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Windows 10 1809 Install + Threadripper 2 + x399 + Intel 9260 = BSOD Perfect Disaster

March 16, 2019 4:26 pm ,

In the Fall of 2018 I built an epic PC for gaming / machine learning.  It was based on the latest technology and included a number of high end parts but not limited to an AMD Threadripper 2950x, ASRock Taichi x399 motherboard, 2x NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 TI in SLI and a Samsung 970 Evo M.2 SSD (full parts list @ pcpartpicker).  When I built the machine in the fall, I loaded it with Windows 10 ( I think version 1803 ) and everything pretty much worked great.  I was even able to have a 3DMark Score in the top 50 or 20 for a few days until the serious overclockers took over, with their custom voltage regulators and LN2.  Now, I’m not even in the top 100.

full parts list @ pcpartpicker
19th for a few days 😉 Now, I’m not even in the top 100.

So, a few weeks ago I wanted to refresh the system, clear out any possible malware, and start fresh.  I didn’t remember which version of windows I had, or what was on what USB key and before I knew it – I had created a new USB Installer key over the old with Windows 10 1809, little did I know that this is where my problems and headache would begin.

When I went to install a fresh copy of Windows 10 1809, I started to run into a BSOD ( blue screen of death ) with a BUGCODE NDIS_DRIVER error.


BSOD ( blue screen of death ) with a Stop code: BUGCODE NDIS_DRIVER

Then the system would restart and produce a new “Install Windows” error in a dialog box.  This error reads:


The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an
unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed.  To install
Windows, click “OK” to restart the computer, and then restart the
installation.

I must have tried 4 or 5 times to just start over, then I tried to locate a different version of the OS.  The best I could find ( from microsoft ) was an ISO of 19H1, but this was much worse as I didn’t even get the dialog.

TLDR; Eventually I found a workaround that didn’t work ( and broke windows update ) before discovering the actual solution ( on an MSI forum) to install the correct and updated Intel 9260 Drivers.

The first work around I tried was on Windows 10 version 1809, where I used a registry hack I found to continue the installation process, which seemed to work.  I got the OS booted and everything seemed fine at first, but after I started installing software I noticed that Windows Update was stuck and wouldn’t load any more updates; some of which I knew were critical to the work I wanted to do.  The machine also seemed clunky, don’t get me wrong it was still blazing fast on 3DMark, but little things like window and mouse jitter seemed odd for such a fast new machine.

After a week of waiting for it to fix it myself I started to investigate the problem further.  I tried a few fixes that end up not working and tried to “upgrade” windows. I tried 19H1, and even tried to “upgrade” to 1809 both of which failed, BSOD’ed, and then restored me to a somewhat working OS without windows updates.

I continued to try various things, none of which worked, and many of which worried me that I was making my Windows 10 Install more unstable.

It was time to get help.

I started with the Windows 10 Troubleshooter, but it reported that it couldn’t find anything wrong.  Then I went on to use the “Get help” link on the Windows Update panel. This led me down the path of what seemed like several solutions, but again anytime I got to the critical point of manually installing the critical update pack, it would fail, or stall.

I scheduled a call with Microsoft Tech Support and a level 1 tech answered the phone.  She remoted into my machine, and walked me through a few things but soon realized that none of those things were going to help and then she recommended that we try “upgrading” or “re-installing”.  I told her that is how I got here and that wasn’t going to help. She then scheduled me for a Level 2 tech call 3-4 days later; and since my machine was mostly working I patiently waited.

8:00am, … 8:15am — missed call from Belleview, WA — It must have been the Level 2 tech trying to call me while I was on my phone (I still have no idea why it didn’t ring).  Eventually by 8:20/30 am we had finally connected. My 2 year old daughter was now awake and playing in the background.

At this point the Level 2 tech had now remoted into my machine ( after i gave permission of course ) and we were trying more advanced stuff.  She was clicking and typing confidently through my OS shutting down services trying to restart them, and trying to get windows update working again.  After several attempts of trying to use her ninja skills to force manual updates, and or get the windows update service working, she said, we need to try to reinstall.  I informed her that I had tried this before and showed her what I did to get the OS working in the first place, but nevertheless she persisted. We tried the “upgrade/install” process like she insisted and again it kicked us back to the saved restore point.  She couldn’t see the BSOD, but I told her what I saw. After a few variants of this, she insisted we try a fresh install.

At this point I was still full of hope that she would resolve my issue, and since all of my data is on a 2nd HD.  I disconnected that SATA drive from the machine, and followed her lead. She made a custom install USB and we secure wiped the SSD and did a fresh install.  Again BSOD, and the error message! I was devastated but still hopeful, but from here on out there was no restore point. I was eagerly awaiting the Level 2 tech to tell me what to do next, but then I realized that she had given up too.  I was so mad that I started the call with a somewhat working PC and now I had a machine that didn’t even have an OS on it.  Hours of set up time wasted again!

She talked me off the ledge, and scheduled me for an in store ( yes the Microsoft Store, in the mall ) visit.  I was a little offended to say the least because she was implying, but never said, there was an “issue between the chair and the keyboard” ( an old tech saying ) for when they think the operator is in error.  She kept blaming my hardware too, scapegoating hardware that was working just an hour ago.  I insisted it was a software/ OS issue, but she held her ground and scheduled a follow up call with me.

I was pissed, because Now I would most likely have to visit an MS store with an even less experienced tech.

When I got to the store after carrying my practically 30-40lbs “copper” brick through the mall I arrived at the counter.  They wanted to check-in my box and tried to tell me that I’d have to leave my PC with them for at least 3-5 days.  I was struck with shock and annoyed, the Level 2 tech didn’t warn me of this at all.  I tried to find out what they were going to do to resolve the issue, and after about an hour of debating with them I realized that they were basically going to try the same stuff, monkey with the BIOS randomly, and then blame it on the hardware (which has always been working).

We exchanged emails and parted ways.  They told me based on the images I had sent them that if they found out anything the would send it along.

Later that night I did get an email from the Microsoft Store.

Hello Justin,

Here is communication I received from our team member in Redmond that he suggested. If you have any questions please let us know.

“I would advise the customer look at this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/721s6z/threadripperasrock_x399_taichi_windows_10_needs/

It appears that IOMMU (Input–output memory management unit) needs to be disabled in the North Bridge EFI settings in the UEFI as it can cause issues with the installation. If issues persist I would point the customer to the motherboard manufacturer for support as each of his parts in his custom build have their own unique OEM warranty. “

I followed the suggestion and tried a few combinations of changing the IOMMU and virtualization settings in the BIOS.  I had no luck, and in fact changing some of these settings resulted in me having to reset my CMOS settings to default. When they did work, the BSOD and the error message would inevitably appear again.

This got me thinking to search the ASRock forums and support pages.  It was at this point that I noticed that there was a new BIOS, v3.50, which is odd because I had been checking for weeks for one with the ASRock APP Shop which just a day ago didn’t report the new BIOS.  I downloaded the new v3.50 BIOS from 1/9/2019 and flashed the MB. ( I don’t think the new BIOS helped, as the ultimate solution wasn’t in the change log). I then again tried the MS Store advise and ran into the same problems.

After again scouring the web for new solutions, I happened upon an MSI x399 thread that offered new hope ( HELP. Can’t install Win10 Keeping getting blue screen and “STOPCODE BUGCODE NDIS DRIVER ).  It was at this point that I realized that it wasn’t a problem unique to my Taichi board, but affected other MBs as well.

I found a few posts mirroring the concern over the IOMMU, the NVM M.2 SSD interface, the 10+ core count in the Threadripper line, and just blaming Windows 10 v1809 as the problem.  Some people even recommended a few sites to download 1709 and 1703 and claimed that they were able to get around the issue that way.

I don’t think you should do any of these solutions.  IOMMU support is actually critically important to Threadripper because it has a NUMA ( non uniform memory architecture ) where blocks of RAM are accessible through different CPUs.  I think disabling this can cause huge issues. Even if you could install the OS on a SATA disk, why would you want to when you have an M.2 SSD? Underclocking with your core count might be possible on the MSI BIOS but it didn’t work on my ASRock Taichi x399, and who knows maybe windows if it did install will think you have two different PCs trying to use that license once you change the core count.  Finally, why use an older version of the OS if you can get 1809 working.

I eventual found this post MSI MEG X399 Creation, Blue Screen during Win10 Install (and a fix!), which points out that this is a Intel 9260 driver issue with Windows 10 1809.

Normally this error might not affect the ASRock Taichi x399, as it comes with an Intel 3168 Wireless-AC module, however, I replaced mine with something faster and with BT 5.0 ( the Intel Wireless-AC 9260 ). The default 3168 Taichi wireless module is actually pretty slow, so, you can see why I would replace it with the 9260.

Since all of the MSI MEG x399 boards come with this module, this explains why I wasn’t able to find a solution when I was limiting my scope to ASRock MBs which come with the 3168 instead.

TLDR; Once I downloaded the driver I copied the unzipped folder to a 2nd USB stick in the root dir ( even though you might be able to have it on the windows install usb ).  When you get to installing the OS, and your selecting your install location (disk/ partition/ drive), you have the option to format, etc…, and to load a driver.  It’s at this time that you load that driver, if you try to wait, you’ll get a BSOD, corrupted install and have to start over.  ( I installed v20.120.1, win10 64 bit only, 3/6/2019 )

Windows threw up a dialog about not finding any valid drivers, close this, you’ll have a few windows to close before you can browse for your driver.  Locate the directory of your 9260 drivers and install. After this it was smooth sailing for me, and the machine felt smoother and more responsive than it did before all of this started.  It however didn’t have any faster 3DMark scores, so don’t expect any miracles.

Summary

While the Microsoft staff was friendly, I found it incredibly frustrating that ultimately they couldn’t help me.

This is a huge failing on their part, especially since Mac OS and Linux are free by comparison, the hardware was supported and functioning, so you’d expect a certain level of support, especially when you buy the Retail Full Version of the OS, for $200.

It’s a 2nd major failing on MS Support Scripts that they so willingly blame the hardware.  All of the hardware is from major brands and have stated that they have compatibility support for Windows 10 64bit.  It was a 3rd failing of MS that the installer of 1809 fails so bruitilly for such a minor issue, even if earlier versions of the Intel 9260 driver BSOD the installer fail, then there are plenty of mitigation strategies that MS could employ.  It was a 4th fail on MSs part that the 19H1 release still does not correct this issue when it’s only a driver issue and Intel has had a new working driver for 6-months. Their 5th fail was that none of their staff or KB ( Knowledge Base ) was aware of the issue, when this affected ALL MSI x399 Creators edition boards, the Level 2 tech ( the highest MS has ) didn’t even try this approach before giving up.

In the process of trying to solve this problem, I saw a lot of issues with 1809, and the 1803 installers.  On top of that Windows 10 has had a number of issues with Threadripper since it’s release. However, this is to be expected with new platforms AMD is probably as much to blame as MS on this one.  AMD needs to better support it’s driver teams and get these issued worked out as early as possible, this is one thing that NVIDIA and Intel still do better than AMD. With all that said someone Intel’s latest driver didn’t make it to the installer.

Now that my PC is working with 1809, and it’s not that bad to reinstall, I’m a happy customer, but I had wished this whole process would have been a lot easier.  I hoping that anyone reading this article can help apply pressure to MS, Intel, and AMD to make this better, because they are not going to do this on their own, especially if 19H1 is any indication.

Crossposted to medium

Posted in: Machine Learning, Projects, Technology , Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Is an Economy of Leisure closer than we think?

October 26, 2012 8:31 am ,

I do feel like we are decades away from being able to create a leisure economy, and I think it’s a necessity.

On the epoch of the information age, we have been doubling our ability to store, archive and create data. We do it on blogs, on social networks and as we browse each website, and as we search via google. We are creating data from satellites, from outside our solar system and we are creating data at home with phones, camcorders, games, and cameras.

As a software engineer I think that we are upon an age of personal manufacturing and automation like we can not even begin to imagine. With so much data, and so many opportunities to create, organize and discover what all of this data we are entering into an age that demands creativity. It won’t be the means of ‘work’ or ‘production’ that enables great ideas to flourish, but how we share, discuss and appropriate resources to those ends.

We will demand creative solutions to existing problems rather than productivity. The means of creativity might be described as prolific, but not as something that can be measured in hours. I think going forwards as more jobs implore creative solutions, will will find that productive work will be taken over by systems that can be automated. Our network should start to fall, while our creative means will be required to increase.

Centuries ago economist and philosophers would talk of the leisure economy, but it was something that only the aristocrats could participate in, however, those that did, designed the 1st telescopes to explore the stars and the first microscopes to explore our cells. We had an age of enlightenment like never before in our history. Today we are on such a dawn, such an age where all of us should have the creative freedom to explore again, to investigate the vary nature of our world and to share in the tools to do it.

Software like Code Academy, Udemy, are putting classes online and disseminating knowledge like never before, while tools like ‘Light-Table’ will make it easier for anyone to understand how programing works. Did you ever wonder how someone might reconfigure a warp coil in 15 min on Star Trek? I can tell you that if they had to use the software debugging tools we have today, that it would always take hours. In the future we will have tools that as you work, as you create, as you think through a problem we will have smart agents that understand us and will test out millions of variants as part of that dialogue between us and our computer counterparts. Debugging and analytics of our designs will be a solve problem, we will measure everything in a simulation and we will be able to predict with ease the results of our creative effort.

The a new age of creativity and leisure is upon us. Those that wish to experience it first will find a way to limit their own ‘productive’ work, and will increase their creative means.

Posted in: Political , Tagged: , , ,

It’s Good to Promote ‘Women In Tech’

October 1, 2012 11:54 am ,

Every day I remise that my profession, one that is pictured as this brute, as a relic of an old era. I love my career as a software engineer. I get to choose my hours, hold great responsibility, and get paid pretty well. In the end I create things, and that too brings joy. But I hear that my life is privileged and that I was only given access to those things because I am a white male born to well off parents. I find violent sorrow in my soul when people tell me that the women I love can not do the same. The funny part, is it’s not men I hear murmur this. It’s women I hear shouting it.

Something must be wrong.

I would love it if my girlfriend, daughter, or mother were able to work in tech. They are all very smart women, and technology empowers people. It empowers women, it empowers the world. Technology equalizes the bar and no one knows who is sitting behind a keyboard at the end of the day except for you. Technology enables 3rd world countries to take part in the success of 1st world and 2nd world countries. Technology allows all of the worlds knowledge to be given to a young child in Africa for $100. It allows people to move from country to country, to work and to learn about other cultures. Technology has brought us so much closer. But for some reason women feel disenfranchised from it all.

When I have a daughter, I want her to feel what I feel in technology and if that means my industry needs some work, then yes, let’s start now. I want her to feel like she can do anything with a well trained mind and a computer.

Today, things especially got awash when I responded to a tweet that @ashedryden had posted.

@ashedryden : Reporter asked me if it was hard being a woman in tech. I immediately said “do you wanna pull up a chair?”

I quickly retweeted, and FAILed at twitter with

@jdavid: @ashedryden, women don’t get into tech because they get impression is that it’s easier to be a lawyer or doctor. good things are hard.

This spun out of control, and my point was lost.

I had written a much longer tweet, but upon that being closer to 200-300 chars, I started pruning it a bit, which had the undesired effect I was afraid of. I find it harder and harder to use twitter for anything that matters. So, instead, it came off as an attack, rather than support of women in tech.

My response should have been a larger response, because in whole I think technology as an industry get’s better when the ratio of men to women more closely matches that of a well balanced society at 50%. I also think that many of the problems we have in gender equality have to do with the simple fact that there are more than twice as many men in tech as there are women. In fact some studies suggest that just 27% of tech workers are women, and that there are as many as 9x as many men in ‘C’ level executive roles as there are women. Legislating requirements would be hard, and for larger companies there are laws, but tech is forged by small teams, and that means the changes need to come from within each of us.

For years articles have interested me in how to get women more involved. I have been reading article after article. Look at years of my twitter and facebook streams and you can see that I promote great groups like the Bay Area Geek Girl Dinners, scholarships for women to get into tech and anything else I can do. I invite my girlfriend along to all of the tech events I go to and would be happy to bring anyone with.

In the end I don’t know all of the reasons why women don’t end up in Tech. I do challenge the notion that it’s ‘just’ sexism and that men are actively keeping women out. I believe that happens some of the time, but it’s hardly the whole reason. Instead I see a lot of men trying to bring their loved ones along. I see fathers and daughters at Maker Faire and I see guys taking time out of their week to hold programing classes just for the ladies. I see Google and Microsoft offering scholarships just for women, and I see companies as ruthless as Zynga promoting women because the web is now Social, and 70% of purchases online are made by women. Tech needs women more now than ever.

If there is a larger problem with the industry then I think we should fix it. If we don’t know why it is, then we shouldn’t ignore that there is an issue, but we should move on to the things we can do. Not every problem is fix’able now, and in a ‘get things done world’, we often put things off if there is no clear solution now. I see articles all of the time where the tech industry is trying to figure out why smart women choose to be lawyers, or doctors or other professions that require more or similar aptitude as technical degrees.

There are things we can do now, and there will be trailblazers that have unique insights later, but I think at the root of it all we need to be positive an alluring to women in tech. We need to make the industry interesting enough that we can work at the gender balance issues, and then work on the other issues together. Adding more women to tech can only improve the industry.

Having more women in tech will make it easier and more probable for women to offer suggestions to make it better. It will make it easier to rally and build support for new ideas, to build consensus and to create a workplace and technology that favors both sexes equally.

Posted in: Political , Tagged: ,

Is Facebook Fingerprinting Chrome extensions?

September 5, 2012 11:11 am ,

This morning I noticed something new in my Chrome Console while working on a Chrome Extension. It looks like Facebook is now looking to see if you have a set of Chrome extensions installed in your browser. Most of the extensions I looked up on Google’s web store and via their search engine and they look like they are Malware of some sort, but a few of them look like they are much less harmless. It’s hard to see what the extensions actually do because they have been pulled from the Chrome Web Store, but some of these look like they modified the appearance of Facebook intentionally.

Some users don’t like being forced to see walmart colors all over the web and have used various tactics to customize the web to their liking. Some other users might do it for usability reasons or just plain augmentation of the web.

Does Facebook have the right to do this? It feels like an invasion of my privacy. I think the latest version of Chrome protects us from this sort of attack but that does not mean that Facebook won’t invest in other ways to discover this information or that they won’t lobby google to discover it. Some extensions also have the ability to open up channels to other extensions so if facebook had it’s own extension it might still try to fingerprint which extensions are there.

This isn’t all bad, in fact it really depends on how it’s being used. If it’s only used to defend our privacy and security then it seems fine, but if this little trick is being abused this could really sour things.

I guess I am mostly just surprised that Facebook is doing this.

Screen Shot 2012-09-05 at 10.30.49 AM

To get this to occur in your own browser you will need to be a bit sneaky and use a private session. Once Facebook runs the finger print they don’t do it all of the time, I think they only do it on auth and then they cache the result in some way. In fact since some extensions have access to the cookies I wonder if one could ‘skip’ the finger printing by setting the proper cookies or localstorage setting.

Finger Printed Extension IDs

kjafndplmofcedgddaoceenkcbfankem
kincjchfokkeneeofpeefomkikfkiedl
iejbljbhhoclgfiapmomcpkpkcmihfib
lkfhadffdnjnogmgjfihlcmmjhcfchaj
afnnkheojlgkipfabekmdkngocfhegck
hkpibllecmidllaojdmkcmfnoinmejco
gpllafflnmgjjcakjloknldkndnkmcpi
pkhidkonipdjidjglnkfcfhnkfnlefbk
kjafndplmofcedgddaoceenkcbfankem
kincjchfokkeneeofpeefomkikfkiedl
iejbljbhhoclgfiapmomcpkpkcmihfib
lkfhadffdnjnogmgjfihlcmmjhcfchaj
afnnkheojlgkipfabekmdkngocfhegck
hkpibllecmidllaojdmkcmfnoinmejco
gpllafflnmgjjcakjloknldkndnkmcpi
Posted in: APIs, Code , Tagged: , , , ,

Whose Responsible for our Country?

June 7, 2012 9:23 am ,

If the CEO isn’t ultimately responsible for his or her company than who is? If the captain is not than who is? When Steve Jobs was captain of his ship he did amazing things at Apple. When Bill Gates created MS he did amazing things. I certainly believe that a great president can help us build a great country. I also absolutely know that Mitt is not a great man, and I am pretty sure that Obama is not as well, however, he is much better at selling what he wants than Mitt is, who just comes off as angry and whinny. I want a leader in office, one who doesn’t need the government to do everything, but one who leads this country in all of it’s facets to make this country great.

When we finally stopped giving SETI money from the government, they rethought the problem and started a revolution in cloud computing. I would argue that Amazon’s EC2 is because the government stopped giving money to SETI, and people were so enthralled with the fun of searching for aliens that we started to share computing resources. It got people thinking of computer’s as a cloud to send data to and fro.

Durring this administration we stopped flying shuttles, and now private industry is going to pick up the slack. They are rethinking the problem and we have visionaries like Elon Musk and Burt Retan that can take their passion and get all of the support that the world has to offer. They are free to chaise their dreams with the world as their tail wind. When the government does it, they do a job that’s just good enough for no one else to try.

Yes we need services to take care of people when they get sick. Yes we need services to take care of people when they loose their job. Yes we need services when people make purchasing decisions that encompass the what they might earn over decades, but the government does not need to do those services.

I also strongly believe that, a good government inspires hope when there is none, and finds a way to charge forwards. To not go down the path of traditional liberalism, but to actually find it’s true latin root, in which liberalism means either to be libre or free or to drive change and actualization of some sort.

We are a wondering country who blossomed into something more than we were when we won WWII and since that greatness we have not had a proper vision to be more than to find the next bully and the next evil to attack.

For us to move forward we need to put aside this notion of bettering other nations, and we need to find out who we are and what we want to be. Essentially we are having our mid life crisis.

What if our census asked people what their 3year, 10year, and 100year goals were. What if as a nation we tried to understand where we want to go and we put plans together to get there. What if we had metrics that allowed us to not only track those goals but how well our laws and governance were working to get us there?

We would transform this nation from one of sound bites, to one of substance.

I am so sick of the rhetoric and the ‘red’ vs. ‘blue’ propaganda. I am sick of us throwing votes at a meaningless argument of who is the better politician, when we should be discussing what would make us a better country and how 100% of American can work together to get there.

In 10 years we could solve AIDs if we wanted to, if we wanted to dedicate the resources to it. I’m sure we could figure out how to produce enough food for the world if the world came together under that goal. Sure we don’t all deserve to eat like kings, but we all deserve to eat something. We all deserve to have access to the worlds knowledge, although we may not all have the privilege to have private tutors.

If as humans we can land a machine on mars that sends data across a solar system that takes at the speed of light minutes to get here, we can surely accomplish great things. 30+ years ago we sent a space craft into space that is now escaping the solar wind of our sun. Just think about that we launched something 30 years ago that is still working and is sending data back to us.

There is a foundation brewing called the long now foundation ( http://longnow.org/ ) their goal is to engineer things that will make humans think about a new time scale, maybe moving from status update to status update isn’t enough for a Great Culture. Maybe quarterly reviews isn’t enough for a Great company. Maybe every 4 years isn’t enough for a Great Country.

Where do you want our nation to be in 25 years? How do we answer that question? How do we make and keep those commitments over that time span?

Posted in: Political , Tagged: ,

In Silicon Valley, to buy a home or not to buy a home

May 28, 2012 9:25 am ,

As many Americans are currently evaluating decisions they have made. I am currently evaluating a number of decisions that I will make in the future.

Owning a home might be one of those decisions. Right now I am working out the math on the topic. And it seems to me that owning a home allows one who has earned income to potentially do two main things.

  • move retirement income into a hard asset with fewer rules.
  • allow you to take a portion of your income and stash it in a hard asset.

The math is preliminary, but let’s just say that 1 year worth of rent in SF is about

$20k

So far is seems like the rent on a mortgage + taxes and stuff for the same type of place would require I buy a $500-650k condo.
The net year cost on that would be

~$30k + possible association fees.

The income tax code says that I can write off the interest on my income, and since it’s a new home most of that mortgage payment can be written off.
Right now the government says that I can write off about $7-11k per year.
This means that my post tax cost for the home is

$20k a year again.

some portion of that $20k that get’s spent is actually principle.

let’s say $5k

As that principle grows, I can use that equity, even though it’s trapped in a home, to take out an SBA Loan with only 25% of the total covered.

So that means with a 5% down ( yes this is still allowed on some homes ), in 5 years turns into

$50k. ($25k down payment + $25k in new equity )

This should allow for an SBA loan of up to $200k that you can use to buy hard assets. Now this does not get you that much if you plan to do software start-ups like i do, but it does provide you leverage on those hard assets. My point being is that just because money is at work in one place, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still get leverage other places.

So, there is a case for moderate leverage. But, what about buying pressure?

As people pay off their mortgage, more principal is paid off and less of that payment is interest. Over time they get less and less back from the government. I think this creates a sort of pressure to be on a new mortgage. I wonder if this has anything to do with why people tend to move every 7 years on average. There are also some interesting rules around selling a home and saving on taxes if you have lived in the home for 2 of the last 5 years. I also think that people get board, and want to move for various reasons, more kids, fewer kids, etc…

Heck I’d like a *maker* room for crafts, electronics hacking extra. In fact at maker faire one of the exhibits was for a company called the 100k garage. So yeah, i’d like to *paint* the walls but i’d also like to continue playing the *start-up* game a bit longer and it seems more and more like they are mutually exclusive if I am going to be really good at either one of them.

It seems to me that buying a home is only good if you have earned income, and secondly if you don’t expect to have to move in 3-5 years. Out here if your company get’s acquired by google or facebook, you might have to start driving to a new office 30 miles away. It’s been a pain for some people I know and it’s been part of the reason they shed the golden handcuffs a bit early.

If I bought a home out here, i’d have to make some major decisions about what my life is going to look like for 3-5 years. It would limit my job choices or my time, which can already be a 60+hr work week, before transit. I’d have to decide between living in the city ( san francisco ), on the peninsula near FB and Google ( where prices are 30% higher ), in the north bay ( very pretty and better schools, no public transit to the city ), around berkely/ oakland. Each has their advantages and their disadvantages.

I’m just not sure what needs to happen to maximize all of my options, and secures a future. I’m just not sure earning an extra $5k in home equity a year is worth it.

Posted in: Living, Personal, San Francisco , Tagged: , , , ,

If not a MacBook Pro, what Laptop should I buy?

January 31, 2012 10:34 am ,

I did this research for a friend, so I thought I would share with everyone else.

The HP laptops have the highest performance to cost ratio with that said there are a few sacrifices for each model.

In your shopping you will want an Intel i5, Intel i7 or one of the AMD A6 or A8 processors. Do not get an Intel i3 processor. The Intel i5 or i7 should be fairly no fuss and I have enjoyed them. It’s the same processor found in the new Macs. The A6/A8 processors from AMD are really new and fewer computers have them, however they have a graphics card built right into the processor and in theory offer really low power operation, although this is the more darring choice.

For price performance, i’d probably choose an i5 or the AMD A8.

Here are list of graphics cards and their frame rates.

The HP models found below are really good, but you will need to choose the upgraded graphics processor. These are the fastest graphics processors in a Laptop in your price range. I also have one of these notebooks if you would like to see how it feels. We could even try your software on it to see how it runs.

HP High Performance Laptops

The other option is the Sony S series Viao. While it’s graphics card is not as fast as the HP, and the Sony has a semi-gloss-anti glare screen while the HP can be ordered with a matte screen. The Sony S series also have a really neet battery system and can last up to 15 hours with the extra battery ( *according to the site ), however, it’s probably more like 7 or 8hours with wifi on. The Sony’s should also feel better or feel more like a Mac.

Sony S series, stylish performance

I would also recommend that you upgrade to Windows 7 professional rather than just sticking with the Windows 7 home version. The professional version allows you to run software in a Windows XP mode and is more compatible with older software. I have used this mode on at least 3 different applications to get them to work.

The HP will be the fastest, but the Sony will feel nicer. HP also has a nice warranty program that can be upgraded over time, and they are the largest PC manufacturer. With the HP warranty I bought the 1 year plan and at the end of the year you have the option to extend it. I do have to say that even though the HP is very fast and it was a great bargin, it does feel quite different than working on a Mac, which is what I am used to.

I loaded up my HP and got i7 Quad core with 2GB of Graphics memory and 8GB of system memory, and a bluray drive to watch movies on planes. ( the Sony S, also can play bluray )

If the timing was a bit different, I might want to sell mine and get a Mac Book Pro 15 inch instead.

Let me know what you decide.

Posted in: Living, Personal, Technology , Tagged: , , ,

The Truth of Libertarian-ism..

November 21, 2011 11:05 am ,

The point of libertarian-ism is not forgo care, but to encourage people to volunteer care.

When 911 struck I didn’t know what to do, I was scared, and everyone was in shock, and things were closing down. The best idea I had at the time was to go to the hospital and to donate blood. It took 6 hours for them to finally get to me, but, while I was there people came in and brought food to the hospital workers working late, and to the people donating blood. As we where all there together it had a sort of healing effect to just give blood.

After that day I gave blood every 2 months for 6 years while I lived in Milwaukee. But one day, I went in and I was in a bad mood and I made a joke that the Vampires were coming to take my blood, and one of the nurses stopped me and said. Justin, we appreciate your gift, but we do want you to give cheerfully, and if you can’t do that then you should find something else you can do.

That’s the point of Libertarian-ism, we just want people to give cheerfully, rather than by the force of the Law.

The problem with forcing people is that they will fight it, and then we spend time fighting the people who fight it. In the end we end up spending all of our efforts fighting and not caring.

On the other hand, people who give with a cheerful heart, are those that will go an extra mile to care for someone.

I want to live in a world where people want to help each other out, and not say, hey here is a government that can take care of the sick and the homeless and I don’t have to. That’s what my taxes do.

The reality is that everything is in decay because we are leaving it to someone else to fix. What if you started fixing things you saw were wrong on your own?

Posted in: Personal, Political, Thoughts , Tagged:

JSLint-Feature – Error Severity

November 1, 2011 3:02 pm ,

Hi Douglas,
I have been to a good number of your talks, and I love the idea behind JSLint. I even don’t mind it when JSLint makes me cry every now and then, however, I feel like the priority of JSLint should be around launch successful code early and often.

Here at Kabam we build games that run as HMTL5 apps, and recently we have started to use JSLint as part of our build process. In a few cases it has caught some minor errors and we were later able to resolve them.

Our build process uses Jenkins, which is an open source version of Hanson. These continuous build automation tools make use of another wrapper library you might be familiar with. http://code.google.com/p/jslint4java/

So in this sense let’s say a develop wants to add a new piece of code, and this code causes a problem.

JSLint reacts in the following ways,
– it has a an error limit and stops reporting erros after a certain amount
– errors are not prioritized based on ‘newness’ – because that would be hard
– errors are not prioritized based on priority.

The end result is that a team must fix all errors to get the maximum value out of JSLint.

I propose a 2 part solution.
1. JSLint should not set error priority, unless it sets sensible defaults
2. JSLint should report an error code so that a wrapper like jslint4java could use a config file set an error priority.

This would allow teams to triage error types as part of their build/ development process.

On line 1326 you have a function warn() defined I propose it’s written something like so, including a new warning property, defining an error.type property using the bundle[] accessor name as the error code.

If you think of some other change that could get to the spirit of what I am looking for that would be great too. If I get the time I might try to implement a prototype. Hudson and Jenkins have 3 levels of errors, High, Medium, and Low.

Would you have some suggestions as to what would make good defaults for each of the error.types?

I feel like this change would better support agile development and continuous integration, and would allow teams to prioritize their development efforts.

Thank you for being a beacon and leader in the community.

function warn(message, offender, a, b, c, d) {

        var character, line, warning;

        offender  = offender || next_token;  // `~
        line      = offender.line || 0;
        character = offender.from || 0;

        warning = {
            id: '(error)',
            raw: bundle[message] || message,
            type: message,
            evidence: lines[line - 1] || '',
            line: line,
            character: character,
            a: a || (offender.id === '(number)'
                ? String(offender.number)
                : offender.string),
            b: b,
            c: c,
            d: d
        };

        warning.reason = warning.raw.supplant(warning);

        JSLINT.errors.push(warning);

        if (option.passfail) {
            quit(bundle.stopping, line, character);
        }

        warnings += 1;

        if (warnings >= option.maxerr) {
            quit(bundle.too_many, line, character);
        }

        return warning;
    }
Posted in: APIs, Code, HTML5 , Tagged: , ,

Netflix, Rushing Roulette?

September 19, 2011 8:59 am ,

Like many of us you might be wondering why Reed Hastings is tearing a great company in two. The company had had a solid decade of growth and now it seems to be faltering at every step. In the past decade Netflix has gone from ~$3 a share to ~$300 a share a 100x return, so investing $100 in the company would have made you $10,000, not bad. In fact that return is so good that you would find it hard to find a bet in Vegas that would give you a return like that. Roulette only nets a 35x return if you bet on a single number, and in Craps you can make an unlikely bet to earn 30x, by betting either on a 2 or a 12, both requiring a pair of doubles to come up.

In the case of Netflix though there are a number of pressures bearing down on them. Content providers see Netflix’s 25 million customers and feel like DVD/ BluRays are more secure and feel like they can turn content on and off to A/B test how consumers view content. The US Postal Service is thinking about cutting 238 offices nation wide, cutting out up to 5 post offices per state, or more likely up to 10 offices per metro region. Netflix has had to adjust content pricing to afford them the ability to bring in new content, while, other long standing partners have decided to take their content libraries elsewhere. And then add to that that there are Trillions of dollars of investment, yes Trillions, invested in the group of company’s competing with Netflix over the content war brewing in your living room and you might start to see why Netflix is being brash about this.

As a Netflix subsriber, I have been more than happy to have items sitting both in my streaming que, and in my dvd que, and honestly if everything on Netflix was available via streaming or download, I would opt for that format. The kicker however is that so much good content is left on disc for one reason or another. I have seen content appear on various outlets, like Netflix, XBox Live, Hulu, and Amazon to name a few, but rarely is all of the content in one place. This is probably why Google feels the need to provide a TV with a search bar, and why Apple has been trying to figure out how to own the channel as well. However in the end, the customer still looses. I think in this case, right or wrong Netflix is just tired of talking to content providers about what format the content will be available. I think the re-brand is more of a point of discussion in contracts, and negotiations than it is a consumer feature.

The next chamber of risk brings us to the pending demise of the post office. Currently the US government has been looking for ways to trim the budget and the US Postal Service has been operating at a loss for as long as I can remember, however, today they are preparing for being on their own. There are a few bills in the House and Senate that might require the Post Office to be profitable, and so the Post office has proposed a plan that will cut 7% ( 38,000 ) of it’s workers, and 1% ( 238 ) of it’s offices from it’s budget just before Christmas. I think Netflix, which is one of the largest users of the post office next to Amazon is probably concerned that the cost to ship DVDs this winter will increase, and the delivery times will too. Right now I get my DVDs in about 1 day, sometimes 2. Imagine now that those discs now take 2 days or maybe 3. How much more pressure will there be to stream. The odd part is that all of the disc rental sites will have the same problem. And for a 2hour film waiting 2 days for a film, and the having to wait another 2 days for it to get back to Netflix/Qwikster might cut the number of DVDs you have cycling through by half. I would expect Qwikster to play with pricing over the next year to account for that. Splitting the two companies means that while Qwikster finds it’s groove Netflix can focus on getting content.

On top of all that, Netflix is a 12 Billion, strike that 8 Billion dollar company that is competing with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast, Time Warner Fox, NBC, ShowTime, HBO, TNT, Viacom, Disney, etc… I think the market cap of their competition is near 2 Trillion dollars. Netflix needs to be more nimble than is competitors and if by doing this they can even gain a month or two on these companies it might be worth it. iPad beat several company’s by only 6 months, but by that time they had already sold enough devices to make it very expensive for other’s to compete there.

Finally companies like to manage their investors expectations and if the news was already bad, they have this habit of pilling on bad news or announcing bad news right before really good news. So if Netflix stock is already taking a hit, and you were going to separate the companies in q4, but now you can just do it in q3, you can write those numbers off earlier, you can push your bad books down into q3, and then you can set your self up for a decent q4. If Netflix wants to compare q4 of this year to q4 of next year, doing this now helps. I also thing that Netflix’s gross margins will skyrocket right now Netflix has a P/E of 40 at $150 a share, and it probably was a P/E of 80 at $300 a share which was probably a bit over priced with a gross margin of 15%, but let’s say that Netflix drops it’s DVD rental service, and it’s gross margins go from 15% to 50%? Even if the company looses customers it probably is better for the stock, and the company. The company would be cash rich and able to better acquire content. Right now Qwikster is expensive to run and competes on costs, and is probably constrained to 10-20% gross margins.

Netflix on the other hand has been experimenting with buying their own custom content and this may allow the company to do that more. I would love to know what the insider trading is doing with Netflix.

Posted in: eCommerce