Goodbye Popcorn Time - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/93f890b8c9f4 <comment><USER2> On the topic of pirated content, I was an early contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter, and I received my "digital download" today.

It consisted of a link to sign up to _two separate websites_ to download a _specific player_ that would stream the video for me on _supported platforms only_. Also, the HD version might not be available right away.

I checked and the torrent of the HD version had been online for 30 minutes already.

Why do they bother with this bullshit? It makes no logical sense and all it does is hurt them.

<comment><USER3> I was also a contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter.

When I received my email today and found out it was Ultra Violet, I was quite upset. I emailed the address they have listed on the F.A.Q. site with my complaint.

I backed the Kickstarter, but in order to watch it on my AppleTV I have 2 options: 1. Purchase from iTunes. or 2. Pirate.

The money I spent to back the Kickstarter could have been used for the iTunes copy. Which doesn't need an external player and is easily accessible on my AppleTV. The iTunes version may have DRM, but it's easily strippable if I desire to back it up for example.

Edit: Some spelling.

<comment><USER4> You kickstart something because you want to help them make it, not because you want a product in return.

While you could strip the copy protections that's a crime.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what is unclear about, "If you donate X, you will receive Y." That's not a simple donation, it's a pre-order.

<comment><USER4> It is very clear. It is also dishonest.

That's a serious problem with Kickstarter - they allow groups to offer tiers that appear to be pre-orders and do nothing when those pre-orders are not delivered.

Kickstarter isn't going to stop doing this despite all the criticism. So people need to keep reminding everyone that tier rewards are menaingless. Maybe you'll get the reward, maybe you won't, but you don't back a project for the reward but because you want to see the project succeed.

Repeating this message may make kickstarter stop projects being dishonest with reward tiers.

<comment><USER6> It will also cause a significantly lower amount of investment into the site, projects, and overall would decrease the number of fees collected. So it ain't happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Piracy is not a people problem. It's a service problem.

I'd say its a pricing problem.

Right now 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is available from Amazon Instant Video at $20. On your popular torrent site virtually the same product is available for $0 + (riskOfGettingCaught * $1,000,000 fine) = $0.000001 ?

You can either try to increase the riskOfGettingCaught or decrease the legal price.

I think the industry should do what Hulu has done over the past 5 years. Give the product away virtually for free, collect an enormous user base while you starve/kill the demand for the equivalent torrents, slowly increase the price of the service until you find equilibrium, then profit.

But hey, maybe piracy isn't really a problem? The greatest assumption people make is that because someone downloaded a movie illegally they were willing to buy it for $20. Which is false. I'd have to imagine that selling 'The Wolf of Wall Street' for $20 on Amazon is more profitable than selling it for say $19 and capturing a few pirate consumers.

But I wonder if theres a number between $0 and $19 that captures enough of the piraters to be more profitable than $20?

<comment><USER8> LOL. And then if you're Hulu, start cramming ads back into paying users' faces. I miss the days when people threw sledghammers into giant TV screens to free us from this hell. Or was that a movie?

<comment><USER9> This will sound like I'm playing devil's advocate, but it's a serious question. Hulu Plus theoretically works an awful lot like a DVR from your cable/satellite company (we'll come back to the "theoretically" in a moment): watch new shows the day after they aired, as many as you want. _Plus_ a lot of back catalog stuff, _plus_ weird independent stuff that they bring in. Not for cable or satellite prices of $100+ a month (and that's not counting "premium" channels like HBO), not even for the promotional special prices of ~$30 a month, but for $7.99 a month, and with about half as many ads, given that Hulu's breaks are 60-90 seconds instead of 2-4 minutes.

I don't know. On the surface, isn't that kind of an amazing improvement?

Coming back to the "theoretically," the problems I see with Hulu are certainly driven by stupid contractual obligations: they usually only have the last five episodes of any given series, so if you want to start watching something halfway through the season you're out of luck; they sometimes don't have rights to stream things on Hulu Plus that they do on _normal_ Hulu, which is banana crazypants; and of course, there are shows and even whole networks they don't carry. But out of all the issues with Hulu, I'm not sure their failure to give us everything commercial free is actually that outrageous.

<comment><USER10> Hulu's breaks are steadily increasing in length. First it was 30s, then 45-60s, now it's typically 120-145s. I avoid Hulu now if there's any other way to watch a show.

<comment><USER11> Is it still the same ad played over and over during the same break? Just 8 times now instead of 4?

<comment><USER9> No, they're up to three different ads. It's just that it's the same three ads every break. :)

<comment><USER11> Hey, it's an improvement. Last time I used Hulu (admittedly a while ago) it was "T-MOBILE T-MOBILE T-MOBILE T-MOBILE T-MOBILE T-MOBILE. It goes fast like this pink motorcycle! T-MOBILE."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It doesn't matter. The code is already out there.

Respectfully, I think the authors didn't think much and were kinda dumb. The project had a great potential, it was barely legal, they bought a fight with the media industry, but the cherry-on-top is that they putted their asses on the line. They shouldn't have used their real names. Anonymise your accounts and be happy.

But as I said, it doesn't matter. Everyone already has a fork of their repo (which has over 70 open pull-requests) and any one of these forks may become the new "official". It won't stop. The gears are already running, much like bitcoin. Fortunately.

<comment><USER13> As you predicted, it looks like the new "official" repo is here: [https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app](https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app) and people have already begun work on getting it working again.

<comment><USER14> I was unaware of that repo yet, it took me 1 hour to get it working though some features was disabled : [https://github.com/cettox/popcorn- app](https://github.com/cettox/popcorn-app) and for precompiled executables visit [http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html](http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html)

<comment><USER15> This seems to quit immediately for me in Mac :(

<comment><USER14> Others already reported problems in mac, yet I am unable to debug it for mac currently.

<comment><USER16> For me it just keeps on Buffering viewo..downloading..and then keeps on doing that. I had the same problem with the official version too. The longest I've checked is ~60 minutes and it was right there where it started.

However, for the same file of 1.5GB it took me ~10 mins to download. (Mac)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did anyone believe that Popcorn Time was going to end any other way than this?

Either they were going to be shut down by their own choice, or their hand would be forced by outside litigation. Just because something is legal doesn't mean companies won't spend millions of dollars to make your life miserable because of what you built.

<comment><USER18> Is it surprising that an appication used to stream torrents, is primarily used for piracy? No, no it's not, and this is why I'm scratching my head. They knew from day one, before they wrote a single line of code that the application would be used for pirating movies. For this reason, I assumed they had a plan, because surely no sane development team would put forth the time to setup this project, and then act surprised at the first legal threat, and close up shop.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure surprised is the word I'd use to describe their sentiment. I'd guess rather that they originally _planned_ to back down at the first sign of legal threats. Popcorn Time has been circulated as an experiment, not a business, and in that sense it was a success. Also, the code isn't going anywhere, so it's not as if all this work was for nothing.

<comment><USER20> Where is the code being hosted now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is an encrypted message [1] in the last commit of their website (popcorn-time.github.io).

[1] [https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- time.github.io/commi...](https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- time.github.io/commit/d0a39b7f04bf8e6ceb1c41fa0b74a10e267beb92)

<comment><USER22> It just occurred to me. It's probably _completely unlikely_ , so I'll put my tinfoil hat on for a moment...

What is the possibility that Github was DDoSed by agents working in or for the movie industry because of Popcorn Time, attempting to either disrupt development or access?

I know, I know. It's outrageous. Unlikely. Crazy, even. But to say I'd be surprised this day and age would be a bit of an overstatement...

<comment><USER23> The movie/recording industry has actually been known to use DDOS attacks. IIRC, they hired a company in India to launch a DDOS against some cyberlocker, which prompted Operation Payback.

<comment><USER24> That sounds interesting. Do you have a link to more information?

<comment><USER25> [http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/movie-industry- launch...](http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/movie-industry-launching- cyber-attacks-on-pirate-websites-715149)

[http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-tries-to-erase- hi...](http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-tries-to-erase- history-111015/)

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111014/02583316350/confus...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111014/02583316350/confused- indian-anti-piracy-group-asks-us-to-remove-article-it-doesnt-like-some-other- blog.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, this is disappointing. It seemed like a nicely designed application, with an enthusiastic development team behind it. And now, within days, it's gone.

If they wanted to avoid piracy, I think it might have had some potential going the legal route as well. It would be a nice interface to browse legal movies, documentaries, web series, etc.

Strange decision, I could see a company like Netflix buying them out for a rather large sum of money, within a short period of time.

As far as using it as a stepping stone to future jobs, why wouldn't they run the application longer? They pulled the plug before it became a widespread success. It they waited longer, the name Popcorn Time would actually be recognizable, which would be great for their résumé, kind of like saying you developed Napster. Now, they'll mention they worked on Popcorn Time, and have to explain to everyone it was an app to stream torrents, that had a brief shelf life.

They really should have road this out longer. Even the name was catchy. Someone else is going to fork the project and achieve the success they would have earned.

<comment><USER26> > I could see a company like Netflix buying them out

Really? I think Netflix would "suddenly" have each and every contract broken and no content can be watched on Netflix services ever again.

Well, with the exception of anything that runs on Popcorn, of course.

<comment><USER18> I never said Netflix would continue to run the application and let people stream illegal content. Let's break this down.

First off, it's a perfect fit. The Popcorn Time audience streams the latest movies and tv series. This is exactly the audience Netflix wants to target.

Popcorn Time hitting 100 million users doesn't seem far fetched. Netflix pays around $16 for each user that you refer to their free trial. Let's say Netflix buys Popcorn Time, converts it to movies that are in the public domain, and tries to refer everyone to the Netflix trial to continue streaming new films. We'll say 99% of people leave, and 1% take up the trial. That's 1 million trial users, which Netflix would currently pay 16 million dollars for in referral fees.

In short, it could easily grow into an application worth tens of millions to a company like Netflix.

The movie industry would love it. Netflix destroys the most popular service for illegally streaming movies, and they make some money off the Netflix subscribers.

If someone makes a successful fork, maybe we'll see this happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's better that the Popcorn Time developers leave now than later. By leaving now they can take advantage of all the attention and get a great fork going.

<comment> at-fates-hands Probably what their initial intention was from the beginning.

1) Build something incredible.

2) Get a ton of cred for it.

3) Release it to the masses via open source.

4) Wait for the lawyers to roll up en masse.

Then simply flee the scene, avoiding any legal entanglements and with steadfast assurances what you've created will now go on without you, and most likely morph into something even more incredible.

Genius I tell you, genius.

<comment><USER28> Interesting! Hadn't thought of that, but it's pretty clever if it is indeed what they're up to.

<comment><USER29> It is becoming a very viable strategy in the "questionable derivative works" scene to open source the assets before a release in case you are C&D'd.

It is wonderful how the Internet makes it hard to suppress information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sadly, existing then shutting down so fast will only hurt the whole reason they set out. Lawyers and middle men are licking their chops and toasting champagne and caviar dreams at the idea of such fast work on their part.

It did prove once again that demand for easy services is desired but lots of that were also because it was free.

<comment><USER31> Why would lawyers be toasting champagne? They could have made money from a lawsuit.

<comment><USER30> Proof that their intimidation 'services' work will sell more intimidation services.

<comment><USER32> good riddance to those people who would then pay for said intimidation service, the find out that it doesn't actually work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder what will happen to the code-base. It's pretty hard to make an application go away when there are many checkouts of its git module around the world.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I'm absolutely certain it'll get forked and live on under different maintainers.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, the service works. I know that I forked a copy just in case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Of course, they received money. So much coverage and stop it here? Who would believe that they are honest? As if the guy who invented torrent stopped working on torrent...

There is a standard for this techno, it's called PPSP [1] it covers both "free" network (with a DHT tracker) and controlled networks (the one required for distributing protected content). There is even an free software that is based on it [2] and a c++ library [3]. It is was developed during P2PNext [4]. During this research some one achieved sub-second DHT lookup and now works at Spotify.

If you are interested in the subject of P2P maybe "P2P virtual network" or "second life P2P" search might interest you.

My interest is for the time being a graph database over a DHT. I am at the very early stage in terms of code. But maybe this might give you an idea of what I'm looking for [5].

[1] [http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ppsp/](http://tools.ietf.org/wg/ppsp/) [2] [http://www.tribler.org/trac](http://www.tribler.org/trac) [3] [http://libswift.org/](http://libswift.org/) [4] [http://p2pnext.eu/](http://p2pnext.eu/) [5] [https://github.com/amirouche/no](https://github.com/amirouche/no)

<comment><USER36> Can not access the /no repo - maybe it's still private? Sounds interesting!

<comment><USER35> It's offline actually, I deleted my github account because of recent events at github.

Since you ask...

3rd iteration: It already took me too much time to write this comment.

The code is really not interesting, the implementation of nolang is broken, I did not find time to debug it, not only "I want to do too much things at once" syndrom but I also wanted to mock the idea of some part of the "final" app, in a browser and apply it in the context of Culture&Empire to reach potential dev/users. Since the web is not my primary target, it doesn't really matter in any way but there's still valuable (to me) ideas in the app. This is the most exciting thing that I ever had in mind. It might sound also kind of naive: instead of pushing Pythonium forward and getting a Python framework similar to meteor or derbyjs I will do "no".

[https://bitbucket.org/amirouche/no-no-more- updates](https://bitbucket.org/amirouche/no-no-more-updates)

The primary application I will build on top of "no" will be something like the venerable delicious bookmark website.

As far as I can think, I would like to be able to boot a computer to be a "no" node with the very minimum. Code & Data will live primarily in the DHT.

[0] The following link is lying. the exact definition of the compliant mode is "wanna be compliant" or "can be compliant"

[1] [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pythonium](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pythonium) [2]

[2] As a Python dev (with JS knowledge), I really like the veloce mode... veloce mode generates perfect javascript code ie. with no overhead. The overhead of compliant mode is between 100 and 10 i don't remember correctly (based on pystones.py).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone interested in the app can still build it from their repo.

[https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app](https://github.com/popcorn- time/popcorn-app)

<comment><USER38> If I wasn't on Comcast I would try this out..

I've had to resort to a lower-tech approach:

* Rent a cheap server * Run transmission daemon on it * SSH into server, port forward 9091 * Connect to localhost:9091 and add torrents that way * When downloads are done, scp them off to my local network

Con: way too many steps involved Pro: encrypted to/from my local network

I know this is not nearly the same as Popcorn Time, but it would be nice to automate all this.

<comment><USER39> I have a similar setup, but I've automated a few more steps.

I have couchpotato[1] running on my VPS. When I add a movie to it, it'll find and drop the torrent file to a directory, where rtorrent will pick it up and immediately start downloading it. When it finishes, it moves the files to a temporary directory, where couchpotato will detect them, rename them and move them to yet another directory, where Git Annex Assistant[2] will add them to its store and sync to a Raspberry Pi in my home through SSH/rsync.

Then I can either copy the file to my laptop or Android by doing "git annex get <file>" or stream it from the Samba server running on the Pi.

Complicated to setup initially, yes, but now it runs smoothly with almost no manual work.

[1] [https://couchpota.to/](https://couchpota.to/)

[2] [https://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/](https://git- annex.branchable.com/assistant/)

<comment><USER40> What is the advantage of this compared to just running everything on the pi?

<comment><USER39> Well, I like to keep decent ratios (usually 3), which would keep my asymmetric home connection too busy - whereas my cheap VPS can do 1Gpbs (burst). And in my experience, the Pi doesn't handle well heavy random IO over the USB/ethernet bus - I had downloads with 20-40% of blocks corrupted upon verification.

And of course, while I don't consider it a problem where I live, removing the torrenting from your connection to a VPS in the Netherlands reduces the chances of having legal problems.

And the VPS isn't a dedicated seedbox - I'd still use it for my email server (Spamhaus' PBL prevents me from sending from my home connection), Tiny Tiny RSS hosting, website hosting, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Popcorn Time as a project is legal. We checked.

The law isn't quite so black and white. There are a lot of different theories good lawyers can come up with. At the end of the day, the only thing that's legal is what a court says is legal.

<comment><USER42> The law and force works so the powerful people can maintain their power, the rich their fortune, and sometime they hang someone so the crowd can be happy, and think the law works.. also.. it eventually locks up marginalized people that dont work in the gears of the big machine.. if you ask them, they will deny it.. and tell what you want to hear.. and you go on with you miserable life..

Kafka my friend.. was there first.. saw it, told us

<comment><USER32> my friend, what you have just described is society. This is why everyone has to step on everyone else to lift themselves up, out of fear of becoming one of those marginalized people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Here's what I don't understand. I pay Netflix $8/month to stream movies and TV shows in HD. From that $8 Netflix has to pay their hosting expenses, maintain a profit margin, and pay licensing fees to Hollywood.

Now a technology comes along that in several ways delivers a _better service than Netflix_ to consumers, for absolutely no cost to Hollywood. Is there any reason Hollywood shouldn't just release content to torrents, and sell an unlimited license for $8, $16, $24, or ?? a month to consumers living in countries which respect intellectual property?

I would gladly pay some amount of money to the content creators if it would buy me Popcorn-time service in a legal manner. I would say the _vast majority_ of Americans are in this boat. They want the service that Popcorn Time used to provide, and they'll pay a price for it. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Hollywood hasn't figured out how to make an absolute killing off of this free infrastructure by merely selling legal amnesty in the form of bittorrent- streaming licenses.

<comment><USER44> 'Hollywood' isn't a single entity. Someone would need to:

\- Set this monthly fee

\- Work out a way to share the fee among content creators, and get that agreed by those content creators

\- Get the data required to support the fee-sharing agreement (e.g. movie plays)

\- Protect the revenues through, e.g. legal action against those who use the service without paying, and providing a payment mechanism for everyone else

Think about it from the point of view of an individual content creator. If I were to create the best movie ever, and wanted to maximise my revenue from the money/sweat/risk I put in to get this far, what kind of revenue sharing model would need to exist, in order to persuade me to make the movie available on a service like the one you describe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd pay 1-5 dollars for a digital download to a video file that I can move and put on anything I own in any way that I want. I won't pay 20-40 dollars for a video I can watch in very limited ways or is a physical disk. It is just too inconvenient to be worth it. There is also a consistency problem. I want everything to be from the same source or in the same format.

</comment><comment><USER46> We need someone rich and powerful to champion this cause, to put their name, influence, reputation behind it. We need an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerburg to just do it, and say go ahead, try suing me, I am going to change the system.

<comment><USER47> Elon Musk is busy trying to change the way cars are sold to the public. And he just lost a battle in New Jersey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Time to fork and continue development.

<comment><USER13> Exactly! :D The fork has already begun here: [https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app](https://github.com/isra17/popcorn-app)

<comment><USER49> If you dump the content of this repo into "%APPDATA%\Popcorn Time\app", the app starts working again without having to do any compiling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I find it interesting that this is essentially a web app front end, made with backbone.js, for the node module peerflix, but peerflix hasn't received any heat.

It seems to me their only "fault" was making things too convenient.

<comment><USER51> That's the flip side of "it's a service problem". Hollywood only cares if you make infringing more convenient than buying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't understand why it got so much attention, it looks just like a ripoff from zona.ru, even the frontend website looks similar. And zona has been out there for quite some time already.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is it just me or is there something they aren't telling us?

<comment><USER29> We can infer that any developer in the US or any real buddy-buddy country with the US probably had police at their door. Yea, they didn't break a law, but the police aren't for law enforcement really.

They also probably got a few thousand notices they would be taken to court.

Their entire goal worked, though - make the app in private, have it blow up, and since the code is FOSS now thousands of people have it and it won't die. Forks can spring up and improve on it just fine - hell, the original developers can work on it still under someone elses repo - but they aren't liable for anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> A nice wrapper around something like btcat: [http://jordic.com/btcat/btcat](http://jordic.com/btcat/btcat) is all that's really needed, a great part of popcorn time was purely in the marketing and presentation, the technology is relatively straight forwards.

Now it's clear there's a demand for similar tools this isn't a tide that can be stopped.

</comment><comment><USER55> There's a saying that goes : Don't buy fish in the ocean.

Studios and all assume that people are thieves.

There are a number of cases to think of:

Tim Ferriss teamed with.. BitTorrent to distribute his latest book (4 Hour Chef). He wrote a detailed article on his experience and the correlation between BitTorrent downloads and sales (number driven he is, he tracked that real-time).

The model was the second-shareware model of early DOS games (you get part of the content, and if you like it, you buy the rest). And people bought it. There was an ad on BitTorrent clients. I haven't bought the book yet, but I haven't even downloaded the free content since I'm saving the thing for later.

There was Radiohead releasing "In Rainbows" as a "Pay what you want" which is extremely risky (since you're giving all the content). And yet, I'll let the reader look up the numbers (it ended being pretty lucrative, since a lot of people pre-ordered it).

Studios and Publishers seem to forget that a lot of human beings would pay if it were easy. One of the reasons I got a MasterCard recently is to pay for books I've read. I live in a country where English isn't spoken, so there's no way I can find them in libraries, I tried to buy on Amazon, they told me they can't ship it where I live.

Second: It's ridiculous to expect of me to buy a movie I haven't watched, or a book I haven't read.

Bear in mind that even with content so easily to be pirated, _most_ movies, and I mean like 99% of them, I wouldn't waste bandwidth to download them. I swear that I wouldn't even watch them if I were paid. Why ? Because a movie is 1h30 to 2h minimum and my life is made of hours and minutes and seconds. I don't like to waste my time. It's not like I'm immortal.

So most movies are crap to being with, not everyone is De Niro.

An other reason: Content is hardly accessible the legal way because their platforms suck big time. I give an example ?

Say there's an interview on NBC or CNN (though free).. I wouldn't watch it on CNN or NBC, because their site is so slow, their players are _horrible_ you want to punch your laptop. So I go to Youtube and find that video and watch it without a glitch.

So I wouldn't even watch free content on the platform of the provider of this free content, because his platform sucks !

If your website is straining someone's computer's resources and making the fan go crazy, you got to ask yourself tough questions (and probably fire some people).

I gladly pay for things. I donate on random websites just because I want to, or because I liked something, or because they had a funny thing, etc.

<comment><USER56> > Second: It's ridiculous to expect of me to buy a movie I haven't watched, or > a book I haven't read.

I've heard this argument many times before, but don't buy it (no pun intended).

There are enough professional and user reviews, video clips, etc of everything for sale online that anyone can make an informed decision on whether the product is likely to be something they'll enjoy.

Why not take advantage of all these great online sources? If many films, for example, haven't suited your taste it may be more valuable spending some time on sites that help you find films more to your taste, and reading/watching/listening to user opinions that are more in line with your own.

That said, I do prefer music services that allow the user to preview tracks prior to purchase. Even Youtube has become a popular platform for previewing content. Seems reasonable for such a type of short-form media.

As for accessibility, companies do need to provide better and more open support for customers to consume their content. It's come a long way though, and hopefully it becomes even more consumer-focused in the future.

<comment><USER55> >There are enough professional and user reviews, video clips, etc of everything for sale online that anyone can make an informed decision on whether the product is likely to be something they'll enjoy.

Most people have bad taste, or are fan-boys. I didn't like "The Batman Rises". Yes, it's Nolan. The extra (actors) were aweful (some of them were laughing in fighting scenes). The scenes where there was a riot, I've seen extras punch the air, etc. Sometimes, Batman wouldn't even hit somebody for them to fall, or worst, hit someone and someone else falls(scene where he gets attacked by a group at night). This is sloppy. Not to mention that the fighting scenes are basically the guys lining up to get their arse handled to them. Why don't you use your gun and shoot the little bat ?

Just weak.

There are tons of movies that are basically a pump and dump scheme. They go heavy, all the way marketing and amping it before the release... Not to mention include scenes in the trailer that aren't even in the final movie. And then release and try to make a killing the first days, because they probably know people will realize it's a shitty movie.

The rest is DVD's, etc..

How many actors can you say are great ? How many screen-writers write really well ? How long have you not seen a movie as The Godfather ?

Extend that to music, too .. How many artists there are, really ? Most music is junk, it sounds exactly the same and you wouldn't be able to make a difference between two tracks (and I have a good musical ear, I mean, I can sometimes recognize a song playing in somone's headphones by its beat).

Furthermore, a lot of "artists" look the frigging same. Lyrics ? Where are the Queens ? And I'm not biased.

Recently, I watched a video of Miley Cyrus a friend was watching. The video was "Jolene". I was speechless and said "Wow ! This song is great". I mean, the lyrics of it. It's vulnerable, etc. It moved me.

And then I said "My God, this song seems coming straight out from the 70's". The tempo, the style, etc.. I listened to it repeatedly. Until I realized that it actually _is_ a 70's song by Dolly Parton (I didn't know her, sorry).

Point is: Good music isn't bound by time. People still listen to The Stones and watch The Godfather.

How many will still listen to the fad music and movies coming out ?

This is the same with books. Pump and dump. Most books I was reading, I'd skim through and then throw it because it's junk. The point is that it would take me more making sure the content is good before buying it (searching reviews of people who aren't me, possibly biased by the author, fans, haters, affiliates) than actually judging by myself (which is done quickly).

<comment><USER57> >How many actors can you say are great ? How many screen-writers write really well ? How long have you not seen a movie as The Godfather ? Extend that to music, too .. How many artists there are, really ? Most music is junk, it sounds exactly the same and you wouldn't be able to make a difference between two tracks (and I have a good musical ear, I mean, I can sometimes recognize a song playing in somone's headphones by its beat). Furthermore, a lot of "artists" look the frigging same. Lyrics ? Where are the Queens ? And I'm not biased.

I'm sorry but this is a load of bull and it's a sentiment that people have been relaying for centuries and it's always ignorant. "This generation's _____ lacks substance but look at ____ and ____ from the past generation and how great it was!"

You can look back on any time period and point out the best of entertainment, just like you can pick out the worst. There was as many awful actors, movies and music when the Godfather was released as there is now, and there is just as much great entertainment being put out right now.

Just because YOU haven't looked past top-40 music and the most popular movies doesn't mean great ones don't exist, and just because YOU only point out the highlights of past entertainment doesn't mean the shitty stuff went away.

This is a ridiculous way of thinking.

<comment><USER55> You're making interesting assumptions about myself. I speak 5 languages fluently; trust me I watch movies, shows, pieces from many, many countries. (I'm not a native English speaker).

This is valid for my tastes in music, painting, books(I've been raised with classic french litterature, but read stuff from all over the world).

(I find it amusing when I see hipsters saying they're "eclectic", yet all their bands sing in English..)

So I understand your assumption that "most" people are spot on top of a Gaussian distribution, listen to popular music, watch popular movies.. People do what other people do. I simply not. Not because I'm contrarian (although this can prove useful in this era), but simply because I have a delicate taste and been exposed to many nice things to spoil my senses.

Furthermore, my words have been distorted. There are many young actors and singers I appreciate a great deal.

PS: You can't deny that the number of cool movies has "sort of decreased". When you see the sequel of a movie like 300, and sequels for everything.. I've watched so many movies that I can tell how a movie will go and I'll be disturbingly close. Heck at one time I unraveled the plot of a movie my friend was watching while I was almost asleep and only listening to audio. Good writers, we need more of those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I thought it was a desktop app that used 3rd party torrent movie search APIs (YIFI, OpenSubtitles, etc.) to stream torrents. How does a desktop app "shut down"? I must be misunderstanding part of the architecture. Did they have a centralized server? What did they use it for?

I know they took the down the download link. People are reporting the app no longer works.

<comment><USER59> They used the [http://subapi.com/](http://subapi.com/) website as a gateway between their app and [http://yts.re/api](http://yts.re/api). You can browse precedent commits to check the previous code, which is what I'm doing now.

<comment><USER60> Popcorn Time 0.1.0 depends on subapi.com to continue functioning. Based on the source the API returns JSON file with the following structure: { movies: { [ torrents: [ {'quality': '1080p', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')}, {'quality': '720p', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')}, {'quality': 'undefined', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')} ], subtitles: [ {'language': 'en', url: '[http://url.srt'](http://url.srt')}, {'language': 'undefined', url: '[http://url.srt'](http://url.srt')} ], imdb_id:, title:, year:, runtime:, synopsis:, voteAverage:, poster:, backdrop:, seeders:, leechers: ] } }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Don't worry, YIFI is on it...

[http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-shuts-down-then-gets- re...](http://torrentfreak.com/popcorn-time-shuts-down-then-gets-resurrected- by-yts-yify-140315/)

 _edit_ Link to new github repo for YIFY:

[https://github.com/Yify/popcorn-app](https://github.com/Yify/popcorn-app)

</comment><comment><USER62> Nobody has a god damn spine in the tech world. These guys could've stood up & been different - the fact they shut down shortly after being featured on here, Reddit & other large websites shows that they weren't passionate at all & weren't willing to standup for their users at all. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER63> I owned a site that was targeted by the MPAA. I don't think you understand just how intense that can be. it's hardly a C&D letter.

<comment><USER64> That's interesting. Any chance you could be more specific?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Could this have been the intent all along? Make a decent first cut of the code, generate a ton of publicity, then generate a ton _more_ publicity — note the vagueness about why exactly they shut down — then leave the code in reasonable working order up on GitHub. Now a thousand hard-to-shutdown forks will bloom.

</comment><comment><USER66> > _Popcorn Time as a project is legal. We checked. Four Times._

What the heck does that mean? Four times, eh? You mean you asked four different lawyers? You asked the same lawyer four times? You got sued four times and won? (Obviously not). You 'checked' by googling around for legal information... four times? You asked your cousin who took a class on copyright once? Four cousins? You emailed the MPAA... four times?

I don't think the law works like you think it works.

> _Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and > copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in > danger for doing what we love. And that's not a battle we want a place in._

So, if after your 'four times checking', it still caught you by surprise that there'd be debates and legal threats... I don't think you were checking in the right places.

</comment><comment><USER67> I was trying to use Popcorn yesterday and it just plain sucked. I then installed XBMC and XBMCTorrent plugin, and everything was buttery smooth.

Popcorn is built on A LOT of immature technology, which makes it very slow. XBMCtorrent on the other hand uses mature, tested, compiled libraries and platforms.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hey this is not the end, it is an opportunity to sell this technology to some company that has problems streaming video PopCorn Time is just the proof that it works and it can be used to solve real world problems. So i hope you find a successful exit.

</comment><comment><USER69> The best part:

 _We've shown that people will risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve.

And maybe, that asking nicely for a few bucks a month to watch whichever movie you want is a bit better than that.

Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives.

Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that's not a battle we want a place in._

</comment><comment><USER70> I've scanned this whole thread and there's not a single post that is at all critical of the intentions behind Popcorn Time. I guess you're all okay with a world where content creators don't eat.

Or do you have a better idea than copyright? If so, by all means let's hear it. I promise you that the person who solves that problem in an accessible way will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Tim Berners-Lee. Every single artist, musician, movie studio, and producer in the world will beat a path to your door, frantically scrambling for their checkbooks and trembling as they hover over a check with the pen asking "how much?!? how much!??" They will break into your house and shove cash down your throat while you sleep.

I know a good number of writers, artists, and musicians. Do any of you six- figure-earners have _any_ idea how insanely hard it is to even make a living doing anything "creative?" I mean a basic living: food, shelter, occasional transportation. Nothing infuriates these people more than clueless techies with (to them) _unimaginable_ earning power braying on about how they should live off charity or touring revenues so "information can be free." _You try it_ , and no open source does not count. Open source is a resume item that helps you land your next six-figure gig, not to mention the fact that it can be monetized in other ways... ways that unlike tip jars actually work. (Services, training, dual-licensing, etc.)

Oh sure, yeah, the record industries and Hollywood make more than the artists. Everyone knows that. In the past, the record company or the studio made most of the money and the artist got too little. But now with piracy the artist gets _zero_. Is that a step in the right direction? We've gone from artists having to suck up to shady promoters to artists not even having shady promoters to suck up to.

Why is there so much crappy music on the radio? Because the people who like it are either too young or too dumb to pirate it.

And this is coming from someone who's written peer to peer apps. I am pretty liberal in this area. I do not believe a technology should be interfered with just because it could potentially be used for piracy. If we did that, we'd have to shut down the whole Internet. But there's a difference between designing an app that _can_ be used for piracy and designing one whose entire focus and modus operandi is to promote piracy front and center. It may not be illegal but it's a dick move. Let's see you work for "voluntary contributions," assholes.

To add douche to the nozzle, there's people in here congratulating the Popcorn Time authors on how brilliant they are by leveraging this for publicity. That's wonderful. Now these folks who did little more than hack together some node.js scripts with a front end will go out and make well above $100k while musicians struggle to pay rent for tiny closets in the ghetto. So the MPAA might have harassed them. Boo hoo. Go blow your nose into your hordes of cash.

Maybe the end of copyright as we know it is technologically inevitable. But in the meantime it shows more than a little bit of ignorance, naiveté, and douchebaggery to congratulate each other on destroying peoples' livelihoods en masse. Maybe instead all you hackers could bend your considerable intellects toward trying to solve this problem in a productive way that actually helps creators get paid while also making it easy for people to enjoy their work. You'd be loved, not to mention wealthy and historically legendary.

<comment><USER29> > Or do you have a better idea than copyright?

Capitalism. Pay for scarce goods and services on an open market. Since movies / music / etc are digital, and that is a number, and numbers are information, you don't restrict information. Instead, you let the free market handle it - in the absence of copyright, people _still_ want movies, and music, and new creative feats. And those creators want to live off of creating their works.

Hint: keyword is creating.

So as a creator you come before the masses and say "I want to make X, but I need to eat to do so, and you want X, so let us have a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange and I'll make it".

The only other thing you need is some kind of restitution system (I think) to artificially increase confidence in creators, or you end up with a reputation based insular ecosystem of the first few to meet the demand finding all the investment. It could be through investor like protection for failed projects, or it could be some program where the state provides you some stipend to attempt creative endeavors and they can deal with the arbitrage over failed works.

Regardless of how you go about it, the concept is the same - stop the doublethink. Information isn't scarce. In the past, making it more scarce had value because it was still somewhat scarce. Today, information is no longer scarce. I have the means to transmit lifetimes worth of information in months / weeks / days / hours / minutes / seconds depending on your connection speeds. And I think there is something fundamentally different between the inception of copyright (make scarce information slightly more scarce to promote its creation because its creators have to endure the upfront costs of infrastructure to account for the medium scarcity of the end product) and modern information (which isn't scarce, has no investment costs besides the scarce resources that go into creating an original instance of it, and has no deployment expenses).

This doesn't happen today because the short term demand for information creation is satiated by media purchase, because funding new open media would be a long term purchase. So when people have to choose between new media now or new media later, they bend over for copyright. If their choice was free media now and paying for the media they want to see made later, there wouldn't be a choice, and all that capital would (mostly _)flow to content creators.

_ : yes, it is likely in the absence of an artificial market propped up by copyright that, due to subliminal mental effects of marketing and appeal, and the fact hairless monkeys don't make entirely rational purchasing decisions, some of those funds would be redirected towards other immediate scarce goods and services rather than potential future information creation. That only reflects how bad our current system is, though - it means people overspend on media because of the existence of copyright, not through rational process, but because they are manipulated into redistributing their funds through manipulation.

If you want an example of this system, look at the gooseberry movie project. Exactly how the future should be.

[http://gooseberry.blender.org/](http://gooseberry.blender.org/)

<comment><USER71> What about FOSS licenses, anyone can simply ignore what for example GPL says and do as they please with the code without copyright. There is simply no case there to fight if it were to happen.

<comment><USER29> But it would also mean they couldn't control the compiled binaries. It takes the profit motive out of software development - you just have to be vigilant enough to make sure you can retrace the source of the software you use.

I'm one of the people that uses the GPL because copyright exists. Without copyright, companies lose the incentive to close their source, because the binaries aren't restrictable anyway so they can't profit off that. It just means they shoot themselves in the foot by not showing the source to others for auditing purposes. It would also mean decompiling binaries would be perfectly legal, and distributing the results of that would be legal too.

I'd rather live in a world where nobody can tell you how to distribute information than one where I can try (and personally wouldn't be able to fight jack in court enforcing it without the FSF's help) to force openness on others for the sake of freedom while international companies profiteer off artificial scarcity.

<comment><USER71> On the contrary I think that's an even higher incentive to close source, obfuscate binaries and add DRM etc. And while someone may be able to copy the binary, they can not create derivative work from it.

It's still going to be a fight, but it will be fought outside of the court rooms without support of the law. To me that sounds like a step backwards, because even more than today that's a fight where a resource heavy megacorp will have an upper hand.

I don't like the idea of someone that creates something great without compensation, put it out for free, only to have the work taken by some large corporation that manages to profit from the work due to large marketing budgets, sales channels and existing customers, while the author remains uncompensated. So it's not an incentive to open source and share personal projects either.

<comment><USER29> > they can not create derivative work from it.

You can easily decompile it, and without copyright nobody can tell you want you are allowed to do with it.

> only to have the work taken by some large corporation that manages to profit > from the work due to large marketing budgets, sales channels and existing > customers, while the author remains uncompensated

How would you profit from the work if you can't "sell" the work? At best they could seek funding to create derivatives of the work. But this does point out a major reason copyright is broken now - in how many other disciplines do you expect compensation for finite effort for infinite time? It should be that your finite work is compensated for finite money during a fixed time period (in my examples, the development of the work).

I'd like to think you could extend plagiarism in the absence of copyright to cover all ideas - ie, you can freely modify, reproduce, or redistribute a work, as long as you aren't falsely claiming it as your own, and upon inquiry you truthfully say where it came from. That is peripheral to actual interactions with information, it is about how you present yourself in relation to them.

<comment><USER71> > You can easily decompile it, and without copyright nobody can tell you want > you are allowed to do with it.

Easy to decompile, is not the same as easy to deobfuscate, understand and create deriviative work from. The entire point of GPL or any license is to tell what's allowed to do, that means you _can_ share source code, and have legal means backing you up.

> How would you profit from the work if you can't "sell" the work?

You are the one who say that you can not sell the work. Of course you can, but it may not be relevant to the question of profits here since we are talking about source code, it may be incorporated in an existing system or service or even in a hardware product just to give some examples.

> in how many other disciplines do you expect compensation for finite effort > for infinite time?

It's not infinite, it is restricted to a finite time. You do not get compensation unless you sell a product, selling that product it self takes work and investments. The amount you get paid, and if there are any reoccuring payments depends on the terms you are able to negotiate with who ever it is you sell to. It has nothing to do with copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> It's deeply frustrating that Bittorrent is still synonymous with piracy just like MP3 was in the 1990s. It's simply a protocol. One may use a technology like this for very good purposes, including independent film distribution. When I worked at Pearson, we could not convince network personnel to allow corporate Bittorrent for media content distribution to international sites because they were afraid auditors would balk at it for its connotations. It was clearly the best technology for the job and auditors have accepted it for similar uses at companies like Ebay and Paypal.

</comment><comment><USER73> You know what really grinds my gears? You actually give so much credit to Popcorn Time for "inventing" something that the damn europeans have for a thousand years...OK, maybe for americans is Heaven on earth cause they pay for damn everything but it's not like they invented fire! It's the same story as Twitter in Europe. Everyone thought it's just another social network, then it moves to US and BOOM. I should start "porting" some ideas then cause you just proved a point I have for 8 years now.

</comment><comment><USER74> I thought it was decentralized enough that you just needed the software for the job. Seems like it used a centralized point since I can't use it now.

</comment><comment><USER75> I was hoping this service was going to take off. I created something similar, a simple movie torrent search engine: [http://www.moviemagnet.net](http://www.moviemagnet.net) I hope people are not discouraged by Popcorn's exit, since torrent based applications should force the issue, old media companies to change their archaic distribution models.

</comment><comment><USER76> Goodbye Popcorn Time, hello Popcorn app - [https://github.com/yify](https://github.com/yify)

</comment><comment><USER77> I don't understand. I thought Popcorn Time was FOSS with it's source on GitHub that downloaded all it's data from external APIs.

How can it possibly just "say goodbye"?

Is this the main developers disowning it or what? I imagine thousands of other devs now have local forks of it on their home machine and can/will continue to develop and release it?

</comment><comment><USER28> I never used the thing, but people seemed pretty impressed by it. This post is a mess though, it's all over the place.

<comment><USER78> Yeah, I don't know what it is, what they've done, or why they are stopping.

Not in any real detail anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Mine does not work anymore, just spins. Mine also says Popcorn time Goodbye was just released you should get it now!

</comment><comment><USER80> Old working version: [https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw...](https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWwvSb5g_eKgolRg)

Apparently they patched it after this release so they could shut it down; tested the one above a moment ago and it still works

</comment><comment><USER81> I don't think this was Popcorn's choice. I'd be willing to bet their hand is being forced here.

<comment><USER26> I think it was their choice, the way they go about it. They've given a huge middle finger to the copyright industry while staying within legal bounds and showing off their programming skills. Can't say they're set for life, but odds are they made themselves a pretty solid future without being dragged along with this project any further.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What does their last commit stand for? [https://github.com/popcorn- time/popcorn-app/commit/7e4d851bc...](https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- app/commit/7e4d851bc02082d5bbc0260315fd61fe856d0bdc)

<comment><USER21> Last flush of code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Believing that piracy is solely a Service problem is pretty naive or downright ignorant. Yes, some people pirate because other means of purchasing the content in question are inferior but lets face it: People will always prefer the free option

<comment><USER32> Nobody is saying it's solely a service problem - but that the current level of legit material isn't serving the full spectrum of available customers. Piracy will always happen, so if you wanted less pirates, one way is to better serve them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> try this:

       https://github.com/hjhart/the_rotten_pirate

<comment><USER84> You can also search torrent manually and use [https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix](https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix) with VLC

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Kinda random, but I associate the word "popcorn" with time, because when I was a kid growing up in the Bay Area, we always dialed POP-CORN (767-2676) to get the current time. Probably just a coincidence?

</comment><comment><USER86> _We've shown that people will risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve._

What? Why do they deserve this?

</comment><comment><USER87> That may be gone but you can still use [http://www.nzbplayer.com/](http://www.nzbplayer.com/) if you absolutely must watch things as you download them.

</comment><comment><USER88> > We became the underdog that would fight for the consumer.

That's like saying "Sure, we burned down the bank, but we did it for the frustrated account holders."

</comment><comment><USER89> Am interested in details, but none given.

</comment><comment><USER90> Why the fuck did they host the servers themselves? Was this planned all the time?

</comment><comment><USER91> I installed it 2 days ago. Was gonna try it out tonight, and now this. :(

<comment><USER92> Works regardless I think because it feeds off of torrents.

<comment><USER91> Don't think so. I just get a "please wait" spinner.

<comment><USER93> They changed / took down the api that got the torrent providers.

<comment><USER94> The previous version still works, you can download it from here [https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWw...](https://mega.co.nz/#!aoB02BwK!AXxujXpZ2AJPe9YUwYDs1EYM6BBnWwvSb5g_eKgolRg) (aprently in the last version they added something that let them shut it down if the needed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Well that was fast.

</comment><comment><USER95> Goodbye Popcorn Time, Hello Streisand Effect.

</comment><comment><USER96> I hope someone from Hollywood reads that.

<comment><USER97> I hope not. It will convince them that bullying developers works because they can't afford lawyers.

<comment><USER98> I made sure to download it right away a few days ago even though I don't know when I will get around to trying it.

<comment><USER99> Too late. Their database is hosted somewhere online and now gone.

<comment><USER100> Strange. Just worked fine for me.

<comment><USER79> No, it does not anymore, just spins. Mine also says Popcorn time Goodbye was just released you should get it now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> How long till someone forks it...

<comment><USER102> It's already been forked multiple times via GitHub. I'm guessing whichever fork currently had the most active developers will continue the application. It's like the movie industry doesn't know how technology works or something...

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> i think the solution is going to be the spotify model for movies.

</comment><comment><USER104> Just today I thought, can we an iPad version of this app. nevermind.

</comment><comment><USER105> I guess I'm the odd man out on reddit, er hackernews, but it doesn't seem too brave or incredible to build an app which is used to primarily stream stolen content.

<comment><USER106> Again with 'stolen'.

<comment><USER107> Yeah stolen! I had a copy of Ghostbusters at home on my shelf and it disappeared yesterday. I suspect a criminal using popcorntime must be responsible.

<comment><USER105> Yes, because words are only allowed to have a single meaning. Using the word 'steal' to refer to piracy to bypass payment to the rights holder has been happening since at least the mid 80s(NYT reference from 1986: [http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/nyregion/cable-tv- operator...](http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/nyregion/cable-tv-operators- unite-to-fight-theft-of-their-services.html) )

<comment><USER108> It's a pejorative term that predisposes someone to a certain conclusion. Pretty easy to bust out the 'S' word and win the jury in .2 seconds. ;-)

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/15263725410/surpri...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131130/15263725410/surprise- mpaa-told-it-cant-use-terms-piracy-theft-stealing-during-hotfile-trial.shtml)

<comment><USER107> Exactly</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GPU-accelerated Path Rendering (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.graphics.rwth-aachen.de/media/teaching_files/kilgard_2012_pathrendering.pdf

<comment><USER2> GPU accelerated path rendering is one of the single most polar technologies. Things like Bezier curves are defined mathematically, so you can represent the way a tiger looks in a, albeit large, mathematical equation! But due to their usage of maths that computers aren't fast at performing, they are extremely difficult to rasterize in real-time.

NVidia's technology to do this has been around for years, but it hasn't 'taken off', I've yet to see anyone use it (maybe Adobe Illustrator uses it?). Khronos (the group who created OpenGL) even has a standard for accelerated vector graphics, called OpenVG, which has also been around for years as well yet only the Raspberry Pi and a few other embedded ARM devices seem to support it.

My conclusion? Path rendering is insanely useful, but it's very complex for both application developers ("this is slow and hard") and artists alike ("I hate these weird grabby-handles!"). That complexity comes at a cost, and time after time we've been shown that complexity is often overpowered by simplicity even when it's inferior (bitmap images).

I would like to see Quadratic (i.e. a bezier curve with just one control point) become popular due to their artistic simplicity as well as their easy relation to graphics hardware (a triangle with a simple GLSLfragment shader can render a quadratic bezier curve).

Perhaps quadratic bezier curves aren't as mathematically pure (cannot represent circles "perfectly") -- but they are artistically beautiful and, in my mind, just as useful as pixels are (in real-time applications). [http://imgur.com/a/i2RtE](http://imgur.com/a/i2RtE)

<comment><USER3> It's funny to see this pop up now. I'm writing a demo (one shader for two triangles) that does 2d distance field rendering, and I'm using quadratic bezier curves for a large part of it. Rather than an optimized form, I'm just iterating over the curve and then doing a point-line distance calculation for each step; it's not the most efficient way to do it, but it's plenty fast on modern GPUs.

I'm excited to see where accelerated path rendering goes in the future. In conjunction with distance field rendering, it's absolutely fantastic.

<comment><USER4> I assume you read [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/cloop/loopblin...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/cloop/loopblinn05.pdf) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious if anyone has had luck rendering > 100k of these at 30 or 60fps in webgl!

<comment><USER4> 100k of WHAT? :) It is easy for a 100k solid circles lines up in a grid. Impossible for 100k mitered lines overlapping the full screen at 1% opacity.

In addition I would guess webgl would get around 10% performance vs native because it is missing a lot of useful API for that kind of stuff and has a significant overhead in javascript - rendering vectors needs a lot of CPU work and not having floats (only doubles) does hurt in use cases like bulk geometry.

<comment><USER5> If you can get 100k+ bezier curves to render in 30-60fps from a vbo, eg, loop/blinn, let's chat :) we're fine on 1mm+ simple primitives, this is more interesting :)</comment></comment></comment>


A closer look at Project Harmony and Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.fiftyfiveandfive.com/dropbox/project-harmony-dropbox/

<comment><USER2> One of the big things that Dropbox missed with the Datastore API is the collaborative aspect. Creating a distributed database that you can use on any device is great, but without the ability to share data between users, you're stuck building apps in an empty sandbox.

With Harmony (and its potential collaboration API) it seems that Dropbox could become a real distributed platform for single-page-apps.</comment>


Build times sneak up on you. - <AUTHOR> http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1257

<comment><USER2> And another good read on make: <http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf></comment>


iOS, the Future of MacOS, Freedom, Security and Privacy - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/desantis/5728d5536b6dfe37e781c0a4a0f32e54 <comment><USER2> When the iPhone was new, Apple wasn't fighting surveillance society. They were mainly fighting carriers forcing you to buy shitty locked-down phones preloaded with as many monetization tools as they can fit in them.

So a lot of the basic security of iPhone OS, as it was originally called, was supposed to stop your carrier from fucking it up.

That legacy continues today, even though Apple is pivoting to a "privacy is the product" model. I suspect a lot of these criticisms are a byproduct of that legacy, and not necessarily a sign of trouble in the future.

I still trust Apple - but Apple will have to continue to work hard to maintain that trust.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Especially since iOS10, and the "differential privacy" (dprivacyd) concept, > which Apple pushed, and which this author feels essentially boils down to > "let's collect even more data without giving a real reason and spin it as a > privacy improvement because we remove certain metadata, after all none of > our users understand or care anyway"

This is too misleading and dismissive. Differential privacy collection requires that the device will send back data which doesn't contain enough information to tell anything significant about the individual, but does allow for population-level statistics to be computed from many samples (eg. the old private-survey trick of flip a coin and answer truthfully if it's heads or randomly if it's tails). If they're collecting more data with this system, then it's supposed to mean that they don't know more about _you_.

Almost all tech companies collect extensive usage data; Apple seems to have made a genuine and rare attempt to improve the privacy of their users (admittedly without damaging their ability to make informed product decisions). Given the popularity of AI tech and the huge amounts of data it requires, systems like this are probably the only plausible way to improve user privacy without getting left-behind in the AI and product-development race.

</comment><comment><USER4> "On iOS, there is no full-disk or full-volume encryption, only varying levels of file-based encryption..."

I don't understand this claim. iOS had full disk encryption starting with iOS 3.0, in 2010. Or at least Apple (and other security experts) says it does:

[https://darthnull.org/security/2014/10/06/ios- encryption/](https://darthnull.org/security/2014/10/06/ios-encryption/)

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER5> You're not missing something. The author doesn't seem to understand how iOS's disk encryption works. It's not "full disk encryption" in that the full disk is not encrypted with one key. However, every single file on the disk is encrypted, with separate keys, and the various levels of security (e.g. "accessible always", "accessible when unlocked", etc) are managed by storing these keys in different key bags whose own keys are evicted from memory at the appropriate times.

Which is to say, it's not classic FDE, but if you were to take the storage out of an iPhone and inspect it, you'd find that everything in the filesystem is in fact encrypted.

<comment><USER3> Yep. And this layered encryption is great because it allows — for example — your phone to boot up before you enter a passphrase.

Making this technology more convenient is just as important for making people secure as the algorithms themselves, because otherwise, almost no one will use them (PGP-encrypted email being the classic example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How old is this?

 _the state and details of disk encryption on both OSes is slightly unclear, but hopefully will become clearer when iOS 10.3 is released._

10.3 was released 9 months ago. And I find it hard to take seriously any article where every other sentence is bolded.

<comment><USER6> Answering my own question - the original gist was posted in March 2017.

<comment><USER7> OK thanks, we'll add that.

<comment><USER8> The gist contains a 2018 update section at the bottom...

<comment><USER7> Ok thanks, we'll take that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _This post by a security researcher who prefers to remain anonymous_

 _If iOS is to really be considered a secure OS, and if vanilla macOS is to become more secure, independent end-user control must be considered. Increased low-level design security at the cost of control, and the ability to prevent leaking data, cannot be considered a real improvement in security._

Whoever you are, _thank you greatly_ for not being another one of those authoritarian cargo-cult "users are stupid so we should remove all control from them" people which the greater security community seems to be full of.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am no _connaisseur_ , just a guy who cares about privacy (in general and his in particular) who also happens to own an iPhone and wants to buy a Mac.

This seems pretty troubling, as I as well as many I suppose, trust Apple and think that they're one of the good guys. I know it's cliché but I think this is the part where "[..] live long enough to see yourself become the villain." applies.

The more important question, imho, then is: what can we do about it ? If nothing, what should be done ?

<comment><USER11> What do you do? Windows world is worse. So is Android generally.

Use Linux? How do you trust that? QubesOS? Pen and paper?

If you walk outside, you're on camera. Living off grid with no phone or computer seals the deal, but not very practical.

I'm all about security and privacy, but everything is on balance with practically. If a three digit govt agency wants to find you, they have so many other ways than Apple.

<comment><USER12> Why not trust Linux? No activation, full control over all the processes. Seems like a good solution for people who "care".

<comment><USER13> It's good in theory but in practice you'd need to spend a lot of time and money doing deep audits yourself, both hardware and software. That just really isn't a worthwhile investment for the vast, vast, majority of people.

At the end of the day it all still boils down to trust based on reputation, incentives and oversight. Openness is important but no panacea.

<comment><USER12> Well at least the surface area of the audit is a LOT smaller than on macOS, Windows, etc.

<comment><USER13> I really doubt that's the case if you use more than a few small apps which is the case for the vast majority of users.

<comment><USER12> Must I link a running process list of my Linux laptop vs my macOS laptop?

<comment><USER14> How do you know the process list is accurate for certain?

The point is, there's potentially back doors in everything, including the C compiler that built your Linux kernel.

<comment><USER12> We've all read reflections on trusting trust... still my point stands, it's hard to argue that Linux is not lighter than the mainstream OSes.

<comment><USER13> It can be lighter but what does that mean in practical terms if the cost of maintenance is monumental? I think with even just the barest bones practical computer with wifi + with email + browser + compiler and their dependencies is well beyond the scope of what one person is able to audit. You'd need a team of at least 20-30 individuals before that starts making sense.

<comment><USER15> If only it was possible for massive armies of people to inspect source code for possible defects or backdoors?

Further what if it happened we were unsatisfied with this we could all collectively hire more people to audit the software stacks we rely on in order of priority instead of expecting each person to hire dozens to vet the software they are presently running.

Further if only even if we can't ever arrive at 100% surety we can get closer and closer to satisfaction.

<comment><USER13> > If only it was possible for massive armies of people to inspect source code > for possible defects or backdoors?

You mean like what Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. already do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Apple Activation servers are accessed via Akamai, which means sensitive data > may be cached by Akamai and its' peering partners' which includes many > global ISPs and IXPs

Wouldn't this be devastating to about 10000 other businesses as well?

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, this was a long article, so let me try to unpack it:

> iOS devices (even non-cellular devices) on first boot and, occasionally for > unclear reasons after OS upgrades, will require "Activation" and an internet > connection to contact an array of Apple servers.

The linked patent says that this is for carrier locking. It's possible that the code is used even on non-cellular devices because they just found it more convenient to not remove it? There might be more to this; maybe it allows for something like Activation Lock to work or allow Apple to track stolen inventory.

> Apple links the credit card used at purchase, the purchaser's name and > email, and of course, the serial number and all components required to > generate a UUID

Of course they do; these are all components of an Apple ID, so it would be impossible for them to keep them apart.

> This means, for example, that if you were to use a certain app for a social > network under a pseudonym on an iOS device (not that I would recommend > installing any social networking site's apps on your device) and that > service sends information via APNS, Apple (and possibly the social > networking service) can most likely link the pseudonym account to your real > identity.

I'm not very familiar with APNS, but doesn't it work something like "social media server sends Apple message, and Apple forwards it to the right device"? How would device-specific information get to third parties?

> if you enter contacts into the address book, contacts' details are hashed > and automatically sent to Apple, supposedly to check for presence in Apple's > iMessage database to determine whether to show iMessage as an option on that > contact's page

I agree that this is a stupid decision. This is a reasonably large loss of privacy for a very small benefit.

> ust try to remove your Mac's WiFi card and rebooting - all Mac App Store > apps will likely fail to open

Wait, what? I've been able to open Mac App Store apps without a network connection. You _can_ try to validate with the App Store over the network, but that's an _option_ , not a requirement: [https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Gen...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/General/ValidateAppStoreReceipt/Introduction.html)

> Apple really wanted the DRM aspect

I'm not even sure what the purpose behind Apple's "DRM" is. It's trivially bypassed on jailbroken devices, and I think on macOS as well.

> On macOS you can separately download an update/upgrade DMG, which will be > signed by Apple, and then simply install it without a network connection.

On macOS you can also downgrade your OS to whatever you like. iOS requires a firmware to be signed before it will install, which obviously means that it will have to reach out to Apple somehow.

> if a user feels like removing/modifying certain Apple system binaries they > are uncomfortable with

What if a user removes AMFI or the Sandbox?

> The fact that there is no way of monitoring or intercepting file system > events, network connections and other system calls on said device and that > you are giving apps many, many more privileges than you realise

It takes work, but this is possible. What you need to do is sign every app you download with your own entitlements that allow for debugging.

Despite the author's hesitations, I'm still pretty convinced that macOS/iOS are probably some of the most secure operating systems you can buy today; the amount of time Apple has put into this clearly shows. Plus, it's obvious to see that Apple's incentives don't really align along data collection, even when taking a cynical viewpoint. Not collecting user information allows them to resist government requests for data and increases public goodwill; unlike other companies they have a clear source of revenue that's not tied to data collection, and it's highly unlikely that they'd burn that money to go after data collection for AI or whatever given that's not an area they have a whole lot of experience in.

That being said, there are many good points brought up in the article, namely the centralized control that Apple has over devices. We've already seen occasions where this has caused Apple to acquiesce to third-party requests: for example, the removal of network extension apps from China's App Store. Apple is playing a delicate balancing game of trying to maintain some control over the hardware they vend while trying to keep it secure, and this is a difficult thing to do, especially when they need to cater to the needs of users for whom features are important and privacy is invisible.

</comment><comment><USER18> Having to choose between sanely developing and cuatomizing your phone, and privacy on your phone, sshouldnt be the case.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone have a pastebin copy or something? I don't log into gh on my phone and gists are behind a reg-wall now...

<comment><USER20> It loads on mobile Safari without a login. Do you have any browser extensions which might be causing that?

<comment><USER19> I have Firefox Focus installed. I've definitely talked to other people who have also been unable to read gists lately without logging in. Would github care about adblockers?

<comment><USER20> I also use Focus so I don't think it's that. Maybe A/B testing gone terribly wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Its encouraging to be reminded that still not everyone who uses Apple hardware runs MacOS exclusively.

[https://sivers.org/openbsd](https://sivers.org/openbsd)

[http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd-on-macbook/](http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd- on-macbook/)

However I have not heard any reports of anyone running an alternative OS on iPhone or iPad hardware.

With every passing year I continue to think it would be interesting to observe how users would choose if Apple hardware and Apple software were sold separately.

Would all users choose Apple software?

<comment><USER7> Duplicate comments are not ok here.

For a long time now—and an astonishing number of posts—you've been using HN basically to post agitprop. The trouble isn't your opinions—whatever they are, I'm sure plenty of other users agree with them, all of whom manage to use HN just fine. The trouble is that you've crossed into being a single-purpose account, which is not cool. HN threads are for conversations, not agendas. One can't have a conversation with a megaphone.

Since we already asked you once to stop and you don't seem interested in changing, I'm going to ban this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

<comment><USER21> Its not a duplicate. @mercer suggested the last paragraph should be removed, so thats what I did. Alas, the edit period had expired.

Edit: Notice that youve toned down your original reply, which had statements like "No one cares about your opinions about Google, Apple or Facebook." It seems I have agitated you. I apologise.

<comment><USER7> I didn't say "no one cares". Originally I wrote " _We_ really don't care about your opinions of Apple or Facebook or Google". That is true, in the sense that if you flipped the high bit on all your opinions to turn them into the opposite opinions, we'd have the same moderation response.

But I've learned it's better not to word things that way. I can't easily stop myself from typing the first version of a comment more strongly than I know is helpful, so my solution is to sand off the sharp edges by editing, which I do a lot of.

<comment><USER21> I dont have any issue with editing comments. I use the edit feature constantly myself.

Im just making clear I am not _trying_ to cause agitation. Thats not the intent.

I try to be sparing with opinions. I dislike having to type prefix or postfix statements with "IMO" again and again, but I want to make explicit what is only an opinion versus what are facts or observations because ("IMO") opinions are almost always worthless. I prefer facts and questions.

Most of the volume of posts I made the past few weeks were not opinions but were excerpts and pointers to articles: facts and some _journalists_ opinions.

The truth is I waste too much time "interacting" with this addictive forum. Its a distraction.

If you ban me from ever posting anything ever again on HN, in all honesty, you will probably be doing me a favour.

<comment><USER22> I don't mean this in a mean way, but you do seem to care a little too intensely (about both fb/apple/etc. and the effects of that on your karma and whatnot). Wouldn't a good alternative be to just tone it down a bit, if possible? Because honestly I don't think you're wrong probably most of the time, so your contributions could be valuable.

I often struggle with my own conduct in social settings, and I've been called 'too intense' more than once, among other things. I don't know your particular story, or if there is a 'story', but I'd really hate the idea that you'd leave entirely instead of finding a way to be _you_ and still fall within the acceptable range of HN commenters. And not get too addicted, of course :). I've been so unsuccessful at the latter that I decided to 'use it for good' and build my own little plugins so at least I'm learning something while being here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Its encouraging to be reminded that still not everyone who uses Apple hardware runs MacOS exclusively.

[https://sivers.org/openbsd](https://sivers.org/openbsd)

[http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd-on-macbook/](http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd- on-macbook/)

However I have not heard any reports of anyone running an alternative OS on iPhone or iPad hardware.

With every passing year I continue to think it would be interesting to observe how users would choose if Apple hardware and Apple software were sold separately.

Would all users choose Apple software?

Expecting to take a little karma subtraction from the thought police for daring to entertain such a nonpermissible idea. Par for the course here and well worth it.

<comment><USER22> I'm almost certain that your comment wouldn't be greyed out if you hadn't added that last paragraph.

<comment><USER21> Comments from me that are _skeptical_ of Apple are _always_ downvoted. Complaining is acceptable but _doubting_ is not. I have tested this over the years and it is remarkably consistent. Its both amusing and sad. The clicks can sometimes take a while to come, sometimes days, but they _always_ come. Whether I add something silly acknowedging this phenomenon makes no difference. They come either way. Its just a small price to pay for being irreverent I guess. I have plenty of karma to spare. Well worth it.</comment></comment></comment>


Curiosity: Should We Poke The Cube? - <AUTHOR> http://statspotting.com/2012/11/curiosity-should-we-poke-the-cube/

<comment> X-Istence I stopped reading when I got to "Pls".

For fucks sake, write the word out. Please is not that many extra characters to type and it will allow those reading your article to at least consider your points rather than having to slog through what I am guessing from that point on is written in texting shorthand by a 16 year old girl.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed that. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> _If everyone playing Angry Bird starts working on putting together some knowledge about the world, they can create a complete wikipedia in 30 days. Yes, thats right. The COMPLETE WIKIPEDIA in 30 days._

That assumes that all amounts of time are equal. For me, spending time with silly games is not equal the time I write a paper.

statspotting.com is one of those annoying spammy sites that link to their own coverage of older stuff, the link of "We had spotted some interesting (actually disturbing) stats on Angry Birds before" goes to a tiny "story" on their site where the actual external content is linked at. Bleh.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is very interesting, it looks stupid at first, but that is exactly the kind of experiment i would want to do on humanity if i had the power of Peter Moylneux.

It's so simple yet players are communicating using words written on the cube, and when the 50000$ chisel (currently in-game purchasing doesn't exist, but it will soon) is available, i bet it will be purchased immediately.

</comment><comment><USER4> Presenting the twelfth disappointing game in a row from bullshit artist Peter Molyneux: Server Not Available - The Mobile Game.

</comment><comment><USER5> The most enjoyable part of Curiosity for me was it having the unintended side effect of getting me to learn how to automate my device through the MonkeyRunner framework... which has, in turn, introduced me to Python.

So, all in all, the sheer monotony of the game has been quite a positive thing for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> So we should spend 100% of our lives being productive and contributing to the betterment of humankind, is the implication?

Maybe some people want to, you know, do mindless fun things in their free time.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is to understand the magnitude. The time spent on these adds up. To huge possibilities. Like the Wikipedia example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The difference between Angry Birds and Curiosity is that Angry Birds is at least slightly enjoyable.</comment>


JavaScript Push API - <AUTHOR> http://www.pubnub.com/tutorial/javascript-push-api Full Publish + Subscribe Push Framework in JavaScript <comment><USER3> This looks really, really awesome -- App Engine users have been needing something like this for a very long time. Unfortunately, Google is about to roll out their own version for free:

<http://code.google.com/apis/feed/push/>

and a native App Engine solution called the Channel API: [http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/building- real...](http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/building-real-time- apps-app-engine-feed-api.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> PubNub works everywhere and requires no setup.

Google Feed requires extra setup with a hub server called pubsubhubbub. The App Engine Channel API will mean you are stuck on Google's App Engine.

<comment><USER3> FYI, I tried to respond to your email but it bounced, hope you read this comment!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great. Sorry about the bounce. I've read the comment and resent my email with an alternate email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Performance is number one and so is usability."

How dilbertian.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dilbert cosmic points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> neat. looks like it uses polling + JsonP to maintain state.

tried to install trafficbeat on my site, but got a javascript error - <USER2> like the script tags they give you to copy/paste are including files that aren't javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> I copied and pasted Traffic Beat on <http://ltsun.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dojo supports a lot of this for quite some time, ie.: <http://docs.dojocampus.org/dojo/publish>

<comment><AUTHOR> PubNub is Networked Comet Messaging. dojo is only information within the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> looks exactly like: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1216648>

<comment><USER8> <http://beaconpush.com> is also a similar service.

<comment><AUTHOR> PubNub Supports Mobile Phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> WOh! The demo videos are awesome :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Video! <http://vimeo.com/12331527>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazing. Very optimized and smooth.

<comment><AUTHOR> webuiarchitect++

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love the background image.</comment>


When epistemic systems gain social and political significance - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_epistemic_systems_gain_social_and_political/ <comment><AUTHOR> Any media channel of either sufficient size or sufficiently attractive audience, becomes a target for attempts to manipulate and influence that audience.

There's probably some sort of hierarchy or staging to this:

1\. Technical use -- solving own problems, scratching own itch.

2\. Creative or artistic uses.

3\. Internal organisational use. Business, government, military, educational, nonprofit.

4\. Widespread use amongst the public.

5\. Commercial use, external: advertising and messaging.

6\. Political use, external: manipulating and influencing populations.</comment>


Submissions about the IE = low IQ hoax - <AUTHOR>

We had 15 or more submissions of the story about how IE users are statistically more likely to have a lower IQ.  Now it's been revealed as a hoax, and the submissions of that story are starting.
How many will we get? <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626> : bbc.co.uk : Much discussion

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840755> : bbc.co.uk : bad references

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840845> : thenextweb.com : deleted

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2842362> (geekwire.com)

and another one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2842478> (bbc.co.uk)

and another one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2842894> (bbc.co.uk)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ah! At last! I was starting to wonder if there would be any more:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2841681>

EDIT: Woohoo! Another one!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2841922> (cnn.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And another: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2844990>

And another: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2845212></comment>


'Progressive' phone company CREDO Mobile slams govt snooping, but can't stop it - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/06/technology/mobile/credo-mobile/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

<comment><USER2> I'm occasionally interested in how they make money, but I guess there are enough people who fall for the marketing scam. Seriously, who would use these guys?</comment>