Start — Dart web framework inspired by Sinatra - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lvivski/start

<comment><USER2> Really rooting for Dart personally, but I'm going to watch for the sidelines and stick with Rails, Ruby and Coffeescript for a while longer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. Haven't seen many Dart projects so far.

<comment><USER4> I have to confess that after read through the Dart specs, all I could think was "meh". Google had a chance to throw their weight behind some powerful language advancements, but all I saw was a boring Java/Javascript hybrid. And given that Dart will never be natively embedded in Safari or IE, it's going to be very hard to get traction on it.

I suspect that's why you haven't seen many projects in Dart.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, the language syntax itself is very boring. Listening to talks from their language designers, I think they are even annoyed a little that they can't do more interesting things with the syntax. I've been following dart for a while now, and here's the feel I get from the language:

* Dart's goal is not to explore exciting new syntax, it's about giving developers a language that can quickly start being productive on.

* Cleaning up a lot of the messy syntax that exist in Javascript today.

* Be able to easily and _efficiently_ compile to Javascript. This seems to be the reason for a lot of the language syntax decisions.

* Provide a full development experience (language, tools, ui, etc...) out of the box.

<comment><USER6> A very important feature is class-based object orientation, which the vast majority of developers are familiar with, thus it is more natural to use compared to prototype-based OO.

Also, tool-visible types allow for better/easier tool-assisted development, something that has been a stumbling block even in the most monstrous of IDEs. For example, ever ctrl-clicked a function assigned to a var in Eclipse?

<comment><USER5> yup. No prototype inheritance is huge, plus having a single entry point for an app is huge. These 2 provide a lot of VM optimization opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loving the test suite.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) well I have no test for now, but there will be test for route parsing and other stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dart is Google's attempt to kill off another OpenWeb technology. This time their sights are trained on Javascript. Dart : Javascript :: Reader : RSS

<comment><USER5> Dart at this point is being directed by Google, but it is totally open source. So if Google decided they wanted to stop working on it, you would still be free to do what you'd like with it.

The Dart code[1], which includes the VM, dart2js, editor, analyzer, and all libraries are under new BSD license. The entire contents of the dartlang.org website are even on Github[2] under Creative Commons, so you can submit pull requests to have any page on the website updated.

While it's direction is being decided by Google, they are taking a lot of input from the community via the mailing lists and bug submissions. Though, it is not driven by committee like EMCAScript is, I'm ok with that for now. I believe when Dart was originally launched they said they would consider submitting the language as an ISO standard once it has become more stable, which may still happen.

[1] <https://code.google.com/p/dart/>

[2] <https://github.com/dart-lang/dartlang.org>

<comment><USER9> [disclaimer, I work on the Dart team]

Yes, one of the long term goals of the language is standardization. The project is open source, we have external committers, and we've taken numerous patches. Pull Requests welcome!

<comment><USER10> Since you're on the Dart team, something I always wanted to say re: Dart.

The main chance I see for the language getting adoption is to start from the server side, if Google could sponsor a full featured web framework in the language with async capabilities, talking to major DBs, and other batteries. Basically a Dart Rails or Django (maybe a little scaled back in the beginning).

Sure, you can let the community create several competing frameworks, like this one. But nothing will get traction like a Google-backed, with 1-2 full time employees behind it, nice documentation et al.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Purism announces PureOS Store - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/purism-announces-pureos-store/ <comment><USER2> As a (satisfied) owner of a Purism laptop, I wish they would concentrate on just one thing and get that thing perfect, rather than spreading themselves thin with laptops, smartphones, security tokens, and now an app store. What do they have, 30 employees? For that many complex endeavors (including hardware development!), something is going to give. There is still a key privacy/security/openness feature promised for the laptop that is not complete. Though I can understand that their focus may have shifted to smartphones rather than laptops since smartphones seem to be a much bigger market nowadays.

<comment><USER3> People want apps. Sideloading apk is a recipe for being p0wned. Therefore, a store is neccessary, to build confidence and trust in the "ecology" of apps, to motivate people to buy apps, which then motivates app developers to write apps for purism, which therefore sells more units.

It's not diversionary: its neccessary. The lead question I see on alternate AOSP sites after how to make it work is "how do I get the google apps"

<comment><USER4> I think they are underestimating how much time and effort (and employees) it takes to be a successful gatekeeper of an app store.

If too many malware or scam apps make it onto the store, people won't trust the store anymore and the whole thing is ruined. So you have to vet every release version of every app or enough bad stuff will slip through that the users will leave.

Pretty soon people will start complaining about arbitrary rejections so you need to start documenting a system of rules and applying them consistently. If you don't do that, the developers will leave. Even if you do it, the developers might still leave unless being in your store is worth the hassle of obeying all of the rules.

Then some parents will complain that their kid spent a lot of their money buying stuff in an online game or spent time chatting with a pervert and it's _your fault_ because the app came from your store. You might need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and PR people to get out of that one.

Most of these problems are nontechnical -- they are really people problems. It's hard to see how such a small company can run an app store that can be trusted by users and app developers unless it handles a very small volume of apps.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft couldn't even get their phone app store to a point where people trusted it and could get the apps they wanted.

I'm cheering for Purism as much (probably more) than anyone, but I think they seriously need to make sure they get this right, and give it the appropriate resources (technical, and people).

<comment><USER6> Their app store, period.

I remember it during the 8.1 period, all you would find is slow garbage. I can't remember using a single app from their store that wasn't a slow mess. I'm betting it is still the case with their app store too. It wouldn't surprise me that the same issues would hit the windows phone app store.

<comment><USER7> Really? I had a windows phone from WP7 up to one of the last released and one of the reasons was that most apps were fast, snappy and started pretty quickly, while android phones in the same price range (about 50$) seemed to struggle with basic stuff.

Of course there were exceptions, but IMO that wasn't the major problem.

<comment><USER4> I remember all the scam apps. I would search for "Facebook" and there would be at least 5 apps with that name, all with the Facebook logo. The real one was somewhere in the middle of the search results, not at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had emailed them 5 months ago about whether they planned such a store and whether it would be worth planning to make an app in time for the librem release, but did not hear back. This is the answer I suppose. The question is whether they plan to monetize it. I think they have to - there has o be a way for developers to pay their rent when working with free software. I hope they can pioneer something along those lines

How did the elementary app store pay off BTW? Are there any numbers available?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder whether they're building it from scratch or leveraging some of the work put into other stores\app centers like Gnome's or Elementary's.

<comment><USER10> I imagine this is going to be flatpak based

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As another commenter has eluded to, I would love to see them propose some monetisation models for the store. Personally, I think they should make Patreon-style donations possible with a super-low barrier to entry (only 1 to 2 clicks to donate). Maybe they take a tiny (~2%) slice of every transaction to help manage the whole thing. Donations only imho. That would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER12> Purism rules! I ordered the phone today. Hopefully this is the start of free linux os on the mobile platform, sorely needed. Support!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's even nicer is that you can always install/create another store, if this one ever lacks.

</comment><comment><USER13> kinda ot: I almost bought a Librem (a few times)... but going without built-in ethernet is a show stopper for me. It's a fundamental feature for a hacker- friendly laptop.</comment>


Aristochat: a web based Multi User Chat with XMPP inside - <AUTHOR> http://blog.superfeedr.com/Chat/MUC/OSS/XMPP/aristochat/

<comment><USER2> This is awfully interesting. I've been looking for a LAMP-pluggable Campfire clone for a while now but no web chat is anywhere near the simplicity or responsiveness of Campfire.

<comment><USER3> How about mibbit? It's pretty simple to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure it's OSS? It it? And how much can you integrate it in your very own app?

<comment><USER3> It's definitely not free software. On the other hand, it does use an open protocol. It's not for everyone, but it does a good job at what it does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Allowing JS and tags - that isn't safe.

<comment><USER5> Could you be more useful and explain why not? Like give an example or something...

<comment><USER4> XSS - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting> Embedding applets, styles and links (although haven't tried these). You can change window location - window.location='<http://example.org/> in a script tag and the code is executable for all chat users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The future implementation of WebSockets will simplify things like this incredibly.</comment>


VirtualBox 6.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog-6.0#v0 <comment><USER2> Avoid VirtualBox and becoming trapped in the non-free & personal use only extension by using one of the very decent open source alternatives Boxes[1] or virt-manager[2]

[1] [https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Boxes](https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Boxes)

[2] [https://virt-manager.org/](https://virt-manager.org/)

<comment><USER3> Even worse: Oracle is going around and threatening to sue enterprises that show traffic to the extensions download site from their IP blocks. Happened recently at a previous employer of mine.

<comment><USER4> Any public references for this anywhere?

<comment><USER5> Personal anecdote: They came after us, since the extension phones home and they could track it to our ASN. Asked us for an audit of all installs of VB. The idea was that they wanted to then charge us big money for a corporate license.

Instead, IT banned it enterprise-wide. Which is sad, because we like it for Vagrant. We've since started moving all of our developer stuff to OpenShift, so we're not totally up a creek.

<comment><USER6> I have a devops guy trying to push me to use Vagrant at the moment, but I am aware of these issues with virtualbox. I was thinking about using one of the lxc shims, but now you have me curious, how useful is openshift in that "I want to spin local vms up for testing" approach? I thought it was much more geared to server and not workstation, as opposed to vagrant.

Of course others are right, virt-manager is probably a better replacement I think.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what feature in the extension pack are you using with Vagrant?

<comment><USER4> USB pass through support to drive hardware debuggers here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be careful about VirtualBox Extensions which is non free on commercial environments. Oracle is hunting non compliance and VB provides them with lots of telemetry.

<comment><USER9> How do you license them? I've never seen a "Buy now" link, only the text about "Free for personal use" every time.

<comment><USER10> I vaguely recall that this was discussed here on HN a while ago and somebody who had actually tried to buy the necessary license reported that Oracle would not sell them the license; IIRC, the sales person told them to "just use it, we don't care", or something along those lines.

Which is very problematic, of course, without something in writing, and given Oracle's reputation.

<comment><USER11> If you live in a one-party state, secretly record them and then if Oracle threatens to sue, show them the recording and remind them of promissory estoppel.

(IANAL!)

<comment><USER12> Not really promissory estoppel, which can enforce a promise if you detrimentally relied on it. It's not really to your detriment to use the product for free, so it's not a perfect fit (unless maybe your company hired someone to administer the VMs, specifically based on his VirtualBox experience?).

Some other possibilities would be the _parol evidence rule_ (verbal exchanges between the contracting parties and their effect on contract interpretation) and possibly _laches_ (no equitable remedy for folks who know about an infringement on their rights and do nothing about it... but money damages isn't an equity claim).

(IAAL but I don't practice in this area, so same grain of salt applies)

<comment><USER13> I think amyjess is right.

From the Restatement Second:

§ 90. Promise Reasonably Inducing Action or Forbearance

(1) A promise which the promisor should reasonably expect to induce action or forbearance on the part of the promisee or a third person and which does induce such action or forbearance is binding if injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise. The remedy granted for breach may be limited as justice requires.

If Oracle says "go ahead and use it" and then sues you for having used it, they lose. If they sue you to stop using it going forward, they win.

<comment><USER12> I can understand how you'd think that, reading the text of the rule in the Restatement. However, at common law - and as shown in the examples if you'd keep reading - there has to be some _detrimental_ reliance. Being able to use a product isn't in an of itself to your detriment. However, hiring someone based on that understanding might be.

 _A, knowing that B is going to college, promises B that A will give him $ 5,000 on completion of his course. B goes to college, and borrows and [[[spends more than $ 5,000 for college expenses.]]] When he has nearly completed his course, A notifies him of an intention to revoke the promise. A 's promise is binding and B is entitled to payment on completion of the course without regard to whether his performance was "bargained for" under § 71._

(detrimental reliance in triple square brackets)

I have a hard time imagining a case being granted summary judgment for the defendant just because Oracle's customer sales rep told him "we don't really care."

In all honesty, the legal issue is more likely to be whether the person on the phone had apparent authority to grant a license. Even if a promissory estoppel theory would work, the person speaking to you would still have to be in some position (or appear to be in some position) to bind Oracle to a promise he/she made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too bad none of these two bugs has been fixed:

[https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9069](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9069)

[https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12597](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12597)

(cannot use `sendfile` in nginx inside a virtualbox, due to an eight year old bug)

<comment><USER15> Yeah it's crazy that it's not fixed yet. About 5 years when I was using VMs for my development environment I remember that bug causing all sorts of issues with assets not loading correctly.

It's also why I recommend people avoid Docker Toolbox like the plague since it uses VirtualBox under the hood. Either use Docker for Windows (if you have Windows 10 Pro), or roll your own VMWare Player (free) VM which doesn't have that bug, has way better I/O performance in the end and isn't much harder to set up.

<comment><USER16> This might surprise you but neither of these 2 are bugs.

VirtualBox shared folders simply don't offer the guarantees of a local filesystem. They are not a local filesystem, they are network drives mounted as NFS, with the abysmal support and quirk that comes with that.

sendfile() doesn't work on network drives. it never did. the host is not aware of changes made to the remote filesystem from another host. it cannot see updated files unless it checks for remote changes.

<comment><USER15> But from our point of view (the end user), it feels like a bug with VirtualBox because this problem doesn't exist when using VMWare or Hyper-V.

I used a VMWare Player driven VM as a primary Linux development environment for full time web development for literally 4 years straight and I encountered the issue 0 times, but with VirtualBox I encountered the issue in 1 day.

Maybe it's not technically a bug with VirtualBox, but it is something that makes VirtualBox unsuitable as a dev environment for web development.

<comment><USER17> You're right that it's a major UX hurdle. But it's not a bug in an advertised feature. Not a technical oversight, not a glitch.

Yes, vboxfs is very restrictive, but then again, the whole cross platform virtualization is a very thin curtain of magic over the nasty differences behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> According to the change log, the guest to host escape vulnerability with the e1000 networking driver was not fixed, or at least it is not listed as being fixed. Is this correct that it is not fixed?

[https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day](https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day)

<comment><USER19> Oracle has an arcane policy of not mentioning any security fixes for any of their managed products, except for once a quarter. The flaw has been fixed as of 5.2.22, but the VirtualBox devs are not allowed to mention it until sometime in January I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Virtualbox is not your only option if you want to use Vagrant. Vagrant has decent plugins for qemu (vagrant-libvirt) and lxd (vagrant-lxd)

Make sure you get your KVM, Qemu and libvirt setup right and run:

        vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt
        vagrant init generic/ubuntu1804
        vagrant up --provider=libvirt

You can export VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER=libvirt to avoid passing --provider=libvirt to vagrant all the time.

vagrant-lxd is less mature but just as useful, especially when you need to run stuff with erratic RSS graphs.

<comment><USER21> You can also put

      ENV['VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER'] = <provider>

In your Vagrantfile to force a specific provider to always be used for that Vagrantfile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Added support for using Hyper-V as the fallback execution core on Windows > host, to avoid inability to run VMs at the price of reduced performance

Any comparisons between hyper-v and virtual box performance? I would have assumed hyper-v would be more performant.

<comment><USER23> Out of curiosity, why do you have a presumption that hyper-v would have better performance?

<comment><USER22> This may be completely wrong, but as I understand it when you enable hyper-v it sits above your Windows install, and runs your windows as a hyper-v VM. So, rather than running a userland vbox process that has OS overhead (especially around disk IO) it can run much closer to the metal.

<comment><USER24> If I remember correctly, Hyper-V is not strictly a type 1 hypervisor ("runs your windows as a hyper-v VM") but comes close. The VMs still run pretty close to the metal, but your host OS is mostly free from hypervisor interference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there anyone who could explain to me why virtualbox is still being developed? I don't mean that as an attack on the developers or the software but Oracle ruined pretty much all of Sun's software with VBox being one of the only two exception along with Java.

<comment><USER26> Define "ruined" to you. By my definition, oracle took something that was "ok'ish, especially when you didn't want to pay and just had basic needs" product and have slowly chipped away anything that could be considered good for most.

<comment><USER27> ↑ this sounds like a pretty good definition of ruined.

<comment><USER26> Exactly my thoughts, but GP claimed that Vbox wasn't ruined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is anyone using VirtualBox on the desktop? Specifically, to run Linux/macOS/Windows guests on a macOS host?

Would you recommend it? Or is the best option VMware Fusion, Parallels, or something else?

<comment><USER29> I recently got a Mac and wanted to avoid the cost of Parallels, so I tried VirtualBox first. It was insanely slow. Like, I would be typing text into a VM and I would type a line, then wait and watch the characters appear. This happened on a 2018 Macbook Pro host with 32GB RAM. This happened on both Windows and Ubuntu guests.

So, I tried Parallels and it was so fast I can't really tell the difference between the host and guest in terms of speed. I highly recommend Parallels.

<comment><USER30> _I tried VirtualBox first. It was insanely slow_

Colleague of mine has Windows running on VMWare on OSX and it's not much better. Also, but this might be because of the keyboard/OS/VMWare settings he uses, but when my muscle memory gets to work and starts using basic key combinations it feels like half of the time they are intercepted by OSX and do funny things, opening apps I don't want or switching desktops or whatever etc. No joy. All in all, of all non-commandline development experiences I ever encountered it's probably the worst. Parallels on the other hand was indeed more 'just works, get shit done'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> No usage of hypervisor.framework... so never mind.

<comment><USER32> I've been using Parallels Desktop Lite which is free for Linux and MacOS X guests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've switched our development environment years ago to VMWare (OSX) from VirtualBox because it didn't work well with fixed IPs, would change the IPs and I couldn't pin them - worked for some time then changed the IP. Has this changed?

</comment><comment><USER34> But _the true hacker_ uses QEMU.

</comment><comment><USER35> 'MacOS Guest Additions: initial support'

I thought that with a dozen hacks it already worked? What did they add? Official support?

</comment><comment><USER36> > Major rework of user interface with simpler and more powerful application > and virtual machine set-up

Anyone found out yet what that's supposed to mean? Looks all the same to me except colors and icons and animations nobody needs.

</comment><comment><USER37> Using this release with Vagrant and the ubuntu/bionic64 (20181214.0.0) box resulted in a very slow boot process which caused Vagrant to abort due to the boot timeout.

It looks like this was caused by a workaround I had implemented for the exact same issue on previous releases:

      vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--uartmode1", "disconnected"]

After removing this line the box boots up normally again.

</comment><comment><USER38> The VMSVGA for linux guests sounds awesome, since they previously removed 3D support for "linux guests using Wayland".. ie. Ubuntu 18.10.

Can any linux experts here explain briefly what is required to get this VMSVGA support? (win 10 host, Ubuntu guest)

Do I have to grab additional drivers or "guest additions" from VMware? Or will Ubuntu 18.10 have 3D support out of the box if I run in with VB6 ?

</comment><comment><USER39> I _love_ how the website has been keep basically unchanged through the years. Its design is clear and easily navigable.

I hope it doesn't change.

<comment><USER40> I think (guessing) that's because this site is 90% just-a-slightly-themed Trac install. It's admirable that the design for that tool has stayed so consistent.

[https://trac.edgewall.org/](https://trac.edgewall.org/)

<comment><USER39> It's nice when things that work don't get change for changing's sake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm sure there are more useful changes but honestly I'm just happy that it finally supports my HiDPI screen.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm unable to find anything about the vboximg-mount utility in the documentation, except in the release notes.

<comment><USER43> [https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E97728_01/E97727/html/vboximg- mou...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E97728_01/E97727/html/vboximg-mount.html)

<comment><USER42> Thanks!

But I wonder why the section 6.11 about vboximg-mount is missing on the .org version of the manual:

[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html](https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "You are already running the most recent version of VirtualBox." -VirtualBox 5.2.22

</comment><comment><USER45> > iSCSI: In cases where there is no ambiguity, the LUN of an iSCSI target is > automatically determined, for targets with non-zero LUNs

Any SAN/Storage admins care to comment on if this is really great or really scary?

</comment><comment><USER46> What virt solution on win10 has 3d acceleration functional on Ubuntu? The Unity Ubuntu desktop is dead slow on VirtualBox...

</comment><comment><USER47> Since this is Oracle, I'm most interested to hear if there have been any changes in the license.

</comment><comment><USER48> Still no Solaris USB fixes after more than five years of busted / non-working USB pass-through. Good work, great job...

</comment><comment><USER49> Holy cow, what an ugly user interface. I mean, it wasn't exactly a Matisse before, but it's just hideous now on macOS.

Who thought "easy to use" rhymed with "make the icons look like nearly identical and somewhat indistinguishable blue squares"? Who decided that an already rather unprofessional drawing of Tux needed to be transformed into Baby's First Vector Drawing™?

And why, when previous versions already did a semi-respectable job of at least _pretending_ to look like a native Cocoa app on macOS, does version 6 not only regress its implementation of the Aqua theme down to everything-is-grey but do so by getting rid of the gradient that emulated NSToolbar on most settings windows whilst then _adding_ ugly gradients to the list of VM settings on the main window in place of the vastly more functional rounded rectangles with separate headers of previous versions?

You see, if it's possible to regress the user interface so badly _when it was already fine_, I don't hold much hope for the rest of the technology. Call me a snob, but it reeks of sloppiness.

<comment> jf- Exactly the kind of nitpicking negativity I expected to see when I opened the thread. It's an app for running VMs, not a piece of consumer software, it's not being marketed based on how it looks. Say what you will about oracle's business practises, but it's a crying shame that this is the top comment.

Edit: _was_ top comment. Crying shame averted.

<comment><USER50> >> It's an app for running VMs, not a piece of consumer software

On Macs, Fusion and Parallels are arguably consumer software. In the early days of x86 on Mac, they were the carrot to lure a lot of non-technical people who used Windows at work to get a Mac.

Since there are a lot of people who gravitate towards "free as in beer" software, you can't _not_ expect a Mac user to at least look at VirtualBox as a consumer app. There are probably plenty of Mac oriented listicles that recommend VirtualBox as a free option for running Windows VMs on Mac.

<comment><USER51> Yep. We're in the edu space, and we regularly recommend VBox to Mac users who want to run a single Windows application on their Mac. Fusion and Parallels are both better, but for intermittent use, free VBox wins out over $80-$100 Fusion/Parallels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is the link down for anyone else?</comment>


Cooking Flowchart: How to Cook Real Good Cheap Easy Food - <AUTHOR> http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1012/pyramid-submissions/cressida-bell/flat.html

<comment><USER2> Is the tuna Provençale using an alternate definition for "slug" I've not heard before? I think the conventional definition is way too much wine to put in something that's not meant to feed a small army, and a single bay leaf won't be nearly enough to balance that out.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any opensource php(not arc) HN clone? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an open source solution that offers me same functionality as HN for my niche community. It should be in php. You guys know about any such project?
I basically want to let my users share news(links) or ask questions and discuss about it just like HN.
I can use pligg(http://pligg.com) but it only lets you share links. <comment><USER2> <https://github.com/antirez/lamernews>

<comment><USER3> That seems to be Ruby only, anujkk asked for PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://noostr.com/> \- it's older, but not abandoned. An update is coming in the next couple months with some much needed patches and additions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rust. It is nice project. This is something I was looking for.

I will use it and will also integrate it with wordpress user system so that instead of noostr login system, wordpress login system is used(may be a plugin). Once done, I will provide it as open source on git and give you its link. It will bring more users to noostr. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've actually toyed with the idea of writing an HN clone in PHP for a while, if there was a demand for one I'd definitely do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess there will be huge demand not only as a standalone installation but also as wordpress/buddypress plugin. If it is well integrated with buddypress system people can also pay a few dollars for it. A news.[mysite].com can be useful for many niche community sites. The news/qa/discussion format of HN is a good way to engage members in constructive discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check this <http://hotarucms.org/></comment>


Functional Operating System and Security Protocol Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://decks.openmirage.org/31c3#/

<comment><USER2> There's also a series of blog posts from earlier in the year.

[http://openmirage.org/blog/introducing-ocaml- tls](http://openmirage.org/blog/introducing-ocaml-tls)

Edit: The ccc video is also up now. See it at (skip to 15mins in): [http://vod.c3voc.de/relive/6443/index.m3u8](http://vod.c3voc.de/relive/6443/index.m3u8)

<comment><USER3> How do I open that m3u8 file?

<comment><USER4> [http://22.214.171.124:8081/str/ner/playlist.m3u8](http://18.104.22.168:8081/str/ner/playlist.m3u8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An interview with two of the core developers.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgJwA73uqTg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgJwA73uqTg)

Truly amazing work here, statically compiling an application as an OS to be run on Xen. This project also sparked development of a pure OCaml implementation of TLS.

<comment><USER2> That's _one_ of the core developers (on the left). The other was a guest who was part of the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me? this seem like it is a big deal.</comment>


Icelandic names: children have different last names to their parents - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name <comment><AUTHOR> It's also fascinatingly controlling that any new first names (first names that have not previously been used in Iceland) must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee)

Also, a first name must be "gender-appropriate" (that is, you are not legally allowed to name a girl with a boy's name, or vice-versa).</comment>


Ask HN: How to get a programming job as a twice exceptional? - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional
I have a CS degree. I have been unable to get a job for 2 years. I have obvious symptoms of being 2e. I usually fail the communication portion or get rejected due to low GPA. My tech skills are decent.
Are there any services that can help me? <comment><USER3> I failed miserably when they gave me a math portion, but they still hired me, because I knew the language and I was good at logic.

Anyways, you might want to try a job site like [https://codefights.com/jobs](https://codefights.com/jobs) in which they test you on your coding skills.

I would also suggest getting together whatever projects you have worked on and your portfolio and resume.

Aside from that, I highly, highly recommend you go back to the college you graduated from and see a career counselor. Why do I recommend this? They can likely help you with your interview skills and personality. (Believe it - <USER2> sense of humor helps)

I'm convinced that personality plays a huge role in helping with the hiring process, and since you claim you fail the communication portion of your interview, it may be that you just need some help with your people skills.

While GPA matters slightly, a good personality can probably explain yourself out of why that isn't important in who you are.

Additional advice:

\- Make sure you have nice clothes to wear to the interview with a nice pair of shoes. (hopefully a strong resemblance to what you will be wearing and feel comfortable in, business casual)

\- Make sure your hygiene is on par along with a nice smelling cologne (if you know any women at all, ask them if they could come shopping with you or find a woman at the store -- the clerk who will likely be standing near the cologne / perfume section -- and ask her for an appropriate "business casual cologne")

\- Make sure you appear confident (even if you have to spend hours in front of the mirror practicing)</comment>


What's the Use of a Horse's Tail? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/whats-the-use-of-a-horses-tail/ <comment><USER2> Well. I had to read the entire article to see if I was missing something, but my answer is no.

The answer to the question as presented in the headline is more or less obvious for everyone who spent significant time around horses and cows: it keeps insects away. (It might also tell you something about the mood of a horse, less so with cows IMO. Small calves and lambs however will wiggle their tail when drinking milk, either because of some kind of enthusiasm or I've also heard to make sure their mother can smell that they are hers. Sidenote: IIRC lambs who try to steal milk will typically position themselves with the tail away from the head of the eve they are stealing from while lambs that are with their own mother will typically stand parallel to their mother, possibly so she can verify them.)

Then there is the question about the pendulum speed, why do horses swing their tails so much faster.

Well a simpler explanation might be because: 1. Tails arent ideal pendulums and 2.) To get enough speed to cover the top of their backs.

I'm no lawyer or startup founder or cryptographer so often I cannot point out if an article is wrong but I did grow up an a farm and I've earned my first money as a farm hand until I was about 20 and I also have some months in farming school so today it feels like I had something to share :-P

</comment><comment><USER3> My opinion: long mammals like cows, horses, camels, etc can't reach their behinds with their limbs. They can use their head (especially when the tail doesn't reach the fronter part of the behind), but it's not efficient because their head is heavy (and they're heavy animals in general) and has more inertia. Therefore, a tail is their swift efficient defense for the behind.

By contrast, smaller mammals like cats, dogs, rats, etc, don't use their tails to deter insect, because they can easily jump, move quickly, or smash their head into their body, because they are much lighter.

Now, this makes me wonder, why do cats and dogs have tails. Maybe im the case of cats it is for equilibrium, but dogs? I think dogs use tails to show people when they're excited :)

<comment><USER4> Look at what the cat's tail does when it leaps through the air, or the dogs tail when turning a corner at high speed, and it will become clear. It's for balance and agility.

Greyhounds and Cheetahs naturally have fairly long tails.

<comment><USER5> Can we call a greyhound's tail _natural_ , if it has been bred for purpose by people?

<comment><USER6> Can you call any domesticated animal natural?

<comment><USER7> It's a legitimate question but it's a slippery slope. A wild horse can be domesticated, is it natural? Donkeys, and camels too, even birds like parrots and raptors can be trained to do work and be subservient to humans.

If the question is learned behavioral domestication vs bred genetic domestication... Is a banana natural? Apples oranges grains, virtually every verity of produce at the store has been 'domesticated'. Are they natural?

Humans have been bred for group behavior, language and manual (slave) labor by means of evolutionary pressure and natural selection. Are we unnatural?

Pretty sure 'natural' is not the delineation we want to use

<comment><USER8> Do not conflate taming/training (of an individual) with domestication (of a species). Very different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> String players probably have a strong opinion on this ;)

Seriously, AFAIK there is no artificial solution for bow strings. The only good material for them is carefully selected tail hair from horses in places with cold climates, like Mongolia.

<comment><USER10> > The only good material for them is carefully selected tail hair from horses > in places with cold climates, like Mongolia.

Do string players usually try drinking horse blood mixed with fermented horse milk? I only played trumpet, so no idea what's normal for orchestra culture.

<comment><USER11> Hey man, are you having a good day?

<comment><USER10> No I mean that's actually a traditional Mongolian food.[1] I'm saying if you have such a deep relationship with these Mongolian horses (via the bow strings) to the point where they're responsible for how you make your art/living, it wouldn't surprise me if some percentage of string players eventually wanted to go over there and learn more about Mongolia and how these horses live in their native habitat. (And/or just try drinking fermented horse milk at parties or whatever.)

It's not really any different than how most people who are ethnically Norwegian or Swedish are probably eventually going to try lutefisk, not because they expect it to be good but just because it gives context to their identity or whatever.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No cows in zoos. So the biologists didn't study them.

Because of cow patties, there are always lots of flies in cow pastures.

Anyone who has been in a cow pasture in summer would easily notice that cows use their tails the same way as horses do: to chase away flies.

</comment><comment><USER13> I use a horse hair hygrometer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygrometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygrometer)

</comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr: "Our work shows that a horse's tail isn't just an ornament. It's their main line of defense against biting insects"

<comment><USER15> That's interesting considering it can really only swat away insects around it's behind and is useless for the rest of the body.

<comment><USER16> According to the article, the goal is not to hit any insect with the tail but rather to create an air wave that is impossible for insects to navigate.

<comment><USER2> Based on my of observations of cows while working around them another (or IMO rather, _the_ ) primary goal seemed to be to swipe or scare away flies and horse-flies that have already landed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At least some animals use their tails to balance when running fast.

</comment><comment><USER18> Balance?

</comment><comment><USER19> Its so that you can bite on it to make it go faster.</comment>


Science article on same-sex marriage retracted over faked data - <AUTHOR> http://retractionwatch.com/2015/05/20/author-retracts-study-of-changing-minds-on-same-sex-marriage-after-colleague-admits-data-were-faked/

<comment><USER2> Faking data is atrocious. It cheapens the efforts of those of us who spend months (or even years) trying to assemble honest and accurate data for analysis. It is a shortcut and a shame.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9579881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9579881).</comment>


Apple and the Next Big Thing - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/01/11/apple-and-the-next-big-thing <comment><USER2> I was an Apple naysayer back in the 90's when they were on the ropes. I remember a having a discussion with a colleague where I exclaimed why doesn't Apple just give it up? They only have something like 2-3% of the PC market share. He quickly responded by pointing out that Apple was making $2 Billion in revenue and that we were working for a company that was making $70 Million in revenue. Should we just fold up shop? I've never forgotten that discussion or the profound impact it's had on my way of thinking since. So yeah, a $500 Million Apple Watch market is something I would _kill_ for. Or any one of their myriad other "losing" propositions.

There's another lesson here as captured by the Harvard Business Review. Let's suppose you're a technology organization, especially an IT organization, and you want greater innovation. What path should you take? Should you focus on innovation or should you focus on execution? Counterintuitively, those organizations focusing on execution achieved greater innovation than those focusing on innovation. Execution is _everything._ Why do so many of us have all these great ideas yet aren't millionaires? Execution. So Tim Cook is focused on execution. Good.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Apple Watch is a business success of course, but I don't see it as a consumer success. Sure a lot of people are using it, but I feel a general sense of "wanting to like it" instead of really liking the thing. Nobody I know who owns an Apple Watch tries to recommend me or anyone else to buy one, and when I ask them what they like about it, they fumble about notifications etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Which companies develop code analysis tools? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in getting an internship/job that allows me to work on code analysis, but I'm not sure which companies are involved in this field. I'm aware that there are companies like Coverity whose main products are code analysis tools. However, I believe that there are others who develop their own analysis tools primarily for in-house use -- for instance, Mozilla has Dehydra and Treehydra for analyzing their C++ codebase. What are some other companies that have good teams working on analysis tools? <comment><USER2> JetBrains: <http://www.jetbrains.com/>

Whole Tomato: <http://wholetomato.com/></comment>


Engineering a Hook That Could Make Drone Deliveries Real - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/wing-alphabet-x-drone-engineering/ <comment><USER2> I'm friends with André! We work in the same building. He's been working on that damn hook for some time now. My desk is near a multi story atrium in the building and sometimes he tests the spooling system near me. I can't recall when he started this part of it but for at least a year now I've been hearing of the ups and downs. They have so many little issues to work out and they always want to keep weight down. It's too bad the article didn't have any pictures of the prototypes he has, but I guess they're not ready to reveal that.

André is also responsible for building a pretty awesome jet turbine powered chainsaw. :-D

[https://youtu.be/cr02tS39op8](https://youtu.be/cr02tS39op8)

<comment><USER3> Did he get paid to build that? How do I get paid to put turbines in power tools?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So a whole article on the perfect hook, with nice photos, but they didn't include one of he perfect hook they designed? Anybody found one?

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing that's because of patent or copycat issues. They don't want to reveal it until it's out.

<comment> at-fates-hands I would assume this is the case. I have several friends who demoed prototypes of stuff they were in the process of building, only to have it copied, marketed and sold before they could finish their design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All's cool, I already see the air full of drones (if I can't have my flying cars in 2020, drones would suffice), I'm truly worried about the noise though.

While hoping that electric cars will make cities less noisy (I can feel it in Berlin with more and more electric cars and scooters), the buzzing sounds of drones is already too loud for me - and I've seen only several so far.

That's going to be terrible, having dozens of them buzzing around, like your typical high-pitched scooter, but next to your 3rd floor window.

Any quiet drones in development? ;)

<comment> Harvey-Specter DJI's Macic Pro Platinum uses a different rotor design and rotor frequency to make it much quieter than previous models. Apparently it sounds more like a desk fan than a hive of angry bees.[0]

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16573820/dji-mavic-pro- pl...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/1/16573820/dji-mavic-pro-platinum- drone-sound-noise)

<comment><USER6> Sounds great! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recommend looking at the prototypes throughout the years from them [1]. It's pretty cool to see what they changed. I am super curious about some of their decisions. I am sure there are good reasons but I am not too clear why (like having smaller props. Did the wake of the large props decreased the efficiency for gliding more than using smaller props for hovering?!)

[1] [https://x.company/projects/wing/](https://x.company/projects/wing/) (scroll about half way down and there should be a slideshow you can click into)

</comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile in rural China:

> Just a few feet above the ground, the drone drops the box then zips back up > into the sky and disappears. The spectacle is over in 20 seconds.

[https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e- commerce...](https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e-commerce- with-drone-delivery-is-taking-flight-in-china)

</comment><comment><USER9> Drone deliveries are real. They are happening in China right now.

[https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e- commerce...](https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e-commerce- with-drone-delivery-is-taking-flight-in-china)

Rwanda too, with Zipline.

<comment><USER10> And starting up in Canada too: [http://www.dronedeliverycanada.com/](http://www.dronedeliverycanada.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Arcade claw machines already feature battle-tested mechanics for raising and lowering something on a string.

They do not simply deploy a wound bobbin, but instead have the bobbin after 2 idler wheels. One wheel is housed on a lever - The weight of the claw (or in this case package) keeps the idler on a lever pushed down during most of the operation - when it contacts a prize (or in this case the floor) the idler receives less load and thus the lever moves up ensuring it does not jam or unwind further.

Its a pretty ingenious design from an age where load sensing would be very expensive - and achieves robust bi-directional winding with end detection with just 1 microswitch.

This zero-moving parts hook sounds great, but I don't see how much different it can be from a gravity hook, or a ships buoy-hook; unless it simply captures the package interface in a specific orientation (anyone who has ever played "fishing" with 2L pop bottles and a curtain ring knows the satisfaction of such mechanisms) - my guess would be that the attachment point is a specific shape rather than a circle; to promote the tension-less force to movement up and off.

</comment><comment><USER12> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_hook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_hook) from the 19th century.

</comment><comment><USER13> This does not seem to be sound engineering to me.

Just the sole fact that they have no payload faring tells me that they don't have a single man with aeronautic engineering background.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I simply misunderstood what you meant, but doesn't the box with all the bubblewrap and whatnot cover that purpose? They're already lowering it to the ground, I don't think it would need much extra protection.

<comment><USER15> I think what the parent is alluding to is that a box shape does not cut through the air very well, and that they should add a more aerodynamic shape to make it easier on the drone.

<comment><USER16> From what I have seen, the "box" here is not a cube, but more of an aerodynamically-sound shape (at least to a layman's understanding of pointy- things-are-more-aerodynamic).

Not sure how recent this photo is, but it gives a feel for what the box looks/looked like at some stage:

[https://www.simplebotics.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/alph...](https://www.simplebotics.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/alphabet_project_wing_hybrid_2.jpg)

[https://9to5google.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/project- wing-...](https://9to5google.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/project-wing- traffic-e1496853046991.jpeg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1600&h=800)

[http://supreme2.ru/geek/uploads/2018/07/g2.jpg](http://supreme2.ru/geek/uploads/2018/07/g2.jpg)

<comment><USER13> >[http://supreme2.ru/geek/uploads/2018/07/g2.jpg](http://supreme2.ru/geek/uploads/2018/07/g2.jpg)

Well, this does look more or less reassuring. Still, even an aeronatics amateur will judge whatever they have there as an abomination.

I just checked. That man is... an industrial designer, not an aeronautic engineer.

<comment><USER17> That single person is a mechanical engineer.

Wing as a project, though, has _designed their own aircraft_ , so I'm going to say, yes, they have aerospace people on staff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bias in the ER - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/bias-in-the-er <comment><USER2>
      They hadn't bothered to consider statistically far more likely causes of an irregular heartbeat. In Redelmeier's experience, doctors did not think statistically.

Statistics assumes independence, something that may be hard to come by in the ER. Even when you start factoring in the covariance between conditions, there's so many confounding factors it's probably difficult to tease out any sort of significant r^2 for an individual patient

Instead, I would advocate for a pattern recognition method. Given a database of x million patients, it's likely someone has had the same type of case before, if not very similar. A sample would provide much less variable results than the individual patient,making diagnosis more confident.

Such a system could be used to predict symptoms before they become symptoms, saving time and preventing pain while serving to reduce hospital workload. Figure out a way to standardize it in the intake, and let the system predict what's wrong. It'll solve most of the cases, and identify new trends, leaving human doctors to focus on the edge cases like the one in the article.

<comment><USER3> I had a professor in undergrad who worked on order entry research. He talked about one of the problems facing Vanderbilt as far as scanning costs.

CT scans and MRI are crazy expensive. Trauma patient comes in, doc orders a CT scan, it comes back and he says, "shit, this doesn't tell me what I need to. I knew I should have ordered an MRI instead."

They used a decision tree learning algorithm and trained it using attributes of incoming patients and which type of scan would have been the most useful. Then they did a trail where ER docs would enter in patient information and what they would have picked, but then defer to the algorithm's judgement instead.

I can't remember the number, but they significantly reduced the number of unnecessary scans.

<comment><USER4> Just curious why are MRI and CT machines so expensive? They are the ultimate tool for debugging the human body. Shouldn't they be very affordable?

<comment><USER5> Cost inflation in the US is huge due to a combination of red tape, CYA, customers with good insurance subsidizing people with bad/no insurance, and many other factors. There's no simple answer, unfortunately. No one is entirely sure why medical costs are so high in the US. It doesn't appear to be any one factor that people commonly blame.

Fundamentally, they don't need to be expensive; via private medical tourism, you can get any sort of scan at a fraction of the US cost.

<comment><USER6> The problem is everyone gets paid too much. Our doctors salaries are far out of line with most countries , we have the strictest drug pricing laws in the world, and people love to sue. We also have a significant portion of the population paying no medical bills while the rest is overcharged to compensate. On top of that our health insurance is full of middle men like "PBM's" that do nothing but raise costs.

The combo means docs, drugs, treatment, and insurance are all more costly.

A fix is hard to come by but would work something like this.

1)subsidize the cost of medical school increasing supply of MDS 2)pass laws to protect physicians from frivolous lawsuits or at least limit damages. 3)disallow drug companies from advertising, ban rampant kickbacks to doc's that prescribe their drugs 4)ban anti competitive practices that prevent insurance companies from negotiating prices directly with manufacturers. 5) provide healthcare centers of last resort(the ER) compensation for patients unable to pay.

My last point is state specific and really controversial but it's based on what I've personally seen.

States with a lot of illegal immigrants spend an enormous amount for healthcare at the ER for these people. Around 1/4 of the people that came into the ER I was familiar with were likely illegal and over 90% either gave a fake name or never paid. The majority of those costs are passed on to those with insurance. I lived in an area with probably 3% of the population were undocumented.

Since the ER is healthcare of last resort they are forced to treat you even if you give them completely false info with no intention of paying. Illegal immigrants know this and preferentially go to the ER because they get treated without probing questions or need to pay. They also already have fake ID's in most cases so giving one to the hospital isn't a big deal. This enomous cost gets buried because it's politically unpopular to say and because the hospital just raises prices in everyone else to compensate.

<comment><USER7> _pass laws to protect physicians from frivolous lawsuits or at least limit damages_

Several US states have harsh caps on medical malpractice damages. They still see massively-rising medical costs. And in uncapped states the rate of growth in malpractice damage awards hovers very close to the rate of inflation of the US dollar.

Which sort of destroys the argument that "frivolous lawsuits" and massive damage awards drive medical costs in any significant way.

<comment><USER8> It's less the actual damages as much as it the defensive medicine that occurs because of the constant risk. If you show up with the flu, but it could be some weird disease that shows up in an MRI, the incentive for the doctor is to get you an MRI.

I used to believe in caps, but I think we could do better than that. Create a no-fault insurance market that pays people without the hassle of civil trials. That has the potential to allow medical professionals to be more open and honest about mistakes they make (similar to the aviation industry). That, in turn, would allow for data-driven decisions about how to make the biggest improvements for the lowest dollar amount.

Oh, and while we're at it, how about a self-driving unicorn that runs on rainbows...

<comment><USER9> 100% agreed with this. This is an insightful comment. people have no idea how much practice patterns would change if less defensive medicine could be practiced. So much of the inconvenience of medicine exists because the standard of care is extremely conservative to ensure minimal risk of litigation. The few states that have malpractice caps really doesnt change anything--those states just provide a good practice environment in rare situations, but doesn't change the way that standard medicine is practiced because that is developed out of state as a national consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article seems mostly a glorified praise of a top-med-school-doc, who in fact is probably in no way exceptional.

Some points:

\- the cardiac arrhythmia and pneumothorax anecdote absolutely screams "inexperienced staff on scene". Not performing basic imaging for car crash victims, and furthermore thinking of a medical (vs. surgical) cause first, would be absolutely laughable for any trauma/ER doc, and does not respect standard care guidelines. Big trauma centers also means lots of resident docs, more or less supervised. Additionally, the article does not give a lot of details about the case, so judgment of this particular case from an armchair is presumptuous.

\- Many medical professionals not only do not think statistically, they also believe statistical studies to be less reliable than their own clinical experience-based judgment, and often rightly so. People outside of the field often miss how catastrophic the quality of medical statistics are. The end result is that professors will cite the literature when it supports their opinion, and will say something on the order of: "in my experience as a clinician, it would be better to do such and such..." when it does not.

\- a serious and reliable approach to statistics is a priority concern of today's medical system. The main problems are 1) inability to collect reliable data, and 2) professionals with no statistical education analyzing said data. This is changing, albeit very slowly.

<comment><USER11> > Big trauma centers also means lots of resident docs, more or less > supervised.

Yep, that was my thought as well. That sounds a lot like a resident who started heading down the wrong path before the attending pointed them back in the right direction. A 'teachable moment' of the sort that occurs hundreds of times a day at teaching hospitals across the continent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a completely trivial takeaway from this, now I want to start using tissues to press elevator buttons in hospitals, and possibly bring along surface disinfecting wipes to use on them as well.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if this is why I've seen metal buttons more often in hospital elevators than elsewhere.

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

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, just being metal isn't enough. Most metal surfaces in hospitals are stainless steel, which can hold viable pathogens for a week or more. Silver plating would sterilize some pathogens in as little as 5 minutes.

<comment><USER15> > Silver plating would sterilize some pathogens in as little as 5 minutes

That would be very expensive for very little benefit - five minutes is more than long enough for multiple people to use the same buttons at a busy hospital during the day.

It's much better to promote behaviors like washing hands before touching food or mucous membranes (like rubbing your eyes) and using alcohol-based hand sanitizers when that isn't practical. That's why you see hand sanitizer dispensers every few feet at (good) hospitals, and why infection rates plummeted when hospitals introduced them.

In addition, never touch those buttons with the tips of your fingers. Use the knuckle of your pinky instead - it's much less common to accidentally use that to touch a mucous membrane later on, so it's slightly better.

<comment><USER14> The importance of handwashing can't be overstated, it is one of the keystones of sanitation and public health! Hospital transmitted infections would go way down if staff followed all checklists to a T.

It's a matter of defense-in-depth. When the traffic is heavy enough to have less than 5 minutes between contacts, how many more people would be infected after a week?

As for cost, it would be more expensive but less so than you might think. With how thin the plating layer is, even for heavy wear, the material cost is under $500 per square meter. For small objects like buttons, door knobs, and hand rails it's negligible compared to installation and other costs. By switching to a cheaper base material it could even be cheaper over all.

<comment><USER13> I agree with your assessment. Considering the constant work hospitals put towards maintaining a clean environment, it seems only natural to use self- sterilizing surfaces whenever possible, just as part of the overall system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how much this is influenced by medical staff being overworked.

<comment><USER17> I think there's more factors than that. Air traffic controllers are very overworked and they don't often cause collisions[1].

I think this part of the article is what the big problem is:

"Eighty percent of doctors don't think probabilities apply to their patients,"

I've recently gone through 4 years of medical treatment, and it's still ongoing. Only to find out this week that I have Lyme disease. Given that the chances of getting Lyme where I live is relatively small, it was overlooked for many years. I even asked doctors to test for it, but they refused. Meaning I'm a direct example of doctors not considering non-regular cases. It cost me over $20,000 out of pocket. Not to mention the other things it cost me.

I don't know if its a form of arrogance or how they are trained or a combination of both. But can be life-destroying for patients to say the least. The leading cause of death in Lyme patients is suicide.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/air-traffic-controllers- are-d...](http://www.businessinsider.com/air-traffic-controllers-are- dangerously-overworked-2015-8)

<comment><USER10> As a matter of fact, their training could indeed have motivated their refusal to test. The Lyme test not being perfect and the disease not being that frequent in your area makes testing dubious, depending on the particular numbers. In more scientific words: if the prevalence of the disease goes down, then the positive predictive value of the test decreases as well [1][2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_negative_predicti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_negative_predictive_values#Positive_predictive_value)

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2540558/pdf/bmj...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2540558/pdf/bmj00448-0038a.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wasn't aware of this, from the article, which appears to me to be a very, very big deal

> more people died every year as a result of preventable accidents in > hospitals than died in car crashes—which was saying something

<comment><USER19> It's a new finding a quite striking if true

Estimates are ~250k/yr for medical error, ~30k road deaths for the US

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627213)

You can hear the researcher talking about it here:

[http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139](http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139)

<comment><USER11> The number of people killed by medical errors thing is a little controversial. People who are about to die anyway get a lot of medical interventions (which is more opportunity for errors, big small). If a patient accidentally gets an extra dose of their antacid 48 hours before they die, is it really likely that error led to their death? Because it would be counted in that 250k/yr number...

<comment><USER19> Yeah there are question marks about the methodology etc. though it still seems there are a lot of errors [https://www.pamedsoc.org/tools-you-can- use/topics/quality-an...](https://www.pamedsoc.org/tools-you-can- use/topics/quality-and-value-blog/BlogJune2116)

<comment><USER11> Preventable medical errors are certainly something we should continue to work to reduce (significant progress has been made over the past few decades in that regard).

I'm not advocating complacency, just pointing out that many people think the 250k/yr number is substantially inflated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm just glad to read a story about smart people thinking about a hard problem.

It's an excerpt from a book - I think the point is to get interested in the question not draw a conclusion ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> There's a book called "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman that talks about systematic bias in human heuristic thinking.

> The more easily people can call a scenario to mind, the more probable they > find it.

This is practically a restatement of the "availability bias" from that book. It came to mind immediately when I saw the article's title "How can Medical Professionals Avoid Making Assumptions That Lead to Mistakes?"

The answer is probably that they can't, because they're human. One can put good processes in place, and do things like checklisting that dissuade people from making fast heuristic decisions (which we know are systematically, and predictably wrong). But people really hate stuff like that, doctors especially, and so it's an ongoing cultural battle.

Doctors in this regard are no different than software engineers, or plumbers, or any other human at work, they just get more attention when they screw up because people die.

<comment><USER22> One thing to note is that the social priming studies in "Thinking Fast and Slow" are not very replicable [1]

1\. [https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...](https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction- of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/)

<comment><USER23> Are only 'priming studies' in doubt? Or are most of the studies in social psychology in doubt today? The experiments and conclusions used to fascinate me, but once you lose trust it becomes hard to believe again.

I used to think all these experiments are conducted on people vastly different from me or the people I interact with, so those findings are not applicable to me. But now it seems that those are not applicable even to people who are a lot like the subjects of the experiments.

I'm probably having the bias where one under the influence of a single significant factor ignores all the rest :).

<comment><USER24> Maybe not all but here's another also with a reference to the priming kerfuffle [http://andrewgelman.com/2017/02/18/pizzagate-kahneman-two- gr...](http://andrewgelman.com/2017/02/18/pizzagate-kahneman-two-great- flavors-etc/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> endoplasmatic reticulum?

</comment><comment><USER26> Why did they replace instances of "fi" with the ligature "fi"?

Maybe they can more easily check for other sites cutting/pasting their work?</comment>


Algorithms Struggle to Recognize Black Faces Equally - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/best-algorithms-struggle-recognize-black-faces-equally/ <comment><USER2> If this seems unavoidable in the algo world, we need a new way of constructing these things.</comment>


eBay To Craiglist: Game On With US Version Of Kijiji - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/03/ebay-to-craiglist-game-on-with-us-version-of-kijiji/ <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know how eBay's arrangement with Craigslist works and how much they paid?

<comment><USER2> It wasn't an investment. They bought the stock privately from an early near- cofounder that Craig had given it to.</comment></comment>


Why Cognition-as-a-Service is the next operating system battlefield - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/12/07/why-cognition-as-a-service-is-the-next-operating-system-battlefield/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29

<comment><USER2> No news here, just buzzwords and "trends."

Platforms, services, and APIs are not operating systems.

"Battlefield" makes things sound a lot more exciting than they are. It'll be a while before "cognition services" are as cool and useful as speech recognition and maps as a cloud service, and there aren't exciting "wars" there, just a few competing players, or one player in the case of speech recognition since Nuance owns all the patents.</comment>


Musicians algorithmically generate melodies, release them to public domain - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain <comment><USER2> lots of discussion over here on this topic from two weeks ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22301091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22301091)

<comment><USER3> And discussed in 1692, by Bernoulli, Mersenne and Kircher

[http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1979HisSc..17..258K...](http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1979HisSc..17..258K/0000258.000.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like this to work, and kudos to the creators for having an interesting idea in a problem area. I've been surprised that copyright plaintiffs have been winning these cases, e.g. Marvin Gaye vs Robin Thicke, the Katy Perry case. Maybe this "all-melodies-ever" idea has an off chance to defeat copyright claims based solely upon melody, although I'm doubtful (that said, I haven't thought deeply about it and copyright law is filled with nuance).

But practically, most of these claims are not based solely on melody. For instance, a plaintiff beat Katy Perry based on expert testimony that the songs were similar "with regard to their pitch, rhythm, texture, pattern of repetition, melodic shape, and timbre."[1] The way these cases are being decided, plaintiffs could avoid dismissal by claiming copyright in some nebulous combination of protectable elements, even if melody is a key part of similarity.

One ray of hope: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which decides most of these cases, since it encompasses LA) is reconsidering these issues in the case where Led Zeppelin was accused of ripping off the Stairway to Heaven riff. The lawyers made their arguments last year, and we are waiting for a decision. A good decision could clean up the law governing these claims.

[1] [http://www.fordhamiplj.org/2019/09/27/katy-perry-lost-her- da...](http://www.fordhamiplj.org/2019/09/27/katy-perry-lost-her-dark-horse- copyright-lawsuit-but-the-real-loser-is-the-music-industry/)

<comment><USER5> This is a great video about that Katy Perry case by composer Adam Neely. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO- qvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg)

<comment><USER6> That was amazing, thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If their legal argument is legit, it also means they just infringed upon the copyrights of most modern songs by attempting to release their melodies into public domain.

Someone who owns the copyrights to a song should sue them for a paltry sum, just to see how things play out in court.

<comment><USER8> What if a good actor who owned an infringed melody sued them with the intention of losing to set a good precedent?

<comment><USER9> See vidarh's very good post which I won't repeat.

A court trail is not much a precedent. The judge can decide to not allow you to mention it. Even if a sympathetic judge (meaning faking neutral but really biased) does allow it, it will be with instructions that allow the next jury to ignore it.

To get a precedent you need to go to court. Then you need to appeal, and a court needs to agree to hear/rule on the appeal. Here you have a problem though: even if you conspire to lose, someone else can file an "Amicus brief" [https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Amicus+brief](https://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Amicus+brief) and make a compelling argument that you overlooked. A first round appeal may not get this, but by the time it get to the supreme court (probably not even you - it generally takes dozens of different cases before it gets that far) there will be a lot of interest and your attempt to lose can still win because those who want to win can pour enough into their briefs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > And in MIDI format, notes are just numbers.

>"Under copyright law, numbers are facts, and under copyright law, facts either have thin copyright, almost no copyright, or no copyright at all," ...

I'm surprised they went there, because that makes no sense. Nowadays books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and pretty much every other form of media consist of a stream of numbers, so by that argument _nothing_ would have copyright.

<comment><USER11> What if I can encode a movie by n^m then it becomes a crime to share that number. copyright makes numbers illegal, it's hard for most to understand since these are very large numbers. what if I can express the information as 2 numbers. (n) and (m) n^m. .... then n and m individually are not illegal, but someone telling you that you can apply ^ to it becomes illegal. or maybe that is not illegal, but if you consume it as the appropriate media it becomes illegal. ... the challenge today is that sharing these numbers or possession of these numbers are a crime. sure, you can call it a file, but it's just a number. if i take a foo.mpeg file and rename it foo.dat or encode it as a zip, gz, string of 1 & 0s, uuencoded data, the law makes all of that illegal. For now these numbers are illegal, but should numbers be illegal?

<comment><USER12> I read an article (>10 years ago so sadly I don't recall the title) about how computer science people see data differently from law people. Computers know nothing about the intent of data, it is only bits. The law (nominally) tries to figure out intent behind the data. It is possible to encode any data so it looks like a random stream of numbers; the law doesn't care what you did to the data, just if you intend to use that data to do something illegal. The user's intent colors the data.

<comment><USER13> [https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23) Colour of your bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "12 beats" makes no sense, they're talking about melodic phrases of 12 _notes_ or less. You can also have a same sequence of notes, but different rhythms or starting on different beats and it'll sound totally different. And then there's the non-diatonic, or borrowed chords - doesn't even take into account Lydian or Mixolydian mode. I dunno, first pop melody that comes to mind that is an example, Michael Buble's "la la la" line in "Everything" is not in this collection.

Also, for actual complete melodies, I'm not even sure Happy Birthday would fit their restrictions. It's diatonic and within an octave, but the range is from V to V rather than I to I. So if they're assuming I to I, it wouldn't fit unless they supported mixolydian mode.

<comment><USER15> If you watch their Ted talk, he discusses them expanding to those combinations as well.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hackers have this idea that they can hack the law. However, judges are not computer programs blindly following the written instructions of the law. They are expected to apply "judgement" when resolving these cases, and they are likely to not be impressed by this effort. I suspect this will have the same effect as if a bunch of people got together and released a massive public domain dictionary and then claimed that authors could not bring copyright claims anymore because all the words they used were in the public domain dictionary.

<comment><USER18> > I suspect this will have the same effect as if a bunch of people got > together and released a massive public domain dictionary and then claimed > that authors could not bring copyright claims anymore because ...

They could claim that as much as I can claim that this sentence I just cited ^ above belongs to me, it wouldn't change the reality of things that you supposedly wrote it.

We are talking about the combined work of a dictionary and not the individual words right? Because let's say Wiktionary was in public domain and not CC BY- SA, then if Elsevier went ahead and said that they had copyrighted this material (because it belongs to no-one in particular) and sued Wikimedia Foundation for publishing Wiktionary pages. Would that lead to plausible "judgement" and whoever got more money for lawyers would win? I'm speculation off course, hence the questions and I'm not actually familiar with the American copyright system.

<comment><USER19> Copyright for written works protects the particular production thereof.

I.e. You can summarize, you can quote, and you can paraphrase, but if you copy the thing in it's entirety, bind it, and sell it as a production of that work, you've violated copyright. If you copy the entire literary content, but leave out all the other trademarks, illustrations, etc, you'd still be likely to be held in violation of copyright as long as the amount of word for word reproduction of these original text in an unaltered form approached unity.

However, as far as I'm aware, you could technically get away with reproducing another book in it's entirety if you quoted every piece it of it, but there were other substantial chunks of content around said quotes. This hasn't typically been done for practical reasons, (as you'd arguably have two books worth of content in one), but would still technically just slide in as fair use as far as I am aware. Though I'm fairly certain anyone would just encourage someone seriously attempting to do that to just get permission, or publish a standalone work with references to a particular edition of the work in question.

The absurdity with music related copyright infringement is that the copyright holders assert they own a copyright to the underlying melody. The foundation of the composition if you will. It should encompass the work as a whole. Either that or the particular scoring. The example I gave above of a book that reproduces another book as part of it's composition would roughly parallel another song composed with the same underlying melody. A book containing a repro of a book in the sense of set theory is still a different composition than the original work. So too should be music.

Unless I'm flawed or unaware of some extra nuance about these things.

<comment><USER9> Quoting generally limits you to 10-20% of the entire work quoted, and you must add a lot of detail to justify those quotes. You could maybe get around it by writing 100 books each that quote 1%.

Even then you might get into trouble if it can be shown your quotes are in order and thus you didn't apply any creative effort in choosing it. (out of order with page references so it can be assembled might be fine).

All of the above with a ton of maybe. It all depends on factors that are not entirely settled and subject to change.

<comment><USER19> >All of the above with a ton of maybe. It all depends on factors that are not entirely settled and subject to change.

That's the part I object to frankly.

For a second I had a hope that there were actually guidelines that helped clarify it, but even with the 10%-20% rule, yet if one managed to write and publish an entire set of pages enumerating every semantically correct page, we'd again be in the same problem.

As the process of creation becomes more available to the everyman, I can see that copyright is going to be a thornier and thornier issue. Especially if smaller and smaller chunks are going to be deemed as an acceptable basis for infringement without taking into account that the commonality of those smaller chunks being allegedly infringed upon must have the quality of being arranged in reference to every other part of the composition as a whole as well to count as an infringement of you're even attempting to achieve a reasonable outcome of copyright. Which means that you couldn't claim infringement merely for the presence of a work in another, which I'm fairly certain copyright holders would find unsatisfying because it would sharply curtail the value proposition represented by going after people for purportedly "infringing" in hopes of garnering a settlement, which is what it seems has become the norm rather than the exception in IP circles nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "if the artist being sued for infringement could have possibly had access to > the music they're accused of copying—even if it was something they listened > to once—they can be accused of "subconsciously" infringing on the original > content."

Now, they just need to release an album called "Every Song Ever" and start having that played on the radio so that they can argue that every musician can claim in court that the version they were subconsciously inspired by the Every Song Ever version.

<comment><USER21> Not before that radio show is over which might take a while.

On a more serious note, if that project was ever taken at face value, that is as a collection of music and not as a piece of mathematical performance art exploring the theoretical boundaries of copyright, they'd get into quite some trouble: somewhere on that drive there's a copy of Strawberry Fields, perhaps even the Happy Birthday song, and we all know what that means.

<comment><USER22> _perhaps even the Happy Birthday song_

Not to be pedantic but at least this one was finally put to rest in 2018, in the US that is. And it's EU copyright expired in 2017 [0].

Copyright law is crazy but every once in a while a legal case comes along and injects just a tiny bit of sanity back into an otherwise insane system...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyrigh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyright_status)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of this work: "On 12 Sept 08, German Avantgarde musician Johannes Kreidler registered – as a live performance event – a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA [german copyright collecting society] using 70,200 forms."

[http://kreidler-net.de/productplacements-e.html](http://kreidler- net.de/productplacements-e.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> This resonates with feelings I have any time I want to work on a music based software project. It feels like a minefield even contemplating ideas in this field; like anything successful that analyzes music will get you sued.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think this is going to put a dent in cases of existing copyright holders making claims against people coming up with similar sounding works.

Firstly, there's an enormous corpus of music out there that precedes this effort, and those copyright holders can still make claims.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, how would someone prove that a musician copied the work from this algorithmically generated collection? These haven't been number one hits or in widely available collections. Someone could not conceivably argue that a musician derived their work from this due to familiarity with the melody.

I wish the copyright problem would go away. But I really don't see this as a solution.

A large number of musicians and software designers need to collaborate on a project that is much more permissive with regard to sampling, covers, arrangements, adaptions, etc, all the while preserving the rights of songwriters who just happen to write a number one hit song to get paid for their work.

The whole thing needs to be lucrative enough that composers, performers and the tech companies involved can afford to flip the middle finger to anyone exhibiting corporate greed.

<comment><USER26> >how to distinguish a solution like this from a traditional record label.

It could be a traditional record label, just with a rule in its charter that all works are released into the public domain ten years after recording (instead of the regular 70+ years). This should still be profitable to run since you have a decade to profit from any song.

Maybe even immediately releasing into the public domain and just operating from the profits of live performances could be a viable business model for a record label.

<comment><USER25> Release after a certain number of years is one possible way forward. The problem I see with that though is you want as much excitement as possible about your number one hit in the first few years. Covers, adaptions, arrangements, performances all add to the excitement around the thing you are trying to sell. You should want those.

My personal (not very practical) opinion on it is that any derived work that is musically distinct should be considered a separate work. If it isn't the same tune, it isn't the same tune, even if it is similar. If it isn't the same performance, it isn't the same performance.

In fact, the only thing that should be copyrightable by a composer is a specific arrangement of a melody, not the underlying melody itself. (The problem of course is that this is subjective, and not something the law or technology is well-equipped to decide.)

As for record companies, all they should care about is people ripping off their exact CD's and putting them on YouTube for free and not paying them. In my opinion, it's greed to want a cut of a performance/arrangement/cover of a melody that someone else put all the work into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Give enough monkeys enough pianos and time and they'll eventually write Mozart's Piano Sonata No 16.

Interestingly, it wouldn't be eligible for copyright[1], but somehow the algorithmically generated work would be?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute)

<comment><USER28> > Give enough monkeys enough pianos and time and they'll eventually write > Mozart's Piano Sonata No 16.

Sure, No 16... No 19 is right out though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> An "8-note 12-beat combo" is nowhere close to being a complete catalog of every possible melody. Not even in pop.

<comment><USER30> Maybe, can you give an example that does not fit into this?

<comment><USER31> Though you asked for an example... but maybe its best to show a counter- example instead? Here's the Imperial Death March played in a Major-scale, instead of a minor scale.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MShtCg4fk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MShtCg4fk)

If everything was in an 8-note (no accidental, transpositions only) measure, they'd sound like "Vader's redemption".

To sound sad, you MUST shift to a minor key. A minor key has sharps and flats to create tension. Any "sad sounding" song cannot be properly played in a major key.

<comment><USER32> > A minor key has sharps and flats to create tension.

The natural minor or Aeolian mode doesn't use any notes outside the diatonic scale (probably what you meant by "sharps and flats"). It's very possible to write sad music in the natural minor. REM's "Losing my religion" for example.

> To sound sad, you MUST shift to a minor key

With sufficient skill you can write sad music in any key or scale, there's no hard and fast rules here. Tonality is only one of the elements you can use to shape the emotion that's conveyed, and it's all quite culturally relative too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The scary part of this (and Adam Neely does a great segment on it) is that the person simply has to have a copy of the work to claim the copyright. It reminds me of genetics companies patenting "random" sequences in a hope that some might contain some value in the future.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What happens if the algorithm creates a melody that is already protected by copyright? Are they prepared to defend themselves in court? Are they willing to take the "offending" piece out of the library?

<comment><USER34> The algorithm has almost certainly has done so many times. But it just writes numbers (in the form of MIDI sequences) to a file. Numbers aren't copyrightable. I don't think there's any issue of them defending themselves. The bigger question is whether these numbers can be used as a defense when another musician gets sued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I only see an 8-tone scale being used so nope, not every possible melody.

<comment><USER30> Are there actually any popular melodies that span more than one octave?

Also, suppose I take a popular melody spanning two octaves and compress it to one (just c' to c). Will these melodies actually sound different enough to be considered independently copyrightable? My guess would be no.

<comment><USER31> > Are there actually any popular melodies that span more than one octave?

Star Spangled Banner's melody spans 3 octaves IIRC.

But more importantly, any melody with an accidental would require the 13-notes that include the 5 "sharps" or "flats" per octave.

Every country song is pretty much played in the 5th, meaning the 4th note is USUALLY played sharp. So your standard country tunes are pretty much guaranteed not to be in this set.

Jazz and Blues music has a LOT of accidentals, and they also are syncopated up the wazzoo. Even IF Jazz and Blues music were all in C-Major, I doubt they tried out their strange rhythms.

At best, 8-note, single-octave, 12-note rhythms, cover a very, very small subset of simplified classical music (Simplified Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and not the original Mozart version either: [https://youtu.be/KKCsujeeu8o?t=50](https://youtu.be/KKCsujeeu8o?t=50)) and maybe some simple folk songs like "Mary had a little lamb". But for goodness sake, even "Happy Birthday to you" spans more than one octave...

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>----

I just counted it. "Simplified Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is 14-notes. Even this beginner song is too long to be covered by the 12-notes auto-generated by this algorithm.

So we're talking "Hot Cross Buns" level rhythms... I guess? But "Hot Cross Buns" is 17 notes long.

"Row Row Row your boat" is syncopated. I doubt its rhythm is covered. Its also 26 notes long.

Here's a better question: what song is actually covered by 8-note, single octave, 12-notes combinatorics? I'm having difficulty figuring one out. I'm picking the simplest songs I know of and they still don't seem to be covered.

<comment><USER9> Many songs have A and B parts. If we allow combining many different "melodies" to create the larger whole that covers some music in that now you only need to find 8 note, single octave combinations. I don't see why we should allow that, but if you allow it.

8 notes in a single octave pretty much limits you to melodies of someone who has been studying music only a few months. Even my penny whistles are capable of more than that after a couple months of study. (a few days if you already know music or are interested in one specific song)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is cool. It's kind of like the project to algorithmically create prior art of every possible idea in order to weaken patent trolls [1].

Too bad they went with CC0 instead of CC-BY-SA – we could have ended restrictive copyright on music and made all music free!

[1] [http://allpriorart.com/](http://allpriorart.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> There is far more work involved with creating music than simply creating an unique melody. And yet, maybe, pop music can and should be kept simple — like these generated melodies — to have a broad appeal. It's a shame that artists can be sued for likeness if their work feels original and introduces a new tone and feeling when heard.

</comment><comment><USER38> The role of the artist is to make choices. Every possible thing is the exact opposite of making a choice, and of a creative act, therefore it makes zero sense that anything could be said to be copyrightable about this.

</comment><comment><USER39> This doesn't make a lot of sense. Songs are copyrighted two ways, performance - the arrangement, composition and lyrical content of the song, and the master - the actual mastered resulting waveform.

Samples are copyright infringement on the master and using for instance the same chorus as someone else in your song falls under performance.

I don't get how this helps either.

<comment><USER40> You're completely omitting written music, which is extremely important in copyright law. Music can be copyrighted without ever being performed—writing it down is enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Cool! Who's going to make a browser to listen to all these first?

</comment><comment><USER42> Just ridiculous. Choice of instrument/rig and articulation alone are enough. If I annihilate "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on guitar like Hendrix did to the Star Spangled Banner, I did that and I deserve to be paid if you enjoyed my playing.

</comment><comment><USER43> You don't have to do a lot to get a TedX talk, I guess.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best HN like site for crypto currencies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> As far as I'm aware, Cryptopanic[0] is the only decent news aggregator but it doesn't have HN-like discussion features.

News in the cryptocurrency community can be extremely unreliable and designed to influence trading negatively or positively so most people stick to sources they can really trust.

Day/Swing Traders - They use Telegram channels(Whalepool, Whaleclub, Bitstash, Coinfarm) for their discussions and pick their news from subreddits(r/btc, r/bitcoin, r/bitcoinmarkets, r/Ethereum, r/ethtrader).

Developers - Slack and Telegram. Reddit and Twitter for their news

[0][https://cryptopanic.com](https://cryptopanic.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out [http://reddit.com/r/cryptomarkets](http://reddit.com/r/cryptomarkets). Lots of good discussion (just ignore the HODL/moon trolls).

</comment><comment><USER4> The Financial Times' Alphaville blog is my favourite. Free to read once you register.

It's not exclusively crypto-related, but they dedicate substantial coverage to developments in the whole crypto/blockchain/ICO space.

They generally approach it from a finance point of view, so it's required reading if you're interested in anything more than just the technological aspects.

[https://ftalphaville.ft.com/](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/)

<comment><USER5> I can only seem to find links to sign up for a paid account.

[https://www.ft.com/products?segID=70703&segmentID=190b4443-d...](https://www.ft.com/products?segID=70703&segmentID=190b4443-dc03-bd53-e79b-b4b6fbd04e64)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> General crypto subreddits: /r/bitcoin, /r/ethereum

Subreddits for daily traders: /r/bitcoinmarkets, /r/ethtrader

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What are the best resources, web sites, blogs etc for understanding what is happening in the crypto-currency world?

<comment><USER7> Check out [https://coingenius.io](https://coingenius.io) for info on top currencies, exchanges and for tracking your portfolio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> None at the moment...

Brb, building HN for crypto.

</comment><comment><USER9> Various Reddit subs.</comment>


Apple stops you playing different music on iPhone and HomePod - <AUTHOR> https://www.cultofmac.com/600518/apple-music-stops-parallel-streaming/ <comment><USER2> I was shocked to find out is seems there's the same limitation on Spotify, this is just lame. There's no other way around it, streaming services only work because they're more convenient than the alternative, if they're not convenient then people simply won't use them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading those Terms of Service are important!</comment>