Think piracy is killing the music industry? This chart suggests otherwise - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/07/think-piracy-is-killing-the-music-industry-this-chart-suggests-otherwise/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> These articles are pointless. This guy knows nothing about being a professional musician.

The investment money is gone. Record labels functioned as venture capital firms. Their bread and butter, the physical audio disc, is no longer. No other entity has yet stepped in to provide mentorship and investment capital for young, bootstrapped musicians.

The schedules of musicians do not align with the modern working world. Employers do not look highly on people who take 8 weeks off to tour. In order to make money touring, you have to be pretty well established.

Also, unlike software development, there is no 'day job' that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture. Their only option is are low-paying temp jobs, mainly in the service industry, that they must frequently quit in order to work on their craft.

And if concerts and not recorded albums are their craft, they will need to spend lots of time on the road perfecting it. But how? Practice does not make you a good stage performer. And you can't play 10 times a month in your home city and expect fans, promoters, or clubs to think nicely af you.

Sure, there are still new music artists that emerge, but nowhere in the numbers that they have in the past. It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don't see that and in fact argue the opposite, don't have any inkling of what is actually going on.

<comment><USER3> Are you claiming that music is a dying art form? Really?

The music industry is at best a 100 year old historical anomaly compared to the at least 4000 year history of music. The life of musician has pretty much always been extremely unlikely to be financially rewarding. Even at the height of the modern music industry maybe 1 in 1000 aspiring musicians ended up being signed to a major label. Musicians by and large have always made the bulk of their income based on in person performances. The only difference now is music companies now are losing out on record sales and starting to design contracts where artists have to split show and endorsement money with the label as well as record sales.

Honestly its a moot point, the technology has changed, and the music industry has to change with it or die. The whole music industry was created by the technology of the record, and will change or die with the advent of easily copyable media.

<comment><USER2> Of course music will still be around. I'm saying that music as we know it, music that has been made as a result of the industry and technologies of the 20th century, is dying.

Claims that it isn't are false and misinformed.

What is ALWAYS missing from the "new solutions" is the investment in emerging artists.

Sure, you see companies like Live Nation/Roc Nation setting up these 360 deals. There is definitely some promise to these new approaches, but the investment money is WAY lower than what it was. I don't know the figures, I can't find the numbers online, but I will talk to people I know in music to see if I can track down some facts and write an article on the subject.

My point stands, however. The author of this article doesn't know what he's talking about and the data he presented is useless and doesn't contain enough information to come close to accurately representing the music industry.

BTW, there is a great opportunity for "music venture capitalists".

<comment><USER3> Music as we know it? What does that even mean? Really I dont understand what you are getting at? This isnt snark I really want you to explain.

Perhaps you mean the phenomenon of popular artists that are so big that they are household names across all demographics across the globe/nation. If so then your probably right. Probably we will see less new justin timberlakes/drakes/britney spears level superstars, and more local/regional/niche stars.

as far as the investment, really labels/mangement companies will continue to invest in whatever makes them money... the size of the investments will probably diminish, but realistically the breakdown of record label investment is 90% marketing/promotion. And realistically if your projected to sell 50% less you should cut your marketing budget appropriately, that has very little to do with the music as an art form at all.

<comment><USER2> Music as we know it. Rock and roll and popular music as an art form. Albums, 3 minute songs. Things that were designed to fit on to a plastic disc and be played on the radio between commercial breaks. This is what made up the "music industry". Touring was a loss-leader to sell plastic to people up until about 10 years ago. You had to go out and make your sales! Come to town, have the local paper and radio do your marketing for you, people maybe come to your show or maybe go buy your album at a record store. That is going away. Hence, the art form will die along with the changing media landscape, because well, you know, The Medium is the Message.

I'm not crying about this, BTW, I'm merely pointing out that the death has started. For fucks sake, I don't even really LIKE making records as much as I like writing and performing music with a group of people, so personally I'm enjoying these transformations.

The point I'm making is, is yes, the music industry is dying. Something else will come along and replace it. Music won't die, but whatever we've become accustomed to over the last 80 years is quickly disappearing.

Again, claims that this isn't happening are misinformed.

<comment><USER4> All of your examples have to do with minor minutia of the day to day life of a musician, but you give no examples of how the actual landscape of music has changed. And I find it baffling if the point is that the focus and work required by an artist today is _more_ different compared to one 10 years ago than it was for that artist compared to one 50 years ago. Television, music videos, global marketing, magazine specialization. These things didn't alter a musicians life more than the current decline in retail sales?

Please expand and explain, because Albums, 3 minute songs, radio play with commercial breaks and touring are all very very similar to 10 years ago from a consumer perspective despite the proliferation of other choices and the changing landscape.

<comment><USER2> Dude, we haven't seen the landscape change yet because no one knows what the fuck is going on.

Let me put it this way. Should I make my art in the form a 180 minute long atonal sound collage that can only be heard by buying a custom piece of machinery that is installed in your house OR should I make my art form 55 minutes of music that can fit on a Compact Disc?

Think of shipping containers. Should I make my own custom shipping container or should I go with the modern, modular standard?

The medium affects the kind of art that is made. The reason we even ended up with the three minute single and the LP have more to do with the physical limitations of vinyl than anything else. An entire industry and culture sprung up around this. It is prohibitively difficult for a musician to go outside of the well established path of the current industry to make and share their music.

Music isn't about 3 minute songs, it isn't about albums, or anything of the sort. It conforms to the momentum of culture and technology as much as it inspires the technology and culture.

It will survive, but the current culture and industry will of course go away, and with it, the entire art form.

Think about that phrase. ART FORM. Roll it around in your mouth, taste it on your tongue. Art will always be made, but it's shape is constantly in motion.

<comment><USER5> Mmmmmm 180 minutes of atonal 'sound collage' hell, otherwise known as complete and utter self-absorbed wank. 99% of the music listening public aren't interested in hearing it.

There are plenty of examples of the non-3 minute song and generally they've been done by masters of their art, the reason songs are 3 minutes long is because that's our attention span for average music.

Records, your plastic limiter, haven't been popular for decades, eons in pop music time, entire generations of teenagers have gone and past, and yet most songs are still 3 minutes long.

So there's your pet theory out of the window.

<comment><USER2> My point with the "sound collage" wasn't with the CONTENT, rather the MEDIUM. It makes more sense for me to ship a stereo recording across an established channel like a Compact Disc instead of coming up with my own proprietary medium. If I make an art form known as an "album" and I make it available on Compact Disc, I can plug in to an existing industrial infrastructure. Sound engineers, mixing engineers, networks of distribution, journalism, marketing... EVERYTHING has been built on top of the little plastic disc. If I forgo the little plastic disc, the album, well, I can't tap in to this industry. You literally can't get someone to review or promote your work as a musician unless you have a little plastic disc.

If you're interested in my "pet theory" of the medium being the message, I highly recommend you check out Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to every small-time musician I've spoken to, piracy killed the indie music scene. In particular, Boston used to have a vibrant music scene that's all but dried up now, and every former musician who played that scene I've spoken to points the finger at file sharing.

This is because piracy changes the economics of how the major labels behave. Before, major labels used to take risks on what they thought might be the "next big thing" in order to reap the profits when it does turn out to be popular -- and landing a major label contract, and the attendant fame and fortune, is what motivated many bands to get together and play. These days, however, if the "next big thing" is starting to show signs of catching on, that probably means its music is already pirated and all over BitTorrent, and that's like Kryptonite to a major label. So they don't sign that cool new band and the band has to make do with concert and T-shirt sales and word-of-mouth. And that may mean having to choose between your music and putting food on the table. To most musicians, your "big break" is _how you make a living with your music_.

It also brings the quality of music down, as now the major labels will only invest in "sure bets" like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, or Justin Bieber. The ones that don't get signed to major labels either take nine-to-five jobs and stop playing, or are so in love with their music that they don't mind being penniless hipsters. Most can't achieve the critical mass it takes to build a large fan base, so most people's conception of what music is is disproportionately influenced by the formulaic "sure bet" acts.

So support your local musicians. Support DRM.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if serious...

Music labels have always sold what is popular, they don't care whether it's good or not, they're a business. For a while, they were quite good at it, but then they started to suck at it and then the money dried up. Now all they have left is investing in "sure bets". Filesharing simply accelerated that process and showed the underlying error more quickly.

Look - Art is hard. For a little while, there was a lot of money in music. Droves of indie musicians missed that train and now they're jealous of the success of youngsters that you really shouldn't envy for a nanosecond. It's particularly sorry that they blame their fans for it.

The reality is: Their music is only good enough for a little filesharing. And that's why they don't get signed.

Most "good" musicians who are also reasonably popular have worked their asses off day and night for decades. Success in art is about getting the privilege to translate your innermost into something that can be shared and then seeing it resonate with people so much that they want to share it forward. Translating your innermost into art that resonates with people is frigging hard and takes years and years. Having it resonate with more and more people so you build momentum takes years and years again. Either you're with that, or don't go down that road.

There is no manna raining from the sky and there is very definitely no guarantee for manna raining from the sky that is unfortunately wasted on those you think don't deserve it. That's petty and self destructive (hey, indie musicians).

If you think you deserve something, but somebody else who doesn't deserve it gets it, you have a lot of soul searching to do. Especially if you're that bitter in your early twenties.

As Stephen Fry said: Self Pity (as a superset of hate) will destroy everything except itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They keep talking about "the industry", but I don't think anyone's been saying the entire industry was being killed. It's the recording companies that have been complaining, and yeah - their orange line doesn't look too healthy. As I understand it, most of the money for concerts and other distribution channels is going to the musicians themselves and newer companies. Am I mistaken here?

<comment><USER9> "As I understand it, most of the money for concerts and other distribution channels is going to the musicians themselves and newer companies. Am I mistaken here?"

Historically, yes. Labels generally had very little to do with concerts.

These days, a lot of artists are signing "360 deals", which means that the label receives a cut of basically all the artist's revenue streams, including touring and merchandise.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal)

<comment><USER10> A (hopefully) smaller cut of everything instead of a large cut of specific revenue streams seems like it might encourage better record company behavior. Rather than highly promoting specific sections of the revenue stream to the detriment to others (overplaying on the radio causing lack of interest before the tour is done, etc), a more holistic approach may emerge, which better benefits all parties.

<comment><USER9> I have a few friends in pretty successful bands, and most of them (and other artists they know) tend to have a pretty negative view of the 360 deal.

My impression is that it's generally considered to be the only option in most cases. In certain segments of the music industry, major labels are still basically the gatekeepers. Wanna be the next Modest Mouse? Fine. You can put a few records out on a small indie label and do pretty well. Wanna be the next Taylor Swift? You pretty much need a huge label like Universal. The discovery channels for certain types of music are a lot narrower. If you're an aspiring pop singer, you need pop radio. And you won't get it without major label backing.

So the labels have the power to basically say "Here's the deal we're willing to offer. You can take it or leave it". Most artists would probably be better off keeping the majority of their touring profits (since, along with licensing, I think that usually tends to be the biggest source of income) -- but if they're stuck between a bad deal and no deal, a lot of artists will take what they can get.

<comment><USER11> >If you're an aspiring pop singer, you need pop radio. And you won't get it without major label backing.

Adele's mega success is absolute proof that this is not true. Her label, XL, is a true independent and ushered her to multiplatinum status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Major record labels are the venture capitalists of the music world.

They invest large amounts of capital in a small number of artists, hoping for big hits that are highly profitable. Most aren't, so they're savagely dumped. Worse, unlike venture capital, record labels insist on control over the reproduction rights of the music they fund, so artists lose control over their own work. It's a really crappy deal for musicians, unless they're one of the lucky handful who go platinum.

When these articles talk about "the music industry", they're really talking about the major labels. They're getting beaten up, and for good reason. It's not piracy - it's distribution costs, which are converging on zero due to Internet technology. The labels were needed when it was an incredibly expensive and difficult proposition to put copies of a record in thousands of record stores. Today, artists can just put their music out on the cloud basically for free, and pay a very reasonable and competitive fee on download costs and payment processing from the likes of iTunes, CDBaby, Bandcamp, and others.

At this point, what are the major labels bringing to the table? Their increasingly irrelevant marketing prowness? Their marketing was based heavily on de-risking due to the investment expense (which is why the major labels pushed so much tame, crappy music - it was safe). That's exactly the opposite of what many musicians need!

So yeah. Musicians are doing fine. It's not as easy to get filthy rich now, but it's a lot easier to make a decent living doing what they love, without compromise. As for the major labels? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

<comment><USER13> Musicians are doing fine? I'm sorry but you base that on what? Because I live in NYC and am acquainted with a representative cross section of professional and aspiring musicians across several genres and including rock stars, sidemen, classical musicians, jazz musicians, jingle writers, you name it.

And overall, most people are hurting. It is harder than it was. Some people who write for TV and commercials are doing ok, some great. Some mid sized bands are doing great. Most everyone else is taking a beating.

<comment><USER14> > It is harder than it was.

Indeed. I remember the happy 1990s. 13-14 year old kids could earn more money than their parents writing websites for companies, and other kids were working as consults for tech companies.

Now days, things like that doesn't seem to happen anymore. It really is harder now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _To be sure, the industry hasn 't enjoyed the strong growth it saw in > previous decades. Revenues are down slightly since the peak about a decade > ago. But there are still plenty of opportunities to earn a living making > music fans love._

So, yeah, that'a a big caveat. Notice how the graph, on the left side, cuts off where we see the end of a steep upward slope. How steep was that slope for the previous 20 to 30 years? That's kind of relevant to the argument.

</comment><comment><USER16> A similar study from Norway: [http://www.espen.com/thesis-bjerkoe- sorbo.pdf](http://www.espen.com/thesis-bjerkoe-sorbo.pdf) and from Sweden: [http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/other_actions/col_2009/pub...](http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/other_actions/col_2009/pub/kth_annex.pdf)

Overall? Less sales more concerts - and musicians earn bigger percentage of money from concerts - so there are more musicians and a little bit better earning.

<comment><USER17> For newer artists though it used to be that labels offered tour support to help with costs. Now, a lot of smaller bands doing national tours that I've spoke to are instead of taking their pay from merch sold while on tour instead using that money to cover costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The graph doesn't mention whether it's adjusted for inflation. If it isn't then the trend is actually downward. $50K 1998 corresponds to $69K 2011.

[http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm](http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing that graph completely fails to address is the fact that economies of scale have massively driven all the good news there. For example, having a massive back catalogue means you can earn more from Spotify or Rdio. Good news for the biggest players, bad news for everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER19> This graph is pointless, revenue is not the same as profit. Sure total revenue has stayed the same but that tells you nothing about profit.

One the the major increases in revenue is concerts. They are expensive and often operated at a loss to promote physical media sales

<comment><USER20> The belief that touring is a panacea really cracks me up. Touring does not make money for indie musicians. Maybe for the top 1% or less, fine - there are always anecdotes - but far, far more common is the kind of tour where you save up money, sleep on couches or share a motel 6 bed with a bandmate, eat crappy food, play to mostly empty rooms to people that are turned away from you talking to their friends, for a door fee that doesn't cover your food and gas money. And that's for _good_ musicians. The bad musicians don't tour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate this idea that concerts are this more nobel endeavor and the saviour of music.

Concerts for most popular music are a low-value-add phenomenon. It's the equivalent of going to a WWE show. They usually involve childish antics which then passes as an 'amazing' concert performance. It's never really about the music, yet is considered 'authentic.'

</comment><comment><USER22> Not surprised at all to see the concerts line going up in this chart. The amount of money my friends and I spend on live music is getting out of hand lately, largely because mid-sized acts can now charge big prices for tickets. I like the fact that 'indie' acts now sell out shows in decent venues and can get away with charging $60+ for tickets. I think the pirating of music is making things a lot easier for those mid-sized bands to push their way into getting a decent-sized world-wide audience. I think groups like Chvrches or The Naked and Famous (both of which coming to my city in the next month, selling tickets at $60+, and likely to sell out their venues) have probably benefited a lot from the pirating of their music. I've never paid for either of their music, nor has anyone I know (in fact, I know very few people who still regularly pay for music at all), but most of my social circle are likely to go to one or both of those shows.

</comment><comment><USER23> The x axis is misleading. The gaps (in years) are: 2, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1.

<comment><USER24> ah yes, the wonderful Excel line graph. Always use scatter!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> " _Data provided by the music industry were misleading; contrary to what lobbying organisations were claiming, the music industry was doing reasonably well._ "

In my mind, this is the real clincher, and the reason why this chart runs counter to previous (false?) data - although I'd love to see their evidence for this statement.

Edit : their reasoning is explained by [http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33905/1/LSEMPPBrief1.pdf](http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33905/1/LSEMPPBrief1.pdf) pages 4-9

</comment><comment><USER26> Three interesting things here:

1) Revenue from recording IS dropping. Some of that is people consuming it differently (hence the uptick in mobile / internet), some may be piracy, some may be disinterest / people preferring to spend money elsewhere.

2) How the music industry has closed the gap - the biggest increase is in money from concerts, which makes sense - if the record companies are scared, rightly or wrongly, of piracy, focus on something you can't pirate - the live experience.

3) What does this mean for books, movies and other media in the move to digital? In particular books don't have a concert equivalent to pick up the slack. Yes authors tour but they're not going to make money out of it the way a band does. Will they see a similar drop off and if so how will they fill it?

<comment><USER27> For #2, the 360 deal (and its variants) arose to mitigate this - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal)

For #3, I think we consume books/movies so differently that what happens in the music industry has no effect on other mediums. The biggest change since 1983, for example, is that people today have the opportunity to hear any and every song they want all day, every day without having to pay. Sure, you might need to listen to a commercial every once in a while (Spotify, Youtube, Pandora, etc) but that's okay - you aren't a "pirate" if you use those services so it's cool. And you can go about your daily life while doing so - you can listen to 8+ hours of music at work today if you want and still get your work done. That didn't happen back in 1983 - _if_ you got to listen to music, you'd share that music with everyone else in the office and it would either be muzak (!) or a radio station. You didn't get to have these deep niches and deep preferences that Spotify/et al allow.

Movies though - that requires your full attention. Can you read a book while you code? Can you watch a movie while you do your company's books? It's just too different.

<comment><USER26> Not saying that the music industry impacts the other industries, just that there are parallels in the move to a digital world and these may be things that will apply.

But yes, there are differences, but there will be similarities too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I don't think piracy has been a problem for a while. Most casual pirates transitioned to free streaming services/YouTube.

The odd ranges on the x-axis also make this chart a little misleading.

It's also interesting to note how revenues switching from recorded music to concerts will effect artists. Previously you could go into the studio, record an album, and sell it. You then tour behind it to promote it.

Now with the money coming mostly from concerts you will have to tour a lot more. In other words revenue from concerts has gone up but it takes a lot more work to make money from concerts than recorded music.

</comment><comment><USER28> Always left out of these graphs: there are more musicians than ever before, and vastly more recordings being released.

Earnings at the top are higher than ever, and the tail is longer and shallower.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well the problem with trying to counter the argument that piracy is killing the music industry is that we are talking about potential sales that would have happened in a universe where no piracy existed. I doubt the graph will help much. They can still claim that with the trends before 2004 the total revenue should have exceeded $100 billion so they still lost $40 (imaginary) billion.

</comment><comment><USER30> Scale of years is uneven, revenue != profit. Also, if the only thing that's countering the loss in album sales is concerts, I think we should take a look at ticket prices for concerts. I think they've grown to be ridiculously (prohibitively) expensive over the years, which is just wrong.

</comment><comment><USER20> There really are some forms of music that are better suited for recordings, as opposed to stages. People insist on conflating them by saying "It's okay that it's harder to sell recorded music - just go on tour!" when that point really doesn't make a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER31> What does the report say about it being ethically wrong?

</comment><comment><USER32> Worst graph ever. I know! Let's do linear extrapolation from a graph with a non-linear dependent axis!

</comment><comment><USER33> the report doesn't seem to compensate for inflation

 _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER34> i guess this proves giving the people what they want isnt a bad thing</comment>


Computer Science vs. Applied Math? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm currently a computer science student in my third year. I'm thinking about switching to applied math since I've ended up more interested in math, but I'm not sure whether this will limit my opportunities in the software industry.
I've taken almost all of the computer science classes for the major and have a good deal of programming experience. Would I have any trouble getting hired by large companies / getting past HR because I have an applied math degree instead of a computer science degree?
Also, if I decide to stay with the computer science major, how difficult would it be to get into grad school for applied math? I know that's a fairly general question, but any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER3> Go talk to a professor in applied math department. Explore the following - <USER2> many additional credits would it take to add applied math as a minor? Or, as a second major? Also inquire about whether you could get admitted into a grad program directly from the CS major, or would you need to take a bunch of prerequisite classes?

Also, are you thinking of taking grad school all the way to a PhD? what do you envision doing with applied math? Heading into academia as a professor or out into the commercial/industrial world?

The answers to each of these should help you make decisions.

If it were me... I would complete the CS degree and a minor in applied math. I would get into the workforce and put these skills to use in the most demanding job I can find. After a couple years of "seasoning" and finding out what you really enjoy and what you think is missing in your education then apply to grad school in an appropriate degree.

By the way, figure out how to manage yourself and build a network for freelance/consulting work and you will be able to easily work your way through grad school by working 15-20 hours a week and not take student loans.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have an anthropology degree (switched from CS), and it hasn't hindered me. You'll be fine either way. I'd make sure to work on some interesting side projects and contribute to open source projects. Lack of experience is more of a hurdle, and showing that you've been working on things outside of school can help you get past it. I can't speak to grad school.

</comment><comment><USER5> My observation is the more maths you know, the more useful you are likely to be as a computer scientist, e.g. the maths are the hardest part of Knuth.

My suggestion is to study what you are interested in.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a degree in Hotel Management and it isn't an issue for me. If you're worried about opportunities being shut out just network and do side projects. Networking is huge imo.

</comment><comment><USER7> study math if you're more interested in that- try to take a data structures and algorithms course. maybe an os course to learn how computers actually work. otherwise you should be good to go!</comment>


Does AI have a dirty mind, too? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@marekkcichy/does-ai-have-a-dirty-mind-too-6948430e4b2b <comment><USER2> Huh... got halfway down the article before realizing having this shit on my screen at work wasn't a great look.</comment>


Why Flash is doomed - <AUTHOR> http://ossguy.com/?p=226 <comment><USER2> Flash isn't doomed quite yet. Flash supplanted java as the primary form of interactivity on the web in the early years, and javascript + html has been making inroads but flash still has a significant advantage. Pure HTML/CSS/JS/Canvas/SVG designs are nearly as capable as flash, but there are still serious design defects in the system, major problems with client support and standardization, and a distinct lack of tooling.

Today it takes a not insignificant amount of effort just to make a simple text box with a border having 4 rounded corners that displays correctly for >90% of a site's visitors using pure html/css techniques. Even if every internet user upgraded to a modern, standards compliant, CSS3 supporting browser tomorrow, there would still be a substantial hill to climb for designing good looking pure html/css sites, it would just be a slightly smaller hill.

Almost certainly this will change, standards will get better, browser marketshare will continue to skew toward newer browsers, tooling will improve, but all of these things will take time.

This is not a defense of flash, I don't think flash is good for the web even today, but until the very real problems of pure html/css design are put to rest (CSS4?) flash will still be seen as a go-to technology for a lot of things people want to do with the web.

<comment><USER3> I think Flash is going to suffer because a lot of people just don't want to develop with it any more, for all sorts of reasons, not least the ones that have been popping up on HN lately (Apple products like the iPhone, non-OSS, etc.) There are tons of developers who would jump at the chance to switch to an alternative, and there are probably lots of developers who are reluctant to learn Flash for these reasons, but still want to be able to program nicely performing animations, interfaces and games.

I fall into the latter category: Flash programming appeals to me because of what you can do with it, but I'm not interested in making a substantial investment of time into a platform that I would rather see replaced by OSS alternatives. (For similar reasons, I'm not planning on learning Obj-C to develop for the iPhone - I'd prefer to get good at developing mobile web applications using web technologies).

The gradual shift in developer attention away from Flash over to alternatives is going to chip away at Flash over time, but I agree that it's going to take quite a long time.

Ultimately I still find it hard to believe how far behind web browsers are when it comes to graphics. The stuff I was running on my 386 back in the day pretty much destroys anything you can do in a web browser. It's kind of sad when everybody gets super pumped that you can run a tiny, glitchy version of Wolfenstein 3D in a web browser. It's great that it runs. But shouldn't we be at full-screen Quake levels by now?

<comment><USER2> I agree, as do many other principled web-devs. Flash is not "of the web" even though today it is very much _in_ the web. One hopes that the innate advantages of pure html/css/js designs will provide sufficient momentum to push the tooling and the rest to a state where it's absolutely better than flash.

But that won't happen tomorrow, and probably not for several years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a laughable article. It's doomed because the iPhone doesn't have it and a tiny subset of Flash's capabilities are matched by HTML/CSS/JS?

The only area that Flash is even remotely threatened is delivering video which may shift away from Flash over next decade, but that's assuming Adobe doesn't do anything at all to keep that market.

Many mobile devices are getting full-featured flash players soon/now - [http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/2009...](http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200910/100509AFPforMobileDevicesandPCs.html)

The 'slow nature of proprietry software' ... in comparison to web standards???? The current standards for HTML/CSS/JS are a decade old, and HTML5 is years away from broad adoption.

While web standards lag years - many sometimes - behind our evolving requirements there will be space for Flash and other plugins that more rapidly cater to new trends and technologies.

<comment><USER5> iPhone is the new IE6.

HTML5 is the new <applet> which no one will bother install.

There is a common fallacy among developers, we all assume what we like must be also liked by end-users and consumers.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, actually I've come to learn that what I hate will be what's most liked by end-users and consumers.

<comment><USER5> Call it time lag :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "efforts like mine would reduce the number of sites using Flash and eventually eliminate non-standard technologies like Flash from the web."

This is just totally stupid. No, no a bunch of opinionated tech snobs not installing flash is never going to impact the market enough to impact the language. The fact is that the new flash VM is actually very good and delivers a sophisticated UI framework that is actually very pleasant to work with. There is a movement to merge AS3 with actionscript as well. The reality is that we're all just writing distributed applications with increasingly thick clients.

<comment><USER7> _The fact is that the new flash VM is actually very good and delivers a sophisticated UI framework that is actually very pleasant to work with._

The Flash VM is shit on everything but Windows. Anyone who thinks that it is a well written piece of software is deluding themselves.

<comment><USER8> In the Flash VM's defense, the new alpha releases work pretty well on Ubuntu 9.10 x64. My laptop still can't handle two Youtube videos at once, but there's a lot less flickering and I haven't seen the 'flash crashed' gray square in a while

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I will argue Flash is far from dead.

Just this week I used Flash.

A Client wanted to flip through photos, have words fade in over a period of time, and at the end, the logo was to fly in, glow, and then blend into the background.

This was a perfect place to use Flash.

Would I have done this in HTML and Javascript? No. Would I have created it in some other software and exported it as a video? No. It came to a few Kb in size when all finished and looked fantastic.

I look at it this way:

Aftereffects is to Video as Flash is to a Web Page.

Your goal is to create something awesome, but if you suck at the program, you'll end up with crap.

If you think that throwing out Flash will take the annoying ads and bad user interfaces of the world with it you are dreaming.

Flash is a nice system for creating some great animations and UI's and I don't see any reason for it to die.

<comment><USER10> What do you do for people like me who browse with plugins disabled but Javascript allowed?

<comment><USER11> Or people like me who just want to get to the content and don't care about the fancy effects?

<comment><USER12> If you are anything like me, just substitute "data" for "content" and we're on the same page.

I think lots of people don't actually want to make their content/data easily available to others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its interesting to see an article one year after it being published; and see how things turn out. Flash still seems to be pretty pervasive even today.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are there no pro-flash devs? I for one love as3. It made flash so much lighter, more manageable, and far more developer friendly. As of today there are no solutions to match flash's breadth of capabilities, and I would be sad to see it go...

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm really surprised that those here don't seem to be placing much importance on the numerous security holes that Flash has brought to all platforms. The first serious one I'd heard of wasn't fixed for like a year and a half? How do people get the notion that a vulnerability that isn't see use in mass-scale exploits doesn't matter? The holes exploited selectively can certainly be a serious threat to industry or government.

To the developers that feel no choice but to use Flash, I suggest you make sure your sites use Javascript from a minimal number of domains because cautious users aren't going to enable them in NoScript when a dozen show up. It might also help that any domains needed beyond that of the site have names which give away their function.

Surfing as securely as possible includes enabling added functionality very selectively. Make sure that when you test your sites they're usable to people running Firefox with NoScript, with little or no granting of permissions.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Free/libre/open-source software advocate and standards proponent"

These people are the vegans of the internet.

<comment><USER17> More like the "this is the year of the Linux desktop" people.

<comment><USER18> ...the year of the Linux phone. Android arrives in a big way. We're saving the desktop for last. :-)

<comment><USER19> The desktop wars are over. The web is the platform now. You should put your energy into making sure that platform stays open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just recently started working with FlashPunk (<http://flashpunk.net/>), a really cool and simple library for game development using AS3 and Flex.

Game development in Flash isn't going away for a LONG time, methinks.

</comment><comment><USER21> Aside from the online games segment Flash still seems to be the necessary evil mostly to show video.

Let's see what widespread HTML5 will do to it, codec licensing issues notwithstanding :)</comment>


Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It's Too Crowded. - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2012/01/03/nobody-goes-to-facebook-anymore-its-too-crowded/ <comment><USER2> The title should be "Nobody Goes To Facebook Anymore... I invested in Path and Just.Me please try those services to make them famous and eventually make me some money; Facebook is cool but you know what's cooler? Me making more money".

I know it sounds like I'm a hater but, read between the lines of this article.

Also, this is an edge case, most people don't have the number of "unknown friends" Michael Arrington has. It takes me less than 5 minutes to go over my friends and delete the ones I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess that's one way to get people to use products you've invested in.. Back in reality we're seeing pretty solid month over month growth in 'organic' traffic and conversions from FB. No effort on our part beyond Like buttons in relevant places.

I'll never understand fluff pieces like this that hit on the argument 'we need less "friends" so we can share more with them'.. failing to realize that maybe a lot of people enjoy passively keeping in touch with people from high school / college that they may have absolutely no contact with otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have no doubt that the appeal of Facebook is declining for individuals that frequent hacker news. tech-savvy, most of us out of college. But there are generations of people growing up with Facebook. I'm friends with some of my younger cousins for example, and they use the service like I used AIM when I was their (lengthy fast exchanges). Also, for high school students and college students, sharing within network is quite active. I don't think Facebook is necessarily on the decline, there is so much content that fbook has essentially cemented it's position as a social hub. I think the role of Facebook is simply maturing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly I tend to feel like any social network based on symmetric following relationships is broken. This is a lot of why people have such ginormous "friends" lists on Facebook - they got in the habit of "adding" any damn person who asks so that they can see their posts.

I don't WANT to have to ask to subscribe to someone. I don't WANT to have to give approval to everyone who wants to watch my stuff. I don't WANT to see every post from everyone who thinks my art and writing is cool. I want to broadcast, not narrowcast. And when I go see what people are up to, I want to see the tiny number of people I'm I interested in, not everyone who thinks I'm cool.

I just tried Path today. My reaction? Pretty UI but I need another place to build a wholly-private friends network like I need a hole in my head. If any of these social networks becomes popular, people will be complaining about the EXACT SAME PROBLEM because these networks are designed in such a way that these problems are INEVITABLE.

Asymmetric follow relationships rock.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why I treat facebook as a place to catch sniffs of the latest gossip (If I ever feel like indulging, which is quite rare). I agree with the author with respect to the coffee-table conversation point, that's very true. Facebook is more like a big school with a lot of people you know, but are not really interested in.

Despite this I still use it a lot, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I don't want to be completely isolated from the community (a lot of socializing among my 'friends' actually does take place on facebook.)I think this is also the reason that so many people use facebook, you're connected with what's 'hip' even if you don't give a damn about it. Knowing what's 'in' makes it much easier to actually have meaningful conversations, it's a sort of appetizer, and that's why even if facebook gets even more crowded, people will still visit it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Facebook has become un-cool. Why would they kids of today want to be on the same network with their moms and aunts, and share everything about their life there?

Facebook is already starting to lose the very same people it attracted when it was made.

</comment><comment><USER8> I deleted my Facebook account 2 months ago and have substituted it with Skype, email, Twitter, HN & Path.

I love Skype because it is all about one-to-one or one-to-few. I love email because it is long-form, thoughtful and easier for my busy friends. I love Twitter & HN because I am always learning something. I love Path because I have rebuilt my real social network and will not accept people I do not care about.

I _hated_ Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Or... Instead of checking 5 different websites/apps, I just check one: Facebook.

<comment><USER8> You checked Facebook to post that comment on HN?

You missed the point. You use all those other services (aside from Path most likely) anyway. I just use them more and more-deeply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Changing nature of Facebook, it was inevitable as they added millions of people. Facebook is not good for people who want thousands of passive followers and symmetric relationships with only a few. Some people will leave, or abandon their profiles. All the grandmas and aunts and cousins that don't have thousands of "friends" have established mini-networks, they will be on facebook forever.

It is what I am now going to be calling "the web of people"

<comment><USER11> Many of these issues can be solved by grouping people into lists. Unlike Google+/Circles, Facebook introduced this later in the game, but it does fix a lot of those problems.

I have 'Close Friends' that I care a lot about, then I have classmates, contacts, work friends, etc. In that aspect, a bigger social network like Facebook (or Google+) is much better than a smaller more restrictive one.

<comment><USER10> I think you may be right, but that is a technical aspect. I think there is a psychological aspect. Some people want an exclusive space where they are not reminded work people or relatives or high school bullies exist at all. Even if they allowed you to block any mention of those people it might cause even more "drama" if they keep messaging you and you never reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Nobody", "by Michael Arrington", "Path (we're an investor)", and "Just.Me (we're also investors)"

I think you can draw your own conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER13> A ton of my real life friends are starting to use Twitter more than Facebook because Facebook "isn't cool anymore."

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm seeing a lot of my real-life, non-geek friends using Instagram like a "Facebook of years ago".

They all have fairly small friend lists comprised of people they actually see in real life. Plus Instagram has that slight "exclusiveness" to it because it is iOS only.

<comment><USER15> It's really amazing how trends move, yet it's hard to put your finger on why exactly some things become such hits, why they fade, and why most never get big.

I think everyone in the geek community can sense that Facebook is beginning its (probably very long, slow) descent, but I don't know exactly why I don't use it much anymore. It's just not fun or worth my time like it used to be.

<comment><USER16> For me it was less a way to have discussions and more about the fun of collecting every person you ever knew, but now that you have "collected them all" I have stopped using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know more about what just.me has planned?

Someone who's just jumped on Path (but also uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) said to me that they were hoping to use Path simply with their husband only. Made me wonder about social network opportunities based around very specific relationships.

Is Just.me cutting that back further? A completely private way to document your life? Not sure how that would have viral advantages.

<comment><USER11> They raised $600k back in July and just raised a $2.7 Series A on December 30

Interestingly, the solo founder and ceo Keith Teare is credited on his Crunchbase page with being a co-founder of TechCrunch

 _From what I've gathered so far, the company is building a 'new type of social network' that lives on your smartphone and the cloud and can be accessed from your desktop browser, rather than the other way around (e.g. what Facebook does). Basically, it sounds like just.me wants to turn your phone into the post-PC centerpiece of your social graph, and not just a tool to gain access to it._

\---

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/29/stealth-social-mobile- start...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/29/stealth-social-mobile-startup-just- me-raises-600k-from-google-ventures-sv-angel-and-others/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/fund-me-mobile-social- netwo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/fund-me-mobile-social-network- startup-just-me-raises-2-7-million/)

<http://www.crunchbase.com/person/keith-teare>

<comment><USER17> Thanks - had seen some of that. No real hint in the name that this could be about private life-tracking? Wracking my brain trying to work out what new take on social someone could be doing at this point to line up $2-3m. Especially with the name "just.me"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There too many cars on the streets of NY so nobody drives.</comment>


OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/opensocial_social_mashups.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "We don't want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks." ... well said

<comment><USER2> Shayan, would you mind not submitting such a large volume of links? Would you also please add your email addr to your profile?

<comment><AUTHOR> for sure ... I added my email address. I try to read as much as I can (if I find the time) so end up finding many links that _I_ find to be interesting ... I have been looking at news here for sometime now, but just recently joined the community...is there a limit on link submission that is preferred? and is there something I should read to understand the community here better?

My apologies in advance, and thanks for the message

<comment><USER2> There's no formal limit, but if the new page is half your submissions that's a sign you should probably be more selective.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point, thank you</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft failed to warn victims of Chinese email hack: former employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-insight-idUSKBN0UE01Z20160101 <comment><AUTHOR> The last time I used Hotmail was the 90s, but I still know people who use it. But an issue like this goes far beyond email. If a company is prepared to so thoroughly sell out their customers, that's a problem. They'll probably get away with it though. In the balance of loss of revenue due to damage to their reputation with their customers versus loss of revenue due to Chinese government sanctions, the appalling truth is they probably made the right decision.</comment>


"Points of View", Essays in Honour of Alan Kay - <AUTHOR> http://vpri.org/pov/

<comment><USER2> I have no clue what Alan Kay did, except to foist the horror of Object Oriented programming to the world.

But here, I conceded, I don't know. Please enlighten me.

<comment><USER3> Other than the huge list you can get from Wikipedia, the one that blew my mind recently was STEPS, a research project he was involved in a few years ago:

[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf) [PDF]

<comment><USER4> Here's a long vid of Kay showing off the fruits of STEPS and doing his job to remind us that because we forgot about the work done in the 50s-70s, we've spent the last 40 years rediscovering it and are only recently starting to catch back up.

[https://vimeo.com/82301919](https://vimeo.com/82301919)

It's important to note that he is giving his presentation using STEPS' custom productivity suite; running on STEPS' custom OS; both of which were compiled using STEPS' custom languages and custom compilers all the way down to the assemblers. And, the whole package (OS, compilers and all) totals well under 100K lines of code with no external, non-STEPs code introduced.

<comment><USER2> I had seen that video before... I found it upsetting as most of it was bragging and ranting, am I the only one who noticed?

There was no material in that video that anyone could use and following the above article ([http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html](http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html)) also was written by Kay himself (which I haven't read yet but will do)... I'm starting to wonder whether the reputation is self made.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HDFS with distributed metadata – over 1M ops/s - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/MySQL/entry/mysql_cluster_7_5_is <comment><AUTHOR> I am one of the developers in this project. Happy to any answer questions you may have.</comment>


Athlete's Heart (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1767992/ <comment><USER2> Medlife Crisis (a YouTube channel that deserves a much larger following) has a good video related to this topic:

[https://youtu.be/hT8GZlBBv5k](https://youtu.be/hT8GZlBBv5k)

<comment><USER3> Good video, although I would like an analysis of how mortality rates change once you go beyond regular to extreme quantities of exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been doing interval training 3 times a week for roughly a decade. This involves a full 400 meter sprint followed by 4 100 meter sprints at full speed spaced by walking the corners of the track. This has resulted in remarkable gains in my endurance. There are many instances where I'm walking up a hill and I don't even realize everyone else is out of breath and half dying just to keep up with me.

Additionally I jog 5 miles twice a week, but I think this had relatively little overall effect on my endurance.

From 70 bpm my heart rate has lowered to a point where at it's lowest I measure 39 bpm over the past decade.

This raised some concern in my primary care doctor who told me to cut down my exercise by 80%. I got a second opinion from a cardiologist who ran ultrasound and did a V02 max test on me and he told me I was fine and my heart was perfect and that I didn't need to cut down my exercise.

Now I'm not so sure, I'm thinking of getting a third opinion. If I keep up this level of exercise my heart rate could go down to below 30 bpm. Although the effects of HIIT are remarkable no one knows the long term outcomes.

Is there anybody else here who has been doing similar HIIT training for long periods of time (again a decade for me)... what's your experience?

<comment><USER5> It is highly unlikely that continued training would drop your resting heart rate below 30 bpm. You are probably already close to your minimum. The world record is 27, and only a tiny fraction of genetic outliers can get close to that regardless of what they do.

In general most exercise scientists consider polarized training to be the best approach for maximizing performance in endurance sports. Do something like 20% hard intervals and 80% at an easy steady pace (ideal percentages will vary a little by individual and sport).

<comment><USER4> Thanks that's reassuring. The thing I'm curious about is long term outcomes of hard intervals. There's no real research on that yet as far as I can tell, and I don't know anyone who has done HIIT for 3x week for a decade.

<comment><USER5> Right there are just too many variables and confounding factors to get high quality results from studying long term interval training. If you're concerned about it then realistically the only thing you can do is get annual heart scans and blood tests to catch any problems before they get too serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would recommend reading "The Haywire Heart: How too much exercise can kill you, and what you can do to protect your heart." The author has some athletes story on similar lines.</comment>


Show HN: Feedback Lite – Partner Program for Digital Agencies and Marketers - <AUTHOR> http://www.feedbacklite.com/partner-program/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

If anyone has any questions, comments or suggestions surrounding our Partner Program we'd love to hear from you.

If you've had any experience running a similar program as part of a SaaS web application, we'd be keen to hear what you learnt from your experience, and any tips you have for us.

Thanks in advance.</comment>


Turning houses into billboards for free mortgage - <AUTHOR> http://www.adzookie.com/paintmyhouse.php

<comment><USER2> As tempting as having my mortgage paid sounds, I don't think I could do it.

I do sort of take pride in my home, and turning it into a giant ad would just feel like I'm cheapening it.</comment>


Google Working to Remove MINIX-Based Management Engine from Intel Platforms - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-removing-minix-management-engine-intel,35876.html <comment><USER2> >Due to MINIX's presence on every Intel system, the barebones Linux OS is the most widely deployed operating system in the world.

Yeeeowch. That's a pretty egregious error.

<comment><USER3> I see no error. Just a very willful self congratulation.

<comment><USER4> Minix is not a Linux OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at [https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/](https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/), the main cost to getting a POWER9 CPU isn't the CPU itself, it's paying a relatively small mainboard design company that needs to recoup their (presumably substantial) engineering costs.

Given Google's size, I wonder:

1) If they could reasonably design their own mainboards for POWER9

2) If they could create a market for POWER9 CPUs among enthusiasts and the security minded (Google's apparent motivation for lobotomizing Intel ME)

3) If the POWER9 CPU is a reasonable option for their workloads

4) If other architectures are a non-starter from a homogeneity standpoint (e.g. everything else runs Intel, and software compatibility is king).

EDIT: Formatting

<comment><USER6> Google and Rackspace developed a POWER9 server [https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing- Zai...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google- and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html) but I don't think it's available to others.

<comment><AUTHOR> If that motherboard could fit in a reasonable desktop tower chassis, it'd be cool to be able to piggyback on Google's and Rackspace's work.

BTW, I assume both companies would somehow benefit from having machines like those on engineer's desks - it's certainly convenient to do local development on the platform you are deploying to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't seem to contain anything new from the previous stories, one of which was even submitted by you :/

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15641592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15641592)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634014)

<comment><AUTHOR> This piece focuses on Google's attempt at removing ME 11 code and replace it with something they are more comfortable with. The others drove discussion towards numbers, security issues and a third one focused on the license (BSD) and its effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is tomshardware calling MINIX a "barebones Linux OS"?

<comment> castle-bravo Linux Is Not UniX.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neither is MINIX.

In the end, though, they're all Unixy enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> what was that video about?</comment>


Show HN: Fridai – A voice assistant exclusively for gamers - <AUTHOR> https://hellofridai.com <comment><USER2> Seems like it's currently limited to only taking screenshots and videos and providing wiki information.

It would be pretty slick if you could issue game commands with it, like 'Open my inventory' or 'Show map'</comment>


The US officially declares that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-officially-declares-that-hong-kong-is-no-longer-autonomous-11590596133 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325778)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish the U.S. would create an autonomous territory on the West coast and build a New Hong Kong and invite those brilliant people over here to reestablish themselves.

<comment><USER4> That wouldn't stop the problem, Communism, China needs beat back to an economy the size of Russia x2.

<comment><USER5> It would in some ways. Brain-drain from germany post ww2 decimated their hopes to rebuild, and exponentally accellerated our space, military, and energy sectors in ways that still influence US military dominance. I do, however agree, that the psudeo-communist despocracy is a net evil and should also be dealt with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Purely speculation here on my part - I know there's other factors involved.

Doesn't it seem silly for China to be wanting to take over Hong Kong NOW, when all they have to do is wait X more years (ideally, I'm sure HK would protest to extend the autonomous-isity (lol))

Without knowing how financially locked HK is to Mainland China, it seems to me that China's economy is trashed and they're grabbing HK as a last ditch effort to keep the economy going.

<comment><USER7> From what I've read on China's mindset, they are impatient to regain middle- kingdom status. In other words, they are the economic, military, and cultural center of the world, and everyone else sends them raw materials. (trying to find the article where I read that - it was from some US diplomat).

A pre-req for that would be to secure complete control over all territorial claims. So if they can speed up the hong kong integration, they would do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have helped liberate countries seeking democracy before. Was that just political cover, or would we help HK if they reached out?

Who, if anyone, should be 'world police'?

<comment><USER8> >Who, if anyone, should be 'world police'?

Germany. Give me all the downvotes

<comment><USER9> As a German, no, thank you. I get why some people think Germany would be a good fit but the German people don't want it. The parliament has enough trouble justifying German military involvement in peace keeping missions - playing world police would never fly.</comment></comment></comment>


Exploring Google Fiber for Chicago and Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/exploring-fiber.html <comment><USER2> I wish this would make it out to the `burbs, but it's not likely. Just the same, fuck Comcast. I would switch in a heartbeat.</comment>


Who catches the IMSI catchers? Researchers demonstrate Stingray detection kit - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/02/who-catches-the-imsi-catchers-researchers-demonstrate-stingray-detection-kit <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14474956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14474956)

</comment><comment><USER3> Underlying paper with all of the tech details: [https://seaglass- web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.p...](https://seaglass- web.s3.amazonaws.com/SeaGlass___PETS_2017.pdf)

And the web site with all of the software: [https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/](https://seaglass.cs.washington.edu/) (most interesting section: algorithms)

</comment><comment><USER4> The tricky part would be eliminating non-stingray signals.

T-Mobile's HQ is in Bellevue, and I'm sure they have some test towers probably set up in their building. These signals can easily "get away from you."

I worked on Windows Phone, and we had a faraday cage setup with various different cellular networks coming in over the wire, which we would set up with different attenuation to test cellular radio handoff. One time someone left the door open, and the whole floor of the building roamed over to the UK. It was not a good day for international roaming charges.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, there's a lot of legwork to be done if you want to use this kind of data, but it's legwork that can be distributed fairly easily. People can check public listings for this or that tower type, carriers document their test setups, etc. Once you weed out the strange but not _that_ strange stuff you probably see a few like the one in Sea-Tac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The next generation of the cellphone protocol should include some kind of PKI so the telco can't be spoofed without its permission.

Don't know if that will actually help, because the telcos are already quite compliant about giving every bit of data that passes through their systems to the NSA.

<comment><USER7> > The next generation of the cellphone protocol should include some kind of > PKI so the telco can't be spoofed without its permission.

3G already does this. But apparently IMSI catchers have often been able to get around this by various means, including downgrading to an earlier GSM protocol (that lacks authentication), or spoofing a carrier from a different region (whose keys they have obtained somehow) in order to induce roaming, or somehow obtaining keys of a local carrier. I have heard there are a couple of other tricks too but I don't know what those are.

> Don't know if that will actually help, because the telcos are already quite > compliant about giving every bit of data that passes through their systems > to the NSA.

It's true that IMSI catchers can also be used to wiretap mobile telephony and SMS, which trust the carrier to provide confidentiality, but that doesn't cover everyone's use of mobile data services. But IMSI catchers often represent a very different kind of threat, which is not just wiretapping but real-time location tracking and/or enumerating devices that are present in an area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent the last year researching, designing, then implementing an IMSI Catcher detector at first as a hobby then as my capstone project. There already exists working fairly mature solutions for this and they are very open about their detection metrics, specifically SnoopSnitch [1].

The major drawback of the SnoopSnitch solution is that they are phone apps and are tightly coupled with the hardware and drivers. We were attempting to demonstrate that it could be done in a way portable across desktop operating systems and phones and we succeeded in creating a proof of concept at a cost of $200 [2].

This solution is also better suited to use as a centralized device for organizations to use that can be audited by security personnel to protect against corporate espionage. This is a real threat demonstrated by the fact that by simply changing a few lines of code in the IMSI Catcher detector a few undergrads built we could have an IMSI Catcher. This need is often left out of the arguments for IMSI Catcher detectors and I think that is very harmful because the first thing said about the project has always been "They will just make it illegal." This is much more unlikely when you consider that anyone can build one.

I would like to continue development beyond the proof of concept but have lost most of my team now that school is out if anyone would be interested you can contact me. Some commercial IMSI Catcher detectors sell for as much as $40,000.

[1] [https://opensource.srlabs.de/projects/snoopsnitch/wiki/IMSI_...](https://opensource.srlabs.de/projects/snoopsnitch/wiki/IMSI_Catcher_Score)

[2] [https://gitlab.com/finding-ray/antikythera](https://gitlab.com/finding- ray/antikythera)

<comment><USER9> Interesting project!

> This need is often left out of the arguments for IMSI Catcher detectors and > I think that is very harmful because the first thing said about the project > has always been "They will just make it illegal." > This is much more > unlikely when you consider that anyone can build one.

But that isn't true. Anybody can make fire-arms, explosives and all kinds of bad stuff and plenty of that is illegal depending on where you live.

The fact that something is easy does not have much to do with legality, if it did then pot would have been legal long ago.

<comment><USER8> True, I just found the argument for IMSI Catcher Detectors to be more effective once I changed from presenting it as "fighting state surveillance" to "protecting corporate IP" most people stopped even suggesting that it will be made illegal (usually citing radar detectors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting.

Wouldn't it be a desirable phone feature to be able to list and select a cell tower connection the same way you can select wifi?

<comment><USER11> Key feature of cellular networks is mobility and if the user interaction is needed it would make it unwieldy

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of those moments would be nice to have Steve Jobs step in. He certainly did not like Government abusing its powers (he used to buy or rent [don't remember] his Benz from CA dealer once every six month and drove on paper license plate because that's how long you can drive on non-hard plate) - I bet you newest update of OS would have it by default turned on detection and rejection of connections with unknown sources.

Overnight Stingray producer - bankrupt.</comment>


Get to Know the Actor Model with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://monades.roperzh.com/get-to-know-the-actor-model/ <comment><USER2> > "If this sounds to you a lot like Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), you are > right."

This sounds like Alan Kay's aspirational viewpoint of independent "computers" interacting through messages. Not the object-orientation invented by Nygaard and Dahl in Simula, that introduced objects, classes, subclassing and virtual functions. Kay's vision is not reflected in modern object-oriented languages, while Nygard and Dahl's remain paramount.

The argument that the Actor Model is really a form of object-oriented programming is an unrequired appeal to credibility.

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER3> Objective-C has the message-passing approach to object-oriented programming; all dispatch was at run-time, and an object could delegate any unrecognized messages or decide for itself how to respond to them.

I suppose it's not "modern" anymore though - and it doesn't look like swift kept this paradigm.

<comment><USER4> ironically, swift is aiming at implementing actor concurrency for its next versions (even adding an "actor" keyword).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The actor model deals with concurrent computation.

The threading models on node and browsers do not allow concurrent computation, except for the case of web workers, and the proposed threading additions of JavaScriptCore.

Because of this, the actor model can be overkill when you have no threads. More specifically, you may introduce queuing where no queuing (or other type of synchronization) is necessary. This is because an actor is basically a worker with a work queue (aka mailbox).

For the most part promises can solve most of your async issues. Event emitting/message passing is valuable, but queuing is optional in many cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, article author here, thank you for passing by!

This is correct but misses the point of the article. The idea is to introduce the Actor Model to people unfamiliar with it, using one of the most popular languages out there.

<comment><USER5> Hey, Scala/Akka user with many years of experience here, thanks for replying!

The article is correct but misses the point of the actor model. The idea was to point out that the Actor model is about concurrent computation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a Javascript "port" of Akka , called Akka.js [https://github.com/akka-js](https://github.com/akka-js)

Scala.js, Scala that compiles to Javascript, enabling all of this. [https://www.scala-js.org](https://www.scala-js.org)

Try it out !

<comment><USER7> +1 for Scala.js mention. That project is really awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does this differ from a Redux-type store besides being able to instantiate them on demand instead of having a global state?

> It's easy to screw up immutability in JavaScript, the actor internal state > can be modified externally if users of the library are not extremely > careful.

Object.freeze() can help prevent this.

<comment><USER9> It's a pattern. It's not supposed to be Redux/whatever library. It's a pattern of writing code (like MVC, or Pub/Sub, etc)

The Actor model strongly influenced protypical classes like Smalltalk and therefore also JS.

It's a 45 year old software design pattern so really it's better to ask: how does Redux differ from the Actor pattern?

<comment><USER8> Sure, that's fine too. My point is more that it would've been nice to get a summary of the differences instead of requiring the reader to dig through the article, since Redux is much more prevalent. Even after digging, I still can't tell if there is a difference. If there is none, it would've helped greatly to explicitly say this.

<comment><USER10> > since Redux is much more prevalent.

Actually it's quite opposite. Redux is a library which was created not until 2 years ago and it is used only in JavaScript. Actor model and similar message- passing patterns are in use for decades and not only in JavaScript but in many programming languages. They are popular e.g. in game development for communicating between game objects.

There is this weird viewpoint in JS community that world is turning around JS and its ecosystem, and this is the newest popular library that dictates standards rather than decades of CS knowledge ;)

<comment><USER8> Based on what shows up on the front page, I'd say the average reader is way more likely to be familiar with Redux than the actor model.

I never said Redux dictated the standard, I simply asked for the differences, and if it weren't for boobsbr's response, I'd be stuck in a state where I don't know how close Redux was to this model which is quite important to get context and understanding.

> There is this weird viewpoint in JS community that world is turning around > JS and its ecosystem, and this is the newest popular library that dictates > standards rather than decades of CS knowledge ;)

If you criticize people like this for not knowing what came first, then it's no wonder people feel like that because you'd never give them the opportunity to learn about the lineages. Instead, people will simply think "oh this looks like an interesting paradigm, maybe I'll consider using it in my next project" without realizing that they're _already_ using it.

<comment><USER10> > I simply asked for the differences,

One of differences could be that Redux has only one object("actor") which can receive messages - that's store.

In actor model there are many actors which can both receive and send messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a better language to understand the Actor Model with is Elixir. The Actor Model's main point is concurrency. It is hard to demonstrate that in a language that doesn't support concurrency.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget fault tolerance! In my particular use cases concurrency is not really necessary, but I love the fact that I don't have to be quite as 'defensive' in my programming. Whenever a particular (Erlang) process/'Actor' fails, its supervisor can simply restart it and I can deal with the cause of failure later while the entire system chugs along (mostly) happily.

<comment><USER13> What happens when the process is bound to fail on start? (eg. trying to bind a port that's already being used) Never used that model so I'm curious.

<comment><USER12> It depends on how you set things up, but one possible approach is that the supervisor, after a few retries, would _also_ shut down, which would trigger the supervisor _above_ that to restart the whole thing with a different port. This wouldn't make sense, probably, but maybe it illustrates how you can go about these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those who like to learn from videos, here is an interview/lesson from Carl Hewitt (he introduced the model):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7erJ1DV_Tlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7erJ1DV_Tlo)

</comment><comment><USER15> This blog is almost unreadable. the font is WAY too thin on Firefox!

<comment><USER16> Looks fine to me. Firefox 55.0.3 on Windows 10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jesus! Are there any posts on HN these days that are not JavaScript or blockchain? (or a combination, describing 90% of blockchain projects....)

On topic: I don't see a use case, in which I would need to use the actor model and would pick javascript as my language of choice. However, I do think your article is well-written and explains the actor model quite well.

<comment><USER17> Just checked the top 90, there are 2 block chain/cryptocoin posts and 2 JavaScript posts. Did you miss the other 86?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > let state = typeof behavior.init === "function" ? behavior.init() : {};

Javascript is such a mess itself, i don't know how one can explain something in it. Choose python, reads like English.

<comment><USER19> It's not unique to javascript. The equivalent in ruby would be `state = behavior.init.class = Method ? behavior.init : {}`

After looking it up, I don't disagree that Python looks a lot prettier, though: `state = behavior.init() if callable(behavior.init) else {}`

That made me curious if Ruby had anything like Python's `callable`, but I couldn't find anything. This is my best effort in Ruby for aesthetics: `state = if behavior.init.respond_to? :call then behavior.init() else {} end`

In the end, I agree, Javascript looks much worse than the equivalent Python in this case. Unfortunately I don't get a choice of python on the frontend :p

<comment><USER20> Closer to idomatic Ruby:

state = behavior.respond_to? :init ? behavior.init : {}

Asking an object if something is "callable" in Ruby is probably unnecesarily verbose, as you are most likely dealing with a method for any attribute access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> yes,I like this design,and my system has applied it.I feel this theropy just like the domain-specific languague or system thought(the_Fifth_Discipline). best regards</comment>


Where federal taxes are raised and spent - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/theredandtheblack

<comment><USER2> I would guess that Delaware tops the list in paying more than is spent on it just because so many corporations are registered there, so the corporate income tax they pay appears to originate from Delaware. Minnesota in second place surprised me though.

<comment><USER3> Minnesota is where a lot of credit card companies are based from. I believe that there was a Regan-era law(may have been earlier, not sure) that allowed multi-state credit card corporations to basically use their "home state" laws for everyone, rather than the individual state laws. MN, at the time, had very permissive laws for credit card regulation, so a lot of companies relocated to the Twin Cities.

<comment><USER4> Huh, I always associated that with the Dakotas (eg: [http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/Articles/Credit-Card-Gift- Ca...](http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/Articles/Credit-Card-Gift-Card-and-E- payments/Federal/south-dakota-a-favorite-state-for-credit-card.html)). I can't find anything referring to that happening with Minnesota, and I haven't noticed a particularly large amount of that sort of activity here.

<comment><USER3> Oh, that's right. It was the Dakotas. Whoops!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to draw any conclusions from this, apart from everyone's favourite conclusion "This graph totally supports my existing political opinions".

One thing seriously missing: the District of Columbia.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious how conservatives will find that this supports their existing political opinions. "Red states deserve more of those tax dollars that are evil and shouldn't have been paid?"

<comment><USER7> Well, if you disaggregate it, the Republican voters in blue states are statistically net tax payers, and Democratic voters in red states who are statistically net tax recipients.

It's a Simpson's paradox type phenomenon, where the aggregation at the state level conceals the individual level trends. Believe the analysis is on the net somewhere, or you can drill down to the Census micro data to confirm it yourself.

<comment><USER8> Citation needed?

Low-to-middle income whites are the Republican bread and butter in red states. They split college degree whites, lose masters+ whites 3:1 or so, and lose blacks 95:5. But their base in red states are typically not the big-ticket taxpayers, aside from maybe in Texas. (cite, stan greenberg's book from 2004).

<comment><USER7> FWIW I didn't downmod you.

Both high and low levels of education correlate with voting Democrat. And higher income generally correlates with voting Republican. The tricky part is that higher education also correlates with higher income.

I believe I saw the data disaggregated in a post on Gelman's blog. Will post in an edit if I can find it.

EDIT:

      www.historycentral.com/elections/12008/exit/Income.html [sound]
      http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/03/income-and-2008-us-election.html
      http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/rich-and-poor-voters-in-2008.html

The second link is the same as the third link from Gelman's writeup (syndicated by Nate Silver), except the image links in the second link aren't broken.

The data shown indicates that Republicans tend to be on average wealthier than Democrats, until you get to the ultra high income levels. If you think about it, this does start to suggest that there are aggregation issues going on; in general the rich pay more in taxes than the poor, and the middle class and rich tend to vote Republican, so something counterintuitive is going on if "red states" are net tax recipients.

I can't seem to find the original post that did the analysis, but hopefully it seems more plausible now; if you really want to explore the issue you can get into the PUMS sample:

<http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/data_main>

<comment><USER8> Hm, it's definitely not as clear as I thought, thanks for clearing that up.

I'm typically suspicious of "average" when it comes to income as Bill Gates into a bar makes the patrons much richer on average. But at a glance those seem to be pretty good faith. Dunno why I was so certain, I'll have to dig up that Greenberg book again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some of these states (Florida, New Mexico & Arizona I believe) have an odd distribution of money partially due to large retirement communities.</comment>


Rules for Show HN? - <AUTHOR>

A while back, I posted a product launch on HN with the prefix "Show HN" and for some reason the prefix got removed.<p>So I wanted to know if there were some specific rules pertaining to "Show HN" threads? I love checking out new products and I'd like an easy way to pinpoint them out. <comment><USER2> To ask about the specific case of "Show HN:" being removed from your submission, the right place to do it is by emailing: email@example.com

I've never seen any official rules or guidelines regarding "Show HN:" submissions, but there are differences in sorting between url-based submissions and text-based submissions. Since text-based submissions sink faster, I've seen some suggest using url-based submissions. On the other hand, with a text-submission, you can specifically ask for what you want (design help, content help, ...) and provide contact info.

From the following, it seems some changes may be afoot.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761378) > _We do intend to add a few things, such as a "show" link in the top bar for Show HNs_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for those insights! Especially for pointing out the difference between url and text based submissions. Didn't know that one!

Also, I realise that I might have wrongly formulated my question. It didn't actually bother me that the "Show HN" prefix was removed from my post (I was on the front page).

It's just that it made me question if there were some guidelines I was not adhering to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Show HN is for something you've made that people can play with. Landing pages, email signups, and fundraisers aren't things people can play with, so we edit "Show HN" out in those cases.

For example, instead of an email signup, Show HN is for the thing you email people about once it's ready; instead of a fundraiser, Show HN is for what you build with the funds you raise; and so on.

We're planning to feature Show HNs on the site a lot more, since most people agree they're one of the best things here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for chiming in Daniel!

That makes things a lot clearer. And it does make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in this aswell. I assumed "Show HN" was the appropriate thing since you clearly state it's a type of self-promotion.

I personally appreciate people being upfront about it being promotional, StrongLoops latest "tutorials" have been a bit of a sinner in this regard. They usually provide great content but always mention their own services (which is fine in my opinion but it should be obvious from the get-go).

Edit: Perhaps the prefix is removed to remove any bias, perhaps people are inclined to be more positive towards user contributions - Perhaps by removing Show HN you let the product live on its own merit, rather than any type of emotional bias.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like a good reason. Maybe someone can confirm this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Show HN is generally used to show off things you've made or had a part in. If it's just a new product then use the title on the site you're linking to.</comment>


Google Launches Presentation with help from Zenter & Tonic - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com Google launched the newest addition to the office family tonight with Google Presentations. <comment><USER2> This is great. I'll definitely be a user. I've never been a big fan of creating Documents or Spreadsheets, but Google Docs has me creating some useful stuff, now that will include Slides. A very nice addition to my Firefox OS.

I did find it incongruous to see _"You can start new online documents by emailing them directly to this email address: <long string>@prod.writely.com"_

Damn it. I want to email upload to The Google, not Writely.

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw what Zenter had before, and Presently incorporates little to none of Zenter's awesomeness. Next version...

<comment><USER4> I agree. I met Wayne & Robbie at a YC tea (the day after a rehearsal demo, which I heard they rocked), and immediately fell in love with the way Zenter actually leveraged the web to make presentation software BETTER.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love it. I haven't seen the old Zenter, so I'm not sure what to compare it to. I made and published a presentation, then added a slide. It took a refresh, but this is why online documents are awesome. You can click send and publish the doc, and still edit it.

Too bad a loaded presentation requires a refresh to get the updates. The spreadsheet is really live.

Also, it would be nice to get a web-cam mic input as a presenter.

</comment><comment><USER6> wow. after making a simple presentation with this thing, i don't want to stab anyone to death the way i do whenever i use PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org (i always say fuck it and use LaTeX/S5 instead). thanks, google!

<comment><USER7> You really need to try using Apple's KeyNote. I haven't stabbed anyone to death ever since I discovered it :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Go Zenter!

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to know how Yahoo and MS responds - I wonder someone like ZOHO is still not yet bought - may be too expensive but definitely to look forward for as they also have project management (like MS Project) and CRM tools and apps ...</comment>


Ask HN: How to get interviews/introductions through work on GitHub - <AUTHOR> I am interested in finding out about stories (both of success and failure) of trying to get an introduction and/or interview by way of making modest contributions (features, bugfixes, performance improvements) on social coding sites like github.
My purpose in asking about this is two-fold. (1) It is well known that resume based screens for candidates can be a huge pain for both companies and prospective employees, partly because of the small signal to noise ratio, but also partly because resumes simply don't efficiently communicate the kind of information employers might like to know. (2) This frustration is compounded for the employer by the fact that, even when a candidate passes an initial screening, they might subsequently fail a fizzbuzz type test or otherwise not meet some kind of minimal criterion for moving forward in the process.
It seems reasonable to me that companies with a significant open source presence might be interested to find out that a contributor to one of there projects was looking for work as (1) if they are already aware of and helping develop projects in the company that is a strong signal for potential skill and cultural fit and (2) if their contributions were accepted into the project that would seem like a reasonable minimal criterion for moving forward in an interview process (i.e. they have some technical skills and a few current employees know their work). This process is roughly analogous to a `project based` interview that many companies do, but it is a signal much earlier in the process and probably less time consuming.
So that's the idea in theory, but I want to hear evidence for against/this strategy. There are some details particular to my situation that I'll leave in a comment. <comment><AUTHOR> As promised, I wanted to give some details about my specific situation without polluting the main post. I am currently looking for a permanent position in the data science / data analysis area. I have specific expertise in time series analysis and by way of interest and skillsets cluster with the so called "type A" data scientists ([https://medium.com/@rchang/my-two-year- journey-as-a-data-sci...](https://medium.com/@rchang/my-two-year-journey-as-a- data-scientist-at-twitter-f0c13298aee6#.ulm7qgdcb)). My search also represents an effort to transition out of academia (short postdoc after PhD) and into industry.

There are a handful of companies that I am very excited about (some of them with employees lurking here on HN). I have had a few rejections at the resume screening stage from companies advertising positions for which I had imagined there would be a strong fit. Of course, it is easy for me to imagine things that might be hard to HR staff to see in a resume. So it occurred to me that if I could establish some kind of basic social rapport with someone at one of the companies I am interested, that could potentially lead to the right set of eyes being cast on my resume in particular, but also, incidentally and perhaps more importantly my contributions to the companies project.

Finally as a side note, I feel compelled to say that I don't have an especially active or extensive github profile (as I mentioned before I am mostly a type A data scientist, and spend much more time doing exploratory data analysis and the like then writing code), but I don;t think this would be a negative signal for most of the companies I am interested in.

A suggestions about how to attack this problem in my specific case would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER2> "There are a handful of companies that I am very excited about (some of them with employees lurking here on HN)."

Why not reach out directly to employees of those companies (whether future peers or hiring managers) and ask them to have a coffee with you? Most people I meet are happy to share information and advice with people who are genuinely interested in their work/field/company.

If you're shy and not sure what to write, there are many examples online. Just search for 'how to ask for an informational interview in an email'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! Its A good idea and actually also part of my plan. There is one extra barrier that makes me a bit uneasy about this, however, which is that I am in every case at least hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from these people. I am not shy at all if meeting someone in person, but making these kinds of cold contacts with the extra barrier of physical distance is a new for me, and part of why I started cooking up schemes involving github.

<comment><USER2> Just email them. Many people work with remote colleagues, and are used to initiating contact over email, and having meetings on Hangouts or Skype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds plausible, but I've never come across a recruiter or HR person who even knows what GitHub is.

<comment><USER4> I get 1-3 emails per month with "I came across your profile on GitHub and you seem like a match" and then they are talking about position using technologies which I've never used nor which I don't have on my GitHub profile.</comment></comment>