VLC maintainer has refused "several tens of millions of Euro" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/73dafr/vlc_creator_refused_several_tens_of_millions_of/ <comment><USER2> That's me.

However, I am not the VLC creator, just the one working on it since 10+ years. And I created the non-profit organization.

See the AMA for more details ;)

<comment><USER3> Time to donate [https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money](https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money)

Thanks VLC team for all the good years !

<comment><USER4> I love it when the Bitcoin QR code is just right there. Donated 10mbtc

<comment><USER5> Ditto, I donated 5 mbtc. I love the _zero-friction_ experience of paying in bitcoins. Click the link, instantly opens my wallet, type amount and hit send. Done.

No need to wait for a slow site to load and having to click through multiple confirmation screens (Paypal)...

<comment><USER6> Paypal is two clicks now. Click buy on the site you are buying from, PayPal loads and logs you in automatically, confirm the amount and click pay.

<comment><USER7> God forbid you attempt a donation to a party PayPal doesn't like, they will just seize your assets.

<comment><USER6> I can only talk about Paypal from the payer side it's virtually frictionless in my experience and transactions can be disputed via Paypal or my bank. Buying and using bitcoin adds a number of extra steps as well as transaction costs in moving dollars into bitcoin as well as giving me no dispute mechanism.

<comment><USER5> Paypal is pretty frictionless, but it still takes ~15-20 sec to do the 3 clicks through 3 slow-to-load Paypal pages (1: paypal button, 2: page to specify amount, 3: confirmation page). By contrast, a click on the Bitcoin address opens my local Bitcoin wallet which opens up instantaneously, and clicking send is also instantaneous. Total ~3 sec. The difference between ~15-20 and ~3 sec is enough to make me prefer BTC over Paypal.

I don't need the ability to dispute: I am not going to change my mind later about this donation.

I don't need to buy BTC: like many bitcoin users I already have some in my possession, ready to be spent at any time.

<comment><USER8> How long does it take for the payment to go through ? What's the fee ?

For a donation transfer speed doesn't matter, but for actual purchase it's a lot more than 30 s last I've tried

<comment><USER5> The payment is broadcasted instantly (1-2 seconds). Fee can be as low as $0.10-0.30 (eg. these donations to the VLC address [https://blockchain.info/tx/99ee82b2b8f33ee22c6c51ff4ba198141...](https://blockchain.info/tx/99ee82b2b8f33ee22c6c51ff4ba198141c4283c702ea212bc9edcad19c33d4d2) [https://blockchain.info/tx/d056b36bdb81f70cf344d4489ba337ad1...](https://blockchain.info/tx/d056b36bdb81f70cf344d4489ba337ad1820e07b0907211ecdff764cb9ed25ba) [https://blockchain.info/tx/445ba8e7559a4f83bcd7fd7adac30cf9f...](https://blockchain.info/tx/445ba8e7559a4f83bcd7fd7adac30cf9fa4e220c25ccc35e9492fff876937fef)).

It's important to understand the difference between a broadcasted transaction (tx received by most Bitcoin nodes, "0-confirmation", 1-2 seconds) versus the transaction being included in at least 1 block ("1 confirmation", ~10 minutes). Some merchants accept 0-confirmation tx, while others require 1 confirmation. But in almost all cases it's fine to accept 0-confirmation transactions:

• ordering physical goods online (an order takes more than ~10 minutes to be shipped & delivered anyway)

• ordering virtual goods/services (eg. paying for VPN: the vendor can simply cancel the service if the tx is never confirmed)

• any low-value real-world transaction (eg. paying for groceries... no one will bother with a double-spend attack to steal groceries)

• etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Feel free to reward the man's integrity here [https://www.videolan.org/thank_you.html](https://www.videolan.org/thank_you.html)

<comment><USER10> You probably meant to link here: [https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money](https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> An admirable move indeed if it was a physical object, but I'm not sure it's the right one when software is involved. Thanks to Open source licensing, a fork would have been trivial: I'd have forked the project, then taken the money and donate half of it to EFF, GNU and other freedom friendly organizations. In a few years the word of mouth that brought VLC as no.1 player would replace it with a new one. Although in different contexts, it already happened with Openoffice->Libreoffice, Owncloud->Nextcloud, MySQL->MariaDB etc. By doing so I would have helped myself and other people in need while taking money from advertisers.

<comment><USER12> No, because a huge percentage of the user base doesn't follow tech news and is likely not even technical. All of those people would only know that their experience just gradually went to hell.

<comment><USER13> How did those users come to learn about VLC Player and what would stop them from learning about the fork the same way?

<comment><USER14> Remember OpenOffice.org? That is still getting ~100,000 downloads a day in April this year [1]. That's after all the Linux distros moved to LibreOffice for years. Forks work for moving development, but not necessarily for moving users.

[1]: [https://lwn.net/Articles/729460/](https://lwn.net/Articles/729460/)

<comment><USER15> MySQL and MariaDB are another example, if you need one. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't get the mentality of whoever offered the money. I mean, great that the money wasn't accepted, but it seems so stupid to try to force ads into something that can easily be forked and have the ads removed.

I get the impression the idiots who offered the money just don't understand logiciel libre.

<comment><USER17> I think some similar things have happened with popular plugins for Firefox, Chrome, Atom and VScode. And also for some apps for Android and iPhone.

This reminds me of the adage: "When the product is free, you are the product".

<comment><USER18> That's why you want them to be free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sadly, can't say I'd have such integrity. I have bills to pay.

<comment><USER20> Well, he earn his life well enough, have a really decent and cheap healthcare, and free education for his kids, what need those millions would fill? Honestly, in any european country, winning around 60k per year (as an employee) or 100k (as a business owner), if you are not living in Paris or London, is enough to provide you a carefree life. You don't need to sell yourself for more.

<comment><USER21> He does live in Paris, though.

<comment><USER2> 60k would be enough in Paris, I would say :)

<comment><USER22> Is it weird when people talk about you as if you aren't there? :)

A question for you: How do you stay motivated to work on OSS projects over a long term?

<comment><USER2> > Is it weird when people talk about you as if you aren't there? :)

Very much weird. Mostly people don't realize I am the one they are talking about. It is the same on Reddit...

Often I get downvoted on Reddit about VLC, like I don't know what I'm talking about :)

> A question for you: How do you stay motivated to work on OSS projects over a > long term?

You find new ideas and new challenges.

<comment><USER23> > Often I get downvoted on Reddit about VLC, like I don't know what I'm > talking about :)

Hilarious, but somewhat typical for Reddit (and other places with voting systems).

<comment><USER24> Democracy is a voting system too :D

<comment><USER22> Not one with downvotes, for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The smart move would have been to take the tens of millions of dollars, retire, and spend it developing VLC Too if you'd like. Ala Mysql > MariaDB.

<comment><USER12> No, because the user bases are completely different. If you're pulling down an open source database and setting it up there's a certain minimum technical skill level that can be assumed. The same can't be said for a consumer video player.

<comment><USER25> I'm honestly not sure what that has anything to do with making millions of dollars, and forking VLC to the next iteration like how MySQL to MariaDB was played out. Where does the user base come into the discussion? You're on a forum, whose users primary motivation is starting companies. We're here to make money. If someone offers you tens of millions of dollars for a video player, you take it, and go enjoy life.

<comment><USER12> There are plenty of folks here for whom 'comfortable' money would be just fine when accompanied by 'make the world a better place, and avoid doing things that make it a worse place.'

<comment><USER25> You can do a lot more good in this world with tens of millions of dollars.

<comment><USER12> You can also enable people to make the world a significantly crappier place for millions of people by accepting that money.

If you're going to think of good or happiness as a transactional thing, you can "steal" some happiness from millions of people to increase your own (e.g. by getting tens of millions of dollars) but in doing so you've likely decreased to total happiness of the world. MAYBE you can make up the total amount of reduced happiness by spending that money to do good somewhere else, but you can never really know whether you've been successful and you can also never really know just how much you've worsened people's lives long-term.

I find it unlikely that people interested in purchasing VLC so they could monetize it would stop at a level that users would consider acceptable.

Selling out your users for money is almost always going to be a net loser in the currency of happiness in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could be me, but the headline is confusing. I thought at first that several tens of millions intended to keep VLC ad free had been refused. Thankfully we dodged that bullet.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would rather they took the money and forked VLC. It would be big enough news that most users would switch and the development would only benefit from the extra cash.

If the initial media attention isn't enough, they could spend some of the excess on an ad campaign to inform users that "the most popular VLC fork is now [new name]".

<comment><USER28> >It would be big enough news that most users would switch and the development would only benefit from the extra cash.

You think most of VLC's users are the type who would read about a fork on a site like this? I imagine their user base is much larger than that.

<comment><USER27> Adding ads is a significant enough negative change alone to get adequate media attention outside of sites like Hacker News.

<comment><USER28> For a product like VLC? I don't know about that. The average user will put up with quite a bit of crap from their software, and I don't imagine e.g. my wife would be reading about ads in VLC on pbs.org.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People like this keep OSS community going

</comment><comment><USER30> VLC hasn't done much to improve picture quality. An mpc and madvr combination easily trumps it and yet you want to donate to this cookie cutter program to only maintain but not make it better? MPC was on the verge of being stopped of development until few people made the effort to volunteer and contribute to code.

<comment><USER31> I assume you're not talking about the mpd command line client of that name? At least I wouldn't know how it relates to video quality, though it plays music quite nicely. The other mpc I can easily get to does multi-precision arithmetic on the complex numbers. Also unlikely to be a match.

So there's your problem. Your software is hard to use and hard to find out about. Get it into distros so that installing it and trying it out is as painless as possible.

If I don't know it exists or have to hunt around the web for a copy, I'm unlikely to donate to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Awesome. Thanks a lot! Can we now add SSL to the website please, since VLC already appeared as attack vector in tools like FinFisher.

<comment><USER2> SSL is already there.

<comment><USER21> Why doesn't it auto-redirect? (Not a criticism, just curiosity.)

<comment><USER2> IE. But that is soon over.

You should see SSL from Google though.

<comment><USER33> Because of lacking SNI support? You can try an Ajax request or loading a picture over SSL and then redirect with JS if it doesn't fail. If the SSL site serves HSTS headers, all SNI supporting browsers will in the future default to HTTPS independently of the kludgey redirect (because all browsers that support HSTS also support SNI).

Sure. An unconditional redirect would be better, but that requires a dedicated IP

<comment><USER34> You can also set the favicon path to https, and put hsts headers on it. No JavaScript required.

<comment><USER33> But people with old IE won't get a favicon that way

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I once sollicitaties for a company that did tv streaming for hotels, everything was based on VLC...

That was amazing to hear!

</comment><comment><USER19> I think there's nothing at all wrong with differentiating into paid and free. No ads needed.

<comment><USER35> I think you're right, in that there is nothing wrong with it. But, I believe their goal is to keep it free as in beer and free as in speech. Noble goals, indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Out of curiosity, what do you think about silicon valley startups :)

</comment><comment><USER37> If the software had ads, it'd lose its popularity anyway...

<comment><USER38> But you can cash in and leave the software to die like uTorrent authors did for example.

<comment><USER39> Someone suggested that in the AMA. Take the cash, then fork and let users migrate. OP then used the word "morale".

<comment><USER40> It is not so simple. Many users would be left on the sidelines and the trust would be damaged forever.

If something like this had happened I would have migrated the machines I maintain for sure but probably not to the VLC fork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why?

VLC is amazing software and I deeply thank you for your efforts :)

<comment><USER42> > Why?

Click the link to find out! The money was to put in some kind of ads or sponsored content

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've moved on to mpv.io these days, but VLC still holds a special place in my heart.

<comment><USER44> Be sure to check out gnome-mpv if you on gnome and haven't heard of it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I fail to see what the problem with accepting ads would be, after all anyone who did not want the ads could simply fork the software. Even he could make a ads-free fork. Moreover I am pretty sure that all GNU/Linux distros would include it without any ads.

Also, he might have refused "refused several tens of millions of € to keep the software ads free" however he did not mind relicensing VLC for free under a less copyleft and user-protecting license so that it would be included in the apple store.</comment>


Google and HTTP - <AUTHOR> http://this.how/googleAndHttp/ <comment><USER2> Let me tell you why this is very dishonest: 1\. The internet was built without trust in mind because it was a simple connection between universities and government. There wasn't much need for security. Now that the internet exists, there is a great need for security. 2\. Https is better than http. It's an evolution. It's not impossible to get a certificate. To verify who you are and to protect your users. 3\. If you don't care about your users' privacy, perhaps you shouldn't be hosting sites. To be completely honest, Google is a bit slow with this. I know the difficulty it posses, but it's worth it. We need to stop passing unencrypted data. We need the internet to finally care about security and privacy. The internet has evolved, ipv4 has been used up (in terms of devices). It's time.

<comment><USER3> None of these statements convince me that http sites should be default flagged as insecure. Take this site, for instance: [http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/65tutor_intro.html](http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/65tutor_intro.html). It is a great resource, but is not available over https. yeah, it's possible that someone could MITM it to provide me with incorrect info on the 6502, but I don't see the disregard for my privacy. I'm never going to put in any of my own information, even if someone uses MITM to ask for my credit card or something.

Could you explain why browsers should flag sites like this? It's possible that I'm too naive to realize the issue, and I would appreciate some education on it.

EDIT: changed "blocked" to "flagged"

<comment><USER4> Blocking HTTP sites is a bit too far, but an insecure warning is perfectly reasonable as, let's be honest, it is _not_ secure.

<comment><USER3> I edited my post before your response to change it to "flagged," but failed to call out the change initially. Sorry, it's fixed now.

For a lot of people, a big scary warning page that says that a page is insecure is essentially a block. Yeah, you can still access it, but a lot fewer people will.

> let's be honest, it is not secure.

My original post is asking for an explanation of how it isn't secure. I would totally understand a browser warning if a user tries to submit a form over http, but for a page like the one I linked I don't see how it can adversely affect the user.

<comment><USER5> I could, in a very tame example, inject a fake donation button which pointed to my own account instead of the author's. In a more extreme and dangerous example, I could inject malicious JavaScript which exploited an unpatched CVE (Meltdown, Spectre) or vulnerabilities in plugins like Flash, if enabled, to gain control of the user's computer.

It's true that these things could also happen over an HTTPS connection, but then the prevention method is "don't go on sketchy websites." It's far more dangerous over HTTP because a user might already trust the site or author themselves.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for answering.

I still don't see why either of those justify warning the user about the whole page. For the donation button, the browser could easily warn you with a big "insecure!" page when you click on the button. Regarding js exploits, I don't think https fixes that even for non-sketchy websites: I'm thinking of the js malware in ads and the recent cryptocurrency-mining ads on youtube.

<comment><USER5> > the browser could easily warn you with a big "insecure!" page when you click > on the button.

But this implies that whenever you click on any link on a page served via HTTP, the browser should warn you with a big "insecure!" page. I think this is far more obtrusive than a simple "not secure" banner next to the URL.

> I don't think https fixes that even for non-sketchy websites

You're right, if the website served over HTTPS injects random JavaScript/is poorly designed. However, the danger with HTTP is that _every single website_ is vulnerable to this attack, not simply the ones served by malicious or incompetent hosts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There really is no absolute right or wrong to this issue.

HTTPS is indeed more secure for users, but it does have some cost, and I think OP has a sensible argument.

If you really think HTTPS is the best thing ever and is absolutely better than HTTP in every sense, you're just looking at it superficially.

When you start looking into how the entire Internet works and what role each party plays in the ecosystem, and how much "real" power each party has, you'll find that HTTPS is THE biggest centralization force of the web. If you think centralization and oligopoly by big tech companies is awesome, fine.

But there are people who don't like that direction for a good reason.

<comment><USER7> _you 'll find that HTTPS is THE biggest centralization force of the web_

This, very much this. Plaintext doesn't require what is essentially authorisation from a central authority in order to communicate.

<comment><USER8> I think you'll find that even without the CA system that you need the blessing of at least a few people to get your content on the internet.

\- Your address needs to be given to you by your ISP or ARIN.

\- Major ISPs need route to your address and/or accept your BGP announcements.

\- You probably need a name which is bought from a few large DNS management companies or their resellers.

\- You're required to have an email address to field abuse complaints which means you most likely will be paying an email provider.

\- If you're not running your own hardware you will have to pay a hosting company.

\- If your site is large you'll probably need a CDN to handle the traffic of which there are only a few major players.

\- Although it's a blacklist you effectively need Google's blessing to not appear on the SafeBrowsing list.

Is the CA system really that much more of a hurdle? No question it's a little scummy at times but it's cheap and relatively low maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just weird and a bad blog post. The author also wrote this: [http://scripting.com/2018/02/23.html](http://scripting.com/2018/02/23.html)

The owner is a domain parker and is upset that he has to update hundreds of sites in order to be marked as insecure, is what I can gather

In the last few weeks he's also wrote:

\- [http://scripting.com/2018/02/21.html](http://scripting.com/2018/02/21.html)

\- [http://this.how/googleAndHttp/](http://this.how/googleAndHttp/)

\- [http://scripting.com/2018/02/08.html](http://scripting.com/2018/02/08.html)

<comment><USER5> His arguments are also legitimately absurd. He says "if Google succeeds, it will make a lot of the web's history inaccessible", which is patently false given the fact _you can always still access HTTP websites_ , not to mention that services like archive.org and Google's own cache exist.

He then makes the argument that HTTPS will make it such that only "super nerds" will be able to create websites. But right now I can host my own blog on services like Netlify and get an HTTPS certificate for multiple domains with one click. If I want my own server it literally takes two seconds for me to set up certbot and get certificates for free. Then he makes a odd and somewhat rambling comparison to the Grand Canyon.

He then argues that Google labeling HTTP as not secure is the first step down a path which leads to "blocking the pages outright", which is a prime example of the slippery slope fallacy.

In another blog post he argues that by applying Occam's razor, it's clear that Google just wants to protect their ad revenue (because HTTPS would allow ISPs to replace Google's ads with their own). Which honestly sounds insane.

I'm really surprised that this person is a software developer. I'm even more surprised that he still believes this stuff after working for 24 years.

<comment><USER7> _I 'm really surprised that this person is a software developer. I'm even more surprised that he still believes this stuff after working for 24 years._

I'm really surprised that you think everyone has/should have(?) the same beliefs about such things.

 _He then argues that Google labeling HTTP as not secure is the first step down a path which leads to "blocking the pages outright", which is a prime example of the slippery slope fallacy._

20 years ago people thought buying computers on which you can't install software some central authority didn't approve of was preposterous, and yet here we are today with walled gardens and the like. This is a rise of authoritarianism, all in the name of "security". The frog boils slowly.

<comment><USER5> > 20 years ago people thought buying computers on which you can't install > software some central authority didn't approve of was preposterous, and yet > here we are today with walled gardens and the like.

I can install whatever operating system and software I like on almost every single consumer-available computer today. The only prominent "walled garden" is the iPhone, which has < 15% market share. And frankly, I don't mind Apple's iOS. I certainly don't mind the fact that I know that any kernel space software that runs on my phone is cryptographically signed by a trusted party in a chain from the bootloader.

<comment><USER10> You should look up Windows 10 S, then look up 'locked bootloader', and then maybe check out Google's moves toward locking out sideloading on Android. I'm not saying the sky is falling, but there are certainly several signs of interest in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did he really dismiss the huge benefit of https that my browser is guaranteed to receive the exact content that the site owner sent me, with an idiotic argument that while it prevents Starbucks or Comcast from pwning me, it doesn't prevent the browser. Really?

<comment><USER3> No. What he said is that Google says that https prevents MITM, but never mentions that they will still be able to do it. I don't see a dismissal, just a criticism of Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Also, if Google succeeds, it will make a lot of the web's history > inaccessible.

> It's like a massive book burning, at a much bigger scale than ever done > before.

How on earth did the author reach these conclusions?

<comment><USER6> A lot of the web properties are HTTP based and they probably won't bother to switch either because the owner doesn't care enough to go through all the hassle, or because they hosted their site/pages on a server whose owner doesn't care enough to go through all the hassle.

Just because these owners don't care about their site, doesn't mean they are not valuable.

<comment><USER12> I was referring specifically to the author's claim that deprecating HTTP and displaying a warning to users is the equivalent of "rendering large parts of the web inaccessible" and "massive book burning".

<comment><USER8> If you mark something as 'Not Secure' you're effectively telling users not to access it. It doesn't matter in practice if the content is still accessible when the browser tells people that accessing it is dangerous.

A lot of content that exists on the unmaintained web is going to effectively be lost, and maybe that's okay because the benefits are worth it, but that's the argument that needs to be made.

<comment><USER5> A lot of content which exists on the unmaintained web is going to be lost anyway, regardless of HTTP. Hosting sites shut down after a while. There's a ton of content that was on Geocities, for example, which is now inaccessible.

A migration of newer websites to HTTPS is no more a loss to data than deprecating old versions of HTML in newer versions of Chrome or upgrading newer servers to HTTP/2\. The old ones will still exist. And if they cease to exist, it's almost certainly not going to be because a browser displays a "not secure" warning on the top left corner of the scene.

There are also entire websites and communities built upon the archival of data:

[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

[https://archive.org](https://archive.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe everyone should use HTTPS, or maybe it's a bad idea. But Google shouldn't unilaterally decide what is good for the rest of us. I'm with the author on that.

This also applies to AMP. Its bad enough they have so much control of the web based on how the rank pages in search results, but there is not much we can do about that.

</comment><comment><USER14> "It may be hard to believe that there was a time when Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter etc didn't exist.

Not really.. I dream all the time of a land where decentralized exchanges exist for these services, and that a clunky web browser is not required for accessing information online.

<comment><USER15> How else would the information be accessed? A separate dedicated app for each of those things? Those exist already.

<comment><USER14> Through a different markup format and set of tools that follows the unix philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is there no proliferation of letsencrypt authorities? If we're all about making https easy and not about central authority, why not have 100+ letsencrypt authorities run by different groups?

The truth is the new decentralised web does not suit the old https signing- AUTHORITY model. it's time for a decentralised system with no authority other than key-holding. The same goes for DNS.

</comment><comment><USER17> https _is_ http (over ssl) so I was expecting something else.

For those who do not know, the author Dave Winer is pretty famous especially in the early web.

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

But he does love a rant.

</comment><comment><USER16> https is only as secure as who's holding your root signing keys (govt agencies). If you want security layer it ontop of https with pub/priv key crypto. https is just the new hoop, jump through it and move on, but lets not pretend https stops anyone important.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is this flagged?

The author is Dave Winer. Known for many things, among them RSS. HN users seem to like RSS and dislike what happened to Google Reader.

There is nothing unreasonable about supporting _both_ HTTP and HTTPS.

There are decisions that should be left to users. Denying them meaningful options is something that should raise a red flag and spur some commentary.

For example, if users want to use RSS, then we should be wary of any company that effectively tries to dissuade them from using RSS.

Similarly, if users want to use HTTP for some content (and perhaps HTTPS for other content), then we should be wary of any company that effectively tries to dissuade them from ever using HTTP for any content.

Not all content needs to be encrypted. Moreover HTTPS via SSL/TLS is not the only way to distribute encrypted content. We should not pretend there is only one way to do it, let alone coerce people to do it only one way.

As a user, I would be just as satisfied with a page of HTML that is PGP- signed, encrypted and sent over HTTP as I would with HTML sent over a so- called "secure channel" via SSL/TLS, what with the third party reliances the commercial domain name and commercial x509 certificate schemes routinely entail.

Besides the issues of requisite third party involvement in encryption, TLS as implemented so far has some serious weaknesses and shortcomings, and is not the only solution to "secure content". If a company is going to issue warnings to users, then that should be among them. Promoting a false sense of "security" should be avoided.

When a company running the largest search engine on the www penalizes websites for not implmenting some feature, whether it is AMP or HTTPS or something else, this should raise red flags. Expect some commentary.

<comment><USER19> Probably just because it's full of nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the worst thing I have read in weeks. The author lacks any understanding of the technology and appears to live in a "Google Bubble". tl;dr, don't waste your time.

He's probably trolling.

<comment><USER21> He's at the origin of RSS, put the base of podcasting, host one of the first blogging platform...

But yeah, what does he knows...

<comment><USER20> Assuming all of that were true, all that does is raise questions how he could be so completely wrong in this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whats the deal with letsencrypt? If anyone can get a certificate for the domains I own, it can't stop man in the middle attacks. How is this any better than a self signed cert which throws a hissy fit when you visit? Thats a browser issue to me not an inherant technical advantage. Anyone can get a cert from it including criminals. Google sometimes makes the news when they revoke a cert authority because of criminal activity (I think). How often do people check under those locks to see what it is? Google.com at a wifi hotspot could be something completely different and you'd not know. I'm sure I'll look like a fool when someone explains it to me.

<comment><USER23> Let's Encrypt just like every other certificate authority validates that you own the domain before giving you a cert. They do that by sending a request to the domain from their servers (via looking up the nameservers via domain registries) and validating the response matches a unique message generated.

You could impersonate google.com on wifi, but you couldn't get a valid cert for google.com because you don't own the nameservers or any of the servers that google.com points to.

<comment><USER22> Thank you! So I'm using a cable modem with a dynamic IP. All someone needs are access to the updater program and credentials to impersonate my domain. So certs are fine and all, as long as those little numbers at the name server never change. I'm a just a hobbyist. Just asking questions, don't mean to offend anyone...

<comment><USER24> Thats your problem</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airplane contrails are changing the climate – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - <AUTHOR> https://thebulletin.org/2019/07/airplane-contrails-are-changing-the-climate/#.XTCSqqYrZLo.hackernews <comment><USER2> No, man — they're "chemtrails". Don't you know nothin'?

/s</comment>


Google kneecapped Amazon's smart TV efforts - <AUTHOR> https://www.protocol.com/google-android-amazon-fire-tv <comment><USER2> Hard to feel concerned here, as these functions shouldn't be built into TVs in the first place - consumers will be best served if we have dumb displays, plug in smart streaming devices (FireSticks / Google Chrome etc) and the competition happens with those items. That also offers a much more logical upgrade path owing to the different obsolescence cycles of the screen and streaming tech.

<comment><USER3> Arguably this is true. However if Apple was leaning on auto makers to not include Android Auto in order to have Car Play compatibility, the pitchfork army would out in force, even among those who never used those features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tell me again how Google is not the Microsoft of 20 years ago?</comment>


"...Francis Crick used to say that God is a hacker, not an engineer. You can do reverse engineering, but you can't do reverse hacking." - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03tier.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I guess I'm not the only person who, while studying (elementary) molecular biology, kept thinking of the Story of Mel:

<http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html>

Mel's design patterns are frighteningly similar to many of the ones used by nature.</comment>


Wanna Impress an Engineer at a Career Fair? - <AUTHOR> http://cushychicken.github.io/career-fair/ <comment><USER2> Probably unpopular opinion but there is no point wasting so much effort at a career fair. The people there will be talking to hundreds of students and largely don't care unless you are really exemplary (which the vast majority of students aren't). In big companies, these people don't even have any control on hiring. Your resume is going to recruiters / HR who will apply their usual biases and heuristics on it.

Career fairs have two purposes: For the company it's a way to establish / further their brand, and for students it's a way to get their resumes to companies and talk to employees.

As someone who has been to a lot of career fairs to represent my company, it's really tedious to hear hundreds of students describe their course projects with a lot of sincerity.

If you are interested in chatting with an employee, please do so and I will be happy to talk about my experiences. This is the biggest value of a career fair for students, coz they can submit resumes on online portals anyway.

Otherwise just submit your resume and get going. This whole facade of pretending to care about the company and going on and on about having done this project and that project is very very pointless.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you've been burned out by the career fair circuit -- maybe your company needs to swap in someone who is still interested in actually talking and listening to prospective hires. If you find talking to candidates "really tedious", I don't know that you're the best face for your company anymore.

A lot of company representatives do in fact remember and note especially promising hires. I'm sure that Boeing and LM and whoever just throw resumes onto the stack, but younger and more dynamic startups definitely have room for human impressions in the process.

<comment><USER4> >It sounds like you've been burned out by the career fair circuit

I've been burnt out by attending too many career fairs, and they are as he describes. Most of the people you speak to will simply take your resume and pass it on - they don't recommend any particular candidate, etc. Many companies are quite open about it. In fact, some companies will tell you _not to give them your resume during the career fair_. They just send you to their web site.

<comment><USER5> Just gotta know which companies to talk to at the fair. For example, line for Google at my school was always long, but very quick, because they simply took the resumes, had a 1min long convo that didnt really matter (as i was even told by people working the booth there), and that's it. For others, it actually did matter. So you just gotta figure out which ones actually care about the career fair and which ones do not.

While i find the generalization of "big corps waste your time at career fairs, small companies actually do care" to be a good general heuristic for starting out, this is not universally true. Off the top of my head, i remember Palantir and Bloomberg specifically caring a lot about the career fair, with the former especially known for giving quick on-the-spot interviews at the career fair (note: i ended up working for neither of them, but i went through the full interview loops with both, and both can be absolutely attributed to my conversations with them at the fair).

It is difficult to know any of that the first time you attend a career fair, but by the time your last career fair rolls out, you should already have a good idea which companies are worth talking to at the fair and which ones are not (thru your own previous experiences, friends, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't take this the wrong way, but from one regular dude to another, both ~20 year old me and the current version of me emphatically do _not_ want to impress someone who seemingly has such a high opinion of themselves.

Like, dude. It's a job. You have what seems like a bog standard middle class existence - just like countless others.

You have a blog post about how you've gone on a single proper holiday in your entire working career, for example.

It feels like you're holding other people to a standard higher than yourself, albeit not in precisely the same categories. I've done it in the past too, and I'm not proud of it.

The Stallman bashing is also completely unnecessary and I wonder if it's in there as a sort of unclear "</sarcasm>" tag.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I just found the post you are referring to [1] and wow it's depressing. At the age of 30 the first real vacation he's ever had is an unpaid 10 week vacation where he had to be prepared to quit-or-else AND pay his own health insurance costs for the gap, and paying to stay on the company health care plan evokes a "woohoo". This is where we've come to folks.

I've worked for a company with a remote development office in Poland, and they get a mandatory 4 weeks plus another 3 weeks or so of paid holidays and a +1 week after 10 years of working (anywhere, including grad school)... so by the time you're in your 30's that's 8 weeks. Every year! And you know what, those guys worked really hard and were plenty productive and we in the US never noticed it because they managed it just fine. [2]

And this is a guy at a presumably relatively well compensated and respected engineering position. Everyone else has it even worse! We're doing great folks, everyone just keep doing what you're doing, woohoo!

[1] [http://cushychicken.github.io/leave-of- absence/](http://cushychicken.github.io/leave-of-absence/)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This whole post really rubs me the wrong way.

College students don't have this privilege, but as an experienced software engineer, if I get a vibe that someone is this judgmental and expects me to sell myself to them more than they sell the opportunity to me, I'm going to pass.

I also think this falls under the common pattern of posts that claim to offer general advice ("wanna impress an engineer at a career fair") when they're really only giving non-generalizable advice ("how to impress ME with my particular criteria at a career fair").

<comment><USER9> > _...if I get a vibe that someone is this judgmental and expects me to sell > myself to them more than they sell the opportunity to me, I 'm going to > pass._

This guy is an EE talking to EE/Comp. E. students; the market isn't as insanely hot for them as it is for software developers. In particular, it's not easy to find an entry level job as an EE or Comp. E. from what I hear.

<comment><USER10> It's true, when I was in school Nvidia gave out tests that people would do and return to the engineers, and these weren't particularly easy questions either, they probably took 20 mins. But they're one of the few hot hardware companies so of course we did it (or tried).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author seems very pleased to experience the power gradient of being surrounded by hungry students looking to join the club.

"You've got a lot of learning to do - minimum nine months - before you even get to working with me."

Such an unpleasant disposition. People who demand humility of others could use a bit of more of it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The people who I knew who were most successful at internships and landing a job right out of college, (not a huge target school like Berkeley or MIT) didn't waste much time with projects and stuff. Their MO was

1\. get any internship doing software after freshman year, even if it's at a noname place which hardly pays

2\. every summer leverage that into an internship at a place with more name recognition and money

From my perspective the best way to stand out at a career fair was always to have prior internships at good places. The people who did those crappy internships after freshman year got the best internships later, then after they graduated usually either went to Google/Facebook/Airbnb or whatever the top startups were.

I don't know what this guy is on about talking so much about confidence or whatever, I get the impression from the article the author is on some weird little power trip lording over these college students.

It's my impression that the way big tech actually recruits at most colleges is to just collect a shitton of resumes, set a target number of interviews, and pick the top N resumes out of that (perhaps with certain demographic goals as well). None of this weird confidence, impress me with an elevator pitch bullshit

<comment><USER10> I've found that confidence and candidate quality aren't correlated particularly strongly. Confidence can be faked easier than programming ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Bitchin" "make that sucker twerk" Really? I think you are mostly letting me know that I don't want to work with your company.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is such bullshit. TL;DR: "Hey - the thousands of hours and thousands of dollars you spent doing good real work and good real learning in university level classes and labs are useless and don't demonstrate your commitment to to engineering. Show me some shitty youtube video you did on a lark and you're in!"

You're also filtering out people who aren't privileged enough to burn Mom and Dad's money outside of class on their radio shack electrics hobbies. I can only assume that is intentional.

I'll take the student who did well in class and has a life outside engineering. I'll take that student every time.

<comment><USER15> I was thinking the same thing. I was definitely someone who had a lot of free time to do extra stuff, so maybe this is just my guilt speaking, but I had a lot of friends that had 0 free time between class, work, and/or family obligations. If anything, they were way more dedicated than I was, because going to college was already a major obstacle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the write-up has some useful information, but it comes off as pretty patronizing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Has anybody ever been hired via a career fair in tech? I did once but it was purely luck as the manager was interested in a specific skillset attached to a third party API. I worked with that API directly in a previous job so there was instant connection. The hiring manager told me the majority of time they get zero hits as they're just collecting resumes and binning them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Protip: Show off software engineering, collaboration, initiative, and problem solving. Don't worry so much about computer science as such other than the baseline expected of all graduates.

Exception, of course, if you're specifically applying to a role (re)implementing bloom filters or something.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Body odor or halitosis are a no go. I don't care how smart you are - I don't want to enable future Stallmans. Though if you think you're a future Stallman, not showering is the least of your problems.)_

Is there some new trend of shitting on RMS this week?

I realize he might not be perfect but I don't being disrespectful to the man who started GNU as the right thing to do.

<comment><USER2> It just feels so pathetic. There was no need to mention him, the article was not about him, but such is the magic of mob mentality. Even those who would otherwise be on the sidelines feel compelled to join with their clubs and spears.

It feels all the more pathetic when tom-dick-harries of the field do it. Like, you probably owe the existence of your career path to giants like him. Have some humility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is solid advice.

When I was younger, I didn't have to do anything particularly special to get job/intern interviews at IBM Almaden, MIT Lincoln Labs or Trimble Navigation. Master your craft to an obsessional level, follow-up with any expressed interest or requests for data/CV and show curiosity by asking good questions.</comment>


Germany Says Nerve Agent Novichok Found in Russia's Navalny - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/09/02/world/europe/ap-eu-germany-russia-navalny.html <comment><USER2> For reference, here is the original statement by the German federal government:

[https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/news/statement-by- the...](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/news/statement-by-the-federal- government-on-the-navalny-case-1781882)</comment>


ITA Emerges from Google's Shadow, Unveils New Airline Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/03/01/ita-software-emerges-from-googles-shadow-with-new-airline-platform/

<comment><USER2> I'm particularly interested to see how the airlines react to the re-emergence of ITA and its new airline platform. For years, airlines have essentially had one choice in reservation systems: Sabre. Sure, there are other systems, but none of them offer the functional breadth that Sabre provides -- including ITA, of course. But where it may get interesting is that, according to a colleague who works at Sabre, many of their customers are growing increasingly frustrated with large numbers of unaddressed bugs, lagging system response time, and overall system instability. Some airlines may decide they've had enough and jump to ITA, and even if ITA isn't successful at wooing away some of Sabre's customers, hopefully the new platform will at least spur Sabre enough to improve its aging product offering.

<comment><USER3> Do Amadeus and Travelport not also host airlines? And there is HP/EDS who also host some major airlines. Plus SITA, which hosts many smaller airlines.

Regardless, all of these systems are very ancient. It's refreshing to see a new generation emerge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related: I really like ITA's flight search interface. It does everything I need, correctly.

<http://matrix.itasoftware.com/>

<comment><USER5> Then you're gonna _love_ Google Flights:

<http://flights.google.com>

Powered by ITA's backend.

<comment><USER6> The obvious thing google flights misses over ITA is the month-long search option, which I use a lot. For the power users, ITA has a very useful regex- like syntax for specifiying flight queries, but that is understandably not of as much interest to the vast majority of people

<comment><USER7> I live and die by the "advanced routing codes" on Matrix... see my previous post here:

         SFO,LAX CX,AA,KE F HKG,ICN,NRT ~CZ+ KMG

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3090362>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Partially to spur conversation and partially because I don't remember the details of previous discussions, does ITA still use LISP?

<comment><USER9> When I interviewed there in early 2010 they still used LISP. They said it was mostly because their hires fresh out of MIT wanted to use it, so I don't know whether they will continue to use it now that their MIT kids will no longer want to use it...

<comment><USER10> I imagine rewriting a large code base in any language to be very expensive, I doubt somebody can justify such an expense just because a bunch of new hires don't want to use a language. Companies don't rewrite java apps in lisp because a new of college grads don't want to use java.

<comment><USER11> No matter how much I wish they would...

<comment><USER10> I can't say i disagree with BigCo on this one. If one wishes to use better languages the options are to switch jobs, start your own company or stay, but push to augment the existing codebase with other JVM languages. Clojure and Scala people have had some success starting skunkworks projects. But a complete switch? In most cases thats insanity. Companies have actually died trying to rewrite their apps from scratch. And even a slow gradual rewrite might take too long and be too expensive, not to mention not bringing any immediate benefits, because you're not adding new functionality and fixing existing bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Google should just experiment and dabble in every single niche in the internet field.. just push the envelope. Start a dating site to compete with Match. Start an auction site to compete with eBay. Start a ticket exchange to compete with StubHub. Just throw a bunch of stuff in the wall, and I'm sure a new billion dollar business will emerge.

<comment><USER13> This was the strategy that they with Schmidt. Page changed it and shut down a lot of products to focus on the company core. The shotgun approach seldom works in business. It is better to develop and nurture cash cows.

Personally, I think that they should focus in the search field to stay ahead of the curve and prevent a competitor from introducing an iPhone caliber product that would make them look myopic like Blackberry. They used to claim that search was a 99% solved problem. I don't think that me looking to a list of blue links is 99% solved problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amadeus employee here..

Indeed one of the largest issues we face is not just building a new reservations, inventory, departure control platform on Linux but having them work in conjunction with our legacy TPF systems. Newer airline systems don't have this problem and have complete degrees of freedom. Interesting to see a new reservations platform and not just flight search coming out into the wild.</comment>


Edible Electronic Birthday Cakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98184828

<comment><USER2> How exactly is carbonating fruit an "Edible Electronic Birthday Cake"?

<comment><USER3> Huh, when I hit the link it was: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9790953...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97909534)

<comment><USER2> Odd... I'm getting linked to: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9818482...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98184828)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Homaru Cantu at the Moto restaurant in Chicago does some stuff like this. He offers "fresh squeezed, orange soda" at his place in addition to donut soup and dehydrated peanut butter. Check out this video at Pop!Tech.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2iuOf76BSg>

</comment><comment><USER3> Go Pat! Congrats on the success of the book!</comment>


What platform to use to build a how-to site with user content and moderation? - <AUTHOR>

I have a CS education but consider myself a self-taught programmer (whoever said CS taught you programming!). I have a (novel :) idea for a how-to guide for a niche area that I feel has been largely ignored. Mainly original content, with an ad-based business model.
What platform and technologies would you recommend to get a site up and running quickly? I need an easy way to write articles, have other editors write articles AND allow users to submit/contribute to articles + comment. Small item, but also need directory structure to be hiearchical so that it appears like http://domain.com/category/topic/
I am comfortable with PHP, AJAX, CSS, etc. but would much prefer a turnkey system so I can get to producing content quickly and less time on coding. Considered Wordpress but feel that may not provide the required feature set...of course I may be wrong. Need something similar to what drives ehow.com, mahalo.com How-to's etc.
All ideas welcome, thanks. <comment><USER2> There are forum plugins for Wordpress. That might give you some of the features you are looking for. I have not used them myself, but I know they exist. If you know CSS and PHP, you should be able to mod something to get the feature set you need. If you want something that goes up quick so you can generate content, Wordpress is the way to go.</comment>


Someone Is Spreading a Massive Google Doc Phishing Email Right Now - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/massive-gmail-google-doc-phishing-email <comment><USER2> Very sophisiticated indeed, _eyeroll_.</comment>


Ray Kurzweil for President (Seriously?) - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/12/ray-kurzweil-running-for-president-seriously/ <comment><USER2> He'd be a more credible candidate if he ran in 2112.

<comment><USER3> I propose a Constitutional amendment to make this automatic; if both he and the US make it to 2112, we hold no election and just name him President.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well you can't say he lacks vision.

</comment><comment><USER5> The US president really has fuck all power to change anything, the poor man would wither and die under his innability to do anything.

I vote IBM's Watson for president AND for every public role, ALL politicians are bent IMHO

</comment><comment><USER6> No. He'll pass a law requiring us all to be cyber-converted. Whether the tech is mature or not.</comment>


Why Facebook Needs Big Money - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/09/27/why-facebook-needs-big-money/ <comment><USER2> I'm no lawyer, but this seems absurdly far-fetched. Facebook needs $300-500 million so that it can pay legal costs? Cuomo's investigation seems much more like the kind of stupid headline-chasing that politicians do every so often than it does a case likely to cost Facebook nine figures.

This ridiculousness of monster valuations and such is much more about Microsoft than Facebook. For Facebook, giving up a mere 5% for $300-500 million isn't, as they say, a choice--it's an IQ test. The money is great, but they don't _need_ it for anything but general security. Explaining why they're after it is like explaining that a lottery winner is planning to pick up his check because it'll help him pay for his house. True, but not really relevant.

<comment><USER3> One danger though is that Cuomo may be incompetent and reckless. He's filling a position vacated by the enormously popular Eliot Spitzer, who won the race for Governor in a landslide. He may be trying to do the same thing without Spitzer's sensibility..</comment></comment>


Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/index.html <comment><USER4> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14323762)

</comment><comment><USER5> More on the "scrollytelling" they used here: [https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-implement- scrollytelling...](https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-implement- scrollytelling/)

I personally found it a great way to tell the story. It didn't interfere with my reading experience at all.

<comment><USER6> Yup. It doesn't make my scrolling janky or slow, it just works. Not tried on mobile yet, however.

<comment><USER7> Works just great on iOS 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think Rihanna's _Umbrella_ takes repetitiveness to its endgame pretty thoroughly...

I wouldn't immediately blame artist dumbing-down for this phenomenon, if it exists at all, but I think it's more a producer thing where looping and morphing cool lyrical snippets, along with deep rhythmic beats, creates a satisfying modern musical experience.

<comment><USER9> Rihanna pushes the boundary even farther in "work". I think there might even be a level of snarky self-awareness with the way she just dissolves that one word into a group of repeated noises.

The production is the legacy of max Martin and dr. Luke they have it down to a science.

<comment><USER10> Repeating the word "work" does has a more poetic utility as a depiction of working. Even allowing the pronunciation to devolve can be interpreted in this way.

I think you are right that it is self aware. It can get quite meta if you read it as her depicting the mundane nature of work as her... work.

Thanks for making me think about that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clicked on this not expecting much ... wow. Detailed analysis and an absolutely beautiful format for the information. I'll definitely be bookmarking this site.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a fun analysis. One of the flaws with comparing only lyrics is that there are some songs for which lyrics are not the source of diversity in the music. For example, Send Me On My Way is very repetitive in its lyrics but has lots of non-lyrical diversity in the vocals. Turn Down for What is very repetitive in its lyrics, but the vocals aren't the melody. This analysis speaks to the following trend in music: how simple are the lyrics?

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think you should think of dance music vocals as lyrics in the traditional sense. They're as much about sound and texture as they are about meaning.

<comment><USER14> Nor rap, as it doesn't generally have a verse/chorus structure. Claiming it's not music aside, fans tend to describe it more as poetry, which is generally non-repetitive.

I'm guessing it would be extremely repetitive for poetry though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would be interesting to know whether repetitiveness of lyrics affects international sales vs English speaking ones.

I would expect native speakers to be more sensitive about lyrics complexity then others - and international people might even prefer simpler lyrics due to them being easier to understand.

</comment><comment><USER16> What a great, refreshingly non lazy article.

<comment><USER17> Presentation was exceptionally well done, I would pay for more content like this!

<comment><USER18> Hit their index for lots more great stuff. This is at least the third of their pieces I've come across and I've been impressed each time.

[https://pudding.cool/](https://pudding.cool/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> repo is here: [https://github.com/polygraph-cool/song- repetition](https://github.com/polygraph-cool/song-repetition)

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe some change is coming ... this song just won Eurovision (European Pop music competition) yesterday:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qotooj7ODCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qotooj7ODCM)

</comment><comment><USER21> This confirms research done by Joan Serra et al., reported in [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-music- idUSBRE86P0R...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-music- idUSBRE86P0R820120726) (original paper: [http://mtg.upf.edu/system/files/publications/srep00521.pdf](http://mtg.upf.edu/system/files/publications/srep00521.pdf)).

Both analyses show that the music of 1967 was the most varied of the period studied.

</comment><comment><USER22> For those interested in this topic, I highly recommend "The Song Machine", by John Seabrook. Music is no longer written by single songwriter-singer, it's manufactured on an assembly line to optimize for 'hits'. Hits are to record labels as unicorns are to VCs :)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/the-song- mac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/the-song-machine-by- john-seabrook.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Another classic from this site from a few years ago which showed the range of lyric vocabulary in hip hop.

[https://pudding.cool/2017/02/vocabulary/](https://pudding.cool/2017/02/vocabulary/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Would it be possible to assess the musical repetitiveness by doing this type of analysis on midi versions of the songs?

I'd also be curious which songs were the least repetitive for each decade.

<comment><USER12> You can do this, but probably not with midi because it would be hard to find. Check out Echonest. There are ways to pull immense amounts of audio information out of songs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So the only thing I see lacking in this is props to Knuth. His intuition seems to have been right on the mark.

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting that they only go back to the 60s - lyrics in the 50s were very simple and repetitive.

<comment><USER27> I don't think it really matters which decade is looked at, as the underlying principals are the same... Music to dance to is almost certainly going to have simpler lyrics. That was just as true with the Rock And Roll in the 50s as it was with the Pop-Dance tracks of today.

You can pick popular tracks to dance to from any decade with simple lyrics:

50's: Tutti Frutti - Little Richard [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F13JNjpNW6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F13JNjpNW6c)

60's: Cold Sweat - James Brown [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8f4s9fm- CE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8f4s9fm-CE)

70's: Rock and Roll - Led Zeppelin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bv_ALKkTjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bv_ALKkTjQ)

80's: I Feel For You - Chaka Khan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9E44mClKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9E44mClKs)

90's: Tubthumping - <USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkmIyC6v00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkmIyC6v00)

00's: As The Rush Comes - <USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGH8rnraxoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGH8rnraxoE)

10's: Get Lucky - Daft Punk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EofwRzit0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5EofwRzit0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow this presentation is great. Anyone know what visualization libraries are used here?

</comment><comment><USER29> I would expect an n-grams approach to be a better measure.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't be the only one that finds it hilarious that there is a duplicate article about repetitive pop lyrics.</comment>


Show HN: NowTube, perfect YouTube playlist for your activity (or mood) - <AUTHOR> http://digibox.info/created/nowtube/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty sweet assane101!

I've only been playing with this for a little while. I love how you already had in mind that this would be used on the phone, so that the controls at the bottom can interact.

I'm sure those may be easy to implement, but its nice that you had that fore- thought.

Is this just a hobby project, or do you plan to expand upon this idea?</comment>


Paul Graham Says Y Combinator Is Pickier Than Ever, 'Hardly Any' Bad Startups  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/paul-graham-picky/

<comment><USER2> _"There are hardly any startups in this batch that are bad," Graham said._

I believe one of two things about this statement, neither of which is what pg likely meant by it:

1\. YC has bad startups it just hasn't recognized yet.

2\. YC has an entirely mediocre batch of startups due to not taking any risks on "bad" startups.

<comment><USER3> Or he was attempting what hu-mans refer to as "humor" :-)

<comment><USER4> A better alternative than what hu-mans refer to as "hue-less."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this really the right approach? I remember PG writing that if YC were truly rational they should have a _bigger_ proportion of failures (because they should be taking much "riskier" ideas, because of the power-law distribution of outcomes).

<comment><USER6> This is a good and interesting question.

Since YCombinator depends on finding Dropbox and AirBnB scale startups, I imagine one of the most important metrics to them is whether they've rejected a business that went on to achieve that scale.

Of course being in YCombinator can increase a venture's chance of hitting that type of success, so keeping track of who they rejected is just a proxy for how well their applications strategy is. They may have rejected a company that _could have become_ AirBnB or Dropbox. But this is less important since in this case that would indicate that this ability lies with YC, not the startup, and so it's less important which companies they pick. If true, this would run counter to the founder-centric model they profess, so I'm skeptical it's how they feel.

This question of who to let in reminds me of the tradeoff of precision and recall in IR. A large class can reasonably be termed higher recall, while a class where they actively exclude companies with predictors of failure increases the precision. THe two metrics are inversely related, but it's possible to have high precision and recall if you're only looking for a very few number of things and you pick them all.

It seems to me that culling out likely failures would only make sense if the partners had determined that the presence of these likely-to-fail companies negatively impacted their ability to help other companies reach their potential. This seems a likely rationale to me based on PG's comments about how dying startups take up so much of their time.

So what it really seems to represent is a vote of confidence in the partners' ability to help startups increase their chance of massive growth. And/or a recognition that likely-to-fail startups have deleterious effects on the rest of their batch that outweigh the likelihood that they'll be successful outliers. Either way it doesn't seem to have much impact on companies that apply.

It will be interesting to see if PG writes a How Not to Apply essay. Such an essay might destroy the predictive value of these behaviors, but if it stops the behaviors and they were causally linked to bad outcomes then it's a net gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's hoping pg writes an essay on what YC thinks the "predictors of failure" are. I'm sure some applicants for S13 are probably panicking, having optimized their application for the "old" version of the YC selection process. I'm not too worried, as we're exceptionally strong on the one data point he's provided.

<comment><USER8> Much like the Google guidelines on SEO, I would imagine pg's response to this would be something like 'the best way to optimize your application is to ignore optimizing your application' and instead focus on building something awesome.

<comment><USER7> He's written quite a bit [0] on what they look for in founders. I'm not talking about pg writing a "How to optimize your app" essay, but literally "Indicators of Failure"

[0] <http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html>

<comment><USER8> Right, you want him to give you more signals about what they are looking for so you can tell them what you think they want to hear - that's the wrong approach. You should instead focus on being awesome and hope that YC recognizes how awesome you are.

The perfect application may look identical to the perfectly gamed application - but the intent is different. And it's a bit naive to think YC isn't really, really good at sniffing out that intent.

<comment><USER4> _> And it's a bit naive to think YC isn't really, really good at sniffing out that intent._

At this point, YC probably has a useful amount of data. I wonder if he's thrown a Bayesian filter at it? One of the things PG noted in his "A Plan for Spam" essay, is that his Bayes filter flagged indicators that he never would have thought of. I wonder what kind of data someone could get from a corpus consisting of YC's data, plus web searches on the applicants?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The linked article (and title) says:

> _"There are hardly any startups in this batch that are bad," Graham said._

But the following [1] says:

> _Y Combinator founder Paul Graham said this he feels like the contracted > size of this class means that there are essentially no weak startups in the > bunch_

There's a huge difference between "hardly any bad startups" and "essentially no weak startups" so it seems someone at techcrunch is misquoting pg.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator- winter-2013-de...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/y-combinator- winter-2013-demo-day-batch-1/)

<comment><USER10> Hey, I'm the writer who wrote the second example cited here -- very good point in showing the difference between the two, so I wanted to try and clarify.

When Graham said the "hardly any" line on stage, it drew a pretty big laugh from the audience -- it seemed like a bit of humor on his part. The earnest meaning and connotation I took from that (and comments Graham gave off-stage) was that there were no obvious weak links in this batch.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the additional insight and context for the quote, and your paraphrase. The quote makes a lot more sense as a joke, so it would be good to note that in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And if there _is_ a bad startup -- like one that looks like it's going to run away with customers' money (or at least make them panic about it) -- don't worry, they just clip out any mentions of the YC association.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428449>

<comment><USER12> If that is the best example you can find of this theoretical phenomenon, I don't see why you'd bother dredging up such a load of nothing.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't bother you that "YC 'XX" appears on every article about a nascent company regarding good news, then gits stripped from the title when one of them appears to be dicking over its customers?

<comment><USER12> No, it does not. The (YCwhatever) doesn't even get slapped on _all_ stories about YC companies. There is a rather large difference between the ones it goes on and an attempt to contact the company through HN, and I don't see any evidence that the sole differentiator is positivity.

But even if it were, not including it in the title of negative articles on HN would hardly be the same thing as removing any mentions of their association with YC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "He [pg] said that this time around, YC looked at 'predictors of failure,' not just 'predictors of success.' For example, he said that in the past YC might have chosen a company that had great founders (a predictor of success), but this time it might have filtered that same company out because those founders, while great individually, all hate each other (a predictor of failure)."

The given example implies that YC has chosen founders who don't like each other in the past. Seems remarkably odd and hard to believe IMO. It may have meant to say that the founders seemed LIKELY TO hate each other eventually but if they even disliked each other at the interview, I can't imagine the YC partners being ok with this.

<comment><USER13> I think he was just giving an easy to understand example which didn't really reflect reality. The problem with predictors of failure, unlike success, is that it's a lot easier to hide them once you know what they are. If you know, for instance, that having founders who when asked say they're doing a startup because they hate having a boss, no non-idiot will give that as an answer when asked, even if they believe it, ruining the predictor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I agree. And exactly because of this, I hope pg doesn't divulge into what these 'predictors of failure' are from his perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why the big fuss about saying some startups are "bad"? I'm sure some startups are bad. There's certainly a possibility that some bad startups looked good and made it through the screening process. Other accepted bad startups may have been risky bets that didn't payoff.

I think at least a few people have a problem with the directness and harshness of the statement. But if I was one of those bad startups, I'd appreciate the candor and directness. That would be far preferable to someone being "nice" and allowing me to continue down the wrong path.

Being "nice" isn't really that nice at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is opposed to last sessions where Paul Graham said lots of the startups that just started and he had subsequently just allowed into his program were bad?

</comment><comment><USER16> YC Has ONLY bad startups if Demo day is any sort of barometer. Some will be "successful" for the investors. Ridiculous garbage.

</comment><comment><USER17> So what does he mean by "bad startup" anyway?

Is that a startup that supposedly will hardly succeed?

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah, so the present Silicon Valley bubble is about to pop.

<comment><USER7> People have been predicting the pop for a while now, I don't think that YC being picky (< 2% of applicants make it) is a sign of the apocalypse.

They hit scaling problems, so what? It's not indicative of a larger problem.

<comment><USER4> _> > Ah, so the present Silicon Valley bubble is about the pop._

Note he said "about the pop," and not "about to pop."

<comment><USER18> That was a typo.

<comment><USER4> Oh, I read it as "about the pop" -- that it's about the small percentage of companies that hit it big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of the slogan for the strip club Déjà Vu:

"1000's of Beautiful Girls and 3 Ugly Ones"</comment>


Ask HN: How much would you pay for an iOS app? - <AUTHOR> How much would you be willing to pay for a fully functional iOS app that would be automatically generated by a software, based on your needs. For example, you could add modules such as: login/sign-up, news feed, user profile, photos, videos, etc.
It would be limited at first but would still cover the basics. What would be a fair (MAX) price for you? Even a range is fine since you could add up N features and each feature would have a specific cost.
Thanks <comment><USER2> $500 - $1000. It depends on the complexity of the app...

<comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to mention you'd be able to select colors and themes for the user interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably as much as I would pay for a website that could do the same thing. How much is wordpress?

</comment><comment><USER4> $9 max.</comment>


Amsterdam's canal houses have endured for 300 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/design/2020/01/amsterdam-architecture-history-canal-houses-urban-design/604921/ <comment><USER2> "The canal houses were from the outset combined residences, storage units, and places of business,"

This is covered well in the Strong Towns book that came out recently: [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Strong_Towns/w0WyDwAAQB...](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Strong_Towns/w0WyDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover) (available on Amazon here: [https://amzn.to/2FRT6bA](https://amzn.to/2FRT6bA) or your local library on request).

In the name of 'progress' we've outlawed that kind of thing in most of the US, so now we have to drive pollution spewing vehicles to do even the most basic things.

<comment><USER3> You have it backwards, the availability of pollution spewing vehicles enabled white flight and our current sprawl.

<comment><USER2> Read the book, he talks about a lot of these things. That kind of development is completely illegal in most of the US, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was hoping the article would discuss the issue of the visibly shifting foundations of many of the houses, which most of us find delightful as spectators but must be terrifying for property owners. It's impressive the houses are still here after 300 years, having been built on a bog. Even more impressive how many appear to be in otherwise excellent condition given their lean angle! I have to imagine many societies would have demolished and rebuilt them long ago (boo).

In the same vein, I've also read that the forward tilt many houses exhibit was intentional- to make it easier to hoist goods to the upper floors.

<comment><USER5> People just rebuild everything but the front if the house. Most classical gragtenpanden have modern insides

<comment><USER4> > Most classical gragtenpanden have modern insides

Yes, and many of these beautifully-renovated interiors are visible from the street! (Sorry, Amsterdamer, it's just impossible not to notice when walking by.)

The point is, though, that it appears common for these renovations to be carried out despite egregious settling of a house's foundation.

<comment><USER6> Don't apologize, it's perfectly acceptable and even expected that you gaze into people's houses while passing by. It's a Dutch thing; front windows are large and heavy curtains are rare.

I look in everyone's house when I walk by, and wave at everyone I see inside. I _always_ get a wave in return. My kids count cats on sills. I spend considerable time in my in-laws' front room waving at passers-by, and we've even been known to go out and join someone on a walk.

I've heard it said that the open front window thing originated as a backlash against the heavy curtains that became common during German occupation in WWII. I don't know if there's any truth to that.

<comment><USER7> >I look in everyone's house when I walk by, and wave at everyone I see inside. I always get a wave in return. My kids count cats on sills. I spend considerable time in my in-laws' front room waving at passers-by, and we've even been known to go out and join someone on a walk.

Wait, _that 's_ acceptable? Heck yeah! I'm moving there in May (though I've been a number of times) and that's going to be super awesome and fun.

Of course, getting my wife to reciprocate and not put up a heavy front curtain will probably be impossible...

<comment><USER6> I do see a lot of shear curtains, the sort of light gauzy material that's easier to see out of than inward. Heavy, opaque curtains tend to draw a bit of gentle curiosity, as though the occupants might have a reason to hide their stuff. It's not a big deal either way, but living in a house without a clear front window would be terribly depressing for me.

I bet it'll be easier for your wife to accept once you get to know your neighbors. Most Dutch neighborhoods are intensely pedestrian, and waving through front windows buys you consistent contact with your neighbors for little effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I did a walking tour there the guide said the very narrow and deep form factor of the houses was to do with the way property was taxed at the time. I imagine they're all protected now what with the look of the city being so important for it's tourism industry.

<comment><USER9> Maybe referring to this?

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

> The window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house.

I don't know if this tax was levied in the Netherlands, but I've heard of other towns that developed narrow house fronts to minimise this outflow.

<comment><USER10> Tax was levied on the width of the house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well the article was a bit thin on the why TBH. But indeed one thing I noticed about Dutch houses is the attention to the living room, at the expense of all other spaces. Bedrooms barely as wide as a bed, ludicrously small bathrooms, entrances that are barely an afterthought (unless you count the space to "get the mud off your hoofs" as one.)

Oh, and the cheapness an often obvious design mistakes even in new buildings, mostly due to the boom/bust nature of the housing market: projects grind to a halt during bust, only exploding in a hurried frenzy when the market would happily buy anything as long as it has a roof (leaky.)

<comment><USER12> > Oh, and the cheapness an often obvious design mistakes even in new > buildings, mostly due to the boom/bust nature of the housing market: > projects grind to a halt during bust, only exploding in a hurried frenzy > when the market would happily buy anything as long as it has a roof (leaky.)

I don't agree with this at all. The houses here in the Netherlands seem to be built a lot more solid, better insulated and come with more luxurious features than the houses I've seen in almost every other country in the world.

<comment><USER13> To me that's a very surprising view. Ample space does not seem to be one of those luxurious features, that's for sure.

<comment><USER14> The Netherlands is densely populated. There isn't as much space available compared to most other countries.

<comment><USER15> This is mainly the case in the cities, other area's offer more space that is similar to other countries.

Also Amsterdam is the peak of tiny spaces here. Single bedroom 25 m2, with shared toilet/kitchen for sale can cost you €100.000,- easily.

<comment><USER16> I just checked funda.nl, one of the most popular property websites, and that amount currently doesn't even buy you half that space anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the discussion of the previous article of this series, I posted some stuff about the beautiful public housing in the Spaarndammerbuurt district of Amsterdam, which Michel de Klerk built in the Amsterdam School of architecture.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043056)

</comment><comment><USER18> There is the Herengracht house index which tracks house prices along the Herengracht canal during a long period of time. Its an interesting read, one notices that house prices flucates over time.

Herengracht index [https://hotelivory.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/a-very-long- view...](https://hotelivory.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/a-very-long-view-on- house-prices/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing! Very interesting I wonder where the index would be now since we have experienced another surge in house prices over the last 5 years in the Netherlands and in particular in Amsterdam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A slight (meta-)architectural comment: in the floor plan there is a hall that leads to living/dining room, kitchen, etc. This is lacking in many modern- built houses.

What I find it a strange architectural design choice, especially in areas that experience something even close to the season of winter, where the main door opens out into the main area of the house. It seems to be this is letting out a lot of warm air and blasting the living area with chilled air.

It would better that after you open the main door, there would be something (2-3 steps' worth of distance) that limited airflow:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibule_(architecture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibule_\(architecture\))

AFAICT, this is "130 Entrance Rooms" in _A Pattern Language_.

<comment><USER21> Most new houses in the netherlands do have an entrance hallway. Just not in Amsterdam because square meter price is too expensive.

However I live in a neigbourhood with houses from 1930 in Amsterdam. All of them have a hallway of 1m.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the main reason is that they were well-built centuries ago, and, by the time something really better could be built, the Netherlands was rich enough and fond enough of their looks to not demolish them.

</comment><comment><USER23> I question logic in the article about stairs being narrow because there was a crane. There is a good case it is the opposite way around - that a crane. There was a tax on the width of the house, so having wide stairways was certain to increase the cost or reduce the useful space. My guess is that this led to narrow stairs, which required the crane in order to bring in things like lumber, beds and other furniture. And then windows that would accommodate those items.

</comment><comment><USER24> A Dutch professor created the "Herengracht index" to track the price of these canal houses back to when construction started in 1620.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herengracht_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herengracht_index) [2] [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=598](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=598)

</comment><comment><USER25> A big part of this is that the Dutch capitulated to the Nazis in WWII before they got to Amsterdam. Pretty much every other major city in the area was reshaped by the war, but Amsterdam avoided the major conflict.

Compare with Rotterdam (which was destroyed by the Nazis).

<comment><USER26> Well only Rotterdam was bombed by the Germans. The next city to be bombed would be Utrecht, but then the Netherlands capitulated.

All other destroyed cities (e.g. Arnhem, Nijmegen) were bombed by allied forces in their attempts to drive out the occupying Germans.

<comment><USER27> > All other destroyed cities (e.g. Arnhem, Nijmegen) were bombed by allied > forces in their attempts to drive out the occupying Germans

I initially learned this from Band of Brothers. It doesn't seem to be as common knowledge in the Netherlands compared to the bombing of Rotterdam.

<comment><USER12> In that case I got more interesting knowledge for you: Rotterdam was also bombed by the allies. It's often refered to as the forgotten bombardment: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_bombing_of_Rotterdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_bombing_of_Rotterdam)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A bit off-topic but aren't there two Tesla cars in front of that house? If you look closely, they are plugged into an electric charging station on the sidewalk.

When I lived in the Netherlands a couple years ago, I was fascinated by the large number of electric charging stations everywhere. The highest density in the world, as I recall reading somewhere.

I love the Netherlands.

<comment><USER4> Yes, there are many Tesla automobiles in Amsterdam.

Fortunately, they're greatly outnumbered by the bicycles. ;)

<comment><USER29> Not just Amsterdam, but basically everywhere in the Netherlands. In 2019, 30% of new cars sold in the Netherlands were Teslas [0]

It's mostly due to the very attractive tax benefits the government gives on EVs.

[0] [https://www.autoweek.nl/verkoopcijfers/tesla/](https://www.autoweek.nl/verkoopcijfers/tesla/)

<comment><USER30> Correction: 30 thousand new cars (6.9%), not 30%.

<comment><USER29> You are right, I read that graph wrong

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of the reasons I think no human will ever be immortal is that we can't even make houses live for more than a couple of hundred years in the general case, and houses are objects rather than dynamic systems.

<comment><USER32> I think it is the other way around, a dynamic system is better at lasting long than a static one.

Human bodies are able to regenerate and repair themselves to a certain extend (no single cell in your body will live as long as you). In fact, one of the factors that diminishes our life is a malfunction of our regeneration processes: cancer.

Human body machinery mostly outperforms man-made machinery i.e. there is nor reason to believe that a human heart can beat for ever if we find a way to allow it to regenerate for ever without faults.

Human brains are able to perform medicine which is also a positive feedback loop for how long human bodies can last.

In a nutshell, a dynamic system has a least the chance to reverse or repair damage done to it due to entropy, a static one has not.

<comment><USER33> > (no single cell in your body will live as long as you)

Unless you're a woman who dies before menopause...

<comment><USER34> Well, maybe: [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence- sug...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence-suggests- womens-ovaries-can-grow-new-eggs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That's just proper craftsmanship. As opposed to that, the term "house" means any shitty cardboard box in the US. Which is as intended because the cardboard box vendor makes money with resales each time the weather gets bad.

<comment><USER4> I generally agree with the point you're making, but to be fair, there are plenty of 200-year-old houses in my neighborhood in the U.S., and few younger than 100. And unlike the canal houses in Amsterdam, all were originally built as residential structures rather than commercial, which I think speaks even more highly to their ratio of craftsmanship per cost.

In our case, however, we're lucky not to be sitting on top of a swamp!

<comment><USER36> I think you make the real point. These "houses" were highly overbuilt warehouses for stacked storage of relatively heavy trade goods on multiple floors... with an intentional overhang for winch loading.

But also, houses built before the end of WW II were often built significantly better than now (e.g. with more "European" standards) to last for a century or more. Since then the commoditization and rapid suburban building (and now multi-story mixed use "urban" condos as well) are meant for maximum profit and 30-50 year lifetimes, just long enough for the mortgage to be paid.

<comment><USER37> That sounds more like "get off my lawn" than objective truth. I grew up in a house built in 1914, and almost 10 years ago I bought a brand new house. The new one is built better in nearly all regards.

<comment><USER38> Beyond that, most people are comparing old houses built by well off people vs modern middle class houses. If you look at "middle class" houses built 300 years ago they were basically shacks.

<comment><USER36> At least those shacks didn't 'cost' a $million so the developer's REIT could show 12% returns on quickly degrading crap. At least they have to meet some modern codes, but that doesn't mean they won't fall apart, leak and mold, or burn quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where did your second customer come from? - <AUTHOR>

Tonight I confirmed my first sale for a product that I've been thinking about for a while. The product hasn't been built yet but the customer is keen to collaborate and help me get it off the ground. Obviously the first iteration will be very strongly influenced by this customer's requirements.
I'm keen for this not to be a one-off but I have a limited number of friends whose employers might need this kind of document-generation tool.
If you've bootstrapped a product like this, where did your second customer come from? <comment><USER2> All my customers come from random Google searches.</comment>