MIT AI tool can predict breast cancer up to 5 years early - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/mit-ai-tool-can-predict-breast-cancer-up-to-5-years-early-works-equally-well-for-white-and-black-patients/ <comment><USER2> Take these results with a grain of salt. There's a large class imbalance in this dataset and ROC curves can be misleading in this case. The test set contains 269 positive examples and 8482 negative examples.

From [1]:

> Class imbalance can cause ROC curves to be poor visualiza- tions of > classifier performance. For instance, if only 5 out of 100 individuals have > the disease, then we would expect the five posi- tive cases to have scores > close to the top of our list. If our classifier generates scores that rank > these 5 cases as uniformly distributed in the top 15, the ROC graph will > look good (Fig. 4a). However, if we had used a threshold such that the top > 15 were predicted to be true, 10 of them would be FPs, which is not > reflected in the ROC curve. This poor performance is reflected in the PR > curve, however.

The authors seem to be aware of this in the supplement and also evaluate performance by a hazard ratio they define:

> We calculated the ratio of the observed cancer incidence in the top 10% of > patients over the incidence in the middle 80% and referred to this metric as > the top decile hazard ratio. We calculated the ratio of the observed cancer > incidence in the bottom 10% of patients over the incidence in the middle 80% > and referred to this metric as the bottom decile hazard ratio.

However, binning is a form of p-hacking [2]. And I'm still wondering why they don't just post the Precision-Recall curves.

[1] [https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3945](https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3945)

[2] [https://doi.org/10.1080/09332480.2006.10722771](https://doi.org/10.1080/09332480.2006.10722771)

[Edit] to add link to [2]

<comment><USER3> It's one of the difficulties with attacking screening applications where the population TPR is very low. For screening mammo, it's less than 1 in 1000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Without information about false positives, this is just basically saying they wrote an algorithm that sometimes points out cancer early. But if it is only correct 1% of the time, nobody is going to listen to it. It'd do even less than the current "You really need to check for cancer!" statements that we already have.

Edit: From the paper:

> A deep learning (DL) mammography-based model identified women at high risk > for breast cancer and placed 31% of all patients with future breast cancer > in the top risk decile compared with only 18% by the Tyrer-Cuzick model > (version 8).

So better than before, but still only detects 31%. If I'm reading correctly, it's 95% correct? I guess that means 5% false positives? That wouldn't be bad.

<comment><USER5> 95% on a 1 in 1000 event means that over 1,000,000 trials

950 true positives

~50,000 false positives

False positive breast cancer is pretty bad.

<comment><USER6> Cost of false positive is retest and observe, this seems like a very low cost. Also, stop consuming sugar.

<comment><USER7> What about the anxiety and distress caused to the patient? How many might undergo an unnecessary mastectomy to be on the safe side?

<comment><USER8> I have a problem with this vision.

You can be told the risk factors for everybody, but when you are told the risk factors tailored to you it becomes dangerous? Should we tell everyone they're going to live forever so they live in ignorant bliss while healthy?

I can see being unprepared for having that information, but I don't think the solution is not having the information.

<comment><USER7> It's not a risk factor; it's a test outcome. You would be told that you've tested positive with the follow on tests and anxiety that causes.

There have been studies into exactly this: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22859786](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22859786)

Specifically on breast cancer screening, the National Institute for Clinical Evidence in the UK has published management guidance that is quite interesting: [https://cks.nice.org.uk/breast- screening](https://cks.nice.org.uk/breast-screening)

<comment><USER4> Can't read that last link outside the UK.

They wouldn't be wold they were positive for cancer. They'd be told that the computer predicts that they are at very high risk for breast cancer. That's knowledge that I think people should have, personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> According to Craig Venter, early detection is what we need to eliminate cancer:

[https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8?t=15m37s](https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8?t=15m37s)

The reason most people die from pancreatic cancer, for example, is because we almost always detect it in a late stage.

<comment><USER10> This depends on the type of cancer. In the case of a slow-growing cancer like prostate cancer, early detection can find cancers that would never be a problem (you'll die of something else first).

This has to be taken into account when deciding how much screening to do.

<comment><USER9> Not really. You're probably still better off knowing you have the slow-growing benign prostrate cancer that you can monitor but not treat. Also, you might find you have the more aggressive form.

[https://www.webmd.com/prostate-cancer/prostate-cancer- surviv...](https://www.webmd.com/prostate-cancer/prostate-cancer-survival- rates-what-they-mean)

<comment><USER10> Maybe the problem is that people don't do that? What do you think of this meta-analysis?

"Pooled data currently demonstrates no significant reduction in prostate cancer-specific and overall mortality. Harms associated with PSA-based screening and subsequent diagnostic evaluations are frequent, and moderate in severity. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are common and are associated with treatment-related harms."

[...]

"Screening resulted in a range of harms that can be considered minor to major in severity and duration. Common minor harms from screening include bleeding, bruising and short-term anxiety. Common major harms include overdiagnosis and overtreatment, including infection, blood loss requiring transfusion, pneumonia, erectile dysfunction, and incontinence. Harms of screening included false-positive results for the PSA test and overdiagnosis (up to 50% in the ERSPC study). Adverse events associated with transrectal ultrasound (TRUS)-guided biopsies included infection, bleeding and pain."

[https://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for- pro...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD004720/PROSTATE_screening-for-prostate- cancer)

<comment><USER9> many people also insist on getting antibiotics when they have a viral infection. We have a more measles cases now than a decade ago because of fake news.

You might be right that many people would be better off not knowing but I'd rather we took a step forwards than backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Addressing model bias by adjusting which data the model has access to is a bad idea. Tweaking the data so that the model output looks equitable is going to make your model across the board. You should train your model on what you have and then add explicit biases to the classifier for different groups. That way you have the best model and are clear on your biases.

If this model is equally accurate for black and white women that means that either race is not a factor in predictability, that it is a factor but easily adaptable into a model, or race is a factor and they've reduced their ability to diagnose one group in the name of equity.

The linked article suggests accuracy gains are due to better risk models, that use more than age. I'm not sure if that means it's tied into the image neural net. Would like to see false positive rate too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's the paper in question.

[https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.2019182716](https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.2019182716)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish they would call it something other than AI. Like "Diagnostics" or if there MUST be a buzzword there, then call it "Predictive Diagnostics".

Once upon a time, a necessary precondition to call something AI was that it should be something where there is at least the hope that it could one day generalize to pass the Turing test or something along those lines.

Medical diagnostics is one of the primary applications of pattern processing, and since it's pretty damned impressive as it is, it's a bit pointless to try and make it even more impressive by suggesting that you might one day enjoy a chat with your medical diagnostic tool over breakfast, exchanging views on how the Knicks' season is shaping up... (Which both the informed readers, and the people writing this, know pretty damned well is never going to happen, and was never intended to happen).

</comment><comment><USER6> JFC this is great.</comment>


Has the key to a coronavirus vaccine been staring us in the face for a century? - <AUTHOR> https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/has-the-key-to-a-coronoavirus-vaccine-been-staring-us-in-the-face-for-a-century <comment><USER2> It's odd watching the news about BCG spread, because the actual paper looks fairly weak to me: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1)

But I guess lots of medical science is messy... Disclaimer: I'm an armchair scientist with a passing interest in biology.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article opens by stating: "Spain had almost 11,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic while Portugal's death toll barely exceeds 200." My first thought was "Port wine!"

Life should be so easy! The true topic is the BCG vaccine and that "COVID-19 is less severe in countries using the BCG vaccine".

Another interesting hypothesis, that "COVID-19 is where Malaria is not" is provided by the complementary nature of the maps of (countries using antimalarials) vs (countries with COVID-19):

"Delingpole: Chloroquine/Malaria/Coronavirus – 'Stunning' Correlation Claimed":

[https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/20/delingpole- chl...](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/20/delingpole-chloroquine- malaria-coronavirus-stunning-correlation-claimed/)</comment>


Zoom Happy Hour Games - <AUTHOR> https://coda.io/@alden/virtual-happy-hour-activities <comment><AUTHOR> This is a curated list of video-call-friendly games to play with friends or coworkers. Most are free and web-based, so there's low friction. You can also copy the doc and add your own ideas, then share it with your team or friend group to vote on which game to try first (voting is a built-in feature).</comment>


Can this $320B Hedge Fund strategy lower Bitcoin investment risk? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@philippkallerhoff/can-a-common-hedge-fund-strategy-be-applied-to-bitcoin-to-drastically-reduce-investment-risk-12bc1c0eb7a6 <comment><USER2> The problem for a type of hedge fund like this is regulation that would apply to your instrument and its potential exposure to illegal activity. That is not insinuating that there IS that activity, but that there is a potential for it, and i can't see how the SEC would approve it.

It would be akin to a hedge fund that was providing hedging to the industry of 'ransomware' or 'illicit drug distribution'. Unless you could ensure that this wasn't possible, I'm not sure you could ever list it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I'm following. Is the illegal activity you're talking about related to the legality new crypto tokens in general or that bitcoin itself can/is used for illegal activity?

Secondarily, the article is only asking if strategies used by HF's could be applied to lower the risk profile of investments in Bitcoin. From the research he did, the answer looks like a theoretical yes.

<comment><USER2> > or that bitcoin itself can/is used for illegal activity?

This part.

Like I said, I don't think there's anything wrong with the attempt, but if they want it to be a tradeable instrument, they'll need to expose themselves to the risk of the instrument they're aligned to. I can't see the SEC allowing that exposure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for clarifying. Should be interesting to watch! (as this whole space is!)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.skytorrents.in <comment><USER2> Hi,

Love the site especially the speed. But disappointed that the search indexes the name of the container of the torrent only and not the name of the files within the torrent.

To date the only site I know that does this is "filelisting dot com" but their website is __very __slow.

Do you have any plans to extend your product to add this feature. Maybe as a premium option?

Super useful to find single documents contained within archived bundles of files.

<comment><AUTHOR> If 3 more users vote this feature, It will be provided for free to everyone and it will provided at the same speeds as the current website.

<comment><USER3> For feature voting I've seen other apps use Product Pains[0]

[0] - [https://productpains.com/](https://productpains.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the shoutout! We definitely see huge value in letting your users post & vote on feature requests:

\- You know what your users want most

\- People feel like their voice is heard

\- It builds a community around your product

Try it out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Suggestion: get rid of the torrent files and just serve magnet urls in plain text without a clickable button. This way you get rid of the knowledge of who- downloaded-what, and also save some bandwidth.

<comment><AUTHOR> If 2 more users recommend this, it will be done.

<comment><USER6> I never download torrent files, just look for the magnet link. Same feature, why bother downloading?

<comment><USER7> It's not the same.you'll be missing some of the trackers.

<comment><USER8> Magnet URLs can and usually do include all of the trackers.

[http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0009.html#magnet-uri- form...](http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0009.html#magnet-uri-format)

That being said DHT and PEX (BEP 5 and BEP 11) is good enough that you don't need them.

<comment><USER9> That's not entirely true. DHT is generally the most effective, but PEX and trackers help a lot when there aren't many seeds, or there's a lot of noise on the DHT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't you realize that you can't build a usable site without mountains of JS and user-tracking scripts? /sarcasm

It's _really_ refreshing to see a fast, small efficient site that gets rid of all the bullshit. Congrats!

<comment><USER11> with all free services it starts this way ( look at imgur and so on. ) and eventually ends in ads ridden monster.

but we usually end up in a couple of years great service, before they figure out that they could be earning money with serving ads or selling data.

<comment><USER12> I never see any banners on Imgur. I block banners.

What Extratorrents and The Pirate Bay do tho seems to be something akin to clickjacking. I click on a link to a torrent search result (or a download link), a tab opens, and it immediately closes. Rest assured this generates them money.

<comment><USER13> That is your adblocker closing the popup as soon as it opens. For users without an adblocker the tab stays open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few other folks have mentioned this, but a (monthly?) dump of the database, offered as a torrent link on the site would be fantastic.

Not only would it enable offline searching, but when the inevitable take down shows up, folks can still continue to search the database.

<comment><AUTHOR> 7 more votes to get it done.

<comment><USER15> It's really not an auction site. Set up a way to handle feature requests.

<comment><USER16> Don't worry, unless they set up a vote to "banish all US Copyright protected works" the inevitable RIAA/MPAA pressure will sort out the project by itself. I'm not delusional to claim Torrents are without legitimate purpose - they are - and I'm also not delusional enough to believe hosts/developers are powerless to address piracy of sorts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That site served blazingly fast. It's refreshing to see an ad free torrent site.

Since you aren't monetizing the site, how are you planning on keeping the site running? Donations?

<comment><USER18> Given the relatively slim page size (23Kb for me), and given that SQLite can pretty easily host a relatively simple database like this one and serve 100K-1M queries per day[0], I would expect that whoever is hosting this could pretty easily host this on a single dedicated server which only costs ~$50. So for the foreseeable future, I suspect this site will be fine.

[0] - [https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

<comment><USER19> The cost of hosting will probably be insignificant compared to the cost of dealing with DMCA takedowns and possibly lawsuits.

<comment><USER20> That's why I built Magnetissimo: [https://github.com/sergiotapia/magnetissimo](https://github.com/sergiotapia/magnetissimo)

It's easy to build a crawler, the hard part is spending time on bullshit like DMCA takedowns and such. Even if you say: "I just crawl, I don't provide download links, I don't even know what is indexed", you have to deal with legal issues.

So, host your own locally or for your community. No big deal.

Even Google has to deal with DMCA!

<comment><USER21> How large is the database compiled by Magnetissimo? Is it Wikipedia-sized (a few dozens of Gigabytes), or several orders of magnitude above or below?

<comment><USER20> Haven't really measured to be honest. But it's only 1 model with a few fields. Shouldn't be humongous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The top 1000 has a lot of software. The thought of running pirated software always filled me with unease, having been burned by malware in my younger days. Only tangentially related to this really well done torrent search (so snappy!), but does anyone have a feel for how safe this software is in general? Do security firms do any analysis on it?

<comment><USER23> Growing up I heard horror stories of people pirating versions of Windows, Office, etc that had backdoors installed. If you download pirated software there isn't a real way to know for 100% certainty that it isn't laced with _something_.

So I avoid it like the plague. Even if the majority don't have anything it only takes the one and then, depending on its level of sophistication, you're screwed.

<comment><USER20> Pirating Windows is pretty stupid these days. You can download the official MS ISO from their website, and buy a real key from some subreddits for like $20.

The keys they sell are those bulk keys large companies get, their IT dep guy wants to make some extra coin on the side. But they work.

<comment><USER24> Also:

\- if you bought a laptop with preinstalled Windows, you can activate a fresh install with the key that's stored in the laptop (in ACPI tables IIRC). Just make sure it's the same edition and language.

\- if you're a student, check if you have DreamSpark (er, Imagine) Premium. Apparently Windows Server is available even in the non-Premium program (for all students).

<comment><USER25> > you can activate a fresh install with the key that's stored in the laptop > (in ACPI tables IIRC).

Free tool we developed to quickly grab that key: [http://neosmart.net/OemKeyTool/](http://neosmart.net/OemKeyTool/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need- Javascript](https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need-Javascript) Here is a good collection of web-components which can be implemented without using JavaScript. Hope it helps you guys in developing the site. All the best.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for sharing that! Some of them are just a big pile of CSS which I don't know if it's a better option than JavaScript... But others were pure gold and a very clever use of HTML (like the carousel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not sure if it's a bug, but a common search for '1080p' returns no results (and takes around 10 seconds): [https://www.skytorrents.in/search/all/ed/1/?q=1080p](https://www.skytorrents.in/search/all/ed/1/?q=1080p)

<comment><USER29> Same with searching '720p'

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Suggestions:

1\. Enable whois privacy via Gandi

2\. Hide your server IPs behind Cloudflare

3\. Ensure the site is written such that it is trivial for yourself and others to use alternate domain names

<comment><AUTHOR> no CDNs as it leads to tracking by CDNs.

<comment><USER31> Close your port 22 at least. Define some simple iptables rules.

Only able to login if coming from specific ip address, like a private vpn server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> #1 on HackerNews -> [Dynamic Search-Result] Page served in 39µs

What kind of dark magic is this? What's your stack?

<comment><USER33> My guess is that he's using a compiled language such as Rust or Go, with a lightweight non-blocking framework, plus intelligent caching of backend queries, plus a decent backend such as Sphinx or PostgreSQL.

Compare with interpreted languages for the frontend and Java monsters as backends (PHP and Lucene anyone?)

People forget what modern computers are _really_ capable of, when used properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd suggest using another TLD or having multiple TLDs to avoid losing it even temporarily (if at all someone decides to take this domain down). The .in TLD policies [1] require a real and accurate address of the registrant, which is not provided for this domain [2]:

> Contact information: Registrants must provide true, accurate contact > information. The following contact types are required: Registrant, > Administrative, Technical, Billing. As per standing policy, the contact data > will displayed in the .IN WHOIS, except for the Billing contact data, which > is not displayed.

[1]: [https://registry.in/Policies](https://registry.in/Policies)

[2]: [https://registry.in/whois/skytorrents.in](https://registry.in/whois/skytorrents.in) / [http://whois.domaintools.com/skytorrents.in](http://whois.domaintools.com/skytorrents.in)

</comment><comment><USER35> Ridiculously fast! Would love to hear about your stack. C, what else? What database, template library?

</comment><comment><USER36> This is absolutely incredible, and the load times are incomprehensible for a modern site.

What software powers the site?

I did some looking and discovered it uses Bulma [1] instead of Bootstrap, and it's absolutely amazing. Another commenter pointed out that the site also uses Caddy for HTTP/2 and HTTPS.

Excellent work, keep it up!

[1] - [http://bulma.io/](http://bulma.io/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks , for such search engine,that really includes no javascript and no cookies in any form.

Secondly Its amazingly fast, I believe its more than just C language. I tried different combinations of searches on your search engine to check whether results are being served from cache or so. And it looks all searches(don't know your cache/uncache db design) are several times faster comparable to many. + +1 for speed. Also i feel i found a minor bug.

Even though it looks passion project but don't know how long will you survive fighting DMCA ,others, costs without monetizing plans or accepting donations. Won't mind donation if you accept.

Till you survive, i am glad for your engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please file the bug on the email address mentioned on the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thank you for working on this project. What is your indexing strategy?

Similar search engines have a warning that you should use a VPN when downloading that I think would benefit users.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have written up a DHT crawler to locate trackers.We are not dependant on trackers. We are also testing an AI based detector which filters out FAKE torrents (it is not currently deployed, but we test it). If 2 more users here demand a VPN warning, it will be deployed.

<comment><USER39> How is this "If 2 or more users demand <x feature>, it will be done" policy working for you? Have you used it in other projects prior to this? Curious to hear any stories :).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working fine. We are gathering feedback what users want and then do the development instead of we will develop this whether user want it or not. A company once invested more than an year developing a feature, which was rolled back in 1 day after users complained.

<comment><USER40> Requiring only 3 users to vote for a feature seems quite low to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Notice how they make it difficult and painful to file DMCA complaints:

[https://www.skytorrents.in/dmca](https://www.skytorrents.in/dmca)

Genius.

<comment><USER42> Doesn't seem too painful to me. They're basically just asking for an email with all the stuff that's legally required to be in a DMCA notice.

Here's what the DMCA requires[1]:

(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.

(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.

(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

[1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Uh, could purely be a coincidence but the favicon looks identical to the logo of UK TV corporation Sky (albeit with less colour): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sky_plc_logo.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sky_plc_logo.png)

<comment><USER44> Are you really complaining that a site that is dedicated to copyright infringement might be misusing a trademark? I have a feeling that is the least of their legal concerns.

<comment><USER45> Trademark law is pretty fierce, and sites like these should generally want to minimise the legal attack surface.

<comment><USER16> Never underestimate the allure of digital heroism. I get a similar vibe as Aurous with this one. For profit or not it'll bear the brunt of an angry industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> add-free, non-tracking, not accepting donations - call me paranoid but unless I know why are you doing this I have to assume the worst. There simply is no free lunch.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow! its super fast and NO Javascript!!!

Where are you hosting it and do you plan to monetize?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we DONOT have any plans to monetize. NO javscript was a design feature for security focused users. We also DONOT place any cookies (and donot track). We wanted users to experience a fastest experience possible without worry about adblocks, noscripts etc.

<comment><USER47> _we DONOT have any plans to monetize_

So my next question is - any plans on open sourcing? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We donot have plans on open sourcing soon, but we love open-source. Making it open-source will be considered in future for sure.

<comment><USER48> You should consider open sourcing the static pages/text at least, so people can improve paragraphing, punctuation, and grammar/spell correct:

"donot" should be "do not" (separate words)

"atleast" should be "at least" (separate words)

I realize English is probably not your first language, so no big deal, but it would be nice to fix.

<comment><USER12> Here's a better version. I'd e-mail it, but I don't use PGP...

[Feel free to change do not to don't. Torrents and Javascript may be capitalised or not.]

 _This is a clean, ad-free, privacy focused torrent search engine. Like Google /Yahoo but just for torrents (at least for now). This project is still under heavy development. Feedback is welcome, please report any problems or bugs.

We do not track users in any form and therefore. We do not use cookies or javascript in any form. We do not sell any data to anyone.

The entire project is maintained up to date by smart software. Manual intervention is limited but still there. Every hour hundreds of new torrents are discovered and made available for search purposes.

This is currently in beta testing. You can send feedbacks or report any problems to admin (at) skytorrents.in.

Note: Any mails which do not use PGP are discarded by automated software._

<comment><AUTHOR> FIXED Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> hey, just a thought, but at some point if this gets too popular you will probably get a message from the UK TV company SKY who wont be super happy about your name.

<comment><USER50> Or the favicon that looks like it was lifted straight from on old version of their website.

<comment><USER49> hah yes i hadn't spotted that but now you point it out i realise it was itching the back of my brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps show the NFO, or parse link to IMDB from NFO and link to that? You can also scrape NFOs to make genres and type of media (games, applications, audio, video, and subgenres of these).

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm very wary of anything closed which bills itself as privacy focused and "non-tracking". Can you prove these claims openly? Otherwise this is just a public tracker, potentially full of malware and honeypots.

<comment><USER52> Agreed here, the site is using a backend and who knows what this backend is tracking. It should be a static site and open source, so we can verify the claims.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are planning to put up a tor onion frontend and thus tor users can browse even more anonymously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> A useful addition would be to categorize the top 1000 based on file name extension.

</comment><comment><USER54> I see that you are based out of India. How do you plan on dealing with law enforcement issues? (Great site, btw).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting a torrent site is completely LEGAL. Since we are acting just like google "a search engine".

<comment><USER55> Do you have legal precedent on this? That defense hasn't held in many jurisdictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Love the speed. What's the stack for this?

</comment><comment> jon-wood What's the chance of this getting a simple API which can be fed into flexget or similar?

<comment><AUTHOR> are you talking about RSS, it's already there as soon as make a query to feed into flexget.

<comment> jon-wood I totally hadn't made that connection, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Search works incorrectly.

+WORD1 +WORD2 returns WORD1 OR WORD2 instead of empty set if there is no match.

</comment><comment><USER58> Asking purely out of curiosity: Are you actually based in India? (The domain is on the Indian TLD and the address in whois records lists an Indian city).

Here in India, cyber law enforcement is a joke, and if some legal issue comes up with this site, I'd be curious to see how it works out.

And, just a hypothetical follow up question: how would it work out if the site was not even DMCA compliant?

<comment><USER59> I'm not associated with it, but yeah, it was posted in /r/india few days ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/5mj3vz/setting_up_ne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/5mj3vz/setting_up_new_torrent_search_engine_ad_free_more/)

Domain is from Gandi (France) and IP address (hosting?) seems to be from Netherlands

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does DMCA require you to delete URLs with hashes of files when you don't own the content?

Also, are you allowed to publish the takedown requests?

</comment><comment><USER61> If someone knows Python and uses qBittorrent, a search plugin for this site would be great!

Instructions here: [https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/How-to- write...](https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/How-to-write-a- search-plugin)

</comment><comment><USER62> Hi. I would concur that you guys should get some help with the UI elements. The Verified icon messing up row height aside, on my screen the no. of files column is excessively large, and the size column is too thin that often the unit MB/GB is squeezed down to the second line, which hurts readability.

</comment><comment><USER63> Add commas to "Serving 11234246 torrents"

</comment><comment><USER64> Refreshing to see such a fast website without any JS.

Really interested in what your tech stack looks like.

</comment><comment><USER65> Great site! What inspired you to create this and how will you afford to keep it running?

<comment><AUTHOR> Too many ads and sloppy search. It will be kept running from our own pockets. If we run out of money,we may make it open-source or request donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Why is "You must identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed." listed three times in your DMCA policy? Does the information actually need to be submitted in triplicate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed

<comment><USER66> Weird that I still see it (duplicate text hastily underlined with imgur's editing tools)[0].

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/n3VeeSh.png](http://i.imgur.com/n3VeeSh.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed for sure, was pending approval from other members

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is blazing fast, congrats! However, I am concerned by the use of IN domain. Indian govtt frequently asks ISPs to block sites to avoid piracy. How do you plan to avoid getting blocked?

<comment><AUTHOR> we only have https version

<comment><USER54> Well even PirateBay had that... and they can just block DNS requests to the website. You should probably set up a hidden service on Tor.

<comment><AUTHOR> TOR service will be put in place soon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This is fascinating! Any idea how it is implemented? Guessing it's using some open source search engine like Elasticsearch to build the indices/compute relevance in a centralized manner. Would it be possible to leverage the distributed nature of TOR to create a completely P2P/distributed version of this search engine? Relevance features like TF/IDF might be a bit challenging to implement, but it seems like it would be possible!

</comment><comment><USER69> Impressed by its speed [https://builtwith.com/skytorrents.in](https://builtwith.com/skytorrents.in)

</comment><comment><USER70> I actually was working on a similar project ([http://pirategod.org/](http://pirategod.org/)) few month ago, but sadly I got a fulltime job so had to abandon the project.

Torrent protocol is a brilliant system for information sharing, and with fragmentation of services like Netflix we need to start considering other solutions again, until the industry can give us what we need.

<comment><USER71> That URL is amazing, I hope you're able to find a use for it in the future.

<comment><USER72> _You Wouldn 't Download A Deity_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Will you offer any type of API? I'd be interested

<comment><AUTHOR> What sort of API, please elaborate ?

<comment><USER74> Similar to what @truftruf said. You could probably build something similar to RARBG's API ([https://torrentapi.org/apidocs_v2.txt](https://torrentapi.org/apidocs_v2.txt)). I find it to be immensely useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I think this a great idea. I looked up things like Tor Browser, Tails, and a few Linux distributions and popular open source projects. I found all of them far more quickly than I could have by going to their respective sites. Then I thought I probably shouldn't do that without promising myself to always verify the hashes, even if this site lets me _start_ the download faster.

</comment><comment><USER76> Suggestion: when searching for TV series, I'd try to sort results by decreasing season/episode (SnnExx), or at least simply by time.

</comment><comment><USER77> I always wish torrent sites used some sort of data table widget to allow for easier sorting of the search results.

Something like this would work great (there may be better ones still): [https://www.datatables.net/examples/styling/bootstrap4.html](https://www.datatables.net/examples/styling/bootstrap4.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was considered, but this feature required javascript. Since javascript was not a option, it was discarded.If there is some other way without scripting, please let us know. It will be used and implemented.

<comment><USER78> It's tedious but can be accomplished with server side sorting.

You could have:

<th>

        <a href="/search?sort=name&direction=asc">

            Name

        <a>

</th>

The server side code would interpret the sort and direction parameters and sort results as instructed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Server side sorting is already being done :)

<comment><USER79> On the issue of sorting, it should be labelled ASC for Ascending, not AESC. That's the only fault I can find...

<comment><AUTHOR> will be fixed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Elegant! At first I thought there was an error between micro- and milli- seconds. But no... File search would be great indeed!

</comment><comment><USER81> Looks great and runs quickly. Couple of UI niggles: \- The verified & marked icon is way larger than the others and completely throws out the spacing \- I find it pretty difficult to tell what page of the results I am on and what pages I have visited \- Because of the point above, a Forward/Back button for pages would be handy

</comment><comment><USER82> Question: How to use metadata info in the search? e.g. "2016" or "1080p" Or only the titles are indexed?

</comment><comment><USER83> Privacy doesn't matter in case of torrents because as soon as you download one, peers will know who are you.

</comment><comment><USER84> Awesome, love it. What a change from ad infested torrent search engines...

Also, it's FAST!

Does it by chance use Elixir/Erlang?

<comment><AUTHOR> No Erlang plz, Only C

<comment><USER85> I like this way of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I appreciate how well this service is made. It's fast and looks nice without any useless dynamic crap to slow it down. You don't need JavaScript and 200 resources to make a nice page, and it is indeed amazing how fast a page gets when you remove the cruft.

Kudos, good sir.

</comment><comment><USER69> Why Netcraft Risk Rating is so high? [http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.skyto...](http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.skytorrents.in)

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the domain is new. It's mentioned in the [http://toolbar.netcraft.com/help/faq/index.html#riskrating](http://toolbar.netcraft.com/help/faq/index.html#riskrating)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I'm curious if this site is vulnerable to torrent XSS: [http://security.stackexchange.com/q/86990/9161](http://security.stackexchange.com/q/86990/9161)

</comment><comment><USER88> NordVPN is torrent friendly provider, I know many people do use them just in case

</comment><comment><USER89> What is the business model ?

<comment><USER90> There is no business model hopefully. And it's really great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Where can I safely download torrents from? A server in Switzerland seems the best option I've found, but wondering about Russia too.

Payment would need to be in bitcoin to avoid handing over payment details.

</comment><comment><USER92> Impressive,I would love to read a blog about the technologies you use.

</comment><comment><USER93> Is there something like this I can run on my computer (or self-host)?

</comment><comment><USER94> This looks great. Nice work. On a privacy related note can anyone recommend a torrent friendly VPN provider? This + vpn would make a great combination. Cheer.

<comment><USER95> AirVPN works great for me in Europe, usually around 1 MB/s downstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I don't mean to spoil all the fun (this service seems AWESOME, congrats and thank you), but who are you? It also kind of feels too good to be true...

</comment><comment><USER97> On a large screen the file list is too small in my opinion. The "Found related results" section takes up 80% of the screen space in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER98> Decent search engine. I'll keep this in mind if torrentz2.eu goes down.

Maybe consider supporting an alternate way to access your website as a Tor onion service too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely will setup a tor onion service ASAP.

<comment><USER98> Great, thanks. Not only is this more secure & anonymous for your users, but it also gives them a way to access your site in case your main domain is lost or revoked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Does anybody have a quick primer on adding security and privacy to the actual participation in the torrent swarm (ie, downloading and seeding)?

</comment><comment><USER100> That's very fast. How much hardware did you have to throw at this? Also, who pays the servers (since you aren't accepting donations)?

</comment><comment><USER101> Wish I counld just click on the "Size", "Files", "Added", "SE" and "PE" to order them...

</comment><comment><USER102> You might want to move to some other tld. nic.in has some absurd rules. dnssec and whoisguard are not allowed with it, for example.

</comment><comment><USER103> This one is hosted using caddy[1]. I wonder what's the backed stack is. The server is hosted on NFOrce, in Netherlands[2]. Interesting. I wonder if we could get some sort of canary.

The PGP-only mail policy is very interesting, I wonder if it will actually _work_ even for DMC-related emails.

[1] [https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/)

[2] [https://www.nforce.com/about](https://www.nforce.com/about)

</comment><comment><USER104> I can't get over how fast this site is. Try the site in dillo or netsurf for a blazing fast torrent search experience.

</comment><comment><USER60> Ordering by relevance seems to be a bit weird, try searching for "ubuntu server 16.04". Great service otherwise!

</comment><comment><USER105> Kudos to you, add some categories if possible

</comment><comment><USER106> Firefox says 'your connection is insecure' and I need to add a security exception. Don't know why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our certificates are valid. Please verify at your end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> wow Super fast.

Interested to know the tech stack. I saw Caddy as the frontend server with https. and you use "C" below.

</comment><comment><USER108> SUGGESTION: instead of using a backend to swift through the torrents, why not host an offline JSON, sqlite or whatever (maybe streaming) client-side data format of your choice that contains the entire index. This way the application is not only offline but can be easily hosted and replicated.

It will be offline and versioned. If the index is too large, than some splitting will be required but I think this is totally doable.

</comment><comment><USER109> It would be nice to get some sort for ratio of peers to seeders so I could find stuff that needs seeding.

</comment><comment><USER110> I applaud the effort, but what's the model for making money? Are you just self funding this?

</comment><comment><USER39> It'd be nice if I could self-host it, or have it run behind a TOR hidden service.

</comment><comment><USER111> Looks great. Now, does anyone also know any torrent client that work in the cloud?

<comment><USER112> [https://put.io/](https://put.io/) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Quote from FAQ: "Thanks, but currently we are NOT accepting donations."

:) so cool.

</comment><comment><USER114> The torrents still contain unencrypted http tracker urls, no thanks.

<comment><USER98> Most if not all relatively modern clients support DHT and other peer locating methods. Just copy the info hash on the torrent results page & paste into your client. HTTP trackers help find peers who are more firewalled I believe, and also potentially speed up the start of downloads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Nice work!

How recent are the search results and how frequently do they get updated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Search results are continuously updated, search results are as recent upto last second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> It would be fantastic if you had a onion services URL as well.

</comment><comment><USER117> Amazing work; the site is extremely responsive!

</comment><comment><USER118> Hello,

Great speed!

But where is the list of torrents retrieved from in the end?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's obtained from the DHT network itself

<comment><USER119> Are you using a opensource tool to crawl DHT?

<comment><AUTHOR> NO, closed source

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> Any plans on providing search API?

</comment><comment><USER120> great... just needs a black/dark theme :-)

</comment><comment><USER121> > Page served in 8.759µs

kill me plz

</comment><comment><USER122> This is awesome!!!

</comment><comment><USER123> liked it.

</comment><comment><USER124> I like it!!</comment>


Amazon EC2 T4g Instances - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/t4/ <comment><USER2> "Users on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal) can take advantage of additional optimizations found on newer ARM-based processors. The large-system extensions (LSE) are enabled by using the included libc6-lse package, which can result in orders of magnitude performance improvements." From [https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-aws-graviton2](https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu- aws-graviton2)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> With T4g instances, customers can optimize for both higher performance and lower cost per vCPU. T4g instances deliver up to 40% better price performance over T3 instances for a large number of applications built on open-source software utilizing Linux distributions. T4g instances also deliver 40% higher peak performance than T3 instances, enabling customers to migrate production workloads to T4g instances more effectively.</comment>


Ask HN: Best book or resource to REALLY grasp CSS? - <AUTHOR> What was the book or resource that really made you grasp CSS in a way that you proactively know what will happen when you change random position or display attributes on elements and that enabled you to design pages without too much trial and error?
Background: I was primarily a backend developer but in the last 3-4 years I do full-stack development, first with angular now with vuejs on the frontend. I always use CSS "framework" on the frontend like Bootstrap and usually buy some theme when I start a project and start from there. I was always able to get the look that I wanted when I changed stuff in CSS but it was always with many trials and errors, usually trying stuff in the browsers inspect window until I get things right. I am sick of that so I would finally really like to properly learn CSS.
The end result that I like to achieve is that I would be able to not use CSS framework (maybe just something like tailwind css) and easily create and maintain responsive page designs. I am primarily interested in pure CSS stuff, not how to organize it, that is a broader topic especially if you use SPA framework, pre/post processors, modules, etc. <comment><USER2> I'm going to recommend what may be a controversial approach: learn CSS in a historical order.

First off, do NOT attempt to learn using a framework. They're complicated and tend to make a lot of compromises in order to satisfy everyone.

Start with CSS1. This supports basic font selection and sizing, bold and italics; margins, padding, borders, and backgrounds. You can't do much in terms of positioning, but the simplicity will help you understand crucial basic concepts: the cascade and the difference between inline and block elements.

Next, learn CSS2, which adds more selectors, positioning and display properties, floats, and a more sophisticated box model. You'll know you've mastered this when you can produce 2-3 different variations of what used to be called the "Holy Grail" layout.

The holy grail layout is a header, 3 columns, and a footer. The columns are ordered center, left, right in HTML markup. Each column has a different background color or pattern, and they all stretch the full height of the layout, no matter how much content is in them or which one has the longest content. It does not have to be responsive, but bonus points if it is.

Responsive layouts can be created with CSS2, and knowing how will mean you've really mastered the concepts, but CSS3 has better features to support more flexible and sophisticated ones.

Smashing Magazine used to be a pretty good resource for CSS2 tutorials, and I bet you can still dig them up with some determined googling. If you want to see what CSS2 is capable of, check out the CSS Zen Garden.

Finally, learn one CSS3+ concept at a time: yet more selectors; generated content; more sophisticated backgrounds and borders; alternative box models; columns; grids; flexbox. Each of these concepts can take a little while to grasp, so they're best approached independently.

I'm not aware of a good source for tutorials on CSS3+ (maybe try W3Schools?), but MDN and CSS Tricks are my go-to references.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend www.css-tricks.com as a high-quality learning resource.

For structuring CSS (its cascading nature requires a lot of discipline esp. on larger projects) I recommend looking into BEM and SMACSS approaches.

If you choose to use CSS for layout, I recommend Susy grids v.2 — look up the Youtube of videos creating different responsive layouts with it. Really fantastic and a time saver. If you're designing only for the latest browsers, look into CSS grid and flex box.

I recommend using the SCSS preprocessor — dry your code with variables and mixins, simplify complex calculations, manipulate color easily, incorporate a layout calculation framework like Susy etc.

CSS is powerful, complex and has variable compatibility across browsers. This means a lot of attention to detail and a good amount of hours solving edge cases.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a solid grasp of CSS to debug anything that comes up, and just enough knowledge to build a small bootstrap-like framework. However, there are some advanced concepts I do not yet understand with related to animations / mathmatical / sass based layouts (the really interesting things in codepen). I don't fully yet understand all the things you can do with hybrid javascript + css related to animations

CSS doesn't require a huge amount of conceptual knowledge, but rather pure memorization / practice of many techniques.

\- Specificity rules: [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/css- specificity-thi...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/css-specificity- things-you-should-know/)

\- SCSS: [https://sass-lang.com/](https://sass-lang.com/)

\- BEM / SMACSS architecture - [https://smacss.com/](https://smacss.com/) , [http://getbem.com/naming/](http://getbem.com/naming/)

\- 30 selectors must memorize [https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-30-css- selectors-you...](https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-30-css-selectors- you-must-memorize--net-16048)

I went through lynda.com's 3 video tutorials on CSS, and a few their SCSS/SASS videos. I don't know if this is the best way to learn this, but it did go through all the fundamentals. Wesbos had a few good videos on javascript30 related to CSS (such as root variables). Most of what I learned through CSS is writing my own themes to popular notetaking tools, and modifying wordpress themes

I personaly prefer to use css-tricks.com and smashingmagazine. Books aren't a great resource for this topic IMO, we are talking about CSS here. There are plenty of good articles on nicely made sites.

Copying things from dribbble is what I see what most advanced CSS developers do

</comment><comment><USER5> As another primarily back-end developer, of all the programming and scripting stuff CSS is truly the most brain damaged.

Most of what I've seen is making CSS way more complex than it needs to be - part of it is thanks to years of general browser incompatibilities causing people to put in "dont go there" warnings or for the sake of compatibility of X stuff. Second would be various tools and frameworks that may have been partially implemented in some other peoples' teaching of CSS.

I would say these two books cleared away a lot of the muck for me:

Stylin' with CSS by Charles Wyke-Smith - very concise.

I also found bits in Handcrafed CCS by Dan Cederholm to be good as it worked on either bad styling or no styling and how to clean up stuff or achieve a good effect CSS wise.

After that a lot of Googling, examining pages that worked, and reading how to do x, y or z as well as just trying stuff out myself till I get it right.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are a lot of "gotchas" with CSS. The only thing I used books for was to read about how other people organized their stylesheets. Other than that, doing it day in and day out for years was how I ended up learning.

People will design all sorts of stuff that requires some creative problem solving with the tools CSS gives you. If I see something interesting on a site, I'll open inspector and see how they did it. That's usually how I learn new tricks. That and by experimenting on my own. As far as not having to use trial and error, that just takes practice. I'll go for 3 years making sites that all look the same, then tastes change and I have to go through trial and error again figuring out the best way to do something new until I've done it so many times I don't even need to look at the screen when coding anymore.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm in exactly your boat, also interested in an answer. I'm amazed how far I've gotten with a fuzzy understanding of both fundamentals and details, and trial and error. But I'm not a muddle-through engineer anywhere else, and this slow half-blind process is frustrating. If it makes you feel any better though, it seems there's a lot of us out there, something about css encourages many to make do with muddling through.

</comment><comment><USER8> I read the PhD thesis of one of the CSS orig designers [https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/](https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/) as a crash course, then picked through the various specifications. There's many surveys on CSS Preprocessors on Google Scholar if interested too.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is this book called CSS The Missing Manual, by David McFarland.

Although I did not finish it, I started it with regards to learn CSS properly (like you) and started to grasp some basic concepts (could not finish it though, due to procastrination). Honestly, I think the books delivers , maybe you could use it!

</comment><comment><USER10> As a backend dev moving to the frontend, I found it super useful to work through [http://book.mixu.net/css/](http://book.mixu.net/css/) taking notes and then to make spaced repetition flastcards in Anki

</comment><comment><USER11> I found that going to [http://dribble.com/](http://dribble.com/) and trying to copy some of the designs was the best approach. You'll only learn with practice.</comment>


Cts: command-line manipulation of ctags for speed and profit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Refefer/python-cts

<comment><AUTHOR> Since I spend so much time in deeply nested source trees (shakes fits at Maven) with multiple different languages at play, I was finding it tedious to jump around to different files, or discover where a method/class was defined. I wrote this tool to let me jump around easily using the index file generated by ctags.

I've found it to be a real productivity booster and figured it to be worth sharing considering previous discussions of hacking directory traversal.</comment>


Ask HN: How will Microsoft-Skype deal affect the Linux client? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The better question is: how will it affect the Windows client? Don Marti writes: _Really, this is good news. While users are trying to figure out whether to download "Skype Live Small Business Edition" or "Skype For Windows Professional Platinum 7.0", some startup will eat their lunch._

<http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/msft-skype-news/>

</comment><comment><USER3> If they focus on market share coverage, I think they will maintain Skype for Linux the same way there is skype for other OSs (including mobile). At the end of the day, revenues are made through the paid subscriptions. The software is more a mean to get the service.

</comment><comment><USER4> They're going to ruin it and turn it into a piece of shit, along with the Windows and OS X clients, like everything else Microsoft touches.

So pissed to read this today. Skype was really, really useful, and then they had to go and sell out. What a shame.

</comment><comment><USER5> They'll neglect/break/kill it.

Ubuntu scares them. Less than web apps or OSX, but it still scares them.

<comment><USER6> No, Microsoft is not king to kill/neglect/break it. Ubuntu does not scare us one little teeny tiny little bit. Linux desktop client is just a non-starter, still, after years and years of effort. Yes, _you_ can use it. But its not anywhere near ready for several hundred million users. The only ohter credible desktop OS besides Windows is OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Depends on how many supernodes are Linux machines, which I would guess is quite a lot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe Miguel will take it over.</comment>


The effect of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo [pic] - <AUTHOR> http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080203

<comment><USER2> So? I don't really use Yahoo anyway :)</comment>


RISC-V port merged into Linux 4.15 - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/a/groups.riscv.org/forum/#!topic/sw-dev/2-u-c3kyZlc <comment><USER3> I love how once this exists in all the standard tools, anybody can just make a new chip and practically instantly run huge amounts of software on it and have the right base to add to it. A free ISA is a great interfacing point, innovation can go on above and below mostly independently, no licences or anything required. A good example of permission less innovation.

The road is long for RISC-V but I think the project is progressing about as fast as one can hope for. Thanks to everybody who helps with this.

<comment><USER4> What about the boot sequence and driver enumeration? How is this handled in RISC-V? This has traditionally been one of the major obstacles to ARM - <USER2> need different kernels for two ARM devices with nominally the same core because of initialisation differences.

Devicetree makes this better but not 100% as simple as the old "legacy" PC boot sequence was. Ironically these days PCs are quite hard to boot too with UEFI.

<comment><USER5> Heh. Device Tree only deals with a fraction of the problem.

Here's what I think would help: (warning: lots of work!)

1\. Large database of free peripherals and foundational blocks. Not just UARTs and SATA controllers, but also network interconnects (crossbar), SDRAM controllers, and all the other bits that go into a modern System-On-Chip (SoC). Power management is a huge pain in general, and is widely different among chip families even from the same vendor.

1.A. Obviously, the above implies a decent set of open-source drivers for multiple operating systems for the peripherals. At the very least, you need support for a bootloader, a real-time OS, and Linux. Preferably with no binary blobs.

2\. A standard for enumeration of these on-chip peripherals. There should be a way to query the chip itself to see what is included in the SoC, what device addresses they have, what options are enabled (like how many interrupts), and how the peripheral lines (if any) are connected (IO mapping).

3\. Some widely-accepted standard for storing the board configuration as well. This could just be a I2C EEPROM, but it has to have a listing of everything connected to the SoC and how. This I2C is mapped to these pins, and has this accelerometer connected at this I2C address. And all the hardware manufacturers (who produce the boards) have to be convinced this is a good idea to have this extra cost (and space) built into their products.

Only after all that would you have a fighting chance to boot a relatively generic kernel and have it actually run. And then have a fighting chance to have the ability for the end-user to upgrade the software after the manufacturer has ceased support.

The cross-platform situation with PCs is light-years ahead of where we are in the embedded space.

<comment><USER6> For those of us who don't know what is involved in power management, would you mind giving a quick explanation of what it involves and why it's painful? What power is there even to manage unless you want to put the computer to sleep or shut it down? Or are those the sole things your are referring to?

<comment><USER7> Not the OP, but there are many (tens of) "power domains" on the system, and if you care about power/battery life then you want to power each of them down when they're unused, automatically, even while the rest of the system stays running. i.e. why pay the battery life cost for powering a USB hub when there are no USB devices plugged in, or for a DSP when there's no sound being played right now.

But the calculation of when it's safe to power down any of the power domains can be very complicated -- you can't turn off a power supply unless everything that depends on it is unused, so there's a subtle and board-dependent graph/dependency problem to solve.

<comment><USER8> Piggybacking on this—what can make it worse is that some chips might not properly power back on reliably, in spite of the manufacturer's claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd really like to jump on the RISC-V bandwagon. Does anyone have any recommendations for hardware that would be .. somewhat .. future-proof for hacking/experimenting on this platform? I'd love to have a board or two akin to the rPi-Zero in form-factor, if such a thing were available ..

<comment><USER10> Also, is there any (low cost?) FPGA board that is capable of running RISC-V + Linux?

That would be a fun thing to to do.

<comment><USER11> Found this blog with someone who bought an FPGA devkit[1] for £260 and managed to boot Linux on it[2].

[1] [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/risc-v-on-an-fpga- pt-1...](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/risc-v-on-an-fpga-pt-1/)

[2] [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/risc-v-on-an-fpga- pt-4...](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/risc-v-on-an-fpga-pt-4/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain what having RISC-V support in the kernel means for Linux OSes ?

Also, how is this different to: [https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V](https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V) ?

<comment><USER13> Stable ABI. We have done ~Fedora 25 in late 2016 - [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/RISC-V) and you can even boot that in your browser - [https://bellard.org/jslinux/](https://bellard.org/jslinux/)

ABIs have changed after we did this. We get the first long-term stable ABI with 4.15 kernel and glibc 2.27 (hopefully). At that point Fedora, Debian, and others can reboot efforts.

<comment><USER14> That was great work and it made RISC-V look that much more viable to me. To think that thousands of programs are ready to go whenever the hardware arrives is really amazing. It's unfortunate that some of it has to be repeated after the ABI changes, but that seems a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. But then I'm not the one who did it or has to redo it ;-) Anyway, great job guys!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's an archive mirror that works without JavaScript: [https://archive.fo/kVvQZ](https://archive.fo/kVvQZ)

</comment><comment><USER16> RISC is good. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPrUmViN_5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPrUmViN_5c)

</comment><comment><USER17> With Google's new war on Intel's ME this is not a coincidence.

<comment><USER18> Actually it is.

<comment><USER17> Yes you are right, no causation just a funny correlation.</comment></comment></comment>


Atomic Veggies: The Other Type of GMO - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/atomic-veggies-the-other-kind-of-gmo <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating idea I hadn't heard of before. Given that my main trepidation with GMO is the lack of long term testing, I'm wondering scientifically if naturally mutated dna via radiation is safer long term than our relatively primitive (but quickly improving) methods for direct modification. Gold guns are so destructive.

<comment><USER3> I would bet that mutated plants created via this "atomic" method are statistically much safer than GMO plants, in the sense that it's much more likely to have unintended consequences with GMO plants. For instance, when BT (Bacillus Thuringiensis) genes were first added to corn for their insecticidal properties, nobody realized that large numbers of monarch butterflies would be killed by corn pollen, but it happened. This type of consequence would be very unlikely with induced-mutation plants.

On the flip side, you can generally get much more pronounced results with GMOs. It's like the difference between a bow and arrow and a machine gun -- the machine gun is more effective, but easier to kill yourself with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A different piece about this topic on HN two months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9408350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9408350)</comment>


Osx-kvm: Run macOS on QEMU/KVM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM <comment> matthew-wegner I've been running my macOS desktop in an ESXi VM for over a year now. I came from a hackintosh, but got tired of the fragility of some upgrades. Some notes on this setup:

\- Apple supports macOS running inside of ESXi. Officially, only on Apple host hardware (i.e. a Mac Pro, which is on the ESXi compatibility list). Apple even ships a VMXNet3 network driver in macOS.

\- For ESXi specifically, you have to patch the host to boot macOS on non- Apple hardware. There's an explicit "am I running on Apple hardware?" check in there. DrDonk's unlocker on GitHub is what you need.

\- You can specify board-id, ROM/MLB, etc values via your .vmx file. iMessage and everything work for me, but I'm also using identifiers from a real Mac Mini I retired a few years ago. I expect this will still work okay with generated data if you follow hackintosh guides.

\- I pass through a GPU and a USB controller card for input/output. For USB, find an FL1100 chipset card, like the Inateck models, which works out of box on macOS, Windows, etc. Recently I moved my boot drive to a passed-through NVMe for extra speed. My other drives are ESXi virtual drives backed by storage elsewhere on my network.

\- Most NVIDIA GPUs will need the NVIDIA Web Drivers to work. Kepler generation cards are the last to work out of box, and the only to currently work out of box on Mojave. If you don't need hefty performance, a GeForce GT 730 is a cheap card. Apple and NVIDIA are still not getting along, so I expect this will only get worse.

\- However, I've never been able to get an AMD card to initialize via passthrough. The PCI device is seen, but the EFI strings or whatever else Apple is using to determine initialization paths are wrong. I recently spent awhile trying to figure this out, going so far as to write my own SSDT tables for the device, but finally gave up.

\- This particular guide is using Chameleon, which is considered an outdated bootloader. Clover is far more flexible, and will work in VM setups that don't natively implement SMC like ESXi. (For the longest time Clover would crash an ESXi VM, but this now works as of a month or two ago).

And finally, on the context of this whole thing--I switched from a real Mac Pro to a hackintosh years and years ago, when it became clear Apple didn't care about upgrading the hardware. They still don't. The last Mac Pro release was 2013 (the 2013 iPhone was a 5S!). They've been promising things will improve "soon". They're the world's most valuable company; if they actually cared, at the organizational DNA level, it would have happened by now.

<comment><USER2> Can you please elaborate on your GPU passthrough setup? I was under the impression that NVIDIA have explicit checks to see if you're trying to virtualize a consumer brand GPU and throw an error in that case.

I have a PC with a GTX 970 that I wanted to try a similar install on, unfortunately the i5-3570K in there doesn't support VT-d from what I can tell.

<comment><USER3> From my experience with a GTX 950 and a GTX 1060, the macOS Web Driver from NVIDIA doesn't seem to care about virtualization, and it works fine (assuming the drivers and passthrough are configured correctly).

Windows is a different story, and I had to use a patched vBIOS[1] to get my 1060 working without Windows 10 throwing the dreaded "Code 43" error (when it detects virtualization and refuses to work). In my case, the CPUID workaround mentioned in another comment didn't help.

As for VT-d, I believe the unlocked "K" processors from Intel all have VT-d disabled for some reason.

[1] [https://github.com/Matoking/NVIDIA-vBIOS-VFIO- Patcher](https://github.com/Matoking/NVIDIA-vBIOS-VFIO-Patcher)

<comment><USER4> > As for VT-d, I believe the unlocked "K" processors from Intel all have VT-d > disabled for some reason.

This was only the case up to Haswell CPUs. They stopped crippling IOMMU capabilities since Haswell Refresh (i7-4790K).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More discussion on Hackintosh VMs at [https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/), just search for KVM, ESX, or Proxmox.

For any one interested in using the Ryzen Threadripper for a Hackintosh VM, see [https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/8knz91/threadri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/8knz91/threadripper_1950x_vega_64_kvm_success_one_issue/)

</comment><comment><USER6> OSX-KVM has been super helpful for recovering old sparseimage-backups I've created back when I was still using a mac. This is because sparsebundlefs-fuse Linux driver doesn't work with this file-format (yet) and I don't have any access to a Mac. (Especially since recovering takes at least a dozen hours).

[https://github.com/torarnv/sparsebundlefs/issues/7#issuecomm...](https://github.com/torarnv/sparsebundlefs/issues/7#issuecomment-326625187)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been running a macOS VM on my Threadripper 1950X for awhile now. Passing through 8 cores with a GTX 1060 attached and it runs great. In the latest Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, no need to compile qemu from source either, the version from apt get works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Previous post from 2016 with 89 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556609)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, one has been able to do this for some time now.

A few years ago I had a setup where (and I admit much of this was for the aesthetic purity of it, not practical reasons), I used a legally purchased copy of macos, copied it unmodified to my VM server, and, with a decent amount of effort, and a patched qemu (for the SMC thingie -- i donno if by now the patch is in mainline), was enjoying a non pirated, non modified macos on a linux host.

I even got USB and BLE passthrough working, so I could use the mac VM for iOS app development.

It was quite effective.

A more challenging project I did later (which I probably deserve some derision for not documenting and sharing) is "How to develop, sign, and upload iOS apps entirely from debian linux, entirely with F/OSS, no VM, no Xcode, just good ol' emacs and cmake". IIRC, there were very little Big Contributions I did, but plenty of assembling a large variety of other projects, bug fixing them, and making an integrated environment.

<comment><USER10> I really want this. I'm a hardcore linux guy(23+ years), but I have to run a windows vm for some instruments I have that wont run under wine. I hate windows. It sucks so much. Even just using it not that often with my instruments reminds me why I stopped using it.

<comment><USER11> I really want this. I'm a hardcore windows guy(23+ years), but I have to run a linux vm for some programs I have that wont run under WSL. I hate linux. It sucks so much. Even just using it not that often with my programs reminds me why I stopped using it.

<comment><USER9> I.... think I get the jokes guys, but you do know that I have no idea what part you're referring to.... >.<

And if you'd tell me... maybe I'd help.... :P :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> for Virtualbox please see [https://github.com/geerlingguy/macos-virtualbox- vm](https://github.com/geerlingguy/macos-virtualbox-vm)

<comment><USER13> (Note that I'll hopefully have the High Sierra support PR merged in soon.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does it compare to running a Hackintosh? Is it much easier to set up? Do you still need to have compatible hardware and to mess with drivers and system configuration? How easy are OS upgrades? How is the performance, including graphics? Any issues?

<comment><USER15> Someone posted a few months ago a story where they were using something similar to this (couldn't find the actual comment, sorry) where they had a HD with a very bare linux install on it that had enough drivers on it to boot on most any modern machine, load up qemu and boot a OSX image.

It was basically a "portable" hackintosh that could be moved between most any desktop machine.

I thought it was a cool idea, and tried to get it working with this repo, but didn't have much luck even with a full load distro (Ubuntu) on a Dell i5 with a nVidia GPU I had sitting around.

<comment><USER16> Might have been my setup: [https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual- builders/tree/master/ma...](https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual- builders/tree/master/machine-builders/macos)

I haven't integrated GPU passthrough yet, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had various success with this repository, unfortunately the various XMLs for libvirt and the "sh" boot scripts all reference different paths and capitalizations of files (e.g. even for the firmware committed to the repository etc).

However I did get it to work successfully with High Sierra at one point.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, when I got mine working I decided to just go from scratch.... you might even be able to use upstream qemu by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will someone please update this with experiences with Ryzen?

<comment><USER19> It works fine on OSX 10.12.6. You need the following customizations (not sure what's in OSX-KVM already):

\- tell explicitly it's a "Penryl" CPU (<model fallback='allow'>Penryl</model>)

\- force AES instructions in order to use encryption effectively (<feature policy='require' name='aes'/>)

\- explicitly define topology (<topology sockets='1' cores='8' threads='2'/>)

\- use usb-tablet (<input type='tablet' bus='usb'/>) for much more convenient mouse input that does not lock to window. Initial setup may need to be done with usb mouse (<input type='mouse' bus='usb'/>)

All of the above need to be reflected in QEMU command line.

I've been using this setup for last half year without issues (mostly heavy compiling).

I'm looking forward porting this setup to 32-core Threadripper. Would be a hell of a beast that outperforms Apple HW that costs several times more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So is there any compatible laptop that will allow QEMU/KVM particulary witwith gpu passthrough? Is someone running something like that?

<comment><USER21> Theoretically you could run Linux headless on a Dell Latitude laptop, configure it to use the Dock's serial output for the main console, and then have it automatically boot the OS X VM with GPU pass through to the main screen. When you close the lid, Linux goes to sleep instead of OS X. You could disconnect it from the dock and just carry it around with you like a normal OS X machine. Open it up and OS X is there waiting for you. Connect it back to the dock and debug with another computer over serial and/or SSH whenever you need to troubleshoot.

<comment><USER4> > and then have it automatically boot the OS X VM with GPU pass through to the > main screen

What GPU would that be? If it's integrated Intel there is very good chance it's wouldn't work. Last time I tried to get my Intel HD working in macOS VM attempt failed completely. As guys from Intel explained somewhere on mail list their Mac driver stack is quite different from what is there on Linux and Windows. This is why they for instance don't support their graphics virtualization (GVT-g) for macOS.

And for mobile GPU like Nvidia / AMD there own set of problems why they don't work at all in VM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since everyone seems to be able to run macOS virtualized how come there aren't any cheap VPS that run macOS available?

<comment><USER23> There are, just not cheap compared to running something else.

<comment><USER22> Do you have some examples? I am not aware of any.

<comment><USER24> [https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html](https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html)

I just Googled "mac os vps"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The last time I virtualized macOS, I had to find and use some arcane compiler flags to get homebrew or any builds to work.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a i5 6500 running with this setup, but memory operations seems to be very limited in bandwidth and latency

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a setup running OSX via QEMU/KVM using this guide. But memory operations seems to be very limited.

<comment><USER27> Limited as in slow?

<comment><USER26> yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is graphic acceleration support these days? Does PCI passthrough work?

<comment><USER29> Yes, it is working for me with a nVidia card

<comment><USER28> Have you tried Adobe's Suite? Any glitches in Photoshop, specifically?

<comment><USER30> On systems with a good support, it works great - it's transparent to the guest. I've been using it for around a couple of years, both with videogames and Lightroom.

<comment><USER28> Thanks. That's enticing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Isn't this illegal? Aren't you only allowed to run OSX on Apple hardware?

<comment><USER24> It violates the EULA, but that's not necessarily the same as being illegal.

<comment><USER9> THIS. ^^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Soooo any way this can help run OS X in docker?

<comment><USER9> I googled <<osx docker>> and this was the 5th entry:

[https://github.com/Cleafy/sxkdvm](https://github.com/Cleafy/sxkdvm)

Though maybe you can enlighten me -- why the heck would you want to? It's in a VM -- you already have fantastic isolation. Why clutter it with an extra layer of packaging that to my naive eyes adds no more value?

Like, a _cool_ hack might be running macos...._slowly_.... on a SBC like a raspi :D But when you have real virtualization, what's the use of docker? (honest question)

<comment><USER33> Docker uses a single Linux kernel for all containers. Docker containers are much lighter weight than VMs, since each VM must run a full kernel instance.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's what I said. (although in a comment below this one. ;))

A container is much lighter weight than a VM, yes. (and so is a chroot)

But the MacOS userspace isn't running on the linux kernel, it's running on darwin. So, macos-in-docker would be an entire qemu installation in docker, with a macos image inside that.

EDIT: Ahhh, because it doesn't make sense to run a full operating system in a container, only a single program, I'm guessing that what OP really wants is some way to dockerize a specific (or several) macos apps. To do so, you'd need a way to wrap the linux kernel do it can provide a darwin like api, as well as the same for any required libraries.

OP: You may find this project interesting: [https://www.darlinghq.org/project- status/](https://www.darlinghq.org/project-status/)

They made a MacOS to Linux translation (not virtualization) layer of sufficient quality that you an run a decent amount of (text only) native binaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where I find the ISO file?

<comment><USER9> If you wanna be above board, I think you purchase a mac, and then on that mac run the apple app store, and then in that store buy a copy of macos.

To my great surprise I found this on Amazon, and I'm curious about what others think is how apple hasn't demanded its removal: [https://www.amazon.com/10-13-High-Sierra-Full- Install/dp/B07...](https://www.amazon.com/10-13-High-Sierra-Full- Install/dp/B07D3CYGW9/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Le sigh, continuous integration of osx and iOS apps is near impossible using standard cloud providers. I would gladly take an osx geared towards the data center.

<comment><USER36> In theory this should be possible on Google Cloud using nested virtualization or EC2 bare metal...

<comment><USER9> If you find me funding, I could give you CI for mobile app development, a decent MVP, in 3 months (which is me taking how long i think it takes and multiplying by 3) :P

But, like a previous poster said, it _WOULD_ be in violation of Apple's ToS. So a legal budget would be required.

<comment><USER36> We actually need something like this internally for non mobile app reasons. We build telepresence.io at Datawire and macOS dev and testing is a huge pain. Interested in a job :) ?

<comment><USER9> uhhh... actually, yes, can you email me (it's on my profile) or tell me your email? please?

<comment><USER36> Sure I'll send you an email in the morning :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We build bridges on top of other peoples bridges - <AUTHOR> http://labs.teppefall.com/2010/02/we_build_bridges_on_top_of_oth.html

<comment><USER2> The Corvair was actually a pretty good car by the time it got into production, and there remain the buffs who are loyal to it.

As for the Prius, Airbus killed a number of test pilots getting fly-by-wire right; I'm not entirely surprised that Toyota experiences difficulties with drive-by-wire.</comment>


Oculus and Vive Usage Appears to Be Flat or Declining - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/10/vr-active-users-steam-september-2018-road-to-vr.html <comment><USER4> Anything based on Steam survey is suspect at best, since it does not reflect the whole ecosystem.

That said, I think there are problems with VR mainstream adoption. Number one being the convenience problem. I takes effort to setup and start a VR gaming session, as opposed to flat-screen couch gaming. It has to be insanely good and addicting for it to be worth it, and its a few hardware and software generations from being there. Flatscreen games also get better and have ever higher production values (Try RDR2 and you see what I mean). This is the competitive environment for VR.

VR might remain niche, and the problem with that its not commercially viable on its own like that. Hence the situation we have now with Facebook basically being the Patron of VR.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hm, as far as I understand these statistics count people who have had their headset connected at the time of measurement. I wonder how much this skewed the numbers, since for example I connect the headset only when using it. So despite using it daily, I still likely wouldn't appear in these stats.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, meanwhile my headset is connected 24/7 while I have decreased usage over the past several months (though this is in general for all video gaming, not just VR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like my Rift, but I can't actually run content very well on it with my current hardware. I was hoping to upgrade my hardware this year, but GPU and RAM prices have been atrocious. Maybe next year...

<comment><USER6> The previous generation's flagship, or one level below flagship, level hardware runs VR pretty damn well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have yet to find a decent enough reason to use or even upgrade one. I have a feeling that this will be like 3D Tv's they will come back every couple of years or so with some company saying 'hey do you want this now? no? ok" and then disappearing again for a few years.

I think the biggest problem is that the FOV is tiny on these things, its good for a while, but I'd much rather use a giant screen than use googles where my head gets sweaty and takes a while to set up.

<comment><USER9> The biggest problem for me is that in order to use it, I have to buy into their respective ecosystems.

I actually don't want an ecosystem or an oculus account or a vr storefront, I just want a monitor for my face. If I can't have that without the nonsense, I guess I'll just wait until they go bankrupt and sell all the patent IP.

<comment><USER6> The Vive is an open ecosystem. The hardware is all semi-open and off the shelf, and the software is all on github. The only hangup is that I am not sure whether you can actually BUILD the software on your own or not, as I've never tried.

<comment><USER9> I tend not to compile my own monitor drivers from source. If I have to do that to use the vive without steam, then I'm not sold on your assertion that I don't have to buy into their ecosystem to use their face-monitor.

<comment><USER6> Ah, right, I'm not sure if you can run the Valve provided binaries without Steam. Although a quick google search offers up [https://community.viveport.com/t5/Technical-Support/Vive- wit...](https://community.viveport.com/t5/Technical-Support/Vive-without- Steam/td-p/14146)

<comment><USER9> Yeah. I did some googling and it seems that all non-steam options are in the "technically you can, here run this cmake file and then hand-calibrate the coordinate mappings in this json file" stage.

It might be that we get to a point where it's more open, but I hoped the same for a bunch of other products (lytro comes to mind) that never made it.

It's not like I don't have steam installed on every computer I own, but it's more of an on principal thing. I don't buy razer mice because I don't want to spend $50-100 on hardware that doesn't work properly if the vendors download servers go down, and razer mice have very strange profile defaults if they can't talk to the razer desktop program. If razer goes under it won't really be possible to move razer mice to new computers after a while.

Similarly, I'm really not keen to buy $800 worth of kit that could become a paperweight if I get VAC-banned. I'm a big fan of separation of concerns on this front. I might part with $100 with a dependency on steam because that's throw-away money, but not $400 and certainly not $800.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Steam are not going to subsidise hardware, then they are a parasite on VR gaming instead of an asset - charging 30% commissions for any VR games sold whilst developers take all the risks.

The future of VR is with a PS5 console that can have an official VR backpack and headset, maybe even a battery pack, and thus be inherently portable with good enough power to run a 1440p display.

VR games need to be so optimised (1440p or 4k @ 90fps) that I don't think the experience will be good enough on anything except console device, that developers can target and build for precisely.

On a side note I think PC gaming could be seriously threatened if console makers ever get their act together with keyboard and mouse support - <USER2> going so far as to allow developers to sell games that require KBM to play. There are too many greedy actors like Nvidia and Valve that are ripping off PC gamers, and the physical dimensions of a PC case are just too big - <USER3> platform hasn't been modernised to make everything smaller and more compact.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love my Vive. Got a beast of a machine to run it on and just bought the Deluxe Audio Strap and the Wireless adapter. The wireless adapter is a game changer for me. The wire was driving me nuts and breaking immersion entirely.

Got addicted to Beat Saber for a while but it's not very comfortable to play for long as you have this huge headset strapped to your face and you're streaming with sweat before long.

Took it to the office for a week about a year ago and then again about a month ago. All of my colleagues were asking me what new experiences I had and you be honest I could only really suggest Beat Saber.

Seems to me like the content stream has dried up a bit but then again I entered the scene late and downloaded years of content at once.

Astrobot looks awesome and I'm a bit miffed it's exclusive for the PSVR

</comment><comment><USER12> personally I won't be buying in until (at least) another generation of improvements to the technology, and I'm sure there are many others that feel the same. there will surely be a tipping point in price/quality of the device/software that will make it worth it for a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER13> Its what valve always feared when Oculus went their own way... why would an oculus user use steam?

I tend to stay away from buying stuff for my rift on steam simply because the experience is better within the oculus ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER14> Buying a vive was the biggest waste of money. Just sits in a box in my closet now. It was never enjoyable enough to want to play after the first week or so.

<comment><USER6> What games do you play? Both in and out of VR?

It was a good purchase for me because I already own most simulation games that are VR compatible and love simulation in general.</comment></comment>


How Can America's Rich Teach Their Children the Value of a Dollar? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/42595/

<comment><USER2> Off-topic rant: why the hell the article is divided in pages? Six of them! This is the WEB. W.E.B. Not a paper magazine. Argh.

Sorry, this kind of things really annoy me. Proceed to downvote ;)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The fix being the "Print" link, of course:

[http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&...](http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Rich+Kid+Syndrome&urlID=25718435&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2F42595%2F)

Though it's silly to have to jump through that hoop, as tucked away and hidden as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting quote: "Writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1981, George Vaillant, a Harvard psychiatrist who's spent the bulk of his career devoted to the study of adult resilience and coping, argued that childhood capacity for work is one of the best predictors of adult mental health and the capacity to love. He based his conclusion on a famous longitudinal study of 456 young men from inner Boston who, starting in the forties, were followed beginning at age 14. All came from blue-collar and welfare families, and none, at least at the time of their selection, had juvenile records. The subjects were assigned ratings for their ability to work as teenagers--in school, at home, in jobs outside the home, in extracurricular pursuits--and they were reinterviewed at several intervals since, at ages 25, 31, 47. The outcomes were pretty stark. Those who demonstrated the greatest capacity for work as 14-year-olds were five times more likely to be paid well for their work at 47 than those who scored lowest, and sixteen times less likely to have experienced unemployment--and intelligence, Vaillant was careful to note, did little to mediate the latter outcomes. They were also twice as likely to have warm relations with a wide variety of people and almost twice as likely to still be enjoying their first marriages. But perhaps the most striking datum was what Vaillant wryly called a "value-free definition of health": Those who had the poorest ratings were six times as likely, at age 47, to be dead."

I think the premise that this is a problem for the rich is a bit off though. Plenty or poor and middle class people are mean, lazy, or stupid too. The truth is simply that money won't solve all of your problems.

<comment><USER5> "The truth is simply that money won't solve all of your problems."

True, although I suspect there are a lot of problems that money could solve that we just haven't figured out yet. A really cool book for someone to write would be a collection of best practices for solving problems with money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To the founder type, as strange as it sounds, (inherited) wealth is a curse. It will color every every success you achieve for the rest of your life.

"Yeah, he started X.com" they'll say, "but he had all of daddy's money; How could he possibly fail?"

Even a small windfall will rob you of the ability to achieve greatness, if not in your own eyes, certainly in the eyes of others. There's just something right starting with nothing but a tiny apartment, 2 ebay computers and a folding table!

<comment><USER7> There's yet another factor, which reminds me the Market Wizards book. One of the famous traders asked who has, in his opinion, more chances to success, a poor one or a rich one, picked the poor one, because the poor one _feels_ pain when loses money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In some Eastern countries (and at least one Western state) there's a simple solution: You make an exact correspondence between how much wealth you have and how many wives you take. Thus, you have so many children that none of them can become especially wealthy.

In most of the Western world, there was a similar fix: Primogeniture. The first boy would get all the money, and the younger ones would have nothing.

<comment><USER9> Bill Gates would die of exhaustion first.

<comment><USER10> Or fall back to in vitro fertilization.

Come to think about it, wouldn't that law (the richer you are, the more children you are required to have) fix a lot of problems? Inequality, dumbing down of society...

<comment><USER11> So would laws advocating eugenics, euthanasia of old people and cripples, sterilization of dumbasses, etc. Doesn't mean they're good ideas.

<comment><USER10> Sure, I was only joking ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> By comparing it to the Euro?

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome read, thanks a lot!</comment>


GrubWithUs Now Wants To Plan Your Group Meals (And Do All The Legwork) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/14/grubwithus-now-wants-to-plan-your-group-meals-and-do-all-the-legwork/ <comment><USER2> It seems like this is a hop-and-a-skip away from being in competition with ZeroCater, another YC company. Once you're having people easily creating group meals and juggling dietary restrictions, it's a pretty natural evolution to just offer that exact same service to office managers.

It's not surprising to see YC companies end up competing, given how many there are and how prone startups are to pivoting. But I do wonder how being part of the YC network affects strategic decisions like entering a market where a fellow YC startup is already playing.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how scalable these services are. Currently ZeroCater is in the Bay Area, and GrubWithUs is in Chicago. They might get around to competing eventually but I'm not sure if it will ever be a serious problem.

<comment><USER4> GrubWithUs started in Chicago but now does meals in a bunch of other cities, as of at least August [1].

[1] [http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/grubwithus-eddy- lu...](http://www.entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/grubwithus-eddy-lu-interview)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm so happy for these guys. Great guys with a simple, profitable business idea. Excited to watch them continue to evolve!

<comment><USER5> Profitable or potentially profitable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a cool service! I used to run a business that helped groups of people order customised clothing. The organisers of such groups absolutely loved the system because it handled all the ordering, payments and customisation- requests for them.

I really hope you guys are able to scale internationally. This would be huge for Londoners. Best of luck!</comment>