Apple's Ping to End With a Thud in Next Release of iTunes  - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120612/apples-ping-to-end-with-a-thud-in-next-release-of-itunes/

<comment><USER2> I work primarily with Hardcore Apple Partisans. When they'd ask what Ping was, I'd say "It's this thing where you can buy a song and then talk about it with your friends."

Their eyes would be fluttering away by the end of the sentence. Nobody, not a one ever, cared at all. There are a thousand other venues to discuss music with friends, most of them involving alcohol.

I personally feel Ping could have been amazing were it a rewards shop that rewarded you with extras for buying tracks.

You buy a top single - a free remix of that song is offered on the side. Nothing obligatory, just extra.

You buy an album - Ping provides that album's music videos and a writeup from the band.

You buy a pop song from a hot entertainer - you're entered into a raffle for show tickets.

You buy a karaoke standard - Ping asks for your best Photo Booth karaoke version that gets uploaded, shared, and voted on next to that standard.

If it was value-adding what you were buying, I think that would be interesting. But hearing your Address Book chime in on a trashy single you bought? No thank you.

<comment><USER3> It would be cool if it worked like a prediction market as well, so that if you were one of the first people to buy a song that later became very popular you could actually make money.

<comment><USER4> A bit like Amie Street? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "At this point, years into the social networking phenomenon, why not leave the social stuff to the social people who are good at it?"

While I acknowledge that Ping was a huge failure the above statement strikes me as odd. If that's so obvious then...

Why not leave Maps to people who are good at it? Why not leave voice recognition to people who are good at it? Why not leave... etc. Apple hasn't been shy about diving into competitor's markets... which I don't always agree with fully. But on the flip side, you don't know if you don't try I guess.

<comment><USER6> That explains why iOS is not a good platform. The owner of this platform loses his focus (building a good platform, giving developers more power), instead it starts to duplicate developers' effort in the name of user experience. Surely they have a chance of doing it better, but it is just because they can use their private APIs.

<comment><USER7> Are you very familiar with iOS development? I ask because those people I know who are were very happy with the improvements and APIs added in past iOS releases and seem to be delighted with what's being released with iOS 6.

Perhaps you've found yourself hampered by the lack of certain APIs that Apple has yet to add or yet to promote from SPI. I know some devs in that boat. But I don't think you can accuse Apple of having lost focus on the iOS platform, or that they aren't feverishly working to give devs more power.

<comment><USER6> A very important missing feature is external keyboard event support. I don't want to go too far into the details, just let me tell you this: ESC, Function Keys,CTRL, ALT are all dead.

I submitted a feature request among other developers like the month iPad came out. So far, no any sign of adding it. Yet we continue to see Apple adding this message that reminder.

<comment><USER8> I'm probably not the worlds biggest Apple fan, but:

 _A very important missing feature is external keyboard event support_

Umm.. no it isn't. It's pretty clear iOS is designed for devices _without_ a physical keyboard, and if that is important to you then you will always be working on something Apple doesn't think is important. Their priority there is quite clear and I don't think it is reasonable to blame them for that.

(Written by someone who likes a physical keyboard and is very happy with my Asus Transformer)

<comment><USER6> Even if it is not universally important, it is very good for projects like:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/229284/the_250_case_that_turn...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/229284/the_250_case_that_turns_your_ipad_into_a_laptop_almost.html)

As a platform provider, why bother work on an app that thousands of developers can do better, and not work on a missing feature that can enable further innovation? We are not talking about a Siri level of feature, we are talking of a trivial platform feature that basically a decent engineer in Apple should be able to do it in a week, testing included.

<comment><USER8> _As a platform provider, why bother work on an app that thousands of developers can do better, and not work on a missing feature that can enable further innovation?_

I'm not sure if you want to hear the answer to that or not.

It's economics & platform strategy. Ping was created to attempt to increase the stickiness of the iTunes platform, to appease the record labels (who wanted an alternative to MySpace) and to bring Apple closer to Facebook. All of those things were major strategic goals for Apple at the time.

Making the iPad something more like a laptop when the MacBook Air already exists? The only way your "bug" will get traction within Apple is if someone decides that is a goal of the iOS platform. That might happen, but pulling an Apple engineer for a whole week off other projects to work on it seems unlikely to happen without fairly major executive sponsorship.

<comment><USER6> There are tons of cases where iPad could be better off with a keyboard, especially for productivity apps. Come on, android has full keyboard support from day one.

<comment><USER9> And what percentage of users actually use the full keyboard support? I mean, with Android tablets we're asking "what is a low percent of a tiny number of people", but still. Being able to use an external keyboard with your phone/tablet is a very, very niche activity.

<comment><USER5> Tons... look at the ASUS Transformer and Slider. Devices like that can't exist in iOS properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ping was a concession to the labels who asked for an alternative to MySpace with a revenue model. It was never given much attention by Apple internally, nor was it a source of "pride" for anyone really.

I remember when it was first introduced, a good number of us at labels were thinking, "great, another marketing platform to update for a bit, then have go stale."

Plus it was supposed to have Facebook integration, which was pulled quickly after launch.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _"We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said 'This isn't > something that I want to put a lot of energy into,'" Cook said._

Good. That is _exactly_ the kind of decision they should be making. Thank you, Cook, for rather quickly killing something that deserved to die.

<comment><USER12> Quickly here meaning about 2 years.

<comment><USER11> In the media world, that's warp 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Ping was too specific.

When we've already built up 99% of the infrastructure required to share _anything we want_ (e.g. messages, photos, videos, links, entire pages on Facebook), it's very hard to see the point of a service that specializes in sharing exactly one thing.

The timing was also horrible. Some of the technologies currently available for sharing are 5 or 10 years old or more, so what the heck was supposed to be revolutionary about Ping? It needed to arrive before there was Facebook or Twitter.

<comment><USER14> I actually thought the timing could have been good. When it was announced, MySpace was clearly in death-spiral mode but still a lot of bands were using it as their primary online presence. I thought Ping had at least a shot at being the place they moved to.

Obviously it didn't work out that way. My hunch is that Apple's feelings on the project were "lets throw this out there and see if it sticks". It clearly didn't, and now they'll move on. When you're making $1500 in profit a second you can experiment a little.

<comment><USER15> > My hunch is that Apple's feelings on the project were "lets throw this out > there and see if it sticks"

Which is somewhat uncharacteristic of Apple and what some folks blame Google for doing repeatedly. I hope Ping's failure resulted in a lot of lessons learned about the social space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's actually really interesting that this product took so long to get axed.

Even Google+ had an initial surge of users that loved it (and some still do), but I've _never_ met anyone that was a Ping lover (or, as far as I know, even a willing Ping user).

</comment><comment><USER17> Ping is one of the few Steve Jobs-approved product failures. Even MobileMe eventually morphed into iCloud. Ping was DOA.

<comment><USER18> Actually, Steve Jobs' track record is closer to 50-50 in terms of successes vs failures. The difference is that his failures were usually not very significant, and his successes were monstrous.

<comment><USER19> Are you counting the totally unprofitable development of NeXTStep as a success or failure (considering that NeXT would very likely have died had Apple not bought them)?

(Those same APIs and objective paradigms became the basis for the entire iOS app ecosystem, via MacOS...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER21> I _always_ wondered why Apple never aquired Last.fm, it's such a simple service and would've perfectly fitted within iTunes.

<comment><USER22> Last.fm was sold to CBS in 2007. It also has lots of legacy client apps on many different platforms to support - I doubt that's something Apple would want to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember one of the big selling points was basically artist blogs, like Lady Gaga. Were those ever updated?

</comment><comment><USER23> These things happen. Next.</comment>


A World Without Referees (2012) [pdf] - barry-cotter https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~larry/Peer-Review.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I might agree with the author but why focus on a small part of the process? What is the ideal way to fund, recognize and reward scientific efforts? Has there been significant progress in each of those fronts?

May be it is my biased opinion, I feel that universities used to have a better balance in terms of exploration/exploitation by giving more space to non conformists and eccentric characters. These days, the system seems to be very skewed towards conformists.

<comment><USER2> The balance is gone, at least in the US, because of several reasons, some easily quantifiable, others more subtle or difficult to quantify.

Most of it is due to the prevalence of indirect fund systems on grants in the US. The way this is budgeted, universities bring in far more money than their actual costs, meaning there's huge incentives to prioritize grant funding over actual research. Because of huge competition and the way grants are evaluated, you have grants only weakly being related to impact or progress, and instead being targeted to what is most likely to be popular.

Another contributing factor is reliance on bibliometric indices like h indices etc. Although this seems reasonable, what it leads to is huge pressure to publish what's popular over other considerations, with lots of co-authors. I've reviewed for high-status journals have said explicitly in instructions to reviewers (and I'm only weakly paraphrasing) "don't evaluate the methodological integrity or integrity of the conclusions, only evaluate how popular this is likely to be."

What happens is you're incentivizing groupthink very heavily. Combine this with eroding of tenure (either through elimination of tenure-track lines, or protections of intellectual exploration), especially in places like biomedicine where the financial conflicts of interest are huge, it leads to big problems.

I have mixed feelings about peer review. I do think it's overrated, broken, and not transparent enough. Having done it for over a decade, I'm still being surprised by ethically questionable things that happen (ironically in my experience it seems like this actually happens the most in fields that are supposed to be more "objective", like statistics or math). On the other hand, my emerging experience with the unbridled internet is that it just reinforces the TED-ization of academics, in that things like twitter attention get mixed in with more formal evaluation of research.

Given the traditional peer review system versus some more open free-for-all, I'd choose the latter for multiple reasons, but they both have issues. In today's dysincentivised climate, the more open approach does have downsides, but maybe if the culture was fixed in other ways those concerns would be alleviated.

To address your question about what to do: there have been lots of proposals but they don't seem to get traction.

Open publication, archives, etc. seem to be moving in the right direction, but many of the grant solutions (eliminating indirect funds or making them line- item justified, lottery systems, funding based on publications through awards) haven't gotten traction.

<comment><USER3> > I've reviewed for high-status journals have said explicitly in instructions > to reviewers (and I'm only weakly paraphrasing) "don't evaluate the > methodological integrity or integrity of the conclusions, only evaluate how > popular this is likely to be."

(Academic mathematician here)

I'm curious, how do they get away with this?

In mathematics, it's common and perfectly acceptable to turn down requests to review a paper. (You're not supposed to turn down _all_ of them.) When I've done so, because I've already taken on too many reviewing assignments at one time, I've never gotten pushback from journal editors.

If some journal editor asked me to review a paper, and gave me instructions along the lines that you described, then I'd just tell them "I'm very sorry, but I'm unusually busy at the moment."

<comment><USER2> Those comments weren't at a math journal, but a more applied biomedical journal.

I also have started refusing requests from that journal.

The instructions I referred to werent available until well after accepting the review request, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER3> They give instructions only after you have accepted? That, too, seems odd to me. I guess that it is what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author makes some valid points, but doesn't consider downsides very carefully. In a world where there is no central publication venue, those who are "famous" (or work in famous institutions) have a very large advantage over newcomers, who can't simply "send email to their colleagues." A little more thought and discussion of this part of the problem would be useful.

</comment><comment> barry-cotter > The refereeing process is very noisy, time consuming and arbitrary. We > should be dissem- inating our research as widely as possible. Instead, we > let two or three referees stand in between our work and the rest of our > field. I think that most people are so used to our system, that they > reflexively defend it when it is criticized. The purpose of doing research > is to create new knowledge. This knowledge is useless unless it is > disseminated. Refereeing is an impediment to dissemination. Every > experienced researcher that I know has many stories about having papers > rejected because of unfair referee reports. Some of this can be written off > as sour grapes, but not all of it. In the last 24 years I have been an > author, referee, associate editor and editor. I have seen many cases where > one referee rejected a paper and another equally qualified referee accepted > it. I am quite sure that if I had sent the paper to two other referees, > anything could have happened. Referee reports are strongly affected by the > personality, mood and disposition of the referee. Is it fair that you work > hard on something for two years only to have it casually dismissed by a > couple of people who might happen to be in a bad mood or who feel they have > to be critical for the sake of being critical?

</comment><comment><USER5> The peer review process is closed with loads of conflicts of interest and reviewer biases.

On a tangential note I think the reproducibility crisis is jarring. There should be a way to rank research by reproducibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the current system the reviewers do not have much skin in the game, they can shoot down a good paper with very little accountability/consequences. May be there should be a system where reviews/reviews are also ranked/commented upon by the group of reviewers or much wider community.

<comment><USER5> That makes sense because thats how film critic reviews work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the last eight years, we've gotten a lot closer to this with the increasing use of preprint servers (arXiv, bioarXiv, etc).

Until recently, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of most preprints. Most seemed roughly comparable to peer-reviewed papers, though the COVID crisis seems to have unleashed a deluge of lower quality work though, and I think we haven't quite figured out how to do (and reward) reviewing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see peer review done on a greater variety of research outputs, not just papers.

Why not sometimes have movies or pieces of software or physical objects or whatever is the most effective representation of the work?

We all have computers now and international shipping is (usually) pretty easy, it could expand of boundaries of research subjects and methods.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the other hand, "hey this preprint!!" isn't exactly _useful_ right now either.

There's a balance.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hasn't the internet solved a lot of these problems?

For example, you can make the argument that hacker news is sort of a peer- review system for articles from everywhere - personal, academic and commercial.</comment>


On Finding Good Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightsphere.com/blog/programming/finding_good_programmers.html "...making hackers work in a noisy, distracting environment is like having a paint factory where the air is full of soot." -- Paul Graham <comment><USER2> _Just having a body to fill the seat is not, I repeat not, always a win for the company._

No kidding. Hmm. Interesting.

 _Anyone who has been a developer or managed developers can tell you that an expert can accomplish as much as 10 average developers._

Anyone who has already heard the standard cliche could and perhaps would tell you that also. Of course, the reason Brooks originally said "10" rather than "9" or "11" is because that is how many fingers we have, and it would be odd if that number somehow corresponded to a programmer ability ratios.

In fact,

...the ratio is often incalculable, depending on the task. Average programmers simply won't be able to complete certain tasks. Easy tasks, like CRUD apps, are more a matter of typing speed than thinking speed, and so a 10:1 ratio isn't likely to happen...unless one programmer is good enough to force a paradigm shift...whether moving assembler to COBOL or Flat files to SQL to ORM or whatever. In that case, the productivity gain is 1000000:1 or more...if the innovation spreads beyond that one task.</comment>


Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks <comment><USER2> Welcome to the internet 2020

[http://www.openculture.com/2015/06/isaac-asimovs-favorite- st...](http://www.openculture.com/2015/06/isaac-asimovs-favorite-story-the- last-question-read-by-isaac-asimov.html)

version 1 "debug_error": { "errorCode": "auth", "errorDetail": "0", "errorMessage": "Video unavailable", "lh": "This video contains content from Penguin Random House, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.", "xA": "ec.150;ed.0;es.This video contains content from Penguin Random House_ who has blocked it on copyright grounds." }

version 2 [https://youtu.be/rjqjSP7kOO4](https://youtu.be/rjqjSP7kOO4)

<comment><USER3> The only book I've checked before going to comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also [https://librivox.org](https://librivox.org) for free public domain audiobooks.

<comment><USER5> These kinds of sites really could use a "Top 100" or "Most Popular" feature for when you just want to see what's on tap and don't necessarily have a specific book in mind.

Amazing resource, though. After recording a short story I wrote, I have even more respect for people who volunteer their time to librivox. I had to do a surprising amount of editing and re-takes just reading my tiny story. Could barely get through a paragraph without some sort of error, even if it was just a weirdly timed breath.

<comment><USER6> Librivox content is hosted on archive.org and can be sorted and searched more easily there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, most public libraries have extensive audiobook and ebook archives, and there are apps that bring all that content straight to your phone. If you live somewhere that has library access, you can greatly and easily expand your access to books, new and old through that method.

<comment><USER8> Even if you _don 't_ live somewhere that has library access, there's a number of options available. Here's a few options: [https://weightywords.net/best- non-resident-library-cards-for...](https://weightywords.net/best-non-resident- library-cards-for-overdrive-access/)

[https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries#Wid...](https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries#Widely_Accessible_Libraries_and_Subscription_Services)

If you're in the US some cities will give access to their library system as long as you live in the state. Overdrive has a good UI, and with waitlists, I always have something to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are looking for free german audio books, checkout

\- [https://www.vorleser.net/](https://www.vorleser.net/)

For a free conversion tool, checkout

\- [https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool](https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool)

\- [https://github.com/gonzoua/AudioBookBinder](https://github.com/gonzoua/AudioBookBinder)

\- [https://github.com/yermak/AudioBookConverter](https://github.com/yermak/AudioBookConverter)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the conversion tools. I was lost trying to deal with m4b audio books and SubSonic not supporting them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If anyone is looking for some free modern genre fiction, I can highly recommend the Worm audiobook: [http://audioworm.rein- online.org/](http://audioworm.rein-online.org/)

It's longer than the entire Games of Thrones series, plenty of content there. It is a fan created recording and the early parts are a bit rough, but gets more professional over time and eventually becomes extremely polished.

This is a sample (standalone, relatively spoiler free since this is 100% flashback) chapter from the sequel story Ward. Read Worm first but this specific chapter can be read by itself. [http://parahumanaudio.com/podcast/gleaming-9-x/](http://parahumanaudio.com/podcast/gleaming-9-x/)

<comment><USER12> Worm really opened up a whole new section of "books" for me. Previously I thought that most web serials were on par with fan fiction in quality and subject matter. That being said another free audio book that is also a web serial (not sure if it's complete just yet) is Mother of Learning: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjR6qnMXU9o&list=PL1R6q3pUbd...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjR6qnMXU9o&list=PL1R6q3pUbd2m-QPJvDpLAERJMSteFBaCI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone else have an issue with audiobooks as literature? Like, if I'm not able to control the pace at which I'm paying attention, it's problematic. I can't guarantee I'll pay 100 percent attention to noise that otherwise would almost be background to me. Regardless, the selection here is pretty bad-ass.

<comment><USER14> Is there something inherent in literature that requires it to be visually consumed? Yes, it's too easy to let one's mind wander while listening to an audiobook but I find it helps to have a group/book club with which to discuss the book afterward.

One significant negative of audiobooks is that I tend to listen while doing "active but mindless" activities (mowing the lawn, commuting, cleaning my office, doing dishes/chores) which means I'm not in a position to stop and take notes in the margin or in a notebook. To really absorb a work and make it your own I think you need to take notes and summarize the main points of each chapter, in your own words, after finishing each chapter.

That said, listening-only is far better than having _no_ exposure to these great works. Would I would love even more is to have commentaries or Joe- Rogan-Style recorded discussions about the books by academics so I could read the book, listen to discussions about the book, then read the book again with these critiques in mind.

<comment><USER15> Guess blind people are just kinda SOL then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I considered whitelisting the website on uBlock but then I noticed 25+ different blocked requests (that number usually explodes after whitelisting too). Is this really necessary?

</comment><comment><USER17> If your favourite book isn't available as an audiobook, give us a try:

[https://auditus.cc](https://auditus.cc)

<comment><USER18> Voice quality and price seems good enough for me to use a lot - as most books / media I want to read are too niche for Audible, etc.

I tried to order, but it errored out because of some file not readable error, but error was fatal and with no recourse but doing everything again.

I would use this all the time if it was a little smoother. Hit me up if I can be helpful. (see my profile here for email)

<comment><USER17> Will do, thanks for letting us know about the error.

<comment><USER18> Update: these guys were great.

They quickly reached out to me with the fixed file and the output is really good.

This is the first voice synthed audiobook that I can actually stand to listen to at length, and it plays well using Podcast Addict on Android, and the voice speeds up well too (encoded at 93%, listened to it at ~1.7x)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What do you use to listen to audio books files? Some normal audio player is rather cumbersome, due to missing progress tracking.

<comment><USER20> For android I use "Listen Audiobook Player". Automatic progress tracking for multiple books, and generally all round great for daily audiobook usage.

<comment><USER21> I also use Listen Audiobook Player [1]. Loaded with well thought out features. The app also saves your progress/stats in a json file in your audiobooks directory, so you can easier move it to a new phone/tablet whenever you want.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroid.listen&hl=en_CA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool site, but for myself, I will stick with Audible because of the convenience. I have probably spent about $1000 on Audible books and I feel like that has been a good value, over many years.

Some advantages I have experienced:

When I read James Joyce "Ulysses" several years ago, it was somewhat difficult to follow the narrative. I then listened to it as an audio book with a half a dozen good actors reading the parts and the book came to life for me.

I have some arthritis in my hands, and any time not using a keyboard, holding a physical book, or an eBook reader helps.

When I am working in the yard, cleaning up the kitchen, etc. it is good to listen to a book.

The one thing that bothers me is the possibility of losing a large investment in Kindle and Audible books if I ever lost my Amazon account. I mitigate this somewhat by buying some eBooks and audio books on Google Play and on Apple's store. --> don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER23> If I could suggest on your last point, that if you are fearful of Audible ever going the way of the dodo, that you look into OpenAudible. I've used it to keep an offline Archive of my content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not what I expected to see: Iggy Pop reads Edgar Allan Poe

[http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/iggy-pop-reads-edgar- alla...](http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/iggy-pop-reads-edgar-allan-poes- classic-horror-story-the-tell-tale-heart.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> I prefer TTS machine generated voice than non professional readers such as librivox, so for me it's either a professional reader or TTS.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do these free audio books collection also has transcripts? I want to use them to train my Speech to text model.

<comment><USER27> If you don't already know about it, you'll probably be interested in Mozilla's Common Voice data: [https://voice.mozilla.org/en/datasets](https://voice.mozilla.org/en/datasets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How do we know they're great? There's no review section like on Audible or Librivox.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there an app on iOS that indexes ubuweb, I noticed Junky read by Burroughs there which would be a fascinating listen, but it comes in lots of pieces and consuming it on the run seems somewhat tricky

</comment><comment><USER30> Was surprised to see the free books in Audible, turns out that this is free only if you sign up and you only get one book, which is pretty misleading

<comment><USER31> As oppose to having some books free but riddled with vpn and pill commercial very 10 mins?

They need to make money somehow.

<comment><USER30> Amazon "sells" classics for free, I thought there was something similar in Audible that I was not aware of

<comment><USER32> If you have an Alexa they now give you access to free audiobooks to listen to for the month:

[https://www.audible.co.uk/ep/alexa-free- audiobook](https://www.audible.co.uk/ep/alexa-free-audiobook)

Caveat being, audiobooks can be rather long and it might be a push to fit them into the month!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So, what software/app do you guys use to consume audiobooks? I haven't found a decent one that works with external downloads.

<comment><USER21> On Android, Listen Audiobooks [1] is my go to and has been for years. As long as your books are DRM free it's the best UX I've had.

[1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroid.listen&hl=en_CA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> First link I click on is a dud (Asimov, Isaac - "The Last Question" ) due to copyright claims. Not a great start tbh.

<comment><USER35> Both "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer" are fantastic shorts that I can't recommend enough to everybody. Don't let this version being a dud stop you from reading them. They're available in text form from other websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is great! thank you

</comment><comment><USER37> Why is this sorted by author name ? Site is very spammy and unusable

<comment><USER38> Also all "free on Audible.com" links simply go to their own page telling the reader to sign up for a free trial with a referral link, instead of audiobooks that are free on Audible. Uhm, so it is NOT free on Audible, and that seems fishy and scammy as well. I understand making money in general (Audible) and referral links (this site), but just tell me, don't skirt around it please and pretend something is free when it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this (pre-recorded) audio book thing is a short-term phenomenon that's creating an economic distortion. Recording audio books requires extra labor, but not much (how many person-hours does it take to record War and Peace compared to person-hours spent by each publisher publishing a new edition, even assuming the use of an existing translation?). Yet Audible rakes in huge amounts of cash by charging a premium (particularly popular titles) for audiobooks over regular ebooks. Sometimes it's because they get famous people to read books, which is a blatant cash grab by the voice artist and/or by Audible. You could find 10 people who have better reading voices than any particular famous person, unless your only objective is to hear your favorite famous person read a book, any book.

Also, subscription plans are designed around most people not using them fully, and not optimizing their purchases.

Soon enough neural net TTS + ebooks will be nearly equivalent, and doesn't cost any more than the base ebook. Plus TTS allows synchronizing between print and speech which you can't get between ebooks and audiobooks; i.e. it would be nice to read in print, then switch to TTS while commuting or working out, then back to print.

<comment><USER40> > You could find 10 people who have better reading voices than any particular > famous person, unless your only objective is to hear your favorite famous > person read a book, any book.

It can work. There's an Indian celebrity ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappi_Lahiri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappi_Lahiri) ) who is famous for his great love of gold. And for the Hindi dub of _Moana_ , he was cast as the voice of Tamatoa.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DailyVC – Daily links shared by VCs and Angel investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyvc.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> What Is This?

DailyVC born from the idea that information on Twitter flows too fast and is really hard to follow all the links shared by the smartest people in the world. @pmarca , for example, is tweeting between 50 and 200 times a day and is f __hard to follow him, so I thought it would be useful for his followers to see all his links in one place.

With DailyVC we can gather the links shared by this curated list of VCs. By the way, if you have more ideas/suggestions about some verticals or specific lists we could create with this purpose, tweet me to @josuegio.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks quite useful. I follow a number of VCs sharing very interesting stuff and it's tough to keep track of all their links and information. It may apply to different verticals too. Have you thought about Tech Reporters?</comment>


Peak in Google Trend for "Google Alternative" - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=google%20alternatives

<comment><USER2> Maybe a lot of those searches are just "alternative to Google Reader", which would be a subset (90% of it?) of the "alternative to Google" results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'd certainly agree with that. I know I personally searched "google alternative" because of the reader fiasco, but a good portion of those likely include the reader term as well.</comment></comment>


Digg Vs. Reddit: The Infographic - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/27/digg-reddit-infographic/ <comment><USER2> This infographic was a brilliant move by the guys at RateRush.com. Not only did it hit the front page of Reddit they've now also been 'featured' on TechCrunch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow - a load of British sites (particularly newspapers) on both sites... I didn't realise it was quite that dramatic.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ultimate Reddit headline:

"Dear Reddit: Fuck BP! The game police dog got Bush to google Fox."</comment>


ActiveAdmin cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.coachup.com/activeadmin-cheat-sheet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a little cheat sheet I put together for using the Rails gem ActiveAdmin.

Some of the defaults the gem generates are a little wonky and can have very negative performance impact when the data grows too large.

One thing I'm curious about from the HN crowd is how large you've scaled with ActiveAdmin, and what you've done when you outgrew it? Homegrown admin interface? Some sort of OLTP -> DataMart migration?</comment>


Show HN: Video Editor App for Dummies - 011-video https://011.video/desktop.html <comment> 011-video Free and without watermark - Progressive web app - Browsers supported : Firefox, Chrome, Edge - Android version available - Features : Real time drawing over video, easy subtitles, speech to stickers, external flow capture... More : [https://011.video](https://011.video)</comment>


When To Write Bad Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandonsavage.net/when-to-write-bad-code/

<comment><USER2> Write prototypes in a language that you don't use in production.

It allows you to get to grips with the problem and prevents you from just copy-and-pasting large chunks of the "i'll rewrite this later" code into production.

I tend to write my prototypes in Perl as I used to use it a lot in the past for hacking things together. It translates well both to Ruby on Rails (front end) and to C (with low level server magic).

<comment><USER3> This is a great suggestion. I've done this with PHP (the first language I learned) for work I'm doing in Python. It also helps sometimes when you have to translate code from one language to another to use an intermediary language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Nothing lives longer than temporary code."

Love this quote. I assumed it was an existing quote/idiom, but it looks to be original.

<comment><USER3> It's not original to me. Not sure where I heard it, but I know it's not mine.

<comment><USER5> _Thus spake the master programmer: "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained." \-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this post goes far enough. It's not only ok to write bad code, it's also ok to commit bad code, and to use such programs in anger. Most code is not actually going to be important. It's ok for that code to be crap. What's generally not ok is contaminating already existing high-quality components with quick kludges. Likewise it's not ok for programs that turn out to be important to remain in a crappy state, even if they started out as such.

I write dozens of shell pipelines every day. Some graduate to actually being saved in files and cleaned up a bit. Some of those start needing new features, and end up rewritten as quick and dirty perl scripts. A few of those see constant use in more and more circumstances and end up accumulating an ever larger number of features. Once that program grows large enough, it'll become obvious that it'll become unmaintainable at some point. And you can either evolve that code into a less crappy state when other changes are made, or you can rewrite it from scratch.

And the thing is, you can't really know in advance what kind of a program a given problem really warrants. Is it shell pipeline that'll only ever be run three times, or will it end up as a core component of somebody's workflow. Since you can't predict these things, you have to play the odds. If most programs end up as important tools, it'd be insane to risk the need of multiple rewrites. While if most programs end up just gathering dust somewhere, it'd be insane to polish them to perfection before committing. And even if "nothing lives longer than temporary code" is a nice soundbite, I don't actually believe that for a moment. I'd bet that most temporary code actually dies almost instantly. It's just some kind of observation bias.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a similar dilema in the creative writing field: "I don't know the right way to say this idea" or "I have writer's block." The general advice from the workshops and masters is to write _something_ , even if you know it's terrible, so you have a place to start and revise (what we would call refactoring). The theory is that revising words is much easier and can be helped along by someone else moreso than a blank page.

However, I've only seen it work in practice when you do go back and refactor. Too often the smelly code gets left behind, and that is why I usually ask others to think through code before writing.

<comment><USER8> _> The theory is that revising words is much easier and can be helped along by someone else moreso than a blank page._

Amen. Nothing beats the instructive facility of running code and a usable UI.

 _> However, I've only seen it work in practice when you do go back and refactor. Too often the smelly code gets left behind, and that is why I usually ask others to think through code before writing._

Well, of course it won't work if you don't refactor. You get results analogous to writing with no revision. There's also the trick of knowing when you've revised enough -- amateurs stop before the pros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In most of the code bases when 5+ people work on the same code, it's really hard to add some non-trivial functionality by writing it the proper way from the beginning. BTW I think sticking with the attitude "first specs, then code" is old school in most situations. Some very rough spec will be fine, but a lot of the things you haven't thought of, you encounter while actually playing with the app/widget, or stepping through the debugger (unless you've worked on a product for a very long time and know it inside out).

I find "write working code & then refactor" ridiculously easy when working with Git. Add some tiny new things one-by-one and commit early each time it is more or less stable (so you can revert quickly when you screw it later, instead of doing some crazy debugging). When it's done, squash the commits and refactor.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't this just usual prototyping? I rarely consider best practices when trying to implement a non-trivial prototype because flow and creativity is broken when attempting to adhere to best practices at the same time (in my experience at least).

My current project contains some non-trivial code so there was a lot of prototyping. If I spent time ensuring this code was also well written, I doubt the problems would've been solved because half of my energy and concentration would be spent on scaffolding and not the actual building.

Having said that, I still find documenting the prototype as important as real code. When it comes to refactoring the code, it helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER11> I used to say that "temporary is the state before permanent". Unfortunately, the crappier the initial code base is, the crappier the production code will be, unless you have a lot of free time to rewrite everything, which about nobody has.

<comment><USER8> Having the time to eliminate your technical debt is just like having the money to make your interest payments. You can go into debt for leverage, just don't get caught in a cycle where it gets deeper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is my approach as well. This basically amounts to planning to throw one away anyway (<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlanToThrowOneAway>) or rapid prototyping (<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RapidPrototyping>).

After coding the first implementation you will always realize things that you didn't anticipate that could improve the design. It's easier to get it working quickly, find the holes in the algorithm/design, then refactor it to be pretty and maintainable.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this varies per person's development style. If the thing that's blocking is getting momentum, then sometimes writing tests and then code to meet those test is easier (for those of us who are more comfortable with documenting).

In the end it depends whether it's easier to _just code_ or setup scaffolding (ie, TDD tests) to then write the code.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I agree with the underlying point, the title is an argument in semantics (and I would say misleading and wrong - it is _never_ OK to push bad code).

It may be unelegant, it may lack any number of "best practices", but if your code solves a problem, doesn't break other things, and can be refactored effectively, it doesn't count as _bad_.

</comment><comment><USER15> > _When the code is working and you're ready to move onto the next phase, then > you can work on making the code pretty, readable, well-documented and > tested. While this flies in the face of concepts like test-driven > development..._

I disagree that writing "shit code that still works" and TDD have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, if I'm going to go the "just get it done" route, I will almost (but not always) try to set up a few tests for it.

Because nothing sucks harder then going back to crap code and trying to decipher what it's doing. If it's crap code, then it's likely non-orthogonal code, which means changing it will likely break something...etc. etc. Tests help me do the refactoring later.

And, also, how do I know that my shit-code-just-works _actually works_? Sometimes, it's helpful to write a kind-of-shitty-test to at least verify that it kind of works, if not perfectly.

<comment><USER3> The person I was mentoring (that prompted this blog post) was having trouble getting ANY code down on the screen. Being able to write SOMETHING was the hurdle for this developer to overcome.

In most cases though, I agree with you.

<comment><USER16> I write bad code all the time, I'm writing terrible code right now. I _check in_ good code.

Some people can visualize an entire program in their head and how it will interact. Not me. I hack at the core of the problem I'm trying to solve, until I've solved it. Then I reorganize the code into something that (hopefully) isn't crap. It seems inefficient, but it works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why you test from the outside in: You first write an acceptance test where you just specify what goes in and what should come out. The error/failure messages you get when running this test drive your design and tell you which components you should write next.

The RSpec book is a pretty good introduction to this topic.

</comment><comment><USER18> From the sounds of other developers, I think much of the development community is moving towards this paradigm. Developers have been so inundated with needing to use patterns, designs and other forms that has lead to inefficiencies in designs that were well thought out, but do not apply, instead of inefficiencies from bad code.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a really interesting point of view.</comment>


This American Life's obituary for Dennis Ritchie - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-lives-they-lived.html?hp#view=dennis_ritchie <comment><USER2> Just a note that this is from "These American Lives" a special section in the New York Times edited by Ira Glass and his team from "This American Life", the radio show.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the-l...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/22/magazine/the- lives-they-lived.html)

<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> As a big dmr fan, I'm happy his death was noticed in at least some small part by the non-geek media. I didn't love this obit though, mostly because (while Google is far from perfect) I think the swipe that equates them with Apple in terms of mobile device control weakens the piece.

Contrary to what the article says, vendors are free to make handsets that run Android without any Google approval, they just don't get all the userland Google apps stuff. Also, Google is hardly in the same league of gatekeeping that Apple is when it comes to their app store, both because they lean towards easy approval of anything not harmful, and because in the standard OS distribution you're free to install your own APKs, other competing app stores (eg. Amazon), etc. Equating that situation to Apple's App Store where that's all you get unless you're going to jailbreak the phone is so much of a simplification of the truth that it is basically a lie.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that equating the two in the article was extremely sloppy, there also exists the phenomenon of Google providing open tools to device makers and carriers, who then use it to create a locked device with poor privacy standards. The Android stack itself may be open, but the devices that actually end up in users' hands vary wildly in their respect for consumer freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of this piece, Ellen Ullman, wrote a really great book (IMHO) called "Close to the Machine" back in 1997; I'm not sure, but I think some of the book was based on a series of (very early) Salon.com essays. Besides being a thoroughly enjoyable nostalgia trip back to the original dotcom bubble, it is a very insightful and enjoyable exploration of what it feels like to program a computer, and why it can be such a rush. Highly recommended, especially for anybody who finds themselves struggling to explain what it's all about to a non-technical person.

<http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780872863323-6>

<comment><USER6> She also wrote a novel called "The Bug", which is about a team of software developers trying to track down an elusive bug which likes to manifest itself during demos to VCs. It's a bit dated since it takes place in the mid-1980s, but those of us who have lived through that technology might find it interesting. (Apparently, there's still some interest in this book, since I see that a paperback edition is going to be released at the end of February.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> technically, I don't think it's correct to say that C let you bring down the system with one command.

On a protected memory system, I think the worst you could do was a core dump. On Unix, unless you were root, you couldn't hose the system. And if you were root, you didn't need C to do it.

On a DOS, Windows 3.1, Mac machine, yeah, an overrun could freeze your whole system, or just make things go haywire at an unexpected time. Ah... the Mac bomb dialog...fun times. Not remembering exactly what Windows 3.1 did, I don't think the BSOD had been invented yet.

<comment><USER8>
        while (fork());

will cause a world of hurt on a multi-user Unix, even non-root.

<comment><USER9> I did this once, just to see what would happen. (I hadn't read Lion's notes yet).

The admin came running (well, fast-walking) and asked me if I knew what I was doing.

"Now I do," I replied.

"No, you don't," he said. The next morning there was a photocopy of Lion's Notes on V6 Unix on my desk.

I learned a lot from that guy, and that illicit copy of LN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised the bundling of open android OS with the closed ios and windows phone OSs got passed fact checking. I'm also surprised that someone who claims to be technical would make that mistake.

Either way the author, intentionally or otherwise, misinforms her readers about Android in this article.</comment>


Ask HN: Tutorials for ASP.NET MVC and C# that are like railstutorial.org? - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hacker News,
Last year I learned Rails using Michael Hartl's excellent Rails Tutorial. This year I'd like to learn ASP.NET MVC and C#.
What I loved about Hartl's tutorial is its comprehensive nature: it introduces readers to everything from fundamental web concepts and common Unix terminal commands to Ruby, Rails, testing, tools and deployments, and ultimately builds a functioning website that you can just share the link to with your friends. I've been searching for similarly thorough tutorials for ASP.NET MVC, but haven't been able to find any. So I figured I would ask here.
tl;dr: What are some good resources to learn ASP.NET MVC for someone who has ~1 year of Rails experience? Don't assume knowledge of C# or Visual Studio.
Thanks in advance. :) <comment><USER2> i have been looking around for this lately aswell, the best place i've found is pluralsight.

<comment><USER3> Seems Microsoft arranged for it to be free:

[http://www.asp.net/mvc/pluralsight](http://www.asp.net/mvc/pluralsight)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pluralsight.com</comment>


Intel's Core M Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8475/intels-core-m-strategy-cpu-specifications-for-9mm-fanless-tablets <comment><USER2> Intels mobile strategy is to bleed $2Bill a year by engaging in anticompetitive behaviour by giving away chips nobody wants

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186367-intels-mobile- divi...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186367-intels-mobile-division-has- lost-an-astonishing-2-billion-dollars-so-far-this-year)

Intell is trying to undercut Allwinter/Mediatek/Rockchip by selling Atoms at $5 a pop in China.

[http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel- sel...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-sells-quad- core-atom-for-tablets-for-5-per-chip-report/)</comment>


New zero day vulnerability in Flash player - <AUTHOR> http://secunia.com/advisories/47161/

<comment><USER2> Instructions for disabling Flash plugin...

in Chrome browser: [http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=108086)

in Mozilla Firefox: [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Macromedia_flash#Enabling_and_disa...](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Macromedia_flash#Enabling_and_disabling_Flash)

Really no reason to have it enabled anymore.</comment>


iOS is destined to be a hardcore gaming platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/16/4525134/opinion-ios-hardcore-games

<comment><USER2> Truly hardcore games will remain on the PC for the same reason they always have: input devices. Nothing else offers the complexity of the keyboard or the precision of the mouse, which is why console gaming has always been a second- class citizen, with auto-aim a necessity and the most exciting new genres impossible. Unless and until we see radically new input devices, that's going to remain the case.

<comment><USER3> This is more of a justification for why First Person Shooters and RTS games (specifically, Starcraft clones) will remain on the PC, and it's not all that great of a justification. FPS games on consoles have been extremely popular, and a lot of really innovative independent games have launched with touch- first or controller-first mechanics.

I'm not sure I follow your statement about exciting new genres being impossible on console or iOS...can you give an example about one such genre that is PC only?

<comment><USER2> Look at the rise of Dwarf Fortress leading to Minecraft and its various imitators. Once you get to the polished, simplified level of Minecraft then it can be (and has been) ported to consoles and phones, but the experience doesn't start that polished. You need to be able to experiment with something clunkier, something with many more possibilities - and something like Dwarf Fortress couldn't possibly happen on anything other than the PC.

I think, anyway. Maybe that's got nothing to do with it, and we see innovation on the PC solely because it's a more indie-friendly development environment. But I think it's telling that the dev versions of consoles come with keyboards.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon can smell the blood in Ads. And it's going for it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aihelloautopilot/amazon-can-smell-the-blood-in-ads-and-its-going-for-it-5a437f30ed9d <comment><USER2> It's pay to play!</comment>


Crytek Outlines Future Plans and Focuses on Return to Core Competencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.crytek.com/news/crytek-outlines-future-plans-and-focuses-on-return-to-core-competencies <comment><USER2> Very related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13149944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13149944)</comment>


Show HN: Mowbly Mobility Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.mowbly.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We just opened out our new cloud version and as part of that move we have started our journey towards open sourcing too. Mowbly has six different modules and we are open sourcing two of them the cross platform mobile SDK (iOS & Android) and coming up in May we will open source our cross platform mobile UI framework 'Juci' along with the Windows & Blackberry SDKs.

Our Github repo: [https://github.com/teammowbly/Mowbly-Mobile- SDK](https://github.com/teammowbly/Mowbly-Mobile-SDK)</comment>


Leaving SSH bastion hosts behind - <AUTHOR> https://www.netskope.com/blog/leaving-bastion-hosts-behind-part-1-gcp <comment><AUTHOR> We wrote this after our move away from using SSH bastion or jump hosts. We found getting away from bastion hosts was quite easy in GCP, so started writing this series. We are going to follow it up with posts about how to do the same in AWS and Azure, although we didn't find it to be as easy as it was in GCP in either of those platforms.</comment>


Show HN: Blocking – 3D Tetris-like browser game - <AUTHOR> https://hb.codes/blocking <comment><USER2> I just spent an hour or so playing it and enjoyed it, so thanks. Some random opinions:

* the control hints were too hard to read (15" MacBook), but no matter, it was pretty easy to work out anyway.

* it was too easy (and slow) at the beginning but quickly got too hard

* then I realised you can move and rotate the current block while paused, which makes it too easy as a game but still somewhat satisfying as a puzzle

* but frustratingly you can't rotate the camera when paused, which seems odd

* also the move controls don't adjust to the camera angle, so they sometimes work sidewards or backwards, which is confusing

* took me a while to work out what the hammer does

* the music is suitably hypnotic

<comment><AUTHOR> And good find on the block but not camera rotation working when paused! Interestingly it'll be because the way it's paused is setting the game's simulation speed to 0, but the camera rotation is based on simulation speed so that it's independent of framerate (unlike block rotation which is instant)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been building this game in my spare time for the past few months. Please let me know what you think!

It's built in Unity, and hosted in GCP Cloud Storage (Mainly because it's the easiest way to use Google's CDN for edge caching).

The source code is at [https://github.com/haydnbannister/blocking](https://github.com/haydnbannister/blocking) if anyone's interested.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, it doesn't (yet) run on mobile browsers. Watch this space :)</comment>


Revamped Cyprus deal to close bank, force losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/us-cyprus-parliament-idUSBRE92G03I20130325 <comment><USER2> There is a very important question here: What is the relationship between you and the bank?

Up until recently, it has been considered sacrosanct that deposit holders be protected, no matter the cost. The convention and social contract has been that you deposit money for safe-keeping in a bank. We have seen this over the past few years across both Europe and the US, as insolvent banks have been bailed-out, nationalised, given secret loans, so that deposit holders are wholly protected.

With Cyprus, this widely held belief is now in tatters. You as a deposit holder are now a creditor of the bank. As soon as you lend your money to the bank, it is no longer yours. The bank will provide you with interest for the duration of the loan. If the bank is no longer a going concern, you will no longer receive special treatment, but instead you must get in line with other creditors.

Some may argue that this has always been the case[1], however it will be a genuine shock to many people, and any faith in deposit guarantee schemes has been dealt a severe blow when a week ago, the EU urged Cyprus to collectively punish all deposit holders regardless of balance.

[1] For those in the UK, the House of Lords said in Foley v Hill 1848 <http://www.uniset.ca/other/css/9ER1002.html>

_"Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal... The money placed in custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases... he is, of course, answerable for the amount, because he has contracted, having received that money, to repay to the principal, when demanded, a sum equivalent to that paid into his hands... the banker is not an agent or factor, but he is a debtor."_

<comment><USER3> > the EU urged Cyprus to collectively punish all deposit holders regardless of > balance.

No it didn't - the EU always wanted Cyprus to leave deposits under 100,000 EUR alone but impose a higher tax on large deposits. The leadership of Cyprus was the one who came up with the tax on lower deposits because they wanted to decrease the burden on high deposits.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21825981> (last paragraphs)

<comment><USER2> From your link: _"The 10bn-euro ($13bn; £8.6bn) bailout agreed with the EU and IMF had demanded that all bank customers pay a one-off levy and led to heavy cash withdrawals."_

The EU were happy to sign off on a proposal which would see deposits under 100,000 EUR being hit. Maybe it was their idea, maybe it wasn't, but they were okay with it. Ultimately it was the Cypriot parliament who rejected the proposal.

 _"Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades says he is battling against eurozone demands that all bank customers pay a one-off levy in return for a bailout.

Mr Anastasiades said he shared people's unhappiness with the terms, whereby all bank customers would pay a levy of 6.75% or 10% on their bank deposits.

The EU and IMF have demanded the levy in return for a 10bn-euro ($13bn; £8.6bn) bank bailout."_[1]

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21824495>

<comment><USER3> My understanding of this article is that the EU told him he would have to come up with ~5bn, which they wanted him to do by imposing a tax on large deposits over 100,000. The comment by Schaeuble is pretty clear in this regard. Instead, the president opted to impose an additional tax on lower deposits in order to decrease the burden on large ones and keep Cyprus attractive as a tax haven. The EU wasn't happy with this but let him do it since it still fulfilled the requirements of raising 5bn.

So yes, the EU demanded that SOME customers have to pay SOME levy and I am sure he "shared people's unhappiness" with those terms. But the one who decided to put the burden on the small deposit holders was the Cypriot government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To add some context to this situation, Cyprus is a country of 1.1 Million people and it's banks have 68 Billion Euros in its accounts (of which 38 Billion is in accounts over 100k Euros) and as highlighted by their own GDP, its an amount of money which couldn't be sustained or created on its own. Germany and France have argued that, Cyprus's offshore-haven business model wasn't sustainable with, Bank of France Governor, Christian Noyer saying that "Cypriot banks have for years been taking the kinds of risks that are not allowed in France"[1]

The reason why Cyprus are getting a deal like this is because of the accusations of Money Laundering - an accusation which has led to Cyprus opening an investigation into[2] which is mainly due to the fact that, a Russian accountant (Sergei Magnitsky) was killed in jail in 2009 after revealing "that $31 million of the tax money was moved out of Russia using five Cypriot banks: Alpha Bank, Cyprus Popular Bank, FBME Bank, Privatbank International and Komercbanka"[2] and because, Cyprus are still heavily exposed to Greece. In fact, "the exposure of domestic [Cypriot] banks to Greece amounted to €28 billion, or one-third of total assets and 170% of GDP. Of the €28 billion, government bonds amounted to €4.7 billion; the rest were loans to Greek residents"[3]

The initial plans were to apply a levy on all accounts in Cyprus (up to 10% although, this was then rumoured to be 25% on everyone's savings above 100k Euros) which was rejected. Then there was a suggestion to nationalize semi- state pension funds although, Germany amongst others were against this idea suggesting that this could be even more painful for ordinary Cypriots than a deposit levy.

The plan now appears to be involving nationalizing state pensions and split failing lenders into good and bad banks which is highlighted by the article, with Laiki (Cyprus's number 2 bank becoming a 'bad' bank).

It's an interesting scenario from an economical standpoint although, Cyprus should have received a bailout as part of the Greek bailout due to their significant exposure to the Greek economy, regardless if they are an offshore- haven or not.

[1] [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/449633/20130324/cyprus- see...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/449633/20130324/cyprus-seeks-11th- hour-deal-to-avert-financial-collapse.htm)

[2] <http://euobserver.com/magnitsky/118524>

[3] <http://www.iif.com/emr/resources+2662.php>

<comment><USER5> _1.1 Million people and it's banks have 68 Billion Euros in its accounts_

So 62k Euro per captia? That doesn't sound like an insane amount.

 _an amount of money which couldn't be sustained or created on its own ... "Cypriot banks have for years been taking the kinds of risks that are not allowed in France"_

Since when has taking cash deposits been risky? This reasoning sounds completely backwards to me.

Why would a country with 68B Euros on deposit be begging for a 10B Euro bailout?

All I can figure is the US, Germany, and France don't like Cyprus taking less taxes and asking fewer questions and they don't want it to be a reliable place to shift your revenue or deposit your money.

<comment><USER6> _Since when has taking cash deposits been risky?_

The Cypriot banks have been paying much higher interest on deposits than other Eurozone banks. (You'd get something like 5-6% in Cyprus versus 1-2% in stable Euro countries like Finland.)

When you're paying much higher interest than market rate, obviously taking a lot of deposits becomes a huge risk. The same thing happened with the Icelandic banks before the 2008 crisis -- they attracted lots of European deposits with high interest rates and lost most of that money on ill-advised investments around the world.

<comment><USER7> when it's to good to be true...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It appears that they are no shortcuts, or getting rich with banking by becoming a low tax banking center (see Ireland, Iceland and now Cyprus).

And that will work against you when you need help from "normal" countries. Cyprus got absolutely no mercy from them, take it or leave the EU. They cannot leave EU so they must do anything else asked.

<comment><USER9> "They cannot leave EU so they must do anything else asked."

Good lord, do you ever read the news? In case you missed it, the last 2 weeks have involved non-stop negotiations with various parties as the people Cyprus pressured the Parliament of Cyprus into rejecting the original deal, with had largely been designed by the Germans. And the deal now being considered does not resemble any deal that was suggested by the Germans or the Russians, so clearly Cyprus can say "No", at least enough to gain some flexibility. And Cyprus can certainly leave the euro, thus endangering the long run health of the European project -- and considering how much Germany has benefited by having no restrictions on its exports to the rest of Europe, this would be bad news for Germany.

But even more crucially, there is the question, has Cyprus already, de-facto, left the euro?

[http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/03/fed...](http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/03/fed- watch-do-capital-controls-mean-cyprus-has-already-left-the-eurozone.html)

<comment><USER8> They said no and ran to Russia to try to pressure the Northern Europeans. And they came back crying...

The new deal, AFAIK, confiscates all money over 100K euros in the second largest bank, the other one was a 10% tax on all.

Either way, Greece had some leverage and used it to its advantage. Despite the huge cuts they were forced to make, they never met the goals set and they were lowered or extended. Cyprus it seems, has very little to no leverage.

They can surely leave the Euro, like I can leave my wife, drop the lease and quit the job at the same time with nothing else waiting.

<comment><USER10> > The new deal, AFAIK, confiscates all money over 100K euros in the second > largest bank, the other one was a 10% tax on all.

It's not a confiscation of all the money. Accounts are frozen, but the final levy (solely on accounts >€100k rather than across the board) are expected to be around 30%:

> Asked about the level of losses on uninsured depositors in Bank of Cyprus, > he told state radio: "The assessment is that it will be under or around 30 > percent."

<comment><USER8> The way I read it, all their money in the second largest bank (above EUR 100K) is on hold, until all the loans, and investments are unwounded. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/cyprus- resolution-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/cyprus-resolution- idUSB5E8KL01220130325) No one really knows how much they'll get back. That's a lot of uncertainty, they essentially screwed one bank's customers over and sent the insured accounts to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wealth redistribution in action.

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem is that there is no competition in banking. A bank is a private company and should be allowed to go out of business as a result of poor decisions and speculation. In a true free market, there would be no bailout. What we have now is a cartel of banks with government-approved protection by central banks, a system that encourages recklessness and a money-system backed by nothing but debt. Propping it up is just delaying the inevitable and allowing the very wealthy more chances to take ownership of property and assets for bargain prices while the general public pay more through inflation of currency, commodity prices and house prices.

We don't need bailouts. We need better education of the population about how private banking is in control of our economy so that it becomes clear in everyone's minds that the whole monetary system needs reform.

The system as it stands is mathematically guaranteed to transfer value from the bottom to the top. This is as true for individuals as it is for countries as a whole. Cyprus will never pay off this national debt with the system as it currently stands and so will sit in the pocket of the IMF, and ultimately the US Federal Reserve. "Bailout" is one way of putting it. So is "legalised plunder".

</comment><comment><USER13> Do yourself a favor; withdraw ALL your money from banks and buy a safe; keep it at home in safe bolted to the ground, fireproof; the type with remote off- trigger so with a gun to your head you can't open it for a burglar. Preferably replace most with silver coins the 25c 90% silver ones. Do not buy gold in large quantities as when buying food on a daily basis it will be hard to "break" a bar of gold.

Once successfully pushed in Cyprus, US will be the next one. Why you think they buying millions of rounds of ammunition? Street tanks bought by DHS (not a military part of government). And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense! Only by taking 25% of peoples assets can safe America, safe Social Security, safe Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Pres Obama already prepared it for you -- "you haven't built your business" yourself; the money you have is not really yours; it should be obvious!

<comment><USER14> This is horrible advice.

It's worth keeping physical currency immediate needs in the case of a storm, earthquake, banking glitch, etc. (For most people, maybe $500-1000; the crazy thing is I know plenty of people who do nothing but use credit cards and just have $0-20, which sucks even if their bank just freezes their ATM account or credit card for 3 days!)

Otherwise, physical currency is exposed to the most serious risks (devaluation, inflation), plus physical loss, plus is relatively inconvenient to use. If you want a hedge against USD shenanigans, the things to do are:

1) Reduce ongoing liabilities (debt or expenses), particularly those which might adjust

2) Invest in income-producing assets which have pricing power

3) Potentially, hedge by investing in assets in foreign currencies or non- currencies, or assets in foreign countries, etc.

#1 and #2 are generally reasonable no matter what (buying energy efficient appliances, buying foods/etc. in bulk, education, being in good health, improving your skills, building products or companies...)

<comment><USER15> _Reduce ongoing liabilities (debt_

FYI, during the Weimer inflation, it was those who went into debt (ie, shorted the Mark) and bought real assets who profited the most. There's no real good advice during a currency collapse for unsophisticated investors. Filling your basement with Jack Daniel's whiskey is as good as anything.

That said, a FRN crisis, if any, is many years off.

<comment><USER14> The difference is _fixed-rate_ , vs. things which could adjust. It's all about being on the right side of optionality :)

It's better to own a subsistence farm than to have something which requires purchasing market-priced inputs and to sell at long fixed-term prices.

Similarly having long term fixed-rate debt (mortgage) is better in a market where rates go up than having to refinance every few years with short-term debt (or, say, rent, in a place where there's no rent control). But a disadvantage of owning vs. renting is that you can't move as easily to take advantage of opportunities.

Reducing mandatory ongoing/recurring market-rate purchases seems like a win; usually that requires either spending capital now or some form of (ideally, fixed-rate) debt. Like borrowing at 3% to buy a fuel-efficient car or live close to work/transit is probably worthwhile, if you get 10-15mpg now and need to commute to work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why figuring out what's behind a big gender paradox won't be easy (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/gender-differences-in-personality-are-bigger-in-egalitarian-countries/ <comment><USER2> The more free a country is, the more men and women think and behave the way they WANT to -- as opposed to how those writing the approved scripts want them to.</comment>


Building an online coaching agency for IELTS test prep - <AUTHOR> https://productizedstartups.com/how-i-was-inspired-to-build-a-50k-month-online-coaching-agency-for-ielts-test-prep/ <comment><USER2> Interviewing successful small businesses and solopreneurs has become a cottage industry. This is a good trend, inspires others to attempt it!

These are the sites I could think of, off the top of my head:

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

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

[https://www.projecthatch.co/](https://www.projecthatch.co/)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I checked out a preview lesson and was surprised the audio quality was poor: bad mic, sirens in the background, etc

This is not to disparage the course or the business: it seems to work for the OP and her students.

<comment><USER4> I think this is a case of pure product market fit. Where you make money despite how poor the experience is as long as the product fulfils a need.

There is a problem, you fill that problem and people are willing to pay to have that problem solved.

"Quality of experience" really starts playing a role with competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> seems very poorly written. how can she expect to coach IELTS?

<comment><USER6> i didn't get that at all. i don't usually read business/marketing fluff but her answers were clear and to the point.

<comment><USER7> A random sentence:

'To earn money to support myself and approve "Asians are NOT stupid", I started to look up information online [....]'

She seems to be mixing up 'approve' and 'prove that'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is such tax saving by registering in Singapore possible for all online businesses?

<comment><USER9> I've just relocated to Singapore from Australia, and there has to be a lot more to the story than just "we registered a Singapore company".

If you are resident in Australia (or the company's primary business operations are conducted out of Australia), Australia will tax you - doesn't matter if your company is nominally registered in Singapore.

I assume the founder relocated to Singapore - if she's just running the Singapore company while living in Australia, she's just not complying with the tax law.

<comment><USER10> > If you are resident in Australia (or the company's primary business > operations are conducted out of Australia), Australia will tax you - doesn't > matter if your company is nominally registered in Singapore.

Well you'll be taxed on your income, but the company won't be taxed by Australia.

<comment><USER9> Not true. If your company is deemed to be a tax resident of Australia, it will be subject to Australian tax, even if it's a foreign-registered company.

I can't register a Singaporean company, conduct all business physically from Australia as sole director under the banner of that company, and not pay Australian tax on the company's income (or GST).

Well, of course you can try and do this - but it's illegal, and if the ATO finds out, you're in trouble.

It doesn't matter that you don't pay yourself a salary or declare dividends. If the company's principal operations are conducted physically from Australia, it will be deemed to be an Australian tax resident.

Now, different story if the company has a physical presence in Singapore - say, your cofounder/codirector works there with a few other employees). Then, the company's Singaporean presence might be substantial enough that the company is not deemed to be a Australian tax resident. Then you would only pay Australian tax on your personal income/dividends.

Similar story if you're the only one conducting the company's operations, but you do so physically outside Australia for more than 6 months of the year.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Book of the Runtime – Internals of the .Net Runtime not in the documentation - <AUTHOR> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheBookOfTheRuntimeTheInternalsOfTheNETRuntimeThatYouWontFindInTheDocumentation.aspx <comment><USER2> That should be an interesting read. Going through the introduction, there is a whole part highlighting that the success of .net comes from its simplicity (which I strongly agree with).

Then I think about the massive compatibility matrix between the different versions of the different sub-fameworks, the confusing core vs non-core naming and versioning conventions, the new language syntax features that are available through nuget packages only, etc. I can't help thinking that the .net team has lost its way, and needs to have a hard think about how to keep all of that simple.

Keeping it simple is what has made the success of competing languages like python.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I hope they get it all sorted out and start deleting some intermediate docs from the internet. And core is fine and all, for data center usage where watts matter, and to run in Linux, but as someone writing enterprise solutions, switching operating systems would be a huge waste of effort. I'm happy to run on the framework, but I'm constantly having to battle developer sentiment that we should "be ready to run .NET on Linux" that comes from all the Core propaganda.

Rewriting framework and standard libraries — I'm sure that will be nice after a while, but I'll sit this transitional phase out.

<comment><USER4> They're getting more and more opinionated in some of the frameworks too, it's getting quite tiresome in the asp.net field. First it was harping on about pure restful controllers which are nothing but a massive PITA, then I had a dabble in ASP.net Core and they'd changed ConfigurationManager to be Dependency Injected instead of an incredibly simple static object.

Yeah it's great improvement to have it nicely typed, but keep it static, I don't want to be DI-ing everything, especially when I'm just throwing together a prototype.

I want easy to use, not dogmatic adherence to ideals that gain you absolutely nothing but a confusing mental model in something like semi-permanent config.

<comment><USER2> Opinionated and changing opinion frequently... First we had webforms, then rest api, then asp.net mvc, then asp.net core mvc and now razor pages to bring back webforms...

<comment><USER4> With a couple of dabbles in OData.

ODataControllers are some of the most painfully bad things I have ever had the displeasure of programming with, I'm migrating our code bade back over to using API controllers with the semi-broken OData plugins rather than use them.

Admittedly part of that is because OData is great for plugging into grids like datatables for jquery or kendo grid, but otherwise incredibly over- complicated.

It sometimes feels as if they can't make their mind up about anything, and yet invest heavily in the latest fad that disappears a year later.

Surprised they've not released an update yet that forces everyone to use yarn instead of nuget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> apardoe-MSFT Having worked for 7 years on the .NET runtime team, I can attest that the BOTR is _the_ official reference. It was created as documentation for the engineering team, by the engineering team. And it was (supposed to be) kept up to date any time a new feature was added or changed.</comment>


Matias Duarte has his head too far up his - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2014/11/05/matias-duarte-has-his-head-too-far-up-his

<comment><USER2> There's a fine line between being opinionated and being plain rude. I think Matias Duarte is not the only person with his head too far up his…

</comment><comment><USER3> Matias once threatened to kick my ass for messing with one of his UI widgets many years ago. It's a badge of honor I still wear to this day. :)</comment>