Whitehouse response to Aaron Swartz petition - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck <comment><USER2> The White House's non-response on the two-year anniversary of Aaron Swartz's death shows why these petitions are not only flawed, but should be avoided by people who actually care about political or policy change.

Look at the nearby discussion: Instead of asking why Carmen Ortiz, who's been in her current job for nearly six years, is still there, we're debating the _terms of use_ of the petition site. Instead of wondering why a law originally designed to protect NORAD was used to drive Aaron Swartz to suicide -- despite his JSTOR "victim" never asking for a criminal prosecution -- we're reminiscing about other, equally useless, petitions in the past.

I admit it's a brilliant move by this administration (to be sure, Rs would do the same thing). Instead of having people sign up to be members of EFF or ACLU or TechFreedom.org, which will send email alerts when legal fixes like "Aaron's Law" are pending in Congress, people slap their names on a petition that results in a committee-managed non-response on the two year anniversary of his death.

Imagine if even 5% or 10% of the 61,179 people who signed that petition instead organized rallies in their cities, or a kind of Leave The Internet Alone rally in DC. That might or may not accomplish something; it surely would accomplish more than signing the petition did. (You could wrap in a bunch of related topics: DMCA/copyright reform, NSA reform, CFAA reform and more.)

I'm sorry if I sound frustrated. I spent hundreds of hours interviewing folks involved in the case and reading court documents about the Aaron Swartz prosecution while I was at CNET before leaving to build [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/). What happened to him was a tragedy, but Carmen Ortiz will leave for a seven-figure law firm job at a time that's convenient for her, and an effort in Congress to fix things actually coughed up a bill to make current law worse: [http://www.cnet.com/news/aarons-law- rewrite-backfires-reform...](http://www.cnet.com/news/aarons-law-rewrite- backfires-reformers-now-on-defensive/)

If you're interested, here's a detailed piece I wrote about the federal anti- hacking law Carmen Ortiz wielded against Aaron Swartz, and how it was never originally intended to cover what he was accused of doing: [http://www.cnet.com/news/from-wargames-to-aaron-swartz- how-u...](http://www.cnet.com/news/from-wargames-to-aaron-swartz-how-u-s-anti- hacking-law-went-astray/)

<comment><USER3> > Imagine if even 5% or 10% of the 61,179 people who signed that petition > instead organized rallies in their cities, or a kind of Leave The Internet > Alone rally in DC.

Because the truth is that people generally don't care enough to do anything worth while ("signing" a petition is pretty minimal in terms of effort). There will always be the activists that are local to the cause who will do everything they can to fight, but everyone else, living their own lives, working, being parents, having hobbies or what have you have their own personal problems to take care of.

It's just routine. With the added regular news from the regular sources, who knows how manipulated they are, they're just so removed from what's actually going on. Not to mention, many people won't ask "What can the people do?" but "What can I do?" and their answer will be: "Nothing!"

We live in a world where people are told to live their lives, handle their business and the rest will be taken care of.

Maybe that's just common in Canada.

I don't like this situation, but this is what I'm seeing.

<comment><USER4> A slightly more charitable argument would be that people _do_ care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes.

And in this particular case, there are ancillary issues too. The Aaron Swartz case doesn't immediately sound important to non-hackers, and there are no shortage of people who will helpfully point out, over and over and over again, that, "Aaron actually did break the law, and if he didn't want to go to jail, he shouldn't've broken the law, and he had a mental illness besides so the outcome is nobody's fault but his own." I disagree with those people, but they're still able to move the discussion away from where it should be: federal prosecutors acted absurdly.

Gay rights have only recently made serious political progress, obnoxious drug enforcement is being fought against, people are talking about the NSA in light of Snowden's leaks (and, fortunately, the law-worshippers' "Snowden is a traitor and a coward" position didn't stick).

People aren't totally inactive. They're just broke and stressed-out and overwhelmed by a relentless tide of political issues.

<comment><USER5> "A slightly more charitable argument would be that people do care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes."

When has this not "currently" been the case? This is exactly the problem. You are always going to be under financial and day-to-day stress. Aaron is the only person I'm aware of whose reaction to the removal of everyday stress was to get more involved in politics and not become a venture capitalist.

There is time today, tomorrow, next week, and next month - not _only_ tomorrow, next week, and next month. The latter mode of thinking yields an infinite number of "todays" with no time for doing anything.

Do something! You can! Start small. Talk to a stranger about an issue of concern, and stop crying in the choir chamber.

<comment><USER4> Well, congratulations, I guess, to earning the title, "Dude who will probably piss me off the most today."

Listen.

Last month my personal account was overdrawn by $400 (people don't pay their invoices in December). It typically hovers well under $1000. Would you like screenshots, would that be satisfying in any way to you? I bust my ass all week long for an awful lot of other people and businesses in my area, including non-profits like Habitat For Humanity. I've been doing this for several years now. And somehow I still find the time and resources to be involved in other ways -- _in my community_.

And I'm not alone. A huge number of people are struggling really bad right now. It's been a frequent topic of journalism the last few years, maybe you missed it.

Aaron? With all due respect to Aaron, he had a family that I didn't have, that was financially well enough off to support him in whatever he wanted to do, and then he cashed out of a startup with more damn money than I expect I'll ever see in my life -- money that gave him the luxury of pursuing whatever subject interested him.

Good for him. I respect what he did, I do. But you deserve a punch in the face for trying to make someone else feel bad for not doing the same, especially when you can't even bother yourself to get to know anything about them.

You've still got a bit to learn about encouraging other people to take up a cause.

Maybe you could start with your Instagram profile, it makes you look a bit of a hypocrite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, I am the person who wrote that petition. (and yes I'm aware of the issues with the wording )

The decision to name Carmen Ortiz was deliberate; she is a political appointee and thus could be dismissed at the administrations pleasure. That they chose to hide behind the 'cannot discuss personnel matters' figleaf is to put it plainly; bullshit. Political appointees are just that, political; and the fact that the administration is too cowardly to defend their choice in this matter speaks volumes.

It doesn't really matter; Aaron is still dead, Carmen Ortiz still has her job (although hopefully her political career has topped out) and we carry on.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, the fact that she's a political appointee is what makes your petition moot. They'll just appoint someone else. She was following directives from the DOJ based on the law. The petition should have called for end to the acadmic papers paywall racket. If you call for a rule that any research receiving government (or at least NIH or NSF) funding must be made freely available upon publish, that is within the purview of the executive and would solve the root problem once and for all.

<comment><USER8> > If you call for a rule that any research receiving government (or at least > NIH or NSF) funding must be made freely available upon publish, that is > within the purview of the executive and would solve the root problem once > and for all.

That already happened --

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing- public-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public- access-results-scientific-research)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does it make me too cynical that my initial reaction to anything on petitions.whitehouse.gov is "Who cares?"

Can someone point me to a petition that actually made a difference?

<comment><USER10> The SOPA petition drew a clear statement from the White House that they would not support any bill that messed with DNS. That was a win for the anti-SOPA folks because DNS redirection was a key part of that bill.

<comment><USER4> IOW, it happened to be one of the few cases where the White House's intentions were already aligned with the public's wishes.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I agree that the SOPA petition did not change the White House's mind on DNS. But it did provide a good PR hook for them to put a stake in the ground, and clothe it in the veneer of public support.

It's probably best to think of the petitions as a PR tool, not a policy tool. Getting a petition over the signature threshhold, or getting a response, is a great news hook that activists can use to generate press coverage of their issue. For example: this discussion would not be happening today if this response had not been issued.

It's also possible that a petition can help affect policy over a long term. In general, people outside of government greatly underestimate just how long it takes to go from an idea or complaint, to a policy shift, to a change in the law. It's not uncommon for it to take a decade or more. For example _Silent Spring_ was published in 1962, but DDT was not banned in the U.S. until 1972.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Federal prosecutors always throw the book at people. That is their job, that is how the legal profession works - 2 sides come at a case from the most extreme positions, knowing that the end result will fall somewhere in the middle. Of course they found inappropriate laws to throw at him. Of course it seems over-zealous. That is how our system works. But people need to realize that prosecutors do not expect every charge to stick. They do not expect to actually get the horrible sentences that they threaten.

Because this case never went to trial, any decisions or reactions based on the worst-case scenario threats of prosecutors are unfounded. Any criticisms of laws being unfairly applied would have been argued in court.

The tragedy here remains that Mr. Swartz needed professional psyche help, and did not get it. A smaller tragedy was that he needed better legal help.

Across the board, this is a horrible story. But people continue to focus on the wrong points. Petitions to fire the prosecutor? Really?

We should be working towards better mental health in our society. I would also love to see a change in our legal system, but that one seems a tougher nut to crack.

<comment><USER12> Even if it's just a 'day on the job' for the prosecutors it's not for the people they accuse and prosecute. Although I understand that that the prosecution in America seems more like bargaining than real justice and that you should always ask for more than you can reasonably achieve in bargaining, I think that the threat of years of your life wasted in prison is not acceptable. I agree with your point about better mental health-care, but the fact that Aaron needed, and did not receive, care does not redeem the prosecutor who drove him over the edge in my opinion.

Saying that it's unfair to challenge the prosecutors behavior because the case never went to court does not seem relevant in light of the consequences the threats have had.

<comment><USER11> It is unfair to act like this was a singular effort against one man. This happens every day in every court case. I think we agree on that.

I'm not condoning it, I'm saying cherry picking one case to fight is missing the point. His real story is one of a failure in our mental health system. This focus on the prosecution is twisting the story into areas that are harder to change, and had a smaller impact on the end result.

This is not the story of a good guy being pursued by a bad prosecutor. This is a story of someone who did commit criminal acts, did get caught and prosecuted, and then did not have the personal capabilities to deal with the consequences. Yes, the story includes a bad legal system. But focusing on the prosecutor diminishes the actual problems in our legal system, diminishes the problems with our mental health system, and diminishes Mr. Swartz own responsibilities in his own story.

<comment><USER13> May I ask you what criminal acts he commited?

<comment><USER14> Apropos of your thoughts on copyright infringement, he at the very least committed trespass. Even if MIT had no interest in prosecution. That is undisputed.

<comment><USER15> > he at the very least committed trespass.

Which is typically a $100-500 fine, and classified as a misdemeanor.

<comment><USER14> Certainly. But the question was "May I ask you what criminal acts he committed?" which, in the context of this discussion, seems likely spurred by a belief that his offenses were purely civil in nature, or should not have been offenses at all.

I place no judgment. But misdemeanor, felony or otherwise, it's a correct and accurate answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
      "You agree to only create petitions consistent with the
      limited purpose of the We the People platform, which is to
      allow individuals to petition the Administration to take
      action on a range of issues — to address a problem, support
      or oppose a proposal, or otherwise change or continue
      federal government policy or actions. To focus discussion,
      the platform is limited to a discrete set of topics, which
      may be adjusted over time."

I wonder how releasing the white house beer recipe[1] fits that standard any more than the Aaron Swartz petition?

[1] [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/ale-chief-white- ho...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/ale-chief-white-house-beer- recipe)

<comment><USER17> That link, they put hours into writing those recipes and formatting... Aaron Schwartz got spin (which admittedly, probably took more work hours to not- create)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's sad that the most on point response I have seen to one of these things was the response to the "Build a Death Star" petition. Everything else just seems like a media spin.

<comment><USER19> Link for the lazy: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition- resp...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response- youre-looking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It makes me wonder, what does the White House consider a suitable forum for holding appointed officials to account? Or more appropriately, holding the _appointers_ to account.

<comment><AUTHOR> They should have at least called out which term of [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/how-why/terms- participation](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/how-why/terms-participation) was being invoked. My best guess is the following passage:

 _To avoid the appearance of improper influence, the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government in its response to a petition._

If that is the case then I strongly disagree. Prosecutorial overreach and our broken plea bargaining system is a national issue that desperately needs to be addressed. The wording of the petition may have been very specific, but it still provides an opportunity to address the issue.

Another possible term that applies is this:

 _You agree to only create petitions consistent with the limited purpose of the We the People platform, which is to allow individuals to petition the Administration to take action on a range of issues — to address a problem, support or oppose a proposal, or otherwise change or continue federal government policy or actions._

In that case only the person who created the petition is in violation. The broad interest in signing the petition is a sign that there is an issue that should be looked at. And indeed there is - the undue impact that prosecutorial overreach can have thanks to our broken plea bargaining system.

I also note that 1.5 years to respond does not fit my notion of "timely" that the platform promised us...

(At a guess they waited to respond to a bunch of these until after an election cycle finished and new legislators were signed in. Best way to guarantee of both low publicity and that anyone outraged will forget about it before any future vote.

<comment><USER21> I don't know what term this is, but We The People has historically refused to respond to petitions about specific individuals as opposed to systemic/generic problems.

I'm curious if the petition would have worked better if it were phrased as, e.g., "Direct federal prosecutors to be extremely cautious in invoking CFAA" instead of "Do something about this one person".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What a surprise. The response to the petition is meaningless dribble. I'm surprised they didn't reaffirm their commitment to using the Internet to further the cause of making politicians seem useful.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's a documentary about Aaron Swartz. [https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro...](https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz)

Edit: It was educational, emotional, and enlightening to see what he went through to make the world a better place. Also it's scary to see how much the government can get away with. .. Makes you think.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a feedback form here: [http://www.whitehouse.gov/webform/tell-us-what- you-think-abo...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/webform/tell-us-what-you-think- about-we-people-and-petition-response-us-attorneys-office-personnel-m)

It's likely that nobody will ever read my feedback, but if enough people respond then maybe somebody will. In any case, here is my feedback.

Please provide any additional comments about the We the People petitions system:

The technology worked fine, but the response was utterly vacuous and without empathy.

Aaron Schwartz took his own life almost exactly two years ago. He was a leader, a visionary, and a friend to many of the people in our community. Most importantly he was a person trying to live his life.

Aaron was subjected to unjust and vicious prosecution for an act of peaceful civil disobedience. That prosecution lead directly to his death. He received a death sentence for downloading academic journals.

This is not a petition about "openness" and "economic growth". This is not about ensuring that "the Internet remains a free and open platform." Hell, it's not even about firing Steve Heymann for his actions. It's about the way we choose how to prosecute civil disobedience (and the way we choose not to prosecute murder [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner)). It's about a justice system that feels increasingly unjust.

Mostly, though, it's about the death of our friend. We'd like an apology for his death, but if you're not willing to do that, at least acknowledge the value of his life. Sympathy is not enough.

</comment><comment><USER25> As frustrating as the lack of action by the white house might be, I think this petition accomplished something:

I can almost bet Carmen Ortiz' name has been thrown to the hat for career advance nominations (federal judge, justice department) only to be immediately dismissed by white house staffers because "the internet would bury us"

<comment><USER26> Carmen Ortiz is already a US Attorney of the District of Massachusetts, meaning that she _is_ the head honcho for the DOJ in that state. There isn't much higher that she could go. A federal judgeship (to a district or non- appellate court) would actually be a demotion in pay, responsibilities, and prestige.

That said, the internet has very little to do with her future. The Schwartz case, legally and ethically will have little effect on her career. She has a long and sordid history of not respecting plea deals and of exaggerating drug ties in forfeiture cases. Consequently, she already faced an uphill battle in ever being seriously considered for a judgeship, and she had essentially no chance of receiving a recommendation from the ABA judicial candidate evaluation committee. Like most US Attorneys, she will either go into politics or into a very lucrative position with a law firm as a white collar defense attorney.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone should write a plugin or bookmarklet that adds an "official whitehouse response" to every petition which just reads: "Okay? Whatever, we're going to take no action on this." because that's been the response to every petition I've seen so far.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do I get this right that this so-called response actually represents the absence of any response? And in good government manner it's phrased in a language that could mean anything and therefore means nothing at all. This just makes me want to barf.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is anyone else embarrassed that the text of the petition is ungrammatical and contains typos?

<comment><USER6> Yes.

Originator of the petition. Pressed enter. When I thought I could edit after. So PEBKAC

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hope and change

</comment><comment><USER31> Whenever there's one of these petitions that goes nowhere, there are a ton of, "I typed my name into a computer and it didn't make a difference! This country sucks!" responses.

Look, I sympathize with this a little--these petitions imply more than they ever deliver. But realistically if you want to force any significant change it's going to take money, time, and a lot more effort.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's weird. I truly believe that if this had happened to someone other than Aaron that he'd have found a way to marshall at least an order of magnitude more petitioners. He really had a knack for this kind of thing. Sad to see this blown off like that, adding insult to injury.

</comment><comment><USER33> It seems that they think this moment is convenient with all of us being distracted, to push this through without too much of fuss.

I am not a president, so I can't publicly disgrace prosecutor, but if I was, I totally would, as her office bullied Aaron Swartz and pushed him over the edge.

That is all.

</comment><comment><USER34> Expecting anything more than this kind of response from an online petition is naive.

</comment><comment><USER35> 78 comments here, 61k signatures, and nobody has pointed out the glaring grammatical error in the first sentence of the petition.

I reckon that the intern who read the thing got a laugh from it.

<comment><USER36> Posted 10 hours before your comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8855367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8855367)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> what third party org is used to validate the petition count number?

<comment><USER38> Being as it's a Drupal site, it's most likely a SQL query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The question here is: what do we want as a nation?

When they decide(d) not to take any action, not even remove those one or two unnamed persons from their positions at the CIA (for all that rectal feeding, waterboarding stuff) why do you think any of this story would matter to them at all? It couldn't count any higher in their value system, could it?

Zilch.

This may be just my anguish but from where I stand and see things these tyrannical problems of our Government will only exacerbate, not subside. There is no reason for them to stop. Not until our citizenry becomes as powerful, empowered and weaponized as is the Government today.

<comment><USER40> Honestly, I felt that there would be a difference because Aaron is Jewish and attended a good University - while the waterboarded and tortured CIA prisoners were of "lessor" ethnic and educational pedigrees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> WOW. Depending on what side of the firewall you sit this act can be interpreted as either "out of the box thinking" OR subtle arrogance and desperation.

For those sitting on 192.168.* that thought this strategy up take note: Speaking of Aaron Swartz is about much more than internet freedom. His actions may relate to this topic closely but his death touches something much deeper. For anyone that cares about this person or his death it is about moral corruption and the hollow platitudes of accountability. You cannot just deal with his life without dealing with his death and attempting to separate them will be seen as arrogance to almost anyone aware of this persons name. In the future, when you're interns are throwing around ideas, take a moment to examine and better understanding of the market you peddle your next strategy to.

FAIL

<comment><USER41> impressed. are votes due to [https://twitter.com/cyphunk/status/553116587071635457](https://twitter.com/cyphunk/status/553116587071635457) ? whitehouse lurking around HN?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cheapest Stripe Alternative? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any cheaper services than Stripe to process charitable donations online?<p>If so please comment on API support. <comment><USER2> If you plan on accepting at least $3000 a month, PayPal becomes cheaper than Stripe. If you're going to be charging tens of thousands a month or more, then a merchant account with low interchange-plus pricing (that's a fixed markup over costs -- the interchange fees charged by Visa/MasterCard) is likely your best bet.

You can use Dwolla or Balanced, or work directly with a bank, to accept donations by ACH (bank transfer) as well. They cost 10-25 cents per transaction, which is much cheaper than credit card payments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check [https://login.ccavenue.com/web/registration.do?command=navig...](https://login.ccavenue.com/web/registration.do?command=navigateSchemeForm)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use PayStand, but there is a monthly fee. You can push the transaction fees to the customer though.

</comment><comment><USER5> www.knoxpayments.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this whitelabel like Stripe? Does it handle verification and PCI compliance?

<comment><USER2> There is no issue of Payment Card Industry compliance when you're not accepting payment cards. That site provides an interface for ACH/bank-to-bank transfers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You mean any gateway? They all have APIs. i.e. Authorize.net, Cybersource</comment>


The Music Industry's New War Is About So Much More Than Copyright - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3061256/youtube-music-copyright-royalties-war <comment><USER2> Whatever you might think about, it seems like you can listen to just about any song that comes into your head, whenever you want, on Youtube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D00M2KZH1J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D00M2KZH1J0)</comment>


Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2035, latest climate model predicts - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/arctic-sea-ice-melt-2035-met-office-climate-change-a9665046.html <comment><USER2> The lowering of the planet's albedo through melting ice sounds like the most worrisome runaway effect.

<comment><USER3> Yeah there are a couple of really scary factors that might compound into a catastrophe.

The Arctic permafrost is another such factor, it might amount to a twelve fold increase in atmosphere methane content if thawed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish I could trade on climate model predictions. I think the notion that anyone can predict a chaotic system 15 years out is ridiculous, but i also think there are plenty of people who for some reason believe it can be done, and I'd like to take the other side of that trade.

<comment><USER5> You can trade weather futures: rain, temperature, etc. You can also indirectly express a climate investment viewpoint by trading commodities,though that'll be a little messier.</comment></comment>


After 30 Years of Drilling, Researchers reach Antarctic Lake - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/antarctic-million-secrets-lake-583/

<comment><USER2> _Specialists [..] predict they will find "the only giant super-clean water system on the planet." The pristine water will be "twice cleaner than double- distilled water," they believe._

Can anyone shed light on this claim? I understand why it would be clear of pollution, waste, germs, etc. but is there any particular reason it would not contain salts, minerals, etc?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's almost obligatory to link A Colder War every time this story comes up: <http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm>

(Warning: Creepy.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why did it take 30 years to dig 4km?

<comment><USER5> It's explained quite well in the article. It took that long for the technology to come along that ensures we don't pollute this pristine ecosystem when we breach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Days later, a husky is seen running in the snow from a helicopter.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, could you explain that?

<comment><USER8> I think it's a reference to the opening scene of the movie 'The Thing' starring Kurt Russell. (Spoiler: It's about an alien lifeform which start infecting researchers at a polar research station)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!</comment>


Ask HN: How to Sell a Stolen Laptop? - <AUTHOR> My girlfriend and I were having dinner in Monterey. We pull into the restaurant's parking lot at around 720pm. We park have dinner and then around 8:20pm we walk back to our car and the driver side window is smashed in. Her bookbag and mine are both missing. Inside the bags are (at minimum) my dev laptop Lenovo Txxx and hers a MSI Gaming Series that I just got her. They were in such a rush, they missed my phone and wallet that was in the center console, which am I grateful for.
Police show up at 8:45pm. We file a report. As we're filling out the paperwork, a guy (let's call him Jim) walks across the street and says " Hey did you get hit?, so did I.." The thief broke his window also and stole his bag with a laptop.
The police starts to explain that laptop being stolen is popular. As he's explaining, the restaurant owner is able to get the license plate from the surveillance video, "registered in Oakland..."
3 hours after the incident, we get a call that they found my girlfriends bag, no laptop ofcourse. It kinda helped. Jim's bag showed up, but his laptop was also gone. Jim had his passwords written on a couple of papers in his bag, they weren't interested in that for some reason.
This, along with other things the cops were saying paint the thieves as people looking to sell items quickly. The chances of getting my laptops back are less than 5%. The cops seems to think that the top 3 ways to get rid of stolen items is 1. Pawn shops, 2. Craigslist or 3. Facebook.
Finally 2 question for HN.
1. What are other ways to sell stolen laptops? @Dang, my apologies if this is not an appropriate question. If so, please just skip to question #2.
2. What are some ways to track it down? I'm planning to visit some pawn shops, monitor craigslist and Facebook for the laptops, maybe even place a reward?
Your ideas are appreciated.
PS: Mainly, I'm furious with myself because I SHOULD know better. <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, there's a trade-off - a good protection from theft may make you a little more vulnerable to hackers. LoJack for laptops installs persistent software in the BIOS, and allows you to track your laptop if it gets stolen. However, hackers may be able to access it if they can find an unpatched vulnerability. That's because you're installing what amounts to a root kit. See the Wikipedia article below, or the company's site link below, for more.

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

[https://homeoffice.absolute.com/](https://homeoffice.absolute.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am sorry to hear what happened. My guess would be selling to friends, or friends of a friend and so on...</comment>


A curated channel of Steve Jobs videos - <AUTHOR> http://cull.tv/2bj

<comment><USER2> Nice! There's a featured channel covering Steve Jobs in Cull right now too.</comment>


Watch age restricted YouTube videos without a Google account - connor-brooks https://connor-brooks.com/bypasstube/ <comment> connor-brooks Hey!

Many YouTube videos are age restricted. Generally this isn't an issue for most. However some people don't have or want a Google account, for various privacy reasons.

This tool allows you to watch any age restricted video you'd like without creating an account.

I'd like to stress this isn't for underage viewers to watch adult content. It would be easy for anybody to fake their age when signing up to Google. This is aimed at privacy enthusiast.

Hope this is useful to some!</comment>


A Complete Program - <AUTHOR> http://richardmavis.info/a-complete-program <comment><USER2> Way overthought. There's 3 things happening: 1\. Waiting. We have `sleep` for that, or `at` or `cron` if one wanted a different interface. 2\. Accepting seconds in a more user-friendly format. We should make a separate program for that so we can reuse it in other contexts. 3\. Notifying. Notify-send is all we need. The -c addition echoes back the output with 2 new words and a newline. No added value. If there's need for another backend like echo one could rather implement --notify-with (notify-send|echo|...) or --json to allow other consumers but at least add the seconds-to-wait information as well. I don't see much added value in that anyway though.

So..

> Some might see the expansion of a single compound command into a nearly > 200-line script as a sign of everything wrong with modern software > development.

No, just avoid \- looking for functionality that noone is asking for (YAGNI) \- complecting

</comment><comment><USER3> No unit tests? :)</comment>


Ask HN: Question about MySQL "create if not exists" performance. - <AUTHOR> After searching Google fairly extensively I haven't been able to find any analysis of the performance of "create if not exists" MySQL statements.
I want to ensure that a MySQL table is existent before using it.  The question is whether or not it will be a major performance hit to do a simple "create if not exists" once each time before using  a table which may or may not exist.  Alternately I could query the information_schema manually to see if the table exists and if not I can create it.
My gut feeling is that it is more efficient to simply run "create if not exists" before using a table which may or may not exist.  This way I only have one MySQL statement that can simply be executed before using the table.
Does anyone else have any thoughts about the comparative benefits or performance issues associated with doing a "create if not exists" on each execution? <comment><USER2> This really shouldn't be necessary at all. In a well-designed application, the table schema should be completely known to the application at all times -- the existence of a table should never be in doubt. If for some reason this isn't the case, you'll be much better served by catching "table doesn't exist" errors when they occur rather than preemptively trying to create tables which already exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered this aspect but I'm using these tables for statistics. Basically I am giving each user of my website a table for storing statistics about their site usage. Some users however, never really "complete" the process and don't really use the website, thus they have no need for statistic tables. So I have the idea of saving space by creating statistic tables as they are needed.

I'm going to try the "create if not exists" first and if that causes too much MySQL server load I'll just create the statistic tables at user registration and save processor usage at the expense of disk usage.

<comment><USER2> Don't create tables per user. Seriously, don't. There's a (relatively low) limit to how many tables MySQL will keep in memory, and once you hit that limit it isn't very good at keeping the right tables loaded. Instead, redesign your database schema so that you can put all of your users' data in the same tables.</comment></comment></comment>


Romania removes theory of evolution from school curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/4652/46/ <comment><USER2> Wow that's terrible. Hate to see ignorance growing.</comment>


Remote freelance jobs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance-jobs <comment><AUTHOR> If you know of any additional remote friendly dev shops or sites with direct clients, feel free to submit a pull request!</comment>


A Man Who's Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/the-man-whos-spending-1-billion-to-own-every-pop-song-75df0024155b <comment><USER3> Not a bad idea. Finding avenues to rent-seek seems to be the winning strategy, especially with all the cash floating around looking for returns.

<comment><USER4> Seems that's the way society ended up being structured. Perhaps we will all end up selling houses to each other and no one will have to make anything at all!

I swear, even the Aztecs had a less destructive system.

<comment><USER5> We need about 1% of people to grow the food and perhaps 9% of the people to make stuff we need.

The other 90% then have to convince the 10% that do the actual work that they are worth the time to produce a surplus for. IP barriers are one way of doing that. Even farmers like pop songs.

<comment><USER6> That assumes the amount each individual person "works" remains the same. Why not full-time employment at 15 hours a week, with 30% of people making stuff we need?

Most of our efficiency gains are presently being funneled into a glut of overproduction of nonsensical "goods" (eg overfinancialization and overadministration) rather than direct quality of life improvements of everyone being able to work less.

<comment><USER5> That assumes fungibility and substitution. The reason we have 1% of people making the food is because that is the specialisation we can't eliminate by mechanisation and automated processes.

The "Spreading the unemployment" argument is a bit like saying we don't need all those violin players in the orchestra, just ship a few unemployed people in and give those violin players Thursday and Friday off.

<comment><USER6> Sure, abstractly. But to continue the analogy - there is presently a glut of violin players and other musicians, and everyone currently making up the orchestras have no time to do anything else.

And yeah, the "best" orchestra is going to face an insatiable demand for their specific time, and likely enjoys performing as much as humanly possible. But these conditions are _exceptional_ , rather than the situation faced by basically everybody else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This new moment of marketization is interesting to observe from the sidelines.

I'm a musician but I've never gotten paid for making music and don't want to be. This way, songwriting and playing music can remain something I do purely for the intrinsic joy of it. And it's not really so long ago that, if you wanted music in your house, you had to play it yourself.

I have nothing against recorded music or professional musicians, but it's interesting how much we seem to collectively forget that buying music isn't the only way to have access to it. Not everything we need has to be obtained as a commodity (still less through a monthly subscription).

<comment><USER8> I could also write my own novels and produce my own TV shows but they wouldn't be as good as what an Orwell or Sorkin could produce.

<comment><USER7> Sure. And the pleasure you would get out of this would depend in part on your skill in the relevant medium.

But I think there's a significant difference: with music, as you play it, you are also experiencing ("consuming") it. And that's what also brings a lot of the pleasure to it.

With writing and videography, meanwhile, the act of production is usually a lot more decoupled from the experience of consumption. I happen to think that producing writing and producing video are also fun activities in their own right. But they don't fit into social life in the way that playing someone a song does.

<comment><USER9> +1000

I perform Bach terribly. But I consume Bach wonderfully when I play. I call it "Listening to the music with my hands."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfENUjqz4bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfENUjqz4bs)

I have experienced this with many other physical activities. To ride a twisting descent engages your brain more deeply than to look at the same road or trail. To climb a boulder engages your brain more deeply than to look at the line.

Climbers pantomime the moves before climbing just as aerobatic pilots pantomime their routine before flying. Physical motion engages the brain a certain way that simply thinking, listening, or watching does not.

The pleasure of listening to music with your hands begins when you first make a single satisfying note happen. It is not necessary to be able to play what you would like to hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's their investing prospectus with the complete business strategy laid out:

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5937f2f1bebafb1297678...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5937f2f1bebafb1297678ff8/t/5b349487562fa750e010ad3a/1530172554717/Hipgnosis+Songs+Fund+Limited+-+Prospectus.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Hipgnosis is a beautiful portmanteau.

<comment><USER12> Pity the guy stole the name from Storm Thorgerson's design studio. Kind of a dick move.

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

<comment><USER13> Since it says his favorite band of all time is Pink Floyd, it is fair he is using the name as Storm and Hipgnosis designed all their major album covers. Hopefully he paid for the name...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald [https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the- radi...](https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radio-was- probably-written-by-these-two/)

I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice.

This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing market, he wants to continue altering it. He's considering launching a songwriter's union, something akin to the Screenwriters Guild, that would give songwriters more leverage to extract better deals from the industry's power brokers."

It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can.

<comment><USER15> > It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can.

Why, what's the information advantage you have over the market?

<comment><USER14> I like the concept. I believe the value of back catalogs will only increase. As they increasingly corner the market, there should be a corresponding value increase in stock. What's not to like?

<comment><USER15> The thing not to like is the current stock price, because everything that you like about it will have already been analysed in deep detail by the market, and priced in.

By investing in a public company, you are saying "I think the market is wrong about the potential for this company", and I'm curious to know why you think that having read this public piece, you think the company is currently undervalued? The shares are at £109 — what price do you think they should be really?

<comment><USER16> That's why I ignore coins I find on the street. If they were real someone would have picked them up already.

<comment><USER15> If you see a coin on a street aggressively patrolled by hundreds of people whose fulltime job is searching for dropped coins, you're better off assuming it's not a coin

<comment><USER16> Exactly. No point in even trying anything, if it's a good idea someone has already done it.

<comment><USER15> It's foolish to assume supernormal returns on investment in a highly competitive market without either innovation or insight, yes.

<comment><USER16> Assume supernormal returns? Who did you mean to reply to? If it was me, why are you creating words out of thin air and placing them in my mouth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So if I'm reading this correctly, this guy is saying that traditional labels put too much time and effort into album sales and completely ignore the money available from licensing and performance royalties (if they don't own the rights to a song why would they care to)

So by buying up the rights he has the incentive to push hard to sell licenses to that music and can build up teams of salespeople to do only that. What songwriter wouldn't want to sign up if they don't like the burden of managing those opportunities themselves and don't trust that labels will put the effort in.

<comment><USER18> I think he's buying the publishing (mechanical royalties).

<comment><USER19> From the article he's dedicating marketers to synch rather than mechanicals. I quoted the explanation of all three revenue streams for people like myself who don't automatically know which is which.

With Hipgnosis Songs Fund, Mercuriadis bypassed all of them. Songwriters are able to generate revenue from three sources: mechanical royalties (the sale or legal download of a song), performance royalties (paid every time a song is heard in public, whether it's a live performance, on TV, or in a movie; played in a bar or restaurant; or streamed), and synch fees (song licensing for use in movies, video games, and commercials). Mechanical royalties are the only stream with a set rate; performance and synch royalties are negotiated percentages. Synchs are often more lucrative for the songwriter, since they generally split 50% for the writer and the artist, with the label taking its cut from the artist's piece of the pie. _Synch is where Hipgnosis Song Fund could make them money, as Mercuriadis explained to the 177 hedge fund and private investors he pitched between 2015 and 2018._

<comment><USER20> For people curious about synch rates, a friend just licensed the music (not performance) to an unknown song for promos for a major streaming production with A listers for $8000 on a two month license. This was with the assistance of an entertainment lawyer.

Of course every case is unique.

<comment><USER21> Sounds like this is all the money being poured into television and film content by Netflix/Amazon/Apple etc. trickling down.

<comment><USER22> On the flipside, we now have Discovery Channel refusing to use music with sync licensing costs (ie licensed through ASCAP, BMI) and demanding composers sign away their royalties if they want their music on the show:

[https://variety.com/2019/music/news/discovery-networks- compo...](https://variety.com/2019/music/news/discovery-networks-composers- music-royalties-1203434924/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> He raised $1B of others' money; he hasn't spent anything close to that yet, even in aggregate. The article is extremely light on details of why this guy thinks he can turn a bigger profit off these song catalogs than the traditional publishers can, but I guess he's cutting a lot of fat compared to the big publishing houses? This seems positive to me because it's shifting more money towards the artists:

"In the music industry, paying for assets at a 10x multiple is considered top dollar. Mercuriadis is reportedly paying up to 20x, making it impossible for others to compete."

<comment><USER24> That's optimistic of you to think that he's going to give more profits to the artist.

<comment><USER25> If he's paying 20x multiples versus 10x multiples than that is _exactly_ what is happening.

His investors take all the risk on trying to make a return on that investment, the songwriter gets paid double up front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> From one perspective, this looks like economically useless activity. And it could be. But it isn't necessarily so.

Historically, content creation and distribution were bundled. Distribution further bundled the content _per se_ and performances. This was all an artefact of the up-front cost of manufacturing and distributing physical media.

With digitization, there is no reason a content creator shouldn't be able to essentially freelance. Make good content. Get paid for it. No requirement to promote yourself on social media, no need to perform for audiences. One _could_ still do that. But it would be a vertical play, not the default.

A financial vector such as this one, which identifies good content, buys it, and then works out distribution, is one way to solve this problem.

<comment><USER27> The article makes it sound like he's only buying proven songs, meaning they already have distribution. Also, as Napster, Pirate Bay and now Spotify have shown, distribution really is trivial - what he's buying is the right to restrict legal distribution.

<comment><USER26> > _as Napster, Pirate Bay and now Spotify have shown, distribution really is > trivial_

Spotify is a multi-billion dollar company. I'm not sure what it does is trivial.

On buying proven content, that still increases competition on the buy side for that content. The decoupling of distribution and content acquisition still happens, and makes the top end of the market pricier. That, in turn, means more money to the lower end, _et cetera_.

<comment><USER28> They are saying distribution is trivial from a technical perspective.

Acquiring the rights to distribute profitably is non trivial, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder why this guy thinks that the rights to a successful song are an "uncorrelated" asset. Wouldn't strong economic growth mean that people are far _more_ likely to spend money on these things? Especially for 'sync' rights which mostly come up for things like ads, or derivative mass-marketed media (e.g. successful song X ends up in the soundtrack of movie Y)? Just seemed like a weird claim to me.

<comment><USER30> Uncorrelated probably means to the stock market. The US market was up about 30% in 2019, but I doubt the value of any particular Taylor Swift song increased by that much.

I'm sure there is some correlation to general GDP growth, and you would actually want that. It's the specific stock market correlation that you tend to not want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks to me like WeWork on a smaller scale. There is nothing innovative about borrowing money in a central bank facilitated bubble.

</comment><comment><USER32> Concentration naturally builds in competitive markets. As each competitor is slain, you get the stuff they owned and add to your power. Nothing stops it except pressure from below. Allowing one man to own huge swaths of our cultural heritage is absolutely mind boggling insane, like a feudal king dictating what culture the peasants are allowed to have.

<comment><USER33> Its not a physical object. Songs are not going to be locked in some room and taken from society. Its just investment from his side and that seems totally OK in my book

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just a thought:

If that is really what it would cost, then for 0.1% of the cost of the Iraq war, we could have had free culture, unencumbered by copyrights. I guess for 1%, the whole century's music production released in the public domain?

Surely, it would have made more for everyone's life comfort than the operation Iraq Freedom did?

<comment><USER35> Indeed.

Although doing nothing at all would also be much better than invading a country and causing the deaths of more than a million people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Has he never heard of the Hunt Brothers and their attempt to corner the silver market? Supply & Demand dictates that prices can go higher than you are liquid.

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

<comment><USER37> With songs though, they'll generate revenue while you're sitting on them. Silver doesn't do that.

<comment><USER38> > With songs though, they'll generate revenue while you're sitting on them.

How, exactly? I'm fairly certain most of a songs revenue is made by the first year. To go beyond that, you've got to get your song back in the public mind.

> Silver doesn't do that.

You can certainly borrow against the value of the silver to fund low risk investments.

<comment><USER39> > How, exactly? I'm fairly certain most of a songs revenue is made by the > first year. To go beyond that, you've got to get your song back in the > public mind.

Bass player with a 70s pop star who's still working and making music here.... I know that his hit songs still generate a significant amount of income for him (I'm not giving figures, but I would be more than happy if I had that much coming in for a full time income, let alone as passive income 50 years later). The songs get airplay, and get used in adverts and so on, and that generates income that I'd certainly be very happy to have. (I don't, I'm just a hired hand, very late to the party!)

<comment><USER38> That's kind of my point. Getting airplay and being in adverts helps keep his song in the public mind which generates income from the song. _He_ may see it as passive income, but people are doing things to keep that income going. I'm also guessing he didn't start out eight figures in the hole by purchasing his songs from someone else.

<comment><USER40> Passive income typically refers to whether the owner of the income-generating asset needs to put in a significant amount of regular effort to generate the income, not whether anyone in the value chain does.

<comment><USER38> The question wasn't about whether anyone in the value chain gets passive income, but whether the songs generate revenue 'by sitting on them.' If you're going to invest in either silver or songs with the intention of doing nothing, which are you going to invest in? The experiences of a 70's pop star getting royalties are not equivalent to what Mercuriadis will have to do to produce revenue from his investors' investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "I don't believe in material things."

Wants to own everything musical and starts up a billion dollar fund to do so.

<comment><USER42> This kind of posturing is nauseating but I find it to be bizarrely common.

I think if you are not an overly literal person it makes more sense though. It's social posturing which is meant to mean "I don't like the most extreme elements of consumer culture like designer belt buckles and luxury automobiles". To many people "believing in material things" means that and not what they are literally saying.

It seems like many people find this type of exaggerated speech to be really charismatic which I find really annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ha! Their homepage (www.hipgnosissongs.com) is full of Youtube embeds of songs they own.

<comment><USER44> This is not the Bond villain we want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is what's considered innovation. It's not innovative in that he's solving a problem but just an innovative way to try make more money.

<comment><USER46> This is finance. "Innovative" means it puts more money in a banker's pocket.

<comment><USER47> And more money in the investors' pockets.

Essentially, the summary of this article is that this dude thinks he can leverage these song catalogs better than other investors. He's literally a music fund manager for music.

His firm is "overpaying" for these back catalogs because he's essentially putting together a collection that might command more revenue than other "fund" managers, and possibly set up something of a targeted monopoly, and he's betting that they can extract more value than less competent managers and record labels.

It wasn't directly addressed in the article but I suspect that the general strategy is to own the majority the sorts of songs that are more suitable for generating Synch fees. A big corporation is going to look around for a collection of songs that tend to do well in a TV commercial, for example. Perhaps they find that Hipgnosis happens to own all of them, and now they have to pay a higher rate, and all of a sudden the high price paid for this catalog doesn't seem like overpaying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> and of course this guy is trying to associate his effort with the English art design group Hipgnosis[1] that specialised in creating cover art for many famous bands.

1- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis)

</comment><comment><USER49> all this means is that musicians need to find a way to own their masters. You will never see Chance The Rapper sell his masters for the very reason this guy is buying up rights.

<comment><USER50> The publishing rights are where the money is. Owning the masters doesn't help much.

<comment><USER49> oh, dang. I thought they were one in the same. Then this guy is going to make a ton of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is one of the most crazy discussion thread I saw here. Very complex with so many aspects of what should I say life's not just music comments

</comment><comment><USER52> They'd need to acquire more and more music as the years go by because they are always competing with other hits and the more that hits the market the more competition they have that cut into their returns. It depends how good they are at squeezing dollars from each music.

</comment><comment><USER53> Oh cool. Joshua Newman's print scifi dystopia short, "Feral", is coming true. [https://glyphpress.com/talk/2014/feral](https://glyphpress.com/talk/2014/feral)

</comment><comment><USER54> It took me a while to realize I was basically reading a really long advertisement that wasn't even intended for me. There should be little flags on stories that indicate it's basically a junket for someone's start-up.

</comment><comment><USER55> I feel like there might be a parallel to when an older person is lured into taking out a second mortgage on their house. Are these songwriters jeopardizing their own future by taking a quick buck now?

</comment><comment><USER56> The issue there is that new songs ans creativity destroys value of old songs and so this way of treating copyright plus no entries to public domain means that old songs will be pushed forward all the time whereas new songs have no incentive at all to emerge. Especially if distribution is consolidated between a few actors.

<comment><USER57> Oh how I totally disagree with you... I thought I'd never move on to listen to "what kids listen to these days" and "most of it is crap". And then a cousin (with similar music taste) pointed me to "Post Rock" genre.. Mogwai (yes from the movie), Bloc Party, Sigur Ros, God is an Astronaut, 65daysofstatic..

I now split my time between good old classic heavy metal (Iron Maiden - <USER2> Maiden)(anything after 7nth son is junk imho), Metallica (up to Justice..), everything Sepultura, basically eveything rock/metal up-to-early-1990.

I get it that for new musicians it's hard to find their place in the world/market, but go start your own cafe/bakery/what-have-you and face competition.

Porter's five forces to the max!

<comment><USER58> Strange to see Block Party in this list! Also post rock had its time in the late 90s / early 00s. Doubt we can put it in the category "what kids listen to these days". This category today is more along the lines of Post Malone and Lil Yachty.

<comment><USER59> TBF GP's comment was responding to

> new songs ans creativity destroys value of old songs […] new songs have no > incentive at all to emerge

and though it's probably not the most popular genre today, there's plenty of post rock being made these days: [https://www.reddit.com/r/postrock/wiki/albums/2019](https://www.reddit.com/r/postrock/wiki/albums/2019)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> How is this like pitched as a union and Disney at the same time? Weird....

</comment><comment><USER61> I hope he succeeds and makes "every pop song" so expensive to license that pop music just dies a natural death, yielding way to musicians who can actually play instruments and singers who can actually sing. The current situation is kind of absurd.

<comment><USER62> In the current world, it seems the "artist" has taken the form of a hive mind (artists and songwriters) while the "instruments" are the mechanisms of production and distribution - and monetization: microphones, pickups, mixers, autotuners, amplifiers, filters, mastering artists, distribution companies, Logic Pro, digital-to-analog converters, headphones...

Unless they're seeing a live symphony or literally sitting in the recording studio with an artist, the vast majority of people (99.999%) aren't hearing music performed by the named artist. They're hearing music recordings generated by teams of people and performed by a computer.

Local musicians (the main source of music for people earlier than about 150 years ago) just cannot compete with the supranormal stimulus of pop/rock/soul written and performed and mastered by students of psychology and music and distributed by capitalists.

<comment><USER61> It's kind of like most of the stuff in a US grocery store. It's overprocessed and it's not really food, but people buy it anyway because their TV told them to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Read the title as Poop Song, I was not far off...

</comment><comment><USER64> Thank you, if you try to make anything from that, we'll he a much healthier recorded music market.

A billion dollars seems a bit low though, no? Surely he's gonna miss a lot.

</comment><comment><USER65> So, how much does a song license cost?

</comment><comment><USER66> At some point this is going to suck for consumers as spotify and other streaming services get squeezed hard.

</comment><comment><USER67> Title is totally off!

</comment><comment><USER68> I'll worry when they start coming from 80s thrash metal.

</comment><comment><USER69> Would be nice if he bought them to make them free.. this is just another capitalistic play by those who are already wealthy.. great..

</comment><comment><USER70> Through my bleary eyes this morning I read this on my phone as $18 and I thought, yes that would be a good investment.

</comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't bother me one bit. I think he's making a mistake though.

Taylor Swift, Timbaland, and Bruno Mars are all arguably homogenous music made by marketing groups for middle American focus groups. They are endlessly replaceable, rather forgettable, artists and will be lost to history by the 'next big thing' that sounds just like it or very similar in a year or two. It has more in common with pop fashion than originally expressive art.

Music made by marketers for middle America focus groups commodifies music so that the next thing can easily replace the current thing.

Who remembers blaque, or 3LW, or All-4-One or the train is boy and girl bands from the past?

This is just the music business cannibalizing itself.

Truly expressive, original, personal, music will always be timeless in my opinion, because its irreplaceable, the style is non reproducible, and it's pretty much unexplainable how it's created.even by the artist...see led zepp, Beatles, Billy Corgan, Mozart, etc. etc.

That's my thoughts and what music I think what he should be focusing on.

<comment><USER47> This gives me the impression that you didn't quite get what the article was about, and I'm not supposed to suggest that you didn't read it but let's just say I have my suspicions.

This company is often buying songwriter's catalogs, not just specific public- facing artists that come and go.

And while you may not remember the artists names, these songs often end up in commercials and other adaptations that generate revenue, even if they're not actually the original recording.

If a commercial plays the song "Whip It," do you remember that it was performed by Devo? I sure didn't, but I've seen it in a heck of a lot of commercials, like this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqnPciNhQXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqnPciNhQXU)

The rights holder to that song undoubtedly made money from that commercial, even though the lyrics have been changed.

The importance of the songwriter over the artist has been growing, all of this was mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER71> > The importance of the songwriter over the artist has been growing, all of > this was mentioned in the article.

That has always been the case in the USA.

The band's songwriter buys a mansion, and the rest rent apartments.

The Go-gos (writer Jane Wiedlin), Twisted Sister (writer Dee Snyder) and Smashing Pumpkins (writer Billy Corrigan) broke up over that, and prolly a majority of other bands.

Songwriter Diane Warren is prolly a billionaire: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Diane...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Diane_Warren)

What's interesting is that above even that is owning publishing rights, pioneered by Frank Sinatra. He produced his own albums, then after he mastered he shopped for a distributor.

Almost no US musicians bothered to retain publishing rights, aside from Steve Vai, Frank Zappa and a few other hard-asses. I tell Youtubers to "own your publishing."

Source: in the biz.</comment></comment></comment>


Gain Self-Insight Through Abstract Thinking
 - <AUTHOR> http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/06/gain-self-insight-through-abstract-thinking.php

<comment><USER2> I sometimes wonder whether it is better to ask for/elicit feedback from a near-complete stranger (first impression) or someone who already knows you (biased impression). From seeing video of myself at social gatherings, I unpleasantly know I give every impression of poor body language (slouch) but I'm not sure if I care enough to force my habits to alter.

Honest feedback is gold. To see yourself as someone else sees you seems to be a huge market covering everything from paid focus groups for new products to Alexander technique training to personal coaching to dating coaching where you practice approaching a female until she says you're getting good at it.

Perhaps that could be a way to monetize ChatRoulette. Pair people up to evaluate their first impressions with peer ratings evaluating how good someone is at evaluating a random stranger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, honest feedback is a rare thing. Smart and honest feedback is even rarer. Well, maybe less so since the invention of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I want to know is whether they over-rated or under-rated their attractiveness.</comment>


Lego: The Future of Construction - <AUTHOR> http://rishitaparia.com/writing/legoconstruction <comment><USER2> Huge fan of modular construction! I hope down the line, more modular construction means you can upgrade buildings much more easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully easier to build, upgrade, and reconfigure. In a post CV-19 world where the 'open-office' configuration needs to be rethought, major changes might end up being prohibitively expensive</comment></comment>


Why Apple will move away from Intel and towards ARM 64 bit - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/24/an-update-on-apple-moving-away-from-intel/

<comment><USER2> I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusions, but

"Next up is the OS. Have you noticed that OSX releases of late, well, to be blunt, suck? It's not that they suck as a stand alone OS, but they take away a lot of the freedoms and flexibility that the Mac desktop OS user has come to expect. Bit by bit Apple is removing all of the parts that make OSX something other than a phone class OS"

Is nonsense. "Suck" is a matter of opinion, but there's nothing you can do on a 5 year old Mac that you can't do on a new Mac (and several things more). People keep confusing attempts to make the OS easier to use with "closing" it. When I can't run my own software, and drop to a terminal with the standard UNIX tool chain, I'll but the argument. But there's no sign of this so far.

<comment><USER3> > When I can't run my own software, and drop to a terminal with the standard > UNIX tool chain, I'll but the argument. But there's no sign of this so far.

You can run your own software and drop to a terminal with the standard UNIX tool chain on your iPhone, too. You just have to jailbreak it first.

So Apple is really one flip of the switch away ...

<comment><USER2> That's true of every computational device in the world. Windows, Ubuntu, Android, etc. Everyone could flip that switch, and lockout non-jailbreakers (or Kernel recompilers). It's not an argument for it happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure that Apple has a plan in place to do this, but whether they pull the trigger on this plan is another question. It's quite likely that Clover Trail is faster than A6, and Clover Trail is Intel's low end chip. Ivy Bridge is almost an order of magnitude faster than Clover Trail. Most of the PA Semi guys at Apple will be working on chips for the next iPads and iPhones, but I'd be willing to bet lots of money there's a skunk works project to design a chip that could go into the Air. Apple loves squeezing the margin out of their suppliers, and Intel's margin is very juicy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unlikely, especially on the GPU side. But let's say Clover Trail is slightly faster than A6. That's not really relevant, because Apple would care much more about using their own chip. It's not like Apple hasn't used slower CPU's than the competition. Heck, for the entirety of the iPhone 4S' and iPad 3's life, both had slower CPU's than the competition. And they didn't care.

Plus, Clover Trail is not used in smartphones for a reason - it uses too much power. That's why they are only using it for $800 Windows 8 tablets with big batteries. So for this chip, the A6X, or whatever they call the chip inside the next iPad, will be its competition anyway.

As for "ARMbooks", I'm pretty sure Apple will wait until they have an 64 bit ARM chip first, but I also wonder if they will make a "higher-end" chip, that uses say 5-10W of power and is specifically made for those ARMbooks - not for iPads or iPhones, while in parallel continuing the development of A7, A8, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being able to run Windows applications with Fusion or Bootcamp was one of the big draws for me for the Mac. Not sure if I'm ready to give up running x86 applications yet (or ever?).

<comment><USER6> A valid point. However, Microsoft is betting heavily on ARM too, with Win8 RT (if I'm not mistaken and RT is the ARM one). So, Win8 and a lot of Win8 apps are going to support ARM, and those who don't can be virtualized!

(Note that I'm not saying it's a good plan)

<comment><USER7> Wait, you're suggesting that you're going to be running an x86 emulator on winrt for apps access? That is pretty unlikely to be a realistic solution unless you're only looking for very old apps - try running an arm emulator on x86 to get a taste, and then slow it down by 5x or more.

<comment><USER6> You're right :) It probably would be unusably slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting read with some good points albiet biased towards the aspect they will move. But does show that it is not impossible, though nothing soon and I'd agree that laptops would be there first target area. I also liked the aspect that OSX is becomming more and more phone OS like and that could indeed also be said of the upcomming win8 due to metro. Overall I see both Apple and Microsoft going for consumer level devices, remember calculators are computers as well, only biased for the application and in that both apple and microsoft are transitioning towards a unified interface and standard making computers more and more consumerised. Thats ok as there will always be Linux and many other operating systems to play with if you need that level of interaction and in that whilst its a change I don't like, I can understand it.

One aspect not touched upon in this article is the whole area of a server, one which apple walked away from and is a whole empty cavity that could become one which a 64bit version of ARM chips down the line could end up making that area viable for Apple again. Though it would probably be a solid white cube called iPortal j/k.

Either way, even if they do move they can still brow beat Intel for even better prices milking every avenue of options along the way. Though any move to a ARM base for OSX would at the earliest be 2 years away and relisticaly 4-5. Though for servers and processing farms it does become a whole new avenue.

<comment><USER9> "Overall I see both Apple and Microsoft going for consumer level devices, remember calculators are computers as well, only biased for the application and in that both apple and microsoft are transitioning towards a unified interface and standard making computers more and more consumerised. Thats ok as there will always be Linux and many other operating systems to play with if you need that level of interaction and in that whilst its a change I don't like, I can understand it."

A huge chunk of Microsoft revenue comes from business customers, pros and the ilk, who run applications that can't all be distilled down to a touch interface. There's still a CLI in Windows 8 and much of the MS new server products are driven with CLI in the form of Powershell. You can pick your level of interaction that you need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like Apple would be a pretty good candidate for the "Heterogeneous System Architecture" work AMD has been doing, x86_64 and ARM on the same SOC. Leave the x86 cores off when you don't need them.

<comment><USER10> If anyone has both the technical know how to come up with a "good enough" development scheme to make that work, and the leverage with their developers to ensure support, it's Apple. But yikes that sounds like a hard problem. How do you migrate a process from one ISA to the other? Some kind of compiler- enforced "safe points" where there's a sensible mapping of the IP and other instruction stream-sensitive state?

<comment><USER11> Lots of systems have been buils with multiple processor architectures, including the early Macs, the Nintendo DS, the PS3, and every PC the last decade (cpu+gpu).

You would usually write your code to use one specific cpu, rather than trying to balance the load automatically like on a heterogenous system.

<comment><USER10> I thought trotsky was suggesting an ARM/x86 mix along the lines of ARM's big.LITTLE, which allows process migration between two very differently implemented (though ISA-compatible) cores.

<comment><USER7> While they haven't announced any of it in public, it does seem hard to believe they'd be migrating running applications. It's much more likely that they're targeting nx page sharing, you'd still have build the os for both isas, but it'd allow you to run many tasks on the low poer cores and only spin up the hot ones when the application required the performance or binary compatibility. Think more like switchable graphics than big.little, though the low power architecture would stay usable all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bootcamp sells a lot of Macintoshes.

<comment><USER13> OS X sells more.

<comment><USER14> I was at a talk recently about some C#/.Net framework aimed at .Net developers and half the laptops in the room where Macs running Windows. Even the lead developer giving the presentation had a Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems pretty silly to claim it's "obvious" as this guy does repeatedly. I'm not sure you can claim that the move from being able to upgrade and service computers to not being able to is a move toward being an iOS device. Seems more likely that Apple just makes those sacrifices because they're required to make thin and light products, and at today's speeds few people need to upgrade things anymore. (Not that it wouldn't be _nice_ to be able to upgrade things, but we've seemingly moved to a time when a lot of people don't mind the lack of this as a feature)

</comment><comment><USER16> Yay, great. Apple go. The day Apple moves to ARM on the Macbook will be the start of the downfall of Apple.

Also, when is Apple moving to Intel on the iPhone?

Actually, i can imagine running a server farm on ARMs, that'd be great (and there is ARM server hardware available). BUt for the desktop? nope.

<comment><USER17> ARM started as a desktop platform and, at the time, it was much faster clock for clock than what Intel offered. I believe you can find benchmarks of that time comparing the Archimedes to high end PCs.

Current ARMs are designed to save power, but there is nothing preventing Apple (or anyone else) from designing one for speed.

<comment><USER16> haha. Yeah, because a benchmark from the 80s means something today.

So you honestly think Apple will forsake the x86 ecosystem, all the apps, maybe put another emulator approach to it AND lose the benefit of running windows on a macbook? For what? What's the benefit? It's just fucking over customers. Well, as always. So maybe, they'll just do it. Opportunity to take even more control of the users, yay.

<comment><USER17> Apple has done it on the Mac now three times with ISAs (68K to PPC to Intel, with multi-ISA binaries) and once with operating system architecture (MacOS classic to OSX). NeXT has ported their OS from the original 68K implementation to x86, HP-PA, POWER and SPARC before making it run on Macs. Their IDE, the predecessor of Xcode, also ran on Windows NT.

Apple has also shifted its strategy from "we build really fast computers" (PPC, MacPros) to "we build tools you love" (current Mac line). I see not big problem to gradually moving again to a new ISA, in special if it promises very long battery lives and even lighter machines.

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying they can't do it. And not saying they never did it. Does it mean that they should constantly switch the architectures? Why?! It's just some stupid "ARM is cool, let's do ARM, it's different" sentiment more then for technical reasons.

Again: If ARM would build a speed equivalent (in major important benchmarks) processor, why do you think that the battery life would increase significantly? Your battery life would _not_ double or triple or whatever. You would maybe get.. i don't know.. 30% more? And why would the machine be lighter?!

So again, where is the real benefit here. Keep in mind that you would likely lose Windows support (that'd even make sense in closing up the Apple ecosystem even more!) and most legacy app (except Apple does another crappy emulator support multibinary thing).

Anyway. As i said in the original post: I hope Apple does this. I hope Apple abandons Windows/Bootcamp and goes further along the road of the Apple ecosystem. If they do, Apple will fall. History repeated :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They're moving away from x86 - maybe. I remember Intel's XScale ARM processors were the best around at the time. But Apple without x86 = suicide...

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone who says something like this deserves to be laughed at and shown the door out of technology.

Intel is light years ahead of ARM for desktop CPUs, where power usage is irrelevant.

Do you really think Apple is going to run ALL THE APPS EVER WRITTEN FOR OS X on an x86 to ARM emulation layer?

Really?

Well, then I have a bridge to sell you.

<comment><USER20> Apple already dropped Rosetta, abandoning PPC apps. Gatekeeper is doing away with apps compiled before 2012. 10.9 may drop 32-bit. Perhaps 10.10 will be App Store only with fat x86-64/ARM apps. Then 10.11 can drop x86-64.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe.

Based on the current revenue breakdown I think the only reason Apple still makes computers is the margins they get. If they got the margins a lot of other pc makers get they would have killed the computer side already.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nobody here's a wee bit worried about the direction Apple is going with Gatekeeper? Only signed and sandboxed apps in a few years? Only to be dl and purchased in the App Store with Apple receiving 30%?

<comment><USER23> As long as the user can disable it, it's not a problem. Android does the exact same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I disagree. They will either hang themselves with x86-64 or make it a success as it is now. They won't go near ARM as a mainstream CPU.

</comment><comment><USER25> Will Windows 8 be able to run on that chipset as well?

<comment><USER26> One thing about ARM is generally ARM chips need SoC specific drivers. If Windows 8 has drivers for this chip, Windows 8 will run. Chances are, if Apple does this and wishes for Boot Camp to continue, they will package the drivers for Windows 8. If they wish to discontinue Boot Camp, they won't.

<comment><USER27> Not going to happen, Windows RT will ship only with devices just like Windows phone, there will be no standalone software that you can buy and install.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It reminds me of this: <http://apc.io/>

At some point, we have enough power in a small space that the hardware powering your computer or laptop is basically the size of a credit card and it doesn't matter if it's ARM or Intel.

Apple can save money and get better battery life by making their own chips (as they do in phones now) so why not move that up the hardware food chain once the performance is "good enough".

Apple is about selling mobile devices to consumers and probably the #1 thing the average buyer wants is longer battery life, even at the expense of performance.

Also, Apple knows the power of controlling their own destiny and inevitably when they partner with a company, the same company tends to turn around and resell the innovation as their own products - Microsoft Windows, Google Android, and Intel Ultrabooks. Apple is big enough now they might not need to partner for such innovations much longer.

That could lead to an even bigger and more sustainable competitive advantage.</comment>


Windows Subsystem for Linux is good, but not enough yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.akitaonrails.com/2017/09/20/windows-subsystem-for-linux-is-good-but-not-enough-yet <comment><USER2> > In an ideal world, Windows should replace its entire NT underpinnings and > either build their own BSD-inspired infrastructure (like Darwin) or create > their own Linux distro using off-the-shelf Linux kernel as the main driver > (probably can't because of GPL).

Why? Is a 'BSD-inspired infrastructure' or Linux the absolute best, or even significantly better? Is an OS monoculture a good thing?

> Apple had its miracle in the turn of the century, and OS X and iOS are > terrific OSes. Best of the breed.

The user-facing portion is, but there are significant problems with some core features (semaphores, forking being very slow, file system notifications, HFS).

Also, for a fair comparison you should run the test suite inside a vboxfs mount.

<comment><USER3> You were comemnting on a blogpost from a person that thinks that linux on desktop is a thing. Well no it is not.

<comment><USER4> It is a thing. It's a very small thing, but a thing regardless. Some of us have used Linux on the desktop since the 90s.

<comment><USER3> No it is not. Not even chromebooks are a thing. Android is a thing and if they try enough the might turn it into a desktop alternative.

<comment><USER2> Linux on the desktop is a thing. At my previous job all the consultants (100+) used a custom distro based off Mint/Kali, with a Windows VM.

It's a thing. Might not be your thing, but its a thing nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > In Linux distros, every binary is compiled against very specific library > headers such as the kernel itself, Glibc and many others. Whenever one of > those change, all binaries must be recompiled to run.

This is wrong. Only kernel modules are compiled against kernel headers, and for userland programs the kernel is binary-compatible since ever.

Which is not to say that random binaries run bare on random systems, but this is a cultural rather than a technical problem (package managers insisting on having only one version of libraries, ignorance of the soname system). But with enough effort you can always get binaries to run on a system, provided you can get ahold of the libraries it expects, up to and including glibc.

>Which is why having source code available is so important

Back to front. The reason for the current situation is it's _expected_ that the source code is available, so there's no incentive to provide stability for binaries. Why bother? It's gonna be recompiled soon _anyway_.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Linux keeps its ABI stable and is committed to not break userspace. Just bundling your app with all needed libraries should allow you to run your app on any distro. There are only two requirements: same machine architecture (e.g. x86_64) and the kernel should support all features used in the app. That's why Go's statically linked binaries don't break on Linux but e.g. on Mac.

I am quite excited about flatpak, should be quite useful for shipping applications to a wide variety of distro with a single binary.

<comment><USER6> I need to add that even glibc is also quite stable and backwards compatible: [https://abi-laboratory.pro/tracker/timeline/glibc/](https://abi- laboratory.pro/tracker/timeline/glibc/).

That's why some projects deliberately build their software on very old distros, since the software then works from this version on.

<comment><USER7> > glibc is also quite stable and backwards compatible

But not forwards compatible. A binary linked dynamically against with a newer glibc wouldn't run with an older glibc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In an ideal world, Windows should replace its entire NT underpinnings and > either build their own BSD-inspired infrastructure (like Darwin) or create > their own Linux distro using off-the-shelf Linux kernel as the main driver > (probably can't because of GPL).

No, no! This is the exact opposite of the ideal world. What we need is for the NT kernel to stay, and for Win32 to get replaced.

Look, people from the Linux world can have trouble admitting this, but NT is a really good kernel. Better than Linux in some ways- not all ways, but some. The shittiness of Windows mostly comes from Win32. _That 's_ what should go away, and WSL is taking the first steps in that direction, even if Microsoft isn't planning on "going all the way" with it.

<comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, in what ways do you think the NT kernel is better than Linux?

<comment><USER10> Read about the history of NT and Dave Cutler the designer behind NT. He was a VMS veteran and brought heavy influence from there ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler)). He is an amazing engineer. Still working.

I would love to return the question and ask, why the Linux kernel is better.

<comment><USER9> I haven't claimed that Linux has a better kernel.

Basing your claim that NT kernel is better than Linux on the employment of a single developer seems pretty pointless. Smart people work on both kernels. Not so much of a feature that is better in one or the other.

<comment><USER10> Was not my claim that the NT kernel is better ;) They are different. There are only 3 dominant kernels left. Two commercial ones and one free. My opinion is just that the NT and also the macOS kernel are in popular opinion a little bit underestimated because they are very misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He incorrectly assumes there's some kind of file system emulation going on. There's not, WSL just runs on top of NTFS directly (NTFS doesn't have those pesky restrictions Win32 imposes).

Fact of the matter is, the file system has _always_ been a sore spot on Windows. It has known to be slow for decades and Microsoft engineers have flat out stated that it's not affecting their bottom line, so they have no incentive on changing that.

<comment><USER12> Well, there is a little bit of emulation. We have to encode and handle Linux- style file permissions, which has some overhead.

We are working on making both the WSL layer and NTFS itself better. For example, in the upcoming Windows release, we have created a fast path for stat that should yield a modest speed improvement.

We have a lot more work to do, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For WSL to be perfect (for me), it would also have to have better integration with the native filesystem. This whole business where the WSL filesystem is a separate thing, hidden away in the user's AppData folder, that you can't write to using Windows tools, is a significant drawback. I dunno, I guess I don't quite get who WSL is supposed to be for. The author of this article presents it as an alternative to running Linux in a VM. Which, OK, maybe that's exactly what it's intended to be. But I still wish that MS would include something like Hamilton C Shell as a built-in part of Windows. I.e. a unixy shell that provides unixy tools, and the ability to compose them, but where the tools are designed to mesh well with the rest of Windows.

</comment><comment><USER14> >In an ideal world, Windows should replace its entire NT underpinnings and either build their own BSD-inspired infrastructure (like Darwin) or create their own Linux distro using off-the-shelf Linux kernel as the main driver (probably can't because of GPL).

In an ideal world, Windows NT stays, but Win32 is demoted to be just one of the subsystems the NT kernel supports.

<comment><USER15> _Win32 is demoted to be just one of the subsystems the NT kernel supports_

'Twas it not always thus?

<comment><USER8> In theory, yes: NT has always had the capability to have multiple subsystems. But apart from some attempts in the 90's that were aborted, it has gone totally unused up until WSL arrived.

<comment><USER16> _some attempts_

There have been Microsoft POSIX, Interix, and OS/2 subsystems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT#Use...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT#User_mode)

EDIT: Re. "totally unused," Interix was available through Windows Server 2012, and supported through 2014.

<comment><USER17> A creator of Interix said that _after_ he left Microsoft in 2004, he had to explain to the Windows HPC team that Interix existed. So totally unused may be an exaggeration, but it sounds like it was overlooked.

[https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on- wind...](https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on-windows-and- other-stupid-human-tricks-part-ii-c244b2ee535)

<comment><USER16> Not well known? Sure. GP didn't know about it, for example.

But "totally unused" is not an exaggeration, it is simply incorrect.

Thanks for the link. Interesting to read Interix founder and open source advocate's personal tales of interacting with early-2000s Microsoft after an acquisition that he didn't feel sufficiently compensated for. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > My ideal setup is actually a MacBook Pro. But I am forcing myself to live > out of the Apple ecosystems, and it hurts.

Why? In all of the digressions I would like to read about this is a big one. I have been considering the same. The only Apple product I have left is a MBP. There are soooo many choices on the PC side of things. The paradox of choice hits hard when looking at; Samsung, Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, Dell, and HP. Some $700 models have the same specs as $1500 Mac's with touch screens and pen support.

<comment><USER19> Without guaranteed full Linux compatibility, it's not worth the risk on many of those vendors. OEM (adulterated) Windows just isn't an option and unless there's an ad-free version of Windows 10 (I haven't researched extensively but I don't think I can just buy one that won't spam my Start Menu) I'm going to have to revert to another OS - having ads built in simply isn't an option.

I'm no Apple fan but the competition is embarrassing at times.

For the record my two notebooks are a MBP 2014 and a Dell XPS13 Developer addition running Arch. Both are equally competent as development machines.

<comment><USER10> My start menu does not have any advertisment. It had after blank installation but removing the tiles and initial apps solved that. Never came back.

Well, I do not have the store on the tile part of the start menu. But I think it is fair game that the store would show some advertisement when it is a tile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Benchmarks were not made properly: there's no warmup, no multiple runs, etc There are number of things, that would go wrong with it: cold caches, unloaded shared libraries, that might be already in memory in full Linux system in VM, etc

Also I should mention, that native Linux build might be optimized for ext2 or whatever as opposed to NTFS.

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the author on quite a few things, but not the main point.

First thing that bothered me: He was bothered by the need to `sudo /etc/init.d/PostgreSQL start` to start up Postgres every boot. Yeah, that's annoying, but easily mitigated by running Postgres (and MySQL and any other service you need) in the Windows layer. Postgres installs just fine in Windows, and uses the Windows service system, which has gone basically unchanged for decades, versus Linux with like 3 service management systems.

But the main thing is that his main objection is that his test suite is about half as fast as it should be. This is honestly not a big deal to me, and I do Rails full-time as well. IMO, even the fastest run of his test suite at 2 minutes is still way too slow to run regularly. If I was working on that app, and I've worked on many with test suites many times slower than that, I would have already switched to running a limited part of it that tested what I was actually working on. I stick to about a 10-second max for tests that I run routinely while working. If it's longer than that, I'll run a smaller set that's under that, and run the full suite maybe once before pushing, or just let the CI server run it. I have to figure the number of people for who that kind of slow-down is a deal-breaker is pretty low.

<comment><USER7> > easily mitigated by running Postgres (and MySQL and any other service you > need) in the Windows layer.

Which comes with its own set of problems.

The entire point of MSFT in releasing WSL was so devs on Windows could use Unix-y goodness on Windows. I think that reasonably applies to the usage of Postgres too, and not just ruby/node/etc.

\----

The proper way would be for Windows to autostart WSL when the user logs in / system starts, like providing a "Linux boot up" behaviour to the WSL userland and trigerring it on actual system boot up.

<comment><USER21> > Which comes with its own set of problems.

Such as? Seriously, I'm running it like that and it works fine. I'll grant that Ruby on Windows only kind of works, but no problems with PG or MySQL.

I do agree though that WSL ought to run as a Windows service and do the normal Linux boot process when that starts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My only fear is if there is, or will be, a way to write Linux software explicitly requiring to be run under it.

<comment><USER7> That'd be the Extend step of EEE.

Although, I strongly doubt it'd come to that. Not because I think the new MSFT is above EEE, but because I think it'd be hard to pull that off with the community of Linux software writers and users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm.. no performance comparisons with Docker for Windows.

<comment><USER24> Docker for Windows seems to be just a Linux VM running on Windows 10's Hyper-V support, so if VirtualBox is faster, Docker for Windows is probably faster too.</comment></comment>


Does Test Driven Development Work? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ruairitobrien/does-test-driven-development-work-75307f88f3cb <comment><USER2> Yes, it works given motivation and a sufficient amount of times untested code fucked up your life.</comment>