Details Of Android 3.0 Gingerbread – SIP Support, Gtalk Video Chat and More - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2010/10/20/details-of-android-3-0-gingerbread-emerges-sip-support-gtalk-video-chat-and-more/ <comment><USER2> Original source: [http://phandroid.com/2010/10/18/exclusive-first-android- ging...](http://phandroid.com/2010/10/18/exclusive-first-android-gingerbread- details/)

Remember that Google recently hired Matias Duarte from Palm, who headed the UI design of webOS. These subtle revisions aiming towards design consistency and taking the ugly out of Android, if true, are very promising.

<comment><USER2> Also, rumors that Gingerbread will launch by December, and 4.0 towards the end of next year:

[http://phandroid.com/2010/10/19/android-3-0-should-be- ready-...](http://phandroid.com/2010/10/19/android-3-0-should-be-ready-for- prime-time-by-december-wont-see-4-0-until-late-2011/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whether the rumors are true or not, I'm really hoping for and looking forward to a version of Google Voice that works entirely over the phone's data connection. With Skype caller-id now supporting Google Voice numbers and Skype on Android, we're close, but not entirely there yet.

<comment><USER4> Not to be a buzz kill, but I think that's the first thing that will be carrier disabled. The downside to Android's openness is that carriers are open to disable features that they don't like. And they certainly have been pushing against "dumb pipe" since there's still plenty of money in selling "minutes".

<comment><USER5> That's not something the carrier can disable. The Google Voice APK is a side loadable app. The only way VZW/ATT could kill it is if they sniffed the traffic from EVERY SINGLE PHONE and tried to block access to the SIP endpoint.

... which isn't feasible or possible on the scale you'd be talking about.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of vendors who would kill for the chance to sell a box to Verizon that blocked all traffic on the ports that this would use.

<comment><USER7> Which would certainly reignite the whole net neutrality debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All of which is completely unsubstantiated rumor attached to a blurry picture that could just as easily have been any number of 3rd party ROM themes...

Edit: Also, good luck seeing Google Voice/SIP over data connection if you ever intend on buying a carrier-released phone. Or at least not without paying a surcharge equivalent to the cost of a voice plan a la tethering.

<comment><USER9> > if you ever intend on buying a carrier-released phone

Why would you ever do such a silly thing?

<comment><USER10> Because it's a lot easier for most people to justify dropping $200 now and paying out the rest over time in a plan that you'd be paying for anyway than it is to justify dropping $600-$800 now. I am pretty sure that the carriers don't discount rates for non-contract phones. People just don't have the money to justify spending that much on a phone when there are so many cheaper alternatives.

Excepting developers, most people are happy to save $400-$600 even if it means they have to deal with a Blockbuster app cluttering the menu.

<comment><USER11> _I am pretty sure that the carriers don't discount rates for non-contract phones._

T-Mobile is the only US carrier that does -- the smartphone plans are $20/month cheaper if you bring your own phone or buy at the no-contract price.

They also have an installment plan where you can pay full price for the phone, but spread it out over 20 months with no interest and pay it on your phone bill. This seems like the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, if you look over the total cost for 2 years, it's really a no-brainer:

2 years @ $80/mo, no cost for hardware: $2099

2 years @ $40/mo, $520 for hardware: $1466

<comment><USER10> The parent says it's $20/mo off for no-contract, at that rate ($60) the no- contract comes out to $1960, barely a savings of $100 overall. Definitely worth the contract if you don't have $520 to drop when you need a phone.

<comment><USER11> Or you can spread that $520 it over 20 months without interest, pay that on your monthly bill, and still get the no-contract price.

A G2 is $199 with the 2 year contract and $499 with no contract. My understanding from their website is that your first installment is due when you take home the phone, so your down payment on a new G2 would be $25.

So using nice round numbers on the prices,

24 months @ $80/month + $200 = $2120

versus

24 months @ $60/month + 20 months @ $25/month to pay off the phone = $1940

So you save $180 over 2 years, and your up-front payment is only $25 instead of $200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sauce [http://phandroid.com/2010/10/18/exclusive-first-android- ging...](http://phandroid.com/2010/10/18/exclusive-first-android-gingerbread- details/)</comment>


Show HN: NudeNet – Nudity classification and exposed part detection in images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/notAI-tech/NudeNet/ <comment><USER2> > _Provocative, but covered Feet; Any gender_

What, uh, exactly are "provocative feet"?

<comment><USER3> The network uses an AI model which takes blockchain-linked data ingested through a big data network in the cloud, and then uses an IoT device inserted into the viewer's mind (think Neuralink) to determine whether or not the viewer finds the feet provocative.

The algorithm used is known as DOFFAA (Degree Of Foot Fetishization Analysis Algorithm).

<comment><USER4> I don't think it would take much to get funding and political support with exactly that pitch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like in today's climate browsers themselves might eventually be held responsible for what people do with them. For instance should chrome detect and block illegal porn from someone trying to access it, etc

<comment><AUTHOR> I strongly oppose this but it feels like we are heading this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Not hot dog"

</comment><comment><USER7> Worked on something like this, a learning process of regional image identification some 15 years ago.

I'd be curious how well it would work with various shade of colors. /PC

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to collect as much data as possible for various body/ ethnicity types. The original data collection process is described in [https://medium.com/@praneethbedapudi/nudenet-an-ensemble- of-...](https://medium.com/@praneethbedapudi/nudenet-an-ensemble-of-neural- nets-for-nudity-detection-and-censoring-d9f3da721e3)</comment></comment>


The splash page that drove up conversion by 300% - <AUTHOR> http://ravn.com/beta/splash

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm one of the creators of the landing page. We thought traditional beta signup pages were boring (ie. Launchrock style) so we added a "Ravn Hunt" game to our landing page. Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code.

It also helps that we invite the top 10 users who achieve the highest score everyday so that people have a goal to reach to get the invite. And of course, the Facebook share button helps with spreading the word.

\---edit---

Here's a pic of our old landing page <http://i.imgur.com/ZhURi.png>

It was pretty straight forward, full size image in the background with a simple Request Invitation button in the middle. Hope that helps.

<comment><USER2> You could just have the game ask to enter your email address if you want to save your scores.

<comment><USER3> you're totally right... feel really stupid that we didn't do it that way in the first place!

<comment><USER2> Nah, don't feel stupid. I've just been thinking about stuff like this, where basically you can let people get going anonymously, because in some instances people are going to want to save something. it just may turn out that scores on your game is one of them, so just like entering in one's initials in the arcade, you can ask for email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My coworkers are wondering why you're encouraging potential users to shoot your mascot/namesake, but my coworkers are nitpickers. That was fun!

If you do: $('div.ducks').mousedown(); in the developer console it's pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER5> All the high scores are based on this now, except for one person who probably modified the JS for the scoring system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just added a made up email just to see your game. Does that really help you?

<comment><USER7> same just wanted to try the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What was it before? How did you test the change? What can anyone learn from this?

<comment><USER9> My thoughts as well. Without any context, this is pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had top score until someone got a score of 100001158 (mine being 3385. You may need to take extra measures to ensure the scores are valid and from the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol, if you're able to hack the score, please send your resume to email@example.com

<comment><USER11> It looks like a post request with an authenticity token that never changes during the session, so you can just post a new request with the same authenticity_token and invite_id, but with any value for new_score :)

<comment><USER3> you're right. honestly we didn't try at all to make it difficult to hack. figured that no matter what we did, anyone with decent skills should be able to hack it. after all you can see all the source code! (like jerry said in another comment, we're not a gaming company after all - it was just a fun little experiment) - excites me that it piqued people's interest enough to go poke around in the source code though! :)

<comment><USER12> The best way to prevent any sort of manipulation is a combination of two things: have a "maximum conceivable score" _and_ regulate the scoring server side. Every time a "round" ends (ducks on the screen) send the data to the server, compare the score relative to the previous score and if it's ridiculous (eg: the max score they could get is 500 and it's 10,000) you dump the session for being fake.

The obvious flaw with this is people who just work out what your maximums are and then get the 100% score, but it discourages the ridiculous scores.

edit: one of your people said this below, disregard :-)

<comment><USER13> Also need to rate limit this, so you don't have someone playing an infinite number of rounds over 5 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm running on a 12-core machine with a high-end GPU on the latest version of Chrome and the parallax scrolling is _still_ hitching. Just sayin'. :)

<comment><USER15> any number of cores more than 1 is only relevant for parallel code (or multiple concurrent apps). Which, for this page, is probably not the case.

<comment><USER14> > (or multiple concurrent apps)

I'm a programmer. I always have dozens of apps running. The point was, it's silly that you can't smoothly translate a few images at a mere 30 Hz with plenty of CPU power to spare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> you should obfuscate that js ;)

<comment><USER17> haha good job stanton. obfuscate probably would have added 30 seconds to the time it would take to hack it. If we really wanted to make it more robust, we would have added a validation to the score, a validation ensuring that time had passed between duck clicks, (looks like you didnt click ducks at all in your case), a minimal time to beat the game, a validation that ensures you didn't exceed the maximum possible score, and whatever other means to make it more annoying to hack, but even then... and in the end, we're not a gaming company and this was just a fun lil exercise we threw together to test a concept. Good job though haha, we knew if we posted in tech, this would probably happen :)</comment></comment>


Popular sites with Apache server-status enabled (leaking internal details) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sucuri.net/2012/10/popular-sites-with-apache-server-status-enabled.html <comment><USER3> To those who think it isn't a big deal: when GET requests are made public you can snoop "password reset links" and similar to to get access to somebody else's account. Even when developers use best practices GET request paths can leak sensitive information.

<comment><USER4> Hi JD

You're right on the GET requests.. :) ..

Any attacker, pentesters, worth their salt would be able to garner some good info from this.

See reference to vulnerable soft in the post published.

Cheers.

<comment><USER5> I think you might mean 'garner'? Just a heads up

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the heads up. Updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Site is down for me, but I thought we agreed last time this was on HN it wasn't really that big of a deal..

Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4661625>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the update withe link.

Yeah, not sure I'd agree with it not being a big deal. Especially with the type of recon you can do on this information as an attacker.

TP

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You've got to watch this... Apache typically limits this to localhost, but if you use squid as a reverse proxy (quite common) then you can see this easily being exposed since all requests will appear to come from the local machine.

<comment><USER8> Similarly, if you are using nginx in front of apache, watch out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even a cursory scan of the <http://urlfind.org/?server-status> list reveals scads of porn sites exposing their visitor's IP addresses:

(Note these links go to Apache server-status pages at the time of linking. This may change if the server admins wise up - to be on the safe side consider them NSFW):

      http://black-tgirls.com/server-status
      http://badexgfs.com/server-status
      http://tubepornx.com/server-status
      http://lesbianvalley.net/server-status
      ..... and many more .....

Personally, I don't care what consenting adults do with their genitals. But I think it's safe to assume that the visitors to these sites expect a certain level of privacy that's not being met.

</comment><comment><USER10> This can also lead to DOS issues, as I understand it, the Apache server-status pages are very computationally intensive to produce, and it requires stopping and polling every child.

Something like

<Location /server-status>

        SetHandler server-status

        Order Deny,Allow

        Deny from all

        Allow from 10.0.0.0/24

</Location>

(where 10.0.0.0 is your local network range) will prevent external requests. This is mentioned in the linked through Apache documentation.

<comment><USER11> According to other commenters, this is only enabled for localhost by default, but if one is using a reverse proxy on localhost, all requests will appear to come from there. So be careful with this approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's also entertaining to google around for nagios dashboards open to the public, e.g.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22View+Host+Status+Detail%2...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22View+Host+Status+Detail%22)

<comment><USER13> Awesome. Tangentially, I use Nagios to verify that outside access to all my hosts (including HTTP) is restricted to my IP space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Aren't the exposed client IPs at <http://php.net/server-status/> a pretty big deal??

<comment><USER15> Why is that a big deal? Is exposing the public IPs of some random people really an issue?

<comment><USER12> <http://furry-incest-porn.xxx/server-status/>

Yes, it's potentially an issue.

<comment><USER15> Sure, for a skeezy site. The parent was talking specifically about php.org, I can't imagine any real risk for a site like that exposing their visitor ip log.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://insecure.org/stc/> (e.g. Information Leakage at the Packet Level) + staples.com/server-status page = legal profit?

</comment><comment><USER17> Back around 13 years ago I believe the default to have it enabled was changed. That said alot of sites carrier on leaking that way, ft.com was one - <USER2> after it was pointed out to them. Eventualy they changed things when I mentioned it to IBM rep who also dealt with FT's account, nice rep.

I can see how it can end up being enabled and left open, but it is also that level of administration that opens you up to other more concerning issues, this is a concerning issue for many reasons. If you had a firewall that blocked off by default not exprecitly allowed(with good wildcarding when needed on sub directory's) remote access to everything not the main public site then that would of caught it. If you had a access control , that again would of controled it.

Only way some companies will learn is to be hacked or being done under the laws for leaking private data. So if you go onto a sight like that, tell there admin they are in breach of the applicable data protection/privacy laws you have that can cover such things. Then if they don't fix it, cash in on there stupidity and sue them, you get paid for your time and they pay for there crime and learn the only way some do learn. Don't hack them, no need, just use the law. Or get a patent on bad administration and use that to claim back royalties. Crazy approach, but if you have the money to cater for such whims, let us all know how it pans out, profitable and educational for the patent system. Who would contest and claim prior art on stupidity of administrating computers, you would get your money worth in laughs if nothing else.

Short version, this is a old issue and you are also breaking data protection/privacy laws - be warned. If you see it, warn them and feel free to educate them via the legal cashmachine.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found another way to search for a similar status page when trolling for network traffic.

Some sample Google queries for the curious:

         intitle:"apache status" inurl:server-status
         inurl:web-console/ "jboss Management Console"

Edited to add more:

         inurl:"/status?full=true"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another issue we identified is that you can find those "hidden" admin panel or URLs that shouldn't be known to the outside, by just refreshing the page a few times and checking all requests.

It is not a best practice, but some companies do and it makes easier for those to be found.

thanks,

</comment><comment><USER19> ouch, sh*t happens when you have it on for 10.0.0.0/24 or so and then set up Varnish in front of it...

</comment><comment><USER20> Sweet, I'm interested in checking out all their configs!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a classic case of bad security posture by larger enterprises.

</comment><comment><USER21> Someone from tweetdeek frequents this site, because it is fixed there. I am just interested in how busy this sites are. From my quick views Ford and Staples were the busiest.

</comment><comment><USER22> Another report: /server-status/?notable

Example:

<http://apache.org/server-status/?notable>

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://apache.org/server-status>

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like Disney fixed theirs.

Can't believe there are admins at this level that miss this.

<comment><USER25> Why do you think Disney has access to high quality admins? Do you know high quality sysadmins who want to work for Disney, or companies like it?

Just because a company is a big name doesn't mean it attracts big talent. Disney is still fishing from the same ocean where all the best engineers went to sexier places.

<comment><USER24> My comment was really 2 separate statements, I don't necessarily think Disney has a 'rock star' admin(s). But you make a valid point.

Also, I think I don't get paid enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> latimes has 10.146.78.21 GET:ing /server-status?auto... their nagios IP maybe?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site is back up.</comment>


Guide: Use Git for Deployment - <AUTHOR> https://neue.st/2019/10/03/guide-use-git-for-deployment/ <comment><USER2> Explaining the reasons this isn't a good idea would make a great interview question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ohh yeah :D</comment></comment>


The limitations of terminals as an interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=409

<comment><USER2> His comments about cognitive load are valid, and a real concern---a good interface needs to let you focus on the core stuff and not make you remember everything about everything. There are two big weaknesses, though, at slightly different levels of interface.

At the input level, he seems to forget that keyboards (with somewhere between 50 and 100 keys that I can strike exactly and digitally) are fundamentally a better input interface for expert operations than the mouse/trackpad/pointer (with a rasterised but basically more analog feel that makes me "look where I'm going"). GUIs are great but there are relatively few that have the level of keyboard control that you can get with a terminal-based app.

The second is that text apps let me give commands with arguments much more straightforwardly; there is a _language_ I speak, where GUI-based stuff is more like grunting and pointing. Clicking a mouse on a button or menu item is like calling an argumentless function(). Maybe you highlight something first and it's more like an argumentless selection.method(). Being able to type your command out, if it's at all complex, is just simply more powerful, and so text-based interfaces aren't going away any time soon.

<comment><USER3> Exactly how I feel. With text-mode interfaces I have the feeling of telling the application what I want it to do in verbal terms, which I find easier to remember than which button or menu selection does what I want.

The author states: _The disadvantage I feel most keenly when using a terminal is the cognitive load. I have to keep more in my head when using a terminal/command-line-based interface._ Again I find the opposite to be the case. When I use Visual Studio I feel overwhelmed by the GUI. Panels and scroll bars everywhere, buttons, menus, etc. Contrast to Emacs, where I have, very simply, one large area for editing text. I can focus on what I'm doing.

It's sort of a Feng Shui thing: the busy GUI is the cluttered room that drains your positive energy and causes constant low-level stress. The text interface is the well-organized room that has everything you need but it's out of the way until you actually use it.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you as well. However, this should be taken into account (wish I could find a reference for this):

"A study done by Bruce Tognazinni when we was at Apple (a company that has had a good track record of designing for the mouse) showed that using the keyboard felt faster but was slower while using the mouse felt slower but was actually faster."

<comment><USER2> It definitely depends on what you're doing and how your interface is set up. If you're editing text in a non-monospace font at a non-super-high font size, and you want to insert between (say) two lowercase L characters, you need some fairly precision mousework, and that takes time.

And it will almost certainly always be easier to do actually complex operations via text (especially if you might be repeating them or slightly modifying them). Just yesterday I was generating a PDF packet with pdftk, and had a command line of the form "pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf blank.pdf file3.pdf cat output outfile.pdf" that I kept having to re-run (because I'd modified file2.pdf) or tweak (because I added file4.pdf). It's possible that the first pdftk would have been quicker in a GUI---though I'm not convinced---but in the aggregate there's no _way_ a series of GUI ops would have been faster. And I'm not even sure how I'd accomplish something like "mv *.jpg jpg_subdir/" in something like Finder without a lot of manual finding and clicking and dragging and making mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A seasoned CLI user will trump a seasoned GUI user every single time for the majority of tasks.

Take a task like thumbnailing every image in a directory to a certain size. With CLI it's just looping over convert(1). With GUI you have to clicky-clicky to get to the directory, drill down to the options, swap to keyboard to enter sizes, etc.

Not to mention the richness of CLI options mean that an equivalent GUI offering would be insanely complicated. Try designing a GUI frontend for sed or awk. Or a file rename utility that matches Emacs Wdired mode in power and (interface) simplicity.

Configuration: changing a text file vs clicking on/off a checkbox. You can write a tiny script that flips options between two configs you like, versus more clicky-clicky. You can copy configs around, diff them, grep them.

tl;dr - yes CLI has more cognitive load (in that you need to be more familiar with your tools vis-a-vis GUI equivalents), but you get so much more in return.

EDIT: quick list of CLI utilities if anyone is interested

* feed reading: newsbeuter

* music playing: ncmpcpp+mpd

* irc/im: irssi+bitlbee

* torrents: rtorrent

* git browser/pager: tig

Many more here: <http://cli.homelinux.net/CLIapps.html>

<comment><USER6> If a GUI tool is written where you can just select items in the explorer/finder, launch tool (from keyboard), enter thumbnail sizes, then GUI may win, since you won't have to switch from file browser to CLI in the first place.

Problem with GUI is that you need a new tool for each such task; we don't yet have a generalized way of handling such things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's stories about tablets and so on recently, so that got me thinking a little bit about what input devices would be like N years into the future?

For programmers, are mouse and keyboard still going to be king? I can imagine that maybe the mouse could be replaced or supplemented by a camera that matches where you're looking at to a cursor position. This should be faster than mousing around.

For text input the options are a keyboard or voice input/brain input. I don't think the majority will move from QWERTY anytime soon, and voice input may not take off for the simple reason that you're making noise. Brain input might be interesting.

As for any fancy ways of generating programs (plugging components together), you will likely still need to go to a textual level to capture all the detail, so no real application for anything touch sensative there.

As for what form a keyboard might be, your touchpad could generate a virtual keyboard when you need it (and have smart materials to give tactile feedback) and fade back to a touch system when you don't need text input.

I imagine you'll still need an ergonomic setup and regular breaks to avoid occupational overuse syndrome.

<comment><USER2> Science fiction gives us all sorts of ideas for futuristic interfaces, and I think (and hope) many of them come to fruition. But cursor position dictated by eye movement will be tricky or impossible---we can more or less do this now with the right equipment, but your eyes saccade all over the place, subconsciously, even when you think you're looking at just one thing. You've noted the biggest problem with voice input: it'd suck anywhere other than a private office! (Not to mention the homophone errors. True voice recognition is AI-complete.) Finally, look up the fate of the IBM PC Jr keyboard to find out why a fade-in touchpad keyboard will be less than ideal for fast, reliable text entry....

<comment><USER7> I think I've seen the a picture of an PDA attachment that uses a laser to project a keyboard on a flat surface. Of course no tactile clickyness, but it's got to be better than 2 finger typing that happens with most smartphone inputs these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> what i find interesting are the places where cli and gui are merged in such a way that uses (at least some of the) strengths of each. on the mac, i use quicksilver, which is kind of a gui for text-entry commands. adobe indesign and netbeans ide each have a drop-down field that's invocable by keyboard shortcut that allows you to directly access options and settings hidden in various menus and palettes by typing a few letters and arrow keys. the firefox plugin ubiquity also has these qualities, and firefox has find while you type built in. these are not terminal equivalents by any stretch, but they are real time-savers, and show the mouse up for the burdensome appendage that it is (forgive my exaggeration). i think if more gui designers and gui programmers would adopt this approach, computer interface design would move forward, imho, in a more useful and more interesting way, instead of slavishly using real- world object metaphors such as the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER9> I disagree with this. If you have a GUI, sure, you have fun buttons to click. But if you don't understand what those buttons actually do, you will mess things up if you click them without thinking. The solution to this is to read the documentation and understand what you are doing.

If you don't have a GUI, then you will have to read the manual to find out what to do.

The end result is the same; you have to read the manual.

(Also, you can have discoverable interfaces without graphics. Open a file in Emacs and type M-x describe-mode. From there, you have a description of the commands available, and links to follow for more details about any aspect.)</comment>


Money: a chart of (almost) all of it, where it is, and what it can do - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/980/huge/

<comment><USER2> Not money, wealth. There's a big difference.

And it's not even really wealth, since it contains huge but not-real numbers like the notional size of derivative contracts.</comment>


Without a Youtube account, how to create a Youtube playlist? - <AUTHOR> http://mailp.in/NHVzGW4W

<comment><USER2> I think you'll see more such use cases for the email-> webpage paradigm. Nice work :)</comment>


Analysis of Tesla Injury Rates: 2014 to 2017 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://worksafe.typepad.com/files/worksafe_tesla5_24.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> > _Tesla's total recordable incidence rate (TRIR) in 2015 was 31 percent > higher than the industry-wide incident rate (8.8 injuries per 100 workers, > compared to 6.7 for the automobile manufacturing industry as a whole)._

Even Jalopnik got a quote from Tesla that has a hard time directly refuting the math:

> _"We may have had some challenges in the past as we were learning how to > become a car company, but what matters is the future and with the changes > we've made, we now have the lowest injury rate in the industry by far," a > Tesla spokesperson told Jalopnik by email._

The point being, IBNR (Incurred But Not Reported) type updates change Tesla's numbers after the fact pretty frequently.

[http://jalopnik.com/internal-tesla-data-shows-injury- rates-e...](http://jalopnik.com/internal-tesla-data-shows-injury-rates-exceed- industry-1795511990)

</comment><comment><USER2> Reads like more pro-union propaganda</comment>


Clojure won't win the battle but may win the war - <AUTHOR> http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/what-killed-lisp-could-kill-haskell-as-well/#comment-37144 <comment><USER2> I use clojure not just because it's a practical lisp (it is), but because Rich Hickey is a genius, and is stirring up programming language design in ways we haven't seen in a long time.

If you haven't, go read his slides from the "Are We There Yet?" talk [http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/images/a/ab/HickeyJVMSummit200...](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/images/a/ab/HickeyJVMSummit2009.pdf) (PDF) . It's worth a read, regardless of what programming language you like best.

Where everyone else (except for maybe the Haskell people) seems to be doing the same old grab bag design "oh that's a cool feature, oh, and that too", Rich has a clear idea of what programming should be, and he moves closer to that goal daily.

I think people overestimate the significance of choosing e.g. Ruby over Python or vice versa. C vs. Java is a legitimate choice, Java vs. Clojure is legitimate, Ruby vs. Python is not, IMO. I'd like to see an example of where choosing Ruby / Python / Perl is a momentous decision.

<comment><USER3> _I'd like to see an example of where choosing Ruby / Python / Perl is a momentous decision._

The only one I can think of is that a lot of people have an intense hatred for one of the three, so you've got to weigh your team's preferences to make sure you offend the fewest number of people.

Personally, I have a deep seated, all-consuming, perfectly irrational (though I'll happily invent reasons) loathing for Perl, and I just refuse to use it.

But Ruby or Python? Eh, close enough that I'm not going to complain either way...I'm sure you'll find plenty of Ruby zealots that wouldn't touch Python with a ten foot pole, though, and vice versa.

<comment><USER4> I love Ruby. It's the first language that's made me happy as a programmer. I don't like special characters, and I can tolerate ruby's occasional =>, |e| and {}, and I tend to avoid the other ones. For the same reason, I like Python.

Languages that introduce characters for the sake of making a compiler happy make me, personally, unhappy. I have a really hard time being comfortable with (){}; all over the place. And it's taken me years to realize why - it slows me down. I don't see very well, and those little things cause me sometimes hours of pain.

So I'm a bit of a language snob. The more clean the syntax, the more I'm going to be drawn to it, and the more I'm gonna be productive in it.

In fact, it's why I like SASS more than LESS (for CSS).

So I guess I'm saying Ruby vs Python? Exactly. Meh. Ruby over Perl or C#? Any day of the week.

<comment><USER5> You should have a look at colorForth. The author replaced punctuation with colors exactly because he has poor vision. (So I have heard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a particularly valueless comparative assessment of some programming languages, with a focus on Clojure. I'm surprised that it was posted here, and more surprised that it's getting up-voted. But then, people don't really want hard comparisons of the tools they use. Instead, they want warm fuzzy emotional validation that reinforces the time commitments they make to learning those tools.

This comment doesn't cite any firsthand experience, doesn't cite even any secondhand experience, and makes frequent generalizations and assumptions about where, how, and why respective languages are designed and used. It also makes the all-too-frequently-made, blithe, and baseless assumption that languages are necessarily in competition, or that if they are in competition, that competition is zero-sum. This is a bar conversation in comment form. It's hand-waving.

Look: comparing programming languages is hard. You can't do it in a blog comment. You can't really even do it in a blog post. Researchers have a hard time doing it in lengthy academic papers. Hardly anyone has attempted to do it in book form.

Don't think that someone summarizing the bullet points from the feature lists of two languages and then extrapolating them out over their particular view of the industry is anything other than opinion. If that opinion validates your choice of language, great; you'll sleep better tonight. But this is just talk. Experience and metrics are what counts.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the authors intention is to compare the relative merits of the languages in the context of a particular project. Its more about horserace and market niche. And these are terms in which startup founders are accustomed to thinking in - in the absence of data, you look at related trends and use your reasoned intuition to think about the spread of new ways of doing things.

My guess is that a lot of people read that comment and figured that it made sense and captured conventional wisdom in a succinct way.

As an aside, because language adoption has network effects, the fact that a lot of people can get interested and excited about Clojure is itself meaningful, which is why I upvoted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see Clojure break into the mainstream. Perhaps it will, but I'm skeptical that any s-expr syntax will ever be palatable to a majority of programmers.

I think programmers tend to overestimate the importance of language choice in the success or failure of a development project. We can passionately debate the merits of static vs dynamic typing and various schools of syntax but I suspect that ultimately the skill and determination of the people involved make the crucial difference.

That said, I do think Clojure's prospects are better than any previous lisp, because even if it can't "win" it can tag along for the ride with the rest of the Java ecosystem and benefit from its much larger momentum.

<comment><USER3> Clojure has a leg up over most Lisps for another reason: the people that know Clojure well and participate in its community are not complete douchewieners, and they're willing to accept that everyone has different needs and backgrounds. They actually _want_ people to try Clojure out (even if they were - gasp! - Java programmers!), rather than making the assumption that anyone that doesn't already worship their language as The One True Holy Solution-To- Everything Language is a moron.

To hear the more vocal Common Lispers tell it, even people that code Clojure are retarded code apes that need to be lectured on why they're stupid for not using a Real Lisp, more deserving of scorn than encouragement or support. Haskell's community is not nearly as bad (Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen, and Haskell is far too active and useful to foster such degeneracy), but there's always that pervasive scent of "If you're not already using Haskell, you're _cheating_ , and it's _clearly_ because you're dumber than I am."

Then again, the Haskell folks piss me off for other reasons - after studying such things in the context of real math, it's infuriating to be talked down to by people that just "got" monads and think that their shallow grasp of the concept entitles them to wield Genius Points over everyone else's heads. I suspect this is just a small but vocal sub-population in Haskell-land, but it's a really annoying one that seriously turns me off from the language...

<comment><USER9> _Common Lisp's userbase has become one of the most bitter, self-important cesspools of snobbery the programming world has ever seen_

You are absolutely right here. I am not sure what caused this to happen, but I have never seen a programming community that so actively discourages code reuse. Ask why two libraries don't work together, and the answer is usually, "you shouldn't be using libraries!"

Yeah. SBCL is a nice VM, but the community needs to die.

 _Then again, the Haskell folks piss me off for other reasons - after studying such things in the context of real math, it's infuriating to be talked down to by people that just "got" monads and think that their shallow grasp of the concept entitles them to wield Genius Points over everyone else's heads._

You're sort of doing the same thing, right? And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone.

The clojure community has the "omg monads!" problem too, but that structure isn't particularly useful in Clojure and that is obvious, so people aren't as excited about it. There is plenty of annoying Clojure fanboi-ing, though... but that is true of any language. (OK, there are no Cobol fanbois.)

<comment><USER3> _You're sort of doing the same thing, right?_

Totally - my knowledge of Haskell is probably more superficial than most Haskell fans knowledge of category theory, so I'm in no position to fairly poke fun. Consider the jab retracted. :)

I think I'm just seething from a recent argument about Haskell's superiority where I was accused of not understanding the almighty Power Of The Monad...really, I just think that the necessary pervasiveness of the pattern indicates that the language is not as powerful as it could be (I raise an eyebrow when I see any pattern used very often anywhere), whereas fanboys sometimes take it as evidence that the language is beautiful - witness the number of Java programmers that think design patterns are proof of Java's perfection. I personally don't like it so much when languages make too many choices for me, and Haskell seems to have that same "protect us from ourselves" philosophy that makes Java so irritating to work with, just with a different enforced paradigm.

 _And in reality, the people that actually use Haskell are not like this. Don't let someone that read about Haskell on Reddit yesterday, opened ghci, and typed "let fibs = 1 : 1 : (zipWith (+) fibs $ tail fibs)" put you off. People like to be excited about things, and people that read too many programming blogs get themselves unnecessarily excited about simple things. Then when they sort of understand that simple thing, they feel the need to tell everyone._

Yeah, this is what I pretty much assume, that it's a vocal minority creating most of the noise. I should probably give it a fairer chance, given that a lot of people find it the perfect language for a lot of stuff.

Unfortunately at the moment, the only "stuff" I can afford to work on involves DOM manipulation, so it's Javascript or bust for the foreseeable future...

<comment><USER10> " I just think that the necessary pervasiveness of the pattern indicates that the language is not as powerful as it could be (I raise an eyebrow when I see any pattern used very often anywhere), whereas fanboys sometimes take it as evidence that the language is beautiful "

Very interesting observation! Generally recurring patterns in one language "disappear" in more advanced languages (as Peter Norvig's slides point out), either by new syntax or changes to the runtime . How could Monads or (by extension type classes) disappear in a new language? Something to think about.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the _problem_ with Monads in other languages is that they _do_ disappear behind the statement separator (semi-colon in many languages). In Haskell terms, you're stuck in the IO Monad and can never, ever get out of it.

An analogy: C has the array-dereference operator []. But that pattern is locked into the language, you can't do _anything_ but dereference C arrays in exactly the way the operator does. C++, Python, C#, and a wide variety of other languages unlock the array dereferencer by permitting the operator to be overloaded, and thereby permitting things other than a straight-up C array deference, ranging from dereferencing into something that presents the interface an array does (like some sort of ordered tree) but is not literally laid out as a contiguous block of memory, to things that aren't arrays at all, like keying into hash tables.

Accusing Haskell of being "less advanced" because it actually exposes Monads to you and permits you to use them is very much like accusing C++ of lacking power vs. C because it permits you to overload the square brackets. If you put aside the question of whether it's a _good_ thing to have the power (a separate debate in both cases), it's not a very sensible accusation to level against Haskell.

The Monad pattern appears everywhere in every language whether you know it or not, Haskell merely exposes to the user something that is already there. Calling a monad a "programmable semicolon" is not necessarily the best way to understand them, but it has more truth to it than some of the other metaphors tossed about.

<comment><USER10> "Actually, the problem with Monads in other languages is that they do disappear behind the statement separator (semi-colon in many languages)... The Monad pattern appears everywhere in every language whether you know it or not, Haskell merely exposes to the user something that is already there. "

Yes I agree (haskeller myself). The "disappearance" I meant was addressing the original point of view that the repetition of the pattern was a weakness in the language, something like Visitor pattern disppearing in Common LIsp. (an intriguing idea to play with and a valid _point of view_ ). Your interpretation of disappearance goes the other way - something like continuations being hidden in fortran and explcit in Scheme.

"Accusing Haskell of being "less advanced" because it actually exposes Monads to you and permits you to use them is very much like accusing C++ of lacking power vs. C because it permits you to overload the square brackets. If you put aside the question of whether it's a good thing to have the power (a separate debate in both cases), it's not a very sensible accusation to level against Haskell."

A better analogy would be an argument about exposing call/cc in scheme. Is call/cc good language design? There are arguments on both sides. Haskell does continuations differently than Scheme. Which is "better"?

And come on, no one is really "accusing" Haskell of anything. I for one, like the language a lot.

If you will, think of this as a _speculation_ about a successor language. 15 years from now (say) there _will_ be a better language than Haskell in the statically typed lazy functional languages space, which absorbs the key positives of Haskell, has a few new ideas, and possibly treats Monads differently (or does away with them altogether). Clean (the language) deals with IO with uniqueness types with nary a monad in sight. Is that design "better"? Worth thinking about.

<comment><USER12> Your point is spot-on.

> A better analogy would be an argument about exposing call/cc in scheme. Is > call/cc good language design? There are arguments on both sides. Haskell > does continuations differently than Scheme. Which is "better"?

To clarify this, here's a couple of questions whose answers might amuse you.

      Is it possible to implement explicit continuations in terms of monads?
      Is it possible to implement monads in terms of explicit continuations?

If it is possible to implement A in terms of B (and not vice versa), then B is more basic than A.

<comment><USER13> That's why I prefer Ruby over Python. It unifies loops and iterators using closures. At the same time the syntax "pretends" to be simple so that you can start using Ruby straight away without having to understand continuations and closures. But I think a language which manages to hide the complexity of monads without removing them will blow Clojure out of the water.

<comment><USER12> > I think a language which manages to hide the complexity of monads without > removing them

Hm, I'm not sure this is possible: a great part of the "complexity" of monads is because it's a similar (and fairly simple!) structure that applies to a great many apparently unrelated concepts: function sequencing, backtracking, and what have you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As long as the freely available documentation of clojure doesn't improve significantly, I personally don't see clojure participating in any kind of battle/war/...

<comment><USER15> The documentation on clojure.org is usable and once you're in clojure you can type (doc whatever) to get the documentation for a function.

However, its a known problem (discussed on the clojure group this week) that there are many ways to set up the environment and build tools.

<comment><USER14> With documentation I mean a) offline readable documentation and b) non- technical documentation targeted at newcomers. Please take a look at the scala site <http://www.scala-lang.org/node/198> and compare that (especially the "Language Specification" and "Scala by Example") with the clojure site.

Alternatively, take a look at the offerings of the haskell community -- including Real World Haskell.

<comment><USER16> Stuart Halloway's "Programming Clojure" is a very good book but unfortunately there's nothing I've seen online to match it for pacing and quality of examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _I would hazard to say that while most problems can benefit from a functional style of programming their solutions are not entirely without side effects. Somewhere in there there is a "sweat spot". A functional side effect free line in the sand, so to speak._

Piling on the contradictory metaphors (is it a line or a spot?) is one thing. I'd really prefer to use a language without a sweat spot though.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there anyone else who are concerned with the lack of tail call optimization in Clojure?

</comment><comment><USER19> Watch the video, it's awesome, the blog post—meh—not so much.</comment>


Let's Call It 'Apple Privilege' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2014/05/lets-call-it-apple-privilege

<comment><USER2> I've never really attributed beats with a particular race ... but I do attribute them with yuppie college kids who don't know the value of their parent's money, or the products they are purchasing.

Doesn't the author have to make some assumptions (and dare I say, motivated by some dark and sinister part in the recess of his subconscious mind) in order to even throw down the race card?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, the author must have sprained a wrist throwing his racist card that hard.</comment>


Ask HN: Google is sunsetting goo.gl on 3/30. What will be your URL shortener? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> And the cycle continues... [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER3> I like that site, I wish it had a filter by services that cost money vs services that are free. IMO it applies to any service if it's free don't assume it'll be here tomorrow and certainly don't rely on it for your business. If it's a paid service at least that gives you a better chance of being able to keep the other business afloat by paying for it. Anyways, I think it's a better way to look at things if it's free don't count on it. If it's for cost count on it but with an alternative if necessary because even paid services go out of business or change model... VC's will only throw money away for so long... before cutting the coord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bought [https://gnu.gl/](https://gnu.gl/) with the intention of turning it into a URL shortener site. Might get around to it some day.

<comment><USER5> Looks like the next couple of weeks is the optimum launch window...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I create redirect entries in my web server. Since they are my redirects and domains, the url's can be 1 or 2 characters long.

<comment><USER7> Classic HN response

<comment><USER6> I blame this on watching both HN and n-gate. [1] I have a reflex action of sharing my deepest darkest secrets.

[1] - [http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://sk.tl](https://sk.tl)

Minimal, super fast, simple, no ads, opensource, works.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been thinking about building one for my app for quite some time, mostly because I never liked that goo.gl used characters that could be confusing in certain fonts (e.g. Il), which is really frustrating when you have to type them.

Still, goo.gl was really convenient so I just put it off, but then I got the shutdown notice and that was the best motivator :)

It doesn't have such a short domain, but on the plus side it's now branded and still fits in an SMS, so it's all good.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still use [http://tinyurl.com/](http://tinyurl.com/) out of habit. Afaik it was the first on the market (2002).

</comment><comment><USER11> Have a look at [https://replug.io](https://replug.io)

A URL Shortener to shorten, track and optimize your links with catchy call-to- actions, retargeting pixels, branded links with powerful analytics.

</comment><comment><USER12> I value my readers too much to shroud URLs that I invite them to click.

URL shorteners are false economy.

<comment><USER13> If you're talking about clickable URLs, I agree with you. But shortened URLs are incredibly useful in non-clickable environments such as posters, where you need a memorable address.

(Example: My department recently organized a scientific conference. The info&registration page was hidden six layers deep on the university website, but we still needed to put the link to it on the advertising poster. In that scenario, a shortened URL (with a QR code) was a sensible solution.)

<comment><USER12> If a QR code was used, why would the text length even be relevant?

I don't click on shrouded URLs, myself. Period.</comment></comment></comment>


Our Font Is Made of People - <AUTHOR> https://source.opennews.org/articles/our-font-made-people/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised they didn't call it something like "Soylent Black" or similar...</comment>


How little musicians earn online - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/ <comment><USER2> It's misleading to compare a single track download on iTunes with an entire album bought on CD. If you assume that a CD comes with about 10 songs, the iTunes payout is actually better than a Retail Album CD (low end royalty deal).

Of course we all know that record labels loved making users buy an entire album for one or two songs -- but that's their own fault.

<comment><USER3> The numbers they display for iTunes and Amazon are completely incorrect. Having listed albums on both through Tunecore, I can tell you you get closer to 70% of the sale price through Amazon or iTunes than 9% - and when we sell MP3s/albums on Bandcamp.com, we get 100% of the sale. Good riddance to the compact disc.

That said, they're pretty much on the money as far as Rhapsody, Spotify and the like are. It's amusing that these companies even bother reporting the pennies we "earn" through them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once again, musicians don't really earn anything on record sales. Theoretically they receive about 30% of the profit made on album sales but that's normally deducted by the record label as payments for the loan they have given them for recording their tracks, shooting the videos etc. so unless you're a very very famous musician it's unlikely that you'll ever pay back this "loan" or earn anything on record sales.

The two main sources of income for musicians are:

* Performing rights. They receive royalties for public performances of the works they composed. Which means not everyone in the band gets paid, only the ones who are registered as composers of that particular work. This is paid for public performances, e.g. radio and television broadcasts. If your work gets broadcasted (or played in chains such as McDonald's as background music) you can earn an awful lot of money.

* Live performances. Even for moderately well-known musicians, it's not unusual to get paid around $1500 per gig per person.

(I work in the broadcasting / recording industry)

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is there so much interest among web developers and entrepreneurs with the business of music?

I really can't figure out it.

Why are you all trying to "solve" an industry that you have no interaction with and seemingly know little about?

How many gigs do you go to a month? How many new albums do you listen to?

Where do bands in your city practice? Who does booking, and for what nights, at what clubs? Who are the promoters? Do you know any music publishers? Tour managers? Record labels? Recording studios?

Do you know any online and radio promotion companies? Do you know any band managers? Do you even know a single musician who makes more than $1000 a month from music?

Do you know where to get a tube amp repaired? Do you know anyone who does live sound? Do you know any good drummers with room for another project on their plate?

Should I go on, or is it painfully obvious that you are all commenting on things you can see very little of?

Why are you so compelled to enter in to the conversation at all?

I am truly curious.

<comment><USER6> Um, I'm a musician and web developer, I do both professionally.

The web is a massive avenue for selling music, and is what most independent musicians use most frequently to promote themselves.

I couldn't agree less with what you're saying here. It's absolutely ESSENTIAL that web developers take an interest in the Music Industry, especially since so much of it has moved to the web.

<comment><USER7> too bad they're down-voting him. The polar difference between his question and your answer seems to make it clear he asked a legit question.

<comment><USER6> His Question:

'Why is there so much interest among web developers and entrepreneurs with the business of music?'/'Why are you so compelled to enter in to the conversation at all?'

My answer I think addressed that question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They still make more than chess players or mathematicians, but I don't hear complaints from mathematicians about only getting paid $0.01 per proof.

This is what society has said online music is worth, so if that is not enough why do you produce music?

</comment><comment><USER9> Make sure you catch the issues with the data and presentation of the viz. First there's the basic "albums vs. tracks" equivalence, and then someone's reply post is here: [http://freshspectrum.com/2010/06/04/critiquing-the- infograph...](http://freshspectrum.com/2010/06/04/critiquing-the- infographic-%E2%80%9Chow-much-do-music-artists-earn-online%E2%80%9D/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is blogspam, source is [http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how- much-do-music...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do- music-artists-earn-online/)

<comment><USER11> Did I miss something? Isn't your link the same as the original one?

<comment><USER12> The moderators probably fixed the link to circumvent the blogspam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm... and why wasn't the "pay a gig in front of x number of people each who pay $5" included as how I understand things, that's how most artists make their money.

<comment><USER14> What of music that is impractically hard to perform live?

The Beatles' decision to become a studio-only band (that eventually churned out the Sgt. Peppers album) would have earned them a rather paltry amount of money for their efforts today by your model (well, ok, to be fair, maybe not -- Sgt. Peppers went on to become a platinum certified album, they would have made a sizable income by your model, but what of bands of lesser prominence?)

And further yet, how would you deal with someone like me -- I have _zero_ interest in ever attending a live concert. But I do enjoy listening to music casually all the time on my computer.

<comment><USER3> As a fan of Nine Inch Nails, I'm often surprised at how well they pull off translating the least performance-friendly music into a five-person show. In a way, the best example is the track "Starfuckers" from The Fragile, which on the album, is a very studio'd/produced track, but when they play it live, they do it without any backing tracks, and it kind of destroys.

Having grown up on Warp Records, Nine Inch Nails, and Nintendo music, I've actually come to really appreciate a good live performance. I've seen the unlikeliest of artists doing live shows, and I've also gone to dozens of festivals which turned me on to music that I'd never appreciate if not for having seen the groups that played the music live.

Aside from that - it's too bad you have zero interest in ever attending a live concert. To me, that's like saying you have zero interest in tasting delicious food, or zero interest in having sex. You've got at least five senses, and only so long to live - make the most of what you have!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a musician with a startup in this space, so I know first had these numbers are skewed.

First, a musician's online product isn't just their music -- merch sales like t-shirts make up a big part of their revenue stream. For our members it is 70/30 split in terms of music/merch, but the profitability of merch is a lot higher. And as others have mentioned, royalties are not in the picture.

Second, the data seems to favor CDbaby. I guess it was easier to just look at one source, but these days there are a lot more compelling options for musicians that have no fees (through sites like Bandcamp). Even the physical CD pricing with CDbaby is incorrect -- on a physical disc an artist selling an album for $10 would only make $4 with CDbaby, not $7.50.

</comment><comment><USER16> OK I totally thought this was going to be an article about how "little musicians" earn money :-)

Awesome graphics btw!

</comment><comment><USER17> My main reaction to this is "So?"

It seems to me that online music sites are a form of advertisement for the artist and his shows, which is where most of the revenues come from.

</comment><comment><USER18> > The sort of artist who survives at the long tail is the sort who would be > happy doing nothing else, who willingly sacrifices security and comfort for > the chance to communicate something meaningful, hoping to catch the > attention of those few in the world who seek what they also find meaningful. > It's a somewhat solitary existence, a bit like a lighthouse keeper throwing > a beam out into the darkness, in faith that this action might help someone > unseen.

Robert Rich

<http://robertrich.com/1000-true-fans-an-answer/>

</comment><comment><USER19> How much would a musician pay to advertise their song to 4 million interested listeners? Negative 0.000017 cents sounds like a pretty good price -- better than Adwords anyway.

<comment><USER20> And what exactly is the point of "advertising" a song to people who, for all intents and purposes, already own it?

<comment><USER19> There must be some point, or otherwise it wouldn't be done. Follow the money.

<comment><USER20> Care to provide some evidence that it is being done, ie. that artists are happy with the payment arrangement negotiated on their behalf with Spotify et al on the basis that it constitutes cheap advertising?

<comment><USER21> I think he's referring to radio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> LastFM and Spotify should be compared with having your videoclip on MTV or your song on radio, not with selling albums.

</comment><comment><USER23> As you can see here, the real numbers are much less straighforward,

<http://www.ascap.com/about/payment/royalties.html>

<comment><USER7> Personal effort, individual sales, and shows are not in their calculation. These are industry shills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How about big musicians?

</comment><comment><USER25> I think this infographic got debunked a while ago. I cant remember where or why though.

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone else just picture very small sized musicians making money online when you read the title of this thread?</comment>


Live From Nokia's Windows Phone 8 Press Conference  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/05/live-from-nokia/

<comment><USER3> I am the only one that finds Metro to be ugly (hate the color choices and block-y design) and cluttered? This does not strike me as something I want to see on my home screen:

[http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/769...](http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/7691/axv1309.jpg)

Regardless, I'm wondering if the average consumer feels the same way as well. WP7 is not selling well, and WP8 (and the new Lumias) don't really differentiate themselves that much from the previous iteration in terms of what a consumer will see in the first few minutes of using the phone.

Also, this is DOA in the US if they are AT&T exclusive.

<comment><USER4> I was surprised to see a view like that being promoted. I love Metro, but I hate app makers that don't keep to the Metro aesthetic. When it's done right:

[http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/nokia-...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/nokia-920-820-lumia-leak-640x353.jpg)

I think it looks fantastic, and communicates more than the iPhone home screen without the mess of the Android one.

<comment><USER3> Even in those two screens, everything just blends together (especially with the white text on yellow tiles). Just seems like a usability nightmare imo.

Regardless, I don't find Android home screens messy at all (although there are a few widgets that are poorly made), and with the customization ability that's provided with custom ROMs, it can be as beautiful as you want it to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading a lot of anti WP sentiment, and much of it directed at WP8 (surprising, because Microsft hasn't really revealed anything about it yet). That said, the Lumia 920 is without a doubt my next phone. Granted, I'm in a position where price means nothing to me, so the deciding factors are wireless charging, NFC, offline maps (not the pseudo-variety Google offers), PureView (even if it's only a 5Mp camera I'm betting it'll still outdo anything else in a smart phone).

I accept that no two people share the same view.

<comment><USER6> The 920 has an 8Mp camera. I got the same feeling from all the blogs covering the event. They all talked about it through a "doubtful" lens. I kept seeing expression like "I gotta admit it's actually nice" and "this might actually be worth owning" that clearly states their Apple/Android affiliation.

I used to be an Android fan but after using the Lumia 820 for a month (unlocking it for a friend), going back to a Galaxy left me a bit sad. After WP, Android seem childish and overly hard to keep uncluttered over time.

I just hope the 920 won't be too expensive otherwise I'm gonna have to deal with samsung for another 2 years :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nokia's new phones look fantastic. But their last ones looked fantastic, too.

PureView camera? Awesome. But all my friends share photos through Instagram. No Instagram on WP8 = me not being able to share photos with my friends. So right now, this former WP7 user is sticking with Android.

I really, really want to like Windows Phone- the UI is better than anything else out there. But it needs more support from third parties, and fast.

<comment><USER7> It seems Nokia's misleading "PureView" marketing has succeed as even tech savvy people can get confused into thinking this camera is the basically the same as the one in the PureView 808 smartphone.

It's absolutely 100% _not_. It doesn't have a high resolution for pixel binning to make those images ultra clear, and it doesn't have pixel binning _at all_. Also it doesn't have that super large sensor to capture much more light. It has a regular smartphone sensor. This is what made Pureview be Pureview. The new camera is nothing like it. It just adds some stabilization technology, but that's no reason to still call it PureView, other than to mislead people into thinking it's the same as the original.

I also think WP7 looked better than WP8. The small tiles make it look more cluttered.

<comment><USER8> Nokia has said that PureView _is_ the new kind of optical image stabilization, not the megapixels on the sensor. It's not misleading, you're just not understanding it correctly. The high MP count was part of the 808 PureView, but it wasn't what defined it as a PureView. The optical image stabilization was. The 41-MP sensor was just Nokia showing off.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3293041/nokia- lumia-920-pur...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3293041/nokia- lumia-920-pureview-camera)

<comment><USER9> The original paper presenting it earlier this year:

[http://www.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000...](http://www.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf)

"The Nokia PureView Pro imaging technology is the combination of a large, super high resolution 41Mpix with high performance Carl Zeiss optics. The large sensor enables pixel oversampling, which will be explained in detail in this paper but in a nutshell it means the combination of many pixels into one perfect pixel. PureView imaging technology is the result of many years of research and development and the tangible fruits of this work are amazing image quality, lossless zoom, and superior low light performance."

So yeah, PureView vs PureView Pro or something. Still feels more like widening a brandname used on something that got people excited.

<comment><USER8> Well it fits in with Surface and Surface Pro. Surface is a tightly designed and controlled tablet running Windows RT. Surface Pro is the same tablet, but running something a little more cumbersome but with the added bonus of being more powerful to use. PureView is a tightly designed lens. PureView Pro is the same lens with the addition of a gigantic sensor which makes it a little more cumbersome to use but also adds an incredible amount more power.

Seems in line with how Microsoft has been branding since at least Windows XP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apparently, it's not living up to the expectations of the stock market. The stock is down 13%. Not sure what people were hoping for.

<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ANOK>

<comment><USER11> They've announced a product, but no pricing or availability. People will immediately stop buying the current generation, but don't have the next generation to purchase - and there is no idea when they will be able to. Nokia just put the brakes on sales, and haven't indicated when they'll let up on them.

<comment><USER12> But the brakes have been on sales for a while, as we have known that the latest windows phone software won't work on the existing Lumia phones.

<comment><USER11> Well, let's just say then that they pushed a bit harder. The difference now, is previously I could have purchased a phone, and then in some indeterminate period of time in the future, upgraded to a new phone, and brought all my applications (and, much, much more importantly for most people - <USER2> familiarity with the platform) along with me. WP8 is pretty similar to WP7 in terms of GUI.

But now - I know what that new phone is going to look like - so buying todays phone is like buying the previous generation. Also - it was _demoed_ - so it feels like it's going to be released any day now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, no prices or dates? Fail.

(Guess they just wanted to announce/show off the devices before the iPhone5 announcement ... but without prices or dates, the hype is going to fade into non-existence).

<comment><USER13> I am now convinced that they organized this event hastily once they knew the date for the iPhone 5 event... kind of like what they did with surface to front-run the Nexus 7 announcement.

Smacks of desperation if you ask me.

<comment><USER14> It will fail, this is the last chance for Nokia, I expect them to go out of the smart phone business very quickly.

<comment><USER15> This is _really_ scary.

If Nokia goes out of business and its patent portfolio ends up in the hands of a patent troll, there will be an effective entry barrier in the smartphone market (because every current smartphone maker probably has a cross-licensing agreement in place, only new players will be affected).

My bet is Microsoft will acquire what's left of Nokia and use patents offensively against competitors where the CLA's don't cover them, but, even if they decide not to do so, life will get a lot more dangerous in this space.

If that's the case, I hope Google acquires them. The peace of mind not to have that IP in Microsoft's hands is worth a lot of money.

<comment><USER16> I came to HN expecting to read such a comment thread and I was not disappointed at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I'm really interested in WP8 and I've held off renewing my contract for a year just to see what will come out. We've had many Android phones in our home and I'm kind of done with them. I would like to avoid the updates nightmare between the carriers and google.

<comment><USER4> If the experience of WP7 is anything to go by, you're going to be exchanging a nightmare between the carriers and Google with a nightmare between the carriers and Microsoft.

AT&T flat out refused to release an update for my phone, I had to do the WP equivalent of rooting it and manually patching myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that's rough. I was pretty upset that Sprint didn't release more WP7 phones but now I see why they held off. Unfortunately, it seems WP7 was a transition/beta device.

But, I think _it will be different this time_ with the huge bet they're making with Windows 8 across lots of different devices now.

<comment><USER17> WP7 was the beta/transition, then it was WP7.5 that was the transition, now it'll be WP8.

I don't see a lot changing - I've used a couple of WP7.5 devices, they nice, but they're not significantly better, or cheaper than an iPhone, Galaxy S3, HTC One, etc, so they're going to struggle.

Microsoft's best chance of marketshare seems to be the implosion of RIM, but that's limited to what, 10% of the market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a side note, Nokia's stock seems to have dropped 11% today. I guess stockholders aren't too excited about the new devices and WP8.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's see how it sells compared to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3. Everything else is moot.

<comment><USER18> Sales are important. But, lets give them some credit. This is a really well designed phone. And if the (less than impressive) iPhone 5 leaks hold, than this could be the first phone that is arguably designed better than the iPhone. That is pretty impressive.</comment></comment>


You don't become a Silicon Valley celebrity by being shy - <AUTHOR> http://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/3-professional-life-hacks-billionaire-introvert <comment><USER2> I wonder what year it will be before the entrenched valley VC types realize that refusing to meet with people unless you have a mutual friend has profound consequences regarding the social and economic class and ethnicity of the people you do business with, and feel compelled to at least pause a moment to contemplate that fact before espousing the practice.

<comment><USER3> not sure you realize the consequences of what you're saying. taking an unfiltered approach would simply not scale. 90+% of startups fail. there has to be some quality filtering, even if it does discard some potential. i'd assert the type of startup you're talking about is even more rare than your average unicorn.

<comment><USER2> Of course I realize the consequences.

My point is not that there should be no filter, but that this specific filter is deeply flawed. There are a nearly infinite number of other ways to filter the onslaught of requests, your fallacy-of-the-excluded-middle argument notwithstanding.

It's worth noting that the people in question have astonishing financial resources. Is this really the only and best possible solution under those circumstances?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title is very misleading and completely obscures the point of the article

<comment><USER5> clickbait-esque

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At some point I thought I wanted to become a VC, but I realized that I have too many nihilistic tendencies to ever want to live a life where my entire schedule is meetings.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand this title. Shy people usually don't want to be celebrities in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actual title: 3 professional life hacks from a billionaire introvert.

Billionaire introvert = Reid Hoffman

<comment><USER9> It's ok for a submitter to use a subtitle when it's closer to HN's criteria of not being misleading or baity. In this case the subtitle doesn't exactly hit the mark, but the title's pretty baity.

<comment><USER10> The "3 hacks" is much closer to what the article is about though. The subtitle arouses curiosity and has more power to get people to click, but is less relevant to the content.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's the problem. If you or someone can figure out a way to salvage "3 professional life hacks from a billionaire introvert" into a suitable HN title, we can change it above.

Or maybe it's just a fluff article and not worth saving.

<comment><AUTHOR> I honestly thought the subtitle was a better title about the story being told, since the life hacks don't really work for common people...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vernox Labs (YC S15) Mines Unstructured Data to Help Reduce Construction Costs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/04/vernox-labs/ <comment><USER3> This will be a great product if it works. I work for a small remodeling company (4 employees and the owner-operator). The owner does almost all the books, estimating/sales, and a good amount of field work. Job costing of course is critical but it's one of those tasks that isn't the highest priority when you have a million other things to do.

<comment><USER4> George, thank you for the post. The administrative strain on construction project team members today is immense. It's crazy how much information everyone is required to maintain and report in addition to actually building! We're definitely working to streamline this. - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Great project. Do you have any idea of how much a construction company is going to save thanks to your software? Do you think construction companies are going to accept to share data with others? Let's say company A has faced a very complex measuring issue and has found an innovative and economic solution. Will it agree to share it on your platformbecause to me it sounds like helping competitors...

<comment><USER4> Hi Yannche, thank you for your post and questions. Regarding savings, we're very early on in our first pilots so I do not have firm data on what we will ultimately be able to save a GC or project as a whole. With that being said, there are public metrics available which point to upwards of 30% of all construction spending being unnecessary or waste. Can we bring that number down through our efforts? We believe so but time will ultimately tell.

To clarify regarding sharing of data, none of our pilot participants are publicly sharing any data. We are definitely seeing that data privacy is of the utmost concern within this industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey there Your customer segment sounds very interesting. There's clearly a need for your project (I'm kind of familiar with construction projects). However I don't get what you're offering and how it works. Can you please explain me again? May be I can help you in return. Thanks

<comment><USER4> Hi Yannche, why don't we connect via email and see if a follow up call makes sense to discuss. Can you shoot me an email so that we can coordinate: info [at] vernoxlabs [dot] com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you, Taylor, for posting. I'm one of the co-founders of Vernox Labs and would be happy to answer any questions that the HN community may have.

-Michael

<comment><USER6> Hi Michael, nice concept but how are you going to collect data for the analytics.How rich, relevant and accurate the historical data to the project ?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the query Niran. I am the co-founder of Vernox Labs.

1) The data is being provided to us by our customers. 2) Data is very rich. However, it is unstructured and that is a problem we directly address using our technology. 3) Even disparate projects have identical sub-systems. We actively create models for relevance between specific pieces of information across projects.

Vinayak</comment></comment></comment>


'I believe in e-democracy' - Russia's communications minister - <AUTHOR> http://www.rt.com/news/russian-communications-minister-nikiforov-451/

<comment><USER2> Only idiots can take words comes from Russian Government seriously. There are only huge kickbacks, budget waste and thievery behind the propaganda they forcing down our throats.</comment>