Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees? - <AUTHOR> Any recommendations for a worthwhile, fully online CS program?  I'm more interested in a BS than a BA, but if online programs are limited (and that seems likely), I won't rule anything out. <comment><USER2> When you're applying for online-only degrees, keep in mind what you're giving up. While the quality of the education may be comparable, much of the value of attending in-person is to build career-lasting relationships with smart, interesting, and trustworthy people. For many of us, sitting directly across from someone else while having a meaningful conversation is still unparalleled by what any communications technology can offer us today.

Of course, everyone has a different situation so an online CS program might actually be the best for you. For master's degrees, I've heard good things about programs at GTech, UIUC, and UCB (UCB is data science only)...not too much in the direction of undergraduate degrees.

<comment><USER3> (full disclosure, i work as an engineer at coursera)

just wanted to highlight that one of the degrees that UIUC (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) offers, the Master of Computer Science in Data Science, is available on Coursera: [https://www.coursera.org/degrees/masters- in-computer-data-sc...](https://www.coursera.org/degrees/masters-in-computer- data-science)

the benefit of this is that the way we structure our degrees, they mostly end up being a collection of courses and specializations already provided on the platform; you can try some of the courses without having to go all-in on the degree just yet. (of course, there's a ton of added benefits for enrolling in the degree program, like high-engagement learning opportunities that you don't normally get from the MOOC experience)

<comment><USER4> I am an iMBA degree student at UIUC. I took a leap of faith and got admitted in the iMBA program (Jan'17 cohort). I can say with confidence that UIUC is not only the first one to give such an affordable education but their online education platform is pretty stable.

Lots of my friends who are in the iMBA program are pretty serious about the Masters in DS. They had to be, after all they are getting 2 masters degree for half the price. I might be wrong but Berkeley is offering their DS Masters (online program for 100k+)

<comment><USER5> That's through Coursera or the university directly?

It looks interesting but I'd have to qualify for federal financial aid to do the program and trust the university more than Coursera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you already have a BS (or higher) in another field, then Oregon State University has a 60 credit completely online computer science BS degree. They have 1, 2, 3 and 4 year tracks depending upon each person's available time commitment.[0]

If you already have a BS in computer science or a related field, then see this comment[1]

[0] - [http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online- degrees/undergraduate/...](http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online- degrees/undergraduate/computer-science/)

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15899756)

<comment><USER7> If you already have a BS in another field, you might be better off taking Georgia Tech's MS CompSci ([https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/](https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/)).

<comment><USER6> "Preferred qualifications for admitted OMS CS students are an undergraduate degree in computer science or related field (typically mathematics, computer engineering or electrical engineering) from an accredited institution with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. Applicants who do not meet these criteria will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis; however, work experience will not take the place of an undergraduate degree."[0]

So unless that other field is Math or computer-related, then that's not really going to work, which is why I specifically mentioned "another field".

[0] - [https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/admission- criteria](https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/admission-criteria)

<comment><USER8> My spouse was accepted with a Psych BA + MS, and about twenty credits of CS at various extension university programs.

<comment><USER9> How much do you think the MS helped?

<comment><USER8> Honestly I have no idea. I'm sure it didn't hurt, but couldn't say if it was a deciding factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surprised nobody has mentioned Open University which just happens to be one of the largest in the world - [http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q62](http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q62)

<comment><USER11> I am getting a BSc in Mathematics there and enjoying is a lot. The first year was easy, but to the third year it has become really serious.Tons of support with forums, tutors, videos, great learning materials.

<comment><USER12> I'd be interested in hearing more about your experience, as someone who likes math amateurly. How expensive is it and what's the process been like for you?

<comment><USER11> The application process is pretty easy, they do not require high school diploma or something to start. The main thing is to manage your study, build routine. Most people just leave on the way not because the topics are super hard - the first year is easy - self study require self organisation and discipline, particularly if you work full time. First year I took 120 points like to cover full time first year study. Next years I took just half 60 points thus making left 2 years into 4. It is much more manageable.

On the third year you can choose from the variety of subjects: applied maths like fluids, optimisation, etc., pure maths, statistics related, and physics related. Very fun, but challenging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good question.

I was looking into this a few years back, and ended getting my BS in-person, at the big state school nearby. It paid off well.

That said, these are other online options I considered.

Portland State University -- has a BS in CS that's fully online. They also have an option for people who are getting a 2nd BS, from another field. * [https://www.pdx.edu/computer-science/progrgam- preparation](https://www.pdx.edu/computer-science/progrgam-preparation)

Harvard Extension - Bachelor's in CS * [https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate- de...](https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate- degrees/bachelor-liberal-arts-degree/undergraduate-fields-minors)

Arizona State - BS in Software Engineering * [https://go.asuonline.asu.edu/](https://go.asuonline.asu.edu/)

I had a co-worker during one of my internships going through this program, at SNHU, fully online & remote, and he liked it a lot: [https://www.snhu.edu/online-degrees/bachelors/bs-in- computer...](https://www.snhu.edu/online-degrees/bachelors/bs-in-computer- science)

Just some food for thought. There are many more options. Good luck!

<comment><USER14> The PSU link you posted:

> Page Not Found

Yea, as someone who is admitted to their CS program but unable to find online courses to actually continue, this web message really hits home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bachelor's CS is hard to find for some reason. ASU and PSU have Software Engineering bachelors which has the basics and covers a good bit of practical knowledge but not so much theoretical. This is probably not ideal if you are already a working software engineer and want stronger theory.

The University of Florida and Auburn University have online CS programs but I don't know much about them.

<comment><USER5> Came in to say ASU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For a master, you have The Georgia Tech OMSCS. Most of the on campus classes are available.

<comment><USER17> Can attest to that (graduating from it next Friday!). Few points - the main pitch for this is the cost, even if it was not a top 10 ranked MSCS program, it was still one of the most cost effective degrees in the US. The total cost for me was around $8,000 including everything (you can lower it if you take it less slowly than I did).

The diploma is the same as the on-campus one by the way. I'm actually attending the commencement ceremony there like all the on-campus students (I'm from GA but some OMSCS students fly in just for the graduation ceremony)

One small correction, I wouldn't say that most of the on-campus classes are available online, I'd say a great deal of them are, but there are many that are offered only on-campus.

<comment><USER7> Don't be distracted by the rankings. Georgia Tech has an excellent computer science department. Rankings often include mostly-irrelevant details like the ratio of faculty to students. As far as I know, the rankings include essentially no information about the quality of instruction.

<comment><USER17> Agree that ranking is not that important, p.s. Pardon my english, it's not my first language, I might have wrote it badly. I meant event if it were not a top 10 program (which it is) it would still have been worth it, just for the cost. GA Tech MS in CS is current ranked #9 in USNews and World Report which makes it even a better bargain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're ok with BS in Information Technology instead of CS, WGU has a good 100% online program. If not, their masters degree programs may be a good follow up (one of them is in security and may include one or more relevant certifications).

<comment><USER19> They also have Software Dev.

[https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/software- development-b...](https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/software-development- bachelors-program.html)

And I believe CS coming "soon."

<comment><USER20> I'm finishing up at WGU in Software Dev but sure wouldn't mind switching to CS proper - I keep hearing this and "soon," but can't pinpoint the source of the rumors whatsoever - do you know where you heard / got the impression that CS was coming to WGU?

<comment><USER19> [https://twitter.com/wgu/status/851483303584514048](https://twitter.com/wgu/status/851483303584514048)

<comment><USER20> FANTASTIC, many many thanks!!! With that in mind, I can move forward in relative peace, again, very grateful!! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not quite on-topic, but some may not know about Harvard's Extension School:

[http://blog.markshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters- degree-...](http://blog.markshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-in- software-engineering)

Master's degree (ALM in IT): mostly on-line (8 weeks on-campus) for appx. $30K.

I think including cost info is helpful in this type of discussion.

</comment><comment><USER22> University of London: [https://london.ac.uk/courses/computing-and-information- syste...](https://london.ac.uk/courses/computing-and-information-systems)

It's the cheapest I've seen - less than $10K total for the degree.

</comment><comment><USER23> University of the People ([https://www.uopeople.edu/](https://www.uopeople.edu/)) offers a tuition free CS degree program (both an AS and a BS). Many of the course materials are quite old (in some cases 5-10+ years), but this is really only a problem where specific technologies are concerned (for instance, there's a mobile applications class that covers Android 2.x). Many of the more general concepts will still apply.

Note that you do have to pay for exams, which are $100/class. This works out to be ~$4k for your entire CS degree.

<comment><USER24> This seems to be the cheapest accredited option, use University of the People to get any kind of undergrad, then can pay for a masters in CS somewhere else. (Too bad uopen doesn't have an applied math undergrad, then the material being dated wouldn't matter).

There is Athabasca U in Canada which offers a fully online, and accredited BSc in CompSci or Applied Mathematics, and the only requirements are 16+yrs old (no transcripts or even highschool grad needed) but the fees are $900CAD or so for 3 credit courses and you need to complete 120 credits so ~$35k for an undergrad ($27k USD). [http://www.athabascau.ca/programs- courses/](http://www.athabascau.ca/programs-courses/) whereas you could do Upeople, obtain an undergrad and pay for Johns Hopkins MSc for the same cost.

<comment><USER25> There's also been reports that Athabasca U is having funding issues at present, for those looking at this option (which is the only option in Canada for online in this field that I've found.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If your goal is "become a software engineer", I would recommend you consider other online options. Your rough ROI equation should be "cost = (tuition + time-to-job * delta-in-salary) + cost-of-failure * odds-of-failure" and "odds- of-failure" is the product of graduation rate * job placement rate. Online CS programs tend to have higher time-to-job and unpublished job placement stats. They may still be good options, but this is how I would evaluate.

Other online options:

        * Hack Reactor Remote http://hackreactor.com/remote
            * Disclaimer: I am a cofounder of Hack Reactor
            * "Online classroom" model (work with peers and teachers over videoconf, etc during set hours)
            * Time-to-job: 3 months program + job search, plus you may need a prep class to pass the entry interview
            * Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rate
        * Thinkful
            * "Mentor-supported" model (some meetings, lots of flex time)
            * Time-to-job: I think there is some info on CIRR.org
            * Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rate
        * Free Code Camp
            * "Self-driven" model (all driven by you, with online text communications and lots of local meetups)
            * Time-to-job: Not sure there is good data on this.
            * Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rate

<comment><USER27> re: Thinkful, we have a rigorous, full-time program that matches your definition of "online classroom" as well as a flexible program for those who can only commit part-time. Both offer 1-on-1 mentorship, with stats available on CIRR.org.

OP - you're welcome to ping me (bhaumik@thinkful[dot]com) w/ any specific questions. I run the full-time product.

<comment><USER28> It looks like an interesting setup, but the requirement to provide email in order to view the syllabus is offputting.

<comment><USER27> Ya I agree it's annoying. Will flag this with our marketing team.

We teach the MERN stack with some CS theory (basic data structures & algorithms). There's also a heavy focus on building so your portfolio pieces will start with wireframes and end with deployment and code reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Don't want to be cynical. Why don't the top 5 CS program online undergrad or masters degrees?

The cynical view is the De Beers conjecture. Artificial scarcity is used to maintain prestige, brand equity for the university ([http://aei.org/publication/on-the-economics-of-diamonds- the-...](http://aei.org/publication/on-the-economics-of-diamonds-the-biggest- marketing-scam-in-history-orchestrated-by-the-most-successful-cartel-ever)).

The generous view is that they are just trying to find a way to ensure a high bar of quality and experience, and as soon as that's possible they'll all have options.

I believed MIT has come closest - you can in principal enter a program without a 99% percentile GRE score (or any GRE score) if you can do the work. You have to spend some time on campus, but in the end it's an MIT degree without an asterisk. For some reason they've not picked Computer Science as one of the first programs.

Berkeley's data science programs do not offer computer science degrees, and unfortunately are not even in the college of engineering. It's a shame because a lot of the math/work there is a starting foundation for machine learning.

</comment><comment><USER30> This past autumn I enrolled in the DePaul University online degree completion for CS. As the name states, it is not a four year program, you need to have basically your freshman year completed elsewhere. I have only taken a single class so far which worked out good. Starting in January I will be in a Discrete Math course so it will be a bit more intense so I will see how that goes.

When researching a program, I had narrowed it down to the following options:

* DePaul University

* University of Illinois at Springfield

* Arizona State University

* University of Maryland University College

* University of Florida

I ended up choosing DePaul because of the name recognition and the fact that I can actually visit the campus for advising, activities, etc. They also do not have a distinction on their diploma stating that the degree is "online", it is the same as a residence degree.

It may seem petty, but one of my criteria for choosing a school was that if I had ever heard or seen the school advertised on TV or radio, I wasn't interested. I wanted a school that was invested in academics and not advertising.

</comment><comment><USER31> I graduated from UIUC with a MSCS '14 (online).

\- Did my CS undergrad at top school on site '11 \- Worked full time in Bay as software developer since undergrad graduation, 2011. \- Employer paid MS tuition

Pros: \- I learn a lot better from doing than listening. I'd watch the lectures at 2x speed. Felt like I could actually pay attention until the end. \- Learned how to read papers. \- Challenged me to keep learning outside of work. I keep studying new stuff even now otherwise I look back and feel lazy. \- Taught by best of the best.

Cons \- Group projects can be a little hard to organize with on site students \- Summer courses are accelerated but your full time job does not get any lighter. Summer classes are very hard with a full time job. Take something fluffy.

Anecdotally, my friends who took online classes at GTech complained that it was too easy. UIUC was definitely not easy and you get access to some top professors. Salary wise, I don't know how much it mattered but if your employer pays for it, it's a no brainer.

<comment><USER32> What company is paying for MS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The University of Maryland (a fully accredited and well respected State school) has a completely online CS program (Bachelor of Science with an option for several minors and specializations as well). Having taken part of my CS program on-site (at other schools) and part with them online, I can say it is very comparable to other programs, quite rigorous, and you get a lot out of it.

You do lose out on some networking opportunities, but I was an older (military veteran) student anyway and couldn't stand the immaturity of most of my classmates while attending in-person class. I found the online ones more distraction-free. It will require quite a bit of discipline, especially in the mathematics courses, to get through it but it is definitely a great program and affordable at the same time.

<comment><USER25> Is this the one you're referring too?

[http://www.umuc.edu/academic-programs/bachelors- degrees/comp...](http://www.umuc.edu/academic-programs/bachelors- degrees/computer-science-major.cfm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> NC State offers nearly the entire repertoire of CS-level classes online (discrete math, C programming language, computer organization & assembly, data structures, algorithms, design patterns/OOP, operating systems, automata, etc). Videotaped lectures and proctored exams. NC State transfers well, and they are credited no differently from an in-person class. No special asterisk or transcript annotation lowering the value of the credit.

However, you'll have to get the vast majority of your bachelor General Education elsewhere (Rio Salado online CC, ASU Online, etc) such as English, Humanities, Calculus, Linear Algebra, etc.

[https://engineeringonline.ncsu.edu/](https://engineeringonline.ncsu.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I am currently 60% through the GT omscs program. I'd say it's good for your money. So far I have been unimpressed with the quality of the recorded lectures both compared to other recorded lectures and on campus lectures. Group projects are a pain. The focuses especially in ML are weak, you really have to do a lot of work on your own in order to be competent in a specialization. Because of the lack of courses they offer I've ended up taking 3 / 6 courses which I didn't need to take or enjoy taking. I'd say it's best if you want to get a well rounded overview of some modern trends in cs rather than focusing on any specialization.

<comment><USER36> > you really have to do a lot of work on your own in order to be competent in > a specialization

Totally agree with this. For courses like AI, ML, and RL, I watched lectures from Berkeley and Stanford in addition to the GT lectures, and that really helped me understand it better.

> get a well rounded overview of some modern trends in cs

That's usually the case for a master's. PhDs are more in-depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/software- development-b...](https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/software-development- bachelors-program.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> This doesn't meet any of your criteria, but will be interesting to some:

[http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/](http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/)

MSc in Software Engineering, from Oxford. Designed to be doable around a real job, over four years. No undergrad degree required. You need to be onsite for 11 weeks over four years. Modular, and you can fit to your interests and timetable. Cost was about £25k for the whole thing.

<comment><USER39> Thanks for the link.

Although fees seems a bit higher:

The projected total cost of an MSc at 0% inflation is £32,140 (or £27,380 for students accorded Home/EU status). The actual cost will depend upon the selection of modules and the total time taken to complete, but may be easily estimated. Any substantive change to this fee structure will apply only to subsequent registrations.

(from website)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I did a year of community college courses and all but 2 of them were online. In person I hated 19 year olds wasting class time that I've paid for and loved being able to push forward online on my time. I would be interested in finishing up online, spare me the social interaction / frustration. That's my take on things and may not fit everyone but I see a end to the expensive roadblock as more education goes online.

</comment><comment><USER41> University of Illinois Springfield offers a BS: [https://csc.uis.edu/online- undergraduate-admission](https://csc.uis.edu/online-undergraduate-admission)

You can save major bucks by doing your gen ed at a community college and then transferring. (Edit: just noticed you already have a BA in another field, so your gen ed is probably all set.)

</comment><comment> g0thams- I have two suggestions:

University of the People: [https://www.uopeople.edu](https://www.uopeople.edu). It's accredited, nonprofit, and has several 'big name' partners like Microsoft, IBM, and Intel.

And Western Governor's University(wgu.edu), also nonprofit and accredited.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't have firsthand knowledge of online CS programs, but I have spent time pursuing an online BS (in Environmental Resource Management). So, this is some of what I know:

Sacramento State, which I personally visited (in meatspace) while investigating online/distance learning Master's, has some excellent programs. I dug around and their site points to what is supposedly an entirely online CS program from a California university here:

[https://csumb.edu/scd/cs-online-degree-completion- bs](https://csumb.edu/scd/cs-online-degree-completion-bs)

A good resource for anyone interested in taking either online classes or getting a degree in California is California Virtual Campus:

[https://cvc.edu/](https://cvc.edu/)

You can search the database for classes you need. I have taken classes from several California colleges in the process of trying to complete my online Bachelor's, some in person and some online.

Penn State was the other thing I researched years ago that looked good to me, but I recall it being spendy. I am just going to point you to their home page and you can dig around and see if they have a program that interests you:

[https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/](https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/)

I was mostly looking for either GIS programs or Urban Planning programs to further my education after my bachelor's (or looking for classes to fill in the holes in my undergrad education, because I have an AA in Humanities and needed more science classes to complete the requirements of my BS). But my recollection is that Sacremento State and Penn State were two well established online and distance learning programs more than 10 years ago when this was not common. So I think they likely know what they are doing and are not fly-by- night deals.

</comment><comment><USER43> Do any of these programs offer a way to trade experience via testing for credits? I went the hands in way 20 years ago and have done really well with it, but I sometimes wonder if having the degree would be helpful.

<comment><USER44> You can challenge courses at most schools if you already know the material.

<comment><USER43> Thanks! Definitely something to check into then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What is the cheapest route from an AS in something like computer networking to a BS in CS? I'm 5 years into mid-level development jobs, so I'm not sure if it's even worth the money.

<comment><USER46> Just curious, do you do any comp sci in your developing role, what sorts of stuff; or is it mainly programming.

<comment><USER45> Eh, no real compsci stuff, it's full stack .NET MVC / Angular 5. I'd like to move towards something more complex in the future, and I figured a degree would help me get into a larger company. I'm not entirely sure if that is true, or if I really want to work somewhere that has a hard stop on requiring one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> ODU (Old Dominion University) has an online cs program, ranked in the top 10 of online cs programs for undergrad. I work with an engineer who completed his degree through there.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hi everyone! As far as I understand from the links below, finding a BS program that costs less than 20000-25000$ is unreal, right?

</comment><comment><USER49> Some things I've learned about school. I'm looking to apply to a masters program, so this might vary a little bit, but hopefully it's helpful:

* If you already have a bachelors, chances are getting further education doesn't make sense from an ROI/opportunity cost standpoint. That's ok though--there are other reasons to further your education. Just run some numbers and know what you're getting yourself into though.

* Community college can be an excellent value, especially for more introductory classes that have a pretty defined curriculum. Outside of that, quality seems to vary more and it's possible your credit won't transfer or satisfy the prerequisites to your program of choice. Unfortunately, most community colleges don't seem to have university-level courses beyond the basics. Leading to...

* Computer science programs have a lot of variation in terms of their curriculum, so it can be hard to piecemeal classes from different sources. At the masters level (which, if you have a bachelors already you might consider) most programs expect you to come in with something of a bachelors-ish level background in computer science, and if you don't, they'll have you take their curriculum. It seems like having professional experience helps in terms of consideration, but not in terms of coursework.

* There are a ton of online programs out there. For what I'm looking at though (MSCS), they work pretty similarly. You can take classes on a per-class basis, then apply to the program, and they'll accept some amount of units toward the degree (note that you can't apply units from your undergrad degree). I know this is the case with Stanford's SCPD program, and I believe it's also true of USC and Columbia.

* Online programs can be pretty expensive on a per-unit basis. Taking one class at a time helps with the sticker shock. Also, there are a lot of professional programs that take less time. Personally, I'm hoping to do a research project, so that won't work for me, but it might for you.

* You can also take classes on an "open" basis at a local university, which is nice for the odd class that is tangentially required that you don't want to pay a lot of money for. For example, I'm taking probability theory at SFSU right now.

A little about me: I'm currently taking classes in preparation to apply to a masters program. I have a BA in economics, but I've been developing software professionally since 2008. I'm currently doing the "Foundations in Computer" science courses through Stanford's SCPD program to provide a coherent core curriculum before applying to programs.

</comment><comment><USER50> Would it make sense to take a formal CS degree for someone with an engineering/math degree? Does having a master's degree in CS help you become a better entrepreneur/engineer considering the cornucopia of knowledge provided by MOOCs?

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone know of any online PhD programs?

</comment><comment><USER52> Columbia University has a distance learning option called CVN. They offer an MS in CS. The degree/diploma is identical to getting a Master's on campus.

</comment><comment><USER53> Saylor?

saylor.org

For the knowledge; not sure if they give you a degree.

</comment><comment><USER54> [http://open.edu.au](http://open.edu.au) partners with a number of Australian universities like RMIT and Griffith, and five or six others, to deliver all of the content online. However each subject generally still has an invilgated exam. From what i understand though, even these exams can be undertaken in a host of other countries.

</comment><comment><USER55> You can get an entire free curriculum from Open Source Society (OSS) and a lot of their classes you can get credited for, however it's mostly a curated list of free resources like classes offered from MIT and Stanford and various other schools last time I checked. Might be worth looking into.

</comment><comment><USER56> Worthwhile and "fully online" are pretty much mutually exclusive.

If you want a degree then actually go to the college. Watching videos is very different than actually talking to lecturers face to face, doing exercises under supervision and guidance, having access to labs and having someone to ask if you don't know something.

There is also the aspect of self-discipline - it is very easy to goof off instead of doing your homework and sitting in front of long lectures on a computer. In a college where you are likely paying tuition you will likely think twice whether you flunk a test or a project or not, forcing you to actually work on your knowledge.

There is also the aspect that pretty much no employer (or grad school) will recognize your online-only "degree". So you may have learned a lot but in the end wasted your time because it doesn't bolster your credentials in any way.

Online programs are a good complement to a classical curriculum on campus but not really the same quality.

<comment><USER15> You could hold n amount of dollars in an escrow account that would donate it all to charity if you didn't make solid grades if you really wanted to.

All the other problems you cited are instances of baseless bias or could be addressed in an online setting. I suppose it depends on the university you attend but I never experienced "doing exercises under supervision and guidance" and indeed, people who can only work/be motivated in that setting woulud probably make terrible professional developers.</comment></comment>


Boeing slams the Falcon Heavy rocket as "too small" - valiant-comma https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/boeing-slams-the-falcon-heavy-rocket-as-too-small/ <comment><AUTHOR> Heh - so the Falcon Heavy has launched a Tesla on its way to Mars, but the Boeing SLS which hasn't flown yet is more capable of "NASA's deep-space needs"???

Are "NASA's deep-space needs" as non existent as Boeings rocket? (Given the current administrations record of funding science, that could easily be a true interpretation, sadly...)

Also, how cool is it that the SaturnV is still the most powerful rocket ever flown? Those '60's rocket scientists were genuine heros...

<comment><USER2> > Those '60's rocket scientists were genuine heros...

That's what the Germans thought too.</comment></comment>


Modifying the Python object model - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/754163/a38214c50e7b3ece/ <comment><USER2> It's maybe worth noting that richards is an "easy" benchmark. PyPy has been speeding it up quite significantly by about 40x for a long time.

Those changes are necessary for improved performance, but not nearly good enough. PyPy does that and tons and tons of more stuff and it gets dismissed here as "provided only modest speedup on company workload", which means there is far more involved here than just attribute lookup/function call which have been massively speed up by pypy for quite a few years now.

<comment><USER3> Pypy doesn't work well with cpython modules. That makes it a non-starter, sorry.

<comment><USER2> We have been addressing that for the last 3 years. Which CPython modules it does not work with for you?

That comment was about something slightly different though - even though richards is 40x faster, pypy still is not faster on some workloads (like instagram in their measurments), which makes me think that there are other forces at play.

<comment><USER3> Well, right now, I simultaneously want to use the python-gobject stuff, Pandas, numpy, bcolz, and other assorted parts of the scipy universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange that Guido or the other CPython devs would object to adding caching (though, rereading, maybe they only objected to the tone it was presented in - which still seems a bit sensitive). I get favoring simple code over optimizations for more extreme cases like switching from dictionaries to arrays, but what essentially sounds like a tiny LRU cache for method dispatch seems like a clear win for everyone.

<comment><USER5> CPython has always strived to be a simple easy-to-read reference implementation of Python. They have rejected many patches over the decades which would have sped up various things at the expense of readability.

People should not use CPython for speed; they should use PyPy for speed.

<comment><USER4> And it is simple. I haven't written C since college and it's mostly very readable, really great for exploration. In many ways, I agree that should be kept.

But memoizing lookups can be a single branch at the top of a few functions. We should strive to have our cake and eat it too, not simply declare we shouldn't bother.

<comment><USER6> It ain't that easy (cache invalidation is hard). But they did it anyway, so, yeah, you can have your cake and eat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great article worth reading for any hardcore Python fans.

I'd also add that the comments on the LWN article are good too.

<comment><USER8> LWN.net articles are generally quite good. I signed up after reading an excellent summary of Spectre/Meltdown work from Greg Kroah-Hartmann.

@all if you like this article please pay for a subscription. LWN.net deserves our support.

<comment><USER9> > LWN.net deserves our support.

Agreed. I subscribed a few months ago, in part because LWN.net seems to be the only publication providing significant coverage of the Python Language Summits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised the article left out mention of PyPy, which is pretty comparable to something like V8

[http://speed.pypy.org/](http://speed.pypy.org/)

<comment><USER2> I believe the article is a more or less verbatim transcript of what happened. I wasn't there and I don't really want to speculate, but I would expect LWN to mention everything important that was mentioned and not add their own interpretation either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see python get much faster. Seeing all the work on node and V8 has made me jealous to the point of wondering if someone would ever take the Python syntax and just put it on top of V8 or (preferably) LLVM.

Yeah, I know that's more work that I can imagine, but I can dream, right?

<comment><USER11> The development of V8 was paid for by Google, and at that point they wanted to achieve market dominance against other big players.

It seems nobody is willing to put big enough money behind making Python much faster. My view is that the limitations are almost purely financial (as in, paying heavily somebody as skillful as e.g. Mike Pall or Lars Bak(1) and his team), not technical.

If Guido would not accept the "faster" Python, the fork would still be more popular if it would be compatible enough. And there are the technical aspects: it's not enough to make Python interpreter alone faster, whoever would take that challenge would have to adapt various important external libraries to be really accepted. Which is AFAIK also doable.

1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Bak_(computer_programmer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Bak_\(computer_programmer\))

<comment><USER2> The barriers are nearly purely social - the unwillingness to drop C API (or to have a phase out plan) and to declare certain kinds of behaviors as "implementation dependent" make it very hard for any meaningful competition to emerge.

It _is_ harder to make a fast python than to make a fast JS, but it's not _that much harder_.

<comment><USER12> > unwillingness to drop the C API

Is a feature not a bug. It makes things like NumPy, SciPy and Pandas possible.

<comment><USER13> Aren't things like NumPy, etc. also possible through a FFI?

That is, I can understand that there's such a big installed based that people are loath to get rid of the Python/C extension API, but I think that's different than saying those projects are impossible without that extension API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know some of the words in that article.

</comment><comment><USER15> things that immediately come to mind: \- GVR founder, involved and opinionated.. argues against the TONE of the communication ! during a fairly ordinary technical discussion of language implementation. Certainly a trained compiler implementor can carefully measure and then show becnhmarks on function dispatch.. but the concern raised has to do with maintainability of the code, more than raw performance. Dont you see? GVR is a humanist and social leader here. Ecosystem participation does matter, as well as raw tech specs. Hardcore math or performance languages are zillions of times faster, and how many users are there.. how many libraries..

* The fashionable inner-circle of the current economic winners, making the academic who "works for so-and-so" an immediate authority. Think for yourself! Wealth-makes-leadership leads to some sick outcomes, frankly. Sure, some academic compiler writer knows his function call stats, but that doesnt suddenly make the years and years of participatory work by many hands, less relevent. This is not populist, but rather pragmatic.

* Comparison to yet-another Python 3.x development. Great! Python evolves.. but lets not throw out a stable binary system with well-understood characteristics.. and that is.. Python 2.7

very interesting peek into the phenomenon of this language

<comment><USER13> > "argues against the TONE of the communication! during a fairly ordinary > technical discussion of language implementation.

The LWN piece says "Guido van Rossum, who loudly objected to Shapiro's tone, which was condescending, he said".

That sounds appropriate.

In your experience, do most people presenting an 'ordinary technical discussion' use a condescending tone? If so, I'm glad I don't work in your organization.

Otherwise, when should people complain when speaker is disparaging most of the people in the audience, even if accidentally?

<comment><USER15> "Guido van Rossum, who loudly objected to Shapiro's tone, which was condescending, he said" yes, appropriate -and- appreciated</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any tips on debugging Linux hibernate issues? - <AUTHOR> I tried posting on r/linuxquestions but the only response I got was generally unhelpful. I thought I would try here since this seems like a more professional crowd.
I have two laptops: Thinkpad T540p, Dell Insprion.
I've had the thinkpad for ~2 years. Hibernate has never worked consistently on it. I can usually get it to resume once or twice, but after I try to do anything useful, it will freeze when waking up.
About a month ago I bought the Inspiron for my wife. It seems to have the same issue. I had always assumed that the Thinkpad had issues because it had a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. But the inspiron only has onboard Intel, so that seems to not be the issue.
I found [this article](https://01.org/blogs/rzhang/2015/best-practice-debug-linux-suspend/hibernate-issues) and set the `no_console_suspend` boot parameter on both laptops.
Both go through the resume process and everything seems to go fine until they get stuck at a call to `lapic_suspend`. It looks like to me that is the call that starts hibernate, and it is trying to come back out of it and resume execution. Except for whatever reason, both laptops get hung instead.
Has anyone experienced this issue? Any tips? Hibernate has always worked great for me up until these two laptops.
Both are running Debian Unstable. This is the current `uname -a`: `Linux Babel 4.7.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.7.8-1 (2016-10-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux`
I am a software developer by trade and wouldn't mind digging through source code if it came to that, but I'm just not even sure where to start. <comment><USER2> This is a shot in the dark but some nasty hibernation bugs are fixed in 4.8[1]. It's probably worth booting a kernel from that series to see if it helps.

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/701639/](https://lwn.net/Articles/701639/)

<comment><AUTHOR> So far it looks like this may have been the issue. I've done some stress testing of things that always made it fail to resume in the past, and it has successfully woken up each time.

Thanks for the tip!

<comment><USER2> Great! Thanks for taking the time to reply. Unresolved questions always bug me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Start with a pendrive / USB boot and try different distro. Try both older and newer debian-based distros like mint or ubuntu which usually have better laptop support than vanilla debian to see if you can narrow down the problem.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found [this thread]([http://www.gossamer- threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/2306799](http://www.gossamer- threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/2306799)) and it seems to describe basically what I am running in to. Unfortunately it drops off and I haven't found if it picks up again in a different thread.

Both laptops are only using the onboard Intel card.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update a week later: The 4.8 kernel appears to have fixed the issue. I have not had a single issue all week.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps use smartctl to run a long test on the drive you're hibernating to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Might be a GPU driver issue. Are using the Nvidia binary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only one of the laptops has an Nvidia card, and I've used `bbswitch` to disable it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have the same problem with a Thinkpad x240. Never managed to figure it out, instead I just use suspend which works reliably.

<comment><AUTHOR> I normally just use suspend too.

I would definitely suggest trying the 4.8 kernel as mentioned in another comment. So far I haven't been able to make it fail.

<comment><USER7> By any chance, do you know which kernel commit(s) fixed your issue? Maybe git bisect can pinpoint the commit? It would be interesting to know what the exact bug was.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the article: [https://lwn.net/Articles/701639/](https://lwn.net/Articles/701639/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Proplets: Devices for Controlling Property - <AUTHOR> https://nakamotoinstitute.org/proplets-devices-for-controlling-property/ <comment><USER2> That is like an OnStar car from GM. There is a cell phone and GPS wired to the ECU. It is good for safety but I know a woman who had it call the police when she rolled her Escalade while heavily intoxicated. If you don't make the payments they could turn the car off or open the door and start the engine remotely for the repo man.

Those services don't work for you directly, but you can disconnect the cell phone antenna and hope it never times out.</comment>


Open Source Ad Stats - Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/open-source-ad-stats/ <comment><USER2> That is six flavors of brilliant. It StackOverflow demonstrate that ads may have an actual ROI despite being pitched at an audience of ad-blind cynical techies without having to expose data from advertisers (which they typically will not go for). Granted, people might click on OSS ads more than they'd click on genuine advertisements but, hey, overestimating effectiveness is not exactly a showstopper for the publisher.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a lot of interesting data to analyze. Like most of the ads have <1% CTR but two out of them have >1%: one contains a human face and the other contains a terminal. Rest contain some text/images over mostly white background.</comment>


Apache Kafka: Life after the honeymoon period - <AUTHOR> https://lenses.io/blog/2020/03/apache-kafka-when-the-honeymoon-is-over/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure your inability to implement Kafka correctly because you didn't want to go through the proper channels is exactly a good reason to kickstart a new project around it...you just have to design your system to use it for what makes sense and deal with what doesn't. Putting PPI into it is madness.

<comment><USER3> touché

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No user mgmt? Did Confluent keep this as a paid feature?

<comment><USER3> Yes, full namespace-based user management (SSO, LDAP etc) with lenses.io.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strimzi worked out quite well for our POC. Any reasons to believe it will not in low traffic production? Pitfalls?

<comment><USER3> That's the problem. POC is easy. Once you start getting adoption is where the problems start and where you need enterprise-features: user access controls, auditing, SQL-based data observability for troubleshooting, monitoring, alerting, self-service admin, schema management etc etc.</comment></comment>


Why Valve's SteamOS Could Be Revolutionary - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-applications/why-valves-steamos-could-be-revolutionary/d/d-id/899846 <comment><USER2> PC gaming has been getting sloppy seconds from the console market for a while now. Graphics have been held back by cross-platform development with consoles, which additionally has slowed the PC obsolescence rate to a snail's pace and killed PC sales. There have been many poor console ports with sloppy interfaces and poor utilization of PC hardware. However, there are a few titles (e.g. Skyrim) that are best played on a PC, and the vast difference in image quality, interface, and community mods is astounding. When developers trouble themselves to put some effort into the PC version, it shines.

In most previous console generations consoles began with clearly superior graphics quality to PC's of the time. The Xbox360 and PS3 changed this trend by being barely ahead at all, and the latest generation of consoles is apparently behind right out of the gate [1]! Consoles offer inferior graphics performance and inferior input (you can always hook a gamepad up to a PC!), but they're relatively cheap and have pretty effective DRM.

This situation presents a big opportunity for Steam. Make steamboxes as cheap and simple to use as a console and you effectively have a console! If you do this while providing superior image quality and supporting better forms of user input, you have a contender. Unfortunately, Valve isn't going to get much help from game producers right away. They'll prioritize whatever market generates the most profit. Steam is going to have to make steamboxes popular before game studios will prioritize the Steam experience vs. that on other consoles.

[1] [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry- battlefield...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry- battlefield-4-next-gen-vs-pc-face-off-preview)

<comment><USER3> To make steamboxes cheap and with good enough quality graphics to compete with the PS4 or a high end PC they're going to need to sell the boxes at cost (or maybe subsidize) and cut great deals with hardware manufacturers.

I don't know if this can square with their plan of having third parties sell Steam boxes unless they are going to give these companies a cut of game sales or something like that.

<comment><USER4> If you're wondering when PC hardware can "catch up" to console hardware, history shows it's simply a matter of waiting a year or two. Rather than the traditional new console generation land grab, Valve is playing a long game; they can afford to let Moore's law catch up a bit.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't necessarily change the economics so much. As time goes on a console manufacturer can drop the price of it's console and make up the difference using it's massive economies of scale and by selling more games (since it gets a cut of every title sold).

OTOH a hypothetical steambox manufacturer must still make a profit on every box sold. Since roughly the same pile of hardware can be sold as either a "steambox" or a "PC" (which can have steam installed) the margins on the two will have to be roughly the same.

Bare in mind that margins on most PCs are already pretty slim.

<comment><USER5> Bear in mind this is additional demand. People were never going to buy the equivalent "cheap pc gaming rig" because it didn't look and act like a console. Whereas steambox will, so effectively existing PC manufacturers will suddenly get access to a potentially huge new market which was off limits to them previously.

Given that the new console generation lifecycle will be about a decade, in 3-5 years SteamBox will be a no brainer in terms of price/performance.

I actually think what comes next is a "battle of the stores", where Steam will come installed on every Steambox but manufacturers will probably get paid to install other stores as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI: "Left 4 dead 2" running on Linux has 315 fps vs 270 fps on a windows PC. Other bloggers have put the game on max settings and tested on the same hardware and gotten almost double the frames per second out of Ubuntu linux vs Windows 8.

It's obvious Valve is in this for the long run. They've talked about it for years: "Big things have small beginnings", "We hate windows", "Windows 8 sucks". And they're right. Windows is holding gamers hostage. And the gaming community's backwards compatibility is unstable because of it. (some titles made just a few years ago don't work on Windows 7 and can't run under compatability mode) The PC gaming community has had no choice but to stick with Windows.

This move is Valve's way of detaching the gaming community from the endlessly, re-re-redesigned, bloated, sluggish, "that'll be $200 for the new version" operating system and onto one that's free, specifically designed to cater to gamers, and maintained by a company that isn't so hostile towards it's users.

I can't wait. It'll take a good 10 years but a Windows free gaming future is on it's way.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm saving up to upgrade my PC (AMD HSA on Kaveri + DDR4) because of SteamOS (amongst other things) instead of getting a next-gen console. And I know a few other people doing that as well.

<comment><USER8> This is what I'm doing. I'm actually looking forward to having a real machine connected to my TV (for lots of reasons besides Steam)...

<comment><USER9> I have a PC in my living room, a wireless keyboard+mouse, high DPI, and no regrets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With the mediocrity of "next-gen" consoles from Sony & MS, I pray to the gods that Valve is successful in this endeavor.

Console stagnation harms all gaming.

<comment><USER11> I'm extremely interested in how Valve will grow into a hardware company, especially given it's frequently-vaunted history of utterly flat management structure. Personally, I have a hard time seeing it work well; hardware is a whole different ballgame from software, and I can envision their internal organization (from what little I know of it) not being very conducive to HW development.

That being said, I DEARLY HOPE I'm wrong.

<comment><USER12> Other than the controller it sounds like they're not getting into the hardware business:

\- [http://games.on.net/2013/11/steam-controllers-will-only- be-m...](http://games.on.net/2013/11/steam-controllers-will-only-be-made-by- valve-no-partnerships-or-licenses/)

This seems smart to me, control the quality of the controller (as that seems to be the central point of the experience anyway), and since the box itself is just a PC let the existing boutique builders build the boxes.

<comment><USER11> I didn't realize the controller was the only component they'd be making. I agree, that seems smart - especially with how slick they look. I got the impression their foray into hardware was into a more console-like machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the most meaningful way, it could be Android for consoles. It's "freely licensable" for hardware manufacturers, so companies will be able to build new consoles without building their own OS -- the same innovation that led HTC and Samsung to become two of the world's leading phone manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Show me the game list. IMO the make or break for SteamOS.

I have a steam account on a mac which has a pretty close parity with linux as to the game list. If that is all, not that interested. New games only for the steamOS will take some time to build a catalog. Similar to the new generation of consoles, from what I have seen it's going to be next fall before there are enough interesting titles to tempt me to get one. If Valve can bring a decent chunk of the last few years of windows games to SteamOS, I would be quite interested in a unit.

The other thing not talked about with SteamOS, PS4 or Xbone is cheat protection on multiplayer games. Huge problem with PC gaming. Small problem with Xbox 360 and a minor problem with PS3. What does SteamOS bring to the table to help prevent this? Or is it purely on the game studio to combat cheating?

<comment><USER15> Valve has been focusing an extreme amount on becoming _the_ place indie studios release on. They're intent is clear: focus more on finding the next top-tier studios instead of a pointless pursuit of the current ones. There's also nothing preventing you from using Windows on one of these boxes, or streaming Windows games from another PC.

Valve has an anti-cheat system, but I don't think they license it (someone correct me if they do).

<comment><USER16> Steam does offer [1] their anti-cheat system to developers, along with features such as matchmaking, leaderboards and achievements. It's all on a platform called Steamworks, which offers devs very similar features to Sony and Microsoft's online services.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti- Cheat#Games_that_sup...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti- Cheat#Games_that_support_VAC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is 1983. The Atari 800 (XBox One) and Commodore 64 (PS4) are the hottest items in home computing. The PC (Steam) that has been around for a couple of years is a growing infant that doesn't quite approach the industry leaders. The brewing revolution that is attributable to the ubiqitous penetration of the PC along with *nix, cheap networking, the internet, billion dollar apps like DBase, Lotus and WordPerfect is a decade away, but it has started. The snowball has started rolling.

SteamOS has the potential to be a juggernaut of gaming that eclipses consoles. Will Valve prove to use their talent and determination to make this THE eventual go-to gaming platform? (Note: Rhetorical headlines can usually be answered with a "no.")

Maybe. They certainly have the opportunity.

<comment><USER18> I, too, am deeply excited by the potential. I wish Valve and Canonical (if they are partnering) well. I certianly would purchase a SteamOS machine. I have a HTC One X w/ Android. I have a Dell XPS w/ Ubuntu preloaded.

I predict, however, that if successful Microsoft will be sure to try to monetize the new revenue stream via patent licensing agreements.

I feel what Valve is doing (if all that was discussed here is legit) is truly important because gaming has always been the next to last selling point for the Wintel ecosystem.

My conjecture: you have to decide if you want mass market (open app OS inc. no app store and no competing h/w division - i.e. pre-win8 desktop Microsoft Windows, pre-Nokia Microsoft WinMobile, pre-Moto Google Android) or niche market (vertically integrated OS, app store and h/w - i.e. Apple, PS4, Xbox)

Windows is the Mom&Pop desktop OS. There is plenty of room for an open gaming- oriented OS.

Linux has been such a net positive for the software industry it is not even funny at this stage. Viva la revolucion libre! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me the best thing to come out of SteamOS is the potential for some really powerful game development tools on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER20> Until we get out hands on the OS, so outside of idle speculation, we really don't have much to go on. Steams "Big Screen" is far from mainstream ready, so I doubt that we'll see a usable OS for some time.

<comment><USER21> You can start to watch what the interface at least will be by running the linux client with -steamos, it'll autostart in big picture mode with a few cosmetic differences right now (Mostly with settings).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _> It's worth noting that current iPhone and Android phones now equal, if not exceed, the current generation of consoles in terms of power._

Is this true?

<comment><USER23> No. xbox 360 gpu has ~ 240 GFLOPS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_\(graphics_chip\))

phones have ~ 25 Gflops - 50 Gflops [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the- iphone-5-review/11](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/11)

<comment><USER24> That's last year's iPhone. Didn't the performance double this year?

[http://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/large/publ...](http://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2013/09/iphone_5s_a7_cpu_40x_slide.jpg)

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the- iphone-5s-review/5](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5)

It looks like we might get a doubling of performance every year. With Android vs iOS vs Microsoft, consumers should be in for quite a treat.

<comment><USER25> Looks like the A7 gpu is coming in at 115.2 glops... so yeah... getting close. That's pretty awesome.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_(system_on_chip)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_\(system_on_chip\))

<comment><USER26> That's not that awesome, that's a brand new chip vs a 7 year old console chip. And not even the whole chip, just the performance of the GPU.

<comment><USER27> Which is running on in the palm of your hand, on battery power.. How is that not awesome?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For some reason I think that Gabe et. al. are smart enough to know that partnering with ubuntu right now would not be met with enthusiasm by the community, on the other hand maybe pressure from Valve could get Mark to pull his head out of his ass and work with the community instead of continually disrupting it.

<comment><USER18> The Shuttleworth/Canonical bashing is beyond tiresome at this stage.

Given like Canonical have actual experience getting their OS onto h/w vendors machines Gabe et. al. would be stupid not to at least contemplate partnering.

Also, Ubuntu is Debian. You've no problem with Debian succeeding, right?

Canonical can do what they like within the boundary of the GPL and other licences. Free software guarantees this freedom. I figure it's his money, he gets to decide. People hate on Canonical for not contributing to the Linux kernel. Then when they innovate build their own identity (you may gather I _like_ Unity btw) they get criticized. For what?

Give it a rest already. the article was mainly about Valve and their Linux play anyway.

edit: without -> within >.<

<comment><USER28> My main issue, one that is especially relevant to gaming, is with the shitstorm around Mir. I would be thrilled if Valve built off Debian, however I would be disappointed if their interpretation of 'open' was strictly literal (GPL etc) and did not take in to account the fact that cooperative and collaborative interactions with the larger linux community are equally (if not more) important. SteamOS is also not the only distro that valve is targeting, so going down a road that reduces support for other distros seems like a rather stupid idea to me (and yes, I am saying that Canonoical's current behavior is isolating their platform from other distros).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's times like these that I wish Valve wasn't private.

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope Valve SteamOS makes it, Linux gives you freedom from unknown surveillance. If gamers start using Linux there will be a mass market and easier to find good Linux hardware for desktop setups.

Lets also face it consoles are a kind of credit purchase where the manufacturer of the console gives you hardware rebate which you pay with increased game prices. You also pay with your freedom as the console maker controls which software are allowed to run on the console.

</comment><comment><USER31> Lets see it released and what it has and how hackable it is - if we could reasonably run all the stuff on current linux distros if packaged correctly it could be my main OS.

But vaporware is always revolutionary (I treat every unreleased software as vaporware). My predictions for steam OS - really rocky start that will settle few months in when the enthusiast community would have ironed most of the kinks and then the heavy gaming hitters will appear.

</comment><comment><USER32> He hadn't mentioned Microsoft project spark, a game creation platform , which at least according to the demo , lets people build amazing stuff with little effort or experience.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37sVEgJrOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37sVEgJrOA)

If it's promise is true, maybe this is where we should look for the future of gaming, and the future of platforms.

</comment><comment><USER33> Will it be suitable to use SteamOS not only as a gaming platform, but also as a general-purpose operating system - i.e. the new Windows for gamers? There might have been a hint in the article, but I didn't quite catch it.

<comment><USER34> they will have a "desktop-mode", and seeing it will probably be based on Ubuntu, it should be usable for at least basic tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Only revolutionary or disruptive?

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd be more hopeful if it was open sourced, and not built by a company that has pioneered DRM...

<comment><USER37> Steam is probably the least in your face, get in your way DRM there has been.. Compared to what other have done, and will do, I'll take Steam.

<comment><USER38> Steam is very in your face.

But it provides huge amounts of value and minimal pain. The biggest problem I have with steam now is that the app can be pretty laggy and I can't move it to my second screen for some reason. Neither of those things hurts my gaming experience. I get a friend system, integrated store, automatic updates, game distribution, achievements, in game browser overlay, steam cloud, etc...

But I still can't play my games without steam. I still can't sell them. I still can't loan them to a friend. It's just that I don't really care.</comment></comment></comment>


Marcus Aurelius on Dealing with Setbacks and Obstacles - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bramkrommenhoek/the-ancient-art-of-dealing-with-setbacks-and-obstacles-marcus-aurelius-b4586efad017 <comment><AUTHOR> Bit of background - last January I read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations for the first time. There haven't been many books that I'd say changed by life, but this one certainly did. It resonated so strongly with struggles I was having (and still have), that it inspired me to dig as deep as I could into the topic. So that's what I did. I think I spent the last 8 months reading everything I could from Marcus, Epictetus and Seneca, and dissected their works into quotes that I then mapped to certain struggles I have. That resulted in a series of essays, of which this one is the first. I doubted whether I should publish this, as I primarily wrote this for myself. But then a couple of people read it, and convinced me to share it with others. So, that's what I'm doing here. The reason I wanted to share it here is because Stoicism has as its fundamental principles very similar ones to the ones I think many of us here at HN adhere to, which are 1) When in doubt, apply rationality, and 2) Life is about contributing to your community's well-being. Hope it helps you then same way it helps me. B</comment>


How to use Deep Learning when you have Limited Data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/nanonets/nanonets-how-to-use-deep-learning-when-you-have-limited-data-f68c0b512cab#.sv478elrs <comment><AUTHOR> Machine Learning and AI seem to be in vogue but become tough to implement unless you have boatloads of data. We've personally had multiple frustrating experiences over the last ~7 years of trying to solve problems using ML. In almost all the cases we failed to ship due to lack of data. Transfer Learning is a major breakthrough in ML where companies with little data can also build state of the art models. Unfortunately not enough people know about it. We are trying to do our part to make it easier to use Transfer Learning as well as increase awareness about it.

Using Transfer Learning we can build a model to identify cats and dogs in images with a few (<100) images as compared to the few thousands it would take before.

To make Transfer Learning easy we are building [https://nanonets.ai](https://nanonets.ai) that has multiple pretrained models that can be augmented with your data to create state of the art models. We are currently in the process of building our first few models. Image Labeling and Object Detection (in Images) work with a few Text based models coming up in the next few weeks.

<comment><USER2> This is Deep Learning 101 level material, rather than an advanced insider technique.

It's even listed in the Tensorflow tutorials: [https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/tensorflow-f...](https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/tensorflow- for-poets/)

<comment><AUTHOR> While I agree that you could build a demo in Deep Learning 101 that could work for some small set of examples, I disagree that this is 101 level material.

Facebook just released: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/facebooks-ai- unlocks-the-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/02/facebooks-ai-unlocks-the- ability-to-search-photos-by-whats-in-them/)

You could also call this Deep Learning 101. But it really isn't because building a usable platform that works at scale actually delivers performance and solves problems is a lot tougher than what can be taught in an intro to Deep Learning 101 course.

<comment><USER3> Just poked around a bit with your API, and the learning with just 25 samples is impressive! And the getting training samples from the web is a great touch. But that 25 sample number seems too low for classes that are "closer" together? How do you quantify if you have done a good job on training or if you need some varied samples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying us out! Internally we have validation metrics which have a number that says how good a model is at class separation. One naive way to do this entropy (-plogp). We are planning on exposing this to users soon. So once you create a model you'll receive feedback as to how "good" we think it is. In case it's not working well we might ask you for more data (we hope we don't need to do this too frequently)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another less know but really promising approach is program synthesis (also called "program generation"). One can build fairly robust model just using 2-5 examples and that too in just seconds. Implementation of this approach is already shipped in to Excel where you just enter few example of formatting and "Flash Fill" will learn what to do: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/flashfi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/flashfill.html)

Paper: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/ca...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/cacm12-synthesis.pdf)

<comment><USER5> This is cool. From what I understand from paper, its DSL has set of algorithms as building blocks that learn the input/output function. Deep learning algos are trying to do the same but with more generic blocks where assumption is that a lot of these blocks will be able to learn algorithms too. Deep learning is trying to build with a more generic approach in which transfer learning is helping to reduce number of examples needed by reusing algorithms learned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Deep Learning is very frustrating to work with at the moment. First, there is the problem of overfitting, which shows up typically after you've already been training for hours. So you have to tweak things (basically this is just guessing), and start from scratch. If your network has too many neurons, then overfitting may more easily occur, which is a weakness in the theory because how can more neurons cause more problems? Then there is the problem that if your data is somewhat different from your training data in what humans would call an insignificant way, your network may easily start to fail. For example, when doing image classification, and your images contain e.g. a watermark in the lower-left corner, suddenly your recognition may start failing. I've been able to use DL for some projects successfully, but for other projects it has been an outright failure with many invested hours of training and tweaking.

<comment><USER7> > which is a weakness in the theory because how can more neurons cause more > problems?

In exactly the same way that adding more terms to a polynomial fit causes more problems. The is one of the most fundamental results in the theory of statistical learning in general; don't blame Deep Learning for it.

<comment><USER6> Yes I know, it was a rhetorical question. Imho, if having more parameters causes problems, then the system should simply not use those extra parameters. But the theory is not there yet.

<comment><USER7> That's what regularization is for. You probably know that too, so pretend that was just for the benefit of the onlookers.

<comment><USER8> I think his point is no one can tell you from theory which regularization methods to apply to a particular problem to get the best results. You need expert knowledge, experience, and hyperparameter tuning.

<comment><USER5> Transfer learning helps with overfitting too. It is proven to get more generalized model if you use transfer learning that if you train a model on your own with same data (even with large datasets). You need expertise in deep learning but the good thing is that you don't need a lot of expertise in domain of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another idea is one-shot learning using deep generative models. DeepMind had a paper on this last year: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05106](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05106)

<comment><USER10> Not to be a pedant, but I think the DeepMind paper is actually an example of one-shot generalization, but not learning. From the paper:

> Another important consideration is that, while our models can perform one- > shot generalization, they do not perform one-shot learning. One-shot > learning requires that a model is updated after the presentation of each new > input, e.g., like the non-parametric models used by Lake et al. (2015) or > Salakhutdinov et al. (2013). Parametric models such as ours require a > gradient update of the parameters, which we do not do. Instead, our model > performs a type of one-shot inference that during test time can perform > inferential tasks on new data points, such as missing data completion, new > exemplar generation, or analogical sampling, but does not learn from these > points. This distinction between one-shot learning and inference is > important and affects how such models can be used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It should be noted that transfer learning is an umbrella term for many ideas that revolve around transferring what one model has learnt into another model. The method described here is a type of transfer learning called fine tuning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes transfer learning is a fairly umbrella term encompassing a lot of different approaches. We tried to give an example of the one most commonly used in NNs almost exclusively with regards to feature extraction. Do you have some resource that lists a variety of transfer learning approaches? Happy to work with you in creating a aggregated list.

<comment><USER11> Well for starters, fine-tuning can be done in a variety of different ways. You can pretrain your model with a larger, different dataset, or you can train an autoencoder that learns some useful representation of that larger dataset and use the encoder as a base for fine tuning.

Another approach I've seen that was really cool is Model Distillation [0], which is basically the training of a smaller NN with the inputs and outputs of a larger NN (where the output is slightly modified to increase gradients and make training faster).

[0] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.02531v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.02531v1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is good advice - in fact at [http://course.fast.ai](http://course.fast.ai) our main teaching focus is transfer learning

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for this write up. I'm not in the ML field, but do follow it a bit and didn't know anything about it.

I also really like your business model. I had argued with potential entrepreneurs and friends that ai is becoming a commodity. However, your business model has a potential for building a network effect of data on top of ai. Presumably becoming more valuable with time. I do think though, you probably best solve this for a specific vertical first as your go to market strategy.

</comment><comment><USER14> For anyone interested, i have a whole bunch of links on Deep-Learning and much more: [http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/Home/ByTag?Name=deep- learning](http://tagly.azurewebsites.net/Home/ByTag?Name=deep-learning)

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is a machine learning app able to detect unprofessional posts (texts & images) on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter:

[https://www.repnup.com/](https://www.repnup.com/)</comment>


Tesla will reveal its semi this Thursday, and Musk promises to 'blow your mind' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/12/tesla-will-reveal-its-semi-this-thursday-and-musk-promises-to-blow-your-mind-with-it.html <comment><USER2> At this point, what would blow my mind is tesla making their production goals for like anything at all.

<comment><USER3> For me, judging by their cars on the streets and all the technology advancements since they started, missing production goals by a few months or even a couple years is irrelevant. I think we are all too spoiled and tend to dismiss real technological challenges because "I want it now!".

<comment><USER4> > because "I want it now!".

Isn't it because "Tesla, a public company, promised/projected this production goal"?

<comment><USER5> yeah, f*ck tech advancements and saving the planet. I want my profits now.

<comment><USER6> The problem is: They cannot save the world if they crash the company into a wall.

I am not saying that they will, and I hope they will not.

But since a few weeks, I do not completely rule out the possibility anymore. Because if only some of their problems, that are being reported right now, are systemic or hard to fix, 2018 _might_ be a bad year for Tesla...

<comment><USER7> Hah, Tesla just can't seem to please anyone (kinda like Trump).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The negativity with Musk is, as usual, strong in the comments.

One would think that a daring entrepreneur tackling all the important problems of our time would be the beloved poster child of HN, but no, apparently he has failed to meet production goals or something so obviously he sucks.

</comment><comment><USER9> If it can't meet current demand on the Tesla 3, how could it possibly ship much larger vehicles with presumably a much greater battery capacity in a relevant timeframe?

<comment><USER10> If I understand correctly, the current speed bump in production is temp issue in production - which is a fixable problem that's taking a bit of time.

That doesn't mean they should halt all their other projects in the pipeline. If anything, IMO, stopping all their other projects would mean there are bigger production issues then they officially shared. Which would be much worse.

Revealing Semi, proves that they are on the right path (they were supposed to reveal semi at the end of this year anyway), minus a temp setback.

I think most people are making a much bigger deal out of this setback.

<comment><USER11> I read the temp. production issue is they're hand welding and making custom parts. It's been three+? months, either way. Maybe temp. isn't the best word to use here. They apparently have no plan to actually deliver the 400k+ preorders in the near future or the schedule they presented.

<comment><USER10> Since we don't know the exact specification of the problem other than what he said, she said.

Hand welding could be because their auto bot welding parts were having issues, and are in the process of fixing them. Is it really that bad? the alternative would be sitting on their butt while the bots are fixed - resulting is zero cars made. Which would have a much much worse public perception?

The other official reason is battery pack issue (could be related to welding, who knows). Again Battery pack is their defacto business, Tesla is essentially a big battery pack strapped into a car. They know how to put batteries better than almost anyone else in the market - if anyone can bounce back from this setback quickly - it's Tesla.

So, again, I don't see a huge issue. I see temp setbacks.

I will take slow production rate over a massive recall of cars (which happens quite often per year, by car industry veteran), any day of the week.

I don't own and Tesla stocks, or any products made by any companies by Musk - or indirectly profit from his products. I also don't worship him.

I just don't like the general witch hunting mentality on the internet. Where minor setbacks or mistakes are blown way out of proportion.

<comment><USER12> > The other official reason is battery pack issue (could be related to > welding, who knows). Again Battery pack is their defacto business, Tesla is > essentially a big battery pack strapped into a car. They know how to put > batteries better than almost anyone else in the market - if anyone can > bounce back from this setback quickly - it's Tesla.

What you're saying here, in short, is "They're having issues in their core competency. Since it's their core competency, it'll obviously be fixed soon." Phrased in such general terms, it's actually not reason to be optimistic about Tesla's future.

<comment><USER10> I could very well be wrong. Since we are all guessing here, my guess is as good as yours or anyone (who is not an insider and sharing the whole story).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have really mixed feelings about Musk.

But I love his ideas... I _want_ to believe... I really want his ideas to work.

I wont invest in his companies.. but I'm rooting for them to succeed.

<comment><USER14> I agree, but unfortunately building a business is more about implementation details than big goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yea, every time the company fails to work, he shows up, and tells about other mystery projects. I'm not sure how he started to be so trust-worthy, and why people give him loads of money, as he is simply an unrealistic dreamer. And then we hear that the workers in the factories are quite badly treated, and that he personally is the smartest man on the world. This is so ridiculous.

So I suppose he will show some special-ultra-super-hiper-cool project like "cold fusion generator for every house", and people will throw even more money into that black hole. Next year, after all other things he say will not work, he will probably show super ultra Tesla Model Black Hole 5. And he will get even more money.

How many people need to die to stop that hype about one person who mainly tries to do good impression? [http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory- workers-detail-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-workers- detail-grueling-conditions-fremont-2017-5?IR=T)

<comment><USER16> Perhaps he is an unrealistic dreamer (though one who has achieved an incredible amount) but I can't think of any other individual who is doing as much for the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I actually think the math really works out well for semis given you can burn through your battery lifespan super quick. Let's say you take two 15 minute breaks + 30 minute lunch per day. That is 1 hour of charge time. Assuming you start from full battery and a 2% per minute supercharge rate (~what wikipedia has for the model s) that gives you an extra 120% battery.

1.9kwh per mile and driving 600 miles per day and you can get away with a 400kwh battery. Less actually but my understanding is you want to not charge to 100% for maximum lifespan. Not sure the optimal cost trade offs...

7 cents per kilowatt hour * 1.9 * 600 = ~$80 a day vs $2.7 a gallon * 600/6(mpg) = $270 a day

$150/kwh for battery with 2000 full cycles is $85 dollars a day without interest(only ~2 year lifespan so w/e and presumably has some residual value also not taken into account)

Seems to work out to about $100 a day in savings?? I feel like I must be off on numbers somewhere. Data on number of cycles doesn't seem to be particularly consistent.

<comment><USER18> > $150/kw

That's insanely cheap, if you can find a place where I can buy batteries for 150$/kWh, please let me know. The cheapest I found are still >300$/kWh.

> 7cents/kWh

In NY the price is ~0.2$/kWh [1]

Also, a 400kWh battery weighs 2 tons. [2]

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-york-new-jersey/news- release...](https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-york-new-jersey/news- release/averageenergyprices_newyorkarea.htm)

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

<comment><USER17> Tesla doesn't publish it's costs but based on what they've said it is a reasonable estimate[0] Cells in bulk are below 150[1]

7 cents per kwh is a very common industrial rate.[2] Maybe it is a bit low but it's a lot more reasonable than one of the highest residential rates in the country ($.2/kwh).

Let's say 5000lb for batteries + cooling/wires. Semi's routinely have (200gallons *7) 1400lb in fuel or more and a ~500 hp ~3000lb diesel engine. I don't know what the electric equivalent would weigh exactly but Tesla's 362 hp motor is 70lb. Let's say a 500hp one weighs 500lb. 5000+500 - 1400 - 3000 = 1,100. Tractor weights are around 15-20k so ~5-7% weight increase with a pretty generous estimate for cooling/wires and engine weight assuming rest of the drive train is identical.

[0] [https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/tesla-battery-cost- gigafactor...](https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/tesla-battery-cost-gigafactory- model-3/)

[1][http://benchmarkminerals.com/lithium-ion-batteries-are- now-s...](http://benchmarkminerals.com/lithium-ion-batteries-are-now-selling- for-under-140kwh-new-york-hears-on-benchmark-world-tour-2017/)

[2][https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a)

<comment><USER19> I want electric vehicles to succeed more than anyone, but lets not delude ourselves:

Tesla's batteries are not that energy dense, they are currently 140 Wh/kg[1]. A 400Kwh battery will weigh at least 6000 pounds.

A 400Kwh will get you maybe 150 mile loaded range, 200 gallons of diesel in a semi is a 1300 mile range[2]. To compete with a 400Kwh battery pack you only need to carry 25 gallons of diesel.

Charging a 400 kwh will take at least 3 hours on a supercharger, vs a few minutes for diesel. Its simply not practical for "long haul" as claimed. For it to be usable for long haul you need at least 500-600 miles for a days driving then charge overnight (even that is low for a truck driver). 600 miles is a 1200Kwh battery at 24,000 lbs costing more than the truck with some kind of faster charger so it can be ready in 8 hours.

Bottom line diesel is 30x times as energy dense as current battery tech and that not even counting how much efficiency is left on the table for diesel, the various super trucks programs are showing real world 10+mpg on a semi vs the current 6.5mpg standard by doing secondary heat recovery like a power plant among other things.

The Tesla semi might have some use for local urban delivery but I am highly skeptical of any "long haul" highway replacement claims, will be very interested in the real specifications come Thursday.

[1] [http://enipedia.tudelft.nl/wiki/Tesla_Model_S_Battery](http://enipedia.tudelft.nl/wiki/Tesla_Model_S_Battery)

[2] [https://insideevs.com/tesla-semi-truck-battery-is-how- big/](https://insideevs.com/tesla-semi-truck-battery-is-how-big/)

<comment><USER17> Taking the 2012 numbers you have at your link, the 85KW pack and 600kg, that is 6200 lb to get to 400kwh. The 2015 number on wikipedia is 540kg per 85kwh pack and the model 3 pack is supposed to be 30% more energy dense[0]. The 2015 number gives 5600lbs so I don't think at least 6000lbs is accurate, even the 2012 number is just slightly over.

All else equal you can charge batteries based on a % of their total capacity. Current superchargers can do about 2%/min for a model S in the 0-80% charge range but can't deliver the requisite power for a 400kwh pack. But I also haven't seen very many supercharger stations that would be particularly well suited for truck traffic either, so I'd imagine there will be a new charger/stations as well.

Sure batteries are no where near competing on absolute range of diesel but I don't think they have to. The question is can you get a days driving in without spending hours and hours charging while keeping the battery capital cost/weight reasonable.

You don't need a 1200kwh pack for that because you can take a couple short breaks plus a lunch with supercharging and over double your effective capacity.

We'll see what happens but I'd be very surprised if the announcement doesn't include a new super charger and stations unless they design it for short range point to point only.

[0][https://electrek.co/2016/11/14/tesla-model-3-battery- energy-...](https://electrek.co/2016/11/14/tesla-model-3-battery-energy- density-model-s/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think what will blow our minds into an alternative dimension is that these trucks are level 4 self driving...

</comment><comment><USER21> I am looking quite forward to that announcement. While other manufacturers have shown some electric semis, they were all in the demo stage. If Tesla manages to get a practical electric semi into production, the impact could be huge.

For those, who think that Tesla should concentrate on the Model 3 first, this is the early product announcement for the semi - production is probably starting in a year only, so there are no real conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER22> What they will be presenting is a design, and a powerpoint slide of promises.

Let's wait how long it takes for the first of those trucks to actually be used.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is another round of fund raising coming around the corner?

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHNgSMhkoBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHNgSMhkoBk)

weeeee

</comment><comment><USER25> Batteries on the trailers, charge while loading

<comment><USER26> That would be a logistical headache.

Current semi-trailers are low-tech, interchangeable and universally compatible.

Introducing a dependency on a specific subset of trailers for a specific tractor, plus the need for charging facilities at endpoints, would make operations much more complicated and expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another bubble Elon Musk blowed up to stimulate Tesla's stock.

</comment><comment><USER28> Techendo predicted the rise of Elon Musk on an old episode way back in the day. Now I'm quite honestly tired of hearing about the hype. The fatigue is real.

</comment><comment><USER29> So, Tesla has models S3X, and now has a semi... LMAO</comment>


Mapbox releases tool to automatically review technical docs - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapbox.com/blog/retext-mapbox-standard/ <comment><USER2> I'm all for clear and concise documentation, and can appreciate the technical merit of this approach. On the other hand, some of the examples they give horrify me. In many cases, added words or synonyms make a text more readable. I might be wrong, but my gut feeling is that this makes something that is already barely readable (tech specs) into something completely impossible to get through without getting bored after 3 paragraphs or feeling like my intelligence has been insulted.</comment>


Neuralink goes out of stealth mode - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/technology/neuralink-elon-musk.html <comment><USER2> I really wonder how they can test this before moving to the clinic. Brain organoids maybe? I wonder how complex they'd need to be and what the implications of that are. I dont know if this is in the realm of what mouse trials can be truly useful in - I personally wouldn't feel confident trying something like this in humans after just testing in mice.

<comment><USER3> probably primates</comment></comment>


Util-linux cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/util-linux-cheat-sheet/ <comment><USER2> OK this is more than I need right now, but I did get curious about the "script" command that captures your term session to a text file- to start and stop use:

      script
      ctrl-d

But when looking at my output file (if you just do what I did above it will be called 'typescript') it has control characters around the file names. How can I suppress these?

<comment><USER3> I bet you've got _ls_ set to colorize file names, right? What you're seeing as"control characters around file names" is VT-100 escape codes to colorize the text different ways. If you do command-line editing in Bash (vi or emacs mode) you'll also see all the control characters that implement the editing. Again, more VT-100 escape code to position the cursor, overwrite characters, etc etc.

Either you set _ls_ to not colorize filenames, or you edit the 'typescript' file. One of the values of _script_ is that it doesn't do any interpretation of the characters it records.

<comment><USER2> You are correct- that is exactly what it is. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing this was generated by running `man -f` on the list of executables provided by util-linux.

        descriptions() { xargs -I '{}' man -f '{}' ; }
        executables() { pkgfile -bl $1 | cut -f 2; } # Arch Linux specific
        executables util-linux | descriptions 2> missed | sort | less</comment>


Weaponizing and Gamifying AI for WiFi Hacking: Presenting Pwnagotchi 1.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.evilsocket.net/2019/10/19/Weaponizing-and-Gamifying-AI-for-WiFi-Hacking-Presenting-Pwnagotchi-1-0-0/#.Xas1JEBAewV.reddit <comment> 88840-8855 My approach to get into wifi networks is not as sexy or cute, but it works:

1) You need a device that can connect to wifi

2) Approach your neighbor/shop owner/coffee owner

3) Ask: "Can I connect to your wifi, please?"

4) It takes about 4-5 seconds to get the password to the ssid

5) Works on WPA2, WPA / TKIP/AES and WEP

6) Success rate: 70-80%

Cheers

<comment><USER2> your sophisticated technique assumes social skills!

<comment><USER3> Ah, social engineering, the most elusive tech skill of all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fun part of this to me is all but the WiFi aspect. It has:

\- a mesh-based social network \- a cute character \- a builtin game \- adjusts to the environment

It sounds like an awesome social game, even if it doesn't have any purpose, and turning this into a mesh communication network would even give it an aspect of usefulness. I can see two ways this could blow up:

\- at big parties, think Burning Man or Chaos Communication Congress, where people get embedded devices (like the CardIO) which encourage meeting others \- everyday, to find connections in unlikely places, with a similar app running on your phone (the Librem5 would be a good starting point)

</comment><comment><USER5> What does this thing actually achieve? (If nothing, that's fine too. It's cute, impressive, etc.) But if it can't actually get you onto wifi networks, it seems like a weird project to spend so much time on. How often does it snag a useable handshake?

<comment><USER6> So what is it? Fine or weird?

<comment><USER7> Yes, it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I get that this things purpose is for fun and not so much cracking a lot of networks, but I can't help but wonder how useful it would be to collate the ssid/gps/key data for public consumption. Even reward pwnagotchis for sumbmission

<comment><USER9> Wifi Chua is a human version of that. It is a public database of wifi passwords that even integrates with iOS such that it will log you directly into the network.

<comment><USER10> It works very well in Vietnam, I didn't know it could work internationally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So it finds Wifi passwords? Sorry I didn't get what exactly what this project is getting to. A TLDR about what exactly it does would a bit helpful.

<comment><USER12> Yes it can find passwords. First it kicks someone off the network by pretending to be the router, then when the person tries to reconnect it sees the handshake information and password.

<comment><USER13> So WiFi authentication is trivially crackable? What should I do to protect my network?

<comment><USER14> Use enterprise authentication with PKI instead of PSK (you'll have to give each device a certificate)

Everything else is trivial to compromise if a sufficiently motivated person wants to access it.

<comment><USER15> A shared passphrase with sufficient entropy is not trivial to compromise [1]

My WiFi router was programmed with a 55 bit key in the factory. (Represented as a 11 letter alphanumeric word).

[1]: [https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=combination_count_formu...](https://hashcat.net/wiki/doku.php?id=combination_count_formula)

<comment><USER14> It is with the strategy used by this device.

You don't need to bruteforce the password if another device tells you what it is.

Read the article if you don't believe it.

<comment><USER16> The article is about collecting WPA handshakes.

WPA handshakes do not tell you the network password.

You use e.g. hashcat to brute force the network password using a stored handshake.

<comment><USER14> No, it's not.

As a previous comment had pointed out before as well:

You wait for handshakes, fake a deauth packet of the handshaking client, spoof an access point with the same SID and wait for the deauth'd client to try a reconnect.

Voila, cleartext PSK without any bruteforcing.

And it's not solveable either. You can't use fingerprinting as this would make mesh lans and quick access point failover impossible.

<comment><USER16> > spoof an access point with the same SID

Pwnagotchi does not do this, despite your errant assertions. E.g. source code: [https://github.com/evilsocket/pwnagotchi/blob/64e677f5df8f9b...](https://github.com/evilsocket/pwnagotchi/blob/64e677f5df8f9bffd6fc56b71c94cbddc07c13e1/bin/pwnagotchi#L92)

> Voila, cleartext PSK without any bruteforcing.

Pretending to be an access point and going through a handshake doesn't let you retrieve the pre-shared key. (Unless the client is vulnerable to downgrade attacks-- which hasn't been a big consideration in more than a decade). Evil twin attacks are powerful but don't achieve what you say.

The station sends to the access point a message authentication code based on nonces and the pairwise master key, which in turn is based on the "network password". It's produced using a series of HMACs and isn't an operation that can be inverted without brute force.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11i-2004#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11i-2004#/media/File:4-way- handshake.svg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've had one of these running since the first week evilsocket put the source out. With $50 in parts from Amazon I was up and running with a battery powered unit within a few hours, that I ended up taking with me on vacation. The new build process is extremely simple though, and I'm excited to see where this project goes.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is more like Pokepwn Go

</comment><comment><USER19> > Each Pwnagotchi is also an end-to-end encrypted messaging device.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's the first time I've seen your website. I didn't read the entire pwnagotchi article yet but it looks great! Keep up the good work, projects like these really motivate me to get into IT</comment>