Making Games with Kotlin - <AUTHOR> https://kotlin.christmas/2019/11 <comment><USER2> People usually get confused when we tell them that we're using Kotlin for our backend APIs. I can't blame them because we attended KotlinConf last year and almost 90% of the audience were using Kotlin on the Android platform.

Hopefully, it gets more attraction from different platforms because staying in the JVM land and being able to use an expressive & lightweight language is great!

<comment><USER3> Sebastian Deleuze who is one of the Kotlin people working on Spring just gave a presentation of the status of Kotlin support in Spring: [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/spring-kotlin-boot- kofu/](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/spring-kotlin-boot-kofu/).

In short, if you are using Spring and are ignoring Kotlin, you are missing out a lot of good stuff. Or in other words, the same that happened to Java on Android is now happening to backend Java. You can still use it but why would you when things can be so much better with a simple upgrade to Kotlin (I've migrated tens of thousands of lines of code, it's easy). And yes Java 9-14 added a bunch of things that are definitely nice/useful but it doesn't come close to Kotlin in terms of expressiveness and language ergonomics.

Also, KotlinConf was on last week. There was a nice presentation about the state of kotlin-js, which is getting some nice updates in the next year including much better dead code elimination resulting in very compact minified code (< 100kb is now feasible for simple stuff), better integration of existing typescript type script defifinitions (i.e. support for most relevant npms out there), better build tooling in the form of an improved gradle plugin. Or put different, Kotlin might start doing to typescript/javascript what it already did to Java. IMHO it's a more capable language than typescript, which I consider to be pretty nice but it just lacks a bunch of things and comes with a some ugliness that relates to backwards compatibility with js.

In related news, Kotlin native is also happening. So, Kotlin is joining a list of full stack languages that used to be really short.

<comment><USER4> What's the status of Kotlin Native for writing backend apps? I really like it but I wouldn't want to get dragged into Gradle, JARs and JDBC again...

<comment><USER3> The native compiler is maturing and they are moving the JVM and JS compilers to the IR format they have developed for that. Additionally, they are going to support a new type of library that compiles to IR and that is reusable for all platforms.

They already have a few multi platform things. Mainly Ktor currently, which kind of should work on native. Additionally, you can target the node-js ecosystem via Kotlin-js. Also, one goal with Spring Kofu at least is also supporting GraalVM at least.

They are also adding more platforms to the native target.

Reading between the lines with what was announced last week at Kotlinconf, I expect a lot of this stuff might stay at least partially experimental through the 1.4 cycle (current is 1.3.61) and would expect that they might start pushing harder on backend native stuff around 1.5. Also there are still a lot of question marks around things like WASM where e.g. MS has a more clear strategy with .Net and Blazor.

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot for all the info! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know the situation on mobile but for cross platform Desktop the JVM is a great target for "write once, run everywhere", and Kotlin is a modern language that fixes or improves a lot of Java's common complaints.

Assuming a JVM is installed, distribution is as simple as sending a packaged .jar file.

There is a huge ecosystem of available libraries in Java, many with Kotlin wrappers for idiomatic usage.

<comment><USER6> Didn't Java fail spectacularly in the desktop application space?

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't say "spectacularly", as I don't remember that many attempts at true end-user apps. Enterprise is ripe with Swing.

Nowadays of course the web has blunted our pain receptors for memory bloat and non-native UIs, thus you're probably running three Electron apps right now, compared to which Java is Win32ASM.

And as others pointed out, for games it doesn't matter anyway. You're not building a AAA-game or something for a 6510, so GC pauses and memory consumption don't matter, either. Plus rapid-development, refactoring and a setup where OOP actually makes good sense.

I wouldn't start Kotlin for that, but if you already know it, there's no reason not to use it.

<comment><USER8> GC is also not that big of an issue in these type of games if one's careful of using pools for the various objects, and then release stuff at appropriate times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a side note, there seems to be a lot of links being posted from vanity TLDs such as .christmas. Isn't there a risk of these links ending up broken in a matter of nothing?

<comment><USER10> .christmas seems to be owned by Uniregistry[0], which also owns at least 26 other TLDs, so I think we can expect them to continue providing service.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top- level_dom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top- level_domains#C)

<comment><USER9> My concern doesn't lie with the TLD registrar, but with the interest in, say, maintaining a .christmas domain in non-christmas times of the year.

<comment><USER11> There is chrismas every year.

<comment><USER9> Yes, and it's relevant for a month tops?

Who will be more compelled to click on a Christmas link in, say, July? A christmas-themed link in February or March seems stale as hell.

<comment><USER12> We saw a steady flow of traffic all through last year on a few .christmas domains from last year's advent calendars.

I don't think they seem stale, but perhaps out of season Either way, we're committed to keep this content online for the foreseeable future, and write a new edition next year if people find it interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shameless plug: I'm working on a multiplatform library ([https://github.com/Hexworks/zircon](https://github.com/Hexworks/zircon)) which can be used to write roguelike games with ascii and/or tile based graphics. The whole project is MPP Kotlin (99% common code). We have a LibGDX renderer as well (although we're not using LibKTX yet).

</comment><comment><USER12> Kotlin seems to have a lot of the tooling required to make games pretty quickly. That's not to say it's not a massive undertaking! The demo at the bottom is just mindblowing

</comment><comment><USER14> My goal is to make a full kotlin android/iOS/backend game with shared business logic. How fare are wew from that?

<comment><USER15> Why not unity? (It's an obligatory question at this point)

<comment><USER14> Because I absolutely love Kotlin and I feel I'm much more productive with it. I have a hard time working with script languages and feel confident on my code nowadays.

Also, Kotlin let you use tons of java libraries.

<comment><USER16> C# is hardly a script language, also Kotlin Native is hardly a tool for gaming with its lack of real multithreading support

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is targeting iOS better now with libgdx? Couple years ago the iOS support was kind of spotty.

<comment><USER18> MS did not like competition to Xamarian so they have killed RoboVM unfortunately...

EDIT: Apparently it's not dead and there seem to be up-to-date instructions here: [https://medium.com/@bschulte19e/deploying-your-libgdx- game-t...](https://medium.com/@bschulte19e/deploying-your-libgdx-game-to-ios- in-2019-8d3796410d82)

<comment><USER19> I can confirm that. I have a couple of games on App Store that use it. I built them initially in 2015 and have updated them a couple of months ago with the latest libGDX.

I used RoboVM just like that person in the article, but I used it with Intellij IDEA instead of Android Studio.

It works and it's pretty easy and straightforward to set up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I know that a killer feature for Kotlin is that you can use the same code to compile to JS, JVM and Native. Is it actually feasible in practice? Can I make a game that will compile to JS, JVM and Native all with the same code? I assume the core logic would be shared and I'd have to implement platform- specific routines for things like drawing and input, but would this actually work?

<comment><USER21> Only if all the libraries you use aren't JVM specific. In this case, the developer is using wrapper for a Java library so I doubt it's possible.

There's no reason the wrapper couldn't be enhanced to use the Java library on the JVM and something else on native but it would probably be a lot of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Although not strictly a game engine, OPENRNDR[0] could probably be used to create one in Kotlin.

> OPENRNDR is a tool to create tools. It is an open source framework for > creative coding, written in Kotlin for the Java VM that simplifies writing > real-time interactive software.

[0]: [https://openrndr.org/](https://openrndr.org/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Is LibGDX still a viable option for MacOS? I'm unclear about how well supported OpenGL is after Catalina.

</comment><comment><USER24> We are using Kotlin in most of our backends running on AWS. We are very(!) happy with the Kotlin developer experience as well as the adoption curve that we have seen throughout our company. I can only highly recommend giving it a try and do not believe it is only meant for App development.

</comment><comment><USER25> At the risk of seeming an ingrate: Does LibKtx also do 3D?</comment>


It shouldn't take 64 lines of code to do something really simple  - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelabor.blogspot.com/2011/10/all-public-government-data-should-be.html

<comment><USER2> I don't doubt this guy's assertion that the data could be formatted better, but if I were working on something like this I'd just be glad that I could access the data at all.

And 64 lines of code... bfd? That's much better than the bad old days of custom binary data formats where you have to write a thousand line data loader in C, worrying about issues like lsb vs msb, whether the number storage is properly following IEEE 754, etc.

I guess I'm just...old, because my first response to 'I had to write 64 lines of Python code to get this data into shape' is to shake my head and think "Kids these days!".

<comment><USER3> I wish I could parse everything I've been asked to parse with 64 lines of Python.

FWIW, I find it ironic that the author is complaining about whitespace-implied structure in his source data, yet uses Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point was not that this was absolutely hard, but rather that's way too hard for the totally mundane thing I was trying to accomplish---namely getting public data from a US-funded statistical agency into a form suitable for further statistical analysis (which is the whole reason they make this data public).

Also, I don't see how it's ironic that I used Python---it seems irrelevant. Whitespace in Python has a well-defined, commonly understood purpose; using tabs or spaces to indicate hierarchal data relationships is not at all standard, presumably because it creates messy dependencies across rows of data.

<comment><USER4> "Messy dependencies across rows" is exactly how Python whitespace works. That data file exactly Pythonic indentation in the main content section.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason indentation to imply structure doesn't make sense for datasets is that in data analysis you are constantly subsetting and sorting data at the row level---something you generally don't do to the lines of a compter program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW the greater Department of Labor (of which the BLS is a subordinate unit) has a pretty okay web API with several "SDKs" (most of which are API wrappers for particular languages). Weirdly, no Python wrapper yet but I wrote one, as well as another for Clojure

<https://github.com/mattdeboard/python-usdol> <https://github.com/mattdeboard/clj-usdol>

edit: A couple of the BLS's databases are available through the DOL API:

<http://developer.dol.gov/BLS_Numbers-DATASET.htm>

"This Dataset contains historic data (last 10 years) for the most common economic indicators. More information and details about the data provided can be found at <http://bls.gov>

<http://developer.dol.gov/DOL-BLS2010-DATASET.htm>

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces occupational employment and wage estimates for over 450 industry classifications at the national level."

That last one is actually a pretty interesting dataset. I pulled it to tinker with at work last week.

</comment><comment><USER6> Given the crazy complicated XML schemas people come up with, I'd say you are lucky it's just plain text, and you can parse it without needing a library.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ironically, at work we buy a bunch of BLS datasets from a third-party vendor. Their format is even worse: an opaque binary database and a win32 DLL that reads it. 1000 lines of Haskell later, it sort of works...

(This is mostly because they chose to represent dates as integers, and they have four possible date types: yearly, quarterly, monthly, and daily. 1901, in their exciting world, could mean "year 1901" or it could mean "month January 1919". That's nice work, Lou.)

<comment><USER4> Sounds like Excel.

Where do you work that uses Haskell in the office?

<comment><USER7> I work for BofA, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that uses Haskell.

I used Haskell because I hate Windows, and Haskell lets me do all my work in a maximized Emacs session without having to install anything other than Emacs and the Haskell Platform. "When life gives you Windows, don't make lemonade. Use Haskell."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yup, worked on this very data problem (bad data sources, especially gov) for a long time, but gave up as I didn't see it as the road to riches. At the end I hit upon an AI solution I'm sure will work, but I never finished it, still on the shelf, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this the problem that data.gov is trying to solve?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing that's the goal, but it's only going to be as good as the inputs provided by the different agencies.

For example, if you look for the time series I was after on data.gov, the "Download CSV" button brings you to...the BLS page, with all the problems I discussed.

[http://explore.data.gov/Labor-Force-Employment-and- Earnings/...](http://explore.data.gov/Labor-Force-Employment-and- Earnings/American-Time-Use-Survey/jgti-eqds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try Data Wrangler <http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand the headline, the Python code in the article is not so terrible considering the input.

<comment><USER11> His point is precisely that the input is awful.

<comment><USER10> Yes, the article says the input is awful, but this headline implies the code is awful.

<comment><USER12> +1

I was think something along the lines of, look at this stupid person who needs 64 lines of code to do a simple insert in a binary tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Semantic web :) Solves everything, not kidding.

Although is a few years when there are a million new standards I guess I can keep my job :)

<comment><USER12> Why am I down voted? Semantic Web does indeed solve this and many more problems. And I'm the only one to mention it. The semantic web has standards for data, standards for the semantic mark-up and ability to connect multiple datasets together. It also allows for standardisation of vocabulary and sharing and reuse.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GitEgo.com - GitHub Stat Tracking - <AUTHOR>

Two weeks ago I wished I knew how quickly the watcher count on some of my repos was growing. Now I can. In addition to watchers, I'm also tracking issues, forks, and repo size.
I find it fascinating to watch how issues trickle in throughout the day for large project like Rails http://bit.ly/rvsNLM. Also interesting to see how Node seems to be rapidly growing in size http://bit.ly/vstVN9.
Let me know what you think http://gitego.com/ <comment><USER2> Should make it so that I can get the github repo from the gitego page.

EDIT: Just found the link on the graph. Tough find :P

</comment><comment><USER3> if it's an ego thing, why not allow tracking all the repos for a user/association?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I plan to allow users to log in with their GitHub account which will then import all of their repos. I could make a page that aggregates all of the gains for a specific user. Thanks for this fantastic idea :)</comment></comment>


Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 Fan Port Hit with DMCA - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341284/Super_Mario_Bros_Commodore_64_fan_port_hit_with_DMCA_takedowns.php <comment><USER2> Nintendo are the Disney of the gaming industry in regards to protecting their IPs.

Any in-game footage of a Nintendo game on youtube can be flagged by Nintendo (of Japan usually) at any time. They don't really check for fair use beforehand.

<comment><USER3> Apparently, they've lightened up a bit on this. [https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18117172/nintendo- youtub...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18117172/nintendo-youtube- monetization-partner-program-super-smash-bros-ultimate-lets-play-livestream)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nobody hates their most hardcore fans more than Nintendo.

<comment><USER5> > Nobody hates their most hardcore fans more than Nintendo.

Perhaps you should not become a fan of a company with such a bullying behaviour.

<comment><USER6> One can certainly stop being a fan, but a Nintendo fan was probably one before they knew anything about how they treat their fans. Blaming the victim for not knowing enough about ostensibly bad company practices when they became fans seems more than a little unfair, especially as many became fans when they were quite young.

<comment><USER5> I openly say I cannot _stay_ a fan as soon as I hear of such bullying behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't worry, it's still out there, just like AM2R. Give it a few weeks so Ninty can parade around like they won something, and if you're in the right places, you'll hear about the continued development.

<comment><USER8> Where should I look? Have AM2R_131, will travel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While this is crappy, it is the default behavior of most large companies when it comes to copyright. As people have described I mistakenly said that copyright must be enforced or it is lost. Agreed I was confusing it with trademark. Despite that, I see many companies treating copyright the same and harassing all copyright infringers with abandon even if it is harmless.

I will also share another story. Some years ago I owned n64.org. I ran a fan website of Nintendo 64 games there. It was quite popular. I was underage ( < 18 ) at the time I bought the domain, and I bought the domain before NOA registered "n64" as a trademark.

NOA threatened to sue me for the domain. I refused as their claim that people would think my fan site was the official Nintendo site was entirely nonsense. In the end they wrote a check to me for like $50 or something equally ridiculous.

Nintendo is not your friend. They don't do a good job taking care of their fans. They will happily sue or threaten you for doing anything they don't happen to like.

<comment><USER10> I am not a lawyer, but I am nearly 100% sure that what you are talking about is trademark protection [1] rather than copyright, people get these wrong frequently. As far as I know, you can enforce your copyright completely arbitrarily.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They seem to really hate direct ports of their work.

Curiously, there is a thriving Super Mario 64 rom hacking community that is rarely hit with notices. Afaik, no one really knows why. There are 100+ games and even a nearly complete level editor. Even when Nintendo were demonetizing videos of their games, these were spared.

<comment><USER12> > thriving Super Mario 64 rom hacking community that is rarely hit with notice

Probably limited resources. The ones that do get hit are the big ones like Super Mario 64 Online [1] . Instead of the hacks themselves they seem focus on youtube quite a bit. I know a lot of Super Mario 64 emulation and emulation of other Nintendo properties is often DMCAed on that platform. [2] discussion [3]

[1] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43axqp/nintendo-s...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43axqp/nintendo- shuts-down-the-internets-favorite-super-mario-64-modder)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E&t=192s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E&t=192s)

[3] [https://www.ign.com/boards/threads/nintendo-is-abusing- youtu...](https://www.ign.com/boards/threads/nintendo-is-abusing-youtubes- copyright-system-to-get-switch-homebrew-videos-taken-down.455352104/)

<comment><USER11> The article is confusing about the details.

"Last Impact" never got a takedown notice and PC Gamer even wrote an article about it (as well as Nintendo clearly being aware of Kaze).

As I said, there is a lack of aggression against SM64 hacks and it has never really been explained--but yes, they do hate copies or extensions to their engines that are essentially their own game, but better. SM64 online definitely qualifies. But again, this isn't correlated to how popular or how much of an online footprint the games have.

(Article here [https://www.pcgamer.com/super-mario-64-rom-hack-last- impact-...](https://www.pcgamer.com/super-mario-64-rom-hack-last-impact-is- the-sequel-we-never-got/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dissappointing, but entirely expected.

That's OK. The DMCA action will have little impact on the community of people who enjoy this kind of thing.

(people who have been around long enough to know better is possible here)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730987)

</comment><comment><USER15> I fail to see how this takedown benefits Nintendo.

How could a C64 port of a NES game released more than 30 years ago could threaten _any_ sale of _anything_ ?

<comment><USER16> It's probably related to trademarks: you lose a trademark if you don't enforce it. If they let this go, chances are they would lose the Super Mario trademark, which would hurt them.

<comment><USER17> > If they let this go, chances are they would lose the Super Mario trademark

You can't be serious. Are you saying that, sitting on a civil jury hearing a lawsuit at some future date, you'd conclude that Mario - one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world - is no longer a trademark of Nintendo because a third party made a C64 clone of the game?

I don't understand how you view this as the likely outcome. Nothing even close to this has ever happened ever.

> Quite simply, the view that a trademark holder must trawl the internet and > respond to every unauthorized use (or even every infringing use) is a myth. > It's great for lawyers, but irritating and expensive for everyone else. And > when done clumsily or maliciously, it chills free expression.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does- not...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require- companies-tirelessly-censor-internet)

<comment><USER18> > It's great for lawyers, but irritating and expensive for everyone else. And > when done clumsily or maliciously

I'm not arguing the truth of the claim, but consider: if a lawyer advises you to defend your trademarks and that you _could_ lose them if you don't, would you risk it? There's no obvious upside to being _nice_ in cases like this.

<comment><USER19> >There's no obvious upside to being nice in cases like this.

Sure there is. Good PR. Your lawyer will advise you to do all sorts of things that are PR suicide to avoid nearly non-existent legal risks if nothing more than to cover themselves.

One of the most important jobs an executive has is to rein in the lawyers to keep them from publicly embarrassing the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bummer. I was fully prepared to exhibit this amazing bit of work at my new retro-computing exhibit [1], and I expect it would have been inspiring for a lot of local indie game developers to have had the chance to see it in person ..

Well, instead, I'll just focus on some of the other gem releases of the retro- dev scene, and fortunately there are a _LOT_ of other great works being produced for these old machines - of limited commercial value - but massive cultural worth. Still, seeing a near-perfect port of Super Mario Bros. on the old C64 is an amazing thing, and fills me full of inspiring thoughts. Bummer, Nintendo.

[1] - [https://subotron.com/7635-timetron-2019/](https://subotron.com/7635-timetron-2019/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah, Nintendo seems to be pretty intense with this stuff (sometimes very unfairly, like in this instance with Modern Vintage Gamer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E))

</comment><comment><USER22> I grabbed a copy of it if anyone's interested.

<comment><USER23> Where do I sign up?

<comment><USER22> [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-fDPJ2Z2pMmrqW6FTxv- Osi92z...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-fDPJ2Z2pMmrqW6FTxv-Osi92zmiZc8A)

<comment><USER24> Thank you!

<comment><USER22> You're welcome. I respect Nintendo. I also respect the indie game community and fans who have kept retro gaming alive all these years. I believe the two can combine efforts some day. I hope you enjoy the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, the Slashdot thread on this was actually more informative. I think that's a first for me.

The issue is trademark: if they don't defend it, they could lose it. It's really that simple.

<comment><USER26> How does DMCA apply to trademark? I thought the DMCA was only about copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They did the same with a fan-made remake of Metroid 2, though that was Nintendo USA:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM2R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM2R)

[http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/](http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> It shows the C64 could run NES type games.

Gaina Sisters did SMB first but also got sued by Nintendo.

</comment><comment><USER29> What is another strategy around this aside from release quickly and hopefully gains enough following.

We see this with Disney, Star Trek but not to this extent.

<comment><USER28> Make Super Tux Brothers or something that does not look like SMB.

<comment><USER30> Great Giana Sisters

<comment><USER13> ...which also saw action from Nintendo.

<comment><USER5> According to the German Wikipedia article

> > [https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Great_Giana_S...](https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Great_Giana_Sisters&oldid=183387863#Angeblicher_Rechtsstreit_mit_Nintendo)

there was no lawsuit between Rainbow Arts and Nintendo, but only a threat of legal steps by Nintendo, which lead to the situation that the existing copies were withdrawn from being commercially available.

Also the alleged lawsuit by Nintendo made The Great Giana Sisters world- famous, even though it was - as remarked - not sold anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A lot of people here a like "Nintendo hates their fans", but seriously, this is a product that Nintendo is currently selling (Well, technically renting to subscribers) why should they stand idle as people pirate it?</comment>


5 common password sins that weaken security - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.csc.com/2016/01/24/five-common-password-sins-that-weaken-security/ <comment><USER2> On the whole, good advice. Nothing new.

However; "[on reusing usernames] .. _Your username and password combination is a lock, and your username is half of it, so obscure it._ " \-- this bit is nonsense.

This entire article could be replaced with "use a password manager".</comment>


Leaked email reveals anti-piracy meeting with Google, Sony, and Homeland Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/11/7376599/anti-piracy-meeting-between-google-sony-eli-lilly-homeland-security

<comment><USER2> These people need to be stopped. Moneyed interests have no business conspiring with the government in private to tinker with the laws to increase their profits. That's all this is.</comment>


Implementing Function Overloading in Python - <AUTHOR> https://arpitbhayani.me/blogs/function-overloading <comment><USER2> This is pretty horrible.

And you could achieve the same thing with built-in functools.singledispatch by designing your API better

e.g. the example given is:

        int area(int length, int breadth) {
          return length * breadth;
        }

        float area(int radius) {
          return 3.14 * radius * radius;
        }

What if you need to calculate the area of another shape that uses a single integer value as the parameter?

With singledispatch and some types:

        import math
        from functools import singledispatch
        from typing import NamedTuple

        class Rectangle(NamedTuple):
            length: int
            breadth: int

        class Circle(NamedTuple):
            radius: int

        @singledispatch
        def area(val) -> None:
            raise TypeError(val)

        @area.register
        def _(rectangle: Rectangle) -> int:
            return rectangle.length * rectangle.breadth

        @area.register
        def _(circle: Circle) -> float:
            return math.pi * math.pow(circle.radius, 2)

<comment><USER3> Again this is over-engineering. Put functions in modules to namespace them and be done with it.

If you really want types, use classes. It removes the need for single dispatch, creates a self documenting namespace and saves you an import when you want to do the calculation.

        import math
        from dataclasses import dataclass

        @dataclass
        class Rectangle:
            length: int
            breadth: int
            def area(self) -> int:
                return self.length * self.breadth

        @dataclass
        class Circle:
            radius: int
            def area(self) -> float:
                return math.pi * self.radius ** 2

@dataclass is of course not mandatory, and just make the code shorter.

We are talking about very simple things here. No need to add complexity to them.

<comment><USER4> Didn't know about @dataclass until now. Thank you.

<comment><USER5> See also attrs [http://www.attrs.org/](http://www.attrs.org/) which is one of the main inspirations of py37 dataclass and is more feature-rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love Python as a "hack it into a Frankenstein monster for fun" language because of how much power you have to get under the hood. For that reason I love articles like this.

But I'm not sure you'd ever want to implement overloading for practical uses. Just utilize optional arguments and some branching logic within the function. But even then, rethink how much you're trying to pack into a function.

<comment><USER7> Yes, my reaction to this was "this is horrifying Python, _never_ do this in real life!" But also fascination at how malleable and subvertible it is once you go deep enough into the internals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Remember that duck typing + default values + args + kwargs is usually more idiomatic than function overloading in python.

Don't try to code in python like you code in another language.

Also, think about what your API is conveying. Overloading may make it less clear.

The snippet from this article is a good example of when not to do it:

        def area (l, b):
          return length * breadth;

        def area(r):
          return 3.14 * radius * radius

Here, you have 2 functions that do 2 fundamentally different things. One is calculating an area for a circle. The other one is for a rectangle. When you have 2 different signatures, it's often a sign the process is very different, and you should signal that in your API.

If you scan code using those, your brain cannot quickly parse it. It needs to process "area(), ok but of what, well, it has only x param, so I guess this is for z". The overloading gimmick has little value for the reader, but a real cost (not to mention in python it actually slows the run time)

The better solution is simply to make it explicitly 2 functions with good names:

        def rectangle_area (l, b):
          return length * breadth;

Or, most likely, put them in separated namespaces (using a module or a class), which does the same.

        import circle

        circle.area(r)

It's very easy to abuse overloading because it tickles our need for refactoring. But it's a tool to solve a problem, not an end by itself.

<comment><USER8> The first part seems the wrong way to do it (treating it as an example). You would presumably overload area() on the object type, not on individual parameters representing the object's geometry. 'circle.area(r)' is even weirder - extracting radius just doesn't make sense here.

<SomeGeometricObject>.area() is right AFAICS.

Which I think is what you're getting at anyway.

But IMO overloading used right is cleaner than not having overloading.

<comment><USER3> > 'circle.area(r)' is even weirder

It's just putting the original area() function in a module, not making it a method of a class. It's the simplest solution you can have, ever.

Adding an object is already more complex, and complexity needs to be justified. Just KISS if you can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a lot of work for a result that isn't even very self documenting compared to some earlier efforts e.g.

Guido's post on multimethods: [https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=101605](https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=101605)

Clojure style multimethods: [https://adambard.com/blog/implementing- multimethods-in-pytho...](https://adambard.com/blog/implementing-multimethods- in-python/)

<comment><USER8> I remember reading the multimethods post and thinking it was wrong as it does not dispatch on all arguments, as dylan would (and I believe closure would too) - correct me if I'm wrong though.

<comment><USER9> It does dispatch on the types of all arguments, ... that's the point of it.

Some sample code (I modified it to be commutative on the argument types):

[https://gist.github.com/arunbear/caef7546d297c01fddbd3f67117...](https://gist.github.com/arunbear/caef7546d297c01fddbd3f671179bb70)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This borders on spam. This is the third time you've submitted this post in the past two months and the feedback is no more positive this time.

Yes, you can do just about anything in Python. But single dispatch is usually a bad idea, and implementing it yourself instead of using the Python stdlib is always a bad idea.

There's nothing wrong with showing off programming curiosities, but this isn't presented in that context. The more often you post it, especially without heeding or engaging with feedback, the more annoying it becomes.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to "overload" a function. Do

        def area(shape):
          return shape.area()

and implement it appropriately in your type.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://pypi.org/project/multidispatch/](https://pypi.org/project/multidispatch/)

IMHO, multiple dispatch is unpythonic and you should use it only if you really need it. Also OP's implementation is missing typing information and differentiates functions only by length of arguments. Though probably that's the reason I do not like this idea in python because it's not a statically typed language.

</comment><comment><USER13> Discussed 1 month ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340720)

</comment><comment><USER14> Singledispatch from functools will often work in a lot of situations where you might want to do something like this: [https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/functools.html)

This is a cool post from the author, though. I interpret this as more of an exploration of Python under the hood versus being a recommended production solution.

Python certainly could use a facility to do that based on an arbitrary predicate fn versus type comparison, though.

Python is well suited for this.. maybe it is time to throw a PEP in the ring.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." -Dr. Ian Malcolm

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this behavior in Python already via the functools module? Can't look it up right now but I'm pretty sure it's there.

<comment><USER17> Functions.singledispatch allows overloading based on the type of the first argument, but doesn't allow complex overloads, like arg-count based or multi- type based.

<comment><USER18> This is not hard to write if you care about it (dispatching on data in addition to dispatching on type). Clojure-style multimethods with python-style type dispatch or data result dispatch can be had for under 150 lines. It's not particularly useful unless you are porting code or otherwise writing very unpythonic code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you allow both

      int area(int length, int breadth)

and

      float area(int radius)

to exist, then in the future you won't be able ask what the type of 'area' is. (If that's your kind of thing)

<comment><USER20> You will, the type could be Union[int, float].

Alternatively, you could also use the abstract base classes in the numbers module - [https://docs.python.org/3/library/numbers.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/numbers.html)

numbers.Number may be a good choice.

Still, you are right, overloading like this may be okay as a thought exercise, but would raise some serious questions during a code review. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Using fancy features does not make you a better programmer. It is the other way around.

<comment><USER19> Being a better programmer makes you use fancy features?

<comment><USER22> Charitably interpreted: A better programmer knows using a fancy feature _can_ result in better code, but, also knows that fancy features usually aren't required to write good code (and that fancy features can turn good code into bad code when reached for too quickly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> duplicate, please don't repost so quickly: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340720)

</comment><comment><USER24> I would have expected polymorphism with type hints. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER25> next: type based dispatch

nzxt^2: predicate based dispatch</comment>


My first experience with web advertising (reddit and Facebook ads). - <AUTHOR>

Recently I decided to partake in the AIDS/LifeCycle 2012 bike ride fundraiser. This event is a 7 day, 545 mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The event itself requires all participants to raise at least 3,000 (USD) dollars to participate in the ride. The event generates funds for SF and LA non-profits that help provide public services that our state is unable to provide.
My first online advertising attempt was to buy a 24 hour sponsored post on Reddit. These are the ads that show up in a darker blue color, at the top of the front page. This ad cost me $20 USD.
The post for my ad is here:
http://www.reddit.com/comments/pi1k4/hi_reddit_im_doing_a_7_day_545_mile_bike_ride_for/ which linked to my donation page (http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/chrisb)
As you can see in the comments, at first I had a grammar fail that caused all the comments to be about my error (expected on reddit:) ). I emailed reddit to have the error mid way through the day. They were nice to take care of this as the website was giving me errors. It also seems that once you post an ad, you can't edit the topic text. This ad was shown across all subreddits.
Stats on the ad (reddit ad traffic page): http://i.imgur.com/PNxgB.gif
Outcome of this ad:
I had one donation for $25 USD. This was great, I made five dollars more than if I had just donated the money I used for the ad directly. I had hoped for more, but I will take what I can get.
With the reddit ad you only have two choices on who sees them. One is to have it displayed on all subreddits, and the other is to display the ad on only specific subreddits. I would imagine that reddit is sitting on a stockpile of user data in the user posts that could be used to create profiles of the users which would help in targeting them. Maybe they can tell who is male and female, or maybe they could tell what your interests are based on the content of your posts? Someone who posts about ron paul all day might be a good target for opposing politicians who want to change their vote?
The facebook ad:
I found a $50 dollar coupon for facebook advertising so I figured I should give it a shot. I've ran the ad for a couple of days now. In contrast to my reddit ad, I decided to target specific groups of people.
facebook ad stats and info: http://i.imgur.com/fDDZX.gif
From what I gather the CTR rate that I am seeing is extremely low. I'm sure a donation is less intriguing than most ads that are displayed so I am not too surprised.
Conclusion:
I've found that advertising a donation request is very unpopular. I almost wonder if it is possible advertise something like this with any success at all.
I wanted to post my experiences here for anyone else who has never used online advertising. It has been interesting to see how something as small as a choosing a contrasting color for a graphic can make a difference on how many clicks you get. I've learned a lot, and now have even more motivation to work on a project of my own (such as writing an iOS or Android app). I can imagine if advertising works well for someone, it could be addicting.
I'm very shocked to see how expensive a click is on facebook/google adwords. I know that I personally accidently click ads more often than I do so on purpose. I'd hope that there is a way to cancel these clicks out. I assume this might be hard to do technically.
Side comment:
Google AdWords: I had planned to pay for a Google ad but soon found out it would not be possible. The site that I wanted to link to is not a top level domain: www.domain.com but rather url with a path: http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/chrisb After contacting google to see if there was another option I found out that there wasn't. They were generally helpful which is a contrast to the support experience I usually hear about Google.
My question:
Does anyone who is an expert in this area have any tips for me to make my advertising more successful? Are there any guides that are online? I'm most likely not going to be spending any more money on another ad (for my donation site anyway) unless I come up or find a good idea that could make the ad more effective.
Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> Here are the links since they are not clickable in the main post:

The reddit post for my ad is here:

[http://www.reddit.com/comments/pi1k4/hi_reddit_im_doing_a_7_...](http://www.reddit.com/comments/pi1k4/hi_reddit_im_doing_a_7_day_545_mile_bike_ride_for/) which linked to my donation page (<http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/chrisb>)

Stats on the ad (reddit ad traffic page): <http://i.imgur.com/PNxgB.gif>

facebook ad stats and info: <http://i.imgur.com/fDDZX.gif>

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi eyeareque, could you please add your email in your profile or just ping me, I'm trying to gt in touch with you. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Added. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Covid-19 Confusion - <AUTHOR> If lockdown is only answer for covid-19, then why Italy is getting large number of affected persons daily even after full lock down? <comment><USER2> Several reasons. One, a lockdown ia neccesary though possibly not sufficient for containg Covid-19. Two countries seem to have succesfully contained the virus after a large outbreak. These are China and South Korea. Both of these countries combined some form of a lockdown with extremely agressive testing. SK has done more testing while China has been way more agressive with a lockdown. Italy's lockdown is not as strict as China's. Further, when Italy first tried to lock down the north, many fled south carrying the virus with them. Second, we may be seeing benefit from Italy's lockdown now. The daily increase in infections in Italy just fell twice in a row for the first time ever. If you look at their infections on a logarithmic scale you can clearly see that exponential growth is ending. This is a very good sign that the lockdown is working.

<comment><USER3> south korea seems to ramping up again (slowed a bit past two days), singapore and hong kong both seem to be on exponential trend in spite of similar measures

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A function of increased testing in direct response to the long incubation period. Symptoms don't show up until much later, I think 10 days (you can look it up) at which point people are allowed to get tested. Add a couple of days to get results and it follows China's trend of ~12 to 14 days after lockdown until peak cases (and deaths?)</comment>


Microsoft's 64GB Surface Pro will only have 23GB usable storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/17ibhc/microsofts_64gb_surface_pro_will_only_have_23gb/

<comment><USER2> Yup $1,000 (with a keyboard) gets you a tablet with 23Gb of storage.

For $200 you can get a Chromebook which comes with a hard drive - plus you could get an iPad with the change or save a pile of money and get a Nexus 10 for $400.

Still trying to figure out the Surface Pro stylus though - what is that about?</comment>


The Evolution of Pre-Launch Gmail In Screenshots - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/06/the-evolution-of-pre-launch-gmail-in-screenshots/

<comment><USER2> First few SS are in Netscape... Old School ftw!

<comment><USER3> Mozilla, actually.. but Mozilla was still so ugly (and therefore Old School) that only a nerd could love it; certainly the nostalgia is rushing back.

I remember someone literally asked me: "WTF is that browser you're using? It's so damn ugly!"

<comment><USER4> And what option did we have that time anyway on Linux? Mozilla at least worked correctly most of the time!</comment></comment></comment>


Google And Amazon May Have Just Handed Apple The Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/18/apple-cloud-music/ <comment><USER2> Not having to upload music would be nice but making a deal with the labels could also lead to serious shortcomings. Google and Amazon didn't have to play nice with the labels, Apple does.

One consequence of that could be that you can only have music you purchased in the iTunes Store in the cloud. What about music bought in other stores? What about music ripped from CDs? Indeed, what about pirated music? Amazon's and Google's cloud lockers work with all those files, will Apple's?

If it doesn't, its usefulness will be quite poor compared to what Amazon and Google have to offer.

Given that the labels were quite miffed that Amazon and Google allow you to upload arbitrary files I would be surprised if they moved away from that position.

<comment><USER3> With Amazon's service you don't have to upload anything you've bought from them, so we can assume that Apple gets that for free as well. These deals are so Steve can tell people they get to play their whole library from the cloud, no matter how they got it, while only needing to upload songs not released by the major labels.

<comment><USER4> No way will this allow to listen to music not purchased via iTunes without uploading. How would they prevent anyone from creating a 10000 track library full of correctly tagged empty files?

<comment><USER5> The server could pick say 5 random offsets in the song, and ask the client to upload the decoded data from one second of music starting at each of those offsets. The server can then compare that to what it has and see if it is close enough.

<comment><USER6> Or simpler still - the iTunes application will generate fingerprint of the whole audio in each file and send it along with whatever metadata is available. Then serverside the fingerprint and metadata are analyzed and if a certain criteria for a match are not met, iTunes is prompted to upload the file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple agrees to the demand of the music labels by paying license fees - additional fees for storing music you already own in the cloud.

Only MG Siegler can spin this into something positive.

<comment><USER2> My.mp3.com lost. That's the legal situation. If you want to let people access their music in the cloud without them having to upload it you will have to come to some agreement with the labels. There is no way around it.

<comment><USER8> Google and Amazon are bigger and could afford a fight. And I hope they do.

To me the fact that Apple will have deals with the music labels and will probably only allow you to play music you bought from them - that's no surprise at all.

<comment><USER9> > Google and Amazon are bigger and could afford a fight.

A fight they have no guarantee they can win still. The jurisprudence is against them, although Amazon definitely seems to think they can be successful.

<comment><USER10> When did fair use go away? I must have missed that.

<comment><USER11> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who has put together a cloud music player/site, I can assure you that uploading is by far the biggest deterrent from people using the service.

In fact, out of my large music library, I only have a couple thousand songs of my own uploaded. Out of a few hundred users, there are only 3 others who have uploaded a similar number of songs. My service allows you to share playlists with your friends and loads of users don't upload anything and are just dependent on playlists form their early adopter friends. If Apple gets the rights to skip out on having users upload it will be a huge win.

It also seems like Google and Amazon are in this space only for the sake of trying to get people on their respective Android platforms (in the case of Amazon up and coming) where as Apple at least has _some_ sense in organizing music nicely and creating a nice playback experience. The Amazon UI kinda makes me shudder as I always end up clicking on things by accident because there are too many links/buttons embedded in each row.

<comment><USER13> Why is it so hard to get them to upload their music? I'd think that you could just have a button in your UI that says, "Upload all my music in the background". And then just do it constantly in the background.

I'd think that Apple could just have the same button in iTunes.

<comment><USER9> > Why is it so hard to get them to upload their music?

1\. It's a chore to even do it

2\. Consumer landlines are generally very asymetric. I have an ADSL line providing 1.1 MB/s (no typo) down, but 75kB/s up. I have 32GB of music on this machine (in lossy encodings). It would take me 3 weeks and 4 days uninterrupted to push that to "the cloud". Not only would make my internet connection completely unusable in the meantime (I don't have a QoS router), 3 weeks before I can truly use the service is hardly seamless.

<comment><USER14> If uploading is so hard, then why is Dropbox so successful? I'm on the max plan and I don't have any problems syncing. Sure, it takes a looooong time, but I expect it so I'm ok with it. Make the uploading automatic & out of sight and most people will have no trouble at all.

<comment><USER15> I assume it's successful in part because very few people upload the full 2GB quota in their first ten minutes of using Dropbox. I installed it, poked around with a couple of MP3s and PDFs, and then stopped. I doubt many users of Dropbox upload more than a couple hundred MB at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's funny, in China, Google has this exact same deal as Apple with the labels. google.cn/music/ is only accessible from within China though. But I can go there and listen to _anything_ from _anywhere_ , as long as the label has signed on. It works amazing.

<comment><USER17> It feels like a failure of the internet that I didn't know this existed.

<comment><USER18> What does this even mean? How did the Internet fail just because you didn't know about it? I'm pretty sure there is _a lot_ of stuff that you aren't aware of, and that in no way reflects on the Internet as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's quite premature to call this game.

No one has seen Apple's cloud music offering.

How locked up will it be? How much will it cost? Will it support MP3s not purchased from iTunes? Will it work on non-Apple-brand devices?

Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER20> Good point. I would expect the Apple service to only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation that they currently have. I'd also expect it to be a pay service, as Apple doesn't do freemium.

I'd consider it a major fail if it's not accessible through a web interface, something I'm not expecting.

<comment><USER21> >only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation

That number is unlimited. You're restricted to 5 computers, but unlimited iDevices. I currently have something like 30 associated with my account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wouldn't be betting on the company making deals with the horse company right after the combustion engine got invented.

People are already getting paid enough by their youtube channel to work on it full time. All it will take is one or two big success stories, of a new celebrity that gets superstar famous purely from youtube -- and we actually already passed that point a while ago, it's just a matter of them figuring out how to monetize properly -- if new stars no longer feel like they need the exploitative record companies, and start launching new music purely through youtube and similar record-company-free cloud mediums, Sony and EMI will go the same way as palm and nokia.

<comment><USER23> There have already been dozens of these superstar from YouTube/MySpace/wherever success stories. I don't know of any that haven't converted their overnight fame into some sort of label deal. It is my firm belief that the only way to properly monetize a music career that can't be pirated and without record label "help" is to build a devoted live audience, which takes years if not decades. Any sort of fame that's caught on the internet is as fleeting as the next famous act on the internet, so while a huge YouTube video or car commercial may guarantee big crowds for one show, they very well may not be there for the next one. And define "paid enough".

On the other hand, you will always have plenty of young, attention hungry people for whom the lure of a record deal and instant riches and fame will be plenty to sign away everything for the chance at it. The point of the whole Justin Bieber marketing machine isn't just to sell his product, it's to fill the labels' funnels with the next round of wanna-bes. And to be fair, the internet wasn't just invented. Napster was over a decade ago but labels, the RIAA and all their purchased goons in the govt. have been very effectively suppressing innovation through legal action for that entire time, and I don't see that trend abating. If anything it seems like it's getting worse.

It's a bummer, but record labels aren't going anywhere for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's interesting to see Amazon & Google directly competing, to the point that Google rushes a seemingly incomplete cloud music offering (also without label consent) to counter Amazon's early control of the market.

They're also competing in cloud infrastructure, android app markets and streaming video services. Their fundamental services are not that different, both centered around search, though they don't really compete for it. Amazon is a retail service but part of their effectiveness is showing you what you want.

<comment><USER20> Supposedly the labels were asking Google to block torrent sites from search results. A store is the only missing feature and it just wasn't going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For all the talk about how Amazon/Google require people to upload their own libraries, there's absolutely no way that the music labels will allow Apple to skip this for anything other than iTunes (and probably only iTunes+) purchased music. Infact I'd be surprised if there's anyway for people to get non-iTunes music into the service at all.

<comment><USER2> (Apple doesn't sell music with DRM anymore. There is only "iTunes+" music. Limiting the service to legacy music with DRM wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. I'm not saying that the labels wouldn't demand it, I'm, however, doubtful that anyone would ever agree to that. It would obviously doom Apple's cloud locker right from the start.)

<comment><USER25> Nowhere did I say it'd be limited to DRM, I said it would be limited to music purchased from the iTunes store.

Even though today's iTunes music doesn't contain DRM it is still fingerprinted and Apple (and iTunes) know exactly whether a song in your library came from the store or whether it was one you ripped yourself.

I'm pretty sure only the former will appear magically in your cloudstore without an upload, and I suspect the latter will never be welcome.

<comment><USER2> Ok, sorry! I assumed you were talking about DRM because you mentioned iTunes+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google and Amazon's approach has some big potential to blow up in their faces. It's definitely going to create some interesting legal questions. For instance Google's YouTube copyright filter applies equally to private videos. What makes music different? It's a slightly different circumstance of course but Google will have to explain why they think private pirated video is a no-no but private pirated audio is not. I think they'll also have some burden to prove only one user is accessing an account. For example when Google Music invites are flying around what stops me from creating multiple accounts and simply giving the username/password to my friends?

</comment><comment><USER27> Google Music service could work.

We have corporate music shoved down our throats from the 3 company radio / 4 company label monopoly.

If one were to reinvent the whole process, giving more profits to artists, aggregating the best tunes 'pandora style', we could see a shift in the zeitgeist of the music we listen to in general.

Let Apple have Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga.

With the advent of cheap professional home recording equipment and loads of talent waiting for a break, the industry is waiting to be dumped on its head.

We are talking about Google here. Why don't you use Altavista or Yahoo what that company does? You could always Ask Jeeves...

</comment><comment><USER28> One of Lala's products that I tried involved purchasing songs without the ability to download, but they were stored in my music locker on their servers. Although these songs couldn't be downloaded, they cost only ten cents a song (I think, but can't remember the exact amount). While this was restrictive relative to purchasing DRM-free MP3s, it cost a lot less and was all I needed in some cases. I hope that either Amazon, Google, or Apple offers something similar at a low price, as I'd like to give it another try.

<comment><USER20> That was what made Lala so brilliant:

1) No subscription requirement. I'm not convinced that the average consumer spends $120 a year on music and wants that expense every month of paying for a MOG, Spotify or Rdio.

2) Extremely low per-song price made "impulse" buys easy.

3) Matching your library to their catalog without uploading.

4) A really nice web interface. Extremely good for 2 years ago. Amazon's is so-so, and I haven't tried Google's yet (looks good from screenshots). I doubt Apple will do one at all.

<comment><USER15> Very well said. But don't forget the full-length free preview of any song. I loved that "once and only once" feature.

<comment><USER20> I forgot all about that, yes that was a killer feature as well. That turned out to be _the_ killer feature for Google's music search as well, and made it infinitely less valuable when Lala went away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about rolling your own 'cloud locker' to stream media to your various devices?

Anyone who has decent upload capabilities (talkin' to you Fios) could have a home media server stream to all relevant devices inside and outside of one's home (audio is obviously easier than audio+video).

All I need is a semi-automated DVD ripper that can take a spindle of purchased DVD movies and rip them all unattended.

In several years, why shouldn't we have a colocated home media server that syncs with the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER29> What about Spotify?

<comment><USER30> Yes! What about spotify? Uploading your own music? Only playing songs that you already own? Bah! Spotify came before google, amazon and apple with what seems to be a better service..

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> article title stunned me in an 'ah ha' sort of way -- sounds like a play/set of moves right up apple's alley

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not real Cloud Music until it's performed by Brian Eno — or perhaps it's more similar to gas music?

<comment><USER33> I prefer the original "cloud" music - Nuages by Debussy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes_(Debussy)></comment></comment>


How old were you when you decided to start giving up? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inklingmarkets.com/2010/02/how-old-were-you-when-you-decided-to.html

<comment><USER4> I would argue that the only skill a business owner _really_ needs is the skill to identify, hire, and lead talent. Everything else is probably secondary. If you're not good at programming, learning to program in order to do it yourself is ridiculous advice - unless you spend ten years learning full time, you'll end up with a mediocre product.

Delegation works. Just do it.

<comment><USER5> So many people confuse "Let others do what they're good at" with "Let others do everything", though. Including your comment. No, talent identification is not _the only_ skill a business owner needs. If they have a skill and you don't, why should they come work for you?

A business owner needs to be skilled enough in their particular specialty to get the ball rolling and the money flowing in. _Then_ they'll have the resources and cachet to identify and hire talent. But if all they can do is find talent and tell it what to do, why should the talent bother listening?

I'm sure I could tell go up to Marc Andreesen or Steve Jobs or Larry Page and say "I've got this great idea. Come work for me." I also suspect that if I did this, I'd get this quizzical "Who the fuck are you and why should I?" look, and then they'd walk away.

<comment><USER4> _If they have a skill and you don't, why should they come work for you?_

Because talented people don't spontaneously self-organize. Your example is a bit silly - you're talking about people with a lot of money, stellar reputation, and great leadership skills. Most skilled people don't have any of these things. Working for someone with leadership skills is the only option they've got. If you happen to have enough charisma to get people to buy into your vision, you really don't need to know how to code.

<comment><USER6> _Because talented people don't spontaneously self-organize._

Yes they do. Game recognizes game. I always want to socialize and engage with people I deem technically competent.

Myself, and most technical people I know, would not defer judgement nor respect to someone trumping "leadership skills" as a reason to follow them. In fact, someone projecting that air would be an immediate target for mockery until they displayed technical competence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Determination is a good thing, but determination without direction is not. If you're good at design, and bad at programming, why insist on doing the programming yourself? A designer-programmer team will almost certainly kick your ass.

If you have a particular skill that seems to be part of a generalized skill set (for example, if you're good at meeting new people, you're likely to be good at sales), you can test it. If you know that you're bad at math, bad at logic, bad at working on one task for more than a few minutes at a time, and bad at spotting your own mistakes, you might not want to try programming (or architecture) just to prove to yourself that you have the willpower to overcome your character traits.

<comment><USER8> I think you're right, but there's a third situation that works even better:

A great designer and a great programmer will work better than a great designer who has picked up some programming, but both will be put to shame by the team of a great designer who understands the challenges the programmer has, with a programmer who understands the challenges of the designer.

In other words: It's important to learn new disciplines, even if you never get near a professional level with them, because you'll work better _with_ the people specializing in that area.

<comment><USER9> I think that's great advice, and it's something I'd love to work towards.

I suspect I'm speaking for a lot of us here when I say that I have absolutely no idea where to even start when it comes to design, though. And I don't mean learning CSS - that's the easy part (at least once you embrace how underequipped CSS truly is vs. the problems of layout and styling).

Are there any good beginner resources available that focus more on developing good designs and less on implementing them? It seems that most of the beginning design stuff assumes that you already know what you want things to look like and that you don't know how to build it; for me, it's usually the opposite problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was an inspiring article for someone like me with an business degree and aspirations for creating a startup but without the programming ability. Would starting out learning a language like python be recommended as a good one in general for putting an idea into action? After some iteration and traction, I'd bring on a capable coding partner to do it right. FWIW, I've also heard that Python is useful for making scripts for automating tasks or improving productivity.

<comment><USER11> This route (learn to code it yourself) is the one I took. I now have a pretty technically credible* product with actual paying customers and everything.

The language I learned first was JavaScript because it's ubiquitous. There are a million tutorials to get you going.

A lot of JS tutorials suck, which is a disadvantage, but it gives you a pretty big confidence boost to be able to read a tutorial and think "that's moronic, I know 6 other ways to do that which will work better". Python tutorials tend to break out advanced/elegant/clever stuff really quickly which has the opposite effect.

I wrote a couple of little apps, then a prototype, then it felt like I knew enough to really get going.

I then picked up Python (actually Django) because the relative maturity of server side JS platforms isn't as good. Switching languages was easy.

The total time to get to that point was about 4 months (whilst working full time), but I had the advantage of living in a place where everything shut when it went dark at 7pm.

*Except for the bugs, and the scaling issues, and the bad design decisions I made early on. As far as I can tell I'm not the only person to have problems like this though, and refactoring is a good way to spend a plane ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't agree with the author more. The primary skill of a successful entrepreneur is the relentless ambition to just do it. Subsequently, after trashing my alma mater for the majority of my college career, I've come to realize that the biggest lesson I learned in life was through there. Which is of course the lesson on how to learn stuff that is really hard, but necessary to accomplish a goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear ya. I'm on the fence when it comes to Jason Fried's advice about dropping out of college. He's a big fan of convincing people to quit and start working, at least in the software industry.

I went to school as a chemical engineer, and though often it seems the education's specifics are a waste to me, I learned how to approach problems rigorously and, in your words, relentlessly. I'm not sure I'd have that same drive if I wasn't challenged like that from the teachers and the education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is _fantastic_ advice for people who want to learn the new things that they need to learn. However, not everyone does, and that's perfectly OK. I know we're biased towards programming here, but let's flip your example around: I know how to code, but I don't know how to do enterprise sales. Yes, it behooves me to learn something about it, but if I can hire someone to do it for me, why shouldn't I? My goal is to always hire people smarter and more competent than myself _at the thing that I'm hiring them to do_. I don't need to be the best at everything; I'd much rather be the best at what I'm best at :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, as long as you have the money to hire someone to do enterprise sales, great. I'm all for hiring people smarter than me and to do things I don't want to do. But most people starting a new project don't have money to do those hires.

Look at Paul Graham. When they started viaweb, Paul had to play sales guy. I believe he mentions in at least one essay, that it's not like sales was something he was chomping at the bit to go and do. But a fledging company can't go out and hire sales guys, so he stepped up and learned how to sell his product, and realized he was actually pretty good at it.

So this advice is to all those out there with no money who are stuck waiting for someone else to make their dreams come true. That's a no good place to be, and I refuse to be in it.

<comment><USER13> Being relentlessly resourceful doesn't always mean "do it myself". Sometimes it means you go get funding, sometimes it means finding someone to work for equity or revenue share, sometimes it means figuring out how to make money somewhere else until you afford to pay someone to do X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      "I have this great idea for a *video game*, I just need someone to build it. How do I find a *coder* and build this *video game* in a couple months?".

This happens so often on gamedev-related forums it's depressing. Pure beginners often lack the gumption, or perhaps just the knowledge, to realize that they could and usually should just do everything themselves, or at least learn how to code a game or use a game making application.

In these days of 200-person AAA development teams I can understand the sentiment that developers by nature are super-specialized, and that having multiple skillsets just doesn't compute.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was expecting something completely different by the title. I was thinking of how, when you grow older, your curiosity dies because it takes too much effort to satisfy it.

This worries me. I have a friend who was saying the same thing, but he was uninterested in doing anything about it.

<comment><USER16> I think curiosity dies out for two reasons. The first is plain ol' brain chemistry. Secondly, when people get older and they sit down at a computer, they do so to get stuff done. When a kid sits down at a machine they explore without expectation of themselves. Adults have the expectation that - <USER2> they want to get done - will get done - and in a reasonable amount of time. However, some things do take more than a "reasonable amount of time", and frustration mounts because of this expectation. Soon, learning new things becomes associated with frustration. So relax a little, and explore a lot. Then read the docs. Or read the docs - and then explore. Just don't expect to be productive in the New-Software-Product in 2 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The bottom-line in this article is that you need to take the steps necessary to get a project done. Even if this means self-educating, don't let that prevent you from accomplishing your goals.

In reality, this isn't always feasible. That's why it's so important to have good judgment about these things.

It reminds me of this quote:

 _God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. - <USER3> Niebuhr_

[UPDATED] This isn't meant to be a religious statement, I'm just crediting the original. You can just as easily replace "god" with "imagination" or "consciousness" or whatever if that makes it more palatable.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you know the stuff, do it yourself. If you don't know it, hire someone else to do it. If you don't have money, well, you find a cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER19> The analogy at the top is flawed. The 7-year old has zero opportunity cost. His time is worthless. If you have a great idea, but also the burden of supporting a family, holding down a day job, or whatever, hiring somebody to build your idea might make good sense.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is Inkling using market scoring rules for liquidity? I've been wondering about that for awhile, and the Hanson reference makes me wonder more.

(The LMSR is the only way I've managed to get a market work; I'm still totally stuck in automated market makers).

<comment><USER21> Yes, it uses Hanson's market scoring rule.

<comment><USER22> That's the same Robin Hanson I've been reading at overcomingbias and lesswrong. I wasn't aware of his work on prediction markets. Most interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 18</comment>


Money is Not Real - <AUTHOR> http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003326.html

<comment><USER2> _"The building up of unsustainable debt loads is a commonplace in history. There are several standard means of resolving the problem: execute the lenders, exile them, default outright or simply renegotiate to achieve partial default and low interest rates."_

Or in the United States' case where the money is being lent in US dollars, print money (inflate) which decreases the value of the debt in real terms.

<comment><USER3> The modern money supply is not primarily inflated by minting/printing money.

The money supply is inflated when people make loans. Easy _credit_ causes money supply inflation. Most of the inflation is caused by private lending, not public printing. Loans cause a 10-1 money supply increase on the base, and often more like 30-1 when you start to look at more risky lenders.

The recent CARD act has likely done more to deflate the money supply than anything in recent memory, as it made one of the most pervasive forms of credit much less attractive to people.

Every debt write down is _money disappearing_.

That alone makes me laugh at people complaining about inflation and strategic default at the same time, as the later directly combats the former.

<comment><USER4> _The money supply is inflated when people make loans._

Well, when people loan more than they have, which banks in the US are allowed to do. Loans in and of themselves promote deflation, since people get loans to build wealth, and wealth increase in a static money supply is deflation.

<comment><USER3> Loans _are_ inflation. By definition. Here is a movie about this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_Ydp7-ApdA>

Deflation occurs when the loan is paid down or written down.

<comment><USER4> _Loans are inflation. By definition._

The youtube video isn't working for me, right now, but that's clearly not correct. In a loan from A to B, the money B now has the use of is money that A does not have the use of. If there is interest on the loan, B can't make up the money for the interest from nowhere (unless B is a government controlling the supply for the money in question), so while the interest _represents_ the additional wealth generated by the loan, it's not inflationary in and of itself. If no one is creating more money, the interest has to come out of a fixed pool of money in the economy, and now that there's more wealth (assuming the loan was successful), each unit of money is worth a little bit more, which is deflationary.

This might or might not be a problem, depending on who you ask. I think it probably is, but the only way to solve it permanently (rather than in a stopgap manner like creating money at a rate you hope matches the actual growth of the economy) is to make actual wealth the basis of the money. This is, uh, very difficult, to understate the problem.

<comment><USER3> I'm referring to fractional reserve banking, and those loans, which _are_ the primary source of money creation in the modern world. Not person to person loans as you are talking about.

<comment><USER4> In my original reply to you, I agreed that loans in fractional reserve banking are inflation:

 _Well, when people loan more than they have, which banks in the US are allowed to do._

But _loans_ aren't the problem, or the source of the inflation. The inflation happens separately from the loan; the loan is just a shell game to hide what's going on.

<comment><USER3> No, the loan is the _actual source of inflation_.

When more loans are made than there is actual economic growth, inflation occurs.

<comment><USER5> for the next poster (randallsquared) - banks don't loan money they don't have - or at least we have to be very careful with the terminology here.

They cannot create money out of nothing - they can only loan out a percentage of hte money they have on deposit. The key is they have to have it on deposit in the first place. This effect compounds itself across multiple accounts and banks and does end up inflating the money supply by a factor of about 10 (assuming the reserve percentage is 10%) - but this is subtly but importnatly different than the bank being magically able to create money it doesn't have.

(the bank can't lend me $90 if it does't have $100 on deposit - it will have to keep the $10 in reserve. OTOH - if someone simply deposits $10, the bank can't possibly lend me $90, because they just don't have it.)

<comment><USER4> But this only works if they can count money as loaned and deposited at the same time. That is, if the system were sound, if they loaned out 80% of the money on deposit, that money couldn't be counted as still on deposit, but they do count it that way. A neat chart that shows this is: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation#Money_creation_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation#Money_creation_through_the_fractional_reserve_system)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Of course, much of the world's elite understand exactly what they're doing: i.e., use the economic catastrophe they themselves created as a pretext to kill the welfare state they've despised for 65 years._

Lost me there. Pure conjecture. If you're not one of the world's elite, you have no idea what their intent is, or even if they are truly coordinated, Bilderburgs notwithstanding.

For example, there is another suspicion that the banking elite uses bubbles and busts to drive down prices and then buy up productive assets on the cheap, and that welfare systems keep large segments of the populace dependent on government and under some measure of control. In which case, why would they try to destroy that system?

So which is it? All? None? Nobody knows. All I know is, if I wanted credibility for my economic analysis blog post, I wouldn't assert privileged understanding of the intent of the world's elite unless I actually was one (and maybe not even then).</comment>


Learnings from Our Private & Public Beta Phase - <AUTHOR> http://teamblog.supportbee.com/2012/07/11/learnings-from-our-public-and-private-beta-phase/ <comment><USER2> How the hell did the word "learnings" catch on? There's already a word for that: "lessons."

/rant</comment>


The Future of Node Is in Microsoft's Fork - <AUTHOR> https://blog.andyet.com/2015/12/31/the-future-of-node-is-microsofts-fork/ <comment><USER2> I think proxies are coming in V8; I'm subscribed to the bug [1] and there've been a steady stream of commits related to them. Nothing lately, but Google's on holiday launch freeze and so it'll probably pick up again in January.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/v8/issues/detail?id=1543#c99](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/v8/issues/detail?id=1543#c99)</comment>


Apple Stealing All FaceTime Information, AT&T Locks Users via OTA Updates - <AUTHOR> http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/leaked-apple-stealing-all-facetime-information-att-locks-user-via-ota-updates/

<comment><USER2> Or, to put it differently:

The arms race between unlockers/jailbreakers and Apple proceeds apace, _and_ FaceTime lacks enterprise-level security features.

The hedline on this article is pure linkbait.

<comment><USER3> _once a person connects to another person on FaceTime it for some reason non of us in the office can figure out, sends us APPLE a message and says those two people are connecting via Facetime and gives out their location to us. So for whatever reason we need that information just blows my mind. As a consumer why would you need to let Apple know that you are connecting with a person via FaceTime, its non of Apple's business._

That seems pretty bad.

<comment><USER4> > That seems pretty bad.

It's required so you can map phone numbers to the other person's IP address. I assume it's also used for STUN (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN>).

(This is just me guessing, of course, but the "don't automatically assume a huge conspiracy theory" method almost always ends up with me being right, so there.)

<comment><USER3> I wasn't thinking so much conspiracy theory...just marketing overreach, I didn't think there's possibly a technical explanation that holds water, interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Not quite sure that some of this adds up.

The leaker _works in the iPhone Development Department_ , yet "no one in the office" can figure out why the phone signals back to Apple when a Facetime session is started?

The leaker doesn't have access to the source code? Or doesn't know who would have implemented such a feature?

Or is this person simply not a developer?

</comment><comment><USER5> MuscleNerd (of the iPhone Dev Team) said after looking through the code, this is complete FUD.

<http://twitter.com/MuscleNerd>

</comment><comment><USER6> Do I need tin-foil hat or should I call this a hit-piece on Apple?

<comment><USER7> I hear tin-foil is coming back into style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assuming this is true, _good_. Apple has been having it both ways by publicly prohibiting unlocking and jailbreaking while actually allowing it. Let them choke on the bad PR their tight control causes.

As for the FaceTime stuff, there are only so many ways it could work. There must be some kind of call setup signaling, and routing it all through some Apple server is a pretty obvious way to do it. The lack of encryption is a shame, though.

<comment><USER2> The lack of encryption could be a resource constraint, or it could be that getting encryption right[1] would have prevented it from shipping, or it could be that they believe that trying to do a "Secure FaceTime" will retard adoption of the protocols (which, it probably would).

I have an iPhone and bought it with eyes wide open about needing to honor the contract it came with, and so I'm watching the jailbreaker battle from the sidelines... and I'm cheering Apple on, not because I care one way or the other about unlocked phones, but because the arms race is fun to watch, and you kind of want to see the people who assume Apple can't win it get some comeuppance.

[1] Lots of AV and telephony systems try to do secure calls with encryption and they routinely screw it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A poorly-written article with a ridiculously overblown headline on a random blog from a completely unverified source. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER10> It appears the commenters do not understand the claim of the article, is without these frequent "optional" updates, the phone will self lock.

Seems like the sort of thing an unlock/hack will easily fix though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The article is not claiming any lockdown command by AT&T. It says that the phone locks down when it can't get a "mandatory" update. And it won't get the update if it's not on the "right" carrier.

At least it seems possible. If Alpha is right we will know soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> The parts that aren't technical are unsubstantiated rumor.

The parts that are at least somewhat technical are also clearly wrong.

I fail to see what part of this would be of any interest whatsoever to hackers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I imagine when FaceTime makes the jump to 3G we'll see a "send my location" feature. Would also be handy for use in voice calls too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hardware DRM. Yummy.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Att already knows where you are. Its called cellphone towers :) Your approximate location is known.

2) As if google maps or any other google service does not collect data on you. So theres nothing special about this.

3) OTA updates is a brilliant idea. They want to lock their crap down, sorry no hacking. They want to make it as difficult as possible. Only affects people who don't abide by the EULA. Wait you do want to install ur own crap and not abide by apple's istore policies? Get an android or stfu I guess.

<comment><USER15> I do hope that #3 is sarcastic.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Guggy – Turning your text into a whimsy GIF message instantly - <AUTHOR> https://guggy.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

My name is Rotem and I'm one of Guggy's co-founders.

Guggy's purpose is to fun-up your conversations. We do it by providing you with a way to turn your text into a relevant whimsy GIF message in real-time and add context to GIFs.

To get more technical, we use smart tech and NLP to analyze your text message, match an accurate humorous GIF and recreate it with the text message animated on the GIF, hence the term "GIF Message". To make things more fun, everytime you use Guggy you will get a different GIF.

In the last 2.5 months (while we were in beta) we had over 1.5M GIFs created and sent by 100K users.

Guggy is now available on multiple platforms and apps such as: iMessage Extension (iOS 10), Slack, Chrome Extension, Guggy Keyboard for Android, KiK & more (you can see the full list at [https://guggy.com](https://guggy.com)). Beside that, we have an API and our main goal is to get to all the big players such as Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, etc so you'll be able to use Guggy seamlessly.

We support emojis, text smileys, slang, expressions & over 30 languages. For example, "I luv HN! " will produce [https://i.guggy.com/kq1BNPdrlc.gif](https://i.guggy.com/kq1BNPdrlc.gif)

I think that one of the cool things that we do is to make almost every GIF usable in chats by adding a specific message to it. For example [https://i.guggy.com/bIsqConQxl.gif](https://i.guggy.com/bIsqConQxl.gif)

A little bit about us. When we started a year ago we wanted to create a humor platform, a place to create and read funny content with emphasize on GIFs. We've really focused on creating GIFs and making it as easy as possible. In that process we realized that we had found a way to do it automatically and by that allowing everyone in the world to create GIFs.

Thank you for your support. I'll be here all day long (not sleeping today) to answer any question you may have.</comment>


Why Crowdsourcing Might Be Better Than the Secret Service - <AUTHOR> http://collegemogul.com/1/21/08/Why-Crowdsourcing-Might-be-Better-than-the-Secret-Service

<comment><USER2> So a person would accidentally take a photo of a sniper, upload it on the internet for PhotoSynth to build a panorama out of, the Secret Service will then look at the panorama, spot the sniper, and take care of it. All of that will happen in several seconds.

Seriously?

There definitely is a case for using technology for protecting VIPs, but it would be smarter for the Secret Service to just get several high-res infrared cameras and hook them to computers analyzing the images for irregularities (ie. "there's a person on the window of that supposedly empty building").

<comment><USER3> I think the author is advocating Wisdom of Crowds.

<comment><USER2> In what way? I can't think of a technology better tapping into the wisdom of the crowds than 911.

<comment><USER3> In Islamic world "network of men" is much stronger and effective than "network of machines".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be worth looking into _after_ something happened to see exactly what happened. But for _prior_ detection, it's next to worthless.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go read 'Halting State' and find out about intelligence agencies in the EU sponsoring a game called SPOOKS that essentially turns citizens into spies.

<comment><USER6> Good pick up; it was the first thing I thought of when I read the title too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Secret Service doesn't want to "track a sniper hidden within a sea of people". If they know there's a sniper, they will take them out rather than follow them cleverly around the crowd using some newfangled image zipping technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> A stretch at best. When the secret service is doing their job right, the sniper gets stopped before he even gets to the event.

And what's a guy going to do at an event like yesterday's, pull out a sniper rifle and shoot from his seat? People aren't going to notice that?

If he's in a surrounding building, then where are these crowdsourced photos coming from?

Maybe more than a stretch....

Although that PhotoSynth tech is pretty damn cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> further study: Vantage Point, (2008) <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443274/></comment>


Seeking Programmer in NC or VA - <AUTHOR>

Seeking a talented website and mobile applications programmer in NC or VA.  I'm located in Raleigh. NC and am looking for a programmer to partner with on a new project.  Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com, or call 919-672-4635, and we can discuss in greater detail. <comment><USER2> The monthly "Who is hiring?" thread will be coming up tomorrow, which is a good place to put things like this, preferably with more details up front.</comment>


Repeat After Me: Investors Are Never the Story - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/11/09/repeat-after-me-investors-are-never-the-story/ <comment><USER2> I suppose investors are brand names when you get down to it. Ever notice how movie previews always begin with "from the producer/writer/director of <popular movie x>"? Same thing here.

I'm curious why serial entrepreneurs don't get the same credit though. Perhaps investors just invest in more companies than serial entrepreneurs start.

<comment><USER3> The importance of the <popular movie person> mentioned in the movie preview is directly proportional to how good the movie is going to be. e.g., "From the director of Avatar..." is probably going to be a good movie. "From the sound editor of Forrest Gump" doesn't have quite the same chances.

I can't recall what movie it was, but I once saw a trailer that touted itself as "from the company that distributed <not very good movie>." The movie proved to be terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hacker News is reasonably guilty of this. How many headlines have we seen with something like (YC W10) in it?

<comment><USER5> I figure this is more like a secret handshake. Presumably anyone reading news at news.ycombinator.com will have an inherent interest in companies that YC invests in.

Not that (YC W10) is a very subtle signal, but it's signaling _something_ to the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Investor names are usually mentioned to establish social proof, but I find that it's rarely the case that the article itself focuses on the investor not the company.

For his example RockMelt, I just picked 4 random stories from Google News -- most of them mentioned Marc Andreesen but he wasn't the focus of the article.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there an endorsement stronger than real money?</comment>


GIF demonstrating how whacked your peripheral vision really is - <AUTHOR> http://theimage.gallery/archives/234

<comment><USER2> That's freaky!

I've never seen an optical illusion like this. About 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through the image cycle, I start seeing twisted faces with huge eyes appearing in my periphery... but if I stare at the faces, I see they are all normal.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if it has to do with your brain trying to equalize a smaller face and a larger one. It seems to me the most whacked out looking ones have a greater size difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ew. That's messed up.

</comment><comment><USER5> what a sketchy clone of imgur!</comment>


Amazon ramps hiring, opening 100k new roles - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aboutamazon.com/operations/amazon-opening-100000-new-roles <comment><USER2> Already on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22597200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22597200)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great news. Kudos, Amazon.</comment>