TENNISSSSSSSSSSSSS! It's back! All the hustle, all the glory, all the prison. An overload of that peaceful green thwacking arrived this week, with 3 ATP events, 3 WTA, and 2 high quality challengers. I'm like a kid who ate too many cookies right now. I missed watching tennis and chatting with the community here, although a lot of you have joined the picking competitions that u/kuklachert runs on discord. Little update on that before the writeup :
Kukla has taken the time to put together a really great and easy-to-use site to automate his tennis picking competitons. The Australian Open will be the first contest this site is public for, so if you're looking for a fun way to compete against your friends and predict tennis without losing money to shady books, check it out 🐢. Just sign up (totally free to join and compete), join the Australian Open comp, and start picking. The site automatically tracks all your results, and maintains a leaderboard. The chat (runs thru discord) is a great place to hang out while you're watching, and there are even some small cash prizes for the top 3 finishers. If you like picking tennis, or tennis, or cash, or prizes, or turtles, or turtles as prizes, or strawberries, or cookies, or tennis, then this is the site for you <3. Check it out here, and remember since it's new feedback is always welcome
Australian Open Picking Competition

Djokovic Chardy : A lot of top pro’s used the ATP Cup as a good opportunity to get some good quality low-pressure warm-up matches for the AO. Not Novak Djokovic. I got text after text asking why Djokovic was celebrating after every point against Shapovalov. The spectrum of emotion from Novak is wide, but rarely matches the situation on court. Personally, I like it. I like unpredictable smirking smashing smiling imploring to the sky swiping angrily at the ground and missing fistpumping at minor victories Novak, because the alternative is pretend to be a perfect guy Djokovic. More celebrities should realize it’s ok to be human. Unfortunately, this man is not human on the tennis court. He didn’t win in convincing fashion, but he never seems out of a match no matter what the scoreline is. The AO is his best event and although there are more significant contenders from the youth ranks than there have been in the past, he is well positioned to be the frontrunner.
Chardy has been playing some outrageous tennis the past few weeks (becoming my personal MVP by whipping Fritz in record time) after a rough couple years where he looked like he’d be stylishly playing his way off the tour. He’s serving well, his groundstrokes are clean, and he possesses the kind of quality tennis that can produce a great match with a top player. In 2/3 format, he could threaten to steal a set with good serving and Novak disinterest. Here, the mountain is too tall. Djokovic in 3.
Travaglia Tiafoe : Usually I’m excited when a player who can beat one of the American hype-train players is set to play Tiafoe, but this is a pretty unfortunate matchup. Travaglia has been grinding his way onto the tour for the past season with excellent serving performances and big shots when “reset the rally” seems like the obvious choice. It can backfire at times but similar to Berretini in his tour ascension Stefano has been fortuitous when it counts. He wears his hat backwards which is super cool when Europeans do it and awkward when Americans do it, and he has a pretty high level forehand. A deep run this week though will be tough to continue and with a finals still to play against Sinner, it’ll be tough to come into the AO completely fresh.
Tiafoe continues to play tennis like he’s in a reddit gif painting something beautiful on a canvas and you just can’t see what it is yet. He’s made huge leaps in quality in isolated spots each season, but is still a bit passive at times. That quality tennis takes time with a young player, so there is always the chance (like with Zverev or Bublik) that at some point he will simply be too good to fail. A testament to that is that an in-form Travaglia, who is a threat against any mid-range pro right now, is still an even proposition at best against the American. Considering the winner faces Djokovic, it’s pretty important for Tiafoe to win here as he brings his best game when he gets in the spotlight, and given his confidence is not based on realistic tennis expectations or results, getting matches against the top players in a “nothing to lose” situation is the quickest way he will finally open up his game and realize that he can compete at the top if he starts working on developing the same motor as Nadal and upping the level of aggression. In a very honest and open letter to Arthur Ashe he wrote earlier this year, he wrote that he’s lucky to be able to set himself and his family up financially, and also wants to help kids who have similar goals and dreams. You love to see athletes mature, and I think he’s right about that stability in his life and that he will do some great work off the court. He has at least a few seasons left on tour even if he goes 0-150, and I’d love to see his team believe that and have him open up and really find out what his ceiling is offensively. Tough match, and given Travaglia’s run in Adelaide this depends a lot on his physical conditioning. Big letdown spot, but this will likely go 5 sets even if he is a bit fatigued as Travaglia is just too sharp right now. Travaglia in 5 but I would not be surprised if there was a huge letdown in physical ability as a day or two to recover from a full week of matches including two a day in some spots is a big ask to follow up with a 3/5 performance. It feels like hedging to say that but I think knowing the things you don’t know is just as important as knowing the things you know.
Lu Opelka : Yen-hsun Lu, or hsunny bono as he’s known to his friends, has been entered in the AO under a protected ranking. His best result on tour was previously beating Alexander Zverev in the Canadian Open in a very big upset, and although he hasn’t been on tour for quite some time, and was pretty visibly behind that pace in his first round last week against Vukic, it might not be so important to be sharp from the baseline against his first opponent. Reilly Opelka looks like 3 kids on each other’s shoulders to sneak on the ATP tour, and while his big swinging from the baseline is a much better opportunity to win points than Isner’s “hit it to their backhand maybe?” strategy, he puts enough balls in the net to make is fairly easy to hold serve against him. Yen-hsun likely holds serve an ok amount of the time, and if Opelka struggles on first serve he may even break. He was outclassed in terms of power by Vukic though, and while he’s a better baseliner than Opelka the Opelka serve and forehand will have ample chances to put this one away. Opelka in 3-4.
Fritz Ramos-vinolas : Taylor Fritz, who spends most of his free time cosplaying as Gumby, has just not produced the results that were expected of him by the USTA. The tennis channel announcers keep wildly inflating public opinion of him, and it almost seems unfair to criticize him as those announcers are most of the reason I’m not a fan. Where I believe Tiafoe will continue to improve though, I think Fritz has kinda plateaud. The big serve and forehand combo was something the USTA got very invested in after Andy Roddick’s success on tour, and they have produced a great number of guys who are capable of winning against the bottom 50 of the top 100, but not really at all against anyone higher. Repetitive tennis is just difficult to win with, and perfecting a few shots leaves you at a deficit on the rest. Kyrgios has a better backhand than most of the Americans at this point and his is immediately a liability anytime he plays anyone on tour with an actual backhand.
I swore that I would say three nice things about Taylor Fritz for every round he advances, so here there are : 1) Taylor Fritz has eyes 2) Taylor Fritz often exhales carbon dioxide, which trees need to breathe. Good guy? Possibly. 3) Taylor Swift has some pretty good music, and although Taylor Fritz looks more like a snake that swallowed a rhombus, maybe they are the same person, or related or something? Possibly.
Ramos-vinolas is a guy who, similar to Pablo Andujar, has had only one or two real impact runs on hardcourt. He’s the pinnacle of smooth clay-court tennis, and needs a lot of time to produce his swings. Fritz was of little use breaking Chardy’s serve, but ARV doesn’t really serve aces. This has the potential to be a straightforward win for Fritz especially if he’s able to get his serve going. He really didn’t do that against Chardy, and it would be relatively unexpected if ARV won, but that’s based on expecting Fritz to get his serve going at some point in the match. He’ll net a lot more free points if he can and even though ARV is steady Fritz’ forehand will be the biggest (the only) weapon on court. It is foolish to really expect someone who hasn’t shown a level to suddenly produce a level, but Fritz in 4.
Sousa Wawrinka : Pedro Sousa plays tennis like he suspects every ball might be a piñata and he doesn’t want any candy getting anywhere near him. He did well to push Evans in their match last week, but couldn’t hold serve well. This will be the case here as well. Wawrinka is lackluster at times, and his willingness to go for broke sometimes combines with impatience to throw away service games, but he’s a heavy favorite here. Wawrinka in 3.
Polmans Fucsovics : Marc Polmans has a pretty neat hat. He looks ready to go beekeeping, and he may get the chance to as this is a difficult matchup. Human Ken-doll Marton Fucsovics is a better version of Polmans. Both thrives on extending rallies and moving the ball well from the baseline. Both don’t really generate free points on their serves. Polmans lost last week in an uninspiring loss to Bourchier and Fucsovics has been fairly consistent on beating lower-tier players. Bigger weapons, less hat-skills. Fucsovics in 3.
Milman Moutet : John Milman is one of the best guys on tour who plays without major weapons. His heart and sportsmanship are inspiring, but his game and backhand are such that he never really has a stranglehold on a match. It takes a lot of work, and it will take even more against Moutet. The emotional lefty has been hit or miss in the past few seasons after a breakout performance at the French vaulted him permanently onto the tour, but this week he played some excellent tennis and there’s no shame in losing to FAA given how well he’s played this week. This is a match where slight advantages in patterns will matter a lot. Milman’s backhand is workable but mundane. Moutet’s is as well. If either are able to make forehand vs backhand the pattern in rallies, they’ll have a slight edge. Moutet’s run is very good, but he has to earn his points the hard way too often and Milman will likely be played into form. Moutet is likely to get the early jump, but I suspect Milman will outlast him emotionally as Moutet has a very short fuse. Milman in 5.
Raonic Coria : Raonic continues to play solid tennis, and this is a rewarding first round match. Coria is extremely consistent, quick, and produces upsets when players are off their game. He struggles though against big servers and there really is no bigger than Raonic. The best thing about Raonic is that his sexy legs don’t awaken anything strange in me at all. Haha. What? Haha. Raonic in 3.
Ruusuvuori Monfils : If you’ve been following Ruusuvuori’s progress at all you’ve seen him vault to prominence and then struggle. This is a common phenomenon on tour. Once players start coming in as 3 to 1 favorites and are expected to win against lower tier players, it’s almost like they feel pressured to produce tennis that’s out of their comfort zone, and they tend to struggle. There wasn’t much to separate Coric and Ruus last week, and the baseline rallies were very enjoyable. Books actually opened Ruus as a slight favorite here, and I think that’s fair but tricky.
Monfils didn’t do much in the ATP Cup, but France didn’t even send their best players. Losing to Berretini doesn’t mean losing to the rest of the tour, and Monfils is particularly difficult to predict. These spots where the underperforming veteran is underpriced are often a bit trappy, and I’m a big fan of Ruusuvuori’s game but it takes a lot of work to hit through Monfils especially from the baseline where Ruusuvuori does it from.
Monfils has ankle injuries in his past, and a neck problem that ended his 2020 season. He is a question mark until he notches a victory on tour, but there’s no reason to think that he can’t win this match, even if backing him is like backing Benoit Paire. If he’s motivated, Monfils in 4-5. If he’s in the “anderson/nishikori” mode of gradually easing his way back on tour, Ruusuvuori will like win in 3.
Martinez Nishioka : Pedro Martinez made a splash last year in the rankings by winning a ton of matches on clay, and even some on hardcourt. For a clay-courter he plays a very offensive style, and the margins he plays with are also small enough that hardcourt tennis isn’t out of his reach. He didn’t do much last week against Mikael Torpegaard but Torpegaard came into that event very hot and his serving game is big enough to really give him an edge against a guy who earns his points like Martinez. Nishioka is the polar opposite of Torpegaard and the lefty is a big name even if his results haven’t vaulted him to stardom yet. He is exhausting to hit through and has been supremely unlucky in some big matches. I don’t consider Nishioka a significant favorite in this match, but he “should” win. Martinez has a very good baseline ability, and has been a consistent problem for lower tier players. Nishioka is a mid-tier baseliner at his best, and he hasn’t been at his best. If Martinez had beaten Torpegaard last week, I’d like him to win this outright. As it stands, I still do but this is a match where Nishioka in his best form can present an extremely frustrating wall to play against. Martinez in 4-5.
Bublik Bedene : Bublik plays tennis for money. A fair enough quote, but one that has led to a lot of people doubting his effort in smaller events. It’s one of those “don’t tell even if they ask” situations. The higher you get on tour, the harder it is emotionally to push yourself for smaller prize money. There are a lot of wonderful simple-minded people who tell you not to look at things realistically. “Always believe you can win!” “Never let your opponent see you weak!” I appreciate Bublik’s honesty, and I don’t think his attitude has affected his results more than he’s comfortable with. He has fun on the court, and he’s not emotionally invested in becoming the best. If he were though, this match is one he can easily win. In a W for the ‘ol cliche spewers, bad habits do create bad performances, and he often makes questionable choices because he plays so free. When you’re willing to hit any shot, you have a lot of difficult decisions on every ball, and if you’re not winning matches you can make a few errors in a match and lose.
On the opposite side of the philosophical spectrum is Aljaz Bedene. Bedene plays a straightforward yet skillful game, and constantly moves his opponent. Hitting to the open court following a fairly good (but less than dominant) serve is the plan, and Bedene isn’t exactly physically dominant so he has really taken advantage of every chance he gets to grab points on tour. Bublik’s serve can keep him in any match, and his ability to get to net can pressure a lot of players, but Bedene’s pretty secure on his ballstriking on both wings and he’s a guy who will generally convert most of his shots down the line which is extremely important against a serve-and-volleyer. Bublik is a likeable Kyrgios; he can always win a match with great serving and creativity, but here he’s like Monfils in that he’ll have to prove he’s committed a few times before I believe him each season. With a questionable work ethic, Bublik doesn’t really shut down his opponents belief, so there’s going to be ample motivation and little pressure for Bedene. Bedene in 4.
Lajovic Stakhovsky : There are a handful of Stakhovsky wins in the h2h records for these two, but Lajovic won the most recent contest. Having come off some losing performances at the ATP Cup, Lajovic comes in with better match prep but worse results. Beating Kubler and Zapata Miralles in AO qualifying is very good practice for playing Lajovic, so Stakhovsky comes into this one not expected to win in terms of names and stages of their career, but with a puncher’s chance as his experience on tour and quality serving makes him a threat once he gets to the end of sets.
The -240 +200 line doesn’t really match the markets for these two players. Stakhovsky is relatively unknown to a lot of people if they don’t follow the challenger tour or are recent fans of tennis. Lajovic isn’t a worldbeater but you would expect him to be more in the -300 range here. Similar to Martinez/Nishioka, this is a good spot for the underdog to win if Lajovic takes too long to find his form. Lajovic may be able to run Stakhovsky into the ground, but he’ll need to do so quick at Stakhovsky is holding serve at a good clip. Someone with a cool name in 5.
Novak Mannarino : A great week for Novak as it always is when Austria gets into an international comp. Dennis has a sharp game and can compete with most of the bottom 50 on tour, but struggles to really move up the rankings. This is a good opportunity, as Mannarino tends to slump and then prosper on tour, and this appears to be a slump stretch after his loss last week to Giron. A loss in the non-competition round to Mahut doesn’t mean a lot for Novak, and after watching Fognini press against PCB today, Novak’s quick dismissal of him looks even better. Novak’s game I’d describe as a light version of Fucsovics, and as he does his best work at the AO, this is a good spot for him. Novak in 5.
Majchrzak Kecmanovic : This is that Wheel of Fortune puzzle they give you when you already won too much money. Majchrzak is great but hasn’t really broken onto the tour in a major way yet. He has too much trouble defending his serve and doesn’t win points easily. It’s always tough to win on tour without big weapons even if you’re very solid. Kecmanovic has somehow done exactly that at times though. He’s struggled with some injuries, but after watching his match with Sinner, it’s become clear that a lot of his struggles are simply unlucky decisions on big points. He had several simple shots with open court at the end of a tiebreaker, and managed to find Sinner’s racquet as he guessed and scrambled. Inconsequential in a certain sense, but stuff like that can wear on you over time and shred belief.
Coming into this match I think Kecmanovic is playing a bit better than Maj. He’d been struggling for quite some time, but seems to have somewhat found his serving and forehand again which have been pretty unreliable for at least a season. Since this is a baseline match, I’ll take the more experienced baseliner, but I would expect a lot of momentum swings here. Kecmanovic in 4.
Cressy Daniel : The people upset about Shapo/Sinner will not enjoy seeing these kinda contests sitting in the first round. Maxime Cressy is a pretty entertaining player, because he serve and volleys on almost 100% of his serves. He follows in the good ones, the bad ones, and it can result in some stolen sets and frustration if his opponents start missing. Across the net will be a guy he’s beaten in 2019 and a good opportunity to get to the second round. Taro Daniel is a solid enough player and has a good atttitude, but similar to Milman there is nothing to really put matches away when he has them in control. He’ll need to return well and keep steady on his own serve in order to win, and that’s not unheard of since he’s a pretty hard worker, but this match will likely be on Cressy’s racquet. Like Paire, the heavy aggressive shot selection can often spike Cressy out of matches quickly. He had a good run in qualifying, but didn’t really win by a clear margin too often. It’ll likely be a similar case here, and both players will have their opportunities to win. Someone who secretly hates the other ones style in 5. I’d lean Cressy.
Giron Zverev : Tough stuff for Giron, who looked pretty good in spots against Evans last week but just couldn’t find the final shots to end rallies. Zverev is of questionable value as a person, but his tennis is off the charts at this point. He’s starting to play aggressive again as he did when he first got on tour, and his serving woes are starting to disappear the same way Kyrgios’ did after a season of just plain going for it on second serves. I will find plenty of negative things to say about the blonde bumshell later, but for now, this is a tough match for Zverev that his talent will likely drag him through fairly easily. Giron has a good serve, and a smooth forehand, so he won’t just disappear here, but his best big wins (Raonic/Berretini) have been when those players were struggling to find their best game. Zverev in 4.
Kukushkin Thiem : Kukushkin had a good warmup for this playing Wawrinka last week, but this is not a realistic upset. Thiem is one of the guys who could win this event and it wouldn’t even be a surprise, and he’s one of the most consistent performers in majors of late. Thiem in 3.
Dellien Koepfer : Interesting first round for these guys. It really is frustrating but also great that lower tier guys manage to wind up in the draw playing each other because the points are really useful and the prize money can pay for a whole year of travel if you win. Dellien just isn’t a consistent performer on hardcourts, doing his best on clay and not really breaking through his original plateau on tour. He’s a guy who’ll always be around the 100 ranked range because he can play lockdown defense, but Koepfer has a good enough handle on his offensive abilities to avoid the errors that would put this match in question. One they’re out there, he’ll have to produce, but the match will be on Koepfer’s racquet. This is where players struggle, slated to win and after the initial buzz around them has died down, but Koepfer gets the nod here as Dellien winning would be a fairly big surprise. Koepfer in 4.
Kyrgios Ferreira Silva : Kyrgios put on an interesting performance this week. He spent most of his time flexing his knee, and seemed like he’d be withdrawing like he generally does, but he moved around the court well and completed (you’re not gonna believe this) ALL HIS MATCHES. I couldn’t actually believe he didn’t skip out on the Coric match,but I’m willing to applaud any progress from Nick, so playing through injury this week is a big step. That unfortunately leads me to my criticisms. Nick is generally grabbing or referencing an injury in any match where he struggles, and this is questionable because A) this is what players do when they’re trying to protect their egos and B) a player who doesn’t really care about the game (his words) playing injured doesn’t seem like someting you’d see. If his team has any concern about Nick, they shouldn’t really let him go out there injured. If he’s not someone you can control or influence, then it’s strange that he always references the pressure he feels to play tennis even though he doesn’t enjoy it. If the injuries are 100% legitimo, then I’d like to feel bad, but it’s pretty obvious that his training isn’t up to the level of the tour, and the simplest way to injure yourself is to try to compete at an elite pace when your muscles/joints aren’t used to that strain. Shrug.
This week’s edition of Kyrgios nonsense included constantly leaving his towel on the floor, and complaining about the shotclock. Oddly, no other player had difficulties placing their towel on the designated spot. This culminated in the umpire giving him a time violation serving at 40-30 while NICK WAS IN HIS SERVICE MOTION. I get the frustration of an ump getting chirped at the entire match, but giving a child something to harp on is a mistaaaaaake. Nick put his racquet down, announced he refused to play, and had to have a parental figure come out and tell him he was right before he got back on the court. Unfortunately, the “i didnt wanna do this bro” act worked on Bourchier, and the extended break left Bourchier furious and off his game. So am I sick of Kyrgios? No. Because that serve is just ridiculous. The forehand is absurd. The skill when he is on control of rallies is wonderful, and the urge to entertain is strong in him. He gets into spots where a second serve double fault will sink his chances, and he hits aces nonstoooooop. It’s just amazing, and while I am not a fan of his penchant for cosplaying a 4 year old who’s been sent to bed, he presents a completely unique spectacle on court.
Does he have an opponent? It seems so. Ferreira Silva had a very good time in the late South American swing on clay, and has followed it up for a couple hardcourt wins. He has a solid lefty game and is the type of player who generally produces wins when he’s supposed to. This is a bit much to ask of him, since Nick can comfortably serve his way through, but where Bourchier and Muller were somewhat distracted by the moment, Ferreira is likely to have his head down and be pressing for every error and lapse in attention that Kyrgios offers. With Nick’s knee being questionable, it’s best to avoid this match as a bettor, and I think Ferreira Silva is unlikely to disappear but will have a tough time finding breaks. Kyrgios in 4 and then later we’ll catch him reading books with a flashlight to be rebellious.
Men's draw continued in comments. Women's round 1 will be up in a few hours : )

DD: Synopsys to the moon

Hello friends, it is your local cybersecurity investment friend. Today I wanted to provide a quick analysis on a company in the Cybersecurity sector that people haven't really noticed yet $SNPS (Synopsys).
Synopsys derives revenue from two main avenues, semiconductor and integrated circuit designs as well as software security. They also do consulting for both. Electronic Design Automation is 60% Revenue, Consulting is 30% Revenue, Security is 10% Revenue. With that cleared up, I'll reveal that my area of expertise is the software security arm of their business, but I'll write on both areas. I don't want to write about the consulting arm, because bodyshop businesses don't scale well so I think that part is supplemental NOT their core business despite 30% revenue.

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays and Electronic Design Automation

Synopsys main focus is on developing software for companies to build Field-Programmable Gate Arrays and integrated circuit designs. They help customers design and test chips. They also have pre-designed circuits for licensing as components of larger chips. In addition, they also provide hardware and software verification/validation services for electronic systems.
I'm not a hardware guru, but as far as I am aware this area is highly competitive. Cadence and Siemens are breathing down Synopsys' neck for getting revenue from circuit design software and I don't see a TRUE competitve advantage. BUT it is not my area of expertise, so I defer that to hardware folk.
That being said, as we move towards Decentralised Finance I expect a significant increase in interest in running purpose-built hardware as a means to achieve new business needs. Digital Currency, machine learning, cloud computing, video processing, or even future automotive/vehicle circuits require custom-built, reliable, secure, and performant hardware. Synopsys is able to deliver on all these.
Supply chain risks are now elevated across all industries due to coronavirus and increasingly troubled international relationships. I expect a large focus on managing this risk from nation states by increasing domestic chip fabrication and design where cost-effective to do so. This is to avoid getting locked out of emerging technology by being unable to access chips, should China improve military and commercial routes in the South-China Sea / threaten Taiwans autonomy.
In addition, TSM, AMD, Micron, and Nvidia have seen dramatic share-price uplifts over the last year and I expect a rising tide to lift all ships. Synopsys is quite undervalued in this space and as a Domestic US design shop, I expect to see more interest in their technology offerings.

Software Integrity

Cyber is a growing industry with a huge total addressable market. Here, I have seen investments in well-known or larger players like Fireeye, Splunk, CrowdStrike, and Cloudflare go well for friends here. Happy to go into more detail about each of these offerings at a later date, but for now let's go with Synopsys as a relatively low-traded stock.
Synopsys' Software Integrity business looks for vulnerabilities in software applications and helps developers fix them, hopefully early and cheaply before they get released into a production environment.
Within the Application Security / DevSecOps space, security tools tend to fall into sveral categories. I can't write their acronyms without Automoderator hating me though. Synopsys does a few of those.

Static Analysis - Look at code, find bugs, report. Static Analysis tools function in different ways. Some build normalised syntax tree's (computer science nerd shit, basically think of it as a translation of a book written in 34 languages to 1 language). Others simply grep for known bad words (ctrl+F print each line with that word). There are many open-source versions like semgrep and bandit available as well.
Software Composition Analysis - Look at the libraries used in your software for known security issues and provide guidance for fixing those. Generally, composition analysis isn't difficult from a technical perspective, and numerous open source tools exist like OWASP Dependency Checker, nodepackagemanager audit, and so on.
Dynamic Analysis - Run your software, then throw shit at it and see what breaks. Useful for quickly identifying areas that crash your app, or ones that cause weird behaviour, but not as effective as a penetration test because they can't cover business logic well. Owasp zed attack proxy is a good example, as well as Community Burp Suite.

Why not use Open Source?

Enterprises often cannot use open-source security tools due to regulatory concerns around the security OR quality of the tools. Other aspects include lack of support contracts, having to manage it internally, lack of integrations with other enterprise systems, etc. While I have no issue with open source security tools, boards and executives clearly do due to the lack of risk transferral and the advantage of shifting accountability to vendors (See SolarWinds).

Synopsys Value Prop

Security Vendors focus on having a broad enterprise security offering (Gitlab) or on building high quality but niche security tools (Thinkst Canary, Splunk, Snyk). Synopsys is the former, but over last few years have acquired two of the latter and then integrated them into their enterprise offering.
In the Static Analysis space, there are a few large enterprise juggernauts like Checkmarx, Veracode, Microfocus Fortify, and Appscan as well some smaller players. The general industry feeling is that each of these is cost too much, don't work in new environments, and are generally security compliance tools trying to fit into a devops world.
Synopsys Coverity in comparison was built with more focus on the developer experience. Developer satisfaction and cost generally trump security coverage in the app-sec space, so these ancient security product companies are failing. To illustrate, $MFGA which owns Fortify (a fantastic product from 12 years ago) currently has a 20% dividend at the moment. Not sure how they'll grow their share price or get further investment with a 20% div.
Unfortunately for Synopsys, with most enterprise security products, a stupid long contract has been signed w/ prior static analysis vendors mostly to keep Microfocus in business I guess. There are plenty of legacy static analysis deployments currently rotting in big enterprises so the total addressable market for Coverity is massive. This is assuming they are able to meet enterprise chief information security officers on the golf course.

Technical Competitive Advantages:

Broad programming language support
Lack of mandatory compilation / builds reduces analysis time
Incremental analysis means you don't need to compile the whole application every time you want to run a scan.
Direct integration into integrated development environments helps developers find issues before committing code.
Lower false positive ratio, less noise is better for developer experience

Sometimes, people think adding features, more vulns types, extra integrations, etc makes for a more convincing product. I think that coverity, by simply being simpler with a focus on the developer experience will win a lot of product bake-offs compared to competitors.
Another thing to note, these are long term recurring revenue licensing agreements. You won't get immediate bang for buck from these contracts, they are generally paid Month to Month and because of that, Synopsys has to wait for their coffers to fill over time.

Blackduck composition analysis

Blackduck basically works the same as other composition analysis vendors, although there is a lot more competition now with WhiteSource and Snyk becoming increasingly active in their Developer user experience space. They were best in breed, but I can't confidently say that's true any more.
Composition Analysis is huge in the security world, validating the integrity and automatically reporting (and potentially fixing) supply-chain risks has a huge TAM. Software Engineers pull libraries from anywhere into their software application instead of writing the code themselves, inheriting the risk profile of that library AND the risk of it being maliciously modified. Blackduck addresses this by identifying software with weaknesses quickly, providing guidance, and by providing vulnerability research into potential malicious updates to packages.
I'm super bullish on all Composition Analysis products as I don't see Software Engineering moving in any direction except for additional code re-use over re-inventing the wheel.
BONUS: Another vendor in this space I'd consider to be promising would be JFrog for the same reasons as Synopsys Blackduck with the JFrog Artifactory Xray offering providing a similar service.

Summary

- Synopsys does two things, Chips and Software Security.
- Synopsys according to their Jan21 Q4 report has been getting increasing revenue across both their Chip and Integriy business divisions despite supply chain disruptions and the covid pandemic.
- Chips and manufacturing are a huge booming business, a rising tide lifts all ships.
- Cybersecurity has a large total addressable market. Synopsys focusses on software security and made two large acquisitions over last 3 years. Both are high quality products with a focus on user experience and are now fully integrated into the holistic Synopsys enterprise offering.
- Synopsys has been doing share buybacks over the last few years, which at least indicates to me confidence in their cashflow and longterm prospects.
- Assets have improved Q32019 $6.4m to Q12020 $7.3m while liabilities Q32019 $2.3m to Q12020 $3.0m. Revenue slight improvement, Q12019 830k > Q12020 860k DESPITE global pandemic disrupting entire world.
Bearish Factors:
- High customer acquisition cost, Synopsys mainly targets whale enterprises, so banking/governemnt/military/etc.
- Acquihired talent lockup ends 2022 for Coverity and 2023 for Blackduck, will see if they stick around.
- One of their Principal Sales Engineers told me I was a good kid and bought me a coke instead of whiskey at a networking event. Boomers in sales positions :(
TL:DR Positions: Synopsys does chips and software security. Chip companies are mooning. Cyber is mooning. Why not both?
50 shares $SNPS @ $272.
EDIT: I have removed almost every acronym as I think automoderator hates them. Sorry for the lengthy post because of that.

A mini-guide to RPA - what did I miss?

Grading cards "The basics"

Updated 12/9/20
Good news, heres a website that shows good examples of comparison grades!
https://www.psacollector.com/how-to-grade-pokemon-cards/
Grading cards...
It looks like there is a lot of confusion about grading cards, "What will it grade? Is it worth it? Grade everything? Investments? I have to pay for it?! I have to pay extra on it?!! It takes how long?!!!"
So heres an amateur rundown of what I know. If you know more and want to add, bring it on. If you want avoid reading you can go through the dozens and dozens of videos on youtube about grading cards, just pick one and they will run through a lot of it on there. This is mostly dealing with PSA but you can get the idea for other companies as well. It starts at the basics and moves on, jump to what you want to know if you know some already.

"What is Grading and what does it mean?" Grading cards is a loose way to say authenticating and objectively measuring the cards physical quality. There are many companies out there that will grade cards, this includes authenticating the card and making sure it is real, ranking it on a 1-10 scale for how the quality is reflected on the card, and encapsulating the card to retain the quality. The quality of a card is based generally on how good of physical condition the card is and how well the card was made. Encapsulating it is placing and sealing the card in a tamperproof proprietary holdecase.

The general idea of grading a card is to give it to a grading company, they will make sure it is real using several tests, then they will inspect it with more than just the human eye (this could be a jewelers loupe, a microscope, or digital imaging), once they have scored it from this inspection they will assign it a grade that pertains to this score (some scores are internal, some you can pay to be revealed), Now it moves on to the encapsulation phase and then sent back to you nice an protected forever. Ta-da, youve graded a sweet card. But reality is a bit more nuanced depending on company.

"What are the grades?" Gem mint 10, Mint 9, Near mint-Mint 8, Near mint 7, Excellent-Mint 6, Excellent 5, Very Good-Excellent 4, Very good 3, Good 2, Poor 1.
"Why PSA?" It is considered the standard for pokemon cards because of consistency, casing, and time. Because it has been around so long, people want to match sets, people with graded cards recognize the name, people recognize the quality, people feel trust in the company that they wont be going anywhere soon. CGC is a newer company for cards and doesnt have community trust yet. Beckett/BGS/BCCG (same company) is seen as weaker for pokemon cards but due to open subgrades, a grade 9-10 can be valued higher than PSA equivalent (Note: they are the standard for Magic the Gathering cards).
"I want to grade my cards" Great... why?
Value? Not all card values are equal, just because its a first edition doesnt mean it needs to be graded. If the condition is not great, maybe consider it for a binder instead.
Because I like it? Sure, grade every card that is special to you to hold its condition for decades.
Investment! Ummm, ok. Like anything, its a gamble if you dont know what you are doing. Do research that is equivalent to the value you expect to make and you expect the card to have. 1st edition charizard, lots of research for the condition, how to ship, how to insure, taxes after grading, etc. Unlimited Paras for nostalgia, dont really need to research, send it off tomorrow using the grading websites instructions and even at a 10, its valued less than $50.
"What are the criteria a grade is based on?" PSA has not quantified their requirements publicly. Generally recognized as Corners, edges, surface, and centering. Creases and dents bring it down immediately to a 4-5, the general idea is each category is a score of 10, cumulative scores added up get you the overall grade. You can have a perfect card but if its offcenter (Beyond the accepted 60/40) it could knock it down a grade. Front imperfections are more damning than back imperfections.
Corners: Are they split, dented, scuffed, or not rounded from bad factory cutting?
Edges: Front has silvering (Shine a light and if its holo and shines, it has silvering), Back has whitening (Place on dark surface and if you see white on edges, it has whitening)
Surface: Scuffs, scratches, dents, dirt, creases, wrinkles, etc all effect it.
Subcategory "Holo": Is the holo or card art scratched? Big scratch cuts into the card and can be felt, small scratch cant be felt but seen, microscratch is the tiny tiny scratches only seen by light at certain angles.
Centering: Left/right sides should be equal. Top/bottom sides should also match. Offcenter qualifier is generally when the art is just shy of a miscut. Miscut qualifier is when alignment dots can be seen or card art is cut off.
"How do I do it?" This depends on the grading company and what you want to do with the card. Check their websites. Most companies have this format: Fill out a form with card info, pay fee, send card, card gets processed, card gets graded, notification gets sent of completion or if there are any concerns when grading, card gets sent back to you. There are a lot of variable in this. How many cards are you sending, what is the fee for grading cards, how long does it take to process, how long does it take to grade, how does it get graded, what are some of the concerns after grading, how does it get sent back safely?
Most grading companies have a tiered payment section for how you want the card processed. The more you spend, the faster you get the card back generally. For PSA, they will upcharge you a fee if the card is deemed to be over a certain value, generally it is better to just be honest about it upfront than to hope they wont catch it and usually it gets you a quicker tier anyways.
"What should I grade?" Grades at or above psa7 will generally raise value of a card. Whether thats enough to make profit is another thing entirely. If you have cards that are high value, consider grading them if they will get at least this high and if you have enough money to pay for the whole process. You can always check ebay for similar condition cards and see grades/sold values/rarity to get an idea if it is worth your time and money.
"Why are they worth more?" Graded cards are generally backed by the grading company to certify the condition. If the condition is certified by a grade, there is very little room to debate about how valuable it is on a condition standpoint. It also authenticates the card and many cards have fakes that this helps ease peoples minds.

For example:
If you are looking for a perfect condition pikachu card would you buy a couple really good looking ones for $50 each send them to be graded, risk not getting a perfect grade and take all that time, or would you rather just pay more for one where someone has already done this? You pay for the convenience as well as the status of the grade. The status comes from the popularity of the card and population of graded cards, if theres been only 10 of the card graded Gem mint10 in 15 years and 400 graded Mint9 then there will likely be a larger than normal value in the 10s because of the difficulty of getting such a high grade.

"Are all grading companies equal?" No. All grading companies employ a different approach to their grades and it is all relatively subjective anyways so they are all different. Some companies have stood the test of time for 40 years, some have faded away, a company that is no longer grading due to whatever issues generally is not seen as reputable as current grading companies so values will be less. Also grading companies that use looser guidelines for grading, poorer quality cases, or poor databasing will have lower values as well.
"My card looks great, I should pay for a grade 10?" No, unless you know for sure it will get a 10, you should never assume a 10.
"I just pulled this card, its a 10 right?" Not necessarily, things happen in packaging and shipping, your card can get as low as a 7 straight out of the package, sorry it sucks but it happens.
"Why did it score poorly, should I complain?" No, chances are you missed something. Psa does have an option for you to regrade and if they find their own error will change the grade for you for free, or if no error will charge you for the regrade. They do hundreds of thousands of cards, some may have errors, some may score higher than they should. They do not refund any extra fees you paid for service regardless if your card valued highly or not, choose your service accordingly.
"But its been in a binder for 20years..." Chances are you got the card as a kid. If you cant remember what you had for lunch 20years ago, you likely dont remember the whole time youve had a card. Any shifting, bumping, humidity, or playing can damage cards in or out of a sleeve, even the wrong sleeves can damage. Some damage makes cards not worth grading, some are still worth it, depends on the card.
"How strict are they when grading?" Strict. Sometimes things slip by, but overall expect them to notice anything you noticed and dock grades for that.
"What isnt graded?" Lots of things, heres a partial list: Any card with after factory ink on it (Considered altered, ungradable), Unofficially recognized errors (sorry no damage ninetails), Unofficially recognized print runs (Sorry base 1999-2000), Foreign language cards (depends on company but psa wont grade any other language than english and japanese except on base set), Fakes, Really good fakes, and others.
"What is graded?" Offical cards, official errors, official miscuts, autographs, PSA can grade jumbos, coins, packs, promos, obscure cards, square cuts, etc.
"How to prep a card for grading" Place card in a penny sleeve, place in a cardsaver 1, check condition from all angles with strong light, catalogue and store until ready to ship. Suggested on taking beforehand photos, possibly tabbing the penny sleeve using post-it tabs in case you need to pull out.

Lets run through the process:
When cards are made at a factory there are a number of steps that can cause the automation to be slightly off, this can be anything from the card sheet not being perfectly centered, bad inking, foil patterns ending and beginning, machines pinching cards, and the list goes on. Cards get packaged and you buy it from a store. Now you have pulled a couple Shiny Charizard V for example and you want them graded. First sleeve them up, evaluate conditions, and prep them for shipping. Follow guidelines on how to submit and fill out paperwork for the correct service, this time we will choose a moderate tier $75/card. Send it in securely and wait. Great its been a few days and they logged it received. Wait... Pending. Its been 2 weeks and it has moved on in the tracker. Another week and now you get an update that you have grades. Its an 8 and a 10, but the 10 is being valued highly and you have to pay a surcharge for this to complete the process. Pay the value fee and the cards are now entering finalization and will soon be on the way back to you. Mailed out, soon they arrive. Wonderful cards but you want to sell the psa8 to make back costs. Its been just over a month, and you can finally sell your cards, hopefully the market hasnt saturated. Thats the general process. If you are using a lower tier, great you sent it in for $15/card, but the grades now both warrant a surcharge fee before they can be finalized, also youve been waiting 9months...

"Im not in the US, what are my options?" Use a middleman, caution with any import fees or taxes, use a less recognized grading company local to your country.
"Middleman?" A service provided by those who sell space on their memberships to get cheaper prices for everyone. Some charge a little, some charge a lot, some make money offering pregrading at $1-3/card (its not guaranteed but usually pretty close). They pay upfront for a large membership fee that allows them to pay cheaper per card, this translates to cheaper for the individual since grading can be pricey for a few cards. They also have the ability (due to volume of cards they are doing) to service to other countries (Ludkins is the biggest I know of). Some offer insurance on shipping, some dont, do your research.

Less basic stuff: * Currently ALL grading companies are delayed. PSA has cancelled low tier memberships with no sign of them coming back soon. They are backlogged 6-12months on low tiers, 2-3 months on moderate tiers, 1 month on high tiers, 2 weeks on top tier immediate service.

Beckett is also looking at month long waits for their grading. expect 6 month wait.
CGC is new and isnt getting the volume yet but since they are the cheapest, they are quickly getting backed up. Currently behind 2 weeks on their lower tiers.
"What is my card going to grade?" The only way to actually accurately tell you is to see the card in person. Photos miss things, videos miss things. Internet can help but never take it as a guarantee.
"Can you look anyways?" Take clear photos in good light, not in a sleeve of front and back with several angles to see the holo for scratches. Maybe a video, but remember, some people wont even look at videos since they move quick and can blur.
"I heard I have high value cards..." Yes, but maybe not worth grading, every card is different and values can change overnight. Is it worth the quickest tier if values are in flux? Everyone will tell you to grade 1st edition base cards but it depends on your situation and what you want to do with the cards. If you can manage it financially, grade them at least for authentication and general protection.

Example time:
1st edition near mint lugia is worth $1000 raw. But near mint is subjective since it has some microscratching and a miniscule amount of whitening. Still near mint but not gem mint. You want it back asap so you spend $200 to get it graded quickly. Assume a bad grader gives it a 7. Its currently selling at that grade for $1200-1500. Was it overvalued raw for the condition, maybe but thats for the potential buyer to decide. Was it literally worth it to grade asap, not really because your net value is the same. You can always regrade and hope for a better chance but really a PSA 8 sells for $2000, so try again and make $500 or lose $200 if its a 7 again? Thats what you are looking at if you are grading for investment or financial reasons.

Selling graded cards Part of the lure to grade is the value, but how do you value it and know when the time is right to sell? There are lots of details and information available so it takes a bit of research. Most of the time if you upgrade conditions or adjust your collections you may be left with some cards you are looking to sell. You can look at current ebay sold auctions to gauge prices but many times cards arent there at your grade. You can look at psa APR reports to get a price history of your specific grade, or similar grades.

"Is it a good value?" Check the population reports as well on PSA to see how many certain cards are graded. Maybe you want the only Gem mint in the world for a card, or maybe you want to see if the price is inflated because out of 500 graded cards, 450 of them are gem mint.

Protecting your collection Cases can be scratched or damaged, use sleeves for graded cards to protect from scratches (Essentially the same thing as a penny sleeve). To keep a larger amount of graded cards safe, hard cases are made (see Pelican cases) with foam inserts that can secure your cards. Encapsulation protects from handling, it does not protect from disaster! Cases will melt or damage given stress beyond normal, they dont protect from fire, they dont protect from strong hits, they might protect from water damage.
Counterfeits The large grading companies provide serial numbers and a database to find your specific card, as well as security labels to help prevent counterfeits. Cases should never be cracked, cloudy, chipping, glued, or tampered with from the grading company directly. If you find one that it, it is suspicious and probably should be treated as tampered.
Grading packs It takes a long time, PSAs estimated turn around is assumed at 1year for grading packs. Packs are graded on the condition of the packaging, not on the weights or expectation of whats inside.
Cleaning cards If you dont know what you are doing, dont do it since you will likely damage it. If you still want to try, try on cheap cards first. Use water only, microfiber clothes, possibly cotton swab to gently removed specific spots, dry with microfiber cloth. Do not get too close to edges or cuts in the card because you dont want water to wick into the card. Alcohol will damage the cards ink. Watch a youtube video about it.
Ask anymore general questions. Hope this helps some of you understand the process.

[Table] r/buildapc — I'm the owner/founder of PCPartPicker. Celebrating 10 years of PCPP + /r/buildapc. AMA (pt 1/2)

Source
Note: other employees' answers were occasionally included, but are by no means complete.

Questions	Answers
PC Part Picker. Where do I start. First of all, thank you so much for all of the help you guys have given me. If not for your team and your website I might not have built the PC I have now. I am very grateful to you guys for making such straightforward software with so many options. You guys are on top of everything, and I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for the PC building community. That being said, onto the questions! 1. What are your favorite PC Parts? What’s your ideal/dream PC part list? 2. I’ve been having this problem recently because things are out of stock. When I make a parts list I often have to go into the page for the part to determine the actual cost for the part when it comes back in stock from the major retailers. When displaying the price, could you also add in parentheses something like: Price: $265 (Lowest: $200)	Thanks for the kind words! I'll defer to Alex/Ryan on their favorite parts. For me I'd just like to get hold of a 3080 one day but I'm not in a rush. I'm still happily running this build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c99djX
	On the stock / pricing issue, we might be able to look into something like that, but I can't make any guarantees.
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Downmented: It's a bad time to be GPU shopping when the founde owner of PCPP can't even score a 30 series GPU BDsBiggest: This was my thought, how does he not have one?	I honestly don't really need one and there are people who play way more intensive stuff than I do. I'm ok to wait.
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On that note, what do you play?!!	I still really enjoy Minecraft of all things. My oldest son started playing Skyblock and so that became a bit of a time sink. Used to play a decent bit of Civ and other Sid Meier stuff a long time ago. I'm just not that much of a gamer though. I'm legitimately terrible at FPS games, so I don't really enjoy them all that much. Minecraft lets me just piddle around and experiment with different creations, architectures, etc. And it's something I can play with my kids which is great until they trash my island.
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As a fellow Minecraft buff, what are your thoughts on the best CPU for Minecraft at the moment? I know it depends more on CPU performance than GPU, at least in Java edition.	I'll have to defer to the other guys on staff or the community because I honestly don't know. I'm playing on an i5-6600k/980 ti which has been more than enough.
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Thanks for the response! How long have you had that build for?	Roughly four years. I need to upgrade the GPU though because where I work in my house it's getting cold and ThoughtA is outpacing me on Folding at Home.
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Do you have a rebuild planned for when the 3080 is back? Or just upgrading the current rig?	It'll probably be a new build, but I'm not sure what it'll be. If 3080s come back in stock where I can get one, then I may start with that and plan the rest around it. Especially if it's something with a particular aesthetic or color scheme that I want to match.
Thank you for your site and all the countless hassle it saved me from. What do you guys and gals think is a thing our community could help you with ? Is there something like a roadmap for pcpp and what are you personally most excited about ? How should people give feedback to you and the other team members? Which channels are you preferring ? On which channels can I send my monthly thank you very much for your service messages ?	Re: what buildapc can help with - this community has helped us so much over the years that I have no asks whatsoever. Just thanks. Thanks for letting us be a part of the community.
	We don't have an official roadmap - I run the dev timeline like a software engineer who is terrible at time estimates. Things I promised eight years ago are still undone while other stuff jumps ahead. I'm most excited for benchmarking. I love performance analysis, and what we're building should be super cool. Lots, lots, lots of data, all in tightly controlled environments. The hard part is how to present relevant bits without overwhelming people with data.
	For feedback, feel free to ping us on our site forums, our contact page, or on our discord channel. Discord is probably the least formal if it's something small, though I'm not on discord all that often these days (Ryan and Alex are though).
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Ah, "agile" development.	Nope! None of that. No agile practices here thanks. Just software development structured along my capricious demands...
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IMHO, "we don't have a project management philosophy" is the best project management philosophy. As long as progress is being made and people are happy, management theory would just get in the way.	For a while I was working on a codebase of several million lines of C++ in an org with 100+ other really smart engineers. I participated in an effort to modularize part of it, and I failed pretty badly. One of the most important things I learned was from an old Windows NT dev presentation that talked about Conway's Law. That really reshaped how I viewed architecture, teams, responsibilities, and communication patterns.
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Did you consider licensing/sharing benchmarks from other hardware review sites, rather than developing a (presumably not-profit-generating) benchmarking competency? Alternatively, if you do want to generate benchmarks, have you considered monetizing them via a blog?	We're planning on benching at a scale that most review sites don't do. Like an order of magnitude more pairings, runs, etc, with a bit more detail on each as well in terms of current consumption, temps, etc. All that all recorded on identical software setups for comparability. No one right now is doing that at the scale we want.
	It's definitely not a profit center, and that's ok for me. I love benchmarking. Before PCPP I was part of a team working on optimizing compiler stuff. I loved writing compiler optimizations and testing the performance changes. So that whole side of things - determinism, accurate measurements, etc, I just really enjoy it. So PCPP in a way helps fund my desire to do that work whether it is profitable or not.
	That being said, I do think it's a complementary feature set to add. While it may not monetize directly, I think the value it adds to the site will (hopefully) result in an incremental change in traffic/revenue.
So how does it feel to have a side project or yours become as popular in the computer world as google? You've become the only place I recommend newbies to go (other than reddit) for pc building help, and your site has become the most useful tool I've ever used outside of my daily IT work. You've created something not only powerfully useful, but well designed, smoothly operated, and pleasing to the eye. I don't really have much of question more just taking the opportunity to say thank you for creating a fantastic tool for the community. If a bigger company offers you millions to sell it I'd understand if you did, but please don't, I can't imagine the site being run any better than by it's original team!	Thanks for the kind words. I gave my mom a shirt. A couple years ago someone recognized the shirt in rural east Texas. Like, she lives 30 minutes from the nearest town of 5,000 people. That was pretty wild. My mom was pretty excited lol.
	I love having something that I helped build be a useful thing for people. That's immensely satisfying. (And it's a team effort, not just me by any stretch at all. The whole team helps every bit of what you see on the site).
	On the other hand, I don't want or like to be out front. I'd rather be behind the scenes working on something and not really be noticed. I think that gets reflected, probably negatively from a business-first standpoint, in how I run things. I don't really push branding hard, don't push social media (Twitter, Instagram, etc), because I personally don't want to be out front there. I can engage here on reddit because I feel like I'm a part of the community here rather than some corporate/redditor relationship. From a business standpoint, I think there's a lot of growth possibility that PCPP hasn't tapped into because I want to avoid various social anxieties and whatnot.
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Just know that if a company offers big bucks (and they probably will eventually) it is because they see an opportunity to leverage the base you built to make money and it most likely will be by selling the customers who trust you. They will probably do something like partner with large manufacturers or sellers and push their own products while if ignoring what is best for the people looking to create their own best build.	Yeah that makes sense. We've made some decisions that probably wouldn't last long - not running ads, not selling user data. So really there seems to be two options: either we run this out until it dies on its own and we get to keep our ideals/positions, or we run out of energy and sell. I don't want to sell. I don't plan to sell. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't days where I feel so tired and just want a break for a bit. It's trying to find the balance of doing a job I love maintaining principles I value and also not destroying myself physically/emotionally/etc in the process.
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Oh cool! If you don’t mind me asking, what area of East Texas? Did you grow up out here? I’m from out in Van, approx 30 min from Tyler. My close friends and I love PCPartPicker. I just used it to build my upgraded rig a couple of weeks ago.	Nice! I grew up in Tyler (edit: but my mom currently lives 30 minutes east of Center, TX - basically on Toledo Bend reservoir and the TX/LA border). My electronics teacher in high school (Mr. Ray) was from Van. He was formative for me in pursuing electronics seriously by introducing me to VICA and electronics competitions.
Benchmark integration timeline when 🍿	Probably mid-2021. We're almost done with a building renovation where they bumped our building service from a 400A service to a 1200A service. Added AC capacity. That 800A is going toward bench... it's going to be fun. This is what I'm talking about https://imgur.com/a/rffuVin. Can't wait to get this all up and running.
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I have a massive transformer that’s the size of a fridge I can’t seem to sell if you guys want it. It was meant for a Bitcoin farm but was never used. Cost $5000 I just want it gone it’s so heavy lol	LOL thanks but we're good. They actually delivered the 1200A from pole mounted transformers. MEP guys were surprised, but the power company said they could do it. Sure enough they did. Old vs new pre-hookup: https://imgur.com/a/ODQlACV
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Dude, you do AWS, dev, hiring, project direction, and building management? Your operation must be crazy efficient.	Oh no I offloaded all the building management stuff to Jack. He's handled almost all the renovation work, which has been an absolute life saver for me. I just come in and throw wrenches in things by adding last minute requests for extra conduit runs from here to there, replace those windows, change that paint color, etc. Jack handles all communication and followups with the GC, subs, etc.
	The other stuff I do do though. AWS (our infrastructure isn't that big really, a couple dozen EC2 instances, RDS, Redis, CloudSearch, Cloudfront, etc). Daniel handles the bits of Lambda that we use. I kinda enjoy the deployment / devops side of things, and I think it's important to have my fingers on the pulse of that whenever I'm designing new features. Helps me have a better feel for what kind of query impact different code or modeling decisions will have.
	The hiring isn't much - we've averaged about one person a year and that's usually someone in our existing network of relationships. And project direction is pretty small right now since we shut down our cycling site. Back down to just one website makes it a lot simpler. We talk about what we want to do as a group a lot, so (I think) everyone has a pretty decent picture of where we're headed despite timelines not being nailed down strict.
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What kind of benchmarks would you be running? Have you considered pulling data from places like passmark?	Anything we can run deterministically and automated and that has license terms that allow unfettered publication of result data. We won't be pulling data from anywhere, passmark included. All the data will be from runs we do in-house.
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May I ask why the focus on internal metrics vs just pulling them?	Mainly because we can control all the variables and make them consistent across all our result pairs. We have some absolutely phenomenal performance analysis engineering expertise in house.
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Unfettered publication of result data. Wow. Nice. As someone who likes playing with freely available datasets, I really appreciate this. Hard to learn data science without freely available data sets that regular people can have some level of subject matter expertise over to start to learn how to put data-driven stories together.	Sorry, what I meant was that the license terms of the benchmark software have to allow us to publish the benchmark results without restriction. There is a popular benchmarks out today that requires the benchmark results be vetted by them first before publication. We'd have to manually send over bench results if we weren't using their bench platform (we're not, we have our own). Then wait for them to approve, and then we could publish. That's not viable when we're testing at the scale we plan to - it'd need to be automated at least but they couldn't offer that. And for benchmarking prerelease hardware under embargo, it'd mean that we would have no ability to publish data right when the embargo lifted. We'd have to wait however long for their manual review.
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How will you be able to benchmark hard-to-get hardware? e.g. RTX 3090, Radeon 6800xt, and Ryzen 5000? Will the manufacturers send them to you? Or do you have to buy them?	I think it's a mixture of both. On new release hardware it's helpful to have bench data when embargoes lift. But I also want to have store-purchased hardware as the main part of our hardware pool, however long it takes to acquire that. We can flag the benchmarks that come from manufacturer review samples - that way people know the source and can factor in review sample binning.
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So once upon a time, I was gonna write a program that would pull benchmark and pricing data to build a list of best value parts, such that no part in the list had a better performing part at a lower price. A sort of definitive do-buy list to make it easier to pick parts. Once benchmarks are done, pcp would have all the infrastructure in place to make that happen in some form on the site, perhaps as a filter for picking parts or as a warning on the part/build pages?	Yep.
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sorry, I'm not sure what you're saying that to, I should have actually posed a proper question: Will you be implementing that?	That's our intent, yeah. It may take us a bit to get there though.
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There is...a lot... of metal shavings in that box. Ah I’m sure it’s fine it’s only 1200A.	Oh at that point it was still all being hooked up. It's cleaner for sure.
	Check this out - relative size difference between old and new...
	https://imgur.com/a/xQD1fEY. (That's one Barry for scale.)
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But how do we know how big Barry is if he's not holding a banana?	Barry is approximately the same height as one marinelli.
A lot of people seem to think that you only host sellers that provide you affiliate kickbacks. Is there any truth to that? Have you ever allowed or disallowed a seller on the basis of affiliate money? How do you decide whether to host a seller or not?	That's not true. We list several retailers without affiliate agreements. Affiliate relationships are often much much easier because they almost always already have price data access. That's the main thing we need.
	Our choice on hosting a retailer largely depends on whether we feel they are good for users or not. If a retailer is being abusive to users or doing highly manipulative stuff, we'll remove them even if they're profitable. We've done that several times in the past. If a retailer also has highly inaccurate pricing, we'll delist for that too.
Yaaatttttt: Not sure if you are allowed to reveal this but what retailers have you delisted in the past? LightningProd12: They delisted MicroCenter in the US ~~because they had too many in-store only deals and no way to tell the difference on PCPP's end. And not everyone can go to one, if you live in the Northwest the closest one can be 800-1000 miles away.~~ Edit: This is mostly false, look at the comments below.	ThoughtA: This isn't true at all. We want to have them on the site. We had some discussions with them, but they stopped responding.
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Oh ok, I remember suggesting it a few years back on the forums and getting told they were delisted. EDIT - Forum post link: https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/309304-request-add-microcenter-to-the-list-of-merchants I falsely remembered there being a reason but was told they were removed from the site.	We did actually list their in-store deals. I put in a decent bit of code for that so that they only showed up if you were within a configurable radius of one of their locations.
	It's a long story, but the gist of it is that we were waiting on some stuff that never came and things went silent. We reach out from periodically but nothing. It stinks - we'd be happy to list them.
	You never know what you reception you'll get from retailers. Some are beating down the door to get on board - that's awesome. Others we have to prove that we're worth their time - that's not unusual. A few will say they want to work together, we get 80% of the way there, and then... silence. Or the key person you were working with takes a job somewhere else. And then some retailers basically say not just no, but h*** no. I'll never forget that one. For some retailers there's a strong aversion to something we do, whether it be price comparison or something else. But just know that if there's a retailer that is reputable and treats customers well, we're more than happy to work with them and get them listed.
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Ohh ok, that sucks. On a side note, is there a story behind the "h*** no" retailer?	They're, eh, no longer in business. Honestly probably dodged a bullet there.
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Maybe this was asked already but still: are there any timeline/plan to add more countries to the country list? I am leaving in Austria and I have to use Germany to see the prices and availability of the parts. Moreover, I see German retailers and prices but not Austrian ones.	We're continually adding new countries and retailers. Adding a country is just a few lines of code on our end - we do that when we have a retailer to add in a country we don't currently support. So really it's a matter of finding and adding retailers. If you have any you'd like to see, send us a note on our contact page and we'll take a look at it. Jenny reaches out to the retailers to see if we can get them on board. It usually takes a while to get in contact and get good data access.
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I already raised this issue to him several years ago - because it was blatantly in the open for users in Germany. You would get amazon affiliate links as "lowest" price, even though there are several other stores that are cheaper... He got angry quickly and gave me the same bs excuse. The top sellers with the top user ratings were never listed as cheapest even though they were.	We list the buy box winner for Amazon. If you're saying we prune results for various marketplace sellers, well, you're wrong.
How's the team handling COVID? Is everyone working from home? What kind of challenges are arising?	I sent everyone home in March. We haven't met as a group since. It's been ok - we just meet on video conferencing when we need to. Jack and Barry are up at the office overseeing the renovation which should be done mid-January. I'll probably be up there from January to April to do the benchmark network cabling and office rewiring (from cat5 to 6a+fiber) because I kinda enjoy cable crimping and punch downs. :)
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The transition from cat5 to cat6 is worth?	Yeah. We're not running 5e, just 5. It's what was in there from when we bought it. So that's not where I'd like it to be for good 1Gb.
Any chance we'll ever see some more filtering options for SSDs? It would be really handy to have the following * Filter by the primary storage type SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC/Optane/etc * Filter by whether the drive has a DRAM cache or supports Host Memory Buffer (HMB)	I'd love to, but I think it'd cause a fissure I'm not sure how to fix. Right now we have SSDs and platter drives in the same category, but the specific filtering for each is different. To apply the really detailed SSD filters, I think they need to be their own category. Same with the HDD types. I don't know if splitting them up is the right path though, so I've been continually punting the issue down the road until we're forced to decide one way or the other.
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Tsk tsk, don’t accumulate technical debt there	Oh, no, it's quite the opposite really. Parametric part additions record the type and filter selections. Those added to a part list stay there forever - we never throw them away. So any filters we add never get removed even if we don't show them. Because of that, I try to be very deliberate in what we add and what we don't. Once I add a new part category or filter type, if I decide later it was a bad idea then it means I get to write lots of migration code. That's no fun.
Super excited for the an app version. Are you guys considering price tracking so that users can set alerts for when hardware drops to a desired price?	Yeah. We have that on the site already with email alerts. But the PWA provides them via browser push notifications (on platforms that support that). I have that all working in a beta test mode (for staff only) right now and it's feeling pretty solid.
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As a front-end engineer, what's your stack look like for the PWA?	Basically built on top of our existing responsive site (Python, Django). I didn't want to spend a lot of time migrating to another framework, so instead spent the time kind of standardizing our own API-ish setup and then handling the caching or offline modes for that as needed. We went responsive with PWA to avoid maintaining three separate codebases (web, iOS, Android), but it's looking like we may go native in the end anyway. This buys us some time at least.
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So not iOS?	Right. :(. I understand there are some workarounds to get push notifications through wallets and whatnot, but that feels pretty hackish to me. We might end up going native on iOS at some point to get good notification support there.
How hard is it keeping up with and adding new item releases (not only the new 3000 series graphics cards from nvidia but also possibly unknown stuff like network cards, etc)? Are there any items you decide not to add or do you try to list everything you can?	New GPUs are pretty easy. CPUs are ok, sometimes a pain depending on the chipset/bios situations. Motherboards are terrible, especially the last few years. Cataloging all the M.2 ports, their constraints (PCIe in this slot disables that SATA, etc) is a major pain.
	There's some stuff, particularly on cases, where there are compatibility constraints that are not economically viable to model. We know what the constraints are, but to model them all across 30k+ parts would make data entry so slow that we'd never finish.
	We try to hit the main product categories, but we'd love to expand that. It's really an issue of how time consuming and costly it is to do the data entry for it versus how often it's used.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
So Wikipedia seems to be crowd sourced, and works pretty well. Maybe some of the more laborious data entry parts could have a crowd source entry option, but be flagged as such when people bring up anything containing those results (a disclaimer)..	It's just not reliable enough. It has to be super accurate, and it's not something I'd ever feel comfortable outsourcing.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Have you tried asking the manufacturers to get involved? You might just be big enough.	When new releases are coming out we sometimes get data ahead of time. Cases are pretty common. Motherboards are a lot harder, because of embargoes and even BIOSes and manuals not finished days before release. Some of the constraints we see are pretty one-off situations that make it hard to provide some sort of standardized input form for though.
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what if you let companies input their own data for their products.	I don't trust that to be accurate enough. We routinely find bad spec data even on manufacturer sites.
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I imagine that PCPP is large enough now to direct traffic to or away from various retailers in volumes they will care about. Like how Google went from small to large. Given that, probably PCPP should begin leaning on retailers to provide product data in an ingestable format, making data entry moot.	We work with retailers to provide the right data in feeds for sure. But the hard part is that not all retailers have the technical expertise on hand to do it (or for smaller retailers, the margin and profitability to pay for that expertise). The back-and-forth to get updated feed frequency, proper part numbers, stock status, etc - it's non-stop. Brent and Jenny bear the brunt of that.
I know you've been vocal about not opening up a merch store for personal profit, but would you ever consider a merch store where all proceeds go towards your well building charity?	We did this once. My accountant was like, "please don't."
	Basically if we buy a thousand shirts and give them away it's super easy - they just get marked as a marketing expense and we give them out however we see fit. But as soon as any of them are sold, you have to track inventory, cost basis, etc. It's a lot more tedious and last time it was maybe a couple shirts a week - enough to invoke packaging and transport overhead but not enough to be efficient. So we instead just give them away at various bapc milestones and donate from our affiliate income instead.
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Kinda funny reading this while wearing the hoodie! It’s easily the comfiest hoodie in my closet.	Oh, major props to Phil for that. He picked it out. I love mine too. We printed some smaller ones for kid sizes and my oldest son tries to sleep in his.
transam617: Philip, Thank you for 10 years of your indispensable help. Over that time, there were probably millions of visitors to your website who have had their PC building experience improved or made possible through the use of your wonderful tool. But specifically: Since 2014, our little corner of reddit (now 10K subs) cabalofthebuildsmiths, has been more effective, and has helped more people as a direct result of your website tool, than from any other tool we have available. We pride ourselves on giving builds to customers where they can reliably buy every part we pick, and be sure they will work as expected. This process takes research and a lot of effort, but the highly accurate, effective communication of pcpartpicker (for all the countries you cover) is the foundation of our process. Thank you for making the messy world of PC parts a little more bearable, thank you for making it all possible, and a big thanks from us, cabalofthebuildsmiths. transam617 kokolordas15 dmz_dragon danyulz bramblexd	Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for all the work you all do to help builders!
What happened to the youtube channel? Loved the build videos and interviews you had while it was still running.	We moved buildings a couple years ago, and decided to pause on them while we renovated the new space for filming and benchmarking. The renovation is finishing up likely mid-January - it took waaaay longer than we originally thought. If we had known it'd be that long we probably would have figured out some interim plan. So once that reno is done, we'll probably start ramping up content again. I'd guess mid-2021 or so.
[deleted]	My first computer was a an AMD K5-133. That was late 1996 I think and I was in college. My friend and I ordered our mobo+CPU off an ad on a magazine page. I bought his old case and an 80MB HDD off of him. Ran Windows 3.1. We played Warcraft 2 across a null modem cable - that was probably the most fun I've ever had with PC gaming. Floating point on that thing was terrible though. Playing a 64kbps MP3 chewed up like 60% of the CPU.
	My roommate introduced me to Quake 2, specifically Action Quake 2. Loved that game. I started running a website on the dorm network on it that got pretty popular. But queries on the db would tank my Q2 framerate so I put in code to disable queries while I was playing.
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tiger direct?	No, it was some small place out of the northeast. I mean, that was pre-internet-shopping days. Wrote a check, hand wrote what we wanted on the order form, mailed it, and waited weeks. No phone calls, no email confirmations, nothing. My kids have no idea what that was like.
Fun fact, I got banned from PCPartPicker for adding a purple dildo from Amazon to my build.	Yeah that'll do it. User code of conduct / ToS and all.
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Boooo. Thats kinda weird, especially for private/personal builds.	Most of the retailers we partner with have as a part of their terms that our site not contain NSFW material. I get some people think it's funny but it can get us shut down, and I'm really not ok with that.
I've used your site so many times and I even met some of the team in Austin outside Dreamhack. Thanks for all you do! Who has the most powerful computer on the staff and what are they running?	I think most powerful computer probably goes to manirelli right now.
Do you have any career opportunities at the company? I have a couple years of marketing experience, but I can’t find a job in these tough times. At least I’ve been learning python so I can get better at data management.	Unfortunately we're not hiring right now. :(
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Mind if I ask where you typically post jobs when you are hiring? Greenhouse.io, LinkedIn, Indeed, all of the above?	Usually it's someone we have an established relationship with. We haven't ever posted a job listing to date.
Are you going to work on an official PCPartPicker API so people don't have to break ToS by scraping?	No. I'd prefer to offer sufficient service that people don't need to scrape.
	Most scrapers use up a lot of resources or don't even do cursory things like follow robots.txt crawl delay specs. It's really frustrating. I'd like to spend my time focusing on user benefitting features than blocking abusive crawlers.
gordonv: A cached CLI/SDK that draws from a CDN (not your web server) would be cool. You'd provide sufficient service, reduce processing cost, and get usage stats. The best way to defeat crawlers is to defeat their purpose. Make scraping look idiotic. Heck, mock scrapers in your HTML with an URL to your API. Add a little wit to that wisdom. Add AWS Cloudfront and now you have 200+ servers in the USA distributing your CLI with authentication to 3 million calls for $20 a month. Some leet stuff. Just noticed a sprinkle of posts calling for an app. If you spec CLI/SDK along with app development, killing 2 birds with 1 budget stone.	We're rolling out a PWA (hopefully) before the end of the year.
^{the below is a reply to the original question}
invisi1407: Perhaps a better question is, why is there a need for scraping? Could that need be satisfied by new/improving features on PCPP? MLG_G0D: Because integrations with PCPartPicker would greatly benefit the PC building community. Constantly navigating to websites can get tiresome, especially on low spec machines. Automation is great. invisi1407: I understand, but exactly which integrations are people looking for? I get it, but I also understand why PCPP isn't interested in having a public, free API. MLG_G0D: I was thinking about integrating PCPP functions into a reddit/discord bot. invisi1407: Not unresonable, but you do understand how it takes away any earnings from advertisements and what have we on their website, yeah? It seems like they are a small company spending an enormous amount of time on the data they are presenting, so I don't think you'll ever see a free public API anyway. Perhaps a paid one, but I don't suppose many would be interested in that anyway. MLG_G0D: Seems reasonable. I'm just a massive fan of companies being open to their userbase, but I guess PCPartPicker hasnt quite grown to the point where thats economically feasible.	There's more to the picture. On pricing data: We're not the source of pricing data as that comes from the retailers. We have various agreements in place where they give us that data to display on our site or to market their products in ways they allow us to. We don't have permission to then hand that data to a third party to do whatever they want to. If we make it available to someone else via an API, we're breaching terms of our agreement, which in turn makes us lose our affiliate deal and price access. Boom, business is dead. Basically if you need that data, go to the source (the retailers) and negotiate with them.
	For product data: We've invested a lot of man years to build our data set, and some of that data helps us maintain a competitive advantage over copycat sites. Making it easier to retrieve that data isn't something I'm keen on. There are other sources of product data available that are more expansive than what we have anyway. I'd suggest pursuing that if you want to build your own hardware related site stuff.
	On API stuff for partlists and markdown: If you just want a discord bot, I'd be happy to chat through what it is you're looking for to see if that's something we could support officially on our end. We have our own discord server bot that uses an internal API to do partlist embeds.
	Last bit - publishing an API adds an additional thing for us to maintain. It's a maintenance and support burden. Even an unofficial API is. It becomes something that I have to test and not break any time I refactor code around it. We're a small company, and that's not really an area I want to allocate resources around if it's not a revenue generating thing.
Thanks a lot to you guys! With your site, I managed to make 3 separate lists, and now my dream of building a PC is coming true. Maybe you could add recommendations based on what the person has on their list, such as a cheaper but better graphics card, etc	I think recommendations are a possibility once we have our in-house benchmark data in place. But that'd be a ways down the road.
Thanks for your work, and since this is an AMA, simple question: Which is the best flavor of ice cream and why?	Amy's Ice Cream here in Austin. Belgian Chocolate. It's just wonderful but I haven't been there in almost a year now.
	manirelliPCPartPicker: I will second Amy's but I'm partial to the Mexican Vanilla flavor.
Wow. What a cool thing to see on Reddit. This is the first AMA I’ve ever replied in/commented on. I’m brand new to PC (3 year macbook user here, and besides a brief stint with a windows Hp laptop on which I played Rollercoaster tycoon and club penguin with “back in the day” I have never had need for the site. Until last month). I’m grateful the site exists, and it’s quite intriguing to me how you manage to create and maintain (emphasis on maintain) such an EXTENSIVE database of parts. I know it’s part of your life, however it astounds me to see these parts that seem so very minuscule, always appear. Have you considered, or maybe there already is and I simply am blind or don’t know about it. Have you considered adding any sort of personal or user based rating system regarding parts? Or a warning system for parts with known issues out of the box?	Our ratings are from users, but we only allow ratings/reviews from completed builds. That way we know that the review is from someone who actually built with it (versus say a 1 star review from someone mad they couldn't buy it).
	We do offer some warnings on known issues, but it's something we may expand in the future.

Windows Provisioning Packages + Powershell: Who wants an alternative to imaging computers or setting them up manually?

I hate images.
When I was first introduced to imaging as a young tech, I thought it was the best thing in the world. You take hundreds of computers that are fresh out of the box and you get them all to the same needed configuration en mass, with rare discrepancies. There are plenty of ways to deploy an image, with hard drives, thumb drives, boot to network, etc. A lot of thought and effort has gone into the imaging market, and I've used many of the products. Then I advanced enough in my career that I started being the guy making the images. Seems simple enough, but it turns out there's a lot of gotchas.

Whether I was deploying images or creating them, I started seeing things that just bugged me. This department wants a different image from that department. The image you just made doesn't have the drivers needed for the new chipset that just came out. That program has a severe security vulnerability and needs to be removed from every computer on the network (but it's on the image). What's that? The image is 6 months old and now spends hours installing updates before it can be deployed? The list goes on. It seems the answer to every issue was, create a new image FROM SCRATCH! I tried to mitigate the worst offenses by scripting updates and changes that needed to be done post imaging which resolved much of my frustration, and then I started scripting the image creation process. Then it hit me, if I'm scripting the image creation process and the updates to apply to a machine after, why do I need an image? Why not just script the entire computer setup process?
After years of developing and refinement, my machine set up process is this.

New machine comes in and needs to be setup.
I copy an appropriate config file to a prepare usb flash drive.
I connect ethernet to the new computer and boot to the flash drive.
I come back a couple hours later, do some basic quality checks, and hand the computer to the customer.

It makes my heart swell with pride when I see a computer install the latest version of Window 10, name itself, create accounts, install programs, configure settings, join a customers vpn if needed, join the domain, install our remote management tool, all that and more, then play a happy little tune at the end when it's done to alert me of it's victory. It's at the point where I've taken entry level techs and after giving them 5 minutes of instructions, they're able to prepare new machines for all of our clients. If a client get's a new machine at a remote site, all I need from them is a flash drive and a few minutes of their time, and they've initiated the prep process themselves. It's done using free reputable tools and self built powershell functions. If something needs to change, I take seconds to update a powershell file instead of taking hours to build a new image.
My question is this. Does anyone else see the value in this enough for me to attempt to document how to recreate the process outside of my environment? There's quite a few parts to make it all come together if starting from scratch, but if you're fed up with images or want something better then setting up machines from scratch, it might just be worth the effort.

################ Response

Well this is surprising. When I posted, I was 90% sure that I've been missing something all these years and I'd be torn apart. This has given me the feedback I was looking for that validates I might be on to something. A few of you are basically doing the same thing. A few of you are wondering why not use packaging from the manufacturer, or some other hands off approach. My main answer to that is I want to see the process in action, and I want to keep the process in-house. If something breaks due to a change, or is no longer applicable, I want to see it before the customer does. With this process, the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation process is almost instant. We also keep machines in stock that our clients buy, we don't know always know were a machine is destine for when the order is placed. All of that being said, I've seen a few of you post a few things I need to learn from, and will be doing so soon. For now, I'll share what I have as I try to strip out my companies proprietary knowledge. I'll edit this comment with more. My process is just thorough (and complex) enough that a dedicated blog might be a better format, but I'll do my best.
Creating the basic documentation now, will update soon. Just know this it's time to brush up on you powershell skills.

Outline of the process in action

Boot to the USB (Human interaction needed)
The USB is a Windows 10 installer with an autounattend.xml which automatically installs the OS fresh with Microsoft's vanilla windows.
- A fresh install removes the complexity and potential security vulnerabilities that OEMs introduce.
- USB is made using the Windows Media Creation tool at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
Once install is complete and Windows boots to the OOBE, it detects a PPKG file we've put on the root of the USB and begins automatically applying it.
- The PPKG file (Provisioning Package) is created with Windows Configuration Designer (WCD)
- WCD comes as apart of Windows ADK (assessment and deployment kit) but I just download it separately from the Windows App Store.
  - Link: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH4TX22
  - Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provisioning-packages/provisioning-packages
- Provisioning packages offer a lot of potential, but break if you try to do too much. Keeping it simple keeps it working.
The provisioning package completes the following steps:
- Creates a local admin account.
- Names the machine.
- Makes a working directory on the OS drive.
- Installs network and chipset drivers from the USB if no network is detected.
  - Packaged and run using Snappy Driver Installer
- Optionally connects to wifi.
  - Careful with this, if no wifi adapter is detected, the package will just fail outright. Only use this if ethernet or using an ethernet to usb adapter isn't an option.
- Downloads a password protected self-extracting file containing powershell scripts and any configuration files needed.
- Runs a short powershell script which:
  - Sets needed automatic logon registry keys
  - Sets Numlock as default on keyboard
  - Ensures the Machine OOBE, User OOBE, and Privacy Experience are all disabled.
  - Sets initial payload powershell script to on initial logon.
- Reboots the computer.
Windows boots into the local admin account automatically and launces the first main powershell script.
- At this point the USB drive a can be removed and used on another computer.
- Imports a maintained list of powershell functions.
- Starts a Transcript Log file for QA and troubleshooting purposes.
- Sets timezone and updates the clock.
- Installs Chocolatey (It's like apt-get for Windows).
- Installs Powershell Core (or whatever it's called now).
- Uses Chocolatey and NinitePro to install all needed free programs.
- Installs custom software such as VPN client.
- Runs Windows 10 Decrapifier to clean up games from work computers and more.
- Installs Office 365 (or 2016, etc) with site specific configuration file.
- Add needed web shortcuts.
- Add needed network shortcuts
- Disable Fast Startup (cause when I tell my computer to shut down, I don't mean hibernate!!!)
- Set a daily reboot scheduled task for 3am if the computer is idle. (No more tickets of "My computer is acting slow and weird", due to 180 day+ uptimes. Encourages people to save their work once in a while).
- Install Windows Updates (We keep the USB drives up to date with lastest build number).
- Installs Windows Apps updates.
- Install Dell updates (Can HP/Lenovo/ other update utilities be fully scripted?)
- Sets Ninite (or chocolatey) to update all possible apps at every computer boot (3am in the morning with scheduled restart).
- Further rename the computer if manual input is needed, some sites are picky.
- Set autologon for next cycle.
- Set next script to run.
- Reboot the computer.
Next script runs as a follow up script.
- Imports a maintained list of powershell functions.
- Starts a Transcript Log file for QA and troubleshooting purposes.
- Installs default app settings. Changing PDF to open in Adobe, etc.
- Second round of Windows, Apps, Driver updates, as there's always something.
- Import the site's wifi profile if a wifi adapter is detected.
- Detect if the site's DC is pingable, connect to site's VPN if not.
- Join the site's domain.
- Set autologon for next cycle.
- Set next script to run.
- Reboot the computer.
Final script runs.
- It basically just installs our RMM agent which takes a while and is finicky. A fresh reboot beforehand helps.
- Plays a little audible tune to alert any nearby technicians that it's done.
- Cleans up the scripts folder, which may contain licensing info and sensitive passwords for joining VPN and the domain.
Technician review
- Check logs for errors.
- Checks site baseline needs are actually configure (trust, but verify).
- Checks if the specific user had any specific program requests above site baseline.
- Ensures the computer is showing up in our Remote Monitoring & Management software.
- Deploy to the user!

**I'll work on details steps this weekend.**Please be patient though. Work is busy. I'm also a husband, father to a baby, dog walker, handy man and college student even though I'm in my 30's. So many things I haven't figured out how to automate!

Infrastructure Setup, Step 1: Prepare your External Site Specific Code Repository

We use an ftp server that is publicly available, but you could use samba or other types as well.When I refer to a "Site", this just means a set of customizations. It could refer to a client, department, or anything that differentiates one setup from another.

Keep it consistent as the main folder containing the sites folders will be launch point for everything, with each site being a variable that is used to pull down specific information.
This Repository must be accessible with minimal effort from anywhere you plan on prepping a machine. If you have remote sites that aren't on the LAN, plan for it!
If it will be accessible to the internet, encrypt EVERYTHING you upload (I'll cover that later).
Create the folder structure in the style of
Keep the site codes short if possible, with no spaces.
The base of this folder structure will be referred to as $ExternalSitesPath

Infrastructure Setup, Step 2: Prepare your Internal Site Code Workspace

This is where we build the code, review it, update it, etc. This is where the code can live free with sensitive information, so make sure it's secured. We keep ours on a SharePoint site synced to our computers, so we can work freely with it.

Setup a mirrored folder structure to the External Site
Create an additional template folder, where you maintain the "Ideal state of code".
When setting up a new site, copy that template folder to begin your setup, then customize as needed.
The base of this folder structure will be referred to as $InternalSitesPath

Infrastructure Setup, Step 3: Set up a Chocolatey Proxy/Repo

Please note, Chocolatey is AWESOME but they aren't set up to support hundreds of thousands of machines. Get to know it, they have awesome documentation. You can play around with it by installing it on your machine here. https://chocolatey.org/install#individual
Beyond that, if you start installing it on a bunch of machines, they'll block you. If you open a ticket about it, they'll send you a nice little email explaining what's up ( https://chocolatey.org/docs/community-packages-disclaimer#rate-limiting ) and how to set up a proxy (https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/features/host-packages).As for me, I took the Nexus repository route. I set it up on a linux VM. Everything is free and I love it.
Last but not least, when you do this, you'll want your own version of the chocolatey install script that set's it up from your server. Fortunately, since I learned the hard way how to do this, they've made it super simple. https://chocolatey.org/install#organization

Infrastructure Setup, Step 4: Prepare your Functions

Modularize your powershell functions! Automation needs maintanence, as the things we're automating change over time. How we install a program today might be different from how we install it tomorrow if the program installer changes. If you have 30+ sites and need to update the code to do something, you don't want to have to go and update all 30 site's code (TRUST ME). Instead, have them all import your functions. Then you update just one file, and they all benefit from it instantly.Some firewalls will block ps1 files and psm files, so I store everything needed as txt files and let powershell just use the content. Here is the boot strapper I use to to enable SSL and import the functions from an https github repo. I keep this on a http server as a text file and I have a tinyurl linking to it. I call it with:iwr -usebasicparsing | iex

Write-Host -NoNewLine "`n - Retrieving IT's Functions -"
$greenCheck = @{
Object = [Char]8730
ForegroundColor = 'Green'
NoNewLine = $true
}
$progressPreference = 'silentlyContinue'
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072
$Destination = $Env:temp + "\ATGPS.psm1"
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
(Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing).Content | Out-File -FilePath $Destination
Import-Module $Destination -Global -Force
If (Get-Module -Name ATGPS -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue){
Write-Host u/greenCheck;Write-Host -NoNewLine " Functions successfully loaded ";Write-Host u/greenCheck;Write-Host "-`n - Get-ITFunctions will give a list of custom functions -`n"
} Else {
Write-Host "Functions were not successfully loaded. "
}

A list of functions will be available at the bottom.

Site Setup, Step 1: Prepare your first Site file structure

Navigate to $InternalSitesPath
If the site you are looking to create a package for doesn't exist, create a folder for it. Then create the following folder structure

\PPKG\_Powershell\Exclude
\PPKG\WCD
Create a strong random password (I use dinopass as humans suck at randomness). Create a txt file under the Exclude folder called SFX Password.txt. Paste the random password into this file.

Site Setup, Step 2: Prepare the Provisioning Package File

Download and install "Windows Configuration Designer" available on the Windows App Store https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH4TX22
Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/provisioning-packages/provisioning-packages
Note: You'll see a lot of awesome options in here. Keep it as simple as possible as things can easily go wrong with this. We can set those options later and more reliably in powershell.

Open Windows Configuration Designer and select "Provision Desktop Devices"
Name the project with the site code.
Set the project folder to $InternalSitesPath\\PPKG\WCD
Step: Set up Device
- Device Name: -%SERIAL%
- Product Key: Enter a Windows Volume License if they have one
- Configure devices for shared use: No
- Remove pre-installed software: No
Step: Set up network
- Select No
Step: Account Management
- Select "Local Admin"
- User name: Local
- Password:
  - Note, when dealing with multiple sites it's easier to use a common or almost common local admin password. For security, I HIGHLY advise using your RMM to deploy a much more secure password to all machines post deployment, or use that here.
Step: Add applications
- Skip this
Step: Add certificates
- Skip this
Step: Finish
- Click "Switch to advanced editor" in the bottom left.

After creating a basic provisioning package and getting into the Advanced View, navigate on the left to
Runtime settings > ProvisioningCommands > PrimaryContext > Command.
Create these basic commands. Do them in order, as reordering them later can corrupt the package. These do not handle change well without corrupting, we we set up some basic commands to download powershell scripts and let those do the brunt of the work. To create a command, put your cursor in the "Name:" field, type in the command name, then click the "Add" button" in the bottom right. We can customize the commands after they're added.
These are the basic provisioning commands meant to make way for the powershell scripts. Make sure to customize each url and filepath according to the site.
**HINT: Copy everything below into a notepad program, and use CTRL+H to replace with your site's shortcode, then copy from there into Window's Config Designer. Also replace with the strong password created earlier.--Just realized images aren't allow in /MSP, so sad--
Commands to create (no spaces allowed here)

MakeDir
InstallDrivers
DownloadScripts
ExtractScripts
PowershellPass1

You'll notice that these commands are highlighted in red on the left. We need to give more information for each. Also note that

#0 Creates the folders to download to
- [Name] MakeDir
- [ComandLine] cmd /C "mkdir C:\IT\PPKG"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#1 Install needed Ethernet, Chipset, and USB drivers if needed
- [Name] InstallDrivers
- [ComandLine] PowerShell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "(Get-Volume).DriveLetter | ForEach-Object {If (Test-Path -Path ($_ + ':\InstallNetwork.ps1')) {Set-Location ($_ + ':\') ; & .\InstallNetwork.ps1}}"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] True
#2 Downloads the powershell scripts self extracting executable. Swap out
with your site.
- [Name] DownloadScripts
- [CommandLine] PowerShell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072;(New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('$ExternalSitesPath//_Powershell.exe', 'C:\IT\PPKG\_Powershell.exe')"
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#3 Extracts the files from the self-extracting executable. Replace
with the password generated earlier.
- [Name] ExtractScripts
- [CommandLine] C:\IT\PPKG\_Powershell.exe -p -oC:\IT\PPKG -y
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] False
#4 Run the main pass1 powershell script. Swap out
with your site.
- [Name] PowershellPass1
- [CommandLine] PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File - C:\IT\PPKG\_Pass1.ps1
- [ContinueInstall] True
- [RestartRequired] True

That's it for the provisioning package configuration! Now we just need to export the file to a ppkg package file.

Save the package from File > Save. Click OK to the "Keep your info secure" dialogue.
Click "Export" > "Provisioning Package"
Change Owner to IT Admin and click Next\.
Don't encrypt or sign the package (Unless you're really ambitious). Click Next.
Click Next after reviewing the save location.
Click Build, and then Finish.

Please check the comments for more.

Never thought I'd create a "This field must be less than 40000 characters long" message.
Comment Links:

Functions - https://ambitions.sharefile.com/d-s0995d289621e41039ed2e6d059d98f41
Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Start) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfazg0b?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
- Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Continued) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/ggjnus2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Site Setup, Step 3: Prepare the Powershell Scripts (Still Continued) - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfazhns?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Packaging and Uploading the files - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfejlay?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Preparing the usb stick & Deploying the package - https://www.reddit.com/msp/comments/k6do1e/windows_provisioning_packages_powershell_who/gfeualo?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

NBA 2K21 Next-Gen MyNBA Courtside Report (Dev Blog) | MyLEAGUE/MyGM

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