Mac Pro 2 Concept Design - <AUTHOR> http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html <comment><USER2> If you are a designer, this is _absolutely the best_ thing you can do to sky- rocket your market value over night:

Create a concept design from a popular product and put it on a slick landing page. It shows that you, as a designer, are proactive and think beyond designing standard stuff (like webpages or mobile apps).

Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions[1] which hurt your work (and portfolio), you learn 3D modelling if you haven't yet (it's not hard just time consuming), if you are lucky with social news sites you get so much free promo and finally, it's the eye-catcher on any CV.

[1] A classic and recommended post if we talk about clients restricting designers: [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell)

<comment><USER3> > Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions

But you must still limit yourself to sanity and physics. Too often, designers don't have a clue what's actually going on behind the scenes, and embarrass themselves.

This example puts 16 TB3 ports on a computer, because "consumers want it to be very expandable" and "2 columns of 8 looks pretty". It also adds two graphics cards but buries the connectors into the floor rather than making them externally accessible.

Concept cars by designers may have faults such as zero visibility from the drivers seat, have aggressively high front bumpers and low hood lines that look designed to kill pedestrians, utterly lack necessary things like exhaust pipes, crumple zones and spare tires, or have absurd specifications ("500 miles from the 2 cubic foot battery pack!" "600 HP V12 under the rear seat!")

Your target (other marketing departments) may not care. But it's also very possible that they encounter these limits as a part of their daily work, and will care, judging you for your lack of domain knowledge. Definitely create some concept work for your portfolio. But don't stray too far from the realm of the possible.

<comment><USER4> Ugh - did anyone take a look at his portfolio? He designs for video games so of course the specs are exaggerated.

He did something fun and most of HN is railing on him. The same criticisms ought to be said here - if you're going to criticize, first take a look at the whole picture and don't jump to conclusions.

<comment><USER5> But part of me thinks he's an armchair product designer. Anyone can create a cool looking mockup. But what about the actual thing?

<comment><USER6> _Anyone_ , huh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This kind of design is WAY more likely to come from a PC vendor than Apple. The 16 TB ports was definitely kind of a LOL moment.

I dig it. They are useful, but that can't be done with "standard components".

The whole idea of a flexible and upgradeable PC is kind of against the Apple "tightly coupled" software and hardware story. The reason that their user experience has historically (I haven't used a mac in about a decade) been so good was because they limit the available hardware for their testing purposes. They don't have a lot of choice in hardware, but what they do support works every time.

I don't know...I got off the Apple train a long time ago. I loved my Mac Pro, but it just wasn't for me.

<comment><USER8> 16 TB ports is probably because they are also USB C ports and figuring out which ports support TB and which don't may become a hassle.

<comment><USER9> I think people are reading too much into these numbers.

The author is a game designer wanting to enter industrial design. It's just a bunch of renders created for fun. Here is another one you might enjoy:

[http://pascaleggert.de/ThorA1.html](http://pascaleggert.de/ThorA1.html)

<comment><USER10> This seems like the kind of design you would come up with if you've never held a rifle before, let alone tried to service one.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't look that far off from the FN P90, which also appears to be impractical on first look.

<comment><USER12> Well, except for the ridiculous magazine design which looks to be aggressively anti-ergonomic and couldn't actually work as rendered without bullets actually passing through one another as they're fed into the chamber.

<comment><USER11> I agree the magazine is user-hostile.

The FN P90 has a similar angled entrance to the chamber. The rounds are perpendicular to the chamber while in the magazine, but are directed into place. I never bothered to buy a PS90 (the U.S. semi-auto version) to find out whether this design results in higher-than-typical stoppages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get that this is a concept not to be nitpicked to death for feasibility, and I love it. I'm also struck by the fact that a fucking computer has produced such heartache in people that somebody spent an ungodly amount of time on this labor of love.

I don't care how little of their revenue comes directly from selling Mac Pros, it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for, not small-ness, thin-ness, or port-deletion.

<comment><USER14> >it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for

As near as I can tell, this is exactly how Apple got to be Apple and they already know how it's done. When people I know who have owned non-recent macs describe them, it's like they're having some kind of profound emotional experience. They don't even talk about it like it's a computer. I've never heard them say things like "having all the applications go to the blue 'Applications' icon on the dock is great," even though that's a useful feature they seem to understand and enjoy using, they say "it's so easy to find things" or "it just works". I know a longtime OSX user who is particularly detail-oriented and I asked him why he liked working with Sprinter vans[1] as opposed to trucks. He explained that they handled more like big cars than trucks, which is handy for maneuvering in cities and backing into cramped loading docks. He had no problem discussing his preference in detail without any prompting, the same way I'll tell anyone who asks that I like headset microphones to desktop ones because it's one fewer peripheral to manage and I have my desk laid out just right. When he talks about his Apple products being good, he just says they "work."

So clearly they've succeeded in the past at giving people things that they really really like. They like them so much that they don't even dwell on the specific things that make them so likeable. I've never made anyone like anything that much in my life, and if I had a process for it I can't imagine why I'd stop.

[1]: A variety of tall cargo van, which may or not be an actual Mercedes Sprinter: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes- Benz_Sprinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter)

<comment><USER13> I'm a pretty die hard Apple guy starting from the mid 80s, and I find a lot resonates with your friend's "they work" example. Me, I love the fact that the machines are beautiful, but also functional in these subtle ways. Like the fact that you can open the laptops with a finger -- they're balanced correctly, the hinges are and the closing mechanism are calibrated s.t. you can lift the lid without the base coming up. Such a pointless bit of design, really, but it's so satisfying that somebody spent a bunch of time working on that. To say nothing of the trackpads, which were just an order of magnitude better than any trackpad on any other brand of laptop I've ever used. Maybe high end PCs have caught up by now, I don't know. Yet.

There's something about things made with such passion, such attention. They stir up the religious impulse. I really feel that, for the first time since the Jobs comeback, I'm on the verge of losing that religion, at least wrt the Mac line. (The iPhones still seem obsessed over in all the right ways, as far as I can see.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's why this is a work of an aspiring designer, not an (apple) product designer: can someone point to a motherboard with 16 dedicated thunderbolts, such many lanes of PCIE, and answer why should 850 evos be used instead modern M.2 SSDs? The coolers/fans are OFF - they're not positioned above the GPUs, but above SSDs (which produce almost no heat at all), and the SSDs themselves are located around the thermal core triangles, why? And GPUs are facing opposite directions, therefore, air streams are broken. I know I've shouldn't be pissed that much by a stupid render, but this person could dedicate his time to make something meaningful and smart. Instead, he's just pushing the dribbblisation of the design forward. My call: this is stupid, meaningless work

</comment><comment><USER16> > 50% of the site was black background + scrolling for me, but I think I can > get the gist of it. Nice design + expansion capabilities, right?

Apple's Industrial Design group needs to get it through their skulls that folks doing ___REAL_ __pro work still need traditional expansion capabilities. At the very least, pro users need to:

1) Have the ability to expand RAM

2) Have space for two video cards (ThunderBolt 3 + video card enclosures is _not_ a desirable solution)

3) Have space for at least a couple internal hard drives

For some reason, I don't think this will ever happen because the end result would probably be bigger, noisier, and uglier than what the ID group would allow. But, man.. wouldn't it be nice to be able to purchase a base config Mac Pro 2 with one stick of RAM, shipped with integrated graphics and the user could drop in any graphics card(s) they wish?

Hackintoshes can work fine for some, but oftentimes we just want to be able to run software update without the fear that a patch will break our bread-and- butter making machines.

<comment><USER17> I wonder what OSX-specific software keeps professionals on machines that they feel are underpowered, even if it's a rather mighty Mac Pro?

All the graphics and video editing suites, AFAICT, are now also available for Windows, too. For audio editing one probably does not need two video cards.

So, what's your use case? Just curious.

<comment><USER18> I write software for iOS / Mac as my day job and it's really gotten to a point where it feels like writing C# on Windows used to feel (which is not a bad thing). The big difference is that back then I could build a powerhouse PC for $1500 and have a handful of big monitors and really feel ahead of the power curve.

I don't feel like I have the option to do that these days, and I'm pretty disappointed by it. $4,000 on a laptop is my best attempt and it's still not.. quite. there.

<comment><USER19> Apple's vendor lock-in strategy geared towards developers appear to really be bearing fruit at the moment.

They've shifted most of their hardware lineup towards consumers and is the weakest it's been for developers in a long time, but developers are still hanging around because they have to if they want to target the Apple ecosystem.

People who've been in the industry for longer than 15 years would remember the last time this happened.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps this isn't the right place for this, but I'd be interested in a broader discussion about this. What do we do about it?

Even if we see it coming a mile away, or if we wake up and look around and see it happening.. what can we do?

Go back to the web is always an option, but I don't like it. I still genuinely believe that the experience I can deliver writing software for iOS is higher quality than what I can deliver on the web.

Has anyone found a secret third option yet? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I appreciate it's just an industrial design concept, but the problem with off- the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports.

The Thunderbolt add-in cards have DisplayPort inputs for this purpose.

The GPU & motherboard vendors should agree on some extra headers to allow you to route these DP signals without ugly jumper cables on the outside of the case.

<comment><USER21> > but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the > DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the > Thunderbolt ports

If the Intel CPU supports integrated graphics (which I realize a Xeon may not) there is actually support for sending display streams over PCIe, so it wouldn't be necessary to route DisplayPort cables from the card output to the motherboard.

The eGPU guys are doing this to display the output of an external GPU on the internal LCD of the laptop. [0] It does slightly reduce the PCIe bandwidth available as you need to transfer the rendered data back via the PCIe, which is then output from the IGP to the display. [1]

However this is still limiting because it means you're stuck with the display outputs supported by the IGP, so if you want to upgrade the video card to support a newer standard (e.g. HDMI 2.0) you'd be stuck.

[0] [https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egp...](https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egpu- experiences-version-20/)

[1] [https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857](https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857)

[2] [https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e...](https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy- e-gpu-projects/)

<comment><USER22> Have you tried this? The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU.

<comment><USER21> > Have you tried this?

I have not used this feature myself because I'm not aware that it's supported in Linux, and I don't use Windows.

> The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts > compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU.

Given that the most typical use case of this technique is for people gaming, I'd say that the amount of data being read back from the GPU in a gaming situation is quite small, so this doesn't have a significant performance impact for its intended audience.

Since I don't use my dGPU for anything but gaming, do you have any more information on the performance impact on compute workloads?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Real Mac Pro would be an aluminum "cheese grater" large quiet box that sits under the desk that I never see or hear unless I want to upgrade something.

The trashcan is at most Mac Mini Pro. Having thousand cables and external boxes sitting on your desk to expand it is not practical nor elegant, and gets out of date pretty fast. And quite frankly it's ugly as well.

<comment><USER24> I have a G5 from the last generation of the cheese graters under my desk right now. The case has seen better days, so I might have to source a better preserved one soon, but I can say it runs Linux just fine.

<comment><USER25> The power-to-POWER ratio of these G5s was a joke.

The mechanical design is quite sound (forgetting about the HDD cage for a second), though, and they look fetching, even today. (imho much better than the trash cans)

<comment><USER26> There are some really nice PC/Hackintosh builds with hacked up G5 cases. You can even get custom-built motherboard trays that are meant to go in those cases:

[http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular- removable-...](http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable- motherboard-tray-p-56.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's my concept design for what I want in a new Mac Pro: [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac- pro-2g-revi...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac- pro-2g-review.media/macpro.jpg)

<comment><USER28> Got one of these in my closet that I use as my home server. Made in 2008 and the thing is still a beast!

<comment><USER29> I have the early 2009 model but I primarily run Windows 10 on it as a file server/plex server. I was having some file system corruptions on Mac OSX and decided to go the NTFS route on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks nice.

But where is all the bandwidth for 16 TB 3 ports supposed to come from? That's 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, mind you.

Adding to that, 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes for the graphics cards, 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes for the TB 2 ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the Ethernet ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the USB ports.

That's 64 + 32 + 16 + 2 + 2 = 116 PCIe lanes

Guess not?

<comment><USER31> Absolutely doable. The modern i7's have 40 PCIe lanes. If you built a quad processor system you would have 160 PCIe lanes... Have a look at the obscene number of PCIe lanes in modern server architectures.

The bigger issue would be memory bandwidth, but I think that could also be engineered around.

Edit: SuperMicro sells a system with 8 PCIE 3.0 x16 + 7 PCIE 3.0 x8 ... 184 lanes not counting the other onboard peripherals. So it basically exists minus the Apple form factor.

<comment><USER30> > Edit: SuperMicro sells a system

Which product is that, specifically?

It's of course achievable with any CPU using PCIe switches. However, they don't magically increase bandwidth.

Two CPUs is probably all that can be crammed into a case that small, so 80 lanes (+ ~8 via PCH) is as good as it gets.

<comment><USER31> A very ugly 7U server: [https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B...](https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B-TR4FT.cfm)

The point was less about the form factor and more about the number of PCIe lanes that can conceivably be available and the associated memory/bus bandwidth that is possible.

<comment><USER30> Haha, I see. That's a blade center with 8 "PCs", each supporting one PCIe x16 card and some supporting an additional x16 card (with only 8 lanes connected).

It's not really comparable to this project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just spent £2000 on a PC after 17 years of purely Apple because I wanted CUDA cores for my creative work.

If Apple had something like this as an option I'd have easily gone upwards of £4000 to foolishly stay within their ecosystem. Guess my wallet is better off in the universe where Apple doesn't want my custom.

<comment><USER33> I feel very much like doing something similar but I'm reticent to move away from macOS because of privacy concerns.

If I moved to Linux I would still need some commercial software available on macOS but not on Linux. The obvious thing to do would be to supplement Linux with Windows 10 but I worry about privacy in Windows 10.

This maybe obvious to long term Windows users but I can only find examples from Microsoft about what they collect/track, not a definitive list[1].

Also if anyone knows, I'd also like to find out if it's possible to stop Microsoft Support from remotely accessing files on a Windows 10 machine and if you need a particular version of Windows 10 to do that. e.g. Is Windows 10 Home more or less secure than Windows 10 Enterprise.

So for the moment baring in mind I don't do CUDA I'm sticking with my slow old Mac. I should probably should build a dual booting hackintosh but I think if would be a lot of trouble to keep going (and also breaks the licensing terms).

[1] [https://privacy.microsoft.com/en- us/privacystatement/](https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/)

<comment><USER34> Look into Windows 10 LTSB (Long Term Service Branch). It's rock solid, doesn't auto-update (only critical security patches), as part of the installation process you can switch off everything, doesn't have Edge or Cortana or any other guff. It was made for ATM's and single purpose machines. I use one for my Plex Media Server and XProtect / Sighthound Server etc.. all rock solid. The "apparent" disadvantages listed against LTSB I actually believe are advantages. Like, want new Windows 10 features? Sorry you'll have to reinstall the latest full release of Windows 10.1 LTSB.

[http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the- cruft...](http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft- windows-10-ltsb-explained/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where would the CPU go?

I do understand the reluctance from Apple to built upgradable computers. They make their money on hardware sales, and an upgradable system would hurt those sales. At the same time their "Pro" gear simply isn't iterating fast enough, perhaps because not using standard components slows them down.

It's not Apples style, but it wouldn't hurt if they gave their professional customers a three year roadmap, just so people would know that they plan to move forward, and in which direction.

<comment><USER36> > Where would the CPU go?

Under the memory probably. It looks like the basic idea is saw the current Mac Pro down the middle and shove some graphics card slots there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I smiled at "Standard components ... exceptionally futureproof". The way Apple are going the next mac pro will probably run an ARM CPU and have the RAM soldered on

Assuming they ever make another mac pro of course

</comment><comment><USER38> Almost hug to death, enjoy the [http://archive.is/XkCPO](http://archive.is/XkCPO)

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png](http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png)

I am glad to learn the dard Components are Exceptionally Futur.

<comment><USER40> Ha I thought it was a Safari problem on my machine and I was going to say "I'm pretty sure Apple would make the website render properly in Safari".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have to say, it's the first time I see a Peter Dinklage used as a unit of measure:

[http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html](http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> This type of design isn't useful. Round things don't fit neatly anywhere on a desk. Air cooling makes no sense when your design goal is high performance in a small space. What would really be useful is something 2.5" thick and as long and wide as necessary. Think about it you could lay it flat on your desk and put your screen on top of it, stand it up behind your screen, hang it on the wall behind your screen, bolt it to the under side of your desk, bolt it to the back of your desk, or bolt it to the side of your desk.

<comment><USER43> So something like a 1U server?

<comment><USER44> More like the early Sun "pizzabox" SPARCstation workstations, I would think.

Example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> For a while, most non-Macbook Air 'ultrabooks' were hampered by the fact that they had to have an ethernet port, or I guess enterprises wouldn't buy them? It was weird. The whole entire computer ended up being designed around its biggest single constraint.

This is exactly what's going on here. "Bigger is better" is an attempted rationalization for the fact that graphics cards are determining the design of this computer. But then look at the Mac Pro: they solved a core problem of performance machines (cooling) with its weird looking design. There was a functional reason for its' looking like a turbine. Here, the rounded ends are pointless (haha design joke).

Edit: there's an interesting problem at the intersection of industrial design manufacturing process that this does solve for. The Mac Pro design process was obviously very involved, and it required lots of folks' attention. They obviously aren't paying attention in the same way, so the care that is needed to make something performant and beautifully designed isn't happening, and the releases aren't happening. This guy's design does an end-run around Apple-like industrial design, and in choosing compatibility with off-the-shelf stuff, probably makes the product more likely to be relevant to folks in the future than Apple's Mac Pro, which is just languishing in long product update cycles.

<comment> white-flame That's a strange definition of "hamper" you have there. What's being optimized for a "pro" computer or "ultrabook"? It's computing power, and expandability. Looks & portability play second fiddle there, although it certainly helps to have something as sleek as can be managed. But not at the expense of technical features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Are 16x TB3, 4x TB2 AND 4x USB3 actually achievable with current/near-future hardware?

If Apple were to implement this, I'd imagine it would be N x TB3/USB3 USB-C format ports, an ethernet port and maybe HDMI (though a dongle would possibly negate that – if 2.1 can be achieved that way)

Otherwise, looks good to me.

<comment><USER3> Not feasibly.

If you really wanted to do it, the biggest processors have 40 lanes of PCIe. Intel's Xeon E5's can be dual-socket mounted, for a total of 80 PCIe lanes. Adding PCIe switching, like two Avago/PLX PEX9797s (see [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx- pex97...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx- pex9700-series-pcie-switches), particularly the diagram at [http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG)) can get you there in the end.

But the sacrifice is that you actually only have 80 lines of PCIe, and it all has to be coordinated. Dual-socket computing does not quite double your processing power, and a switch adds latency. Your overall bandwidth will still be limited to what you have coming from the processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I can dig this, but the next Mac Pro needs to compete with the current line of HP Z840:

[http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf](http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf)

<comment><USER48> God, I always lol at HP URLs. What a mess.

<comment><USER25> At least they're stable. I have bookmarks on HP datasheet pages from the early 2000s that still work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Instead of fancy design, I would rather see some fairly boring box that would enable Apple to use almost off-the-shelf hardware. Kind of hackintosh, but made by Apple. This way it would be much easier for them to bring regular (yearly) hardware refreshes.

</comment><comment><USER50> > Sometimes bigger is actually better

Well that's definitely something we'll never hear Apple say.

<comment><USER51> They used to say it about their 17" laptop.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just pointing out that it says 4x HDMI ports, but the rendered model only has 2x.

<comment><USER53> Yeah I noticed that also. Seems strange to make such a mistake with so much attention to detail.

Pretty design but by my count that machine would need to be a quad CPU (not core) system to support all that I/O. Where are those 4 CPUs gonna fit and how are you gonna keep them cool?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Only 24GB of RAM?

The current Mac Pro officially supports 64GB and 3rd parties offer upgrades to 128GB.

Even the 2006 models can be upgraded to 32GB.

<comment><USER20> He means 24GB of video memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I like the size of this. The expandability of the machine is nice considering the current lack of refresh on current apple desktop hardware. I'm not holding my breath though.

I have the old mac-pro (cheese grater), and it was remarkably expandable (and easy to do so). Its remarkably heavy (theft deterrent).

You can go see what the hackintosh people are building with commodity hardware:

User Builds: [https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user- builds.28/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/)

</comment><comment><USER56> So basically a bigger trash can without a proper cooling system. Yikes.

<comment> yoz-y From what I gather the ONE great thing about the trashcan design is its cooling system.

<comment><USER56> Reading comprehension: "bigger trashcan without a proper..." means that this is a bigger trash can that does not have a proper cooling system. The regular trash can thus has.

<comment> yoz-y Aha! It looks like there is no space for huge fans from one of the angles, but then, this is a magic concept for already impossible tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Somehow the grey metal Mac Pro case shown beside the current Mac Pro and this Mac Pro concept design looks to me much better and functional than any of the other two.

It makes a much more professional, high-quality, clean impression and has definitely the potential to house at least the same if not more hardware than the cyclindric ones.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't undestand, the CPU would rely on convection+fans while the more powerful GPUs just push air to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER59> Looks nice but I don't think that's practical (or realistic).

That's way too many USB ports, SSDs on one machine.

BTW for devs out there that need that much horsepower, what do you do? (I understand needed 32 GB of ram which was not available in the latest MacBook pros, but when do you need that much storage?)

<comment><USER17> Re storage: video editing readily comes to mind.

<comment><USER60> And multitrack audio recording.

<comment><USER17> ...which can also be taxing on CPU / GPU if you apply effects to a lot of tracks, and can't render them (yet) because you're tweaking the whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Gigabyte announced a similarly shaped product last week at CES.

[http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product- page.aspx?pid=6151#...](http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product- page.aspx?pid=6151#kf)

</comment><comment><USER62> Problem being that the current Mac Pro is already the 2nd [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro)

</comment><comment><USER63> Funny enough, the thing that had me thinking the most was the double ethernet ports. What would that be for? Two different networks? When one cuts out you just switch to the other one?

<comment><USER64> The current real Mac Pro actually has two ethernet ports too. There are a number of ways this could be useful.

Number one would obviously be to connect to two different networks. It could also be useful in a scenario where the machine is used as a server and you want a semi-redundant backup network line. It could also be used to directly connect to a NAS box via Ethernet.

<comment><USER65> you can bridge network cards to double your connection speed. You can connect to 2 different networks (load balancing or 2 different Internet Server Providers). You can run multiple virtual machines on your mac and separate traffic instead of putting all into one adapter. Multiple LAN is a norm now, especially if you in IT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Looks great... just needs 10GbE instead of 1Gb. Add an SFP port and a RJ45 if all you got is a 1Gb or want to try your hand at getting 10GBASE-T working.

</comment><comment><USER67> While I really like the aesthetics of this, I think it still suffers the same problems as the current Mac Pro.

It needs more PCI card slots. It needs to support more than two GPUs. To suppprt that it's also going to need one helluva power supply... it needs its workstation credibility back more than it needs a beautiful design.

I still think the previous generation of Mac Pro look great. They'd look even better in Space Gray.

</comment><comment><USER68> The Mac Pro design was fun to look at, but the concept firearms on this site were the most impressive to me. Well thought out and engineered from a concept perspective, addressing pain points for the customer that requires some pretty serious knowledge. I'm surprised somebody hasn't tried to manufacture the Thor A1 at this point, as they seem to fit a pretty sizable PPW market.

</comment><comment><USER69> I think the next Mac Pro will need to fit within the Rack.

Basically merging the Xserve and Mac Pro together. It will need Dual CPU and Dual GPU space.

But May be the consumer Mac and iPhone is simply too large of a market, where even small minor profitable business like Server and Pro market are being ignored. But sometimes it isn't about profits, but ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks great, it will take one hell of a custom riser to orient those video cards like that. [https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor- systems.102/](https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/) has the best collection of Super small custom form factors in the world.

</comment><comment><USER71> I don't want a system that "anticipates" what I may need. I want a system that allows me to update and upgrade easily based on what my needs are, and how they may change. In that way, the cheese-grater Mac Pro was ideal. Apple needs to get back to that mode for the _desktop_ Power user.

</comment><comment><USER72> Not bad. Reminded me of the internal arrangements in the MSI Nightblade MI2, a pleasant small desktop gaming machine. You can buy some of them for under 1k USD.

( [https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade- MI2.html](https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html) )

</comment><comment><USER73> Top 80% of the page is just black for me. I hit the spacebar 7 times until I saw "Built-in handle" ?

<comment><USER74> I also had one big black page. I thought it was a joke and it meant the author thought there was no Mac Pro 2 coming. Then I remembered this is not Reddit and there are no funny links on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Great design work, as for the idea, I don't think Apple would roll with the alien/spaceship/ninja vibe [http://d.pr/i/jzcl](http://d.pr/i/jzcl)

</comment><comment><USER76> GTX 1080? That seems like an unlikely choice to me. Apple prefer AMD GPUs, not NVidia's.

The GTX 1080 is also part of NVidia's consumer line, whereas the current Mac Pro has FirePro chips, which are from AMD's workstation graphics line.

<comment><USER77> I don't know where you get this impression from unless you're only looking at what's currently (or recently) shipping. They've always used both and played them off against each other. Which vendor is used for a given model changes from one year to the next, although sometimes there will be long stretches of seemingly only using one or the other. There've been plenty of times over the last 15 years where one or the other has been predominant in shipping products, but it never lasts more than a couple years. There've also been plenty of times when the currently shipping product line featured both vendors.

<comment><USER76> Oh, right. I didn't realise they'd switched more than once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Looks like this is getting the HN hug of death, anyone have a link to a cached copy?

<comment><USER79> There you go: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascalegge...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html)

Edit: fixed wrong link

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This looks cool...but the inside of the machine is so unlike Apple. It is scary and futuristic in an Alienware way. Apple's design (even inside) is always more human and approachable.

</comment><comment><USER81> Nice work, but it looks like it's transitioning from a small circular garbage can to a rectangular garbage can. The original aluminum Mac Pro shrunken down would have been the ideal design IMO.

</comment><comment><USER7> 503? Looks like its down.

<comment><USER82> I think the entire product design team at Apple are scraping it for ideas.

<comment><USER83> Yeah, because Apple designers are too daft to come up with something this derivative on their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> More top overpriced GPUs, computer must cost more than automobile.

<comment><USER85> That's nothing, the server I'm dialed in to right now cost 30x as much as my car. And we have racks and racks of these...

<comment><USER83> Is your car an entry-level bicycle? What kind of servers are you running that cost 30x an actual car? We run some expensive servers but none that cost anywhere near 30x the cost of my car.

<comment><USER85> I'm including the support contracts in both numbers. I work for an ISP, so our storage systems are both large and very sensitive to downtime. You don't want x0,000 customers calling about their email, HBO Go, and billing logins failing. So the support contract is a bit extreme to match. The exact price is under some kind of NDA but let's say my car was a bit over $30k.

<comment><USER83> That must be some impressive support contract. For close to a million dollars per server I hope they come with an indentured engineer who lives in your colo ready to do a hot swap at any moment.

<comment><USER85> Close, the SLA is four hours call-to-repair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> looks great but will never happen -- the mac pro is not a priority for Apple -- sometimes I wonder, what, if anything outside of the iPhone, really is a priority for them.

</comment><comment><USER87> "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

</comment><comment><USER88> Just use the design of the old G5 Tower, but a bit smaller! And in Silver, Space Grey, and Jet Black.

</comment><comment><USER89> In reality it will only have a power adapter "port" and they will call it portless and amazing

</comment><comment><USER90> Come on man. 10gig ethernet please.

</comment><comment><USER91> No RAM/Memory specifications? Surely it ought to showcase at least 64GB DDR4 RAM.

</comment><comment> j-pb Why for the love of god would a beast like that still have two shitty gigabit ports.

<comment><USER92> First thing I noticed, too. You beat me to it! A PC can't possibly be considered pro without a couple of CXP connectors.

;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I think at least one USB C port would be appropriate. Very nice though!

<comment><USER94> Thunderbolt 3 uses the same connector as USB C, and it supports the same USB functionality. ([https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb- c-d...](https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it- all))

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> 2 GTX 1080 in this small box? Nahh, this is going to be smoking hot.

</comment><comment><USER96> You could build the PC version of this for about a 1000 bucks.

</comment><comment><USER97> cool but if you can upgrade the gpu and storage, than you should also be able upgrade the cpu, ram and psu? at that point, it's just the old ATX mac pro design

</comment><comment><USER98> Looks like what Darth Vader would have on his Destroyer.

</comment><comment><USER99> Is HDMI 2.1 now superior to DisplayPort?

</comment><comment><USER100> I thought that was a camera lens.

</comment><comment><USER65> I like it.

</comment><comment><USER101> Why woukd you have HDD?

</comment><comment><USER102> i like it

</comment><comment><USER103> It irritates me that this page was clearly designed on/for a super wide high- res display

<comment><USER104> It's heavily inspired by Apple's own page for the Mac Pro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> No USB-C? also, what's the point of including the Thunderbolt 2 ports, I thought Thunderbolt 3 was backwards compatible. Sweet design other than that.

<comment><USER103> Thunderbolt 3 is USB-C

<comment><USER106> Thunderbolt 3 can facilitate the USB-C connector.

<comment><USER107> This seems like a fun ladder of pedantry, count me in!

Thunderbolt 3 is an extension to the USB 3.1 standard which utilizes the USB-C connector and implements USB Power delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> The next Mac Pro will just be really really thin, have no ports, and gets it's power wirelessly from a mat underneath it, but no batteries. It'll have 8 cores and max out at 13g of ram

<comment><USER108> I forgot to mention it _will_ include nerfed NFC, so you'll be able to Tap and Pay with with Apple Pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Oooh, an artist spend 20 minutes with PhotoShop and now Apple can just take his pretty pictures and start pumping out new computers. It's not like anyone needs to actually create an actual prototype, source components, set up manufacturing, market and deliver anything.

<comment><USER110> 20 minutes? What are you even talking about?! This would take days if not weeks.</comment></comment>


Breaking the Mold: A broader array of lifestyles than many of us could dream up - <AUTHOR> http://blog.longreads.com/2015/08/27/breaking-the-mold/

<comment><USER2> probably a good match between our clients/users and the people portrayed in that book</comment>


Inbound.org: Community-curated Marketing News - <AUTHOR> http://inbound.org/

<comment><USER3> This is a perfect example of what's wrong with the shallow approach to design. Sure, it looks nice, but it functions awfully.

Compare its homepage with the Hacker News homepage: HN won't be featured on any galleries any time soon, but what makes it successful is that it is really well designed. It has a clear brand identity, and the homepage is incredibly functional; you can easily scan the top news, and see what's new. Visited links are grayed out, and the only text that pops is the new headlines. Everything else is secondary, and therefore scaled down and/or grayed out.

Inbound, on the other hand, gets it all wrong. You'd think it's a well designed site—it has pretty colors, pretty fonts, pretty patterns. But that just makes it a pretty site, not a well-designed one. You can only see 10 headlines on a page above the fold, and even so it feels more cluttered than HN's 30 article homepage. Extra attention is called on irrelevant information like the rank number, or the author and his mugshot. The end result is a homepage that feels cluttered and has no clear sense of hierarchy.

This is what gives designers a bad name. This is also why, if you're building a product, you want to hire a real designer with an education and an understanding for the basics, not just somebody who got good at making shiny things by following photoshop tutorials.

<comment><USER4> That's pretty hypercritical. Personally, I'd like HN to have more reasonable typography like a fixed width column for comments—somewhere in between Inbound and HN as it exists currently.

It's also not functionally awful. My wife, an interior designer, has often commented that she doesn't know how I can stand to read comments from this site because of how garish the colors and how poor the type is. We've had time to adapt to the use of HN because the content is great and the software has been evolved to function well.

Inbound also has an entirely different target market, one that is, by definition, more superficial and shallow in regard to design. Nothing that looked like HN would get traction in the marketing community, at least from the people I know.

<comment><USER5> @randfish and I were very inspired by HN. We understand the tradeoffs in terms of design (we're big reddit fans too).

Your observation that marketers (our audience) are different from hackers is dead-on.

With inbound.org we had some early debate around design. Candidly, I was more on the "lets make it like HN" (I write code every day) and he was more on the "lets do something creative and solve for our audience" (he has a much better aesthetic sense). We're still debating it.

We're also both entrepreneurs, so understand the importance of launching and just getting it out there.

Now, back to dealing with the technical issues we've run into tonight...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why did they schedule maintenance for the middle of the day on which they launch? That seems like the _worst_ time to take down your site for scheduled maintenance.

Doesn't take a marketer to know that.

<comment><USER7> Because it wasn't scheduled.

<comment><USER5> You're right. It's not scheduled maintenance. We're furiously working on the issue as we speak.

<comment><USER8> If you need some servers just let me know man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> inbound.org is a reference to Inbound Marketing, which Hubspot coined entirely.

HubSpot snapped the term "Inbound Marketing" (which really means "permission marketing") so they could differentiate more easily from other marketing software competitors.

The strategy is really smart. If you look for "inbound marketing" on Google, Hubspot has completely pushed down the older term by flooding the page with results they more or less created: conferences, groups, books, even a Wikipedia page defined by the company.

For old time marketers, "Inbound Marketing" meant "marketing research", as opposed to "Outbound Marketing" which meant "reaching out to users".

In a sense, it shows those guys are great at what they are doing, marketing.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to register, but twitter only???

And then... An error occurred while trying to retrieve your Twitter username. Please try again.

<comment><USER11> It's run by marketers, after all.

<comment><USER12> And HN is written/run by a developer who made his fortune building web apps, yet it still manages to average a 5+ second page load time. What's your point?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not to troll, but I think a segregation of the crowd here would be great. I know pg has made a few comments lately along the lines of "where did all these non-hackers come from?"

I feel like sub-HN's would be helpful, as I find myself generally reading programming tips and things much more than I read "how to get your conversions up".

Having a good community to submit that to and discuss would cut down on the signal to noise ratio for readers like me.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't sub-hacker-news threads for non-hackers defeat the purpose of it being part of __hacker __news in the first place?

<comment><USER13> I agree. That's why I hope inbound takes off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do I really need to use Twitter to sign up? I feel like I must be missing the real button and it's just hidden somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> Prediction: tomorrow we'll see the front page full of "Hacker News for XYZ".

</comment><comment><USER16> This is wonderful. I love it. Lots of SEO and Social Media Marketing articles. I hope they poach a lot of people from HN.

_(ssh, quiet...!)_

<comment><USER17> The smart ones (including Rand) will stay here, sit quietly, listen/read, and say very little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love this concept, but I'm hoping they can manage to get a community that can keep the level of content high instead of the mostly link bait and spam articles the SEO community is known for.

A quick look at the home page for Inbound.org which has 25 articles shows: * 9 articles that are "X Number of Things" * 4 "The Guide to" articles * 2 "How to" articles

That's 15 out of 25 articles that are mostly filled with shallow link bait type articles. Granted I didn't read all of them so I'm sure some are good and deserve to be high on the page but the ratio is way off.

By comparison the HN home page has zero of the same type of articles.

Now maybe that's what they are going for, but personally I'd love to see less lists and more high quality content around marketing.

</comment><comment><USER19> My only problem with this is that I can't see how this isn't going to be hugely insular, and spammed to death by self-promoting "marketers".

I'm curious how it's going to avoid turning in to what Sphinn at the worst times.

</comment><comment><USER16> So many of the linked articles have comment threads that are total circle jerks!

</comment><comment><USER20> Very good! Two questions

1) How did you build this? Some pre-made system or not?

2) Is there a list of more specific communities like this? Examples: entrepreneurship only, selling only, consulting only.

</comment><comment><USER21> You have way too many articles on the front page. It feels a little ridiculous that I have to scroll down on a 24" monitor at 1920x1080 to read everything.

It's a little similar to what I said about another side: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547100>.

I might accept a lot of articles in one page, but I should be able to view everything in one "page" regardless.

</comment><comment><USER22> Love the concept and I'm hopeful that it gets the traction deserved.

A couple of UI comments from a brain that spends all day on conversion / UI:

a) HN at 1280x1024 gives you nearly 30 items without scrolling vs. ~10 on Inbound which feels like a UI problem.

b) The header is unnecessarily large, the "Hot Articles" title is redundant to the point of the site. In conversion testing I've never seen a larger header improve sticky/conversion and less is always more.

c) On hover you activate the color change of the story table but I still have to navigate to the actual link for the click through which is non-intuitive.

d) Categorizing is an interesting idea but I think that appeal of HN and many specific community sites (or subreddits for that matter) is that sub- categorizations aren't necessary. EG the community picks the content that's interesting to the community, and category sorting is a "power user" desire, but just confuses the 95%.

Big fan of the work you guys do elsewhere, hope this sticks!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the feedback. You make some really good points.

a) You're right. Though we're not going to get to the same density as HN (we've deliberately chosen to show more information per article), we should be able to get more items in there.

b) You're right. It's too large.

c) Right again. We should allow clicking through the article on any area that triggers the hover.

d) This was a deliberate choice. We debated it, and categories won out. Though the right thing to do is to test it (and see what down-side impact the categories are having -- and whether that's worth the additional categorization).

For now, we're working on getting the site back up. The issue is not traffic (directly), but some strange wonkiness with the twitter oauth process.

<comment><USER23> You should also take a look at the site using IE8 (one of the largest browser segments for general traffic). The articles area is grey-ed out (you can hardly see it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been a part of the beta of inbound.org, and have been really impressed with the community thus far.

It's still very immature and small, but it brings together some of the brightest minds in inbound marketing.

Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz) and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot) deserve a lot of gratitude for getting this community started.

<comment><USER5> As fans of HN, one thing we know is that what makes the whole thing work is the community. So, thank _you_.

We're hoping to make the same kind of magic for marketers that HN has been able to do for hackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've also been a part of the beta testing and think it will be a great tool. I love HN for the technical and startup material and have found some amazing material here. I hope Inbound.org is the start of other awesome crowdsourced communities in the HN-style model.

Hats off to Rand and Dharmesh.

</comment><comment><USER26> Design suggestion: I am more interested in seeing the score given by the community rather than the rank awarded by an algorithm. I think you should replace the large position text (#1, #2, etc) and with the # of upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER27> No disrespect intended, but did you load test this app before launching it?

</comment><comment><USER28> Great initiative. This has been lacking in marketing industry. Although as others have pointed, I think UI could be polished a bit. It doesn't yet feel as fluid as HN.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe something like this? Just a few minutes in developer tools.

<http://cl.ly/1p1C0t0E3A0H400L293J>

</comment><comment><USER30> Really looking forward to checking this out once it's back online - <USER2> marketing site with a community even half as strong as HNs would be absolutely great.

</comment><comment><USER31> Neither the login or register features are working. I'm trying to create an account but just getting a blank dialog box.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is going to work (if you can make the site work!) I'll definitely participate.

</comment><comment><USER33> What are so many inbound marketers doing hanging out on HN?

<comment><USER34> Customer acquisition is one of the most important features of start-ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> love the idea, really looking forward to it but... did you ask a marketer to decide what platform to built on? wordpress? really?? :-p

</comment><comment><USER36> Who is this targeted at?

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks like the SEO D-Bags have already discovered your site :(

</comment><comment><USER34> I am extremely excited for this. I have been wanting something like this for some time.</comment>


Show HN: ServerlessBlog = Python + Flask-Blogging + AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://serverlessblog.com <comment><USER2> So in reality "serverless" just means "other people's servers"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not invent the term serverless. Generally the term serverless is used to refer to a cloud function concept.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's an annoying, misrepresentative marketing term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like there's an XSS attack there

[https://serverlessblog.com/blog/page/8syxjygpwyz9gb6m5am2uma...](https://serverlessblog.com/blog/page/8syxjygpwyz9gb6m5am2umank2/script- alert-31-script/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out. I will look into fixing this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created a site to demonstrate how to setup a blog on AWS lambda.</comment>


PracticeJS – Coding exercises in a mobile friendly web app - <AUTHOR> https://practicejs.com/ <comment><USER2> I think coding on a phone is doable if we "rethink" the keyboard part.

I've built a PoC (also a Web app, but requires a backend), video demo here:

[https://vimeo.com/339574087](https://vimeo.com/339574087)

The neat thing is that all the heavy-lifting of syntax highlighting, autocomplete, etc are done by Vim, so I don't need to port everything to the front-end.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems very similar to codingbat.com. My CS teacher in high school made me do codingbat and it was very helpful; I could see this site doing the same for JS learners. Codingbat is not as mobiles optimized but is still usable on my phone. As another commenter mentioned, some important differences are:

Number of problems, sorted into levels of difficulty / focus areas (this has only one problem that I would consider 'hard')

Help (not just solution) is available to those who want it

Helpful error messages

Syntax highlighting

That said, I really like the interface here. It works well on my phone and looks nice on a desktop, and is straightforward and simple. The only issue is that keyboard auto capitalization/autocorrect gets annoying to deal with on a phone. Hacker's Keyboard (free software Android keyboard) could help with that; it would be nice to have a link to something like that for Android+iOS on the website.

<comment><USER4> Auto capitalization can also be fixed with a cheeky little `autocaptialize="off"` attribute.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_att...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes/autocapitalize)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not convinced coding on a phone will ever be a thing. I've tried a few challenges on my phone while interviewing and it was just a clunky and slow experience

<comment><USER6> I don't think coding an entire app ever will be. But mini training exercises? Maybe.

<comment><USER7> AWD editor has a built in sftp plus something like juicessh for command line server access makes it not too bad even on a small phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the initiative, but the 'editor' on desktop is just an input field. Would have benefited from something like Ace Editor or CodeMirror.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure what the test cases are for the Fibonacci sequence (just happened to pick that one first), but it gives an error for my code, and I'm not able to figure out why. (please ignore my bad variable names)

      function(index) {
       var fib = [0,1];
       for(var i=2; i<index; i++){
         fib[i]=fib[i-2]+fib[i-1];
       }
       return fib[index-1];
      }

<comment><USER10> Your function will return 2 for index = 4, whereas it's expecting 3.

<comment><USER9> Then are the instructions not clear enough, or am I just missing something....

From the website: "For example, the sequence [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34] forms the first ten entries of the Fibonacci sequence." Entering 4 should return 2 in this case, which is correct? I don't get it.

<comment><USER11> Index 4 is the fifth element, 3. Index 0 is the first element (a zero).

Reread the examples.

<comment><USER9> Hmm...I see. Thank you for the help!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) would benefit from some kind of keyboard help so that it's not capitalizing every first character.

2) getting errors when trying to use single or double quotes which makes things difficult:

>SyntaxError: Invalid character '\u201c

Otherwise, nice work.

</comment><comment><USER13> The test cases for the Fibonacci sequence is terribly bad, you can cheat by returning fn = n=>[0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34][n] You need random test cases and larger test cases.

Codewars is definitely better than this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Neat! Are there any programming keyboards for iOS out there that help with common operators /characters?

Can you add syntax highlighting to this?

<comment><USER15> Messagease is really good for coding and typing at a shell prompt, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems very procedural-oriented. Would be really cool to see a procedural and functional orient solution.

</comment><comment><USER17> Terse and you don't learn anything. You should build levels and offer explanations to YOUR code.

<comment><USER5> algodaily.com has some really good explanations</comment></comment>


Cash machines robbed with infected USB sticks - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25550512 <comment><USER2> This is surprisingly easy. Look for the defcon talk "atm jackpotting".

The summary is there there are only a few vendors of ATMs and ATM software. They often have a tubular lock with a small number of lock combinations. You open it, and there's the main board. USB (some with auto-play still enabled), CF card (main storage), everything. Plug in what you want. Some insist on code-signing of the CF card to boot, but it can be bypassed.

Often they are exposed to the internet, and as of the talk at least one vendor had a pre-login vulnerability to an internet-exposed port (which the speaker reported, so that particular one is probably fixed now, but goodness knows if the sites in the real world are patched).

Once you have your code running, it's game over. Open the cash drawer, record stripe data (and phone it to yourself whenever you like), rootkit the device to make yourself undetectable.

He bought several ATMs of the most popular model to experiment, right off the internet, some from the vendors themselves. Nobody questioned him.

Watch the talk, it was great.

<comment><USER3> Whatever happened to Barnaby Jack? I know he was found dead in his SF apartment sometime after this DefCon talk.

Port 18456 is the port BTW. If you do a masscan sweep you'll find a ton of them facing the internet.....

I don't think he ever released his exploit or scrooge rootkit.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, just read on this Jack guy. What was that thing? He was 35 years old and wasn't sick or obese.

Now, for people who believe the generally good nature of states (and/or Santa) this might not even raise an eyebrow, but for people who have read their history, well...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So a lot of things clearly came together here:

1\. The attackers knew there was a USB port on these devices that would auto- play, or at least trigger the auto-play dialog. 2\. The attackers knew all of the software internals of the machines before they started. You don't just write code that works with any old ATM software. 3\. The article stated that 'the organisers displayed "profound knowledge of the target ATMs"'. "Profound knowledge" seems to be an understatement. That's the kind of knowledge that you get when you work for a company that designs and builds ATMs.

Really, I don't see this as anything more than something to chuckle at. It's like if a restaurant was robbed by someone that knew the code for the back door and that a spare key to the safe was taped to the underside of the desk in the back room. If you know what you're doing, of _course_ you can break in.

<comment><USER6> So why in the name of "bruce" was an ATM ever shipped with a USB port in the firstplace. The firmware update process should be locked down.

what needs to happen is that all the executives of the ATM company and the bank concerned (going back 15 years or so) need to be banned for life from ever being directors and b from ever working in the finance industry

<comment><USER7> USB port or no, once you have physical access to the internal electronics then the game is over. It seems to me the failure was using materials that could be quickly breached and then patched.

Do you have unique experience to justify up your vitriol?

<comment><USER8> "once you have physical access to the internal electronics then the game is over"

Common... Someone used an X-acto knife to plug in an USB stick on a PC configured to auto-play it and we should take it as a proof that "physical access to the internal electronics then the game is over"?

Companies like Brinks are using special sprays that renders bills unusable in case someone tries to break in the safes if I'm not mistaken.

What about an ATM where any tentative of opening it to physically access the internal electronics would result in the ATM bricking and all the bills getting instantly sprayed as to render them unusable?

What about spraying the bills and rendering them unusable in case the ATM is powered down and making it impossible to install new software without powering the machine down? (so that when you come with your new harddisk and access the internal to plug it in, you're SOL). This would even have the benefit of rendering attacks of the type: "I come with a truck and steal the part of the wall that contains the ATM" impractical (yes, people have done these).

And where the only way to prevent that, for example during legitimate maintenance, would be to first enter a token generated by the ATM company and communicated to the (legit) employee doing the maintenance when he's working on the machine?

I've never worked on ATMs and I'm sure it shows, but that's not the point.

Honestly I find it quite sad that simply plugging in an USB stick allows to steal money from the machine.

I find it also very sad that several people here consider that "nothing can be done against a rogue employee" or that "nothing can be done if you have physical access to the internal electronics".

And I do honestly hope that people working on ATMs will start thinking about how to better secure their ATMs and which kind of trust systems can be put in place so that rogue employees (and other thieves) have a much harder time attacking ATMs.

"It seems to me the failure was using materials that could be quickly breached and then patched."

That is just _one_ failure. The attacker exploited several holes and the answer from ATM companies should be more complex than just putting duct tape on one of the holes.

<comment><USER9> With regards to the "spraying of bills", the bills themselves are usually in a safe, which is separated from the electronics (computer & peripherals). But I do agree that when a machine is breached it should halt immediately. Having said that, financial institutions are not going to take this route for a variety of reasons, one of which is just general maintenance. If the case is breached, do you suspect that the intruders had access to everything? If so you want need to brick the entire device, to prevent any data from leaking back to the intruders.

Your suggestion with regards to maintenance is indeed a valid one, but again the increase in cost is simply to big. Most financial institutions in my country and region (western europe) actually see ATM purely as a cost, and install them simply because they want customers to get a hold of their money. It is that simple. So why would they increase the costs?

I think, and I don't want to start any flamewars or anything, that reconsidering the use of Windows in its current form is a valid route. If you were to start from an extremely limited & stripped down version sure, but not in the way companies are currently using it (for those that might wonder, yes full installs of windows happen all the time).

Anyway, I'm glad this is in the open. The more people talk about it, the more things will change.

<comment><USER10> > With regards to the "spraying of bills", the bills themselves are usually in > a safe, which is separated from the electronics (computer & peripherals).

I used to work in a supermarket with the 'self service' checkouts. The cash dispenser internals looks to be exactly the same as that in basic ATMs [0]. Without going into too many details, in our case the security was minimal and there was no tamper proofing. If you really wanted to get inside it wouldn't have been particularly hard. ATMs may by different as they are slightly more portable than a checkout though :)

[0] [http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/11/this-picture-of- an-...](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/11/this-picture-of-an-a.html)

<comment><USER11> Basic ATMs found in gas stations and liquor stores are different. All the ATMs in big banks have a safe at the bottom that houses the case made of 1/4 inch or so steel plates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The actual talk, "Electronic Bank Robberies - Stealing Money from ATMs with Malware", from 30C3 a few days ago: [http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5476_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5476_-_en_- _saal_2_-_201312271600_-_electronic_bank_robberies_-_tw_-_sb.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have about a year of industry knowledge working with ATMs. NCR and Diebold hold a huge portion of the North American ATM market and likely European too. All of the NCR and Diebold machines I worked on were running locked down Windows XP as of a couple of years ago. The PC hardware is fairly standard. Most of the peripherals like cash dispensers connect via USB to the PC in the ATM.

I haven't had a chance to look at the exploit but I'd assume it didn't necessarily use auto-play. The OS images that are loaded on these machines are highly customized and would likely prevent auto-loading a usb driver. However, either it auto-loaded or they exploited some other USB bug in Windows.

Once they could load code then they would have been able to manipulate the cash dispenser using an XFS app[0]. This would let them dispense bills from the safe to the customer facing throat. However, once the machine was restocked the bill counts would be off and the banks backend should detect the tampering.

Based on the story it sounds like they were able to load code into the banking application to allow activating their hack from the pin pad. To me that seems to indicate either a former engineer of NCR/Diebold or someone who got their hands on a used ATM and spent a lot of time reverse engineering the application software and chassis.

I've also made the assumption that this was done on a free-standing ATM[1]. Wall mount ATMs that you see at most banks are mostly behind the wall and would be extremely difficult to get access to a USB port.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEN/XFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEN/XFS) [1] [http://www.diebold.com/products-services/atm-self- service/te...](http://www.diebold.com/products-services/atm-self- service/terminals/full-function-cash-dispenser/Pages/522-lobby.aspx)

<comment><USER14> Do the NCR ATMs dispense bottle caps?

<comment><USER15> You have to walk a long way from Shady Sands if you want anything but Tandis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For what it's worth, there's a fair number of Windows-based ATMs in the US and around the globe. You can find articles as old as 2003 about exploiting Windows-based ATMs. My favorite was the machine that had a Paint program enabled by an intrepid hacker. Every year without fail the ATMs of the hotels surrounding DEFCON get owned multiple times, sometimes advertising it. ("Dumb" ATMs are often much easier to attack using default passwords, but harder to install malware on)

[https://www.informationweek.com/mobile/banks-struggle-to- get...](https://www.informationweek.com/mobile/banks-struggle-to-get-atms-off- windows-xp/d/d-id/1110965)

[http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/25/windows-based-atm- machine...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/25/windows-based-atm-machine- hacked-gets-painted/)

<comment><USER9> Depends on what you mean by "harder to install malware on". Most of these machines are regular Windows, and inherit the default risk associated with such machines. The only difference is that some might have better hardening.

<comment><USER17> > Most of these machines are regular Windows

What's "Regular" Windows" when it's at home? The couple of ATMs I managed to see the inside of were either running WinCE or OS/2.

<comment><USER9> The windows CE and OS/2 are getting rare. those I have tested all had win XP and win 7. (I have tested nearly every major financial institution in my country)

<comment><USER18> Whenever I come across a green-screen ATM running decent old software I practically leap for joy. Why? I can get my money in 5 seconds. The new ones, that I guess are running Flash on top of MSIE on top of WinXP, are unbelievably slow.

<comment><USER19> My favorite are the ones where the developer got the resolution of the screen wrong, and both the horizontal & vertical scrollbars are present. The touch screen is emulating a mouse, so you can drag the bars a little ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I notice at the end of the article it says a filename was hack.bat.

Looks like they are windows based machines. Wonder if they left auto-play running on them?

<comment><USER21> That's also in the article, they left auto-play running.

I'd bet they use standard PC motherboards. The only unusual things the thiefs knew where where to open the hole, and how to use the cash dispenser (altough, I'm quite sure one'd be able to get the entire dispenser documentation from Google).

Knowing that they are Windows machines, why don't people attack the ATMs by the network?

<comment><USER22> I'm vaguely surprised they bothered to cut a hole to do this. When I was working on ATMs, none of my clients ever bothered to have they ATMs uniquely keyed. I had a keyring of about 30 keys that could open pretty much any ATM I came across.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> this reminds me of this ATM hacking talk at DEFCON [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1KfSSDh3gU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1KfSSDh3gU) pretty much an exact description of the attack with nice demo.

</comment><comment><USER24> The sad part is that BBC takes this random fact and completely missed the important ones about the more massive problem that the NSA and complacent / blackmailed government represent...

</comment><comment><USER25> First things first: USB sticks were not infected. They were just a tool used to infect.. It's like saying that the needle was infected.

</comment><comment><USER26> Please stop all auto-run options.</comment>


The Economic Rout Accelerates - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-economic-rout-accelerates-11584573285 <comment><AUTHOR> In addition to mitigating the effects of the pandemic itself, the proposed solution(s) here focus on addressing the liquidity crunch many businesses are facing now or will face shortly.

Interested to hear what people think about the proposed solutions.</comment>


Understanding Object Oriented Programming (2000) - <AUTHOR> https://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/patterns/ppoop.html <comment><AUTHOR> Previously on HN, Rob Pike's opinion of this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4784555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4784555)</comment>


Sanctioned: P2P lawyer fined $10,000 for "staggering chutzpah" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/sanctioned-p2p-lawyer-fined-10000-for-staggering-chutzpah.ars

<comment><USER2> And he laughs it off because he can make ten times that suing his grandmother.</comment>


We sent 42000 Snapchats, collected the responses, and started a social contest - <AUTHOR> http://ranker.io

<comment><USER2> [https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/api-hackday- sf-2013/...](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/api-hackday- sf-2013/hacks/ranker)</comment>


Ask HN: Pancreatic Cancer Resources - <AUTHOR> This is still very new to us and I couldn't think of a better place to try to get a head start on beating this.
I hope when future hackers go searching for this on HN that they will find a list of the best resources.
Thank you :) <comment><USER2> Pancreatic cancer is a tough one. Try reading some stuff about Randy Pausch, who did the "Last Lecture"

[http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/honor/index.html](http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/honor/index.html)

Perhaps there are organizations or treatments that you will learn about.

Also, this PBS series on cancer was informative: [http://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all- maladies/](http://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/)

Think it might be on Netflix. It's based on a best-selling book:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7170627-the-emperor- of-a...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7170627-the-emperor-of-all- maladies)

<comment><USER3> Dealing with the diagnosis and treatments/surgery is indeed tough physically and psychologically.

Physically it's important to understand how to deal with things day to day. Article is on nutrition post-diagnosis from John Hopkins. [http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/TreatmentNutrition.php?are...](http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/TreatmentNutrition.php?area=tr)

Psychologically the whole team (family/friends/practitioners) need to be on the same page and transparent. [http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/03/fine- balance-hope-cope-c...](http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/03/fine-balance-hope- cope-cancer-patients.html)

Patrick Swayze had this condition and despite his prognosis filmed a movie and did his own stunts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This might not help post-diagnosis but maybe will help a lot of people in the future. As they say the best type of care is preventative care.

Pre-Cancer screening (Gates & Bezos invested) [http://www.grailbio.com/?ref=producthunt](http://www.grailbio.com/?ref=producthunt)

Here's a better article from the MIT review [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545326/illuminas-bid- to...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545326/illuminas-bid-to-beat- cancer-with-dna-tests/)

</comment><comment><USER4> My beloved is currently back in oncology. Her career has included working in hospice, geriatrics and alzheimer's.

The place to start irrespective of having pancreatic cancer or not is with a living will and an advanced health directive. Even if you're going to freeze your head, you'll likely benefit.

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer- health/...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in- depth/living-wills/art-20046303)

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER2> This site has a video about someone who had pancreatic cancer and was cured:

[http://www.cancermoonshot2020.org](http://www.cancermoonshot2020.org)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A past HN discussion about cancer [not pancreas specific, though] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682)</comment>


A Geiger-Counter for Viral Risk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@SteveHazel/a-geiger-counter-for-viral-risk-8b14f4f3dc66 <comment><USER2> Not sure if it is a parody.</comment>


NewsFeedEmail.com Means You Cn Get Facebook News Feed via Email - <AUTHOR> http://scottsbarlow.tumblr.com/post/2828624064/newsfeedemail-com-press-release

<comment><AUTHOR> Privacy Policy in place, will add this to the site this evening aswell as T&C's.

But cover:

We do not share your information with third parties except, if at all, in accordance with Facebook policies. We may temporarily store certain technical information (including IP addresses) or aggregated information to improve the quality of your experience on NewsFeedEmail or analyze general demographic and preference information among NewsFeedEmail users. Our collection, use, and disclosure of anonymous and aggregated information are not subject to any of the restrictions in this Privacy Policy. NewsFeedEmail is usable only by visitors who login to the NewsFeedEmail website using their Facebook account. NewsFeedEmail does not require that you download plugins or utilize additional software from third parties in order to use NewsFeedEmail.

</comment><comment><USER2> love this and really want to sign-up for it but didn't see a privacy policy anywhere.</comment>


Europe's hottest startup capitals: Tel Aviv - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/09/european-startups/tel-aviv?page=all

<comment><USER2> Journalism nitpick : Israel is in Western Asia. Just because they compete in the (shudder) Eurovision Song Contest doesn't mean Israel is in Europe.

<comment><USER3> That's more than just a nitpick, especially since that's in the headline.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good resources for learning about Computer Networks? - <AUTHOR> Networking and Networks are probably my weakest area when it comes to technical knowledge/skills. I know enough to create new virtual networks and subnets on AWS and Azure as well as how to set up my router at home, but beyond that I'm fairly clueless about how things work at a lower level.<p>Do you know of any good resources for developers to learn about computer networking and how things like TCP/IP, etc., actually work? <comment><USER2> This should help you [https://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/cnp3](https://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/cnp3)</comment>


Deep dive: Cancellation rate in SaaS business models - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/cancellation-rate-in-saas-business-models.html

<comment><USER2> If anybody wants years of insight into the SaaS business model, look at reseller web hosting.

People have been reselling web hosting for more than 10 years now and it is, at its core, an SaaS model in a highly competitive space. You have monthly recurring income from customers who subscribe. You have to maintain and improve your service constantly, and support is a big part of the business. There is overhead, there is a lot of work involved, and it's very stressful.

Check out WebHostingTalk.com and just read about the ups, downs, pit-falls, successes, and problems people have been having for a long time and you'll learn a thing or two about what it's like to capture and keep subscribers.

When it comes to SaaS, the thing is, people leave, they cancel, and you have to let them go. They know what's best for their business, so you can't dwell on cancellations.

The only way you survive in this recurring revenue world is if you are acquiring faster than you are losing customers. It's pretty basic math.

I used to try SO HARD to keep those customers who were walking away. I felt bad about it.

Things change.

Today, if someone is leaving, I help them get where they are going if I can. I am not an obstacle. I'm that friendly face you are always welcome to return to if you don't find greener pastures.

You know what? I get A LOT of people back as years go by.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested to see the comparison between _enterprise_ SaaS and normal $39.95/month SaaS.

The churn on enterprise SaaS would presumably be incredibly low, because once a company invests in integration, workflows, training, etc. for a particular system, it's going to be very hard to switch.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget the long-term contracts, where an enterprise signs onto the software for five years in exchange for a discount. That's probably the most common justification for "Why can't we have better service?" that I've seen IRL.

<comment><USER3> Great point... our typical deal is a three-year contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My churn history, for what it's worth: <http://i52.tinypic.com/2v3llr7.png>

Bootstrapped b2b saas startup with one part time support guy, 2 technical founders and no one else, avg sub $80/month, 75% of revenue in 2011. Most customers are small business.

Most people seem to churn because they only want to use it for the 1 month free trial period.

<comment><USER6> What kind of customer research do you do with people that leave after the trial?

Also, many companies that I know don't count trials as part of "customers" so they don't impact churn (higher churn among people who have paid you in the past is a more urgent cause for alarm than increased amount of canceled trials)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One issue with the equation [Cancellation rate] = [product utility] + [service quality] + [acceptable price] is that it assumes the product continues to be relevant or useful to customer forever. This may not be true for all products. Point in case is A/B testing software. Many small customers decide one day that they need to optimize their landing page. They purchase a subscription and do a couple of A/B tests. They are happy with the product but they anyway have to cancel because the tool served its job and they no longer need it.

Product utility was there, service was good and price was also okay. It is just that the product need wasn't continuous.

<comment><USER8> In cases like that you may still be figuring out the business model. Unless you are selling to companies that maintain lots of websites, that may not really be a subscription service but rather more like a "rental."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best N/USA-free computing setup? - <AUTHOR>

Starting from the operating system up, what software and online services can I use to regain some semblance of privacy?
My Privacy Plan by Ben Matthews looks like a good start: http://benrmatthews.com/2013/06/my-privacy-plan/
What are your recommendations? Bonus marks if it's relatively simple and fast to implement. <comment><USER2> I'd guess it'd be an idea to never publish yours or a family members name, address or any other personal information to any website or sign up form. Ever.

Then use some form of anonymous payment for anything you buy.

Ensure all of your browsing is done through Tor and/or a VPN.

Don't cache anything, just in case you get raided.

Also, always use a PC in the dark. It works. Trust me.

</comment><comment><USER3> No such thing.

You connect to the internet you're going through the USA even if the company you're dealing with is based in some other place. For example, I just ran a tracert on a connection to a college located in the same city I am in, it goes through New York State before hitting a data centre in the UK.

You can install Ubuntu, use AOSP on your phone, and use Firefox for your browser. But as soon as you connect to any service, including Hacker News, there is a good chance you're being spied upon.

If you want to avoid the dragnet then I'd stick to obscure sites and services (i.e. smaller providers) since the NSA likely hasn't taken the time to spy on each and every one. Also online game's interplay chat might be somewhat spy free (relative to other IM services anyway).</comment>