In China, plagiarization is an established business model - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/china/in-china-plagiarization-is-an-established-business-model/360?tag=mantle_skin;content

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very big problem in China's startup scene; even Qihoo is very dodgy and might not have a real business plan. Lee Kai Fu's Innovation Works are trying to break this habit; they are starting fairly small and looking for startups that could have YCombinator-style exits. I'm not aware of any other incubators, at least in Beijing, this is still a very new thing.

Actually, there is a lot of money sloshing around in China looking for places to go, given the opaque stock market, bad real estate market, and strict capital controls. But just knowing that someone will probably rip off your idea if you are even semi successful makes investing way too risky.

<comment><USER2> How long will it take for China to go through what the US experienced in the 1800s? Back then the American companies were the one pirating British designs, technology, and copyright, making poor, inferior copies at first, only later to find their own superior methods.

Even Japan followed this pattern of emulation and later refinement, and more recently Korea has entered the stage where it's carving its own path, not just making knock-offs but best-of-breed products in certain categories.

There's a point where you can no longer gain anything by stealing, but is this because everyone you're competing against has already caught up, too, and now you must go beyond in order to survive?

Maybe China's pressing need for solar, which other countries seem relatively uninterested in, will be the start of that shift.

<comment><USER3> You could have a thousand examples of the copy->innovate->invent development cycle, but most Americans simply won't ever believe Chinese people can invent things until it happens. Nevermind that Chinese people invented all sorts of stuff - "what have you done for me lately?"

Just look at Japan - the thought that Toyota and Honda could ever make cars better than Detroit used to be _completely_ outlandish... then it was Koreans. Now it's Chinese (a Chinese car? HA! WHAT A JOKE!)

It's just racism, plain and simple.

The public perception curve for developing Asian countries in America goes something like this: Ridicule -> Dismissal -> Contempt -> Acceptance -> Reverence

Reflect upon where Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, China, all fall along this curve, and where they were 10, 20, 30 years ago.

<comment><USER4> I don't think its fair to call that attitude 'racist'. Anyone trying to accomplish something great is ridiculed at one point or the other.

Anyway, the point about the copy->innovate->invent cycle is a very interesting one. I'm guessing that the competence (and possibly, sales) that copying gives to the copier builds their confidence which is then applied to solve genuine problems, which leads to genuine progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Copying != plagiarism. Plagiarism is about pretending to be the original author of the ideas - maybe there were some examples of that in the article - but the bulk was about simple imitation without appropriating the authorship.

Conflating of copying and plagiarism is another attack on the Copy-left culture (but it can also be effect of the authors stupidity).

</comment><comment><USER6> Plagiarism, dammit, the word is plagiarism! (I know that it's that way in the original, but I don't feel like creating another fershlugginer account just to bitch about diction.)

</comment><comment><USER7>
      Tencent QQ boasts 721 million active accounts.

Numbers like that blows my mind. It's twice over the population of the US.

</comment><comment><USER8> In Europe everybody and their brother have their own struggling Groupon-clone.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Baidu's search engine is a copy of Google's. " Not True. The founder of Baidu received a US patent for search engine result page ranking back in 1996. So it is not a simple copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't web search quite an old field? It was around in 1996. Before that there was AltaVista and Excite.

RankDex is definitely not as good as PageRank with respect to results, I'm sure they have moved beyond that by now. I think what Baidu did copy outright was Google's minimalistic look and feel, which is definitely not very Chinese but appreciated nonetheless. Same with qqmail and gmail.

<comment><USER10> Every search engine did this, even Yahoo (search.yahoo.com).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relevant: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0>

</comment><comment><USER12> There was a portion of Top Gear about this in the last series, where the presenters travelled to China and showed off nearly exact copies of other automakers' vehicles, such as BMW (who have sued the Chinese companies in the past and lost in Chinese court). I don't believe this is limited to startups and the Internet, and I think that the Chinese have just become very good at copying things.

Best copy I can find: <http://vimeo.com/40226173></comment>


UK Competition and Markets Authority: New regime needed to take on tech giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-regime-needed-to-take-on-tech-giants <comment><USER2> There are a couple of issues here that seem to crop up every time people try to apply antitrust to these sectors. No one ever seems to address them. It's almost as if people decided they want a shiny new task force and then looked for a justification... Specifically my issues are:

First, that it's not really possible for tech companies to share their data without massive leaks. You can identify most people from their post code and date of birth. So the idea that google can strip names from the database and make it available and that 3ont come back to haunt users is frankly silly. The Cambridge Analytica scandal (imho a much more pressing issue that competition in tech/advertising) proves this. It also shows what happened historically when Facebook tried this.

I don't think it's possible to share datasets at all without basically having a total privacy breach. I don't particularly trust facebook/Google with my data, but I trust them more than "literally anyone who fills in a form and send it in to request access".

The second issue is that these are natural monopolies. That what the press release itself argues. That's what most people think. That's why these tech companies haven't been caught abusing their positions under existing rules: they don't need to, the landscape does it for them.

This is important because the only want to bring competition to a natural monopoly is to change the landscape. Every time that competition obsessed governments have tried to force competition on natural monopolies without that has failed. Here in the UK the examples of this include weird fake "markets" for train operators, water utilities and Internet infrastructure. Maybe UK Gov should finish those great leaps forwards before getting involved in something more complex, faster changing and international?

Again, I think these services should be regulated. I'm just saying regulating a natural monopoly is not the same as trying to force it to not be a natural monopoly...

The third issue is a bit more general. We have a lot of antitrust issues here in the UK. I hear the US is the same. But Facebook isn't on the top 100 for me. Sure, they're a monopoly but unlike other monopolies or oligopolies they don't seem to be abusing their power. So why is everyone desperately interested in them? The CMA should get its shit together and deal with the appauling quality of broadband in the UK (I could list the massive abuses going on there). Or mobile phone networks (some of the lowest rated companies in the country for a reason). Or water or trains.

People may argue Facebook is "essential", maybe it is. But its not as essential or as expensive as my (legally mandated, under regulated, suspiciously profitable) monopoly water supplier.</comment>


Using Heartbleed as a starting point - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/76

<comment><USER2> Hey, as a starting point and a simplest-thing-that-could-possibly-work, how about making use of the publicity and pain of Heartbleed by launching a timely crowdfunding project to greatly increase the Internet Bug Bounty money for OpenSSL, and maybe (as a stretch goal?) start similar bounty pools for GnuTLS and other core crypto programs? Just stick it up on Kickstarter or wherever. There have to be plenty of unhappy sysadmins and IT managers who would readily chip in right at the moment, and the publicity should also help attract support from a much broader group of people who normally wouldn't even think about these things. The hoopla should also hopefully embarrass some big companies into making useful contributions to the pot. (Due credit to FB and Google for funding the IBB in the first place.) Strike while the iron is hot.

Yes, bug bounties on their own aren't a sufficient solution: more systematic, less _ad hoc_ approaches are needed too, no doubt. But nonetheless I think it makes sense to double down on bug bounties, for two reasons. First, bug bounties are _an_ approach that seems to be fairly successful, though the IBB money probably wasn't part of Neel Mehta's motivation to start inspecting OpenSSL at all. There may be better, though more ambitious, approaches, but if there's one thing that seems evident from the recent SSL/TLS bug fiasco it's that making the perfect, or even the great, the enemy of the pretty good is counterproductive here. Second, probably nothing will motivate the maintainers of OpenSSL etc. to actually implement (and keep implementing) systematic, proactive changes better than the constant, realistic threat of being pantsed again by bounty-hunting outsiders. (Remember: all technical problems are social problems in disguise, just as all social problems are technical problems in disguise. ;) ) Or failing that, fairly frequent bounty-funded bug finds would at least serve as a warning to the rest of us that the maintainers aren't doing very well.

<comment><USER3> Bug bounties have proven successful in many circumstances.

Funding the bug bounty is one problem, but administrating and adjudicating it is quite another task.

Also at what level is the bug at the standardization level?

<comment><USER2> I'd suggest that Plan A would be just to throw the money at HackerOne, as a donation to their Internet Bug Bounty program [https://hackerone.com/ibb](https://hackerone.com/ibb) which is already set up and running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Relevant: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Golang- Nuts/0za-R3wV...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Golang- Nuts/0za-R3wVaeQ)

JT Olds asks: "Why did Go implement its own SSL library? I've scanned the list and the website and I might have missed a design doc somewhere, but as far as I can tell I can't find any motivational reason for why Go implemented its own SSL library."

agl responds: "Have you seen the OpenSSL code? I do, indeed, work with it a lot and it doesn't exactly fill one with positive feelings. NSS has a different set of issues. (I'm not familiar with alternatives like Polar or GnuTLS.)"

<comment><USER5> Nothing like rejecting all the alternatives and getting a brand-new shiny set of security holes, amirite?

<comment><USER6> Since Go's SSL library written in Go, it should be a lot more resistant Heartbleed-type errors. In Go you use slices to manipulate memory, which are basically (pointer, length, capacity) triples (IIRC). This is a nice feature of Go -- a new balance between safety and performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In general it does not help the fact that the system that is the de facto > standard in today's servers infrastructure, that is, Linux, has had, and > still has, one of the worst allocators you will find around, mostly for > licensing concerns, since the better allocators are not GPL but BSD > licensed.

False. Glibc uses ptmalloc:

[http://www.malloc.de/en/](http://www.malloc.de/en/)

Which is under the MIT license.

I couldn't find any really good, recent benchmarks of different allocators, but it does seem to be the case that ptmalloc is not as fast as tcmalloc. However, i suspect that at the time at which it was adopted, ptmalloc was one of the fastest options available.

<comment><USER8> Sorry I was not aware that Glibc malloc is also BSD licensed, thanks for providing more information about this. Given that, to me it is a big mystery why they don't migrate to something more reasonable like jemalloc, which is able to provide less fragmentation and top performances. Jemalloc is also very actively developed.

<comment><USER9> I think this comes under the heading of squabbling over details.

To quote from your blog post:

"This is a sign that still performances, even in security critical code, is regarded with too much respect over safety. In this specific instance, it must be admitted that probably when the OpenSSL developers wrapped malloc, they never though of security implications by doing so. However the fact that they cared about a low-level detail like the allocation functions in _some_ system is a sign of deep concerns about performances, while they should be more deeply concerned about the correctness / safety of the system."

As you stated in this bit of your post this is a sign that the OpenSSL team have their priorities backward. In other words they are NOT fit to run a security critical project. Period.

<comment><USER8> I believe the stress on performances is largely community-driven in a project like OpenSSL. A lot of environments did not switched to encrypted connections because of cost concerns and unfortunately costs are related to OpenSSL performances. So it's not like they are crazy and mess with priorities IMHO. But it is time to re-evaluate.

<comment><USER9> Don't get me wrong -- performance _can_ matter, but in the end it's up to the _user_ of your cryptographic solution/process/abstraction to decide what tradeoff is acceptable to them. If you're responsible about it, you try to explain to potential users what the tradeoffs are -- you don't try to optimize before you can be sure that you're doing so sensibly (see next paragraph).

Of course you should try to optimize as much as is sensible, but if you don't have any process in place (unit tests, integration tests, fuzz testing, formal methods, timing attacks, whatever you can throw at it) that lend some assurance that Implementation#1 (optimized) actually does _exactly_ the same as Implementation#0 (less or unoptimized) under all circumstances, then you should be as conservative as humanly possible... and choose to NOT optimize unless/before you have those processes in place.

(I'll happily admit that this is somewhat armchairy -- I'm glad I don't work in a particularly security sensitive area. I'm not sure I could handle all the obligations/pressures myself.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Given the attention OpenSSL just "received" wouldn't it make sense to start a mass audit effort?

Why not counterbalance the "crypto software is hard, don't touch it" idea with some simple tasks, like: check all allocs in openssl for bounds checks? "mark" missing ones? "mark" fishy ones etc.

Can a software security audit be crowd-sourced and be meaningful?

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem with #3 (Abstract C with libraries.) is that, while there are less place / code to audit, in case of failure (e.g. a security hole in said library), damages are everywhere.

A good exemple is Daniel J. Bernstein. The man doesn't even trust the libc and wrote its own layer for all of his software (djbdns, qmail, ...). (source : [http://cr.yp.to/qmail/guarantee.html](http://cr.yp.to/qmail/guarantee.html) #7)

<comment><USER12> Libraries are so bad that DJB has to write his own? What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying anything. He is.

I think there is a good balance between using third party library (possibly untrusted) and plain C. Kind of an analogy to centralized network vs decentralized.

<comment><USER12> So far as I can see TFA isn't even insisting on third party libs (even though he himself has released e.g. "a sane dynamic string library"); he just wants a refactoring, so that overflows and other problems are avoided in DRY fashion, using libraries. _memcpy()_ isn't quite as smelly as _gets()_ , but a well- designed library can certainly help even expert coders use it more safely.

I can't see how the DJB example supports the claim that "damages are everywhere". It's trivial to say that there could conceivably be a "balance" here (what human activity doesn't include the concept of balance?), but a cursory glance suggests that OpenSSL code is currently far from that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about not designing protocols that will echo anything back? All that was really needed was a UUID here. Fixed length. Type checked preferably. They didn't need a client specified size and client specified content 64k or under echoed back to them. That isn't the server with SSL's job.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a far more reasonable response to the Heartbleed situation.

Earlier, Theo de Raadt's response on a mailing list was linked. Theo being himself was to be expected, but that kind of talk doesn't help anyone.

<comment><USER15> It's amazing how much noise to how little action the programming field produces. If the aerospace industry was like the programming industry, stalled planes would be falling out of the sky 100x more often, there would be no stick shakers and automated warning facilities, and the bulk of the reaction would be devoted to saying how incompetent the crashed pilots were.

We need to take pragmatic actions that fix problems, not exchange recriminations and continue to live with the problems.

In other words, we as a field sometimes use this algorithm:

        1) Identify the problem
        2) Repeat

We should have fixed bounds checking and use after free errors by now.

<comment><USER16> > _If the aerospace industry was like the programming industry, stalled planes > would be falling out of the sky 100x more often_

On the other hand, if the aerospace industry was like the programming industry, we'd now be flying 10000000000 faster planes with warp drives, that take us to A-Centauri in an hour or so. And everybody would have one such plane, folded in his pocket.

<comment><USER15> _On the other hand, if the aerospace industry was like the programming industry, we 'd now be flying 10000000000 faster planes with warp drives, that take us to A-Centauri in an hour or so. And everybody would have one such plane, folded in his pocket._

If you're going to carry the analogy to that ridiculous corner then a black- hat hacker with a heartbleed equivalent blows up Earth in an antimatter explosion.

<comment><USER16> Not any less riduculous than the original (old and tired) analogy.

Plus, I don't recall computers having killed many people. Planes do. If planes were like computers, we'd just reboot them and carry on.

<comment><USER15> _Not any less riduculous than the original (old and tired) analogy._

 _You_ brought up the rotten analogy. I'm talking about what humans comparatively actually do or don't do in different fields, not making an analogy. (Please look "analogy" up.) Historically, aerospace is very good about taking concrete actions that actually reduce accident rates. Historically, computer programming is pretty rotten at this. Our algorithm is literally:

        1) Identify the problem
        2) Repeat

With meaningless variations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Code reviews.

It surprises me that something as important as OpenSSL doesn't have hundreds of coders studying every check in to find potential bugs, in particular obvious C errors.

<comment><USER18> They do, but only way to make some real money is to sell vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sad that he didn't mention the obvious solution that would have caught this problem: running valgrind or Thread Sanitizer.

(Yes, you will have to create a build with OpenSSL's custom allocator disabled to get a full run. No, it isn't hard.)

<comment><USER19> Valgrind alone wouldn't have caught this bug. You would also need to trigger the bug, which would involve either specifically testing for it, or sending randomly invalid requests hoping to hit bugs.

Granted, security software should be tested against invalid requests.

<comment><USER4> I think you are greatly exaggerating how hard it is to find invalid memory use in openssl.

According to Ted Unangst, all you have to do is turn off the custom allocator in openssl to immediately hit a use-after-free bug.

He writes:

 _" This bug would have been utterly trivial to detect when introduced had the OpenSSL developers bothered testing with a normal malloc (not even a security focused malloc, just one that frees memory every now and again). Instead, it lay dormant for years until I went looking for a way to disable their Heartbleed accelerating custom allocator."_

[http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/analysis-of-openssl- free...](http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/analysis-of-openssl-freelist- reuse)

<comment><USER19> The bug he is referring to is not in heartbeat, but rather in OpenSSL's use of its own allocator.

I am not claiming that it would be difficult to find invalid memory usage in OpenSSL, rather I am claiming that the particular invalid usage that led to heartbleed would be difficult to find, becuase it does not occur under normal circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why Ada is not widely adopted by security community. GCC supports it for ages and it is as fast as C

</comment><comment><USER20> Regarding point #5. If the performance of OpenSSL was terrible we would not be having this discussion. This is system level component which must pass all encrypted traffic.

OpenSSL is ubiquitous and runs everywhere including phones and low powered VPSs that everyone is using. If OpenSSL burned RAM and CPU cycles for the sake of correctness, alternatives would appear. The hard part about developing a library like OpenSSL is it has to be fast AND secure.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems like companies that can afford to work on goggles & thermostats or drones & microblogs could set up small teams to review and test the core open source projects used by the larger Internet community.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the OpenSSL protocol sufficiently pinned down that any difference between behavior of NSS and OpenSSL is a bug in one or the other?</comment>


LuaJIT Hacking: Getting next() out of the NYI list - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/luajit-hacking-getting-next-out-of-the-nyi-list/ <comment><USER2> As a heavy LuaJIT user, this blog post is a really great read. Regardless of if this particular optimization will directly benefit my software, the post contains many insights into LuaJIT's performance and optimization characteristics.

It's great to see this kind of deep understanding of LuaJIT coming from people other than Mike Pall, until he can be cloned: [https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/45](https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/45)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your desktop wallpaper? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I live in a pretty cool place. So usually, it's a picture of my dog looking out over one of our local mountains:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4901704088/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4901704088/)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4682694730/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4682694730/)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4679036325/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/4679036325/)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/3700860792/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/3700860792/)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/3620966113/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteralpenglow/3620966113/)

<comment><USER3> I know it is a useless comment but.. this is really-really beautiful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing. I virtually never see my desktop, so I don't bother decorating it.

I don't care what my computer looks like, only what's in the windows and consoles. All I want is windows, a task bar and a few gadgets in the tray.

</comment><comment><USER5> The entirety of the interfacelift library on rotation: [https://github.com/rockymadden/interfacelift-downloader- plus...](https://github.com/rockymadden/interfacelift-downloader-plusplus)

</comment><comment><USER6> A rotating collection of images from Hubble and the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archives: [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> A picture of Amy Pond (Karen Gillan):

[http://www.freefever.com/stock/karen-gillan-plolice- role.jpg](http://www.freefever.com/stock/karen-gillan-plolice-role.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Hot though she is, I feel like that picture is stealing my soul

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the last three months I've been rocking this:

[http://imgur.com/3c71uIw](http://imgur.com/3c71uIw)

It's a rendering from the Audi website of the car I ordered three months ago. I finally got the car on Friday, so I should probably change the wallpaper now :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Portal-themed lock screen (Win8) and wallpaper pair:

[http://i.imgur.com/OVD70eI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/OVD70eI.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/F16JCSK.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/F16JCSK.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been using #282828 as my wallpaper for a few weeks now. Here are some wallpapers that I use from time to time: [http://idzr.org/ffugk](http://idzr.org/ffugk).

As winter is upon us, check out the winter folder too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Mars Sunset Panorama taken by curiosity rover at Gale Crater [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Martian-Sunset-O-de- Gours...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Martian-Sunset-O-de-Goursac- Curiosity-2013.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> Bruce McCandless orbiting in a jetpack [http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601259main_jetpack_full.j...](http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601259main_jetpack_full.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> I use this: [http://www.iconpaper.org/folds/](http://www.iconpaper.org/folds/)

IconPaper is nicely-curated site.

</comment><comment><USER14> 2 of my kids underwater:

[http://imgur.com/hUeLQ1Y](http://imgur.com/hUeLQ1Y)

Taken with GoPro Hero3

</comment><comment><USER15> Here it is (it's a picture of Mars) [http://i.imgur.com/YRdPXGS.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YRdPXGS.jpg)

Edit: I found some in bigger resolution for dual monitors if anyone is interested [http://minus.com/mjlk3agPxlej9](http://minus.com/mjlk3agPxlej9)

</comment><comment><USER16> Michigan rocky lakeshore detail [http://imgur.com/nj6f1kO](http://imgur.com/nj6f1kO)

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://i.imgur.com/lKbjefi.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/lKbjefi.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a folder of wallpapers. They vary between nature scenes, family photos, and videogame wallpapers.

</comment><comment><USER19> No wallpaper - just black background. I prefer to minimize distractions.</comment>


Aldous Huxley: The Ultimate Revolution (1962) - <AUTHOR> http://pulsemedia.org/2009/02/02/aldous-huxley-the-ultimate-revolution/ <comment> Ar-Curunir Here's a link to the actual interview itself. It's one and a half hours long, so pretty long.

[http://youtu.be/RpwOmwysqJ8](http://youtu.be/RpwOmwysqJ8)

</comment><comment><USER2> I love Huxley's forward to Jiddu Kirshnamurthi's (who was major influence on Huxley) book. [http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view- tex...](http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view- text.php?tid=30&chid=385)

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps nowadays it is the iphone or android we use to self administer, no expensive drugs required.

<comment><USER4> Interesting idea. Perhaps we are already living in a version of BNW, with media and constant advertisements serving the role of sleep-learning.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Yes, that is one premise of BNW, constant engagement and thus constant and immediate satisfaction is one purpose of the media, but media as a form of propaganda is an age-old tactic.

The widespread reach of modern media just makes it easier to spread any given point of view, with the chance going to the highest/most powerful bidder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Taking apart this programming:

[http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2318856/pg1](http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2318856/pg1)

</comment><comment><USER6> >And the same way with various technological advances now, I mean we need to think about the problems with automation and more profoundly the problems, which may arise with these new techniques, which may contribute to this ultimate revolution. Our business is to be aware of what is happening, and then to use our imagination to see what might happen, how this might be abused, and then if possible to see that the enormous powers which we now possess thanks to these scientific and technological advances to be used for the benefit of human beings and not for their degradation.

Thank You

NO! Thank YOU, mr. Huxley.</comment>


Show HN: AirCSS – Distributed Asset Delivery - <AUTHOR> https://aircss.io

<comment><USER2> How is this different from a regular CDN like Akamai, Cloudflare, etc.?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an easier approach for getting content onto a CDN. All you have to do is upload the files to the dashboard, and you are ready to go. The system provides you the markup to put in your code to use the css or js file.

AirCSS can be used alongside Cloudflare, but if someone wants an easy to use CDN that isn't limited to using Cloudflare DNS (like if they want to use nsone or another DNS provider), they can use AirCSS to easily get their files on a CDN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> DigitalOcean restricts the use of their nodes as a platform for a CDN like yours. IMO, I find the latter restriction unfair but ToS is ToS. Make sure you have a plan B.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Where do you see this? I seem to be missing it.

Also, no CDN server is on the DO network, just the main website.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/do-you- have...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/do-you-have-a-fair- usage-policy-for-bandwidth)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should add a "Why AirCSS?" section, because this is the first question people will have, given the existing alternative services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent suggestion. I'll fit that on the main page soon.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! Long time lurker just finished my first web app. Thank you all for checking it out!

<comment><USER5> Will you allow custom domains? Do you allow SSL?

<comment><AUTHOR> SSL is provided. This isn't a typical CDN. This is a way for people who don't want to setup a CDN or deal with the cost to upload their files and receive the markup to use on their site. So custom domains wouldn't be a feature we'd offer in the near future, but always something to consider.</comment></comment></comment>


OVH: PaaS DB PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.runabove.com/PaaSDBPGSQL.xml <comment><USER2> I've been an OVH customer for a long time (years), and would _never_ bet my company on such an offer.

OVH excels at offering lots of resources for a cheap price, but they are _awful_ at support. Think of any horror story and I've either seen it happen firsthand or have heard about it at their forums. Examples:

\- One-month back-and-forth with support about a clearly missbehaving hard drive (2MBps sequential transfer speed)

\- A whole week of lost "virtual rack" (private lan) connectivity.

\- Failover IPs (ip's that you can move from server to server, touted by OVH as a failover solution) stuck in netherland (routing to /dev/null because of some issue) for some days

\- Extremely slow High-Availabily NAS speeds for a cuple of days. Afer those days I migrated off that service and never looked back.

At this point, I only hire dedicated servers from OVH. Furthermore, my strategy to deal with any issue is simply to rent a new server, test it thoroughly (important! OVH should do it, but they really don't), migrate everything, and don't renew the old one. In my own experience, this leads to far less downtime and headaches than trying to deal with OVH's support.

<comment><USER3> Many friends of mine have been or are OVH customers due to their low price and all of them say the support is just awful.

In my own experience, when I was consulting a company with a physical server on OVH and opened a ticket... Well, you know when you open a ticket, you don't know when they will be answering.

Also, they have an awful ipv6 setup: [https://otacon22.com/2016/02/21/two- hosting-providers-ipv6-s...](https://otacon22.com/2016/02/21/two-hosting- providers-ipv6-setups-compared-ovh-online-net/)

<comment><USER4> Their support is awful and their customer service is down right disgraceful.

I used to be a customer for almost 18 months. We got DDos'd twice. On both accounts, they didn't and said they couldnt do anything. The only response was to turn of the server.

Not only that, I tried to work with them on setting up a much bigger distributed environment. I gave them the exact specification of how to setup the network and clustering of the servers. They got it wrong, on multiple times. The Sales Manager who I was working with said on many occasions that I would NOT be billed until the specification was setup correctly and running.

Guess what, we were billed. The setup was never fully completed. I wasn't allowed to talk to the 4th line (network) engineers who were setting up the infrastructure.

In the end, I complained to the top level management with the timeline of events. I saved every email and when read through a chronological timeline. It was clear the sales person was inept and technical didn't do what was required. I never heard anything back.

What was worse, is that we got a partial refund. We lost $2k in total. I told my partner to go back to the bank and demand a charge back. But he had no spine and said we'd eat it.

Never again will I go with OVH and I tell everyone I come across not to bother. Sure they prices are cheap in the beginning, but their support is non- existent and their engineers awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please note that all RunAbove stuff is Beta and will be discontinued at some point in the future and either integrated in OVH.com or completely dropped.

Had a service running on RunAbove Cloud, and suddendly they pulled the plug with 1 month notice - and nowhere on their page was something that hinted on that.

<comment><USER6> RunAbove is OVH's incubator. It is very clear ideas are either moved to OVH or discontinued on their about page: [https://www.runabove.com/about/about- us.xml](https://www.runabove.com/about/about-us.xml)

Which is linked from the homepage from the "learn more" button and numerous more times through out their site.

tdlr: Use RunAbove to test things. Not to deploy a live website.

<comment><USER7> It either wasn't in the past or was significantly less clear in the past. I recall using runabove and _within_ runabove there were beta trials but it seemed like a generally available service for the other parts. I was quite surprised coming back to it that I couldn't spin up a box there like I had done very shortly beforehand. I received no email about the change.

Here's a quote from their about page previously:

> RunAbove aims to provide a cloud infrastructure powerful and transparent, > for developers all over the world so they can focus on their work by relying > on unshakable resources.

Unshakable resources indeed.

It switched over about September/October last year.

Here's their old page: [http://web.archive.org/web/20150913235342/https://www.runabo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150913235342/https://www.runabove.com/index.xml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I love seeing more PostgreSQL offerings in the cloud, I don't understand why they call it PaaS. It's a DbaaS, but a PaaS... a PaaS is really an application API that is managed by the cloud provider, and takes care of stuff like scaling it. Like Google App Engine. But calling a database a PaaS is a little bit bending the term, IMHO.

<comment><USER9> > [an application API that is] managed by the cloud provider, and takes care > of stuff like scaling it

A system like DynamoDB, that exposes no concept of database cluster size, would be a PaaS, then? Still sounds off, to me. "PaaS" just isn't a word that applies to a service that doesn't execute your code.

Something that's almost entirely a database on the backend could still be a PaaS if it runs your code, though—like Parse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OVH also release PaaS DB MySQL [https://www.runabove.com/PaaSDBMySQL.xml](https://www.runabove.com/PaaSDBMySQL.xml)

</comment><comment><USER11> Friends dont let friends use OVH, I cant reiterate this enough. They've long and sometimes dramatic history of broken services, undelivered paid services (like months long queues for paid upfront servers not being delivered), lack of communication with customers, truly horrible support all of which I had the back luck to experience myself, so do yourself a favor and just avoid them at any cost.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting .... and the prices seems to be low, but they run postgresql 9.4 which is a little outdated. and there is no details about what you'll be able to do / not do (like installing extensions, or other similar things)

<comment><USER13> Thought so too, being cautious though "*Prices might change after beta"

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't be surprised at costs like that though. They offer 2G ram VPS for less than the 512M PG instances here.

Obviously it makes sense to be cautious but they don't seem like insane prices.

<comment><USER6> The VPS isn't fault tolerant or managed. I am assuming this is? I actually asked them on IRC if they could launch MySQL, PSQL aaS less than a month ago. Turn around from the RunAbove team has been super fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any ideas on how this is different from compose.io's offering: [https://compose.io/postgresql/](https://compose.io/postgresql/)?

Hourly billing?

<comment><USER15> It's 15 times cheaper ($23 vs $353 monthly for 4GB RAM). Assuming the pricing on that page doesn't change too much.

<comment><USER16> Cheaper, but does it also provide value? For non-critical things, OVH provide relatively good value for money. For critical things, I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.

OVH is a dysfunctional company that somehow turns a profit. We almost lost our company's domain name twice due to their incompetence.

We paid OVH for the renewal of our company's domain name several weeks before its expiration. This domain hosted our google apps for business and more. We received an invoice and bank statements for that. OVH never renewed with the registry. We only got to know about this because of a standard email warning from the country's registry (not OVH as a registrar) itself about quarantaine and expiry! We spent over eight hours over several days talking to OVH. I have been able to verify that the problem was on the side of OVH only, and not on the registry's side at all. In the end, we made a direct payment to the registry to make sure the domain was not deleted.

<comment><USER17> I've been using ovh (proper OVH brand) for years and the only issues I've had recently was a service without an SLA which I foolishly used without a failover in a different dc (load balancing ips had an outage for ~5h recently)

Other than that they've been top notch, support is slow, but the non-human things are working as advertised

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very wellcome, any experience?

<comment><USER18> As others have noted elsewhere in this thread, all RunAbove products are 'in beta', and they have a tendency to terminate these services with very little notice given.

I wouldn't rely on them for anything that needs to stay up.</comment></comment>


This week in KDE: Converging towards something special - <AUTHOR> https://pointieststick.com/2020/01/26/this-week-in-kde-converging-towards-something-special/ <comment><USER2> Anyone thinking about using Linux on their desktop or laptop should give latest KDE a try. Rolling release distros like Arch or OpenSuse Tumbleweed should be good options.

Reasons you may like it - no new paradigm bs to learn just your plain old customizable desktop, it's stable(they're fixing stuff like crazy every week), if you don't like something they are making contributing to / building KDE components very easy, HiDPI support is about the best - partial scaling, per desktop DPI works great at least on X11 and finally they are making running GTK apps a great experience with Plasma 5.18.

<comment><USER3> After years using Ubuntu 16 I upgraded to 19 as I heard it was really good and fast. It wasn't either... lots of things just didn't work anymore, like function keys (switching languages takes like 5 seconds and it's a known issue they just won't fix) and shortcuts changing or just not working anymore in several applications I use.

So I decided to install KDE Plasma, and I couldn't be happier! Everything works exactly as I expected. And it's a beautiful desktop environment, especially after I installed a dark theme. I also use a Mac, and now I honestly don't know which desktop experience is better! Which is a huge compliment to Plasma, as MacOS is actually quite polished.

I can't recommend Plasma enough to anyone who wants Linux on desktop/laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Kubuntu at home and work for over four years now, and it has been a stable and productive experience. The only significant difficulty I can recall was immediately after upgrading from 19.04 to 19.10, where GRUB was having difficulty with a Secure Boot extension. I should have waited for the 19.10.1 release, but the issue was relatively easy to fix by commenting out a line in GRUB config.

I really believe that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are reaching a high level of simplicity and stability where they can be adopted or at least tried out by people who are more casual computer users (or who just want to stay productive.)

<comment><USER5> A casual computer user is going to figure out they need to comment out a GRUB line?

Nope. That is an experience that will push them right back to OSX or Windows.

<comment><USER6> Casual users don't upgrade 2 times a year. A casual user might not even know that those things are called "windows" or that you can maximize them or that most application have settings where you can change the behavior you dislike.

Causal users just use the system how it is, I sometimes find them suffering trough a complicated workflow because they did not consider to even ask themselves "maybe this can be improved, maybe there is a setting to do this or a shortcut or some better way"

<comment><USER7> > Casual users don't upgrade 2 times a year.

Casual user hears about Linux, and that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux, then goes to the site

[https://ubuntu.com/](https://ubuntu.com/)

And reads: "Ubuntu 19.10 is here

The latest version of the world's most widely used Linux platform for Kubernetes, multi-cloud and machine learning.

Download Ubuntu 19.10 now"

And the problems begin -- he _will_ have to upgrade twice a year.

The branding would have to be different for that not to happen. The LTS should not be called LTS but simply Ubuntu. All the versions between two LTS versions should be called like Ubuntu Developer Preview 19.10, and they should be offered easily on the site.

Then one could claim that the casual user wouldn't use the "Developer Preview" versions.

As it is for years, it's not so. Just explaining what the exact difference between LTS and "newest Ubuntu" and why they are still offered the "newest Ubuntu" on the web page would at best confuse or annoy the "causal user."

The casual user will "the newest" but "the newest that works" and that he "doesn't have to change." Not in the sense that nothing is updated but that the updates aren't invasive to him. And the "newest Ubuntu" versions are invasive -- the last time I've tried such, not even a GUI partition manager worked.

<comment><USER6> Casual users don't install an OS, as i said they don't even install an ad blocker or change the keyboard shortcuts to an app.

The people you are talking about are enthusiasts, the probably re-installed Windows before too,

<comment><USER7> > Casual users don't install an OS

Your definition is useless: it would just mean that casual users simply never use Linux OS at all, and aren't supposed to use it, as these with your definition also wouldn't have an awareness to specifically buy a separate computer with preinstalled Linux.

To make a definition of a "Linux casual user" in any way meaningful, you have to assume that it's somebody who would like to _try_ to use Linux, especially without a specific desire to pay for a new computer for that.

Oh, and also without the specific desire and readiness to use command line having the ingrained assumption that the GUI tools simply don't work, which is relatively common case in desktop Linux, even with LTE.

By the way, my quote also shows what Ubuntu consider their casual user, based on the strengths they advertise:

"The latest version of the world's most widely used Linux platform for Kubernetes, multi-cloud and machine learning."

I'd say, from their point of view, the target user on that page is, interestingly, somebody who needs but is undecided which Linux platform to use for "Kubernetes, multi-cloud and machine learning."

Which is also interesting, but also doesn't follow that such a person would expect his installed OS to have broken applications every 6 months because of OS experimentation in compositors or whatever.

<comment><USER6> OK, so you were meaning casual Linux user not a casual computer user.

In my definition a casual user has his computer setup and managed by somebody else. Someone that helps the casual person to buy the laptop/PC that fits their budget and needs, that installs the browser and extensions for them, that installs the apps they need like Skype.Word installs the printer and other devices for them.

Someone that can installs Linux (usually you need to go in BIOS/UEFI to enable boot order and disable secure boot and other shit) is not a casual in my opinion.

Do you think that Ubuntu users are the casuals and Arch are the power users? I will disagree with that, I used Arch in the past but now I am happy with Kubuntu LTS just because a DE and OS is a launcher for my applications and not a identity.

About Ubuntu home page, I assume Canonical is not trying to target the casuals with that page, casuals can't just download and install Ubuntu on any random laptop or PC, there s also no money to be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a tangent: the telegram desktop client is IMHO one of the best examples of how (Linux) desktop apps should be: compiled, fast, and (at least compared to competitors like slack) light. Far from perfect for sure, but compared to any cheap electron app it's a pleasure to use.

And yes I know about the security concerns. I'd really love to see similar apps for other messengers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm most excited KDE/Plasma on the mobile. Once people get Linux working smoothly on the Pinephone, etc I think the Plasma interface could be a sane default that's already available.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I initially assumed the "converging" in the title meant they'd be talking about that:) It is a bright _near_ future now

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > In KDE apps that allow you to override the systemwide color scheme, there's > now an option to revert back to using the systemwide color scheme

Is there a way of forcing gtk apps to use the qt file picker?

<comment><USER11> It's not related to the part of the article you quoted, in case you don't know. Generally, you can't use anything other than the GTK file picker in GTK apps. If you use flatpaks with XDG portal support or the app implements XDG portal support (e.g., Firefox), then they can use the KDE file picker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish there were a updated rigorous comparison of KDE vs Gnome. I switch every few ubuntu versions and notice niggles. For example, ctrl alt L doesn't lock screen in Gnome, Gnome has a pointless background you must drag away to reveal the login screen.

<comment><USER13> FWIW Ctrl+L locks the screen in GNOME and you can press Enter instead of dragging up the lockscreen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm using KDE on Arch Linux for about a month now (tried KDE for the first time) and I'm loving it. Will start contributing to KDE soon :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm happy to see [https://kde.org/hardware](https://kde.org/hardware) exists, but why do all of the pre-loaded laptops come with 1080p screens?

This includes the $2395 model, so it can't be cost.

I haven't had a daily driver screen with resolution that low since 1998. For almost all of those years, that was with desktop Linux / Unix. The problem clearly isn't software support.

<comment><USER16> Not trying to yuck your yum, just offer another perspective. I see no benefit from resolutions >1080p for common laptop sizes. I think 17" is the transition point where 1440p even begins to make sense.

The majority of people I've actually discussed this with (note, N=V.Small) tend to agree.

I say this having had multiple laptops <=15.3" with >1080p and really not seeing any benefit. Those have all been provided by employers. I really cannot justify paying for it myself.

What is the benefit you see from higher resolutions on laptops? Am I just missing something?

<comment><USER17> IME, it's not 1440p that is interesting, but skipping all the way to 1600p or 2160p. This lets you use 2x scaling factor and keep the same ergonomics of 800p or 1080p, but has a few other big advantages:

\- "Retina" resolution with significantly less artifacting due to density (your eye doesn't see "pixels" individually)

\- Ability to tweak resolution scaling without paying a huge cost in visual artifacts (on a MacBook, the native resolution is often 1600p with virtual 800p, but you can scale to 960p, 1080p, or even down below 800p if you want, and they all look pretty good)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love KDE and use it daily on my tablet, but it's still pretty unusable without a mouse :(

</comment><comment><USER19> This is all awesome stuff. Slick wallpaper too.</comment>


Ask HN:Sales commissions and finding distribution channels for software products - <AUTHOR>

I'd prefer direct sales, but we are considering using a distribution channel to market some future products. The primary goal would be to generate leads and we would probably do most of the talking with potential customers directly.
In general, does anyone have recommendations on what the appropriate sales commission might be a for software products in the $10K to $50 range. I realize that this will vary depending on the product, the industry, how easy it is to sell it etc. so I'm just looking for general thoughts and payment ranges (e.g. 10-15 % of sale price)
Does anyone have suggestions on how to identify the right marketing firm for a particular industry (e.g. distribution channel for a software product targetted at independent book stores or restaurants etc.) <comment><USER2> Here are some options:

Lead Generator: (undergrad degree with energy) Basically they will hit the phone all day and setup appointments to speak with potential customers. Salary: 30k-40k a year with bonuses based on appointments and closed opportunities running about $2k - $3k a quarter.

Account Executive: (undergrad degree with 2-3 years selling) These folks need to sell product with an annual quota between 250k - 750k a year. Average salary around 40k - 60k with top salary around 80k - 120k a year.

You can reach via email at mklein1 at babson.edu

I can help you with marketing firm selection and reaching independent books stores and restaurants. What's the product?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned book stores and restaurants as examples of industries. I have no specific products for these industries and I was just looking for general thoughts on sales commissions and finding distribution channels.

I should also reiterate that I'm not looking to hire salaried employees. I'm looking for marketing firms that work on a commission basis (and payments will solely be based on commissions)</comment></comment>


One secret tip to increased productivity, tomorrow. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mdpierce13/one-secret-tip-to-increased-productivity-tomorrow-f8a65432a1d8

<comment><USER2> So the key to getting things done is to go get things done?

That's deep, man. Epically deep.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha pretty much. The goal is to not let tons of little things stack up that will prevent you from truly focusing on what is important.</comment></comment>


Home working: Why can't everyone telework? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11879241

<comment><USER2> I see a lot of comments on HN about people wishing they could work from home and barely any wishing what I prefer instead: A workplace worth being at.

I work from home on occasion, but I also consider my workplace to be a society that I enjoy being a part of.

I like talking to the people in my office throughout the day. I like going to lunch with them sometimes. I like that I am in a building of experts and collaborators.

I suppose I am more fortunate than most in that I can walk to work and that my work is on Main Street, surrounded by many wonderful cafes and restaurants. But that many people do not share such suitable conditions I think is an argument against their conditions (poor commute, poor workplace location), and I don't think their conditions _necessarily_ point to teleworking as the best solution, while it is certainly a better alternative than a miserable commute, I don't see it as an ideal.

So I must Ask HN: If your work was closer to you and in a pleasant location, would you still want to work from home primarily?

<comment><USER3> This the difference between introversion and extroversion. While you enjoy the company of your teammates, others may prefer to work independently.

The freedom to work from home doesn't mean you have to be cooped up inside your house. You can work from cafes, parks, anywhere and everywhere with wi- fi. Sick of the same restaurants and bars? Take a weekend flight to Europe and work from there. It's the sort of romantic nonsense that some of us find appealing.

<comment><USER4> I'm high on the introversion scale (and work from home, the cafe, etc. with some regularity) but I agree with the grandparent post. I like having a space dedicated to work and the ability to collaborate with my coworkers in person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The hardest part of development, and any human endeavor, is typically communication. Working in an isolated environment can be extremely productive for _some_ people _some_ of the time (e.g. A dev knows exactly what to do and needs to just crank) but even that is oversold: having someone to bounce ideas off and to talk us off the ledge can prevent a lot of malinvestment in code.

Email, text chat, even video chat just ain't the same as having a guy next to you that you can interrupt at a whim to discuss things with. In particular the ability to recognize that someone gets what you are saying is severely hampered with remote technologies, making technical communication much less efficient. Then you have the informal and overheard communication that takes place in a (sanely laid out) office. Then you have lunches. It all just piles up.

I work remotely and I hate the inefficiencies it introduces.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, email, text chat, and video chat/screen sharing _is_ pretty much the same as having the guy next to me.

<comment><USER7> I can pick up a piece of paper, scribble on it, ask if people prefer X or Y, draw on a whiteboard, wave my hands descriptively, and generally get much better communication with people who are right in front of me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate working remotely. I hate working with people who work remotely. One-on- one communication is inferior but acceptable over phone or chat, but trying to have a group technical discussion with one or more people working remotely is glacial. The tools just aren't good enough yet and may not be good enough in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a person who's worked at home for years: You have to communicate intentionally. I've done this for years with many clients I've never met face to face (some I haven't even seen their faces).

Also: I'm not introvert. That makes me assuredly talk to people perhaps more than many introverts would at home. I know some of the people I work with kids names, and we still ask how weekends, etc went.

Skype works fine for communication (along with emails). Screensharing is much more useful than video chat in my experience. I also have various other tools like that queued up for when they're better (Copilot for instance).

Also: you really have to develop your phone skills. I think lots of people have underdeveloped phone skills these days, so _aren't_ good at working at a distance. They don't know how to do a phone call well, wether it be pacing, tough issues, agendas or any of that. They especially don't deal well with understaters or the like. Lastly, for many important calls, you MUST follow it up with a summary by email. You also need to learn basic drawing, as a quickly sketched diagram saves the bacon in the middle of some calls (which you then throw in your feed scanner that automatically turns it into a pdf).

I think a lot of people who work in offices lack the ability to express themselves well in these situations, and that's why they feel ineffective (they are a bit, but could get better with practice).

You also need to live in a reasonable place. You have to have a fast internet connection. If this means you have to live at the exurbs instead of a rural farm, well too bad. I personally have 2 different ISPs and a router which combines the connections for failover purposes. (I also live in the middle of a relatively large city, Midtown Atlanta).

<comment><USER10> _I think lots of people have underdeveloped phone skills these days, so aren't good at working at a distance. They don't know how to do a phone call well, wether it be pacing, tough issues, agendas or any of that. They especially don't deal well with understaters or the like._

I don't think most people handle those issues well face to face either. Most f2f meetings I've been in have been abysmal wastes of everyone's time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a coder who often has to upload multi-MB files to the office dev and stage servers, my home upload speed of ~300Kbps doesn't cut it. Sure I have 10Mbit down, but it's kind of useless for me.

<comment><USER12> You have to actually FTP files? I ask because if you have your code in, say, github, and you deploy from that, you shouldn't have this problem. Unless there's something specific about your code that means you have to send really large files?

<comment><USER13> Try working in any media centric industry. Soon you'll be uploading gigs of files on a daily basis.

<comment><USER14> I'm old enough to remember Syquest disks and motorcycle couriers as being the way you uploaded :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I work from home and have a great setup. I'm also a moderate introvert, but I end up going to work at cafes and outdoor space because I also love to be around the intangible energy of other people, even if I'm not saying a word to any of them. Plus, I sense the ability to add novelty to my environment helps trigger a certain bump in creativity.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have worked from home for two years and it is definitely a life-ruining experience with some upsides; I work longer hours, take calls in the evening, feel guilty every time I take a toilet break, never have 'cooler-chats' and miss the daily interaction with colleagues where I get to remind them who's boss; also I have to buy my own stationery. Upsides? Working in the nude, answering the front-door to survey people and inviting them in for a long chats about nothing, getting to slope off and write reams of useless code for no good reason. OK, so there's the whole 4 Hour Work Week idea of starting a business but I feel too guilty to do that.

Of course most companies are global and so my development team are in Poland and my home office is in England or Switzerland, so I would never get to interact with them in any 'high-performing-team' kind of way; but that's what big companies like to do anyway - split up their workforce, divide and conquer, choose mediocrity over performance.

So, if you work for a big dumb organisation, work from home. If you work for a small agile organisation, work from the office. If you work for yourself, give up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Working next to the people I'm talking to, where I can just turn my monitor, ask "A or B?" and get an instant answer is a fantastic experience.

Even being 30 seconds away across the office is inferior. Working from home is appalling by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER6> I work from home and love it. I'm not an introvert either, I just prefer the freedom. It's never gotten in the way of me advancing professionally.</comment>


3 important areas of ehealth where SaaS solutions excel - <AUTHOR> http://sensinum.com/blog-post/3-important-areas-of-ehealth-where-saas-solutions-excel/ <comment><USER2> looks like SaaS and eHealth can became next big thing!</comment>


How Professional Trolls Help Russia with Online Propaganda - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-professional-trolls-help-russia-with-online-propaganda

<comment><USER2> Original story is at [http://www.rferl.mobi/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling- trolls...](http://www.rferl.mobi/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling- trolls/26919999.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, a personal human touch instead of automated bullshit spewed Operation Earnest Voice? No wonder theyre winning.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the zionists brigades on reddit.

</comment><comment><USER5> do you think that this is a phenomenon particular to Russia or would it also exists in other countries?</comment>


CLforJava (Common Lisp for Java) - <AUTHOR> http://clforjava.org/ <comment><USER2> I remember seeing a talk about this at ILC this year. It sort of has the feeling of "one guy in his spare time" (with random parts written by his students), whereas ABCL seems to have some sort of community (and plan) behind it.

Just my impression, as I would use SBCL for any real work.

<comment><USER3> The first sentence gives a reasonable summary of the impression I got from ILC:

> CLforJava is an ongoing project in the Computer Science department of the > College of Charleston to educate students in modern software engineering > practices by having serial groups of students build a complex product over > several semesters.

The goal isn't (exactly) for a guy to produce a new CL implementation, but to educate students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So a tiny amount of fiddling with it, and it doesn't appear to understand defpackage. Looking at the source, it says "these macros need to be implemented".

So while the front page says it is a lisp, does not really appear to be yet true.

</comment><comment><USER4> _No other implementation of Common Lisp has this bidirectional ability._

Doesn't Clojure?

<comment><USER5> Clojure is a lisp, but not an implementation of Common Lisp.</comment></comment>


Paul Graham's long-lost 2006 Infogami essay, "Startup Names" - <AUTHOR> http://messymatters.com/pgnames.html <comment><USER2> If you are interested in evaluating names, I recommend reading The Igor Naming Guide: [http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming- guide.p...](http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.pdf)

They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative. Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning. Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a experiential name.

A quote from the manual:

 _One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct experience_

The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great (evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines:

"But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or

"Religious people will be offended"

Or Caterpillar:

"Tiny, creepy-crawly bug",

"Not macho enough – easy to squash",

"Why not "bull" or "workhorse" "?

It's a great read.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think things have changed a lot since then (it has been half a decade), but it's still mostly right.

Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011.

These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com.

For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered. You'll have to buy them off someone.

For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will do the job perfectly fine.

<comment><USER4> _Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com_

With the possible exception of groupon and dropbox, all of those names would very expensive to acquire. The problem is that a startup typically has to pick a name before they have $50000+ to drop on a domain.

<comment><USER3> I believe Dropbox and Groupon were both quite expensive (but acquired after significant traction/funding).

Mint.com on the other hand was purchased with ~$180k in Series A stock. The domain owner ended up making $1+ million when the company was acquired. The founder (Aaron Patzer) seems to think it was one of the very best decisions he made.

The paradox of choosing a domain is that you buy it when your company is small but you live with it when your company is big.

It's a lot like choosing real-estate for a restaurant. You can launch your restaurant in a bad location, build it up, and then move. Or you can find a great location and build it there. A great location doesn't mean you will be successful (it's just a big advantage), and a bad location doesn't mean you will fail (it's just a big disadvantage).

<comment><USER5> > The paradox of choosing a domain is that you buy it when your company is > small but you live with it when your company is big.

thefacebook.com didn't, to pick one example.

<comment><USER6> Nor did getdropbox.com, or mymint.com

<comment><USER3> It's a fair point. You can move domains. Mint isn't an example of that though. Patzer bought mymint.com but didn't launch with it. He got mint.com before any press/traction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant thinking could probably create a name that would only be _slightly_ less effective.

Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain.

But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.

</comment><comment><USER4> This whole problem would be solved if .com's cost $100+ per year to register. Don't have that kind of money? Get a different TLD. I'm tired of having every single name I can think of -- even bad ones -- already registered and unused.

</comment><comment><USER8> How is Viaweb verbable?

"I viawebbed that store." "We're going to viaweb our platform"... I think not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sort of a stretch. What I thought pushed it off the fence though was that it's a whole adverbial phrase which is pretty cool and in the same spirit as verbability. "Should we sell this stuff brick-and-mortar or viaweb?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for archiving this and how prescient this was about color.com: "Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup "cool.com."

<comment><USER10> I may be biased here, but I don't understand the animosity toward exact-match domain names. The claim is made that such a name is uncool, but an explanation, for why this is so, is not self-evident.

<comment><USER11> (Apologies for going off on a tangent)

Personally I don't like domain names like cool.com or color.com because they are impossible to google. Apple is probably the exception that proves this rule.

<comment><USER10> That is a fair point, but what about product domain names, e.g. shirts.com, beer.com, etc, for companies that sell those specific product types?

<comment><USER12> If you own "shirts.com" then you definitely ought to make a website out of it. You have a huge advantage, and you should use it.

But if you were making a website to sell shirts, you might reasonably ask whether it's worth it to spend the money to buy shirts.com or to pick a more affordable name and save your money for other things. If you're a startup and shirts.com is in your reach, then you have a surprising amount of capital for a startup that hasn't launched -- why do you even have that much?

I think that's the issue at hand.

<comment><USER13> Definitely. You wouldn't buy shirts.com because the price of shirts.com is roughly equal to advantage you'd get using it, except for the fact that you had to pay upfront.

The only time you'd buy a domain like that is when the benefit you'd derive from it is greater than the price; However when the seller hears of your offer to buy it, goes to your website, finds out how much you'd benefit from the domain, the price would go up accordingly. In other words, only when the seller is clueless.

Same reason why Groupon in Australia was called "Stardeals" once upon a time, on a domain called stardeals.com.au.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is probably the fifth essay I've read on the subject, and they all really agree. Google was being highly eccentric in choosing their brand name when they started up, and it was comparatively rare back then. But look how fantastically successful it is now. It's even more relevant in the current market. The easiest and most permanent way to make an impression, and thus, a user base is with attention grabbing. Beyond that, the creativity will do hakf the work for brand recognition, and repeat patronage will be secured.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget Yahoo! And I actually think there's plenty of other precedent for whimsical company-naming, even before the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The site was taking a while to load for me, so I went ahead and put it up on a PDF if anyone needs it: <http://sumukh.me/MWZc+>

<comment><USER16> Thank you, it would not load for me at all. Did you re-format the content like that? If so, what did you use?

<comment><USER15> I used the readability bookmarklet and saved it a PDF. (<http://www.readability.com/>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious: how can this be from 2006 when Stack Overflow was (according to Wikipedia at least) launched in 2008?

I checked because it didn't feel that old.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, note the parts in brackets are my interjections (from our now internet- decades of hindsight).

<comment><USER17> Oh I see. I didn't understand until I clicked the link at the top that the different criteria, and thus the images, were not from pg.

I was a bit surprised that Viaweb ended up all green, but it wasn't pg's choice, just yours, correct? :) I disagree on evocability and verbability actually.

One thing with verbability though, is that it's probably hard to predict. I don't think it would have been easy to predict that you could "facebook" someone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's just me with the colors. I tried to justify my scheme in my own post about naming: <http://messymatters.com/nominology>

Good point about the trickiness in predicting verbability.

As for the evocativity of "viaweb" I think it seems generic now but at the time it was more novel: conduct your business _via the web_. Wow!

<comment><USER18> I just submitted your article to HN at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180861> \-- I think you are too modest! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Site seems to be down. Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messyma...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messymatters.com/pgnames.html&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ng7&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&pws=0&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Back up (I hope). Really sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The categorization rankings seem pretty subjective. I read somewhere that your best bet, if possible, is to call your company what it does. If your software emails timed newsletters, call it newsletter or emailer and keep working around that until you find something available.

</comment><comment><USER21> Without the commentary: <http://fpaste.org/GJCi/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Good essay, still fun to read.

I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an article as I'm reading it.

</comment><comment><USER23> good and non-obvious (at the time) advice, at the end: "Whatever name you choose, be careful. Names stick."

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain the criteria for each of the tags given in the article? For instance, the "google" tag presumably means "if you google this term, the startup will likely be on the first page of results" (or maybe it means something else?) Is agreeability essentially the same thing (Eg: a unique word) or is it something else? What decides whether something is yellow or red in the "mis-spellings"?

We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.

<comment><USER25>
        EVOC  Evocativity       Conveys at least a hint of what it's naming
        BREV  Brevity           Shorter = better
        GREP  Greppability      Not a substring of common words
        GOOG  Googlability      Reasonably unique (and domain name available)
        PRON  Pronounceability  You can read it out loud when you see it
        SPEL  Spellability      You know how it's spelled when you hear it
        VERB  Verbability       The name (or variant thereof) can be used as a verb

Source: <http://messymatters.com/2011/10/31/nominology/>

<comment><USER26> You can have a phonetically spelt word that still is close to a real word, but that gets auto-corrected when people try and use it. And that is bad. Because auto-correction is everywhere these days.

For me this problem didn't appear until all the predictive spelling started appearing. Now it is a major problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> what did webshaka came to be?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://youOS.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Goddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it really pisses me off.

Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.

It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business.

Look at Chinese search engine Baidu (百度). Startups of the world, I want you to read this shit: [http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol- homepr...](http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile) .

In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice: [http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol- homepr...](http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile) .

You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.

You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.

If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.

Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.

You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? Go here, press a button and BAM: <http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html>

Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"...

Worthless, reproducible, empty.

Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile.

If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here?

EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?

<comment><USER29> > If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire > __deleted __English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to > misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your > business.

Sounds like something that should be testable, given a dictionary and some time to write a script that look up domain names. Any takers?

<comment><USER30> I did this last week, pretty much only crappy domains are left in .com, so you either have to buy one from someone, choose a different TLD, or get creative with spelling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think ideally you create an entirely new word, like a portmanteau, that is nonetheless spelled exactly the way you'd expect it to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is terrific. This is newsworthy. Hope it gets legs.</comment>


We Can Stop Pretending LTE-M Is a Low-Power WAN - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@patburns/the-joke-is-over-we-can-stop-pretending-lte-m-is-a-lpwan-683020fcb3b5 <comment><USER2> I'm just in the middle of launching an LTE-M based device that contains a primary power source (a 12v vehicle battery) with a supercap for backup power when the battery dies.

Average power at the moment is around ~3mA to keep an LTE-M module (using a QCOM chipset) connected to the network in DRX mode. Bandwidth wise, LTE-M gives us between 500bytes and 3.5KBs per second on the AT&T network - its not terrible and the byte cost is also "low" from AT&T.

LTE-M network coverage is good - same as AT&T LTE as far as we can tell (as LTE-M is just an extension to the basestation feature set and doesn't need new infrastructure).

Only when AT&T starts to support eDRX and PSM will "a month long" battery be realizable for portable products like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> We at Hiber [0] are working on an actual low-power solution, which will give the device a way to transmit once a day to a sattelite with a custom 144 bytes user payload. The device location is already encoded, so you can focus on filling those 144 bytes with anything you'd like. You'll have global coverage and a central system to extract the data.

[0] [https://hiber.global/](https://hiber.global/)

<comment><USER4> We would like to evaluate this. Currently looking at Sigfox, space.fleet and others. I sent a message via the Hiber contact page.

<comment><USER5> If you want to experiment with LoRaWAN, we open sourced our Network Service: [https://github.com/exploratoryengineering/congress](https://github.com/exploratoryengineering/congress)

We also open sourced our module design (EE-02) that uses nRF52 as the MCU: [https://github.com/ExploratoryEngineering/ee0x-hardware](https://github.com/ExploratoryEngineering/ee0x-hardware)

You can buy the modules here, but I think stocks might be running low. (However, if anyone needs larger numbers of modules we can put you into contact with the factory we use for manufacturing them): [https://shop.exploratory.engineering/](https://shop.exploratory.engineering/)

<comment><USER6> Nice!! Cool that it's open hardware. What's your business model considering you don't want someone buying large numbers from you? :-)

<comment><USER5> You have no idea how often I am asked that :-)

We work for a telco, and this was just a learning exercise to understand the opportunities and challenges with LPWA. While waiting for NB-IoT chipsets and network rollout. We mostly set up the shop to have a orderly way for people to get the devices from us if they want to experiment (free stuff has a tendency to end up lining people's drawers unused)

We built everything from (and including) the devices to the applications, and everything inbetween minus the LoRa gateway. The attitude being "okay we can read a bunch of datasheets and PPT-decks, but we're not going know anything unless we get hands on". So we did.

The modules were just to get the radio and MCU bits into a reusable module which we then used for about a dozen or so prototypes. We run Apache MyNewt on them (the EE-02 was actually used to develop LoRa support for MyNewt).

Since Nordic Semiconductor are in the same building the nRF52 was a pretty obvious choice (I think we might have been the first customer). They make lovely chips. And I'm not getting paid to say that :-).

We did think about building a gateway as well, but we felt it didn't add much to the exercise.

And now? Now we are doing the whole exercise again for NB-IoT, but this time it is to apply what we've learnt. That being said: we plan to open source stuff in the future. Both hardware and software.

<comment><USER6> Nice! How can we stay up to date?

<comment><USER5> We have a blog where the team occasionally posts updates.

[https://blog.exploratory.engineering/](https://blog.exploratory.engineering/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's be honest, LTE was always oversold in terms of its technical limitations. The first reference to it that I can recall seeing (years ago) actually was describing LTE Advanced (~150 Mb/s), but conveniently left out that information.

I know that it had been shown in testing to reach 200 Mb/s - call me when real world usage data can show that kind of result.

In reality, the kind of progress that @barbegal mentions has done more to advance device capabilities, but for something that was initially sold as a 10x _speed_ improvement over 3GPP, it hasn't really panned out.

The telecom folks make a bunch of noise about how you can replace a home connection with these kinds of technologies, but until prices come down and speeds go (way) up, the wireline people don't have much to worry about.

<comment><USER8> I've gotten 150 mbps down using the Ookla Speedtest app on my iPhone 6s at the strip mall nearest to me. (Nowhere special, suburban Annapolis.)

Tried it just now at my house on my iPhone SE: 29 mbps down, 28 msec ping. One floor right above my Wifi router, I'm getting just 30 mbps (7 msec ping however) over Wifi, so the LTE performance isn't too shabby.

<comment><USER7> That's fair, although I suspect the infrastructure is more developed in certain areas because the Naval Academy is there. The SE result is pretty typical from what I've seen. When I only had 25/5, I'd be really excited by such a thing, but 100/35 has ruined me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the kind of blather I expect from business types without hardware experience.

The issue with NB-IoT right now is chicken vs egg.

NB-IoT stuff currently is limited to expensive modules.

Why? Because the carriers aren't rolling this out yet and when it is it's expensive. So, nobody is going to make a chip for it since the volume isn't going to be there for a while (Intel, for example, just pulled out of making NB-IoT chips). So, the badly integrated systems are going to be battery hungry and expensive, which means that the carriers don't see any volume and consequently don't feel the need to work very hard rolling it out.

Once the carriers finally get NB-IoT stuff universally deployed (even if it's expensive) then the silicon vendors will go to work on integrating everything into a single chip.

Once _that_ happens, someone will say: "Hi, T-Mobile, I have 10 million devices I would like to activate and connect. Would you like to do this or should I go talk to Verizon, AT&T, etc." and the prices will come down.

This will follow the same trajectory as cellular data vs cellular voice.

<comment><USER10> Intel pulling out is far from a canary in the coal mine. The rest of your post is fairly accurate though!

Background: Intel has serious production issues with their latest 10nm process, meaning their x86 chips and LTE modems for Apple are filling most of their capacity to manufacture chips on the existing 14nm process. I doubt Intel has LTE modem designs that work on older processes, and NB-IOT being unproven, low volume and needing low power chips means it could really use the best process available. Thus, with no slack capacity to build chips, why spend engineering time on something you can't build in quantity?

If 10nm were usable, Intel would likely have numerous side projects filling their older 14nm fabs. Sadly this won't be the case for Intel anytime soon.

<comment><USER11> Actually, ultra-low power devices (ie months-/years-long battery life) are probably better suited for older technology nodes, say 40+ nm for bulk, or 22+ nm for SoI. Standby leakage power is going to be too high on the lower nodes. Lasting months/years on a coin cell means sub-1 uA standby combined with infrequent, short-lived wake cycles. There's no real way around this until you go to energy harvesting, and right now that's limited to very very low power, single-function devices.

<comment><USER12> Excellent post -- a rarely understood truth. For low power wireless systems, still, though, the bulk of the energy is spent in TX and RX. But realistically the quiescent power drain still needs to be in the sub 5uW range to deliver long life on a small battery. A lot of GNSS and LTE SoC's standby in the 50uW range, which is just too much. Most of the LTE devices I've surveyed (M1, NB- IoT) are expected to be attached to MCUs, but they implement internally a small linux platform. Obviously, that makes it hard to get down to 5 uW.

<comment><USER9> > For low power wireless systems, still, though, the bulk of the energy is > spent in TX and RX.

That is _very_ highly dependent upon the system.

Some systems are all about leakage--these spend most of their lifetime on a shelf and a couple of days actually active.

Some systems are all about sensors or actuators and the communication is in the noise.

Some systems are all about calling home, and those require good TX consumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing is that LTE-M allows you to have real IP connectivity in contrast to other true LPWAN technologies built on datagrams that are sufficiently small that any real cryptography is non-trivial challenge and can be transmited once each minute/hour/day. If there is any unserviced niche it is in duplex bursts of realtime traffic (ie. what you usually get for satellite telematics, but for IoT it has to be few orders of magnitude cheaper)

<comment><USER12> A few things. (1) If the payload is shorter than the key length (e.g. 128 bits) then crypto is actually really strong (and easy). For long payloads, you need to work a lot harder. (2) For doing a public key handshake, you can do it without a huge packet using one of the elliptical curve algos, but for any public key handshake you need a reasonably short duration of the handshake in order for it to be adequately secure. That's a bigger challenge than the data size. Low power LTE Cat M1 or NB-IoT systems aren't any better at practically serving low latency sessions than most LPWANs are. (3) "secure elements" should be called "insecure elements" when the items they are installed in are remotely operated in public environments. (4) Carriers tend to use TCP/IP with LTE, which is more of a limitation than a benefit, because it prevents any manner of broadcasting. There are a lot of applications that can be low power if they are broadcasted, but will never be low power (or easy) via TCP. (5) The direction LTE has gone, in my opinion, makes it undesirable for a lot of applications. It is nice for low-volume monitoring applications. So in a sense I think LTE as a LPWAN is really the great solution for niche use-cases.

<comment><USER14> Your claim (1) looks a lot like hubris to me unless you're imagining a product that sends only a single payload during its lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've done a lot of prototyping with LTE, GPRS, LTE-M, and NB-LTE chipsets (along with having previously worked for a Bluetooth tracker company) and I think this article is making a false conclusion. The terrible battery life of these example products is much more caused by the power devouring GPS or a lack of adequate battery capacity in these products than by the LTE-M chipset.

<comment><USER6> If you think so, you've to state what the power use was of the chipsets you've used.

For example the well-known nRF51: [https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic- q-a/1657/how-to-mini...](https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/1657/how- to-minimize-current-consumption-for-ble-application-on-nrf51822). It can be as low as 20 uA. Between advertisements 4 uA.

<comment><USER16> its down to duty cycle. That figure is the average consumption. I can make most chipsets consume 20uA, its trivial, just don't take them out of hibernation.

LTE-M is a high(well couple of kilobytes per second) bandwidth, full duplex, high duty cycle transport layer. Not only that, its relatively long distance (well kinda)

Bluetooth is short range < 30m, and at high bandwidth shorter range. yes it can be full duplex, but not at low power (I've not validated that claim though) The BLE beacons don't emit a location every 4 seconds, they also don't have a GPS on all the time eating 35mah.

Lora has a maximum duty cycle of something like 5% (ie it has to be not transmitting 95% of the time) not only that, its not designed for realtime two way communications, It's niche is a sensor reporting the state of a sensor every n minutes.

<comment><USER6> You won't be able to achieve the BLE figures with cellular technology. (Even without GPS. )

You just basically say so by explaining how much higher the bandwidth is.

The thesis of the author of this article still stands. It's not just GPS.

<comment><USER16> I can, if I don't turn it on, which is where the 20uA figure comes from, keeping the device in hibernation

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Duty cycle is something we had to be very aggressive about even on the BLE side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No idea why this article takes the view it does on LTE based on 1 device? ... We do low power data loggers on 3G and now just starting doing LTE, and power usage is really good for LTE compared to 3G. We aren't rechargeable (though we do have options for that), and we do 3+ years depending on the scenario. We have 1000s of devices in the field and have been doing this for quite a number of years. LTE is going to let us do more for the same life span, or the same for a longer lifespan.

<comment><USER18> Hi Keith, I am interested, who is "we"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> that's absolutely true, the real low-power is LoRA technically, it's just that LORA is too small comparing to all these cellular giants.

maybe Amazon or some other big guy interested in IoT should acquire LoRA, then for low-power use cases, LTE-M has absolutely no chance.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would love to see an actual low power, long range system: a cross between Bluetooth low energy and LTE. Allow devices to transmit at a higher power than Bluetooth and with much smaller receiver on time than LTE.

<comment><USER12> That's a really hard problem to solve, which is why you don't see lots of solutions. DASH7 has been around for a few years, and it addresses the technical aspects of this problem, although it still probably needs another year to mature to the point where it's easy to integrate. But if you have a high volume application, it's an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On another note, GPS tracker is probably wrong application for this assesment as I would believe that GPS receiver has significantly larger power consumption than LTE-M radio.

<comment><USER12> No, it's usually much less for GNSS. The secret to low power GNSS is to find a way not to have the receiver on much of the time, but that's very possible. LTE has less flexibility in overhead energy, because there's overhead enforced by the network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd be amazed that anything with a GPS in it would last seven days, never mind any other radios that are in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about a LPWAN endpoint with GPS that last 2+ years? Like this: [http://bit.ly/2pBcYqp](http://bit.ly/2pBcYqp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If it isn't open source, it can't optimize power efficiency up and down the stack.</comment>