TSMC's Wafer Prices Revealed: 300mm Wafer at 5nm Is Nearly $17,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmcs-wafer-prices-revealed-300mm-wafer-at-5nm-is-nearly-dollar17000 <comment><USER2> Anandtech _should_ have an article with primary source instead of this estimate. ( Assuming they are allow to publish it )

1\. It is no use discussing yield % without putting the die size. It is defect density per cm2 that is the most important factor. ( Your yield percentage change due to design and die size )

2\. 5nm defect density is better than 7nm comparing them in the same stage of development. i.e Very Good.

3\. TSMC is actually open and transparent with their progress and metrics. Both in Investor Meetings and Technical Forum. ( And with their business partners.... something most other Foundry aren't doing as well )

4\. Most of these calculations in the comment are in BOM cost, which completely ignores the Design Cost ( Billion ) and Research Cost, in terms of Apple that is Architecture Cost, and IP Cost such IMG, FPGA ( Lattice ) etc that are paid per unit. ( Edit: And testing, packaging cost, but it is relatively small )

5\. Hopefully with these figures in mind, you will see how Qualcomm is fighting hard to compete, considering they will have to sell it with at least 50% margin. ( And why Nvidia dont necessarily want to be in the Mobile SoC market, as suggested in the ARM- Nivdia discussions previously )

6\. And then you should realise, how the ARM royalty portion is not an important cost factor. ( As per _all_ ARM or RISC-V discussion on HN )

7\. You should also notice the trend of Wafer Pricing. Hopefully that will finally shape your view on Moore's law.

<comment><USER3> >ARM royalty portion is not an important cost factor

That's exactly the reason why Nvidia's pending acquisition of ARM is so suspect. There's not much money to be made in ARM's business model hence it really only makes sense if they plan on exploiting the synergy of ARM + Nvidia tech in a way that only ownership of the company allows them to.

<comment><USER4> No, an option to hike royalties is very much on the table given ARM's very liberal fees by industry standards.

High volume, high margin fat lambs like Qualcomm merrily eating grass around, or obscenely high margin high-end network chips would've ended on a dinner plate much, much earlier if ARM had an American business culture.

<comment><USER3> Softbank can do that themselves if that was the plan.

<comment><USER5> SoftBank needs cash now, not later. Their horrible bets all got called this year.

<comment><USER3> Softbank is getting just $2bn right now. And the next payment at closing is only $10bn, the rest is in stock.

The whole Softbank needs cash now to fill the WeWork hole doesn't add up. They could have made more cash with an IPO, in similar timescales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just doing some napkin math to give myself some other context in my own head with something much smaller, die size for the Apple A14 isn't out yet, but the A13 (found in the iPhone 11 series and SE 2) is around 98mm^2 manufactured on TSMC's 2nd gen 7nm N7P. A14 might be something like that, because while it's a smaller process Apple boosted transistor count by 38% as well. Lazily/conservatively taking off 10mm on the edge for squares into a circle, that'd be about 630 chips per N5 wafer, a high enough count that chip loss rate shouldn't be too far from defect rate. Even assuming they can get 90% yield right out the gate (maybe generous) that's still about $30/chip, just for manufacturing without any R&D amortization, packaging etc. That actually seems not insignificant going by historical iPhone BOMs [1], so even for smartphones with their far far smaller SoCs 5nm at launch isn't nothing.

The continued ongoing progress in silicon is just mindblowing when you dig into the details in any real way. I was blown away already watching the "Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips" [2] presentation years ago, which _still_ seems incredible and yet that's all talking about now ancient tech. The increasing costs and design challenges though are also going to have interesting effects on the industry, as who/what has the margins to afford fabbing aggressive chips on the cutting edge might start to diverge a bit more. I also wonder how longevity will be, I remember speculation that smaller processes would eventually have to deal with more risk of earlier breakdown even in more normal shielded settings. And speaking of that, in higher rad environments it's normal to use older bigger processes since they're more resistant to disruption. I wonder if small enough processes ever make that more of a consideration even at sea level.

\----

1: iPhone Xs Max for example: [https://technology.informa.com/606680/iphone- xs-max-costs-ap...](https://technology.informa.com/606680/iphone-xs-max-costs- apple-20-more-in-materials-than-last-years-smaller-iphone-x-ihs-markit- teardown-reveals)

2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4) (highly recommended if you haven't seen it)

<comment><USER7> > Even assuming they can get 90% yield right out the gate (maybe generous)

That seems outrageously generous. Rememember that Apple doesn't (as least hasn't so far) bin their parts to sell the ones with faults via different configurations. The only way to get a chip yield like that for a single device configuration is with a ton of redundancy.

I certainly don't know what the yield rate is of Apple silicon, but I definitely don't believe 90%.

<comment><USER8> If Apple wanted to bin the chips, they have devices crying out for low-power draw, albiet slower clock. They can sell a tonne of earphones, watches, HDMI enabled USB-C dongles. They could re-purpose chips which can clock 10x slower for 1/2 the cores, and still have too much CPU. But free.

They can use them for the Apple touchpad, the keyboard, the on-mobo controllers which currently consume non-general-purpose chips, if they want to. If they displace a 10c part by an otherwise redundant $30 part, they are still ahead, if it works.

<comment><USER9> The power draw for a full blown chip like A13 is vastly different from that of the typical ones you find in the devices you mentioned. Also the form factor could limit for many of the smaller devices

<comment><USER8> Yes, I realised this was stretching the argument after I posted. Probably, repurposing terminates in slower, lower spec devices the A13 targets anyway. Maybe in something like the Apple TV?

It would be true that compared to Intel they have far less binning opportunities

<comment><USER10> One way to bin it would be:

Macbook -> iPad -> iPhone -> Apple TV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's quite cheap.

Consider how gigantic a wafer is.

I can of course only run calculations against the half price 7nm node but you will see...Even the mammoth (as in, reticle limited) nVidia A100 is just 826mm^2. [https://anysilicon.com/die-per-wafer-formula-free- calculator...](https://anysilicon.com/die-per-wafer-formula-free-calculators/) says 57 of those fit on a single wafer. This table says the price of a 7nm wafer was 9346 so nVidia paid about 164 USD for each of those. The A100 card -- of course piled with RAM but still -- sells for ten grand.

<comment><USER12> That's double the rumored price of 7nm wafer and 5 times of 14nm wafer

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> ~650MTr per $ at super low power level, not bad.

TSMC's N5 process density is ~171MTr/mm2 and the area of a 300mm wafer is 70,685mm2. Shave off maybe 5,000mm2 for edges and you're at 65,000*171,000,000 = 11 trillion transistors for $17k, or about 650 million transistors per dollar. Apple's A14 11.8BTr so minimum ~$18.20 at this price. Of course there's defect rate to consider.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bah, I could setup a large format camera and do optical reduction of an arbitrary B&W image, transfer that image onto a semi-conductor with a laser, then deposit a thin layers of metal (and whatever) onto it in a vacuum chamber for like, maybe $5 of material. What a ripoff.

<comment><USER15> You can in fact do this.

The process for the original 6502 chip is publicly available I think. You could make it even smaller than the original 8um, probably.

<comment><USER14> I know its possible, I was only being 25% facetious (which is presumably why someone downvoted me). FWIW in all seriousness, getting anything non-trivial to work at 8um would be VERY impressive in a garage-level environment, and of course you'd _still_ be off world-class fabs by 3 OOM!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For some context, the table is on pages 44 and 45 of this PDF: [https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI- Chips%E2%8...](https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/AI- Chips%E2%80%94What-They-Are-and-Why-They-Matter.pdf)

via [https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848](https://twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1306437988801486848) (the article is based on this guy's tweet)

Also note these are not actual prices but estimates.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what the internal cost is for TSMC to do a wafer is?

The variable cost if you will: The cost of materials, electricity, staff etc.? Probably a very small amount.

The big cost for TSMC is the fixed cost of the expensive equipment and the massive R&D in developing the process. However the amount is interesting since if you wanted to spend a massive billions of dollars and setup a competitor to TSMC, you know that TSMC would be able to compete with you on price all the way down to that point.

<comment><USER18> You can look at ratios like WACC and ROIC.

TSMC's weighted average cost of capital is 7% (WACC)

ROIC % measures how well a company generates cash flow relative to the capital it has invested in its business. For TSMC the ROIC is 28%.

If you would like to compare competitors these ratio's combined with growth rate give a very good market overview.

[https://www.gurufocus.com/term/wacc/NYSE:TSM/WACC-/Taiwan- Se...](https://www.gurufocus.com/term/wacc/NYSE:TSM/WACC-/Taiwan- Semiconductor-Manufacturing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the table on the page, why does "Foundry sale price per chip" decrease, while "Foundry sale price per wafer" increase?

Does it have something to do with the average chip area being much larger at larger process nodes?

<comment><USER20> I assume as transistor density increases, you get more chips per wafer.

<comment><USER21> AMD style chiplets also increase yield.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For info, around 600 A13 chips fit on a 300mm wafer. Means Apple is paying around $29 per chip.

<comment><USER23> If the chip yield is 100%.

<comment><USER24> Apple may be paying just for working chips, rather than wafers.

<comment><USER25> If you're their largest customer, and there are no alternative suppliers, leverage works both ways -- but it's beside the point. TSMC does multi-year low-scale runs of new processes to figure out tooling and reduce errors, before committing to huge orders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's a pretty good price. Imagine if masks did not cost so much to make. We would see tons more custom designs.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do defects factor into pricing? Do you pay $17,000 per wafer, regardless of the amount of defects? What if TSMC's estimates are off? If defects are higher than expected, do you get a rebate?

<comment><USER28> You pay the same per wafer regardless or defects.

I'm assuming whatever happens if estimates are off is a crapshoot depending on your contract and specifics.

I could be wrong but there is also usually at least a little 'buyer beware' on newer processes; I know that was a big part of AMD being kneecapped at the offset of the Bulldozer arch era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title should say Estimated, not revealed.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm surprised, that's pretty cheap

<comment><USER27> I assume it's bulk prices, requiring thousands/tens of thousands of wafers of commitment.

<comment><USER30> I don't think they need to require it - you'd be crazy otherwise because you have to pay the multimillion dollar cover charge (to make the masks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can someone help me contextualize? 300mm diameter is 70,686 mm^3. If a chip is 300mm^3, does that mean the company can print about 235 chips per wafer or is it much lower? At 235 chips and a 100 dollar retail price, that doesn't leave much of a profit margin (23,500 gross vs 17,000 to TSMC).

<comment><USER13> A 300mm2 chip would have about 50B transistors, 4x an A14 and 1.8x a Geforce GA102 (RTX 3090 chip). Don't think anyone would sell that for $100 in 2020.

<comment><USER32> You need to check your sources or your math, likely both.

<comment><USER33> A 5nm 300mm die is pretty close to 50B transistors. The whole chart is based on a 90B transistor 610mm die at 5nm that costs around $200. Hence why the die cost of 90nm implies wafer scale level of transistors for the per chip cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For context, a skim of random internet sources claim that TSMC produced 1.1M 7nm wafers last year.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wait, wait. Is this the total price? I think it's much expensive. $17000 for 300mm wafer is unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER36> What's TSMC's secret sauce compared to American fabs?

Cheap labour?

Government handouts?

<comment><USER25> There aren't really subsidies for TSMC here in Taiwan. I would say labor cost is relatively cheap (compared to western countries), and security is relatively high (compared to the Chinese ecosystem).

A big reason it happened here is probably more to do with how manufacturers started combating intellectual property theft decades ago. Firms who wanted to manufacture in China manufactured a few key components in Taiwan to maintain control over output, then shipped them to Guangzhou for final assembly.

I'm not sure there's a "secret sauce". It's more they quietly built a decade plus lead on their closest competitors when they were in the "less desirable market" (compared to Intel, AMD, and Nvidia), and there are huge barriers to entry, with little short-term incentive to DIY (vs. contract manufacturing).

TSMC is actually now Taiwan's single biggest energy consumer, using about 5% of the entire country's electrical supply.

<comment><USER37> > There aren't really subsidies for TSMC here in Taiwan.

Subsidies don't need to be direct cash handouts/tax deductions. I think the real advantage TSMC gets over its non-Asian competitors is government spending on infrastructure specifically for silicon fabrication. TSMC has guaranteed access to water, electricity and engineering talent from local universities on a resource constrained island.

It's smart industrial policy that is the key behind the rise of a lot of Asian tigers, and something other countries should study as well - laissez faire is not always the optimal answer to innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Imagine how many rtx 3080s could come out of that.

<comment><USER39> Zero. They are using Samsung 8nm process for producing all RTX 3 series</comment></comment>


It's a darn good time to be a UI/UX designer who wants to work from home - <AUTHOR> http://www.remotecreative.life/category/digital-media/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know of any other sites that list UX specific contract contract positions?

<comment><USER3> Most of the ones I've seen just scrape other job sites or feeds, like Monster or Indeed. Standalone ones are going to provide higher quality listings, like:

Authentic Jobs, although you have to provide search terms: [https://authenticjobs.com/#onlyremote=1&search=ux%20or%20ui%...](https://authenticjobs.com/#onlyremote=1&search=ux%20or%20ui%20or%20design%20or%20designer)

We Work Remotely, formerly the 37signals job board: [https://weworkremotely.com/categories/1/jobs](https://weworkremotely.com/categories/1/jobs)

Slack at Work, for companies that use Slack, although you seem to have to search for terms one at a time: [http://slackatwork.com/](http://slackatwork.com/)</comment></comment>


On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules (1971) - <AUTHOR> http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2979&context=compsci <comment><USER2> Is it too much of a simplification to say that this paper is basically advocating object-oriented design, before that term was coined?

My summary:

The paper compares two different ways of dividing a codebase into modules. The program under question is KWIC. In the first case, the modules are divided into the four major steps of executing the KWIC algorithm: Input, Circular Shift, Alphabetizing, and Output. In the second case, the modules are nearly the same, but they are more service-oriented than action-oriented, e.g. Circular Shifter and Alphabetizer instead of Circular Shift and Alphabetizing. The chief difference is the interfaces between the two. In the first case, the contract between modules is the format of the data structures being passed from step to step. In the second case, the data structures are encapsulated, and the contract between modules is the api for manipulating the hidden data structures.

The author argues that the second way is better in terms of changeability, independence of development, comprehensibility.

At this point I lost interest in the paper (because I sing in the choir), but scanning the rest, the author talks about how to avoid taking a performance penalty when using the second design, and then gives a second example, this time of a markov algorithm translator instead of a KWIC.

<comment><USER3> I think they're advocating for some piece of OO design, but I think it's more core than OO generally. It's a technique for justifying the existence of existentials/modules of which OO is one kind of elaboration. OO design thus reflects some of module design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Urgh - does the text exist in a nicer format somewhere?

<comment><USER5> [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=On+the+criteria+to+be+used+in+decomposi...](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=On+the+criteria+to+be+used+in+decomposing+systems+into+modules)

<comment><USER4> Thanks - but, I hoped someone would save me from looking through lots of similar pdfs.</comment></comment></comment>


Linux 3.8 introduced unprivileged user namespaces [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://man7.org/conf/meetup/understanding-user-namespaces--Google-Munich-Kerrisk-2019-10-25.pdf <comment><USER3> The given title (currently "Linux 4.6 introduced unpriviledged user namespaces") isn't accurate - unprivileged user namespaces have been around since this commit: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=5eaf563e53294d6696e651466697eb9d491f3946)

This is included in kernel 3.8 released in 2013, and the linked PDF says that's when CLONE_NEWUSER itself was released - i.e., ever since user namespaces have existed, they've been allowed to unprivileged users.

Some downstream distributors, including Debian, started carrying a patch that added a restriction back in via the kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone sysctl. This is because allowing unprivileged user namespaces exposes a lot of attack surface to users. There's nothing fundamentally unsafe about it, but there are many kernel components for which bugs are only exploitable by unprivileged users if the feature is on. See [https://lwn.net/Articles/673597/](https://lwn.net/Articles/673597/) for more discussion. (I thought a version of that patch eventually got accepted upstream, but I can't find it.)

The only reference to kernel 4.6 in the document is CLONE_NEWCGROUP, which is entirely unrelated to unprivileged user namespaces.

<comment><USER4> Ok, we've subtracted the pair (1, -0.2) from Linux in the title above.

Edit: corrected from 0.8

Edit edit: corrected from (1, 0.2)

<comment><USER5> Linux versions are not decimal, you subtracted 1.-2

<comment><USER4> Oh dear. Fixed. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Subtracting (1, 0.2) would've left 3.4!

<comment><USER4> I need to stop doing this so hastily. Argh!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will this make it easier to run docker without root / sudo?

That could fix the barrier of entry and make docker tutorials passed around more canonical. I would love it if docker "just worked" across machines when testing locally, commands and all.

Even sharing docker in open source projects, there's a learning curve for me where commands in the README won't work. Is it my docker installation? Version differences with docker? Docker compose? Did the container images I'm pulling in change some way?

Do I need sudo or not? I guess with proper group permissions I'm okay - <USER2> will the developer(s) I share instructions with have these permissions ready to go?

On StackOverflow: copy/pasting docker CLI (even given proper context fitting into a larger whole) commands and configs probably has a 50% success rate for commands, and maybe 10% if it's a config of some sort (e.g. compose files)

<comment><USER8> > That could fix the barrier of entry and make docker tutorials passed around > more canonical. I would love it if docker "just worked" across machines when > testing locally, commands and all.

For an almost drop-in daemonless, rootless docker replacement for this use case, see podman ([https://podman.io/](https://podman.io/)). You can `alias podman=docker` and it will just work.

You do need a bit of configuration, specifically you need to create `/etc/subuid` and `/etc/subgid` if they don't exist and add subordinate UIDs/GIDs which will be used to map the containers users and groups. E.g.

        usermod --add-subuids 100000-165536 $USER
        usermod --add-subgids 100000-165536 $USER

<comment><USER9> > You can `alias podman=docker` and it will just work.

Yes, and it's super awesome. Unless you need docker-compose!

<comment><USER10> Podman supports pods, hence the name. It follows the k8s approach, and it's nowhere close to a drop-in replacement for docker-compose, but managing multiple related containers is supported as a core feature.

[https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/01/15/podman- managin...](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/01/15/podman-managing- containers-pods/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would recommend watching the same (or similar) talks about namespaces in Linux done by Michael Kerrisk at NDC TechTown (Kongsberg) September 2019.

I learnt a lot from these talks.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJPa-1FuoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJPa-1FuoI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73nB9-HYbAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73nB9-HYbAI)

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone tried fuzzing random sequences of unshare(2), clone(2), setuid(2), capabilities, uid/gid map calls (etc) to see if there is a sequence that eventually gains real root or some other privilege escalation? I'm dubious that Linux is theoretically sound, what with the multiple layers of historical baggage.

<comment><USER13> Syzkaller fuzzes that stuff. [https://github.com/google/syzkaller](https://github.com/google/syzkaller)

<comment><USER12> It fuzzes individual syscalls. Does it string them together into sequences? (Edit: yes it does, but it doesn't look for priv escalations, only crashes, kernel panics and the like)

<comment><USER14> It can be adapted to privlege escalations, but it doesn't do it on it's own. You have to give it a stub to check after running the syscalls to check if the permissions are intact.

<comment><USER15> Does it trace existing programs and use those as seeds in how to compose syscalls?

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's got the ability on it's own to do that, but I can imagine you could do it with strace and some other scripting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If Michael Kerrisk is reading this: would be great to have a small supplementary book to the great "The Linux Programming Interface" that handles namespaces, capabilities et al.

<comment><USER17> I had the absolute pleasure of attending a week of all-day sessions with Michael Kerrisk and on 2 or 3 or those days he covered only container related primitives. His materials were great and he was an excellent teacher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Typo in title, should be "unprivileged". Not nitpicking, just should be searchable later.

<comment><USER19> Also the bane of many a DBA trying to update permissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have never used OpenBSD, but isn't Linux getting closer to their equivalent pledge and unveil? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17277067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17277067)

This is great news, because I can't switch over to OpenBSD (docker, bluetooth, etc) or more folkloric distributions like VoidOS and Qubes. Going to make a bunch of Anki cards today to remember these namespaces and how to use them!

</comment><comment><USER21> The author's book, The Linux Programming Interface, is an amazing book and a new classic.

</comment><comment><USER22> user namespaces are a super rad feature. They've protected us at $WORK from multiple vulnerabilities that have come out.

<comment><USER23> How do you use them? Are we talking about developer desktop PC's here? Or user namespaces as part of a containerization setup?

The main use of user namespaces seems to be running stuff that wants to be root as non-root. It would seem better to simply fix all those tools to not check if they are root, and instead just try to do the thing they were trying to do.

<comment><USER24> For developer desktops, there's firejail[1].

[1]: [https://github.com/netblue30/firejail](https://github.com/netblue30/firejail)

<comment><USER20> Lovely! Thanks for sharing this awesome-looking tool :)

edit: oh, it's also mentioned in the document slide 53 along with Flatpak</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Louis Dalton Porter Used Artistic Skills to Trick German Army (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701341.html <comment><USER2> Also worth noting, dazzle camouflage: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage)

"Unlike some other forms of camouflage, dazzle works, if at all, not by offering concealment but by making it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed, and heading. Norman Wilkinson explained in 1919 that dazzle was intended more to mislead the enemy as to the correct position to take up than actually to miss his shot when firing."</comment>


Inside JavaScriptCore's low-level interpreter - <AUTHOR> http://wingolog.org/archives/2012/06/27/inside-javascriptcores-low-level-interpreter <comment><USER2> In short: in order to write the fast interpreter for the bytecode of JavaScript in WebKit JS's JavaScriptCore, the author developed a custom variant of an assembly language, wrote the interpreter in it and wrote in Ruby the translator from his custom assembly to the native assembly (allowing him to target different processor architectures like x32 x64 and ARM, at least that's how I understood it from the description).

He explains how with C++ he could not get the speed gains he achieved with assembly. One real life example where writing exact assembly code still matters.

Coming to a browser near you.

<comment><USER3> No offense intended, but this comment does not add very much while misunderstanding some other things. For example, I did not write the LLInt. It was mostly written by Apple's Filip Pizlo.

If this is the sort of topic you are interested in, then you can have the patience to read a few paragraphs. If it's not, then summarizing isn't going to help :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, now I know that LLInt (the new interpreter) was written by Filip Pizlo. Note that you mention him in the article only related to DFG JIT. I didn't try to investigate the source files or checkins, I tried to understand only what you write, and that was obviously not clear enough.

I hope you see that I'm interested in the topic but read about it the first time. I hope you also can imagine that there are more readers like me. And they would benefit from the correct summary too.

Please do write what else I misunderstood, that is exactly the reason why I wrote the short summary, to get the feedback, not to claim that I understand more than you or any insider. It's short, counting the words some 20 times shorter than your article, so I hope it wouldn't be hard for you to point to any other inconsistency. Summarizing helps if the result is something relevant and clear, in a few sentences instead of 1700 words. Without the summary, the most important points can be overlooked/misunderstood by anybody not "close to the sources."

<comment><USER3> Well, I guess the one thing I would correct is the "why". The LLInt doesn't just produce assembler to be fast, though it is faster than the old interpreter. The real reason it produces assembler is to control the stack representation, so that it works better with tiering, exceptions, and the optimizing compiler (DFG). Otherwise, interpreting was a lose, because tiering up cost too much.

As you can see, the situation is a bit complicated. If I could have made the article shorter, I would have :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I understood that the main benefit was a tightly controlled CPU stack and that it's exactly what would be impossible to achieve with C++ code. Now we don't have to agree if that goal can be called "speed." I believe it can, since otherwise just a "good old" interpreter would be enough, no need for "simple JIT," DFG JIT and the control of the CPU stack.

And thanks for writing the article (and the other ones on the same subject) I've really learned a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> For those who don't know JavaScriptCore under that name:

JavaScriptCore, the WebKit JS implementation [http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/10/28/javascriptcore- the-w...](http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/10/28/javascriptcore-the-webkit- js-implementation)

"In 2008, the WebKit folks (...) called the thing SquirrelFish Extreme. _Marketers called this Nitro Extreme._ (Still, the proper name of the engine is JavaScriptCore; Wikipedia currently gets this one wrong.)"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#JavaScriptCore>

"JavaScriptCore is a framework that provides a JavaScript engine for WebKit implementations, and provides this type of scripting in other contexts within Mac OS X."

Probably should be "within Safari browser." But as the first linked article notes:

"JSC folks were doing great, well-factored work. It was so good that SpiderMonkey hackers at Mozilla adopted JSC's regexp JIT compiler and their native-code assembler directly."

I believe then it should be "as the whole within Safari browser, and some key parts also within Firefox browser."

<comment><USER4> What is it you think should say "within Safari browser"? JavaScriptCore is certainly not inside Safari; it's a part of WebKit. JavaScriptCore is no more "within Safari" than WebKit itself is. But I'm not sure what else you could be referring to.

<comment><USER2> The Wikipedia article, at the moment I quoted from it related to Max OS X but not mentioning Safari at all, and Safari runs on other platforms: iOS and Windows."

Moreover the conclusion that "the JS engine is used wherever WebKit is used" would be false. Wwhen describing the use of the given engine, it's not a good description to say "the engine in WebKit" as there is an example of the very popular use of WebKit without the engine: Google Chrome.

<comment><USER4> Neither I nor Wikipedia said "used wherever WebKit is used". The Wikipedia article said "JavaScript engine for WebKit implementations" and I said "part of WebKit". The fact that Chrome chooses not to use it is immaterial. It is part of WebKit. Check out the WebKit source and you will get the JavaScriptCore source as part of it.

Similarly, there's a GIMP-based image editor called Seashore that doesn't use a lot of GIMP's UI, but I still think it's fair to say that the UI code is part of GIMP.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


List of Web Applications from 2005 (How many are still around today?) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/21/03045/5568

<comment><USER2> To be fair, some of them have changed names, rebranded, or been bought out. For example, the one listed as "RSS Digest" was owned by me but was a donation-ware service at the time. It became Feed Digest, got angel funding, and in 2007 I sold it. The new owners rebranded it and it continues to operate.</comment>


SICP lectures - For people who want to learn lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ <comment><USER2> I think there are more efficient ways than SICP to learn Lisp if you're already a competent programmer. Scheme was my first functional language and I picked it up directly from R5RS. Then I moved over to CL by skimming ANSI Common Lisp and then reading On Lisp.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree with that if you wanted to pick up the syntax. The initial chapters of either R5RS and Ansi CL don't make it obvious how scheme/lisp are different from Algol, except the (()).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out that you won't get far without doing the exercises in the book too. In fact, I recommend working through the book and only watching a video lecture if you're unclear on the material.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gerry Sussman in a fez! Yes!

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks!</comment>


I spent 22 years in prison for a crime I didn't commit - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e63xwa/i_spent_22_years_in_prison_for_a_crime_i_didnt/ <comment><USER3> Something I think about is why is the American Justice system designed the way it is. Like a commenter said below it is a legal game. Why?

These are peoples lives, why is this system gamified? Why is it not a truth- seeking system? I am probably naive and don't see the full picture of all of this but it is confusing to me. The United States is known to be the country with the highest number of its citizens in prison. With a burdened legal system and little funding, why does this continue to be so? I find the barrier of entry to prison in the US very low compared to other countries I have lived in and visited. What are the advantages of this? I find this all very absurd.

<comment><USER4> The _theory_ is two sides produce the absolute most convincing argument they can, and an independent arbiter - the jury - decides between the two arguments. As both sides can freely choose their representatives, they can change if their guy isn't doing a good job. And as the jury has heard the strongest possible arguments, they've heard all the information the two sides believe they need.

If you're accused of being gay in 1880, a randomly selected truth-seeking arbiter might be very anti-gay as that was the median opinion in society at the time - or even subject to political pressure. Only by having free choice of who represents you can you get someone who isn't biased against you.

Of course, that's only the theory. How well it works in practice, particularly with under-funded public defenders, is a different matter!

<comment><USER5> There are so many holes in this theory it is no wonder it doesn't work at all in practise

<comment><USER6> Good news then, we use competing systems to determine a solution in several facets of society (e.g. politics at every level, almost everything related to countries, governance in the public and private sectors). The minute someone comes up with a better system with less "holes" it will be quite the human revolution.

<comment><USER7> There are different systems in use today. In many other countries, judges/prosecutors are charged with much more of a "figure out the true facts of what happened; do justice" role than they are in the US system.

[https://definitions.uslegal.com/i/inquisitorial- system/](https://definitions.uslegal.com/i/inquisitorial-system/)

<comment><USER8> Is there evidence to suggest that those systems are more effective at finding the truth, or delivering justice?

<comment><USER5> That is a subjective question. I would argue things like paying for lawyers, paying your court fees even if you win (US system), and bail, cannot be an effective way to achieve true justice because they are all biased towards the rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The sad thing to me is that there are hundreds upon hundreds of such cases, with apparently a racial component to it as well [1].

As the author and jacquesm in this thread touched on [2]:

> I don't think my case was directly race related. I do believe that failed > public defender systems across the country has a race related component. > Most people who need a public defender are either black or poor or both.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/wrongful- convictions-r...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/wrongful-convictions- race-exoneration.html)

2\. [https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e63xwa/i_spent_22_yea...](https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e63xwa/i_spent_22_years_in_prison_for_a_crime_i_didnt/f9nttqp/)

<comment><USER10> I find it difficult to imagine a sufficiently wealthy black person would struggle to find a lawyer willing to represent him, and be forced to fall back onto public defenders.

Most people who need a public defender are poor, and a large portion of the poor population is black.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't fathom Missouri getting away with imprisoning someone for 22 years and not paying him any compensation. An entire life down the drain due to incompetence.

<comment><USER12> A while ago I was thinking the same about compensation but then someone pointed out that if you were eligible for one, they would have incentive to not let you go.

It would be cheaper for everyone to just keep you unfairly.

<comment><USER13> > [...] they would have incentive to not let you go

This is where separation of powers is important. A judiciary shouldn't care that the executive branch is on the hook for compensation.

<comment><USER14> Except, the executive branch appoints judges.

<comment><USER15> This is why Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. At least in theory, they'll carry out their job impartially because they don't have to run for re- election. They'll hold their position long past when the current administration so any conflict of interest should be mitigated over time. Directly electing judges has its own set of problems. I'm not trying to argue for one way over the other, just pointing out that the executive branch appointing judges is not inherently wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the start of the AMA: "the public defender ... didn't have time or the resources to prove my innocence". The defence isn't supposed to have to prove anything, that's the job of the prosecution - but what surprises me even more is that no-one seems to have picked up on that point. Suggestion for US readers - it's not a justice system if it imprisons innocence people at an overly high rate.

<comment><USER17> This is a naive view, and doesn't reflect anything unique about the US justice system at all. Innocent until proven guilty is a nice ideal to aspire too, but at the end of the day, you're dealing with the opinions of a dozen random jurors. The fact that somebody chose to charge the accused with a crime is enough to prejudice them off the bat. Defence will always carry at least some burden of proof.

<comment><USER18> Not just "a dozen random jurors", but rather "a dozen random jurors who individually usually don't want to be there and just want to go back home to eat and live their lives - and by the way, when is lunch?"

I've never been on a jury (and likely never will be - closest I got was "voir dire", and when I was questioned I inadvertently brought up the concept of a fully informed jury - and they dismissed all of us virtually then-and-there - that was over a decade ago and I have yet to be called for jury duty again), but from what I have read about other people who have, your fellow jurors, regardless of their intellect or life experience, really don't give a damn about seeking justice or truth, but rather the most expedient way to leave the whole thing behind and get back home.

Then - you get someone like me (who gets past voir dire of course) - who does want to get as close to the truth as possible by examining and questioning and discussing everything, and if there is any doubt - will not vote unanimously with everyone else (who just want to go home) - after being sent back to the juror's room a couple of times...well, most people would likely fold - <USER2> the other jurors gang up on them, scream, threaten to fight, argue, make other threats, etc - rather than actually do the job they were entrusted with - especially in a case where a person's life is at stake.

They are all quite selfish, and don't really care about the defendant, and almost actively hate a fellow juror who does care about the process, about what is at stake, and about coming to the most just conclusion (especially if that conclusion is "the law is wrong"). Jurors tend to forget that the jury is one of their most important Constitutional rights and duty as citizens in the United States; as the saying goes,

"A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box."

Let's hope we never again need to use the last one, which is why the jury box is so important.

<comment><USER19> Why would you not vote for conviction if there is any doubt when the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> He was able to read over 1000 books and notes it as one of the positives. That is way more than most people will read in their lifetime.

[https://piks.nl/upload/upload/chrome_2019-12-05_09-17-19.png](https://piks.nl/upload/upload/chrome_2019-12-05_09-17-19.png)

This popped out for me because, having time to read, is always the first thing that comes to my mind about being imprisoned.

<comment><USER21> I think that is changing though: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/incarcerated- pennsyl...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/incarcerated- pennsylvanians-now-have-to-pay-150-to-read-we-should-all-be- outraged/2018/10/11/51f548b8-cbd9-11e8-a85c-0bbe30c19e8f_story.html)

I cannot fathom working on a product like this, to extract as much as possible from people who already have almost nothing. It makes my blood boil.

<comment><USER22> Thats an absolutely terrible and ignorant and draconian policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is just a personal opinion, but I don't think that anyone should be sentenced to a term in prison longer than 20 years.

I should also say that I was/am the victim of a crime that, while I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about it here, would normally get someone the death penalty.

The primary reason that I don't support the death penalty is that I don't think that the state can be trusted to kill people humanely. It took me years to come around to this, but I also believe that it isn't punishment. It's revenge.

The reason that I don't support terms longer than 20 years is that, no matter how uncomfortable it is to think about it, its abuse is more horrifying than the crime. Our prison system is barbaric.

Google "California prison gladiator" and tell me that Abu Ghraib was a bunch of bad apples. Prisons produce that kind of abuse systematically.

No matter how bad a crime committed by a single individual is, an institution that that produces the outcomes like those that out prison system creates is worse.

Where I'm from, the prison system has a legacy that is intrinsically tied up to the slavery of the pre-civil war era. Some southern states even have prisons on the grounds of former slave plantations.

In fact one of the things that most american's don't know is that slavery is not prohibited by the constitution. The amendment that banned slavery left a clause in place for prison inmates. This is particularly grotesque because they are still counted for the purposes of determining representation in congress based on population.

Also, prison guard unions aren't prohibited from lobbying state or federal government to pass longer sentences. Never mind for-profit prisons, even prisons run by government aren't free from commercial pressures to keep prisons full.

I'm intimately aware of how horrible crime can be, but prisons do not stop crime.

<comment><USER24> _" Some southern states even have prisons on the grounds of former slave plantations."_

To increase the horror of this- some southern states have prisons on the grounds of former slave planations, whose majority black prison population works the field of said plantations for less than a dollar an hour.

<comment><USER25> That's not exactly just a horrific coincidence; the prison labor system was adopted as a direct continuation of slavery in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, exploiting the explicit exception for penal slavery in the 13th Amendment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> He's got a gofundme if you want a send a few bucks his way: [https://www.gofundme.com/f/ricky-kidd-reunited- after-23-year...](https://www.gofundme.com/f/ricky-kidd-reunited- after-23-years/donate)

Apparently in Missouri, state law says he's owed no money for being imprisoned _unless_ the wrongful conviction was due to DNA testing.

<comment><USER27> I didn't expect much and I'm still disappointed. What a misery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> From reddit, link to book written by Ricky Kidd:

> [https://smile.amazon.com/Vivid-Expressions-Journey-Inside- > In...](https://smile.amazon.com/Vivid-Expressions-Journey-Inside- > Innocent/dp/1548560952)

He now supports himself through his book sales and speaking tours. That's one way to support him.

If you want to support Midwest Innocence Projecj: [https://themip.org/donate/](https://themip.org/donate/)

</comment><comment><USER29> try wrapping your head around the idea of a 43% unemployment rate. That's the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated Black women: [https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/outofwork.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/outofwork.html)

Instead Prisons: [https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapte...](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/instead_of_prisons/chapter1.shtml)

 _> There ought to be no jails; and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with the people on the inside, there would be no such institutions as jails .... The only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to abolish the big ones and the little ones together. Make fair conditions of life. Give men a chance to live .... Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way. Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full. The only way to cure these conditions is by equality. There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. If you would wipe them out there would be no more criminals than now. They terrorize nobody. They are a blot upon any civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed.

—Clarence Darrow, An Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail, Chicago, Illinois-1902_

<comment><USER30> As feelgood a quote as that may seem, this line:

> Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way. > Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full.

is complete nonsense when contrasted against modern times. All the thieves in jail are not there because they stole to feed their family or some other noble deed.

<comment><USER31> Yep. Agree with his conclusions but also think that his reasoning is nonsense

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is one of the best threads and feedback I have read on HN. The biggest fear among males is prison. Not having proper protection and legal advise changes lives, and it federates deep.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ricky came and spoke at my firm a month ago after being out for only 72 days. He has an amazing story. He is a phenomenal speaker. I was in charge of logistics for the event and we had a book signing after he spoke. As he signed each book he put a unique and different inscription in EVERY SINGLE BOOK HE SIGNED. Literally no two were the same and he signed a ton of books. I would recommend you bring Ricky to speak wherever you may work so more people can hear his story. Support Ricky directly by buying his book or supporting his GoFundMe.

</comment><comment><USER34> _We are over-taxing the justice system; we need to decriminalize a lot [of] behavior that would be better managed by the health care system. A majority of people in prison are mentally ill. Many are there for drug convictions or behavior in service of an addiction. So reducing the number of people brought into the system would be a strong start. Stop voting for tough-on-crime politicians, and start getting smart on crime._ \-- Sean O'Brien

<comment><USER35> I agree with his point, but I think that it's also important to note that there was a reason why 'tough on crime' was electoral gold for so long: the U.S. really _did_ have a problem with violent crime (still does, in comparison to other countries, but it's a _lot_ better now than it was).

There are a whole lot of reasons for that. Our history of racial injustice absolutely destroyed so many black communities, to a degree I hadn't appreciated before I considered it. Closing the asylums (which really were awful, but _also_ really were needed) was another problem. The widespread attitude that the justice system is to punish the guilty rather than reform people who have done bad things is another. I suspect that the fact that Americans descend from folks who were so unusual that they fled across continents and oceans to get away from their communities can't possibly help.

But for all that, prior to the tough-on-crime movement we really did have a problem with real crime — by 'real' I mean crime with actual victims. Things are much better now, and we are much richer now, and so now we have the luxury of being smarter.

<comment><USER34> No, USA never had such a "problem with violent crime" to justify anything like the evil we've done to the incarcerated in this country. Maybe the media or politicians told you that, but they were scamming your prejudices for attention and votes. Violent crime _is_ much lower now than it was in decades past, but that's true of pretty much anywhere else on earth. The violence we have is mostly a result of drug prohibition (which could go away anytime we decide we'd like less violence) and our colonial legacy. Comparing USA to Belgium is for suckers. The nation to which we are most similar is Brazil. They also have more violence than homogeneous non-colonized nations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Won't civil law measures against wrongful imprisonment come into play here? The state should be paying heftily for putting people into imprisonment wrongfully.

<comment><USER37> How would you structure a compensation scheme that fairly compensates someone who was wrongly imprisoned before "iPhone" was a thing until now? Assume that his imprisonment has deprived him of the ability to learn critical financial management skills and that society hates unearned entitlements.

<comment><USER38> > society hates unearned entitlements.

I'd say he spent 22 years earning it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How much of this nightmare happens in other 1st world countries? Does the adage "Never talk to the police" hold elsewhere/everywhere?

<comment><USER40> It absolutely can happen but I suspect the frequency is much lower compared to the US (just like being imprisoned in general is much less likely in most other countries). I would certainly hope so.

Most high profile cases of wrongful conviction or almost-wrongful-convictions in Germany are sex crimes or connected to sex crimes with very little reliable evidence.

> The cops don't want to sort anything out, they aren't on your side. They > want to nail you. That's all they care about. They have a job to do. That > job is to find someone to blame for this problem. So they're gonna do that.

Police in a certain sense always wants to nail people after a crime has been committed. The difference is perhaps that US cops are more happy nailing any convenient person, while police elsewhere rather want to nail who actually did it, which of course does not mean they actually do.

Apart from being directly connected to a serious investigation in which case it is probably most wise to consult a lawyer in any case, I don't have issues talking to the police, be it reporting something or asking for help. If people regard police as an oppressive force that better not be involved in things, that clearly suggests a big problem with the police.

<comment><USER41> > The difference is perhaps that US cops are more happy nailing any convenient > person, while police elsewhere rather want to nail who actually did it, > which of course does not mean they actually do.

This seems like gross assumption. I have no doubt there are plenty of genuinely good American cops who want to do what is right. But the bad cases of the entire nation float to the top of the newspapers/internet and give the impression that the whole country is this way.

I've yet to see actual statistics of wrong imprisonment rates in the US vs. EU. And I'm sure if you broke if down by state you'd find some states have even better cops than EU.

<comment><USER40> It is always easy to think these things come down to individual's behaviour when systematic pressures and biases can play as big a role if not larger, e.g. pushing for arrest rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you are interested in this matter, watch The confession Tapes in Netflix, and learn why you should never talk to cops (nor brag about crimes [you haven't committed - and even if you have, you don't want to start talking without a good lawyer helping you out first because a deal might be on the table, etc.).

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80161702](https://www.netflix.com/title/80161702) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confession_Tapes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confession_Tapes)

</comment><comment><USER43> Another nightmare that could even come close, I can not imagine.

</comment><comment><USER22> These letters from his public defender seem horrible.

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/read-ricky-kidds- despera...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/read-ricky-kidds-desperate- letters-begging-his-public-defender-to-do-more)

<comment><USER44> Thank you for the link.

What I find really appalling, besides the letters by the lawyer is that the attempt to have her changed was submittd to court on a pre-printed form, which means logically that it is very commmon to have "free" defenders doing nothing.

The way the form is laid down, the five pre-printed "statements of facts" are an exact list of infringements to all the duties that a public defender should have and represent IMHO serious accusations that in other countries would likely trigger at the very least an "ethics" investigation on the lawyer.

Besides any reason, true or false, given for requesting the change of one's defense, having it granted should be a basic right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The fact that the legal system can work correctly only if you throw enough money into it, that's scary. Is it a good thing that only wealthy persons can afford a correct legal treatment? Not seems to be in a free and open society the US claims to have.

<comment><USER46> The US never claimed to be a free & open society. It's just interpreted that way by people that don't have any significant wealth. Everyone is created equal when it comes to the significance of the almighty capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Another sad situation that discourages death penalty. I can't even imagine the amount of people killed when they did nothing wrong.

<comment><USER48> People bring up this argument all the time as if there are no other alternatives (black or white fallacy). How about a simple rule to abide by: if there is any ounce of doubt as to whether the person committed the crime that puts the death penalty on the table, then it doesn't get upheld. They can get punished in other ways if evidence is strong enough though.

The death penalty would only apply to clear-cut cases. And there have already been a bunch of those (mass shooters, etc.).

<comment><USER49> We already have the simple rule that if there is any reasonable doubt that they committed the crime, they shouldn't be punished. That doesn't seem to be working at all.

There are two reasons we can't just have a higher standard for the death penalty. The first is that there isn't a sensible standard stronger than proof beyond reasonable doubt. The second is that even if we impose a higher standard, that standard won't be enforced correctly. Similar to how proof beyond reasonable doubt isn't enforced correctly now.

<comment><USER48> > We already have the simple rule that if there is any reasonable doubt that > they committed the crime, they shouldn't be punished.

This is different from what I wrote. When there's a serious punishment like the death penalty, then any ounce of doubt should waive it. Other lesser punishments can still hold if evidence is strong enough.

<comment><USER49> I addressed this in the second half of my comment. There isn't a sensible standard stricter than proof beyond reasonable doubt, and the current standard isn't enforced properly so I don't see why adding another one will magically fix the issue.

<comment><USER48> Because it already works like this in other regions/cultures, and it seems to be doing quite well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I have been living in Germany for many years and the prison (and justice) system is obviously different hear. Quite a few Americans think it's ludicrous here. But reading this, I beg to differ. This is also just heartbreaking.

It's also crazy to think he gets no state compensation for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER51> The German legal system works _very_ differently. I can see how US citizens would be comfused about that. In Germany, the Judge asks questions and arrives at a verdict. The prosecution and the defense state their cases and bring evidence, also question the witnesses etc... but the Judge has a lot of control over the process of examination. So the nature of the court proceedings is not fundamentally adversarial as both parties have to convince a person who tends to ask hard questions about the arguments that are brought before the court. I have witnessed judges tear through bullshit arguments with ease.

Judges may be guided by personal biases. That does happen. To balance that, ordinary citizens are drafted as layman judges (Schöffen) to assist in more important cases for fixed terms (not individual cases). They are present to balance out professional judges and any biases they may develop as part of the system. They are passive observers in the court room, but have an equal say in deciding the final judgement. So this may lead to panels of up to five judges presiding over a case.

The resulting system is not perfect. But I got the impression from my personal experience that it is quite fair and balanced over all. It isn't a perfect system, and some egregious errors are made. Some have ruined lives unnecessarily. But on average, it still looks fairer to me than what I hear about the US system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> 'anything you say can and _will_ be used against you in a court of law'. This sentence police say condemns the us system to a game where the objective is to beat the opponent. It's ingrained in the system every step of the way, even with a person's supposed 'rights'.

</comment><comment><USER53> This may be a dumb question, but if I'm in the situation where I'm being questioned by the police and need a lawyer, how do I get one (a decent one, not a public defender)? Is there a hotline or something? I've never interacted with a lawyer before.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank God for PBS NewsHour. Some the best, most professional (exhibiting neutrality, just the facts) journalists we have.

</comment><comment><USER54> Cutting and pasting this comment from the thread:

As someone once falsely accused of a crime and facing 12 years in prison. I went to trial and I have some advice for people.

1\. You gotta start acting and thinking like you're guilty. Ask yourself "if I was guilty and trying to get away with this, what would I do?"

When you're innocent you think that your innocence means something. It doesn't. Discount it and move on.

2\. Get the best lawyer you can not afford. Borrow from anyone and everyone. I borrowed 120k for my trial. Had to work my ass off to pay people back but it was worth every cent.

EDIT: Another mindset to use is to remember it's NOT a justice system. It's a legal system, so get the best damn team you can. Because you're in a legal game not a justice game. Know what game you're playing before you step on the floor.

3\. Never ever ever ever talk to the cops. Retain your right for silence. It's the greatest gift you have. The cops don't want to sort anything out, they aren't on your side. They want to nail you. That's all they care about. They have a job to do. That job is to find someone to blame for this problem. So they're gonna do that. Don't help them do that. Save your ammunition for trial. My jury ended up laughing at the prosecutor and the investigating officer in the trial.

I was acquitted of 13 charges in under 70 minutes by my jury. If I had of used a public defender I would be in prison still. With another 6 years to go.

Hopefully this advice helps someone else. Hit me up if you're in trouble with the law and just want an ear to listen.

PS. If you're guilty, I got nothing for you, no idea how to help you.

EDIT: Another mindset to use is to remember it's NOT a justice system. It's a legal system, so get the best damn team you can. Because you're in a legal game not a justice game. Know what game you're playing before you step on the floor.

from:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e63xwa/i_spent_22_yea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e63xwa/i_spent_22_years_in_prison_for_a_crime_i_didnt/f9oranm/)

<comment><USER55> > Never ever ever ever talk to the cops. Retain your right for silence. It's > the greatest gift you have. The cops don't want to sort anything out, they > aren't on your side. They want to nail you. That's all they care about. They > have a job to do. That job is to find someone to blame for this problem. So > they're gonna do that. Don't help them do that. Save your ammunition for > trial. My jury ended up laughing at the prosecutor and the investigating > officer in the trial.

Beware this advice can vary from country to country. In England and Wales for example if you don't say something to the police that you later rely on for your defense that can be used against you e.g. they ask 'why was your boot full of weapons and where were you heading?' you stay silent then later state in court 'it was my brother's car, he asked me to drive it to a friend's house and pick him up, I didn't think to check in the boot' they could perhaps infer you'd taken some time to concoct a false story which is why you didn't answer the question initially however the rules are complex: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_and_Wales#Adverse_inferences_from_silence). You do have the right for a duty solicitor to attend an interview who can advise you on prudent things to say and where you should stay silent.

EDIT: Initially said this applied to the whole UK, actually only England and Wales (from the linked Wikipedia page) uncertain about Scotland & Northern Ireland.

<comment><USER56> The extremely adversarial approach to "justice" is an issue specific to the US (and probably some other countries), and is not universal.

Do definitely have a lawyer present, but whether or not to talk to the police varies a lot per country. Personally, I think that not talking to the police being such vital advice in the US, is a strong condemnation of how the American system works. People should be able to trust the police, and the police and prosecutors should be working to do justice, not merely to lock up as many people as possible. Every innocent person behind bars is a failure of the system.

<comment><USER57> It has to do with incentives. When incentivized for the number of arrests and convictions, no one cares if it's the right people. Add in that there is almost zero penalty for prosecutorial misconduct unless it is extreme, and it's no wonder so many innocent people end up in jail.

Prosecutors play fast and loose to win the game, justice be damned.

<comment><USER56> Yeah, the system needs to be fixed. Instead of rewarding people for number of convictions, right or wrong, they should be rewarded for reducing crime by independent measurement. Or simply be rewarded for doing their job as honestly as possible, with proper accountability and all that.

But rewarding police and prosecutors for the number of convictions is like rewarding programmers for the number of lines of code. It rewards bad code and unjust convictions.

Maybe there should be a justice-equivalent of code review for police and prosecutors.

<comment><USER58> It was called the grand jury, they made reports on issues of public concern, and authorized private prosecutors to pursue cases against suspects.

It isn't clear what sort of reforms are needed, but grand juries are the only democratic institution in our republic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Depressing.

</comment><comment><USER60> Americans, take a look at that. I think you have a lot to learn where Soviet, and then Russian criminal justice system went.

US police and that of Soviet Union have surprisingly many things in common.

The biggest similarity I think is police's and DAs' willingness to throw a charge at just anybody, some times even at a first passerby they see, and then "seeing if it sticks." And they, sometimes, show an even greater zeal at going after known "easy targets" than genuine cases.

<comment><USER61> You always have to look at what the incentives are.

For example, forensic labs are paid by the prosecution. They really need to be funded by a separate organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> HN commenters are usually infatuated with using the government to solve all of their problems, then situations like this come up and it's "Doh! Why this happen?!?" How about we stop giving the government infinite power, both in the legal system and in the political system?

<comment><USER63> Who do you suggest solve _legal_ problems if not the government?

<comment><USER64> He didn't say anything about abolishing government prosecutions, he said stop giving them unlimited power.

A good example I can think of is over charging a defendant. Aaron Swartz is a good tech example.

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

The only ray of light is Kamala Harris got killed in the presidential primary. She basically ran on throwing people in jail and the old, "tough on crime" trope. She probably would have been much more successful if Tulsi Gabbard hadn't mentioned her prosecutorial record. Many prosecutors have political ambitions and prosecute accordingly.</comment></comment></comment>


Taxonomies of Lost NYC Playgrounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamestrainor.net/692

<comment><USER2> My wife works on the playgrounds in Central Park and tells me that monkey bars with over 9 feet of fall height and kids on tire swings right below them (which I cringe at as "collateral damage") are, indeed, a thing of the past. But many beloved spaces are receiving redesigns with the original creative vision in mind -- but also years of community feedback to benefit from. These are some of the most trafficked spaces on earth. From the outside looking in, the Conservancy has always struck me as a great institution; they strive for creative excellence while still seeking to understand the unique needs and constraints that come with maintaining an island of public space in the densest city in America. Just like our industry, great engineering is the art of careful compromise. The fact that it's not one big rubberized parking lot with legal disclaimers posted is a huge testament to their creativity and humanity.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm missing some context here- what happened to these playgrounds? Why have they gone missing? For example, it looks like Central Park still has a lot of playgrounds. [http://www.centralpark.com/guide/activities/children-s- activ...](http://www.centralpark.com/guide/activities/children-s- activities/playgrounds.html)

<comment><USER4> Actually one of his lost playgrounds is still there,

[http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and- do/attractio...](http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and- do/attractions/adventure-playground.html)

but it does look somewhat different. There are however a few other playgrounds (103rd st., Ancient Playground) on that list you found that have similar features.

It looks to me like he's lamenting the loss of a certain kind of vision in modernist playgrounds that were less about swings and slides and more about stimulating creative play. I don't know a lot about it, but you can probably dig for it. What I'll say though is that while the modernism might have been lost, the adventure has not and new playgrounds in NYC get better and better with every new or rebuilt one.

<comment><USER5> Adventure playground is there, but most of the tunnels are blocked off. You can't go inside any of the pyramids any more. It's still a great space, but it's not a free-wheeling as it was perhaps intended to be.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure about that? I was there a year and a half ago and had no trouble with the tunnels. And the similar pyramids at the 103rd st. and Ancient Playgrounds have tunnels.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pentagon buries evidence of $125B in bureaucratic waste - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?postshare=5201480985071782&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.621c10954a5f <comment><USER2> @dang

Seriously, why was this flagged? I'd argue this has politics in the article, but doesn't seem to start anything related to "flamming" and the figures were interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this politics?

<comment><USER2> If you're referring to the post made yesterday I would argue it is not.

<comment><USER4> That's kind of the problem with politics.</comment></comment></comment>


Carnegie Mellon student shows that 64 pixels is enough for Mario (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/carnegie-mellon-student-shows-that-64-pixels-is-enough-for-mario/

<comment><USER2> Whoa, that's my girlfriend! So proud. Weird to see this after not being online for a week while traveling with her.

<comment><USER3> hold on to that one

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like the levels and perhaps the idea are based on "Super Pixel Bros" game: [http://hackaday.com/2010/02/19/update-most-interesting- game-...](http://hackaday.com/2010/02/19/update-most-interesting-game- in-64-pixels/) Here's a youtube progress update: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avvba3prLlc>

Pretty awesome if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was a little surprised because I thought everyone knew that if you bumped one of the first blocks with your head, you got a coin ...

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool. This would probably work for any tile-based game by assigning a unique color for each tile. The original NES Zelda comes to mind.

<comment><USER7> I experienced precisely this effect, in a before-and-after style, _as a gameplay element_ yesterday. The game started with lots of visual detail, but began to "degrade" as you advanced through it, and at 100% completion every tile was replaced by a single-colored block.

(The game was "REDDER": <http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=540>)

<comment><USER8> Holy crap, nice game! Hats off to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1179745>

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm waiting for someone to port this onto a building using the lights as LEDs.

</comment><comment><USER11> I need to buy some Arduinos, stat!

<comment><USER12> A regular computer can draw red and orange squares and accept inputs from buttons too. If you really want to do a hardware project, get an Arduino, but you can easily play with ideas like this without any hardware. And you won't have to write your code in C.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, but it looks a lot cooler when the orange squares real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> to bad she didn't hook it up to a NES controller, should have been trivial no?

</comment><comment><USER15> why does she talk like homestar runner?

<comment><USER16> It sounds like she may have some minor hearing problems, but I think your social disabilities probably have a much greater affect on you than her disability has on her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> prediction for this years' hottest xmas present - arduino</comment>


Complete iOS7 Course for free - <AUTHOR> http://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-complete-ios7-course

<comment><USER2> Product Hunt redirects you to: [http://bitfountain.io/course/the-complete- ios-7-course-learn...](http://bitfountain.io/course/the-complete-ios-7-course- learn-by-building-14-apps/?couponCode=phunt&src=producthunt) (which makes the course free).

<comment><USER3> What's the deal with people linking to Product Hunt comments instead of the original article, it's not the first time I've seen it happen.

<comment><USER4> Apparently you only get it free if you're going through Product Hunt. Somewhat irritating, as I'd like to avoid going to Product Hunt whenever possible.

<comment><USER5> > I'd like to avoid going to Product Hunt whenever possible

Why?

<comment><USER6> Why not? Linking to the source is always the ideal.

<comment><USER7> But he didn't say "I'd like to link to the source", he said "I'd like to avoid going to Product Hunt whenever possible".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just FYI, this is Objective-C.

For developers completely new to iOS, is this a good starting point or we better skip straight to Swift?

<comment><USER9> Swift was designed for beginners and in our experience it delivers. We ([http://www.thinkful.com/](http://www.thinkful.com/)) recommend Swift for beginners and the students in our Swift classes the last few months agree!

<comment> pi-err Announcing a $500/month price tag _after_ an email signup dripping with trackers is not so inspiring. Hopefully you teach better design practices in your lessons?

<comment><USER10> There is no $500/month price tag. The course is completely free.

<comment> pi-err OP's site is free. I was answering to the ad for the thinkful.com site posted above - which asks $500/m.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also a deal for the iOS8 version, of course, from $499 > $79! [http://bitfountain.io/course/complete- ios8/?couponCode=presa...](http://bitfountain.io/course/complete- ios8/?couponCode=presale). I am not connected to the company, but found the link to the deal :-)

<comment><USER12> Any coupon for the Happy Bird clone tutorial?

<comment><USER10> [http://bitfountain.io/course/the-complete-ios-game-course- bu...](http://bitfountain.io/course/the-complete-ios-game-course-build-a- flappy-bird-clone/?couponCode=COUPON237282)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Of course, there are lots of iOS courses available, but Eliot Arntz is regarded as great instructor and this bitfoundation course looks solid to me. The free offers seems only valid through the producthunt website, so I had to link there and you have to click thru.

<comment><USER13> thanks that's so nice :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad I used a fake email address and unique password when I signed up for this:

      - no HTTPS
      - passwords are stored in plain text
      - password is easily extractable on profile page

<comment><USER15> That's a good find! I registered with a "junk" email address after seeing this comment. Just a "view source" on the profile page shows the password in clear text.

@arntzel, @nicholjs, would you please fix this ASAP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "Original Price: $499"

A good way to highlight the value/quality of the course; rather than just delivering the course for free, which can give the an appearance of cheaper quality.

</comment><comment><USER17> getting error loading bitfountain.io:

Response Error.

Technical description: 502 Bad Gateway - Response Error, a bad response was received from another proxy server or the destination origin server.

<comment><USER13> Sorry looks like a server issue - working on it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does this compare to the iOS course by Stanford University on iTunes?

<comment><USER13> Our course is more geared towards beginners but seeks to incorporate much of the depth available in the Stanford course. We also tried to break items down into smaller chunks then the 90 minute lectures in the Stanford course. Those with a CS background may find the Stanford course to be more their style since the instructor is world renowned teaching iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this the same course that's on Udemy?

<comment><USER10> yes it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> website feedback : signup form accepts signup even if you don't click Accept TOS .

<comment><USER13> Noted - thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice job Eliot ;-)

<comment><USER13> @allsystemsgo thanks :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: TwitchRaids – Travel with a pack of viewers to random Twitch streams - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitchraids.com

<comment><USER2> Brigading is quite explicitly against Twitch's ToS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking through the ToS and I don't see anything against it. If you know the section that mentions it could you please point me to it? Also I see streamers toss to other streamers at the end of their broadcasts all the time with similar effect.

Plus the whole reason I did this is because I think there needs to be a way to introduce viewers to these streamers that go unnoticed. I think the effect of this is wholly positive.

<comment><USER2> "Raid" has the implication of harassment, which is against rule 13.i. I recall one streamer getting into trouble for telling users to raid a competitor's stream.

The beneficial aspect of the raid isn't immediately clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't meant to imply harassment. A stream raid is just what they call it when one streamer tosses to another at the end of their broadcast.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vagrant 1.5 and Vagrant Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.vagrantup.com/blog/vagrant-1-5-and-vagrant-cloud.html <comment><USER2> Mitchell, firstly, I love you. You're an amazing guy, and you're creating something of great value in the world. I really appreciate you.

OK, so now the constructive criticism: Can you explain the apparent obsession with bringing everything great into vagrant core? I know that core leverages the same plugin architecture that everything else does, but I just can't understand why you privilege "official" plugins above others. Not to mention the fact the it shifts the burden of maintainership onto core developers such as yourself.

(This criticism is coming from someone who in the past has spent a long time working with Drupal, and who has always been disappointed with how that community insists on pulling everything into core, under the guise of "shepherding". As I see it, those pieces then move more slowly and are less likely to see a large maintainer-base who take ownership.)

<3

EDIT: Holy jeez, Vagrant Cloud is awesome.

<comment><USER3> Hey Pat! HAHA. Thanks for all the compliments.

As for the criticism: spot on, I can see where this would irk you.

I want to first say that the "core" itself is still very slim: you could easily generate a Vagrant installation without a lot of these things. The standard Vagrant distribution, however, is getting more feature packed.

That may be a bit pedantic, so let's talk about the standard Vagrant distribution. It is getting larger, but the primary reason is because I think these features are important enough in the "Vagrant vision" to be available out of the box. Additionally, it shows a bigger promise that I care about the stability of those things.

The "support" issue is one I am very careful about. Luckily Vagrant core has a lot more committers and we have a few "lieutenants" that cover specific areas very well (for example Salt and Ansible provisioners).

As it stands, as the core distribution has grown, I haven't had to spend more time on issues and I still mostly handle the core code. This is largely in part to the fantastic community around Vagrant and the core team that is in place. If I see it shifting otherwise, I'd start to worry.

<comment><USER2> Still wary, but this is good enough for me. If you're not overburdened, then that's the main thing :) Thanks man

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really exciting. I'm also glad Vagrant Cloud is in existence, I think that's exactly what they need.

(I also want to see Docker's Index blown out to be a more robust system like that!)

SMB is also huge for Windows users. Even on Linux, I found SMB easier to use and setup than NFS.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thank you sir.

Typo in your blog post: pleasent (should be pleasant). Also: "interetsted" on the "Organization Accounts" page.

Thank you again.

Not quite the awesome criticism sandwich @patcon made, but that's all I can do.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is hot. Great approach to the same sorts of things we're working on at [http://bowery.io](http://bowery.io) and a logical next step for vagrant.

</comment><comment><USER7> One problem with using Windows guests on Vagrant is how big they are. You can be looking at 20GB for a stripped down disk with just the OS. This can easily become prohibitive if you want to use more than a few VMs in Vagrant (not to mention the time copying all this redundant data).

Having read about differencing disks, they seem like the perfect solution to this problem, by allowing VMs to share the same parent disk, without needing to copy it (as each VM only needs to keep track of differences to the base disk). From what I've read of differencing disks, this seems like a no-brainer for Vagrant (but unfortunately my experience extends no further than what I've read).

Is there a reason Vagrant doesn't use this approach? Any plans to put this on the roadmap? It seems like this feature is supported by both VirtualBox and Hyper-v.

(This page describes differencing disks, and the first diagram under "Using multiple differencing disks with one parent disk" accurately depicts the sort of thing I have in mind here [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc720381(v=WS.10)...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc720381\(v=WS.10\).aspx) )

<comment><USER3> Differencing disks depend on some things in the core changing. These changes are under way already in branches of Vagrant and Vagrant 1.6 has a very good chance of properly using linked clones wherever possible.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the super quick reply! I'm glad to hear I'm not completely crazy with this idea. Multiple 20GB images make my diddy little SSD cry, so this feature would be fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "In 1.6, you'll finally be able to see the status of all created Vagrant environments from anywhere on your system."

Yay!

<comment><USER9> This will be nice. In a similar vein, I'd also like to see an option to install base boxes and plugins system-wide in addition to per-user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work Mitchell! Pretty excited to try this. But...

Is anyone else having problems with this release? On my machine (OSX Mavericks), running any vagrant command is taking ages and is making my computer non responsive. I rebooted, reinstalled vagrant, no luck.

I see in Activity Monitor a ruby process is almost taking over my CPU! at 90%+.

<comment><USER3> It is probably upgrading your home folder (".vagrant.d") to the new format. That should be IO-bound though, not CPU-bound. Let it run for awhile... I haven't heard of this happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alternatives to NFS on Linux...oh god you just made me a happy happy bunny.

Just read the rsync part, I think I love you guys now.

<comment><USER12> Second the happy bunny part, surely since it's getting close to Easter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Beware of Vagrant 1.5 if you need vagrant-berkshelf. There are serious dependency issues that are not yet solved:

[https://github.com/berkshelf/vagrant- berkshelf/issues/141](https://github.com/berkshelf/vagrant- berkshelf/issues/141)

I had to rollback to 1.4.3

</comment><comment><USER14> Rsync looks awesome, but having to run the rsync-auto command separately looks like it will be a drag.

There needs to be a plugin that will run rsync-auto automatically on vagrant up/resume, and terminate it on vagrant halt/suspend.

</comment><comment> stephane-klein Is it possible to create a private Vagrant Share "proxy" ?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it will be. While we intend for the shares through Vagrant Cloud to be free for personal use, private proxies will cost money when they're available. But we intend for Vagrant Cloud to be fully self-installable and designed it that way!

There are always alternate localhost tunneling solutions you can use if you want a private domain and don't want to pay. But if you want the `vagrant share` integration and a custom domain, we'll be charging for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Vagrant Share works flawlessly, thank you very much, Mitchell!

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks awesome. Really excited about Vagrant Cloud. Wish it had the option to sign in with Github but still looking forward to it.

Great work Vagrant Community and HashiCorp Team!

<comment><USER17> Thanks! We look forward to integrating GitHub – there's a ton of cool stuff that can be done, as it's very common that a box maintainer has Packer templates, configuration management scripts and so forth there.

We didn't go the OAuth route primarily because we need to enable `vagrant login` locally, and for that it's useful to have a login/password combination, authentication tokens. I couldn't think of a workflow that makes this as easy for a user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't mean to this sound snarky, and I really appreciate vagrant. I've had patches merged over the years, so I'm a strong supporter.

BUT, I'd be genuinely interested on the reasoning behind charging for a vmware provider but not the hyperv one? Is it simply that nobody else bothered to develop a vmware provider?

I've considered developing a vmware provider, but don't like the idea of cutting off a vagrant revenue source.

<comment><USER3> Hi! I'd be happy to say why. VMware itself costs money, unlike VirtualBox which is free. We felt it was fair to charge for a provider where the underlying hypervisor cost money. Additionally, it was our first and only way to support ourselves in developing this product.

If we had a ton of money we'd make the VMware provider free, too. :) But as it is, it is our primary source of income at the moment. Based on interest in on- premise Vagrant Cloud solutions, that may quickly change (hopefully!).

Hyper-V, on the hand, was developed mostly by MS OpenTech. It would be unfair (and likely illegal) to charge for their work they did and contributed as MIT licensed code to Vagrant core.

Thanks for your support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> OK, one criticism for Vagrant Cloud: When creating a box, it provides some default values for name, description etc -- but they are placed into the plaveholder attribute, meaning I still need to enter my own values. I suggest putting them to the value attribute of the form fields, which will speed up things while still allow the users to change the values if they wish.

</comment><comment><USER20> Excited for these new sync options like rsync and smb. I had been using smb shares on my VM in the past to get better performance

<comment><USER21> Me too. We gave up trying to get new hires to reliably create smb shares in the end so have started packaging a smb server with the vm and instead have them mount the shares in windows. It will be nice to rip all of that out and replace it with this.

<comment><USER20> Hah yes! Exactly what we did

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> mitchell I admire you, for number of commits you make on github.

downloading it now :)

there was some bad blood earlier where you complained about docker stability, they skipped vagrant and build boot2docker.

now vagrant has many features which first came out on docker especially in vagrant cloud.

edit: good to know it is not bad blood, my clarity has improved , curious why the down vote

<comment><USER23> Hi, Docker maintainer here. I'm not aware of any "bad blood", not everything has to be a war or a competition ;)

Vagrant has been super useful to help us get a VM up and running with Docker pre-installed. But when boot2docker came along with a tiny (25MB!) single- purpose VM, 5 second boot time, way less moving parts and no ruby dependency - it just made sense to use that instead. It also helped reduce the confusion between Vagrant and Docker. We had a lot of people who after installing Docker were confused that now they had to learn this other tool called Vagrant, with a complicated ruby syntax etc. Taking Vagrant out of the equation helped with that too.

<comment><USER3> I agree. There was definitely no bad blood! I was frustrated with dockers stability at one point and made my feelings public. Perhaps I shouldn't have but I also remember saying at the same time that docker is a fantastic idea :) so... not bad blood. Boot2docker has also been great for the ecosystem so it's all good.

<comment><USER23> By the way Mitchell I think we fixed most of your bug reports - thanks and please keep them coming!

<comment><USER22> I love open source

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can't wait to give it a shot, the Vagrant Share feature is really cool.

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone know why there's no repository for Vagrant? I have to manually download and install the deb|rpm and install it myself, manually, on every new release.

Is this just a manpower thing?

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know what terminal emulator they're using for vagrantcloud.com? It looks slick, I just can't identify it.

<comment><USER27> They're serving up one big JS file: [https://d250n10lsq5j8r.cloudfront.net/assets/application- aca...](https://d250n10lsq5j8r.cloudfront.net/assets/application- acabf0ff19fad8ad3d4f2dee89cf438b.js)

control-f-ing for 'term' makes it look like it may even just be custom? [https://github.com/search?q=var+AddTerminalShell&ref=reposea...](https://github.com/search?q=var+AddTerminalShell&ref=reposearch&type=Code)

<comment><USER26> That's what I was thinking.. Found the JS file, Googled for AddTerminalShell to no avail. Didn't know if anyone else could recognize it or if it was custom.

Thanks for the help, though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Vagrant cloud looks awesome. nice and easy share boxes distributions. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER29> is 1.5 not compatible with 1.4.3 boxes? I had to downgrade because of ruby errors on windows 7.

<comment><USER3> Its completely compatible, and I run Vagrant 1.5 on Windows! What error did you get? Please report it: [https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues)</comment></comment>


Big City Housing Doesn't Have to Be So Expensive (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-27/big-city-housing-doesn-t-have-to-be-so-expensive <comment><USER2> As long as housing remains an investment asset the price will continue to go up. If we would just decide that housing is meant to be lived in, not profited from, you'd see the price come down overnight because investment companies and rich people wouldn't be buying up hundreds of houses they'll never live in.</comment>


The Simple Trick that Will Keep You Secure from Government Spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/the_simple_tric.html

<comment><USER2> Stay off the web? I haven't clicked the link by the way. Maybe it's a trap.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I rename my HN account? - <AUTHOR>

Already searched for this, but didn't find anything.<p>I'm currently trying to get away from my pseudonym, so I'm renaming my account on as many sites as possible. <comment><USER2> Email PG, he may help. I have heard of him renaming accounts for people before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll give it a try.</comment></comment>


Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github <comment><USER2> "said that it was impossible to tell whether a pull request was ignored out of bias, or just because a project owner was busy or knew another developer personally."

This is exactly what I've been saying. Open source projects are very political and studies like this don't really show sexism, it shows favoritism.

This is what happens when each project is essentially a dictatorship with a small group of leaders that can pick and choose commits.

We should be striving for more of a meritocracy, rather than favoring someone because we like them.

The same thing happens with political beliefs as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074587)

</comment><comment><USER4> If coding is intellectual in nature and the primary biological resource it draws on is our brain, and female and male brains are the same, how could this be true?

Brains are the same source: [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains- men-and-women-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and- women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds)</comment>