actually take my contribution.

<comment><USER18> Do you have a link to an issue for this? I work on the Support Engineering team and while our central mandate is not committing code, I think this could be something we could address quickly.

<comment><USER8> [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- runner/issues/4029](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/4029)

<comment><USER18> Thanks! I messaged some of my teammates to see if they can take a crack at it.

Thanks for the issue!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great, addressing a common and real criticism of gitlab that it seems has been in recent history much more focused on adding features than maintaining quality. The maturity schedule as I see it seems quite slow though, it shouldn't take years for a new feature to have high quality.

<comment><USER20> The GitLab team will readily admit that they have a breadth first policy. This gives transparency for that policy, and does not change it.

<comment><USER4> That is still our policy but we recently added something to [https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#breadth-over- dept...](https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#breadth-over-depth) that might be relevant:

"So breadth over depth is the strategy for GitLab the company. GitLab the project should have depth in every category it offers. It will take a few years to become best in class in a certain space because we depend on users contributing back, and we publish that journey on our maturity page. But that is the end goal, an application of unmatched breadth and depth."

<comment><USER19> My first experience with GitLab, several years ago, felt like it needed this policy. I actively didn't like it, and did not see the point or added value.

Now my experience is exactly the opposite. I like all of the things GitLab does, it is an obvious and significant value add _but_ ... when I have experimented with it in a home lab and elsewhere there were several things which gave me pause, and I've seen the same expressed elsewhere which alleviates doubts I may be wrong.

Now I'm in the position where I like something and hesitate to recommend it worrying that the details will make my life more difficult and my users' lives more difficult and not less, not because of missing big features but because of quality and depth, as you call it. Maybe it's the right thing for your business to go for breadth even for years longer and seek depth in the future to solidify your position. But for now, as a potential user, GitLab might not be right for me, which I think is unfortunate.

<comment><USER21> Hi there! I hear what you are saying especially if you are considering recommending the full single application. As our maturity model shares, we are better at some stages than others. So I would share parts of the product that really work for you all the time and let people experience for themselves.

<comment><USER19> If I could have GitLab Mature Edition that was restricted to the high quality more complete parts, it would go a long way. Otherwise shipping a product where I have to sell the good parts and hand-wave the rest as incomplete -- it makes the product much less appealing.

<comment><USER21> Hah, I love the "GitLab Mature Edition" idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Lovable: Provides an elevated user experience that customers love as > measured by NPS.

NPS = Net Promoter Score

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

<comment><USER23> Not sure why NPS is being used everywhere these days. Basically it makes all levels of "bad" just as bad as each other. What's so hard about using distributions?

<comment><USER24> Distributions are harder to track over time. Coming up with a single metric is really helpful for A/B tests and seeing how your product changes over time.

<comment><USER21> Agree. It's about consistency over time (and now across companies and products with the adoption) vs perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've just read all the comments here, it's a roller-coaster ride but is exactly what I saw with my self-hosted GL.

Each new release there'd be a new release with great new features - yay! - followed by 3-4 patch releases to fix the bugs. You eventually get worn down by it and don't bother using these things.

I see the same with other dual licensed stuff. Kong is a good example - <USER2> that actually _stop_ routing traffic are eventually acknowledged, but with no feedback unless I keep chasing them. However i'll get regular emails with new products. They've got a new Service Mesh they announced recently. There's not a chance in hell i'll use it until they fix the bugs/issues i've reported in the core product.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool, requirements management is coming!

Not cool, it's only in Ultimate. No way am I going to be able to get my company to shell out for that.

<comment><USER27> Hi! I'm one of the product managers at GitLab that will be contributing to the development of requirements management. I don't believe we've decided that it will only be an Ultimate level feature. The label was added to the epic ([https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/epics/707](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/707)) before any conversation had taken place...or even before there were concrete requirements to build requirements management ;)

We do our best to align features with the likely buyer according to our pricing model ([https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/pricing/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ceo/pricing/)). Sometimes we don't get it right and need to fix our mistake after a feature is launched based on feedback from our wider community (example: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/13856](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/13856)). We have been and will always be transparent about our pricing model and our mistakes in aligning new features with it.

If you're interested in collaborating with us as we build out requirements management, we would love that. It will help us build the right features for the right likely buyer. Please leave some additional thoughts on the epic discussion if you have them!

<comment><USER26> Oh, I don't doubt that the feature would make most sense in the Enterprise tier, but we're on Atlassian right now, whose price is often equated to free compared to Gitlab.

Convincing them to spend $20/developer/month is going to be hard. Convincing them to spend $100/dev/month is going to be a whole different ballgame (even if it's ultimately perfectly great unit economics if gitlab increases productivity by at least 2%).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very pretty graphics and a good way to see a complete listing of products they offer.

I fear that GitLab has simply bitten off more than they can chew. They try to implement so many features that many things feel half-baked. Ultimately - those features that aren't finished are useless to paid or enterprise subscribers.

GitHub has been successful because they focused on doing one thing very well. Now that they have established market dominance, they are slowly introducing new features - but in a way that makes them feel like useful pro-level products right away.

I don't know how GitLab recovers from that other than continuing to march forward. If I were them, I would stem the tide of new product introduction and focus on building out what is already there. It's a very ambitious roadmap they have given the number of features they want to implement.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'll add my two cents and feedback:

I like the GitLab flow, and I absolutely love the "Create merge request" button in the issue detail. I miss it dearly whenever I'm working on GitHub, and `hub pull-request` isn't quite the same.

I don't like the code review functions: for example when I'm in the changes tab, where I can both resolve discussions and double-check the code, cycling through unresolved discussions breaks every time and I have to go back to the discussions tab where to check the code I have to open the linked diff in another tab.

I don't like the settings UI, with all those "expand" buttons so far on the right side. I mean, there's even one of those buttons in places where you have only one fieldset worth of settings.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the feedback. I just spun up a test MR ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www- gitlab-com/merge_requests/29655)) to understand if I could quickly see what was bothering you on cycling through unresolved discussions but it seems to be working ok. Would it be possible for you to elaborate a bit more or link me to a MR where you can replicate the breaking functionality?

I did notice there's a bug where the hover text doesn't go away after clicking on the "Jump to first unresolved discussion" button and I've created an issue to fix that ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/15462.](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/15462.))

<comment><USER31> My biggest issue with gitlab code review is that it's unusable for large changes and large files. On large changes it sometimes won't even show all the changes.

Also the auto-collapse size is far too small, and the fact you can't even see the diff for some large changes in infuriating. It makes using it for code review a struggle. My company is trying to move us all to gitlab-ee, but the lack of features and polish to the code review tool is preventing some teams from making the jump.

I feel like the code review portions are more like a half-circle, and not a heart. There are so many deficiencies that make it unusable for large projects.

If I were gitlab I would look at gerrit for inspiration on what you should use for code review. It's ugly, but it's very functional and performs quite well on meager hardware.

I know there are feature requests to make code review more usable but I can't understand how you could dogfood that code review tool and not go insane.

Also, merge trains for FF-only repos, please!

<comment><USER32> > it's unusable for large changes and large files. On large changes it > sometimes won't even show all the changes.

Improving the performance and scalability of merge requests is the priority for the Source Code team right now, and we are starting with progressively loading the diffs over coming releases. See [https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab- org/-/epics/1816](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1816). Currently we load them in a single request which is a serious bottleneck.

In parallel we are exploring a range of UX changes to streamline and improve the code review experience. If you have any specific ideas please let us know, or create an issue!

> Also, merge trains for FF-only repos, please!

Absolutely! We are iterating towards this [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab-ce/issues/58226](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/58226)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is beautiful.

Made me think of [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful), so I submitted it there [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/d1xqfz/git...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/d1xqfz/gitlab_maturity/).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for submitting it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unrelated to the post but I interviewd with GitLab this year and want to give them a shoutout. The whole process was smooth and the people I dealt with were SUPER friendly, even after I withdrew my offer for another.

Since then, I've moved most of my personal projects over to GitLab and try to evangelise them whenever possible.

<comment><USER12> We're really glad to hear that!! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think Gitlab is doing a great job. I like how their feature requests and bug reports are all open.

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to use GitLab for my personal projects, but moved away for a couple reasons. The primary one is that GitLab is heavily opinionated, and its opinions differ irreconcilably with my own in a few areas.

Now, most of my code is hosted on GitHub, with a few projects hosted in a Gitea instance that I run myself.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm curious, is this an open-source component? I like the way they visualize the maturity of their products.

<comment><USER4> We use Chart.js for this. Credit goes to Josh Lambert who made this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Provides an elevated user experience that customers love as measured by NPS.

What's NPS?

<comment><USER39> Net Promoter Score. Is a score calculated with a periodic survey that tries to determine cohorts of promoters (people who like your product so much that they are willing to recommend it to colleagues) and detractors (people who hate your product so much that they usually talk bad about your product if the opportunity to do so arises.)

This is calculated through those surveys you get sometimes that say something along the lines of "From 1 to 10 how likely are you to recommend X product to a friend or a relative".. or something like that.

<comment><USER38> Huh, I'm confused how that score would tell you if a particular specific feature/area of the app provided "an elevated user experience that customers love". Any ideas?

<comment><USER39> Hmm. Good question. In my experience an NPS study isn't just the survey. I have done it in the past and usually after you get the results you do a baseline a call/contact your promoters and detractors to learn more about their issues.

So I think it's determined by a combination of personal reach-outs and probably the same questions scoped to particular features.

<comment><USER14> Hi - we've been discussing how to better anchor these on quantitative data, rather than the subjective opinion of GitLab PM's.

You can see some of the discussion here ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/Product/issues/323](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/issues/323)) which continued to some degree here ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab- com/Product/issues/386](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/Product/issues/386)).

If you have feedback on some other metrics to use, please contribute! I don't think we've landed on the right formula just yet. But directionally, we'd like these to be based on user outcomes rather than our own opinion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


London's New Artificial Trees Guzzle as Much Pollution as 275 Regular Trees - <AUTHOR> https://secretldn.com/city-trees-london-pollution/ <comment><USER2> Although this is a great piece of public art, it's worth noting that the pollution they refer to is really only particulate matter, with some effect on nitrogen oxides. These mosses would be far less effective at scrubbing CO2 than a 'regular' tree.

You could get a pretty similar effect by installing a mechanical air filter and planting some trees.

<comment><USER3> Can you give a study for this? And plants, no matter which, obviously have other benefits than cleaning compared to an artificial filter. Seeing nature, even on screen, boosts human health. [https://environhealthprevmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...](https://environhealthprevmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12199-009-0091-z) Another important factor of trees is their ability to cool down the city. Moss might not be able to provide the shade the trees offer, but they can provide a cooling effect a simple filter could not provide. Apart from that, while trees are awesome, they take a long time to grow, and a lot of resources during that time. Moss is easier to farm and therefore can be easier to replace if it dies. And no matter how well tended a tree is: A city is a hard place for trees. And taking climate change into account, it will get even harder. Trees that were once fitting for a city might not do well there anymore. And I dont think the moss trees are supposed to exist instead of actual trees. They are instead a great way to boost a citys health next to actual trees and to fill gaps where trees are missing or have been newly planted. So why use trees and mechanical filters, when you can get trees and moss?</comment></comment>


Goosh - The Unofficial Google Shell - <AUTHOR> http://goosh.org/ Amazingly amazing unix-like shell for Google Services. <comment><USER2> It's cool as a programming exercise, but I just can't see it being useful for me. If it can do something else, that might be cool, but it can't do much. ^k and dictionary bookmarks in firefox are far superior to using that shell.

Dictionary bookmarks, for all those unaware, are a beautiful feature I rarely hear about. For example, go to en.wikipedia.org and right click inside the search text box on the left. Click on 'Add a keyword for this search.' For name, put anything, for keyword i have 'w'. Now, whenever you are in the address bar (ctrl+l or alt+d to get there in windows/linux, apple+l in os x) you just type 'w plants' to get the wikipedia page on plants.

Go and try it, type ctrl+l, 'w firefox', enter. I almost can't live without it. And the same works for anything else, so google news can be 'gn', google images: 'gi', etc thus making that more useful goosh. goosh doesn't even have any of the features you'd want from a *nix shell like redirection.

<comment><USER3> Firefox's Awesome Keywords are.. hmm.. awesome, but what if you need:

* a synchronization between different computers (the same keywords on different computers)

* to use other browser

* two or more parameters, e.g. to find Google Sets for "cat, and man"

* to combine multiple queries, e.g. to search for "hacker news" on Google and Yahoo

YubNub's examples:

      $ gset  man, cat

<http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=gset%20man%2C%20cat>

      $ ms2 hacker news; g y

[http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=ms2%20hacker%20news%3...](http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=ms2%20hacker%20news%3B%20g%20y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is Google Code Search missing from the list?

</comment><comment><USER5> firstname.lastname@example.com:/web> news daum Error: Operation timed out (1212416829830).

firstname.lastname@example.com:/web> news obama Error: Operation timed out (1212416850562).

email@example.com:/web> 1 aiml Error: Operation timed out (1212416867098).

<comment><USER6> it's noscript

<comment><USER5> I see! Sorry. I totally forgot about that.

<comment><USER5> Then again, no. It's not noscript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The really cool thing is that you can search and bring up the result sites without a mouse (or any mousless browsing extensions).

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really cool, but you can set search shortcuts in Opera (and the other browsers too). Eg. I type 's xyz' to google search xyz. I have tons of other search shortcuts, like e for ebay, a for amazon, i for imdb, m for mininova, y for youtube, etc.

<comment><USER9> For my Firefox keywords, I have g for google search, map for google maps, gis for google image search, imdb for guess what, w for wikipedia search, py for local python module documentation lookup, modindex to flatly take me to the local python module index, def for google define, dict for dictionary.com, doc for local docs, and yt for youtube search.

Between that and having the left Windows-key bound to "Start a new terminal", I'm never more than a few keystrokes away from my thoughts.

<comment><USER10> That's brilliant! I didn't know about Firefox keywords until now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought it's supposed to save me time :)

</comment><comment><USER12> To everyone who is listing google time out errors - this is in beta. 0.4.1-beta #1

I think it's an interesting idea. I like the idea of being able to use something like this when I'm on a "foreign" computer. Like a computer at my parents, friends or at school. By providing a web front end you don't HAVE to be on your perfectly configured box at home...

</comment><comment><USER13> to everybody with timeout errors: if you use the noscript firefox-extension you have to add "ajax.googleapis.com" to the whitelist.

<comment><USER14> so that was the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems to be giving me different results than google.com for many queries (examples: my name, "java", "specialtys") . I presume this is because searches I do on google.com are personalized to my search history and whatever other data google has on me...

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody use YubNub: "a command line for the Web" (<http://yubnub.org>)?

It's a similar idea that's been around for a few years.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have no idea when or how I would ever need to use this beyond all the Firefox shortcuts I already have...but I have to say it's pretty damn cool. Slick UI, too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Googling for "goosh google" gives me lots of results on Goosh, but Gooshing (...) for the same gives me 0 results on Goosh.

Is this not live data?

<comment><USER19> Google has many datacenters. You probably used a different one then Goosh. Not everybody sees the same results on google.

<comment><USER18> I knew that there are many datacenters, but I expected them to be more or less in sync. However, the results have been totally different for many hours today, and are still only half the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Latest in "time sink" technology!

Love it.

Another timeout below:

firstname.lastname@example.com:/web> = Error: Operation timed out (1212424763266).

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://www.masswerk.at/termlib/sample_socket.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone know how how to make an "extension"? Help says:

load <extension_url> load an extension

<comment><USER23> "You can see an example module at <http://goosh.org/ext/spon.js>"

<comment><USER22> You quoted that-- sorry if this is a dumb question, but where did you find that information?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER24> It is in the source: <http://goosh.org/goosh.js>

Personally I think this is fantastically cool. It is just going to take me a little while to stop typing "ls -l" and "mutt" at the prompt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really cool, but I see it more as a curiosity than something useful.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you like this then you'll probably like mudsh ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=186849> ).

</comment><comment><USER27> best thing I've seen around here in a while. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER28> i'm going to waste way too much time on this

</comment><comment><USER29> gobsmacked.

</comment><comment><USER30> The next step is to integrate this into bash.</comment>


Cursores.js - Get and replace tokens under the cursor (JS autocomplete library) - <AUTHOR> http://cursores.bitbucket.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Related blog post: [http://blog.bitbucket.org/2012/12/21/autocompleting-your- use...](http://blog.bitbucket.org/2012/12/21/autocompleting-your-username- mentions/)</comment>


Chinese Midea makes $5B bid for KUKA - <AUTHOR> http://www.therobotreport.com/news/chinese-midea-group-makes-5-billion-bid-for-kuka-ag <comment><USER2> Kuka makes great industrial robots. They are pretty much the goto guys for car manufacturing robots from VW, BMW to Tesla. I do see how Midea would benefit from this deal as there are no competitive chinese robot makers, yet. However, in the long run Kuka's company culture and roots in Augsburg, Germany will not survive this deal (my impression). They are a 'small' specialized company in the huge industrial manufacturing market, a deal like this had to happen at some point.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, the Chinese will need KUKA.

After Trump becomes president, he will give China 3 years to reach a balanced trade with the US. Huge part of the production will move back to the US. Unfortunately, only a small part of the jobs will come back. Maybe 1 or 2 out of 10. Most stuff will be done by robots. Maybe it will be US based Chinese companies, but it will be US based. And regarding to Midea: An Australian engineer that consulted for them told me, why he would never buy a Midea washing machine. "I would be scared my house burns down". Buyers beware!

So say hello to US based manufacturing and say goodbye to the 'Chinese century".

[http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/chinas-debt-bomb-no- on...](http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/chinas-debt-bomb-no-one-really- knows-the-payload/)</comment>


Benchmark Tests for Evolutionary Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://panthimanshu17.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/benchmark-tests-for-evolutionary-algorithms/ <comment><USER2> I expected more graphics. The graphics comparing the different algorithms are [http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/doku.php?id=bbob-2012-results](http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/doku.php?id=bbob-2012-results) (linked at the bottom of the page).</comment>


How Will We Interact with the Web of Data? - <AUTHOR> http://dsonline.computer.org/portal/site/dsonline/menuitem.9ed3d9924aeb0dcd82ccc6716bbe36ec/index.jsp?&pName=dso_level1&path=dsonline/2008/09&file=w5web.xml&xsl=article.xsl& <comment><USER2> I can't read about the semantic web anymore without the "ditching the semanic web" ideas from inamidst being at the front of my mind. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320989>)

It seems like RDF in theory is fantastic, but it's still so irrelevant in practice after so long in development, that more effort should instead be going into interpreting content that already exists. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I don't want to wait for the content creators to all start using tools requiring them to structure their content--I think we can develop smart enough tools to interpret unstructured content more quickly.

In the long run we should definitely attack the problem from both sides, but for the time being, let people create content however they want, and leave the interpretation burden on those seeking the information.</comment>


Apple Severed Ties with Server Supplier After Security Concern - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/apple-severed-ties-with-server-supplier-after-security-concern <comment><USER2> Paywalled

<comment><USER3> And dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719800)</comment></comment>


Earn ETH by committing to open source projects - <AUTHOR> https://blog.status.im/introducing-commiteth-enabling-a-community-driven-development-model-52159984c531#.dmpp3zthu <comment><USER2> Very cool! Coincidentally, a group of us were just discussing this idea over lunch today. We also imagined that one could write a package manager which could link into 21.co and charge some minute amount of BTC / ETH to pull the latest version of <insert library here>. (HTTP 402: Payment Required) That pool of money would then be allocated to issues / features / etc, based on how many upvotes on Github, etc, which seems similar to what you've done.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a neat idea, although the implementation strikes me as being rather bizarre: users of open source projects, which they fetch from a distributed VCS, can pseudonymously send distributed cryptocurrency to an autonomous smart contract. OK. The contract releases the funds based on comments appearing in a proprietary, centralised CRUD Web app. WAT?

</comment><comment><USER4> Could someone translate the 'How does it work?' section for those of us who aren't familiar with Ethereum?

<comment><USER5> Basically a github maintainer can add their project to commiteth so that whenever someone posts an issue with a label "bounty" a bot posts an address. That address is an ethereum smart contract. People all around can send ETH to that address in order to add incentive to the fix. In Ethereum, contracts can have balances just like wallets.

When a pull request comes in that says it fixes that issue, the bot sees that. Through the smart contract it authorizes the package maintainer to disburse the funds to the fixer at the maintainer's discretion.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any idea what happens if the smart contract isn't ever fulfilled? For example, could the reporter create a expiration? Otherwise the Smartcontract is tied up ad infinitum, and perhaps might never be fulfiled, hence locking up Ether forever? Any idea how this works?

<comment><USER5> While I haven't read the contract, that is a definite possibility. Most applications that require an 'Oracle' (a trusted source of information i.e the bot) can be written in a way that a deadlock would occur if their service was down, for example. That being said, a smart-contract can be written to give refunds in the case of an expiration, disallow the maintainer from cashing his own pull requests (though he could make another account), and other logic like that.

It's very powerful; but when the smart-contract world interfaces with the unpredictable outside sometimes the logic doesn't line up.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes I feel like smart contacts solve a set of problems by creating a whole new set of problems</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


iOS 8 Security Flaw Makes It Possible to Bypass Touch ID and Password - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/ios-8-security-flaw-makes-it-possible-to-bypass-touch-i-1640152643

<comment><USER2> Is it possible it's just reading his fingerprint, unlocking, but not sending him to the home screen until he swipes?

I'd like to see it tried without the correct fingerprint registered.</comment>


The Intel Optane Memory (SSD) Preview: 32GB of Kaby Lake Caching - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11210/the-intel-optane-memory-ssd-review-32gb-of-kaby-lake-caching <comment><USER2> Might be somewhat niche, but this is looks to be a near perfect match for SLOG usage in ZFS based storage schemes where a certain amount of synchronous writes are important. SLOGs don't need much raw space or massive throughput, they need low latency and reliability (including of course persistence in the case of power loss). Traditionally this has been handled either (suboptimally) by flash drives (preferably SLC) or by battery backed RAM drives, which are extremely expensive and have their own potential failure modes. This though looks almost exactly right and could become the new basic answer. In fact it's cheap enough and good enough that it may make ZFS users who previously decided it wasn't cost effective enough to bother with even if some gains were available reconsider.

<comment><USER3> Something to consider for SLOG (or other journals, e.g., bcache) is that write endurance of the Optane 16-32 GB models is pretty poor. You might want a bigger Optane (or SSD) as a writeahead log / WB cache not because you need the capacity, but because you need the write endurance.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely an important consideration, and it certainly depends on the use case. The IOPS also isn't remotely as high as the larger models or a ram drive (though SLOGs can be striped for more). But it's $44/$77 whereas the P4800X starts at ~$1500 and something like the DDRdrive X1 (4GB RAM/4GB SLC NAND/power backing) is ~$2k. For a lot of individual applications (and remember, sync behavior can be set per dataset and SLOGs are assigned per pool) even the limited write endurance will be sufficient for a significant period of time, and even if these initial Optanes were burned through within a single year it could still be dramatically more cost effective: at these prices we're talking decade(s) of yearly replacements before equalling the cost of one higher end drive. Also consider where we are on the development curve for this tech. This is effectively 1.0 of XPoint technology, so it's reasonable to expect significant improvements in capacity/$, performance, and so on over the next few years, which in turn means it may be desirable to cycle them relatively fast anyway.

What I had in mind wasn't that these would be replacements for existing solutions used for high sustained intensity applications directly making money. Those are covered by ram drives or striped SLC already (and perhaps the P4800X series soon). I was more thinking the Optane Memory might provide a solid route for experimentation by a new class of users given the capex of a few pizzas. A lot those cases are going to be relatively low sustained intensity, but with burst performance still desirable. Heck, for forty someodd bucks some might go for it just to do some profiling and get a feel for what a separate ZIL would do for them at all.

If anything a significant limiting factor right now may simply be the relative availability/preciousness of M.2 slots in deployed home/soho appliances, servers and workstations.

<comment><USER3> Yep, those are all good points. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> LinusTechTips just tested this (video is not on YT yet though), and their benchmarks show that it's only really useful as a HDD cache. When used as a SSD cache the only real difference can be found in synthetic benchmarks.

It's unfortunate that it's only available for Kaby Lake, since I imagine that most people in need of a HDD cache run much older systems.

<comment><USER4> Here's the video I talked about: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgTYSsaNU_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgTYSsaNU_A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Intel has a feature where you can use one of their SSDs as a cache. It's fantastic. Except they limit you to 64 gigs no matter what the size of the SSD. Incredibly annoying since what I need cached doesn't remotely fit in 64 gigabytes.

I get to experience lovely things like performance falling off a cliff when stupid programs preallocate 30-40 gigs at a time. If I could use the rest of the SSD it would be no problem.

What desktop user needs fast write caching for synchronous writes? I mean really. It's all buffered writes for programs that work right. Cache size is going to give power desktop users what they need from spinning rust not a small fast cache that won't even fit a single AAA game. 32 gigabytes is a step backwards.

And what is with requiring hardware RAID? It really makes me think all the rapid response stuff is just for marketing.

<comment><USER6> > "And what is with requiring hardware RAID?"

Intel doesn't really do hardware RAID, just software RAID that the motherboard firmware has a compatible implementation of for boot purposes. There is one hardware feature that Intel relies on for RAID or caching involving NVMe drives: the PCH can remap the PCI registers of NVMe drives so that the NVMe drive is only accessible through non-standard interfaces on the SATA controller. This prevents non-Intel NVMe drivers from binding to the NVMe drive and getting in the way of their caching or RAID. It's a hardware hack Intel created to work around poor software architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Optane menory is a really nice solution for write-back caches to slow HDDs (e.g. ZFS Slog, bcache, ...). Or a cache for often-requested HDD blocks which didn't fit anymore to RAM (ZFS L2ARC).

</comment><comment><USER8> Whats the different between this and a regular hybrid SSD/HDD besides being more expensive and exclusive to Intel? No benchmarks and pretty bad write speeds(even if latency is low). I bet this would get beat by a SSD/HHD hybrid for a lot less money.

Queue depth is being hyped but means basically nothing for commercial SSD's that have battery backed ram cache. The SSD just queues writes until queue depth is deep enough.

<comment><USER9> Most SSHDs offer 8GB of flash storage max, and often post numbers that indicate that the flash storage is mediocre. This will absolutely annihilate the vast majority (or all) SSHDs. Is it really so much more expensive? $44 for 32GB of high speed caching is impressive.

Extraordinarily few SSDs, even commercial, have battery backed caches (and those that do often turn into a reliability nightmare), and when they do it tends to be relatively tiny compared to the scope. Queue depth is profoundly important in the real world.

<comment><USER10> One more thing is that every single SSHD ran @ 5400rpm. I ended up buying a conventional HDD @ 7200rpm and bundled a portion of my SSD with PrimoCache.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the SSHD offerings from Seagate et al. are atrocious. It's almost as if they don't want to sell them. Perhaps they're afraid of cannibalizing other product lines?

<comment><USER12> From what I remember a lot of them don't even use the flash to speed up writes, throwing away a lot of the potential performance gains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure where this will be useful.. Only major advantage seems to be the super low read latency.

I was wondering if this will be any helpful for a product I am working on, but as I use mmap for reading our data, don't really see a benefit after the initial read.

<comment><USER14> When you have more data than RAM. There's a cost/performance curve between RAM -> SSD -> HDD. This is something between RAM and SSD. Makes sense.

<comment><USER15> well there are 1tb memory machines not sure if a 32 gb ssd cache would help.

<comment><USER16> The 32GB one from this article is the consumer product with the same Optane technology as the enterprise/datacenter one. The DC-P4800X (the datacenter one) has 375GB, 750GB, and 1.5TB variants[1].

So, no, if you have 1TB of memory a 32GB Optane SSD isn't going to make a difference, but if you have 1TB of memory, you're not the target for the 32GB consumer version, you're the target for the 375GB+ datacenter version.

[1]: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209/intel-optane-ssd- dc-p480...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209/intel-optane-ssd- dc-p4800x-review-a-deep-dive-into-3d-xpoint-enterprise-performance)

<comment><USER12> > you're the target for the 375GB+ datacenter version

Keeping in mind that that version costs $4/GB, which is about half the price of adding more RAM. Which means that while it can be good storage for ZFS or a database, it's still not a particularly effective cache in such a machine.

<comment><USER15> well at 1tb memory there aren't that many dimm slots free and some processors also don't support that much more.

but still what I wanted to say is that it is prolly more useful as a ssd read cache. and not to have it behind your big memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't quite understand a few things about this review. One is that they're using a 960 EVO 250GB as their benchmark SSD, but it's not the best SSD, the 960 PRO 2TB is. How does it compare to that.

The other thing I don't get is that Intel wants to sell Optane drives to "eSports gamers". Why would they need that? I've heard people on the Overwatch forums complaining about slow map loading from laptop hard drives... but if you're playing organized eSports, they're not going to start the match without you. Matches are paused mid-match all the time for technical glitches. If you're just playing on your machine at home, that's not really eSports, that's just playing computer games at home, perhaps with a higher than average dedication to winning. And map loading time is miniscule with SSDs, so I don't see the advantage you could possibly derive from there. (It all fits in RAM anyway, which is cheap.)

I dunno, I kind of see this whole thing as a solution without a problem, at least in the consumer market.

<comment><USER6> I only had a few days to test for this initial review, so I picked flash SSDs that are comparable in price to the Optane+HDD cached setup rather than the best flash SSD money can buy. The 525GB Crucial MX300 and the 250GB Samsung 960 EVO are both close to but slightly cheaper than the 32GB Optane Memory plus the 1TB hard drive.

Intel knows that Optane caching isn't an attractive high-end solution; they're not trying to pitch it against the 2TB Samsung 960 PRO. They'll be coming out with higher capacity Optane SSDs for primary storage use later this year, though still sacrificing a lot of capacity for the improved performance relative to NAND flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> With this kind of endurance and $/GB, there is no reason at this time to buy Optane over more RAM, NAND SSDs, and battery backups.

Maybe the next generation of Optane will be worth it, but this generation certainly is not.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder, what would be better for desktop: traditional SSD or Intel Optane SSD?

<comment><USER12> Define 'better'. In terms of performance Optane absolutely wins. In terms of performance _per dollar_ it's hard to justify.

<comment><USER19> Better in terms of visible performance of typical tasks (development, browsing, gaming). I thought of assembling new PC this year, I wanted to go with Samsung Pro SSD (something like 512G), but now I'm considering to wait for this new tech.</comment></comment></comment>