20th Century Fox Uses ML to Predict a Movie Audience - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/how-20th-century-fox-uses-ml-to-predict-a-movie-audience <comment><USER2> I know I'm not the average movie-goer, but I strongly prefer to see movies at either end of the spectrum: really bad or really good. Those are usually experiences I can fully immerse into and enjoy.

Anything in between (I.e. mediocre) does nothing for me, no matter how well produced or marketed it is or how many hundred millions it cost to make. It's just gonna be a dud.

Most movies made to please the most people end up here: high budget, great looking, but mediocre, predictable and utterly boring.

To me, using ML to optimize movie audience targets sounds like something which will make a bad situation even worse.

I guess cinema as an _art form_ is truly dead.

Edit: This news seems to confirm a claim made by screenwriter Max Landis[1] in a RLM podcast: Hollywood used to have a recipe for making "successful" (i.e. profitable) movies, but these days none of the recipes work anymore and they are desperate, feeling blinded, and as a result being even more risk-averse in their productions.

This definitely sounds like a desperate move.

[1] [https://youtu.be/DR-Dry8Qb4A](https://youtu.be/DR-Dry8Qb4A)

<comment><USER3> Most movie-goers are primarily _goers_ and only secondarily _viewers_. They decide to go to the movies, then they decide what they want to watch. Major blockbusters change the equation and draw in non-habitual consumers (hence their importance to Hollywood), but most movie productions aspire to little more than an appealing trailer, a bit of star power and sufficient entertainment value to avoid alienating their core customers. Retaining those customers is much easier than persuading someone like you to make a special trip to the theater for a critically acclaimed movie.

The rise of Netflix and the decline of Blockbuster has decimated the secondary market for movies, further pushing the industry towards conservatism. It's much harder to convince people to pay to see a quirky indie picture or a sleeper hit at home, so movies that don't do well in the opening weekend are pretty much a dead loss. As with Spotify and the music industry, $12/mo subscriptions can't make up for the loss of $9 cinema tickets, $4 rentals and $15 DVD sales.

Cinema isn't in a healthy place right now, much to the benefit of television - the economics for broadcast and streaming TV are much more favourable and there's an influx of talent.

<comment><USER4> _> Most movie-goers are primarily goers and only secondarily viewers. They decide to go to the movies, then they decide what they want to watch._

Any cites for this? I am _very_ curious to read more about this.

<comment><USER5> Me too - it's a really insightful statement. I'd never thought about it before, but in social settings, the actual film watched is frequently an afterthought; it is secondary to the plan of 'going to the cinema'. Plans changing because someone is late is another factor. I really enjoy when this website makes me think of something obvious I'd never considered!

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about it from the other way around: because I'm not sure I know _anybody_ who would go to the theater without really wanting to see the film being shown.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's exactly what is being talked about; rather, people _say_ "let's go see a movie", and then look at the movies app to see what's in theatres lately. Of course they won't end up going if there's nothing worth seeing—but their criteria for "something worth seeing" is a much lower bar than it would be if they didn't already want to "go see a movie."

When a new movie comes out, I say either "that looks like it would be a good movie to watch in theatre", or (far more often) "I think I'll wait for that to come out on iTunes/Netflix/etc." When I'm making _that_ decision, the bar is high. But that's because watching-at-home really is good enough for the vast majority of movies—it doesn't remove anything from the experience.

<comment><USER4> I understood what was being said. I am questioning the point of it. Everybody I know who I've ever talked about going to a film with (and my girlfriend really likes going to the movies so it comes up with her and her friend group a lot) _always always always_ has a movie in mind when they come up with it. The most recent example for them (I didn't go) was the new Spider-Verse movie. They weren't going to see "a movie", they were going to see "that movie", and it was from that movie's release that the impetus originated.

I'd like to see evidence of assertions to the contrary, because to me they don't jibe with reality.

<comment><USER6> Dates. The time when people go to the movies _to_ "go to the movies" is when they're on a date. (Not just at first, but also later in the context of a steady relationship where they want to see a movie together "because we haven't seen a movie together in a while.")

For me, seeing a movie in a theatre vs. watching at home is a bit like going to a restaurant vs. eating at home. I used to "go to restaurants" to try specific things I'd heard about, when I was single. Now, though, I mostly only go to a restaurant _to go to a restaurant_ , because that's a nice thing I can do with my wife. With restaurants, this is the difference between choosing by word-of-mouth ("they have great X!") vs. choosing by reviews ("this restaurant seems like they'd have _something_ we'd enjoy, let's go and find out.") Movie theatres don't really have the same element of diversity (unless you're going to independent cinemas), so it's more just a choice of whether to go to "the movies" at all.

On the other hand, everything I said about restaurants applies exactly to the other kind of theatre. There's a Shakespeare troupe here (Vancouver) that, each year, puts on three of the bard's plays (several showings apiece.) You can certainly want to "see The Tempest", and therefore go watch them perform it; but what I hear much more often is people wanting to "go to _Bard on the Beach_ " (the troupe), and so then they look at what they're putting on this year to see if it's anything they could stand to watch. In this context, the theatre troupe is exactly like a restaurant: they want to go to it, as long as it has something they'd be okay trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Success in the movie industry relies on a studio's ability to attract moviegoers—but that's sometimes easier said than done"

No it isn't. Just make a good movie. Forrest Gump didn't need any machine learning.

The only reason someone might use this is when your strategy is "spray and pray", create crappy movies that insult everyone's intelligence and you need to figure out is it worth launching at all.

<comment><USER8> > Forrest Gump didn't need any machine learning.

No, it just needed a massive demographic the studios could exploit the Hell out of by taking a semi-popular novel and Spielberging all over it.

You have a good point, but you used an imperfect film to demonstrate it. _Forrest Gump_ was just about as cynical a film as you could imagine, and succeeded precisely as predicted. That kind of cynical filmmaking, explicitly targeted at demographics with earnings projections in place before casting begins, is precisely what this AI-driven concept will end up with at its worst.

A better example would be the works of the Coen brothers, or David Lynch: Even if you don't like them personally the fact remains they have an audience, and they most certainly weren't made to order based on market forecasts. They represent the _auteur_ theory in action, being the products of distinctive creative minds who impressed their equally distinctive visions upon them.

<comment><USER9> This is being a bit too "edgy" for me. Not to defend _Forrest Gump_ as an all- time great or anything, but is there really something wrong or unsavory about its conception?

What you call "exploiting a demographic" is more like "having a target audience instead of trying to be all things to all people". Sure, Boomers are a huge generation. But they were entering their 50's when _Forrest Gump_ came out... and studios usually aim at 18-34 year olds because that's who spends the most time and disposable income at the movies.

What you call "Spielberging" is probably just a combination of cinematography, soundtrack, and accessibility over hipster snob appeal. In other words, good mass-market filmmaking.

Maybe this particular movie isn't your cup of tea, but there's nothing negative or cynical about this. "Cynical" would be hijacking HN threads to bring up urban walkability, UBI, random potshots at Baby Boomers, or any of the other standard hot buttons that typically guarantee upvotes and validation.

<comment><USER10> I believe the cynicism would be when a studio chooses demographic and marketability over art.

There is no "best" art (sorry, high art world), but there are absolutely choices you can make for marketing rather than artistic reasons.

I _like_ Robert Zemeckis and Ron Howard films, but they're boring ideas, well- executed. And I have a sneaking suspicion that given their copious directorial output and uniformity of end product... some of those choices were made for monetary rather than creative reasons.

Nobody says "I want to make a mind-bending _Dune_ film, get me Robert Zemeckis!"

<comment><USER9> > " _there are absolutely choices you can make for marketing rather than > artistic reasons_ "

That is fair. I believe it's also the case that when evaluating art, it's easy to conflate those reasons with one's own POV and demographic biases.

In other words: _Forrest Gump_ is cynical pandering to Baby Boomers... but [this-year's-Marvel-superhero-movie] is an artistic gem, and _The Dark Knight_ or _Black Panther_ got robbed at the Oscars, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Six terminators, Seven transformers, eleven Madea films, and nine aliens films. If the strategy is to waterboard us with progressively more pointless sequels, no ML in the world is going to improve the outcome when the writers have clearly checked out.

<comment><USER12> At least these are "sequels". Reboots are even worse in my book.

<comment><USER13> I think the issue is when remakes happen in quick succession. When generations go by magic like The Fly, Oceans 11, and the greatest remake of all time, The Thing, happens.

<comment><USER14> I... don't think any of these movies have remakes?

If by the thing you mean the 2011 film, that was a prequel. It had few redeeming qualities, but thing it did unreasonably well was faithfully reproduce specific elements that were shown to have occurred previously in the first film.

<comment><USER15> The 1960 film Ocean's 11 does have a remake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tired that (machine learning) suggestions in Amazon, Youtube, Instagram and other sites mean showing me more of the same. Is this the fabulous AI revolution?

Yes, I like photos of food, but I can also enjoy other types of photos and until I don't start searching for them, Instagram (or whatever service) doesn't list them. What a great AI!

This is like that article that talked about increasing extremist political videos being recommended depending on your views habits (Youtube).

I understand, no data can create predictions. But tastes are so depending of the context you grow up in that it is normal not to be able to predict that. And that uniqueness is what makes a person great.

<comment> crooked-v [https://mobile.twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/72481708630914...](https://mobile.twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/724817086309142529)

<comment><USER17> [https://mobile.twitter.com/chethaase/status/9257152892448194...](https://mobile.twitter.com/chethaase/status/925715289244819458?lang=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess _20th Century Fox Uses Statistics to Predict a Movie Audience_ doesn't have the same ring to it.

<comment><USER19> But I bet the 21st Century Fox could do it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The top audiences for Logan were actually a combination of superhero (which > we already knew) and "rugged male action lead" (which we didn't know with > certainty). This can be better seen by noting that key "rugged male action > lead" predictions like The Magnificent Seven (in blue above), John Wick (in > green above) and Terminator Genisys (in blue above) were also present in the > top 20 list of actual audiences. This result is a win-win because the new > audience "adds" to the core superhero audience, and can potentially be used > to extend the reach of the movie beyond that core audience.

I wish they'd include saturation and release dates as factors as I'm sure releasing a new rugged make lead superhero movie every week would have diminishing returns at some point.

<comment><USER8> > I wish they'd include saturation and release dates as factors as I'm sure > releasing a new rugged make lead superhero movie every week would have > diminishing returns at some point.

Hollywood has seemed... _constrained_ from noticing this.

<comment><USER21> Nope, it just financially works so why do otherwise. People still pay no mater how many bad movies they got fed with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the reasons why there are so many sequels and less unoriginal movies from big studios.

Big franchise names almost always perform according to expectations, even if the movie is bad.

<comment><USER23> It's actually fairly rare for an animated sequel to outperform the original.

[https://filmrust.com/2019/02/12/where-lego-2-went-wrong- an-5...](https://filmrust.com/2019/02/12/where-lego-2-went-wrong-an-50-movie- analysis-of-the-best-and-worst-times-to-make-an-animated-sequel/)

Incredibles 2, Shrek 2, Spongebob 2, and Despicable Me 2 were really the only ones worth making, vs gambling on a new property.

<comment><USER24> Maybe domestically? Toy Story 2, Monsters University, and I'm sure others outperformed the original when you compare their global box office numbers. [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=monstersinc2.htm](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=monstersinc2.htm) (nb foreign BO is 64% of the haul).

<comment><USER25> Personally I just consider every Pixar movie a sequel to the previous Pixar movie. I treat Pixar more like a director or author. The stuff may be different but I'm going to buy the next Neil Stephenson novel even if it's a cook book.

<comment><USER23> That was kind of my point. Pixar or Dreamworks or Disney Animation or Illumination as a brand are bigger draws than being a sequel. "I want to go see the new Pixar movie."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A data science consultancy I used to work at did box office predictions for a major movie studio, and the fanciest techniques you could dream up gave only a slight lift over the [https://www.hsx.com/](https://www.hsx.com/) prediction market, which provided the overwhelming majority of the model's predictive power.

</comment><comment><USER27> There was a great AI Today Podcast interview with 20th Century Fox CTO Hanno Basse on how AI is being used quite intensely in the entertainment industry: [https://www.cognilytica.com/2018/11/07/ai-today- podcast-62-a...](https://www.cognilytica.com/2018/11/07/ai-today- podcast-62-ai-in-the-entertainment-industry-interview-with-hanno-basse- cto-20th-century-fox/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's an orthogonal idea which would make a great project - scrape IMDB for all creative roles in the credits - actors, directors, writers, set designers, make up, music, etc. -- all of them. Regress them against budget, revenue, margin and revenue/budget.

Importantly it would allow for groundbreaking and genre bending movies to be assessed.

See who's adding value and who's not. And see how well that predicts your outcome.

<comment><USER29> With enough orthogonal ideas you'll have a well rounded approach. Why would 20th Century Fox advertise their best idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > When combined with historical customer data, sequencing analysis can be used > to create predictions of customer behavior.

When not combined with sequencing analysis, historical customer data can be used to create predictions of customer behavior.

It watches movies and does classification which all studios do anyway for decades on everything they and their competitors produce. I'm not really seeing the value add here apart from having a "data science" team to excuse your flops.

</comment><comment><USER31> JJ Espinoza goes into detail about the system on the twimlai podcast - [https://twimlai.com/twiml-talk-220-building-a-recommender- sy...](https://twimlai.com/twiml-talk-220-building-a-recommender-system-from- scratch-at-20th-century-fox-with-jj-espinoza/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Netflix is doing this at scale for all the content that it is on its platform, where the audience is the number of Netflix member that have watched (or will watch) a tv show, movie etc. There are limits of predictions that are reached quite fast. For example, how much money you spend on the production for an original show is the best predictor of the audience (more money spent means more promising plot and actors and directors, more marketing and so on). All the fancy AI, Deep whatever are largely irrelevant and a waste of time and money, but can be sold very well internally and externally, at least for a few more years.

</comment><comment><USER33> This strikes me as being classically anti-inductive: if they figure out the "formula" for a successful movie, the formula will become useless as soon as they try to apply it.

</comment><comment><USER34> And this is going to ruin the current movie industry if it gets any traction. Now that technology is highly available to everyone, this is going to cause two major streams of movie making - industrial/predicted and independent/auteur. Those exist already of course, but indie is a niche. Guess who is going to remain in business if the movie industry collapses?

<comment><USER35> The indie lives if the industry dies. The industry will not die but it may evolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Netflix has been doing this for years. It's one of the inputs into how much to pay to license a film or TV shows (but to be clear not the only input, at the end of the day it's the buyer's gut instincts that determine what to buy at what price, but the AI is a tool to help them make that decision).

</comment><comment><USER37> For those interested in the economic factors driving media production and distribution, Matthew Ball [0] is a great analyst to follow.

[0] [https://redef.com/author/56d1e0f14f16158e36008235](https://redef.com/author/56d1e0f14f16158e36008235)

</comment><comment><USER38> This is the reason 90% of their budget goes to comic book franchise movies. I guess it also helps that the simple-formulaic plots translate easy and rarely delve into any social issues that foreign (e.g., PRC) censors would find objectionable.

</comment><comment><USER29> I bet this is one example of many on how they use ML. This is probably their least capable predictor- but a good example to signal that 20th Century Fox has entered the 21st Century.

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe someone here remembers the name but I read a short SciFi story about someone who edited a mediocre movie into an amazing movie, posted it online, got tons of hits, was offered a job by the movie company. When she arrived it turned out they wanted her to be part of an audience of people with good taste. Some AI made the movies, they'd play them to the audience with tracking equipment on their heads. The AI would use the info to adjust the movie. Their memories of having watched the movie would then be erased. Repeat several thousand times until all readings are high. Release movie.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why wait for a movie to be produced before running ML on it to predict audience?

Why not just run it on SCRIPTS to see which to produce?

:-)

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow I didn't know you needed ML to decide to copy what disney and marvel are doing

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use some old movie terms ... maybe it's in the code such as a "LEGS quotient". They used to ask if a movie "had legs" because legs puts butts in seats.

</comment><comment><USER43> So now we get even more of the same but machine certified?

</comment><comment><USER44> if you apply machine learning to a creative effort you will only continue to imitate what has already been done

</comment><comment><USER45> google built the awesom-o 4000?

we're going to be getting a lot more adam sandler movies

</comment><comment><USER46> Using ML to speed up the process of making bland blockbusters!

</comment><comment><USER47> is this why everyone makes shitty movies these days?

</comment><comment><USER48> Now every 20th Century Fox movie will be full of violence and sex.

Ops, It looks like the ML is already in production!</comment>


Ask HN:  Is mobile internet a threat to creativity? - <AUTHOR>

Creative ideas seem to come when the mind is doing nothing in particular.  That's why long walks for example are helpful in that regard.<p>But mobile internet threatens to take away these periods of extended idleness, thus threatening creativity. <comment><USER2> I expect we'll be just fine.

From my own experience, when I'm tired I want simple, easily-digestible input - stories to read, video-games to play, websites filled with fresh user- nominated content. Without internet access, I'm just bored, not creative. On the other hand, when I'm well-rested and feeling alert and active, I can't not be creative - the idea of sitting down and passively consuming ideas would be just as torturous as being creative while tired. I've got to write code, take photos, go for a walk, _something_.

If worst comes to worst, we'll always have the shower and the toilet as enforced creativity timeouts. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I took "mobile internet" to refer to surfing the web from a cell phone. Considering today's phones, my answer is no, not really.

</comment><comment><USER4> Creative ideas happen regardless of situation. Idle or active, they happen on their own schedule.

</comment><comment><USER5> iff (mobile) internet makes you passive (like TV) -- clicking on url is nothing more than a glorified mode of switching channel on TV</comment>


Elixir v0.14.0 - <AUTHOR> http://elixir-lang.org/blog/2014/06/17/elixir-v0-14-0-released/

<comment> sr-ix The changelog for this particular release: [https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/releases/tag/v0.14.0](https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/releases/tag/v0.14.0)

Enhancements

[ExUnit] Add on_exit/1 callbacks that are guaranteed to run once the test process exits and always in another process

[Kernel] Store documentation in the abstract code to avoid loading them when the module is loaded

[Kernel] Add get_in/2, put_in/3, update_in/3 and get_and_update_in/3 to handle nested data structure operations

[Kernel] Add get_in/1, put_in/2, update_in/2 and get_and_update_in/2 to handle nested data structure operations via paths

[Mix] Add Mix.Config to ease definition of configuration files

[Mix] Add mix loadconfig task that can be called multiple times to load external configs

[Mix] Support --config option on mix run

[Mix] Support HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY on Mix url commands

[Mix] Support --names options in mix help which emit only names (useful for autocompletion)

[Protocol] Add Protocol.consolidate/2, Protocol.consolidated?/1 and a mix compile.protocols task for protocol consolidation

[Protocol] Add Protocol.derive/3 for runtime deriving of a struct

[String] Add String.chunk/2

[Struct] Add support for @derive before defstruct/2 definitions

Bug fixes

[File] File.rm now consistently deletes read-only across operating systems

[Kernel] Ensure Mix _build structure works on Windows when copying projects

[Kernel] Ensure 1.0E10 (with uppercase E) is also valid syntax

[Mix] Fix mix do task for Windows' powershell users

[Path] Fix Path.absname("/") and Path.expand("/") to return the absolute path "/".

Soft deprecations (no warnings emitted)

[Kernel] size/1 is deprecated, please use byte_size/1 or tuple_size/1 instead

[ExUnit] teardown/2 and teardown_all/2 are deprecated in favor of on_exit/1 callbacks

Deprecations

[Access] Access.access/2 is deprecated in favor of Access.get/2

[Dict] Dict.Behaviour is deprecated in favor of Dict

[Kernel] Application.Behaviour, GenEvent.Behaviour, GenServer.Behaviour and Supervisor.Behaviour are deprecated in favor of Application, GenEvent, GenServer and Supervisor

[Kernel] defexception/3 is deprecated in favor of defexception/1

[Kernel] raise/3 is deprecated in favor of reraise/2

[Kernel] set_elem/3 is deprecated in favor of put_elem/3

[Kernel] Passing an atom var!/1 is deprecated, variables can be built dynamically with Macro.var/2

[Mix] Exceptions that define a :mix_error field to be compatible with Mix are no longer supported. Instead please provide a :mix field and use Mix.raise/1 and Mix.raise/2

Backwards incompatible changes

[Access] Kernel.access/2 no longer exists and the Access protocol now requires get/2 (instead of access/2) and get_and_update/3 to be implemented

[Kernel] Retrieving docs as module.__info__(:docs) is no longer supported, please use Code.get_docs/2 instead

[Kernel] Code.compiler_options/1 no longer accepts custom options, only the ones specified by Elixir (use mix config instead)

[Mix] mix new no longer generates a supevision tree by default, please pass --sup instead

[Task] Tasks are automatically linked to callers and a failure in the task will crash the caller directly

</comment><comment><USER2> We've started using Elixir in our Erlang application and it's been a pleasure to work with. Everyone in my office agrees they would've loved to have this when they started with Erlang.

<comment><USER3> What sort of thing are you working on that is well-suited for the Erlang/Elixir languages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been keeping an eye on Elixir for a while, waiting for some spare time. What are reasons not to use it in favour of Erlang?

<comment><USER5> Elixir is still a moving target (as the number of deprecations and changes in the announcement show) so if you are building something that needs a stable base then I would not recommend Elixir just yet. You are still using a lot of Erlang libraries for things outside of the core, so you still need to learn or at least understand Erlang and its APIs. OTOH, I love it and I think that the costs that I mentioned previously are more than made up for by the lower cognitive load Elixir imposes on people coming from outside the functional world and the macros and protocols are very cool. Elixir is a language to play around with now and get used to and in three to six months I think it will be a serious contender for any new product that slings packets or has to handle massively concurrent loads.

<comment><USER6> Fair comment. Some of us are using Elixir in production, and there's a cost to migrating the code base from one release to the next.

But overall, even for a new fast moving language, the stability of erlang benefits it pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone used Elixir in production yet?</comment>


Intel releases consumer M.2 Xpoint SSDs: Endurance problems on a gumstick - <AUTHOR> https://semiaccurate.com/2017/03/27/intel-releases-consumer-m-2-xpoint-ssds/ <comment><USER2> _Back to the tech, if you assume a 16GB laptop, you can sleep it 6x per day before you over-stress the drive and exceed its limits. This assumes the magic driver under the hood does nothing else but clocks out space for a sleep /hibernation file. Does this sound like an unreasonable use case?_

The authors seem to be assuming that hibernation involves writing the entire contents of system RAM to disk. This is generally not going to be the case; pages which are unallocated or contain (unmodified) memory-mapped files from disk do not need to be stored, since they either don't contain anything useful or can be read back from their original locations.

On my 8 GB laptop, I currently have only 2.5 GB of _active_ memory; the rest is free or buffer cache.

<comment><USER3> Anything from Semiaccurate regarding Intel should be taken with a grain of salt the size of the moon. The author is extremely hostile and every article is about problems or how bad something is or will be and it's usually wrong.</comment></comment>


AirMessage – Android app to interface with iMessage on a Mac - <AUTHOR> https://airmessage.org/ <comment><USER2> Apple's iMessage lock-in and the effect it has on teens in the USA is disgusting. I think it's worse and deserves more attention than all of Apple's other atrocities combined; sadly, it won't get it, because it doesn't cause x rich people to lose money. Nobody loses money on iMessage except the parents (likely low-income) which are forced to buy an iPhone because their teens were left out of groups with friends and essentially excluded from socialization in school. This even comes down to bullying and exclusion over something as simple as a "green bubble" or a "blue bubble" just like bullying for having a more affordable brand of shoes. The effects are especially clear in rural places where standard SMS is far less reliable than Wi-Fi-based messaging. Nearly every peer I've asked has stated they _know for a fact_ they would be plum left out of groups if they were to buy a phone without built-in iMessage. Props to Apple for developing the iMessage technology and making it accessible in the ways they already have, but very shameful and evil of them to pit iPhone users against non-iPhone users with something vital to humans like communication just so they can sell more iPhones. They've found a fantastically profitable way to abuse psychology in teens, as if it wasn't already bad enough that they're considered a designer brand. I'm honestly shocked that no one seems to care about this, and I haven't heard much protest other than from the many parents who were forced into buying an iPhone. Just buy an iPhone, problem solved. Just stay in debt to a major mobile carrier. Just keep upgrading. Just stay locked in. I would say the forced iMessage segregation alone is responsible for much of Apple's growth in the USA, and it's disturbing that it's allowed to continue without much protest from anyone.

<comment> old-gregg Let's see... you're proposing that a company should just hand out their competitive advantage just because some parents are unable to curb their consumerism / keeping up with the Jonesses an dealing with "psychology in teens"?

Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever. You don't need to be upgrading with every cycle (or even every other cycle) either. I am on my 4th smartphone since 2008, replacing a battery is cheaper that replacing phones. And if your teen insists on the latest&greatest instead, that should be your problem, not Apple's.

Without their walled garden Apple is nothing but a commodity hardware maker and those do not survive for long on this side of the Pacific.

<comment><USER3> Why should we pander to the needs of Apple, a corporation making a few people wealthy beyond all imagination, but not much else?

<comment><USER4> Apple paid $35B to developers last year.

It pays around $12B a year to shareholders, which today comprise a large percentage of the US population.

It has 137,000 employees making an average comp north of $200,000 a year.

It's the world leader in consumer computer products and leads its markets in customer satisfaction measures.

What is this not much else you speak of?

<comment><USER5> > Apple paid $35B to developers last year.

Paid is very strange term to use to describe it. They sold 3rd party software to users, while taking 30% cut.

<comment><USER4> They hosted, vetted, distributed public, provided support and developer services including a single easy to use and safe purchase system that built that market over a decade. They have been so successful that iOS developers make nine times as Android developers per device solid.

<comment><USER5> Walmart build, vetted, distributed and provided support to Procter & Gamble products over many decades. But saying that Walmart is paying to Procter & Gamble would be also gross mischaracterization.

Appstore model is as old as civilization - middle man reselling stuff. Some middle mans are more effective than others, and true, Apple is one of them. But that doesn't change characterization of the relationship. They don't pay developers for their service, they resell their stuff, while keeping hefty profit margins.

<comment><USER4> Grocery stores were an enormous business before Walmart, it just made them more efficient. And it opened doors for lots of smaller products to reach far more customers.

The entire mobile app market was not even one hundredth the size of the App Store before it was created.

The walled garden Apple created made safest and easiest app purchase environment ever, which is why it attracts the highest spending by app customers and highest spending app customers.

If Apple had taken the Google play route that $35B a year would be closer to $4B a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I set up a VM and had this whole stack working about a year ago. While it was fun to get up and running, it proved to me enough of a nuisance that a few months later I bought my first iPhone. Happy to answer questions about my experience. I applaud the author for the work and found it to be a really neat hack.

<comment><USER7> I was just looking at this because I'd really like the option of switching to Android. In what ways was operating AirMessage a nuisance?

<comment><USER6> Getting the VM up and running was a bit of work. Without getting into it much, the VM needed to be convinced it was a real machine with a real serial number, etc. took a it but I got that sorted out.

I needed that working so I could create an real iCloud account that would allow me to use iMessage first on the VM and then again on the android app. Before Apple let's you use iMessage you need to convince them you bought Apple hardware.

The VM constantly wanted to restart for updates, which I was scared to do because of the tenuous nature of the VM I had set up. I ended up having to re- do the Vm 3-4 times because I would inadvertently break something with a small tweak.

Th VM wanted to be rather directly exposed to the outside world. Of course there were ways to try and make things more secure, but I didn't really try.

I would have to sync messages from the VM to my phone if for some reason the VM went down because of a restart or power outage. The VM was running on a Windows 10 box, and windows likes to update and restart whenever it feels like it.

I had to use the AirMessage app, which of course makes sense, but the texts didn't integrate with a native android message platform. Again this makes sense, it was just a little annoying sometimes.

People had to know to iMessage me with the email address I had connected to iCloud. I couldn't connect my phone number. So everyone who wanted to iMessage me needed to both know and use the email address instead of my number. I've had this number for about 20 years, and trying to sort that out with everyone seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

There iMessage features that I remember not working, all the "likes" and whatnot on a message. Sending pictures was pretty slow and painful, and didn't always work.

There are probably a few more things I'm forgetting. I really want to convey again, I applaud the author for what they've accomplished and I think it's really neat. Perhaps some/all of these pain points are resolved. I tried to give feedback in the private reddit when that was a thing because I really wanted this to be my way to iMessage on an android.

<comment><USER8> The serial, how did you get it working? I tried generating a few of them and they never worked. I got one from my MacBook to put on another computer, it worked for a while but one day clover (osx bootloader for non Mac hardware) updated and it stopped working. I am not sure if the serial had an issue or something, did you have a similar issue? I ran it on bare metal and my use was different (just to have my messages and iPhone synced) so it worked ok for me until i updated it and stopped using osx.

<comment><USER6> There was quite a bit I had to do with generating the right set of serial number + I think two other numbers that escape me, using I believe clover. I also had to do a good bit of hand modification of the vmx file leveraging the generated numbers. It took a good bit of googling. I wish I remembered the details better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish there was an iMessage application for Windows. iPhone <-> Windows 10 interoperability is not really there.

<comment><USER10> Entirely intentional on Apple's part, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Requires a Mac to relay messages:

 _AirMessage leverages the power of your Mac computer in order to route messages to and from Apple 's iMessage servers. The server is to be installed on a computer at home, and will pass messages to and from your smartphone to allow the usage of iMessage and other installed services._

[https://airmessage.org/help/](https://airmessage.org/help/)

<comment><USER12> For all those billions of people with a Mac computer and an android phone...

<comment><USER13> I have a Mac and Android. I dislike iOS because of the locked-down nature, something that (arguably) macOS and Android don't have.

<comment><USER14> iOS has certainly opened up over the years. Perhaps apart from the lack of side loading capability, what kind of freedom do you seek?

<comment><USER15> Side loading, ability to access the underlying file system, have their applications like iMessage work across platforms, have better support for cross-OS applications are a few that come to mind.

<comment><USER16> What part of the "underlying file system" do you want/need to access?

What do you mean by "have better support for cross-OS applications"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Please note that a Mac computer is required to use this app."

</comment><comment><USER18> Surely helping prop up iMessage is a terrible idea? Especially if it still has that "feature" where if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone the messages aren't sent to your phone for a while?

<comment><USER19> I think characterizing this as having any effect of "propping up" iMessage is laughable. To call it a "terrible idea" is unfair to the project creators. They're solving a problem people have, they're not the cause of it.

<comment><USER18> But the problem stems from their use of iMessage and Apple not doing an Android app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Got my entire immediate family on signal - the big feature is the multi device support for a lot of folks on iMessage, using the Signal desktop app seems to be good enough.

</comment><comment><USER21> I dare say every move Apple makes is to surreptitiously lock in users and create a protected lock-in. They have mastered the approach, perhaps accidentally, by slowly rolling the features over time across their device portfolio to the extent the the masses don't see what's happening.

Google isn't much different. Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome 10yrs ago were obvious venues to extend their advertising channels. Chrome is their nuclear option in case hardware or other legal issues prevent their current ad insertion techniques.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised that Apple hasn't made an official iMessage app for Android. After all, there is Apple Music for Android and iCloud for Windows.

<comment><USER23> They would never. iMessage incompatibility is a feature which drives user to buy iPhones.

<comment><USER24> This was never the original intention. Back in 2010 WWDC, Jobs presented FaceTime/iMessage as a messaging platform for all phones. Unfortunately, patent trolls killed this idea and iMessage became a closed wall for iPhones.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114)

If you want to get mad, get angry at our outdated and abused patent system.

EDIT: 2010 WWDC keynote (1:37:01) where Jobs mentions open sourcing FT as open source protocol - [https://youtu.be/UjUd0VSM2RA](https://youtu.be/UjUd0VSM2RA)

<comment><USER25> I don't think the highest market-cap company on Earth would have much difficulty in buying-out the patent owner.

<comment><USER4> For what price? Why reward a patent troll?

<comment><USER26> So the patent troll stops trolling.

<comment><USER4> Why would a troll stop if they got a massive payout? It just creates a hundred more.

<comment><USER26> I'm talking about trolling Apple, the only entity Apple cares about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've switched everyone I know to Telegram, which works on all devices and isn't anti-competitive like Apple.

<comment><USER28> Don't get why you're being downvoted... telegram was the first thing that came to mind as an alternative/better solution. Cross platform, dead-simple to setup and it just works.

<comment><USER29> I suspect the downvotes are because everyone knows there are alternatives to iMessage out there. It isn't relevant to this particular topic.

"All you have to do is convert everyone you've ever known to use a different app" is... not the proposition some people think it is. Kudos to anyone that's pulled it off, but I won't.

<comment><USER30> That's just gatekeeping nonsense.

Discussing alternatives are always relevant and popular on HN.

Like talking about macbooks on Thinkpad topics. Everyone knows macbooks exists, it's still fine to talk about them in non-macbook topics.

<comment><USER29> That's the beauty of the voting system. No one is banning the discussion, they're just expressing their own disinterest in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wish they had a linux version available.

It is the one thing I truly miss from my switch to running Linux as my primary operating system on my work laptop.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sounds like a middle man security breach waiting to happen. I am not sure how Apple feels about this. I am not using this until security is guaranteed.

<comment><USER33> The smart part is that this _doesn 't_ require a middle man since it uses your own Mac to receive messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's literally 1000% easier to just buy an iPhone/iPod/iPad.

<comment><USER35> In my use case, I wanted a smaller phone, that's harder to get sucked in to using ([http://palm.com/](http://palm.com/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If anyone here is interested in texting from an Android using a Mac app without propping up iMesssage I strongly recommend you look into Google Messages. It works out of the box and is better than most stock messaging apps. I switched over from MightyText a couple years ago and never looked back. [https://messages.google.com/](https://messages.google.com/)

<comment><USER37> That's not what this is. This runs on an always-on Mac and relays iMessages to and from your Android phone.</comment></comment>


New Music Streaming Service: Zimute - <AUTHOR> https://zimute.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Simply Music Discovery: Gain early access to Zimute 's music-streaming service with ad-free listening experience for all.</comment>


Simplified GTD - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/practicing-simplified-gtd-335269.php <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed this article. I have read David Allen's book, and honestly, I don't have that much going on to implement GTD the way he describes it. This article mimics a lot of what I have distilled GTD to, only that I maintain sub Someday/Maybe Project lists like "Books To Read", "CDs to listen to" etc...

And yes, the weekly review is really that important...:D</comment>


Searching with Riak Search  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inagist.com/searching-with-riaksearch

<comment><USER2> Could someone clarify on the RiakSearch scoring function for evaluating retrieved results?

It appears that RiakSearch is modeled after Lucene in a variety of ways (<https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/Riak+Search>):

"At index time, Riak Search tokenizes a document into an inverted index using standard Lucene Analyzers. (For improved performance, the team re-implemented some of these in Erlang to reduce hops between Erlang and Java.)"

"Search queries use the same syntax as Lucene, and support most Lucene operators including term searches, field searches, boolean operators, grouping, lexicographical range queries, and wildcards (at the end of a word only)."

However, there is difference in the scoring function (<https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/Riak+Search+-+Querying>):

"Documents are scored using roughly the same formulas described here:

[http://lucene.apache.org/java/3_0_2/api/core/org/apache/luce...](http://lucene.apache.org/java/3_0_2/api/core/org/apache/lucene/search/Similarity.html)

The key difference is in how Riak Search calculates the Inverse Document Frequency. The equations described on the /Similarity/ page require knowledge of the total number of documents in a collection. Riak Search does not maintain this information for a collection, so instead uses the count of the total number of documents associated with each term in the query."

I am confused by this statement that they don't know "the total number of documents in a collection".

If they were to say: "We don't use the document frequency (# of documents containing this term / total # documents) because we cannot compute (# of documents containing this term) over the entire corpus. Instead we estimate the document frequency using the term frequency (# of occurrences of this term in the corpus / total # terms)." that might be sensible.

But I am not really clear what the current scoring function is.

</comment><comment><USER3> If search performance and accuracy is the criteria of choosing the data store, how does riak+riak search compare with mysql+sphinx ?

<comment><USER4> It is WAY easier to scale (up AND down) over several nodes. So if you've got BIG amounts of text that you have to fulltext-search, Riak might be the better option.

<comment><USER2> And, for good measure, could you compare RiakSearch to horizontally scaling Lucene?

And ElasticSearch, if you are familiar with it?

<comment><USER5> IMO, this is one of the better discussed comparisons on the whole Lucene sharding business:

[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hbase-user/201006.m...](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hbase- email@example.com%3E)

EDIT: Also, keep an eye on Twitter's Lucene branch - [http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/10/twitters-new- search-a...](http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/10/twitters-new-search- architecture.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I studied engineering, not English. I still can't find a job - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/27/i-studied-engineering-not-english-i-still-cant-find-a-job/ <comment><USER2> _" Maybe it's a crazy idea, but if you're going to spend all that money for a college education, shouldn't you expect to learn real-world skills from people who know what they're doing?"_

Maybe it's a crazy idea, but universities are not, and were never intended to be, career training centers. Helping you get a job is just not the mission of these institutions. And it's just as well; it would be highly unfortunate for the academic field of computer science if the undergraduate curriculum focused on how to use current tools like Eclipse or Ruby on Rails or Angular.js. Universities are designed to give you a firm grounding in the fundamental concepts, which should give you the ability to understand whatever tools are in fashion in the industry with relative ease. Besides, if you're not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career.

<comment><USER3> You articulated perfectly exactly what I was thinking.

I realize it is a popular idea among society - that college is a career training center - but that is patently false.

It is an unfortunate idea too, because it leads to lots of people wasting thousands of dollars on an education they won't ever use in their career just for the sake of having the piece of paper they get at the end.

> Besides, if you're not doing any hacking in your free time outside of class > anyway, you're probably not cut out for this career.

Bingo.

<comment><USER4> It'd be really interesting to go back and see when people started to shift towards colleges being a training ground and not the typical apprenticeship path that was the real training for generations. The way you learned to be an electrician was by being someone's apprentice, then working your way up the ranks, and this went for nearly all trade industries that I can think of. This statement has come to sound incredibly pompous (and I genuinely don't mean for it to), but college isn't for everyone, and it shouldn't be the only road to a successful life and career.

<comment><USER5> Germany is still strong on the apprentice model, but even here there's a shift towards universities.

Now companies face an apprentice-shortage and they started actively recruiting university drop-outs to fill the ranks. At least it's not an expensive experiment for those kids, given that tuition costs max out at about 1000 EUR/year.

<comment><USER6> Although German universities were meant to teach things that are going to be useful later on. They were not intended to give "well rounded experience" people these days talk about without being useful to chosen career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You might get the impression that the author studied engineering (" _I studied engineering, not English..._ ") or perhaps computer science (" _...graduated at the top of my class in computer science..._ ") whereas a quick look at his LinkedIn profile shows that he studied Management Information Systems[0] which, as far as I can tell, is a non-degree along the same lines as "Marketing" or "Media and Journalism" i.e. light on technical skills and heavy on jargon and buzzwords.

[0] [http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis- undergrad](http://www.smeal.psu.edu/scis/mis-undergrad)

<comment><USER8> Nice catch. Someone in the comments section pointed out that the WaPo actually listed MIS as one of their "most unemployable majors." (Is that irony on some level?)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/26/t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/26/the- college-majors-most-and-least-likely-to-lead-to-underemployment/?hpid=z5)

<comment><USER9> None of the "10 Most Unemployable Majors" are even remotely related to MIS (well maybe graphic design, but I'm sure that number is inflated by a lot of unemployed art majors).

<comment><USER8> Business management & administration

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yet-another-whining-about-college-education. Frankly, this is the most appropriate place to scream, "get a job, man."

I never understanding these complains about how bad college education is. We talking about America here, the land of individualism, of self-interest, of self-discovery. It seems like everyone expects 5-year-old kids to pace their studies. Yet, funnily, if it's college, the professors have to decide what the students need for "real world." What gives? So elementary pupils know what they need to learn, but college students (aka 18+) do not?

On a closely related note: half of all technology workers have no formal education, the article said. Wait, if those workers can learn by themselves, can't our precious, innocent, poorly taught college students get off their behinds and study those, too? Rather than whining about how their professors are not familiar with, you know, "real-world" experience, why not focus on what they are familiar with? Can you go out to a real world and expect those to know the greatest and latest algorithms and languages and formal definitions, their pros and cons and applications? Or how, says, Windows applications and AJAX applications are similar and different. Or a thousands of those long-term researches that businesses just can't afford to do. No. That's why we need professors and researchers.

Geez. Get a job, will ya?

</comment><comment><USER11> Author claims to have studied engineering, but seems to be absolutely unaware of co-op programs which almost all engineering schools have. Some, like Northeastern University, even require you to do a co-op[1]. I've worked with Northeastern students at pharma companies and they dive into the belly of the beast when they they spend six months at a company. Often, they become so integral, they get hired after they graduate to keep doing what they did during their co-op.

Or an alternative model, going back to 1916, is MIT's Practice school[2], where graduate students go into factories and apply their training on specific projects.

This reads largely like someone who is ignorant of the opportunities that were probably present at Penn State, assuming that a degree would just get him a job.

[1] [http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/](http://www.northeastern.edu/coop/) [2] [http://web.mit.edu/cheme/academics/practice/](http://web.mit.edu/cheme/academics/practice/)

</comment><comment><USER12> "To find real work, I had to teach myself new technologies and skills outside of class, and it wasn't easy."

What the hell was this guy expecting? "Hey, guys! I just graduated! Let the money river flow!"?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading the article raised tangential questions for me: How comfortable is it for someone who's not a programmer by temperament or interest to get a computer science degree in college? Or, alternately, what percentage of computer science grads simply aren't programmers? I've never really thought about this but now I'm wondering!

<comment><USER13> To pass any decent CS course you need to at least be able to program, but outside of maybe a few group projects the programs that you write won't be very large so you don't have to be an expert in TDD, version control or any frameworks.

In the UK at least once you get into the 2nd/3rd year of the degree you get to select a larger number of the modules that you study. So it's possible to choose modules with lower programming content which might be focused on theory or on business type subjects.

Most universities here offer a sister degree to CS which is focused on business computing/project management and has substantially less programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I finished my bachelors in CS at a state school while working in an unrelated field. I couldn't get a job programming a VCR out of school. My school was not prestigious. I had no idea how to interview. This was over a decade ago now.

I got a job working telephone tech support for a networking company, hardly worth my time. Nearly two years later i got a job as a data analyst through a friend of a friend, working in SQL server and writing VB6 apps.

I should have spent some time researching and contacting companies while I was a junior and senior in college. I figured, like the OP, champagne would rain down from the heavens when I left school. It did not.

But there is hope. Keep plodding forward. What I learned in college has helped me through the years and it does still look good on the resume.

</comment><comment><USER15> Idiot MIS major is 'CEO' of his own company but can't find a job... And then writes an article where he pretends to be an Engineering/CS major.

I feel like the Washington Post ought to be embarrassed to have printed this.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is unfortunate that this article gets featured when the author is obviously blowing smoke; it would be great to hear from someone actually in this boat.

The comments there pointed out another article by the same author last year, explaining how he turned down multiple jobs to start his own web design company: [http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/09/heres_why_why_more_a...](http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2013/09/heres_why_why_more_and_more_college_grads_are_tossing_aside_their_resumes_and_embracing_entrepreneur.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> "...a 2006 study of college professors in STEM fields showed that a whopping 59.8 percent hadn't had any job experience in their industry. That means that a large portion of the professors tasked with teaching college grads how to become marketers, managers and salespeople have never marketed anything, managed anyone or sold anything at all."

Come on HN, you guys missed this cherry? I do like that you dug through the 22 year old's Linkedin profile to get his real degree, but yall missed a pretty big logical flaw there.

That said, there is a lot to analyze about the poor kid. First, he thinks that spending a year unemployed is abnormal. Granted the guy was in State College for a long time, and that is a pocket universe filled with football, cheap beer and cheaper dates. He's been sheltered with the Penn State pride and now is finally realizing that you gotta kiss a lot more ass than what he is used to in order to make it through an interview.

Second, he's at least misleading readers to his actual degree (as yall sought out online) and he thinks thats ok to do on a national level. A simple google search is going to ruin this guy. But as a voting, draft-eligible citizen, he's allowed to pave his own path.

Third, he's naive at best, ignorant at worst. Honestly, he seems harmless, and that is not going to cut it for the guy now that he dug this grave. He's got to get some beating in here before he realizes that he is the only one that will straighten his own back.

Best wishes to the poor guy. As John Wayne said: Life is hard, but its a lot harder when you're stupid.

</comment><comment><USER18> > 47 percent of the technology jobs in New York City no longer require any > college education at all.

I've done a lot of hiring over the years and recently in NYC. I can say in general I've always hired for Attitude and Aptitude. I can teach you anything if you have the right Attitude. I can't teach you to have a good Attitude and I can't make you have a better Aptitude.

One very real challenge in NYC is that big players are soaking up most of tech talent and there is a ground war between financial technology companies and other start-ups. That pressure has caused companies to go back to the drawing board on how they qualify candidates. For a while recruiters wouldn't even look at a person without seeing some lofty education background in a resume. Now they're looking for the scrappy problem solver that might be savvy based on their recent work experience.

I find this interesting because when I started in technology 30 years ago I had a hard time hiring for my companies and developed this "Attitude+Aptitude" concept with my teams. Over time it seemed like it was getting harder for people to get into technology jobs because it became accepted principle that you had to hire people with CS degrees to ensure success. Of course that was BS when it happened and I've always fought against it over the years. One of the best things for me about hiring in NYC was being able to tell the recruiting team what I was looking for and to tell them to stop looking for just CS degrees.

Recently I took a position as CTO in a San Francisco HQ'd start-up. I've been talking to my engineering team on how we filter candidates, again I'm preaching A+A but its clear they've been taught to look for CS degrees and Math majors. I'm working with them to broaden their thinking. I think this is an example that in general people are lazy about hiring and they'll use anything they can as an excuse to not invest in finding out if a candidate is the right person. It's tough, we're all busy and have yet another meeting to run to or another customer call to deal with. It's easy to think hiring is a pain and distraction from what you're doing today. But, let's be clear, the single most important thing you can do is scale your teams and if you don't hire they'll never scale and you'll fail. To me the most important thing you can do in a company is hire well. The second most important thing is fire well, let people go if they're not working out. You're not doing them any favors and in the end their life will be better if they can find a place they fit in and can be successful and your world will be more successful if you focus on building a team that is a well oiled machine that smashes through problems like a hot knife through butter.

</comment><comment><USER19> I studied English and not engineering and had no problem finding a job in NYC as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER20> He says he studied engineering. But he didn't. He studied computer science. And therein lies the root of his confusion.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe he should have picked a better major. No one takes an MIS degree seriously.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's true. Obviously the person with a CS degree will be hired over the person with the MIS degree all other things being equal, but it's up to the candidate to spend time to create a portfolio or something that shows they know what they are doing and can code. If you're too lazy to do the CS route and plan to go MIS then get a programming job, then you have to be un- lazy in your free time to make up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Silly engineer, English is just another name for "Pre-Law".

</comment><comment><USER24> go flip burgers</comment>


An API Ontology - <AUTHOR> http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2012-02-13-an-api-ontology <comment><USER2> To me it seems quite an inaccurate description both of the theory and of the status quo.

For example, the SOAP section should be "WS", web service: that is the class of protocols like SOAP. The high-level distinction should be WS vs. RPC vs. REST. WS is centred about the services, RPC is centred about the methods and REST is centred around the resources. HTTP is just a transport layer, the GET/POST style is a primitive way to implement each of these architectures. It is the input and output data that makes a GET/POST request fit in one of these three categories.

But what really bothers me is that, to my eyes, the author main point is that REST is marginal and people who still seriously talk about it are akin to those hunting unicorns. This is not explicitly said, but this is the feeling that this article left me with.

The description of REST says

> Originally, REST was synonymous with what is now called "Hypermedia APIs." > However, after large amounts of misunderstanding, REST advocates are > rebranding REST to "Hypermedia APIs" and leaving REST to the RESTish folks.

I have never heard an use of "Hypermedia API" as different from "an API that user REST". REST is an blueprint for building distributed architectures. When you build one that follows such blueprint you end up with an "hypermedia API".

People who misunderstand REST are actually using RPC+GET/POST. These kinds of mistakes are routinely pointed out; people will comment "the API of XYZ is not RESTful at all! They are using _REST_ only because it is a cool term to use nowadays". Not much different from how people misuse "multimedia", yet the meaning of multimedia is not going to change any time soon.

When talking about REST there is spectrum to take into account: there are APIs that fully adheres to the REST principles, other that adhere less, others that are basically redoing SOAP or RPC yet call themselves REST because it is cool. The same thing has happened with Agile programming. People use SVN, a code review every now and then, write two unit tests that cover 1% of the paths and they will says "we are doing Agile development, like all the cool kids". Yet the meaning of what "Agile programming" is has not changed.

<comment><USER3> I never heard of "Hypermedia API" either - sounds like some REST people are lazy, don't leverage things like content negotiation, URI de-referencing, etc and wind up with an HTTP-RPCish monster with a REST name tag on it.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS>

<comment><USER3> HATEOAS yes, "Hypermedia API" no -- reducing the distributed state engine of HATEOAS at the same level of RPC-style APIs doesn't adequately convey the purpose of HATEOAS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"You can tell an API is Hypermedia by providing only one API endpoint, but which accepts requests at other endpoints that are provided by discovery."_

And then the docs provide you hardcoded URLs for each endpoint. Is there an actual, practical use for dynamically discoverable APIs that I am missing?

</comment><comment><USER6> "Ruby on Rails brought respect for HTTP into the developer world."

Excuse me?

</comment><comment><USER7> I strongly believe that recoining the term REST to Hypermedia API won't help preventing misunderstandings. But it sounds more like what Fielding wanted to get across.</comment>


Phones Should Be Like Toothbrushes - <AUTHOR> https://emptyyourcup.substack.com/p/your-phone-should-be-like-your-toothbrush <comment> V-2 _> Your toothbrush is the greatest tool of all time. You only use it when you're supposed to for as long as you need to and then let it go._

I use my phone to play blitz chess online (I'm a chess player; if you play chess, you shouldn't focus exclusively on blitz, but it does have its place eg. to help quickly practice new openings)... to listen to podcasts (for instance when I'm washing the dishes - no dishwasher where I live right now, now that's quite a setback)... or to read articles on Hacker News, for one. Do I _need_ to do any of these? No. Certainly not in the same sense as I need brushing my teeth. But these are my pastimes. I also don't _need_ reading a book, listening to a radio show or going to standup comedy. It's entertainment.

A smartphone is _not_ like a toothbrush, and there's no reason why it should be. Its applications go beyond bare necessities by design.

<comment> Funes- > to listen to podcasts [...] or to read articles on Hacker News, for one. Do > I need to do any of these? No. Certainly not in the same sense as I need > brushing my teeth. But these are my pastimes. I also don't need reading a > book, listening to a radio show or going to standup comedy. It's > _entertainment_.

That's the thing: The apps that take up most of the average person's smartphone daily usage[0] are _designed_ to exploit your psychological imperatives and vulnerabilities, so they can literally _entertain_ you for as long as possible--that is, to divert the user from other, more intentional activities that are much more costly in terms of conscious preparation and effort, by means of frictionless, persuasive design[1].

Being able to entertain oneself by using an electronic device is not a bad thing _per se_ ; however, smartphones have enabled corporations to dictate our behavior during every single hour of our waking lives, turning it into a mindless, constant consumption of entertainment. Many people's lives have become a never-ending pastime. Our attention, our time, our true beliefs and desires are all we've got to develop as a person and lead a fulfilling life. We should think critically of something that permeates our lives as heavily as smartphones and their apps.

[0] All the people ranging from 10 to ~20 years old that I've recently met significantly exceed the 2.5 hours of smartphone use per day that the article mentions. That only illustrates my own experience, but I believe it's something to think about.

[1] [https://captology.stanford.edu/about/about-the- lab-1.html](https://captology.stanford.edu/about/about-the-lab-1.html).

<comment> V-2 _> Being able to entertain oneself by using an electronic device is not a bad thing per se; however, smartphones have enabled corporations to dictate our behavior during every single hour of our waking lives_

I see it as a mere externalization of responsiblity for being, well, lazy.

Somehow I'm never browsing Facebook or Instagram for pictures of cats and the like. I guess they must have overlooked me when they "dictated" behavior to people.

 _> Many people's lives have become a never-ending pastime._

Yes, ever since we no longer work in the field for 15 hours a day ;) There are pastimes, and there are pastimes though. It's pointless to pretend all are equal - in terms of intellectual or aesthetic stimulation.

 _> We should think critically of something that permeates our lives as heavily as smartphones and their apps._

I agree.

<comment><USER3> > Somehow I'm never browsing Facebook or Instagram for pictures of cats and > the like. I guess they must have overlooked me when they "dictated" behavior > to people.

It's great that the methods Facebook uses don't work on you, be it because their "product" just does not interest you or because you have above average self-control. Other people are not as lucky.

<comment> V-2 My point is that adopting such point of view is a form of fatalism that leads to erosion of self-control.

<comment><USER3> Realizing that your and other's self-control has limits does not erode it any more than realizing you are not Usain Bolt keeps you from walking. But pretending it has no limits means we rely too much on it when instead we should reduce the need for it. It also means we expect people to resist manipulation when they simply can't.

<comment> V-2 But "someone tries to manipulate me" is a quite different mindset than "someone dictates my behavior turning my life it into something mindless" (to slightly paraphrase the comment I originally responded to). Perhaps it's a matter of phrasing that irked me.

<comment><USER3> But the issue is not that someone _tries_ to manipulate us, but that they – partially – _succeed_. So saying that they "dictate our behavior" may be hyperbole, but aside from that, it's the better mindset. Denying a problem exists is rarely useful.

Of course if you understand "dictate" as "dictate to the extent that I cannot resist", then you might as well deny the issue you believe you can't deal with anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Your phone does none of these and that's why it's a lousy tool at best.

A phone is not a lousy tool, from the perspective of it being a tool it is actually quite effective at what it does.

> People now spend 2.5 hours on their phones, daily. That's 17.5 hours a week > and, unless you work part-time at a call center, that's way too much.

This is a silly point, in my opinion. It is not the quantity of time spent on a phone that matters but the quality. If I call my grandparents each weekend for 30 minutes is that already reaching my quota for phone usage that day?

I think this article is a rushed thought that should have been polished. The core issue with phones, it seems to me, is not the phone itself but the self- control of humans that overuse it.

I know people who scroll through social media for hours on end, in my opinion that feels like a bad use of your time.

But what stops someone from reading a book? Or connecting with their distant family? Learning math? Keeping track of their life?

_So_ much can be achieved with a phone, we have got to stop treating it like a Devil's implement.

<comment><USER5> > _So_ much can be achieved with a phone, we have got to stop treating it like > a Devil's implement.

I agree, that is why it is not the phone that is the devil tool itself, but what's on it. Broadcasting tools like Instagram are the most time consuming and addictive without actual benefits. Using those tools are actually detrimental to mental health [1].

Thus I believe without understanding what makes phone usage harmful to both productivity and mental health, we are bound to fall into the same traps with other technologies.

[1] [https://www.salon.com/2019/01/30/a-gold-standard-study- finds...](https://www.salon.com/2019/01/30/a-gold-standard-study-finds- deleting-facebook-is-great-for-your-mental-health/)

<comment><USER6> Instagram can have benefits, like helping you attract a mate or improving your photography.

<comment><USER5> I meant without actual benefits in the context of being addictive

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Getting a smartphone a few years ago was a great change of my life. I can now catch up on boring emails, tech support, and GitHub issues while being in a place otherwise doing nothing. Typing on my phone is only about 1.5x the effort as typing on a keyboard. So when I'm in front of a real PC, I can get straight to the useful work like programming without an hour of catch-up per day. This results on me taking walks and going to social events more often even when I have heavy workloads.

I'm a quite impatient person, so if a friend wants to meet for lunch and is 20 minutes late for whatever reason, I'm no longer annoyed/bored because I now just read articles or play dumb phone games for 20 minutes. That situation would drive me crazy before I had a smartphone, but now I'm always more relaxed wherever I am because I have a super convenient personal assistant and time-burner.

There are humans out there that make irrational decisions, but I think for most people, if they willingly do something, it's because they have evaluated that it gives them net benefit. Assuming that most people have no control of themselves is definitely wrong.

<comment><USER8> Exactly.

Regarding people, you need to spend time with them and its not true that 100% of that time is useful. While you previously did absolutely nothing, now you can do infinitely many things of various complexity and usefulness WHILE STILL BEING HALF-PRESENT. You have more choices. I am also VERY IMPATIENT, and with phone stuff that were driving me crazy are now not a problem at all.

The article is completely meaningless - the two things are not comparable.

Many people like to do mostly meaningless stuff - watch reality shows, read the newspapers, read pulp fiction, watch sport events every day with a lot of emotions. Phone is another medium, nothing else. People will find ways to do such things on any kind of medium.

One thing is more concerning - time doing nothing (boredom) is reduced a lot with a phone because its so effective in accessing stuff from everywhere. During such times human brain can practice imagination and problem solving (there is nothing detracting ATM).

Simply turning off notifications and real time sync is enough - I usually check for a mail 3 times a day manually and sync the phone even less then that (not only on phone but on Desktop too). I think that method works pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never really bought into the argument that if we set aside our phones, all that liberated free time will go towards "something useful."

People aren't going to spend those 2.5 hours a day learning a new language, or coding a side project or whatever, they're going to find something else that's mindless and entertaining like sitting in front of the TV for 2.5 hours a day.

<comment><USER10> I'm inclined to disagree to a degree. I don't use my phone for anything but Messengers and Twitter (apart from the "utilities", such as Uber or an alarm) - and have deleted by Twitter account a while ago.

After doing that, I find myself looking at my phone out of habit/boredeom, but realize I removed the last time wasting app (I got rid of reddit about a year ago) and turn the thing off again. This results in me doing things I consider to be a better investment of my time.

Yes, that might be watching a show on TV - but I found that to be more engaging than mindlessly scrolling through people's opinions I ultimately don't care about (as Twitter, as opposed to say HN, rarely spawns intriguing thoughts).

Also not having a simple distraction available does result in me being more likely to spend time on more "important" things, might it be yard work or a side project. But it certainly depends on one's personality and preference.

<comment><USER11> I think the quality of Twitter can be excellent if you're following "the right" people. I'd be happy to recommend some users who post incredibly intriguing content if you're interested.

<comment><USER10> I would be interested in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reads like a "those darn millennials" post, both in how the author seems to think everyone should act like him, and in how out of touch with the way other people _actually_ do things he is.

First off, phones aren't really _phones_ anymore. They're computers. For many people, they're the primary or even the _only_ computer they own. It would sound a lot sillier if he said "people are spending 2.5 hours per day on their computers, that's way too much!"

Second, who the hell is he to say how we should be spending our time? Or how we should be using our pocket computer-cum-worldwide-instant-communication- devices? So what if I'm getting distracted by notifications? Maybe they're from my close friends and family members who live hundreds of miles away, yet whom I am able to converse with regularly without seriously interrupting my daily work, because text communication is much less disruptive than an actual phone conversation. Maybe they're reminders for me to get up out of my chair on a regular basis and move around so I can stay at least moderately healthy at my sedentary job. Or reminders of what piece of work I'm supposed to be working on during this part of the day, so I don't get lost down a rabbit hole and lose hours unproductively. Hell, maybe they're notifications to take my life-saving medication that I'm otherwise too absent-minded to take at the right times.

So sure, I've set my phone on vibrate, because a soft "bzzt-bzzt" is unquestionably less disruptive _to the people around me_ than the Final Fantasy victory fanfare playing every time a reminder goes off. And I've disabled notifications from apps that just want to get me to spend more money on them. But leave my phone at _home_? That's the second most absurd thing in his piece.

The most absurd is the notion that your toothbrush prompts you to stop using it when you're done.

<comment><USER13> ...the author also uses the buzzword 'mindfulness'.

I thought this had peak-memed about four years ago but apparently not, interest in the concept of 'mindfulness' is marching ahead:

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfuln...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfulness)

The problem I have with the word is that there are always better words to use. Being 'aware of one's surroundings' rather than 'mindful' makes more sense to me as I am not initiated into the cult of 'mindfulness'. The word is like insisting that people do yoga instead of anything else involving physical activity. For people that have the 'mindful' meme in their head the use of the word resonates, but for those of us that are suspicious of the word it is a turn off.

There is a certain amount of grandstanding with the use of the 'mindfulness' word, it implies someone knows better when they probably don't. They are holier than thou as they can do this 'mindfulness' thing. They are in touch with some spiritual understanding that also needs kale and yoga.

In the premise of the article is that the person with the phone/toothbrush is the most important person in the known universe. What they are doing is also totally important.

But life is not like that. If you have a relative in hospital you will be desperate to answer that phone. Same if you have some romance or job situation needing a deal to be closed. How can anyone be so aloof that they are not wanting to get messages?

Well one answer is that none of us really are that important. Six billion or so people could phone any one of us up at any moment in time but it is actually only a small handful of relatives and friends that do call. "Hi Mum!" as the saying goes.

So what better than to create a false narrative for yourself where you are that popular and so famous that you need to close down your communication channels as if you were the Queen of England? Don't let people email you and suggest they reach out over a 'tweet'. Now we have these instant communication devices, heaven forbid anyone actually use them. Have no phone just because if you had one then recruiters could call it. Have no email because if you had one then someone might send you spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I get the point, but "like a toothbrush" is a stretch. Dentists think none of us spends _enough_ time with the toothbrush.

<comment><USER15> Well, we've read the article. That was the objective of the metaphor.

<comment><USER16> Just as a data point, I looked at the article title and the comments here and decided _not_ to bother reading the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > People now spend 2.5 hours on their phones, daily. That's 17.5 hours a week > and, unless you work part-time at a call center, that's way too much.

Says who? "Too much" is not a quantifiable amount. There's a time and a place for everything.

</comment><comment><USER18> My phone (iOS) is perennially on Do Not Disturb + let calls through. In my life, calls are super rare, and 99% when they happen I want to know. Everything else can wait until I check my phone. Sure, sometimes I check it often when I'm bored, but when I'm concentrated / in the flow I am never interrupted.

I can't believe most people keep notifications on, and sometimes at full volume. It would drive me crazy.

<comment><USER19> I'm in pretty much the same camp here. One day I was chatting with a collegue and he asked if he could call me to work out a problem and I realized I had no idea where my phone was, the battery was dead when I found it. I hadn't even used for a few days.

The majority of my time spent looking at my phone is for 2FA , taking a photo, or bored somewhere waiting.

<comment><USER20> Same.. usage may vary, but I have only kept notifications for messaging (but none on "groups" and I user "Favourites" for the calls/messages while on DND. Everything else sits in absolute silence as it should (for me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sorry but I have a small business, active family, 2 kids (1 teen and 1 tween) and silencing my phone, or putting it away for long periods of time just doesn't work. I don't spend as much time on my phone as the article claims is "average" (thanks screen time!) but it's simply unrealistic for people that have a busy, dynamic life.

Every single day is a symphony of coordination between myself, my wife and my kids. Schedules change, buses are late, appointments are rescheduled - <USER2> "offline" would seriously effect my ability to operate on a daily basis.

<comment><USER22> I understand the dilemma, however people used to manage life just fine before cell phones became a thing.

You can make a plan for the day, everyone does their thing, you don't have to be available 24/7\. If your day-to-day life is a constant flurry of schedule changes and time-critical communication, maybe that needs to change. Being constantly on edge like that is a surefire recipe for stress.

<comment><USER21> > If your day-to-day life is a constant flurry of schedule changes and time- > critical communication

You must not have kids, or much going on. I'm not saying it's chaos, or that everyday is that insane, but it requires coordination. "Blanket advice" like this I find only applies to a small percentage of people. Just the kids alone* make my day pretty nutty, both have hobbies, practices, games, after school events, play dates, sleepovers, they forget things, they need to be picked up because "so and sos" Mom is sick or late - I have doctors appointments which also require multiple prescriptions, I have client meetings, they too are busy and reschedule occasionally. Again, not every day, but enough that using my phone like a f _cking toothbrush is just insane. Sorry for the rant.

_ I have only TWO kids. My peers, with 3 or more would laugh maniacally at this suggestion.

Edit: I apologize, I realize I simply re-stated my original comment, adding more detail. TLDR; I disagree with your assertion ;-)

<comment><USER22> And yet, people did all of those things just fine before cellphones were ubiquitous. What I'm saying is that all of this stress of modern life is artificial and unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The primary problem of the phone is that it's a lineal descendant of a technology that was unavoidably based on "stop what you are doing and pay attention to me". (Contrast telegrams, from the same era.)

It's not just that voice calling necessarily interrupts you (or if you arrange that it goes to voicemail, this is considered rude), it's that the whole mental model of a phone is a thing that interrupts you.

</comment><comment> d--b Maybe if my toothbrush was a little more like my phone, I wouldn't forget to brush my teeth twice a week...

<comment><USER20> Not trying to promote electric toothbrushes, but what worked for me is to get an electric one, keep the charging dock right next bathroom sink, with the toothbrush latched on, so you have the visual queue/reminder to brush them 100% of the mornings/nights.

</comment></comment><comment> Funes- I always say that any use of screens, given their captivating mimetic and sensorial nature, should be preceded by a clear intention regarding _what_ will they be used for. Moreover, I wholeheartedly agree on the fact that electronic devices--any kind of devices, really--should only be used for as long as they are required to accomplish the task at hand, which has ben decided _a priori_. Anything that deviates from that is effectively dictating our behavior to a harmful extent.

</comment><comment><USER24> Use it twice a day and get a new one every three months or so?

</comment><comment><USER25> Imagine how great our oral hygiene would be if toothbrushes were more like phones.

... flossing away during meetings, on the bus etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> My toothbrush has bluetooth... and an iPhone app...

([https://www.oralb.co.uk/en-gb/products/electric- toothbrushes...](https://www.oralb.co.uk/en-gb/products/electric- toothbrushes/oral-b-genius-9000-electric-rechargable-toothbrush-white))

</comment><comment><USER27> The endgame is whole population wearing AR headsets so that corporations control your whole vision and hearing. Everything is consentual of course! Nobody is forcing you. But everyone is wearing them anyway.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Kill vibration.

I did this a while ago. What happened was I ended up checking my phone significantly more due to FOMO. Hiding your phone is a better solution, since it's more out of sight.

</comment><comment><USER29> "2.5 hours on their phones daily?". Sheeeat. Before lunch, maybe.</comment>


Got laid off. What can I learn in 2 months to get a job - <AUTHOR> I just got laid off. I have got 3 months of severance package.
About my last job: I worked on a banking application support project, no coding. Just checking some usual stuff in Unix.
The only thing I'm good at is "searching for something online, in shortest amount of time". Other than that, I've interest in investing in stocks (I do not trade, only 'delivery' - so far I'm profitable); this is more of a hobby. I also keep myself updated in what's latest in technology, read tech news websites, Hacker News regularly. But I'm unable to make use of these things. I feel like a total loser.
What skills can I teach myself in 2-3 months to get a job (technical or non-technical role). <comment><USER2> You're probably not going to get a new skill to the level where it will get you a job within a couple of months. By all means start learning, but in terms of employment I'd focus on applying for jobs that you already have the capabilities to do.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the manual tasks that you do daily in AWS - mani-smhack Scheduled EC2 Start and Stop , S3 Analyzing<p>Suggest some of the devops tool that will also reduce the manual task . <comment><AUTHOR> Almost nothing -- if you're doing daily tasks, you're leaving a lot of automation on the table.

I would cleanup old backups and whatnot every month or three, but for the most part, I had a very set it and forget it setup.</comment>


The Australian Housing Bubble Has Popped - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/australian-housing-bubble-popped-2011-4

<comment><USER2> That's a very bold thing to claim, Australia is a very big place, cities such as Sydney and Melbourne were doing well last year, Sydney still reported positive growth for the last quarter.

Although the Jan/Feb lending figures were indeed indicative of a slowdown, for NSW(where Sydney is) at least, they have rebounded somewhat in the latest AFG figures: [http://corporate.afgonline.com.au/idc/groups/public/document...](http://corporate.afgonline.com.au/idc/groups/public/documents/web_content/mortgageindex- apr11-nsw.pdf)

AFG is a mortgage broker responsible for 10% of lending in Australia, their figures are updated monthly and are a good leading indicator of the slower official government stats.</comment>