Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-hands-on <comment><USER2> I think Microsoft re-branding Augmented reality as "holographic" is hugely impactful and, with the new wave of AR and CV products that are coming onto the market [1] might be the thing that makes people take it seriously.

It's just so much easier to explain to people what it is if you say Holographic vs Augmented Reality - even though it is technically wrong. Kudos to MSFT for making that leap.

[1] Shameless plug for ([http://www.visidraft.com](http://www.visidraft.com)), my AR CAD company.

<comment><USER3> From their marketing material, they pretend they figured a way to fake depth. If true, that would be a huge step compared to classic stereoscopic technologies or other cumbersome devices.

However, I doubt this is the case, else they wouldn't just slap this announcement at the end of a boring Windows 10 presentation. I mean, all I could remember about this presentation was: "Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10 with HOLOGRAMS using Windows 10! Windows 10. Windows 10. Windows 10."

<comment><USER4> No need to fake it... if you can get the retinal projection accurate enough, with fast enough eye tracking, the depth is as real as anything else you'll see in real life...the goal would be to have it feel completely natural.

<comment><USER5> I really hope they get the accurate tracking and depth and getting objects to "stick" where they belong in 3d space correctly, without moving out of place or floating in a wrong way, with quick head movement. If they can do that, most of the battle is won and it will be amazing.

Edit: although, of course they'll need some intelligence on the surroundings to identify surfaces and stuff. But imagine like re-decorating your work room, adding scifi textures or something, and maybe pipes or whatever ;p

<comment><USER6> They didnt, otherwise they would show you eye view instead of third person impression of what its supposed to look like to the user.

Most likely it suffers the same shaky snap laggy tracking like every other AR setup.

<comment><USER7> But they showed footage "through the eyes of the wearer" and they let press have a hands on demonstration, so it's not like they can really fake anything.

I did see a tiny bit of judder in the footage that was supposed to be exactly what the person wearing the glasses would see, but it was hard to tell.

<comment><USER8> In the video I saw at the conference presentation, the "holograms" were always in front of the person's appendages, obscuring things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6sL_5Wgvrg&spfreload=10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6sL_5Wgvrg&spfreload=10)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tuned out when I read this: "Sensors flood the device with terabytes of data every second, all managed with an onboard CPU, GPU and first-of-its-kind HPU (holographic processing unit)."

I'm sorry, but there is _no_ wearable device which can handle terabytes of data per second. Heck, my brand new Haswell has a peak memory bandwidth of 17GB/s; even to the L1 cache, its theoretical max is 700GB/s.

This sounds like a puff PR piece.

<comment><USER10> For that matter, what sensor can produce terabytes of data per second?

<comment><USER11> The CERN Large Hadron Collider sensors[0]

(not head-mounted!)

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

<comment><USER12> Nope, that's 25 petabytes per year - under 1 gigabyte per second.

<comment><USER13> It's not constantly producing data though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Video of it in action here (?): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiTfdqCUIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiTfdqCUIY)

<comment><USER15> Here is the product website with three promo videos on it:

[http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en- us](http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us)

<comment><USER16> Reminds me of Google Glass's concept video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R1snVxGNVs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R1snVxGNVs)

I think Google over-promised initially which lead to many being underwhelmed with Glass. I hope Microsoft isn't making the same mistake here.

<comment><USER17> A better comparison would be Microsoft's demos for Project Natal, which eventually became Kinect: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5__fZ3GsW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5__fZ3GsW8)

There was also the other Kinect demo that featured Milo, but Molyneux probably deserves the blame for that infamous piece of hype: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM#t=10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM#t=10)

I definitely want HoloLens to be real, too, but to avoid heartbreak I'll temper my hopes until more reports come in. Or, even better, a firsthand experience.

<comment><USER18> I've never used a Kinect; how does the promo video live up to reality? It's looks almost identical to what I still assume Kinect is like, minus perhaps some of the highest fidelity parts like the skateboarding and soccer which I imagine have been attempted but turn out too clunky to be worthwhile. Am I wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm so excited to see this. I cannot wait to try one of these on for the first time. I'm going to bet writing apps for this kit will be a _lot of fun_.

And all the C# .NET developers can say again, _thank you Microsoft_ since they have committed to one platform, one store, all device types. I think it will be a while yet before there are thousands of developers working on this, but it will grow exponentially for a while.

If this is comfortable for extended wear, it's just going to further increase the value of remote workers. You can't beat time zones, but for everything else, there's holograms.

I really, really want to understand how high fidelity this is.

One point is we aren't seeing it used for video conferencing between two people each wearing a band. Probably because face-on you look pretty silly in it. So it's not quite a natural way to meet people. Just yet. I think it has world changing potential.

But in 2016 or whenever, this will not be selling for $499 or $899, it's more like $3299 I would guess. And really, that's more like the price level we expect for a very high quality gear. Actually, you could realistically go upward of $10k if the quality truly reflects that price.

So of course the next thing I did was check MSFT stock price. $382 billion market cap. This is a $100 billion idea, might be a good time to get back in. I guarantee you, the market has not fully priced in holograms. Just saying it, you know it's true. For now I will choose to believe the hype, because eventually, absolutely, this is all _possible_.

<comment><USER20> _" the market has not fully priced in holograms"_

Did you factor in the potential disruption by Magic Leap? Retinal projection could be a better bet long-term.

<comment><USER19> "Developer, developers, developers."

But imagine picking up an original iPhone today and comparing it to v6. Now imagine HoloLens going through that refinement process.

If the platform is as powerful as it sounds, and you can openly develop software which effectively leverages that platform, how is that not awesome?

I mean, it's an entirely new hardware form factor that we all get to hack on and play with, and it's not a sure thing, but if it goes well, it could become mainstream and open an entirely new era of computing.

That's the vision anyway... like I said, I'll choose to believe the hype because it's more fun that way.

Thinking about the design a bit, it's interesting all the compute is on the band, and not broken out to a separate box communicating over wireless. They mention fans blowing hot air away from your head, and then add in the battery too... how long can it run?

I think their use cases are a little weak. There are much more impressive things you could do with this kit.

Also, what does it look like in a dark room?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It was demoed just right now here: [http://news.microsoft.com/windows10story/](http://news.microsoft.com/windows10story/)

It looks really really really impressive! It's a see through pair of glasses so not like Occulus and they said they invented a new technology: HPU. The glasses will have their own GPU, CPU and HPU and will be wireless.

<comment><USER22> HPU isn't really much of a "new technology". It's just a custom coprocessor, not all that different from the motion coprocessor in the iPhone (except designed for video processing, so presumably a lot more powerful).

<comment><USER23> Except Apple's motion coprocessor is just an ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It looks impressive, but it would help to be able to tell the hype from reality:

"Sensors flood the device with terabytes of data every second" ... somehow I doubt the aggregate bandwidth of the device is > 1TB\s

Makes it harder to know how much of the rest of the 'explanations' are accurate.

<comment><USER25> Could the sensors be indeed flooding the device with terabytes of data, but the device can only sample that data at a more reasonable rate?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Well, from that perspective, an analog temperature sensor is flooding your ADC with infinite GB/s.

For further comparison: the fastest CPUs you can get nowadays have an aggregated memory bandwidth of ~ 90 GB/s using four lanes.

<comment><USER26> if you have enough pins, a custom asic can do just about whatever you want. the data flowing into the HPU is likely huge, but it is processed down into something the CPU can deal with.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Yeah, well, 4x DDR4 DIMMs have 4x288 = 1152 pins. If you want to be two orders of magnitude faster than that, you're talking on the order of 100 000 pins, which is just absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So many questions. I can understand light reflecting into the eye from a microdisplay (using the same principle as a car HUD), but are they actually creating _opaque_ imagery as well? How is that physically possible?

Then there's 3D spatial interaction: In my experience with Leap Motion, Kinect, and other competing tech, the level of accuracy still limits interactions to broad gestures. If they've made a big enough leap in this domain to enable precise object manipulation, that's a major achievement on its own.

<comment><USER28> The WIRED article seems to imply that this device has outwardly-facing cameras that use Kinect-like technology to track the operator's hands, which is probably how they are able to let you interact with the projections without using some kind of wand or controller.

I could see some "high-precision" gloves being an optional accessory for this that would include some kind of tracker markings to allow even more precise controls (maybe for medical applications or something)

<comment><USER29> I would almost imagine gloves like this would be a requirement for precise control. The Kinect had seemingly pretty decent limb sensing from the few minutes I played with it (it was able to accurately model the bones in my fingers moving). However, it had an advantage in that it was a few feet away, viewing you straight-on.

This device will be looking nearly straight down instead, and seems to me that your limbs & fingers will often occlude what is behind them. I doubt the twin cameras used to sense depth would be far enough apart to always see your fingers behind your other arm, for example.

<comment><USER30> If you want to see similar technology that's being used now, check out the Leap Motion being used with the Oculus Rift. They mount it on the front. I've personally only got experience with the rift (I have a DK2), but I've heard good things.

I think Oculus has it right, though, in that any HMD that does positional tracking needs super low latency to feel natural. Should be a little less problematic since the whole world wouldn't lag, but I'd be disappointed if the virtual overlay had perceptible lag after using some of the better experiences on the rift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now it makes sense that Google just announced that they're stopping Glass from being sold retail. They did not want to have their device compared to the new product from MS. Actually I see this new device as more prone to success than the Glass. These devices are competing for the same markets: healthcare, education and entertainment. And here Glass is somewhat underpowered.

<comment><USER32> Google's response would presumably be their partnership with Magic Leap.

<comment><USER33> "holographic", "cinematic reality" \- all just words used to describe augmented reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What are your thoughts about this? I'll tell you mine.

I just watched Google slowly, painfully, realize that Google Glass isn't commercially viable (in it's current form and to the general public). I can't help but feel that this is a larger, albeit more immersive, version of Google Glass.

I only make this point in regards to any plans for a sci-fi, everyday wearable HUD. There is obviously a great demand for this kind of immersion within the gaming community (although I would argue that Oculus will have market control for the forseeable future).

My opinion is that the kind of augmented reality that we all dream of, that sort of matrix-like constant data download, won't become a reality until someone figures out how to take it (visibly) out of human interaction, i.e. with smart contacts, etc. The current tech is just too intrusive in normal human interaction. My understanding is that this kind of tech is still a long way off.

I'd love to be wrong though!

<comment><USER35> What I find interesting is Microsoft launching this technology just after Google dropped it. I think the focus on business is the right way to go in this case, not everything can start from the consumer, e.g. look at how PC started from a geeky thing for scientists and is now in our pockets and wrists.

<comment><USER36> I didn't know Google Glass combined a 3D Camera with full augmented reality vision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well I'm impressed. I wasn't initially in the stock promo videos but once she put the actual device on and you could see the quality of the hologram, the spatial tracking, etc, pretty impressive. We're also not getting a feel for the sound system built into it. They mentioned in the demo the sound is also projected virtually from where the hologram is located.

I'm curious what the price tag will be? Battery life?

<comment><USER38> Apparently there will be both consumer and enterprise pricing, whatever that means. I'm guessing $500 to start at consumer level with lower resolution, less battery life, etc. Twice that for Holo Pro.

Sound is easy enough - a pair of decent headphones can produce fairly decent 3D sound, and combined with the illusion of depth provided to your visual system, I suspect it will be extremely convincing.

<comment><USER39> I'd assume for sound that it doesn't use headphones so much as bone conduction so that it doesn't get in the way of natural sounds. From the design, it seems that there's some kind of device-skull contact most of the way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What sort of use case is this for? The demos talked about in the article seem rather specific. I don't see how this will appeal to mass consumers.

<comment><USER41> Ten years ago, I would have said the same thing about a consumer smartphone.

<comment><USER42> Both portable cell phones and PDAs existed 10 years ago. The smartphone was a logical extension of those paradigms. AR Glasses (for lack of a better term) are still very young.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> VR is going to be a real game-changer for entertainment, but it's AR that's going to change how we work and live our everyday lives. The key to making VR work is reducing lag, but this is even more important for AR, which carries additional complexity in sensing and blending the virtual with the real. The difficulty of sensing and correctly modelling the real world in real-time is immense. There aren't many companies I'd believe could make the leap directly to functional, useful AR, but MS's experience in gaming, with the Kinect, gives them a huge head-start. This could be the real deal!

<comment><USER44> >VR is going to be a real game-changer for entertainment

I think the jury is still very much out on this. Personally, I hate VR. Its claustrophobic, asocial, dizzying, and I do not like the idea of giving software my entire field of view either. Cheap HMDs are going to be nice, but I don't know how well they're going to do outside the hardcore gamer demographic. I can't imagine watching a movie with friends with each of us wearing these things or even playing a console game with the other players in the room.

AR gaming, on the other hand, isn't something that gets much press, but I can really see some novel uses. Imagine playing something like "Gone Home" but in your home. Clues hidden in your real-life closets, drawers, etc. Or peering into the mirror in your bathroom and seeing the main characters face instead of yours. Or something in the background that's not really there.

<comment><USER45> I wouldn't watch a movie in the same room as friends with a HMD, but I could watch a movie with someone in a "virtual theater" when they're 1000 miles away.

I don't think we should write it off so quickly; it's like saying "Text messages are pointless, they don't carry inflections and emotion like phone calls. I can't see myself texting anyone." There are things you can do in real life but not in VR and there are things you can do with VR that you can't do in real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What is the killer app that will get people to go out and buy these? I don't think Holo Studio is it.

Where is your imagination racing to?

<comment><USER47> Depending on the resolution, it could replace your monitors at work (assuming the headset is light, comfortable, etc). Using a wireless keyboard and mouse, you'd have your computer with you anywhere in the home or office.

As a developer, having a wall of holographic desktop screen space in front of me would be amazing. My home office would look much better too!

I have no idea how far away this version of HoloLens is from that reality though.

<comment><USER46> I think the 'depending on the resolution' is key. Its not really a matter of software to me, its whether or not the hardware can deliver the necessary resolution to replace a monitor that's typically 1.5ft from your face. If you can break the dam by executing on the hardware the software will flow. (I wonder how Hololens compares to Magic Leap's technology.)

I think it would be very cool to just have 3 tripods on your desk (a ball on a stick) that represent 3 screen spaces. You could reach out and move them around, telescope them up and down in the physical world and the headset could use them for triangulation to render an accurate monitor on each. You'd still have a keyboard and mouse in the first iteration and then slowly overtime give way to other forms of input.

<comment><USER4> Thinking about how our eyes really work - you don't need the same resolution. You only need proper eye tracking and the right amount of resolution in the center of your vision (or wherever). You only need it to render what you are looking at - I'm sitting about 2 feet away from a 27 inch screen.... I'm never looking at the entire thing in such a way that I need all that detail at every point. Sure, I need it to be there when my eyes dart around... but as long as that's done, it will look just as real.

Given something more adaptive, there's no reason you couldn't have a ginormous holographic wraparound workspace... or whatever your imagination can come up with.

<comment><USER48> Great point, MS have been working on Foviated rendering for a long time.

<comment><USER49> I hadn't heard of that - here's a Microsoft Research video: [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=173013](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=173013)

Sadly the video player is horrible, and I didn't see this video on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is it really "holographic", or just stereoscopic?

<comment><USER51> It works by stereoscopy. There maybe something "holographic" in the math used to compute what to show each eye, but there is no projection of light into space to form holographic images that people can walk around.

<comment><USER52> Nor is there with holograms. Holography requires creation of light fields from a flat surface - each point on the surface reflects a different amount of light depending on what angle it is viewed from, exactly mimicking the way light would pass through that plane if an object were there. No 'projection of light into space' is involved.

Since images are formed on your retina by focusing real lightfields, a true holographic display which produced a complete lightfield would be much more realistic and comfortable to view than a flat stereoscopic image is.

<comment><USER51> I don't know enough about holography to agree or disagree, I was under the impression that the "lightfield" has a 3D structure that e.g. the light coming from a movie screen doesn't.

In any event I don't think that the "holographic" goggles are actually projecting a complete lightfield. I'm pretty sure they just shine two more-or- less normal images into your eyes although the math to compute those images might, uh, be holographic.

<comment><USER53> You can capture a lightfield using a 2d sensor [https://www.lytro.com/](https://www.lytro.com/) It's like the way your eye can re-focus on different distances without moving. That's something you can't do with MS's new tech - everything in the image will be in focus at the same distance, even if your eyes are getting different images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I just finished reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End [1], and then this comes out!! I want it now!!! This is so the way to go. If you are a SciFi fan, you have probably heard of Vernor's books, if not, I really recommend them. They have actually given me a brighter outlook on the future of humanity :) Apart from Rainbows End, check out Zones of Thought[2] if you want a outlook at what space travel could become in the future.

Back to the AR subject, I much prefer AR over true matrix style VR. Let us stay in the real world, move about the real world, extend it with the virtual.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor- Vinge/dp/081253636...](http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor- Vinge/dp/0812536363) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones- Thought/dp/081253...](http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones- Thought/dp/0812536355/ref=pd_cp_b_0)

[Edit: Grammar]

</comment><comment><USER55> How is this different than the Meta AR glasses? I have a pair, and I think they did a great job with the display and interaction.

<comment><USER56> Hey, did those end up being any good?

I wanted to buy some to develop on, but they didn't really seem to have their act together.

<comment><USER57> I tried some out at a hackathon and they look cool, the technology still has a long way to go. The resolution and display quality is pretty shitty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The craziest part about this is that they were embargoed for __four __months.

<comment><USER59> Yeah, I'd guess that someone leaked to wired accidentally or on purpose (but the person wasn't cleared to leak) and to keep any info from getting out they gave Wired an exclusive on condition that Wired keep it's mouth shut until today.

<comment><USER60> It was almost certainly just an embargo in exchange for exclusivity until launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Skeuomorphic UI design makes a comeback ;) Ironic that after they push for flat UI that this device is going back to 3-D UI (obviously 3-D is the whole point). It might look bad if light sources of the rendered objects are not consistent with your surroundings.

</comment><comment><USER62> It makes the Minecraft purchase make a whole lot more sense now.

I mean, it made immediate sense it's a cash cow, but long-term Minecraft is perfect, it's simple, easy, forgiving and fun - a perfect entrance into VR/AR

</comment><comment><USER63> Why do I get the feeling this is more akin to the trailer to a movie. One that I really really want to like. And with decent editing to fit in a small demo looks bloody awesome. But on arrival will mostly just be boring.

I also feel that the videos give a very misleading sense of what it will look like to see someone using something like this. Unless, I suppose, they have worked out the "shared" experience would be like. (That is, two of these in the same room.)

</comment><comment><USER64> [http://qz.com/330921/this-is-the-difference-between- microsof...](http://qz.com/330921/this-is-the-difference-between-microsoft- and-apple/)

More closeup picture of the device in that link. There's some sort of camera/light emitter above the left and right eyes. Two panes, and some sort of smaller HUD in front of the right (and left?) eyes, but it actually might be a part of the second glass pane.

</comment><comment><USER65> Wow. This looks seriously impressive and based on everything we know so far, it looks far better than Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus. I can't really afford such purchases at the moment because of an upcoming wedding, but I am definitely going to get one of these when they become available. Seriously, look at that Minecraft demo, impressive.

Looks like Microsoft has just upped the virtual reality goggles race. My mind is racing with excitement over all of the applications this could serve. The tech behind how these glasses actually work is also pretty clever, I don't entirely understand it, but it seems to be more than just a OLED diplay, lenses and a driver like existing solutions. I legitimately feel more excited for this than I have been for Oculus and Morpheus.

Another little clever thing Microsoft have done here is calling it a holographic headset, not a VR headet. The different wording not only separates Microsoft from other competitors refering to their headsets as virtual reality headsets but it also makes much more sense (from a technical and branding perspective).

</comment><comment><USER66> This makes me want to get a dev kit and create a prank exploit that puts a 3d clippy in the corner of your view that you can't get rid of. :D

</comment><comment><USER67> Key feature: see-through glasses. The eye strain was a major problem with Google Glass, that's not present here.

<comment><USER68> Yes, and Oculus Rift is now less relevant as well (good timing for selling it to Facebook). Why buy a dedicated heavy wired non-see-throw helmet? To shit yourself when someone is tapping your shoulder?

<comment><USER69> To get fully immersed in another world. For example, playing games or watching a movie. I go to an IMAX theatre because it engulfs my senses, audio all around me, most of my field of view watching the screen. If the screen were translucent it simply wouldn't be the same.

This will no doubt have some incredible applications, most of which augment reality. Not quite the same goal as Occulus.

<comment><USER70> Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't Microsoft just release (or ship this product with) a sort of blinder to put around these glasses to make the dedicated sight come from the glasses themselves while darkening everything else?

<comment><USER71> Certainly possible. It'll be interesting to see how feasible it is for these goggles to render entire 3d worlds in this scenario, since normally they'd be rendering a small fraction of the space you're in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Is the plan that you develop apps for this thing using C# (or any .Net language) plus special libraries? Or will the somewhat real-time nature of 3D imagery integrated with the real world using a lightweight mobile device require something closer to the metal?

<comment><USER19> "Developers can target all these device types, with one platform and one store. And stay tuned later while our device types expand." They will not abandon that mission, they just committed to it! (video 3:00)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Someday there could be gloves that allow you to feel these "holograms" using cables that prevent your fingers from moving up/down, etc.

I also think this could be a short-term way to introduce full-body physical constraints in full-on virtual reality. (In the more distant future, we will probably know how to stimulate the brain directly to produce these sensations.) I envision a full-body suit (fitted to the user with near perfection) with a bunch of cables going in every direction. So if you try to push a virtual wall, the proper cables will be set to resist. Doesn't seem very practical, but the glove version might be.

</comment><comment><USER74> Here is fresh "back-to-reality" report from Engadget journalist who just tried working HoloLens device prototype (at the same event where it was announced):

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

 _" Does it work? Yes, it works. Is it any good? That's a much harder question to answer."_

 _" I say this in the nicest way possible: Using Microsoft HoloLens kinda stinks. In its current form, it feels like someone is tightening your head into a vice. The model being shown today on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus isn't what you saw onstage, but a development kit. The demos begin by lowering a tethered, relatively small, rectangular computer over your head, which hangs around your neck by sling."_

 _" You can literally feel the heat coming off the computer's fans, which face upward. It feels like you're wearing a computer around your neck, because you are."_

There doesn't seem to be full hand tracking (as suggested by the demo on stage). Instead it uses something they call AirTap which uses gaze for pointing and hand only for clicking:

 _" By looking at any of them and using "AirTap" (hold up your hand in front of your eyes, tap with your pointer finger), I could select any contact to call."_

 _" While the effects of interaction were impressive, the actual interaction was less so. Rather than picking up a sheep with my hand by literally just grabbing it with my actual hand, my only means of interaction were voice (pickaxe! redstone torch! etc.) and the aforementioned "AirTap."_

Overall impression is kinda mixed (especially compared to how well were received even very crude Oculus Rift early prototypes):

 _" HoloLens is clearly very early, and kinda sucks right now. It's uncomfortable. It's cumbersome. It looks and feels like a piece of hardware that's far from final."_

 _" Is it bad? No. Lord no. Stop it. It's very impressive, but it's a brand new entry in a market that basically doesn't exist yet."_

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

[http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens- hands-...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens-hands-on/)

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

Given Engadget description of the actual device, here is a screenshot from Microsoft promotional video that probably captured it:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B76axLVIUAA4egZ.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B76axLVIUAA4egZ.png:large)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmAwvmOXKM&t=12m21s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmAwvmOXKM&t=12m21s)

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

Another journalist impressions (Andy McNamara from Game Informer):

 _" Important first impression. In the videos I thought it filled your entire field of view, but it's more like a screen floating in space."_

 _" I'd say it's like a 16x9-ish monitor floating about 7 to 8 inches just in front of your face."_

[https://twitter.com/GI_AndyMc/status/558039828328357888](https://twitter.com/GI_AndyMc/status/558039828328357888)

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

Gizmodo report was more enthusiastic, especially about ability of display to hide real view, though noted "tiny" field-of-view:

 _" It's one of the most amazing and tantalizing experiences I've ever had with a piece of technology."_

 _" It's not like the Oculus Rift, where you're totally immersed in a virtual world practically anywhere you look. The current Hololens field of view is TINY! I wasn't even impressed at first. All that weight for this? But that's when I noticed that I wasn't just looking at some ghostly transparent representation of Mars superimposed on my vision. I was standing in a room filled with objects. Posters covering the walls. And yet somehow—without blocking my vision—the Hololens was making those objects almost totally invisible."_

[http://gizmodo.com/project-hololens-hands-on-incredible- amaz...](http://gizmodo.com/project-hololens-hands-on-incredible-amazing- prototy-1680934585)

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

Verge folks also liked it:

 _"... you look down at the coffee table and there's a castle sitting right on the damn thing. It's not shimmery, but it's not quite real, either. It's just sitting there, perfectly flat on the table, reacting in space to your head movements. It's nearly as lifelike as the actual table, and there's no lag at all. The castle is there. It's simply magic."_

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868251/microsoft- hololens...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868251/microsoft-hololens- hologram-hands-on-experience)

<comment><USER75> >There doesn't seem to be full hand tracking (as suggested by the demo on stage)

The demo on stage clearly mentioned that you used your gaze to select and then tapped with your finger. Which is also exactly what we saw the lady on stage doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Promotional videos look impressive. The demo, thought, not so much: gesturing seemed awkward, clicking in the air is not an interface. I guess this could easily be improved using haptic feedback.

Of course, the naysayer in me is just thinking this is a PR move to tell investors and stakeholders everything is alright and that MS got their backs covered by stepping into the future. Which is not that unusual, Google and Amazon are doing it too.

</comment><comment><USER77> This looks just like Magic Leap.

<comment><USER60> Except Magic Leap is only a concept video right now, publicly at least. This is a product ready enough for reporters to try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Kind of explains why they bought Mojang for Minecraft!

</comment><comment><USER79> It was a bit irritating to see the kid running up to the model of the rocket ship with excitement and _no goggles on_. Why lie and make it seem like you'll be able to see these "holograms" without the goggles on? Everyone walking around with these big ski goggles strapped to their head seems worse than Google Glass, which is awkward enough as it is.

<comment><USER80> I understood from the video that it had been 3D-printed

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> This has the potential of making being rich kind of...obsolete.

Think of it like this: can't afford an iphone? There's a Holographic iPhone you can download. Can't afford a fancy big screen TV, there are thousands out there you can download, etc.

This will all depend on the quality / ease of use of Holographic Windows, but I can already see it's the future of computing.

<comment><USER82> The last few major purchases I made with my relatively plentiful disposable income: A pair of Doc Martens, two plane tickets to Kenya, yearly membership fee to my concierge medical clinic. None of these could be replaced by this technology. Arguably, I could make it _look_ like I'm wearing new shoes when look down, and I could load up "Kenya" mode on my Holographic Goggles -- but nothing will replace the feel and protection of good shoes, or replicate the smells, tastes, and adventure of actual travel.

Also, I still own an iPhone 5 and don't have a particularly fancy TV...

Your same argument has been made (to a greater or lesser degree) with the advent of the industrial revolution, the Internet, cheap processors, 3D printers. There is no technology that will make wealth obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I wonder why they didn't demo an outdoor use case.

I'm curious if this technology is closer to oculus rift than to google glass.

I'm thinking maybe they use a front-facing camera to capture the scene and render the 3D stuff on top of the camera view? a user simply sees the composite scene via a display similar to oculus rift.

<comment><USER84> I'm pretty sure he said in the demo that it did not use a camera.

<comment><USER83> seeing something like this without knowing how it works drives me crazy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I watched the live demo and was really excited about this and Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrot got to use it and are really excited about this. They also mentioned that it will be released this year. They talked about it on TWiT. Paul said that it looks as good as the pictures on the holo website.

</comment><comment><USER86> What is the resolution of the device? I really doubt it will be as HD as the promo video that they created.

<comment><USER85> In the live demo it wasn't has high, but it was still really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> The HoloLens description reminds me of the VR technology depicted in Arthur Clarke's "Light of Other Days". Its interesting to see how many of things he predicted of the future we have achieved, through different means than what he imagined.

</comment><comment><USER88> The technology looks very impressive but I do not see how this will be widely useful. The necessity to hold your arm out as far as it will go will only cause Gorilla Arm, and is the reason touchscreen desktop PCs are always abysmal failures. You need to move your arm far more than with a keyboard and mouse, so you'll never be productive. The technology looks impressive but I can't see it being useful unless used for holographic weather reports where excessive gesticulation is apparently mandatory. 3D modelling with that would be exceptionally painful. Perhaps gaming or something, but I wouldn't want to be sat there on my armchair waving my arms around like I am suffering some sort of uncontrollable seizure (no offence intended btw, just the best way of describing my actions to onlookers).

</comment><comment><USER89> Might allow them to reinvent their "Windows" theme when people start interacting with their environment through some sort of lens. It will act as a 'window' to the world.

</comment><comment><USER90> I don't understand why there is no comment about the probably most important aspect: The image quality. Is it low resolution or really high def and you can't see single pixels?!

<comment><USER6> engadget:

-field of view is extremely limited. There's a rectangular area in the center of your vision that acts as your "window"

-image was relatively transparent

-HoloLens is clearly very early, and kinda sucks right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> A problem I have with this is that blocks so much of the face that it hinders subtle facial gestures.

Notice that on all the video calls they show the other person isn't wearing one?

(That and it is rather ugly, too.)

</comment><comment><USER92> Hey! We're having our first Meta (YC S13) AR Hackathon in SF Feb 20th-21st. Come and hack on our Meta Glasses and have a hands-on AR experience! goo.gl/b6BIWN

</comment><comment><USER93> Anyone fancy a game of dejarik? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6M4ngKRp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6M4ngKRp0)

</comment><comment><USER94> Curious about skype (inc Lync which will be rebranded to Skype)

Seems like a strong use-case but how will they render people on the call if participants are wearing a headset?

</comment><comment><USER95> I think Microsoft just gained back its cool factor.

Now lets hope .Net also becomes 'cool' to use among developers. The current perception is pretty bleak.

<comment><USER96> They should have gone all in on ironruby and it would have been a huge competitor to jruby to hip coders for the enterprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> This is truly amazing. I'm super excited. It might be time for me to get my hands dirty with C# again :)

</comment><comment><USER98> Unlike the usual meme, in this case the goggles do something. Be interesting to actually try one.

</comment><comment><USER99> This is one of the very first times I've been happy to be a .NET developer.

</comment><comment><USER100> I know this is the future, and I feel somewhat weird in saying this but I am not quite happy. I feel like technology is coming to replace the physical world instead of augment and improve on our actual experiences. Either way it's some awesome work that was done.

<comment><USER101> This is 100% designed to augment our actual experiences. That's why they said "this is not VR". It's putting digital objects in the real world. That's augmenting actual experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> I'd settle for that holographic puppy at the end of the video!

</comment><comment><USER103> "all the fun of schizophrenia in a hat" ?

</comment><comment><USER104> Was anybody else slightly disturbed by the Raytheon product placement? [http://i.imgur.com/ekogOBL.png](http://i.imgur.com/ekogOBL.png)

</comment><comment><USER101> It seriously took me several minutes to realize this wasn't a joke. Even Peter Bright on the Ars live blog had to stop and say "wat".

<comment><USER105> The name doesn't quite sound right, which triggered the same response in me.

<comment><USER106> Probably because it's more AR than Holo. But meh, still wicked cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> I'm going to take a guess, Microsoft is going to give out these to devs at build this year.

</comment><comment><USER108> Now, this is going to be the most exciting news of 2015 for me. Well done, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER109> The future is here.

<comment><USER110> holographic nipples everywhere

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> It will definitely stamp its name on the page of history.

<comment><USER112> I might be ignoring something, but this appears to be the first ahead-of-the- pack innovation from Microsoft that I've seen in at least 20 years. Congrats to them.

<comment><USER3> Kinect was pretty surprising too, especially at that price point. EDIT: Granted they didn't develop 100% of the tech themselves, but still: depth perception, human skeleton recognition, in real time, on a crappy 360, for 150$? That was impressive.

<comment><USER113> Same guy behind this and the Kinect project though - Alex Kipman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> I can't see this becoming a consumer product.

</comment><comment><USER115> Your all plebs

</comment><comment><USER116> Google Glass made you look like an idiot.

HoloLens does the same but if you believe their product video: you _are_ an idiot.

</comment><comment><USER117> That's pretty evil/clever of them to throw Minecraft into their marketing images.

<comment><USER68> They have a vision, Minecraft was fitting that vision. So they consumed it. It was smart. Project Spark makes more sense now as well.

<comment><USER117> Totally agree. I meant it as a compliment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> Once again, Microsoft is slow to produce a product.

In this case, the product is a "moonshot" at changing the UI.

No wait, the product is a PR event that just says. "We can innovate too, you know"

If this fails, they will be late again in canceling a VR/Augmented reality product that should not have made it past beta. See Glass, Google.

<comment><USER119> Haha alright Captain Buzzkill, let's give it more than one day before we start burying this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is really cool, but I'm kind of wondering when Microsoft will cancel the project. Because, you know, that's what they do.</comment>


Ask YC: How do I store online contracts? - <AUTHOR>

Our site has a component where certain people sign up for accounts and get paid. I'm planning to do the contract online.
Googling keeps getting links to sample legal agreements, etc.
I'm concerned about how I store the contract & proof of signature. Does anyone have any pointers for storage/format of electronic legal documents?
Much appreciated. <comment><USER2> What sort of contracts? In what jurisdiction? And for what purpose?

[The ABA guidelines are one place to start looking](<http://www.abanet.org/scitech/ec/isc/dsg-tutorial.html>).

If I were doing it I would save the actual contract portion of things as a text file that includes (text of agreement, HMAC of the text, signed HMAC, public key of the signer) note that including the public key of the signer in no way guarantees the authenticity of the signer; it's there purely as a sanity check, since if you can't decrypt the signed hmac with the provided public key and match the original hmac (or the derived hmac) the document is invalid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I'm looking at it now.

> What sort of contracts?

I'm not sure how to answer this. It's basically an agreement saying we'll pay the authors X% of the proceeds from book sales every month.

We are a Delaware C corp.

<comment><USER2> Find a lawyer for the product team; not your corporate counsel, but someone whose sole responsibility is advising you on your contracts and recordkeeping requirements. From the sound of it someone who has experience in the publishing industry who has both written contracts and litigated disputes involving revenue sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have to wonder why you are doing this - are you really planning on having so many authors that you need a technical solution for this right now? Massive book publishers need that sort of thing but for a startup it seems unnecessary and a luxury. email the contracts in .pdf form, have them sign and return two copies, then mail one copy back to them.

I would just worry that you'll spend 40 hours developing a solution that will save you 5 hours a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I'm inclined to agree with you now. However, if the answer was something quick and easy, I would have done it.</comment></comment>


Tipjoy: are they still around? - <AUTHOR>

What's the inside scoop on Tipjoy (YC'08)? They haven't Tweeted in 3 weeks (since they spammed their userbase). Their payment system isn't cooperating (users can't pay in and are getting long delays in payouts). And I've heard from a few folks that now, they aren't even responding to emails. Are they moving in with Madoff, or what? If they're done, it's OK. But, there's a proper way to fail and a way <i>not</i> to fail. <comment><USER2> Some parts of our site need some maintenance. That's been slowed by the logistics of moving across the country to California. Things will be back to normal soon.

<comment><USER3> Good luck with the move! I'll visit next time I'm out there.

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate to be negative, but when you are dealing with people's money, you don't have the option of going dark for a month. It's unprofessional and possibly illegal.

<comment><USER2> We haven't "gone dark". We answer support emails.

<comment><USER4> Weak, weak sauce. How can you have time to post on hacker news but you can't get a server back up to allow withdrawls?

<comment><USER2> Withdrawls never went down, but only get delayed if it isn't obvious you're a real person. Investigating a social graph is hard from my iPhone. I'm in the middle of nowhere right now. That I'm posting at all is pretty hot sauce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _But, there's a proper way to fail and a way not to fail._

I guess you can start your own company and make it fail however you like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Been there, done that. Licked the wounds, learned the lessons. (grin)

Look, I hope Ivan is wildly successful in his venture and that this relocation works wonders for everyone. Honest.

But the bottom line is this. When you are the Leader of a company that is taking other people's money... You. Don't. Go. Dark.

Tell your users what is going on. If you have to go dark, let them know how long and setup autoresponders (my mom even knows how to use them & she's 66). If there are any problems, state your plan to rectify them. And if you're really on the ball, have a Plan B, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Are they moving in with Madoff, or what?_

Why would you even say such a thing? Have you made attempts to contact them? If you have, please tell us about it. If this is your first attempt to find out, isn't it too harsh? Trash talking first and apologizing later is not cool. (I am assuming you'll apologize after you find out that there is nothing wrong, a likely scenario)

Isn't there enough strife in the world already?

<comment><AUTHOR> The bottom line is this... if you're going to operate a busines in the financial services sector, you don't go dark. Period.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, fine, we agree, but comparing someone to Madoff is one step short of a comparison to Hitler. It's a little too much and makes people not take you seriously.

(the thread is now officially over, btw!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IvanKirigin posted here not just two days ago. All his contact information is in his HN profile. You could ask him.

</comment><comment><USER9> They are otherwise indisposed at the moment. I'd cut 'em some slack for the next couple weeks when it comes to responding to emails and such.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's putting in a lot of hours. He's moving cross-country and it's taking him longer than expected. Those are excuses.

Ivan is a smart, hard-working guy. I think he will emerge from this experience scarred, but smarter. And I truly wish him all the success in the world -- Honest Injun. (someone will probably get all bent out of shape b/c of that!).

Problem is, you're missing the point. He's not working the grill at In'N'Out. He is the leader of a company that is operating in the financial services sector. And that company is taking other people's money, while making commitments to those people. As the leader, he does not have the luxury of going dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe they are having technical issues?

<comment><USER11> Maybe they could tweet "having technical issues"</comment></comment>


Dropbox discontinues rendering of HTML content - <AUTHOR> This is an email Dropbox sent to users today:
" We're writing to let you know that we'll be discontinuing the ability to render HTML content in-browser via shared links or Public Folder. If you're using Dropbox shared links to host HTML files for a website, the content will no longer display in-browser.
Please note that this change will take effect for your account on October 3, 2016, and only impacts how shared files are displayed on the web. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.
Thanks for being a loyal Dropbox user.
- The Dropbox Team " <comment><USER2> In case you're confused, new non-business dropbox accounts haven't had the ability to create a "public" folder since 2012. [http://superuser.com/questions/764641/how-to-serve-html- off-...](http://superuser.com/questions/764641/how-to-serve-html-off-my- dropbox)</comment>


San Jose grand jury indicts members of hacker group Anonymous - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18508492?nclick_check=1 <comment><USER2> This link worked for me: [http://www.mercurynews.com/crime- courts/ci_18508492?nclick_c...](http://www.mercurynews.com/crime- courts/ci_18508492?nclick_check=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm getting an error when I click through on this link: [https://secure.news.ycombinator.com/registration/?rPage=logi...](https://secure.news.ycombinator.com/registration/?rPage=login&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fnewest&eRightsSessionExpired=true&forced=true)

Anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER4> merc really doesn't want us reading their news.

The URL works fine if you paste it and edit it up a bit. Just can't click through.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure which prior comment to respond to.

MN links end up with a query string appended. If you're going to share them, you need to shave it off before sharing / following:

<http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18508492></comment>


The 9 questions that uncover the most surprising insights from employees - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-9-questions-that-uncover-the-most-surprising-insights-from-employees-b7bc0d20ede8 <comment><USER2> As to this:

"Have you seen someone here do great work that's gone unnoticed?"

This is best handled by anonymous upvoting. Give every employee the power to upvote 3 people each month. That way the management can see if there are some "unknown" people who are getting upvotes.

Also, every employee should be given the power to anonymously downvote one person each month. This is the best way to find cases of racism, sexual harassment, and plain incompetence. Often with issues such as sexual harassment, people won't come forward because they don't have enough evidence, and even if they did come forward, management would be faced with a "he said/she said" situation (or "he said/he said" or "she said/she said"). But a persistent pattern of downvotes, over the course of months, tells management that an employee is problematic in some way, even if that employee does good work and, when management is around, demonstrates good behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> Feels like blatant self promotion. Yet another type of slashvertisement.

<comment><USER4> Self promotion is more thank ok. What matters is whether or not the content is useful, in this case it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're yes/no questions that don't provide any clues as to what/where/when/who/how…

<comment><USER6> The yes/no is a jumping off point. Are you afraid of something at work? Yes -> please expand on that.

<comment><USER7> Part of the issue is that many people will be willing to answer questions like these anonymously, but asking the "why" identifies those employees. Most of the time people don't speak up because they are afraid of the consequences/ramifications.

<comment><USER8> This is a great point. If you can at least discover that there is a problem, you can find some other means to uncover and solve it.

<comment><USER9> to be fair, since the probability of the employees answering yes is already really high, you could just assume that the answer is yes, and then do that investigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with this is that it does not address the fact that while employee feedback may provide some insights that are more or less useful, it does not do anything to help a manager decide what to do about it. That's where real managerial skill provides value, but these questions don't get you any nearer to the answer(s).</comment>


The Shazam Effect (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-shazam-effect/382237/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> I remember posting this awhile ago. Here is the Original Thread if you are looking for more comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634357)

Great article regardless. Glad to see more peoples take on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> So basically, labels are now treating music production as an optimization problem.

And because they're terrible at this type of optimization problem, they're getting stuck in a local minimum (the space is anything but convex), which happens to be repetitive, awful, and targeted at the largest common denominator.

Treating music as an optimization problem may not be a bad thing in itself, the issue is being unable to solve the problem properly.

<comment><USER4> Are they really terrible at it? You seem to assume that the global minimum to the problem is an artistically perfect song. For record labels the global minimum is the song that makes the most money. If that song happens to be repetitive and awful, so be it.

<comment><USER3> If so many people are unhappy with the state of the pop music landscape, then that is not a global minimum. The space of possible music is immense, you could invent so many new genres. By not exploring the unknown, they are missing out.

Iterating endlessly on a single recipe is just not how you build a sustainable artistic business. It makes money in the near term, but it is doomed in the long term. The music labels and Hollywood will have to realize this at some point.

<comment><USER5> The music labels will never have to 'realize' this because, short of a cultural revolution, it will always make the most money. I'm a musician, I am very picky about the music I listen to. My wife? Not quite as picky. She will hear a song on the radio, like it, and become a fan of that song. Her, along with probably 90%+ of the general public don't carry the same snobbery that I do, and have no guilt liking a Nickelback or a One Republic song. Edit: I meant One Direction, but same thing.

<comment><USER6> I'm a music snob, but One Republic have a couple of decent pop-rock-ish tracks. Your point is very spot on though.

I presented and DJ'd on a community radio show for a few years, and had a bit of a cult following around here, however my main focus was local talent, and was decidedly not the mainstream nor even the mainstream-indie like Triple J plays. My audience was limited by that.

People don't really want to hear new things on the whole, and if they do, they want the new thing to sound like the old one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time I read an article about Shazam, I'm deeply skeptical of the claims.

Example: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/08/20/shazam- hit...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/08/20/shazam- hits-100-million-active-users-as-it-gears-up-for-ipo/)

Article makes it seem like Shazam has metrics like a social network, but my experience, and everyone I've ever seen is that it's rarely used -- and simply to quickly identify a song.

This latest one in The Atlantic implies people use it far more frequently then I think they do, and I'm again, very skeptical. And even if they do, they don't shazam hits they know, or songs about to be hits, but they shazam that random song they can't identify -- not sure that's an indicator of hit'ness.

From user numbers, to capital raised, to stories like this, each time I read about Shazam, I say to myself "Gosh, I really love the app, but can it really be this big and lucrative?" I feel like I'm missing something.

I hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER8> Think about the kind of data that they would collect.

I personally rarely use Shazam, but when I do, it's more often then not a song I don't know at all rather than trying to remember a song's name.

So someone like me hears a song and wants to identify it. Then another person, and another. So you have three people in a specific location at the same time looking to identify a song. That would suggest that those people like what they hear. You know what the song is so you know interest has piqued. If you cross reference that with radio plays at that time you have a new metric that you couldn't measure previously - reaction to a radio play. It's incredibly interesting because of the type of data it collects, which to be honest I think the article explains explicitly and very clearly!

<comment><USER9> It's only just struck me that it can also catch copyright infringement as location of public performance of a work that's not authorised can be established - especially if more than one person used Shazam to ID the work. Interesting.

Perhaps this was obvious to everyone else.

Personally I've never used it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shazam is wasting a LOT of money to try to sell that image.

they have 2min ads on feature films showing music news.

i bet this is but paid PR. they are desperate.

the music id business is so dead. Google, apple, yahoo... everyone does it!

<comment><USER11> Apple uses Shazam as the backend for their music identification service on iOS 8, so at least they're not having to compete there.

<comment><USER10> Had no idea about that.

<troll>but agreeing to apple terms, show that a company is already in bad position to negotiate. :) </troll>

now let the downvotes begin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice PR piece for Shazam. Does anybody do actual reporting anymore?

</comment><comment><USER13> An article from 2014 (that I remember reading). Perhaps that should go in the title here...

</comment><comment><USER14> > ...it has been downloaded more than 500 million times and used to identify > some 30 million songs ...

That doesn't sound right. On average one identification for every 16 downloads? I'm guessing that second million should be a billion.

<comment><USER15> My reading was '30 million distinct songs', not 30 million identifications

<comment><USER14> Ahh, good point. That makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there some write-up on the algorithm used?

I'm currently in the planning stage for a similar project and this might end up being really helpful for me.

EDIT: Thanks guys.

<comment><USER17> See "An Industrial-Strength Audio Search Algorithm"[1], a 2010 paper written by one of the Shazam developers. The analysis itself doesn't seem complicated[2] but having a large enough database to compare against is probably the hard part.

[1]: [http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf](http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf)

[2]: [http://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in- ja...](http://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Media measurement company BigChampagne tried to do the same thing by monitoring file-sharing networks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Any reason why would Shazam be significantly faster than Twitter or the likes in detecting trends?

<comment><USER8> I would imagine that it's good because it doesn't require any more information that what a song sounds like. A user hears a song they like, records it there and then and that shows 'interest'. Twitter on the other hand needs a name / artist.. you can't really analyse a tweet saying "I like that song that goes du du dud dud dahhh"... but Shazam actually can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The trick, he discovered, was to turn a song into a piece of data.

I cringe and then laugh inside whenever I see tech writing like this.

<comment><USER21> I didn't see a problem with it. The magazine is "The Atlantic" which has a general readership.

If one writes a program to analyze Shakespeare text, he might describe it as _" converted the text into a multi-dimensional vector space"_ or _" mapped ngrams into a point cloud"_ \-- and that would be acceptable lexicon for a Dr Dobbs Programming Journal or possibly ArsTechnica. However, for The Atlantic, it seems reasonble for a journalist/editor to write that as _" convert the plays into data."_

Yes, Shakespeare the text itself was already "data" so in a pedantic analysis, saying "converting data to data" seems pointless but that's not the level of indirection the general readership is at.

<comment><USER22> Even for a general audience, "data" is uselessly broad. Such a reader would be better served by a better explanation of the acoustic fingerprint idea, or even nothing at all. As it is, the article promotes the idea that "data" is some sort of magical thing, and that's harmful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not clicking since is is the Atlantic so I'm not sure what was discussed but...

I'm on the cusp of deleting Shazam as useful as it is it's getting more spammy as the days go by too many notifications of junk.

<comment><USER24> >I'm not clicking since is is the Atlantic

Context? What did they do?

<comment><USER23> Very spammy at least on social media such as reddit and HN breaking a rule (official or not) of not submitting your own material it should come from a user not the website.

They get around it by making up a username or pay someone to submit.

Physorg is another terribly spammy site often with misleading headlines.

Both phsyorg and the Atlantic have been banned from reddit at least once if not multiple times I'm not sure about on HN.</comment></comment></comment>


Keep out: NASA asks future Moon visitors to respect its stuff - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/keep-out-nasa-asks-future-moon-visitors-to-respect-its-stuff/ <comment><USER2> At first I was annoyed at the audacity of NASA; "don't touch our stuff because its important and has a historical significance". But as I read more of the story I realized that the historical significance is related to the fact that we're not really sure what 40 years on the moon can do to equipment. Keeping some of the existing sites in "pristine" condition is necessary to find out how long term exposure to a hard vacuum as well as large doses of radiation could effect future missions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly if Americans are too damn cheap to go back to the moon then we can't be too upset if someone from someplace else messes with the stuff you left behind. Although the real futue risk may not be future trips sponsored by nation-states but even provate salavage hunters looking to make a quick buck just like what you see today with the Titantic (or any ancient artifacts that get looted).</comment>


Coronavirus response failed because we didn't understand the complexity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/03/what-really-doomed-americas-coronavirus-response/608596/ <comment><USER2> Failed because... what?

Corollary: It's good for the South Koreans that they understood the complexity, then.</comment>


Housing can't be a good investment and affordable - <AUTHOR> http://cityobservatory.org/housing-cant-be-a-good-investment-and-affordable/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad someone is pointing out something that nagged away at me for a long time. With every other cost-of-living product, we celebrate when their prices go down, because we recognize that a lower cost-of-living translates to better qualify-of-life, at the aggregate. So why is it that we do the exact opposite with housing.

Imagine if house prices tomorrow were to increase by 10% across the board, throughout the country. Who exactly would that help? Not the vast majority of home-owners who own a single home. They're still going to continue living in their house, and will be unaffected by the 10% increase in any meaningful way. And if they ever decide to sell the house and claim the 10% increase as profit, where are they going to live next? They will just have to buy/rent another house, where their earlier profit will be going entirely towards paying the higher housing prices for their new home.

So what you really have is a situation where all the renters face dramatically higher costs of living, the single home owners are mostly neutral, and the upper-class with multiple homes suddenly find themselves with a windfall. And we think this is cause for celebration?

Personally, I can't wait for the next housing crash.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you here. It really annoys me when people tell me they hope their house continues to increase in value at an exponential rate. Houses are not like stocks, families don't buy and sell them to make money. They are places to live.

The people I hear this the most from are in the middle class, the ones who are most likely not to benefit from the increases.

I hope this thinking stops.

<comment><USER4> If it continues, it's going to help me a lot when my kids are gone, and I can downsize to a smaller (less expensive) house.

<comment><USER5> And there is the rub, the Boomers have treated their homes as investments, on average their homes are by far their largest "investment", with plans of downsizing to finance their retirement. The problem with this is you need to find someone to purchase the home.

Over the last few years a large part of the reason in the increase in the value of homes has had to do with historically low interest rates and a statistically low inventory due to the number of homes underwater or with low equity. The Boomers are just starting to retire, over the next decade many will attempt to do as you describe creating a glut of homes for sale, while the median household income has continued to decrease making it impossible for the generations coming behind to absorb those homes based upon their income and Demographics, remember Gen X is much smaller than the Boomers and the Millenials have not come into their own yet.

<comment><USER4> Well, with each generation containing more members than the previous, it would all work out, except for that pesky "median household income continuing to decrease" part...

<comment><USER5> Well that would be the case if Demographics and birthrates supported that. The Boomers were the largest generation by births Gen X was much smaller and the only reason there are more Millenials than Boomers at the moment is immigration and some of the Boomers have died off. Birthrates at or below replacement level in most of the developed world for the last 40 years are begging to show their consequence, the problems will grow over the next few decades as Demographics take hold. As of this year more people are dying in the EU every year than are born, Japan has been mired in this for years and China will see the problem as well as their working age population is in decline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is an excellent point.

TL;DR: A good investment has to grow in value over inflation, and if housing grows in value at even a decent rate, it compounds out of affordability. As an example, housing in San Fran has grown at 2.5% over inflation.

<comment><USER7> >A good investment has to grow in value over inflation

Housing is the exception to this rule. Yes you want your investments to beat inflation, but unlike an index fund, or a stock, or a commodity, you need housing (you have to live somewhere). You have to either rent or buy (or live off the land in the woods, which can be illegal many places). When you rent you are throwing your money away, you will never see that money again, period. The one other alternative is to purchase, even if you lost a small percentage on your "investment" buying a home, isn't that better than just throwing your money in the trash and losing 100% of it? An investment that isn't great is still better than an investment that absolutely sucks.

<comment><USER8> That's not how ROI works. You can show that in San Francisco, IF you live in a rent controlled apartment, it's very possible that you get a better economic ROI from renting than owning. The factor you are forgetting is that owning a house requires a down payment and there's an opportunity cost of not investing that down payment in alternative investments (stocks average 6-8% ) which could generate a return that's significantly better than your house.

I've actually done a 10 year DCF analysis for SF and in many scenarios, a rent controlled apartment whose rent becomes cheaper over time (since SF rent controls are at 1% while inflation is 3%) can be a significantly better (and less risky) investment than owning.

There is this false concept that rent is "throwing money away" but that's not true in many cases; there's an opportunity cost of your down payment, property taxes, etc. with house ownership. NYTimes has a nice web calculator to help figure it out for you: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy- rent-calc...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent- calculator.html?_r=0)

Key reasons why renting could make sense 1 house ownership is incredible risky due to high down payments 2) rent control laws makes renting actually cheaper over time

<comment><USER9> Fellow SF renter here.

I've also done the DCF analysis and found that it's about a wash assuming a 10% discount rate and 10-year rent vs. buy-then-sell-with-payoff.

One problem with your analysis is that I think anti-rent control sentiment is growing in SF as the city's politics moderate overall. You could very well get Ellised out of your place and then the entire analysis goes out the window (though I suppose you could probabalistically factor this in, including the Ellis payment, but then, you really should work on Wall Street building option and mortgage payout models, shouldn't you)

A few interesting observations from the DCF:

(1) In expensive markets like SF, the mortgage interest break is a _huge_ deal. Consider that most buyers will be in a pretty high marginal bracket, CA has obscenely high taxes, _and_ you'll be paying a ton of mortgage interest on a $1MM+ loan.

(2) Not surprising, but your inflation/growth estimates for price vs. rent are the most important parameters. I don't think anyone could've foreseen the 10% year-over-year growth we've had for the better part of the last 5 years in rent. You just can't foresee everything in a model. (And to be perfectly honest, I can't stand the smugness of the luck-masquerading-as-skill crowd these days. Because sure, you "just knew" Google was going to be huge when you worked at some random startup back in 1998. And you "just knew" housing would go up like it has.)

(3) I really buy the "forced savings" argument. Sure, you could theoretically do better running a "lean" operation and investing, but do most people have the discipline to do it? I might, and I certainly am now, but I'm not sure. Getting locked-in with a payment you know you MUST make is a powerful psychological anchor that might change behavior around, say, buying a new car, or a vacation, vs some abstract and sort of arbitrary savings goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't care as much about my home as an investment (though appreciation matching inflation would be nice) as much as not having to pay rent or mortgage when I'm older. Retiring at 70% income means nearly full salary after the mortgage has been paid off, minus taxes and insurance.

<comment><USER11> I think the article is simplifying things. Gaining money with a housing investment is great and all, but stoping the stream of money that goes into the void from rent is also a gain. Owning with a loss less than that from renting is, by definition, and investment.

      Investment: the action or process of investing money for profit or material result.

      Profit: money in - money out.

For the bay area, that means you just have to not lose ~36k/year in taxes, fees, and any housing dips.

<comment><USER12> >Gaining money with a housing investment is great and all, but stoping the stream of money that goes into the void from rent is also a gain.

You're just trading the stream of money that goes into rent for the stream of money that goes into taxes and interest on your loan.

You can't say "owning is better than renting" or _vice versa_ without crunching the numbers for your particular situation.

When I bought my first house I was paying out more every month (by quite a bit) than I did as a renter. Then I rented for awhile and bought my current place, in which I come out ahead vs renting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I agree. I suspect the real issue is the government supplied debt financing. I think government subsidies drive up housing prices to the extent that you __NEED __to take out a loan to pay for a house rather than being able to pay for housing up front out of savings.

Housing prices would be a lot lower(and more affordable) were it not for all the money unnecessarily doused on it.

Because prices are so high buyers must participate in credit markets which is like socio-economic ankle weights for poor people. They either get screwed or excluded(and screwed).

EDIT: The Higher Prices also ensure that people need continue to work to "pay off" their mortgages. If housing prices weren't artificially high they'd already be "payed off" having been payed for with savings. cf: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131855)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why no one seems to take into account that house is something that wears off with time.

Shouldn't the value of the house asymptotically aproach zero, given long enough timeframe? I mean, at some point, like maybe in 100 years it should eventually rot and collapse. Or you can keep fixing and redecorating it, but that also costs money.

<comment><USER4> Well, the _land_ never goes to zero. The _house_ may (or may even be worth less than zero), but not the land...

<comment><USER15> Exactly. That's why in Denver you see lots of old houses getting purchased only for their land, torn down, and then a new $800k house in their place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Houses build equity, I'm not sure if they have been expected to be a good investment that beats inflation. This was pushed hard though by multiple industries during the mortgage bubble

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this author a complete idiot, or just a stooge of the banks? Investing 1/3 of your income into equity every year sure as hell beats losing it forever to rent-seeking landlords.

It doesn't matter if the value of your home goes up, just that instead of being empty handed after 30 years of paying rent, you will have a huge financial asset.

<comment><USER18> If the value of your house goes down by more than you pay in rent, then renting is the better option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is not a ponzi scheme, it is a limited good in demand. At some point the price will be high enough that it is not affordable for the people that want to buy it.

You cannot just treat housing like a stock, since it is also a way to get good jobs and children in good schools.

<comment><USER20> It's a ponzi scheme when Government subsidized debt and high risk mortgages (NB: free money) removes price pressures, allowing prices to inflate to unreasonable highs. It's a feedback loop where more money > higher prices = good investment > more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Homes do not need to grow faster than inflation to be good investments.

Let's look at a couple numbers. Over the long term, on average, U.S. homes do not appreciate faster than inflation.

> Home prices look remarkably stable when corrected for inflation. Over the > 100 years ending in 1990 — before the recent housing boom — real home prices > rose only 0.2 percent a year, on average.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/why-home- prices-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/why-home-prices- change-or-dont.html?_r=0)

Yet, despite that, home ownership is correlated with net gains in household wealth.

> Overall, owning a home is consistently found to be associated with increases > of roughly $9,000-$10,000 in net wealth for each year a home is owned. Also > consistent with earlier studies, African-Americans are found to benefit less > from owning a home, but each year of owning is still associated with gains > in net wealth of between $6,000 and $8,000, which is substantial considering > the generally low levels of wealth among African-Americans generally.

[http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/hbt...](http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/hbtl-06.pdf)

So how does this make sense?

Well first, home prices on average keep up with inflation, which is a strictly better rate of return than just holding cash. So even if just think of it as a vehicle for pure savings (wealth preservation), home ownership is better than no investment.

But you can also easily and relatively safely leverage up to buy a home. With a 20% down payment, if the home appreciates at inflation 2.5%, your actual rate of return will be 12.5% before expenses and payments!

But what about expenses and payments? Well--you have to make them anyway, even if you're renting.

But aren't mortgage payments usually more expensive than rentals? At first they might be, but with a fixed-rate mortgage, the nominal monthly payment doesn't go up. So again, inflation helps out: every year the real cost of the monthly payment declines. Good luck finding an apartment with rent control for 30 years.

Finally there are the tax advantages. Every one knows about the mortgage interest deduction, but potentially more powerful is the capital gains exemption of up to $250,000 per person.

</comment><comment><USER13> A potential solution to this problem: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122503)</comment>


Am I "banned" from Google or Should I "ban" Google? - <AUTHOR> I have been onsite three times with Google.
Eww, right? "Why would you do that yourself?" Well, My girlfriend is there I always wanted to be with her, as we did at graduate school. And I wanted to be or as "good" as her.
The first two times were myself to blame: not enough time practicing the quizzes and bad timing. The third time recruiter contacted me again, I spent months to go over fundamentals/algo/coding systemically. The feedback turned out to be generally good (two strong hires), but with a mix that my recruiter revealed that my second interviewer, who also delayed my process by two weeks, he gave me the no hire and his feedback was I "needed a lot of hints"?! where he was spending a lot of time asking my experience and leaving me 15 minutes doing the quiz and coding. Worse, he did not give me the opportunity to fix my code the moment I wrote it out! Unfair! While I could not afford to lose the "last" opportunity, but someone like him just destroyed everything! I got rejected by the hiring committee, even though my team match was successful!
My girlfriend told me your career is not about stupid google, nor about her. I totally agree with him. However, I felt confused and defeated. I searched online that google is very good at using statistics to judge candidates. So the one No hire is not the only reason, but is it the hiring committee can see all the previous performance before that made the conclusion I was weak, not worth to hire, no matter how many strong hires or recommendation of its own googler? Of course, they don't cares about how hard you worked. Once a loser, loser forever, in their eyes?
The recruiter encouraged me to try in the future. But I think I might have been put in their blacklist or something. I still felt great shame to even ask the question: If the recruiter contacted me again, should I try it one more time? or I should really ban google myself? Because the next time they will still see me as a loser? <comment><USER2> It seems like you're just upset that you didn't get the job. If you want to work with your SO and this would enable it then why should you being bitter about trying again?

From what I've seen it takes many applicants several tries to get in to Google, and if that's the case this hasn't put you on any "blacklist". Make sure next try you're aware of these practices and think through the problems before writing your 1st line of code.

<comment><AUTHOR> True about "think through the problems before writing your 1st line of code". The reason that "why should you being bitter about trying again?" maybe about the rumor of "three-interview limit".

<comment><USER3> Three interview limit referring to this: [https://www.quora.com/How-many- times-can-you-interview-with-...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-can- you-interview-with-Google-1/answer/Bob-See)

Former Principal Recruiter saying that Google has a policy where people who have interviewed onsite with engineering three times should not ever be reinterviewed, and will be blocked later in the process if they somehow get onsite again. There is some debate about whether or not this is still enforced, though: [https://www.teamblind.com/article/google-interview- qvZnatoN](https://www.teamblind.com/article/google-interview-qvZnatoN)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: AMZN is set to be larger than APPL soon. How did AMZN pull this off? - <AUTHOR> AMZN is currently at a $909 billion market cap. AAPL is around $960 billion. These numbers are insane to think about considering how close both companies were to 'being dead' at some point in their history.<p>I'm curious to hear your thoughts, insights, analysis on how you think Amazon went from being an afterthought to many in the industry to being a force on par with Apple and Google, maybe bigger in a few years. <comment><USER2> As discussed elsewhere, both companies enjoy large tax breaks that give them huge advantages. However, I think only Amazon sells so many items online without sales taxes across the US.

Apple still makes a good deal more revenue.

For quite some time, Amazon made almost no profit and just spent everything they earned. I believe they recently started taking in more profit, and this has probably excited the stock price a lot.

Amazon also seems to do things Apple isn't willing to. Amazon hosts the NSA's data, while Apple fights for privacy. Amazon has notoriously poor working conditions and unethical sources, while Apple leads in creating an ethical supply chain, using green energy and making recyclable products.

Apple's strategy means they're virtually the only ones who can sell phones, tablets and computers for a decent profit margin. Amazon's strategy shows they're willing to be cut throat. Both are attractive to traders in about equal measure, it seems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is a very good summary and considers all factors.</comment></comment>


I Have No Car in L.A. And It's Awesome - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@codexjourneys/i-have-no-car-in-l-a-and-its-awesome-364cfa7fad6f

<comment><USER2> It is not exactly car free life though. Uber, Lyft etc. are less environmentally friendly than a personal car, in the long run, IMHO; and they are still cars.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'm more likely to walk to the store a mile or so away, though, whereas I'd drive if I had rented a car. Same thing for using the metro -- I've done it several times, whereas I think I'd have driven if I'd rented a car. So I think it's an improvement, even environmentally.</comment></comment>