Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-music-on-track-to-overtake-spotify-in-u-s-subscribers-1517745720 <comment><USER2> Honestly, I can't imagine switching to Apple Music. Speaking as a guy who owns an iPhone and a Mac. I love being able to smoothly control playback from any device. I love how seamless the experience is, I've only tried the Apple Music Trial when it first came out and I can't see any possible reason to switch to it now.

Spotify is excellent for music discovery, and I love the top songs and everything. It's perfect. It's the kind of software I wish I could make someday.

<comment><USER3> Google music has been the best for me:

\- IT doesn't block it at work(it blocks spotify)

\- I don't have to install anything

\- I don't see ads on youtube

\- it has all of my music that came from CDs backed up to it

\- I regularly discover new music through their Radio feature so long as the artist/song isn't super popular

<comment><USER4> On T-mobile in the US, spotify streaming doesn't count against mobile data quota ;)

<comment><USER5> But if a fixed-line provider did that it would be considered a violation of network neutrality and the pitchforks come out.

How can a future challenger to Spotify compete in such am environment? etc

<comment><USER6> Well there's 45 services that already do, and it doesn't seem particularly hard to get on that list:

[https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom- list.html](https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried Apple Music for 6 months, and spent that time diligently training it to my tastes. My latest "favourites mix" had 12 songs that I had to mark as "dislike" after all that training. Likewise the "for you"playlists are garbage - just because I like a couple of songs by guitar bands doesn't mean I want to listen to hours and hours of them.

Apple Music on Apple Watch 3 is amazing - leaving a phone at home is strangely liberating.

But, for me, the big advantage of Spotify is I don't always need to think about what I want to listen to - I can pick an artist and listen or I can be lazy and just hit a Daily Mix which plays stuff I really like. Asking Apple Music to play "some reggae" or whatever invariably ends up with it playing a load of music I really don't like, even after all that training.

<comment><USER8> > But, for me, the big advantage of Spotify is I don't always need to think > about what I want to listen to

I haven't tried Apple Music but I do listen to Spotify. What is highly dislike is that it's so terrible about suggesting or playing songs. I don't think it's good at all. Further, the shuffle doesn't seem to shuffle well enough (often seems to play in a similar order).

I'm terrible at knowing artists, song names, etc. I've noticed people liking Spotify often know the names or various artists plus create their own playlists. I think it's all terrible.

Same for e.g. listening to songs. I might be in the mood for some salsa songs. Spotify will have me listen to Salsa songs for hours on end. It should be way smarter. Some slow songs, then some quicker.. but not too sudden, etc.

I don't want to pay for Spotify because of this. It's terrible in song selection IMO.

<comment><USER9> "I don't want to pay for Spotify because of this. It's terrible in song selection IMO"

I'm the opposite. I know their song suggestion can leave something to be desired, as it is obviously based on your recent listening instead of suggesting from your entire playlist suggestion. But then again, that also gives me ways to tweak it by simply sampling a variety of music during the week - which I do when I'm searching for new songs. I rarely know band/song names, and can still find music.

Their song selection is generally good for folks that are sometimes listening to odd music. One of my favorite artists has less than 55k plays on the most popular song - and they suggest this sort of thing to me instead of continually suggesting "popular" music.

The most jarring thing (to me) was the ads, which were solved by paying a small fee each month. Bonus points for downloads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spotify (after years) still doesn't exist in the country I live in.

Google Play (after years) still doesn't exist in the country I live in.

Apple Music has been available from day one.

They also have country-specific pricing, instead of expecting the right price for Americans to be the right price for a developing country.

<comment><USER11> This. This is the only reason I continue to tolerate Apple Music. My job requires me to travel extensively across countries. With Apple Music, I can be assured that music in my playlists works across countries.

When am in the US, I honestly find YouTube Music to be the best (probably since it has a lot of my listening data already hence gets the prediction accurate). But Apple Music still remains the only music subscription I pay for.

<comment><USER12> If you pay for Spotify in a region, the selection should be the same wherever you physically are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have very few complaints about apple music, and most of them are because I regard the Atomic Unit Of Music to be the studio album.

1\. No Tool. :(

2\. No easy way to reorder search results to be album first.

3\. Date of original album release is buried.

4\. Hard to filter by "studio album" vs "live album" vs "compilation album" vs "greatest hits album".

5\. Siri can't help; "play me the third album by the rolling stones" doesn't help, and neither do i have a voice-controlled "tell me what the album names by X are and let me pick one" interface.

My impression is that no streaming service does these things.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean by it doesn't have a tool?

I do think a lot of these services should do more to prioritise the canonical version of a track. When I search for a popular track I don't want to see an ocean of compilations before the original album it came from.

<comment><USER15> He means the band Tool. And yes, it is a shame their music isn't on Apple Music.

<comment><USER16> Not on Google Play music either.

<comment><USER17> Not on Spotify either.

<comment><USER18> Or Amazon Prime Music/Unlimited.

This is the other problem with streaming services.

"tens of millions" of songs still leaves out some glaring omissions for a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sad. The UI of Spotify is much better - less taps to get where you want to go, dark theme, and it actually has song handoff between devices and a dedicated desktop app for the Mac, none of which Apple Music has. I can't help but think this is because of Apple's monopolistic practice of only allowing Apple Music to integrate with Siri.

<comment><USER20> Apple Music is on desktop

<comment><USER21> > Apple Music is on desktop

Not in a dedicated app. The integration with iTunes is a bit of a mess and brings all of the iTunes weirdness along for the ride. I really wish Apple would break iTunes apart...

<comment><USER22> Heh, my biggest complaint wih spotify is that I can't use it with my carefully curated itunes library, including my many smart playlists.

<comment><USER23> I can definitely remember this being possible a while back when I was using Spotify.

<comment><USER22> Yea, it still forces you to listen through the spotify player rather than itunes (which is not _at all_ surprising) and they never supported smart playlists.

Again, not surprising, but certainly enough for me to prefer apple music. The player is just way, way better for my needs.

<comment><USER22> Also (forgot before I can't edit) spotify has no way of syncing your music not in their catalogue to your other devices. So my many bootlegs, mixtapes, and music not in the spotify catalogue is a real PITA to manage across devices, and is not even possible in some cases (eg I can't think of a way to listen to my mixtapes on the xbox spotify player).

Meanwhile apple has the "itunes match" program (...I think?) which solves this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like I'm sure many predicted this would be inevitable regardless how better one product is over another. At the end of the day Spotify can't compete with Apple's budget, and music streaming isn't a long term profitable business on it's own. I love Apple and deep into their ecosystem. However, certainly not a fan of Apple Music. When using on the Mac iTunes is rather horrific since everytime I search it searches local music rather than Apple Music or vice versa, or its in the Podcast tab, etc. They need a dedicated Music app for Mac and universal search without the iTunes store. I'm sure they are moving towards this but until then rather miserable. The Spotify app isn't as clean looking but is much more practical and enjoyable to use. Finally, Apple is about curated playlists, where is Spotify is about algorithms which in my experience is the better route. So while Spotify maybe the better product, at the end of the day, Apple Music is more seamless for people in the Apple Ecosystem of Siri, HomePod, AppleTV and all and in the end will win out. Let's hope Spotify stay's long enough to make Apple Music better.

Forgot to add, that personally, I love YouTube Music. The algorithms and search and pool of countless remixes, live performances and old videos/music not on other places is unmatched. It lacks the Apple Ecosystem benefit, but is a hidden gem

<comment><USER25> I'm personally getting tired of ecosystem lock-ins, so Spotify is a great alternative because they're available everywhere. Also, the UX of Spotify Connect is great.

<comment><USER26> > Also, the UX of Spotify Connect is great.

The color scheme and layouts are beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have grown increasingly disgusted with Spotify pushing a political agenda inside their app. The last place I want to have politics shoved in my face is my music streaming service, whether I agree with the stance or not. Yet it seems, at least once a month, the banner of the desktop app is decidedly pushing a playlist promoting one side of the political agenda du jour.

With them recently banning the personal playlist of a conservative Australian senator, simply because they don't agree with his politics[0], I'm about ready to jump ship.

[0] - [https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/spotify- ban...](https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/spotify-bans-cory- bernardis-australia-day-playlist-ng-b88718551z)

<comment><USER28> "pushing political agenda" "politics shoved in my face" "don't agree with his politics"

It's always the same boring meme phrases. I know that having a persecution complex is effective politicking but it comes off immature.

I read the article you posted. You should understand that an individual artist is more important to Spotify than an individual user to Spotify. Especially artists like: Men At Work and Savage Garden

The playlist was called Australian Conservatives and was a public playlist. If you're advertising it, then it's not personal. Normally if you want music associated with your brand, a company or political party has to pay. And artists have the right to refuse.

It looks like Darren Hayes posted this:

Hi @CoryBernadi and @AuConservatives. I do not want to be associated with you, your party or your views. Remove my music from this stunt or expect contact from my publisher.

Responding like this doesn't really work in the real world:

"Get over yourself darrenhayes. Music is for everyone." Bernardi tweeted.

<comment><USER27> > "pushing political agenda" "politics shoved in my face" "don't agree with > his politics"

Spotify has company created playlists specifically for the travel ban and DACA, permanently in the Browse section. Yes, they are pushing their agenda in users' faces.

Why not just remove the complaining artists? Why remove the entire playlist?

Do you believe that if the political roles were reversed between politician and artist that Spotify would nuke the whole playlist? I sure don't.

You may agree with Spotify's politics, but that doesn't invalidate my point.

<comment><USER28> There's two things here.

Spotify as a company can push whatever politics they want to. It's a business decision, if it loses them users then it's upto their management to determine whether that was a good option or not.

You should accept that Spotify is a "liberal" company either as a stance of the management or as who they see their most engaged users to be. Everything doesn't need to appeal to you.

Saying they're shoving their politics in your face is hyperbole. If I read a business focussed newspaper, they're likely to have articles that are anti- climate change. I don't agree but I'm in their house.

>Why not just remove the complaining artists? Why remove the entire playlist?

[https://press.spotify.com/uk/about/](https://press.spotify.com/uk/about/) "Number of playlists: Over 2 billion"

2 billion playlists, why expend the manpower to do that? Paying moderators isn't free.

>Do you believe that if the political roles were reversed between politician and artist that Spotify would nuke the whole playlist? I sure don't.

Why don't you describe an actual hypothetical scenario?

That a politician created a playlist called Liberal Music and some artists complained. Saying that they want nothing to do with the politician and their party. Also at least one artist indicated that they'd contact their publisher to take action.

Why wouldn't Spotify just take the playlist down? It's the easy action. Playlists are just lists of songs, the songs are still there.

<comment><USER27> > Spotify as a company can push whatever politics they want to.

If you read my other comments in this thread you'll see I agree.

> You should accept that Spotify is a "liberal" company either as a stance of > the management or as who they see their most engaged users to be. Everything > doesn't need to appeal to you.

It is a company owned by liberals. Semantics, but important ones. Also you pose a strawman. I never suggested they be obligated to appeal to me, just that their political posturing doesn't and that I'm nearing the point where I will also exercise my free will and leave.

> Saying they're shoving their politics in your face is hyperbole. If I read a > business focussed newspaper, they're likely to have articles that are anti- > climate change.

Not a proper comparison. I get a newspaper _specifically to read about politics_. I don't do the same for a music streaming service, as much as you probably don't want a plumber coming to your house and lecturing you on how Trump's America is fantastic.

> Why wouldn't Spotify just take the playlist down? It's the easy action.

Why has the decided soft, yet ham-handed, censorship of conservatives become a systemic issue with online services, be it Facebook, Twitter or even Spotify? Why does the far left need even their music streaming service to be an echo chamber?

<comment><USER29> > It is a company owned by liberals. Semantics, but important ones.

A company is a tool of it's owners, everyone else involved is paid agents of the ownership. The distinction you draw isn't important, it's meaningless.

<comment><USER27> The company is a tool for streaming music. The politics are extracurricular.

When I go to Spotify's site, they sell me music streaming. Their company tagline isn't "Spotify: unlimited music and social justice activism".

<comment><USER29> > The company is a tool for streaming music

You've confused the _company_ (which is a tool for serving the interests of the owners) with the _product the company sells_ (which is a tool for streaming music.).

<comment><USER27> I highly doubt that "political activism" will appear anywhere on Spotify's IPO application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been an unhappy subscriber since it started. Siri commands and Apple Music are essential when driving and thus I'm stuck with it(only use it while driving which is frequently).

After three years it still sucks for me because...

\- bloated UX

\- try asking Siri to play all your "Recently Added," songs without creating a new playlist.

\- how can I discover new music when driving? I can ask Siri play similar songs to current song playing but what I need is Apple Music to shuffle all my songs and randomly add new/similar songs that compare to my entire and eclectic song playlist.

\- there are instances where Apple Music/Siri plays non-copyrighted songs ie. cheesy horrible and lame covers of public domain Xmas songs. Makes me feel ripped off

Spotify is better but totally unsafe to use while driving vs. Crapple Music.

<comment><USER19> Google Assistant will happily play you Spotify songs on Android. Obviously Apple won't allow integration with third party software on iPhone.

<comment><USER31> I am happily surprised google assistant not only plays from Spotify but let's you set Spotify as your default music service. No "ask Spotify to play..." just a simple "play..."

I feel like Apple bullies people into inferior experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Globally, however, Spotify remains in a league of its own, with nearly > twice as many paid subscribers than No. 2 Apple, and slightly faster > subscriber growth.

I mean Spotify has been around a lot longer. Is it weird that new users aren't growing as fast if it already held the majority?

</comment><comment><USER33> I switched from Apple Music to Spotify solely because of Spotify's awesome recommendation engine.

Can't even think of switching back to Apple Music after witnessing Spotify's magic.

I guess the recommendation system will keep on giving an extra edge to Spotify over the years to come.

</comment><comment><USER34> Spotify has a desktop application for Linux. Apple Music doesn't. So Spotify wins, right out of the gate.

Add to this that Spotify's auto playlists are a hell of a lot better than Apple's, and I really don't understand why people bother with Apple Music.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is depressing, and I don't get why customers are so fanatically loyal to a service that's consistently trailing the industry in features, security, and has a bad habit of deleting people's music or "forgetting" their accounts.

</comment><comment><USER36> One big disadvantage of Apple Music to me is I still can't listen to Apple Music through a browser without iTunes easily.

It's just so much more convenient you can just use a incognito Chrome session on friend's PC and start streaming, as comparing to install/logout/login/logout (which is referred as "mobile/app first" experience nowadays).

</comment><comment><USER37> Spotify is available via Discord, Xbox, and Playstation. The diversity of clients is key for me. Apple Music has at most what an Android App?

<comment><USER38> Also works with Chrome Cast, which is pretty affordable way to build multiroom setup if you already have some audio equipment around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> In Australia apple music is given away for free with a few of our mobile providers for free. Is the same in the USA? I dont know a single apple music user in Australia. Spotify is a much better user experience.

<comment><USER40> I have never seen a US carrier offer Apple Music. T-Mobile does provide a Netflix subscription with some plans, so it's certainly possible though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a much better strategy by Apple, than Microsoft's strategy against Netscape in the 90's. Here, Apple charges consumers the market price [1]. Microsoft on the other hand gave away its browser for FREE. Free is better for consumers but it sparked antitrust backlash. Apple just let time play to its distribution advantage.

[1] The $ are the same for consumers but not for Spotify. It loses margin because of the App Store's high take rate. As a result, Apple Music makes more than Spotify on a per consumer basis, even at the same price

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

<comment><USER42> IIRC you can't sign up for Spotify inside the app, so they wouldn't pay the App Store tax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I rarely read the full thread on HN but read this one to see if anyone had mentioned Echo or Alexa-enabled devices. Surprising that no one did, esp given how many they have sold.

We are an Apple household primarily but also have a Google Home and recently bought an Alexa-enabled car charger (Anker/Roav Viva). The only service that will work across the board is Spotify. In that regard Spotify is like Netflix -- available on _every_ device.

<comment><USER44> Not to sanction further consolidation or oligopoly issues, but Spotify has long seemed like a logical acquisition for Amazon.

\- Fix Prime's song catalogue size issue (still an issue?)

\- Grab massive market share and upsell/bundle other services

\- Provide bargaining power to Spotify \- Get access to very advanced IP

\- Integrate with voice ui further (i.e. smarter voice commands including play list creations, complex requests and vague requests)

\- Clock / alarm integration for music upon wake from echo/dot

\- Fix profitability concerns of Spotify's revenue stream

\- Provide high quality music, podcast services etc. alongside their soon-to- be-formidable film offering

\- Use Spotify's algorithms and data to potentially improve film/tv recommendations and discovery

\- Provide the gateway to becoming a record label, thereby cutting out the middle men à la netflix/Amazon film strategy of content creation

Would anyone more knowledgeable be able to comment further or point out flaws with this theory?

<comment><USER45> I'm definitely not more knowledgeable, but in my experience Amazon hasn't been as good as e.g. Apple at making their services accessible internationally. It's getting slightly better now with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime video, which is in the same category. But I fear being neglected if they made an acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Gonna be hard to pull me from Spotify. With the Capital One Quicksilver 50% off deal I get the family plan for $7.99 a month (5 users for less than the regular price for 1 user)

At times I'm tempted to give Apple Music a shot because I admire some of the UI differences – but my wife is an Android user and she loves Spotify as well.

It's really the most well-rounded and accesssible solution right now.

<comment><USER47> There exists an Android app for Apple Music:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.android.music)

Anyone have any idea if it is any good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It is interesting how many thinks Spotify is better if it was available in the country, and yet people out of convenience still choose Apple Music.

I have heard Apple Music in UK or US are great. That is when only one languages is being used, and mostly English.

Whenever Apple Music has to deal with two lanagueges, it sucks.

[https://atadistance.net/2018/02/04/homepod-and-the-apple- mus...](https://atadistance.net/2018/02/04/homepod-and-the-apple-music- japanese-metadata-mess/)

And it is not only Japanese, but most of South East Asia. if Apple Music already wasn't better then Spotify, this make it worst.

In the old days, Apple was all about being the best to win. Not it has become being good enough to win, and to make the matter worst they stop improving it after they won.

</comment><comment><USER49> Every year I used to go to Spotify's site, see that they don't support my country, leave and check again later.

Apple Music was the first music subscription service to work in my country and did so pretty much as soon as it came out.

A few months later it got support for my Sonos.

Done and done.

Spotify may be better but I'll never know now.

</comment><comment><USER50> Grooveshark :(

</comment><comment><USER51> I was a subscriber to Apple Music for almost a year, until I realized I wasn't discovering music anymore. It's very nice having a combined streaming and local library. But that alone isn't worth it. I've discovered so many new artists and songs through Spotify using their suggested playlists, related artists, Spotify radio, etc.

You also can't beat their multi-device interoperability. I can use my iPhone to listen, but control playback through the linux desktop app, for example.

</comment><comment><USER52> I tried Apple music, then realized it cancels the ability to sync music from itunes.

Why?......

I immediately shut off apple music and icloud music library once I learned that. Which is a shame, as I'd love to be able to stream from my watch.

But, none of the other music services destroy the functionality of my phone.

Yes, I'm sure I could learn how to use icloud music library. But I don't want to. I just want to be able to take a file from my computer and put it on my phone. I guess that's power user behaviour these days.

</comment><comment><USER53> Can someone explain why? Does Apple music have significantly more songs? Is it significantly cheaper? Or is it simply because it's the default music app on iPhone?

<comment><USER54> The sole reason I use Spotify is it's fantastic (community created) playlists and great recommendations. Once Apple Music catches up to that, I may switch to it because Spotify's UI is truly awful.

I want to go back to Apple Music. I only left because someone showed me some amazing playlists and pretty soon Spotify started recommending great songs to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I use Apple Music for various reasons, but where I am (Denmark) _everyone_ uses Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd stick with Bandcamp and other DRM-free FLAC stores.

<comment><USER57> I really hate that you were downvoted for this. It may be only a single sentence, but I think you're correct to bring up the fact that Spotify and Apple Music both don't represent the entire music industry. These two entities are merely soulless peddlers of the Big 5. There are substantially important pockets of the music industry that do not exist in this narrow realm.

<comment><USER58> > These two entities are merely soulless peddlers of the Big 5

Rubbish - the vast majority of music on both platforms is not released on any of the big 5 record labels.

Apple Music has so many playlists featuring underground artists and labels. Spotify Discover Weekly never gives me any big 5 music.

The only time people get "peddled' the big 5 tracks is when they want to listen to them.

<comment><USER57> You know for a fact that the only reason either of these music services exist is because the Big 5 are in on it. Their catalog is what carries the services, and is what makes them profitable.

There is no Spotify or Apple Music without the Big 5. You cannot say the same of Bandcamp.

<comment><USER58> Why is that a bad thing? It's a positive that the big 5 are enabling smaller artists labels to have distribution to new listeners.

I love Bandcamp for downloading WAV files for DJ purposes but as a streaming service, it just isn't that great simply because of the lack of breadth of the catalogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> And here I was thinking they were fighting a lost battle.

<comment><USER60> How so ? Isn't Apple Music Pre-installed on all iOS devices ? That's a huge advantage that most new services don't have.

(I realize Play Music has the same advantage on Android but Google has completely failed to even try to promote this service)

<comment><USER61> I cannot think of anyone in my life ever using itunes at pool parties, on boats, etc. It's always Spotify and lately every so often it's GPM. I recently switched from GPM back to Spotify. It's everything I need in that specific app.

<comment><USER62> I tried Spotify years ago and didn't like it. None of my close circle of friends use Spotify either.

I used GPM for a couple of years and recently switched to AM. It's hidden in the UI, but you can buy a year in AM for $99. If you look around you can find a $100 iTunes gift card for $80 (sometimes cheaper) pushing the cost of AM down a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I love Spotify, but it bugs me that I can't use Siri to launch music from it. It's the only thing Apple Music has over Spotify imo.

</comment><comment><USER64> I use Google Play Music because it has a block explicit songs switch, which is perfect for family journeys.

<comment><USER65> Spotify has that as well, they included explicit warnings a while back.

<comment><USER64> Really, that was one of the reasons I left. I might look again.

<comment><USER64> Oh, they mark content as explicit but don't filter it out.

I don't see what the technical issue is, if I apply a filter, I get the clean version or it skips the track - if I don't have it on, I get the explicit version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Does Apple Music offer something comparable to Spotify's Discover Weekly playlists?

<comment><USER7> They have a weekly "favourites mix", "new music mix", and "chill mix".

In my experience the choices that Apple Music make are extremely poor, even after months of training. Spotify seems to know what I like, Apple Music has no idea.

(Also Apple Music has nothing like the Daily Mixes, which also work really well for me; it suggests a daily set of playlists for you, but again, Apple Music doesn't seem to have learnt what I like, so these are pretty useless)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> BTW why won't some business fairness commission attack Apple for using their cellphone market domination to thwart competition and promote other products of their own like iMusic (e.g. the way they did with Microsoft when MS started shipping Internet Explorer built in Windows systems)?

<comment><USER7> Don't get me wrong - as I've stated elsewhere on here, I don't like Apple Music and it annoys me greatly.

But Apple Music is only usable with an optional subscription payment and can easily be uninstalled (pseudo-uninstalled) from an iPhone. It does integrate with Siri, which other music services cannot do, and it streams music on the Apple Watch, which other music services cannot (or will not) do. But it's not essential to the function of the phone. And the iPhone has a 30-40% market share or less on unit sales (depending on where you are).

MS was punished for including Internet Explorer for free and then tying it into the innards of the OS so it could not be removed. And Windows had an 80-90% market share at the time.

<comment><USER67> > It does integrate with Siri, which other music services cannot do, and it > streams music on the Apple Watch, which other music services cannot (or will > not) do.

Any idea why? I think they would probably add this if Apple would provide a reasonable way to. Does anybody know if Siri and Apple Watch expose nice APIs that would let you integrate your iPhone app with them?

> And the iPhone has a 30-40% market share or less on unit sales (depending on > where you are).

Although the iPhone-vs-Android comparison can seem to be in favour of Android, Android means many independent manufacturers competing and much more free market for the apps. No single phone manufacturer but Apple has such a market share, having 30-40-50% of the market under unconditional control of a single company means a way more of actual power and commercial value per percent for them than if it was about shares of multiple companies running same technologies summed.

Here ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16279975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16279975) ) is what I have been told in a neighbour thread: "With the iOS market share hovering slightly below 50% in the US, it's iMessage that is the main messenger, at least where I live... I don't use Whatsapp nor was I ever invited by someone to use it, but I heard it's basically the iMessage equivalent in the EU and in other places where the iOS market share is lower."

I don't mean to argue nor am I a proponent of regulations. Just sharing thoughts. Thank you for the answer.

<comment><USER7> I see no reason for Apple not to allow music access for Siri - they have opened it up to other categories of app but have left music out and the only reason I can think of it to prevent competition.

I've heard conflicting reports about the state of the streaming APIs on the Apple Watch. Certainly, it's Apple's standard playbook to test an API with their internal products first before releasing it to others, and as the Apple Watch 3 is only a few months old, I will give them the benefit of the doubt here.

I'm not sure about your point on market-share. Apple may be the biggest single phone manufacturer, but they still can't bully people the way Microsoft did, because 60-70% of people aren't using them - it's platform share that counts here.

(And yes, the majority of my contacts are on iPhones, but when it comes to group messaging I use WhatsApp because that's the only way I can be sure not to leave anyone out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> If Microsoft bundling a browser is antitrust, why isn't this?

<comment><USER69> MSFT wasn't busted for bundling the browser but it was busted for forcing OEM's to not include any 3rd party browser. To get the OEM pricing for the OS, you had to agree that your OS image would not include any software that would compete with IE.</comment></comment>


To all the entrepreneurs. - <AUTHOR>

"We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. That's how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing."<p>—  Steve Jobs <comment><USER2> That's an awesome quote. I'm going to write it down.

He touched so many people by being such an inspiration, I'm going to miss him. I'm writing a book, a life manual or something like that, and I wanted to ask him a question or to give a unique quote for the book but I guess I waited too long to ask. I was thinking about that last month when he resigned. This just goes to remind me that I better hurry up and get that book written or my project finished...just in case.

</comment><comment><USER3> An inspiration to all of us. The day October 5th, 2011 will be remembered as the day the earth lost one of the greatest minds of all time.</comment>


Growing fresh air [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html

<comment><USER2> Been on here a couple times:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=471469>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466315></comment>


Ask HN: Help with acqhire from EU by US company? - <AUTHOR> I'm a european single founder working on a niche startup and have received an acqhire offer from a US company. The package is vested equity (a mix of shares and options), no cash and is conditioned by my employment in the EU subsidiary of the company (different country than I currently live in).
I'm not sure if this is a good offer or not and this is largely conditioned by what taxes apply as I might not be able to pay them. My work contract would be with the EU subsidiary of the company, but the equity is held and transfered by the US company.
Is receiving equity through a vesting program a taxable event in the US? Is my situation any different from the typical vesting situation from a taxes point of view?
In my current country of residence this is not taxable and there is also a double-tax treaty with the US. Would it make sense to set up a holding company here and use it for equity transfer or do things really not work that way?
Any thoughts / advice would be appreciated! <comment><USER2> Firstly, have you spoken to a lawyer/accountant? This is complicated enough to justify a conversation.

Secondly, what type of options? IRS has a short piece about taxation on options here: [https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc427.html](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc427.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. Not sure about the type of option from that classification, it wasn't mentioned in the offer.

So far I've only talked to local lawyers and accountants. Will consider contacting a US counterpart.

<comment><USER2> I would definitely recommend finding someone familiar with US stuff, preferably in your country. If you are in the UK, my email is in my HN details, and I can introduce you to someone.

Also, figure out what type of options, it matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are the options/shares for stock in the EU subsidiary of the US company, or for stock in the US company itself?

Regardless, this is obviously a very complicated situation... Talk to a lawyer. And maybe try to negotiate some cash into the buyout so you can pay the legal fees.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the US company buying? Do you have a EU company they're buying? Or is the package you describe an employment only while they don't really care about any products you created? Who is receiving the shares&options, you a person, or you a company?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have a EU company and the offer is for the IP it currently holds. They want the product I've created and me to integrate and develop it further. The domain is quite niche, it would not be easy for them to find someone else to work on this product.

Reception of the shares & options is not yet settled, it can be either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cash rules everything around me.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to have EU companies, why selling it to an USA one? If it's niche and they have a hard time to employee someone else to develop it then go on with your company.</comment>


Source of HNs own 'Save to Pocket' link on every item? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not able to look it up at the moment, but this 'Save to Pocket' link I'm seeing on HN today: http://i.imgur.com/ntciQmS.png
Is this native to HN now or did the pocket developers just add an update with special attention to adding these links to HN.
Either way, whomever's responsible, i love it. <comment><USER2> Noticed the Pocket extension for Chrome started doing that recently. If you open the extensions page there is an options link for the Pocket plugin. In there it has a few sites it appends the links to that you can enable/disable

</comment><comment><USER3> Buffer does that,too. They annotate onto the existing DOM when HN is detected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. That was my guess. I didn't think pocket was that widespread enough that HN would implement something site wide like that... but I wasnt sure because they havent done anything site specific that i've noticed so far.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what Pocket is, but I don't see those links.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah ok. Must be my pocket plugin. (It's a 'read later' plugin).

Thanks!</comment></comment>


PiPlay, Raspberry Pi Gaming and Emulation Distro - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1985705009/pimame

<comment><USER2> Any difference to RetroPI? ([http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/](http://blog.petrockblock.com/retropie/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a few. The biggest difference is that PiPlay includes a web frontend that enables drag and drop loading of game files, as well as controlling different settings.

RetroPie is built off of lib-retro and RetroArch using EmulationStation as a front end.

PiPlay is an sd card image with a custom frontend (configured using yaml) and individually compiled emulators.

You could add many different programs, not just emulators, to the frontend.

-Shea</comment></comment>


US Air Force Chooses AT-6, A-29 for Secondary Light Attack Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2018/02/02/air-force-chooses-6-29-secondary-light-attack-experiment.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here are the wikipedia articles on the planes:

* Embraer Super Tucano A-29: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano)

* Textron Aviation AT-6 Wolverine: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-6_Texan_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-6_Texan_II)</comment>


AntiSpec pressures Mailchimp to work for free - <AUTHOR> http://antispec.com/hq/mailchimp <comment><USER2> This is just wrong. Making this kind of letter open make MailChimp look like they are doing something wrong by charging for their services.

Not to mention their (antispec's) supporters are web celebrities that charge $500+ per day for their work. They can show their true appreciation and donate to the cause.

Hypocracy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For a company that exists to stand up for people getting paid fairly for their work, it seems hypocritical to expect the opposite from their suppliers.</comment>


How a Single Mechanical Failure Sparked 625 MTA Delays (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/mta-one-day-625-delays.html <comment><USER2> "'For 67 percent of the railroad' — that is, every lettered train line except the L — 'we don't actually see train movement or control any signals and switches from the control center.' Instead, they do it the same way they've been doing it for decades: train crews communicating by radio with a dispatcher. If there's a delay, the dispatcher phones it in on the '6 wire,' an open party line, and awaits instructions."

Wow. I knew the system was old and rickety but I didn't realize it was this old and rickety.

<comment><USER3> The tram line in Trondheim, Norway (orders of magnitude smaller than anything operated by the MTA, but still...) had a signaling system operated by the drivers on a single-track line - on a pole next to the track there was a small bucket.

When you rode uphill, you grabbed a token as the tram passed. Empty bucket meant thou shalt not pass.

When you came back down again (leaving a vacant track behind), you dumped the token back in the bucket.

This system was in use at least until I left town in 2005.

<comment><USER4> I love the simplicity of that solution, but the hacker in me wonders how hard it would be to duplicate the token...

<comment><USER5> A cracker in me wonders what would happen if some random person just came up and stole the token...

<comment><USER3> I believe the assessment at the time was that the speed was so low on this track anyway that a missing token would be an inconvenience more than an outright hazard - tram drivers getting into staring contests and the like. ("You back off!" "No, you back off!")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Their nightmare scenario," says Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers > Campaign, the venerable subway gadfly group, "is there are these people who > are like bouncers who are standing in front of the staircase at Grand > Central and put up a felt line and say, 'You can't go down for 15 minutes, > because it's too crowded down there.' And it's not an insane, paranormal > phenomenon. It happens in London. And it would be terrible."

I've had this happen while commuting in London, and it is definitely annoying. But it is not "terrible" and certainly not "insane" or a "nightmare scenario". Surely it is better than the vicious cycle of overcrowding forcing longer dwell times forcing more overcrowding? And that's not even taking into account the obvious danger of overcrowded platforms, with people at the back wanting to get to the front, and people at the front teetering over electrified rails as a train approaches.

<comment><USER7> I've always wondered, why don't they have fences a few feet from the edge of the platform, with many open gates? Then you could stand at the fence without being able to be pushed into the train's path. Since they aren't on the edge, you could get off the train okay. It would reduce free movement but would not matter unless there was heavy traffic - and in that case, it would be welcomed, by me at least.

Let's see if I can do this with ascii art, just for fun:

       [trains, edge of tracks below]

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

\--- </comment><comment>-- </comment><comment>-- </comment><comment>-- </comment><comment>- fence line

       (people, crowds .................................)

<comment><USER8> In London TFL is looking to deploy more track side doors, which are similar.

I can't speak for other cities, but in London many platforms are simply too narrow for a few feet of the platform to be cordoned off.

Additionally the other issue with overcrowding is emergency and disaster response. If the fire alarm goes off, you need to get all those people too the surface, without anyone being crushed or trampled (look at the Hillsborough disaster to see what happens when you get to wrong). I suspect that people being pushed onto the track is minor concern compared to what happens if people start to panic.

<comment><AUTHOR> This article would justify a submission of its own but is so spot-on in reply to your comment; here we go:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/07/crush- point](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/07/crush-point)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are only gap fillers at two NYC subway stations, Union Square and old South Ferry. Since the new South Ferry station is open again (flooded in 2012), the old curved platform at South Ferry isn't being used any more.

Those gap fillers are a tough piece of mechanical engineering. They have nearly a foot of travel, because they're on a sharply curved section of track. Some other subway systems use gap fillers, but they're usually much smaller, and are sometimes just passive rubber blocks.

Gap fillers get banged by the train as it leaves the station, rather than being retracted before the train moves. That's to prevent dumping people onto the tracks. So gap fillers have to be very tough, and they have to be pushable. That means no electric ball screws or hydraulics; they have to be pneumatic. They have to work at temperatures from below freezing to above 100F. They have to resist ice. They're stepped on by people and people can drop things through the slats, so they have a potential jamming problem. They're long sliding devices, always a headache. They're long enough that being pushed near one end when the air cylinders don't respond fast enough may force them back misaligned and jam them, which is probably the failure mode that caused the problem here.

Union Square's gap fillers are a one-off; there are no other copies of that design. If there were lots of those things, different designs would be tried and tested, as is normal for rugged mechanical design.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are lots of small improvements that could be made to this system. Passengers are often left in the dark about what is happening, and so can't make informed decisions about which train to take, or whether to take the train at all. Announcements are rare except when trains are to be rerouted. The overhead signs that report arrival time estimates and delays are not always visible from the turnstile. And on the Lexington Ave line local track, most of those signs do not show the express train times, so transferring from the local to the express is always a gamble.

<comment><USER11> There's the Transit app, which tells you how long you have to wait for the next train. If more people used it, people would know about delays before entering the platform, and only take the train if they absolutely have to.

<comment><USER10> The Transit app appears to use the official train schedule, which is useless in case of delays. The real improvement is the MTA's own Subway Time app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >MTA executives are naturally defensive about the criticism. They argue that, unlike in the '70s, the current problems are a result of their own success — the subways are more popular than ever and therefore more crowded.

Aren't these the same people that got caught destroying data so that people could not check the efficiency of management?

<comment><USER13> The current problems are a result of the city's success _in spite of the MTA_. Tourism and commuting population have both increased more than the ridership on the subway, which shows that the MTA is holding the city back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have recently been doing a literature survey of research into train timetabling and re-scheduling for a potential contract (using machine learning et al). Dealing with train delays in real time is not an easy problem to solve; it's pretty much a NP complete problem to find the most optimal solution. So 'the best so far' is the goal given time constraints. So I'm not surprised at all about how one issue went and cascaded. Managing real world train networks is pretty complicated because of the interconnection of so many things - the train schedules, the crew schedules, managing the rolling stock, the passengers... and the profit/loss of the train company.

<comment><USER15> If you've not already found it, _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ by Edward Tufte (Graphics Press, 1991) talks a lot about the representation of graphical train schedules by the slope of a line between stations; the intersection of two lines on the graph shows the time and place where two trains meet going in opposite directions. This was in the nineteenth century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've had a lot of luck using this unofficial web-app: [https://wheresthefuckingtrain.com/](https://wheresthefuckingtrain.com/)

<comment><USER17> Interesting, is it using different data than the official subway time app[1]?

I use a script to check the times the trains arrive so I can leave the office at an optimal time.

Something like: echo " #!/bin/bash

curl -s [http://traintimelb-367443097.us- east-1.elb.amazonaws.com/get...](http://traintimelb-367443097.us- east-1.elb.amazonaws.com/getTime/W/R18) | jq '.direction1.times' " > /usr/local/bin/train && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/train

It works really well.

[1] [http://subwaytime.mta.info/](http://subwaytime.mta.info/)

<comment><USER16> Good question - I have no idea! I did find it funny that it's almost always returning data, even when the overhead signs are blank.

(Also, howdy, neighbor - I leave the office and go to the 23rd street stop.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What strikes me is the massive difference in functionality between the system when it is running smoothly and when it hits a snag, and how people consider the very best case to be baseline against which performance should be judged. Perhaps operations can be improved, but pending those improvements, the system is essentially running overoptimistically, pretending that its performance when everything is working right reflects its true capability more than its usual performance does. Many people have made this point, but the quote I have to hand is from Rich Hickey: "In the real world, failures are all the time. A large system is in a state of partial failure almost continuously." In a system like this, there's no point in improving the best case or even the most common case. In fact, it can be counterproductive, because it makes it hard for riders to figure out how to plan their trips, and when they do figure out the best way to use the system (getting to work an hour early many days to ensure you're consistently on time) they resent it. Also, if you perform acceptably most of the time, people are going to assume that you're just a few tweaks or a modest increase in capacity away from performing acceptably _all_ the time, which can be very far from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing I don't see acknowledged in the enthusiasm for rail-based public transit is its propensity for cascading failure. A road network has the very nice property that a disabled vehicle can coast off the road, or only block a subset of lanes, leading to a "graceful" degradation and creating backpressure that encourages other drivers to take different routes, which exist. It isn't fun, but it's a pretty amazing resilience story compared to alternatives. Many commodity parts, failing in ways that the system as a whole recovers from. You would think software engineers would be more positive about that.

We build train systems in such a way that if any component fails, the entire network is fucked. There's only one way to get between A and B, and if it's blocked by an emergency situation or the failure of some bespoke part, no trains will pass until the situation is resolved. From a distributed systems perspective, that's horrifically bad engineering.

Maybe there's some way to make rail networks more road-like in this way, or to build better bus systems that people will enjoy and embrace, but as it stands, the differences in failure modes motivate drivers to stay in their cars.

<comment><USER8> Rail based transport on cities makes a lot of sense. In cities usually the only way to significantly increase transport capacity it to dig tunnels. Building on the surface is just too difficult.

When you build tunnels your cost proportional to the volume of earth you remove, which means your cost is the square of your tunnel diameter. Double the diameter, quadruple the cost.

This is where rail shines. Rail let's you run faster, longer, vehicles in much smaller spaces, because the rails guarantee you won't collide with the walls or each other. Just look at the London tube, with trains only slightly smaller than the tunnels. This means smaller _cheaper_ tunnels, so you can build more of them.

In this system the tunnels already eliminate any real ability to reroute, so you may as well put the biggest vehicles in there and maintain them properly.

<comment><USER19> A system experiencing cascading failure has no capacity, and at this point it should be considered engineering malpractice to imagine that American democratic institutions will do the maintenance on _anything_ , in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what your point is. It's not viable to build more roads, so tunnels it must be. Tunnels are expensive, so rail is a requirement. Maintenance is must, regardless of political will.

Saying that US institutions can't/won't maintain things, thus don't build things that need maintenance is just unhelpful. You might as well say we should all give up now and go home.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CurrentColor - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/currentcolor/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. It seems like it's just a pointless shorthand.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there already an app to export Fb groups to Google plus circles? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You have to do it by Yahoo contacts. There was something else, I think it was facebook and google contacts that needs yahoo inbetween. I only did it 4 months ago and I've already forgotten my yahoo id twice, I wish there was a simpler way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook Friend Exporter

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ficlccidpkaiepnnbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ficlccidpkaiepnnboobcmafnnfoomga)

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading that exporting certain facebook content violates facebook's terms of use. Just a heads up to check the terms of facebook if you were to create an app for export.

</comment><comment><USER5> I decided that I only wanted some selected photos, so I installed a chrome plugin, downloaded some albums and then (love this bit!) dragged them onto Google+ to upload them.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 :) gonna look for the chrome plugins</comment></comment>


A 106 kilobyte color profile for a 3 kilobyte image file - <AUTHOR> http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2011/11/05/shooting_yourself_in_the_foot_with_great_verve_and_accuracy/
<comment><USER2> From the article:

"This is not exactly an unknown problem. Google constantly harps on optimizing images, but Tumblr blindly reuses images that its users hand it. This makes me sad."

There are tons of valid uses for the color profile and other metadata in PNG files. Generally, I _don't_ want services dicking with this stuff (in some cases I don't care, but I don't want the service to decide when I do or don't because it is bound to decide wrong some of the time, so they should just leave my data alone).

Onus should be on the content developer to save the image in a proper format and strip all metadata that isn't required. I don't want services I use stripping this stuff willy-nilly. Perhaps I _want_ accurate color profile data in my PNGs so my tumblr followers can make accurate prints. Perhaps I _want_ geolocation EXIF data in there because my blog is read by people who want to see this data, etc.

tl;dr -- Don't listen to this guy, Tumblr (or anyone else). He makes the classic mistake of "because something isn't important to me, it has no use".

<comment><AUTHOR> There is _no_ possible reason why you would need metadata for any kind of thumbnail, much less a user icon.

In any event, tumblr already resizes all large images to a maximum of 1280 pixels on either axis. If you were very concerned with maintaining images in their original state, this would be driving you up a wall. Good thing it's trivially easy to use alternative image hosting sites, like flickr or photobucket, on tumblr.

<comment><USER3> There's metadata and there's metadata. Sure, EXIF, IPTC and XMP data is usually entirely useless for web images. But colour profile information actually has the information needed to correctly render the colours in the image.

You could argue that small thumbnails don't matter. I would agree for small sizes, but as the size increases, it becomes important to preserve the ICC profile data. With bandwidth having become cheap, and processing power having become abundant, these days it's often appropriate to downscale images in the browser; so instead of storing thumbnail as 40x40, 60x60, 100x100 etc. depending on the use cases, just store a flexible version (say, 150x150) and let the browser scale. At that resolution, I would keep the ICC data.

<comment><USER4> Well, except that this particular color-profile was for the sRGB color space, which is exactly what every browser and image-viewer on the planet defaults to if no color-profile is supplied. It'd be like shipping an ASCII text file with a Latin1-to-Unicode mapping table.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, if the colour space is sRGB you can remove it, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learnt a lot about PNG from that, thank you.

What is a sane solution for users without clue? Does the website just need a good PNG optimizer and hope nothing breaks too bad, and if it does it's only an image?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can just run Pngcrush[1] in a directory full of images, and it'll optimize 'em all. Trivially easy to automate.

1: <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pngcrush>

<comment><USER6> Do browsers use the color profile for displaying the image? If so, wouldn't this affect the appearance of the image?

<comment><USER7> There is a test to check if your browsers support it. <http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter> Chrome has no support at all, which is annoying really.

<comment><USER8> Chrome seems to support that, based on latest Chrome on mac.

<comment><USER9> Chrome 15 on OSX Lion here. Doesn't work at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main reason I'd see for originally including PNG color space metadata is to correct for the inconsistent gamma between OS X 10.5 and earlier (gamma 1.8) and Windows (gamma 2.2). Snow Leopard and Lion have switched to 2.2 so the problem is graduating, but web designers before 2009 had to worry that the colors on their Macs did not match the colors on PCs.

The real question is why throw in the whole 100K including the color space and all, when only a gamma value would suffice?

</comment><comment><USER11> What I've found is that the more a system tries to do colors "correctly" the more likely they will get fubared. I remember the bad old days in the 90's when Adobe Photoshop was the worst tool for editing web images because it would screw up the gamma correction every time.

'Stupid' programs like the gimp would deliver images that looked ok because they followed the hippocratic oath: first do no harm.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty easy to fix using ImageMagick which is what most apps are using to resize images. At the command line it's the -strip option and in rmagick it's the strip! method. This does remove all meta data but for thumbnails like this it's probably desirable.

<comment><USER13> ImageMagick also has a -thumbail option that you can use in place of -resize:

 _This is similar to -resize, except it is optimized for speed and any image profile, other than a color profile, is removed to reduce the thumbnail size. To strip the color profiles as well, add -strip just before of after this option._

[http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line- options.php#t...](http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line- options.php#thumbnail)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having colour tables in image files is a bad idea for these reasons:

1) For small images, the table is bigger than the raw image itself, as this article amply demonstrated.

2) For poor quality images, colour quantisation does not save anything.

3) Good quality images with subtle colours are degraded by it.

<comment><USER15> I don't think you fully understand what these "color tables" are. They are ICC profiles, and they have a purpose. They do not degrade colors. They enable your browser (if it is a modern browser) to display color accurately.

In the example in the article, the embedded profile does nothing at all, because the default for the web is already sRGB. If your image, on the other hand, is in some _other_ color space, such as Adobe98, the embedded profile allow the image to be displayed correctly in modern broswers. Without that profile, the colors will be wrong. Of course, in older browsers, the colors will be wrong regardless of the embedded profile, because most older browsers do not support color management. That is why, for display on the web, images should already be converted to sRGB. Most photo sites do this automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not just colour profile metadata. JPEG images are often loaded with EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata that is mostly useless for serving as part of web pages. Our users kept uploading images where the metadata were in the order of megabytes, exceeding the sizes of the JPEGs themselves, so we started stripping it. Not sure what was in them, possibly garbage generated by faulty software.

</comment><comment><USER16> Really interesting subject since its one most people don't pay much attention to. Here is a relevant article which explains how to create the smallest possible PNG: <http://garethrees.org/2007/11/14/pngcrush/>

</comment><comment><USER17> And, I think of a nasty thing to do using this information...

One can use this sRGB color profile and jam it full of 'complex color information' and know that most sites won't do much with it. Instead, I'd bunch in there maybe 3-4 MB of information (or under size cap) and link the hell out of it.

Who'd expect an avatar image to DOS a site?

<comment><USER18> > Who'd expect an avatar image to DOS a site?

26.media.tumblr.com is an Akamai server, and I suspect it takes more than large files to bring them down.

Yes, you can wreak all sorts of havoc doing this, but I doubt you can actually take down Tumblr in any meaningful way, so it's not really a DOS attack.</comment></comment>


Google Makani – Wind Energy Kites - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/makani/ <comment><USER2> I'm still a bit confused about how the forces line up for the flight path. If I'm understanding:

\- the wing flies in a circle which is perpendicular to the wind (oriented the same way an ordinary wind turbine would be)

\- the tether is up-wind from the wing, so the force from the tether pulls the wing into the wind which generates lift, which is used to propel the wing along the circular path

\- the propellers are driven by the circular movement of the wing, and generate electricity

So the tether and the wing generate movement, the movement spins the propellers, and the propellers drive the generator. Except for take-off and positioning, where they are used as motors. Am I understanding this?

<comment><USER3> I think that's more or less it.

I think what they're doing is a milder version of dynamic soaring, which is a popular technique used among RC glider pilots (and some birds).

The speeds attainable are pretty insane, the current RC record is _505_ MPH, which in a rather fascinating twist is faster than the fastest POWERED RC aircraft.

This a video that shows a pretty good idea of what it looks like, at compartively slower speeds.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DegX_we1Mic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DegX_we1Mic)

<comment><USER4> This video explained dynamic soaring for me: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVN- oF6tPLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVN-oF6tPLc)

The key thing seems to be having different wind speeds available at different heights so you can do the upwind part through slower moving air.

<comment><USER5> Cool. I never knew that stuff. There's a vid here of a guy getting his glider to 320kph with wind speeds of only 25-30kph before crashing it into a rock face. Reminds me of my own efforts with a RC glider which crashed into a concrete pillar at ~50mph quite promptly due to my lack of pilot skills.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWFcYqdgA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjWFcYqdgA4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good, could people just stop messing with how scrolling works.

<comment><USER7> I have a default zooming of 125% and nobody seems to know how to make the web work for us with disabilities, not even gmail works well.

Scrolling pages always look weird for me. Image libraries like lightbox are a special pain in the ass.

<comment><USER8> Would you willing to provide me any detail about the issues you run into with Gmail?

<comment><USER7> The most prominent, composing a new email. The floating window appears out of bounds and it's impossible to click any buttons on the lower bar, including the send button.

What I do is tabbing all the way down so the floating window reorganizes allowing me to send the email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is pretty cool, but several questions spring to mind which I haven't found good answers for.

The first is what sort of density can you get out of these? How many per acre/hectare? 1? 3? California has a number of wind installations and some of them are pretty dense [1].

The second is what sort of radar signature does this thing have? Probably not a navigation hazard but should be interesting on the weather doppler display.

[1] [http://www.jamielaval.com/Images2011/Journal/Tehachapi_windm...](http://www.jamielaval.com/Images2011/Journal/Tehachapi_windmills1.jpg)

<comment><USER10> They do mention density in terms of kw / sqm as being slightly higher than conventional turbines, but don't give a lot of details beyond that. I can only hope it's not based on parking them all right next to each other and hoping they don't get tangled up :p

<comment><USER11> Imagine if they were aware of each other's locations and made micro adjustments to their timing to sync each other. They could cross flight paths.

On the other hand, wind isn't uniform enough to really allow this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My friend worked for Makani for quite some time. I remember at the time, they were in financial difficulty and, in his words, laid off all the people who viewed it only as a science project in order to get lean. Not enough people were focused on what would be necessary to bring the tech to market. He ended up finally leaving after some time, but I think before Google took them. A Google X type of environment probably is perfect for people who like working on science projects and can't be hindered by financial constraints that would hold back innovation at this scale. Would be interesting if Google ends up being able to turn this into something used by many parties worldwide.

<comment><USER13> I guess they did very well to lay off the people who thought of it as a science project, because it's obviously an engineering project! All the science needed to make it work already exists, it's just a question of hammering it together. Disclaimer: engineer here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The 60% load factor seems a dream come true... well above offshore wind levels (c. 50%). Having said that, I'm very curious to know the capex per MW, and the ongoing O&M costs for each of the kites. Onshore wind has experienced a considerable decline both in the cost of the turbine and O&M... my impression is that this technology is not going to be cheap to run. Anyone has any insight?

<comment><USER15> What gives you the impression that it won't be cheap to run?

Presumably, if they've got the automation figured out, each unit will just manage itself, launching when wind conditions are favorable.

<comment><USER14> The underlying technology for the Makani kites and a standard turbine are the same. In the Makani case you have one kite with eight turbines, and like a standard wind turbine, all turbines need to be serviced. If you have to service 1 turbine, the other 7 stop operating. Hence, on a per turbine basis, I believe availability won't be around the 98-99% level (the industry standard), but lower.

Additionally you have the tether, a new variable, which is another moving piece, and will also need to be serviced.

I've done some back of the envelope numbers, and without assuming a higher capex (which I'm fairly certain it is), on an recurrent basis, an increase in production doesn't really lead to cheaper $/MWh on an O&M basis.

                            Standard Turbine	Makani
      Capacity (MW)		1.5			0.6
      Load factor		23%			60%
      Production (MWh)	3,022			3,154
      Availability		98%			95%[1]
      Net Production	2,962			2,996
      O&M $/turbine/yr	20,000			20,000[2]
      $/MWh/year		$6.75			$6.68

[1] I think I'm being generous at a 95% availability, but I haven't got enough data to make another assumption.

[2] O&M can be contracted on a turbine or MW basis. Still, given the "complexity" of Makani, the price of this could be higher than the standard cost.

This is a new technology, and not much info is available e.g. how big can these get, what's the investment cost per MW, what are the potential maintenance issues, how does availability look like, etc. My above argument is an educated guess, but I'd really like to know more about it. I really like the idea and I would like the economics to work out.

<comment><USER15> After they get going, I don't see how the capex could possibly be higher than for a traditional tower wind turbine. Everything is smaller, and closer to the ground. Less site preparation, and you don't need to rent giant cranes. You're also not shipping giant blades and pylons with special trucks.

Also, using smaller generators means that you've got a higher production volume, which can mean significant cost savings. You're also not dealing with giant bearings, gearboxes, etc. which are expensive to produce.

And if you're taking a kite offline, you might as well replace all the motor- generators at the same time. I assume they'll be designed to easily detach and replace. Then, back at the shop, you can check them out on your test bench, and see which ones can return to service in the spares stock.

I agree that the tether is a big question mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The New Yorker did a great article about this tech (and the guy behind it) a couple years ago: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/inherit-the- win...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/inherit-the-wind)

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the link, I was wanting to read that article but had forgotten about it.

I met Don on a return flight from SJC to OGG. He seemed very kind and passionate about the Makani Power project at the time. The idea, as he explained it, originated from plans to build a self powered kite boat [1] that could circumnavigate the world. The "self powered" part interested his friends at Google and they started funding him. He confessed that he had accidentally become an engineer in the process, but his real passion was wind surfing and kite surfing and he was eager to get back to that.

[1] [http://project.kiteboat.com/](http://project.kiteboat.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks a lot like a project being developed by Bryan Roberts (IIRC) in Australia, that New Scientist covered about fifteen years ago. He was using a gyrocopter-like structure (he called it a gyromill) to keep the devices up in the air, and with an intent to be much higher up than these things seem to be aimed at, but the principle remains the same (tethered, high enough to gain some consistency of wind).

Can't find the NS link, but this provides some more info: [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_18...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_182107.htm)

[Edit: add url, fix historical reference.]

</comment><comment><USER19> The specifics on how it works is in a sublink here: [http://www.google.com/makani/technology/](http://www.google.com/makani/technology/)

</comment><comment><USER20> > The energy kite simulates the tip of a wind turbine blade, which is the part > of a turbine that makes most of the energy. The kite is launched from the > ground station by the rotors, which act like propellers on a helicopter. > Once in the air, the kite generates power by flying in large circles where > the wind is strong and consistent. Air moving across rotors mounted on the > kite forces them to rotate, driving a generator to produce electricity, > which travels down the tether to the grid.

Are the rotors that launch the kite the same as the ones that generate the electricity?

<comment><USER21> Yes. The generators turn into motors if you turn the electricity around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://kitepowercoop.org/](http://kitepowercoop.org/)

Looks like there is an open-source community around energy kites. They're largely focused soft form kites, rather than fast moving rigid wings.

And another rigid wing competitor: [http://www.ampyxpower.com/](http://www.ampyxpower.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that wind turbines were effectively unsustainable due to the materials they are made of and their actual lifespan not offsetting the initial financial and environmental costs.

Now, I understand that this project is supposed to provide greater versatility and efficiency using cheaper materials, but it seems to me (by no means an expert on the subject) that these kites are considerably more prone to damage by their very nature too.

Honest question, is this really solving a problem?

P.S.: this website is absolutely horrible to navigate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never heard the argument that current wind turbine are unsustainable before. I don't see why that would be so. The base is concrete, the tower is steel, neither of which is exotic. The generator is pretty standard. All of that is industrial tech we invented a century ago, and we know how to maintain it for the long haul.

The blades themselves are composite, that may have some longevity issues (you typically need to paint carbon fiber to prevent UV degradation every view years), but I don't know, they can last for a long time. Fiberglass boats last 50+ years.

I would imagine the designed lifecycle of a wind turbine is 25+ years, and I also imagine that the bases will last long beyond that. In 50 years we may have to go around and replace the blades on these things, but that's it.

<comment><USER24> My understanding is that, among other things, the generators come under extreme stress during exceptionally windy occasions, causing a lot of wear and tear that happens way up at the top of these giant windmills.

These require a lot of manual maintenance, which is dangerous and expensive due to the nature (and location) of the work.

Additionally (and as a demonstration of just how much stress they come under), while coming under said strain, they've been known to burst into flames [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_oFPF6Anwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_oFPF6Anwo)

As for their lifespan, the government agencies that build them claim 25 years, but there's controversy about this. Searching online will find you conflicting studies, including this one [http://www.ref.org.uk/publications/280-analysis- of-wind-farm...](http://www.ref.org.uk/publications/280-analysis-of-wind-farm- performance-in-uk-and-denmark), which states

"Analysis of site-specific performance reveals that the average normalised load factor of new UK onshore wind farms at age 1 (the peak year of operation) declined significantly from 2000 to 2011" indicating that they may wear out more on the order of ten years.

Now that was a cursory search but in any case the argument that the wind farms cost so much to maintain that they're nonviable is not new.

Wind turbines aren't exotic tech, but it is a giant turbine that is placed way up on a pole, and fundamentally a turbine will need maintenance, so someone has to go up and do that maintenance, and that's expensive.

<comment><USER25> > Additionally (and as a demonstration of just how much stress they come > under), while coming under said strain, they've been known to burst into > flames

I thought all wind turbines were built with brakes now exactly to prevent this and other more spectacular failure modes, like the blades fragmenting. They have a defined operating range, and if the wind isn't in that range the brakes engage and the blades don't move.

<comment><USER26> Not quite, if the wind is too strong the blades feather (edge on to the wind) brakes exist but are puny and are only for maintenance use. Some blades have a tip that the rotates and causes high drag in the event of feathering failing and going into an overspeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Call me skeptical.

I live in the land of many wind turbines, the Øresund region of southern sweden, and I know that they can break down or even catch fire from time to time. Who is going to service this aeroplane when it breaks down?

It just seems to me that this idea has too many possible problems that could go horribly wrong from trying to fly a plane around on a teather in strong winds.

To be honest, before I saw the G+ page and read the top HN comments, my first thought was that april 1st is right around the corner. ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's fucked up that "modern", "mobile-first" web design essentially boils down to powerpoint in a browser.

That said, this is a cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER29> Would it plummet out of the sky if the wind dropped suddenly?

<comment><USER30> presumably it would go into helicopter mode and return to base.

<comment><USER31> There's also autorotation, which means you need very little power for a controlled descent (still need some power to steer).

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

<comment><USER32> Autorotation only really works for large heavy propellers, like the ones on helicopters.

<comment><USER31> I don't know. It works for RC helicopters of 500 size or so. I haven't seen autorotation performed with multicopters, though, so not sure how it maps to this application. I'm guessing these are fixed-blade machines. RC heli's manage autorotation via their collective pitch, which RC quadcopters (or hexacopters) don't have (collective). So it might not be relevant. But on the other hand, if the value of avoiding a crash is high enough, they could make the blades collective just for that purpose. Or maybe make one or two of the multiple props collective... I'd assume they already have a working solution to avoid falling out of the sky, but then, it isn't mentioned in the copy.

EDIT: There _are_ quadcopters that can fly inverted, but I think they use powered servos with a reverse polarity. The value of autorotation is that it works when your main power source dies. So it all depends on the context and parameters (is there a backup battery of lower capacity available for emergency situations, say).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm happy to see experimentation in new wind technologies, but it makes me sad to see things like this grabbing headlines when floating offshore is such a strong contender that just needs some more funding for the engineering effort (mostly because it's pushing the currently tested limits of carbon composites).

[http://bangordailynews.com/2014/05/07/news/bangor/umaine- get...](http://bangordailynews.com/2014/05/07/news/bangor/umaine-gets-small- grant-for-offshore-wind-project-but-far-less-than-hoped-for/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they mutually exclusive, but great link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It seems like if there were a "farm" of these kites, they would have to be very widely spaced out, or else they would crash into each other or get their tethers tangled up.

<comment><USER35> Automated control would handle this easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm worried about the noise. The blades spin many times faster than a regular windmill. I imagine it will sound similar to a small plane flying very close to the ground. Of course a plane flies over once and it's gone; this thing will produce a constant droning noise that fluctuates in pitch and volume every few seconds as the kite goes up and down. If you put them far offshore this wouldn't be a problem, but I wouldn't want one of these near my house.

<comment><USER19> The majority of noise you hear from a small prop plane flying above is from the engine.

Also, the advanced height they're trying to achieve limits the amount of noise relative to what you would hear from a small drone overhead.

<comment><USER37> I'm sceptical that that's true. We can put mufflers on gas engines to make them quieter. The prop, though, is moving a lot of air, and there's no way to get around that and have it still work.

<comment><USER38> I found an old JPL document detailing "Aerodynamic Noise from Rotors, Propellers, and Lift Fans" ([http://cafefoundation.org/v2/pdf_tech/Noise.Technologies/NAS...](http://cafefoundation.org/v2/pdf_tech/Noise.Technologies/NASA.1970.Prop.Noise.Review.pdf)) which has some interesting details.

A 300hp hub, spinning a 9ft diameter propeller at 1584 RPM should be roughly 72dB as measured from 1,000 feet. From a mile away, it will be more like 57dB or about TV volume from 6 feet away. -- Then again, these are spinning far faster than you'd expect from a wind turbine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Reminds me of Kitepower: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjcJljXGW9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjcJljXGW9I)

</comment><comment><USER40> Does this work in the rain? I'm watching the TED talk now but I can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER41> They're supposed to be putting up a test installation on the Big Island of Hawaii sometime this year:

[http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/morning_call/2014/10...](http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/morning_call/2014/10/google- owned-makani-to-test-wind-technology-on.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> It is strange that their map of the USA left off the entire state Alaska, where electricity is among the most expensive in the country: [http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a)

Makani seems ideal for their needs: "Alaska's electricity infrastructure differs from that of the lower 48 states in that most consumers are not linked to large interconnected grids through transmission and distribution lines; rural communities in Alaska rely primarily on diesel electric generators for power. " \-- [http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=AK](http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=AK)

</comment><comment><USER43> How does this affect birds? How does it affect planes flying in that airspace?

<comment><USER44> Commercial planes don't fly below 250m at all, expect when taking off and landing at airfields.

The structure of these "turbines" are that of planes which look like large birds to real birds, so they would stay away from the area with them.

I'd assume that these would be installed in large open fields, so it shouldn't affect migration patterns or bird localities.

I have seen eagles attack quadcopters thinking they were birds, but those are usually of similar sizes to what eagles' prey would look like, but obviously this shouldn't be a problem as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Direct link to video for those frustrated by the scrolling:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSYMHzgLLn8&t=20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSYMHzgLLn8&t=20)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks kind of cool. I just looked up the cost of regular turbines are "about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed." So I guess for a 600kw kite to be economic you'd have to build them for about $1 - 3m given the kite produces more constant power. Dunno what happens when the wind drops and all your kites have to land.

</comment><comment><USER46> A german startup for energy kites based in berlin with a working prototype was even first. [http://www.enerkite.de/](http://www.enerkite.de/) [https://fundernation.eu/fundernation/projects/enerkite](https://fundernation.eu/fundernation/projects/enerkite)

</comment><comment><USER47> For a second a tried to imagine a satellite view of the earth with many of these flying. It'd look mesmerizing. I really applaud Google for funding research on affordable renewable energy. It's unfortunate that the scrolling doesn't work, but hey the prototype does!

<comment><USER48> You mean an airplane view? From the top down I imagine they wouldn't look very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Did anyone else read this as Google Mankini?

[http://www.amazon.com/Smiffys-Mens-Borat-Mankini- Dress/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Smiffys-Mens-Borat-Mankini- Dress/dp/B005HMHNX8)

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting tech. I wonder if these have lower impacts on avian and bat populations.

Also, it's interesting that tech companies love using Hawaiian words for things (Wiki, akamai).

<comment><USER35> The research I've seen says bats are mostly affected by low frequency pressure waves from conventional turbines, so these won't have that problem.

They may also spin fast enough to make enough noise to scare birds away, but they are also _moving_ pretty fast, so could pose a problem for birds at the low end of their loop, which is somewhat under 150 m.

Putting them on a migration route would be a very bad thing for birds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Very similar to underwater kites:

[http://minesto.com/deep-green/](http://minesto.com/deep-green/)

</comment><comment><USER52> looks like a fun project, but unfortunately wind will unlikely to make the impact needed on the shift from fossil to renewables.

</comment><comment><USER53> What happen when I buy one of those, put them in the air and then Google cancel it, will it crash on the ground?

</comment><comment><USER54> What a horribly designed page. It could have fit all on one page.

</comment><comment><USER55> I want Kinetic Energy Puppies.

</comment><comment><USER56> Completely breaks swipe-back gesture in Chrome on a Mac. In a really weird way. Left and right swiping takes you up and down the page. Really awkward.

<comment><USER57> Scrolling with a standard pointing device was off too. FWIW. YMMV.

<comment><USER58> Acronym professional

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Off topic but I have been toying with building a small catamaran powered by a Darrieus turbine or a kite setup such as depicted. The point is wind powered navigation of busy rivers and the east coast intracostal waterway. Obviously this makes zero sense on the open sea or in wide bays, where long tacks are easy and more efficient. Tacking on the intracoastal is practically infeasible in today's world, yet there is loads of wind. Can anyone refer me to to prior art on this?

<comment><USER60> [http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/attachments/projects- propos...](http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/attachments/projects- proposals/17617d1197420937-another-idea-upwind-sailing-real.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Crazy ideas should come with graphs. Not clear how much it costs, how much energy it will generate, and how it will recoup the cost.

<comment><USER62> check this [http://www.google.com/makani/solution/](http://www.google.com/makani/solution/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 600 kW from one kite is insanely impressive. It looks pretty small. That can easily power a few hundreds of homes.

<comment><USER63> That number sounds really high to me too. 2000 of them of and you have a nuclear power plant.</comment></comment>


Parsing in Clojure via a Backtracking State Monad - <AUTHOR> http://brehaut.net/blog/2010/ghosts_in_the_machine

<comment><USER2> I have a question. With the backtracking parser, does this mean that you can rewrite parse-number like this? :

(def parse-number (domonad [sign (optional parse-sign "+") [type digits] (choice parse-integer parse-float) _ eof] [type (apply str (cons sign digits))])))

The fact that you can fail on the eof and backtrack into the choice (if it is possible) is the main advantage. It lets you lay out your parser in a logical way.

</comment><comment><USER3> there is a port of haskell parsec library to clojure at <http://github.com/mmikulicic/clarsec/>

<comment><USER4> There is also another parser combinator library called fnparse at <http://github.com/joshua-choi/fnparse>

<comment><USER3> another one in <http://kotka.de/projects/clojure/parser.html>, also using the same nomenclature as in Parsec. Very nice but the sources are unreachable.

I wrote clarsec because I was in hurry and the "kotka"'s sources weren't available.</comment></comment></comment>