Time to do away with the UX discipline? - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/02/its-time-to-do-away-with-the-ux-discipline/ <comment><USER2> This is dumb, I cannot say it more specific. UX today is both an area of expertise and a set of tasks to be done - making everyone doing it is the same as making people from the whole organization writing software in addition to their other daily tasks. It's not just that most of people are not qualified for this job and need to be educated and get necessary experience, it's also about them losing their focus. UX as a discipline was created because there was a need in specialization: the tasks that could not be done by other people and required a dedicated person to work on them. What is really necessary today is to go further and specialize more: stop talking about UI/UX and emphasize that UX is _not_ UI. And even more: UX research is not the same as the interaction design or data science. And more: DesignOps is something that needs focus. And more: accessibility design is something that does require attention, focus and expertise.

</comment><comment><USER3> May just be a coincidence, but no one I've ever worked with who had "UX" in their title seemed to A) Know or B) Care about users as human beings and their experiences. Most were primarily concerned with turning whatever app/page in production into their personal art gallery, almost always at the user's expense and would respond with a blank stare if you tried to discuss, say, gestalt issues.

<comment><USER4> That only reflects the quality of people you tend to work with. It's like saying engineers suck.

I've worked with UX professionals who were the powerhouse behind amazing products and were sometimes the only people at the entire company batting for the end users (which is the point of the article).

It really is a great experience to be a developer when there's a skilled UX designer working full-time on such a hard problem upstream from you. And it's a harder job than I think most people realize. Balancing UI with the constraints of being human friendly is its own class of engineering.

Looking at all the UX turds that developers come up with because UX is hard, you'd think the top comment would be a bit more understanding or appreciative of UX work. I guess this hubris is why good UX is so rare, especially among "Show HN" projects. ;)

BTW, the article doesn't trash UX professionals as unnecessary which is how you and other HNers want to interpret the title. Rather, the article does the opposite. It points out that ideally you strive for good UX at the systemic/organizational level, not just depend on some UX hotshots to save your ass.

<comment><USER3> I didn't offer any opinion as to whether the work of creating goid user experiences is _necessary_. Since you brought it up, I think that it most certainly _is_ - just that in my experience, people with "UX" in their title tend to be the most adversarial to that concern.

<comment><USER5> As parent mentions..

 _That only reflects the quality of people you tend to work with._

Wherever you worked, may be they were low in design maturity ie., without optimal ux culture. There would be 100 such places for 1 that has robust design driven product development culture.

Also, that place may be hiring poorly, which in turn reflects on the leadership of that place, and so on..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" Extending responsibility for the user experience across your organization requires at least a six-month plan...Dan Gardner is CEO of Code and Theory"_

I don't disagree with the premise but it's pretty clear this is a thinly veiled piece of content marketing for his digital agency. Hey I'd love to get fat 6 month retainer agreements for "digital transformation" projects too!

</comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately in most companies those who wear the UX title are just UI designers. Real UX is about researching and performing experiments on how your customers interact and use your software. So you can make proven decisions on how to design your product. Not I think buttons should look prettier and how do we make this look cooler.

<comment><USER8> That's not 100% true. It's like Henry Ford said. If you asked people what they want they'd say faster horses. Sometimes UX involves taking risks and getting people to adopt new paradigms. And if you're not working with a screen you'll probably have to invent something. Research us useful but has it's limits.

<comment><USER9> UX research isn't just asking people what they want. If you do it right, it can help you assess the risk and reward of the new paradigms you're considering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ja my biggest gripe with UX-Ppl is that the ones I have encountered are all ex-graphics-artist with a new title.

Not a new education or new field of study they did... It was just on Monday they were graphic artist... and on Tuesday they were a UX-Expert ! If someone tells me make this button yellow and move it down. I want to quantitative science on yellow and why ? Or at least a statistical test(call it A/B if you want).

I have no idea where all these sudden so called experts came from overnight.

As that one quote goes. "If we don't have data and only opinions let use mine.(sic ?)"

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but notice that the rise of designers and UX coincided with the end of being able to tell which things on the screen are clickable and, having clicked them, whether I actually clocked them and, having done that, whether my device is loading anything.

Maybe it's a coincidence, idunno. But Windows got this right like 25 years ago, and somehow it's gone away in spite of us now having "UX designers".

</comment><comment><USER12> Eh, specialization is good, if you can afford it. There's real value in having dedicated QA people, security people, DBAs, Ops folk, and yes, UX people. What I can't help but notice is that we're trying to make everybody wear all the hats at once, in many cases these days. There's also value in being a jack-of- all-trades, or a T-shaped person, but you just can't be expert at _everything_ , and some aspects are going to fall through the cracks.

<comment><USER13> I assume you didn't read beyond the title, as your point is pretty much the basis of the article. It calls for a wider adoption of the design-thinking, users first mentality and embraces various types of ux designers.

So, the article actually criticises how broad the term ux is and that we should have more specialisation and appreciate that.

<comment><USER12> No, I read the whole thing. It brought to mind the protestations that eliminating dedicated QA teams at Microsoft wouldn't cause any problems, because now quality would be everyone's responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Something that is everyone's responsibility is no one's responsibility.

<comment><USER10> Side note/rant: I've never seen it more clearly illustrated when working as a waiter back in the day. The head chef(more like head guy in charge of kitchen not really a chef). Got flustered whenever it got busy and then just barked out commands to NO ONE. The end result was, that while the restaurant was at its busiest there was a scary dude yelling "SOMEONE get me new spoon". Because he didn't delegate or assigned this task to anyone. THE WHOLE kitchen came to a stop and ppl looking at each other wondering who is going to give the yelling beast a new spoon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stallman's website linked me to this article on UX that I thought was quite insightful:

[http://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/](http://contemporary-home- computing.org/RUE/)

> The role of "experience" is to hide programmability or even customizability > of the system, to minimize and channel users' interaction with the system.

>UX fills awkward moments when AI fails. It brings "user illusion" to a level where users have to believe that there is no computer, no algorithms, no input.

> It is achieved by providing direct paths to anything a user might want to > achive, by scripting the user and by making an effort on audiovisual and > aesthetic levels to leave the computer behind.

> We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for "experiences," for the > questionable comfort of "natural interaction."

> But there is no natural interaction, and there are no invisible computers, > there only hidden ones. Until the moment when, like in the episode with The > Guardian, the guts of the personal computer are exposed.

<comment><USER16> > We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for "experiences," for the > questionable comfort of "natural interaction."

This assumes intuitive UX _forces_ you to use a product a certain way. There's no reason this has to be true. Good products can be used intuitively _and_ can grant their users programmer-like powers.

Take Google Search, for example. It's easy to use; you can largely speak to it like you would to a human -- type "what time is giants game tonight" and you'll get the answer you're looking for. But you can also use operators and other power features to perform specific and precise searches. So good UX merely gives less savvy users a leg up; it doesn't force a mediocre experience on power users.

<comment><USER17> I read the linked article, it's great. And it does make a point that "experience" part of the UX isn't about being a conduit to experience, but about designers _authoring_ an experience and guiding users through it.

Tools have always guided their usersas much as users guided their tools; UX is doubling down on the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > And it means employees can get closer to the work they love.

Wow these people are all in on the koolaid. Am I interpreting the meaning here correctly if I think they mean employees can work even longer hours to incorporate this?

</comment><comment><USER19> It'd be nice if we could but it would require people to have different sets technical skills and emotional capabilities for one job role.

UX is about cold efficiency and UI is touchy-feely.

Having someone do both UI and UX is like having your architect also be your interior designer. On the surface, it seems like one person could do both, but in reality they require VASTLY different skills and knowledge bases.

<comment><USER20> >Having someone do both UI and UX is like having your architect also be your interior designer. On the surface, it seems like one person could do both, but in reality they require VASTLY different skills and knowledge bases.

Good analogy since almost everyone needs an architect for their software as well as their buildings, but much fewer can be seen to benefit from a designer in either case whether they use them or not.

I wouldn't cry over it because I've been in favor of broader technical skills and emotional capabilities for a long time, just old fashioned I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a reason why enterprise software looks like enterprise software...

<comment><USER22> There are terrible enterprise software with the most modern skin but a pain to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >When the digital revolution first spawned the user experience discipline, it was a radically new idea.

Nope, by the time Feld was complaining, it was one of the most fundamental things that had been sorely forgotten; that programmers are supposed to naturally always craft everything with the users in mind without needing a non-programming designer, and have it come out more usable that way.

Without programmers adequate enough at all levels, the shortcuts & workarounds can work out fairly ugly even if the interfaces look fairly attractive on the outside.

This whole article is about overcoming the technical debt in organizations that skipped the effort necessary to build their group with fully user- dedicated programmers from top leadership on down to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER23> No. No. No.

When designing a system you always need to start top down.

Too many times I see a developer sit down an immediately start from the database.

Start from the UI or API. Just like we have UX for UI, you should be taking experience into account when designing an API.

<comment><USER17> If you know everything about your system. Chances are, you don't.

It's a known programming adage that you should start by getting data structures right, and proper algorithms will follow. In my experience, the shape of data and ways you work with it have so huge impact on what _must_ be presented on the screen that I'm starting to feel it might be best to delay UI/UX work until you have all that figured out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The better question to ask is, "What are people doing at work if not catering their work for some end-user?"

</comment><comment><USER25> > It should result in advertising content that is more personal and > emotionally resonant

Exactly at the moment I read this, an auto-playing Volvo commercial started making noise just below that paragraph. Ugh. We're a long, long way from advertising putting "users" first.

</comment><comment><USER26> I sure hope my competitors buy into this story's thesis.

</comment><comment><USER27> UX is a stupid neologism for user interfaces. I do think expertise in this field is its own discipline, but I associate the expression with corporate misbehavior patronizing users.

Maybe because the first and most prominent products using this term had profoundly bad UIs.

</comment><comment><USER28> This sounds a lot like...wait for it...agile.

</comment><comment><USER29> The time for DevSecUXOps is now!</comment>


JavaScript at the Edge - <AUTHOR> https://fly.io/ <comment><USER2> Looks super similar to Cloudflare Workers [0] but less generic, as Cloudflare Workers use a modified way of service workers (which means that code reuse is possible) but this looks like it's creating a lock in :-(

Still great about the small latency (1ms~?) though. Much better than docker + node where the latency goes crazy (~1s) :-( I would like to see some BasS products like these (small latency and not docker)

[0] [https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/)

<comment><USER3> Like you say, Cloudflare workers can run on node, so there's no lock in. [1]

Cloudflare workers also cost a lot less. [2]

However, fly don't have a script size limit, CF have a max 1MB script size limit.

Also, fly allow socket and long running applications, CF doesn't have that yet.

[1] [https://github.com/dollarshaveclub/cloudworker/](https://github.com/dollarshaveclub/cloudworker/)

[2] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/36000165755...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/360001657552-Billing-for-Cloudflare-Workers)

[2.1] [https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/kv](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/kv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Write, run, and test Edge Applications with the open source Fly runtime."

Was that supposed to tell us something?

</comment><comment><USER5> How bad is this idea? JS too much with it. Browser engine, bloated dependencies thanks to npm, type unsafety (without Typescript), performance problems. Rust or Go would make more sense, if you want go ditch C/C++ for something more modern at the edge</comment>


A Tale of Drastic Signup Form Field Elimination - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@signupper/how-low-can-she-go-a-tale-of-drastic-signup-form-field-elimination-9d44623dd29b#.rzqbmx13b <comment><USER2> tl;dr: You can get rid of pretty much everything except email. Even remove the password requirement because most users don't return. We did something like this ages ago and it was quite successful, although I am not legally brave enough to omit the password requirement.</comment>


Google's Super Bowl ad - video and instant analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2010/02/07/googles-super-bowl-ad-proves-that-google-knows-too-much/

<comment><USER2> Since my comment is stuck in moderation limbo on reputationdefenderblog, I'll paste it here:

",,,I think Google meant the ad to show that it is powerful."

I don't think the commercial's primary intent was to display the "power" of Google, but rather the day to day usefulness of their engine.

Interestingly enough, the overwhelming initial response to this ad campaign has been positive from girls in their mid-20s (I saw a copious amount of "awws" in my twitter feed), and "mehs" from their male geek counterparts (who already probably use Google anyways.)

We weren't exactly the target demographic of this ad. Home run, Google- you slammed this one out of the park.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great ad with no bullshit that shows off the core of Google. It was funny, memorable, and different than the rest of the Super Bowl commercials.

<comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree. I thought it was melodramatic, not funny and missed the mark for the vast majority of the audience watching.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever been in love? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You'd have a hard time actually reconstructing a life from a search history, because there would be so much noise. For every search that reflects an important life decision, there will be dozens (hundreds? thousands? I can't estimate very well) that you entered out of idle curiosity, random whims, etc. The significance of the ad is that those important searches will take place. Google will have no way of knowing which ones they are.

<comment><USER7> Google's data-mining fu is extremely strong. This is what they do for a living. I'm sure they would be able to reconstruct a life if they choose. For every important life decision there's probably more than one search involved (having a baby? you'll search for crib, babyfood, baby crying, how to change diapers and much more) and it is certainly possible to pick that out from random searches for cribs because of boredom, checking it for a friend, etc.

If you move (change IP) Google will be able to track you if you use any of their sign-in services (email@example.com now regularly logs in from this IP instead of the old one). Your only chance of breaking this chain is either to regularly use proxies or to change IP and gmail (and other services) simultaneously.

<comment><USER8> This is basically the plot of Caprica. Zoe created a search engine so powerful that when she died, it was able to reconstruct her personality from publicly available information about her. Then her father downloaded her into a robot, and thus was born the first Cylon....

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super- bowl.h...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super-bowl.html)

1\. The ad wasn't made for the Super Bowl

2\. There are other ads in the "search stories" series

<comment><USER9> The flight number is different, because the other one would start returning suggestions for guns as you were typing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't own a tinfoil hat but that was pretty creepy. The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who will be by my side as I go through life...

To me it comes across as a mixture of arrogance and over familiarity. Google wants to know us better so they can serve more targeted ads. That desire is not reciprocal. Not for me at least. Its like it never crossed their mind that people may not be as pleased as they are at the idea of an ad network being their best buddy.

<comment><USER11> > _"The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who > will be by my side as I go through life..."_

But often they are. Example: I grew up watching James Bond movies - I still watch James Bond movies, and there will probably be many more Bond movies between now and when I die. It's a known quantity - despite whatever different directors have done to the franchise, it's a mainstay and recognizable part of my existence.

In some ways, it _is_ a buddy that will be by my side as I go through life.

Now, I can be cynical about it and see Bond as merely a corporate, franchised brand being foisted upon me as the unsuspecting consumer... But I choose to see Bond as something genuine people have put genuine care into creating for my consumption. It's not nearly so bad if you put it that way, eh?

I don't think Google is entirely off its rocker trying to portray itself as my "buddy" - because it is. It knows everything I've ever wondered about, either publicly or privately, and so far anyway its products respond to my needs much better than any of its competitors (GMaps vs. MapQuest, for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just went through my last two months of Google Web History, and I can tell you, it doesn't reveals anything that anyone that know me doesn't know. The fact is that every day web searches are not as interesting as the ones in the ad.

Most of them in my case are software development-related stuff. Before being so afraid of "the power that google has" just check you history: it's less frightening than what commercial made you believe.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Remind me to clear my search history more often._

Doesn't Google store search data even after the user has cleared it from their history?

<comment><USER14> Yes - this guy is heavy on drama and short on logic.

Here's a thought: If you don't want Google to know what questions you ask - don't ask Google any questions.

<comment><USER13> Or use Scroogle: <https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=%s>

Substitute %s with your search term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It'd be nice to be one of the sites at the top of those SERP's during the super bowl.

<comment><USER16> Signal v Noise - suddenly having your server overwhelmed with 'interested superbowl watchers', and then losing people actually looking to buy your product is not so nice.

But (almost) any publicity is good publicity, and this may inspire a few people to fly to Paris / get married in Paris / make a DIY crib etc, which has positive flow on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All this proves is that geeks think about things very differently than normal people.

<comment><USER8> Also: that geeks are getting laid now, just like normal people.

<comment><USER11> "Google user" = "geek" now?

<comment><USER8> I was initially going to write "Also: that geeks are much more numerous now", and on reflection that may've been a better observation.

Yes, Google users are geeks. Think back to the 1980s, or even the early 1990s. If anyone had suggested then that you type a few words into a box onto your computer screen to ask how to impress a girl, they'd be branded with "OMG you are _such_ a geek." Except that "OMG" was itself a geek thing then. More likely, they'd be punched in the face.

It's amazing how standards have changed in 15 years, and how what was dorky then is normal now, and what was normal then is hopelessly out of date now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> flagged for a sensational, reddit-bait article concept.</comment>


Prohibition: The History of A Calamity - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576600863260993384.html

<comment><USER2> Daniel Okrent's book (mentioned in the article) is also worth reading; I wrote a little about it here: [http://jseliger.com/2010/07/18/hypocrisy-as-enabled- by-wealt...](http://jseliger.com/2010/07/18/hypocrisy-as-enabled-by-wealth-a- lesson-from-daniel-okrents-last-call) . One upshot of the book: Prohibition required an unusual confluence of political factors, including racism and class fear, in order for it to pass.

On a separate note, I wouldn't be surprised if drug prohibition eventually comes to look as silly as alcohol prohibition. From an intellectual standpoint, it already does.

<comment><USER3> It already looks sillier, alcohol prohibition didn't lead to the loss of thousands of lives and breakdown of civil order in Mexico, didn't fuel a sustained rebellion in Colombia, and didn't handicap the prosecution of a war in Afghanistan the way the drug war has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back then people understood that it was outside the power of federal government to ban a drug and that it would require a constitutional amendment. Today, marijuana and a whole host of drugs are banned at the whim of bureaucrats.

<comment><USER3> The power of the Federal government was much lower before the Supreme Court allowed the abuse of the commerce clause to get so far out of hand.

<comment><USER5> The power of the Federal Government was a lot lower before the huge "trusts" of the late-19th century grew in size and strength until they could wantonly trample the rights of consumers, their own workers, and citizens generally without any similarly powerful opposing force. It grew still further after the outsized influence of corporate and financial interests led to a calamitous worldwide economic collapse (the great depression) and citizens demanded that their government do something to prevent those imbalances and instabilities.

The US Supreme Court changed its understanding of the commerce clause and other aspects of government regulation of commerce in the 40s–60s in rejection of the previous generation's court whose every decision favored the rich and powerful and blocked corrective legislative action at every level (for instance in the famous Lochner v. New York case after which we now refer to that whole court "era"). The citizenry explicitly (and overwhelmingly) elected legislators and executives who promised to reign in the power of corporations, and they replaced the previous justices... that's how democracy is designed to work.

Government regulation is a response to real serious abuses of the type almost everyone is horrified by when they hear the specific examples that prompted the regulation – false advertising, fraud, miserable working conditions and the general treatment of workers as replaceable objects (and preserving the same by viciously breaking up any attempts by workers to organize), the sale of deadly diseased food, dumping of toxins into drinking water supplies, the use of market power to block competitors from markets or disrupt their operation, discrimination based on race, gender, and religion, etc. etc.

To just sum up this history as "the Supreme Court allowed the abuse of the commerce clause to get so far out of hand" is deeply disingenuous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An aside: This may have been discussed before about WSJ, but /article/SB10001424052970204226204576600863260993384.html has to be one of the worst URLs I've seen. What system is it that builds those filenames?

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's CityDesk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a staggering statistic:

"By 1830, the film informs us, the average American male over the age of 15 was consuming the equivalent of 88 bottles of whiskey a year."

That makes prohibition a lot more understandable. Not acceptable! Just easier to understand why desperate people thought desperate measures were needed.

<comment><USER9> Without rigorous original sourcing, I'd take that statistic with a large grain of salt. Would not be surprised to see it originate from the WCTU, which in other places claimed that alcohol could set fire to a man's body. The only really credible way to calculate that would be to backsolve the number of liters sold from alcohol company revenues at the time, and divide by population.

<comment><USER10> The figure is plausible. Recent figures for Australia's Northern Territory give 14.6 litres of pure alcohol per year per person aged 15 years and older: <http://tinyurl.com/5uyyuv5>

This equates to about 50 bottles of whiskey.

<comment><USER8> As a bit of noodling: ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+US+in+183...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+US+in+1830)) the US had about 12 million people in 1830. Life expectancy is here: ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+in+US+i...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+in+US+in+1830)) If we say that 3 million people were drinking 50 bottles of whiskey each per year that's 150 million bottles. If each bottle is half a litre that's 75 million litres. It takes about 100 kg grain to make about 80 litres. 75m / 80 * 100 == 93,750,000 kg grain. That's about 90,000 imperial tons of grain. It takes about 250 labour-hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat. (<http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farm_tech.htm>) That's, uh, my conversions are failing now. (<http://www.interstock.ru/0obuch/conversion.pdf>) okay, I give up. I was trying to see roughly how many people and acres it would take to fuel an 1830 population of 15 year olds at 50 bottles a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if we'll ever see a movie in the future about the failed and disastrous prohibition of other drugs.

<comment><USER12> In the future?

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/>

<comment><USER11> Yes, also The Wire, and The Corner, all quite excellent. But they are narratives, typically fictionalized. They are not non-fiction documentaries. They do not take on the issue head on, they do not discuss the statistics of the problem, etc. They come close, but a full head-on confrontation of the issue is still too taboo to be done by the mainstream press or entertainment industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone's interested in Prohibition-era America, I would strongly recommend checking out HBO's _Boardwalk Empire_ series for a masterful televised reenactment of that period in history.

</comment><comment><USER14> A society with so many ppl that rely so much on alcohol is just a symptom of even bigger problem. Give people a sense of purpose, or better community ties, and the need for "drugs" decreases

<comment><USER15> > A society with so many ppl that rely so much on alcohol is just a symptom of > even bigger problem.

It's common for people who don't drink to assume alcohol is a big problem - it's not.

> Give people a sense of purpose, or better community ties, and the need for > "drugs" decreases

People with sense of purpose, and better community ties, indulge in social drinking all too often. Never been to an entrepreneur's meetup which is in a bar? Never seen a family and friends getting drunk?

<comment><USER16> * My grandfather was an alcoholic and caused lots of damage to my dad's infancy.

* Teenagers are amazingly stupid already. They are stupid and dangerous when driving under the influence of alcohol. A very dear friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver.

* Drunk girls are raped by drunk stupid men all the time. My cousin got pregnant at 14 because of this.

When you don't drink is when you can really see how big of a problem alcohol really is. Starting with social drinking, which means that some people are absolutely incapable of have social bonding or plain fun without any alcohol. Pathetic.

<comment><USER17> * Neglectful parents are a very important problem.

* Drunk driving is a very important problem.

* Rape is a very important problem.

* And people demonizing me (a drinker) for crimes that _I_ do not commit... _is a very important problem_.

Put those pieces of shit in jail for the crimes they commit and let mature people (the _vast_ majority of society) be.

PS: Approximately 80% of all drunk drivers are adults (21 and older, I'll give you 20 as teenagers). So you should probably stop blaming teenagers so much too... Source: [http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#Fi...](http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k10NSDUH/2k10Results.htm#Fig3-5)

<comment><USER18> The issue is not whether you or any number of people can 'handle' X (whatever X is), the issue is, Is X, when it and its consequences are considered in their entirety, a net positive or not? Also, stating that alcohol has a pernicious effect on society doesn't imply that one is demonising drinkers at all. Some might do that, but it is not implied in the statement.

In the UK something like 90% of crime is alcohol related, most A&E admissions are alcohol related, etc. As someone who used to drink (i.e. take alcohol) and now doesn't, I feel qualified to agree with armandososa that for many it's not until you stop drinking that you really become sensitive to many of its negative effects such as those he/she mentioned.

Edit: in case it's not absolutely clear, I am sure you are a good person whether you drink or not. That does not mean that widespread use of alcohol is good for society.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough. I often just feel attacked in topics such as this, some people are not so careful to avoid demonising drinkers in general.

Anyway, I think my point distilled is that although alcohol may be very commonly involved in crime that doesn't mean that crime is actually very common.

And for what it's worth (not much, since this isn't my field of study ;), I'd say that alcohol probably never caused rape. You have to be pretty damn fucked up in the first place to rape somebody, normal people will never do it no matter how much alcohol you put in them.

<comment><USER19> At the very least, having sex with someone who's passed out and unable to consent is rape; those rapes, at the very least, could not be committed without some type of drug to cause the person to pass out, and alcohol is the most legal and most widely used drug that has that effect.

I'm quite inclined to think that rape is far more common than you think. Most rapists are perfectly "normal" people in their everyday lives.

<comment><USER17> Rapists are, by definition, not normal. The untrained layman might not be able to pick them out, just like sociopaths often manage to slip under the radar in day to day affairs, but they are fundamentally a different sort of animal.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure what definition of "rapist" or "normal" you're using, but the typical rapist is probably closer to "selfish asshole on a first date" than "masked man hiding in the bushes". And selfish assholes are frankly very common.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to talk about the Google Manifesto at work – a guide for managers and HR - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-talk-google-manifesto-work-guide-managers-hr-jennifer-kim?trk=v-feed&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BlN8C08p2PsZKg9c%2BibHyGA%3D%3D <comment><USER2> I wonder why this has no comments? Because everyone now knows either you drink the corporate Koolaid or you get bounced for talking truthfully EVEN if your company has a big, ol' "free thinking and diversity of ideas" policy.</comment>


Redesign of Tux mascot - <AUTHOR> https://www.behance.net/gallery/14661255/linux-visual-identity-redesign <comment><USER2> Linus' idea of Tux: _So when you think "penguin", you should be imagining a slighly overweight penguin, sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just burped. It's sitting there with a beatific smile - the world is a good place to be when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish and you can feel another "burp" coming. _

Totally _not_ the vibe I'm getting from this...

(quote from [http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_T...](http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin))</comment>


California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-16/ocean-acidification-california <comment><USER2> I wonder if instead of desalination plants, there exists "de-acidification" plants that can in turn use the acid for electricity generation or something like that?

Whenever I see these articles, unfortunately my first thought is "we're too far gone, we can't turn around now" in terms of climate change. But! I think that instead of trying to reverse the situation (for instance, by convincing the largest carbon emitters like China to stop - which they won't), we should try to make use of the situation.

Too much carbon being released? Free carbon! How can we use it to make something else / convert it to something else? Too much acid in the ocean? How can we extract it and use it for something? Rising temps? How can we make use of this to grow crops that need warmer environments, or use it for better solar generation, or use thermal power generation in these areas. Our best hope it to adapt to the new norm rather than fight a losing battle. I know it's fatalistic, but I think we will last longer as a species if we adopt this approach instead.

<comment><USER3> Trouble is, rising acidity at alarming rates is still only a 0.21 decline in pH over a 100 year period. Whilst that might be more than enough to upset no end of shelled animals and other issues. A de-acidifcation plant faces the same issue as carbon capture and storage away from the huge emitters -- you're going to have to process a colossal volume to capture enough of the pollutant you're removing.

While we're at it, how much overhead do we add to global power requirements for all these de-acidification plants, desalination plants and CCS contraptions? How about we stop pouring it in the top and just fucking decarbonise, and leave all those tar sands alone... :)

<comment><USER4> It is not enough still. But processing such huge volumes with current technology is out of reach.

Might be easier to devise a biotech solution, but messing with ecosystems is quite risky nonetheless. An example would be putting carbon fixing bacteria or algae in the water, additionally replacing the plankton that died due to change in pH. We have similar technology for cleaning up oil spills and some chemicals, so why not dilute carbonic acid as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The underlying study is dubious... [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0499-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0499-z)

They took 0.5 meters of sediment.

They examined shells in the sediment, and using a very convoluted and new measurement technique, they found that 'larger' shells were at the bottom (without very much statistical certainty.) And, the study admits that other factors -- such as water temperature -- could effect the size/shell thickness... to what degree is ignored.

They then radiodated this 0.5 meter column of sludge, and after making assumptions about this and that and nuclear bomb testing and a host of other assumptions, they determined that the bottom of the 0.5 meter column was from 100 years ago, and the top more recent. (And, of course, they assume the sedimentation was perfectly uniform during the century because... reasons.)

And, then you have a graph, showing a decrease in some factor of shells (using a new measuring system) over a span of 100 years (give or take 100 years)...

they then claim the decrease is due to CO2, and Voila, the paper is sucked up by Nature.

I'm not criticizing the work. I'm sure the researchers would be the first to admit their conclusion is based on a host of assumptions and guesswork.

But, what I do find amusing is that a speculative study involving 0.5 meters of mud can get HN readers to begin proposing massive 'de-acidification' plants and fretting about the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's worth noting that the oceans are actually alkaline, not acidic.

But it makes for less alarming headlines to say "Oceans becoming less alkaline", doesn't it?

I really, really wish things were presented dispassionately and accurately. Things like this smack of propaganda.

<comment><USER7> becoming less alkaline = acidifying

one just takes fewer words

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seriously, WTF is a study from a US agency doing behind a paywall? That ought to be illegal! So here.[0]

0) Osborne et al. (2019) Decadal variability in twentieth-century ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem. [https://sci- hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0499-z](https://sci- hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0499-z)

</comment><comment><USER9> Problem with climate related news is that it has such a bad record on wrong prediction that i'm having a hard time believing anything that's written in regular newspaper. it's just working too well at freaking people out, even the most scientific minds.

For example, I can't remember the first time i read about ' arctic ice completely disappearing in the next ten years', or the polar bear going extinct..

<comment><USER10> While some headlines may be overly aggressive, many (anecdotally) of the very serious consequences of climate change are predicted to happen on the order of 50/100 years from now.

There are a couple reasons this sucks: \- some people seem to not care about that far in the future \- people seem to be pretty bad at detecting change in their environment over longer time scales

A memorable example of the second one: [https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big- fish-stories-getting-littler)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> California oceans? Does it have more than one?

<comment><USER12> I think it's pretty common to refer to a single body of water in plural form. Probably because it's so massive or maybe just due to the nature of liquid. For example: sailing the waters; a ship got caught in the stormy seas; etc.

<comment><USER13> Bodies of water like lakes yes. Stormy seas would refer to the state of the sea (i.e. wavy, amount of unrest). An ocean is always an ocean and California is only connected to one of those. Coastal waters is clearly the correct term as they didn't do measurements across the whole Pacific (didn't read the source articles linked though), only around the coastline of California.

So either "California coast" or rather "California coastal waters", since the article is talking about the watery part of the coast, not the "landy" part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> California oceans? Hard pass.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's the counter point to this?

<comment><USER16> How can there be a counterpoint to a scientific measurement? It either is or isn't more acidic.

<comment><USER17> There could be sampling issues, since you can't measure the whole ocean at once. The CO2 in the atmosphere is linked to the carbonic acid in the ocean, though, and both indicators point in the same direction.</comment></comment></comment>


Artificial Data Gravity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mccrory.me/2012/02/20/artificial-data-gravity/

<comment><USER2> This makes total sense for the data storage providers, but it's also clearly not an equilibrium in the long run since it'll be economical for all of the data to replicate to multiple locations (where each group of users has privileged data access rates).</comment>


Rabbit Proto: Open source electronic prototyping for 3D printers - <AUTHOR> http://www.rabbitproto.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Feedback and contribution wanted !

<comment><USER2> This looks really cool - I'd be interested in seeing more demos of printing circuit boards. Also, will the head work on something like a Prusa i3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yay, the electronics are 100% compatible and we might just need to work out our CAD to attach it to your carriage. That would be a good way to structure out our GitHub.</comment></comment></comment>


Project management alternative to basecamp - ticketing and version control too :) - <AUTHOR> http://unfuddle.com <comment><USER2> Looks good. Probably BaseCamp 2.0. I've really gotten to like Trac though, and I've used most of the tools out there. Trac just gets it done. I think the biggest plus is the Wiki.</comment>


Ask HN: Help testing out my Rails deployment script - <AUTHOR>

Each time I deployed a Rails app it took hours on a clean install it took hours. Eventually I got fed up and wrote a bash script to automate the process. The script installs and configures:
Enterprise ruby Rubygems Rails 2.3.8 Sqlite3 package and gem mysql package and gem Passenger Apache Git Capistrano
I wanted to get to a point where the end user can enter in couple basic info (where to install, db name etc) and the script automatically do everything else, which is exactly what the script does.
I've tested on five different vps and it works. Nevertheless I want to test it more. If anyone would like to spare about 30 mins to help me test the script that would be great.
All you need is a vps server and root access. In return I'll provide you with a license code good for 5 installs. I'll probably be writing Rails 3 install script pretty soon and I'd gladly share that with you as well.
Please email me at email@example.com to get started.
Thanks guys. <comment><AUTHOR> I've used sprinkle in the past when I first started out with Rails. It was way too complex and broke too many times. One of the reason for ezror was to make the process a lot simpler. ezror asks for just 6 things and it takes care of the rest for you. Takes about 20-30mins tops.

</comment><comment><USER2> A license code, are you going yo try and monetize this?

It's a tough market because you have things like sprinkle [1] that does exactly the same.

1 <http://github.com/crafterm/sprinkle></comment>


Scientists characterize a new shape using rubber bands - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2014/04/scientists-characterize-new-shape-using-rubber-bands

<comment><USER2> It is also known as the kinked phone cord (back when phones had cords between the base station and the headset):

[http://i.imgur.com/AS7UI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/AS7UI.jpg)

:)

<comment><USER3> I tried for ages to work out how to unkink them. I never figured it out. I could just move the kink location around but never anhialate it.

<comment><USER4> Phone cords usually end in straight sections, you just move the kink there and it disappears. I think there is no other way.

<comment><USER5> No, you can unkink them locally, the opposite of how you introduced them.

<comment><USER6> Wonderful! Could you provide a diagram or explanation? I've never been able to do it reliably, only by random luck.

<comment><USER7> Here's a hint that helped me understand much of the mystery of phone cord kinks: Notice how in bhouston's image above the coil on the left of the kink has opposite spin as the coil on the right. With this kind of kink there is no solution but to completely re-coil one of the sides.

<comment><USER8> I think you could "fold" the whole cable back on itself at that point. Instead of unwinding around the axis of the helix, unwind around an axis at a right- angle.

<comment><USER5> No, dual is correct. There's no local way to unkink the phone cable in that image. Just notice that the orientation (whether a cord spirals clockwise or counterclockwise as you travel along it) doesn't change in a properly unkinked cord, but the left and right side of the cord in the photograph have opposite orientations. Whatever manipulation you do locally around the kink (even if it involves rotating the whole rest of the cord around rigidly) won't change the orientation of either side.

A corollary to this is that the kink in the picture wasn't created locally, and is not the kind of kink you accidentally create. Though you can create a stretch of mis-oriented cord by trying to fix what starts as a local kink, but that requires fiddling with that entire section of cord.

<comment><USER8> I had to go play with an actual cable for a while, but I see what you mean :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This also happens with slinkies - I've ruined more good slinkies that way!</comment>


Ideas Ubuntu should steal from Windows 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/12-ideas-ubuntu-should-steal-from-windows-7-618472?src=rss <comment><USER2> It seems that on a lot of these points they fail to realize that they're exactly the reason Ubuntu outperforms Windows in some of these areas. In regard to backup software, they say, "Yes it's available, but why isn't it there by default?" Perhaps it's because Canonical's stated goal is to fit an entire operating system on a single CD. If they crammed in everyone's favorite feature to the base distribution, that wouldn't happen. People are more concerned with getting up and running with OpenOffice, email, etc... immediately. If I want to backup my data, I'll worry about that once I'm back to being productive. I'm happy to just grab it from the repository.

Also, I outright disagree with some of their observations about ease of use. They say that Windows is actually pretty good at hand-holding when you "troubleshoot" something. Me? I've never once had any success using the "troubleshoot" tools to fix something. I've never once had a problem I couldn't solve by a quick search of Ubuntu's forums/documentation and editing the config files myself.

And I almost laughed when they said Ubuntu should use ideas from Windows UAC... All in all, I really think this article fails to realize the difference between Ubuntu and Windows. I don't think Ubuntu is trying to BE Windows. If anything, they're trying to reaplce it (and I don't even think that's their goal). There's no point in competing with Microsoft if you have the same vision as them. Ubuntu has it's own goal, so does Mac.

<comment><USER3> Good arguments. Upvoted even though I disagree with many of them.

 _I've never once had a problem I couldn't solve by a quick search of Ubuntu's forums/documentation and editing the config files myself._

That's a lot harder than what the average computer user wants. When I used Ubuntu, I was terrified of the config files, and I hated forum searching to solve problems. It seemed like such an inelegant solution.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that's true, and I definitely think that Ubuntu is trying to move in a more user-friendly direction than traditional Linux mindsets. In any case - what has been your experience with the "troubleshoot" tools in Windows? It's not that I'm arguing the point with you, I really do think they seem easy to use. My only problem, is that it's never actually succeeded in fixing or diagnosing the problem I was having. Am I alone in this?

<comment><USER4> My experience has been that after a year or so using Ubuntu I am on a learning curve, which was a bit frustrating at first.

My legacy Windows XP install makes me want to bang my head on the wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion, there's one critical thing which is keeping Linux out of the non-nerd workstation market, and that's X11.

The windowing system is slow, yet takes more CPU than Windows. Animations (flash, the progress bar in fullscreen gnome-mplayer) bog down the system on low-end graphics cards (which saturate the market in the consumer desktop/laptop market). Scrolling a window up and down can be enough to lag the system into unusability.

Microsoft invests hundreds of engineers on making the graphics system fast and responsive on any kind of graphics hardware. Linux needs to catch up in this field before they can play with the big boy. Someone needs to do something with X11.

<comment><USER6> Right on. I have always felt X was a horrible idea. OS X's Quartz, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty.

Is Google going to use X for the Chrome OS or will they roll their own?

EDIT: spelling.

<comment><USER7> I don't know if it's been stated officially, but nerd consensus seems to be that Google will be using something other than X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to disagree on a couple points:

A single media player for audio and video is not desirable. They're separate and almost unrelated functions; the only time they might belong together is syncing to another device. That's not to say Rhythmbox couldn't use some polish.

How, exactly is Gnome's panel crude? I find panel applets far more natural than the system tray for little utilities that aren't part of a larger app, and I really don't care for Apple's dock. Is there some justification for this claim?

<comment><USER9> In my experience, many people don't like Gnome because it doesn't look like the desktop they are used to.

If I went back some 40 years and presented Gnome to IBM mainframe users, they would complain the lettering is not green on black.

But I would love to have the 3278 font available on my boxes.

And no, it's not exactly the one on x3270. They got the 6's and 9's wrong

<comment><USER8> I've found that reaction doesn't last very long. In fact, configuring any Linux desktop to look extremely similar to Windows[0] leads users to think _everything_ will be extremely similar. They tend to be more upset upon discovering unexpected differences than they are when it's obviously different from the start.

[0] I say Windows here because I've only seen in with Windows users. Users of any other platform are used to the idea of different operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of times when I read these things, the sort of pro-Linux with pro- Microsoft points articles, I can't help but feel it is paid for by Microsoft. It certainly seems like I have been seeing more and more of these kinds of things over the last few months.

<comment><USER9> It seems Microsoft is boosting up their astroturfing groups. Watch out for your karma ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are there any similar time-blocking options for the Mac? Sounds like a great way to force somebody off the computer.

<comment><USER11> Try parental controls in system preferences.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seriously lame. Flagged.</comment>


Show HN: Transdata – flowchart-style data manipulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.bfstransdata.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, OP here. A bit about Transdata:

It started as a scratch-your-own-itch idea from one of our founders (a financial analyst) to solve problems that are impractical/impossible in Excel and such. The overall goal is flexibility and ease of use. The entire tool was written in C++ by a single programmer (me).

Some key differences:

-The flowchart-style GUI (using Qt)

-Ragged data is allowed (non-rectangular)

-No data limit beyond what your computer can handle

-Reusable models</comment>


New ≠ Better - <AUTHOR> http://jordankoschei.com/2017/02/28/new-does-not-equal-better/ <comment> ng-user Which is more sustainable? How many acres could one person possibly yield per hour?

While I agree with the headline, I don't think the video is a good example.</comment>


Can Beethoven send takedown requests? - <AUTHOR> https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/08/27/can-beethoven-send-takedown-requests-a-first-hand-account-of-one-german-professors-experience-with-overly-broad-upload-filters/ <comment><USER2> I used to have a Youtube channel where I posted videos of me playing the piano. I played mostly Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff compositions. I had around 40 videos in total. Sometime around 2014, I started getting DMCA takedown notices from various companies claiming copyright. I was getting one or two per week and I contested them and things were ruled into my favor. But then it started getting harder and harder to contest them and I even lost the ability to upload. It got so bad that one day several (3 or 4, don't remember anymore) notices were filed and Google didn't rule on them fast enough.

I had to close the channel because my account was locked for one full day and I couldn't do a thing. I had too many emails inside of Gmail and didn't want to lose them so I gave up. I'm still pissed about it and how Youtube and Google run things.

I always found it interesting that under YT rules content creators have the "3 strikes and you're banned" rule hanging over their heads but those who falsely claim copyright can do so with impunity. I still remember one company that ended up falsely claiming copyright over 10+ of my videos and they did so against one or two videos per week. Nothing was ever done about them.

<comment><USER3> Who was sending these notices? Sounds like perjury to me.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to the DMCA. It's as broken as copyright and causing quite serious stifling of young creators. It sometimes feels like it's used more for evil than for its legitimate purpose.

<comment><USER5> Takedown notices on Youtube are not handled under DCMA. DCMA has protections against false accusations.

<comment><USER6> More like "DMCA theoretically has protections against false accusations, but instances of people being held accountable are _extremely_ rare."

Knowingly making a false DMCA claim is perjury, and IMO it should be treated as such. Instead companies send out automated claims in the thousands and then come back with "but we didn't _know_ it was wrong, it was the bot!" and get away with it.

<comment><USER7> Hi there. Plaintiff here from OPG v Diebold, the first successful case enforcing 512f against knowingly false DMCA takedowns where the defendant was found guilty and owed several hundred thousand dollars in damages. It can and does happen and there is court precedent. Contact EFF if you're on the receiving end of an obviously bad DMCA takedown.

<comment><USER8> Bravo, now if it could become standard practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems to me that a big part of the problem is that Google is focusing on this the wrong way. Rather than automatically assume that ContentID is correct and notifying the user, it should instead notify the supposed owner of the music, and let them decide whether or not to make a claim. If the "owner" makes too many false claims then they should be banned form the service.

<comment><USER10> I thought that was the way it works ? But they just hit the (virtual) "claim everything" button as fast as they can.

Maybe the problem is that Google can't ban them from the service legally ?

<comment><USER4> The problem is that by the time the victim has fought to have their video re- monetised or reinstated, it's "old". You have a very short time to make money on videos these days. Yes there's rare videos that gain longer term success or get dug up and go viral, but for the most part those first couple days are vital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given how quickly music becomes "old" I don't understand why copyright needs to chain up music any longer than two decades (I'm being kinda generous, some songs are old after a few months / one to five years). I hate the state of copyrighted works. Movies can stay copyrighted for a good 40 to 50 years, anything else is crazy. Books maybe 50 years too, but again, it's just crazy and clear that the extended years of copyright only benefit record labels and other publishing corporations, and not truly the artists / authors who get decent money, but it's mostly chump change.

<comment><USER12> > Given how quickly music becomes "old" I don't understand why copyright needs > to chain up music any longer than two decades

You say that but the Beatles, Elvis, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson are all artists that had their heyday 30-60 years ago and are still the top selling artists. A lot of them are dead now because of varying reasons, but some are still alive and kicking and giving new performances of their 40 year old music.

Are you going to tell them they have no right to their own work anymore 20 years after they had one of their most successful releases?

<comment><USER11> If anything I'm more for stripping record labels of their copyright, an artist can keep their copyright till they die for all I care. Their families shouldn't depend solely on one artist's income. There's many angles to copyright, it's a complicated subject cause of it, but we need to take away all the noise of it, this legalized censorship against allegedly copyrighted works doesn't actually work is the main issue. Most artists don't even care that their fans download their music until their record labels have them say otherwise. Artists from what I recall make more money selling merchandise and doing concerts...

<comment><USER13> In fact, that right already exists (in the US), it's Section 203 - artists can terminate their copyright grants after 35 years after the publishing date.

<comment><USER11> That's quite insightful, now if only after 50 years it would be terminated, regardless of whether the artist is dead or alive. If they want to give them a renewed copyright grant or something that's another story, and it should end the moment the artist dies. Till death do us part indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me a lot of the experiment someone did uploading white noise: "My ten hour white noise video now has five copyright claims"[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075325)

</comment><comment><USER15> Copyright should only have a term of life (with a minimum duration of 50 years in case the artist dies at 20-30) and that's all. Tell me one reason this shouldn't be the case. By then, the studios will have taken a profit (or been a commercial failure but that's not on us) and so will have the artist.

After the artist dies, there's no reason to "support the artist" anymore and while there is the effect of post-mortem sales spike, a celebration of now freely available music for all to enjoy would be a much better hommage.

As for the family, there really isn't any reason they should obtain that copyright. If they wanna earn money with art, they have to create art on their own. What the current laws create in most cases are lazy rich children who spend the rest of their lives managing the copyright legacy of their parent. That doesn't benefit society in any way. Either they work like normal people or they make their own art but they're not entitled to the copyright of their parents. If the parents don't want to leave them in poverty, they can still leave the money they earned with this copyright over the years for their children.

Also, with the minimum 50 years duration, they could still inherit the copyright if their parent dies at an early age. However, a term of life PLUS a ludicrous amount of years is a really bad idea for the cultural development of our society.

<comment><USER16> Lazy rich child A's dad built a house, which he and his children can benefit from for marginal costs (maintenance, taxes).

Lazy rich child B's dad wrote some music, which he and his children can benefit from for marginal costs (publishing, taxes).

I know - in one case it is a physical object, and in the other - immaterial. But both houses and music can offer enjoyment and can be benefited from financially, and thus have inherent value.

I am not sure if the notion of private property should depend on the continued existence of the _original_ creator. When do we start requisitioning houses for the hommage of the original owner?

<comment><USER17> In my country, inheritance of more than 2 million € is taxed ~50% (20% tax for 500 000 - 1M€).

Copyright inheritance is not taxed in any way.

<comment><USER18> _> >Copyright inheritance is not taxed in any way. _

Michael Jackson's estate begs to differ: _IRS argues that the pop star's name and likeness should have been valued at $161 million; that would be down from 2013, when it valued those rights at $434 million._ [https://www.wsj.com/articles/michaels-jacksons-estate- faces-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/michaels-jacksons-estate-faces-demand- for-big-tax-payment-1486320354)

<comment><USER17> Well, as I said, in my country it's not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YouTube sent me a takedown request for publishing a video to my own song (which is published on CD only).

They took down the song because I could not "prove" I was the owner.

I guess my name being on the cover and my picture was not enough...

I.e.

\- they don't check even if you point out it's a mistake \- they always side with the copyright owner by default

<comment><USER20> > They took down the song because I could not "prove" I was the owner.

Because it is not about rights, it is about power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's really only one viable solution. If you want stuff to stay up, put it somewhere that won't let anyone take it down. No matter what. And isn't vulnerable to coercion. YouTube is not such a place, of course. For most purposes, torrents are good enough. Maybe BitChute. Or for sensitive stuff, sites on Tor .onion servers. Not Freenet, though, because that is a trip to jail, just waiting to happen.

Edit: OK, about Freenet. Yes, it is uncensorable distributed storage. And yes, it is arguably impossible to prove which nodes are storing what, and which nodes are accessing what. But it _is_ possible to establish what a given node is sending and receiving, based on hashes. And if you get busted, you will be faced with the prospect of paying an expert to explain some seriously complicated stuff to a jury. And you will likely end up making a plea bargain. Even if you were entirely innocent.

If you're curious about Freenet's opennet content, there's only one "safe" way to access it. Do everything via Tor, and access Tor via nested VPN chains. Get yourself some Bitcoin, and mix it very well. Then use it to anonymously lease a VPS. Install Freenet on the VPS in headless mode, with its webGUIs as Tor .onion services. Now you can safely access whatever you like. Maybe the VPS will get busted, but tracking that back to you will be _very_ hard. Also, to be safe, use Tor via Whonix. Work in a clone of the workstation VM, and nuke the clone after each use. And of course, have LUKS on the host machine. Maybe use a dedicated host machine, and wipe it when you're done, just in case. Seriously, Freenet is _that_ radioactive.

<comment><USER22> Why is uploading to Freenet illegal? And where?

<comment><USER21> Sorry, I updated with a much longer explantion about Freenet. It's not that using Freenet is illegal _per se_. It's that Freenet is loaded with child porn, and worse. And that investigators have tweaked Freenet software that logs content moving through all peers that they connect to. And there are databases with hashes of illicit content. So they see that your node is handling illicit content, contact your ISP to get your identity, and then SWAT you. That's how that ex cop in Philadelphia, who's still sitting in jail, after "forgetting" his FDE passphrase, got busted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The solution, of course, is to make legal arguments a class of intellectual property.

If a lawyer wants to cite a precedent, he's got to pay. Using a parallel argument without explicitly citing the precedent is a tort, and may be subject to lawsuit.

This will tie up all the intellectual property lawyers who will start suing each other. At that point the rest of us can go on with our lives.

(At least in countries with a common law based legal system...)

</comment><comment><USER24> Devil's advocate here: why give welfare to artists (really, the labels they sign their rights over to) when so many great pieces of art actually exist that were made by artists who died penniless? Van Gogh, Gauguin,

I just don't buy the notion that extending copyrights way, way past death help the artist in any way. Why fight for labels' rights, when they largely amount to copyright trolls? Their artificial fears have made their way into YouTube, which just _has_ to take those legal recordings down (they don't), because they're just _so scared_ (they should not be) that this _might_ be something that belongs to a troll.

When the real musicians get their content taken down after Big Label overtly steals it, we're getting trolled.

</comment><comment> rbrtdrmpc- I personally work with music copyright claims for an internet company and as i see a lot of folks here (including the author) are missing the copyright thing. They are not claiming for the fingerprinted music, they are claiming for what the big publishing companies are saying, and they are the ones making the rules. This is how it works more or less, YT fingerprints a piece, they run their algorithms on new content and if they match the fingerprint, also using metadata, if its right and guess what, most of the time its not, they look at what the MULTIPLE publishers claims on the same stuff. Publishers can claim whatever they want, they need just to face other publishers if they abuse their power (and bare with me, this is mad because there is no central authority!), there is no such way as YouTube able to rule on copyrighted content. So as an example, if i upload a video with the 5th of Beethoven, the algorithm can fingerprint it correctly, next YT looks at what publishers are claiming and if there is someone with a valid recording of that piece at a "performance" level, they need to pay for the content otherwise stated. And just to add something more, there are three different type of "claims" in the music industry, mechanical, synchronization and performance share, more about the aforementioned here [http://www.copyright.com/blog/music-licensing-public- perform...](http://www.copyright.com/blog/music-licensing-public-performance- license-synchronization/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Copyright should probably be about 5 years long, total, non-extendable.

This achieves 95% of the asserted benefits of the existing copyright system and gets rid of 99% of the problems. The boost to national innovation would be tremendous.

But of course it's about money (copyright is a just a privatized tax) and anyone advocating this would find themselves marked for death by the copyright industry.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _"[…] thank you for contacting Google Inc. Please note that due to the large > number of enquiries, e-mails received at this e-mail address support- > email@example.com cannot be read and acknowledged"_

Google's support in a nutshell.

<comment><USER27> It's worse than that: the phrasing is entirely deceptive and misleading. "Thank you for contacting Google"? But the remainder of the message is denying that you actually _did_ contact Google. You tried, but you _failed_.

<comment><USER28> You contacted Google's bots, while failing to actually reach any human. In a way you succeeded while also failing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Firstly, the assumption by google should be innocence rather than the guilt of the youtube creator. The burden should be on the accuser and not the accused.

Secondly, if 3 copyright violations gets the accused banned, then 3 false copyright accusations should get the accuser banned. Under youtube's current model, it actually incentivizes companies to claim everything since there are no consequences.

Thirdly, with what youtube is doing, it seems like they just want to be a platform for corporate media. It seems like they are heavily pushing established media like CNN, Late Night Shows, SNL and celebrities like ( Kevin Hart, Will Smith, etc ). I'm seeing so many more corporate media recommendations on youtube than ever before. If that's the case, what's the point of youtube? If all they want is for me to see CNN or Kimmel clips, what do I need youtube for? I can just go watch CNN and Kimmel on TV.

Youtube's selling point was that it wasn't TV. It was different. That's the case less and less now. I still have hope for youtube and I still like a lot of the non-corporate content there, but I hope youtube really reassesses their handling of claims.

Edit: And as for copyright, there should be less, not more of it and it should be for limited time. It stifles creativity and it pretty much enriches the few ( most of whom had nothing to do with the creation of art ).

<comment><USER30> Copyright as it exists today definitely favored the rich in recent history, because you had to sell out just to get your creation in front of an audience. The Internet changed all that, but it seems like companies like Google are working hard to get things back the way they used to be by becoming the gateway to the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Copyright claims have become out of control!

Someone uploaded white noise they recorded to YouTube and got five copyright claims. [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42580523)

<comment><USER32> From that:

>Google automatically makes claims on behalf of content creators if its algorithms find a close match between the content of two videos.

That seems to the the root cause of a lot of these problems - Google's software being dumb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > However, I intended to release all of my videos under a free license, so > that they could be used in the future for others to educate and inform > students about these beautiful works. Even in cases where my defense to the > ContentID claims were successful, the videos were not reverted to this free > license, making it much more difficult for others to use and share these > digitized works in the way I originally had intended.

If you don't own the copyright of the thing or have a license to it, how can you "release it under a license" any license at all?

Is the OP just not saying it clearly, and what they really wanted to do was to mark it as in the public domain?

Or does Youtube actually have no way to do this?

Our entire cultural practices, corporate policies, and software feature lists, are set up ignoring public domain use cases. People don't even realize how this stuff works legally, which doesn't help. But you can't release something under a license if you don't own it (or have a license to re/sub-license it).

<comment><USER34> The music is not copyrightable, but presumably the videos are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Easy and stupid solution: Make it illegal to falsely claim copyright on a piece of media and additionally make transparent and fair processes around Notice&Takedown required for all larger platforms.

Youtube's DMCA mechanism is a black box, you get told you did some bad and you can say "no I didn't do bad" at which point the black box will do things and after a few days agree or not.

If someone files a copyright claim on my video I want to know who did it, why they did it, what they expect as a resolution and if the claims turn out to be false more than three times, ban them from claiming already uploaded videos of mine or even future videos.

There needs to be hurtful punishment for abusing these processes but there isn't so lots of media corporations abuse it without end.

<comment><USER36> Powerful entities are getting less and less liable to the public every day. And it's mostly because of us: we don't make them pay any mistake, so they carry on as long as it profit them.

Google is not your friend. It's a for profit company that protect its interests.

Basically, they won't do anything because:

\- they don't care. They never did. They used to pretend they did when they were not the leader. Now they are.

\- they won't gain anything from changing the status quo.

\- they won't lose anything because of it. You content is just a tiny small drop in the sea, and they own the biggest and most popular ocean. And the fish never rebels.

<comment><USER37> Why can't a for profit company that protects its interests be my friend?

<comment><USER36> It can. It's just not the case with google, as they proved again and again in the last 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Things are seriously whack in regards to posting anything regarding classical music online.

I had a short 1-minute video that I made last year to demo a product. I used the intro to Beethoven's Ninth, second movement, from a recording made in the 50s as background music.

Nobody would post it due to copyright issues. Heck if I could figure it out, and like all things fucked up about having algorithms tell me what I can and can't do online, I ignored it and moved on. Not worth fighting over something I shouldn't have to fight about.

I wonder, however, how many other people do the same thing that I do -- and how that's all going to end up over the long term. Not good, I expect.

</comment><comment><USER39> One solution would be to host videos on your own site. It's another argument for decentralization.

Of course it's not simple. We need a decentralized platform for this and social media, but the questions on how to achieve that are many.

<comment><USER40> > We need a decentralized platform for this and social media

PeerTube (YouTube lookalike), Mastodon (Twitter lookalike), and PixelFed (Instagram lookalike) are already that[0]. On top of that, they all follow the same federation standard (ActivityPub), meaning that you can follow and comment on a PeerTube channel or a PixelFed feed from within Mastodon. You don't really need three separate accounts, you can just have one.

They are practical on some levels, impractical on others, and they definitely do require some tweaking of how you use social media.

But they do exist, they are decentralized (as in, anyone can run their own instance), they are in active development, and they even have some fair amount of users. If I remember correctly, Mastodon boasts with around 1.5 million users at the moment. IMO, minuscule number for something that's considered a social network, but a _gigantic_ number for something that's a _decentralized_ social network.

[0] There are way more clients than the three I've mentioned. I chose to mention these three because they're lookalikes, meaning that you already kind of have the idea of what they are for.

<comment><USER39> Can you regulate who sees what? For example, I want the FB capability of sharing stuff with friends only in addition to having some public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Never forget when that on guy uploaded a video of random white noise and he got several automatic copyright strikes

</comment><comment><USER42> YouTube gave me a copyright strike because I posted video of a broken NES emulator I was developing.

</comment><comment><USER43> In case you missed the Blender Foundation debacle...

[https://www.blendernation.com/2018/06/19/blender- foundation-...](https://www.blendernation.com/2018/06/19/blender-foundation- youtube-update/)

Another piece in the puzzle that is Youtube's copyright compliance. You'd consider it good enough, until you realize _how_ broken it is.

</comment><comment><USER44> Jim Sterling has done a brilliant job at explaining how broken the YouTube Content ID system is, and how to prevent these companies from monetizing your work (though you don't get to run ads on the videos either).

Possibly NSFW: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8i6aMG9VM&t=20s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8i6aMG9VM&t=20s)

</comment><comment><USER45> Seems like anybody who receives a serious number (say, 5) of bogus TD requests from one entity could sue them for restitution for time spent. Of course the counterparty (bogus filer) won't show up so the plaintiff will get a default judgment. You could ask for an injunction and court costs or reimbursement and court costs.

Sounds like a lot of work and of course it would be (though you do get your costs back) but if a few people do this and win, and then go seize assets with the sheriff (like a guy in Florida did to Bank of America in the housing crisis) it would get public attention. I wonder if small claims can issue an injunction or only cash awards.

I don't know if the system in Germany can support this kind of thing. The German right agency (GEMA) is particularly bad.

</comment><comment><USER46> > lawful free expression online

What's the point of using the word "lawful" here? Free expression is free expression, conforming to a law or not is subject to the country and time. I think it somehow dilutes the absolute nature in the meaning of: free expression.

<comment><USER47> You're technically correct but in a meaningless way.

One is "free" to do basically anything they have the power to do, but nobody acts that way (they'd be jailed or dead) so when we say "free" we mean within reasonable bounds, which usually includes the law.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure how it's meaningless. When we're talking about a concept such is free speech, there is no point of "within reasonable bounds... the law", at least in an ideological frame. The only bounds are those of any greater freedom, meaning do as you like as long as you're not transgressing on someone else's. Freedom of expression using ones own means is an absolute freedom that should be self-evident and self-defined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Had exactly the same problem after uploading some newer recordings of Beethoven's work that was purposely placed in the public domain by the authors (or it might have been some loose license, can't remember).

</comment><comment><USER49> If only there was a way for regular people to unite their resources and push back against corporations lobbying their copyrights into eternity.

</comment><comment><USER50> Seems to me anyone can send a takedown request, or rather program a bot to do it. There seems to be no cost or due diligence involved.

People want to blame Google but they have no choice but to comply with current copyright laws. YT is investing a lot of money in monitoring its content. The internet isn't cool anymore.

</comment><comment><USER51> Well this is what the tech giants brought to us. The middle finger and an automated 'Up your ###' message. Not a far fetch to assume that soon similar technologies will judge your work resumes and credit worthiness too. With a similar up your ### message of course.

</comment><comment><USER52> There were file sharing sites before Youtube came along and there are still file sharing sites other than Youtube now.

SO - stop enabling Google-Youtube to pull this stuff and go somewhere else - its called using the Internet?

<comment><USER30> That's fine. I agree with you. Now, how are people going to find it?

That may work if you have an established presence, but even then you will likely lose a lot of your audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Question: Would filing a false DMCA request count as libel? After all, it is an accusation that you are using someone else's property without permission, in a written format.

</comment><comment><USER54> Got hit with several ContentID claims on videos that I posted in 2013 with the work I was supposedly infringing on being created in 2014. My appeal was denied. Moronic algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER55> Would human monitors work better than ContentID in this situation?

<comment><USER56> Even if we disregard the obvious costs of having thousands of people screening uploads all day long, I don't think it would work better. The humans will need to identify the content, and decide if it's public domain or not. This requires an infinite amount of knowledge, or a lot of googling.

I think a hybrid sollution (computer identifies the content, and if it is not sure about it being public domain or not, a human is used to give the final verdict) is probably the best compromise. But I expect that YT is already doing this.

<comment><USER57> AFAIK the first copy right takedown noticed is received without review by Youtube, they only review after being contested.

From my perspective, people are just too used tolerating the bad things of ContentId which in part is the result of bad legislation.

In this case I bet that no human would be able to make a confident call because of multiple jurisdictions. On Germany it's public domain but on France maybe it's still copyrighted so you need an international copyright law master degree to figure that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is why left wing political parties should make copyright and IP law reform a major part of their platform, and be willing to kick out the corporations and 'donors' in exchange to going back to basics.

All it takes is one political leader and party with the guts to tell the likes of the MPAA/RIAA/Disney/whatever to stick it and change the laws. What can they do if they don't like it? Go to China where IP laws are basically not enforced at all?

And I'm pretty sure most of the population would be on their side if they did that.

</comment><comment><USER59> listen while you read: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKiYw5hVuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKiYw5hVuM)

Dalia Lazar playing a Beethoven concert on piano.

</comment><comment><USER60> So, does anyone have experience with other video websites, like Vimeo?

<comment><USER61> You can also just stick video on your own blog using <video> tags. It's super easy these days! No Javascript libraries or Flash required.

Here's an example on my own site: [https://www.brainonfire.net/blog/2018/03/23/oxalis-leaf- open...](https://www.brainonfire.net/blog/2018/03/23/oxalis-leaf-opening-time- lapse/)

And here's the source code:

      <video src="https://www.brainonfire.net/hotlink/20180323-oxalis-timelapse/oxalis-160x.mp4"
        poster="https://www.brainonfire.net/hotlink/20180323-oxalis-timelapse/oxalis-poster.jpg"
        width="640" height="360" controls muted="true" preload="metadata">
        Video element not supported in your browser.
        Try this link! <a href="https://www.brainonfire.net/hotlink/20180323-oxalis-timelapse/oxalis-160x.mp4">oxalis-160x.mp4</a>
      </video>

(The fallback content is totally optional, but a nice touch for curmudgeons like me who don't have A/V enabled in their main browser.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _the videos were not reverted to this free license_

What does that mean?

</comment><comment><USER62> No, he's dead.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm amazed at the amount of comments that say music, should for some reason, be less protected than other forms of media and created works.

Your precious books and movies are no different than a song someone wrote and/or performed. Get your heads out of your asses.</comment>


The area of sphere [gif] - <AUTHOR> http://matematicascercanas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/VarC3A1zsceruza.gif <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion on r/math: [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/4yf5h4/the_area_of_sp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/4yf5h4/the_area_of_sphere_strangely_beautiful_in_its/)</comment>


A Surprising Comparison of Male vs. Female Microbiomes - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubiomeblog.com/surprising-comparison-male-vs-female-microbiomes/ <comment><USER2> I would think that the microbiome is so heavily influenced by one's environment (what they ingest, etc) that things like gender wouldn't matter so much. Considering that it's fairly easy to determine things like when someone traveled by simply looking at time series data of their microbiome, locality and diet would be the things that I'd expect to see differentiated.

<comment><USER3> Article concludes weaker statement as well:

"It turns out that in our dataset, there is no statistically significant difference between male microbiomes and female microbiomes. And, given a random sample, we would not be able to determine if it came from a man or a woman."

<comment><USER4> I found that completely unsurprising

<comment><USER5> It's about as unsurprising as the MythBusters finding that both men and women fart.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mNU6MFQP1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mNU6MFQP1k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article would have been more interesting if the author had explained the context which made them expect to find a gender-linked difference in the microbiomes. As someone unfamiliar with this field, the results of this study were completely _un_ surprising; it's exactly what I would have naively imagined to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pie charts? Why not a histogram for each bacterial phylum plotted for men and women?

<comment><USER8> And some discussion of the statistical-significance test(s) used, since from the tables, there _are_ some big differences in category proportions. (The text and the charts aren't clearly in agreement.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> These seem to be results for the intestinal microbiome. There might be different results for the skin microbiome, the sinus microbiome, or the vaginal microbiome.

<comment><USER2> "or the vaginal microbiome"

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you _can_ detect a gender difference here.

On a serious note, for better or worse it seems that 'microbiome' is often used colloquially to mean 'gut microbiome'

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I won't be surprised if many new discoveries come out of the dataset uBiome is constructing simply because no one has ever collected such a dataset before. And at this scale.

</comment><comment><USER10> My mind is also unblown.</comment>


Complexity Zoo - <AUTHOR> http://qwiki.stanford.edu/wiki/Complexity_Zoo

<comment><USER2> I used to be afraid that I didn't have that much knowledge in the domain of these types of things...

\- but this seems like a knowledge of a worker, not a owner... at least at this of a level, no offense - but this seems like early optimization for most anything except for those who are getting a PHD in it; I would say there will always be lower hanging fruit in my life than these things..

: i am probably just showing my very lack of knowledge here..

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow,

Having only dabbled at the beginning graduate level in this, it makes me wonder what actually interesting things come out of describing more and more classes of this sort? I know groups in group theory get classified in an organized way. These classifications seem much more arbitrary...</comment>


Show HN: Notable – The markdown-based note-taking app that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable# <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765482).</comment>


United Airlines' 26 different ticket fare classes - <AUTHOR> http://cwsi.net/united.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Even as a 100K flyer this shit is extremely confusing to me. No wonder the airlines are so screwed up.</comment>


Retro68 – a GCC-based cross-compiler for classic 68K and PPC Macintoshes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/autc04/Retro68 <comment><USER2> I still can't believe the amount of work Wolfgang Thaller puts into this project. I subscribed to the Github issues tracker and he constantly helping others with bugs, quirks and features.

I just wish I could put time and effort into learning to use the Macintosh Toolbox libraries and actually build something.

</comment><comment><USER3> Writing System 6 software with C++17? Now that's an interesting version of retrocomputing. Are we getting more Slack clients for old systems/operating systems?

<comment><USER4> This is one reason I am glad gcc is retaining at least nominal support for old architectures. Clang is great for example, but c++ has changed a lot in the current decade, and clang will not target m68k. GCC allows for interesting retrocomputing experiences.

I keep saying I will power up my old Sun or my 68k Mac running a/ux and try to write something for them. Though having free time is the limiting factor for me.

<comment><USER5> This is why I created the Bountysource campaign to fund the MODE_CC conversion of the m68k backend which luckily succeeded:

> [https://www.bountysource.com/issues/80706251-m68k-convert- > th...](https://www.bountysource.com/issues/80706251-m68k-convert-the- > backend-to-mode_cc-so-it-can-be-kept-in-future-releases)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to write an application for System 6, you might need this: [http://www.weihenstephan.org/~michaste/pagetable/mac/Inside_...](http://www.weihenstephan.org/~michaste/pagetable/mac/Inside_Macintosh.pdf)

<comment><USER7> the 1995 docs are probably more useful for most people, especially since the original Inside Macintosh code examples and references are all in Pascal rather than C

(also I'm more of a System 7 person)

[https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/inside-macintosh-cd- rom](https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/inside-macintosh-cd-rom)

<comment><USER6> There's something wonderfully refreshing to me about the use of Pascal. For most modern platforms, C has always enjoyed the benefit of a sort of "platform nepotism" in which all APIs/ABIs cater to the particulars of its type system. You can certainly use C or C++ to target classic MacOS, but it's always a _bit_ of a second-class citizen. It's fun to imagine how things might have turned out if a different language became the lingua franca of systems programming.

<comment><USER8> Pascal is just such a nice language to read, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. I am sure this will help the Amiga Community which is still going strong.</comment>


Ask HN: live website analytics -- installable product - <AUTHOR>

Do you guys think there is a demand for a productized version of live website analytics software? Something that can be installed on the web server itself instead of needing to feed all visit information to a third party analytics service.
I might be getting old, but I am having trouble understanding how so many companies can be acting so frivolously with what essentially constitutes sensitive and strategic business information. Or am I the odd one out?
I realize that the sales cycle for product is longer and trickier, but I am looking at something similar to Shaun Inman's Mint - light, easy to install and without Urchin's shocking price tag. <comment><USER2> I definitely do think there is a demand for it. How big is the demand? - I'm not sure but like you mentioned, Urchin is crazily priced and at our company, we are using an extremely old product that was poorly written. We'd love to switch it out but for legacy reasons, we can't really do it. Support for it is gone as well and looking at the code, it doesn't seem too hard to do either. We didn't feel comfortable going with something like Google Analytics precisely because of the sensitive information so I can't imagine us going through 3rd party analytics.</comment>


How to make money with Mechanical Turk without being scammed - <AUTHOR> http://mkronline.com/2014/06/10/how-to-make-money-with-mechanical-turk-without-being-scammed/

<comment><USER2> Just want to chime in as a regular requester here - mTurk is a major part of our business, and we've found that treating mTurk workers with respect (answering their emails promptly, communicating with them on forums, giving a fair pay rate) results in extremely high quality work that we can verify as high quality.

Our trick is to give a slightly lower base pay rate and then give bonuses to workers who provide higher quality work so they're more likely to come back. We watch our turkopticon ratings very closely to make sure we're doing right by them.

There are a lot of bad requesters and a lot of bad workers, but if you know how to use it the work can actually be immensely valuable. As a requester, having workers voluntarily post your HITs to forums and /r/HITsWorthTurkingFor/ tends to drive the largest number of high quality results.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn I wrote this so others wouldn't have to hunt down all the tools I used, or worse, waste a lot of time on scam jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> MTurk is just as much a scam for those posting jobs as maybe for those that try to make money on it.

I have heard many more horror stories about the poor quality of completed tasks and needing to request 3+ turkers to complete the same task in the hope that at least one would do it properly. Maybe what you are seeing are simply people posting jobs who have been burnt too many times.

<comment><USER4> > quality

That's why MT is a poor solutions for 'artisan' tasks. I've used it for 'commodity' tasks primarily.

Meaning: the price of having three people do it is included in the hit price

If you would normally pay 3$ per hit, instead you pay 1$, and eat the duplicates and mistakes.

<comment><USER5> completely agree, when you offer only 45 cents for a 20 minute survey you should inherently understand that more than few hits are going to be junk</comment></comment></comment>