How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/01/13/how-amazon-tricks-you-into-thinking-it-always-has-the-lowest-prices/ <comment><USER2> When I started working on [https://trackif.com](https://trackif.com), I thought the premise was thin because prices couldn't fluctuate that much. I assumed everything gradually declined in price, and that it'd primarily be driven by store-A vs store-B price dropping.

Nope. Retailers are just gaming us 24/7\. I've become very aware of all the different timeframes retailers offer post-purchase price-matches (published at [http://blog.trackif.com/trackif-smart-shopping-guide- store-p...](http://blog.trackif.com/trackif-smart-shopping-guide-store-price- matching-correction-return-policies/) since I felt like I was hoarding knowledge.)

Have retailers always played games like this? Or it just a side-effect of sales moving online?

<comment><USER3> I can speak to 25 years ago: the answer is yes. Here are some of the things I saw:

* Marking items up 30-45 days ahead of a big sale. This allowed our price to be 25% off instead of 10%. Or sometimes, our sale price probably should have been the regular price. This happened all the time, and people fell for it hard. Usually this would happen before a 10% off everything sale.

* Price adjustments from competitive shops. All of a sudden on some non-advertised sale day the laser printer would spit out a new low every day price if a strategic product was priced above the competition.

* Some price adjustments occurred to game the competition. We did this a lot with appliances where we'd mark up a model we knew the manufacturer had a ton of inventory. The competition would buy a few truckloads and then we'd run $200 off when they ran their $100 off add.

The only thing the internet has changed is the speed price changes occur and has enabled some other kinds of buy this get that deals.

<comment><USER4> In the furniture biz, lots of places have laws restricting how many days/year a given shop can do "going out of business"/"total clearance" sales. Otherwise, they tend to run them non-stop for decades because they are so effective at bringing in customers.

According to my friends that have worked furniture retail, it was common practice to mark everything up 300% for a week then have a "40-60% Off!!!" sale. Customers would be very excited about how much money they were "saving" even though the reality was that they were buying at a net markup compared to a few weeks ago. But, a few weeks ago the shop was much, much quieter even though the prices were lower. So, what's a shopkeeper to do?

<comment><USER5> In Europe, there are rules about sale pricing for all items, they have to be at the original price for a certain period. They still manage to game it a bit, but slightly less so, eg some items are normally overpriced etc.

<comment><USER6> What I have noticed recently in UK TV adverts is that £xxx off special offer and then put an on-screen rider "discount on 'after offer' price".

So they pitch it like a sale but really they will just offer whatever is left of their product at a higher price for a while in some store or maybe just online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://camelcamelcamel.com/](http://camelcamelcamel.com/)

(Amazon price tracking.) Very useful if/when you want to buy something and want to check historical prices. (You can also set email alerts when something drops to below a certain price.)

Edit: linkified. (Thanks, canvia!)

<comment><USER8> If anyone is curious about whether's it's worth checking CamelCamelCamel before making an Amazon purchase, look at the price history for this tea in the past year:

[http://camelcamelcamel.com/Stash-Tea-Green-Chai- Count/produc...](http://camelcamelcamel.com/Stash-Tea-Green-Chai- Count/product/B000CQE42M)

The price rapidly fluctuates between $18.99 and $14.24 on a nearly monthly basis. In this case it's worth it to create an alert and wait a week or two for the price to drop again.

<comment><USER9> But wouldn't something like tea fluctuate in pricing anyway because of the type of product it is and not necessarily because of price gaming?

<comment><USER8> You're suggesting that the worldwide price of tea or market conditions are causing these nearly monthly fluctuations, between two set prices? I'm skeptical, the graph doesn't suggest that to my untrained eye.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't suggesting anything, I was asking a question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I buy from amazon for their predictable shipping and insanely awesome customer service.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Maybe if this article was written 5 years ago I can understand, but unless you're live somewhere where you don't have access to Amazon; everyone knows it's not just the prices that Amazon has that keeps customers coming back. People trust it. Amazon has the best customer service I've ever experienced. It is amazing. imo it's because unlike most stores, Amazon keeps your full shopping history so they know your worth to the company (as well as your habits and so on).

<comment><USER12> As a counterpoint: Most people I know go to Amazon 100% for the prices. Often they will actually visit a brick-and-mortar store first to browse in person (page through a book at a bookstore, even try on shoes at a shoe store), and only _then_ order on Amazon, once they've decided what they want. Amazon adds nothing here in convenience or service. The most convenient option would be to just buy the item you already physically have in your hands, which means you'd get it today, and not have to deal with UPS missed-delivery bullshit. But Amazon gets the sale because they win on price. Or at least used to!

<comment><USER13> counter-counterpoint: I bet a large portion of the people you're talking about are genuinely price conscious consumers trying to make the most educated purchases they possibly can. I doubt these people would be the same type that blindly buy an hdmi cable at a 20% markup... how simple is it to compare prices these days online? If you're traveling to a book store then buying through amazon I would bet money that you're probably going to price check that Amazon branded hdmi cable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They mention HDMI cables specifically. I just went into a Best Buy and asked for their cheapest HDMI cable. The salesman showed me one for $15. The Amazon basics cable is $5.49. If you've got Prime and you factor in the shipping costs of using another website, it's hard to beat Amazon's price.

<comment><USER15> For cables, Monoprice is also a good alternative (and, generally, price- competitive with Amazon).

Another commenter mentioned that Monoprice's HDMI quality has declined; I haven't noticed any problem with their Ethernet and USB cables.

For HDMI, Monoprice goes all the way down to $2: [http://www.monoprice.com/Search/Index?keyword=hdmi](http://www.monoprice.com/Search/Index?keyword=hdmi)

Best Buy preys on the 'I need this cable in 30 minutes for the big presentation' customer, and prices accordingly. Try buying coaxial cable - it's obscene!

<comment><USER16> The main reason I buy cables from Amazon instead of Monoprice is Prime. Monoprice's shipping is always slow for me. (Last gig I was at, we bought a truckload of their monitors, though, on my recommendation. Love those guys, just wish they could ship faster without ruining my wallet.)

<comment><USER17> You can buy a lot of Monoprice cables through Amazon at the same price but with Prime shipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am willing to pay a significant premium to Amazin for the no-bullshit customer support. If my transaction doesn't delight me, I know they will make good on it.

<comment><USER19> I have a similar mindset. I don't know anyone who thinks Amazon has the best prices, I'm happy to pay a little extra for the convenience and quality of service.

Case in point, I bought a new router from Amazon last week. When I got it I realised I'd made a mistake (I'd chosen one without an ADSL modem). I fill in a simple online form to get the return label, return it via Collect+ (it's a service in the UK for collecting parcels from local stores) and Amazon process my refund whilst the item was in transit (before the item got back to their warehouses). This is typical of their customer service, it's really second to none (in my experience).

<comment><USER20> Apart from the refund before the item was returned, this is pretty much standard procedure in europe, as in a consumer right by law - you always have 14 day return period at any online store. Sure, amazon extends their grace period (30 days, right?) - other than that it's really nothing special.

<comment><USER19> Nothing special from a legal standpoint, but it's all about how easy they make it. I have bought from other online retailers, and whilst the experiences haven't been bad, they still aren't quite as slick compared to Amazon. I can't really point to anything in particular that will convince you, it's just that the whole process is painless and easy, not just for the basics (purchasing) but for everything.

Aside from the 'refund before the item was returned' example, I could also point to when I'd had to speak to Amazon customer support before, all done through instant messaging on the website with one of their team. Resolved within minutes. Contrast with other retailers where there's a back and forth with emails. Again, not horrible with other retailers, but the Amazon experience was more streamlined.

<comment><USER20> It's fine, I didn't try to nitpick. No need to convince me - I like their service too. Though you'd be surprised how many people don't know that the return option is available everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not only amazon that does this with loss leader pricing, it its also my local grocery store with milk and bread.

For me what gives me the impression amazon has the lowest prices are their nearly nonexistent profits. Whatever's up may not the the _cheapest_ but it's always difficult to find something cheaper elsewhere, even if it does exist.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm sure Amazon is constantly adjusting their prices in order to maximize their sales and revenue; they even have some price automation tools as part of their inventory management system for people who sell their stuff through Amazon.

However I'm not sure these adjustments are meant to make people perceive that Amazon has the lowest prices. Instead it seems like they're meant to ensure that Amazon actually _has_ the lowest prices on the most popular and high volume items. On those items they are pricing for high volume, while on the lower volume items they need a higher price to get an equivalent margin. That's what this looks like to me: maximizing margins across products with different sales volumes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another common sales technique is to have 3 models in a line - the stripper, the standard, and the deluxe. The stripper was barely functional, and its sole purpose was to have a cheap price to attract customers to the showroom. The deluxe had every silly feature the manufacturer could think of, like pinstriping on a dishwasher. It had a very high price. It's sole purpose was to 'frame' the price of the standard model and make it look like a bargain.

The standard model was the one the manufacturer expected to sell. Of course, the rare price-insensitive customer would buy the deluxe, and the salesman was happy to sell that and collect the large commission.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pricing the most-seen items lower is not quite as nefarious as "trick" would suggest, IMHO - and part of it is probably just driven by various advantages of selling a lot of some particular product.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is all old, old news. Back in the 1970's, a friend of mine was shopping for a nice SLR camera. He knew which camera he wanted, and diligently researched ad after ad, finally settling on one with the cheapest price. We all piled into his car to go get it.

Sure enough, he bought the camera body dirt cheap. But he walked out of the store with a lense, filter, case, flash, film, and a few other accessories. When back home, he ruefully discovered that the total price he shelled out was higher! He didn't realize that the accessories were priced higher than the competition. People simply are not price sensitive to add-ons, and salesmen have known that for centuries.

Gillette is famous for pretty much giving away the razor and making money on the blades.

There's even a word for it: "loss leader".

All Amazon has done is automate it. Pretty much all retailers do it.

<comment><USER25> > Gillette is famous for pretty much giving away the razor and making money on > the blades.

Admittedly... if you're not including the blades, the "razor" is just a plastic stick.

<comment><USER23> Not so before BIC - the Gillette razor was a nicely crafted metal tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Amazon jacks the price around on a lot of the household items that I buy. There one item that I last purchased for $11.94. I have seen it as high as $29 and some change. Right now it is $23.94.

I've wised up to this tactic and will buy extra when the price is low enough to make it a better deal than buying at the grocery store.

<comment><USER17> Their pricing of household items is not very good. Almost everything I'd buy is cheaper at retail stores and I don't need to buy a pallet load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Surprisingly most home improvement things are cheaper at Home Depot rather than Amazon. I learned this one the hard way. Also Amazon routinely displays "original" prices that are much higher than other places and with the "discount" falls in the same price range.

</comment><comment><USER28> When I decided I didn't feel great about supporting Amazon any longer due to its reported treatment of its business partners, corporate employees, and warehouse employees, I started shopping around and was surprised to find it wasn't so hard to find deals just as good or better elsewhere.

Sometimes prices are just lower elsewhere, sometimes free shipping comes without a requirement to make a $35 order. (Or pay a high annual fee for free shipping that wouldn't amortize well for me.)

And sometimes Amazon still is the cheapest, but not by so much that it feels imperative to shop there if I have reasons not to.

</comment><comment><USER29> As has been said, this should be no surprise at all - especially if you've followed phenomenons like the Harry Potter books that got the same treatment.

Amazon underbid competitors on the short tail and make it up on the long tail.

Amazon also stand the benefit that nothing is technically "upsale", since it's all horizontally in the same basket, so they can't get accused of selling you extra stuff the way other vendors might.

</comment><comment><USER30> I read on NPR a while ago some guys found an arbitrage opportunity in book prices. So - he would track the most sought after books, buy them when price were low, usually around July/August, and then sell them back on Amazon when prices were high, around the time of September and January. Makes sense.

<comment><USER31> Planet Money, probably their second best textbook story:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/11/10/363103753/textbook...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/11/10/363103753/textbook- arbitrage-making-money-off-used-books)

(best imo was talking about the whole mess around writing textbooks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This has been WalMart's strategy for decades so it shouldn't surprise anyone.

<comment><USER33> What is Walmart's digital stratergy?

<comment><USER14> I think WalMart is pretty focused on free ship-to-store. This doesn't appeal to me at all since I live in a big city and going to a suburban Walmart would be a big production. It makes a certain amount of sense for my parents since there's a Walmart neighborhood market five minutes from their house. It eliminates one risk of online purchases (package sitting on your doorstep) but introduces the inconvenience of parking and getting your product from the store's customer service department.

<comment><USER34> Every time that I have used Ship-to-Store from Wal _Mart, I have had to spend at minimum 30 minutes between entering and exiting the store parking lot. Most of the time, I have to hunt down a store employee myself, because unlike the customer service desk, the Ship-to-Store /Layaway desk is not continuously staffed.

Wal_Mart is great when the value of your own time is not very high, but at some point, it is glaringly obvious that they keep prices lower by making all their customers spend just a little bit more time in the store than absolutely necessary.

So the inconvenience is very inconvenient. It is only made worse by the fact that I didn't shop for the items, and didn't buy them, but I'm simply the one who drives past a Wal*Mart every day. For the shopper, it really is free at- home delivery. For me, it is, "Hey, guess what? You get to flush half an hour of your life down the toilet today--what a deal!"

Ship-to-Store is precisely the reason why I fear Amazon Locker and other "ship it the last mile yourself" services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The startup wants to help Amazon competitors think about pricing in as > sophisticated a way as Amazon does.

The catch is that if several big retailers apply the Amazon strategy, a self- reinforcing feedback loop will drive the prices for popular products to zero and the prices for less popular products to +inf. This will make popular products even more popular, which further strengthens the effect. The question that this startup has to answer is thus how they are going to keep the market from exploding and how they can benefit several clients at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER36> I dont get why they use HDMI cables as their first example: we keep buying HDMI cables because they get busted, not because we need more.

AmazonBasics is currently the best cheap cable (replacing Monoprice's now that they aren't nearly as good as they used to be).

Also, why does the article call them HD cables. Whats an HD cable? None of my ports say HD, they say HDMI.

And it doesn't even get into how Prime games S&H over the long term.

<comment><USER37> Is it possible that there are different types of cables that offers HD transfer to the TV? I've never really heard "HD" cable either, but in the article I read it as HDMI, had to go back to check if it actually said HD.

<comment><USER36> You can do 1080i over YCbCr analog, but no one has done this for like a decade, and it only made sense for pre-HDMI HD sets (which made as little sense to manufacture as pre-Rec2020 4k TVs being made now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Lego pricing on Amazon is generally bad. Often much worse than what Lego sells the sets for. That is one area I'd love to see Amazon change.

<comment><USER39> Amazon doesn't sell every product themselves. Most are Amazon Marketplace sales, which are entirely 3rd party (some are Fulfilled by Amazon, which gives you the Prime shipping but is still 3rd party). In these cases, Amazon can't control the prices at all; it's all up to the 3rd parties to set the prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I also like the simple but effective Keepa [http://keepa.com](http://keepa.com) to compare amazon prices in different countries at the same time. In Europe for example, Hometheater amps are 50% cheaper in Germany than france, while france is cheaper on something else and UK is cheaper on tools and sometimes projectors (depending of FX rates)

</comment><comment><USER41> I think Amazon is emulating [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500)

</comment><comment><USER42> "Rising the price of the cables by 33%" feels really sinister and underhanded. Is this guy totally sure that it was done intentionally.

</comment><comment><USER43> I use [http://camelcamelcamel.com](http://camelcamelcamel.com) to track stuff I'm looking to buy. Here's a screenshot from my price tracking last year on a WD 6TB drive:

[http://i.imgur.com/evOBCVN.png](http://i.imgur.com/evOBCVN.png)

</comment><comment><USER41> You'll buy anything you think Amazon is losing money on.</comment>


Quickmeme banned from Reddit for alleged vote manipulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-bans-quickmeme-vote-manipulation/

<comment><USER2> It's worth noting that another Redditor and mod from /r/AdviceAnimals, /u/ManWithoutModem, independently discovered different evidence that the Quickmeme posts were being manipulated. [1]

No one believed him and he was demodded. He's not happy about it.

[http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickme...](http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/1gvnk4/quickmeme_is_banned_redditwide_more_inside/caoiq3t)

<comment><USER3> What is the 'np.reddit.com' subdomain used for? I had never seen it before, and it looks similar to the www subdomain.

<comment><USER4> 'NP' stands for 'No Participation'.

"Linking to np.reddit.com instead of reddit.com will cause the subreddit to display the No Particpation stylesheet. It's a read-only mode where users linked through the NP domain cannot vote or comment. This works only if the subreddit has installed the NP CSS. If not, linking to the subreddit with the NP domain will cause to display without the subreddit's custom CSS, and voting and commenting will still be possible. This way we can still watch drama as it develops, but if the subreddit wishes to preserve its own culture by discouraging popcorn pissers, they have that option."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/annou...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14xivv/announcement_a_new_rule_to_discourage_invasion/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now r/adviceanimals users are clamouring for a quickmeme alternative, because the present meme sites (eg: livememe.com) suck. Opportunity for anyone that wants to clone quickmeme.com in the next ~6 hours.

<comment><USER6> Can't they just upload the quickmeme generated images to imgur?

<comment><USER7> No, quickmeme doesn't actually generate the final images. Instead it layers a transparent PNG on top of the image.

<comment><USER8> That's not true. They DO layer a transparent PNG on the image, but that transparent PNG has no content whatsoever. It's there just to prevent people from hitting right click and "Save Target As."

<comment><USER9> w... WOW. REALLY?

I refuse to believe quickmeme became popular because reddit _liked_ it. That is very very anti-user.

Edit: theeeey sure do!

[http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad](http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3uwwk8/#by=ad)

right click, view image, go here: [http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif](http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif)

delete that element and do it again, go here: [http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg](http://i.qkme.me/3uwwk8.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Never heard of spaceball.gif?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ironic that this is posted by a HN user with no comments, and only submissions from the daily dot.

</comment><comment><USER12> Excellent, a few months ago clicking on a quickmeme (by accident normally when not logged in) link on android resulted in multiple redirects and an attempt to download an apk which was lovely.

After that I used RES to filter quickmeme on all my desktops.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not so concerned with Quickmeme et. al, (because I don't follow default subreddits) but rather I'm concerned with voting rings against personal accounts. I had an account for a substantial time where I posted good, useful comments frequently (for which I was upvoted frequently). Once, maybe twice in response to other commenters I disagreed with them, like 0.1% of my time on the site. Afterwards I found myself downvoted to hell no matter what I did, how long I waited between writing comments (ie, 6 months). Everything (quality comments) would go rather quickly to a 0 or a -1/-2. I had to make a new account, there's no way around it.

<comment><USER14> I think this is one of the biggest concerns for Reddit going forward. Fighting bots can be approached systematically and with relatively decent results. Fighting coordinated groups with an agenda and voting brigades is a much harder beast.

The SRS "fempire" is probably the scariest case study in all of this.

<comment><USER15> On the contrary, SRS is one of the most innovative uses of a subreddit since Reddit's inception. Think back to the days of forums, LiveJournals, mailing lists, IRC, etc. Whenever an issue of discrimination arose, it was _always_ derailed one way or another. Between vocal opponents, concern trolls, and "explain to me how this offends you"-types, it was impossible for someone who experienced discrimination to find a safe space to legitimize their experience.

With SRS, instead of allowing any kind of discourse related to the validity of a claim, every participating member is required to just accept the claim as valid. There is no driving force to change Reddit, and there is no activism involved. It's simply a safe space for people who are offended to express themselves in an environment that won't be questioned, especially when Reddit is known for having a hive mentality.

<comment><USER14> No offense, the warm and fuzzies are great; but this is the anti-thesis of intelligent and productive discourse.

I wouldn't mind at all if they just wanted to create a safe place for these things to be voiced, but they threaten the integrity of the entire community with the current choice of actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> the owners of grumpy cat hired a "meme manager" to promote and sell their meme. I now hate all internet memes.

[http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme- management/](http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/)

<comment><USER17> You're really surprised that a concept that has gained worldwide popularity might actually warrant "brand curation"? I hope you hated memes before grumpy cat then.

<comment><USER16> I did but grumpy cat was marketed to make money virtually at its inception. I remember them selling merchandise at NYCC last year, that's two weeks after they posted it on reddit.

The commercialism and exploitation of this cat shortly after it's birth has really rubbed me the wrong way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think Reddit (and HN) should make votes and ip addresses transparent for external analysis. The spammers hide behind these.

They could also be more brutal with punishments, route every single link to the offending site through a page that says they were spamming so it's an inconvenience for people and a wall for search engines.

<comment><USER19> No, IP addresses are a private matter. The identities behind pseudonyms should never be exposed unless the affected person decides to do so.

<comment><USER20> Expose them as a hash with a hidden salt. Maintains user privacy while exposing a static data point that can be used for analysis.

<comment><USER9> ah, that might work, if users can't be tied to upvotes, just that one upvote can be tied to others. Still, if someone finds a way to associate a username to a hash, then there could be real life consequences for that.

I like the idea, but it's playing with fire.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't have to be a reversible hash, just assign a guid for each ip address.

There are probably subreddits where that information could be potentially harmful (eg upvotes in jailbait way back when) but that can be solved by not enabling it across the board, and it's not an issue here. Digg made their upvotes public from the start, and so do delicious, facebook, stumbleupon etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't that what Reddit did to bootstrap its site?

<comment><USER22> Reddit astroturfed their own site with fake users. These guys are 1) astroturfing other people's sites, 2) practicing unethetical tactics by down- voting links to competing websites with automated bots.

<comment><USER21> The point is that they are equally dishonest.

<comment><USER23> Astroturfing your own site is a longstanding tradition in media. A long time ago in a career far, far away I wrote classified advertising software for desktop publishers, typically small outfits like trade magazines or penny- savers.

When launching a new feature like classifieds, it does you no good to put out a blank page. So absolutely every customer that didn't already have classified ads would astroturf with fake ads.

The ethics of their profession was to discard any mail-in replies unread. For example, one customer used my software for personals. They had a strict rule that any reply to one of the "fake" mailboxes was to be shredded immediately upon receipt, unopened. They didn't even want them laying around lest someone write down a name or return address.

One there are enough "real" ads, the fake ones are phased out. I can't really say whether it is right or wrong, but I can say it seems to be a standard practice predating the world wide web.

<comment><USER9> that's interesting, but they sure do seem the same. I'm thinking the only difference here is cultural. Like how we don't view reporting a price as $4.99 instead of $5 as unethical.

<comment><USER23> Here's a phrase I feel comfortable using: It's a _deceptive practice_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What kind of idiot made the owner of quickmeme.com a moderator of the subreddit that contained presumably most of its posts?

<comment><USER25> Red dit bans the posting of personal info. They didn't know.

<comment><USER24> Hm, understandable, but then how did they learn it after the fact?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _And as such, content submitted within these subreddits are regularly featured on Reddit 's front page each day and capable of being clicked on by more than 1 billion people._

What an odd thing to say. That same hypothetical line of thinking could lead you to say that I'm capable of receiving a trillion dollars tomorrow, simply because I have a fedwire destination address and that much money could hypothetically be transferred to it. Neither has even a slight chance of actually happening.

</comment><comment><USER27> But there will be nothing left! It will now be all fabricated Facebook posts and 4chan content that is intellectually low-brow enough for the Reddit hivemind to understand!

</comment><comment><USER28> And nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER29> > _Gaming Reddit for traffic has become a regular frustration for the > community, which boasts more than 22.9 million monthly visitors in the U.S. > alone. This is particularly true within Reddit 's default subreddits. All > new Reddit users are automatically signed up as subscribers of the site's > default subreddits, which include r/AdviceAnimals, r/Atheism, and > r/Politics._

Hmmm...maybe this problem could be alleviated by not auto-subscribing new users to a meme-based forum? Of all the great subreddits, AdviceAnimals (albeit, which is pretty funny sometimes), seems like a silly one to acquaint new users to.

Have any of the bustups of voting rings been done algorithmically? That is, does reddit have a way to pick out cluster of reddit accounts that seem to behave like scripted bots? It seems all of the major domain bans (such as the Atlantic) were done through manual user suspicion and inquiry.

<comment><USER30> The top ten subreddits(excluding NSFW ones), based on the number of subscribers, are chosen to be the default ones.

New accounts do not increase the default subscription count, until they subscribe or unsubscribe to any other subreddit.

You can find some good comments on the matter here [http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_belie...](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1dtvwz/i_believe_that_ratheism_should_be_removed_from/c9ttixl)

<comment><USER8> Also excluding any subreddits which specifically ask not to be included. I cannot remember specific cases of this, though.

<comment><USER31> A while ago, r/askscience was briefly listed as a default subreddit, until the moderators (and probably users) asked for the subreddit to be delisted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Who gives a shit?

</comment><comment><USER33> This can only be seen as a good thing as Quickmeme tends to be an extremely heavy site with stuff that could be easily handled by simple image linking or, at worst, imgur.

<comment><USER2> Quickmeme, for the most part, was only regulated to /r/AdviceAnimals, which says a lot about the quality of /r/AdviceAnimals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It won't be enforced I see many sites supposedly banned still posting everyday websites such as physorg and the Atlantic.

<comment><USER35> Weren't those bans lifted?

<comment><USER36> I don't know, communication isn't so great, I have no idea which sites are officially banned, which have bans lifted. There may be a spot on the reddit blog or somewhere else that I'm not aware of but really it shouldn't be my responsibility as a user to enforce it that's the job of admins and mods, that's why they exist.

It doesn't seem to matter though because I have seen banned websites post even when they are supposed to be banned, reddit doesn't seem to block the url it just mentions the website is spamming reddit and that seems to be all we're told.

There is an unofficial (?) subreddit that monitors of banned websites, look to the right at the sidebar for the link to the list [http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/](http://www.reddit.com/r/BannedDomains/)

<comment><USER29> The bans of The Atlantic and other large publishers has been lifted...it was said early on that the bans were just temporary:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/v03qc/physorg_is_not_allowed_on_reddit_this_domain_has/c50651w)

And speaking of temporary bans...I thought dailydot used to be blacklisted from HN? I'm glad to see that it wasn't a permaban.

<comment><USER18> It looks like dailydot has started running spam accounts - the OP and this one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sexyalterego)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OTRAustin)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Something something pots and kettles and allegations and blackness.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have always thought imgur, quickmeme and other meme site (forgot its name) are owned by Reddit owners or executives. It is impossible to get upvotes if you embedded image on your site/blog.

<comment><USER5> imgur.com is owned by Alan Schaaf, he's not associated with reddit. The reason images don't get traction if they're embedded on a website or blog is because they're not compatible with the reddit clients people use (mobile) and RES (reddit enhancement suite). Most people that use r/adviceanimals want instant gratification, if your image doesn't load in under a second nobody cares and will move on, it's why imgur is so popular: it's fast and consistent.

<comment><USER16> I believe conde nast owns reddit & imgur.

<comment><USER5> Conde Nast purchased reddit in 2006, then in 2011 (maybe 2012) it became "independent" again with the parent company of Conde Nast, Advance Publications, retaining an ownership stake of the newly formed reddit, inc. [1][2]

Imgur is a totally separate entity, the company was founded by Alan Schaaf using reddit as a place to "launch" it[3], they've never announced outside funding and there has never been any talk of reddit (or Advance Publications, or Conde Nast) having any ownership stake.[4]

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/14unl6/reddit_is_a_corporate_investment_and_we_are_the/c7gwhzp)

[2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits...](http://www.reddit.com/r/lounge/comments/1g73ec/whats_reddits_pledge_drive_pitch/cahlxny) (screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZoQKmOh.png))

[3] [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting/)

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

<comment><USER39> Schaaf first posted about Imgur on Digg, and when it didn't gain traction there he posted it on Reddit. It was disingenuous of him to call it a "Gift to Reddit" in that post.

<comment><USER40> In what way is imgur not a gift "to" reddit? It might not have been "exclusively for reddit", but I'm willing to be a huge sum of money that most top subreddits, including the first 4 pages of the frontpage are dominated by imgur links.

imgur was the first image host (before minus) that didn't suck, wasn't anti- user, freely allowed hotlinking and had a minimal page when they didn't hotlink.

It's almost never down and the links don't magically fail or expire after they get lots of traffic like many other hosts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Any tech companies hiring Software developers in Canada with visa support? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys I am wondering if there are any tech companies hiring Software Developers in Canada with Visa support ? <comment><USER2> Check vanhack.com</comment>


A hacker's easy dinner: Vegetarian Tacos - <AUTHOR> http://www.mronge.com/2009/08/13/a-hackers-easy-dinner-vegetarian-tacos/

<comment><USER2> Let's raise the level of abstraction a bit.

1\. Heat oil in pan (until oil is hot; should flow like water)

2\. Add vegetables (almost always including onion); cook, while stirring, until soft.

3\. Add seasonings (salt, pepper, spices, garlic, etc.)

4\. Add in a protein; continue stirring, until everything is cooked through.

5\. Optionally, add a liquid and simmer.

This process is the basis for cooking a lot of foods, and it pays to get it down really well. Consider:

\- Protein is ground meat; liquid is a can of tomatoes. This is pasta bolognese sauce.

\- Lots of vegetables; liquid is soy sauce and optionally a slurry of cold water and cornstarch. This is a basic Chinese stir fry.

\- Protein is ground meat; liquid is mixture of beef stock, crushed tomatoes, and a can of beans. This is chili.

\- Vegetables are bell peppers and onions; meat is andouille sausage; season heavily with Cajun spices; liquid is chicken stock and long-grain rice. This is jambalaya.

Sure, these aren't real recipes, but once you have the above procedure down, it's just a matter of developing an intuition for taste and some knowledge of how ingredients work (e.g., 2.5 cups liquid per cup rice), and most basic cooking is pretty simple.

<comment><USER3> You stole my 'recipe'. The only difference is that I usually use tofu or similar for protein (vego) and I add it first to get a just little of that tasty-but-probably-carcinogenic browning on it.

Anyway I'd like to see a book of other 'Cooking Patterns' laid out like this.

<comment><USER2> Tofu is a protein too! The great thing is that all these things are easily interchangeable, so you use whatever you like.

Your post did remind me of an advanced technique. If you are cooking chunks of protein, the best method is to first fry the protein, then take it out, and then follow the original recipe. Why? Because you want to get that browning, and you only get that with direct contact between the protein and the pan. (This is known as the Maillard reaction.) But if you leave the protein in the whole time, it dries up faster than the vegetables (they have cell walls that are hard to soften).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Needs more cumin. Seriously, it's _the_ taco spice. It aint a taco without cumin. Go to your spice rack, and take a sniff of the cumin jar. Yep, smells like tacos.

<comment><USER5> To me, the three basic ingredients to taco seasoning are:

1\. Cumin

2\. Chili powder

3\. Tomato sauce

This recipe is missing 2 of the 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As long as people are submitting easy hacker recipes, here's one of my staples:

-Fill a saucepan with water and boil

-While you're waiting, chop up one small onion and heat some oil in a pan

-Brown the onion in the pan with some garlic and spices (I prefer red pepper flakes, cayenne, and Chipotle Tobasco)

-Once the water's boiling, toss in a packet of your standard cheap-ass ramen and the spice packet (or just random cheap noodles and some bouillon)

-Crack an egg (or two if you want it thicker) into the mix and stir vigorously (it's easier if you scramble the egg first, but it dirties more dishes)

-Dump the onion pan into the ramen mix and add more spices to taste

Boom, you've got yourself some startup stew. Depending on the ramen seasoning you use, this can be vegetarian and eggs are a good source of protein.

Basically the single most important rule for making cheap food at home is learning to love your spice rack. I have Sam's Club jars of red pepper flakes, onion powder, and garlic powder, plus a big tub of minced garlic and an arsenal of dried peppers and hot sauces. These things can make a $.50 meal taste bearable enough to eat all the time. Plus the different mixes of spices give the illusion of being a different meal... if you use your imagination a little bit.

I see cooking a lot like hacking; once you understand how a dish works, you can take it apart and rebuild it to suit your tastes.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could also, you know, grab a couple bags of ground beef and keep them in the freezer. Ground beef freezes really well.

<comment><USER8> And also microwave-thaws quite well, if you get the technique down.

Preferably, use the thawing program of the owen - if there isn't one, use a quite low setting.

Run the thaw-program for about half the amount of meat you have. This should soften the meat enough that you can chop it in 2-3 cm cubes with a big knife. Run the cubes (with plenty of air around) in the owen again, on the same program. You'll probably need to experiment a bit, but the idea is that you'd rather have nice and raw on the outside and semi-frozen in the middle, than cooked on the outside and raw in the middle.

The semi-frozen bits of meat will cook just fine, if the object is to get small chuck of meat, e.g. for a taco (if you need patties, slow-thawing is the only solution). Just remember not to over-fill the pan, if there's too much on the pan, if will boil, not sear, and you'll miss out on the tasty goodness of the malliard process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not a strictly "hacker" recipe, but hard to beat for simplicity: Hainan Chicken Rice

Boil a really big pot of water.

Put a chicken in it. Add a few slices of ginger and some scallions.

Keep the heat on low and poach until the chicken is cooked (about 30 mins).

Take the chicken out (if you're ambitious you can douse it in an ice bath), saving the broth.

Measure N cups of broth and N/2 cups of rice (rinse the rice until the water runs clear). Stick it in your rice cooker.

Serve chicken over the rice. The leftover broth goes in the freezer to start the broth next time. Over time it will intensify.

<comment><USER7> Don't you now have a whole lot of flabby chicken skin?

You may be missing some instructions here. =)

<comment><USER9> That's what the ice bath shock is for-- it firms the skin back up again. The skin and fat is the good stuff :)

This is one of the national dishes of Singapore, btw. There are hawker stands that have been recycling the broth for decades into a super-intense brew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's one of my carefully developed hacker easy dinners, refined over a number of years, optimized for minimal prep and cleanup time, cost, and healthiness:

      * Family-size package of bone-in chicken thighs with skin
      * 4 cups white rice
      * Bag of frozen vegetables

      1. Preheat oven to 400°.
      2. Salt and pepper chicken.
      3. Place chicken on half sheet pan.
      4. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until the juices run completely clear, with
         no trace of pink, when a fork is inserted.

      While the chicken's cooking:

      1. Place rice in saucepan.
      2. Add 2 cups water (or as much as the package instructions say).
      3. Bring to boil.
      4. Turn heat down as low as it goes, stir, and cover pot.
      5. Cook for approximately 15 minutes, or until all the water has been absorbed. Do
         not lift the lid until the end, to check whether the water's been absorbed.

      5 minutes before the chicken and rice are done:

      1. Place frozen vegetables in a microwave-safe container.
      2. Add a few tablespoons of water.
      3. Microwave for 5 minutes.
      4. Salt and pepper.

Upsides: It takes 20 minutes, it will all be ready at the same time, there are only two pieces of cookware to clean, it makes enough for dinner for a week, and it costs about $10 total.

Downsides: It doesn't taste very phenomenal. But, hey — cooking food that tastes good is what makes cooking time-consuming.

The chicken will taste better if you brown both sides in some butter and vegetable oil in a frying pan first, but that takes more time. If you don't want the carbs in the rice, you can switch in some black beans.

<comment><USER9> Some suggestions: cut a lemon in half, squeeze juice over bird, shove what's left inside the bird. Also put some fresh thyme/rosemary in there.

Put those frozen veg in the bottom of the chicken pan (helps to use a 13x9x2 here). They will poach in the chicken fat and taste glorious. (salt and pepper those too)

Advanced: shove some butter under the skin of the bird, and smear some on top too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What exactly are 'crumbles'. Googled it and no easy joy there. Are they the same as what goes in apple crumble?

Actually it seems to be a feature of american recipes to list branded ingredients, they don't translate easily (and its kinda wrong anyway).

Sorry, english (and a bit anti-capitilist).

<comment><USER12> They're a ground beef substitute that manages to be even more inedible than even the shittiest ground beef. It's mostly chewy filler, not even soy -- the offal of agri-business faux-meat.

Instead throw thinly sliced onion and firm tofu into a hot dry skillet and toss regularly. After it starts to brown, add butter and sliced fresh hot peppers. After that's integrated add ground spices: cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, coriander, black pepper. While this is happening you can be frying eggs in the pan at the same time. When it's getting ready to leave the pan, you can add things like fresh garlic (it's better lightly cooked) and cheese (if it browns well). You can clear the flavor residue out of the hot pan by adding a splash of sherry, vinegar, or tamari.

Try to avoid the tofu that comes waterlogged in a little failure tub. Most large grocery stores have a brand that comes in a vacuum-sealed bag, usually costing 3x as much, and it's worth it (like 'Wildwood' at Safeway). You can usually also get decent fresh tofu at local coops and asian immigrant groceries. You can also make it yourself, which usually results in a nice crumbly texture: make extra-strength soy milk, add dash of vinegar to coagulate, squeeze through cheesecloth.

<comment><USER3> > Try to avoid the tofu that comes waterlogged in a little failure tub.

Why? Is there some problem with storing it this way or do those brands just tend to be the crappy ones? After you used some storing in water is the only way to keep it fresh that I'm aware of.

<comment><USER12> > _Is there some problem with storing it this way or do those brands just tend > to be the crappy ones?_

Both. The non-tub kind is a lot firmer and tastier, mostly due to the manufacturers giving a shit, which leads to the better packaging.

You don't have to store it immersed in water, just in a plastic bag. I usually use leftover grocery produce bags. It doesn't actually spoil any faster, any spoilage is much more obvious (sliminess / breakdown into chalky goop), and it doesn't get all loose and waterlogged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I agree with the cumin sentiment. I'm also a big fan of cutting up any leftover meats: sausage, bacon, cooked ham/steak; and throwing it in a pan with some onions and leftover veggies. Then, after they're all heated up and the onions are soft, I throw in a bunch of scrambled eggs and cheese and serve it on a tortilla with salsa. It's not necessarily the healthiest meal ever but you can do the same with tofu instead of meat to make it a little less caloric. In that case you'll probably need a little oil or butter though.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Go to chinatown

2\. Find the busiest dumpling shop (chowhound will help)

3\. Buy a bag of frozen dumplings. Buy two.

4\. Buy some "chunkiang" vinegar while you're in the neighborhood.

5\. Boil water.

6\. Put frozen dumplings in water. Stir for a minute so they don't stick to the pot.

7\. When the water boils again, set a timer for 8 mins (depends on the size of the dumpling)

9\. Drain and serve with a little bowl of the vinegar.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is where a slow cooker is HUGE. Every Sunday I throw a bag of lentils, some veggies, and spices into a crock pot for 9 hours. Total prep is 20 minutes and I have a week's worth of lunches. The most expensive ingredient is the olive oil, which I buy in jugs from the warehouse store.</comment>


Consumers Won't Pay $120 for Windows 7 Upgrade  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/173868/consumers_wont_pay_120_for_windows_7_upgrade.html <comment><USER2> Most consumers will get Windows 7 preloaded on new computers, so this is not an issue.</comment>


Penguin Random House Creates Reader Loyalty Program - <AUTHOR> https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/79824-prh-creates-reader-loyalty-program.html <comment><USER2> This is their replacement for their "First Look" program which gave readers early proof versions of books to drive "influencer" reviews. I found that the book selections there were really poor; I often found that I didn't want to read any of the books on offer, even for free.

They kept the points tech, and dumped the free books portion.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can only earn a maximum of 10 points per single ISBN. You may not earn additional points by purchasing multiple copies of the same ISBN. Members can earn a maximum of 720 points per calendar year. If a title is not eligible for points, there will be a note on the book detail page that reads "This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program" or "This title is not eligible for the Reader Rewards program."

<comment><USER4> It looks like you get a $30 reward for every twelve books.

You can only use the reward on orders under $30, and if your order is less than $30, you lose the difference.

<comment><USER5> Hmm... I wonder if this would fall under some state's laws regarding things like balances on gift cards and the like.

<comment><USER6> Do many of the gift card laws cover rewards programs?

<comment><USER5> I don't speak lawyer, but here's an excerpt from Florida's law:

> (a) "Credit memo" means a certificate, card, stored value card, or similar > instrument issued in exchange for returned merchandise when the certificate, > card, or similar instrument is redeemable for merchandise, food, or services > regardless of whether any cash may be paid to the owner of the certificate, > card, or instrument as part of the redemption transaction.

[http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Displ...](http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0500-0599/0501/Sections/0501.95.html)

Would "or similar" suffice?

<comment><USER6> IANAL, but yeah maybe. Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Login fails for me - can others sign up?</comment>


Parsing HTML with Regex - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1226894

<comment><USER2> While I agree with the answer. What most people take from it is don't use Regex to scrape data from HTML. Which isn't exactly the point of it. Parsing HTML and scraping are two different things.

If you know the exact HTML you are working with, using regex to extract the data is in my opinion a superior way of doing it. Less lines and generally less complexity. (Such as taking the name and id of an amazon product from a single site is different from taking all the links out of any page given.)

<comment><USER3> With today's widely available DOM manipulation tools (jsdom, phantom, zombie) and proper HTML parsers in javascript there is _absolutely no reason_ to use RegExps.

<comment><USER4> > (jsdom, phantom, zombie) and proper HTML parsers in javascript

Well, for starters, if you're not using Javascript. All four tools you mentioned are Javascript-based.

<comment><USER5> There is an XPath implementation for everything under the sun now - I saw and used one even in Erlang - and such an implementations beats regexes in readability and loc 9 times out of 10.

The only real reason to use regexes is when dealing with html so broken that parts of it are inaccessible through parser.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, the world would really benefit from someone updating the libxml2 HTML parser to match the HTML(5) spec, since it has popular bindings for many other languages (e.g. lxml in python). The current implementation is broken in lots of (not so) edge cases. This can be a problem when there is the choice of being fast and wrong (using libxml2) or being slow and correct (using html5lib or one of the other high level implementations of the standardised algorithm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The answer is pretty entertaining, but in context it's pedantic to the extreme. The poster's question was about matching opening tags that don't contain a closing slash, which is a tiny (regular) subset of HTML. You don't need pushdown automata to recognize these.

English, as any other natural language, is (at least mostly) a context free language too, but you wouldn't go around telling people that you shouldn't ever use regexen to match certain constructions in English text, right?

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't call a natural language context-free. They're not formal languages at all.

<comment><USER7> I'm well aware that English isn't a formal language, that's why I added the qualifier "mostly". The great majority of expressions in natural languages can, in fact, be accounted for with CFGs, and purely CFG-based Phrase Structure Grammars have been proposed (see the work of Gazdar and Pullum on Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, from the early 80's, if you're interested). Many of Chomsky's original claims about the weak generative capacity of CFGs with respect to natural lanaguage that gave rise to transformational syntactic frameworks have since been disproven.

Whether or not there is an absolutely snug fit between CFGs formally and natural language "in the wild", so to speak, is another topic, and rather beside the point of the analogy. Context Sensitive Grammars are overly expressive, Regular Grammars much too weak, for much the same reason why they are too weak for HTML. Were there a perfect English language parser, you would not need it in order to match regular subsets of English, just as you do not need a full HTML parser in order to match regular subsets of HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had one class where we had to build a multi threaded search engine in java and parsing HTML with regex was a requirement. Regex was the downfall of about 50% of the class and the majority of the students who did well still had slight issues with their HTML parsing. Moral of the story is that regex is a poor solution for HTML. Not to mention, hours debugging regex is one of the least meaningful or rewarding experiences you can have as a programmer.

<comment><USER10> The obvious workaround for that broken requirement is to use regular expressions to handle the tokenization, and then write a simple recursive descent parser on top of that. Even if this is playing fast and loose with the requirements, it would work out fine, and you would almost certainly get a good grade if you explain why you did it.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this ^

Because, no, you can't parse XHTML with regex. As easily shown by the pumping lemma and all that jazz.

But, there's no freaking reason why you can't tokenize an XML start tag with a regex! In fact, you'll probably find that most uses of parsers in real life have regexes to tokenize down at the level that they can handle, before using a parser on the resulting tokens for the part that actually needs to be a CFG (among other reasons, because a compiled FSM is a lot faster than even a limited LALR parser).

Looking at this specific example, we can refer to the definitions for start tags [1] and empty element tags [2] in XML, and see that all their constituent rules form a regular language (if you don't believe me, it's not too hard to go check for yourself). So, especially since the orignal question doesn't even mention 'parsing', can we all please just shut up? (unless you actually want to figure out the horrible mess necessary to define a regex from the spec :P )

1\. <http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#sec-starttags>

2\. <http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#dt-eetag>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You know you've been on SO too long when you see this title and go, "I'm pretty sure I know this question already." And you're right.

</comment><comment><USER13> A programmer has a problem which requires parsing.

He decides to use regex.

Now he has two problems.

<comment><USER14> A HN user reposts a SO post from ages ago.

Another HN user decides to repost a relevant joke from ages ago.

Now HN is going down the drain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related SO post/comment - _Oh Yes You Can Use Regexes to Parse HTML!_ \- <http://stackoverflow.com/a/4234491/12195> (HN - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2741780>)

This comment is from Tom Christiansen of _Programming Perl_ / _Perl Cookbook_ fame which includes the following caveat:

 _So while it certainly can be done (this posting serves as an existence proof of this incontrovertible fact), that doesn't mean it should be._

</comment><comment><USER16> There are plenty of good, real html parsers, so there's no need to try regex.

Xpath is nice for scraping HTML, though it always turns out the stuff you need is in the middle of a bunch of other text.

<comment><USER17> I would imagine that valid HTML could be parsed as XML, e.g. with the Python ElementTree XML API

<comment><USER18> That would be true for XHTML but not for HTML as tags like paragraph do not always require a end tag, which would break XML parsing.

<comment><USER17> I was under the impression that HTML4 introduced XML requirements, thus requiring the </p> tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The ultimate regex repost!

</comment><comment><USER20> In audio/video format... best when he goes off the deep end and begins speaking in tongues towards the end of the post <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQgNRKpmFuo>

</comment><comment><USER21> You cannot parse HTML with regex. You can find and match strings, but you can't actually parse html with regex.

Chuck Norris can parse HTML with regex.

<comment><USER22> "asking regexes to parse arbitrary HTML is like asking Paris Hilton to write an operating system"

This cracked me up :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you need something fast but not necessarily 100% correct, such as for a real-time code syntax highlighter in JavaScript, RegEx is fine.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hilarious and entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER25> I reckon that _technically_ regex is a tool that can be used to parse HTML. It's just that you could only use it in a very trivial way that would be better suited to other tools.

<comment><USER26> No. _Technically_ , you cannot _parse_ HTML with regular expressions. You can _find_ certain strings in HTML which is a different thing.

<comment><USER25> At the very least, you can use regex to match individual characters as you scan the HTML for parsing. It's an inefficient and stupid way to do it, but it is still something you can do. And in that case, regex is technically a tool that you are using to parse HTML, even though 99.9% of the work is being done by non-regex code.</comment></comment></comment>


Physicists used atomic clocks to test the theory of general relativity - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/these-physicists-watched-a-clock-tick-for-14-years-straight/ <comment><USER2> > The concept they tested is similar to Galileo's apocryphal experiment, in > which he dropped two objects of the same mass off the Leaning Tower of Pisa > and found that they fell at the same acceleration regardless of their > composition.

Typo. Should say of _different_ masses.

</comment><comment><USER3> >"We've moved the lab 14 times around the sun," says Patla. He's not trying to be cute; it turns out that Earth moves through some distinctive regions in space. Because Earth's orbit isn't a perfect circle—its distance from the sun varies—the clock moved through varying gravitational fields.

Michael from Vsauce has a nice graphic showing that [https://youtu.be/IJhgZBn- LHg?t=1016](https://youtu.be/IJhgZBn-LHg?t=1016)

</comment><comment><USER4> Quibble: the article refers several times to the theory of general relativity. I always thought it was the general theory of relativity: i.e., it was the theory itself that was general, handling everything the special theory (limited to inertial reference frames) couldn't.

Am I making a distinction without a difference? Are there two forms of the name in free variation?

<comment><USER5> They are just somewhat different names of the same thing. General relativity includes the special relativity one where special means without accelerated reference frames, i.e. nothing accelerates or is exposed for gravity.

<comment><USER6> > special means without accelerated reference frames

That's something a lot of people say, but it's not strictly true. Special Relativity is fully capable of describing acceleration in a flat (Minkowski) spacetime[1].

General Relativity is only _really_ needed when there's curvature in the spacetime (gravity).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration_(special_relativi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration_\(special_relativity\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That was more interesting than I expected! Good to test basic assumptions otherwise taken for granted

<comment><USER8> General relativity is not a basic assumption in physics. There is a large feeling that there is something more out there , but that we don't really know what it is . Some theories of dark energy or dark matter work by modifying gravity away from general relativity and in the process create testable predictions.

<comment><USER9> > _There is a large feeling_

Feelings don't count in science. Every experiment (I am aware of) to disprove GR has failed. It is the best explanation of spacetime we have.

<comment><USER10> It is better than a feeling. GR cannot be quantitized. If anyone describes the present status of gravity as anything other than a mystery that we are good at predicting the movements of, they are wrong.

<comment><USER9> > _GR cannot be quantitized_

This is irrelevant. GR makes accurate predictions. Perhaps we haven't figured out how to quantise it. Maybe it isn't a quantum field. Maybe we're mis- interpreting the mathematics.

Hypotheses are interesting. I find the variable speed of light discipline neat. But they're just hypotheses. Until they explain experimental evidence better than GR, they will remain hypotheses.

<comment><USER11> It's not irrelevant if you're looking for new classes of predictions and new kinds of experiments - which is one of the motivations for quantum gravity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My theory is that time runs backwards.</comment>


H-index for Hacker News - <AUTHOR>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index
the variation for Hacker News:
A HNer has index h:
if h of [his/her] posts have at least h upvotes, and the rest posts have at most h upvotes each. <comment><USER2> I don't understand what you are proposing - what is the outcome you want/hope for from mentioning this to us? I don't see a suggestion in your comments or any indication of what sort of dialogue you want/expect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking to clarify. I was just giving another established measure of performance. One that is currently used in academia. It basically indicates the consistency that someone produces quality posts. If for example some body has only 50 posts with more than 50 votes, he has served the community more than somebody that has 2500 vote from 2500 posts. Since he has not polluted the wall with many crappy and indifferent posts.

I was mainly sharing that index, with the hope that karma based site will find interesting.

<comment><USER3> I see a lot wrong with this.

At HN we are not initially tied to our username. I would keep making new accounts/submissions until I hit a gold mine, something that generated a ton of karma. This would make my initial HIndex very high, and give me 2nd, 3rd, and 4th posts a much larger edge.

It would also encourage high risk initial posting. Since every new account's first post is going to be a calculated gamble to gain karma, that first post should be something highly controversial, opinionated, shocking, risky, etc. When it fails or gets downvoted, we just open a new account and try again.

I do not think indifferent comments are bad, in fact I think they are good. They help us realize that its ok to have a non-opinion on something that is seemingly coming off as 'the greatest thing ever'. Of course these comments never get upvoted because they don't mix things up or stir the pot, but they help add clarity and balance to the conversation.

Also my biggest pet peve with HN is often times really good thought out comments go overlooked. Maybe because they are on too high of a level or do not present themselves well. This of course is a current problem with the karma system that the HIndex does not resolve.

<comment><USER4> _new accounts/submissions until I hit a gold mine, something that generated a ton of karma. This would make my initial HIndex very high, and give me 2nd, 3rd, and 4th posts a much larger edge._

I think this is exactly what the HIndex is designed to avoid. One jackpot high karma value only gives you HIndex "1". Two gives you HIndex "2", and so on.

The HIndex rewards a broad pattern where nearly every comment gets consistently well upvoted, rather than lots of ordinary comments and the occasional massive jackpot.

It's closer to the median than the mean.

 _Also my biggest pet peve with HN is often times really good thought out comments go overlooked_

I agree. I think that, in general, karma should be viewed as generalised encouragement for the HN community to stay helpful and informative, rather than as tightly coupled to how helpful and informative each individual comment is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Wish this had been more active - I enjoyed reading OP and ryanto's comments. OP, you might find a bigger audience if you resubmit on a weekday?</comment>


Bitspend - Buy Anything Using Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> https://www.bitspend.net/

<comment><USER3> Hey Guys, this is Jessica from Bitspend :) I want to cover a few things.

1\. Yes, there is a lot wrong with the site right now - including the order form. We had been working all week on the new site, including an automated order-form, and at 4AM this morning we had major issues with the server. Since we had already publicized our launch, we chose to put together what we could for today as we fix the issues that broke the "real" site. We know the site right now is not what it should be - and its killing us too! We promise to have it all fixed shortly.

2\. About our contact information. Within the week not only will we have 800 numbers for you to call for support, but we will also have our office address available, and invite anyone in our area to come in and check us out themselves.

We are aware that what we are doing will take time to build trust in the community, and we will go above and beyond to make sure we earn it. We will continue to work on ways to improve our service to you, and to expand our offerings.

We have a long road ahead, just as the Bitcoin economy itself does. We plan on making the most out of it and providing you all with a way to purchase ANYTHING(Legal!!) with Bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool idea! Few things about the website:

* The navbar on <https://www.bitspend.net/order.html> isn't consistent with the rest of the site. It's missing the "Order Now" link.

* I want to click your logo to go to the home page.

* You're using the Bootstrap default favicon

* Is the business's name Bitspend or BitSpend? Both appear on the site.

* The links on the bottom of the main page don't go anywhere.

* The text in the jumbotron/masthead is misleading. The item isn't shipped directly to the consumer.

* "Unlimit Your Bitcoins" sounds a bit awkward. What about "Unleash Your Bitcoins"?

<comment><USER5> My understanding of the business is that the item IS shipped directly to the consumer. I send them X bitcoins (plus a $2 fee), and a link to amazon.com item, and they buy it for me using their credit card, and Amazon ships it to me not them.

You think the item goes to them first?

<comment><USER6> It says it goes to their warehouse first for "relabeling", then sent to you, "so you can shop anonymously".

It probably also has the benefit of not triggering merchant anti-fraud mechanisms for shipping to all manner of different addresses.

<comment><USER5> There's two types of packages:

\- Standard Order, $2 flat fee

\- Anonymous Order, 5% fee

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea. When I saw the title, my first thoughts went to prepaid one- time credit cards, and I think that might work as a scalable version of this: specify how much you want to spend, send the corresponding amount of BTC (plus fee) to a specified address, and get a credit card number with that much on it to use at an arbitrary merchant that accepts credit cards.

<comment><USER8> Aside: Are you aware of any APIs for the creation of one-time credit/debit cards?

<comment><USER7> I don't know of any, no; you'd probably want to partner with a friendly local bank for that. Offering such an API seems like a great unfilled business idea; I can easily think of half a dozen great businesses to build around that API, and a couple of really obvious business models to charge for it.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. My initial thoughts were around a business built on that (better solving the problem I'm trying to address), but just an API could be huge.

Looking around the internet, I've found a couple related things:

Google Wallet creates a "Virtual OneTime Card" underwritten by The Bancorp Bank for each transaction. <https://developers.google.com/commerce/wallet/online/faq>

Citibank lets you log into your account and create a "virtual account number." [http://blog.credit.com/2011/06/worried-about-online- security...](http://blog.credit.com/2011/06/worried-about-online-security-use- a-temporary-credit-card-number/)

This (brief) thread in a MasterCard forum, referencing closed APIs. [https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/forums/One-t...](https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/forums/One- time+credit+cards)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clearly a secret CIA scheme to link personal details to bitcoin addresses.

<comment><USER10> I'm no expert on bitcoin, but I've read that you can have as many addresses as you want. You could generate a new address for each time you order through bitspend and never give them your "main" address. Overall it may or may not be a better option than just buying directly from a merchant because of other considerations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will money-laundering as a service pass legal muster? It'd be interesting if it does. Anyone know of case law that protects an idea like BitSpend?

Anonymous purchasing power is a Good Thing; going through a third party seems like it adds wrinkles.

<comment><USER12> Doubtful: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gaining trust is key if you want people to give you personal and financial information, and the 30 second Bootstrap website really isn't inspiring any confidence -- especially the visible seams in your pasted together background, the complete lack of form validation, and all the blank links at the bottom.

<comment><USER14> Coinbase is using basic Bootstrap, they seem to be doing fine, selling over $1M USD per month: [http://blog.coinbase.com/post/42587245753/coinbase-is-now- se...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/42587245753/coinbase-is-now-selling- over-1m-usd-of-bitcoin-per)

<comment><USER15> The difference is that YC has invested in Coinbase, which automatically gives them tons of credibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What state are you reshipping from? There are sales tax implications unless you are in a state like Oregon.

Also, I'm sure there are users that need an international reship.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great MVP :) I guess you just receive the orders via the form, and if you see demand, then you start improving the product?

<comment><USER3> That improvement is already underway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> yikes, hope you have good insurance and a fat legal warchest

</comment><comment><USER19> This is likely to solicit questions about whether purchases can be anonymous. However, I don't think that matters. As long as an average Joe (who doesn't care about anonymity) can use this to spend bitcoins, the overall acceptance of the currency should increase. That benefits all bitcoin users, including the paranoid ones.

<comment><USER20> > As long as an average Joe (who doesn't care about anonymity) can use this to > spend bitcoins

My question is, why does Joe who doesn't care about anonymity, care about Bitcoin?

<comment><USER19> If you owe Joe money, he might accept bitcoins because he knows he can use them (minus a fee) at sites like bitspend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What happens if you need to refund something?

<comment><USER22> then you get a refund (including fee).

They use some fancy PKI footwork to facilitate returns/refunds without retaining customer/order information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unless you're specifically aiming for illegal transactions, I'd remove the specific reference to law enforcement.

<comment><USER23> I think it's good to have it mentioned, regardless. Too many sites claim they "won't turn over information" or claim they don't keep records, only to later say "ok well for LE, yeah", proving they had your data the entire time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> * How do you handle the cost of shipping if the user is not based in the USA?

* If I buy from a non-USA based site, how are the customs charges handled when the items arrives at your warehouse?

* How will you handle returns if the item is defective or damaged?

<comment><USER5> Not my site, but I think "Standard orders" go direct to you not to a warehouse. You pay shipping from the original seller, whatever they charge. You pay customs fees. Returns are going to be a pain in the ass - don't expect to be able to do that very easily.

For "anonymous orders", the concept doesn't seem thought through very well. Only 5% fee on any order from $1-$300? So I want to buy something from eBay for $1, you will anonymize that for 5 cents? I don't think so. I doubt you'll be able to do international orders anonymously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's possible to submit the order form at <https://www.bitspend.net/order.html> and receive a success message without completing any of the fields. No validation - a big bug?

<comment><USER26> It's an MVP. No point in writing all that validation code just yet - <USER2> people understand that you actually have to fill the fields in.

<comment><USER6> I think an MVP of anything related to finances (be it cash, card, or bitcoin) should include SSL and validation. I see there's SSL.

In any case, adding simple form validation there would have taken <10 minutes with a decent library (especially given that they're already "using" jQuery - though perhaps not actually "using"; it seems that they've taken the Bootstrap example HTML wholesale, and include a bunch of other Bootstrap jQuery plugins that they're not using - or have at least included it).

Apparently their MVP includes a "secure warehouse"... but not ten minutes of Javascript?

There are many things that can be excused under the umbrella of "... but MVP!".

This site is asking people to place their trust in an anonymous entity to the sum of several hundred dollars - I say anonymous because there is ZERO contact information on the site, no address, email (well, other than for Media Requests), or anything.

Speaking of anonymity, there are also no corporate registration records for "Bitspend LLC" in Florida (where the domain is registered), or the US, for that matter.

MVP or not, this site doesn't scream "credibility".

<comment><USER3> We love the constructive criticism, however we would like to ask that you stick to facts when claiming something:

"Speaking of anonymity, there are also no corporate registration records for "Bitspend LLC" in Florida "

If you did a simple business title search on the FL sunbiz site, you would find Bitspend LLC listed, right at the top :)

As far as your other concerns, we are able to admit that where the site is at this exact moment is not where it should be. We promise to have it up to your standards by end of week!!

<comment><USER6> I'm willing to stand corrected. I had done a Dun & Bradstreet corporate registration search.

Duly noted!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Standard Order, Order Total of $1: $2 fee; Guaranteed Anonymity, Order Total of $1: $0.05 fee Is it true?</comment>


Why I Left Android for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://wojdylosocialmedia.com/left-android-iphone/

<comment><USER2> _There are some Android smartphones that are still running operating systems that are two or three versions old. I am not going to get into the technical reasons for this but I think it is silly. Why should a Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket be running an operating system that is completely different from the Nexus 4? All Apple iPhones are running the same operating system._

How can multiple versions of android os be considered different operating systems, but multiple versions of the iphone os not different?

<comment><USER3> Well I'm not an android guy per se, but I'll take a crack at it. In the iOS side of things, there is ONE distribution that has versions. You may be at an older or newer version than another iPhone user, but it's always in the same upgrade path.

With Android there is an OS, and like Linux distributions there have risen up a number of distributions of android. Each device maker is able to use android for free to build a distribution for their phones, but it's up to the phone companies to maintain support and bring updates to their distribution. Because of this, different android phones at the same version in different distributions could be considered different OSes, and different android phones in the same distribution with different version numbers could be the same OS.

That's my understanding of it, and also why non-Google android phones often lag in support. It's all a numbers game and the phone companies make sure the best sellers get the fastest updates and get around to supporting the phones that aren't selling anymore when they have a chance

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friend had an Android phone. She was pretty good with tech. But her and I, working together, could not solve some of her issues. Android is infinitely more customizable, but the iPhone, as a general rule, just works.

<comment><USER5> What were a couple of them?

<comment><USER4> Had a text message that would not go away. Ever. Killed every app, reset every messaging service. If she did reset her phone she would have to re-download her apps. Sync wouldn't work? And her data would come on at random times. She didn't have unlimited so it was a stress she didn't want. :)

<comment><USER6> Text message that wouldn't go away doesn't sound as bad as one you never receive re: iMessage

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tune in next week on why icecream is better in a bowl than a mug.</comment>


Show HN: A Customizable SoundCloud Player Built on the Web Audio API and d3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.toneden.io/player <comment><USER2> Tim from ToneDen here. You can check out the full repo and documentation at [https://github.com/ToneDen/toneden-sdk](https://github.com/ToneDen/toneden- sdk).

Let me know what you guys think!

<comment><USER3> Hi Tim, ToneDen looks really cool. I love the look of the live-frequency line.

I wish to incorporate aspects of the player on ([http://spawnsong.com](http://spawnsong.com)), will this work for non- soundcloud sources of music?

Do you have an e-mail that I can contact you at?

<comment><USER2> Definitely! I can point you to how we are doing it on our player.

You can reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This player looks _fantastic_. I really wish I could use it on our site (www.gigsalad.com) for custom MP3s that the our users have uploaded. Is there any chance this might ever happen?

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. Hit me up at email@example.com and I'll show you how.

<comment><USER5> This is why I like HN. I was about to build something similar. I choose the same color and even picked the same spinner [http://tobiasahlin.com/spinkit/](http://tobiasahlin.com/spinkit/) :)

Kudos. I'd like to give a try with my mp3 library. Maybe just add it to README?

I had two bugs. \- header bg was not loaded \- there was a high pitch sound (defo not part of the song)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks really nice. Am I blind or is there no volume control? Is there a reason you chose to exclude it?

<comment><USER2> We definitely gave this some thought. We put it aside to keep the player minimal assuming that people listening would resort to using the volume control built into their computers.

We have the functionality for it there in the source but we just need to implement a UI for it.

<comment><USER7> Just put it next to the timeline. The lack of a volume control on is a _huge_ annoyance with the existing Soundcloud embeds, and it was the first thing I looked for.

 _We put it aside to keep the player minimal assuming that people listening would resort to using the volume control built into their computers._

I'm guessing you use a Mac. PCs don't have volume controls on the keyboard. So to change it IO either need to leave my browser environment to change the OS volume, or reach for a physical volume control.

I very much want the volume control associated with the player, for two reasons. First, I never know in advance what sort of volume a given video or audio clip on the internet will have, so I want the ability to adjust for that close to the controls for navigating internally within the clip or selecting other clips. Second, I don't want to change my _computer_ volume at all if I can avoid it, because I'ma sound engineer and I already have the system volume set to a level that I'm comfortable with for recording and editing. Adjusting the computer's default volume will throw it out of what relative to everything else that's plugged into my mixer.

Sure, relatively few computer users are sound engineers - for the typical music consumer, this in't a problem. On the other hand, the majority of people with Soundcloud accounts _are_.

<comment> vertex-four Laptops definitely all have volume control on the keyboard, and even my current (wireless) desktop keyboard has volume control. Is this still not standard on wired desktop keyboards?

<comment><USER8> They do... They're just terrible. Unresponsive, and inconsistent. Of course, part of that might be that windows seems to give the volume -control less thread priority than rebuilding search indexes or updating virus definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The screenshots I saw on github look great but it's a complete no-go on Firefox 24.10 on linux.

<comment><USER2> Ouch. We didn't have a Linux machine around to test that case but we will definitely look into it. Right now Chrome is the best supported for our player.

<comment><USER9> I don't think version 24 and earlier supports Web Audio API, according to what I found with a little digging so it's not your code.

<comment><USER2> We do have flash fallback but no one's got time for that :)

<comment><USER10> Not working for me on Chromium 33.0.1750.152 Ubuntu 13.10, stuck loading forever.

<comment><USER2> Good to know. I'll find a Linux box to test this on. Thanks for the info.

<comment><USER11> It works fine on 34 Chrome on Linux.

You might want to give something like Saucelabs or Browserstack a go if they offer Linux?

Otherwise you just use virtualbox for an opensource winning way. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really neat looking, but 50% CPU usage is a bit much. Admittedly, I'm on an older Core 2 Duo desktop, but still, I don't even remember Winamp visualizations taking this much CPU on my old Pentium-class machine years ago.

<comment><USER12> On a side note, thanks for turning me on to this remix of "Music Sounds Better With You"!

Actually, you have pretty good taste in music, I like all of the tracks you have in the default playlist :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it possible to have it such that changing theme doesn't stop the audio? Also buffering issues result in the last tone being held until playback can continue, might be more pleasant if it were just silence.

Aside from that, looks fantastic!

<comment><USER2> It's possible. Right now the CSS isn't being applied dynamically so we are actually recreating the player instance every time the theme is changed in this demo.

The second issue is something we are very familiar with. What we think is happening here is that if the track is buffering too slow and the playing progress catches up with the buffer, our player should just stop playing until the track loads. We are playing with the thresholds to make the player pause before it gets to that case. We are pushing a fix for this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cutting down square album covers to a circle isn't always very nice. Plus, I had a couple of audio glitches while the player was in a background tab; never experienced anything like that with SC player.

</comment><comment><USER15> This player is really nice, but is there a compelling reason to tie the API to soundcloud instead of having the usual player setup where the caller feeds it a tracklist containing audio URLs and metadata?

<comment><USER2> Eventually we want to be agnostic to any streaming service out there today. Right now, we believe SoundCloud is doing streaming the best by allowing people to easily publish and share their music. However, we have plans on implementing support for tracks from other sources like Bandcamp, Mixcloud, and YouTube.

Functionality for including tracks locally on the server is there also, but we need to modify the API for this a little.

<comment><USER16> How would you get around the restrictive Youtube API? With such rules as having the embed visible?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What does the SoundCloud API terms say about this? I thought it was like YouTube where you are required to at least show their embedded version when using it.

<comment><USER2> The track streaming is openly accessible but there are some rules arround attribution which are required: [http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/buttons- logos](http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/buttons-logos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> hey tim -- this looks really nice!

just one small note -- you may want to disable the "next track" button if you're on the last track of the playlist. it just makes the song pause now if you press "next" while on the last track (and if you hit the play/resume button it starts the song over from the beginning)

<comment><USER2> Good call. I think we'll just make pressing 'next' loop back to the beginning of the playlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice work, Tim!

Just a heads up: the D3 visualization doesn't seem to be working in FF28 on Win 7.

<comment><AUTHOR> We should mention this on the site, but the visualizer currently only works in Chrome due to some idiosyncrasies with the way other browsers handle (or don't handle) getting waveform data from audio tags. We're working on it though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mixture of Webaudio API with D3 is awesome , liked the themes as well .. good work :)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a beautiful player, and fast too. Thanks for open sourcing it. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER22> Really clean UI, maybe add a repeat button or integrate hotkeys likes soundcloud

<comment><USER2> There is a parameter to enable keyboard events that's turned off in our demo. You can check out our documentation on GitHub.

The repeat button is on our dev list. Should be out in a week or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> cool, but it reminds me how underrated using the waveform is when showing the track- its such a good way to scrub through and pick spots.

<comment><USER2> This is not evident on our demo but we've engineered the ability for you to get waveform data and visualize that as you like. Right now we visualize equalizer data but it would be trivial to create a visualization for realtime waveforms etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice. Like it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not seeing an obvious way to change the volume.

<comment><USER27> May I ask why you would want to change the volume of a browser widget over, say, a browser, or your system volume? As someone that has developed a similar widget, I've never understood this request, and more often than not, users accidentally mute themselves.

<comment><USER28> I have many sources of audio, and their volumes vary dramatically. Unless I want to adjust the global volume every time I switch audio sources, adjusting each source once and having it stay correct makes more sense.

Think of turning up your system or browser volume for a quiet song, and then viewing a loud flash video. You might hurt your ears or disturb someone. Adjusting only your music player for songs without ruining your volume setting for some other source gives you a finer control.

<comment><USER15> I used to espouse this "finer control" argument but I've come to realize it was more typical nerd desire for hyperconfiguration than practical need. Yes, things make noises at different volumes and some are too loud and some are too quiet and they force you to jump and adjust the volume when this happens. But it's not generally predictable, so you're not going to set it just right ahead of time, and having N volume controls to go paging through to find the one that needs adjusting is a hell of a lot more difficult than just having a hardware control, always right there, that adjusts everything immediately. The number of times I've wanted to actually listen to multiple audio sources at once and carefully set their relative volumes is almost certainly in the single digits over my entire lifetime. Unless we're talking about doing mixing for an audio project, which of course we're not.

Every media player on every web page could set its volume permanently to 100% and I really would never even notice.

<comment><USER2> I think what we are thinking of is making volume control an optional parameter to enable/disable. That way we can give the embedder the ability to control that experience for the listener. Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> I don't want the embedder to control my listener experience, actually. That person knows nothing about my listening environment, and I don't want to adjust for their content. I realize this isn't such a big deal for someone that has SoundCloud playing in the background on their laptop while they do something else, but it's a total pain in the ass for anyone who works with audio professionally.

<comment><USER2> Got it. We will be implementing volume control. Look for it in the next couple of days :)

<comment><USER7> Awesome! Thanks for being so responsive, and I'll keep an eye on the project. Feel free to hit me up for feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Git-sweep: a tool to remove your merged feature branches - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arc90/git-sweep

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first public release of this tool, if you run into any problems please let me know. <https://github.com/arc90/git-sweep/issues>

</comment><comment><USER2> The fun thing is, because you named it git-sweep, you can use it like a regular git command instead of needing to use git-sweep, for example: git sweep preview</comment>


The inaccurate use of "risk-averse" - <AUTHOR> https://dereksakamoto.com/2019/02/12/the-inaccurate-use-of-risk-averse/ <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback would be appreciated</comment>


Social.com Domain Is Up for Auction: Who Will Bid? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.louisgray.com/2011/05/socialcom-domain-is-up-for-auction-who.html

<comment><USER2> I doubt anyone wants this. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are already brands. Nobody says, "I want to do social networking! I'm going to type social.com!" They just google Facebook and go there.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft might though, would certainly be more relevant than the amorphous live.com.

<comment><USER4> It wouldn't be unheard of for Microsoft to rebrand it again. They have already rebranded it 3 times!

<comment><USER5> Microsoft Live Social Network, very catchy

<comment><USER4> Microsoft Bing Hotmail Live Social Network Simulator

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Color could rebrand as Social.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just, on principal, because there are gazillions of free domains out there, bidding on crap like this seems wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some dubious <strike>porn company</strike> adult-dating-site for sure. Maybe even Microsoft as @sradnidge notes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone give a price estimate? I assume something like 200k?

<comment><USER10> According to the auction catalog at [http://domainauctions.moniker.com/viewCatalog?id=209&x=6...](http://domainauctions.moniker.com/viewCatalog?id=209&x=63&y=14), opening price will be $5MM or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any potential buyer for Soci.al domain?

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like it might be perfect for LivingSocial. Still far from a household name with a somewhat awkward domain name (what does living social mean?), and lots of cash. I think they'd be happy to rebrand as social.com.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. That was one of my suggestions as well.</comment></comment>