10 years of love for Emacs undone by a week of VSCode - <AUTHOR> https://swizec.com/blog/vscode-better-editor-emacs/swizec/7921 <comment><USER2> _" The feature that made me try VSCode for real. You can hover any function or variable, press command, and see its definition in a little popup. Or jump straight to the code."_

Are you fucking kidding me? This is the amazing feature that made this guy _" admit VSCode is a better editor than Emacs"_?

etags, gtags, ctags, universal-ctags, rtags. It really doesn't take much searching to run in those or their integration with Emacs. It's difficult to imagine this guy using Emacs for 10 years and never becoming aware of any of them.

Not to mention the offhand dismissal of the value of the rest of Emacs because of some single feature (which Emacs doesn't actually lack). Everyone's entitled to their opinion, I guess.

<comment><USER3> That was the exact thing that came in my mind first. Here 10 years might just mean the date author first tried Emacs and not the time for which Emacs is the primary editor.

<comment><USER4> All those tags options require a gen tags file step that is completely inadequate and cumbersome

<comment><USER2> That step can be completely automated.

You could also use something like the dumb-jump package which doesn't even require a tags file. It's not perfect, but it suits the needs of a lot of people.

<comment><USER5> ...or you could just use the editor that does what you need out of the box.

Yes, emacs is great but many people will go with less friction.

<comment><USER2> _"...or you could just use the editor that does what you need out of the box."_

If your needs are simple enough that you don't need Emacs, more power to you.

Some people are happy programming in Notepad because it does all they need -- or all they think they need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stuff seems to be very easy to get working in VSCode, whereas almost everything is a bit of a faff to set up in Emacs. Getting decent Go support in VSCode took about 1 minute, for example, and the only problem I've found with it is that now I've got to use Go. Emacs on the other hand... well, I haven't even bothered. It's almost certainly going to be a complete bind. (And even if it isn't, my statement is worded in such a way that I'm actually still right.)

Once you've been using VSCode for a while, though, you'll start to wonder just why you can't move that stupid sidebar to some other place on the screen.

Or maybe you'll wonder why you can't see its individual components in different windows. Why are they all stuck as like tabs of the same panel?

Come to think of it, why can you only split the editing window twice?

And considering it's all driven off a dynamic language, how come there's so much damn boilerplate when it comes to writing an extension? And where's the in-editor JS REPL akin to M-: or the scratch buffer? (Actually, now I've even asked that question, I'm sure I've just missed something obvious, because there _has_ to be one, and it _must_ be there.)

Don't even get me started on how to share configs between multiple systems... (there's an addon that'll upload them to gists but there doesn't seem to be any way to have system-specific configs, something that Emacs solves inherently because its config files are just Lisp code)

Also, VSCode doesn't work properly with my favourite font on Windows.

And I'm not going to mention org-mode.

<comment><USER7> > "where's the in-editor JS REPL"

Can use Code Runner for evaluating JS in a REPL...

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=formulah...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=formulahendry.code- runner)

Can also use the Shell Arguments feature of the Integrated Terminal to start up a JS REPL when opening a new terminal window...

[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/integrated- termina...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/integrated-terminal)

> "there doesn't seem to be any way to have system-specific configs"

Just use Git, and only clone the repos for the system settings you're interested in using. So, if you have a Git repo for VS Code settings on PC 1, don't clone it on PC 2. Not that hard is it.

> "And I'm not going to mention org-mode."

I think you just did. It looks like someone wanted to implement it in VS Code ( [https://github.com/jsonreeder/vscode-org- mode](https://github.com/jsonreeder/vscode-org-mode) ) but there were issues holding it back from being implemented fully, such as:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3422](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3422)

<comment><USER6> The org-mode reference is "rhetoric". That's the Latin for "#thatsthejoke" :)

Regarding the REPL - what I mean is, run a snippet that executes in the context of the editor. Like, in emacs, you can execute ``(defun fred () (interactive) (insert "fred"))'' from the scratch buffer, and now you've got a new editor command: fred. Run it with M-x (the closest Emacs analogue to the Command Palette). Bind it to a key, maybe: ``(global-set-key (kbd "<f6>") 'fred)''. Good for prototyping, debugging addons, or just writing quick one- off things.

And as for Git, I don't really understand the suggestion. I have a Git repo for Emacs settings that works on all my PCs: Linux, OS X (terminal), OS X (GUI), Windows (non-work), Windows (work). If there's anything that needs to be different on one or the other, I just do ``(when (tom--is-osx) ...stuff...)'' or whatever. tom--is-osx is a function that's something like ``(defun tom--is-osx () (eq system-type 'darwin))'', and so on for the other systems I use. I check for my work PC by examining the hostname.

For VSCode, on the other hand, there's only one settings.json (and it's right out of the way, in some fiddly folder structure that's laid out like there's no real user-serviceable parts inside, which gives me pause - but that's a separate issue). In my case, most of it wants to be the same on every system. Some bits want to be different. I'd also like my plugins list to be synced as well. Doesn't seem to be any good support for that either.

(This stuff is easy to do with Emacs, because Emacs doesn't have a settings file per se, just a file with Lisp commands in it that, when run, leave the system in the desired state. So you can have ifs, along with anything else you like, because it's just code.)

<comment><USER7> > "The org-mode reference is "rhetoric". That's the Latin for "#thatsthejoke" > :)"

I got what you were doing with it (suggesting it in a jokey way as if it wouldn't be fair to even bring it up), I was just using it as an opening to discuss alternative org-mode implementations. Emacs may have the canonical one, but it's not like it's impossible to implement elsewhere.

> "Regarding the REPL - what I mean is, run a snippet that executes in the > context of the editor"

Is that not covered by the Code Runner extension I suggested earlier?

> "And as for Git, I don't really understand the suggestion."

Multiple Git repos, each one covering different system settings. In other words, if you work across two PCs, one Git repo for PC 1, another Git repo for PC 2. Alternatively, you could organise it in the same repo under different branches. If you know Git you'll know what I'm suggesting is trivially easy.

<comment><USER6> The Code Runner looks like it just runs a script and puts the output in a VSCode panel, which is not the same thing. VSCode is written in something that compiles to Javascript, right? So, while you're running VSCode, there's a JS VM that's running the VSCode code. So what I'm missing is a way to be able to run your own code inside the same VM that the editor's code is running in, giving it full access to all the objects and state that the editor's code is in.

You can use this to write ad-hoc extensions that disappear when you quit, or just experiment with the extension functionality. This is typically how you start and then iterate on extensions in Emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Author discovered "goto definition" in 2017??

it will take another 10 years for him to discover that all that code understanding (even more precise!) and 10 times bigger load of useful features were already implemented in WebStorm, for ages.

Ok, anyway.

<comment><USER9> They are implemented in Emacs as well. There is no meat in the article, no proper comparison between Emacs and VSCode

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fellow Emacser here. I tried vscode too for a while.

It's amazingly appealing. Lots of things just works out of the box. For an electron-app it's surprisingly responsive. Clearly good engineering. And to think it's a cross platform, open-source project made by Microsoft!

That said, as an Emacser, I just notice things everywhere where I want/need to _tweak_ and change things slightly to fit my work-flow.

But then you can't. Not at least without a full rebuild-cycle. So that doesn't really work.

After meeting a few issues like that, I was quickly back to Emacs.

It's not as visually fancy or OOB ready. But it has a select few, powerful primitives and full access to adapt everything those provides to suit how you work.

A little bit of fancy is _nothing_ against that kind of power, but I can definitely see how this eats market-share from other editors in the beginner- segment.

</comment><comment><USER11> I used VSCode exclusively while building a Go project, a while ago.

At the time support for this language was mostly offered via Vim and VSCode - Vim is a love/hate thing for me, so I decided to jump in with the cool kids and play with VSCode.

It was pretty great, the Go support was amazing, I was getting the productivity I needed. And then my project grew. And then my VSCode memory usage grew even more. It became clear to me just how bad this Electron deal is.

Maybe one day Electron/JS will grow in a direction that makes any sense when it comes to performance, until then you're better off just using other software - I absolutely recommend anything by Jetbrains, the license is affordable and extremely worth it, they now have an IDE for Go (not fully out but you can grab a EAP that works GREAT). I can't even begin to understand some of these blog posts - People seem to just now be discovering things like GoToDef, syntax checkers, auto tooling... Really? From Eclipse, to Netbeans, to the now amazing software provided by Jetbrains - None of those features are new. I like to try new editors/ides, but if they don't offer these things out of the box (or without minimal dependency management), why even use them? The feeling of lightness that your hardware disagrees with?

<comment><USER12> I dropped PHPStorm for VS Code as soon as I could. PHPStorm (and WebStorm) just felt slow by comparison with VS Code, and that was mid-2016. Sometimes upon opening a project, not for the first time, PHPStorm would just freeze while my MBPro fan spooled up like it was going to take off. I say, "not for the first time," because this same behavior on opening a medium-sized monorepo was absurdly drawn out. When I was using it every day (in 2015) at a workplace where everyone else also used it, opening PHPStorm was something I tried to do only once a day, when I got to work, so that I could use that time to go get breakfast while it struggled with indexing or whatever. That one behavior put me off of Jetbrains products and sent me searching for something better over and over, and it's something that VS Code never does. Of course, once in a while Code struggles with individual files if they're more than a few thousand lines, but it doesn't present as a speedbump I have to navigate every time I open the editor, at least.

<comment><USER11> I have to admit, I open my IDEs maybe once a month (and only when a restart is imposed in me), and while indexing can take a while, I don't get anywhere near to the sort of issues you have, even on very, VERY, large codebases. Different hardware, I guess. Although I can't help but think the situation should be much worse under any Electron malarkey.

<comment><USER12> VS Code doesn't seem to require indexing in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Indeed it's nice we have a free, open source _code_ editor that has true intellisense out of the box. (And that isn't terrible, like Eclipse). It's a good personal growth point realizing that you don't need to solve the problem of figuring out which combination of plugins you integrate into your _text_ editor (like cscope or ctags), and start editing in a _code_ editor that has solved this for you.

<comment><USER14> Honestly, Eclipse is pretty great actually. It does run faster then VSCode. It just needs a better ux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Funny, exactly the opposite happened to me. I have been using VSCode for C++ projects and, after discovering that it had very poor support for the Scheme language, I was practically forced to try out Emacs. A few months messing with it and some new lines on my .emacs file, I just had all my needs fullfilled by it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I once had a Java job which required me to use an IDE. What I noticed is that I became dependent on the auto-lookup features and didn't really learn the codebase until at least a year in.

I use vim, and whenever I need definitions from other parts of the code base I put them all up in multiple panes or tabs. Its not as immediate as the pop ups, but it forces me to go look at that part of the code base. I find I learn the relevant parts of the code very quickly and even remember the most common definitions.

<comment><USER17> Yes, there was a time when I took pride in that too. Then I realized how much more effectively I could use that cognitive capacity if I was applying it where it was best used rather than where my tools forced me to spend it.

<comment><USER18> Any tool or technology requires an investment. It just depends on how much you want to spend on it. You do not need to be an emacs guru to use emacs. Just learn the basics,downloads some pkgs, use what other people already built for you. Hell I never ever wrote a line of elisp but I am able to glue things together so It does what I want.

But you are right if a tool is just as good in its default configuration then it's harder to justify the investments to learn another one.

On the other hand Emacs has been here for dozens of years and it still mostly works and behaves the same. )

<comment><USER4> What if I don't _want_ to make that investment, because otherwise I have to make 1000 investments for glue code projects

<comment><USER19> That's quite an exaggeration, there's already written packages in emacs for lots of programming languages. Just need to add the package to your config.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am an Atom user. Coding isn't my main job, but it is part of it. I really appreciate how cool VIM is and I once spent an afternoon trying various plug- ins and getting something to code with. At least now I can edit files on our Solaris machine and know how to save and exit.

On the other hand I installed Atom and started coding right away. It had a sensible font and colour scheme, a nice file explorer and tab indents four- spaces. But best of all, it does this on Python, SQL, Markdown, HTML, and all the other things I have to dabble in with zero config. Yes it uses a fair bit of memory (I use an ancient Thinkpad T410 with 4GB ram and am doing OK). It also sucks at opening really big files, like log files, but cat, grep, head and tail deal with those anyway. But apart from that it is great. If I could be bothered I would try VScode again to do a comparison, but I have no real need. If my projects ever run to hundreds of files I will get Intellij.

HN loves Electron...

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a name for the phenomenon where someone thinks something pedestrian is amazing simply because they're ignorant of what else is available?

</comment><comment> phoe-krk

        You can hover any function or variable, press command, and see its definition in a little popup. Or jump straight to the code.

SLIME for Common Lisp have had it for a much longer time, M-. works well enough in it.

<comment><USER22> M-. is the key-command to locate source code in Emacs since the early days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That little popup is basically just cscope. It isn't unique to VS/VSCode or even any specific IDE/editor.

<comment><USER24> Isn't cscope only for C/C++?

I hate writing C# or Java in emacs because there's no intellisense/code completion. There exist projects like omnisharp but I've never been able to get it to work successfully.

<comment><USER25> > I hate writing C# or Java in emacs because there's no intellisense/code > completion.

Agreed. The quality of the IDE/tools is such a huge factor in the quality of one's experience writing code.

Can't imagine writing C# outside of Visual Studio or VSCode. Can't imagine writing Java outside of Eclipse.

Can't imagine using anything but vim or emacs for academic coding ( Standard ML, lisp, c, etc ).

But it might be because I'm just used to coding in these IDEs/editors for these particular languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As I write from a Mac that has VSCode running in the background, I'm rooting for it. But then, I'm biased. The VScode team started as a sister team to the Chakra javascript engine team, and I worked on Chakra for a few years. The lead architect for Chakra very early on implemented an emacs editor in IE6 with the old javascript engine just to prove it was possible. It's cool to see the vision that was so clearly articulated years ago coming to fruition.

</comment><comment><USER27> are you sure that little popup is not implemented in some emacs package? i get those little popups when working in edts-mode with erlang..

<comment><USER28> I would say clippy.el, and if Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, it can display a "graphical" tooltip instead of a text one.

Edit: I'm wrong, clippy describe a function in a tooltip, it doesn't show the definition, one should extend it to use something like xref-find-definition (M-.) for the Lisp mode (and for Elisp there is the elisp-slime-nav package).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You used emacs for 10 years and never used cscope?

<comment><USER30> Since he wants that feature to work for Javascript, cscope is irrelevant anyway.

<comment><USER31> Well if he wanted code navigation for JavaScript he could have used tern. It also integrates nicely with company for auto-completion.

<comment><USER10> Or tide, which uses the typescript tsserver-backend for all its code-analysis.

Gives you navigation, refactoring, completion, eldoc etc. Basicslly JS on steroids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Let's now all reference our own favourite IDE that can also go to function definition with one click.

</comment><comment><USER33> You can configure emacs to have practically all the features of VSCode. The problem is that getting there has a high burden to get there .

I was thinking of making a VSCode clone setup for emacs .

</comment><comment><USER34> amazing what can happen when one invests oneself for more than 18 minutes. anyway, welcome to the party.

</comment><comment><USER35> This all said... I think I could really use an in-depth "guided tour of VSCode"

</comment><comment><USER36> I have used VIM since my Amiga. I use VS Code most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER37> starting to think ms has an army of interns whos job is to make ms look "cool"...

<comment><USER7> The killer feature the author points out is something pretty much all modern IDEs have. If you thought the feature was "cool" then I'd recommend picking up any commonly used IDE, it doesn't have to be one from MS.

<comment><USER37> i do not mean the feature -- i mean why the hell is it on hackernews front page?? (a joke i hope)

<comment><USER7> Do you have a problem with Microsoft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Author instead of looking how to solve this particular issue in emacs threw everything away and tried a glorified browser masked as IDE :))

What I have to acknowledge though is that out of the box experience of VScode is like a billion times better than what you can get with emacs or spacemas.

I am not sure about extensibility but I think in the long run VSCode/Atom will greatly benefit from using a language that's just simply more popular.

I'll probably stop using emacs when people stop developing great modes for it. I still hate that out of the box experience (even for installing and activating the pkgs) on emacs is a thing from the past.

<comment><USER38> IMHO out of the box experience does not matter that much from a point-on, because configuring emacs with an existing configuration is very easy. You just need to save your .emacs.d folder and every config you've accumulated over years is there.

The nice thing about emacs is the extensibility, you can very easily write your own modules load it etc. I understand the same argument could be made for VS Code, but I think emacs is here to stay, because Electron can never be as _responsive_ as a native application.

On the other hand it's true that installing emacs packages and getting them working is cumbersome. Maybe, as a community, we need to prepare modular dot files. For example, are you a Go developer, go install Go Emacs. Or are you a web developer Go install Web Emacs etc. Having a set of prewritten configs would benefit Emacs's popularity.

For example my init.el in .emacs.d consists of a couple of lines loading my modules:

      (package-initialize)
      (load-file "~/.emacs.d/melpa.el")
      (load-file "~/.emacs.d/golang.el")
      (load-file "~/.emacs.d/readability.el")

(I see now that there are some prepared configs such as [https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d](https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d))

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's obvious the topic of this post is strategic -- it will drive traffic which helps him sell his content.

</comment><comment><USER40> The best editor is the one you know how to use. This is sage advice!</comment>


Practical Examples of Logical Systems Solved by Z3PY - amit-bansil https://ericpony.github.io/z3py-tutorial/guide-examples.htm <comment> amit-bansil I taught myself to program. Badly. I spend my time doing grunt work. I used to think computer science research was the domain of theorists celebrating toy problems, but, if you look at the 8 queens solution at the bottom of the article, it is difficult to deny that the best of CS is anything less than "a bicycle for the mind."</comment>


Security Chasms of WASM [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://i.blackhat.com/us-18/Thu-August-9/us-18-Lukasiewicz-WebAssembly-A-New-World-of-Native_Exploits-On-The-Web-wp.pdf <comment><USER2> Hey! I helped write this paper. Let me know if you have questions about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, these exploits have very little to do with WASM, and more to do with exploits around the toolchains and code running on it.

<comment><USER4> If you're looking for bugs in WASM implementations, take a look at [https://www.blackhat.com/us-18/briefings/schedule/#the- probl...](https://www.blackhat.com/us-18/briefings/schedule/#the-problems-and- promise-of-webassembly-11219) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17782552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17782552) previously posted a week ago)

Our paper/talk was more about the security implications of using WASM in your stack.

<comment><USER5> Are you talking about bugs or are you talking about inherent security vulnerabilities in the design?

<comment><USER4> Less "inherent vulnerabilities" than "If you're using a memory unsafe language (like C), the protections WASM gives you aren't enough to mitigate every possible vuln you might have had in your C code"

The WASM platform does provide some really cool protections, but it's not a silver bullet, you still need to fix your C code.

<comment><USER6> > The WASM platform does provide some really cool protections, but it's not a > silver bullet, you still need to fix your C code.

I mean, the way you're phrasing it, that's true of every system. IIRC seL4 had a couple bugs where the code _and_ the formal model both got it wrong in the same way, and it therefore passed the proof.

The guarantees that wasm attempts to provide are that it's ok for me as a user to run random code in a wasm sandbox, rather than that code is inherently better at it's internal security by being in a sandbox.

ie. wasm doesn't attempt to make the developer's job any easier, other than making it more likely that users will be willing to run their code.

Like, I don't think my c code is any safer when I run it on a system with a hypervisor.

<comment><USER7> > IIRC seL4 had a couple bugs where the code _and_ the formal model both got > it wrong in the same way, and it therefore passed the proof.

I haven't heard this one yet. How did they find it, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This paper is important. It doesn't point out anything that you shouldn't already know if you're an experienced systems programmer, but may be a good reminder that WebAssembly's sandbox isn't the last word on security. You still need to be on alert for things that can trigger XSS, which can be easier when you have a memory unsafe language like C or C++ in your stack.

There's a good point in there about how node.js is exposed to all these vulnerabilities too.

</comment><comment><USER9> Who had abbreviated WebAssembly as WASM? I know I know nobody use Watcom assembler (wasm) now, but still.</comment>


IPhone + TSA security-fail combo - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/03/iphone-tsa-security-fail-combo/

<comment><USER2> In addition to pointless, the iPhone most certainly can be setup to lock when you hit the sleep wake button.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm new to this site, but how does someone ranting about a problem that doesn't exist end up on the front page? It's not a problem with procedure, the guy just doesn't know how to use his phone. Maybe he'd be better off reading a manual instead of immediately posting his complaints on the internet.

<comment><USER4> this was upvoted so quickly because it is jwz, a man famous for his anger and rants - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jwz>

This was not a good one, in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> Ah, thanks for the explanation and link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is, at least for now, a rather pointless rant.

You can turn your phone off completely. I don't know what he means about "burns battery for the 5 minutes it takes to boot up", but my iPhone boots up in about a minute (I'll admit I haven't timed it, but it's WAY quicker than 5) and I never notice significant battery drain.

Also, it's pretty rare that you go past the TSA doc-checker drone and through the X-ray in under 5 minutes. So, just leaving your phone alone (tossing it in your bag) after you do the boarding pass scan would solve this "problem" for 99% of the common cases.

In the scenarios where you DO go from doc check to all the way through security in under 5 minutes things are usually so light at the check-in line that it is pretty easy to keep an eye on your stuff, and any handling of it that the TSA agents may be doing.

<comment><USER6> Another solution is to simply put the passcode requirement to "Immediately" just before going into the line. It is annoying, and I'm glad jwz pointed it out.

Disappointing that we have to worry about security drones going through our email/personal records. TSA sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> first world problem?</comment>


The Secret History of Silicon Valley, Part 4 - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/04/13/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-secret-history%E2%80%9D-part-iv-undisclosed-location-library-hours/

<comment><USER2> No. The book was the summary of the course notes from the Berkeley/Haas Business School Customer Development class. The stories attempt to add some color to the book.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow... Does anyone know if his book is similar in style? Very entertaining...</comment>


TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11 <comment><USER3> Good riddance. I cut the cord about a year and a half ago and replaced my cable box with a Roku box. There was a brief period where I missed the background noise but now I find broadcast/cable television unbearably grating. Frankly I think the cable companies brought it upon themselves with the constant loud commercial interruptions, the garbage programming, and the utterly miserable cable box interfaces.

<comment><USER4> I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been using Apple TV for Netflix.

TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.

<comment><USER5> > TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully > annoying.

The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or more insidiously 'your parents should buy you junk-food, because that's what happy, normal families do'). I actually saw one today which discouraged you from asking your friends for help, apparently it's better to pay the company to do repairs than go through all the hassle of having to repay a favour. These sort of campaigns beggar belief, either they are ineffective, or they must surely do serious collateral damage to shared values.

<comment><USER6> Shoot, I hope my thumb hit the up arrow. Sorry if not.

But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TV still has plenty of life in it. Be careful of those graphs with a non-zero y-axis minimum.

But there is a shift happening. The biggest question to me is whether brand advertising dollars are/can/will shift with it. We need new ad products. Especially ones that will reach younger audiences who avoid current ad products. Maybe opportunities for Snapchat/Twitter.

Also, content production is going to see some challenges without large amounts of ads to support it. I think there's still --on average -- a big gap in budget, revenue, audience, and quality between successful online-only shows better suited for YouTube and near-filler content on niche cable networks that have managed to stay alive with advertising. Cost of content production is still quite expensive. House of Cards had a $100 million budget to produce 13 episodes. Shows need a lot of audience to make the numbers work, and I'm hoping we see some acceleration here.

<comment><USER8> TV is in its heyday. Dramas are at the highest quality they've ever been.

The _protocol_ , cable (and satellite), is dying. Almost nobody in my age range, or younger (late 20s), has cable. Everyone has Netflix along with some other streaming services combined with iTunes purchases and such. If you want to watch live sports, the NFL is free over the air, you'll just miss out on the NBA (oh well).

Cable television has no reason to exist. Get rid of it and use the bandwidth for streaming. I just bought a TV after not having one for half a year, and briefly considered getting Time Warner. After seeing what they charge for the basic service, along with $16/month for the "equipment rental," why would I bother? Life is better without cable anyways, the garbage on there just stresses me out and makes me hate our society! You do _not_ need CNN, my life is so peaceful not knowing what their talking heads are spewing off about.

<comment><USER9> _> Almost nobody in my age range, or younger (late 20s), has cable._

Are you sure that's not just selection bias? I'm 25 and almost everybody I know around my age does have cable. Some are sports fans (and you miss out on much of MLB, the NBA, and the NHL by cutting cable--the streaming prices for each are extortionate and there are cable-area blackouts for local games), some just really can't be bothered to put up with the delays to get to Netflix or other streaming solutions (for many there is a strong social component to being able to see, and discuss, television programs simultaneously with your peers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Making me turn on the TV at a specific time and date to watch something is such alien notion to me at this point. All of these shows worry about schedules and what's on other networks, but that's eventually not going to matter at all.

<comment><USER11> And that's not all! Insane copyright prevents a lot of people from legally watching popular series. I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series.

So what do I do when I don't get proper service? Piracy - it gives me on demand HQ content.

I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. The next network delivers cheap, on demand HD content worldwide will make a ton of money :)

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series."

You can't buy the box set anywhere? You can download it from iTunes or another legal service? I'm in Europe too (UK to be specific and can do both of those things).

I'm guessing what you really mean is you can't watch it when you want to, you have to wait a little while longer.

<comment><USER12> In Germany the major problem with on-demand and streaming services is that a lot of content is only available in dubbed versions, of course you don't have the problem with Hollywood content in the UK.

If you're like me and don't like dubbed content and have already phased out physical media, there often really is no way of getting the content legally in at least a semi-comfortable way.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "If you're like me and don't like dubbed content and have already phased out physical media, there often really is no way of getting the content legally in at least a semi-comfortable way."

I guess this is my point. If it's available on physical media that seems convenient enough to make it morally wrong to pirate. There is a moral argument for piracy when content isn't made available but when it is available in several versions and someone still chooses to pirate it because it isn't available in the version they prefer that seems indefensible to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I cut the Time Warner Cable cord in Q3 as well.

We have an Apple TV which plays Netflix, Hulu, PBS, Rented Movies, Music and YouTube.

After 2-3 months of us never switching off of the Apple TV HDMI port, I told the kids I was going to cancel cable which they could never find anything of substance to watch anyway and they didn't even put up a fight.

None of us watch sports so there was virtually no reason to keep cable anymore.

What I found slightly disturbing was how hard it is to setup an over-the-air TV setup. It's going to cost about $200 in equipment and another $100 to setup on my roof. It seems almost insane how expensive free TV has become to get. It'll still pay off because we were paying over $100 for TWC; it's just strange to see something that used to be so simple become so complex and I didn't care about it because I thought I would just have cable the rest of my life.

<comment><USER14> Over the air has been exceedingly hit or miss for me also. Even after the equipment the actual delivery seems very scattered. I know in my head that the delivery of digital with correction should be better than analog, but the experience simply is not.

I am not a electrical engineer, so can anyone shed light on why the range for channels on digital is so much lower than it was with analog, also is weather much more impeding for digital than analog?

<comment><USER15> OTA can be tricky because its not as simple as just throwing up an antenna and calling it a day, the system has to be engineered. Check out www.tvfool.com for some great info on properly designing a system. Also, avsforum.com has some great info.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for these links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sort of thing just makes me more upset about youtube. Google has the future of video in the palm of their hands but they don't understand and don't care. Typical of a bloated empire.

I just hope that google doesn't destroy their golden goose merely because they are too incompetent to understand its value or importance.

Edit: Unrelated, I was annoyed by the quality of the "net subscriber adds" graph since it's obviously dominated by an annual signal, so I created a smoothed version (the raw data should be accurate to within ~5-10 pixels give or take): [http://i.imgur.com/ffBzR8g.png](http://i.imgur.com/ffBzR8g.png)

<comment><USER17> > Google has the future of video in the palm of their hands but they don't > understand and don't care. Typical of a bloated empire.

A little more reasoning would be appreciated.

<comment><USER16> Maybe I'll actually write something more substantive on the subject, there's a lot of depth to it. For now I'll just point out that many young creators in video are falling into the youtube sphere of influence.

A lot of independent video producers have switched from using their own proprietary video distribution systems to merely hosting their videos on youtube. The monetization difficulties are made up by the ease of distribution, network effect, and lower costs.

Also, there are a fair number of kickstarter projects where the end result is the creation of videos on youtube (such as Tropes vs Women). Within the Film & Video category on kickstarter many projects in all sub-categories will release their content on youtube and the webseries sub-category is almost entirely youtube projects. If youtube had better monetization models and improved ability to host paid and unpaid content almost all of those projects would host on youtube.

Consider the many musical acts that have risen to fame through exposure or maturation through youtube. Walk off the Earth, Julia Nunes, Pentatonix, and of course Justin Beiber being just a few examples among many.

Consider that Bon Jovi's song "Living on a Prayer" recently made its way back to #25 on Billboard's charts (27 years after release) almost entirely due to the popularity of a viral video on youtube of a fan at a Celtic's game dancing enthusiastically to the song.

(Edit: also look at the importance of youtube in the most widely heard pop music such as Psy's Gangnam Style, LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem, Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know, etc. It's clear that youtube is as culturally relevant as MTV ever was, and that's just a tiny fraction of youtube's influence on the world.)

Or consider the veritable ecosystem of new funding platforms springing up to help creators using youtube to monetize and support their work (such as subbable.com, tested.com). Google's idea along these lines is to introduce pay walls, whereas almost every creator prefers to use more of a pledge drive / premium level model.

Google has tackled the technical bits of web video quite well. They built a system that handles video uploads at greater than 6,000x real-time (over 6,000 seconds of video are uploaded to youtube every second).

Youtube alone is responsible for nearly 1/5th of all internet traffic.

Stop and read that again, it's important. 1/5th of the usage of the entire internet is being dedicated to the use of youtube. And that figure is growing by double digit percentages year over year.

Unquestionably people are increasingly spending their video viewing hours watching content on youtube. And creators are increasingly turning to youtube as their distribution platform.

So yes, I'd say it's fair to say that there's a very strong case that youtube is the future of video. And yet google still treats it as a hindrance, as a second class citizen. As mentioned above creators are desperate for tools to help them support and monetize their video making but they have to turn to 3rd party services to do so. Google has the expertise and capability to offer creators everything they need in a one stop shop. They also have the ability to invest in and support video makers to plant a seed of content creators on their site. And they did, but half-heartedly and without sufficient follow through. It's going to take years until more than a handful of people can support themselves through youtube and even longer before we can see the sort of content that a "youtube generation" of artists is capable of creating. In the meantime such creators have to contend with google making arbitrary changes to youtube for their own petty reasons with little thought for the true potential of what they control.

<comment><USER17> I'm not to sure what you're trying to say but to me it sounds like you're implying that Google owes people who want to create video content a living. That Google should supply tools and a monetisation model to people who want to make a living of making videos. I don't think it works that way. Google does what it thinks is best for them and if the current model is that, than so be it.

You rightfully pointed out some successful acts that have gained notoriety through YouTube, and good on them. They were the top content creators and were awarded for their efforts. YouTube seems to work if the quality of your work is good and outstanding. Personally I think the current model works well. Should all the crap that's being produced be monetizable?

I don't understand the Internet traffic thing. YouTube serves video which naturally takes up a lot more bandwidth than textual content, i.e. Twitter. I understand that YouTube is popular but you can't really measure popularity in bandwidth.

<comment><USER16> Owes? Hardly. But it's stupid for them not to. Someone who earns a living via their videos is someone who is able to continue to do so, which draws in more viewers and keeps the talent within youtube's purview. Also, the more tools youtube provides for monetization and the more money flowing into creators bank accounts the more money youtube can make by taking a percentage, instead of having to rely solely on ad dollars.

The ad market is huge, but the entertainment market is much larger.

Content on youtube, whether it's "crap" or not, should be monetizable if it's capable of being supported. Currently the basic tool that youtube provides for that is a crappy ad system and a tiny cut of the ad revenues. They could, and should, do so much more. They have the opportunity to make their viewers and their creators not just users but customers. They have the opportunity to take a bite out of the multi-trillion dollar worldwide entertainment budget. They have the opportunity to have works of legitimate value (not just viral videos and pop phenomena) find a home on youtube and for youtube to become to be associated with works of quality instead of works of frivolity.

There's already lots of good stuff on youtube, but most of the best stuff is made at a loss. Youtube is perhaps the foremost instructional video publisher in history already, for example, but almost nobody publishing those videos is making a decent RoI on their efforts through youtube.

Web video is a medium and youtube is the apotheosis of that medium. To downplay that medium is as short-sighted as downplaying literature or film. There will be "youtube shakespeares" in the 21st century. There will be web videos that we find as powerful and meaningful as any other form of art (if there aren't already). I can say this with certainty because it relies on the simple fact that humans will always create art in any medium. If you give a man a steel barrel he'll create a steel drum, if you give a man a plastic barrel he'll create STOMP. It's really only a matter of time.

But by the same token, the fewer tools that google puts in the hands of creators and the more difficult it is for creators to make a living off of their creations the more potential will be wasted. Imagine how different the world would be if Elvis or The Beatles couldn't have made a living off of his voice and guitar.

<comment><USER17> It's funny that you bring this up. The only reason Elvis and The Beatles were able to make money is because of the distribution format of music at the time. This distribution format has drastically changed in the past 10 years. Everyone nowadays pretty much streams (and copies) their music which means that music isn't sold in "units" anymore. Hence why the all so mighty record companies were, and are, in such an uproar.

I think it was Mick Jagger who said something like that the time we've lived in was kinda special. There has been no time in the history of humanity where musicians were able to make such amounts of money and those times are pretty much gone. If you're an emerging artist, whether a musician, movie maker or what ever, you're pretty much to par with the troubadours of the middle ages.

Going back to Google, I think Google pretty well understand the ad market more than anyone else on the planet and if there's money to be made they will and it seems that your view isn't aligned with theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The demise of TV in a single chart:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less- time-i...](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in- front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html)

Younger the viewers, less TV they watch.

<comment><USER19> I would be cautious about drawing too many conclusions from that. Younger viewers are also more likely to have school work as kids or college students, and as young adults they spend more time running around exploring the world, seeking a mate, and so on. On the other hand, when they settle down viewing patterns can change. Also, bear in mind that now many current shows are competing with older shows available through services like Netflix; they make less money up front, but the 'long tail' gets fatter for quality or cult shows.

<comment><USER16> But you can see that the trend is downward in each younger demographic. Also you'll notice that the figures from comparable cohorts stay pretty steady over time. For example, the 2011 18-24 figures are similar to the 2013 25-34 figures, and the 2011 12-17 figures are similar to the 2013 18-24 figures. The data from just that chart is not complete enough to follow a particular group as it ages but still it looks like the chart supports the idea that younger folks simply watch less TV and will continue to do so even as they get older.

<comment><USER19> I see your point but don't fully agree. There's only 3 data points for each cohort, and the change seems to be within the margin of error, at that. Have you considered that the year-on-year decline might also be correlated with the modest increase in economic growth over the last few years? This occurs to me because I notice that the older two cohorts (which would have the highest number of retirees) actually show a slight increase in viewership for this year over 2012.

I do think TV is in long term decline, though as I explained in a nearby comment I think that's more to do with the model of TV distribution than production. The subheading on the graph actually acknowledges this (saying that streaming video services are disrupting the traditional pay TV audience model), but the headline is misguided - I'm not convinced people are spending that much less time sitting in front of the TV than before.

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised the decline isn't steeper, although I'm basing that partly on changes in my own viewing habits (n=1) as the selection on Netflix improves - Iwatch about 6 hours of news and 4 hours of entertainment on TV in a typical week, but since rescuing a dog has made it hard to go to the movies, over the last few months we've been systematically working our way through every episode of _Star Trek_ instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think most of the networks stream their shows for a short time on their web sites. At this point I just wonder, why not just cut out the middle-man and get on with it? I'll pay for subscriptions, but not for endless commercials and 490 of 500 channels that I don't even watch. Not for TV shows that have stupid animations in the corner every five minutes. Since the cable and satellite companies refuse to give us the choice we want, we simply choose to opt-out. Once communities start installing their own low-cost fiber and free wi-fi en-mass without the litigation, the last hope of Time Warner and such fossils will be gone. TV isn't dying, it is dead and just too stupid to realize it.

<comment><USER21> It's probably because "we" (the purveyors of such consumption behavior) are still not the majority yet.

With time though... with time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "The old way of watching TV" is dying, and TV itself is just aging, and finding its place among Internet options it seems. It's now just another option among many, but I don't see that as meaning it will "die".

I subscribe to Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Cable TV.

This way of getting entertainment is actually frustratingly expensive.

And to make things even dumber, sometime NONE of these services have what I want without an additional convenience fee. So my wife and I will stop at a Red Box and get a movie for about $1/2, LOL. It's crazy.

When 3 or 4 more $10 per month options pop-up, and everyone is watching some great show exclusive to that service, then what? Things get WAY worse.

Someone needs to start a company where I pay $80-$100 per month, and I get EVERY one of these services streamed through 1 site to every room in my house :) Someone get started, make the deals, get this going, OK. Good luck.

<comment><USER23> > This way of getting entertainment is actually frustratingly expensive.

That's because you still have cable. Dump it and you'll get down to a reasonable cost.

Hulu + Netflix + Prime is around $23/month.

<comment><USER24> Sadly that's still not enough to completely replace cable (the HBO series don't show up there). And even with Netflix and a cable TV subscription, I still find myself torrenting certain things. Sadly, torrenting is just so much easier than most of the legit ways to get shows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The total number of hours watching video is still increasing through. You also have to consider that the cost of production is dropping, and the number of big players in the TV market is still tiny. The huge players are (Disney/ABC, NBCU/Comcast, Time Warner, Fox/Newscorp, CBS/Viacom) and they own an enormous percentage of TV Networks and TV production, both domestically and internationally.

So individual shows rating may be dropping and rating for networks may be going down, but they are spreading their revenues across a lot of the more niche properties. They also make a huge amount from Cable licenses for the whole package of networks to ensure they have as many channels available to viewers as possible.

They are now learning to monetize their properties across digital media, and you will see that growth into online media and consolidation there soon.

I work with major media groups helping them with social media and the growing time-shifted audience, so I've heard a lot of the plans for the future. They see the writing on the wall, and while broadcast and cable might be shrinking, the content creation and advertising around video entertainment will keep growing, of that I am certain.

</comment><comment><USER26> "TV is Dying" isn't the crazy part of this article.

It claims people are chucking broadband subscriptions and using tablets and mobile internet, or more often, just free wifi from Starbucks (or neighbors?).

Fascinating. If everyone dropped broadband, TV, and phone lines into the home, what's that world look like?

<comment><USER27> I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy.

They promise a graph showing in hard numbers that broadband subscriptions are down, but never actually provide one. They just provide a graph showing, as best I can tell, that total customers for cable companies are going down. In fact, they confusingly state that customers are moving from cable with broadband to "telco companies like AT&T and Verizon who offer TV as a package with high-speed internet access."

From the description, this apparently isn't referring to mobile Internet, but AT&T U-verse and the like. So high-speed Internet from AT&T doesn't count as broadband on the grounds that they're a telco.

My best guess is that when this whole article is founded on the strange understanding that TV through a cable provider is the only real TV while getting the same content through satellite or what-have-you is "mobile," and cable Internet is "broadband" while anything from a "telco" like AT&T is a totally different thing. A rise of alternative providers is an interesting story, but it's a pretty different story from the one they're trying to tell here where everybody is just taking their iPads to Starbucks and watching cat videos.

<comment><USER28> Yeah the article is pretty selective in statistics. Time Warner may have lost broadband subscribers, but other cable cos have seen increases in broadband subscribes while television subs decrease. And broadband is MUCH more profitable for cable cos than television because there is no content cost to pay.

On that note, he, and commenters, and saying cable is "killing itself" by raising rates. Subscription rates are actually rising more slowly than the content costs cable cos pay. The content creators are driving this process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I cut the cable TV cord three years ago, when it was costing me over $100 a month. I don't miss it one bit. In fact, when I go over to a friend's house and watch some TV I feel like it's just grating noise.

I have broadband Internet at $35 a month (about 20mbps), Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and Netflix, and I have more than I need. I spend a lot less time wasting time flipping channels and watching commercials. I total about 3-4 hours a week of watching anything on TV.

<comment><USER30> So are all the shows you watch on Netflix purely ones created by Netflix and not ones that came from one of those ... those TV channels?

<comment><USER29> I don't know... and I don't care.

<comment><USER9> It is in your best interest to care, because otherwise these commons get mighty tragic. You are getting content without paying a representative cost of that content. Which is good for you! For now. But be prepared for that to change, and probably sooner than you'd like.

<comment><USER31> I've found content on Youtube by independent productions to be far better than what is on Netflix, so perhaps it is not that tragic. My tastes are probably not representative, but those types of productions are bound to improve as mainstream production quality declines, kind of like we've seen with music.

<comment><USER9> The begged question that mainstream music quality has declined is one of the more curious things I have read in quite some time, to say nothing of the implication that the same will happen with, say, dramatic content.

You may not like, say, Miley Cyrus (I don't), but artists and groups like Daft Punk and Radiohead are quite mainstream, quite successful, and quite good as well. The broadening of what is "mainstream" has added a lot of choice for pretty much everyone and a lot of it is quite good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Who needs stats... my teenage kids pretty much ignore 200 satellite channels and instead watch youtube, read forums and IM their friends.

When they were growing up I allowed them to be bombarded with information - <USER2> on, web access, phones from an early age - and they've developed the ability to filter it quite well and just ignore things that don't interest them.

The only down side is:

"awww dad I didn't get anything done today" "why, son?" "some Internet happened"

<comment><USER33> I don't think TV will ever die because when your kids will be bored with forums, or have nothing on their watch list they will switch on their TV. When TV came, people thought it was an end to the film industry but nothing like that happened. Though, statistically speaking the future seems obscure for television and usage is declining but I am sure something for it will come up that may revive it.

<comment><USER34> My 8 year old has only experienced real-time broadcast television when staying at a hotel, where he was frustrated and perplexed that we couldn't rewind it (he has no clue where the concept of rewinding really comes from). He has always experienced media he can control on YouTube or Netflix. I can't imagine he'd ever subscribe to something like cable in the future. Maybe if TV could associate itself with Minecraft somehow they could reach this cohort, but I suspect it's a lost cause.

<comment><USER35> I went to see the last Batman franchise film last year, which I found horribly boring. I actually had a moment where my hands reached out in the dark for the fast-forward button, which took me by surprise as to how used I am to having those controls now. I'm well into my 30s so I can only imagine how reactive it is for young kids to not have this ability.

<comment><USER36> That's the exact reason why I love the movie theater: no one has any control at all outside of walking out, so everyone pushes their ADHD to the side and commits to the movie for two hours. Once the movie is over, you might still think it was shitty and a waste of time, but at least you gave it a fair shot.

Try watching a slow movie like Gattaca at home, with a dozen devices and apps competing to take your attention away, and see how many people drift off and watch it from the corner of an eye or don't even finish it at all. Does the movie deserve that? Maybe; if only short-form content or frenetic Avengers- like action can hold people's attention from start to finish, then that's how it is. But I, for one, appreciate immensely when people commit fully to something, the way it was intended to, for better or for worse.

And that's why I love the movie theater.

<comment><USER35> I completely agree. For just a short time in your life, you can let go and trust the author with your mind. Having said that, when it comes to Batman 3 my mind was very annoyed (and would have left if it weren't for friends).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> When we stayed in a hotel and my preschool kids were subjected to cable, they were confused and angry. Why couldn't they choose the program they wanted? And on e they found a program that was acceptable, why did it keep stopping? They actually thought we were punishing them with commercials and could not figure out what they were doing wrong. Interesting to see it through their eyes.

<comment><USER30> These were preschool kids right? Confused and angry ... Is that uncommon for preschool aged kids? What other kinds of things can we learn about the world based on these data points ... ? I feel like there is a Malcolm Gladwell book here ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Good at lying with statistics. The plots don't say what the text does. Non- zero y axis makes tiny effects look big. Worst culprit are the age plots, which show retirees watching more tv than young'uns. It doesn't change over time, but text claims youngsters do not do tv.

</comment><comment><USER21> TV may die, but content will not.

TV shows may die, but our need for storytelling will survive.

<comment><USER17> I don't think the article is disputing that. It's about the medium on which those stories are told that is changing.

<comment><USER39> Yet its is important to bring this up. The MAFIAA/government will always manipulate this argument to give the illusion that content and culture is dying. Thus the MAFIAA gets to keep its propaganda monopoly and the government its censorship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The day Netflix signs a deal to stream NFL games is the day TV finally dies.

</comment><comment><USER41> Me: Cancel my TV service. I'm going to watch TV over the internet.

Comcast: OK... Done. We'll miss you as a Comcast customer. Will there be anything else?

Me: Yes. Please sign me up for internet service. I'm going to watch TV over the internet.

Comcast: OK... Done. We'd like to welcome you as a Comcast customer.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is clearly because of pirates and VHS!

Sorry, and on a more serious note, I should hope this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. Moving out a few years ago I ordered a 25/25 fiber line and completely dropped any form of cable/satellite package.

Norway, similar to the UK and probably many other countries, has a "TV Licence" which I still gladly pay, even though by law I am not required to do so as I don't technically have any TV channels in my house. NRK (Norwegian "BBC") provides a fantastic internet service on par with BBC's player, that does _not_ require me to handle the archaic technology that is decoders and their 1990's era hardware running millennium software.

</comment><comment><USER43> Of course it is dying, and I'm glad it is. TV is one of the most obnoxious formats of distributing information, shoving adds in your face without giving you a chance to turn them off or skip them and forcing its schedule onto your limited time.

</comment><comment><USER44> _" Our broadband-only growth has been greater than I thought it would be,"_

One word: Kodak.

(They had no idea customers would turn to digital photography so fast and so completely. World-dominating brand now defunct.)

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd say the opposite is happening, depending whether you use the definition of "old tv" or "new tv". Old TV is passive video broadcast from a central source. New TV is screen video of any size from watch to theater wall. People are spending more time than ever glued to their new screens of any type - old tv, movie theater, game boxes, smartphones, tablets, and newest wearable screens. It is said children are spending less time than ever in history playing outdoors or in sports.

<comment><USER46> Exactly. I don't get folks who say they don't watch TV, but then they prattle on about all the stuff they watch on their iPads and Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Some points from Europe:

Germany is now forcing to pay every household for state TV propaganda, even those who do not own or watch TV.

Greek instead closed state TV stations, because they can not afford them.

</comment><comment><USER48> The cable and phone companies need to realize that they are ip providers only in the future. Either get with that picture or die. TV is moving to internet distribution (has moved for many) and mobile phones are computers with a voice modem that's not really needed. Just compare the audio quality of facetime audio to a phone call to appreciate the difference.

Mind you, what do i know, I gave up TV in 1991 - there's just for more to do on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER49> The Sandra-Bullock movie "Gravity" cost as much to produce as the Mars mission recently launched by India (~ 100Million USD).

Gravity made 500Million USD.

Something does not sit right.

<comment><USER30> Shh ... We are supposed to believe no one goes to the theatre any more because that's the lamestream media or something ... Right, that's the correct echo chamber view?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is why it baffles me, day in and day out without fail everyone speculates Apple are going to revolutionise TV with Apple TV. Television is a dying medium, I download and consume all of my media on my phone and computer. The only time I ever use my TV is when I want to watch downloaded content on a larger screen and copy it to a USB drive to watch on my TV. Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER51> Another interesting aspect of the discussion, not discussed much, is what will the new purpose be for TV?

What I'm getting at is people used to go to movies to see a movie. But thats technologically obsolete and frankly with all the previews and ads and hyper expensive junk food its too offensive to experience. However, movie theaters currently exist, and will exist in the future, solely for younger teens dating / makeout sessions, a social party atmosphere, that kind of stuff. And thats apparently a lower level yet stable and mostly constant line of business.

So what will the TV analogy be after most people no longer watch TV? My guess is sport fanatics (despite the stats showing dramatic declines in watching pro sports). Also I think mindless shovelware while people eat. Propaganda such as religious shows or news reporting? Imagine a world with only three cable channels remain, EWTN, ESPN, and Foxnews.

<comment><USER52> > "What I'm getting at is people used to go to movies to see a movie. But > thats technologically obsolete and frankly with all the previews and ads and > hyper expensive junk food its too offensive to experience"

.... in the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Everyone seems focused on TV shows. I'm not really concerned about TV shows, it's the news I'm interested in.

Granted, the news in TV, radio and most newspapers aren't any good as it stands now, but if we keep moving from TV to on-demand services like Netflix, funding serious news broadcasting will become an issue.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in many European countries, like the UK, Germany and Denmark, the public are required to pay for public broadcasting). This in part is suppose to pay for news and journalists... In reality it pays for crappy talentshows.

Still what's the model for serious news broadcasting going to be in the future? The models that seems to "work" is having a rich sheikh pay (Al Jazeera) or government funded (RT.TV / Press TV / France 24). This doesn't give you the best of news, but then again neither does ad funded news live CNN.

<comment><USER54> TV news grates on me.

Here's a good reason:

[http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of- human-...](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort- one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Heh, we got rid of cable years ago (in favor of Netflix, Amazon, and more and more Hulu+) and when we do see cable, the only channel we seem to watch is International House Hunters on HGTV. It's certainly not worth $60 / month.

</comment><comment><USER56> I am not too worried about the cable companies. They've made the shift from television to Internet and phone just fine.

Television, however, is going through the same metamorphosis that music, retail sales and newspapers are enduring.

I'm not worried about the music industry. They've made the shift from vinyl to cassette to CD to digital, and may owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jobs.

However, newspapers and brick & mortar retail have been decimated.

So the question is, will TV go the way of music? Or newspapers?

</comment><comment><USER57> In Sweden, the Swedish national public TV has simply defined that any computer, be that one without a graphic card or software, is an TV.

So the stats are going up up and up!

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if switching from Analog signals to Digital has contributed to this...

Not only do you have to buy the receiver box, which craps out and has a separate remote and interface, but Digital TV has really really terrible reception. I live in a large metro area and even we have tons of problems with reception, I can't image what it's like for people who live out further.

<comment><USER59> I'd love to see a correlation between this data and the advent of reality TV. I wouldn't even be surprised if part of this decline is due to the incredibly amount of garbage, Kardashian sisters and Honey Boo Boos on air.

<comment><USER58> Hm, you may be onto something. It might just be the overall negative tone that TV brings into the home. Negative news, scare techniques, negative culture, negative morals. If people feel like TV is making them unhappy or destroying their family values they're obviously going to leave TV. Same thing goes for the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> With the NBA and NFL starting to allow online streaming of their games, I am seeing less and less reasons to keep my cable. Netflix, Hulu, NBA League Pass, and NFL Sunday Ticket would cover 90% of my cable consumption. The other 10%, HBO, is rumored to be considering a standalone subscription service.

</comment><comment><USER61> The bit at the end about people "cutting the cord" on broadband and going to free wifi rings... not just false, really, but simply ridiculous. To a reasonable approximation, nobody is relying on Starbucks (or whatever) for their Internet access - that's simply not a substitute.

</comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.scribd.com/doc/140433670/TV-Consumer-Freedom- Act](http://www.scribd.com/doc/140433670/TV-Consumer-Freedom-Act)

This is a crazy law to even propose, but the idea behind it should be considered by the cable industry hard and fast.

</comment><comment><USER62> Do you think that, if there is a tool that scans all channels through looking for something good to watch, things could be better?

<comment><USER63> We already have that. It's called TiVo Suggestions.

People aren't cord cutting because they can't find anything good on. People are cord cutting because their cable bill is too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Been without cable since 2004..haven't missed it a day...on the other the productivity boost is priceless.

</comment><comment><USER65> I trust these stats because i dont immediately see conclusive proof of the simplistic headline.

</comment><comment><USER66> TV is unbearable after abstaining for a few years. The non-stop Viagra ads! Who would let this trash into their house?

<comment><USER30> Because of ads? Isn't that only thing that makes these weekend projects that are basically yet another photo sharing app worth billions of dollars??

<comment><USER14> Except most of the users of those weekend projects do not pay $100 dollars a month to access the site, and then still have ads everywhere.

<comment><USER30> I think the idea there is people would rather see ads than pay the mi h larger sum that would be required to fund those shows without ads ... Funny thing, economics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I used to watch a fair amount of TV, now I have three young kids and watch less than an hour per month. I wonder what I actually got out of those 30+ hours a week of watching television. What a waste of life. how many people on their death bed say... I wish I had watched more television. Some people are going to spend 1/4 of their life watching television. Seriously? think of what you could have done with that time.

Online gaming is becoming as much of a time drain. It at least does not have as much of a social, political and interpersonal agenda as television (though it does warp you mind in other ways) but still, what a waste of precious life.

What would the world look like if television was gone tomorrow. No more marketers and hidden agenda writers and directors programming your mind subtlety.

What happened to board games? getting together with family and friends to socialize? I would like to see numbers on what television, media, and gaming has replaced (as far as time spent). Eventually, humans won't even act like traditional humans. All social skills and collaboration, perhaps even empathy one day will be far diminished or lost. Our very humanity.

See how much your demographic watches (or is influenced/brainwashed by): [http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less- time-i...](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-10-21/less-time-in- front-of-the-tube-threatens-pay-tv-model.html)

</comment><comment><USER68> Never grew up with a TV, won't ever know what it's like.

</comment><comment><USER69> Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!

</comment><comment><USER51> One truism of humanity is if you free a person, they try to enslave themselves as hard as they can. Sounds dumb, but its a wise observation of an older guy. Applied thru all aspects of life.

Anyway the relevance to this discussion is as TV dies out, what will be the analogy of the Janet Jackson superbowel half time show? Who will legions of mindless drones mail (email?) complaints to, regarding reddits gonewild showing about 3 square inches more of flesh than you'd see at a beach or the mall? Who will the super-conformists conform to if their holy altar of worship, the TV, goes away?

I guess what I'm saying is a darling of the censored neutered content biz is dying, but that doesn't mean weirdos (or prudes or whatever you want to call them) are going away any time soon.

So aside from this interesting and overlooked observation, whats the likely result of the final death of government censorship? Or will it be the final death...

<comment><USER70> It will be interesting to watch, for sure. Informing weirdos and prudes that their opinions are irrelevant and they don't matter is one of 4chans specialities. So I'm definitely looking forward to it 20 years down the road.

The tide seems to be that, all things considered, the internet will have free speech. Actual, real free speech.

<comment><USER51> "Informing weirdos and prudes that their opinions are irrelevant and they don't matter is one of 4chans specialities."

Its hard to imagine politicians not pandering to the prude weirdos or neopuritans or whatever they call themselves and instead embracing 4chan or reddit (or HN?) culture, but maybe its inevitable?</comment></comment></comment>


Learning Golang – From Zero to Hero - <AUTHOR> https://milapneupane.com.np/2019/07/06/learning-golang-from-zero-to-hero/ <comment><USER2> This[0] is the best way I've seen to learn Golang. It's exactly what _I_ needed to make things stick and make sense.

0: [https://quii.gitbook.io/learn-go-with- tests/](https://quii.gitbook.io/learn-go-with-tests/)

<comment><USER3> I have to second this as well. What's even better is if you require more detail on a subject, there's often a link to another well-written, detailed Go article.

</comment></comment><comment> irq-1 > With a buffered channel, the receiver will not get the message until the > buffer is full.

This is wrong. [https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#channels](https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#channels)

> Receivers always block until there is data to receive. If the channel is > unbuffered, the sender blocks until the receiver has received the value. If > the channel has a buffer, the sender blocks only until the value has been > copied to the buffer; if the buffer is full, this means waiting until some > receiver has retrieved a value.

<comment><AUTHOR> The statement was misleading. Thanks!, it has been corrected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote this post about learning Go: [https://getstream.io/blog/go-1-11-rocket- tutorial/](https://getstream.io/blog/go-1-11-rocket-tutorial/)

We switched from Python to Go over 2 years ago and it's been an amazing improvement in terms of performance as well as developer productivity for building high traffic endpoints.

</comment><comment><USER5> Info about workspace is outdated. Go modules allows you to to work outside GOPATH

<comment><USER6> I recently hastily put together a "Learn Go in 10 days" program for my team, where I only used go modules: [https://github.com/hliyan/learn- golang/blob/master/day-08/ma...](https://github.com/hliyan/learn- golang/blob/master/day-08/main.go)

Feedback welcome.

<comment><USER7> Thanks so much for sharing. Very helpful to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Such a great language. If only it had a good GUI library...

<comment><USER9> I have made very good experiences with the GTK bindings for go ([https://github.com/gotk3/gotk3](https://github.com/gotk3/gotk3)). As the GTK Api is C-Based, it fits conceptually very good to Go. Actually I consider the Go bindings even better than using GTK from C, as the thin object model GTK uses, translates well to Go structures, most functions become methods on those structures. And the Go garbage collector solves the memory handling of the GTK structures.

<comment><USER10> I mostly have too, but GTK itself is a bummer. Doing most any interesting thing is a ton of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love reading articles like this. I really want to find a good work related reason to learn Go, just not a thing right now.

My main concern with the article is the massive abundance of typos. Like more so than a normal article written by a programmer. They make me stop and double check if I read it wrong, it is a term or something I haven't seen before, or just a typo.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wosh I had time to learn new languages as I used to... but with 2 kids, one being 4 months it is nearly impossible. How do others devs hungry for knowledge deal with situations like this one?

<comment><USER13> Go is a language you can pick up in a relatively short amount of time.

The syntax is in the vein of C and Python, so it's probably familiar. The language itself is fairly small, and the focus is on simplicity over expressiveness. If you want to learn new languages but have limited time, my answer is to take a look at Go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> skip Golang, go straight for Rust

EDIT:

as my time for learning new programming languages is limited, I would invest it in learning Rust, rather than learning Golang or learning both of them.

IMO the only reason to learn Golang is if your already have a legacy Golang codebase or if you want to contribute to various open source projects written in Go, like for example Kubernetes (my first experience with Golang was trying to compile a patched Hashicorp project).

It's the same as suggesting to a front-end dev, skipping Backbone, Ember and Angular and going straight for React.

There are lots of overlapping technologies in our space and learning all of them is a huge time waste.

<comment><USER15> Your opinion is fine, but you need to tell us why. A single sentence adds nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER2> I agree. I would guess the "why" is that Rust is capable of everything that Golang is capable of, except more and better. Not to mention that Rust has a very supportive community to help each other.

<comment><USER16> Clearly there's more to it otherwise Go and other languages would be a thing of the past.

This is really not a topic for language flamewars and it's even against HN guidelines. I don't understand why people need to scream rust in every other language post like if it was a religion.

<comment><USER17> Devil's advocate here : i think it's due to the promise rust makes that borrow checkers prevent you from writing unsafe code or race conditions, as well as high level abstractions with zero performance cost.

That set of promises really would make any programmer go crazy i think, and become a zealot.

Rust is definitely on my todo list, i'm just waiting for the language to mature a little bit more, because some edges still seem a git rough. But i am extremely enthusiastic about it.

<comment><USER16> It's not free though. There's a hefty price to be paid in complexity. I am as "crazy" for Rust as I am for Ada.

I suspect that is one of the reasons why behemoths like Uber, Twitch.tv, Stripe and Walmart chose Go over Rust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Go's not existent standard library is almost a deal breaker for me.

The lack of even a dynamic array (c++ vector, Java arraylist) means you write a lot of 2-3 lines of slice notation phrases that require stopping and thinking about indices you wouldn't need to in other languages (and creating a lot of zero length slices for boundary conditions that shouldn't be needed). Also no balanced tree is a big issue (googles side implemention sucks in that the comparator cannot be passed in).

I recently tried to write some small library functions using sqlx to do arbitrary sql queries and then some munging of the results before returning it. It was extremely difficult.

The language feels half done at times. I find it hard to believe that Google used it much internally before releasing it. So many unfinished corners.

Generics would go a long way to fixing some of these issues.

While the ahead of time compilation is nice and had lead to me using it for things that need fast startup (some shell like scripts and literally old school cgi), it often seems like a worse Java.

If you don't like Java's verbosity, go's from my small use is about twice as bad. 300 lines of go does surprisingly little - part of this is gofmt's fault though.

Also, does anybody know of good performance tests between Java and go? I mean like well written and optimised. Most tests over I've are very poorly written and do dumb things like include hotspot startup and compilation times. Hotspot can generate some very slick code, but it just takes 10k passes to get up that point.

<comment><USER19> I (and seemingly other people) consider [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks) to be a good set of performance benchmarks for use cases many people around here would be facing. I guess they haven't been updated in nearing a year though. Go does reasonably well but apparently gets beat by Java.

More generally. I like the idea of community driven benchmarks where each community tries to make representative, performant samples to realistic problems. All too often you get an expert in one language making a benchmark against a language they are not experienced with and getting really improper results.

<comment><USER18> I don't do any a lot web stuff but most of my go code is quick hacks for data analysis or display but this is still really interesting.

I had a feeling go was slow, but I didn't expect such poor performance numbers. Some of that is probably the heavy reliance in reflection. For example they json parsing you need to go to the bottom of the list to find a go program, and go's json library makes extensive use of reflection and tags to guide the parsing.

It is somewhat ironic that go's big feature was AOT compilation static type checking, but it seems to immediately devolving into reflection and parsing tag key value strings to do anything. I had a typo on one of those they other day and could find the bug for an hour.

<comment><USER20> You can use alternative packages for when you need to do things more quickly. For JSON, check out fastjson, easyjson, gojay, and more.

In real code that I write, most projects never import reflect. Sometimes I import it in tests.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The App Design of Instagram for Android - <AUTHOR> http://themodernink.com/app-design-of-instagram-for-android/

<comment><USER2> "Instagram's developers have decided to layer each tab change on the back stack of the app so that pressing the back button navigates back through the tabs you've previously selected. It instantly feels unfamiliar and you're not sure when the app will let you exit it completely. This fake back trail continues until you hit the home tab where you entered the app and then the back button let's you exit the app."

Well, isn't that a guideline for Android applications?

[spoiler] [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/tasks...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/tasks- and-back-stack.html) [/spoiler]</comment>


Show HN: Configure domain redirects and URL forwarding with a simple DNS record - <AUTHOR> http://redirect.name/ <comment> mike-cardwell Shame it requires polluting the root of your zone. Could have used a TXT record at "_redirect-name.example.com" or similar instead.

[edit] Also, this service will be abused by spammers and it will then become impossible to use a "redirect.name" URL in email.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the kind of feedback I was looking for by putting this out there - <USER2> thanks!

I hadn't thought about putting the TXT records on another hostname. That would actually be advantageous for using a CNAME instead of a A record, too.

Can you elaborate on "impossible to use redirect.name URL in email"?

<comment> mike-cardwell My point was that it will be used by spammers to hide their domains. So redirect.name will quickly get added to email blacklists, so people wont be able to send legitimate emails containing redirect.name URLs as they'll be rejected/blocked/filtered.

<comment><AUTHOR> redirect.name is never part of the actual redirect. It's only the documentation site. It's always your domain that is serving the HTTP redirect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have done something similar myself. First I tried to put the TXT record at the same domain which I did want to redirect. To tackle the CNAME problem did I come up with a complicated solution which I also did write up ([https://github.com/tellnes/dhr2](https://github.com/tellnes/dhr2)). But when I actually tried to use it was it too complicated.

What I'm actually using now and have been using for some time is just a simple TXT record at a subdomain (eg _redirect.example.com). I also have a script which looks for these TXT records in my zones and adds A/AAAA records when needed.

You can check it out as follows:

        dig TXT +noall +answer _redirect.infogym.no
        dig A +noall +answer infogym.no
        dig AAAA +noall +answer infogym.no
        curl -Is infogym.no | grep Location

The plan is at some point to put the scripts I actually use on GitHub, but I have never come so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm, I'm not seeing the value proposition here. Or, I'm unclear why I'd use this service.

Here's how I understand redirect.name working:

===

1\. An A/ALIAS/ANAME record for "example.com" points to a redirect.name service (self-hosted or otherwise).

2\. The service sees the "example.com" HTTP request via the host header.

3\. Service does a DNS lookup for a matching TXT record redirect rule.

4\. When found, the service issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect, according to the matching rule.

===

Is this correct?

If so, compare to:

===

1\. Create an A record for "example.com" that points to my Apache server.

2\. Apache detects "example.com" via the host header.

3\. Virtual host config for matching domain issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect.

===

Aside from shuffling the redirect config from Apache to DNS, what's the advantage of using redirect.name?

Additionally, every domain name registrar I've used includes a feature called "URL forwarding" that can redirect all HTTP requests for a domain to another. Again, what benefit does redirect.name provide that URL forwarding doesn't?

I'd love to hear the use cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> My company is currently offering "web forwarding" to our customers for free, but this service outsourced to the same third-party that provides our DNS hosting. While the DNS service is rock solid, the redirection service has had many shortcomings including delays in updating redirects, caching issues, etc.

This was one of a few ideas we had for bringing this in-house. I've seen other DNS-configured redirection services, but nothing with the flexibility we'd need to offer our customers to match what they're currently getting. I thought I'd do a quick mock-up of the idea and put it out there to get some feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is an ALIAS or ANAME record? I've never heard of that, and it isn't listed among these record types: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types)

<comment><AUTHOR> ALIAS/ANAME records are non-standard. They are like CNAME records in that they accept a hostname value, but they ultimately resolve as an A record.

See: [http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/differences-between- a-c...](http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/differences-between-a-cname- alias-url/) [http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/services/aname- records/](http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/services/aname-records/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is nice. I can finally get some easy redirects here, as Cloudflare's page rules don't work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clever! Thanks for making this open source. I really like small services like this written with Lua+nginx.

</comment><comment><USER8> So I have to trust my domain with a 3rd party and pray they never shut down? No thanks!

<comment><USER9> Well it's open source, you can host it yourself too.</comment></comment>


Tesla wasn't wrong about automating Model 3 assembly line-just ahead of its time - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/05/elon-musk-wasnt-wrong-about-automating-the-model-3-assembly-line-he-was-just-ahead-of-his-time/ <comment><USER2> Either Tesla was ahead of _its_ time, or Nikolai Tesla was _really_ prescient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed.</comment></comment>


LightTable 0.8.0 - <AUTHOR> http://lighttable.com/2015/12/10/light-table-0-8-0/ <comment><USER2> Congratulations to the team for making this happen as this was long awaited. In fact the new version of LightTable works well for me now, thanks!</comment>