Ask HN: What's your hobby? - <AUTHOR> How do you spend a free time? How do you refresh your head? <comment><USER2> I play guitar (poorly) and bass guitar (well enough to convince bars to pay my band money).

Several times in my life I've completely burnt out of playing music. The most recent time was about a year after graduating from college. I was tired of going to bars, tired of playing the same songs over and over, and tired of playing music in general.

I quit the band I was in and sold all of my bass gear to buy a Fender Telecaster and an amp to go with it. I thought changing my instrument would be enough to bring the passion back. Unfortunately it wasn't and my Telecaster was largely unplayed.

I tried several synthesizers, a digital piano, busting out my old trumpet, and an acoustic guitar but they all ended up sold on Craigslist or sitting around collecting dust. I was also pretty depressed at this time in my life and I think that's why it felt like I would never enjoy playing music again.

I found other ways to occupy my time. I bought a fancy gaming computer and played a lot of Overwatch. I watched way too much TV and read some really good books. Eventually I lost interest in those things too. I hit a really low point with my depression but bounced back with the help of my wife. Things got better.

I happened to go into a Guitar Center while I was on vacation to look for something to try igniting my musical passions with. I happened to stop and play a bass guitar that had caught my eye.

This was the only love at first sight experience I've had in my life and it was amazing. I only played it for about ten minutes but I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.

The next day I went back to Guitar Center and bought the bass along with an amp. That night I texted one of my old band mates and a few weeks later it was just like old times. I started playing the bass guitar everyday again which led to me playing the guitar everyday again which led to me recording myself playing again.

I won't be surprised if I burn out again in the future. I think it's a natural part of life for me. It's comforting to know that however bad it gets music will be there for me when I'm ready for it. That's why it's such a good hobby.

<comment><USER3> Bass is great to pick up as someone who doesn't know any instruments because it only takes about 5 lessons to feel incredibly comfortable with a lot of basic music. After the first few lessons I've found the problem is now how do I contort my fingers to play certain parts of songs.

<comment><USER2> I agree. The reason that I started playing it was because my three friends and I all played guitar and wanted to start a band. I was the worst guitar player so played bass.

The only downside to the bass for me is that it's not as fun as other instruments to play by myself. I love playing it in a band but when I'm by myself I'll usually pick up the guitar instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bouldering/Climbing!

Love this sport. Everybody, whatever their level, does the same thing : Fail and try to outdo themselves.

It's difficult to go run with someone better than you, or play football because of the skills gap. I found that with climbing whatever your shape you can have the same kind of fun.

I also love the combination of body shape, technique, and thinking (how can I pass this, what does the route want me to do?). And because everybody is trying its hardest, I like that it creates group interaction on trying to solve a problem.

<comment><USER5> +1 not sure if it was my uni but almost everyone I climbed with was an Engineer of some sort.

<comment><USER4> Also my experience! For some reason, most of the climbers (and for that matters, jugglers) I know have some kind of technical / high education related job. Most of the people I climb with are Phd, engineers or something.

Not something I am actively searching for, but a pattern I have found. Having climbed in 4 countries, this pattern seems pretty consistent across Europe, interestingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Boardgaming. As a father to 5, I have plenty of willing participants. My long game has finally borne fruit!

<comment><USER7> Hahaha, this is also my long term plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't really have any right now. When I get home from work, I just spend the rest of my evening in bed reading stuff on my phone or laptop.

I'm trying to develop enough upper body strength to start bouldering. I have a pullup bar, but it's slow progress.

<comment><USER9> You develop upper body strength just by doing bouldering. Seriously, don't wait until you think you have enough, just go out and do it. It may feel foolish at first but you will pick up technique which won't happen on a pull up bar or hangboard

<comment><USER4> Definitely agree. Bouldering is not about upper body strength until you reach a certain level. It's mostly about technique and placement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have many hobbies!

My primary hobby is working on life simulations and other personal projects. Other hobbies include:

* Taking care of my cats

* Growing plants

* Vermicomposting (this is a newfound hobby)

* Learning new things

* Reading (this is usually an "in-between" hobby - I do it when I have some time on public transport or before bed.

* Walking in nature when I can find time to do it, or just taking a walk through a nice part of the city.

My interest in each of these comes and goes so they tend to rotate. The constants are learning new things (which I do by working on fun life simulation projects) and my cats. I now have worms to take care of too, so vermicomposting has been high up there on the hobby priority list.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like to learn new things.

I have a (bad?) habit of spending all my energy learning as much as I can about a new topic until I get either bored or distracted, and move on to the next thing. Never fully learning one thing (jack of all trades, master of none).

Some examples in the last year: Etching circuit boards, woodworking, ZBrush, speaker design, reading Cyrillic, photography, Erlang.

<comment><USER12> This is me in a nutshell too.

This year has been film photography, drone piloting, 3d printing, vector graphics, javascript, speaker building and learning arduino.

As soon as I get hooked I go overboard. Like with film photography I have gone to the extent of buying like 3 different types of cameras,experimenting with as many film types as I can and looking at learning to develop the photos my self in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER11> Drawing from your last comment: Why do you think you/we do this? What is the emotional need?

<comment><USER13> I'm not the above poster but I think its an innate tendency to understand how things work, down to the lowest possible level. I find myself doing this when learning a new language, wanting to understand how the internals of something work.

From a psychology perspective (of which I don't know more than psych 101), it also could be about an "alpha-geek" hierarchy. This probably comes from a desire to be the smartest in the room on <<topic>> which often happens in geek circles, right? Don't we often get into the "I started coding at 6", "I used a mainframe", etc. one-upping. Also known as establishing dominance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Funny and may be sad but I found myself learning more and more about servers, linux, nginx, load balancers etc. in my FREE time. So seems like that is a hobby of mine for now. I do work with my own business where I have to tinker with servers but the more I get into it, the more I enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to work out at the gym, but I got bored of it, and wanted to do something that would give me some kind of 'skill' at the end of it.

So, I looked on Twitter, and found a post about a BJJ class near the office. I had my gym clothes with me, so I popped down for the class after work, and I've been going a few times a week for the past three years.

I can have a terrible day at work, and the second I step on the mat every worry I have tends to melt away, if only for an hour or two. It also gave me a great perspective of being "the newbie" again, something I had missed at work at times.

<comment><USER16> BJJ?

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu- jitsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu) I would assume

<comment><USER15> Yep, probably should've mentioned that above, since it's not a popular enough sport that everyone will know what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> barrow-rider * hydroponics. since people always ask: no, not weed. mostly orchids, lettuce, cucumbers, etc. Gonna try hydro chilis in the future, not sure how that'll go.

* concertina and harmonica. maybe i'll pickup the accordion one of these days.

* mountain biking when I have time to do a long drive out of town, maybe once a month? I bike around the city a lot.

* been really into Cities: Skylines lately. Learned a lot about city planning and it's a lot of fun. the modded radio soundtracks and dlc soundtracks help make it kind of relaxing to play

</comment><comment><USER18> Playing starcraft ladder 1v1. It scratches a true competitive itch, since there's so few things in live that truly start out balanced, and it give you detailed feedback at the end of each match.

</comment><comment><USER19> Bluegrass (and other styles) mandolin at the moment. It requires no Internet connection, runs for hundreds of years strictly on power supplied by the user's hands, never needs updates (key word being _needs_ ), and there's a whole community of fellow users who get together regularly (which, ironically, is why I _need_ an RV full of tech gadgets for festivals).

It's my low-tech break for the day. I keep one in my office for the occasional riff between builds.

</comment><comment><USER20> Argentine Tango. Despite what you might think, it's a surprisingly technical activity. I meet a surprisingly high number of engineers and PhDs in the tango community. When I'm dancing, it puts me into a state of flow where I'm constantly listening to the music and thinking which movements will fit best. If you're in the SF Bay Area, it's arguably the best city for tango in the US.

</comment><comment><USER21> My Hobby is flying RC air planes. Once a week I go to the field to fly them, other than that I train using an rc airplane simulator. I highly recommend this field, it is very fun and cheap, today you can buy many models from the Chinese e-commerce websites (banggood, ali-express, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER22> If we're talking outdoors: swimming, hiking, biking.

If we're talking about an indoor hobby: Programming. My goal is to become a true IndieHacker. I'd love to make a career out of selling the services of my SaaS products.

If we're talking about what I also have to do: make sure wife is decently happy.

</comment><comment><USER23> I dont have hobbies. I stare at a screen 40 hours a week then go home and sleep a lot.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reading NHS bureaucratic documents, mostly from NHS Improvement or NHS England.

</comment><comment><USER25> Biking, woodworking, reading, musical audio synthesis, cooking, hiking, smithing, etc. The most active hobby changes based upon what sort of itch I'm trying to scratch as well as the season.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like taking pictures and go hiking. I used to play online shooting game but I found that my emotion went even worse, but Japanese RPG is fine for me.

<comment><USER7> I actually like shooters because of the emotional hit. It's a kind of meditation for me. I do tough things, get shaken, try to emotionally ground myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anything that makes me talk with people outside of tech and makes new friendships. Hiking, bar hopping, Fortnite... you name it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like anything involving training. Weirdly enough, I love Marvel movies for the training montages.

<comment><USER28> Then you gotta love old kung fu films with their training montages!

<comment><USER7> Which ones are good? I did like Karate Kid and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but I feel like I missed out on a whole genre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Traveling, hiking, running, lifting, photography, fixing stuff (car, home improvement)

</comment><comment><USER30> * Trail Running

* Yoga

* Cooking

* Gardening

* Photography

* Reading

I've found that a lot of my hobbies are inextricably related to one another in some way, like a strange loop :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Ride my bike, 20 miles or more. Try to do it in an hour.

</comment><comment><USER32> Running. I'd explain more but I gotta go run.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have my own podcast - Non English

</comment><comment><USER34> Read HN, IH.

</comment><comment><USER35> Learning Chinese and maybe Korean.

Math.

Meditation.

Trying new ice cream flavors.

</comment><comment><USER36> * walking with my son

* riding a bicycle

* camping

</comment><comment><USER37> Fly fishing</comment>


Ask HN: What are the technical and scientific achievements of this decade? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> GANs? Deep[insert]? I like how they are developed through curiosity and testing by randos online, instead of having researchers warm up in their labs. 3D printing? Self driving cars? CRISPR? Vocaloid?

</comment><comment><USER3> Gravitational astronomy.</comment>


Show HN: I Coded a Vector Field in Canvas (JS) - <AUTHOR> http://tofuness.github.io/eex/vectorfield/ <comment><USER2> Here is another cool one [http://bl.ocks.org/newby- jay/767c5ffdbbe43b65902f](http://bl.ocks.org/newby-jay/767c5ffdbbe43b65902f)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool! Mine only shows the vectors/direction of flow :c

<comment><USER2> You've got some other awesome visualizations</comment></comment></comment>


Dealing with startup fears - <AUTHOR> http://chegra.posterous.com/dealing-with-the-fear-that-comes-with-taking

<comment><USER2> In a way this also applies to creating things in your spare time. Many side projects I worked on ended in a dusty archive. Just because I wondered to much about possible problems. This is my first post here and I would like to add that it's quite interesting how just reading HN slowly changed my approach to actually try and create something. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> He basically says: _Do not let fear overwhelm you. Just do it. Listen to paying customers. Then just do it. And drugs._</comment>


Show HN: Affirm – Improved error messages for Python assert statements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gooli/affirm <comment><AUTHOR> I like to have a liberal amount of asserts in my code, especially when I'm interfacing with some external component, just to make sure I've got my assumptions correctly. The Python assert errors are pretty useless, so I made a small library to make them (slightly) better. Hopefully other people can use it too.</comment>


Why Google TV will win - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/video/why-google-tv-will-win/

<comment><USER2> Windows PCs are customizable, and their manufacturers often customize them. And people spend hours and hours, and dollars and dollars, removing the crapware and shovelware. I wonder why the author thinks this won't happen with Google TVs? I'll not even go into the malware potential.</comment>


The Persistent Economic Advantage of America's Suburbs - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/03/cities-economic-performance-data-suburbs-urban-research/584284/ <comment><USER2> I don't get it, doesn't this just say that more rich/educated people live in the suburbs than urban areas? How is that an economic advantage or 'outperforming' urban neighborhoods?

I thought it has been shown that suburbs cost a lot more per capita in public services like roads but this is heavily subsidized by more the efficient urban areas.

<comment><USER3> >Richard Florida is a co-founder and editor at large of CityLab and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is a university professor in the University of Toronto's School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a distinguished fellow at New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate.

The article is written from a Realtor's prospective.

<comment><USER4> Richard Florida coined the term "creative class" and was one of the big boosters of the idea that the young cool people would not only move to the city when they're young and eager (same as always), but also would decide to stay there as they grow older (new in the late 90s), effectively transforming the urban environment. The wealth of this middle-aged creative worker with disposable income would then trickle down to the service class. He described a model for urban renaissance that was essentially reducing a city to factories of entertainment and opportunity for yuppies. He really shaped the conversation. But as reality is more nuanced than that, he's trying to find a new tack. Smart guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >The once cut-and-dried distinctions between city and suburb have blurred and no longer explain the actual places we live

I think this should be expanded on. If you live in a place where people commute to the urban center on a daily basis, then you are a part of that city's urban fabric, even if you are not "in the city".

The distinction between "urban" and "suburban" is mostly superficial based on the forms of housing common in each location, the modes of transportation commonly used, and the culture of each location. This is even evident in day to day speech, if you are traveling and meet someone who asks where you are from, from my experience you say the name of the city you live near, not the name of the adjacent suburb or township you live in.

<comment><USER6> How is that "superficial"? You listed some of the most economically and culturally impactful factors for a settlement.

<comment><USER5> Fair. Maybe a better description is that the differences between urban and suburban were manufactured by public policy.

The forms of housing were manufactured by zoning law, home owners associations, and master plans for communities of houses with big lawns.

The forms of transportation were manufactured more or less as a direct result of the housing forms above. Walking, biking, and transit aren't as viable in the land of suburban sprawl (and during the decades of expansion of the suburb, public transportation money mostly aimed at motorist-friendly projects like expressways)

The cultural (and socio-economic) differences were manufactured by horrifying, now-illegal, 20th century policies, namely redlining and racial covenants. The OP's description that suburban and urban are "blurring" is a result of several decades of recovery from these policies.

By superficial what I meant is that without these forces manufacturing a false dichotomy of "urban" vs "suburban", we would likely have a much more blurred spectrum of housing & neighborhoods.

<comment><USER7> Everything you mention is a byproduct of one factor: density. Density of people determines housing and economics and transportation and everything else that makes a suburb different than a city. And while I agree that there is a continuous spectrum there, the dichotomy is anything but false. The noisy, dirty, cramped city might as well be on a different planet from the quiet, disperse suburbs 30 minutes away. The lifestyles and experiences of the two places are very different.

<comment><USER5> Of course there's a difference between city center and city boundary. Of course some places are loud and some are quiet.

But the point I'm trying to make is that "noisy, dirty, cramped" isn't a singular fact of urban life - in fact, there are plenty of places relatively high density that are none of those. Even in the USA, there are neighborhoods like Brookline in the Boston area. Brookline is relatively dense (the streets near the light rail system anyways), but also quiet, clean, safe, and residential. The main problem is that it's expensive, very expensive -- which is understandable because there are so few neighborhoods built like it, so it's a very desirable place to live.

You mention "worlds apart from the quiet, disperse suburbs 30 minutes away", but this is also a product of urban planning. Here's what a neighborhood 30 minutes away from Osaka city hall by train looks like:

[https://email@example.com,135.520036,3a,75y,14...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,135.520036,3a,75y,144.18h,91.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMmIsYvY57W5kibf-p3bYrQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

Quiet, dense, Residential. A mix between single family homes, tightly packed, and mid-rise apartment complexes. High standard of living, but affordable to the middle class (330~ usd per sqft from my understanding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Across the board, suburban neighborhoods have higher incomes, higher home values, higher shares of college grads, and higher shares of professionals than urban neighborhoods. And suburbs do better than urban areas even when we compare neighborhoods in the same quartile of status."

I think though that part of the problem is that housing in the suburbs is more expensive to begin with, so only people with a lot of money can afford to live there. If you have more money you'r emore likely to be a college grad and a "professional" (whatever that means). It's not that suburbia makes you rich, it's that you have to be rich to live in surburbia. There isn't an economic advantage to living there, you just have to be richer to live there.

<comment><USER9> Housing in the suburbs was more expensive in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, but that is no longer true in many cities. Excluding the most affluent suburbs higher quality urban real estate is often more expensive. Suburbs closer to city centers are also generally more expensive unless they are in poor condition.

I've wondered if the suburbs might not have been a major driver of American middle class growth in the late 20th century for a really simple reason: expansion fueled by automotive transit allowed people to escape the law of rent and the tyranny of landlords and the property market.

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

Eventually this expansion reached practical limits due to commute times and energy costs, so now we are back to the way it was before.

<comment><USER10> > I've wondered if the suburbs might not have been a major driver of American > middle class growth in the late 20th century for a really simple reason: > expansion fueled by automotive transit allowed people to escape the law of > rent and the tyranny of landlords and the property market.

Nice insight. I know in Silicon Valley, people are not nearly as wealthy as the could be given their salaries because maybe 1/2 their monthly income goes to housing.

<comment><USER9> The Bay Area is the most absurd large scale property market in America, but it's really just the most extreme case of a disease found almost everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Subdivisions" \-- Rush, 1982, _Signals_

        Sprawling on the fringes of the city
        In geometric order
        An insulated border
        In-between the bright lights
        And the far, unlit unknown

        Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
        Opinions all provided
        The future pre-decided
        Detached and subdivided
        In the mass-production zone

        Nowhere is the dreamer
        Or the misfit so alone

        ...

        Any escape might help to smooth
        The unattractive truth
        But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
        The restless dreams of youth

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_\(song\))

<comment><USER12> Ahead of their time :)

<comment><USER11>
        Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
        Opinions all provided
        The future pre-decided
        Detached and subdivided

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article seems to want to say "suburbs cause wealth" but only provides data for "rich people live in suburbs".

</comment><comment><USER14> This article is all about money. What about life?

Suburbs are depressing. I find myself both happier and healthier in walkable communities near city center.

<comment><USER15> If you have 4 kids, it might be different.

All of my siblings have kids ands live in the burbs, and it's jus easier: they have larger, boring homes, but easy access to schools and the grocery store.

Parkland: they all play sports and there are actual places to play them.

The couldn't care less about not being near the museum.

I think they would like maybe to be able to 'walk places' but that's one thing they give up.

It's also very green and closer to the countryside.

It's a little more banal but I really do think when you have kids, it's all about that, and so a lot of other things have less priority.

<comment><USER16> I agree, and I think the discussion of suburban vs urban doesn't focus on it enough. As a single (or at least, childless) person, the city absolutely is much more appealing to me. The moment I had children the city became much less desirable than the suburbs.

Unfortunately, cities, particularly American cities, are not ideal for families.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to see how age factors into this spread. During this study's timeframe at least, older people have had more opportunity to accrue wealth and have children (who have also had more time to go to college). In my anecdotal experience, most of the urban influx has been from younger people.

<comment><USER18> The most detailed data I've run across in recent years suggests the urbanization trend is mostly about college educated 18-35 year olds moving to a relative handful of dense urban cores. (Though anecdotally the same thing is happening on a smaller scale in many cities that have small gentrified cores.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "during the four-decade period spanning 1970 to 2010."

<comment><USER20> "...a period that overlaps with notions of the resurgence of America's urban centers and the decline of its suburbs."

<comment><USER18> That sentence seems odd. NYC was about to go bankrupt during that period. Boston was losing population and employers into the 1990s. The current new urbanism renewal is mostly overstated and applies to a thin slice of demographics and locations but it's also very recent—less than 20 years old for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it any surprise?

I don't want to be accused of being a racist so I can't move into affordable urban neighborhoods with too many 'underrepresented minorities'. I like peace and quiet, you don't find that in the city. I like driving more than walking/bicycling/taking the bus so I live in a place that makes it less of a hassle to own the cars. And I care for my safety and my property, I'd be an idiot to move to the cities near me that care more about being nice to criminals than protecting property owned by the working class.

And yeah, the suburbs are advantaged. I saved money to live there, I want my kids to have the most advantages possible, I've instilled enough discipline in them that they're able to learn and grow at school. I've been in city schools, they're full of kids pissing away the opportunity to learn and interfering with the learning of other students, how can someone succeed when their classmates are cranking that soulja boy?

<comment><USER5> >I don't want to be accused of being a racist so I can't move into affordable urban neighborhoods with too many 'underrepresented minorities'

???

<comment><USER21> [https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d- smi...](https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d- smith/article219312260.html)

Improving a blighted neighborhood is racism. If I were to displace a minority from "their" neighborhood, I would have done a racist act.</comment></comment></comment>


Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.shardsofconsciousness.com/user/sites/shardsofconsciousness.com/files/ebooks/RajaYoga_Vivekananda.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> What I like most about this book is that it puts human at the center of spirituality and give you scientific method of enquiry, (observe, experiment, observe...) to experience the ultimate reality that is within you, your consciousness.

You don't need to go anywhere, you don't need to do anything, to experience which is beyond this body. You just need to sit silently and observe within.</comment>


Amazon Career Choice Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view-type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=1RWZQ2HKJPYQ2YKQ0XX2&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846 <comment><USER2> I'm cynical about this for the following reasons:

* Amazon's line workers who do picking/packing are not Amazon employees, but instead are temp contractors.

* Even if they were employees of Amazon, they frequently are laid off or fired for failure to meet unrealistic performance standards within a year or so, meaning they'll never reach the 3 years required.

I don't think this actually will impact very many people. It's a nice gesture, but I'm curious to see how many employees actually currently qualify for this program.

[http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon- complain...](http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon- complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story) "Temporary employees interviewed said few people in their working groups actually made it to a permanent Amazon position. Instead, they said they were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were terminated, they quit or they got injured. Those interviewed say turnover at the warehouse is high and many hires don't last more than a few months."

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't hate them for the gesture, but it is just that: a gesture. It all sounds nice, but reading the actual fine print at [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view- type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center- column&pf_rd_r=1M0PABF9DFXF83S75C62&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846), they'll give you up to $2000 a year. Not exactly covering much, particularly given current educational costs.

<comment><USER4> I know the US has astronomical tuition fees for "academic" college/university programs, but this explicitly doesn't apply to those -- it's for _vocational_ training.

What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part- time vocational programs?

<comment><USER5> "What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part-time vocational programs"

The school I attended didn't really have the concept of "full vs part time" it was solely credit hours with one minor little exception of $7.50 for liability insurance per semester no matter how many or few credits.

Fifteen years ago when I got my near worthless associates it was approx $1000 for 16 credits per semester. Next fall its exactly $1870.40 for the same 16 credits, however there is a MINIMUM material fee and MINIMUM activity fee adding up to at least $176 per class, even if the class involves no materials or activities. Also there is a mandatory liability insurance fee for all students tacked on at the end of the bill (Student has coverage if during carpentry class he drives a nail thru his classmates hand, that type of thing). If you take classes online its an extra $160, apparently its extremely expensive to heat and cool a virtual classroom... or some BS like that. It would be very difficult to escape below $2100 per semester at full time, so lets call it $1050 in the fall of 2012 for half/part time per semester (at 3 semesters per year)

The killer problem is I've never found a corporate employer who cares about AS degrees... considered no different than graduating high school. Perhaps Amazon is the first employer I've ever heard of who cares about a AS degree. My entire career has been about knowing people and no one cared about my AS degree. Now that I've been out in the world for awhile, no one cares about the BS degree I later received, either.

The "electronics telecommunications" AS degree requirements were basically the standard EE curricula minus about 64 credits of liberal arts and electives (the suggested curricula had only one possible elective... Instead of photography or whatever I chose microcontroller programming, crazy me). They had a variety of options where you could transfer into the local public or private engineering school after your AS to get your BSEE degree, basically 64 credits of history/fine arts/writing/foreign language/etc plus a little extra math and science (diffeqs, second semester physics, those are the only two "technical" classes I can remember as requirements).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From what I've heard, read and experienced, I'd argue that Amazon (or at least its Seattle HQ) is likely the company that offers the best benefits. And real benefits that affect the employees' lives, not things like beanbags in every office and foosball table.

One of my best friends recently got hired by Amazon. I won't disclose his full benefits+relocation package because that's private to him, but it included many little things that just make it feel like Amazon deeply cares about its employees: for example, they paid a special recruiter to help his fiance find a job in Seattle, bought a plane ticket for his cat's relocation (the devil is in the details), and so on.

<comment><USER7> Having had firsthand experience with Google and Microsoft, and secondhand reports about Amazon from many friends who've worked there, I think Amazon is the lowest of the three for benefits - although all three are spectacular when compared with average companies.

Both Microsoft and Google have similar white-glove treatment for relocation. For example, when I was recruited to MS out of college, I got a gift bag of scuba gear and a call from a local dive shop because I asked the recruiter about diving in the area. Microsoft paid for movers to pack me and ship everything, while my dorm-mates looked on with envy.

Google, in turn, makes Microsoft look stingy. Everything you've heard is true and then some. Random example: most BigCos have top-notch coverage if you have international problems while traveling on business, provided by an expert 3rd party. Google extends this to international travel you may take for pleasure.

Amazon is very good by the standards of all companies, but not particularly notable when held up to its closest competition.

<comment><USER8> On that note, I think Amazon's tuition reimbursement is also more meager than that of Microsoft's, if not absent altogether. MS is happy to cover something close to 10k a year for your graduate degree.

<comment><USER9> That's comparing very differently compensated employees, though. This Amazon program is for hourly employees, such as warehouse staff. My guess is that Microsoft's willingness to pay $10k/yr for graduate tuition only extends to their salaried white-collar employees, unless they treat their hourly staff a lot better than I'd realized.

<comment><USER10> Amazon doesn't give tuition assistance for white-collar salaried engineers at all.

Source: my Amazon offer from Fall 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked at Boeing for 4 years and they paid for pretty much any education you wanted and as much of it as you wanted. It's not that abnormal for big companies to do this.

<comment><USER12> Yep this is pretty why UW Bothell exists today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the FAQ Link: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view- type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center- column&pf_rd_r=0ECBRRR9EJJ6YSYYRP85&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846)

> What are the maximum benefits under the program? Amazon will pay up to 95% > of the tuition, textbook and associated fees up to a maximum of $2,000 per > year for four years.

Better than nothing, though I wonder how expensive the courses are for those fields?

<comment><USER14> Well, if you're going to a California community college (I think that's the sort of courses this program is aimed at), you would pay $36/unit. A full time student would take 12 units for a total cost of $432.[1] Things like textbooks are extra but obviously vary a ton depending on the courses you choose and how clever you are buying them.

[1]: <http://www.cccapply.org/faq/costs.asp>

Assuming you're not actually going to be doing a full 12 units--a reasonable assumption here, I think--the $2000 limit should suffice.

I don't know about more specific vocational schools or anything like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone making warehouse worker wages will probably qualify for over $10k in Pell grants immediately to complete an AS just by enrolling now, not in three years. Many programs are fully funded with scholarships and grants. Even if the person doesn't qualify for Pell or scholarships, They could borrow the $2k and living expenses, complete the program, and repay the loan well before the five years it would take them to get a two year degree under this plan. Those same students can also take the $2500 American Opportunity Tax Credit and start the AS program right now.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm pleased to hear that Amazon is doing this. It seems like a change of pace from their past treatment of temps ([http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal-w...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal- workers-amazons-grueling-working-conditions-are-only-temporary/46426/)) and absence of philanthropic activity ([http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/201...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017883663_amazonmain25.html)).

<comment><USER16> The cult internally at Amazon, in response to constant attacks regarding the lack of corporate philanthropy, is actually a _hostile_ attitude towards corporate philanthropy.

Internally, amongst the die-hard adherents, corporate philanthropy is seen as tyranny - pushing private agendas and priorities on the entire employee base who "pay into" such donations. The refrain that philanthropy runs counter to the obligation to maximize shareholder value, is also used often.

It's kind of a weird attitude, but while I was at Amazon I got swept in it too. In hindsight it's all very Stockholm-y.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like Jeff Bezos confuses himself with John Galt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's better than nothing, but look at the target... $1 and hour of educational benefit ($2000/year divided by 2000 hours/day) is great for someone making $8 an hour. That's a 12.5% raise off the cuff. Apply it to someone making 100K, and it's a lot less.

Some big companies do full tuition reimbursement, but the # is shrinking over time.

<comment><USER18> I don't expect any Amazon employees who are making 100K to need a subsidized associates degree, though.

<comment><USER10> Many of Amazon's competitors in the employment market, however, offer tuition reimbursement for MSc or PhD degrees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having worked for Microsoft and Amazon, there is a reason that so many engineers go to work for Microsoft, or Google, after working at Amazon for awhile. It isn't just that they offer better benefits than Amazon.

I do not think this program will compensate for everything else when it comes to associates. Associates are not respected by management.

Frankly, this is because Amazon does not respect employees. Full Stop. (or suppliers, or anyone really. They only treat customers well because it is profitable. It is kinda funny that Zappos got bought by them, since Tony's ideology is the polar opposites of Bezos, but maybe Tony is just propagandizing the way Bezos makes himself out to be a visionary.)

Amazon is like the cult of scientology: It sounds really great on the way in, but well before you get to the verbal abuse, the death marches, denial of sleep and the beatings[1] you realize it was all a lie.

They do roll out the red carpet treatment in the early days for people that a manager insists need it.

But they operate on stack ranking, are completely political, anti-innovation, and really they are very much like a cult, with their own reality distortion field and magical sayings. "Its day one!"

For contrast: Over the 25 years of my professional career, I have worked for a lot of startups. Many of them were poorly run, simply because the management was in well over their heads. There's a huge difference between management being well intentioned and over their heads and what I experienced at Amazon. Management at amazon is pathological, because Amazon is designed as a Lord of The Flies experiment, not a company.

I've also worked for Microsoft and a number of other big companies. Big companies have Big company suckage syndrome, and Microsoft has management problems. But again it is sorta like management ends up being a bit incompetent in areas where they shouldn't, not evil. Microsoft was also a little bit of a cult but a pretty mild one. Both companies practice the "once you've turned your back on the cult you're unclean" police though.

One important lie: "If you don't like where you are at amazon, you can move to another department." Despite getting an offer from the cutting edge part of AWS, my manager naturally blocked it because he was losing too many people (%60 of the team left by the time I left, because he was a total abusive asshole who knew nothing about computers, let a lone programming.) So, I resigned. (This was also after I'd tried to resolve the issue by going to HR, only to discover that HR told my manager everything I said, despite offering confidence, and thus he knew I wasn't going to lie to cover up his misdeeds.)

Just FYI, my manager at Amazon was a drug dealer who dealt to other amazon employees in the parking garage next to PacWest. He's had a wonderful career there because his boss is also incompetent, and the incompetence goes all the way to the top, and he's really effective at blaming others for his problems (like, you know, being a drug addict and forgetting to tell his team to do stuff.)

Incompetence is irritating. But that said, I had great experiences at a lot of companies, and at least perfectly fine ones at almost all the places I worked. I don't particularly like Microsoft, really, but I would never warn someone off working there.

Amazon is the only place I've ever taken the time to warn people against. Some people work there and do fine because they end up working for a manager who knows what a loop is. There are even largish groups like that (namely AWS). But that doesn't change the fact that there are whole divisions run by asshole bozos as well.

Amazon's crime is not in hiring an asshole bozo and putting him in charge of programmers. It is in letting him drive out %60 of his team and then promoting him. It is the culture that lets such a terrible person thrive. That culture is what makes Amazon a terrible place to work, because it is completely up to chance whether you will be treated decently or not.

[1] I wasn't beaten. If I had been, I would have sued. Everything else is an accurate description of the experience.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like you just had a bad manager. At a big company (like Amazon) there are good managers and bad managers. I'm sure your opinion would be different if you actually made it to the AWS group like you wanted.

You're turning a bad experience with a single manager into a personal vendetta against the company as a whole. I have friends who work there who work normal hours (and have for years) and they even said they feel like they are more respected employees as engineers then the business owners.

<comment><USER16> > _"At a big company (like Amazon) there are good managers and bad managers."_

This is a lousy excuse and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I too had a bad manager at Amazon. So did my roommate. So did my friends in the company. So did his friends.

In fact, I was a returning intern who went back full-time with _dozens_ of other employees, and here we are 3 years in... and practically no one remains. I can count the number of people who have stuck around on a single hand.

Look into Amazon's employee attrition rate. Eye-opening. Hell, if you can, go to one of the company all-hands, where at some point they encourage new employees to stand up (hired in the last quarter)... that's not company growth, that's replenishment.

Amazon has consistently one of the _worst_ retention rates, if not _the very worst_ out of all the tech "majors". The problematic management is incredibly pervasive, and I'd argue that the islands of sound management are the exception, not the rule.

Be very, very, very wary of working for Amazon.

<comment><USER20> Also be wary about anecdotes from previous employees who feel slighted by the company, because they are usually passionately vitriolic and have a bone to pick :)

<comment><USER16> It's _weird_ how many isolated anecdotes from different people, each one passionately vitriolic about the company, that we run into _everywhere_ in the software engineering community.

It's also pretty weird how _many_ ex-Amazon employees I know who would never, ever go back, regardless of the size of the paycheck.

Either there's an organized hit job against Amazon as an employer, and myself and nirvana (among many, many others) are all shills.

Or perhaps the notion that Amazon, as a whole, is a heavily mismanaged company, has some merit ;) Food for thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Craigslist reportedly blocks search engines to kill competitors - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/craigslist-reportedly-blocks-search-engines-to-kill-competitors

<comment><USER2> Thus Craigslist begins the march to their own irrelevancy.

<comment><USER3> "Again," or "still?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As someone who has been following this story, the title here appears to be clickbait.

"It would be irresponsible _not_ to speculate." --Peggy Noonan</comment>


Nearing the Babel 7.0 Release - <AUTHOR> https://babeljs.io/blog/2017/12/27/nearing-the-7.0-release <comment> git-pull All the stuff babel includes is really impressive.

Checkout the pipeline operator: [https://github.com/babel/proposals/issues/29](https://github.com/babel/proposals/issues/29) ([https://github.com/tc39/proposal-pipeline- operator](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-pipeline-operator))

That's some cutting-edge stuff. I wouldn't want to use it until it was official, but it's cool to have the opportunity to try TC39 ([https://github.com/tc39](https://github.com/tc39)) proposals via babel. In addition to the normal compiler usage for the latest standards.

> We received a $1k/month donation from Facebook Open Source!

> This the highest monthly donation we have gotten since the start (next > highest is $100/month).

When I read this, I kind of mumbled to myself, "that's all?"

It goes to show how poorly funded open source projects are. We rely on these tools, file issues, and want them to work, yet there isn't enough to even pay someone to work on it full time.

[https://twitter.com/ShiyaLuo/status/931230821976907776](https://twitter.com/ShiyaLuo/status/931230821976907776)

> Engineer: There's a thing we need in babel, can I spent 2 days with a PR for > it

> Company: lol no it's their job

Yep, the problem is cultural. The whole system of reciprocity is out of whack. The system would work more smoothly if more people took on responsibilities, QA'd, contributed patches. Give engineers a % of time to contribute back to the libraries they use.

And yea, contributing back upstream to libraries isn't always glorious as releasing your own stuff, but it's part of what open source is. These big companies (not naming names) would rather make totally new projects than pitch in maintaining current ones. I admit it, it's not fun to do, but it's necessary.

> TL;DR: use babel-preset-env

This is convenient.

<comment><USER2> > Yep, the problem is cultural. The whole system of reciprocity is out of > whack. The system would work more smoothly if more people took on > responsibilities, QA'd, contributed patches. Give engineers a % of time to > contribute back to the libraries they use.

It's more nuanced than that I'm afraid. I work on tooling for a living, and have in fact tried to contribute back to babel but unfortunately there's so much noise and traffic that there's just as good a chance that your PR is stuck in limbo forever than being merged or even reviewed. I understand why, there's only so much the maintainers can do with the limited time they have, but my point is that you can't just say that the problem is that people aren't contributing. It's a two-way street, and maintainers need to figure out how to actually accept (or reject) contributions as well.

There are other ways to contribute than opening PRs and issues of course, like sending money. But even sending money isn't without complexity -- plenty of companies have the ability to contribute financially, but they can't because they need a VAT receipt or invoice to make it happen. Accounting is a hard requirement for companies, you can't just send money willy-nilly like you can as a private person. It's surprisingly difficult for companies to contribute financially to most projects, and that's not even considering the hard ship of getting those expenses signed off which is often a battle and a half on its own. Babel has a decent set up, but still requires a credit card -- this alone makes it much harder since you'd probably have to personally expense it and _then_ try to get it past accounting.

It's a problem, for sure, but I don't think it's as black and white as you make it seem.

<comment><USER3> > I work on tooling for a living, and have in fact tried to contribute back to > babel but unfortunately there's so much noise and traffic that there's just > as good a chance that your PR is stuck in limbo forever than being merged or > even reviewed.

I agree it's a two way street and not all maintainers want to be "purely" what people consider a maintainer role unlike me - but it's a lot of responsibility on their part to have to look at every PR in a certain amount of time. I think contributors could also do more to ask and get involved although it will take more energy on both sides parts: like doing a hangout/video call etc even though it feels like people either maintainer or contributor just think making a PR suffices to get something merged when a lot of times it is so much more.

I think what I'm saying is that if you do get the time to make a PR and if employers allowed it, they should also allow for the time it takes to get through the noise and traffic by helping out with maintenance, not just the bug fixes, or that we need a priority kind of thing so that maintainers/contributors see effort from one another to make it better. Yeah it's definetely not that simple but I think we need more people/companies trying it out to really see what the problems are then just talk about it.

<comment><USER2> I agree, but as a contributor there's only so much you can do if the receiving end isn't, well, receiving.

Plenty of people try to contribute but either the receiving end is unreasonably difficult to work with – or, as is perhaps more often the case – simply aren't responding at all. It's hard to get on a call where the other end isn't picking up, as it were.

I've seen this first hand several times. Despite numerous attempts to make things as easy as possible to merge, providing ample documentation for the changes, making yourself available etc., the receiving end simply isn't picking up. At some point you just give up and let it be. Sometimes, I've seen my PRs get picked up months or even over a year after initially submitted, at which point even I as the author don't know what the PR is all about anymore...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh cool, didn't realize someone posted to HN (I haven't been on HN in a while =D)! Open to questions and clarifications (on the actual content of the upcoming release, process, how to help, future, whatever)!

There are a few things we need to do like a upgrade tool and some other things that haven't been addressed like how library/module authors should publish to npm (do you include/exclude polyfills, do you compile down to ES5 or start introducing ES6+ code under a different folder or package.json string like "module" or "es2015" which will be out of date, etc)

Also didn't write much about the Typescript support yet but we want to help people use that too if that helps with their development

<comment><USER4> I am very interested about publishing ES6+ code. [https://philipwalton.com/articles/deploying-es2015-code- in-p...](https://philipwalton.com/articles/deploying-es2015-code-in- production-today/) was very inspirational on this topic, but the fact that 99% of the libraries I use are publishing transpiled code (+ polyfill) is a big disappointment.

From what I understood, there is currently nothing to allow both ES5 and ES6 code to be published and let the bundler choose which one to include. Any ideas on how to change this?

<comment><USER3> > From what I understood, there is currently nothing to allow both ES5 and ES6 > code to be published and let the bundler choose which one to include. Any > ideas on how to change this?

Yeah it's mostly a conventional then we have to figure out.

Some people have different "dist" folders like say with redux_- [https://email@example.com/](https://email@example.com/) there is `src`, `lib`, `es`, `dist`.

In package.json, you can specify

      "main": "lib/index.js",
      "module": "es/index.js",
      "jsnext:main": "es/index.js",
      "typings": "./index.d.ts",

which a bundler like webpack will look at. The problem now mostly is that "module" assumes es modules but not a specific level of ES/polyfills and we want a way to do that instead. Making a yearly "es2015", "es2016" field seems weird and we want one that is up to date like preset-env?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Babel is one the few pieces of the modern JS stack that "just works." Most projects work by just including `babel-preset-env`. It gets lumped in with Grunt/Webpack as being a pain, but I rarely fight with it. Compare that to Webpack where a minor config change can suck up a days worth of time wading through mountains of semi-complete documentation.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, babel is the single most unreliable and unusable piece of the build machine.

The issue to blame is [https://github.com/facebook/react- native/issues/12590](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/12590) which has been "iceboxed" and not fixed. In short, I have to patch metro each build, to increase the time it waits before killing babel, since the 5 minute timeout simply doesn't cut it.

Debug builds would take over 30m to transform with babel.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, sorry it feels that way! I don't use react-native and don't think anyone on the team was informed of that issue - but is it really an issue from Babel itself?

I guess in that case I would suggest not transforming files like ".json" which if it's a wrapper around Babel could do for you automatically? It's not intended to transform JSON since it would just have the same output, not sure how it's related to compiling JS specifically.

<comment><USER6> This is strictly for transforming JS. It has existed for over a year, here [https://github.com/facebook/react- native/issues/8475](https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/8475) as well.

It's certainly possible that the babel team was never aware of it, but I'd imagine this has to do with the seemingly exponential growth of transformation time per source KB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the move to scoped packages.

I encourage everyone to switch to scoped packages if possible, it gives you much more freedom over your name, reduces the chances of typosquatting causing your users problems, and can even help get your name out there a bit more!

It's a no brainer, and I'm surprised more people don't use them.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was hesitant due to not that much support in the community, etc but after hitting the typo-squatting issue over like 5 times (you'd think once would be enough) it just had to be done. There are other issues for our plugin ecosystem since people fail to know which ones are from us and which are just another plugin.

I think before they were part of the paid npm plain or just not enough information about them, and the questions on what being an npm org meant, etc. Maybe Babel switching to them will help move that forward even?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would anyone use Babel instead of TypeScript's compiler these days?

<comment><USER9> I think the main conceptual difference is that Babel is a plugin ecosystem while TypeScript has a fixed set of features. But I think it's common for people to not consider the TypeScript compiler because they're not using the TypeScript language.

Reasons to use Babel:

* Babel supports bleeding-edge proposed language features like the pipeline operator, throw expressions, optional chaining, etc.

* Babel lets you run custom transforms like babel-plugin-idx and babel-plugin-rewire.

* Babel gives you more control over exactly which transforms you want to run. In one case, I wanted to disable most transforms, but still had to enable the class transform for interop with CoffeeScript classes. TypeScript would need a custom option for any use case like that.

* Babel supports both Flow and TypeScript.

* Babel is a community project rather than being primarily developed by one company. Microsoft theoretically could make a business decision to stop TypeScript development, but nobody could do that for Flow.

Reasons to use TypeScript:

* From my measurements, TypeScript is quite a bit faster than Babel at compiling ES2017 to ES5. From a quick test, TypeScript took 35 seconds and Babel took 140 seconds when run on my codebase at work.

* TypeScript is probably easier to set up and configure. No individual plugins or presets to install, you just set your compilation target in the config. The TypeScript team has already made the decision about which proposed features (e.g. object rest/spread) are safe to use right now, so there's less decision-making to do in that regard.

* TypeScript is maintained by a full-time team at Microsoft, and there's less risk of the maintainers getting burnt out.

<comment><USER3> > * From my measurements, TypeScript is quite a bit faster than Babel at > compiling ES2017 to ES5. From a quick test, TypeScript took 35 seconds and > Babel took 140 seconds when run on my codebase at work.

Hmm, I would of thought it would be the opposite but I guess it depends on the setup?

> * TypeScript is probably easier to set up and configure.

Yeah given it's more of a "language" TS can decide on those defaults although you can just make your own preset for your company/project as well. I think we can fix that too with a default/separate thing but not sure yet.

<comment><USER9> I haven't looked too much into the TypeScript compiler implementation, but my theory is they've just had more bandwidth to do little optimizations or maybe got lucky on some design decisions rather than it being something fundamental. To be clear, this doesn't include any typechecking, so Babel and TypeScript are pretty much solving the same problem here.

I've actually been hacking on a faster alternative to babel/tsc for simple use cases: [https://github.com/alangpierce/sucrase](https://github.com/alangpierce/sucrase) . It has a built-in benchmark (`yarn run benchmark`) with at least one example of where typescript is about 3x faster. So you could look at that config if you want one example to compare the two.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Should Not get six pack abs - <AUTHOR> http://www.forgottensecretsforabs.com/why-you-should-not-get-six-pack-abs/

<comment><USER2> Great advice. One more thing is the slow down in metabolism that occurs as one gets older which means that diet plays a much larger role in contributing to overall fitness and flab eradication.</comment>


Show HN: Flight Instruments in Snap SVG and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://fl7b8.csb.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote these a while ago with some intention of creating flight training tools. I'm making them available to all the other programmer / pilots out there who might find them useful. [https://codesandbox.io/s/six-pack-flight- instruments-fl7b8](https://codesandbox.io/s/six-pack-flight-instruments-fl7b8)

<comment><USER2> This is one of those things that "someone must have already done, it must be out there." Thank you for being that person.

<comment><USER3> Those type of awesome contributions are what drives humanity ahead :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, they look great & realistic!

Possible issue with the Altimeter. I'm not sure if this was meant as an accurate simulation, or just a technical demonstration of what is possible with the component, but I've noticed that the Altimeter pressure setting (small window) is changing on its own as the altitude hand sweeps around.

That never happens, the altimeter setting is a fixed setting set by the pilot used to calibrate the altimeter readout to be relative to a known/shared pressure setting.

<comment><USER5> Looks like the site is demoing the altimeter reading changing as the setting is changed. Note the altitude is changing properly with respect to altimeter setting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct! If you play with the source on codesandbox you can disable the demo mode and actually rotate the Kollsman window using the BARO button. The calculations for pressure and resulting altitude are from standard physics texts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine the next jumbo jet using avionics rendered on Electron.

<comment><USER7> I could have done without that thought thank you.

* your plane crashes because the avionics computer OOM's because you're running chrome

* your plane crashes because JS decides that the pitch angle is suddenly NaN and plows the plane into the ground.

* your plane won't take off, because there's been yet another NPM dependency breakage because someone got annoyed and removed their single line "right pad" package, which causes the avionics to break because some dependency 400 layers down the tree used it to align an ad that displays on the command line at startup

* the plane crashes because in an emergency the pilots couldn't find the instrumentation they were looking for, because the UI was updated for the 15th time that month and that disk has been removed "because A/B testing showed nobody clicked on it".

<comment><USER8> * the plane crashes because there was an undiscovered bug in an important library whose sole maintainer is currently in a penal colony.

<comment><USER9> Oddly specific

<comment><USER7> If you are out-of-the-loop, it's a reference to this:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/26/corejs_maintainer_j...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/26/corejs_maintainer_jailed_code_release/)

Associated HN thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681860)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This could be a game where you have to fly a plane, looking only at the instruments (this kind of training exists for real pilots).

</comment><comment><USER11> Also check out Project Magenta for MS FSX and Pr3par3d pro flight controls (FMC, etc.):

[https://www.projectmagenta.com/](https://www.projectmagenta.com/)

It's commercial software, but there's free demo versions of the controls, and a personal license is 600 euros, which is a good deal if it does what you want.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks great. I have have a mind to make a VOR + map combo sometime, but I haven't mustered the effort yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nice work! Unfortunately it appears Snap.svg has been sunsetted and has not been updated for a few years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too bad, was only a thin wrapper at best though. Maybe time for a new open source SVG library.

<comment><USER13> d3 would be the obvious choice to me. I have only taken a cursory look at your code but strikes me that it could be fairly straight forward to rewrite it using d3.

<comment><USER11> d3 is just a low-level combination of HTML, CSS, JS and SVG. It's seldom obvious how anything is easy to do "using d3," unless manipulating a table of data.

Essentially, if you're a raw d3 programmer, you're a front-end web engineer.

<comment><USER13> [https://medium.com/@Elijah_Meeks/d3-is-not-a-data- visualizat...](https://medium.com/@Elijah_Meeks/d3-is-not-a-data- visualization-library-67ba549e8520)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any plans to use these in tandem with X-Plane?

Looks really fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER15> Upload the source code to github

<comment><AUTHOR> The original app is on bitbucket git clone firstname.lastname@example.com:duncanmeech/flying.git

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well done! They look gorgeous ...</comment>


Meet Thomas Drake, Senior NSA Executive, whistleblower - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/us-usa-security-nsa-drake-idUSBRE95A12X20130611

<comment><USER2> Thomas Drake, William Binney and Jesselyn Radack gave a talk about "Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime" at the 29c3 last year:

[http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en- enemie...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en- enemies_of_the_state_h264.html)

<comment><USER3> Does anyone know if the CCC made the code Binney gave them available?

Also, William Binney gave a keynote talk at HOPE 9 that talks about this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This title is rather misleading. Throw a 'former' (senior nsa exec) in there...

</comment><comment><USER5> "I wouldn't want any American to go through it".

Indeed, Americans should be shielded from any unpleasantness. Fine for everyone else though...

</comment><comment><USER6> He now works at the Apple Genius bar?</comment>


What are some Japanese Payment Gateways? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for some payment gateways for a small business website in Japan. Are there any Stripe equivalents? I noticed WebPay.jp which seems like a clone of Stripe. There's also Paypal, but Paypal is kind of clunky because it takes you to another website and I don't think it is as recognized in Japan as a brand. <comment><USER2> Here is a spreadsheet I made in 2009 comparing processors who can handle Yen payments in Japan. It doesn't include Cybersource. We tried GMO, Worldpay and Paypal. We eventually decided Cybersource was the easiest to deal with in terms of API.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvWgqGUbGJszdHB...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvWgqGUbGJszdHBYSElHaXhGNXh4WHpqaFBmNFFfaUE&usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER2> I recommend cybersource Japan. Same API and documentation as the USA. Unless you are fluent in Japanese and prepared to deal with arcane systems and pricing structures, go with cybersource. I've tried three other providers, still waiting for stripe Japan.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most popular payment gateway is GMO: [http://www.gmo- pg.com/](http://www.gmo-pg.com/)

I am often told that PayPal is the only sensible option for small businesses, however. I wish Stripe would come to Japan!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know anything about Zeus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use PayPal as a backend processor [https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-payments- pro](https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-payments-pro)

No need to redirect users.

<comment><USER5> Except that you can't use Pro unless your company is in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends on your case but I would suggest choosing a payment processor that enables conbini shiharai (payment at convenience stores like 7-11, Lawson, etc.).

Do not underestimate the power of conbini. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone loves the conbini!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Minimal native MP3 player for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-player-for-mac/ <comment><USER2> Features: • not iTunes

You know, iTunes wasn't so bad before they convoluted the UI/UX to shit...looking at the music app on iOS 5-6 vs iOS 10-11 is like comparing a walkway to a labyrinth.

The amount of steps taken backwards in Apple's UI / UX is staggering. Even the simple replacement of the Spotlight bar from an unobtrusive widget in the top right corner to a giant box in the middle of the screen, directly covering your content.

<comment><USER3> Some really nice folks are trying to figure out the whole "not iTunes" issue - it's called hyperamp: [https://github.com/hypermodules/hyperamp](https://github.com/hypermodules/hyperamp)

<comment><USER4> > electron

HN hates election apps :-/

<comment><USER5> Electron apps should stay in the browser as the Web apps they are.

<comment><USER6> And if the browser provided unrestricted file access they probably would. But we'd all be in trouble

<comment><USER5> All apps, even native ones should be forbidden to have unrestricted file access.

Just because something runs under my id, doesn't mean I want it to read everything I have in $HOME without me knowing about it, and possibly sharing it with the world.

On my systems, every sandbox option I can enable is turned on.

<comment><USER6> My point was the browser has no file access. Most electron apps work with the filesystem in some way, and in the browser it's not possible to, for instance, give a web app access to a folder on the desktop

<comment><USER5> HTML 5 File API is a thing.

<comment><USER6> Groovy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cog is a similarly simple open source player for macOS which also supports Opus and has a folder pane.

[https://github.com/kode54/Cog](https://github.com/kode54/Cog)

(original author) [https://cogx.org/screenshots.php](https://cogx.org/screenshots.php)

I really like it, it is still my goto player after 8 years.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm not sure what this one has over Cog, which is mature and well supported.

Of course it doesn't hurt to have more than one option... but Cog seems slightly nicer of the two at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wanted to solve this very problem, and use !iTunes to play audio files on the Mac.

First, I went with VLC. It's quite capable.

It turns out there's a native Mac app called 'afplay' and it'll do the trick as well. "afplay foo.mp3" and it'll play that MP3. No frills, no controls. Just plays the file.

I would cd to a directory with the songs I wanted to play, and use a for loop to play them all.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yay for anything != iTunes. I've been contemplating the iTunes dilemma for quite a while and decided that I needed to start moving off iTunes and not be locked onto a specific platform. My approach so far is to store my audio files in cloud-based object storage system, including a SQLite file as my catalog. When I start one of my players, it pulls the latest copy of my catalog and then starts random play. My latest player is Raspberry Pi with HiFiBerry DAC+ that outputs to my home stereo.

I just pulled all of my content out of iTunes on my laptop about a week ago, but still have it on my iPhone and iPad. Every little move away from iTunes makes me happy.

afplay on Mac and mpg123/mplayer/aplay on Linux can provide a decent start with your own controller driving it.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for mentioning the HifiBerry DAC+ which I didnt't know. Looks very interesting. They call the pro version "audiophile" which is hard to believe at $39. How well does it perform in your experience?

<comment><USER10> Mine is not the pro version, although I was tempted to get it. Mine is just the DAC+. So far I'm extremely happy with it. It's super easy to attach to Pi (no soldering). I had to make 2 simple edits to /boot/config.txt and it works. Sound is very good and I play mostly MP3 and some FLAC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, thanks for all the responses.

Gapless playback is high on my personal wishlist as well.

Same goes for additional audio formats. I was actually surprised that the latest macOS had built-in support for FLAC but there are a few others I'd like to add.

Both of these features will require a more custom audio solution, which may take some time to figure out... but it's on the roadmap!

<comment><USER12> Geez, why didn't I know about this earlier? It's a life saving tool.

I have been using Cog or Gog or whatever but recently gave up. This thing is exactly what I needed. Not that iTunes shit that tries to move my files around or that electron shit that gobbles 1GB of my memory for just the nice transitions.

<comment><USER13> Why did you give up? I'm a Cog[1] user and I fail to see why this would be any better than Cog. It looks worse.

[1] [https://github.com/kode54/Cog](https://github.com/kode54/Cog)

<comment><USER12> Is this the new fork? I thought it doesn't get updated and I think last time it crashed on me or did something weird, so I stopped caring about it.

But this fork seems really good, too. Thanks, let me use both and see what I like more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you've already got VLC, which is open source, it can work and look similarly, just drag on some MP3 files and it turns them into a "playlist" and plays. Example: [https://i.imgur.com/YoiWeDz.png](https://i.imgur.com/YoiWeDz.png) .. bonus is it'll also play stuff like .mod, .xm and other old tracker formats.

<comment><USER15> Without going off topic and kudos to the developer...however i was thinking exactly the same! I use VLC everywhere because its open source and awesome. I really believed in the project since early on, in fact if you have been using it for 10years or so, like i have, consider donating! Honestly they deserve it!

<comment><USER14> Good idea - I just sent some Bitcoin. To be fair, I don't think it _is_ off topic as I've often learnt about alternatives in threads here. It'd be weird if it were frowned upon, so I'll happily take the downvotes as the price for sharing :-D

<comment><USER15> I wasn't implying you were offtopic but rather my comment reply to yours might have been perceived as off topic reply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice. Looking at this takes me back to 2000s, and leaves me thinking we've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Software should be simple - and that means that it should do one thing and do it well, not be stunted for "aesthetic" or other reasons...

In case you don't, please support gapless playback. It's an obvious feature for concerts and live performances, and a lot of software (e.g. whatever Ubuntu uses) doesn't handle it at all.

<comment><USER6> +1 for both the simplicity and the gapless playback. I wish software was more lightweight

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've taken to using the OS X client for Google Music, where I've backed up all my mp3s, but this looks great for when I eventually leave that ecosystem (I still use Winamp on Windows). The simpler the better as far as I'm concerned. Although the ability to search the playlist and queue items would be nice.

<comment><USER18> Can you link to that client? I didn't know it existed

<comment><USER19> [https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com](https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com)

<comment><USER20> This is an electron wrapper around the website.

The website claims that it's more efficient than running Google Music in a Chrome tab, but I'm pretty dubious; it's running an entire browser runtime!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hey this reminds me of Bahamut which I made for similar reasons: [https://github.com/sdegutis/Bahamut/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/sdegutis/Bahamut/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bahamut looks really nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been using Swinsian for this. Plays nice with a networked music library and has excellent tag editing. [https://swinsian.com/](https://swinsian.com/)

<comment><USER23> Looks nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Awesome! I really like the minimal interface.

After I switched from Windows to Mac about one year ago, I couldn't believe I had to abandone foobar2000 and IrfanView. After some try-outs I got a bit comfortable with iTunes to play my local music, esp. different display modes (song list, album overview) of what's currently played is well done.

Your player is a nice little program, I'm gonna keep it on my mac!

</comment><comment><USER25> I love the "not iTunes" argument, but the thing I miss from nearly all those nice little players is library management. I have a lot of music I like to browse.

My wish list: 1) Browsing by album, with or without covers. 2) Playing a song should queue the rest of the album starting from that song. 3) I'd like to be able to "discover" music I don't listen often to. Like reverse sorting by last play date. To many time I "re-discover" that I have music from artist X. 4) When I press the play media key on my keyboard (and the player wasn't paused), it should start playing something I like/play often. 5) Of course 3 & 4 should be automatic without creating any playlist.

</comment><comment><USER26> Good stuff. For me, Winamp always was "just right." I'm one of the old school weirdos, I guess, that doesn't need endless recommendations from Spotify and Pandora, and just enjoy my enormous (yet growing) mp3/flac collection.

</comment><comment><USER27> How is this better and / or different from VLC [0]?

[0] [https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html](https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> I so much need a music player that fits my needs on macOS that I hacked my own on top of FFPlay from FFmpeg.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/fraktus/39848081275/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/fraktus/39848081275/)

For me, I like to see the spectrum when I listen to music because it gives a good idea of how well the spatialization has been recorded.

Also, thanks to FFmpeg I can display all encoding details right away...

<comment><AUTHOR> FFmpeg is a great project. Interesting how it interprets the embedded artwork as 'mjpeg' in your pic.

<comment><USER29> Well, an MJPEG is literally a stream of JPEGs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I mostly use Spotify and stream music rather than collect mp3 files, but I still have a couple hundred or so songs that Spotify doesn't have. Spotify lets you load local files and add them to playlists alongside songs you stream, and I've generally been pretty pleased. It certainly beats iTunes, and it's nice having everything all in one place.

</comment><comment><USER31> I mostly use afplay to play mp3 from the command line. It is quick and fast. Only playlist management is missing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Impressive. The job well done. Since today, Tiny Player will be my player of choice on Mac.

One suggestion though: currently it shows "FLAC" in status bar when I play a FLAC file. But what I really want to see is something like "FLAC 24 bit 96 kHz".

<comment><USER33> If you can hear the difference then why do you need a display of that?

<comment><USER32> Huh? Mac OS has an audio mixer that works in a fixed predefined format unless the audio device is open in exclusive mode.

So here comes the problem: audio mixer is usually set to highest audio rate your DAC supports. But for better experience it is recommended to set it to native rate of the source material.

That's why it is very beneficial to know what audio format you are currently listening to. You can then go and adjust the pipeline to match that format.

A mismatch between source and DAC sampling rates leads to an undesirable aliasing. This is the very same effect when you try to watch, say, 1920x1080 desktop screen on 2540x1280 LCD monitor. Audio is considerably more forgiving to such a mismatch comparing to video, but still this is a noticeable and undesirable effect, especially when you have a high-end audio pipeline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> BTW, anyone has suggestions for a non-iTunes, non-Vox music player supporting Applescript?

<comment><USER35> Swinsian[.com] supports "Applescript control" according to their features list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For something named Tiny Player, it wastes a surprising amount of screen real estate.

</comment><comment><USER37> Did you write the decoder yourself, or do you feed it into FFMPeg or something similar?

<comment><USER38> It says "for FLAC support you need macOS 10.13", so it almost certainly uses the system libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. I might switch to a 3rd party decoder later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great start! Would need something to easily mass edit ID3 tags and also rename files based on tags - any good solutions? Surprisingly, I couldn't find a suitable CLI tool so far either.

<comment><USER40> There's the "id3" mass tagger utility which supposedly can do that: [https://squell.github.io/id3/](https://squell.github.io/id3/)

I haven't used it though, I've settled for MusicBrainz Picard for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They also have the Tiny Player for iOS, which completely bypasses iTunes.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is very nice! I've been using cmus as of late as I can keep it open in a terminal tab while I'm working, but I will certainly try this out.

</comment><comment><USER43> I like minimal players for music. On Linux/BSD, I like mpg123 or mpc. On Windows, I am a big fan of Foobar2000.

</comment><comment><USER44> Very nice! I know this is intended to stay small and minimal, but I'd love to see at least some rudimental artwork support.

<comment><AUTHOR> cmd-i to open an extra window with artwork and meta info? I'm working on that. Still haven't figured out if it should show the info for currently played track (and switch when next track starts) or the one that's selected in the playlist. Or some special "smart" combination of the two... what would you expect to happen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been looking for something like this for months, ever since I switched from Windows for work. I miss foobar2000

<comment><USER45> The developers of Foobar2000 released a Mac app recently [1], not under active development and with very limited functionality but I hope for more.

[1] [https://www.foobar2000.org/mac](https://www.foobar2000.org/mac)

<comment><USER46> FWIW, there was also enqueue app [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/enqueue/id493119959?mt=12](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/enqueue/id493119959?mt=12) (not maintained since 2012, but still there) which was inspired by foobar2000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Simple. Minimal. Functional.

</comment><comment><USER48> Beautiful. Good work man.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Plays MP3s (also FLAC, AAC, AIFF and WAV)

What about OPUS?

The player looks really cool but OPUS (together with FLAC) is the audio format of today, not MP3 (in fact it is plain ancient and the worst option available today, worse than WMA, worse than Vorbis, worse than AAC, worse than OPUS).

As for me I've recoded hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s to OPUS already to save huge lots of space (which is very precious on a 128 GiB MacBook SSD as well as on mobiles) without loosing quality.

Did you know a 32 kbps OPUS podcast/audiobook sounds exactly the same as a 192 kbps MP3? The ratio is not this mind-blowing yet still very impressive for music files too: 128 kbits OPUS music file soudns like 256-320 kbps MP3.

Please add OPUS support and I will start recommending your player to everybody.

<comment><USER50> >without loosing quality

Yes, you did lose quality, Opus is a lossy format so whatever your source material is, you _will_ lose some quality.

How important or noticeable that is will depend on the opus bitrate, your hearing and your personal preferences are. But just putting this as a warning for anyone reading.

<comment><USER49> This is obvious. Whoever collects MP3 files already knows what a lossy compression format means. I don't mean recoding FLAC to OPUS can save space without loosing quality, I mean recoding MP3 to OPUS can save space producing a file of the same quality as the MP3 original is. Obviously it will have less quality than a FLAC/CDDA original but not less than MP3 (unless you actually set the bitrate too low). E.g. I am sure converting a 256 kbits MP3 to a 192 kbits OPUS means no loss anybody can hear and converting it to 128 kbits OPUS may only mean tiny loss almost nobody can hear. Speaking about lossy format implies there is always a loss from the mathematical point of view, no loss means no perceivable loss in this context.

<comment><USER51> >Obviously it will have less quality than a FLAC/CDDA original but not less than MP3 (unless you actually set the bitrate too low).

This is incorrect. Lossy-to-lossy transcodes always incur a quality loss. It is known

<comment><USER49> The same kind of loss as caused by using cheap audio cables instead of golden cables perhaps... (sarcasm)

It would make sense to speak about quality loss if it was about FLAC originals but not if the originals are already MP3. You can't save what is not there.

<comment><USER52> Umm ... no, when you recompress music that was already compressed with a lossy algorithm, you will have lower quality than if you had just stuck with the original. You can't save what isn't there, but that doesn't mean that you can't lose even more!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The economics of the film industry are changing - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21572218-tale-two-tinseltowns-split-screens

<comment><USER2> This article is kind of disappointing.

> Between 2007 and 2011, pre-tax profits of the five studios controlled by > large media conglomerates (Disney, Universal, Paramount, Twentieth Century > Fox and Warner Bros) fell by around 40%, says Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan > Stanley.

Mass-market luxury industry takes hit during largest recession since Great Depression. News at 11.

>In 2011 American cinemas sold 1.28 billion tickets, the smallest number since 1995. Last year, ticket sales rose back to 1.36 billion and box-office revenues to a record $10.8 billion

So the year over year volatility is in the single digits and following the economic recovery they're back to making record profits.

It seems like the only point the article makes is that that TV is doing better than film right now. But that isn't "movies are doomed," just "TV is doing really well."

>A move from analogue to digital film enabled perfectionist directors to shoot more takes and touch them up afterward, using up expensive production and editing time. Studios have also started to make more "tent pole" films: big releases that can support the bottom line like a pole holds up a tent. These typically rely on expensive special effects, rather than compelling scripts, to attract a global audience.

Jevon's effect in action. The thing is, that's not actually a problem: If you're making more profit from doing that than it costs to do it, it's sustainable. If you're not, why are you doing it? Stop it and go back to creating a larger number of less expensive films based on compelling scripts rather than special effects. It seems to be what people are asking for anyway. You can't simultaneously expect to be taken seriously in complaining that what you're doing isn't working and refuse to change what you're doing.

They keep talking about John Carter as a failure. I saw it. It wasn't great. And the reason wasn't bad acting or bad special effects, it was that it had a mediocre script. So yeah, try hiring some better writers next time. They apparently cost less than special effects anyway.

>Between 2006 and 2012, the six big studios also cut the number of films they made by 14-54%, according to Nomura.

And then they wonder why they're not doing as well as they want to.

>And they started to pay actors and directors far less.

It's about time. Hard to find sympathy for "we're not making enough money" when you're still paying eight figure compensation to individuals.

<comment><USER3> "They keep talking about John Carter as a failure. I saw it. It wasn't great. And the reason wasn't bad acting or bad special effects, it was that it had a mediocre script. So yeah, try hiring some better writers next time. They apparently cost less than special effects anyway. "

I saw it too, and thought it was decent. It failed because of the title. Even the most hardcore sci-fi fans don't know what John Carter is.

If the title had "Mars" in it it probably would have at least broken even.

<comment><USER4> John Carter was doomed before it was released. All the reviews doomed it. I even read a critical article on the WSJ. With all the bad press and the amount of money spent to make the film, I decided to see it anyway. I must say that I've seen far worse movies and I found it to be quite entertaining.

<comment><USER5> A book that "details every blunder and betrayal that led to the doom of the motion picture - and that left countless Hollywood careers in the wreckage" was written titled John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood - [http://www.amazon.com/John-Carter-Gods-Hollywood- ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/John-Carter-Gods-Hollywood- ebook/dp/B00AFCZ1S4).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _film-going in America is not a growth business, especially now that people have so many media to distract them at home. The share of Americans who attend a cinema at least once a month declined from 30% in 2000 to 10% in 2011._

You can get both a really good 60-inch plasma (or a good 1080p projector!) and a solid surround system for well under $1500 these days (even five years ago, that might've got you just a crappy 42-inch LCD).

At least for me, that's really lowered the appeal of going to a theater, even if I'm pretty geeked about something. Add in the instant gratification of Apple TV/Netflix, and I just don't see people going to theaters in five years (when this level of quality has trickled down and even the $1500 tier will be even more opulent). Kind of like when video arcades couldn't offer anything that much more technically impressive than the current generation of consoles.

<comment><USER7> I agree. The only advantage the theater has now is the release date. Torrents have mostly taken care of that advantage for those who know where to look.

<comment><USER8> Those who know where to look, and are willing to do something illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I changed how I think think about movies after talking with a marketing rep at a studio. Imagine you were launching a new software startup every single week, and all the brand equity you built up before resets to zero each time. All of a sudden you'd throw out any film purist sense about you and be looking for tricks to prevent this, namely sequels, marketing on stars or director reputation, etc.

<comment><USER10> That's a really good point I hadn't considered...with production costs easily breaking $100m, lots of the bigger fundraising news doesn't even reach this. Color for example raised ~$40m, which in movie terms isn't even a small romantic comedy. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had a budget of $281 million and in many ways was a big of a gamble as any Venture Backed Company.

I'd imagine that the methods to raise that kind of budget aren't all that dissimilar in truth.

<comment><USER11> "The Lord of the Rings trilogy had a budget of $281 million and in many ways was a big of a gamble as any Venture Backed Company."

Not really. Lord of the Rings was an established brand before the movies with a fervent fan base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a great Blu-ray player at home, but it's unused owing to the ridiculous prices of the media. Sure the detail is great, but it's got to compete with Netflix for home viewing. In addition, Netflix allows me pause and watch this anywhere on my Nexus 4/7.

A Blu-ray copy of John Carter is equivalent to 2 months Netflix subscription, or 3 months in Blu-ray 3D.

Could have watched John Carter 3D in the cinema (ignoring the poor reviews) only to realize I'd never watch it a second time at home in Blu-ray. 1 month's Cineworld subscription is the same cost the Blu-ray 3D.

<comment><USER13> Not to mention the anti-consumer nature of blu-ray and dvd these days: the unskippable commercials, trailers and anti-piracy warnings? These are also not present on Netflix. Some commercials are present in some content on Hulu Plus. But even that is far, far less than what you have to deal with when renting or buying a retail disc.

To say nothing about new releases trying to push people into 3D prints that were rarely good (let alone worthwhile), more-often sloppy and always carried the negatives of eye-strain, dimness, unnecessary cost, etc. [1]

Which is all just to say that the economics of film are changing because film- going and retail discs have been continually decreasing their value proposition while their digital alternatives have been continually _increasing_ theirs.

[1] Not letting people BYOGlasses is absurd. Even if theatres allowed it, most film-goers would inevitably forget and just buy them anyway. They're really only punishing families with that kind of policy. Families who already have plenty of good reasons to ignore the theatre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife finds movies, especially action movies, too loud at the theater. So we don't go anymore.

<comment><USER15> I use earplugs in movies, maybe they change the frequency spectrum (cut off more in high frequencies), but I not so much of a purist to mind.

<comment><USER16> Just a heads up, you can buy a pair of frequency-neutral earplugs for about $10-$15. They reduce the volume without giving the sound that "underwater" quality. The only downside is that they aren't disposable, so you might need to wash them with a damp paper towel between uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hollywood is famous for playing so fast and loose with tax-loopholes that I just can't trust any of the numbers quoted. Practically every Hollywood blockbuster loses money on paper when it comes time to pay taxes, so you have to wonder if they're reporting those same cooked numbers to drum up sympathy. Let's also not forget that Hollywood films are filmed all over the place to save money, and usually in places where studios are heavily subsidized. Governments see a local film industry as a cultural gem, and pay through the nose to attract productions. I find it difficult to believe that all those free-rides aren't having an impact on the bottom lines of film companies.

</comment><comment><USER18> I met someone recently who was a photographer/editor/camera op and recently made a thousand dollars for some editing work on a commercial. The person that gave him the gig was a former partner of a now famous producer. The editor found out later that the entire budget for the commercial (the project he was working on) was $50,000.

He also found out the entire thing was filmed on an iphone and the producer pocketed the rest of the money.

</comment><comment><USER19> For some reason the page crashes safari and chrome on iPad after loading halfway.

There is an interesting issue regarding ticket prices which the article mentions but doesn't discuss in detail. Many years ago it was affordable for a family to go to the movies every weekend. Now, ticket prices have shot up so much that its a pretty expensive habit. I wonder if a forced deflation of ticket prices could improve the situation</comment>


Ask HN: What are your preferred DNS management services? - <AUTHOR>

What are your preferred DNS management services? I've heard people talk about both DNSmadeeasy and Zerigo but thats about it.  I've been using slicehosts DNS management but I just bought a 3 year reserved micro instance on ec2 and need some advice.  Definitely don't want to run my own. Cheers! <comment><USER2> I have used DNSMadeeasy and Zerigo but I have since switched to using the services my registrar provides (though I still use Zerigo for Heroku sites.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use and am happy with OpenDNS <http://www.opendns.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Zerigo for about 8 months, and so far I have no complaints. I just couldn't find any other service with a similar price point (I have about 60 domains).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like Total DNS is supplied with godaddy domains. Are there any performance issues with using one DNS management service over another or rolling your own?</comment>


Homeland Security News interviews Bruce Schneier - <AUTHOR> http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/attackers-have-advantage-cyberspace-says-cybersecurity-expert <comment><USER2> The same maxim applies to cyber security as physical security. Defenders must be right 100% of the time, an attacker only has to be right once. That will never change--even if you deem your systems "impregnable" (if you do, ask the French how the Maginot line worked out for them).

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that's why we have layers of security so the attacker has to be lucky more than once and it gives the defender (theoretically) a better chance of getting back in the game with the use of intrusion detection systems etc. The problem is, I guess, partly that people find it hard to motivate spending time and money on the inner layers (before it's too late).

(not saying that it's easy or that the attacker doesn't have an advantage)</comment></comment>