Apple promises maps app will 'improve' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19672981 <comment><USER2> "as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get."

That's a nice non sequitur, but doesn't really answer how they're going to solve this problem. They say they're working hard on it, but the scale of the data here means that you can have people working hard for months and not fix even 1% of the errors. "The cloud" isn't going to magically solve them itself.

<comment><USER3> Pretty simple. Apple can do what Google does. Buy/license data from third parties.

You didn't think Google created all of it did you ?

<comment><USER4> Google Maps is seven years old. Do you really think people are going to wait around until 2019 for Apple to fix this?

This is a rare but genuine example of (the modern) Apple completely fucking up; it surprises me that some people are so unwilling to acknowledge the fact.

<comment><USER5> It won't take 7 years to make another mapping solution. Google took that long because they had to blaze a lot of new trails that Apple can conveniently learn from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get"

Based on what I've read about the problems and their causes so far, usage volume doesn't seem to addresses any of the problems except for increasing the likelihood errors will be spotted.

The fundamental problems seem to be around the way multiple data sources have been combined and in its current form I can't see how usage volume would improve this in any way??

It may well contribute to POI data and so make it 'better' but that isn't really what the complaints are about.

<comment><USER7> The only problem I see here in the middle of the US is the sparse and wrong POI data. The tools to report fixes are on the Maps app already. If they have an automated system for processing these it could be fixed very quickly.

People should remember that Google has that POI data because the crowd entered and maintained it. The same dynamic will work for Apple.

Mass transit isn't an issue here, but I hope they get it to work before I go to Manhattan again.

<comment><USER3> Actually most of Google's POI data comes from established companies e.g. Yellow Pages.

For whatever reason Apple has chosen not to seek out the same partnerships. Maybe they will get round to it. Maybe they are hoping for a true crowdsourced solution.

<comment><USER7> My business locations didn't show on Google until I entered them myself.

That was years ago though, so things may have changed.

The darker side of crowdsourcing: My tenant didn't show up on Google maps until someone entered them, apparently just so they could then attach a really angry negative review stemming from a bad experience with a different company that was infringing my tenants trademark in order to steal customers. Good luck getting that kind of mess out of Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The interesting question here, to me anyway, is whether this whole debacle is a sign of a real problem at Apple, or whether it was just an "oops" (like the iPhone antenna).

The conventional wisdom (for the past decade or so) has been that Apple doesn't release "beta" products. Google and MS do, but not Apple. However, this is clearly such a product (they must have known it wasn't as good as what it was replacing).

So either Apple is changing (which would be understandable, but still interesting) or this was just an error in judgment somewhere in the chain of command (which itself would be a real change, at least from the Jobs era).

<comment><USER3> Or (c) you actually don't know as much about Apple as you think. Apple has routinely released 1.0 products that contained major flaws in one way or another.

It's just that Apple polishes those flaws so they aren't as glaring. And they've been doing this since the very beginning of Steve Jobs' second reign i.e. OSX.

<comment><USER9> _It's just that Apple polishes those flaws so they aren't as glaring._

Actually, I'd say one of the things is that Apple often release radically new things, so yes there are bugs, but it's so new and different, with much other advantages, that people overlook the bugs, or comparing it with existing offerings is an apples & oranges comparison.

In this case, maps like Apple are releasing are not new. We've had Google Maps et al. for years, so people have come to know what a maps app can do. Apple's offering is not radically different from Google Maps, there's nothing new here. It's completely fair to compare Apple's Maps with OSM or Google Maps, and in that comparison Apple is far behind/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's the thing, despite the relentless mockery and snappy tumblrs (which is pretty funny) the Maps app will get better, and probably quickly. Google Maps haven't always been awesome, where I lived about 2 years ago wouldn't show up on GMaps as it thought it was a building site.

Apple had a choice, no maps or some maps. I've been running the GM for a week or so now, and I can say over the course of a week the search and directions quality has improved noticeably in my area of England. I know it sucks they've crippled it but we can either complain about it, or report the errors and hope Apple iterates _fast_ on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Press "Report a Problem" just above the Print button and report the issue to get it fixed. This is a better response than all the whining. Google Maps had many, many issues not long ago and they did get things cleaned up. Same situation here. I am finding Apple Maps to be very solid, but I did notice a small issue, which I reported.

</comment><comment><USER12> One day Apple apologists will have to draw a line in the sand – does Apple care more about users, or more about ego-laden competitive angst? When Apple limits people – they do it for business, when they allow freedom they are doing it for the users.

Sorry, but ripping out a familiar, tried and true application and replacing it with one far inferior is not _for the users_. It would be different if they had been more diplomatic and said to Google, "we're doing our own stuff, so, maybe you want to launch at the same time so people won't be all pissed off with our version 1.0?". That would be _for the users_ and Apple could still have their own Maps and improve it beyond Google's capabilities within time. People would switch because it was better.

I have all Apple products, but as a fan I sit on the fence when the logic doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER13> The thing is, we just don't know what the circumstances were. If you want, you can assume that Apple was the one who pulled the plug on Google's Maps app, but the same thing happened with the YouTube app, and wouldn't you know, Google released a new YouTube app through the app store, _with ads_.

A version of the story, that is at least as likely as Apple taking away Maps.app (which could arguable be the most used non-telephone app on the iPhone) and replacing it with something that isn't as good - Google wanted to put ads in the app, something more than "sponsored pins" or whatever they had been doing (aka, display ads).

<comment><USER12> It's true to say that my version of the story is probably not accurate in any sense. My main point is that Apple has pulled the rug away from it's users. YouTube is a great point, too. I upgraded iOS and all of a sudden it was gone. No "oh, by the way you totally gotta download this app manually now if you want it".

If Google is making crazy demands, then they need to be outed. The company that does no evil shouldn't mind disclosing the parameters of their licensing. I can accept Apple's version of Maps with an explanation. As a paying user of their ecosystem, I deserve an answer as to why I have been given something inferior. Telling me to keep quiet, or wait for some milestone isn't good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's obvious it cannot get any worst than it is now.

This new map app was such a lame move that I cannot understand how did apple shipped the iOS6 with it, if you have a nice person you can call it an early Beta.

</comment><comment><USER15> What a lof of drama. Apple knows the maps they use now are inferior, that's obvious.

The point is: their contract with Google ended and they had to come up with _something_. I find it interesting how everybody is blaming Apple when the core issue is that Google retains a monopoly on cartography data. If you wanted to create anything with a map you would be on the mud too, since Google doesnt contribute to OSM.

What will probably happen is that Google will release their own map, with ads. Tge same situation of the YouTube app.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if we're starting to see the "absence of Steve" effect?

As in, "Well, it wasn't okay before, but we've fixed a lot of stuff, and ...", and the filters that would have prevented it from shipping are losing their effectiveness.

It's easy to be blind about the quality of your project, or get ship-fever and think that you /have/ to get it out the door by (insert date here) or the End of the World will occur.

Then again, it might have gone out anyway. Who knows?

<comment><USER17> Probably not, but "the absence of Steve" effect will be brought up for years to come any time Apple stumbles. Steve stumbled too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Duh? Couldn't exactly get worse now could it?

</comment><comment><USER19> "working hard to make the customer experience even better"

A fine example of Apple speech.

<comment><USER20> Seriously? Nine out of ten companies will turn "make it suck less" into "make it even better". Apple dropped the ball, Apple does some very questionable things, but please stop this idiotic bashing, whether it's targeting Apple, Microsoft, Google or even RIM. Just stop it.

<comment><USER19> How about a straight "we will fix it"? Maybe it is Marketing 101, but I found it noteworthy how consequently Apple executes it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess what else could they say.</comment>


The US Department of Defense isn't sure where Damascus is: statistical proof - <AUTHOR> http://usvsth3m.com/post/59778656173/the-us-department-of-defense-isnt-sure-where-damascus

<comment><USER2> I knew exactly where Damascus was, but they put me down as barely making it inside their 200 mile cutoff, at 163 miles away. I think this is more about bad UI design. I got a hand cursor rather than a pointer, making it difficult to be precise, and I never noticed the zoom logo in the upper left.

Plus, with only 65 DOD responses, how significant is a deviation of only 4.5% from the norm?

<comment><USER3> I cheated and still got it wrong -- it's too hard to click on their map (I doubt I was any more accurate at clicking on Arlington, VA where I live).

The Linux users doing so well against Mac users thing was interesting. I wonder if it has to do with how it displays in browsers. Also -- did the measure the delay in responses (e.g. how many people went and googled it before clicking?)

<comment> lhc- I used the mousewheel to zoom in, making it much easier. I still was 140miles away though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Their app sucks. A geographical map without the political boundaries makes little sense, and their zooming blows to a point that I'm surprised anyone bothers with it.

Show me how many US citizens can place Kansas City or Atlanta on the same map.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know it's tongue in cheek, but that's a pretty unfair headline.

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds of a situation years ago where a friend of mine downloaded a bunch of archive material from a certain security disclosure site while at work.

Within a day the site had proudly proclaimed that they were being "investigated" by his agency.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Texans were slightly worse than everyone else - 49.3% got it correct compared to the world average of 52.5%." Let's see the baysean credible intervals... sounds like that might not be statistically significant.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Mac users are much worse than Linux users .

I guess GNU/Linux users are smarter than everyone else across the world :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Within 100 miles: not as great as I'd like, but I do take some pride in the fact that I got inside Syria (my guess turned out to be right around Homs).

That said, is it really appropriate to be using a physical map to find political entities?

<comment><USER10> No, I couldn't even locate where I live on that map. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems kind of absurd. What are they doing, looking at an IP block belonging to the DoD and then laying claim that the DoD doesn't know their geography because a couple of people on their network did their quiz incorrectly? Give me a break.

</comment><comment><USER12> The unanswered meta question is why it should matter.

They went into the game knowing they were doing a meaningless internet quiz, so its going to be hard to abstract how intensely groups goof off when they're goofing off (or propensity to cheat in a meaningless internet quiz using an adjacent google maps tab), vs actual knowledge.

Oh well, result were reported to 3 sig figs using a whopping dozens of samples, so it must be meaningful, LOL. When you know the denominator is extremely small, you can play a math game trying to find small integer fractions that divide out to about .493 and so on.</comment>


It's time to not go to work.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thump.in/files/economictimes_awards_fullsize.jpg <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm a bit too cynical, I think the message is awesome, but what is his motivation?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some critical and inspiring words (print ad) from Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys Technologies, one of India's largest IT companies with offices in 22 countries and 104,850 professionals working for them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._R._Narayana_Murthy>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infosys_Technologies></comment>


German data protection authority puts fine on FB like button integration - <AUTHOR> https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/presse/20110819-facebook.htm

<comment><USER2> So for the German data protection authority it's fine that all european flight passenger records and all direct debit transactions are transferred to the US because of the "international war on terror", but Facebook's "like" button is a severe privacy issue?

How pathetic.

<comment><USER3> The title is wrong, this is just a local agency who is trying to enforce this. Nobody really cares if they are fine with whatever happens at EU level, in fact most people in Germany are currently wondering what the hell they are doing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> English translation: [https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/presse/20110819-facebook-e...](https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/presse/20110819-facebook- en.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Please be aware that this is a local authority, it does not apply to whole germany. Also, Thilo Weichert is not a politician, his job is to enforce standing data protection laws in Schleswig-Holstein.

While I do not support his interpretation of the law, I see how he came to his conclusions. And his job is to enforce these conclusions, so I am a bit split on that topic.

</comment><comment><USER5> To all the people saying this would affect only Schleswig-Holstein: Facebook is breaking German federal laws (BDSG, TMG) by not obeying to their requirements when handling personal data. This has nothing to do with Schleswig-Holstein.

The only interesting question is whether you as a German company or individual can be held responsible if you include facebook's like button on your website. Thilo Weichert says yes, but we'll have to see how the first judges will decide on this matter. If he is right then this is true for whole Germany.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a local politician, Thilo Weichert, trying to make a name for himself. I think everyone in germany except him are wondering what he is doing.

<comment><USER7> Reading the paper posted at [https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/facebook/facebook- ap-20110...](https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/facebook/facebook- ap-20110819.pdf) it seems if he finds a judge who understands it he could very well get an injunction prohibiting websites from deploying a working like button to german users. Failure to comply would result in a fine of 50.000€ under current law. Of course it would only be enforceable on websites hosted in germany. I don't agree with his assertion that he can apply the german TMG (TeleMedienGesetz) to Facebook since they have no hosting presence in Europe, as far as I know. And even then there would still be the trouble of enforcing it.

I actually think that would be a good thing, I don't like being tracked through the like button if I forgot to log out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to remark that this seems to only apply to the state of Schleswig- Holstein, or, according to Wikipedia, 2.8 million of ~80 million Germans.

<comment><USER7> It's the only state with an agency trying to enforce it right now.

The applicable laws are federal laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone cite exactly what laws FB is breaking and how they're breaking them? Is FB gathering data beyond the basics of URL and title? Is FB using traffic data gathered via the like button as claimed here (with citation please)?

<comment><USER7> <http://dejure.org/gesetze/BDSG/4a.html>

<http://dejure.org/gesetze/TMG/13.html>

<http://dejure.org/gesetze/TMG/15.html>

Seem to be the most important ones.

Source: [https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/facebook/facebook- ap-20110...](https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/facebook/facebook- ap-20110819.pdf)</comment></comment>


What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs? - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/02/05/what-happened-to-the-100000-hour-led-bulbs/ <comment><USER2> Lifetime isn't even my #1 concern with LED bulbs. It's strobing/flickering.

I film all the LED bulbs I buy in slow motion at 240 fps with an Android phone, and play the movie back on a PC with mplayer using the dot(".") key to move frame by frame. Here is a shot I made comparing 2 brands of LED bulbs: [https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ](https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ) (Edit: yeah you don't have to transfer to a PC, just playing back in slow motion on the phone will still show the effect quite well.)

It's amazing how I find this way that most (but not all!) of LED bulbs flicker with a strobe effect at 120 Hz (frames alternate between bright and dim) because they have crappy power supply designs that fail to smooth the A/C voltage. As a result they flash one time during the positive phase and one time during the negative phase of the 60 Hz A/C mains frequency.

I find this unacceptable. Although not too noticeable in normal conditions, a 120 Hz strobing light is definitely noticeable when your eyes move or track an object illuminated by the bulb.

In my experience, Philips lightbulbs are one of the few brands that don't have this flaw because they take care of converting AC to a stable DC voltage internally. In fact they are advertised as such: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CFRCGKC](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CFRCGKC) "COMFORTABLE LIGHT: Our products meet strict test criteria including flicker, strobe, glare and color rendition to ensure they meet EyeComfort requirements"

<comment><USER3> LED flicker could prove harmful or fatal if you work with anything that rotates or reciprocates.

The rotating / reciprocating mass may appear stationary at some RPM.

Just a reminder to only ever use incandescent or halogen lights around machinery you can touch while in operation: drills, lathes, mills, slotting machines, etc.

<comment><USER4> Just how likely is this to happen though, it would have to be the only light source and be flickering with exactly the same frequency as the machinery is traveling at (which i assume for most devices varies a lot).

Not saying it can't happen but it does seem stupidly hard to achieve.

<comment><USER5> Pretty common, about as common as the wagon wheel effect in 24fps film movies. In just the same way, the item can appear to stop, run slow, or run backwards, just as with film. No it does not have to be the only light source, just the nearest one to the machinery.

Fluorescent tubes are most noticeable, LEDs a little less. Tungsten or Halogen are the only sensible option for workpiece illumination.

<comment><USER6> Or, of course, just use a LED that properly smooths out the DC. It's not hard to do, and a quality LED manufacturer should get this right. The only excuse for flickering is a cheap LED that cuts cost for circuitry.

<comment><USER5> Oh I agree, but a surprising number of LED bulbs have some degree of flicker, even from those makes you might expect to do better. A purpose made work lamp should get it right though. Hopefully. Maybe.

For my hobby stuff, I just bought a couple of spare halogens that should see me out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've taken every single LED bulb that has failed on me to pieces and it's always the same failure mode. The heatsink compound isn't applied properly to the back of the LED board. The LEDs immediately in the gaps smoke out.

Alas this isn't a problem. If a lightbulb goes, Amazon send me a new one out now free of charge and tell me to throw the old one in the trash.

This is one manufacturer, prevalent on Amazon, the Long Life Lamp Company. Long Life my ass.

They have been replaced by Philips and Ikea LED bulbs now which the oldest are 5 years old now and still going strong.

Edit: one thing to note is the really cheap ones run pretty hot. They have 105 oC rated capacitors in them. If you look at the derating curves at the running temperature they are clearly designed to last just past a year.

<comment><USER8> Do not buy "bulbs," they are hopeless. Just buy a whole fixture with a big aluminium PCB and directly bonded chips.

<comment><USER9> My friend's bathroom light that is now a strobe light and the landlord has yet to replace because it requires an electrician to replace the whole fixture would like a word with you.

<comment><USER10> >requires an electrician to replace the whole fixture would like a word with you.

Kind of like how replacing a gas dryer "requires" a licensed plumber to make the gas connection or you're "required" to drive no faster than the speed limit at all times.

You're getting the runaround. If it was in a vacant apartment that they were showing to people it would already be fixed. If they cared about getting it done ASAP they'd either shell out the big bucks or ignore the law.

Edit: I think a lot of people on HN don't realize how simple swapping failed parts is. Swapping a failed water heater or electrical fixture (especially light fixtures) is a waste of the skilled tradesman's time and the customer's money. Even an incompetent landlord or maintenance service should be able to get it done.

<comment><USER11> yeah, darn those pesky laws around liability getting in the way of some good old-fashioned handiwork.

<comment><USER12> The law once mandated that you hire the services of a licensed electrician to replace a lightbulb. Imagine if the same laws where applied to tech. Need to update Microsoft office? No way arround it you need to hire the services of a licensed IT professional! You might get electrocuted in the process not being a professional. So it all makes sense.

<comment><USER13> Cite please. Was that ever really a law anywhere other than Victoria, Australia?

<comment><USER14> Actually it is the law at every trade show I've ever exhibited at, just about to the point where you can't plug in anything without a union electrician doing it. One can usually get away with plugging in a laptop, but certainly if you need anything more than the single standard 10A 2-outlet power drop, expect to pay and wait for the official electrician (and they will kick you out of the show for violations).

Edit: I've seen this at least in NY, Florida, California

<comment><USER15> > it is the law at every trade show I've ever exhibited at

I've read that you can't move chairs, etc, either. I understand it's part of the contracts between venues and unions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ... so what happened to the 100k hour LED bulbs?

It never answers the question. It has an anecdote about the author's own lamps that ran an estimated 15-20k hours with an advertised lifespan of 30k and have degraded to the point where they will replace them. That's n=1 and nowhere near 100k hours, or even 50k as the author mentions early-adopters will remember seeing advertised.

The article contains a lot of info, but does not actually answer the original questions it poses in the title and the second paragraph.

<comment><USER17> as with many such articles, the title is rhetorical and not intended to be answered.

<comment><USER18> Is it in this case. I presume that at one time there were actual bulbs which said 100,000 hours on the physical box. What specifically happened here? Do we have the same bulbs today and the marketing was wrong, or are bulbs today de- engineered?

<comment><USER19> I'm not positive on this one, but out seemed the article alluded to the idea that the 100,000hr life was measuring to LED failure and ignoring the possibility of driver failure, whereas now there are stricter standards both for measuring the potential of a driver to fail and measuring the lifetime of an LED as the point at which out drops by 30% rather than the point of total failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, engineering lead of a (outdoor) led Luminaire manufacturer here. And our sales director used to work for one of the biggest Asian light bulb OEMs. Happy to answer specific technical questions out there that this article triggered.

<comment><USER21> Why do so many of the bulbs run hot? Like so hot you can't hold them in your hand if they were on when you unscrewed them. Isn't this a lot of wasted energy?

<comment><USER20> All bulbs produce heat, both from the LEDs and the electronics. Incandescent bulbs were blazing hot, too, and they radiated IR on top everything else.

A high efficiency LED assembly is still producing on the order of 50% light and 50% heat.

<comment><USER21> High efficiency is only 50%? Isn't that terrible? Are LEDs really that bad?

<comment><USER22> Incandescents used to be 5% visible light at best, with 95% of energy turned into non-visible radiation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I also have been disappointed with LED "bulbs". They get too damn hot in recessed fixtures but NOT because of the LED's. It's all because of the shitty power converter embedded deep inside the bulb getting too hot and failing. The industry has necessarily had to retrofit to where incandescent bulbs are supposed to go.

I think that we'll start to see improvements in this area as people move away from "screw-in bulb" as the form factor and towards using external power converters delivering power to to LED fixtures that are just LED's and their heatsink + mounts.

<comment><USER24> Every so often, I come back to the "I should have DC power on demand in my house!" until I'm reminded that DC power loss over a distance can hurt bad, even 48VDC telecom power.

Perhaps USB-C PD might help? USB power adapters are compact and PD offers standard, useful high power DC. If the adapters become ubiquitous, you could see "USB-C lightbulbs".

<comment><USER25> Slight tangent but "in-building DC" exists, and is rapidly gaining popularity but not via the medium many assumed: Power Over Ethernet.

You can buy PoE LED light fixtures now, which are both powered and controlled over ethernet. You buy a single PoE switch, run some low voltage Cat6, and you can power an entire floor's worth of lighting.

EEPoE (Energy Efficient PoE) offers more efficient PoE too which claims up to 94% efficiency.

Definitely a space to watch. Particularly as the cost savings of running low voltage Ethernet cable compared to high voltage electrical cable (110v) are substantial.

<comment><USER26> _you can power an entire floor 's worth of lighting_

? Must be either very low current lighting or that's some pretty beefy Cat6. I think the average Cat6 cable is only 24 gauge and that won't carry a lot of current very far.

<comment><USER27> Star topology

<comment><USER21> Isn't this like saying you could light the world if you had a big enough switch and unlimited cable?

<comment><USER27> Where did you get that? GP is talking about lighting a floor in a building.

<comment><USER21> He's talking about running a separate cable for each and every bulb. It's a wasteful solution compared to running all of the lights off of a single circuit (or limited number of circuits) like a normal building.

<comment><USER25> No I wasn't. PoE+ can support half a dozen LED panels off of a single Cat6 run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised that there is no mention in the article of "filament led" bulbs (and very little mention in the comments): [https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/led-filament- bu...](https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/led-filament-bulbs). They are based on the simple idea of stacking enough small LED's that they can run on mains voltage. You still need a rectifier to go from AC to DC, and a capacitor for smoothing, but no voltage conversion means there are fewer parts to fail. And multiple smaller LED's makes the heat dissipation much easier, so they tend to run cool.

I've been using them for a couple years, and think they are so much better than the previous generations of CFL's and heat sink LED's that would quickly fail, especially in enclosed fixtures. I'm buying cheap ones from Amazon, and occasionally I get early failures, but lifespan after initial burn in has been excellent. Like others, I often wonder why they haven't taken over the market: [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-haven_t-filament- led-b...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-haven_t-filament-led-bulbs- taken-over-the-market/)

<comment><USER29> These result, generally, in a 120Hz flicker, which some people are sensitive to.

<comment><USER30> There's no reason they can't smooth out the power like other lamps (except space). The linked article mention manufacturers already doing this in 2014, surely you'll find flicker-free versions. These are all over home improvement shops over here.

<comment><USER29> Doing so requires bigger and better capacitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My father in law is a general contractor and religiously keeps all his LED bulb receipts. If anything goes out before the listed hours he returns it to HomeDepot. He hasn't had any issue so far including some of the older bulbs described in the article.

<comment><USER32> Pro tip: Home Depot recently started to allow receipts to be pulled up and items to be returned with just a credit card. Ikea does this too if you always scan your Family Card.

<comment><USER33> > if you always scan your Family Card

i.e., if you agree to be tracked.

<comment><USER34> I mean in this case you literally want them to track your purchases so that you can return defective bulbs without keeping the receipts.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but not for any other purpose, and that's what GP means.

It's like GPS tracking: I track every trip I make with OsmAnd's tracking feature automatically when it starts routing. But I wouldn't trust Google Maps to do the same with their location history feature. Their usage of the data isn't limited to what's in my best interest, so I'll collect it myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This makes me wonder if we shouldn't have an AC _and_ DC circuits in the house. I mean, it could be all AC coming in, but at the box it splits into (at least) two different circuits (an AC one and a DC one).

AC circuit would still be used for things that have motors, but everything else uses DC.

Imagine how simple LED lighting could be on a DC circuit. Just an LED and resistor.

I only took a few electrical engineering classes so correct me if this is a bad idea.

<comment><USER36> To convert from AC to DC you need a transformer and a rectifier and there will be energy loss during the conversion.

<comment><USER35> Right, but my question is would it be better to do the conversion once for the entire house or to make every single device bundle in its own transformer and rectifier as we are currently doing?

<comment><USER36> I was not clear. The point I was trying to make was that transformers are not perfect in the conversion even when there is no load there is some power loss in the form of heat. Not sure if it is a real problem or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As others have mentioned, it seems all backwards that each bulb is converting AC/DC internally, and does not appear to have much in the way of heat dissipation for the converter or the LED chip(s).

I've built a lot of LED lighting setups, and even with the most efficient chips and converters, extremely underdriven, the footprint required to run efficiently and dissipate heat in a way that will let them last 10-20 years is an order of magnitude larger than what would fit in a bulb.

<comment><USER38> I've thought about the idea of wiring my entire house with DC for the lighting parts, for exactly this reason. But the fact that I'd have to sell my house one day stops me.

<comment><USER39> I've built a custom LED-lighting setup in my living room. There is one 10cm × 4cm × 30cm AC/DC transformer (with its jet-intake-like 4cm fan replaced with a quiet 8cm fan intended for gaming rigs) that supplies 12V from a central location, passing through a panel of MOSFETs driven by a PCA9685 controlled by a Raspberry Pi, onwards to the custom armatures in the ceiling. I can set it to all the colours of the rainbow (RGBWW LEDs), but the warm-white LEDs mean I can mix anything from a very low-key ambient amber evening lighting to a brighter and colder light useful for doing things that require, well, light.

I've only done this in the living room as an experiment, and have no intention of doing this anywhere else exactly because of the maintenance overhead and the breaking with convention.

> But the fact that I'd have to sell my house one day stops me.

"Here. It works now. Here is a manual that describes how it works, here is a box of spare parts. You are welcome to rip it all out and replace it with conventional gear. There is no warrantee on this thing, even though it's awesome."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My experience has been totally positive, although limited to an early release of the full color Philips Hue bulbs which are like $50/each.

The Hue app kinda sucks but those bulbs have been going strong for 4-5 years. No failures of course, and one bulb that was left outside (covered) in NYC and always on for almost two years. No issues at all, and runs very cool.

<comment><USER41> Economically it's a disaster but technically Hue lights are a wonder. Every bulb is a Hue @ my house. I can make it a 80's Miami nightclub or make the rooms feel bigger with bright light. It's nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> From the article -- _" The new $5 BR30 LED bulbs I just installed in the kitchen are amazingly bright and crisp: tests with a lux meter show the illuminance is more than 60% higher. Plus, they'll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced."_

This is what amazes me, I've been an early adopter of LED bulbs (Google even gave out a bunch at one time to employees) and have seen my share of failures, from color shift, to brightness degradation, to controller failure. That said, they nearly always cost less to operate than the previous incandescent lamps they replaced.

When the LED 'tubes' which replace fluorescent bulbs became cost effective I replaced all the bulbs in my garage. And when a credible can light with acceptable dimming came out I replaced all of the recessed lighting in the family room and living room. I now don't have a single incandescent lamp in the house and it has reduced by monthly energy by anywhere from 35 to 55 KWhr per month. That represents about a $50 a year in energy cost savings. The cost has come down to the point where the bulbs pay for themselves well within their lifetime range (my experience over a population of 62 different bulbs has been 7.5 years MTTF).

That said, I haven't been as diligent in figuring out exactly why a bulb has died, if it is just the power supply I expect they could be resurrected less expensively than a new bulb, caveat the reassembly of the light diffuser bulb.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is pretty annoying as I replaced every bulb in my house with LED under the assumption that they would last at least a decade. I didn't even think to check a powered-on time rating.

Not that using incandescent bulbs is a good option anymore anyway.

<comment><USER44> Curious, have you noticed any sleep issues, after you've switched to LED?

<comment><USER43> No, but all my LED bulbs give off a yellow light instead of a white light.

<comment><USER45> As I understand it, even though LED output is yellow, the primary light range emitted is blue. No idea if this study [1] is good, but the abstract explains it a bit.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I once worked for an offshoot of Sunfor - a chemical company making LED phosphors.

The first driverless, flicker free LEDs on the market were their invention. Basic idea is that if you fine tune phosphor components, and their ratios, you can make a direct 120hz AC driven LED with close to no visible flicker for as long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins

<comment><USER46> > as long as your output colour temperature is in between 5500 to 6000 Kelvins

color temperature is really important. I despise 3300K+ headlights and bulbs.

Philips has a dimmable LED bulb where the temperature varies between 2200K and 2700K. I've also found standard 2200K bulbs. But mostly I prefer using single- color red orange and yellow bulbs.

My understanding is that white LEDs are basically blue/ultraviolet LEDs with phosphors to knock down the energy level of the photons. Do you have any links about the phosphor components used for different color outputs?

<comment><USER8> No specifics, they don't get public about the tech besides bare minimum:

[http://xlgy.scnyw.com/product/powder.html](http://xlgy.scnyw.com/product/powder.html)

[http://en.scnyw.com/About/Affiliates/4.html](http://en.scnyw.com/About/Affiliates/4.html) [http://xlgy.scnyw.com](http://xlgy.scnyw.com)

They were bought and sold like 10 times over since I left them in 2013

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I was an early adopter thinking it would save a bunch of money in the long run. I went all Cree and happened to have a few Philips. The Philips are still standing tall, one burned out of the two after like 7 years. However there's these eco incandescent lights I installed in my parent's bathroom that are connected to a standard fixture powered trough one of the Lutron Maestro dimmer switches. Those bulbs have never failed possibly going on 8 years+. I'm pretty convinced that their fade in fade out dimming when you turn on/off the switch makes a graceful ramp of current that the filament never gets shocked to suffer rapid thermal expansion that eventually fails the bulb.

Cree has a good 10 year warranty though, I've sent in boxes of dead bulbs to them. However many substitutes are dying out too and they're included in many of the replacements that are going back for my next batch.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have some electronics with LED displays/indicators that have been on 24/7 for over 30 years, or 256k hours, and haven't failed. The difference between those and the ones in bulb replacements is that the latter are driven much harder, to the point that they dissipate a lot of heat. Indicator/display LEDs don't get hot or even noticeably above ambient.

Thus it seems that, just like with incandescent bulbs, LEDs will last practically forever if they're run dimly. The difference is that LEDs are actually _more_ efficient at lower current densities, where they're converting more of their input power to light instead of heat, but cost considerations has lead to typical bulbs driving them at much higher currents for more brightness but correspondingly less life and efficiency. They're still far more efficient than incandescents, so I guess that's what counts...

</comment><comment><USER49> I toured a house looking to buy, 20 years ago. The old lady owner said "The light bulb over the door is going with me! I've had it 20 years and counting." It was a weird antique-looking thing with lots of wires and stuff in the clear glass bulb. Dim as hell. But 20 years! They don't make them like they used to.

<comment><USER50> The expected life of incandescent bulbs follows power laws with pretty big exponents: w.r.t. intensity its to the third power, w.r.t. voltage to the sixteenth power. So if you e.g. put a 230 V bulb on 110 V power, it will be dim as hell, but boi will it last!

<comment><USER21> So what this is saying is that light bulb companies engineered their bulbs to need regular replacement and we could have had much much longer lifespans with somewhat dimmer bulbs?

<comment><USER51> But then the efficiency (light output per watt of power used) would be quite bad, so we'd be wasting enormous amounts of power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> New Yorker:'LED Quandry' (2016)[https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d- quanda...](https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quandary-why- theres-no-such-thing-as-built-to-last)

"A light bulb at a fire station in Livermore, California, has been on almost continuously since 1901. In 2015 it was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's longest-burning bulb.... Giles Slade, in his book "Made to Break," traces the term "planned obsolescence" to a 1932 pamphlet, circulated in New York, titled 'Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence'.... the lamps market will bring in an estimated thirty-eight billion dollars this year, L.E.D.-bulb makers are already reacting to the spectre of declining sales."

<comment><USER53> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why are they putting electrolytic capacitors in these light bulbs? The SM2082D datasheet specifically calls for an electrolytic cap, but wouldn't a power ceramic cap last longer? 4.7uF is doable with ceramics. Is it just a really minor cost thing, and hoping the bulb fails so you have to buy a new one?

<comment><USER55> Could be the driver is designed for a specific range of equivalent series resistance of the capacitor. High ESR could help with peak current and EMC.

<comment><USER54> You have to add a resistor across the cap anyway according to the wiring diagram. I think dfox is probably right that it's a voltage rating thing.

<comment><USER55> That's a bleed resistor to discharge the capacitor when turning off, else it could keep dangerous charge for a long time.

ESR limits current inrush into the capacitor, with ceramic caps you would need some additional current limiting.

Voltage should not be that much of a problem, but there may be other issues with ceramic caps (like cracking due to thermal stress, voltage dependent capacity, microphoning, ...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I was recently excited to find an "award winning" Ikea Riggad LED lamp on the "take for free" shelf by the recycling area of my building.

Plugged it in, did not work. Tried dismantling it with the help of these photos — [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfZ- vwau8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfZ-vwau8c) — but some screw sockets seemed damaged and the screws would not come off. I could not see anything wrong with cables or soldering as far as I got, so I wonder if the LED or circuit board is the problem.

Good design needs to consider sustainability, longevity and ease-of- maintenance in addition to how something works and looks.

</comment><comment><USER57> The same could be said about every product...

Appliances back in the days could last decades. Now you're lucky if they don't break in a few years.

What do they say about the best type of customer? The best customer is a repeat customer :)

<comment><USER58> It says more that customers overwhelmingly prefer cheap products.

A 1962 washing machine was 184.95 [1] ($1523.97 today) and a 1959 model was $209.95 [2] ($1729.97 today); which are both more expensive than all but the highest end front loader currently at Best Buy. The vast majority of top loaders are in the $500-700 range, top loaders $800-1000. There simply isn't much market for $2000 machines that will last decades.

It's a similar story for almost all home appliances I've looked at.

1) [http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60selectrical.html](http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/60selectrical.html)

2) [http://www.aei.org/publication/appliance- shopping-1959-vs-20...](http://www.aei.org/publication/appliance- shopping-1959-vs-2012/)

<comment><USER59> > The vast majority of top loaders are in the $500-700 range, top loaders > $800-1000. There simply isn't much market for $2000 machines that will last > decades.

Those "high end" washing machines will also fail in the same time range that the low end ones will.

There is a market for them, but it will remain unfulfilled because the manufacturers make more money in the short term with the low-reliability ones.

<comment><USER21> I've never seen a washing machine manufacturer put their money where their mouth is with a $2000 machine with a 20 year comprehensive warranty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> And the confusion really starts when you hook up LED bulbs to a legacy dimmer.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's no problem to get 50,000 hour LED bulb but you going to pay $10+ for each one. Mainly due to the metal heat sink. American companies are still machining blocks of metal. The Chinese adapted other heat sink technologies to make thinner heat sink fins, when combined do the same with less materials. I'm pretty sure the next leap will come from LCD scale LEDs combined into bigger arrays which require even less for cooling since they can be printed onto various materials.

</comment><comment><USER62> Well I had only one LED bulb fail me in 10 years. And not having a mercury vial in each roof (CFLs) is a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER63> I have another issue with LEDs, I am designing an indoor device that use solar panel for recharge, and if I put my current solar panel (IXYS panel) under a LED vs under an halogen light, which are both similar in light intensity "to the eyes", I have like 100 times less energy on my panel under the LED.

I just discovered that a few days ago because I was using a LED maglight to test my panel and realized I had incredibly small power output with it. Now I am building a small circuit to measure and datalog the power output of different solar panels under different type of artificial lights (vs having to use the multimeter + oscilloscope which is not very portal outside my labs).

If you designed solar powered device for indoor use and have heard of this issue, I'm very interested.

</comment><comment><USER64> Article does not so much as mention Philips which are the gold standard here. The off brands he's looking at are the problem. Cree is a fine brand for LED components but not for the entire bulb assembly in my experience.

</comment><comment><USER65> > _Plus, they'll more than pay for themselves in electricity savings compared > to the old, inefficient LED bulbs they replaced._

Sure, eventually, but without further context this obsession with light bulbs always sounds a little bit penny wise and pound foolish to me.

The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and cooking is done with gas.

<comment><USER66> > The relative cost of lighting on the monthly electricity bill is tiny so > those savings are pretty small. Getting a more efficient fridge, washing > machine, TV or (in our profession) computer typically has a much bigger > effect on electricity expenses. And that is assuming your heating and > cooking is done with gas.

The switch from using tiny space heaters for light to using LEDs that consume a tenth of the power was a huge savings. It only takes a few 100w bulbs to equal or exceed the energy consumption of a modest desktop computer.

<comment><USER67> This is correct.

I just thought that "everybody" has switched to CFLs 10 years ago, when they became decent.

<comment><USER68> Yeah, I switched a few bulbs to CFLs 10 years ago when they "became decent", and then switched them out every 6 months (i.e. when they burned out) until LEDs "became decent"... Haven't had as much trouble with LEDs as CFLs, but I'm definitely not paying $10+/bulb like I did with CFLs.

<comment><USER67> > definitely not paying $10+/bulb

Maybe you should. I mean, the cheapest option is rarely the most durable or performant. See Vimes' Boots Theory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio- economic_unfairness)

<comment><USER68> those $10 CFLs burned out almost as quickly as I could replace them. Kinda spoiled me on the whole "spend more for something that will last longer" theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> My personal biggest problem with LED bulbs is that my entire (100 year old) home is wired with neutral free light wiring and a lot of 3-way switches. This makes using dimmers very hard and most do not support 3-way and many will not work with LEDs and no neutral wire. Some do - Lutron Caseta makes a nice neutral free dimmer that works on many of my bulbs - but others don't and I then just use high efficiency incandescents. Shame. Maybe there is a good "neutral free dimmable LED" that allows reasonable leakage current so the dimmer can work.

<comment><USER30> There are many recent LED models that have built-in dimming, you step through three or four brightness levels by flicking the switch on and off.

Or, switch entirely to Philips/Ikea smart bulbs which are very affordable now. I think dimmers as a wall-mounted fixture will be on the way out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Personally I love the heat that an incondecent bulb emits, I can actually keep my hands warm on my keyboard while lowering my room heat. 75 watt bulb with heat versus a 3000 watt space heater.

<comment><USER71> Depending on where you live, the energy "inefficiency" of a light bulb is no such thing.

In the UK, for example, during winter (and spring and autumn) the heating is appreciated! However, it is 2-3x more costly than using gas central heating. (However however something something whole house vs room-specific heating.)

In the summer, it's a complete waste though.

Directed infrared heating panels may be the most efficient because they do what you describe - heat you up directly, rather than heat the air in the room.

<comment><USER72> It's also heating the ceiling, which will reduce the efficiency further.

It's a straightforward issue of separation of concerns, there are some occasions where you want heating and lighting always tied together, but they are niche. Almost everywhere in the world you have large periods of the day or year when you want lighting without heat.

<comment><USER70> I use a desk lamp so It's really close to me and I get both the light and heat and I swap the bulb out for an LED during summer.

<comment><USER72> Ah, I see, that's a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> One potential solution would be to standardize the driver and lighter assemblies and allow them to be independently replaced. You could even then have lamps with a single large driver which connects to many small lighter assemblies without duplicated effort. Of course, that standardiZation process could take a very long time and have a wide variety of form factors, output levels, etc... which is sort of where we are anyway with light fixtures and bulbs today!

</comment><comment><USER73> Reading about bulbs lead me on a journey and I somehow stumbled upon limelights (aka oxyhydrogen bulbs), which was the original theater lighting 'bulbs'. Basically, you can direct a torch over a block of lime (or a cinder- block I guess) and it will become extremely bright.

Could only find one video of the effect: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheumkzDslA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wheumkzDslA)

</comment><comment><USER74> As pointed out in the article the LEDs just fade away. This means that if you define "lifetime", you also need to define how much you can lose brightness to still considered it to be alive.

Could it be that with the initial 100k LEDs the definition was different than with current ones? As mentioned, the industry is now using the 70% of brightness as the limit. Since such figure was probably not defined early on, maybe the vendors put the limit much lower.

</comment><comment><USER75> The same thing that happened to CFLs, they got cheap.

The CFLs I bought in the mid 90s lasted for years and years. Now they are practically pre-burned-out for your convenience.

</comment><comment><USER76> So it seems like part of this answer could be that the age statement could have changed even if the bulbs did not. After a dozen or so years on the market they have learned to promise less.

The article goes into how the color and brightness degrades naturally over time, so it may also make sense that they counting more of that behavior as failures rather than the traditional "burn out".

</comment><comment><USER77> What's the short answer?

<comment><USER8> The AC-DC or DC-DC converter will likely die long before LED's junction. Primary failure mode is capacitors "drifting" and closing the mosfet inside the buck converter too early.

This is why I tell people to buy simple "driverless" LED bulbs. A shitty constant current driver is worse than not having it at all.

<comment><USER78> But don't they flicker a LOT?

<comment><USER8> Ones that are properly designed for "direct drive" do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> We know how to make incandescent bulbs that last this long, that is not the problem... Companies just make more money this way.

</comment><comment><USER80> Unless you need to get there by boat, it's "lighting aisle", not "lighting isle".

</comment><comment><USER81> Cree's 1st generation LED bulbs are one of the worst purchases that I've made. I outfitted my entire house with them, but they started dropping like flies. The failure rate was around 50% and the cost of shipping back a bulb under warranty was the same as buying a new one.

</comment><comment><USER82> I personally haven't have a LED bulb last 2 years yet, most last 3-6 months. I get them from dollar stores, Walmart, and Ikea. Maybe there is some magical lighting store that sells good ones, but I think there are 3 burnt out ones in various places in my house as I type this.

</comment><comment><USER83> There is a youtube channel that does detailed led bulb teardowns, for those who would like more of this sort of info. [https://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate](https://www.youtube.com/user/electronupdate)

</comment><comment><USER84> Some fun reading on the topic of long-living light bulbs: [https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html](https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html)

Edit: the source is not mentioned anywhere. This is an excerpt from Gravity's Rainbow.

</comment><comment><USER85> I bought a bunch of the Cree LED bulbs from HD when they first came out, and I've had probably 6-8 of them fail into what I call "disco strobe" mode.

Eventually I'll replace the rest of them as they fail with whatever cheap store brand LED bulbs I can get.

</comment><comment><USER86> The biggest advantage of LED over fluro for me is light quality. High quality LEDs can put out a pretty nice spectrum which for me makes them ideal to replace halogens or incandescent. I use 100W (actual) LED flood lights for my loft and I love them.

</comment><comment><USER87> Two of my Cree bulbs failed a couple months from each other about five years into a 22-year advertised life. I realized it wasn't worth it to pay to ship them the bulbs for replacement, so I just decided not to buy more Cree bulbs.

</comment><comment><USER88> Three years in on a bunch of very cheap Ikea GU10 LED bulbs, haven't seen any failures yet. Though one of them occasionally likes to buzz softly at random times.

The fittings are open-backed (not ceiling-recessed) which probably helps.

</comment><comment><USER89> First generation "high power" LED (I have a bunch with E27 socket) had a small cooling fan... If you ever owned a laptop for a while, you know what happens to small fans after a (admittedly long) while.

</comment><comment><USER90> In some of the fixtures in my house, I've thought of installing small fans running at low speed (resistor in series with the fan slows it down) to stir the air and help cool the lamp.

</comment><comment><USER91> Bad LED bulbs, like bad headphones, or TVs that emit high pitched whine, brought to you by undiscerning people with broken senses who nevertheless insist you're crazy.

</comment><comment><USER92> Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, has a plotline involving hunting for a rogue lightbulb that has lasted too long.

</comment><comment><USER93> cf. Byron the Bulb in Thomas Pynchon's book Gravity's Rainbow [http://lukedanger.blogspot.com/2009/02/story-of-byron- bulb.h...](http://lukedanger.blogspot.com/2009/02/story-of-byron-bulb.html)

</comment><comment><USER94> Somewhat related, I am collaborating with someone on building an indoor aquaponics system, and he's ready to pick out LED lights. We both are really confused by all the acronyms (PAR, PPF, PPFD, etc). Does anyone have a good, ELI5 (or ELINP: Explain Like I'm a Normal Person) article on what to look for?

</comment><comment><USER95> A: There is no such thing.

In pursuit of cost savings, we made a simple product 100x more complex.

</comment><comment><USER96> LED bulbs are bad for us. Better to use low-voltage incandescent halogen lights.

</comment><comment><USER97> Life pro tip. Sharpie the date on your bulbs the day you install them.

</comment><comment><USER68> And why does every single LED stoplight I see have large segments of unlit LEDs?

Seems like some municipalities got sold a pile of crap. At least they work even with the missing lights, but who knows how often they are having to replace those?

<comment><USER98> Funny... I've never noticed that. Maybe your municipality picked the wrong vendor?

<comment><USER21> Or he lives in a town where people regularly shoot the stoplights.

<comment><USER68> maybe... looks like some sort of passive failure to me though. I haven't noticed any bullet holes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> They didn't come with 100000 hour power supplies.

All the failures I've torn down over the years had failed power supplies and perfectly functional LED's. I've got a drawer full of the for little projects.

</comment><comment><USER100> Most of mine have lasted about a year. So a few times longer than incandescent, sure, but cost a lot more. And I am sure the energy cost of manufacturing them (including mining for rare earth minerals) is so greatly more that over their lifetime they use more energy than incandescents which were made of simpler materials.

</comment><comment><USER101> I bought some G9 bulbs, and they are not performing like the halogens... It doesn't give me the full RGB like halogens and my house looks pale white(lacks red) instead of full color.

I might go back, I do not like the look of my house, and I find myself turning on my living room lights AND dining room lights. The brightness wasn't there.

There is massive improvement to be made on LEDs still.

<comment><USER102> If you're getting a pale white, "operating room" color - look into "warm white" (instead of cool white or "sunlight") LED bulbs. I've found them to be the closest to an incandescent you can get. Be aware, though, that some "warm white" bulbs are toward the "cooler" end of the range and look more white; you'll need to try a few brands to find the color temp you like.

<comment><USER101> Yeah the G9s we bought had nothing labeled. Going to give amazon a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Seems like a capitalistic society will never get away from products with built-in planned obsolescence. It's all about the profits. Buy and replace consumers...

There's a great documentary on planned obsolescence for those that haven't seen it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU)</comment>


Hans – IP over ICMP - <AUTHOR> http://code.gerade.org/hans/

<comment><USER2> Now we have to filter ICMP packets too?

Run to the hills!

<comment><USER3> And DNS: [http://code.kryo.se/iodine/](http://code.kryo.se/iodine/)

It even works using a "complacent" recursive resolver, without direct connection.</comment></comment>


Small Talk: Cynical view on why the common past time is a a waste of time - <AUTHOR> http://thetooth.co.uk/lifestyle/small-talk/ <comment><USER2> Possible remedy: [http://thetylerhayes.com/2010/02/24/video-talk-like-you- like...](http://thetylerhayes.com/2010/02/24/video-talk-like-you-like-you- know-care/)

<comment><USER3> Ditto. Glad you like it.

EDIT: Here's a direct Youtube link (to the actual performance, not the "flying typography" video in my original blog post): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4></comment></comment>


Framework fatigue: How many frameworks do I need to know? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeviathon.com/2010/12/framework-fatigue-how-many-frameworks.html

<comment><USER2> _"When did getting a job become more about knowing a specific framework at not being an expert on the Java language"_

When did getting a job become more about knowing a specific language and not being a good programmer?

<comment><USER3> When did getting a job become more about programming and not being a good problem solver?

<comment><USER4> When you already know that the problems you're trying to solve require programming, you might as well narrow your search for efficiency.

If you don't know that your problem requires programming, and you put out an ad for a 'problem solver', the chance that you'll actually hire someone who knows programming, and recognizes that the best way to solve the particular program is programming, are slim to none.

<comment><USER5> "Expert in efficiency analysis, human factors, and process modeling and automation." Your problem might best be solved with programming, building a (human or robotic) assembly line, or making a bunch of individuals _want_ to solve little bits of it semi-manually (reCAPTCHA, freerice, Mechanical Turk); really, what everyone wants is someone who knows which kind of solution a given problem calls for, and can then get it done, regardless of solution space. NASA calls these "systems engineers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It doesn't matter what language a developer knows, they are all similar._

All procedural langs are pretty much the same. Functional langs are significantly different. Skill with applying OO concepts translates across languages pretty well, so long as you are cognizant of little differences which cause impedance mismatch. (Static method inheritance in Java vs. class methods in Smalltalk/Ruby.)

 _How many frameworks do I need to know?_

One fewer than will fatigue you!

<comment><USER7> I _still_ don't get Factor and I have looked at it several times now. The last time all I learned was that it runs on a Squeak VM. One day....

<comment><USER8> I don't believe Factor ever ran on Squeak. It generates its own native code.

<comment><USER7> I could've sworn I saw the mouse logo at the top left corner of my window when I fired it up. I guess that's one less thing I know about Factor after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of a recent conversation I recently had with a company in my area. They wanted to hire a PHP developer, I sent them my resume which included 10+ years of PHP experience as well as working with many different frameworks. However I was not not offered the job since I had not worked with Drupal for at least 2 to 3 years.

Hiring managers and head hunters need to take note of this article.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, sometimes proficiency in some framework or CMS or vertical skill area _does_ matter a lot more than you think it does. Remember now, the problem isn't that they get candidates who don't know $whatever_niche_topic, it's that they "don't know what they don't know", i.e. they have no inkling that the general "depth of terrain" in that area is much greater than what they were able to size up from their casual acquaintance with it... or that they _think_ they can hit the ground running on a project that a serious heavy hitter with 5-10 years experience in that "niche" area been working on, when of course they can't.

That said, if your interviewers are doing their jobs properly, they should be able to filter for (or simply ask about) that level of skill awareness during the phone screen.

More likely, when you get told _post-interview_ that "we need someone with more experience in X" it's usually a polite way of saying that they just weren't, you know, _all the into you_ , and are trying to save face on both sides by pointing to something dry and objective, rather than things that actually matter. Like you know, the fact that you were underdressed (or overdressed), all those awkward silences you had with that second or third guy you interviewed with (remember, the one who announced his presence in the room by slouching in a chair and saying "I'm hungover"), or that you seemed to exhibit a slight latency in your recognizing some technical term that's common coin in the circles they run in (and so therefore, you just don't have enough chest hair), etc.

<comment><USER10> _all the into you_ => _all that into you_ , of course

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "A talented developer has an interpreter and compiler in his head and thinks in pseudo-code anyway."

So true, if you think this way, you will adjust to almost all OO languages very quickly. Also it's always good as a developer not to favor only one language and/or one framework. Don't get me wrong, I don't say you should be Jack of all trades master of none, it's good to learn and 'master' a chosen language or framework, but during the learning you should not be 'blind' towards the other options and not have any interest in them.

</comment><comment><USER12> My partner and I are both programmers and I was recently tasked to hire our first employee.

We have a certain ideal environment in mind that we would like to create for other programmers. In short, the plan is to hire the right people, trust them with their responsibilities and respect their freedom, time and space. We rely on our own past experience and other niceties straight from Peopleware. Some of the key criteria we want to go for are curiosity and interest in programming (what have you done in the past, what do you like about it, what's your next move, etc), problem solving ability (puzzle, maths, etc), autonomy (do you teach yourself, can you improvise, etc). Language choice and experience give some weight, but are not our primary interest.

We believe it might provide the right ingredients for a well balanced culture within our team.

But that's only one side of the coin. Somethings can't be ignored and during my exercise in finding the ideal hiring process for programmers, I was made aware of some legitimate concerns by HR people from various types of companies: \- training someone involves losing money with the promise of seeing a diamond in a rough blossom into a jewel. Can you afford it? \- programmers, especially Y generation, can be very unstable. You hire someone today and there's no guarantee that he'll be with you 6 months from now. But in your mind, you're grooming him for at least the next 3 or 4 years. \- there are deadlines. sometimes you need somone right here and now that can land with wheels running. That means having to pass over some really nice resumes. \- you have a small team and lots of work. Each needs to pull their own weight, there's no time holding newbies' hands.

In my opinion, the ideal candidate for your company depends of your short and long term goals with him/her. If you're a startup, with only one product with dependencies on a framework and other tools that aren't likely to change much in the next couple of years, it makes much sense to hire someone already up to speed with said tools, even more so if you don't have the budget to train someone. If on the other hand you provide various services likely to span multiple horizons, betting on people that have the general ability to grasp this stuff is more appropriate. If you're google you can get the best from both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER13> Everything old is new again. Joel Spolsky's Lord Palmerston on Programming, from 2002:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LordPalmerston.html>

<comment><USER11> I knew I've heard of Joel Spolsky, and when I opened the post I knew why, he wrote one of the best introductions to Mercurial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Basing technology decisions (or an argument in a blog post about making technology decisions) based on something Kevin Rose said is just a bad idea.

The bit about "but after placing the individuals, he decided to branch out to other technologies and the developers he hired, weren't able to make the transition" is just laughable.

</comment><comment><USER15> I completely agree with Chris's assertion that it's better to hire for talent than knowledge of highly specific frameworks. Things are going to change anyway, so ability to learn quickly is far more important.

However, I only wish his last statement were true, that "applying that to a language or framework is just a matter of figuring out the syntax...and that is the easy part".

I guess it depends on how you define easy, but if this were true, I wouldn't have framework fatigue. I suppose it's easier to learn spring MVC if you already know Struts2, but for me (I should only speak for myself here), it actually isn't easy. Ditto for ant to maven, or SVN to git. You're in far better shape if you already know something related, but you're far from in the clear.

Reality is, it takes (me) a long time to get truly competent in a framework. It can take months to get competent, and it can take well over a year to really master it, and that's when you _have_ a related background.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny. The only framework I've been heavily drilled on is Java Concurrency, oh and they make sure you know JUnit well enough to write a test case (erm a few method calls and a bunch of autocompletion from the editor?)

Everything else is: Do you know spring? What is IOC? Ok good enough. Do you know Hybernate? What is ORM?

Guess you've been looking for the wrong job or you've been giving the job search to the wrong person. If at an interview someone just whips out "Lets get into the nitty gritty details of your struts2 knowledge" I would just leave, unless I don't have food at home and no money to pay for more.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two: .NET for server-side and jQuery for client-side.</comment>


Show HN: Helpninja Is Live on Producthunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/helpninja <comment><AUTHOR> Our mission is to get your whole team to support your customers without worrying about the agent fee. It's simple as Gmail but for teams. Have your whole team on support for free! Feel feel to try it out and looking forward to all your feedback :)</comment>


Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87 - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html <comment><USER3> I vehemently disagreed with Zinn when I tried reading "A People's History" a few years ago, but I was much more naive then. I have realized that corruption is the norm, and that when people fight back, through organized labor or through revolution, there's usually a good reason for it.

I'm even more skeptical that communism would magically fix the wrongs Zinn railed against, for the same reasons democracy hasn't fixed it. But I do have to say, that I am glad someone like Zinn wrote prolifically to stand up for the little guy, for us. RIP.

<comment><USER4> I never got the impression from his writings that communism was the alternative he was advocating.

<comment><USER5> I could only stomach the first 10 pages, and quit. But that little peak certainly made me think of socialism.

And I don't see how socialism is looking out for the little guy, either. To look out for individuals you need a liberal (in the classical sense) philosophy of individual liberty. Socialism is built on a philosophy of collectivism, doing what's best for the community as a whole ("the needs of the many exceed the needs of the few, or the one"). The rhetoric about helping the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin and Mao find it easiest to use to hoodwink the masses.

<comment> b-man _I could only stomach the first 10 pages, and quit. But that little peak certainly made me think of socialism._

10 pages is enough to link the guy to socialism? really?

 _The rhetoric about helping the little guy is just what monsters like Lenin and Mao find it easiest to use to hoodwink the masses._

Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment. This is just a red shirted example of Godwin's law.

<comment><USER5> _10 pages is enough to link the guy to socialism? really?_

Maybe not to start a conversation. But when chiming in to support someone else's claim, and with the clear caveat, then yes, I think it's perfectly OK.

 _Monsters use any rhetoric they think will fit at their historic moment._

Show me a monster since the advent of socialism that did not use it as its justification. The only one I can think of is Pinochet in Chile (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Casualties> ), and even that needs a very loose definition of monster. Certainly the chart-toppers like Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Kim, Pol Pot, Hitler preached socialism. (I'll grant that they generally didn't understand the concept very well, but the point is that it's what they advocated to their partisans and people as the ultimate solution)

<comment> b-man Specifically one from my own country,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artur_da_Costa_e_Silva>

Argentina's story is a bit more brutal

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_(1966%E2%8...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Argentina_\(1966%E2%80%931973\))

All over South America during the 60~80 there were numerous 'capitalist' brutal dictatorships.

And then there's more, such as

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi>

Never forget, what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power.

<comment><USER5> I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these. I think you're stretching the "monster" thing here; they're not in the same league as Lenin and Mao.

 _what makes you a monster is not that you killed millions, but that you were willing to do it in order to maintain your power_

But if you _believed_ that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK? That's nuts.

<comment> b-man _I'm not finding counts of deaths, nor listings of atrocities, for these._

Argument from ignorance. They were in the same league from the point of view of their victims.

 _But if you believed that doing so was somehow right (again, the "greatest good" nonsense or something), then it's OK?_

I never said that. From available evidence, not one of the people you mentioned did their atrocities for the ``greatest good'', and it would not matter if that was the case, because the willingness to commit atrocities is the monstrous thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always like Howard Zinn and I'm pretty far away from him politically speaking. I'm about as libertarian as they come but I always admired his consistent anti-war tone.

I always get annoyed when people don't like the opposition party's wars but love their party's wars. Zinn was always one of my favorite people on the left because he didn't like any war in American history or see it as a "good war".

I wish him well and think we're all a bit worse off for his absence.

<comment><USER7> Is there really that much difference between libertarianism and libertarian socialism? Both are anti-authoritarian political ideologies. The main disagreement seems to be about the role of labor unions in our society. There is much more common ground between libertarian socialism and libertarianism than there is between libertarianism and American centrism.

<comment><USER8> Libertarianism opposes the initiation of force.

Libertarian socialists, like regular socialists, favor the use of force. They differ from socialists only on exactly who should be empowered to use it (the state vs smaller agencies).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember reading "A People's History" during high school and having my mind completely blown. As I got older, I realized my life experiences led me to disagree more and more with Zinn, but I was always thankful that his book had pushed me to see the world through such a different (and easily neglected) point of view. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER10> Obligatory challenging of the status quo about Howard Zinn:

<http://hnn.us/articles/1493.html>

<comment><USER11> To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless.

<comment><USER12> > To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is > especially graceless.

I'm glad the commentor did, because this will likely be the first and last discussion of Howard Zinn on Hacker News, and the review had some important points.

<comment><USER7> I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so in a way much more biased than Zinn himself. Zinn was a great historian; Daniel J. Flynn is the proud author of _Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness._

Flynn loses any remaining credit for calling Zinn a Marxist, continuously. That's a label chosen for its emotional resonance; not its meaning. Zinn was a socialist, a libertarian socialist, an anarchist sympathizer, a leftist... but he didn't go around labeling himself as a Marxist on the back of the books, that's something only done by his critics. I might as well be calling Flynn a fascist.

<comment><USER12> > I thought it was inappropriate, not for questioning Zinn, but for doing so > in a way much more biased than Zinn himself.

Eh, the review was nothing special, but the fact that Zinn left out that the side he labeled as oppressed started the Pequot War with a murder seemed like an important detail. Or the fact that war was primarily Indian tribes vs. other Indian tribes, and the Anglo component was less than 20% of the winning side. But, you can't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I imagine Zinn himself would agree he was more of an activist than a historian, and he fits history to his activism. The uberpatriot people aren't any better and might well be worse, but the message is more important than the messenger. Pointing out that a man claiming to be a historian is leaving out entirely crucial historical details is important.

<comment><USER7> By the point of that war the white people had been oppressing the Indians for more than a hundred years. One murder does not justify returning with a massacre, and leaving out various facts from history does not mean much when you are trying to retell a whole lot of history. If people want a different telling of history, there is always Wikipedia.

Also, if you read Wikipedia, you will see that Daniel Flynn's understanding of the Pequot War is completely wrong. I will quote him, and then let you read the Wikipedia article yourself.

>Thus the Pequot violence against whites that led to the war is almost entirely absent from the text. The most Zinn can bring himself to admit is that "Massacres took place on both sides." In fact, the author details only the atrocities committed by one side: the Puritans.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm reading A People's History right now. Like others here have said, I don't agree with much of the underlying ideology, but I appreciate a different view of history that acknowledges that the study of history isn't as simple as "this is what happened". RIP.

</comment><comment><USER14> I recommend listening to 'A People's History' as an audiobook.

Howard Zinn sets out with the stated objective of narrating a dissident's history. With this, he absolves himself from narrating a completely objective history, which I suspect he sees as an impossible task. You may not agree with many of his assumptions (I don't), but you will gain from the experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> Headline seems a bit off, but perhaps only because I know quite a few practicing historians whose reaction to his work was "oh, so some guy just made a fortune packaging up all the stuff we've been writing about for years?"

<comment><USER4> Making it accessible is key.

<comment><USER15> True, but it doesn't mean that he "challenged the status quo", unless by that you mean he wrote the same stuff as everybody else but in an easier-to-read format. The credit Zinn gets for being some sort of maverick attacking a standard view of history is... well, he wasn't. History's complex and often not very nice, as most historians will be happy to tell you, and American history is no exception.

<comment><USER4> From a purely historical context, you're right of course. I think the "challenged the status quo" part comes from the way he combined the popularization of a history that had previously under-represented in the mainstream consciousness with his activism in a variety of forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When Howard got done, 'his-story' was no longer his. So much for the painted- up, lying cheap tart once called history.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely, the best thing that Howard Zinn ever did was tear to shreds the lie that "History is written by the winners". As I recall, he never meant "A People's History of the United States" to be a canonical text but, merely one to read alongside the "standard message" in dialectical* conflict.

*"Dialectical" in Marxist critical theory, not necessarily in political motivation.

<comment><USER18> Good point - and to further your definition of dialectical - it is not simple opposition of two forces that leads to a 3rd path (I think that is often referred to as Aristotelian dialectic).

The critical theory dialectic you refer to is the ability to observe something in terms of its totality. The moment (for Hegel) that the totality is clear and apparent it begins to 'sublate' which in this context means simultaneously to negate and transcend.

In the preface to Hegels "Phenomenology Of Spirit" one example is the acorn.

It goes through a series of discrete steps of growth. It is hard to say the moment that it ceases to become an acorn and becomes something else. It goes through a process of negation (no longer an acorn) and transcends this to become an oak shoot and then a tree.

There is a moment i am sure - when the shell cracks and a series of small quantitative changes result in a qualitative change.

There was a time in which the highly educated 'saw' the totality. Samuel Johnson was reputed to have read all the available knowledge of his time. (I dont know how one could know this - but for the sake of argument I will take Ben Jonson's word). But it has been 200 years since anyone would even make that claim.

But Zinn was able to hold up a recognizable fragment in which we could get a glimpse of a total image for a brief moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How sad. Because when the older ones die it seems for the first while like the rest of us have no one. No one to look up to, no one to stick up for us.

</comment><comment><USER18> I, myself, am not a Socialist I tend to vote 3rd party because I believe Nader's basic idea that there is no difference between the two dominant parties - they just serve different corporate interests. But I am in no way a committed Marxist/ Socialist anything. But I feel deeply that so few discussions get it right - in ether the pro or the con.

It is easy to confuse the political realities of Socialism for the underlying ethos. Marx's Socialism at its core sought to put political control in the hands of those who produce society. The ethic defining the movement was to take the advances of the French Revolution (which was essentially a Middle Class revolution) and extend those liberties for all.

It is in that sense that Zinn is a Socialist writer. It is not accurate to characterize him as writing to "help the little guy". I tis accurate that this is a perversion of not only Stalin and Mao (Stalin more than Lenin as Lenin was more about aligning state power with a political party) but also Hitler, Huey Long, David Duke, etc. Demagogery is neither left nor right.

The important work of someone like Howard Zinn is not that he simplified history or wrote for the 'little guy' but that he wrote with awareness of Machiavelli's dictum: "History is written by the victors"

I think - if one is interested in what Zinn was writing towards and can look at things like socialism with a dispassionate eye - it is worth reading Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History". Dense and epigrammatic - like reading Nietzsche or Kierkegaard.

It is easy - and in terms of praxis correct - to lambaste Socialism as a failed attempt which turned into horrific perversion. But there is something vital there still. I would argue that there is much still to be learned from reading Marx and as a thinker he leads back to thinkers like Hegel, Kant, Vico, etc and engaged some of the brilliant minds of the 20th century - <USER2> Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, etc

To borrow from one of Adorno's lectures on Hegel in which he attacked Benedetto Croce for the presumption of an early 20th century essay entitled "What is living and what is dead in Hegel". The issue here is not Zinn's relevance to our world but our relevance in terms of the basic Enlightenment tradition.

One thing that is very hard to argue if you are coming from the standpoint of " liberal (in the classical sense) philosophy of individual liberty" (which I agree is the place to start - that is where Marx and Zinn both start in their very different attempts), one thing that is hard to argue is that we are dealing with the Kantian transendental subjectivity that classical liberal philosophy was based on.

We are different. The 20th century changed what it means to be human.

To sum up - I think Howard Zinn was a wonderful figure. I have enormous respect for him. He is not one of my favorite writers or thinkers but I do enjoy listening to his readings. For me he is an example of an ethical person who saw clearly and attempted to educate others. I have similar respect for Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, Philip and Daniel Berrigan even when I entirely disagree with a point or a position. RIP Professor Zinn.</comment>


A smarter, more complete-y search bar on Github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1461-a-smarter-more-complete-y-search-bar <comment><USER2> I think it's smart of them to move quickly and innovate on what they've already done. I felt the same way about the search bar as of late - I knew it had certain commands, but I forgot what they were and quickly stopped using it for anything other than repository navigation or search.

It's good that they removed the underused features - it draws emphasis to their ability to admit when things aren't the best move and go back to a better place to work from.</comment>


Show HN: Startup Championships - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupchampionships.com

<comment><USER2> I think you need more emphasis on the prizes, at least proper links to what they are or a description to help sell them. Maybe it should include portion of all the application fees which seem quite substantial considering the costs of the prize and mechanical turk fees.

I'm also not convinced by the explanation that mechanical turk would provide effective feedback to a startup. Even if the scoring system did tell them where to focus, there should be another round of the top 50 or so with actual experts providing much more detailed feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

1\. I linked the prize back to the Web Summit - Alpha page. I will consider moving the prize above the fold.

2\. As a beta the pricing is experimental and will adjust based on feedback. Mind me asking what you might pay, if anything, for user testing/feedback? Finally, what you might pay for the same service if the feedback was not via mechanical turk, but judges from the tech community (startup founders, VCs, experts, etc...)?</comment></comment>


The Curse of Xanadu (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html

<comment><USER2> Story-wise, this is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7849389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7849389) which had significant discussion 2 days ago.

Also, the submitted title ("Why would someone release a 54 years old software?") broke the HN guidelines badly. Please do not rewrite titles to put editorial spin on them.</comment>


OpenSSL release announced for Mar 19.  Fixes "high" severity security defects. - <AUTHOR> https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2015-March/000020.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if any of these will have been already resolved in LibreSSL through their codebase cleanup.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if the ones that aren't resolved have been communicated to the LibreSSL team?

<comment><USER4> OpenSSL cannot share with OpenBSD team because the OpenBSD team would not think twice about committing those fixes, making those issues public.

[A founding value of OpenBSD is about making anonymous access to their code repository: they develop the same tree that we see. Believe it or not, this was a radical stance for its time.

This is contrary to NetBSD's policy at the time of the fork: their code was only published at time of release, making contributions very difficult for outsiders, and withholding security fixes. Theo suspected people with commit access developed attacks based on these changes prior to next release.]

I can't recall any time where OpenSSH security fixes were withheld. Although OpenBSD developers do not take the time to evaluate whether a bug may always be exploitable, they do not hesitate to announce the possibility. [http://www.openbsd.org/errata.html](http://www.openbsd.org/errata.html)

This is contrary to the approach by Linus on the linux kernel, where security issues "are just normal bugs", placing the responsibility of downstream vendors (and attackers) to evaluate whether they are also a security issue, [https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/648](https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/648)

<comment><USER5> I do not remember Theo ever telling me in the 1990s that he believed NetBSD team members were using their access to develop attacks. His opinion of the NetBSD team was far too low to give them that much credit. Theo was much more likely to believe that the concepts behind attacks were invented in the OpenBSD tree, and if he had a problem with how NetBSD managed its tree, it was that they wouldn't track OpenBSD fixes.

I don't know what Theo's saying these days. It's been over a decade since I talked to him. But I talked to him a lot in the earlier days of the project, during the original audit, during which time I wrote the OpenBSD advisories, sometimes at the Ship & Anchor in Calgary with him. I would remember this accusation. I never heard it.

<comment><USER6> Every time I read one of your comments, it is a fascinating look into cryptography. Now you're telling me you were part of the OpenBSD team?

I guess I need to search through your past comments, and a quick Google indicates I missed this.

Every time you comment here you make me feel so lazy. Haha.

<comment><USER5> Not really. I had commit privileges (a year earlier I had them briefly on FreeBSD, because of the crt0.c bug) but I used them I think twice, once to do something to ping(8) and once to add RADIUS support to tcpdump. I did however write many of the OpenBSD security advisories, and participated in the audit. In 1997, when I moved to Calgary for a few months to work for Secure Networks, Theo was the first person I met there.

To this day I still don't know how to use icb, which if you're an OpenBSD person tells you how much a part of that team I was.

I'm not smart or anything. I'm just (I assume) older than you are. And I got a very early start. That FreeBSD thing happened the year after I graduated high school. I skipped college and went right into dev.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Get a perfect elevator pitch - <AUTHOR>

http://pitchremix.com
About a month ago, I launched this site. I got a ton of great feedback and updated the service.
Some things I've changed:
- Site is much simpler and has less text to read
- I've gotten a few testimonials
- We now work with you to make the pitch. So there's a lot of back and forth.
All feedback is appreciated. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Good value for what you get. I know I've personally spent an entire day with my partners trying to hone those 3 types of pitches that you offer for $45+.

One thing I'd like to see in a more forefront position on the website is actual pitches you've created, even if they are for fake companies.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://pitchremix.com/></comment>


TNW Poll | Best Design: iOS 7 or Android Jelly Bean? - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TheNextWeb/posts/6y9veXN45wh

<comment><USER2> This is a bit of an unfair contest at the moment. iOS7 isn't completed, it could still be evolving. Add that to the fact that most people don't have access to it yet, are basing their judgement on images alone, and not experience. Where as Jelly Bean has been available for quite some time to all users (except those that are unable to upgrade) and therefore have plenty of hands on experience. This poll could be summarized to simply "iOS or Android" because that is what the majority of the votes are going to be solely based on.</comment>


Cray-1 Hardware Reference Manual - <AUTHOR> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CRAY-1-HardRefMan/CRAY-1-HRM.html

<comment><USER2> A thread from 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337157)

</comment><comment><USER3> It was amazing hardware at the time.

What's incredible is you can now wear double the power of the Cray 2 on your wrist: [http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/194367/does-the- app...](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/194367/does-the-apple-watch- have-more-processing-power-than-a-cray-2-supercomputer)

</comment><comment><USER4> By the way, Ed Thelen (whose website has the manual) also runs the IBM 1401 website ([http://ibm-1401.info/](http://ibm-1401.info/)) with tons of information about that old mainframe and the restored 1401s at the Computer History Museum.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        Each DD-19 has a capacity of 2.424 x 109 bits so that a
        maximum mass storage configuration could hold 9.7 x 109
        8-bit characters.

Is that supposed to be 10^9?

<comment><USER6> Yes. There's a chart in the linked manual that states it with the superscripted 9.</comment></comment>