Show HN: True-Random – Generate "truly" random numbers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jaybosamiya/true-random <comment><USER2> > Since the number of times it would be able to flip the bit changes due to > random fluctuations in time due to context switching of processes, this > generates an arguably truly random bit (I would love to see a PoC that shows > otherwise, however).

This wouldn't be true random. It's just using the time jitter introduced by context switching to introduce entropy. Similar to many other pRNGs that use system entropy, mouse movements, etc in order to seed the pRNG.

A pRNG is 'p' because if you know the conditions used, you can deterministically predict the outcome. The difficulty of recreating those conditions has nothing to do with being truly random.

</comment><comment><USER3> 'fuck, not again' \- said the cryptographer. The title of the project is potentially very misleading.

I know most of you take this stuff seriously in your codes and rely on the well know cryptographically secure random number generators: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseud...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseudorandom_number_generator)

<comment><USER4> CSPRNGs require random seeds. They're the obvious right thing when you can generate 256 (or whatever your security level is) bits that are truly unpredictable, independent, and of equal probability 0 and 1, but when generating significantly more is hard. If you can't generate 256 truly unpredictable bits, the CSPRNG doesn't help you much. And if you can generate an unbounded number of them, it's not clear that there's a downside to just using the TRNG data (but there's certainly the argument that it's better- studied and more robust to use a CSPRNG anyway).

Whether this particular method of random bit generation is in fact sound is a different question entirely (and worth asking of _all_ ways to generate those seeds, including the Linux kernel's entropy divination code).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems a bit ambitious to call this true random without any analysis of randomness quality or predictability.

I find it very unlikely this will be shown to be better than existing RNG solutions.

It's clever, but clever in the way that sleep sort is clever, at least until proven to be of actual benefit.

<comment><USER6> It's expensive; it spins for a millisecond to obtain one bit.

Suppose this is running on a quiescent system with no interrupts or other tasks running. I can see it degenerating into deterministic behavior. Suppose the RTC counter and the CPU clock are from the same master clock, and the code is executing cleanly to the clock from on-chip caches.

Ultimately, the question is: is there really one bit of entropy from each call to get_bit(), and under what conditions?

<comment><USER7> It spins for a millisecond to have a chance of obtaining half a bit actually. It takes two clock calls to create a chance of getting a bit, and only if the bit pattern changed during that period.

<comment><USER8> It _can_ create a whole bit per spin, but my guess is that the output was predictable enough for the author to notice, so they added a single round of the most basic random scrubber. 'Hey it looks random now, ship it!'

<comment><USER7> From that perspective, I think we can use the methodology in this code as an input into SHA3 / Keccak or Skein (A SHA3 finalist).

I dunno Keccak, so I'll talk from a Skein perspective. If every millisecond you added the "nanoseconds" field with the Skein cryptofunction salt = mix(nanoseconds + salt + current seed + other Skein stuff), it'd be pretty darn random. (Apparently Keccak can 'sponge up' entropy somehow, but I don't know the mechanism that it does it with)

The output would at least be a crypto-secure PRNG. All that needs to be proven after that fact is whether or not enough entropy was being gathered from the real time clock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks to be the same technique as Dan Kaminsky's DakaRand, including the debiasing: [https://dankaminsky.com/2012/08/15/dakarand/](https://dankaminsky.com/2012/08/15/dakarand/)

See also Kaminsky's implementation of the same approach in pure JS: [https://gist.github.com/PaulCapestany/6148566](https://gist.github.com/PaulCapestany/6148566)

and Ryan Finnie's implementation in Perl: [http://www.finnie.org/2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/](http://www.finnie.org/2012/08/14/twuewand-2-0-released/)

The big concern I have is how reliable this is on virtual machines. Just about all physical machines I'd want to use have high-quality, trustworthy-within- my-threat-model (i.e., "if the NSA wanted to attack my silicon, there's easier silicon for them to attack") hardware random number generators, and all physical machines I'd want to use pick up sufficient randomness from the kernel's entropy magic thing. But virtual machines often don't have access to the hardware RNG, and they don't have access to enough other hardware to populate entropy. It seems like this technique would be particularly risky there ... although I don't think anyone's published an attack on DakaRand yet, so maybe it's fine!

<comment><USER9> The answer for VMs is guest OS drivers that taps into the host's system RNG (with support for doing so in the VM software).

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Having a root, high-quality RNG whose output can be input into other systems directly or seeding a CRNG is a classic, design pattern of mine. It can be used for dedicated, simple machines too predictable for TRNG (eg RTOS's), virtual machines, and probably other things I haven't thought of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really hesitant to even consider this without it being run through the Diehard Tests[0], since from my understanding, "True Randomness" should be cryptographically secure should this be used in a CSPRNG.

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

<comment><USER12> rng-tools includes a command for testing random number generator output. I tried this with a FreeBSD port from [https://github.com/waitman/rngtest](https://github.com/waitman/rngtest)

Results aren't great:

        rngtest: bits received from input: 300032
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2 successes: 0
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2 failures: 15
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Monobit: 15
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Poker: 15
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Runs: 15
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Long run: 0
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Continuous run: 0
        rngtest: input channel speed: (min=236.690; avg=245.396; max=251.742)bits/s

<comment><USER12> And with more data:

After nearly 8 hours:

        rngtest: bits received from input: 6762248
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2 successes: 156
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2 failures: 182
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Monobit: 182
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Poker: 174
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Runs: 160
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Long run: 0
        rngtest: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Continuous run: 0

<comment><USER11> Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is almost certainly not more random than this: [http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/](http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/)

It is a cool idea.

<comment><USER14> Or than

[https://www.random.org/](https://www.random.org/)

Which even includes real-time statistics on the quality of the numbers.

<comment><USER15> Or

[https://qrng.anu.edu.au/](https://qrng.anu.edu.au/)

That takes his number from random fluctuations from quantic processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The debiasing idea is due to von Neumann himself:

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

</comment><comment><USER17> How does checking `get_fair_bit(0)' that the next bit isn't the same as the current help fairness?

<comment><USER18> This is a known method for a simple way of getting an unbiased bit from a series of (possibly biased) coin flips.

Stated another way, the algorithm for getting an unbiased bit from a biased coin is:

1\. Flip the coin twice.

2\. If it's both heads or both tails, discard result and go back to 1.

3\. If it's heads then tails, result = 0

4\. If it's tails then heads, result = 1

<comment><USER8> This assumes the bias can't change over time. This works for a coin because you're using the same coin for all flips, you just don't know the bias. This falls apart in this library because in the computer the source _can_ be affected differently over time -- an attacker can effectively switch out your coin on every flip, rendering this whole process useless.

<comment><USER19> I'm not convinced Von Neumann debiasing is vulnerable like you think. You're dropping runs (00's and 11's) so you don't care if it's 90% 0 or 90% 1, you care if there's an even number of a run or an odd number of a run.

In other words:

0000000000000001 000000001 001

...are all interchangeable. So biases can change all day.

There are _other_ issues I've seen in real world data, but not this one.

<comment><USER8> So I have the ability to arbitrarily change the bias on every flip, and you don't think debiasing is affected?

How about this: for the next string of generated bits, for every even bit the bias is 90% towards 1, and every odd bit the bias is 90% towards 0.

raw: 0101010101010111010101010001010101010101

'debiased': 1111111111111111

<comment><USER19> Ah, there you go. Repro code:

#/usr/bin/python

from random import *

count=0

def get_bit():

       global count

       count+=1

       if (count%2)==0:

          return random()<0.9

       else:

          return False

def get_fair_bit():

       while 1:

          a=get_bit()

          b=get_bit()

          if a!=b: return a

while 1:

       print get_fair_bit()

I'm wondering how often this one shows up the field -- my interest here comes from the ~1% failure rate of RSA keys in the field because manufacturers actually will not install hardware RNG or externally inject key material. Field vulnerability trumps religion. It looks like you need a really stateful vuln -- something akin to "a 1 is always followed by a 0 due to power drain" wouldn't be enough because the number of 0's is still acceptably unbound.

I know there are debiasers that look at statistics across a group. Wonder what else is out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What if get_bit happens to be deterministic on a particular machine? Then get_fair_bit would be stuck in an infinite loop. This can potentially happen when CPU is so overloaded that executing the bit-flipping instruction takes longer than a millisecond.

</comment><comment><USER21> Could you not build a "truly" random number generator using a quantum computer?

</comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't an example of a truly random number generator be to open up a pseudo random webpage (say something like www.engadget.com/page/<pseudo_random_number>) and do a modulo count of the number of whitespace separated words/tokens?

</comment><comment><USER23> This post reminded me of this other project: [https://github.com/dasmithii/RCRand](https://github.com/dasmithii/RCRand) (a similarly silly but fun race condition based RNG)

</comment><comment><USER24> The only thing in the world that might be classified as truly random is wavefunction collapse under observation, and even then we're not sure.

<comment><USER25> Or radiation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is _not_ random.... it is deterministic.

typical round-robin times are on the order of 10ms, so you would have a significant amount of non-context-switched 'random' numbers, which when combined with analysis using the cycle counter.... namely a counter running at the clock-speed of your processor would yield a _very_ non-random value.

</comment><comment><USER27> The periodic interrupt frequency of the system this is run on will have an impact on the numbers produced.

</comment><comment><USER28> You have to ship the hardware with it.

</comment><comment><USER29> ugly tests

1\. ("true"-random) 10 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.82

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 10); do echo -n $(./generate_constant_stream |head -c 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/10") |bc -l
      4.81945500000000000000

2\. ("true"-random) 100 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.37

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 100); do echo -n $(./generate_constant_stream |head -c 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/100") |bc -l
      4.37395291000000000000

3\. ("true"-random) 200 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.35

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 200); do echo -n $(./generate_constant_stream |head -c 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/200") |bc -l
      4.34563333000000000000

1\. (openssl) 10 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.88

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 10); do echo -n $(openssl rand 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/10") |bc -l
      4.88125000000000000000

2\. (openssl) 100 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.87

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 100); do echo -n $(openssl rand 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/100") |bc -l
      4.87404420000000000000

3\. (openssl) 200 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.88

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 200); do echo -n $(openssl rand 32 |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/200") |bc -l
      4.87885575000000000000

1\. (/dev/urandom) 10 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.82

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 10); do echo -n $(head -c32 < /dev/urandom |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/10") |bc -l
      4.82264100000000000000

2\. (/dev/urandom) 100 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.89

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 100); do echo -n $(head -c32 < /dev/urandom |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/100") |bc -l
      4.88655640000000000000

3\. (/dev/urandom) 200 iterations; 32 random bytes | Result Avg Entropy: 4.88

      $ echo $(echo -n "("; for i in $(seq 1 200); do echo -n $(head -c32 < /dev/urandom |ent |head -1 |awk '{print $3}')"+"; done; echo -n "0)/200") |bc -l
      4.88061280000000000000

<comment><USER30> Can you explain what do these results mean?

<comment><USER29> The values presented are "N bits per character". 8 is the maximum, 0 is the minimum. The less value is the worse. The ugly test results show that "true"-random tool does not perform better than openssl / /dev/urandom. What makes it even worse is that the entropy decreases with the amount of iterations. These are simple bash tests, you can try on your own, playing with the values. Though, I suggest to understand some theory in the first place:

\- randomness [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness)

\- entropy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_\(computing\))

\- ent [http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/](http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/)

<comment><USER29> I think it is even worse than I thought...

I've asked the "true"-random tool to give me 3000 of the really "true" numbers (as it claims) and out of 3000 it has thrown to me ~9% of char(0) and ~9% of char(255) values (see the fractions below), whilst the others <0.01% per char between char(1-254).

      ./generate_constant_stream |head -c3000 |ent -c
      Value Char Occurrences Fraction
      0              309   0.103000
      1               33   0.011000
      ...
      ...
      253   �           28   0.009333
      254   �           29   0.009667
      255   �          312   0.104000
      Total:          3000   1.000000

      Entropy = 6.861709 bits per byte.

_Update_

Running it without the char(0)/char(255) neither did outperform /dev/urandom, but only running terribly slow (~5mins on i7) and using 100% of a CPU core:

      $ ./generate_constant_stream | cat - | sed -u 's/\x00//g;s/\xff//g' |head -c3000 |ent -c
      Entropy = 7.737683 bits per byte.

      $ cat /dev/urandom | sed -u 's/\x00//g;s/\xff//g' |head -c3000 |ent -c
      Entropy = 7.924493 bits per byte.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ego has infected this thread. We can't just say that this project is interesting. We have to talk about "expensive" computation. Why? What does "ambition" have to do with computer science?

<comment><USER32> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669106) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Psytrance Guide - <AUTHOR> http://psytranceguide.com/ <comment><USER4> I have just returned from one psytrance festival. I like to go there, not mainly for the music (which I like mostly), but for the atmosphere. Meeting all kind of different people and getting out from the usual "reality" and norms and rat race and jumping into crazines, relaxing the norms and trying new things. It is so refreshing, I always return home more happy and enthusiastic about life. And yes, people eat like tons of drugs at festivals, but I had never ever seen or experienced anything bad from people on trance festivals (which I can see everywhere where alcohol is the main drug). Sounds too hippy maybe, but that is my experience.

<comment><USER5> I'm glad you had a good experience. When I was younger I was producing psytrance (I played the guitar) and I would do liveacts with a dj + my guitar. I had some pretty cool gigs and nice songs too.

Unfortunately, what made me quit the scene was the transformation I saw on my friends and acquaintances due to drug abuse. I don't know if it is a cultural thing, but I have witnessed people losing some or all of their mental sanity due to drug abuse; one time I was at a party when someone died - in the end I called it quits because I didn't want to become involved with that in any way.

I still like the music though

<comment><USER6> I also know a number of people in the scene who lost their sanity through drug abuse. It is sad, but when you are partying and abusing yourself every weekend for years on end something is going to give.

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying there isn't a correlation with partiers who do lots of drugs and mental illness, but I have watched a lot of people lose their minds across all my social circles. It seems like a certain percentage of people lose their minds in their early 20s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. I'm old enough to remember when it was just goa trance.

And then towards the end of the 90's the kicks became more pronounced and the melodies were dropped in favour of more psychedelic soundscapes. From that it seemed the genre split into daytime trance that was brighter and more uplifting and nighttime that was darker and more psychedelic. As a dj, people would grumble at you if you played daytime trance at night, or vice versa!

Even then most psytrance was played at a more sane Bpm < 145\. And then I think the Russians came in around 2006. Artists like Kindzadza pushed the Bpm up to 150+ and it all went crazy. It seems artists started to compete with eachother to write the craziest tracks, and rather than reaching for more psychedelia, they just made the track faster. I'm almost a bit sad to see that the guide lists Forest as 150+ bpm. It was much more psychedelic at 145 (imho).

That was kind of when I dropped out of the scene, its quite crazy to look back and see how categorized it has become. Im going to have to have a browse..

For more, there is a ton of psytrance available to download for free on [https://ektoplazm.com/](https://ektoplazm.com/).

<comment><USER8> I find it painful to see my favourite all-time genre of music, goatrance, getting more and more obscure and snowed under the abundance of time and psytrance. I can relate to oldschool house, trance, and techno lovers alike.

Consider the introduction in this article to goatrance, at the very bottom of the website after all kind of psytrance subgenres.

Roland TB-303? Not mentioned. The archetype synthesizer of acid and goa trance.

Acid? Not mentioned. A genre related and inspirational to goa trance. Same with trance, and techno.

SH-101? Not mentioned. Frequently used synthesizer in trance, including goa.

4-4-4-4-1 bass-line? Not mentioned. Its the bass-line which is typically found in goa trance. Some tracks by Miranda even have a slightly different bass tone on every bass hit which creates a kind of 3D effect in the bass (it _feels_ like salsa to me).

Etnica? Not mentioned. Huge name (with sub projects like Crop Circles and Pleiadians) in the 90s.

For me, a band like Juno Reactor is much more according to the psychedelic values than the conventional psytrance.

Also, goa trance wasn't formed in Goa in the 80s. It was the very end of the 80s, but more the early 90s (91-93). It was normal to combine all kind of genres back then (trance, techno, house, etc). Consider, for example, the legendary Paul Oakenfold - Goa Mix from 1994. Or this very mix which combines different genres in one [1] (though it includes acid, not goa trance).

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkzvUEbf1DY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkzvUEbf1DY)

<comment><USER9> Don't want to be "difficult" but the 303 isn't really the typical psy synth. Although it's used, psy trance required a bit more sophisticated equipment for chords and layering etc.

The concept of "acid" appeared in Chicago.

It's fascinating how goa trance came about. At first they were just strumming guitars out there and then came the drugs and the very early electronic music from labels like Harthouse and Eye Q ... those were the roots of this movement.

<comment><USER6> Early goa did have a lot of acid lines, although I dont think they strictly used 303s. I know Cosmosis used a Novation BassStation for all the lines on their Cosmology album. That album is full of acid (and thoroughly recommended, even 25 years on).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My first though was Ishkur's guide to electronic music as mentioned in another comment, and which hasn't updated in ages. I then go into the wikipedia, and along to twitter, and see that there's been a countdown going on today - hoping it's a launch of a new version... [https://twitter.com/Ishkur23](https://twitter.com/Ishkur23)

<comment><USER11> The amount of time I spent exploring it! What a rabbit whole to wonder into!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought I was pretty hip to psytrance, but I guess not because I don't recognize any of these artists. How can there be a whole psytrance guide without mentioning 1200 micrograms, Infected Mushroom, or Shpongle?

<comment><USER13> Well yes, if you don't know any of the artists on there then you don't listen to psytrance obviously.

This is a modern guide to current genres and almost all tracks on it are released after 2010 (yes even the Goa tracks are recent, its not dead).

This is not a history of psytrance guide, if it was it would be huge.

BTW Sphongle definitely isn't psytrance, and Infected Mushroom isn't well regarded in the underground.

<comment><USER14> The first couple of IM album were well regarded, that's why the backlash was so pronounced starting with BP Empire. By the time they started singing, I think the underground threw up their hands and walked away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very nice guide, especially for all of us in our mid forties that liked and listened (still listening?) to all these styles when they were actually being created!!!

Recently there was a HN post about a similar site [http://everynoise.com/](http://everynoise.com/) but for all music genres

<comment><USER16> More trance than psytrance, but I recently stumbled onto Above and Beyond and their Anjunabeats label. I had no idea people were still making trance that feels like a continuation of the stuff I listened to in the late 90s. It's great!

<comment><USER17> Their shows are pretty freaking great, too. If you can't make ABGT in Prague, I'd recommend trying to go to ABGT at The Gorge in 2021. It's a marvelous venue, great crowd, and the music is fantastic (Anjunabeats first day, Anjunadeep second day).

Some of the songs are decades old, too, which helps with that feeling. Hard to believe that "Satellite" is 15 years old and "On a good day" is 10 years old. Wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well I for one think Electronic Music has too many sub-genres. Like if you change the timing of the highhat or the type of synth you're using it catapults you into a different genre. Whats that all about? Why does it need to be so segmented?

<comment><USER19> Metal is the same, often it's the true(TM) fans who come up with the micro- genres as a way to beat people over the head for not knowing that "foo" is "bar".

It's the pretentious of wine culture applied to music basically.

<comment> keymon-o People enjoy certain patterns in some genre and then they explore and develop it further. When that pattern becomes more known it gets a name for easier referencing.

All music eventually starts to sound boring and micro genre is how fans find what they like about genre and continue enjoy it.

I don't understand craft beer fad and obsession, but I know beer has many tastes and many interesting stuff can come out. Why would I call someone pretentious just because they develop something I don't care about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone wants to check a really cool interactive guide of electronic music genres and their history check Ishkur's Guide. It's old but still one of the best ones ever made. (You'll need to activate flash)

[http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic- music-guide/)

And here a more modern version with near 3k genres (although not as informative and visual):

[https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/every-noise-at- once...](https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/every-noise-at-once/)

<comment><USER21> A new version of ishkur's guide is coming soon, [https://twitter.com/ishkur23](https://twitter.com/ishkur23)

I've looked at every noise at once, but to be honest it seems terrible to me. Quantity over quality, some of the samples they chose, even for genres that aren't really obscure, are wildly off-base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> South Africa's psytrance scene is going strong and is quite diverse across a few of the psy sub genres. Maybe a little under-represented in the night full- on category...

For more information on what the DJs and producers here are doing, check out the Psymedia Soundcloud page or their website. [https://soundcloud.com/psymedia](https://soundcloud.com/psymedia) [https://psymedia.co.za/](https://psymedia.co.za/)

<comment><USER6> If you bump into Tersius on your travels, tell him he's awesome! ;-)

<comment><USER22> He DJs at the Our Minds festival?

<comment><USER6> I think he plays all over South Africa. We used to share a flat together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Ultimae Records

Panoramic greetings! (kind of an in-joke if you follow their newsletter last few years)

To psychill I would like to add, definitely listen to Easily Embarrassed's "Idyllic Life" album, it's absolutely brilliant: [https://easilyembarrassed.bandcamp.com/album/idyllic- life](https://easilyembarrassed.bandcamp.com/album/idyllic-life)

Edit: while I welcome this particular bit of content, I'm surprised to find it on HN; seems a bit offtopic, no?

<comment><USER24> Great recommendation, love it already. And I'll share my "modern" full-on artist: Talpa. His sets on Soundcloud are great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love the fact that there are a couple of inline music samples for each so you don't have to go look them up yourself or follow a link for each.

I'd very much like to see something similar for all the hardcore techno sub- genres as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> Shameless Plug!

Since everyone is sharing their favorite psytrance and coding-oriented tracks, I'm gonna share one of my own:

[https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/twothousandseventeen- feat-m...](https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/twothousandseventeen-feat-marcix)

I have a really hard time pinning the genre of the stuff I produce so if anyone could help me out on what genre this actually is (I labelled it as Psytrance but it's a blanket/general term) I'll be thankful.

Have a good one and if some of you produce on your free time as well, share on! o/

<comment><USER27> Hm, yeah it's definitely very unique. It's psytrance in the same way Juno Reactor is psytrance, as in it's the closest concrete label, but explores a space well outside the typical fare.

Texturally, reminds me almost of big beat/ breaks. Reminiscent of the Antigravity album by Zircon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I enjoy coding more on psytrance! Anyone else?

<comment><USER29> Here's a monthly Mixcloud show featuring tech trance, psy tech, prog, full on, etc. Usually ranges from 138-145 bpm.

I have a few developer friends who enjoy listening to it while working. I've also heard it's good music to listen to while driving. (:

[https://www.mixcloud.com/palanesesummer/](https://www.mixcloud.com/palanesesummer/)

<comment><USER30> I can vouch, this mix is great for coding!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't believe Infected Mushroom isn't cited anywhere on the page.

<comment><USER32> Seconded. Also, Boris Brejcha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty nice and comprehensive guide. Ever since I've first seen Ishkur's guide as a kid I've wanted one for all genres of music, it always seem like the coolest thing.

Also this guide reminded me that James Reipas exists, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER33> At first I was thinking - why is this on the front page of HN? Then I remembered when I was heavy into the scene (~1999-2003) - so much overlap with tech, way ahead of its time!!!

A few examples:

* projection mapping onto surfaces like mountains in nature parties

* zero-latency visuals synced to the music (and the cream of the crop demoscene type stuff)

* custom synths written in max/msp or whatever

* designer drugs, nootropics, "bio-hacking"

* experimenting with inducing trance states with "brain machines" and certain repetitive frequencies and stuff.

I really feel lucky that I got to experience all that, since I was kinda jealous from reading the Acid Test of what the hippies had and how they combined music with visuals and tech (like microphone feedback experiments)... we had much better toys :)

There has got to be cool stuff happening these days... would be a bummer to learn that 20 years (WTF?! HOW?!?) hasn't seen much progress..

</comment><comment><USER14> I have memories of an interview with an artist that I believe was ManMadeMan. They discussed how they preferred the BPM to be around 135-138. At that BPM with a running 16th note baseline, they said it was very easy for people's brainwaves to sync up with the music as it was very close in frequency to one of the brain waves. I can't remember where I saw it. It might have been one of the early documentaries about one of the big festivals.

Did anyone else see that video? I would love to know if there's any validity to it other than personal experience. I know that when the BPMs started creeping up, a lot of that dance floor vibe seemed to goaway (eh?)

</comment><comment><USER34> X-Dream - We Created Our Own Happiness album, that's one of my favorite trance albums, but maybe nothing to do with psy? Also Eat Static when he does psytrance. But I should totally listen to some stuff that's not a quarter of a century old.

<comment><USER9> Eat Static ... how long's that guy been going? Abduction and Implant were awesome. De-Classified more than 10 years later, equally awesome.

<comment><USER34> Yes, Implant! I saw him play live earlier this year and absolutely loved it. He has not got old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've listened to most of the projects mentioned here and have been listening to Psytrance since 2005 but nowadays I mostly listen to 90s and early 2000s Trance and I must say that I find it better in general than the Psytrance stuff. I'd like to mention some of the legendary tracks here:

Quiteman - The Sleeper (Man With No Name Remix) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOcSatGkmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOcSatGkmo)

Li Kwan - Point Zero [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWIXkF_7JII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWIXkF_7JII)

Electronic Arts - Need for Speed 2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8CEJTPECxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8CEJTPECxc)

Blue Planet Corporation - <USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtw6j1AHUw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtw6j1AHUw)

Odyssey Of Noise - Firedance (The Sunrise) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPMZm2O8No](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPMZm2O8No)

X-Cabs - Neuro [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy- tKoIE9C0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy-tKoIE9C0)

</comment><comment><USER36> Similar project [https://www.12edit.com/drum-n- bass/](https://www.12edit.com/drum-n-bass/)

</comment><comment><USER37> This is great! I now know that "minimal psy" is the name of the genre I like to listen to whilst coding.

I'd love to see something similar for the various sub-genres of drum & bass.

'Psybreaks' really reminds me of the soundtrack to the original Wipeout game, written by Cold Storage ([http://www.coldstorage.org.uk/](http://www.coldstorage.org.uk/)).

<comment><USER38> Depending on where you are, the sound track may well have included some Orbital, Leftfield and Chemical Brothers also, it was stripped out for the North American release though.

There was also an album of the music released.

<comment><USER37> IIRC only the Playstation version had licensed music from those artists. Other versions (such as the Saturn version that I owned) had tracks written exclusively by Cold Storage.

<comment><USER39> PC version also had a coldstorage soundtrack

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I didn't believe my eyes when I saw "psytrance" on the front page of HN...

Anyways, for anyone in North America looking for psytrance festivals, here is a guide put together by fractaltribe:

[https://www.fractaltribe.org/blog/north-american- psytrance-f...](https://www.fractaltribe.org/blog/north-american-psytrance- festival-guide-2019)

<comment><USER41> Me neither! :) Are any fellow psyhackers attending Dreamtime in sept?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Where would Sphongle fit in on that list? I like Sphongle but do not know much about the genre.

<comment><USER13> Nowhere, since it's not psytrance (no trance beat for one thing).

It's considered psybient(psychedelic ambient) or rather they invented that genre.

<comment><USER42> Thank you for your reply, it was very helpful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm a huge music lover, but discovery is a problem. Thank you for this. May I suggest links to popular music platforms so 1. We can listen to it via common music platforms (and thus easily listen over and over.) 2. So the artists can clock listens.

</comment><comment><USER44> Interesting that "psytrance" is also listed as a subgenre of "psytrance".

</comment><comment><USER14> Di.fm has a few channels related to goa/psytrance. The person that put this guide together, Daniel Lesden, has show that plays on one of the channels. From listening to some of his shows, it makes sense he would put something like this together.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is awesome! I never really knew what trance exactly was, but this made it cyrstal clear to me, as well as it's subgenres.

Does anyone know of a similar type guide to techno or house? Theres just so many different niches in both of those genres as well.

<comment><USER46> Psytrance is already a sub-genre of trance; this site doesn't reflect trance as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> So who else just returned from Mo:Dem and had a laugh about psytrance being on hackernews?

</comment><comment><USER48> Organizing subgenres by BPM range is pure lunacy

<comment><USER49> They are not organized by BPM range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Lol, I'll assume the OP recently returned from one of the _many_ European trance festivals (Mo:dem, maybe?) and discovered a new passion :-)

The comments are on point: the best thing about psytrance is the community, and the extremely friendly hippie vibe found in these festivals as well as, let's be honest, the extremely copious amount of free-flowing available drugs can make any one of them a live-changing experience.

I wonder how it compares to the American equivalent, which would be something like Burning Man? I guess?

</comment><comment><USER51> Really like this. Found like 5 new songs in different genere I like

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone know of good guides on making this kind of music? I've tried looking into it and there are just so many options and esoteric knowledge of synths and software required that's it seems hard to get started. I've bought several MIDI keyboards that all turned out to be junk and tried several DAWs that were very unintuitive, I'd like to know the best way for a beginner to get into it

<comment><USER53> You can find quite a lot here [https://www.lynda.com/Ableton-Live-training- tutorials/139-0....](https://www.lynda.com/Ableton-Live-training- tutorials/139-0.html) The link is for Ableton, but you can find the courses for other DAWs there.

I started with Ableton a few years ago, because it is widely used for electronic music production. Also, my employer provided 50% discount on Ableton products :)

I'd like to also recommend this book [https://www.amazon.de/Dance-Music- Manual-Rick-Snoman/dp/0415...](https://www.amazon.de/Dance-Music-Manual-Rick- Snoman/dp/0415825644) if you are interested in theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Honestly I've moved completely to progressive house since it's way more bearable to me. Still love the oldschool goa sound of course :) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aDQzR0O-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3aDQzR0O-A)

</comment><comment><USER55> That's sweet. I've been an occasional fan? (I would move to other genres and then back) of psytrance for the last ~13y now but it has been always seemed a bit hard (on last.fm) to find artists that are not complete rubbish and would actually do psytrance.

</comment><comment><USER56> I honestly love that the "Mainstream" psytrance section is previously-not-at- all-mainstream trance.

great reality for music to conform to the tastes I wished was more popular 20 years ago where I grew up, where mainstream was just "rock or rap, choose one".

</comment><comment><USER57> If I'm having trouble focusing on the code, I load up techno music. Just clicking on the play links in the referenced site (Psytrance Guide) has me in the mood to put on my headphones and work on a development project that I've been putting off.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is a great introduction nicely designed ! Do similar websites exist for other genres?

<comment><USER59> Ishkur's guide to electronic music: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishkur's_Guide_to_Electronic_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishkur's_Guide_to_Electronic_Music)

<comment><USER60> FWIW, sounds like there's a big update to Ishkur's guide about to drop - <USER3> Twitter account has been counting down for the last month (it's at 1 now)...

<comment><USER61> FWIW - [http://everynoise.com/everynoise1d.cgi?scope=all](http://everynoise.com/everynoise1d.cgi?scope=all)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> My favorite place to listen to psytrance was philosomatika.com, shut down by the RIAA in 2010, it's now back as [http://www.philosomatika.fm/](http://www.philosomatika.fm/)

</comment><comment><USER63> I used to love listening to this all day while coding. But I've had to wean myself off it because I started feeling like my brain started becoming a bit messed up by it, compared to listening to just silence.

<comment><USER64> I've never liked to listen music to "pump me up". I'm very fond of music, having been raised by a classical composer and a choral regent. Recently when I was experiencing anxiety due to the unexpected, untimely death of a pet, I used "lo-fi hip hop radios from YouTube. Precisely because it's music that I wouldn't ordinarily enjoy.

But: back then when Infected Mushroom and Skazi were top of the pops artists, I lived far away from work and had a long, boring, stuck in traffic bus commute. Psytrance excelled in making me feel alive at moments where I was basically stuck in a box.

That's not how I need to feel at work, ESPECIALLY when it comes to coding. Maybe I'm not a super hacker type that just has programs flowing off his fingers — I have to think hard, even about naming functions and classes.

<comment><USER65> My work is a mix of 3D modelling, painting, and coding. For the modelling and painting I'm like that girl sitting with her cat by window ledge; the work flows with the music. When coding music is way too distracting, it requires intense mental effort. Same for technical animation; understanding how objects move is hard and I would get nowhere with psytrance thumping away in the background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If someone is looking for party dates, this is the go to address: [https://www.goabase.net](https://www.goabase.net) (at least for the EU) :)

</comment><comment><USER67> This is great. Would love to see a guide like this for techno!

</comment><comment><USER68> Goa Gil, Astral Projection, Juno reactor - good times! Saw them all live, Goa Gil did a 24 hr set in the Santa Cruz mountains, absolutely blew my mind!

</comment><comment><USER69> Very nice, kinda unrelated but how did you pick your colors for title / background for each subgenre?

</comment><comment><USER70> It's the revenge of the nerds. Who needs those self-important people with guitars?

</comment><comment><USER71> Please update this page with links to Spotify (or other streamable) playlists.

<comment><USER72> Here are my versions. Every playlist has top 5 songs from the artists mentioned for each subgenre on the list.

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4dAcwPZxCRk5V2ab3EFPZP?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4dAcwPZxCRk5V2ab3EFPZP?si=AOrH80lNRWKdO5r8DuHtOg)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6WrCSyOd1UfrmaZJFXeqAF?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6WrCSyOd1UfrmaZJFXeqAF?si=w2NIqxpyTseCub1OXOGb4Q)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3SfxYfyeBU1ph75Ed8mCpP?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3SfxYfyeBU1ph75Ed8mCpP?si=vVPw93tZTHm35OYcQPsVnQ)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3tETCS8IwxJiz5XWHz8Kqp?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3tETCS8IwxJiz5XWHz8Kqp?si=sdaTy0QFQeWDdproOaLWzg)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Y3IUHGeiOwkpuUhjW2ErM?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Y3IUHGeiOwkpuUhjW2ErM?si=Rev9JBSkRMKGF9SiHPWKvw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hRuECtfy9PKczpWPE0SRh?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hRuECtfy9PKczpWPE0SRh?si=VdgS0uMITuKqPQBuFun7Zw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/22tkk9pQIbGVqpBVY2996d?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/22tkk9pQIbGVqpBVY2996d?si=K7Fbao2_QO6e2lYFRH88WA)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0W9ICmxCNPQzkknHa6CyKI?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0W9ICmxCNPQzkknHa6CyKI?si=h6P5VHAsTjqeKR0mZIcnYA)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1lIeAjrLNrggjQmC8BNxh0?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1lIeAjrLNrggjQmC8BNxh0?si=s9-fyykWQeKYktZRyL6-6A)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0O1gKw9KRYTUFS7WyywMoT?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0O1gKw9KRYTUFS7WyywMoT?si=kELkZEcbR1KoHHDEKlsYig)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5S34tPfWB0q9s3f3fcHLh8?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5S34tPfWB0q9s3f3fcHLh8?si=2nwDksc0SVG_8vIyTioZmw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3k13QP7kaDvbxYyKo4CuZp?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3k13QP7kaDvbxYyKo4CuZp?si=CLPIk7c6SheLl6lzmgFdaA)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7sZ7YSdmZXb2ksze3bk3cS?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7sZ7YSdmZXb2ksze3bk3cS?si=fgXf3vd8Qj- GalplGZ0mig)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2KxhKNBkrW47UfrpW4ezAO?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2KxhKNBkrW47UfrpW4ezAO?si=6PhfO1EOSumvQ3GntKt1Fw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5D9xAkuYC9cklxFXZUns8K?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5D9xAkuYC9cklxFXZUns8K?si=cXnpoQ8-SpmtY9iQu9vSnQ)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/62XI14VIjqZxsA2CikNrBf?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/62XI14VIjqZxsA2CikNrBf?si=kEQPLPFYTHW4H5z87qi6Ig)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5kf1tVYouTxcJGbxV1lQny?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5kf1tVYouTxcJGbxV1lQny?si=kZVTBLxMQ0OgrY4vcv4icw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bBurOc5GGytLjnKPIExy9?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4bBurOc5GGytLjnKPIExy9?si=3sQwnkfNQlitQ3pVuKrQiw)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5n6n7vNaBbRNelVzAD8UKw?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5n6n7vNaBbRNelVzAD8UKw?si=IUpBktTcSO2idiyjvh1kgg)

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3jPeGD6FKvEiYH4HP6m0Lv?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3jPeGD6FKvEiYH4HP6m0Lv?si=VhHknQx2SXaI5fsWmjWkVw)

Hope you enjoy. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> not sure why this is in HN, not to mention the somewhat ridiculous breakdown of genres which seems weird to anyone who's in the scene ---

BUT anyways, add a 2017 to this because it's not new.

</comment><comment><USER74> Where is psydub ?

<comment><USER8> I suppose there is some overlap with psyambient and psychill. There was a time when not every genre had psy before it.

If you like that genre, I can recommend Ott's Hallucinogen In Dub remixes and his album Skylon [1]. I also like some specific tracks of Easily Embarrased and Koan but not sure which genre it falls under.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott_(record_producer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott_\(record_producer\))

<comment><USER75> Good God, Ott is by far my favorite artist with not even a distant second. I've been hunting for other artists/tracks for the last few months to fill the void til his new album comes out but have only come up disappointed and empty handed. Nobody else seems to be able to be so varied and inventive with each track yet always deliver a compelling and engaging sound and melody so reliably.

Anyone have more recommendations?

<comment><USER76> Some artists truly are unique. and I think Ott falls into that category.

Entheogenic, Slackbaba or Globular are probably the closest you'll find.

<comment><USER75> Globular is fantastic, haven't really dug into Entheogenic or even heard of Slackbaba. I'll give those a look, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Needs HTTPS.

<comment><USER78> Does it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> No Skazi :(

</comment><comment><USER22> This isn't the first ever psytrance styles guide. I recall seeing one on psynews.org many years ago that actually appeared more comprehensive than this one.

<comment><USER80> > This isn't the first ever psytrance styles guide.

So what? What a silly put-down.

<comment><USER22> was not intended to be a put down, but I could have probably added more to my comment</comment></comment></comment>


Problems With the Python 3 Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://jamespulec.com/blog/2014/12/23/why-python-3-isnt-being-used-more/ <comment><USER2> I've been using Python 3 for all new projects for over a year. It was painful in the beginning, but my recent experience has been very rewarding. The few libraries that I use that have not been ported have, in almost all circumstances, been replaced by better libraries—I presume that this explains the lack of motivation to port the old ones.

That said, there are respected programmers who have good criticisms of Python 3[1] that are more level-headed than this sensationalized article; however, that has not stopped the community at large from moving to Python 3 where possible.

Also, as myself and others continue picking up LXC technology (Docker) the issue of host/ops dependencies interfering with project dependencies will gradually vanish—which is the only legitimate point made by the posted article. The title should have been: "My first day with Python 3"

[1]: [http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/5/12/everything-about- unicode/](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/5/12/everything-about-unicode/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A few months ago I attended PyCon SG (Singapore). At some point one of the presenters[1] asked for a show of hands how many people were using Python 2, and how many Python 3. The ratio was about 10 to 1 in favor of Python 2, with hundreds of respondents.

Python 3 just doesn't have traction, and it may never get there. It's sort of a shame how Python 2 is now in maintenance-only mode, but on the other hand it's great for professionals: we don't need to worry about the language or the reference implementation changing ever again.

[1] Kenneth Reitz, as part of his excellent talk "Python 2.7 & Python 3: A Sacred Love Story."

<comment><USER4> Here's the talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skYBOXE02OQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skYBOXE02OQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could solve that problem by not using Ubuntu: SmartOS, Debian, and OS X all have perfectly functional Python 3 packages. (as I'm sure many distributions and operating systems do)

This has very little to do with Python 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ubuntu is one the most deployed server distributions of linux, and one of the most battle tested. While this post isn't meant to criticize python 3 (I think the language is perfectly fine as is), it's meant to criticize the ecosystem, where one of the most deployed distributions doesn't work.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but Debian is also very widely deployed and doesn't ship with a broken Python 3 package. I'm just pointing out that your issue is specifically related to Ubuntu. You'd be better off calling your article: Ubuntu is Not A Suitable Platform for Python 3 Development, or something along those lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, this exact issue was also an issue in Debian. The bug reports can be found further down in an answer to the same stackoverflow question. It may now be fixed, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER6> The issue linked was against jessie/sid. Debian users expect broken things outside of stable.

The Ubuntu release in question was the LTS Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To summarize the article:

Author stumbles upon problems with ubuntu and some other third-party software => concludes that Python 3 is not being used anymore.

Well done, sir.

</comment><comment><USER8> Python strikes me (as a Perl, Haskell developer) as the boring scripting language, which I consider to be a feature. Golang, not Python 3 is the obvious successor for people who want One Way To Do Everything.

Ruby was the obvious successor to Perl, rather than Perl 6, but I wonder if Rust ends up being Perl's natural successor. It's fast, there are awesome functional features, and Perl developers tend to be pretty comfortable with the general concept of references... Not going to appeal to the "hack it to get it done quickly" crowd, but as a replacement for bigger Perl 5 projects...

<comment><USER9> Personal opinions of what languages are "boring" aside: "Golang, not Python 3 is the obvious successor for people who want One Way To Do Everything."

Uhh, what? I'm not even sure why you're comparing Golang to Python. One is a compiled language that specializes in concurrency and the other is a interpreted scripting language. They're for completely different purposes. Python3 was never intended to be a "one way to do everything language".

<comment><USER10> That isn't the first time such a comparison has been made, and the people making it are always remarking more on the culture surrounding the language than its implementation details (not that the latter are irrelevant, but Python certainly could be a Compiled Language™ if Guido so chose). The takeaway here is that both Go and Python codebases lend themselves to team efforts between early contributors and new arrivals, because the set of idioms you'll find is very consistent from one codebase to the next. This promotes a certain confidence in teams working on very large projects, as well as tools that must be maintained for a long period of time. It's a hard thing to measure. You certainly won't identify it just by asking what features the language has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how a single anecdote about a packaging issue on a single distro is being used to draw the conclusion that "Python 3 Isn't Being Used More".

<comment><USER12> It isn't being used to draw that conclusion. The article starts with that premise and uses an anecdote to illustrate one reason why. In marketing and customer service, the plural of anecdote may not be data but it is is a broad trend.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Title changed from "Why Python 3 Isn't Being Used More" to "Problems With the Python 3 Ecosystem"

</comment><comment><USER13> Sorry but this misses the point. The biggest reason Python 3 isn't being used is because most libraries haven't been updated to support it.

<comment><USER14> I feel like the balance has tipped in the past six months. I started my current project two years ago and stuck with Python 2 because I was concerned about library compatibility.

The Python 2 standard library is now showing its age. Limitations with the multiprocessing module on Python 2 drove me to look into the possibility of switching to Python 3 and I was pleasantly surprised to discover all ~45 packages my project depended on had been ported (through caniusepython3.com.)

Porting to 2/3 compatible code with python-future.org turned out to be fairly painless so I expect to make the change soon.

The transition has been a painful one, but I'm sure that these sort of problems will feel a thing of the past in a year or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, I had these problems too. I had a problem where I was following the instructions for some Django tutorial and by accident I was always invoking the python 2 interpreter when I should have been running the python 3 interpreter. Death by a thousand cuts.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey James,

Good to see your post on the front page, and it was a nice writeup. Personally for me the issue with Python 3 has been the lack of support by many good 3rd party Django apps. Until that happens I can't see myself moving anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER17> Note: edited, other people made the other points I made

Digressive: "Always wanting to be cutting-edge, I decided I would would start with ubuntu 14.04", shouldn't that be 15.04 then? (latest I could see in the mirrors at least)

<comment><USER18> The daily builds of the 15.04 alpha may be on the mirrors but what he meant was cutting-edge stable. Had he used an unstable daily build, his arguments would have been much less relevant.

<comment><USER17> I agree that going for the actual cutting edge would be a bit silly, but mentioning "cutting edge" and then using just the latest LTS (noting that 14.10 also exists), seems a bit silly to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a complaint about the Ubuntu 14.04 python3 package, not Python itself

<comment><USER20> True, it's an incredibly personal and situational post with him using the word "me" throughout. The title choice is just really poor it seems.

Although I'm someone who doesn't develop in python, I have toyed around with the packages and versions for dependencies for other projects and tools I use. At first I assumed that "latest is greatest" but recently came to understand that it's not the case as far as practicality is concerned. Perhaps it is involved with the rather irritating versioning (python3, pip3, etc. - I've found the same thing to be true on archlinux), but I think a lot of it is definitely as somebody else said above, the lack of updated libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you are Asian, you will feel better in python 3.

</comment><comment><USER22> The moderation on titles is killing me.

<comment><USER23> There was no moderation on this title, nor on the post in any way.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. The title originally read: "Why Python 3 Isn't Being Used More"

If this wasn't moderated, then my apologies.</comment></comment></comment>


The Ocean Cleanup: "It's Feasible" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theoceancleanup.com/

<comment><USER2> Great news, hope they can move forward!</comment>


Are you measuring something you can't change? - <AUTHOR> http://benhughes.org/are-you-measuring-something-you-cant-change

<comment><USER2> Please drop the text shadow and set font colour to dark grey, otherwise it's hurting eyes.</comment>


Mnist Reborn, Restored and Expanded: Additional 50K Training Samples - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/syncedreview/mnist-reborn-restored-and-expanded-additional-50k-training-samples-70c6f8a9e9a9 <comment><USER2> Interesting, but given how good image classifiers have become I think people are better off inverting the train/test specifications on the regular MNIST set to push the limits of what we can do with smaller training sets.</comment>


Is paying for backlinks for SEO ethical? Do you do it? - <AUTHOR>

I set up a blog a while ago and wanted to grow it organically. It turns out google really put a lot  of weight on how many backlinks you have and from where they are coming. So how do you handle this? <comment><USER2> First of all, I refuse the notion of "ethical": IMHO Google is NOT a moral instance and does not get to decide which behavior is ethical and which is not.

However, they get to decide which links they consider "valuable" and which not. Which in turns affects your rankings in Google's SERPs. They claim that they do punish websites that use paid links, but in reality it is safe to assume that they do NOT catch every offender (probably far from it).

I personally do not pay for links, mainly because of the fear of getting caught (and punished) by Google. ViperChill.com is a great resource for less Google-certified SEO techniques.

Additionally, you might find this article interesting that goes into great detail about the value of links in general and the market for paid links: [http://blog.linksspy.com/paid-links-price- study/](http://blog.linksspy.com/paid-links-price-study/)

Disclaimer: I am the author of that article and also the maker of [https://www.linksspy.com](https://www.linksspy.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of the SEO's I talk to would not advise paying for backlinks (directly, with cash). But most of their advice is intended for larger companies who have more invested in their website than just where it ranks in Google. So the downside of getting this kind of business a penalty is quite large.

There are people who make a tonne of cash buying links to websites (not just those who sell the links!) but these businesses set themselves up so that if a domain is penalised it doesn't really make much difference to them.

For a blog, particularly one you want to grow organically, I would not buy links as you build equity in the blog domain through other channels (recognition on HN for example). Buying links represents a risk in this case and for little reward.

Ethics doesn't come into it as long as you accept that spending money on marketing is ethical.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is not a question of morality, it's a question of risk tolerance.

Most SEOs will advise you to err on the side of caution, but most SEOs work with large businesses that already have a lot of link equity and brand dollars thus making the point kind of moot.

People say create good content, but good luck creating the best content in the world and thinking that Google will feel obliged to rank you.

The reality is that with any venture you have to take risks, specially in the beginning, and if done smartly, buying links is a pretty balanced risk-reward scenario to kick start your property.

Lastly, in most cases a few well placed links are all you need. Once you start gaining traction you'll automatically get the motivation to create more/better content and do other forms of link building which are safer but much more time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google is search . . . they make the rules . . . Google will penalize you for paying for links . . . so I wouldn't risk it.

Good content rules the day so spend that money on more and better articles/content . . . instead of paying for links.

Follow SEO best practices and keep a white hat on.

</comment><comment><USER6> No way dude!

Do the pills that make you lose weight actually work - long term? Sorry itengelhardt, I disagree. IMO, this is just another get-rich-quick scheme, like the pills I mentioned. Allured by the thought of losing weight, or being on the front page of Google is just that, an allure. It's the same mental trap the mythical siren used to drive sailors into rocks. A few of the respondents here cite content as killer, which I agree with, but there's also the element of bad ass customer experience that must be present. Treat your customer unlike the competition and try to author more content that the competition, and you'll rise to the top of your context, but it will take time. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not that anyone cares, but when you "juice" your search ranking to make your web site appear more relevant (to the user doing the search) than it really is, you are "breaking the internet".

I'm sorry if not enough people are driving by your restaurant but that does not justify putting up a detour sign in order to trick people into taking the road that passes by your business. If you want more business, make a better product. Don't waste everyone's time detouring them in hopes they will stop on their way by.

<comment><USER8> How do you plan to let people know that you have a better product if you don't link to it somehow?

<comment><USER7> Buy advertisements - just like any ethical business would. At the end of the day, if your business can't survive without "cheating", perhaps you should pivot or go into another kind of business.

For example, if Verizon can't make money if they actually honored their "unlimited data plans", they should stop offering unlimited data plans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might sound cliche, but you have to have excellent content. If you are writing pseudo-topic content, you won't get many repeat users.

</comment><comment><USER10> The number of backlinks isn't as important nowadays as the power of each individual backlink is. But anyway I see nothing wrong with paying for SEO, especially in the beginning. Get a little boost then continue to grow organically.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have done this before and I don't see any changes. Also there is always risk of Google blacklisting those site.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see what the problem is. It's just like pushing ads?

</comment><comment><USER13> No, it is not ethical.

<comment><USER2> Who gets to decide that? Google IMHO does NOT (even with their "don't be evil" slogan). All Google gets to decide is whether they value certain links or hand out a penalty for them. That does not define whether something is ethical or not. It's ethical to pay for advertisements, so why shouldn't it be ethical to pay for links?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stop Paying for Terrible Links

<comment><AUTHOR> I never paid and never will. But there doesn't seem to be any agreement how you should legally build backlinks. How people are doing it? some people reach out to other sites and ask specifically for a backlink.

<comment><USER15> The agreement I've seen is to not focus on it. People say write good content and let it happen organically.</comment></comment></comment>


Using computers to teach children with no teachers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10663353 <comment><USER2> The researcher, Sugata Mitra, gave one of my favorite TED talks on this topic. Watch it here: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_ki...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

Video is from 2007. Since then he has built a website where you can get more info: <http://hole-in-the-wall.com/>

<comment><USER3> Excellent links. Here's a shortcut to Professor Mitra's publications on the topic since the BBC article is minimally informative about his research.

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/Publications.html>

<comment><USER4> I knew I'd heard about this on the radio, usually I listen to BBC Radio 4 so I think that this [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/thinking...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed/thinkingallowed_20090121.shtml) half-hour programme is where I heard of it. Just in case someone is looking for an audio presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The gist of it: children are curious and clever, and able to learn by exploring, particularly in the presence of other children. Presented with a novel and engaging device (an internet connected computer), a test group was able to acquire the knowledge necessary to make use of it. Extending this idea, classrooms that mimic this interaction may prove an effective way of integrating educational technology into the classroom. Technology will then raise the quality of education in areas where the quality or availability of teachers is poor.

I spent two years in Cambodia working on an American-funded educational technology project. I think many well-intentioned technology projects (like OLPC), find the real world has sharp edges. Implementation woes are many in poor countries with poor infrastructure. In particular:

\- Electricity is extremely expensive in rural areas. In many cases, you're talking about operating a generator fed with expensive gasoline. A generator is a prime target for theft. As is the gasoline, wires and generated electricity (which can be sold to neighbors). Most donations are for the initial installation and a year or so of operation. Money for ongoing operation may not be available. In our case, it wasn't, which meant operational electronics lying dormant.

\- Wires and electronics must be locked up and guarded. This means metal doors and windows, padlocks, and a night guard.

\- General purpose computers with a CD drive can play music VCDs and games, which children find more fun than typing programs and courseware. Children in foreign countries are not so different from children in the developed world. There's excitement about technology, but things tend to follow a path of least resistance if there is a lack of direction.

\- Internet-connectivity in a remote region means a two-way satellite, networking equipment, and trained personnel capable of installing and troubleshooting inevitable issues. Again, theft and misuse are issues. And the payoff is hard to measure.

\- In Cambodia, a college-educated teacher may get paid around $40/month. In the past, the government often had difficulty making those payments. If I had a family, and were trying to support them on a little more than a dollar a day, I might have a motivation problem as well. To float themselves, many teachers charge for test answers, handouts and additional lessons. Spending relatively large sums of money to solve the problem with tech seems like a short-sighted bandaid atop a much larger systemic problem.

To be clear: I think technology has a place in education, and improved education is the most effective way to lift up the struggling poor. But many of these ideas veer off-course with flights of fancy, like a pricey vSat- powered "granny cloud" video chat systems vs. utilizing existing teachers or paying local grandmothers a very small amount to provide encouragement in the actual classroom. The lack of pragmatism is what bothers me, I guess.

How this would work in Europe is another question entirely.</comment>


Ask HN: How much time of his time should a CEO in a 5 man team spend managing? - <AUTHOR>

Recently, I moved from a role whereby I spent 1/3 of my time doing coding and other low level stuff, 1/3 of my time doing biz dev, 1/3 of my time planning and managing to spending 2/3 of my time planning and managing (spending no time on low level stuff)<p>I FEEL that this is making the team much better, but I am not completely sure if i am being deluded.... any feedback? <comment><USER3> You code to execute vision, just as you step up a marketing campaign to execute a vision/strategy. If you're growing so fast that the coding can't catch up with the pace that your vision needs to be executed, give up coding and delegate it to someone else.

You feel you're not accomplishing anything because of "muscle memory"; your mind is used to feel accomplished when a build is complete and a test suite passes with flying colors. Your role has changed, and now you need to get your high from somewhere else. Feel free to go over what the team is doing a few times a day, but ultimately you will need to give up.

If you're feeling bored you probably are not doing all you could. Business responsibility is a hell of a burden and you should be able to visualize months into the future while your team is still at square one. It's not the same thing as a hack-mode, where you can shake off by scratching that itch and writing a toy app or a library.

Look harder into your market and competition and you will find something that you might have missed before that will keep you awake. 2/3, or 3/3 of the time left for management will feel like peanuts :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> You feel you're not accomplishing anything because of "muscle memory" - <USER2> is a great insight - thanks a lot for that. Where did you get this phrase from?

<comment><USER3> It's my own observation. As a programmer, you are better equipped to arrive at insight through reflection better than most people, using your debugging and profiling skills ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Managing" and "planning" are distinct activities, and then there are a bunch of sub-activities that make up either.

In a 5-person startup team, you should spend virtually no time _telling people what to do_ (i.e micromanaging). They should be able to figure that out for themselves. If they can't, you're probably screwed.

But there's a lot of work involved in figuring out customer requirements, breaking down those requirements into tasks that have to be done, covering bases that would otherwise be forgotten, and generally fretting so your team doesn't have to. If you're taking care of that so the rest of the team can worry about the low-level details of getting stuff done, that's valuable, and it's not unreasonable to expect that to take up 2/3 of a person in a 5-person team.

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you're taking care of that so the rest of the team can worry about the low-level details of getting stuff done, that's valuable, and it's not unreasonable to expect that to take up 2/3 of a person in a 5-person team."

\- THANKS a lot! that is enormously helpful and concise. Now I am kinda feeling better. =)</comment></comment>


Tractors Are Getting Smarter - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/29/leadership/deere-sam-allen.pr.fortune/index.html

<comment><USER2> My family run John Deeres with Starfire and greenstar. With our neighbours we have several RTK stations to get centimetre accuracy.

When we got our first auto-steer in 2001 it changed my school holidays.. Instead of having to drive mind numbingly slowly I was able to read books, and then progressively shift onto movies etc with the first video iPods etc. awesome. Huge increases in productivity and reduced inputs.

On the other hand, our neighbours who have often got seasonal workers to drive tractors have lost several tractors due to the workers not paying attention and running into power poles etc.

I have heard that the biggest obstacle to self driving machines has been the legal implications of having a tractor with no driver. It would be great to overcome this but there's still a way to go because at the moment no system I have seen can handle obstacles, specially if they haven't been programmed in (at the moment you can place a mark near trees, and it will beep when you near the end of your run to alert you to turn around) - also each implement requires very précise monitoring that may change markedly in the same field depending on the conditions in terms of ground speed, implement height and a host of other factors.

Awesome technology

</comment><comment><USER3> My uncle was an early adopter of these sorts of things for his rice farm. When I saw the movie "Cars" for the first time and the film portrayed Tractors as "dumb" I thought to myself, if you really knew what went into a modern tractor you would not portray it as "dumb" in an animated movie.

<comment><USER4> But to be fair, the tractors in cars weren't modern at all, they were from roughly around the 1950s/1960s

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems.

In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.

<comment><USER6> Where are you getting those numbers from? Surely such improvements would be fairly isolated to an acre or two, rather than hundreds of acres. Those numbers (6.8% and 7.6%) aren't in the article.

<comment><USER7> At an acre or two, you'll be doing most of the work by hand, with using push tools -- rototillers and the like -- for the occasional tough part. These sorts of process improvements are one of those economies of scale things that really only start making sense when you're dealing with an amount of land that you can't just eyeball.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I agree completely. That's exactly why I'm suspicious of the numbers the parent quoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember when having an air conditioned cab was considered to be high end farming... Then it was 8 track stereo, and microwave ovens. The tractors were over $100,000 before the advent of the personal computer. I wonder what the cost of a smart tractor is now?

</comment><comment><USER4> > Most people don't don't realize that an 8000 series tractor has more > computing power than the first space shuttle...

So does my $200 cell phone...

<comment><USER9> Hell, so did my N64.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their GPS steering is really cool. I think they get better accuracy through multiple GPS receivers spread out across the entire tractor.

<comment><USER11> Some vendors use multiple receivers, but Deere uses one, with possibly one or more on the implement(s) being towed, depending on the configuration. RTK provides centimetre level accuracy with the single receiver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tractors may be getting smarter, but _the entire notion of large-scale monocrop farming is basically forkin ' stupid_.

Through recent research I developed the distinct impression that anyone who has managed land for an extended period+ with and without modern industrial farming methodology seemed to say that the general outcome of such was dependence on external entities for seeds, technology, energy, fertiliser and pesticides... and this seems to include both academia and government bodies in charge of agricultural knowledge dissemination.

The most lucid illustrations of this quandry I have yet encountered are Masanobu Fukuoka's _One Straw Revolution_ (a few decades ago) and the USDA's _Alley Cropping_ instructional video series: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Kwb5yInPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Kwb5yInPM)

Basically, the claim is that higher yields with lower maintenance are possible through non-industrialised methods that rely on crop diversity and natural systems.

My impression is that the US (and Europe) heavily subsidise or artificially protect a lot of their agriculture whilst burning loads of fossil fuels to plant, maintain and harvest them which is a situation that has partly evolved to cater to vested interests in government and energy sectors.

China wastes loads of food, leads the world in agricultural research, and certainly does not yet have anything like a food crisis. Not only that, but their population is stable or dropping.

Overall, this article is pretty FUD.

\+ Not I!</comment>


There Are Now More Shows Streaming Than There Are on Broadcast or Cable - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/streaming-shows-outnumber-broadcast-cable-1202027973/ <comment><USER9> Someone recently commented elsewhere that they were tired of paying for streaming access to a bunch of shows nobody wants to watch, and they wanted access to the most popular movies/network shows/whatever.

I didn't comment then, but FWIW: some of the best shows available are now streaming originals from Netflix, Prime, etc. If you haven't checked out specifically any of the Netflix originals, you're missing out. It's a complete replacement for the non-sports watcher.

As posted in response elsewhere below, here's a list of Netflix's best work:

      - Stranger Things
      - <USER2>
      - The OA
      - The Haunting of Hill House
      - Marvel series. All of them!
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Altered Carbon
      - American Vandal
      - 13 Reasons Why

Also good:

      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - <USER7>
      - <USER8>
      - Master of None
      - Chef's Table
      - Making a Murderer

This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix)

I tried to skim through it and provide my own short list of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.

<comment><USER10> We recently binge watched both seasons of Stranger Things. Stranger Things and Altered Carbon on Netflix and The Marvelous Mrs Maisal and The Expanse on Amazon have been my most enjoyed shows this year.

<comment><USER9> The Expanse was good! Fair disclaimer: I canceled Netflix recently, due to unhealthy amount of binge-watching... hence the list above. I have not heard of some of these newer titles. It seems some of them didn't make it through NFLX's recommendation system to my homescreen, because I have never heard of Marvelous Mrs Maisal but that has been out for a while.

<comment><USER10> Marvelous Mrs. Maisal is on Amazon, not Netflix. Amazon also picked up season 4 of The Expanse after SciFi cancelled it. Good for them. Who needs cable???

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is funny how the thing that is breaking the cable stronghold is the same thing that will bring it back. By 2020 there will be at least 15 competing streaming services backed by large entertainment companies.

How many subscriptions will people end up paying for then? Someone will then have the idea to consolidate it into one or two packages. Rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER12> This time it's without commercials, at least.

I recently watched plain old tv again (after not watching any for several years) and I can't believe we used to put up with those! It was like I suddenly turned off my adblocker.

<comment><USER13> Its truly incredible. I also had to stop using ad-block due to some work- related regulations, and I should demand compensation from the state on that.

What is most noticeable to me is how wasteful advertising is. I've seen some of the same ad 1000 times, and im just not going to buy that damn car. I cant drive!

<comment><USER14> > I also had to stop using ad-block due to some work-related regulations, and > I should demand compensation from the state on that.

I'd love to hear more about this if you don't mind.

<comment><USER13> I work in healthcare: any plugin with access to your rendered pages is a massive liability.

<comment><USER15> Interesting that having ads profile the browser - and in many cases the ads or metrics have access to the page - isn't. I wonder if you could persuade them to drop a few domains at the router.

<comment><USER16> Get the IT guy to switch to Zscalar, Adguard, or similar ad blocking DNS:

[https://adguard.com/en/adguard- dns/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html)

At home, I believe the software defined mesh routers from Eero offer a subscription with Zscalar's malware and ad blocking DNS, 1Password Family, and VPN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tangential. Streaming TV has given us many benefits. More choice, watch at any time, pause, save for later ('record'), etc.

But I am wondering how much that has increased energy consumption for watching TV and having the internet as its backbone?

<comment><USER18> LED screens use less power than old CRT TVs.

<comment><USER17> Well, yes. But I was more interested in the energy requirements for getting the signal to your home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On Netflix most of their own series are low production value crap. I don't even bother checking them anymore even if the subject sounds interesting, unless I hear about them in the media first.

This can't be good for them in the long run if the Netflix name becomes associated with filler content.

<comment><USER20> Not everything can be that good, unfortunate.

There have never been too many Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad or StarTrek Voyager.

But Netflix has still lots of other shows to over. They just have all Star Trek series. They buyout really good shows (Like Black Mirror) and there catalog is only growing.

That for only 10,- Euros. Spotify costs me the same!

I bought DVDs and rented VHSrs before. I don't mind paying it to Netflix and other Streaming services instead.

I do believe that the quality and availability got higher and the prices are cheaper than ever.

And btw. for a german person, it is the first time ever that i can watch it all in the OV. Even when you had something similiar to a usa cable subscription, you could not switch the language. Now its a nobrainer.

Glories Times :-)

<comment><USER21> There was a ton of "made for TV" content in the 70's and 80's, for example, TV movies. It has all vanished. It's not even on imdb.com. I wonder why nobody is streaming it.

On the other hand, I've noticed that record companies are reaching further and further into their back catalogs, even going back into the 1950s, and re- releasing on CDs long unavailable stuff.

(I notice this because I often buy thrift store records, wondering what is on them. There are some really nice forgotten gems.)

<comment><USER22> I tried watching the first season of Star Trek TNG recently and couldn't get through two episodes. Things get dated I guess.

<comment><USER21> I don't think good music ever gets old.

I like the old TOS with its campiness, but even when TNG was new I found it unwatchable.

In general, though, TV shows don't age well. Even Mission Impossible from the 60's, well regarded at the time, looks silly today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's no more the age of info overload but sensory and stimulation overload.

All cultures have a handful of the same stories they replayed to themselves for thousands of years. Now we somehow believe all this bullshit "variety" is required to entertain ourselves. It isn't true and it will break down.

<comment><USER23> You should tell that to the ancient Greeks, with their yearly competitions for new plays, and dozens of playwrights. Sophocles alone wrote a hundred and twenty plays, and he had a much smaller potential audience than someone writing for Netflix.</comment></comment>


I asked Taylor Swift to solve an integral on Chatroulette in 2010 and - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFnZOuFx2TA <comment><AUTHOR> ... I didn't know she was a celebrity. Initially, I intended to make a youtube video with a compilation of random people on chatroulette trying to solve an integral that I was showing on the webcam. I've never finished that project but now 10 years later I retrieved that video rush and it made me smile.</comment>


Scientists have found a woman whose eyes have a new type of color receptor - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-found-a-woman-whose-eyes-have-a-whole-new-type-of-colour-receptor <comment><USER2> I was just reading the Wikipedia article on Tetrachromacy and saw this interesting fact.

"Humans cannot see ultraviolet light directly because the lens of the eye blocks most light in the wavelength range of 300–400 nm; shorter wavelengths are blocked by the cornea.[27] The photoreceptor cells of the retina are sensitive to near ultraviolet light and people lacking a lens (a condition known as aphakia) see near ultraviolet light (down to 300 nm) as whitish blue, or for some wavelengths, whitish violet, probably because all three types of cones are roughly equally sensitive to ultraviolet light, but blue cones a bit more."

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

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I see those "blacklight" CFL ultraviolet lamps as violet-white. I see the sameish color on ultraviolet lasers. Am I the only one who sees it that way? Can anyone describe how they perceive those lamps?

Communicating color is extremely difficult!

<comment><USER4> > Communicating color is extremely difficult!

Odd personal anecdote: In first grade art class the teacher held up a piece of art paper and said "This is red". Being the curious student I was, I raised my hand and asked "how do you know?" I was looking for something that would answer both "how do you know I perceive red the same way you do" and also "what defines it to be red". Something about wavelengths and color spectrum etc. would have been a great answer.

I was sent to the principal's office as a troublemaker. Never did like art class after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did anybody happen to see anything in the article about what wavelength the extra cone type was actually (most) sensitive to???

The article hyped the "millions of colors" aspect, but nothing about whether it was deeper reds, higher blues, or just more precise yellows (or whatever).

<comment><USER6> cDa29 is a cone that is a deuteranomaly, which is a kind of altered sensitivity to green light. So, presumably she has better discrimination of yellows/greens/reds, and not blues.

See this 2010 paper for details on this person: [http://vision.psychol.cam.ac.uk/jdmollon/papers/JordanDeebBo...](http://vision.psychol.cam.ac.uk/jdmollon/papers/JordanDeebBostenMollonOnTetrachromacy.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Ah, thanks. So further improved primate detection of ripe fruit, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also the story of Concetta Antico, who is also supposedly a tetrachromat _and_ a painter.She claims to add hues to her paintings that she sees but we do not. Researchers are looking into her abilities.

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

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-seaberg/worlds- first-t...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-seaberg/worlds-first- tetrachromat_b_5832242.html)

[https://concettaantico.com/oil-paintings/](https://concettaantico.com/oil- paintings/)

(watching her paintings through what is likely an LCD screen that isn't even wide gamut is a bit ironic, of course)

</comment><comment><USER8> Why would only women be capable of tetrachromacy?

I am a man, but if the test is made public, I would be interested in testing myself. I am not color blind according to color blindness tests, but there have been instances where I disagreed on the color something was with others and while I could consistently use the name that they used for it, I felt it really ought to have been named something else. One involves "green" status LEDs on electronics, which seem more in common with yellow than green to me. They look different from yellow, but they seem closer to yellow than green to me and for lack of a better word, I would rather call them yellow. If I could use a different name for the color, mapping it to green when interacting with others would seem less weird. Another involved the paint of a house when I was young, whose color seemed to poorly resemble what my parents said it was when it was dark. The house has since been repainted. Having three primary colors never made much sense to me either, but that could just be my own ignorance.

Anyway, I am sure that there are many more variations in human vision than we realize. The dress incident brought that to light:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress_(viral_phenomenon)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress_\(viral_phenomenon\))

It would be nice to have ways of categorizing them.

<comment><USER9> > _Having three primary colors never made much sense to me either, but that > could just be my own ignorance._

Tree primary colors thing seems to be mostly ignorance of the educators teaching that stuff to children. There are no absolute "primary colors" \- basically, you can pick any colors at random and use them as a base for linear combinations; the set of colors you can express as such linear combinations form a color space defined by those base colors you picked. Red, green and yellow are a common historical picks, RGB is more common now because that's what is put on the computer screen, but CMY form a color space too.

C.f.: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_color#/media/File:CIE1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_color#/media/File:CIE1931xy_sRGB.svg) \- the triangle inside is the color (sub)space of RGB overlayed on CIE 1931 color space ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space)).

Source: I educated myself when I got asked by a local drunk to resolve a bet between him and (presumably) another local drunk while I was shopping in a local grocery store. Those two got into a bet over whether RGB or RGY are primary colors.

<comment><USER10> I always understood it as RGB being additive -- each color directly stimulates a given color cone in the eye. Whereas process colors (CMYK) are subtractive, because they are a tint. White light hits the paper, but each color (Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow) takes out a certain RGB color leaving the remaining two colors to reflect off the paper. For example, Cyan is a filter for Red, leaving Green and Blue to reflect.

<comment><USER9> I'd say it's a property of the medium, not of the colors. Computer screens blend additively because you emit a mix of light waves; pigments blend substractively because they are filtering out wavelengths from incoming white light. Color spaces and "primary colors" are orthogonal to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought the discovery of individual tetrachromats had been reported several times in recent years. This article seems to suggest that women who were anatomically capable of tetrachromatic vision were found before, but that none of them were successfully confirmed to be tetrachromats in practice until this new study. Is this really the case?

<comment><USER12> yes. [http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/326976](http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/326976) [http://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2191517](http://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2191517)

<comment><USER11> Hmmm, that shows that this research finding was published in 2010, which might be the timeframe I was thinking of. I first thought from the link that this article was newly published.

<comment><USER12> yeah, me too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of this bit from BSG (a conversation between two "artificial" humans):

        Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star supernova?

        Ellen: No.

        Cavil: No. Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks
        of the universe, other stars, other planets, and eventually other life, a
        supernova, creation itself. I was there. I wanted to see it, and be part of the
        moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the
        universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed
        to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, with ears designed only to
        hear vibrations in the air.

        Ellen: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.

        Cavil: I don't want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear
        X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am?
        I can't even express these things properly, because I have to — I have to
        conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I
        know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and
        feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I can
        know much more, I could experience so much more, but I'm trapped in this absurd
        body. And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's very exciting for me to dream of a future where we manage to tap into the visual cortex and maybe then we'll be able to see as if we had 4 or maybe more cones.

I really hope this result is verified and confirmed. It's very interesting to think what would it mean to see like this. Could we liken it to jumping from 8 bit color to 32 bit color for example?

<comment><USER11> Nope, the trichromatic vision is the reason we use color spaces like RGB -- it means that combinations of three colors can produce nearly all of the subjective hues that we experience. The idea of "three primary colors" comes from trichromatic vision; there's nothing about physics that implies that there should only be three primary colors, and machines can be built to distinguish an unlimited range of hue combinations that are not regarded as built up from _any_ finite number of primary colors, whereas human vision simply can't make these distinctions.

Tetrachromatic vision means a four-dimensional color space which will have to use four, not three, primary colors in order to represent all subjective hues through combinations. So you would need to add another channel on top of RGB.

The bit depth in a color space is effectively about how many different intensities of each primary color can be distinguished (although you can have a system that measures or distinguishes colors in terms of other features instead). So if you have a greater color depth, you can make more fine-grained distinctions about the intensive of the primary colors, but having a new primary color (that reaches otherwise-unrepresentable colors!) is something else entirely.

<comment> gm-conspiracy What about CMYK for tetrachromatic?

<comment><USER15> I think the primary difference between CMYK and RGB is that CMYK is a subtractive color space, while RGB is cumulative (I don't know if these are the correct terms in English). The first is used for reflective surfaces, while the other is used for light sources.

On reflexive surfaces, you make colors by subtracting wave lengths (the paint has pigments that absorb specific wavelengths). On light sources, like our computer screens, we make color by combining primary wavelengths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> See also [https://theneurosphere.com/2015/12/17/the-mystery-of- tetrach...](https://theneurosphere.com/2015/12/17/the-mystery-of- tetrachromacy-if-12-of-women-have-four-cone-types-in-their-eyes-why-do-so-few- of-them-actually-see-more-colours/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is not news. This article is based on another article from 2012 ([http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with- supe...](http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human- vision)).

<comment><USER16> And actually the whole story is based on a paper from 2010: [http://vision.psychol.cam.ac.uk/jdmollon/papers/JordanDeebBo...](http://vision.psychol.cam.ac.uk/jdmollon/papers/JordanDeebBostenMollonOnTetrachromacy.pdf)</comment></comment>


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