Bringing Back Skeuomorphic Design - <AUTHOR> https://blog.prototypr.io/bringing-back-skeuomorphic-design-d211cc1c22d2 <comment> et-al Yes please.

Apple had a good balance between skeuomorphism and minimalism a few years ago, but as Jony Ive & Co. strip out decoration for flatness, iOS 11 almost looks unfinished. Case in point: the PIN screen and the calculator app.

Lock screen: [https://file.mockplus.com/image/2017/10/5627bfee-8dbf-44b4-9...](https://file.mockplus.com/image/2017/10/5627bfee-8dbf-44b4-94e3-3a0782e9a276.png)

Calculator: [http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/iOS-10...](http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/iOS-10-vs-iOS-11-Calculator.jpeg)

I live in an old Victorian house, and there's something very "human" and comforting about the tiny details that designers embark on a crusade to erase every other decade. Sometimes I wonder if flat UI and "brutalist design" [0] came about simply because folks got lazy and need to show something quickly Monday morning.

[0] [http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/)

<comment><USER2> The current iOS calculator app is atrocious looking. However I usually use use spotlight for my calculations but that's been hidden several swipes away if you're in an app.

Where's the minimalism in the amount of touch input needed? Replying to emails in Mail is a chore of taps.

<comment><USER3> It's literally two swipes or less to get to Spotlight from anywhere in iOS.

Also, it's only two taps to reply to an email in the Mail app. What a chore!

<comment><USER2> It used to be just one minor swipe down. You could pull down the notifications blind just a small bit and you'd have access to it instantly. It was really useful, now I have to swipe across two screens. [0]

Mail is similar, there are more taps than there used to be in favour of minimalism. So yes it is a chore when it used to be effortless and now it's two swipes across useless empty screen filling space in different directions that iOS sometimes misinterpretes.

[0] [http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/06/17/ios-10-tidbit- spotli...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/06/17/ios-10-tidbit-spotlight-in- any-app/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, the reason we got rid of it was that it was impractical for like 90% of software. Skeuomorphism works for calendars and notepads, that's it. That's why those are always the examples you see for them.

There's no such thing as skeuomorphism for a chat app or a social media site - there's no analog comparison to take design cues from, they're inherently a digital thing. So what you end up doing is wrapping digital things in leather and wood texture as if it was some kind of physical device. It's tacky and cheap, and frankly, I think only a small subset of users get a kick out of it.

I don't like these designs at all. Sure, they are well put together. But the screen feels crowded and the buttons look hard to hit. It just looks incredibly delicate, if i flipped on large text mode, the whole design would break.

On the other hand... Skeuomorphism is _fantastic_ for video games, where utility is not the primary motivator of design. If I'm playing a WW2 game of some kind, yeah, I'm cool with menus looking like war-torn clipboards and whatnot.

<comment><USER5> For games, both approaches work well. Very weird is fun. Immersion (of which skeuomorphism is a part) can be fun too.

I'd rather not want my phone apps try to be immersive rather than get the job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's time for the pendulum to swing back I guess ;)

The article give iOS 7 the credit for ushering in the 'flat' design trends ... But I remember the Windows Phone 7-8 'Metro' (later renamed to Modern) design language as the key influence. It blew away people with the attention to typography and proportional grid-based layouts.

<comment><USER7> I think you're right. But, in a reversal of roles, Microsoft did the design well and Apple's copy was a poor, souless wannabe IMO. They sucked any semblance of "joy" (for lack of a better word) out of the Metro ideas and iOS.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Microsoft just took typographic design principles that have been extant for decades and which were already commonplace in print and web design and applied them wholesale to UI design.

There are situations where this makes perfect sense, but it was hardly a sensible approach to UI design on the whole. Metro was widely criticized for making it more difficult for users to be productive, which I would argue is the primary concern of any desktop operating system. And indeed, Microsoft quickly moved beyond Metro in favor of Fluent, a design language that is much more in keeping with Apple's current design language than it is with Metro.

Metro, despite being relatively popular with UI designers and developers, totally flopped with users, who did not find joy in using it at all. With Metro, Microsoft attempted to cut out UI chrome in favor of content. The idea being that removing chrome would make room for content. Instead, they ended up treating content as chrome, leaving substantially less room for _actual content_. Microsoft failed to meet their own design goals for Metro. And what's worst, they seemingly failed to recognize that they had failed for quite some time.

Apple's human interface design guidelines for iOS, while far from perfect, are a much truer realization of the design principles that Microsoft set out to implement with Metro. Rather than treating content as chrome, chrome is reduced to its most basic elements, retaining its ability to inform the user as to its function, while minimally detracting from content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Balance in all things: a design should be minimalist where that is called for (the background, unimportant or repetitive elements, etc.) and should increase in visual complexity/depth/color/brightness in areas that are important and need to draw the users eye. (NB: minimalism does not mean "nothing". Sometimes a slight texture completely changes the feel of a UI, but it requires a deft hand.)

I'm glad to see the flat-ui/material-design over-application of minimalism is coming to an end and designers are getting back to more complex visual treatments. My hope is that, rather than casting back and forth between the various schools of thought, designers start thinking in context-sensitive terms: not "Should I use flat design or skeumorphic design for this app?" but rather "Where in this UI are flat design AND skeumorphic designs best utilized?"

</comment><comment><USER9> IMHO the most important skeuomorphic thing in UI is to make buttons actually look like buttons, i.e. they are obviously meant to be pressed. Far too much time has been wasted on trying to learn UIs where buttons are virtually indistinguishable from static text. Borderless buttons are particularly frustrating, especially when there's multiple of them next to each other.

<comment><USER10> THIS. Material Design guidelines tried to drill these into deisgners' head. But man, their damn artsy skulls are thiiiiick...

There should be a "Shadow + Fill if it's tappable/clickable. F please!" rule though in every design school. Every time I see it not followed I get a fit of rage, that unfortunately I need to swallow and not fire the designer because I know he's otherwise good at UX too.

It's should something like a "don't f drive when you're drunk rule" rule... _common sense to every-f-body!_

<comment><USER11> fuck.

There, I said it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The very first thing I thought of when I started seeing everything moving to "flat design" was "I wonder how long this will last?"

I figured everything would go flat and then designers would bring back skeuomorphic designs and they would pop extra hard in contrast.

Now I bet we'll go really loud and retro ("Stranger Things") for a while until we get worn out and need to take a break and go flat again for a while.

<comment><USER13> One can at least hope that the amplitude of pendulum swings decreases, which seems likely to happen to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please do bring it back. In my opinion, it looks better than the flat modern interfaces that everybody now uses. Starting with Windows 8 phone minimalism has made computer interfaces uglier, and harder to use.

It seems like UI designers are just as fashion concious as clothes fashion designers, and also have less concern for the comfort/usability of their product.

[1]

<comment><USER15> Fashion really has no place in computing. These are tools and we should treat them as such

"The reaction, as all reactionary trends, was to throw out everything that came before and fully embrace this new direction of minimalist ui, white space layouts and magazine typesetting. Some argue that it was a timely change to meet the demands of the increasing complexities of the interface. That we had grown out of the need to include real world cues in our digital analogies. Evolved the interface."

No, a bunch of kingmakers got on stage and we foolishly listened to them.

<comment><USER10> > Fashion really has no place in computing. These are tools and we should > treat them as such

This cracked me up... You do realize that even things like _programming language selection_ are 90% fashion-driven, right?

<comment><USER13> Grandparent needs to machine learn a container full of IoT blockchain.js as a service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Original drive towards flat design was in part driven by retina-style displays and scalable vector graphics where authoring tools used to be pathetic. These days we have much better tools, so maybe we can finally get attention to details back instead of enforcing one-size-fits-all ugliness on everyone, just because it's simpler for non-designers.

What I am worried though is that "flat" already caused too much damage and we will never see a beautiful complex yet holistic UI again. Something like what happened to IndyCars; they had arguably the most beautiful cars on the planet in 00s, then switched to unbelievably ugly decade and half, and this year will have something that while prettier than what they had before, still can't match their golden age in looks when many people were watching them because they just looked so cool.

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of the reason skeuomorphic design went away was that Apple had a release which used more skeuomorphism and was also _ugly_. The OP link is more tasteful. Let's just bring back taste, rather than carrying banners for one abstract philosophy or another.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like it, it's very tasteful... I hope it does come back, because I find the flat / whitespace / no decoration UI craze to be boring.

<comment><USER5> This point is mostly about looks, not skeuomorphism.

You do not have to model real items to have them look good and be recognisable and the functionality being relatively obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amen.

I'll be the first to admit that "you don't want me doing your UX design"[0], but I found the whole violent shift from skeuomorphic to flat to be too much. Almost over night we went from nearly cartoonish to IRS forms "with color". As a non-designer, I was happy -- finally, I could hit up a web site for a reasonable color palette, grab a popular font from Google and have a design that _almost passed_ as typical. As a user, I found the look ... boring and uninspired.

Here's the thing, though, skeuomorphic design _did_ serve a purpose. It was to equate, for non-tech-savvy folks, concepts from the "real world" to concepts in an app. A few simple design elements can differentiate my calendar from my task list from my playlist and can be _highly effective_ in circumstances where providing a UI more than a very brief glance can be dangerous[1]. And outside of those scenarios, it's nice reducing the cognitive load required to recognize the context of what I'm doing. Unfortunately, it _was_ taken way too far. But it went too far the other way, too. There's a happy medium here, and I rather like the UI presented here as that happy place.

[0] I'm not completely miserable at it, but I'm a developer. I want a knob/switch/setting for _everything_ and the ability to customize _everything_ (I joke that I never quit Firefox because I love "about:config"). My mom doesn't. For most of my projects, which are either personal or targeted at engineers, a lot of time isn't spent thinking about design.

[1] For instance, waking my phone while driving to change the song -- It's nice to see something that indicates "that's a playlist" which is obvious and instant.

<comment><USER5> My playlist does not look like a collection of CDs nor like a plain text list. It does look like a spiffy and specific list - and different from image gallery too.

(Using PowerAmp, not affiliated.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree that most UI is the same these days and some change from the norm should be encouraged, but I don't think that UI with actual real world things like binder clips is needed. Mobile apps don't need clips to keep pages together, so lets not bring new constraints into a field that already has it's own to work with.

I love how Google is updating material design to have more aggressive shadows and bring in elements that make the UI feel more like the real world, while also pushing the boundaries of app design with newer interaction models that most haven't seen, but immediately feel used to.

Mobile app design is such a new field, let's not jump back into our time machine because we feel nostalgic for Steve Job's Apple. Let's keep pushing the field forward.

<comment><USER21> When every app looks and acts the same, why have different apps at all? What I want is one single mega app that does everything. At least then I can rest peacefully knowing that the interfaces between all of my digital playspaces are consistent. Think of how wonderful it will be when I can open my phone and not be surprised by what a designer has carefully crafted. This excites you too, doesn't it?

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying everything should be the same, my first sentence said quite the opposite. I'm just saying let's not bring the constraints of the physical world into mobile app design, let's get a little more creative.

<comment><USER21> I'm of the opinion that "Material design" is exactly what my comment portrays... a world where all interfaces look and act alike, where everything must adhere to "best practices" at the expense of a unique experience and fresh ideas.

My thought is that, if the goal is more creativity, then we have to move away from trying to homogenize user experiences by funneling them into the same identical visual theme (read: "Material design")

I didn't mean my previous comment to rip on what you were saying; this just comes from someone who is working on a project that has been shorehorned into Material design and I sincerely think the user interface has worsened as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please don't. Skeuomorphism always lies to the user.

That button? Does not really depress and definitely does not act immediately.

Knob you're turning? It is not analogue nor you can really use a true turning gesture.

And why do you have to use one when you have a touch screen to draw the result on?

Computer desktop is not a desk top, items do not obstruct each other.

A file folder has no pages.

Ebook only has them because someone thought it needs to. I'd welcome infinite scrolling in these.

Non-flat is not the same as skeuomorphic. Hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kind of dooh: as we get _better and higher DPI display, skeumorphic designs are too good at showing off how good the displays actually are to worth passing off :P_

Thing with skeumorphic design is that people really don't know where to stop when they start doing it... so it will be a cycles thing: at some point all cargo-cult designers overdo it, everyone gets sick of it, and we're back to Metro. To be hones though, I like the "improved flat" phase of Material Design and I hope we stay on it as much as possible, so we can focus on things like UX more instead. Back in the days of full-skeumorphic fever, "good UX" was seen as worthless ammateurish crap unless dressed in tons of graphic desinger makeup...

</comment><comment><USER22> The problem with flat design is the human optical perception is the product of literally hundreds of millions of years of evolution, and it is designed for a three dimensional world.

Flat design the latest example of a utopianistic drive that started in the 20th century by some intellectuals to make a world that fits robots, not human beings. Other examples are modern classical music and modern architecture. Modern classical music never caught on because it simply doesn't fit the human auditory system. Ditto modern architecture,though it has persisted partly for business reasons, and has been greatly modified to make it more humane.

</comment><comment><USER23> I agree that some of the most extreme instances of flat UI design need to be dialed back, but:

> make UI fun again

Hell no. I'm not using an app to have fun with the UI, I'm using an app to complete some sort of task [1]. Sure, the UI designer wants to have some fun (same for the developer), but in the end, the user's experience matters the most.

When designers embrace this back-to-skeuomorphism trend, I'd like to remind them of Dieter Rams' Good Design Principles:

> 5\. Good design is unobstrusive.

> 6\. Good design is honest.

> 7\. Good design is long-lasting.

> 10\. Good design is as little design as possible.

[1] Implying that it's some sort of productivity app, rather than some game or entertainment content.

</comment><comment><USER24> The skeuomorphic design in the article is beautiful. It represents a real life object augmented with digital. It makes me want to use it.

Notice there are no textures. Maybe textures was the corny side of skeuo and what people didn't like.

<comment><USER25> > _Notice there are no textures._

It has a leather case and metal binder rings. It absolutely has textures.

<comment><USER24> I meant as background fill. Textures here are used to augment (borders) and not fill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's missing is user testing. Many designers are still in denial that they're engineers not artists, they still mock user testing with "users don't know what they want" etc.. But how do you know if the interface does what it's supposed to do? Does it have bugs?

One of the benefits of a platform design language is that users learn the language, they know what the buttons are, how to navigate around without putting too much thought into it. If you deviate from that you really need to be sure the user will benefit from it and it's not just pretty for pretty's sake.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis)

<comment><USER28> Does this mean I'm allowed to use <tables> again without being crucified?

<comment><USER29> Can't be any worse than bootstrap's col / grid system.

<comment><USER30> I've actually never even tried to understand people's issue with tables. I think there are important places to take stands in my life and I guess that <table> isn't one of them. I'm more of a "generalist" than a front-end dev but that being said, I would guess that you would have more control for responsive layouts with bootstrap's grid system than using HTML tables. If I'm using table cells I can have them stretch or squeeze to fit the screen but it's trivial with Bootstrap's grid to change the number of div's in a row depending on screen size. I don't believe that is achievable with basic HTML tables.

<comment><USER31> The argument was/is that 'table' should have semantic meaning; you use it for tabulation of facts. Most people were using it to create arbitrary containers.

Some people have taken it too far, and refuse to use tables even for representing actual tables of data.

<comment><USER13> I believe it's a weird kind of misunderstanding. Tables were declared bad when the rule was still "mark up meaning, not physical look".

Today, websites are mostly designed in a fixed layout (well, two - desktop and mobile), so the argument against tables makes no sense anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I miss skeumorphism. It was great for making computing more accessible

</comment><comment><USER32> I have mixed feelings about this.

Lets take something that most on here probably remember, the floppy disk. It is still a common sight as a save icon, but my youngest children have never USED a floppy.

I don't mind the concept, as long as the concept isn't sacrificing functionality, and astethics for the sake of nostalgia.

<comment><USER33> Right we should use a Zip disk icon instead. Much more modern.

<comment><USER5> Some software use the standard icon for storage instead - looks like a stack of hard disks.

And then you also get the folder icons with arrows on Windows, not floppies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> skeuomorphism works, and should be used, because of:

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

[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2...](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html#id2878339)</comment>


Review: Windows XP significant improvement over Vista - <AUTHOR> http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx <comment><USER2> The System Stability Chart is pricelessly funny. Which member of the Sirius Cybernetics marketing team designed _that_?</comment>


Thousands of Hip Hop Mix Tapes, Why Not - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4979 <comment><USER2> In fifty years, Jason Scott should be fêted for this archival work he's been leading. He may not have come up with the idea of the Internet Archive, but by putting in so much work to archive and protect this history—be it mixtapes, old DOS viruses, or playable arcade games—he's making it something that the general public has a reason to care about. This archive has significantly more relevance than it did even five years ago, and that's awesome, because it will eventually represent the internet's past to its future.

It wasn't that long ago that mixtapes like this were thrown on sites like MegaUpload, in a way that didn't do much to take them outside of the moment. (It didn't help that they shut down MegaUpload, either.) By uploading the mixtapes here in a way that catalogs them and makes them easier to find, it makes it so that they're given the same level of respect as, say, something that shows up in a record store.

In another era, this would be a thankless job that wouldn't get the respect it deserves. It's getting that respect, because people are actually using the tools and archives he and other Internet Archive employees are helping to build.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mixtapes are kind of the open-source version of rap music. Sort of free to download, remix, and distribute. Sort of... Almost every rapper who is popular right now (meaning, being played on the radio, touring...) has released their music for FREE, months, if not years, before being available for sale on iTunes, or CD. Sure, the iTunes version was mastered by someone who wasn't stoned, but it's pretty crazy that arguably one of the most popular forms of music in the world is distributed for free, on niche websites like datpiff, before it's available for purchase.

Record companies made a push to crack down on mixtape releases in the mid 2000's, even going as far as trying to pin DJ Drama (gansta grilllllllzzzzz) with a RICO charge, for illegal distribution of music owned by the rappers record companies.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html?...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html?referer=)

A lot of these guys, didn't even want to fuck with the big labels, because they didn't get anything from them. The money they would receive from a record deal, could be just as easily made by selling merch, and going on tour, all without having to pay back a record advance.

Unfortunately, Apple has figured this out. Rappers are now signing deals for their mixtapes to be iTunes exclusives for a few weeks, and Apple with all their force, is cracking down on sites like datpiff for releasing the tapes they have exclusive rights too.

Young Thugs brilliant Slime Season trilogy was released on datpiff up until the third installation. Apple got an exclusive.

Just hope this amazing ecosystem doesn't disappear...

<comment><USER4> > Apple with all their force, is cracking down on sites like datpiff for > releasing the tapes they have exclusive rights too.

You might be on to something. I was trying to download Chance The Rapper's new mixtape from Datpiff, and saw a message that it has been taken down due to copyright quibbles and what not. Went to HotNewHipHop and same thing ... I have to say this is the first time I've seen a message of that kind in either website.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Apple got the rights. You can get it in two weeks for free, but have to buy it to hear it today. The worst part is it's working... I caved and bought it.

It's fire by the way...

<comment><USER5> Wow, Apple securing exclusives on mixtapes is some of the corniest shit I've heard of. Get money and all but damn.

<comment><USER6> Yeah speaking of corny you should read the back-story on how Jay-Z worked a deal with Samsung(?) and some marketing team folks to block out enough downloads/streams/whatever with Rihanna's new album so it would be, essentually, guaranteed to go Gold its first week. Is it really a Gold certification if your label bought it for you?

The Chance thing, other than getting money, might be an approach to see if they can wiggle into Grammy contention. That's a rumor though. Will have to see if it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a hip hop head, this is the best news I've seen on HN in a while. Some of my favorite old mix tapes are on here, stuff I'd lost years ago! Great job, Jason!

PS, this is my favorite Houston mix ever: [https://archive.org/details/DJ_Michael_5000_Watts_Overdose](https://archive.org/details/DJ_Michael_5000_Watts_Overdose) \- listen to Track 5. Z-Ro holds it DOWN!

<comment><USER5> Wow, never would have expected to see Z-Ro mentioned on HN. I really think he's one of the greatest ever and wish he was more successful but (and not to sound like a hipster or elitist) his music would absolutely not be the same if it was widely played. Never been there but love Houston if only for its rap.

<comment><USER3> Or have someone post a Watts tape... Houston has had it's own self-sustaining rap system that never really crossed over into the mainstream. DJ Screw, Watts, Swishahouse, Chopped-and-Screwed tapes... All crazy influential on the rap scene, but most people have never heard of this shit.

Does anyone have this tape?

[http://www.djayres.com/houstonfordummies.htm](http://www.djayres.com/houstonfordummies.htm)

Aryes (DJ from the RUB DJ's in NYC) put out this "cliff notes" of Houston Rap. Got me into the scene.

edit: [http://www.datpiff.com/DJ-Ayers-Houston-for-dummies- mixtape....](http://www.datpiff.com/DJ-Ayers-Houston-for-dummies- mixtape.478.html)

<comment><USER6> Eh, I don't think you can say Houston's influence didn't cross into the mainstream. Mike Jones and Paul Wall definitely broke through and hit the top of the charts for a while. Drake just had a sample of Pimp C on his latest Views. The incorporation of the Lean'd out style is really present in contemporary big hits, and I think - maybe I'm off on it - that a lot of that can be traced back to the Houston scene, or the influence of it in some ways. Just thinking H-Town does get its props pretty often.

<comment><USER5> i hate drake

edit: I can point to Houston influence in so much music but yeah definitely dont get its due props.

<comment><USER6> He's not my style in the least but in referencing mainstream he's about as big as you can get without mentioning another Canadian who frequently tops the charts, just gotta point that out. I do think Houston's rep though is kind of frozen in the past, in that I agree there's not a lot of newcomers (from what I can tell) going to the top via Houston. Latest big name from Texas I can see is Post Malone and he reps 214.

<comment><USER5> Oh, definitely agree, I just can't stand him at all and have to express it at all times. Drake thinking he could rap on June 27 is borderline blasphemous and if Pimp C didn't want to do Big Pimpin' with Jay-Z, there's zero chance he would be associated with Drake.

I haven't really kept up with rap in a few years so I'll take your word for it but yeah I haven't heard of anyone really either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm impressed by the effort he put into this.

But I can't find anything older then 2002. I mean the most interesting times where anything before, especially the 80s & 90s. Did I miss something or this this just a huge load of more or less modern mix tapes leaving out all the old gold nuggets from the good times ?

I understand that these tapes are scraped from torrents which might be the reason that most analogue cassettes are missing or maybe the very old tapes are burried in the rest of the upload queue?

I'm currently looking at this ordered version: [https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes?&sort=date](https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes?&sort=date)

<comment><USER9> I'm listening to this blast from my past: [https://archive.org/download/Kool_DJ_Red_Alert_- _Radio_Mix_9...](https://archive.org/download/Kool_DJ_Red_Alert_- _Radio_Mix_98.7_KISS_FM_Circa_1987/Kool%20DJ%20Red%20Alert%20-%20Radio%20Mix%2098.7%20KISS%20FM.mp3)

Even has Scott La Rock up front...

<comment><USER10> How did you find that? I was going to echo the GP, about 2002 being the earliest visible through the date sort (so far).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://datpiff.com](http://datpiff.com) is another good source for mixtapes, but it's cool that he took the time to clean these up, catalog them and throw them up on the archive.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's posts like this that make me think something that resembles IPFS _just has to_ work out, in spite of all the big problems that are yet to be solved.

Because I see this, and I think, "Wow, that's cool. I want to listen to some of these." And it just makes so much sense that my computer should be able to compute a hash of that archive and seed it for others, at least as long as it's on my machine.

It makes me think about how recently, we've collectively embraced an abstraction of what it means to share content online, because of the way that social media works. There's the actual transfer of bits, and then the newly- formed social-media advertisement that says, "I endorse this content."

Isn't it a little fucked up that most (all?) of our social networks don't allow for you to share content to other people without implicitly making a statement about it?

Is anyone aware of someone attempting to create social browser history? I already share it with Google. It might be fun to share it with friends, too.

eg: See that a coworker and I both have visited that stackoverflow post a dozen times, or see that my highschool teacher also read that article, or see that my friend listened to the new Radiohead album.

The problem with Facebook, and even with Twitter, is that every single post becomes a statement. I think this is why snapchat is filling a niche -- maybe it's actually not interesting because of impermanence, but maybe it's about the expected notability of each post. On Twitter or Facebook, your posts end up in the feed of someone else, so there's a pressure to not shitpost.

Snapchat doesn't _really_ have that. You can post dumb shit to your story all night, and people just will get tired of looking at it and go to someone else. No harm done.

I wonder if social browser history could work for the same reason. Unfortunately, I think it'd be a hard sell. People see their browser history as private, in spite of the fact that their browser is full of third-party tracking cookies. You'd never get people to download an addon.

<comment><USER13> I understand your point, but the phenomenon you're describing is essentially just curation. Social media has simply shifted curation from established sources (newspapers, critics, etc.) to everyone.

I would question whether the solution is _less_ curation.

<comment><USER12> I don't think I was clear enough on how I imagine this working. I wouldn't have it work where you can look at the browser history of any of your friends, or as a feed.

Instead, I would use any of my social-news aggregators normally, but if I end up on a page that a friend has also ended up on, It would be fun to be able to see that, and maybe I could leave tiny comments scattered around the web, visible only to my peers who come across it, and we can annotate together.

That makes me think about Genius. I remember seeing them work on this a bit, but it was a couple years ago IIRC.

<comment> j-hernandez [https://hypothes.is/](https://hypothes.is/) \- Maybe relevant to your interests. Very active project. Although IIRC it is scoped to people who use the service and not to your social graph. I follow the project on github and its very active. The volume of problems that they have to solve to make something like this work for users in potentially any environment is pretty astounding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some links from the article:

The actual collection of mix tapes - [https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes](https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes)

A lengthy discussion of what a mix tape is - [http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the- real-difference-between-a-mi...](http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-real- difference-between-a-mixtape-and-an-album)

</comment><comment><USER15> Dude this is the dankest stuff I saw on HN for a while. Here an upvote, and thanks for the share. And thanks Jason for this awesome work. I'm heading right away to listen to some O'school Tupac & Biggie mixtapes. Aw yeah!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely culturally relevant and very cool to see it being treated as such. That whole motif of Mixtape cover art is a trip and a half to me, seeing these cliches over and over and over.

As for the Mixtapes themselves, I'm still kind of reluctant to jump all-in on the Copyright free-for-all that Rap likes to work with (e.g. Tarantino's _Kill Bill_ siren) and occasionally gets called out on. I think retaining some kind of performance rights and compensation standards - think 2Pac's version of "Changes" \- is just fine for the useful progress of the arts (as Copyright intends).

Besides, I'd be pretty pissed off if a shitty rapper used a track of mine and started blowing up without cutting me a piece of the action - that biting shit won't fly with me, even if it makes me sound like Don Henley. Now, if approached by somebody I respect and admire, say, Chance, I'd have to think about signing for free or not. One situation apparently went down kind of like that with Chance and Apollo Brown, in that using a beat for free was not approved by the respective camps[1]. Hip-hop showing respect and doing good business is nice to see.

[1] [http://uproxx.com/smokingsection/chance-the-rapper-apollo- br...](http://uproxx.com/smokingsection/chance-the-rapper-apollo-brown- coloring-book/)

<comment><USER5> Honestly, I used to love mixtapes because of the "look the other way" sentiment towards copyright at least in regards to using other rappers' beats. When a track was hot, you would hear everyone on it and you would hear people completely outshine the original artist many times over. Really was nothing like that.

<comment><USER6> Yeah that type of thing I'm very cool with, in that it's part of the community and a shared expectation of sorts. I think it's a great way to build up cred in the scene. I really don't have any beef with that.

What gets me though is the lifting from other genres where the traditions and expectations are different. I'm not saying 'tributes' and using other people's material isn't huge in, say, rock or blues. Covers and doing 'Standards' are rites of passage.

It's just that I can kind of see why Don Henley got ticked off at Frank Ocean though, because jumping on a really well known track and twisting it in a new direction kind of blurs the expectations. Don & co. are super protective of their legal rights, this isn't news really; I do think Frank Ocean is very talented and his music is quality, so it's not like I'm arguing against his art - just a specific technique or approach in the scene.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, typically mixtapes are kinda lawless re: copyright, serve purely as promo, and then might breakeven at the end of the day. A lot of the time people looked the other way because there wasn't a label to sue, the artist sure as hell didn't have any money, and most mixtapes never got big enough to garner that kind of attention. The Frank Ocean example got large enough and not sure exactly how things were setup back then but Sony is the parent of his label so...

Definitely of the mind that if you are releasing shit commercially that you either clear things or run the risk of getting sued though. This is bringing up all sorts of memories of promo singles with samples that got completely remade because the label didn't want to pay clearance. Even worse, having to interpolate tracks and not nailing the original.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing your perspective and I'm in agreement for sure, re: the commercial clearance. It just makes sense, both artistic and financial wise.

I'll never forget the contrast of watching Vanilla Ice try and explain how the beat in "Ice Ice Baby" was different from "Under Pressure"[1] and then seeing the two behind the scenes Manager/Label guys sitting in chairs on camera saying, "Oh, we knew if it became a hit we were going to have to pay." Still cracks me up.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> More than once, archive.org has hosted something I though was not possible under the current copyright regime.

MAME ROMs, old time radio shows, and, well, this.

So for someone who's not paying attention, does anyone have an explanation of how they're allowed to do this?

For example, do they have special dispensation from the Librarian of Congress?

<comment><USER17> The Internet Archive receives an exemption from the DMCA and other copyright law for the majority of the works it hosts.

<comment><USER18> And the Archive is actively working to show the Copyright Office what needs to be preserved and therefore why they need to be exempted from DMCA e.g. [http://archive.org/about/dmca.php](http://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great. I don't have anything insightful to say, but this makes me so happy.

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot of stuff on DatPiff has been removed because of copyright claims.

Rick Ross's last mixtape: "Black Dollar" is a classic, and was debuted on DatPiff. Now when I look for it on there, I get this: [http://www.datpiff.com/Rick-Ross-Black-Dollar- mixtape.732049...](http://www.datpiff.com/Rick-Ross-Black-Dollar- mixtape.732049.html)

Jeremy Banks is a copyright lawyer with IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).

I see that OP uploaded Rick Ross - Black Dollar to this collection. What'll happen if Jeremy Banks demands it be taken down?

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish the same existed for BBC music broadcasts. Their DJs are excellent. I had tons of their broadcasts on an external HD but my business partner thought it was his speaker and threw it away.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.themixingbowl.org](http://www.themixingbowl.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was my main way of finding new music when I was younger.

The problem is DJ Whatever will often just steal a bunch of popular tracks and turn them into a tape without any input from the artist.

Once you filter that out you'll find some gems. Bishop Lamont put out so many I feel he's already released his best work

</comment><comment><USER23> \-- mad mad props.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pretty cool. Wish Pandora or something would get on the boat with this. (at least pandora can censor out swear words)

<comment><USER25> Same with Spotify, although I have heard from a publicist yesterday that Spotify plans to announce at IMS next week that they will begin supporting mixes/mixtapes very soon, but I am betting they will require "papered" mixes (as in all songs and samples cleared by ip owners, which is very rare in the mixtape world and could be argued is against the entire philosophy of the free mixtape...). Mixcloud and podcast services seem to be the main venue for mixtapes in the dance scene. Anyone know of any alternatives for hosting mixes for streaming?

<comment><USER6> Yes, go take a look at Dubset and their Mixbank approach - it's advertised as a way for DJs / remix producers / mixtape creators to get their versions approved and out into the wild and both parties (original and derivative version) are compensated according to some deals hammered out. It looks like progress is coming in this arena - SoundCloud probably has a lot of those deals in place now (they're claiming the days of pulling DJ mixes are over, I think) so that avenue might be, well, back.

<comment><USER26> Soundcloud currently denies, but there are huge rumors that they are about to crack down a lot of DJ mixes again.

[https://www.yahoo.com/tech/following-licensing-deals- soundcl...](https://www.yahoo.com/tech/following-licensing-deals-soundcloud- may-173858278.html)

I have switched to Mixcloud for all my mixes, but not ideal because their streaming can be flaky and you can't scroll back in time.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, I saw some mention of that via Billboard I think. Agreed that MixCloud has its hiccups and drawbacks but at least trying to be in the space 'n nice 'n tidy 'n legal. Plus me like free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun free to download  - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/command-conquer-tiberian-sun-free-to-download-20100215/

<comment><USER2> This is nice. I remember this game. I got interested into hacking and the web development because of this game!

I remember that for CnC games, you could just edit the .ini file and you could basically change everything in the game.

I ran a small fansite called Tiberian Sun Oracle -- back in the days, most people submit their sites to Yahoo Directories, etc. I also remember RADen, Battleground TS. I also remember using Newspro (later renamed Coranto) for the news management. Good old days.

The game was still under Westwood back then.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, CNC 3 was a pretty decent game but since it was made by EA, all the units were like the same between the 3 civilizations. Anyway for Tiberian Sun, yeah the ini editor was the best!! I remember there was this thing, SunEdit2k or something like that, where you could create your own units or modify the stats of other units

<comment><USER4> You could edit INI files for all of the 2D C&Cs and even the sorta-predecessor Dune 2 :-) For our multiplayer games we used to crank the buildings and units to produce almost instantly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're doing this so people have something to play until C&C 4 comes out (unless you're in the beta). Of course, this game is absolutely nothing like C&C 4. In fact, C&C 4 will probably be the worst selling game in the franchise's history. I cancelled my preorder after playing the beta. It's just not the same game anymore.

edit: Weird, I guess someone didn't like my opinion. That's fine, but at least leave me some feedback so I can make sure I don't do it again. :)

<comment><USER6> I liked some aspects of 3, although it didn't really feel like the same game. I watched a couple of multiplayer replays and the way people mass units in this game makes Starcraft look like Warcraft 3 by comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aw this just brings back traumatic memories of the day I found out Westwood was acquired by EA.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great game. If only they could release the game under a GPL license as well. That would be a great way for open source developers who want to learn from the code, and possibly improve the original game.

<comment><USER9> Then they won't be able to port it to new platforms and sell it again.

<comment><USER10> John Carmack did just this with Wolfenstein on the iPhone.

<comment><USER11> Are you comparing Id to EA?

Totally different corporate cultures.

<comment><USER12> No, he's not. He's saying that if id did it it can be legally done.

<comment><USER13> I'm sure it is a licensing issue. If they had agreements for the models or the sound files they'd have to pay those people. I think doom was released without the original sound files. Perhaps that was quake.

<comment><USER12> It was not a licensing issue that prevented id game assets from being released. Carmack wanted to share the technology, the knowledge, so others could learn from it and improve on it. Letting people play doom/quake for free was not the purpose at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish they would do this with more games. Give it something like a window after so many years (5/7/10 w/e) then just release them as free. They have made all the money they are going to from it.

<comment><USER15> I suspect that it's mostly an issue of money. Releasing a game, even for free download, costs money in the form of staff, servers, bandwidth, etc.

<comment><USER16> If there's DRM involved, the conversion from disc to bare .exe would have a minimal cost involved, I suppose. But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth.

EDIT: MechCommander was released as a torrent. Microsoft (you know, that Microsoft) owns the IP.

<comment><USER17> _But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth._

A game via torrent? It's probably already been "released" for them...

<comment><USER18> They only get the promotional benefits if they create an official release.

<comment><USER19> or if some idiot out there finally figures out how to monetize torrent... even an included movie ad or something... or a modified game that shows a boot screen with an advert would be completely acceptable to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I suspect they haven't fixed the requirement of IPX (!) for LAN play in this version, which seems to be the primary stumbling block for multiplayer in older C&C games (up to RA2) on modern computers. I suppose now you can just all play via the internet instead, without having to make sure you've got enough serial numbers.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't help with these old Windows games, but DOSBox provides virtual IPX- over-IP emulation so LAN play works on old DOS games. I wonder if there's a way to do something similar for Windows games?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never really got into the CC franchise. Was always more of a Warcraft/Starcraft guy.

</comment><comment><USER19> now if only i hadn't switched to mac about 5 years ago...

<comment><USER19> p.s. C&C original was my intro to RTS and led to a 3 year serious addiction to starcraft.... glad those days are behind me... but secretly miss them somehow too.

<comment><USER23> wow i thought i was the only one.

yes i'm glad that my starcraft addiction is well and truly behind me, and that warcraft III "just didn't do it" for me.

i am however, secretly anticipating starcraft 2, and at the same time somewhat glad that it hasn't gone anywhere in the last god-knows-how-many years.</comment></comment></comment>


Be Suspicious of Online Movie Ratings - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fandango-movies-ratings/ <comment><USER2> Oh wow, that's rich. Quoting from the article:

 _Sites like Rotten Tomatoes that aggregate movie reviews into one overall rating are being blamed for poor opening weekends._

The best part is that the quote above even provides a _link_ to the reference they are using for the made statement.[0] In effect, the studios are complaining that news of the films' crappiness are spreading _too fast_.

Let that sink in. The studios confess that their productions are so awful they couldn't be used even for guano. It's almost as if the availability of reviews was the reason for such bad box office performance - not the dubious quality of the object being reviewed.

When a bunch of reviews can undo the effects of a massive, weeks or months long marketing push, I'd say it's time to rethink your product strategy.

0: [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/summer-box-office- how-...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/summer-box-office-how- movie-819250)

<comment><USER3> _> When a bunch of reviews can undo the effects of a massive, weeks or months long marketing push, I'd say it's time to rethink your product strategy._

Whenever a debate about advertising pops up on HN, many people defend it as the necessary way for consumers to find out about good products. Healthy free markets depend on informed consumers, but to think that advertising results in informed consumers makes little sense. I find it strange that a community of logic and science oriented people can hold such a notion.

When communities were small, reputation was king. If your town had two bakers, everyone knew which one was good and which one sucked. No amount of advertising would fool the townsfolk into going to the sucky one.

But this doesn't scale to huge cities with tens, hundreds or thousands of choices. We can't know the reputation of such a wide array, and we can easily be fooled by advertising. Internet-based recommendation systems make the grapevine and reputation scalable. I hope we see more innovation. Yelp is a start, but it fails miserably because if I rate a place 5 because I love very authentic Thai food, and another person rates it a 1 because they are used to Americanized Thai, the restaurant gets a 3 (I'm simplifying for illustrative purposes). In other words, Yelp's rating is useless to both me and the other person.

I'm hoping for a future where recommendation systems and collaborative filtering get so good that they render marketing and advertising useless.

<comment><USER4> That'd be nice, but it hasn't happened yet.

I'm not going to make a grand sweeping statement here, but certainly, I've found out about multiple useful products via adverts. I actively don't want them to go away completely.

I am very interested in hearing about new products in a number of spaces. If people can pay to let me know, briefly, about their thing that they think I might find useful, I'm cool with that.

<comment><USER5> Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them?

I find myself very often in the situation were I hear/learn about a new cool thing, and I want it absolutely right now (The last example was a colleague bringing an Oculus to work, I almost ordered one the spot)

However, I try to wait a bit before actually buying anything big (like one/two weeks), and I find that most of the time I don't actually need/care about the product I was so hyped about.

This is one of the part that annoy me the most about advertising, especially if it is well targeted : It creates a new need and offers (sells) its solution, more than it helps me to fulfill a real need.

<comment><USER6> > Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them?

Yes. As a mater of fact, a prime example from earlier this week--I live in an area with very active clays and we've had a serious drought this year which has shifted foundations around like crazy--whatever, that's what active clays do and you learn to live with it. But the annoying part is doors that stick or won't close or closets that won't open. So, I fixed a few last weekend by putting spacers behind hinges and moved some strike plates around and was getting ready to learn how to plane the doors that couldn't be fixed that way and for the first time and I saw an advertisement for an "adjustable door hinge". Whoa. best. idea. ever. Test batch is in the mail and I have high hopes. Why on earth these things aren't stocked in the local Lowe's or Home Depot is beyond my comprehension.

<comment><USER3> Ran into? That's not an argument for ads. That's an argument for serendipity. We don't need ads for chance encounters of things that might be useful. You run across them when you visit someone's house, or a friend tells you about something great, or someone here on HN mentions it. Or maybe you do a web search and it comes up as a recommended alternative to planing doors. All of these are better than ads because the source does not have a conflict of interest, an incentive to deceive.

And we can move away from a web, roadsides, subway cars, buses, everything littered with ads. We can have a web and newspapers or television news that don't put out junk to increase page-views or tv views using any means necessary (e.g. click bait, sensationalistic junk "news" "reports", etc).

We won't have children being programmed to want more and more stuff.

I could go on and on.

<comment><USER7> Yes, we can.

Private roads have no ads. Expensive neighborhoods have no ads. You won't see many ads on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Expensive HOAs ban lawn signs. You can pay extra for the ad-free Kindle from Amazon. If you buy books, the books are ad-free. Expensive newsletters are ad- free. Pay per view movies are ad-free (except when they have products inserted surreptitiously into the content on behalf of advertisers).

Are you seeing the pattern, here? You get to pick two from this set: cheap, good, fast. If it's cheap and fast, it'll be bad. If it's good and cheap, it'll take a long time. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap.

Plenty of people -- the majority, really -- want lower prices in return for submitting to brain-scrambling.

<comment><USER3> So, a two class system. The poor get by (taken advantage of is more like it) by submitting to "brain-scrambling". The rich get rich thorough said brain- scrambling. Excellent!

Not to mention it is utter bullshit that ads make things cheaper or free: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773). So much for your "pattern".

EDIT (since I can't reply to hagbardgroup at this thread depth): You didn't really read the link and the argument why it doesn't make anything free or cheaper (think about where the advertisers get their money that they pay Facebook), in fact the opposite. Ok, here is the same argument in different words: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237)

<comment><USER7> It does make things cheaper -- whether in time or money.

I don't get it how your statement about Facebook's customers not being the users isn't consistent with the idea that it's 'free.'

Everything costs resources. Facebook isn't 'free.' You use Facebook in return for allowing Facebook to spy on you on behalf of their customers, and give those customers chances to influence you through various forms of media.

There are plenty of communications alternatives which are more private and expensive. Phone companies offer various tiers of paid service. There are tons of messaging apps that permit you to mass message people. You can send electronic mail to anyone in the world. Whoa! So many options!

Facebook is pure frippery, and most people's lives can be improved by quitting the service in the same way that unsubscribing from Publisher's Clearinghouse improves people's lives.

However, plenty of people are willing to give up their attention in return for low price entertainment. People can go to the movie theater for $10, or they can spend two hours clicking Buzzfeed for $0 and two hours. Advertisers pay Buzzfeed's bills so they can remind those readers to buy more tacos from Taco Bell. It costs the advertiser maybe $0.03 per page view for that user owing to Buzzfeed's excellent rates -- so a cool $0.60 for a 20-listicle binge.

The readers spent two hours, but plenty of people are willing to make that trade. Others aren't.

Free web services need advertisers way, way, way, way more than advertisers need those free services. If those web services can no longer provide value to advertisers, then those web services will need to start charging users rather than advertisers to fund the service. Else, you can lobby the government to fund GovernmentBook -- hopefully with co-located servers in that Utah data farm. Then, taxpayers will pay for a continually degrading monopoly service, and you'll get government ads instead of commercial ones. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never trust any online reviews, especially aggregate reviews, because I have never found any to hew remotely closely to my taste (the best example is on RT, the worst movie I've seen in the last two decades is rated 95% fresh).

The only approach I've found that works is to pick a professional reviewer that is marginally close to my taste, read a lot of their reviews, so I know where I tend to agree and where I disagree with the reviewer, then build a mental translation, so when I would see Roger Ebert trash a David Lynch movie, I could discount it because I know Ebert's antipathy to Lynch in not something I share.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious, what was the 95% fresh movie that you thought was the worst movie in 2 decades?

<comment><USER8> Snowpiercer. I'm sure some people love it, but I could not think of a single redeeming thing after I got done. I honestly preferred "The Room", (though that ones 'quality' was unintentional.)

<comment><USER10> Snowpiercer was indeed sad, but I always assumed my negativity towards it was a result of having already read Hugh Howey's (rather good) Silo Saga, which it seemed to rip off at every turn, only having shifted the X and Y axes.

I came away from it thinking that if I hadn't read the Silo Saga, I might possibly have actually enjoyed Snowpiercer, though definitely nowhere near 95%'s worth.

<comment><USER11> I found the first half of Wool to be very good and the rest of it readable, although just barely so. Howey is a terrible writer with interesting plot ideas. Howey has a compulsion to explicitly tell you in minute details through every other passage exactly what is on everyone's mind. The concept of using symbolism and actions to portray people seems lost to him. His sentence structure is terrible. He's saved by Wool's very interesting idea and the first chapter of Wool was admittedly very good. I read the entire series and I really think at a high level his ideas a very interesting, but he just doesn't really have the skill required to write well. I am not sure an editor would help, maybe a co-author.

<comment><USER12> I think you have it backwards. The ideas of Wool are so common in prior science fiction that authors would take them for granted, play with them. The plot is pretty much that of The Penultimate Truth. Howey succeeded because, for whatever reason, people liked his writing or he details of his version more than previous iterations of the idea.

<comment><USER10> Very possible. Not suggesting that Wool was entirely unique, but more specifically, that Snowpiercer seemed to have taken the entire idea of Wool and just shifted the axis from vertical to horizontal.

There were a LOT of copied ideas. Perhaps none of them were original to Wool, but Wool was not (to my knowledge) as much a clone of any individual work as it was the compilation of a lot of tropes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rotten tomatoes usually matches my personal tastes pretty well. Their Critics Consensus summaries are pretty blunt and entertaining sometimes. Here's the one for Fantastic Four (2015). "Dull" is my favorite part.

"Dull and downbeat, this Fantastic Four proves a woefully misguided attempt to translate a classic comic series without the humor, joy, or colorful thrills that made it great."

<comment><USER14> The only way Rotten Tomatoes is useful is if you look only at the negative ratings. All kinds of horrible schlock that has mass appeal gets "certified fresh." But isolating negative reviews: If idiots dislike it then it's probably good; If the negative reviews sound cogent then it's probably bad.

<comment><USER15> I usually go for a metric along the lines of Chesterton's Fence: do the negative critiques seem like they're dismissing the film out-of-hand, or do they seem to show an understanding what it was going for and still think it failed to do it well? Roger Ebert was usually pretty good about this, which gives his truly scathing reviews that much more bite [1].

[1]: [http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield- earth-2000](http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000)

my favorite bit: "The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why."

<comment><USER10> I generally feel the same, but was woefully misled by a detailed, thorough, but overall negative review of "Spring[1]", which I found to be a delightful genre-bending tale that really surprised me.

I'm not suggesting it was the best movie of the year, by any stretch, but where the reviewer kept insisting that the alleged plot holes were completely unexplainable, I found that perhaps she just didn't "Get It", because not only were the holes absent from my viewing, but where she found holes, I found explanations that actually made sense (y'know, within the context of a film anyway).

[1] - [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3395184/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3395184/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of this [1] movie poster for "Legend" that does a great job of turning a 2 star review from The Guardian into what appears to be 4 stars.

[1][https://twitter.com/benfraserlee/status/641368752798306304](https://twitter.com/benfraserlee/status/641368752798306304)

</comment><comment><USER17> Having done a little bit of work on stuff like this for Fandango a long time ago I learned a little bit about their view of customers from their marketing folks.

Their average customer is a person that sees all the big blockbuster movies. They are _not_ discerning about what they see and they are not critical viewers.

Comparing these people's reviews to the professionals on Rotten Tomatoes is a little silly. As mentioned, Fandango has no motive to reduce the ratings, the more "must see" movies there are, the more money they make.

 __edit __having read more of this article now, I see the issue with Fandango 's rounding. Pretty lame.

<comment><USER18> The Fandango scores were also higher than the Rotten Tomatoes _user_ ratings 74% of the time. But yeah, Fandango is obviously incentivized to be biased.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm wary of any website that offers reviews for things they are also trying to sell, like those online systems for buying games (Playstation Network comes to mind). Why would a profit-driven enterprise allow anything to create a negative impression for the user? Amazon seems okay because they have such a wide variety of items: They're getting paid either way.

<comment><USER20> The problem with most online reviews is that they usually only collect reviews from those who are motivated to submit a review. This usually skews reviews towards the 1 or 5 star ends of the spectrum because 3-star reviewers aren't really motivated to go through the hassle of submitting a review, unless they're the type of person who obsessively reviews everything (think Yelp! Elite).

The only real way to get past this is to know when someone is a candidate to review something and solicit reviews from them. Amazon reviews fall into this category and it's the reason why they're pretty reliable. I'd bet they're getting 5-10% conversion (I've worked on systems that got over 30%, but different types of reviewable products have different conversion rates) on every "Did product X meet your expectations?" email they send. They've got their die hards that review everything and who's reviews everyone finds helpful, but the star rating will be largely determined by the larger group of people that write 1-2 sentences and submit.

But without closing the loop and attempting to get reviews from every possible reviewer, ratings are far less useful.

<comment><USER21> Still with regards to books,on Amazon alot of books get a relatively high score(4+) and it's hard to filter good vs bad books using the score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've never seen much point in caring about movie ratings. I find very little correlation between my own perception of a movie and the ratings; whether from "professional" critics, or the generic crowd-sourced ones. I just watch stuff that sounds interesting to me. Sure, you hit some stinkers here and there, but I find that acceptable.

<comment><USER23> I find the same thing. For example, the funniest movie I've ever seen is "Freddy Got Fingered". This is currently rated 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. And the most boring movie I've seen is "Lost In Translation", which is rated 95% there. In both cases I watched them because I liked the lead actor's previous work, and that's had a better success rate than trusting reviews.

<comment><USER24> I'm appalled that for someone out there, Freddy Got Fingered is the _funniest movie they 've ever seen_. Likewise, that Lost In Translation is _the most boring_.

<comment><USER23> Note that "funniest movie" isn't the same as "best comedy". It's merely the one that made me laugh the most. That's a very important attribute for judging comedy, but not the only one. Taking all aspects into account (how much I laughed, acting, memorable lines, cultural impact, cinematography, etc.) I would rate Ghostbusters as best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fandango can't be trusted to give an unbiased rating because they're trying to sell you tickets to the movie.

On the other hand, movie studios have a lot to gain by gaming sites such as IMDB and rotten tomatoes while these sites wouldn't exist if their users knew their ratings were paid for. As others have pointed out, I have noticed that movies tend to be very highly rated on IMDB during the first week or two of a movie being released to theaters. With the amount of money on the line I wouldn't be surprised if movie studios were creating fake accounts and reviews on a massive scale in an effort to generate positive ratings, especially if review sites aren't accepting the movie studio's money to fake the rating.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is the deal with IMDB's ratings? It feels like over time all movies end up rated around a 7.

<comment><USER27> I feel that's something like survivor bias - you may watch and rate only the movies you're interested in. My Goodreads ratings are at an average of 3.8/5 because I usually stay away from books I know I wouldn't enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe of interest to some here is MovieLens[1], a research project from University of Minnesota that makes personalised movie recommendations based on your own ratings. You can dive behind the scenes and switch between different algorithms, compare its predicted score against the average review score, and there's a page with statistics on your own ratings. (Preferred genres, ratings curve, ratio of mainstream to obscure movies, etc.)

After rating 250+ movies on there myself, my own ratings demonstrate the same right-skew graph curve that IMDB and Fandango has in the article.

[1] [https://movielens.org](https://movielens.org)

<comment><USER29> This (collaborative filtering) is a better approach, but it depends very much on the algorithm used, and how many movies you have already rated. I have not subscribed to MovieLens, and don't know what algorithms it uses.

I developed an online recommendation system (see [http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/morse/MORSE.html](http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/morse/MORSE.html) for details) about 20 years ago. For a user who had entered sufficient ratings for other movies, the algorithm I used (described in the paper) performed better than the more widely used average of M nearest neighbours, which in turn is better than simply averaging everyone's ratings. All it used were the individual ratings given by its users. It was entirely agnostic as to genre (which is quite fuzzy), cast, or crew. I was aware of a tendency for people to rate movies more highly if they watched them recently, but never asked users for this data.

Surprisingly, using the ratings of only the one person whose tastes are closest to your own (i.e. M=1) results in very inaccurate predicted ratings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Note: Rotten Tomatoes is a property of Warner Bros, whose box office revenue was signficantly affected by the ratings last summer.

</comment><comment><USER31> The author might be mistaken. I think there's a pretty chance this is simply a demographical difference between the sites' visitors, and I'm pretty disappointed this wasn't brought up early on.

Rotten Tomatoes is a hipstometer (if you don't believe me, look at the artsy film festival movies that rank highest there, or read some of the pedantic reviews). Fandango is what a lot of the RT fans would call a "low brow" venue. More Hollywood-ish (huge budget, unrealistic, etc.) movies (transformers, 2012, The Fast & The Furious, etc.) rank well on fandango, but not on Rotten Tomatoes. The really great movies rank well on both (e.g., Captain Philips, Life of Pi, etc.).

It's always been this way. I use a specific formula of Fandango, iTunes and Rotten Tomatoes scores to decide on a movie. If Fandango ranks it 4-5 stars and Rotten Tomatoes ranks it 50-70%, it's usually really good. If the rank is lower on Fandango and higher on Rotten Tomatoes, it's usually a bit too artsy and pretentious for me (I go watch a movie to be entertained, not to stoke my ego).

<comment><USER32> > If the rank is lower on Fandango and higher on Rotten Tomatoes, it's usually > a bit too artsy and pretentious for me (I go watch a movie to be > entertained, not to stoke my ego).

Crass anti-intellectualism.

I like the Sundance Festival, Movies from all over the world and wouldn't got see 2012 on screen but I don't go pissing online on fans of Transformers.

Your definition of `artsy and pretentious' is just `things I don't like'.

<comment><USER33> Your usage of the phrase "crass anti-intellectualism" is far more absolute, dismissive, and disparaging than anything the parent said.

<comment><USER32> I don't think so. Moreover dismissing an entire group of people (hipsterism ? really ?) by stating that watching and enjoying movies one doesn't like is akin to stoking one's ego and that such movies are pretentious seems way more... well... dismissive and absolute to me. Because, believe it or not, some people truly enjoy the movies he doesn't enjoy and it has nothing to do with ego. This is objectively anti-intellectualism.

<comment><USER31> My comment isn't intended to be anti-anything. I spend 10-15 hours per week studying philosophy, history, economics, ontology, physics (a little), and biology, even if it is largely via Wikipedia. I'm certainly not anti- intellectual.

By assuming that watching "hipster movies" makes you intellectual, you've illustrated exactly my point, that (some) people watch these movies because they think it somehow makes them into intellectuals, which fits the definition of pretentious quite well.

Also note, pertaining to pretentiousness, that pretending to be an "intellectual" by category or style doesn't change one's IQ by even a little.

<comment><USER32> > By assuming that watching "hipster movies" makes you intellectual, you've > illustrated exactly my point, that (some) people watch these movies because > they think it somehow makes them into intellectuals, which fits the > definition of pretentious quite well.

Don't reverse the role, you are the one stating and assuming that people watching movies you don't enjoy are stoking their ego and you are the one who came up with the _hipstometer_ word:

> Rotten Tomatoes is a hipstometer (if you don't believe me, look at the artsy > film festival movies that rank highest there, or read some of the pedantic > reviews).

> By assuming that watching "hipster movies" makes you intellectual, you've > illustrated exactly my point,

Really, what a weird line of reasoning. I never wrote that and you can't conclude that's my opinion from anything I wrote because I never qualified any movies as `hipster movies' (while you did).

> that (some) people watch these movies because they think it somehow makes > them into intellectuals, which fits the definition of pretentious quite > well.

Likewise you seem to put yourself above them by not watching them and being a real intellectual while they would be frauds. Yeah, not pretentious at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I usually don't trust on online movie ratings. The only platform that have some ratings similar with my tastes is Letterboxd: [http://letterboxd.com](http://letterboxd.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> While I generally agree with the sentiment of this article, Rotten Tomatoes and its ilk have problems of their own. Virtually every small-budget independent film on the site winds up with a very high rating, likely thanks to the big-budget hating, pretentious film critics whose reviews it compiles and summarizes. Likely for the same reason, some larger budget films that receive high RT scores from audiences receive low RT scores from professional critics.

In short, it's impossible to trust RT's ratings of independent films, as they just can't all be that good, or its ratings of big budget films, as they can't all be that bad. If a movie looks good to you, go see it - whether or not RT tells you to.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, the thing that is really important about reviews, is that you as a reader knows the reviewer and their taste.

So we really need something similar to Netflix rating system, where the rating displayed to you is generated from users with similar taste who have already seen the movie.

[http://tastekid.com/](http://tastekid.com/) let's you search for movies you might like based on movies you do like. It's not quite the same, but I don't know any other.

<comment><USER37> Try [http://www.criticker.com](http://www.criticker.com)

I've been using it for years, it's pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've noticed a trend with IMDB reviews:

* The rating will be very high around release time, then drop a point or two after a few weeks * The top 1-2 reviews will be 9-10 star. After that will follow a large number of reviews saying the movie was terrible.

I first noticed this with movies that I disliked, and couldn't believe their high imdb rating. For example, I loathed American Hustle, and it had that same pattern.

That movie was around 8.4 when first out, and had a ten star review on top. (I've now noticed the ten star review is gone.)

<comment><USER39> It's likely that you just have specific tastes, and you were not the target audience for that movie. It is almost universally liked by critics, earning a 93% on RT and 90% on MC. The high rating on IMDB wasn't misleading in any way.

<comment><USER38> It's possible, but then what's going on with the imdb reviews? The users hate it: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt)

When I look at older movies (pre 2010 or so) there is no such divergence in rotten tomatoes and imdb user reviews. Recent movies have a massive divergence. I'm not sure what's going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really like the hobby(?) project [http://www.phi- phenomenon.org/](http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/) which attempts to create a definitive weighted-aggregate of movie rankings using:

      many different types of lists to measure film quality
      ... polls of the general public, of academics, of critics,
      and of filmmakers.  Some of these polls ask respondents to
      list their favorite films. Others ask respondents to rate a
      large number of films. There are single author lists by
      critics, academics, and filmmakers. There are lists that
      focus on how films are rated by video guides or on how many
      awards the films received. Some lists try to call attention
      to obscure films. Others stick to the obvious choices. Some
      attempt to measure film quality directly. Others include
      factors such as the historical importance of the film.

      The use of different types of lists and the statistical
      methods used help to minimize the effect of factors other
      than quality in order to create a purer measure of a film's
      greatness.

      It is not perfect, but it is closer to perfect than any
      other method is.

<comment><USER30> Looks interesting, too bad they stopped after 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I usually only check ratings & reviews after watching a movie, just to see what other people think about it.

Seeing how easy it is to game such online ranking systems and how tastes can differ, not only on a personal level but also on the current mood, I simply don't trust the scores without having been able to make up my own opinion.

The same goes for any other aggregate "review" site, e.g. restaurant reviews. Those are even worse for restaurant owners, since a bad review can stick around, even if you used its mentioned points to improve your service.

At least movies don't usually change over time (Star Wars being one of the few exceptions), but it's still annoying to get caught up in a hype only to be bitterly disappointed, or the other way around, finally watching a movie after hearing so many bad things about it and then thoroughly enjoying it, making you wish you had seen it on the large screen instead.

...and not to forget paid social marketing, especially when it's not being disclosed.

<comment><USER42> As someone who relies on online movie ratings (not Fandango), how do you choose movies then?

<comment><USER41> I usually base it on the movie's stars, theme or genre, then read up its synopsis (short movie description on imdb or theater's website), and if it's less likely to have some kind of twist or I don't mind spoilers at the time, then I'll watch the trailer.

I'm also not really picky, so don't mind giving a movie a try without knowing anything about it in advance (Dancer In The Dark, Oldboy, and Snowpiercer come to mind as wonderful surprises, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > if you ask people about a movie after they've paid $15 for it and devoted a > couple of hours of their life to it, maybe they'll have a more favorable > opinion of the work. Maybe the profoundly rightward shift in Fandango's bell > curve is just a moviegoer's version of Stockholm syndrome.

This is called the Endowment Effect[1]. I suspect it happens when you spend a considerable amount of time picking the "right" movie.

Admitting to yourself that you made the wrong pick is harder than consoling yourself that it wasn't so bad after all.

Often times the bias will manifest itself in the subtlest of ways--for example a survey of "How would you rate the movie you picked?" versus "How would you rate the movie?" can skew ratings positively in the case of the former.

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

</comment><comment><USER44> What would be interesting is to follow the evolution of big blockbusters on imdb through time. Perhaps I am confused but I think I spotted a pattern where around their release date they have very good ratings and then they trend toward very different ratings. Which feels like the ratings are manipulated during the marketing period.

<comment><USER45> _Which feels like the ratings are manipulated during the marketing period._

I always assumed this was because the people most enthusiastic about a movie see it first, and then everybody else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are a lot of problems with star ratings in general. I believe they should be normalized to a more sensible distribution. So e.g. exactly 20% of things have 5 stars, and exactly 20% have 3 stars, etc. Or a more gaussian distribution so most things get 3 stars, and truly good or bad things get 1 or 5 stars.

</comment><comment><USER47> Reviews in general are crap for several reasons.

One is just pure statistics and design. The typical "average" review score is a mean. And a mean tends to bias towards higher scores, especially when the floor isn't zero. Consider Amazon reviews, for example, which is a 1 to 5 star system. Amazon has half-star increments for the average rating, so you'd think that leaves a lot of dynamic range for reviews, but in practice only the very highest averages are worth considering, everything else is a crap shoot. Consider something that is near universally considered bad by reviewers, it takes 3 1-star reviews for every 5-star review to bring the average down to a 2-star. A 2:1 min:max ratings ratio leads to the same average, and a 1:1 ratio leads to 3-stars. A 1:2 ratio (where 1/3 of all customers have an awful experience) results in around a 4-star average. So you have a situation where a 1-star average means something is universally horrid, and 2 through 4 stars are just variations of awfulness, with only 4.5 stars and above meaning that more than 3/4 of reviewers had a good experience.

Obviously the better metric would be a median, or something similar, but that would lower the average ratings and lead to fewer purchases, most likely.

The other big problem, especially with media, is that the ratings are from self-selected groups. In many cases, especially media, the only people who are going to go out of their way to experience something are folks who are going to be predisposed to liking it, while most other people stay away and thus won't even rate it.

All of which is beside the elephant in the room, which is the fact that in art there's no such thing as an objective universal scale of quality. You absolutely cannot place movies, books, television, or games on a linear number line of "quality" and have those numbers be consistent and sensible. The best that you can hope for is a general sense of whether a lot of people like something or not and the intensity of that like, beyond that you need to actually dig into what people are saying, and who, deciding if it's worth the risk to watch/read/etc. and then deciding for yourself how you feel about it.

<comment><USER48> Skewed absolute rating is not a problem at all.

The problem happens when bad things are rated better than good things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Anyone that reads /r/movies semi-regularly would have seen this happening a lot.

The posts there are so blatantly advertising it's insulting, though it seems the mods are in on it, they have no interest in changing anything.

</comment><comment><USER50> I look at RT but I take it with a grain of salt. I've seen many 95%+ movies that I didn't like. My tastes might be different than the mainstream or the critics and I can be picky but, there's also the issue that the number on RT is the percent of people that didn't hate the movie.

So, you can get 100% if everyone thought the movie was just ok but no one thought it sucked. All the reviews could be just mildly positive rather than glowing.

</comment><comment><USER51> I generally use this settings when looking for a movie on movieo.me: [http://imgur.com/X4xsXaX](http://imgur.com/X4xsXaX). When I'm extra bored, lazy or uninspired and just want some mindless entertainment, I might filter by movies with decent (70+) IMDB ratings, and allow lower RT and Metacritic scores, although I have regretted this a number of times.

</comment><comment><USER52> My experience has shown that the only movies worth looking at are rated > 7/10 anything below is mostly crap.

But this only works for movies that are mainstream BUT not too real blockbusters. Because stuff like the fast and the furious or transformers gets good ratings anyways.

But I use such ratings only to get something light on a boring evening.

Mostly I watch ArtHaus stuff and don't look at those ratings.

<comment><USER53> My own experience is that there is no correlation between online rankings and my own enjoyment.

I enjoy some higly-rated popular movies, and I hate many of them with a passion. Many of my favorite movies, which I would consider truly great, are somewhere around 4-6 on IMDb/metacritic because they don't have mainstream appeal.

Suggestion engines like NetFlix or Spotify don't seem to do any better at predicting what I like.

There's no accounting for taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It might just be sample bias. While users of Rotten Tomatoes are more serious and critical movie watchers, Fandango users are probably more casual movie goers who can enjoy any movie. If I'm out on a date and want to have some fun, I don't care that much about the quality of a movie. Some stupid action flick like Transformers is fine.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm even more cautious about yelp ratings!

<comment><USER56> A friend of mine suggested what I think is a very good idea for starting to fix the Yelp ratings problem: Rotten Tomatoes style ratings, where you're given both food critics and audience ratings.

<comment><USER57> Or, you know, just read the reviews and see the distribution

A review of one star that has 'tis place sux' is much less relevant than one star review that says "ok, service took one hour, even after asking the server multiple times, the food was undercooked and tasteless"

Though my favourite Yelp complaint is that the food tastes "bland". I'm pretty sure that 90% of people that complain about this have absolutely no idea what that dish should actually taste like (or maybe is accustomed to commercial MSG pumped dishes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Noticed while using Fandango's app that the user scores are basically worthless shill scores often around 1.5 stars higher than they should be. They do give the metacritic rating if you click through or for coming soon though.

</comment><comment><USER59> It always surprises me that most rating sites don't even take the basic step of normalizing their ratings to a more even distribution.

</comment><comment><USER60> Of all the ratings, IMDB are the most useless of all. Especially for quality movies that have gathered enough of a reputation to be watched by the masses of tv or netflex, who then proceed to rate them low for being "boring".

Pretty much all of those converge on a rating of around 6.2, including some great classics, whilst lots of Hollywood lightweight entertainment has 7+ ratings.

The only good cinema to escape this faith are black & white and non-English speaking movies, because the unwashed masses of IMDB avoid those.

<comment> saiya-jin for me personally, IMDB works damn well for almost all movies (except family/sport stuff which ain't my cup of tea). probably the attitude "I am above all the stupid masses" tells a bit about you...

hollywood "classics" that have rating around 6.2 are mostly piece of cr*p IMHO, unwatchable/boring these days except if you have some strong bias towards it due to special childhood memories or something. the true classics, be it from 40s, 50s or 60s (that are in top 250 for example) are damn fine movies that stood the test of time with flying flags. only last week I found my way& time to watch Citizen Kane. what a movie and performance! Too bad Wells didn't get well deserved regognition in US for his work, that's US public voting with their cash at their worst...

<comment><USER33> You might think the parent is condescending, but I've noticed the same thing. VERY few movies are anywhere lower than 6 stars or higher than 7 stars on IMDB. It's almost worthless. Not because my taste is so superior to the reviewers, but because the scale is so coarse.

<comment><USER61> There are a ton of 4, 5, and 6 rated movies. I use IMDb at the video store and won't pickup anything that isn't at least a mid-6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The 4.1 to 4 and a half star rounding up issue happens on the play store too, I think. Surprised no one brought it up.

<comment><USER63> I wonder it it comes from programming languages which silently truncate the fraction part of a float when using it as an integer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Hmmmm... I never took online reviews / ratings too seriously. Why would I bother about some random website?

</comment><comment><USER65> Metacritic

<comment><USER66> or look at the average rating in RT

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The think to do is find a few reviewers who resonate with you and keep tabs on them. I mostly just see what Armond White tells me to see.

<comment><USER67> Really? He's well-known for picking contrarian views just to get hits, causes problems at events, and is pretty much shunned by the film community. Even Ebert called him a "troll".

[http://www.ew.com/article/2014/01/13/armond-white-kicked- out...](http://www.ew.com/article/2014/01/13/armond-white-kicked-out-of-ny- critics)

[http://www.avclub.com/article/armond-white-claims-he-was- kic...](http://www.avclub.com/article/armond-white-claims-he-was-kicked-off- rotten-tomat-65156)

[http://www.slashfilm.com/armond-white-prevents-toy- story-3-f...](http://www.slashfilm.com/armond-white-prevents-toy-story-3-from- becoming-the-best-reviewed-movie-of-all-time/)

<comment><USER14> Ebert was an idiot and an idiot's reviewer.

<comment><USER68> It's interesting that you bring up Ebert because I would apply your original comment to him. Ebert is spot on about the redeeming qualities of many films, but in retrospect he focuses a lot on the positives. I don't think this is due to him appealing to the "idiot masses", but rather it's a product of how he views film. No matter which review I've read, the only impression of Ebert I've had is of someone who loves film and its ability to convey the human spirit.

As for calling Ebert himself an idiot the man had seen pretty much every movie that deserves acclaim so it's silly to think he doesn't have a huge library to compare to or isn't qualified to talk about film. He even kept reviewing after having his lower jaw removed because of cancer. The only reason I'd call him an "idiot's reviewer" is because he never bothered with pretentiousness or overanalysis in his reviews.

<comment><USER14> What Ebert did for the most part was accurately say whether or not the masses would find a film enjoyable. He was very good at his job.

A film critic should aspire to do more. He should be _critical_ and hopeful educate the audience on some level. Ebert's reviews were more like restaurant reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I had no idea Fandango was owned by NBC. I will never buy tickets there now</comment>


How Chinese Tinder clone screws you - <AUTHOR> http://www.larrysalibra.com/how-chinese-tinder-clone-screws-you/ <comment><USER2> CEO's response can be found here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3sz5jq/how_chi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3sz5jq/how_chinese_tinder_clone_screws_you/cx1zfk0)

<comment><USER3> CEO reached out to me via email as well a few hours ago to acknowledge the security problems and promise to implement encryption.

Our email thread and my comments can be found here: [https://www.larrysalibra.com/tantan-responds-promises- encryp...](https://www.larrysalibra.com/tantan-responds-promises-encryption/)

<comment><USER4> 1\. I really, _really_ like #5 on the part of the developers. Being decisive like that FTW. :P

2\. Maybe it's possible to be _too_ conspirational, but I'd assumed that, shall we say, SSL had been foregone by arrangement. I'm really glad to hear this is not the case!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Failing to use encryption isn't good, but it isn't the same as "screwing" it's customers. Also, The connection to Ashley Madison has no technical merit. It is just for shock value. This article is really sloppily written.</comment>


Ackermann Goo - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/1gKjae8 <comment><USER2> I upvoted because I'm intrigued. I'm familiar with the Ackermann function and how it relates to μ-recursion, but don't know anything about molecular computation. What exactly are we looking at, here?

<comment><USER3> I don't know but my mind immediately went to grey goo.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Because self-replicating nanobots is the definition of Grey Goo?

<comment><USER4> Grey Goo is self-replication which is only optimized to self-replicate without bound, while consuming any and all local resources.

<comment><USER5> A hegemonising swarm event, if you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you like this, here is the problem I don't know how to solve.

Some numbers: 150K views/day and 5MB/view makes 750GB/day served by google for my collection of animations, during 1.5 years.

Problem: how can I do this alone?

Solutions I thought about:

1\. make a downloadable blob, meh

2\. find investors to turn this into an art project, examples: (2a) some form of exhibition in meatspace, (2b) find cheap tablets or alike and sell them downloaded with one animation, or with the live js which makes the animation (2c) find a flexible screens producer, convince him to make Voynich manuscript like "books" with pages showing one or several annotated animations, sell the books as art (which it is)

3\. make a divination app which takes as input say the date of birth and the current date and perhaps place and creates a graph like you see in this animation, which reduces itself. This idea comes from the fact that I was told from several sources that these graphs are somehow alike "vajra chains".

So if anybody has a solution to my problem, then I can bring the theoretical know how, animations, annotations or produce more.

This is one of about 400 animations, annotated with ideas, linked with programs and libraries hosted on github and figshare. For me this is an science and art project which attracted about 150K views/day on g+, so as an afterthought google was not that bad, even if it does not care about (scientific) data, only about the metadata exhaust.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OK, here's a new one [0], an animation which circulated publicly of a dodecahedron which self-replicates twice.

This is possible because a dodecahedron is a generalized Petersen graph [1]. Topologically is like a perturbed duble stranded, circular DNA, where you left one strand untouched, but you rewire the other strand.

The image is available at [2] and it is used also in the (js) slides [3]

[0] [https://imgur.com/a/StCeSat](https://imgur.com/a/StCeSat)

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

[2] [https://github.com/chorasimilarity/chemlambda-gui/blob/gh- pa...](https://github.com/chorasimilarity/chemlambda-gui/blob/gh- pages/dynamic/dodecahedron.gif)

[3] [https://chorasimilarity.github.io/chemlambda- gui/dynamic/cfp...](https://chorasimilarity.github.io/chemlambda- gui/dynamic/cfp.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it an example of perpetual energy?

</comment><comment><USER7> Getting top at HN??</comment>


Ask HN: Getting in trouble because of depression - <AUTHOR> . <comment><USER2> >I've been developing a game with some friends for two years now.

Ask your friends to talk over Skype in your stead.</comment>