Ask HN: Good tech blogs to read - <AUTHOR> I recently started reading again and I was looking for some good tech blogs to read. I tried Mashable/Gizmodo/zdnet but their junk to good read ratio is really high. I'm looking for something more like the old new thing [1], but I've come to really enjoy.<p>[1]: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ <comment><USER2> Here you go, [https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering- blogs](https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's some good ones:

* [http://joelonsoftware.com/](http://joelonsoftware.com/)

* [https://blog.codinghorror.com/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/)

* [http://joelonsoftware.com/](http://joelonsoftware.com/)

* [http://martinfowler.com/](http://martinfowler.com/)

* [http://www.hanselman.com/](http://www.hanselman.com/)

* [https://www.grahamcluley.com/](https://www.grahamcluley.com/)

<comment><USER4> You added joelonsoftware twice, if I were you I would add it one more time, just to show how important it is....

<comment><USER3> sorry i copied and pasted those from a text file. It was a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The man, the myth, the legend Steve Yegge's blog(s) are worth reading if you haven't yet:

[https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/blog- rants](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/blog-rants)

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/)

Armin Ronacher's blog is also excellent:

[http://lucumr.pocoo.org](http://lucumr.pocoo.org)

For the Schemer, or the compiler hacker, Andy Wingo's blog is fantastic

[http://wingolog.org](http://wingolog.org)

For insights into debugging, kernels, and debugging kernels, Bredan Gregg's blog is fantastic.

[http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/index.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/index.html)

Finally, I wish to list a non-blog: and unblog, or perhaps the remnants of a blog once passed. This is an archive of John Carmack's .plan between 1996, and about 2005.

[https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan- archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

It is still a fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER6> A very good one if you are interested in (mostly .NET-based) application architecture is Jimmy Bogard's blog on Los Techies:

[https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/](https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/)

Some great posts:

[https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2016/06/13/10-lessons- fro...](https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2016/06/13/10-lessons-from-a-long- running-ddd-project-part-1/)

[https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2016/06/20/10-lessons- fro...](https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2016/06/20/10-lessons-from-a-long- running-ddd-project-part-2/)

[https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2012/10/08/favor-query- ob...](https://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2012/10/08/favor-query-objects-over- repositories/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It surprises me that no one has suggested Patrick McKenzie's (patio11 here on HN) blog.

 _So much_ value there.

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/)

<comment><USER7> For that matter, there is a lot of great stuff in just reading his comments on the threads here on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few that I follow on a semi-regular basis:

[https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com](https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com)

[http://highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com)

[http://techblog.netflix.com](http://techblog.netflix.com)

[http://www.natpryce.com](http://www.natpryce.com)

[https://8thlight.com/blog/](https://8thlight.com/blog/)

[https://www.percona.com/blog/](https://www.percona.com/blog/)

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

[http://blog.crisp.se/author/henrikkniberg](http://blog.crisp.se/author/henrikkniberg)

[https://m.signalvnoise.com](https://m.signalvnoise.com)

[https://dannorth.net/blog/](https://dannorth.net/blog/)

[https://codeascraft.com](https://codeascraft.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Also this one : [https://github.com/sumodirjo/engineering- blogs](https://github.com/sumodirjo/engineering-blogs)

</comment><comment><USER10> Kilimchoi's link is a great repository! If you want some more good blogs and you tube channels to follow, take a look at my collection here..

[http://searchtrack.co/viewproject/203/good-tech-blogs-to- fol...](http://searchtrack.co/viewproject/203/good-tech-blogs-to- follow?rc=120594565rcXCEQyvinJylCn%26source=socialquo)

</comment><comment><USER11> It would help to clarify what you mean by "tech blog". "Tech" encompasses a lot, and most blogs (aggregators aside) are single-issue or few-issue because most people are knowledgeable about only a few things. What specifically are you looking for?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've never seen a Julia Evans post that wasn't super informative. [http://jvns.ca/](http://jvns.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a pretty big fan of Scott Hanselman!

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know any blog quite like Raymond's, but the more technical ones I like are:

Jan-Piet Mens (mostly protocols and IoT) - [http://jpmens.net/](http://jpmens.net/)

Absorptions (Oona Räisänen's excellent hacking around signals of all kinds) - [http://www.windytan.com/](http://www.windytan.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a community blog, news for nerds, stuff that matters :).

[http://slashdot.org](http://slashdot.org) [http://techdirt.com](http://techdirt.com) \- for techno legal matters. [http://techmmeme.com](http://techmmeme.com) \- aggregator of blogs & news sits.

<comment><USER16> It's [http://techmeme.com/](http://techmeme.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jeremy Kun's blog is exceptional

</comment><comment><USER18> The Procedural World blog — about the development of a complex procedural- generation-centric engine and development tool — is quite a read: [http://procworld.blogspot.com](http://procworld.blogspot.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> Jeff Atwoods codinghorror.com is good. Rarely updated though.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://testingalert.com/api-testing/api-manual/](http://testingalert.com/api- testing/api-manual/)</comment>


O'Reilly book on "unofficial" iPhone development is sold out at Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/o_reilly_bets_on_iphone_hackers_with_new_book

<comment><USER2> Still available from BN.com: [http://search.barnesandnoble.com/iPhone-Open- Application-Dev...](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/iPhone-Open-Application- Development/Jonathan-Zdziarski/e/9780596518554/?itm=1)</comment>


Show HN: Zero-fees global international money transfers, Magno - <AUTHOR> https://www.magnocash.com <comment><USER2> Zero fees my hole! There is a fee, it's called the spread.

Just because the fee (or more properly, the commission) is zero doesn't me you are not paying for the service.

The spread - the difference between the buying price and the selling price for, in this case, a foreign currency - is where the money is made. You can be sure that this firm is widening the spread they get from an upstream liquidity provider before quoting you the number of Peseta they'll sell you for a Dollar.

So whether you are paying a percentage commission or not, you are definitely paying. It's just the presentation that differs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey bradwood, we don't charge a single cent from fees, the spread we take is the mid-market one.

This differs from Paypal, TransferWise and such, to whom you pay hidden-fees, and conversion-fees as you refer to the spread.

In our case, we make money from API Calls to our B2B service, but not from common transaction.

If you deposit 100Euros from an account in Bahamas, and transfer it to an account in Papua Nueva Guinea, the Papuan guy's gonna receive 100Euros, then he can withdraw in the currency he prefers and get a spread at official conversion rates (Except for Venezuela, where we offer a special rate due to obvious reasons).

Thanks for the Finance 101 Class!

<comment><USER2> > get a spread at official conversation rates

"official"? What is that, exactly? "Official" determined how, and by whom, and using what inputs?

Forgive my scepticism, but that sounds awefully fishy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

> _What to Submit_

> _If your work isn 't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show > HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then._

> _Blog posts, sign-up pages, and fundraisers can 't be tried out, so they > can't be Show HNs._

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh my bad, I surely read the rules but missed that.

Thanks for the insight!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $0 fees is becoming norm, this is specially for bank deposits right? Problem is with credit card fund transfer where there _will_ be fees.

Finally the time for transfer, is it still 4 business days?</comment>


All of IT - <AUTHOR> http://www.eldelshell.com/all-of-it.html

<comment><USER2> Hi Eldelshell, your blog shows, that we're lucky to have you in our new team as you also regard things from an abstract way as much as from the material scope. Seeing forward to meet you, "A PM-ing Developer". ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Too long didn't read summary: Ask open questions, provide people with code, talk to them how they would find answers or improve it. And spend a little bit of your time learning some IT if you expect to hire anyone decent.

The problem is that there are many limiting factors in questioning surveys and what you are testing them on. And determining a person's aptitude for technology is a very subjective process. Do you test their resourcefulness by asking them what sites they visit and learn from? Do you test their actual programming ability by having them do a live coding that could be too specific case? Do you ask them about terminology which just shows they may know some buzzwords?

Google for a while gave up on asking algorithm questions supposedly for a certain subset of jobs they had.

I think as IT is getting more specialized and there is a difference between people knowing certain things it is important to have some form of domain knowledge which can be in the form of terminology quizzed, but at what level is up for debate. But maybe a more open question format would be better.

I think always presenting the interviewer with the code and having them look it over then provide input is maybe a better fit. It is like math, everyone wants to just use a calculator but in school you use your head at first for a while, but eventually everyone in a work environment uses a calculator anyway.

The computer questions should be the same, they should have access to a computer. They should then be quized on how to reason out this x code and how can I change it to be more like y. They need to be problem-solving questions, that use some critical thinking but also involves some reasonableness to them. Some may ask terminology, but it shouldn't be the main focus.

It also does not help that employers don't know what to ask for their tech jobs as well in many cases. If someone wants to hire a web developer they may just copy and paste and re-write the job requirements of a random posting they find online. This is what I imagine happens 90% of the time. The reason why job posts are such crap is because when someone posts a new requirement they probably all just update their templates that they had before-hand. It's technological ignorance at best!

What is getting worse is also specialization in different sectors of computing is just confusing companies more-- Devops, machine learning, security programming, etc etc. And as computer literacy is improving in population yet code is getting automated more and more there is becoming an increasingly difficult question of what is necessary to learn for aspiring programmers who will be joining the workforce.

A few good devop team can easily be more productive then 3 times the size of it in developers if the developers know nothing about devops.

A few good machine learners can solve real problems with data mining that may save a big company millions that a group of programmer interns wouldn't know how to do.

A few good pentesters can find holes you completely missed and need to patch providing your company from losing tons of credit cards through an open point of sales or losing important company data.

One funny way to see experience in IT security is to simply ask are we getting more safe, or less safe security wise. The answer less safe shows that they have been working in the IT security field, however if you ask researchers at universities they may not know about the level of problems in the security industry being so prevalent but they may still be good fits for specific research.

It is hard to manage which are necessary, and it is also hard to address skill level. There are many groups of interns now who could easily possess such skills that may be of way more use than people know as well.

Many companies rather hire a student out of college than a phd student because they may have some interest in some of these things and because he may have some sample projects or notice in communities even though he may not have specialized skills.

One of the most major faults though is that we have tons of jobs that are not using any technology at all and involve 0 programming, while others that are entirely programming. The future of programming should adapt to things where there are jobs that have people do both. Project managers and devops people should be developers as well, not just people who manage but coders. But this is only applicable to certain technology focused companies, which is becoming harder to reason not to be technology focused.

For the reasons above I've actually been learning on my own lots of diferent technologies way before trying to get a job in IT. However, IT is still too rapidly changing to learn "everything", but people can benefit from learning how big companies like yahoo, reddit, facebook, netflix, linkedin etc deploy their infrastructure to handle large amounts of data. They can also learn security and machine learning as well as other more special skills which can get them a job or even better start a startup. With the ease of setting up a Software as a Service, it is becoming more approachable to start a startup then to get locked in the horrid cage of mismanaged companies as well.</comment>


Dynamic Provisioning and Storage Classes in Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2017/03/dynamic-provisioning-and-storage-classes-kubernetes.html?m=1 <comment><AUTHOR> This has been in the works for a while, and we are really proud to announce this has reached GA. Storage for cloud computing is a particularly hard, and often hinders portability due to cloud specific deployments. With Dynamic Storage classes, deployments now have a cleaner level of abstraction letting devs focus on apps, and ops focus on infrastructure and resources. Super cool!

Disclosure: I work on Kubernetes at Google

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an awesome feature and thanks to everyone who made this happen.

FWIW, in minikube, we've added a custom dynamic hostpath provisoner for local storage. This makes the abstraction much cleaner between development and production.

Disclosure: I work on minikube at Google</comment>


Ask HN: Does your app need Quickbooks integration? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking into integration my web app with Quickbooks and it's a huge pain.  I'm seeing if there's a need to make this easier.  Anyone in the same situation? <comment><AUTHOR> <https://github.com/ruckus/quickeebooks></comment>


Dart: Sound Null Safety - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dartlang/announcing-sound-null-safety-defd2216a6f3 <comment><USER2> I've been using Dart and Flutter recently, mostly happy with it, Dart got into my top 3 languages actually (the other 2 are Swift and Julia).

Some random thoughts about Dart:

\- The design seems driven by pragmatism and developer experience. I hate dogmatic approaches to languages (such as: FP is always better than OOP).

\- No REPL.

\- Two things I like about doc comments. First, they use "///" instead of "/* */". Second, instead of the Javadoc style where every method argument and the return value must be described, in Dart the preferred style is to describe the method naturally with no prescribed structure.

\- The formatter defaults to 80 characters, I think something like 105 would be better.

\- Don't like the access control model where private members start with an underscore, it's just ugly. It would be better if everything was private by default and public memebers would be annotated with the "public" keyword.

\- Overall, it seems like poor man's Swift, can't think of any amazing feature right now, but the whole experience is good, not too far behind Swift, better than Kotlin, even though Kotlin should be better on paper.

And Flutter:

\- It's fun and easy compared to Android and iOS. (I haven't tried Swift UI yet so can't compare.)

\- Iteration speed is amazing and a killer feature. I have the IDE and the iPhone simulator side by side and with Cmd + \ I can reload the app in like half a second.

\- You can't achieve truly native experience but you can get close. The widgets don't accurately mimic native widgets. For example scrolling physics on Android - it's just similar.

\- Performance seems reasonably good, native apps just feel a bit better for me.

\- Flutter is the best technology for multiplatform mobile development IMO, unless you want to share code with web - Flutter for the web is DAO.

<comment><USER3> > Overall, it seems like poor man's Swift, can't think of any amazing feature > right now, but the whole experience is good, not too far behind Swift, > better than Kotlin, even though Kotlin is more feature-packed.

It's actually the reverse. Dart was designed _before_ Swift and Swift seems to have taken quite a few ideas from it. The "big" difference to me is tuples, but Dart has the idea open under multi-value returns. Another big difference is GC vs reference counting, but I think the GC is the correct choice.

I rather like the underscore for private variables. It helps remind me without having to reference the top of the file constantly.

<comment><USER2> Which ideas did Swift take from Dart?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, they really listen to people's feedback. Looking forward to testing it with a couple of small apps I have once it becomes stable. Overall, the dart/flutter experience has been amazing for me. The team looks serious about providing the absolute best developer experience and so far they've done it.

Flutter's future looks promising because it's also a first-class citizen in the new Fuchsia OS. I don't know how's that experiment gonna end up, but even today it can be considered one of the best UI toolkit we have.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kudos to the Dart team. I'm sure this feature was a super heavy lift.

"The soundness of Dart's null safety has another welcome implication: it means your programs can be smaller and faster. "

</comment><comment><USER6> What is Dart being used for these days? This isn't snark I'm curious. I looked into it a couple years ago but ended up going with TS for a project, it looked pretty neat though.

<comment><USER7> Dart is used by [https://flutter.dev/](https://flutter.dev/) a Google UI toolkit

Flutter's focus has been mobile apps, but they are working web and desktop.

Dart pad has some flutter demos [https://dartpad.dev/](https://dartpad.dev/)

<comment><USER8> Is it used for anything other than Flutter? I remember they initially pitched Dart as a wholesale replacement for JavaScript on the web, before Flutter even existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll never understand why people thought it was a good idea to design static type systems that _can 't_ express nullability/non-nullability in the first place. In a Java codebase every single object reference is a potential land- mine, and the only way to be totally safe is to add a null check before every single access or method call. So most people just roll the dice until something inevitably breaks.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Dart shares sound null safety with Swift, but not very many other > programming languages.

What about Kotlin and Rust?</comment>


Ask HN: Which is better Clojure or Elixir? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Wrong question. There is no such thing as a language being better than another in general. Better for doing what, by whom, in what time and quality objectives ?

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends!

</comment><comment><USER4> Clojure (Or Elixir? )

</comment><comment><USER5> Elixir is better Elixir. Mind the punctuation.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I sell some code that I wrote - <AUTHOR>

A few years ago I quit my day job and started using my savings to build a product mostly aimed at companies. For some reason or another I had to stop doing that after only managing a (minor) sell.
I still have all the source for the product, and over the years I'm always thinking of getting back to it, but for one reason or other I have never done it. This piece of code works very good, but the web frontend needs some work to expose all the info of the backend and some cosmetics changes.
So my question is: How could I go to find someone interested in buying this code ?
There are a few companies already in this market space so I know there's a need for this sort of product, and my code could be used to maybe add extra capabilities to an existing product. <comment><USER2> I would suspect you would have a much easier time selling an entire product than a feature add on. Unless you are talking about a widgetized or plug-in architecture, wouldn't any company that would buy your code need to refactor it to fit in their existing products.

You'd have to sell it to a company for less than they could create/implement it themselves. I'm not saying this can't be done, but I suspect it is a much bigger challenge then selling a complete product.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a complete product on its own. It just needs some work on the front end (I was just commenting that this _could_ also be turned into an addon).</comment></comment>


Chrome's Console API: Greatest Hits - <AUTHOR> http://www.mitchrobb.com/chromes-console-api-greatest-hits/

<comment><USER2> Author here-- really happy that people are finding this useful. I wrote it a few months ago when frustration with the way Chrome logged objects led me into their docs and I found a bunch of cool stuff I hadn't seen before.

<comment><USER3> Excellent post, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Re: caveats, if you want to snapshot something at a point in time but still have it look nice:

        console.log(JSON.stringify(someObject, null, 2))

Will nicely indent it for you.

<comment><USER5> two things about the `null` - the "replacer" function

1\. in IE 8, it will choke. it needs to be a function (hopefully you don't have to care about IE 8, though)

2\. in all other JSON.strigifable browsers, you can skip it with a falsey value, which is what the `null` is doing here. As a result, you can also use `0` (e.g. stringinfy(foo, 0, 2)), which I like because I can type it faster

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The console api isn't really linked to chrome. I prefer the chrome debugging tool but those things should work on firefox too. I think you could be clearer on this point.

<comment><USER7> Don't use that in prod, because it doesn't work in IE and it will cause your js to stop working.

In IE the 'console' object doesn't even exist if the developer tools aren't displayed, so if you use "console.log" in your program, your js will just throw an NPE.

Note that if you try closing the Developer Tools, 'console' is still declared for this page and all descendant pages. To test 'console.log' you need to avoid opening the devtools and open a new tabs.

<comment><USER8> The simple solution is to polyfill: [https://github.com/paulmillr/console- polyfill](https://github.com/paulmillr/console-polyfill)

<comment> ux-app Another solution is to remove all debug commands as part of your build/deploy process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> console.copy is pretty useful to copy stuff to clipboard.

<comment><USER10> Looks like there's also:

* console.watch & console.unwatch

* console.timeline & console.timelineEnd

* console.timeStamp, console.time, console.timeEnd

* console.markTimeline

* console.groupCollapsed

* console.exception

In Firefox Nightly. A few of the timeline ones don't seem to work just yet, as the timeline is currently being prototyped in Nightly.

<comment><USER11> in Aurora (Fx39), profile/time tools create profiles and marks on the timeline, but nightly (Fx40) has a combined tool and the profile/profileEnd commands landing soon

watch/unwatch are from Object.prototype, confusingly enough!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> the "caveat" about "live" data is only in chrome console. For example firebug does not have this problem.

Another pet peeve of mine: at the moment, only in firebug I can call console.log() passing a function, get a nice, clickable function definition, that can get me directly to the "debugger" section, at the right place where the function is.

</comment><comment><USER13> Simple, useful code (uses ES6 syntax) - `console.log({a, b, c, d})`- it's shortcut for `{a: a, b: b, c: c, d: d}` and is less invasive than breakpoint.

</comment><comment><USER14> These look incredibly useful. Regardless if they work on IE or not.</comment>


Kalashnikov 'feared he was to blame' for AK-47 rifle deaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25709371

<comment><USER2> "The Gun" by C. J. Chivers was an interesting book that covered a lot of the making of the AK-47. Kalashnikov was a very interesting character who was wrapped up in cold war rhetoric and who frequently said contradictory things.

</comment><comment><USER3> All engineers have a moral responsibility for the work that they do--this is important whether you are making bridges, assaults rifles, or data warehouses.</comment>


With change at the top of Copyright Office, a battle brews over free content - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-copyright-office-20161109-story.html <comment><USER2> > "You don't make any money from recording music anymore," he said.

Historically, musicians got paid for making music, not for selling it. For thousands of years, musicians never got paid for recorded music, yet they survived. The real money maker is, and has always been, live performances and concerts. The multi-millionaire double platinum musician is a 20th century aberration.

Ever read "The Problem with Music"? [http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem- with-music](http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I get this argument. Of course artists would rather be paid for product than time, and of course they want the aberration to continue.

The world of tech would be pretty different if the "aberration" of stock options were eliminated, and everyone was paid only by the hour.

But it goes further than ISOs to actual product revenues - I would be pretty sad (and much less well off) if I could only charge by the hour for writing software vs collecting revenues for software I already wrote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "The librarian wants free content, and the copyright office is there to > protect creators of content. They are diametrically opposed ideologies"

Well, that's an insane viewpoint.

Creative Commons and free culture licenses exist to maintain both!

> "You don't make any money from recording music anymore," he said. "The > streaming services have wiped out that revenue stream."

Ah. So your company has failed to keep pace with what your audience wants, and so is falling apart. Your answer is to use copyright like a sledgehammer, rather than trying to understand the current market.

<comment><USER5> > Creative Commons and free culture licenses exist to maintain both!

 _If_ a content creator has licensed her content under a free culture license, the job of the copyright office is to help her enforce that.

> So your company has failed to keep pace with what your audience wants, and > so is falling apart. Your answer is to use copyright like a sledgehammer, > rather than trying to understand the current market.

That would be a reasonable argument if the market set the price for streaming services. But to a significant extent it does not. For example, Pandora-style streaming is subject to mandatory licensing at prices set by the government.[1]

Imagine that the government sets the price for wheat (as it has several times in our history). If the government sets the price of wheat too low, due to pressure by say cereal manufacturers who use wheat as an input to their profit-making activities, should we condemn the farmer for complaining about it?

[1] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct- jay...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-jay-z- pandora-songwriters-compensation-copyright-justice- perspec-0402-20150403-story.html)

<comment><USER6> _> That would be a reasonable argument if the market set the price for streaming services. But to a significant extent it does not._

It's been a minute, but didn't CDs and records usually get sold at the same price point?

Also, the article you linked is about songwriters, not performers (and happens to be co-written by one of its case studies for "I got paid far less than I think I should have" afaict).

I was under the impression that Spotify allocated revenue according to total listens on individual tracks, which seems fair enough.

<comment><USER5> Spotify, because it lets you choose your song, is not eligible for compulsory licensing. But the compulsory license still anchors the market price. Content owners can't charge the "real" market rate for songs because streaming services and downloading services are to an extent fungible with each other.

<comment><USER6> How would one determine the real market rate for a song in the first place? In an ephemeral streaming context, a market seems like it would be nigh impossible to implement. "I bid $.02 for an hour of streaming music, only play me songs that are under that"?

<comment><USER5> The same way they do now when there is no compulsory license: the publisher negotiates the value of songs with the streaming service up front.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't sound particularly free. That sounds like monopolies dealing with each other.

<comment><USER5> There are dozens of publishers and dozens of streaming services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For an interesting understanding of the state of copyright today, I recommend reading Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig.

I bought the kindle version but it's also available online at [http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf](http://www.free- culture.cc/freeculture.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think an understanding of the positives and negatives of copyright is important. Copyright is an important economic motivator and the basis for the creative industry's ability to generate revenue, but taken to extremes it stifles technological innovation and can lead to outright censorship.

Until very recently, only the positives were represented in government policy. It was as if it was impossible for too much copyright or too strict copyright enforcement to even exist.

What we are seeing is a rebalancing of the narrative, one that includes the opinions of more then just the entertainment industry. That's all.</comment>


Baba Is Turing Complete: A Sketch of a Proof - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqrh1m <comment><USER2> This is concerning an award winning puzzle game in which you can manipulate even the most basic rules of play:

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

<comment><USER3> Baba is You is a good metaphor for programming; the puzzle design is dependent on recognizing the "trick", but even if you do recognize the trick, there will _always_ be a catch or a one-off error that's difficult to solve.

<comment><USER4> Plus many of the puzzles iterate on previous puzzles. You'll solve a puzzle, then find that the next one is almost the same but has one tiny difference that completely closes the door on your previous solution without opening any obvious new ones. These are great, because it often makes the second puzzle look completely impossible on first glance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some visual proofs of Turing completeness:

[https://twitter.com/shr_em/status/1127922245743960064](https://twitter.com/shr_em/status/1127922245743960064)

[https://twitter.com/mattar0d/status/1109987662608384000](https://twitter.com/mattar0d/status/1109987662608384000)

The game for those who are new to it — well worth playing!

[https://hempuli.itch.io/baba](https://hempuli.itch.io/baba)

<comment><USER6> And here's one for Conway's Game of Life [https://twitter.com/fengchuiyulin/status/1110423064020480000](https://twitter.com/fengchuiyulin/status/1110423064020480000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Baba Is You is one of my top 3 games for programming-minded people (the other two being Factorio and Shenzhen IO). It's an amazing game to play with non- programmers as well. Basically each puzzle design is crafted to hinge on some incorrect assumption you hold about the rules of the game. Only by thinking very carefully can you uncover this wrong assumption, and then it becomes a tool in your toolbox for future levels.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not remotely surprised that Baba Is You is Turing Complete. I shudder at the thought of a Turning Machine running on it, though. It sounds like the worst possible self-modifying code hell.

<comment><USER9> If you look at it with the perspective of an engineer, it's the worst

If you look at it with the perspective of an artist, it's absolutely glorious

I think there is enough space in the world for both (as long as they don't get mixed up at the wrong moment). See also Daniel Temkin's "The Less Humble Programmer"

[0] [https://esoteric.codes/blog/the-less-humble- programmer](https://esoteric.codes/blog/the-less-humble-programmer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author talks about the game and how he created it - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd_-4lp7hZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd_-4lp7hZk)

</comment><comment><USER11> Baba is one of those games where the learning curve is absolutely sublime and gives the player so much satisfaction after figuring out some of the puzzles.

Don't play this sitting on the toilet though, it's going to be a long toilet session

</comment><comment><USER12> At a glance it looks a LOT like

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip%27s_Challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip%27s_Challenge)

</comment><comment><USER13> That's pretty neat.

Is there a name for the thing where you generalise something to be an infinite version of itself, then show that that infinite version is Turing complete, then transfer that back to the original finite thing? Sort of like we are willing to call real physical computers 'Turing complete' despite them clearly not having infinite memory.

<comment><USER14> Closest thing I could find was involved in proving the finite version of Ramsey's Theorem from the infinite version as a compactness argument.

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

That being said, I'm a little curious as to why one would want to prove something is Turing complete. I tend to assume something is Turing complete unless shown otherwise. For instance, I would never have gambled MTG wasn't Turing complete.

<comment><USER15> At the very least, proving that a game is Turing complete can be as entertaining a challenge as playing it.

One case where Turing completeness was useful was in proving wrong those programmers who claimed that there were some programs that just could not be written using structured programming. Also, if we did not know about Turing completeness, there would be constant futile research trying to find alternative architectures and languages that could solve problems that cannot be solved with what we have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everything is Turing complete until proven otherwise.</comment>


The Surprising Impact of "Mountaineer's Guide to Death and Disaster" - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150206-mountaineering-accidents-american-alpine-club-climbing/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I didn't even know this exists -- which is surprising because I just finished reading "Training for the New Alpinism" and am reviewing a number of climbing books.</comment>


New Tech Brief - <AUTHOR> http://lnkagency.com/technology-intelligence <comment><AUTHOR> With more and more US start-ups prototyping and more in China, we decided to start this so you can keep up with news, moves, and more in the region. Enjoy!</comment>


Hacking:SF:HackerNews is like Jazz:NewOrleans:WWOZ - <AUTHOR> http://www.wwoz.org/programs/streams

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the pretty much _the_ station in New Orleans. So much fresh new music they can't play it all on two stations running 24/7. As it happens, the site is designed and maintained by a small outfit with ties to the local 2600 scene as well.

Maybe its the trolleys.

</comment><comment><USER2> Born in NOLA but transplanted to SF long ago, listening to WWOZ online is one of my few remaining links to home. Good to see it mentioned here.</comment>


You wait ages for a new particle, and then five come along – 700+ authors - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04639 <comment><USER2> Please don't rewrite titles to make them more baity.</comment>


Utopia, Abandoned - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/t-magazine/olivetti-typewriters-ivrea-italy.html <comment><AUTHOR> I worked for Olivetti until 1989. Fascinating company and family.</comment>


How to "open" a microchip and what's inside - <AUTHOR> http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/how-to-open-microchip-asic-what-inside/

<comment><USER2> What a super nice series of pictures, if you look at the date codes and compare them the advances in process technology are the most vivid and compelling visual display of Moore's law at work.</comment>


AOL Realizes Bloggers Will Work For Free; Stops Paying Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/28/aol-realizes-bloggers-will-work-for-free-stops-paying-them/ <comment><USER2> Not really news. Not even accurate.</comment>


A Short Intro to Constraints - <AUTHOR> https://zalo.github.io/blog/constraints/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious if someone would know where to point me?

There's many problems I would like to solve using some sort of model definition with constraints given, and variable(s) to optimize. Either to aid in guiding the design of a system, or using generative design.

Example:

        - Electrical power, voltage and amperage constraints along with physical size constraints, in a circuit model.
        - Data size and throughput and concurrency constraints in a distributed system models.

I have a feeling there must be well known techniques and/or tools to do these kind of general purpose constraint modelling, but I can't put my finger on it. The closest that comes to mind is using Prolog, but I've only used it with boolean type of constraints.

<comment><USER3> Have you looked at Propagator Networks? It's a fascinating computation model that I believe was originally proposed by Gerald Sussman. The original use case/example was electrical circuits.

<comment><USER4> Seems like AYBABTME is talking about constrained optimization, whereas you are speaking of "constraints" in a different context, i.e., this paper ([https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6255](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6255)) by Stallman and Sussman, further developed in Guy Steele's PhD dissertation, eventually leading to the propagator model by Radul and Sussman ([https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/propagators/)). Both kinds of "constraints" are very interesting, but one is a class of numerical algorithms and another a general programming framework.

<comment><USER3> Yup, it looks like I glossed over the optimization part and latched onto the circuits part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the distance constraint, won't the point always land _on_ the circle? The visualisation shows that it can be inside the circle too.

<comment><USER6> So probably the author put a "distance less than or equal to" constraint. Having a "distance equal to" constraint would have the point always on the circle. And, magically, "distance larger than" would have the point always outside the circle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any idea how the graphics gets rendered on the brower here? Is there a javascript library for this?

I see further interesting graphics from the author here: [https://github.com/zalo/MathUtilities](https://github.com/zalo/MathUtilities)

<comment><USER8> The first post is done in Paper.js, while the rest of them are done in Three.js. The scripts in MathUtilities are for the Unity3D game engine.

All of them are excellent graphics frameworks (though with strengths in 2D, 3D, and standalone content respectively).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Truly didactic while being entertaining. Playing lets the concept sink in better.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a similar project that showed up on hn a while ago:

[http://omrelli.ug/g9/gallery/](http://omrelli.ug/g9/gallery/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I could see this as a great as visualization tool for a high school geometry class, i.e. explaining solutions for systems of inequalities.

</comment><comment><USER12> there are not so many videos about this topic

this GDC talk is kinda hard to understand (at least for me) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHinxAhv1ZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHinxAhv1ZE)</comment>


Vevo could have been 'an existential threat' to YouTube, but YouTube won - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/5/24/17390756/vevo-youtube-video-apps-existential-threat <comment><USER2> All that Vevo ever was for me was a _quality seal_ that guarantees that the video from an artist is official, when searching for a song on YouTube - i.e. it had good image and sound quality and it was indeed a video clip, not just an upload of the song with the album cover or crappy collage as image.

Never thought about it as a company with ambitions to challenge YouTube.

<comment><USER3> i actually used to avoid vevo because it would usually give you the censored version of popular songs.

<comment><USER4> I came to type the same thing.

<comment><USER5> When you get big, you abandon the edge. That's just how it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vevo was a partially thought-out venture, executed well but not well enough. It was always hampered by the studios' stubborn direction: licensing limitations that kept it out of lots of markets, not enough cross-promotion through sponsorships, retail channels, or advertising, and intentional lack of scope to avoid cannibalizing music sales. And they were hamstrung by the legacy of their initial decision to syndicate to YouTube: most people probably discovered the name 'Vevo' through seeing their watermark on music videos posted to YouTube, but subsequently had little reason to explore what Vevo is or does. Not that they missed anything: Vevo didn't do anything that YouTube didn't already do.

They wanted the cake both ways: leverage YouTube's audience and discovery, while running a not-at-all-captive, ad-supported competitor just for the sake of perceived control and leverage. That's cute.

If it wasn't such a half-assed venture, Vevo could've become the single most valuable subscription music streaming destination: a captive Spotify for daily use, with music videos on demand. But studios couldn't commit to the serious business decision of withdrawing their licensed content from other platforms that have already built an audience. Instead, now they've abandoned their ambition to have their own digital distribution solution, and have decided that focusing on licensing and revenue sharing is their preferred outcome.

It's interesting to compare this to TV, where the major incumbents are still interested in gating their content to their respective captive distribution portals.

</comment><comment><USER7> When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. I am not surprised that Google was able to manipulate them so well.

<comment><USER5> _When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people._

This can be generalized. Example: The rocket launch industry was once more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. Fortunately, what that does, is to create a market that is dramatically misaligned with what the price could be from first principles.

On the other hand, network effects with proprietary tech might be the great fatal flaw in capitalism that Karl Marx so desperately wanted to find. Once the creative destruction stops, stagnation then oppression takes over. Once capitalism no longer has sufficient advantage over the oppression of centralized control, there is no reason not to fall into centralized control. However, that result isn't utopian at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I happened to have a chat with someone who knows what happened first hand - between YouTube and the record labels oligopoly, they could hardly develop as a company and not a mediator, sandwiched between giants on both content production and content distribution.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was always under the impression that Vevo was owned by YouTube/Google. I had no idea they had plans on anything other than "official music videos" on YouTube.

<comment><USER10> Alphabet does have a minority equity stake in Vevo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest threat to YouTube is YouTube. Censorship is getting out of hand and demonetizing/banning sucessful tubers is making people ask questions.

Questions like: Should I continue to invest in this platform or start moving my viewers elsewhere?

Personally, if I had a following, I'd be getting my branded media site up and running. I'd continue to post teaser content to YouTube, but host my full content on servers I control.

<comment><USER12> The hard part is that Youtube is actually really great at playing videos.

I have always found the alternatives surprisingly subpar.

It should maybe not be a surprise, after all they had all the time they needed in order to improve the experience.

<comment><USER13> There was a time where dailymotion had a shot but they missed it and failed hard on this part.

Vimeo is probably the only one that felt good (even though the average resolution being higher killed my poor old laptop)

<comment><USER12> Vimeo tends to really annoys me by forcing me to go to their website if I want to see the video in high def.

This tends to make me make sure to just leave the website afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Vevo's post [0] about stopping their service is a priceless list of bullshit bingo:

> At Vevo, our objective is to grow the commercial and promotional value of > music videos, fostering deep connections between artists and fans.

> To be most effective in achieving those goals, we will phase out elements of > our owned and operated platforms.

> Going forward, Vevo will remain focused on engaging the biggest audiences > and pursuing growth opportunities.

[0]: [https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned- and-...](https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-operated- platforms/)

<comment><USER15> Why does that page look so absolutely perfect on mobile? Perfect blacks, ultra crisp fonts.

<comment><USER16> It takes a good designer and a premium font: [https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir- next](https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next)

(not that there are no quality free fonts)

<comment><USER17> I tend not to think of fonts that come with the operating system as "premium" :)

(Avenir + Avenir Next have been bundled in various Apple operating systems, and are the default font choices in a few of Keynote's built-in themes)

<comment><USER16> Since it's not on windows, linux or android, you should buy it which makes it premium despite the Mac luxury :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had no idea that Vevo wasn't just a subsection of YouTube anyway, the equivalent of Twitter's blue tick

<comment><USER19> They were formed out of a lawsuit (or thread of lawsuit). The music companies were going to sue YouTube/Google for copyright, so Google basically said, we'll provide you the infrastructure to play your Vevo songs free of charge as long as you dont sue out pants off. Worked out in the best interest for both party's

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> No, a reaction cobbled together to try and maintain control of a no longer releevabt business model was never a threat to anyone other than investors whose money music publishing industry is wasting.

It could only ever fail cause its real customer is music publishers and not music consumers.

<comment><USER21> How is it "no longer relevant business model"? Youtube Music would not exist if Vevo ended up being a separate destination that all the main music publishers endorsed.

Of the top 100 most viewed YouTube videos, only 6 are _not_ music videos.

<comment><USER22> I've always doubted that the view counts on Vevo videos are real.

<comment><USER23> They might not be "views", just "listens" from people leaving on autoplay for hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The newest threat to Youtube is Youtube itself. Many content makers are complaining about the AI of Youtube that misunderstands text and videos and forces content makers to take down their own videos. I have also seen channels go down and the owners complaining since they cannot communicate with a real person and have no explanation why their channel is taken down.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've always thought the music industry would be hitting this point in their life 20 years ago if not for the constant format changes. How many people replaced their collection over and over through the vinyl, 8 track, cassette and cd transformations. Now in it's final format change to downloading the replacement of collections is over and the industry is in trouble as it can't adjust to the lower gross. Depending on a single source for video, in this case Youtube, is going to be a mistake in the long run. Too much power in too few hands.

</comment><comment><USER26> Vevo chose Youtube as a distribution channel. That was both the right and wrong move for them, but in the end it worked out pretty well for consumers, with the wider-scoped/user-driven concept winning over the media site.

</comment><comment><USER27> Has YouTube won? Don't they lose money?

It seems like Netflix has won. Hulu is catching up. YouTube is working hard on a distant third place.

<comment><USER28> According to YouTube they now have 1.8 billion logged in users each month. So I guess you could call that winning.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billi...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billion- logged-in-monthly-users-brandcast-2018)

As for their profitability:

[https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard- data-...](https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-that- youtube-isnt-profitable-a00aed0672ac)

<comment><USER29> Just speaking personally, I probably watch at least an hour of YouTube video daily, but I'm feeling less inclined to spend time on YouTube lately, due to all the ads and creator community hijinks. I've even considered hosting my own videos at sites like IA from now on. So while the big numbers look good, I'm personally more concerned about YouTube's future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this means on the backend the post production houses will just send the masters to YouTube instead of over to Vevo, only for vevo to upload them to YouTube. Would be much cheaper if vevo didn't ingest every video.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is another clickbait variant: postmortem clickbaits.

e.g: "My startup failed", "Why I quit <company>", etc...

I am passing on this one since my common sense tells me VEVO and YouTube are vastly different services.

</comment><comment><USER32> I thought this was talking about Vimeo.

</comment><comment><USER33> Youtube's " 15,000-strong salesforce"

and non existent customer/producer support</comment>


Ex-Opera developers begin working on a new browser based on Node.js and React - <AUTHOR> http://vivaldi.com

<comment><USER2> It's actually based on Chromium (aka Chrome's base). And this is a repost.</comment>


Why isn't the human race advancing faster? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dustincurtis.com/why-isnt-the-human-race-advancing-faster

<comment><USER2> "Since the 1970's, not much as changed." Oh, really?

"But human life expectancy hasn't changed at all, really..." Since 1970 US life expectancy at birth has increased about 5-7 years: <http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5414a6.htm>

"travel is still expensive (though cheaper, of course, but not by much)" Since 1970, roundtrip airfare between NYC and London has dropped, on average, from $2600 to $600: [http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfare...](http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfarenylondon.html)

There's still a lot of room for improvement, but since 1970 a lot has improved.

<comment><USER3> As far as life expectancy, if you do three things to the data:

1\. Normalize it to account for war and crime-related deaths, so you only get data that shows improvements to medical technology,

2\. Look at worldwide life expectancy, not just US, and

3\. Remove time people are kept artificially alive in hospitals or in inpatient care without the ability to live on their own...

you find the numbers are essentially flat, with very tiny increases that are barely statistically significant.

(I quickly looked for the papers I used to calculate this for lifepath.me, but I can't find them right now. I'll post them all to that site when it launches, though.)

\---

Interesting about airfare prices dropping. I didn't know it was by that much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Growing up in the 1970s and reading lots of sci-fi, I expected that by my current age, I would be on an interstellar colony ship - or at least living on one of Jupiter's moons. I also thought the human race was sure to give up on traditional religious taboos and stop wasting lives and resources on war.

None of that happened, but as a consolation prize, modern smartphones and the internet are still pretty amazing and the social changes they are bringing about have obviously only just gotten started.</comment>


33 of the hardest questions Apple will ask in a job interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.in/33-of-the-hardest-questions-Apple-will-ask-in-a-job-interview/articleshow/49570312.cms <comment><USER2> These are a collection of questions from Glassdoor, presented as a slideshow.

If you want to see them as a single list, an earlier 25 question version is available at [http://barcitytv.com/the-25-trickiest-questions-apple- will-a...](http://barcitytv.com/the-25-trickiest-questions-apple-will-ask-in- a-job-interview/) .

To give an idea of what's in the slideshow:

The 'drop two eggs' question, for a software engineer; "Who is your best friend?" for a Family Room Specialist candidate; "Describe an interesting problem and how you solved it" for a SE; "Explain to an 8 year old what a modem/router is and its functions." for tech support; "How many children are born every day?" \- Global Supply Manager candidate; "Describe yourself, what excites you?" \- Software Engineer candidate, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Race for 5G Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei - <AUTHOR> I see conflicting information on who is ahead technically. <comment><USER2> They will all claim to have the best, while all delivering sub-par garbage (just like what currently runs LTE networks) so I really wouldn't be concerned about which vendor to choose - they're all bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> That kind of information is hard to gather, valuable to carriers, and dangerous to equipment vendors so I wouldn't expect to see it in public.</comment>


Martha Stewart: Why I Love My Drone - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3053003/martha-stewart-drone <comment><USER2> Wow. The parody is incredible: [http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily- shouts/martha-stewart-e...](http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily- shouts/martha-stewart-explains-drone)

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if she's parodying herself with this bit:

 _The shots of my farm were breathtaking and showed not only a very good landscape design — thanks to the surveyors and landscapers who worked with me on the overall vision, much as le Notre worked with Louis XIV — they also showed me what more I can do in the future, and revealed unexpected beauty._

I mean really... she's comparing herself to Louis XIV?

<comment><USER4> From the subtitle

 _Because it 's a useful tool. And imagine what Louis XIV could have accomplished at Versailles if he'd had one_

I think she's just referring back to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you need some 4K/5K drone footage with RED Epics.. [http://londonhelicam.co.uk](http://londonhelicam.co.uk) :)

4K showreel here - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDF4ju6CC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDF4ju6CC0)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me or did she just invite everyone to fly drones over her property and take pictures?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or is the real world closely emulating 80s/90s cyberpunk literature?

<comment><USER8> "William Gibson Correctly Predicts the Internet of 2013"

[http://www.somethingawful.com/news/gibson-neuromancer- twitte...](http://www.somethingawful.com/news/gibson-neuromancer-twitter/)

"Vektor extracted the Corsair 32 gigabyte thumb drive from the inside pocket of his pea coat and slotted the stick into his Dell Inspiron's port. The solid state memory activated instantly, a small LED washing green as the operating system recognized the device. ...

<comment><USER9> The funny thing is, that spoof is basically what Gibson did seriously in the 2000s with the Bigend trilogy, setting stories in the present where he somehow gets iBooks to feel as exotic as Ono-Sendais.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought this was going to be a parody article or at least anything other than a story about how Martha Stewart has a drone and loves it. But alas, Martha Stewart is more tech savvy then I have ever given her credit for. That's really awesome Martha, have fun with your drone.

<comment><USER4> [http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/6.08/stewart.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/6.08/stewart.html)

<comment><USER10> In 1998 she had a server in her basement? That is a little bit of a shock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This, along with "UN discusses plans to ban 'killer robots'", are the two recent headlines that convinced me I'm living in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Related - Just published a huge 10k word article about drones/quads, how to get started, fly and modify them. :) [http://paulstamatiou.com/getting- started-with-drones-quadcop...](http://paulstamatiou.com/getting-started-with- drones-quadcopters/)

<comment><USER13> Cool, that was fun to peruse. Any comments on the Parrot AR drone? Is it worth looking into or just a dud?

<comment><USER14> Battery life is short. You need at least two batteries so you can fly uninterrupted. My parrot drone has 12 mins battery which is short. Just when you're enjoying flying the battery runs low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I did my best to master the moves and angles that would result in most arresting pictures and video."

Heh. Arresting. Heh.</comment>


Hooked removed from playstore, warning sent to android users to uninstall app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.surveymonkey.hooked

<comment><AUTHOR> App is by SurveyMonkey.

iTunes version still appears to be here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hooked-app-habit- tracker/id9...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hooked-app-habit- tracker/id966290813?mt=8)

Play store mirror: [http://m.downloadatoz.com/apps/com.surveymonkey.hooked,14311...](http://m.downloadatoz.com/apps/com.surveymonkey.hooked,1431157.html)</comment>


Do I Look Like a CEO? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm?campaign_id=rss_topEmailedStories <comment><USER2> The real genius in bittorrent does not lie in it's technological superiority, but in it's bravery and simplicity.

The idea that people will continue to upload the file after they have downloaded it seemed silly before someone actually did it. Using a http tracker was going against the trend that all the other protocol designers were following at the time.

Then someone made it, and it became a big hit. Just like YouTube - it sounds technologically silly before it is done. NOW it's easy to see how obvious it is, but before it was done, it was not the same way.

Bram Cohen is the polar opposite of Ian Clarke, and that's why his project is so much more successful.

<comment><USER3> > The idea that people will continue to upload the file after they have > downloaded it seemed silly before someone actually did it.

This part had been well-validated before BitTorrent came out. People were already using Napster, Kazaa, and AudioGalaxy, all of which relied on people leaving files available for upload after they finished downloading them.

Using an HTTP tracker _was_ a pretty courageous act though, and I don't think the rest of the protocol would work without it. At the time, everyone was doing desktop clients and trying to make things as anonymous as possible, since they were all afraid of copyright-infringement lawsuits.

I kinda wonder whether Bram _really_ didn't know it would be used for copyright infringement, or if he just says that because he's smart enough not to get sued. _Every_ other P2P filesharing system was used to share music, and the mainstream media was going on and on about how Napster was the death of the music industry. You'd have to be living under a rock not to make that connection.

<comment><USER4> That's nothing, every operating system was used for copyright infrighment too! Bill Gates has clearly contemplated mass-scale music downloading when creating windows, unless he was living under the rock.

Sarcasm aside, universal tools are like that - people use them for many things.

<comment><USER3> My curiosity is because every other P2P filesharing tool written _before_ BitTorrent was used for copyright infringement. Bill Gates is a different situation, because there were no PCs before he wrote Altair Basic. There were plenty of P2P filesharing services before BitTorrent, though.

You can't predict the future, but you ought to have a pretty good idea what's happening in the present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An amazing story about Cohen. As an engineer, I know it is hard sometimes to break oneself from the confines of logic and structure to take a more emotional intuitive approach to understanding the world.

There are two books that I must recommend for any engineer that is in the same situation as Mr. Cohen.

Blink, By Malcom Gladwell. This book explains the concept of intuition and thinking with the subconscious. I think this is something that is lost to a lot of science people that have to rationalize everything in life with concrete details. In my opinion, I think that our subconscious is a much more logical real life processing unit than our conscious because it can link concepts much more quickly. As the old adage says, sometimes you have to trust your instincts.

How To Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. This book goes into incredible depth with a bunch of narratives explaining the proper way to deal with people. Very interesting book, in fact, this is the one book PG recommends EVERY startup entrepreneur to read, and I couldn't agree more.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Python source to bittorrent is worth reading as well, even if it doesn't quite follow the best coding practices.

[http://bittorrent.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bittorrent/BitT...](http://bittorrent.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bittorrent/BitTorrent/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's worth mentioning, while we're talking about the "real genius of BitTorrent" --- and fine, it's better work than I've done, but ---

BitTorrent is an implementation of an idea (group delivery of content using FEC) that was quite popular at the time. There was already an open-source C language startup doing it, and more notably the idea was the foundation for Digital Fountain, which Michael Luby started during the tail end of the boom. The Fountain guys even tried to standardize it, as a protocol called FLID-DL.

The relationship between BitTorrent and the kernel of its idea seems to be approximately the same as the relationship between Napster and IRC XDCC, or between WinAmp and MP3 players. I think that's a compliment, by the way.

<comment><USER8> > _more notably the idea was the foundation for Digital Fountain_

IIRC Luby came up with a rateless encoding algorithms while working on overcoming content delivery issues in lossy networks. It had less to do with a _group delivery_ per se, and more with the lossy transmission medium. They did initially focus on a single-sender setup, and in that they were quite a bit different from BT. Only after DF was founded they started looking at alternative applications of their (patented) ideas and resurrected the swarm- casting stuff.

In other words I wouldn't mix DF and BT together. They are certainly related, but they are more different than they are similar.

<comment><USER7> You'll probably win an argument about Luby's CV, but I'm just going to point out that the signature technical detail of BitTorrent is FEC, and Luby is an FEC, coding-theory, and crypto luminary from way before the first bubble.

I founded a VC-funded startup that ran from '99-'01 that was directly in this space; we implemented basically the same system as BitTorrent for group file transfer. We definitely felt like there was significant overlap with Digital Fountain (though we were using off-the-shelf PD coding schemes, like BitTorrent did).

"Lossy transmission medium" is another way to think about multicast congestion, and multicast congestion is another way to think about "how to get content to a large, diverse audience of people", which I think sums up BitTorrent.

The big difference between BitTorrent and DF is that BitTorrent is P2P, and DF isn't. That sounds huge, but realize that "P2P vs. Planned" is an informal way to describe the major approaches to multicast reliability protocols.

<comment><USER8> > _I founded a VC-funded startup that ran from '99-'01_

Feel like sharing a name of the startup ? :)

<comment><USER7> It's not _too_ hard to track down, but, no. We weren't particularly successful. I've got a blog post or 50 to write about that whole experience, when it's less raw.

<comment><USER8> I am being lazy. It _is_ trivial to track it down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The intriguing side of the article is not so much about BitTorrent, but about Asperger syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was really hoping there was nothing on that page but a picture and two radio buttons for yes and no. That would have been amazing.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like there is a market demand for amiaceoornot.com...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Original request for test porn downloads: <http://www.ntk.net/2002/07/26/>

I believe this is the first mention of Bittorrent when still under development.

</comment><comment><USER13> No and BitTorrent doesn't look like a company either.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't websites use svg? - <AUTHOR>

I really wonder why almost all websites use raster images like png, jpg instead of svg format. Is it a performance issue or anything else? I'm starting a project fully working with vector images and planning as much as flexible it can be. <comment><USER2> The web was built before SVG. Older web browsers particularly IE do not support it directly, others offer partial support. So it doesn't degrade gracefully. On the other hand, everything supports bitmaps.

In addition, the process of designing for the web is centered around bitmaps because full support has been lacking and because advertisers (still the primary income source on the web) want maximum compatibility.

<comment><USER3> Even newer browsers don't seem to announce their SVG support in the Accept header, so you'd have to whitelist specific browser versions or script in feature testing and progressive enhancement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have used SVG in past on the web for rendering waveforms but we have replaced them with prerendered PNG images. The reasons are: the performance is abysmal, the file size is considerably larger than PNG (even with gzip compression), browser support (including Chrome and Firefox) is weak even when present (crappy antialiasing, crappy scaling etc).

<comment><USER5> If your PNGs were coming out larger than your SVGs you were probably plotting more points and precision than needed at the given resolution. You can greatly reduce filesize just by rounding up some decimals.

<comment><USER4> You mean SVGs being larger than PNGs? No, that wasn't the case, we were using integers and in the prerendered PNGs there was a 1:1 mapping between the integers and the pixels in the PNG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brudgers point about browser support is the main reason. However, earlier versions of IE had VML, which is very similar to SVG.

Take a look at [Raphaël.js](<http://raphaeljs.com/>), which conveniently wraps up SVG and VML into one library. There are some minor quirks when dealing with IE, but nothing that can't be worked around. I've used SVG is most of the commercial work I've been doing for the past 2 years with great success.

On the performance side though, there is a noticeable performance hit on mobile browsers. Also, Google made the odd decision to leave SVG out of it's mobile webkit implementation in earlier version of Android. And because Android adoption rates aren't great, it has been an issue on some projects. However, it's possible to fill that hole using the canvas tag.

I personally think it's SVG's time to shine. HD graphics present a huge problem which SVG goes some way towards solving, and it's a great replacement for _some_ of the stuff that was previously the sole domain of Flash.

</comment><comment><USER7> No, its not IE this time, as with Raphael for example I can use VML. The dog here is Google with Android.

</comment><comment><USER8> Because the Android default browser had no SVG support until version 2.3, allegedly to save 1MB of space. These older versions will remain in widespread use for a while yet (slower upgrade rate than iOS) and Raphael doesn't fill the gap, unfortunately.

Opera Mobile and Mobile Firefox do support SVG, even on old Android, by the way. (Disclaimer: I work for Opera.)

</comment><comment><USER9> For images that are part of the website design, it makes sense to use rasters since the websites are designed using pixels as a unit. Web interfaces might be responsive, but they rarely "scale".

</comment><comment><USER10> because IE8 does not support SVG, and we still have to support IE8.

</comment><comment><USER11> The good news tho, SVG is a fairly good solution to the Retina display problem, so that might boost adoption.

</comment><comment><USER12> size is directly related to performance on the internet and that might be the reason sites not using svg format

</comment><comment><USER13> Similar to why pure declarative programming is less popular than imperative. It's far less efficient to maintain all that unchanging state, except in special cases where optimizations are applied. And it's often easier to describe what you want in a procedural way.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, it was because of bad mobile webkit support.</comment>


Amazon Echo Plus - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/amazons-echo-plus-gets-close-to-giving-us-the-easy-smar-1820091030 <comment><USER2> I really don't like Gizmodo's comment system, so I'll chime in here.

"Even as a pretty tech-oriented person, I still can't find the appeal in this IoT tech as it stands. It's too vulnerable, and most of the things it does seems to be either simple quick fixes for lazy people or are solutions looking for a problem. Can anyone that's in deep on this tech tell me what the appeal is, apart from having mood lighting in every room of your house and being able to unlock your front door with your phone?"

It's laziness and convenience. I can turn on the lamp 2 feet behind me from my watch or yelling out to Siri to turn it on for me. When I leave for work early, I can turn on first floor lights before getting to the first floor and stubbing a toe on a chair or turning on to many lights and waking up the wife. Lights turn on when you get home (geofence) so your not walking into a dark house. Or turning on the furnace when you leave work, or turn it off when you forget to before going to bed. Etc...

I don't have HomeKit door locks yet, if ever - That I don't trust. And I haven't found a drapes controller I like. I'd really like a controller for the fireplace but I haven't been able to find one yet.

Personally, I'm waiting for HomePod in December from Apple. We're an Apple house through and through so doesn't make sense to put something else in the mix when it's finally almost here.</comment>


Recession Will Be Brutal for Millennials - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/the-2020-recession-will-be-brutal-to-millennials-ddd9feae2598 <comment><USER2> Yes, a recession is bad if you are not prepared for it, or never had the opportunity to do so.

But, this article reads so over-the-top pessimistic and self-pitying that I'm surprised that the author didn't try to sell his crypto-salvation to us.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think Millennials might be ill-prepared for a 2020 recession. Namely, this could disrupt their prime earning potential if it's a serious dip.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are the last paragraphs a conclusion\summary? Looks like they're supposed to be about "capitalism" from the header. I could hardly remember what the article was about while struggling through a few particular lines there. Maybe go learn how to use the word ("a capitalisms"?) and do some light research -- what capitalism? Corporatism?</comment>


I just got served a cease and desist from Automattic? What should I do? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/I-just-got-served-a-cease-and-desist-from-Automattic-What-should-I-do?share=1 <comment><USER2> First and foremost you should contact a lawyer - HN isn't a good forum for getting legal advice.

If you contact your local bar association they can set you up with a minimally costed consultation ($35 in sf) that will likely answer all of your major questions. This has worked well for me for several issues.

You can try a nominative fair use argument, but it is likely easier to just change the name - are you really getting so much value out of the name it's worth spending thousands on a lawyer fighting it for an uncertain result?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to fight it. I believe everything comes under nominative fair use. Please advice. I am in the UK, they are in the US.</comment>


Show HN: Bring VSCode's IntelliSense hint to GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pd4d10/octohint <comment><USER2> This is great. I look forward to using it day-to-day. Also seems worth suggesting as an addition to Refined GitHub?

[https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined- github](https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it work across files, or with npm modules, like vscode?

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good suggestion. It is not supported yet, would be implemented in the future. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does PayPal access my Bank Account - <AUTHOR>

PayPal, asks me for my bank information and than can withdraw funds for my bank account. If I wanted to program this on my own how can I achieve that? <comment><USER2> I can't answer precisely, but I can give you some pointers to start your research:

1\. International: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication)

2\. America: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, There is a lot of information in the links. I will go over them in detail when I get a chance.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Compare Trends on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://hnprofile.com/compare <comment><USER2> Cool idea! Just some feedback:

1\. Bug; I was able to enter just spaces as a search character somehow

2\. Maybe have an example query at the beginning, as it's not clear what this does.

3\. The graphs look cool, but what are the units on the y axis? What are Sentiment units?

4\. It would be cool if the query was in the url, so I could share the link!

Anyway, loved the idea and the sire looks pretty well done

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting idea, but I don't really understand what the numbers mean.</comment>


A unified theory of the brain? - <AUTHOR> http://reverendbayes.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/bayesian-theory-in-new-scientist/ <comment><USER2> _The brain is much messier than a physical system. ... So it does not lend itself to being easily described by simple mathematical laws._

Here is a nonsense that I really wish people would stop repeating.

The only simple physical systems are the ones found in introductory physics textbooks. Meanwhile here in the real world: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem>

</comment><comment><USER3> kinda weird that this is pointing to a full excerpt of an article from the New Scientist reproduced in a blog. Is this a new splog attack vector or legit and just misguided?</comment>


NASA Guide to Air-Filtering Houseplants - <AUTHOR> https://www.lovethegarden.com/community/fun-facts/nasa-guide-air-filtering-houseplants <comment><USER2> Link to original study at Archive.org: [https://archive.org/stream/nasa_techdoc_19930072988/19930072...](https://archive.org/stream/nasa_techdoc_19930072988/19930072988#page/n1/mode/2up)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this MrJagil. I think this is underrated as a way to modestly improve health, especially with the new air tightness standards in modern houses.</comment>


Any chance to get money back from Procto^WProtonMail? - <AUTHOR> http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/07/07/protonmail_fail_javascript/#c_2237077

<comment><USER2> "ProtonMail makes the software that handles the keys!"

Well yes, they do, but that's true for any cryptosystem where you did not personally audit the source code and then compile it yourself.

That copy of GnuPG on your Linux box? Did you audit the source? Are you aware of the underhanded C competition and how... well... underhanded a source-level bug can be? If you didn't compile it, do you know all the people who have the CentOS/Debian/etc. package signing keys?

ProtonMail isn't perfect but it's better than plain text e-mail stored with a company that's known to make a business model of data mining you. Don't call it "snake oil."</comment>