A faster BBC News front page - <AUTHOR> https://wildlyinaccurate.com/introducing-a-faster-bbc-news-front-page/ <comment><USER3> Can you ditch the 'breaking news' whilst you're at it too please? It's never really 'breaking' and is usually the headline of the landing page anyway. Usability wise, it's as bad as a pop-up ad. Like this, for example:

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

<comment><USER4> The breaking news banner is a source of much internal conflict, at least within the engineering teams. I think most people agree that it's too big, and most people also agree that it's over-used. Unfortunately it's _one of those things_ that editorial will not back down on — they _must_ be able to push their breaking news to people, and it _must_ be prominent (and therefore quite intrusive).

There is a small improvement to the banner on the new front page (/news/0), which is that it's about 4 pixels shorter, and it's now grey instead of black which I think is _much_ less abrasive.

<comment><USER5> I just block it with Ublock Origin.

It's intensely irritating, since it's never breaking and these days with the way the world is it is also worrying.

For me Breaking News should be things like terroist attacks, massive flooding not "Back Off Contestant Falls Over".

<comment><USER6> I just realized that wasn't an ad; I've never read the text because the placement/intrusiveness triggered my ad blindness, I've blocked it with ublock as well.

<comment><USER5> Aye, I use Ublock Origin to block more than just ads.

It's also handy for the comment sections on newspapers, sections of news sites you are never gonna click/read (in my case sport) and comments on youtube.

<comment><USER7> I block the suggested videos sidebar on youtube, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OP explicitly mentions a "Mobile - Emerging Markets" speed test, which is a nice benchmark. I sometimes try to browse the web on EDGE or weak 3G, and 99% of sites do not load in reasonable time, or at all. The old-wide-web of 56k modems would be perfect for it, but websites and javascripts got really obese nowadays:

* 14KB site [https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_EP_VE7/](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_EP_VE7/)

* 443KB bbc [https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_RQ_VK2/](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_RQ_VK2/)

* 3652KB the verge, of course [https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_44_WCC/](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_44_WCC/)

But I applaud BBC's effort, I hope to see lighter and faster web even though we move to Fiber and 4G.

</comment><comment><USER9> This does feel a lot faster, but hasn't fixed my pet peeve (on bbc.com): clicking on a link to a news article and getting taken to the wrong one because the ads loaded and everything moved just as I clicked. This often happens to me 3 or 4 times in a row. Space needs to be blocked out for ads as soon as the page renders.

<comment><USER10> Yes! For me its the lazy loading of the images (not necessarily ads). Just as you are about to click on a link, the whole page jumps down and you end up clicking the wrong link. And then you click the back button, and the same thing happens again. So, you end up just having to wait 5-10 seconds for all the images to load just to ensure that you don't mis-click on the next article.

<comment><USER11> Press ESC, it stops the page loading and everything freezes as-is. It's how I get around this exact problem on lots of sites due to my slow net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It is available over HTTPS, and we have plans to redirect insecure traffic > to HTTPS in the not-so-distant future.

        ~ curl -I https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/0
      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
      Content-Type: text/html
      Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2017 09:33:49 GMT
      Location: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/0
      Connection: Keep-Alive
      Content-Length: 0

What annoys me most about this is that there is a valid GlobalSign SSL certificate there and the server can clearly handle TLS handshakes. It's just deliberately being used to make the user's experience less secure.

I realise this is being worked on and somewhat tangenital to this post, but the BBC's rollout of HTTPS has been shockingly poor and incredibly slow comapred to other news organisations. What's the point of serving account.bbc.co.uk securely if all links to sign in can be MitM'd? The parts that can be accessed with HTTPS don't seem to use HSTS either.

<comment><USER13> Hi, BBC employee here (although not in News). Basically, we're working on it. The main issue is that by making a page HTTPS only, that all content also needs to be HTTPS too. We're working with our CDN providers to enable that (not only for new content, but for our archive too), and we also have to support a much longer tail of browsers and SSL configurations than other sites (China being an important market for us, and anecdotally I've heard we still get >1% IE7 from China, presumably from pirated XP machines) which makes it more complicated. It's not really an excuse, but there are people working very hard at enabling TLS without breaking the site for others. Other parts of the BBC website are available over HTTPS, hence the redirects that are in place. Similarly, we can't use HSTS as that applies to the whole domain.

<comment><USER12> > Similarly, we can't use HSTS as that applies to the whole domain

Is this a problem for e.g. account.bbc.com though? I can't see how that can impact bbc.com/bbc.co.uk if the header is set on the subdomain only.

I remember it used to be that e.g. news was accessed via news.bbc.co.uk but this seems to have been changed more recently to be accessible at /news. As you note, this makes HSTS a no-go because of all the other products on the same domain need to support HTTPS. This makes me wonder why this change was made in the first place. It would also seemingly mean that (without e.g. [https://w3c.github.io/webappsec-suborigins/](https://w3c.github.io/webappsec- suborigins/)) an XSS in one product means an XSS everywhere.

I'm sympathetic re. the SSL configurations you need to deal with and it's reassuring that this is being worked on.

<comment><USER13> Ah true, I'm not close enough with the detail of some of the subdomains to know what's going on there.

A few years ago a decision was made that the BBC site should be all under www.bbc.co.uk, I believe this was mostly for marketing purposes, but also to simplify our internal routing for the site. news.bbc.co.uk was previously separate as News had it's own infrastructure separate from other parts of the BBC, but that's been rationalised now (leaking subdomains for technical reasons was something we frown upon).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I mean, okay, it's faster than it was a year ago, but it's still considerably slower than it was a decade or so ago, before there was a plague of javascript o'er the land.

I miss when the major constraint on page load time was the server-side rendering time...

<comment><USER15> According to my Safari console, it's loading the page on average in 50ms, with some samples as low as 20ms. That's considerably less than the blink of an eye (at 100ms).

I doubt that a decade-old CPU/OS and a decade old browser were rendering any page (even without JS) at that kind of speed.

<comment><USER16> 2.23s here, including images - [https://imgur.com/a/9Kpxp](https://imgur.com/a/9Kpxp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is one thing that annoys me about [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news) I use VPN node in Finland. When I visit the news site the page loads very quickly, I start reading and after 3 seconds you figure out that I'm not in UK (based on IP I guess) and you reload to the international page with different articles.

<comment><USER4> Sorry about this... The BBC has some _extremely_ strict rules around not showing advertising to UK users (who already pay a license fee to the BBC). We attempt to prevent this by redirecting people to the "correct" edition based on their location.

Unfortunately, for legacy reasons, the geolocation lookup and subsequent redirect happen in the browser. It might be possible for us to issue the redirect from the edge soon, since most non-UK users now come via Fastly which does some geolocation.

In the mean time, you can prevent the redirect by ensuring you go to bbc.com or bbc.co.uk, depending on whether you are in the UK or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great. I religiously visit BBC news throughout the day. This definitely loads quicker than before.

That said, there is performance and then there is perceived performance. Why introduce an arbitrary fade-in animation on the images (aka a delay)? Just show them as soon as they are available from the lazy-loader. This makes it feel slower for me.

<comment><USER4> Agreed! Glad you mentioned the image fade-in. I was actually speaking to our UX team about it the other day, and I think we might get rid of it \o/

<comment><USER19> It was the one thing I noticed actually. The loading speed seemed about the same to me (its always loaded quickly here) but I found the fade-in really quite distracting. If you could pass on my downvote :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And this has a sort-of easter egg: if you open developer tools in Chrome when at the page, they invite you to apply for developer jobs:

Hi there! Do you want to help build a fast and accessible web experience used by over 300 million people around the world each month? We're hiring people for all sorts of roles. Head on over to [http://careerssearch.bbc.co.uk/](http://careerssearch.bbc.co.uk/) (search for "News") to find out more!

<comment><USER21> As a long time Internet user I could actually imagine myself becoming passionate about "Make The Internet Fast Again". I wonder how one would start a career in that direction. It's a bit of a dilemma: In order to build fast modern websites you probably need to know how to build horrible modern websites. And I can't really motivate myself to imitate horrendous websites just for kicks. In fact, I stopped creating websites when jQuery wasn't enough anymore. In other words, more than ten years ago... It's not that I shun more recent technologies, I am willing to learn. I just don't want to create Frankensteinish websites first.

Any tips for a more direct path towards website optimization jobs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find that BBC News is one of the best sites on the entire web for browsing with NoScript.

EDIT: This is what I get: [http://imgur.com/a/Cg9sD](http://imgur.com/a/Cg9sD)

<comment><USER3> Serious? This is how the current homepage renders for me. [http://imgur.com/a/8pDS0](http://imgur.com/a/8pDS0)

And the new one is even worse (though it's a work-in-progress)

[http://imgur.com/a/IPr3U](http://imgur.com/a/IPr3U)

<comment><USER4> Wow, this is awful. Would you mind telling me what combination of settings/add-ons you have so that we can reproduce this?

Our "no JS" fallback styles are not done in a very nice way at the moment: they rely on the browser reading noscript tags. We never did any testing with NoScript or similar add-ons, and I remember hearing somewhere that those sort of add-ons don't always evaluate noscript tags.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your reply!

\- Chrome Version 57.0.2987.133 (64-bit)

\- No-Script Live 0.2.4 [http://mybrowseraddon.com/noscript- lite.html](http://mybrowseraddon.com/noscript-lite.html)

\- Privacy Badger 2017.4.19.1

FWIW Privacy Badger isn't blocking anything, I think this is all from script blocking. I notice that low-res images get sent by default, which suggests that the design conflates 'no script' with 'mobile'? That's not true at least in my case.

Here's my browser log. [https://gist.github.com/afandian/b97fc7bb9f5e15f924acb770322...](https://gist.github.com/afandian/b97fc7bb9f5e15f924acb7703220df42)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! We'll take a look at this ASAP. In the mean time, I guess all I can do is apologise for the broken experience...

We use a technique called _cutting the mustard_ to determine whether a browser is modern (read: >=IE9). This allows us to write one set of CSS that should work in pretty much any web browser (we call this the "core" experience), and another set that uses modern-ish CSS (the "enhanced" experience). One of the major drawbacks to this technique is that the technique relies on JS — it is literally just _modernBrowser = ( 'addEventListener' in window && 'querySelector' in document && 'localStorage' in window)_.

So when you browse the BBC News website with JS disabled, you are getting a page that has been styled to work on a Nokia E65, BlackBerry OS4, IE8, and everything in between. Unfortunately right now we don't have a way to give you the enhanced version of the page without JS. In the future it might be possible for us cut the mustard at the server (or the CDN edge) based on User- Agent but that isn't something I can see happening in the foreseeable.

<comment><USER3> It's great that you're trying so hard to accomodate such a broad landscape; of course there will be trade-offs. Being a weird intentional corner-case you get what you ask for, I suppose!

Thanks for engaging with questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a great site but internationally the ads ruin the experience. You think you've clicked on a link but the site still hasn't loaded all of its ads and you have clicked on the wrong link.

Also waiting 30 seconds for a video ad to see 10 seconds of content is kinda stupid.

</comment><comment><USER24> Supporting http/2 will improve performance too!

<comment><USER4> H2 support is happening at a much higher level (like, the BBC-wide infrastructure team level) but I think it's coming pretty soon. We did some testing and saw a positive impact on all front-end metrics: first paint, interactive, DOM complete, document onload.

<comment><USER25> Does Mr Butterworth help guide the H2 stuff?

<comment><USER13> Brandon's not really involved that high up the application stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oh no; the BBC is the site i use when I need something served over HTTP, not HTTPS.

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify: We aren't redirecting HTTP -> HTTPS and don't have any plans to do so, at least in the short-term. All we're doing is enabling HTTPS for bbc.{com,co.uk}/news because at the moment we issue a 301 for HTTPS -> HTTP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Guardian did a lot of work on pagespeed, made a lot of it public - <USER2> wonder if much of this was referenced. Especially given the planned 'masonry' effect shown midway down the page.

Good to see major public resources taking the lead (gov.uk being another) on reducing cruft. Most likely out of necessity, but it wouldn't hurt to start a trend :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Until the internet marketing team loads it up with scripts that inject 12 different versions of jQuery to do some a/b testing.

I wish engineers would actually be able to take responsibility for the whole, and dismiss marketing tags based on technical grounds.

<comment><USER29> they can and often do -- code your own bespoke lightweight A/B testing software

that'll be the easy bit, of course, the hard bit will be influencing people to part with the £silly amount of money it'd likely cost vs. off the shelf alternatives

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing.

I'm assuming you are happy to receive feedback?

Does the cookie statement have to be so large? On first load it takes up ~ 3/4 of my usable screen space on an iPhone 5S in safari? It also feels unusual to be at the top of the page as opposed to hovering over some space at the bottom of the page.

Also on iOS lots of unnecessary line spacing (to the right of images) occurs when listing headlines.. image heigh, font size and line spacing could be worked to look better.

Congratulation on achieving the performance gains however :)

</comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon _React is only used on the server. We do not load it in the browser._

My apologies in advance for my ignorance, as I have so far read about React, but not actually used it. Isn't the main advantage of React the virtual DOM it sets up and its reconciliation algorithm with the DOM? How can this be applied without using on the client side? Wouldn't all the responsive aspects be lost, requiring a round trip to the server for each event?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER4> We've found that React is actually really great for building complex UIs out of small reusable components. I often struggle to put into words just how much better it is than, say, using Mustache templates or PHP/ERB/etc. I think it mostly comes down to how React makes component composition super-easy, and support for higher-order components makes component reuse a breeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would also like the site NOT to be sending me a tonne of nugatory whitespace in the HTML, and to enable gzip/deflate as a minmum to reduce bandwidth...

<comment><USER31> Compression shows every sign of being enabled so there's little downside to any whitespace in the HTML:

[https://redbot.org/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2F](https://redbot.org/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2F)

[https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_79_P0Q/1/details/#...](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_79_P0Q/1/details/#waterfall_view_step1)

If you're not seeing transfer encoding, is it possible that you're behind some sort of proxy – network or local antivirus – which is stripping it?

<comment><USER25> Always direct.

Today is the first time I've seen gzip actually happen though! If only all my other problems were so easily solved by whining!

But still: sending, compressing, uncompressing stuff that definitely adds no value and would be trivial to statically omit almost all of is still a downside...

<comment><USER31> The question you should be asking is why it's there: is saving an extra nanosecond or two of easily-cached compression time really worth having to rearchitect a backend templating or content assembly system?

It's not a bad thing to do but I'd be surprised if they didn't have higher priorities for their engineering staff. If you look at the trace I linked before, note that even if you could eliminate all of the time to generate the page the most you could save is less than 100ms on page which uses multiple seconds of CPU time to render. Look at the video – the page doesn't even render for almost 5 seconds in a low-end browser:

[https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=170424_7...](https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=170424_79_P0Q-r%3A1-c%3A0&thumbSize=200&ival=100&end=full)

Chrome is faster but still over 3 seconds:

[https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=170424_N...](https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=170424_NT_W4S-r%3A1-c%3A0&thumbSize=200&ival=100&end=visual)

If you were in charge of that project, would you commit your limited developer time to something cannot possibly produce a human perceptible benefit or instead have them work on removing a borderline-uncomfortable delay?

<comment><USER25> Most of the work would be essentially quick and one-off: no one blinks at minifying JS or CSS and I bet that 50% of this would be entirely the same and at low dev cost.

I entirely see your point, but disagree that it's not worth doing any of it, given an almost certain quick small win + saving CPU time and bandwidth and a bit of planet while we're at it!

<comment><USER31> > Most of the work would be essentially quick and one-off:

Again, think about the complexity of what's generating that content. Do you really think they have a single index.html template floating around rather than the system described pulling blocks of content in from various sources, all of which need to be updated in various places? You could build a system to collapse whitespace runs after the content is generated but now you need to develop that and test it to make sure it doesn't trigger on something where the whitespace actually matters … and suddenly you're taking time away from changes which actually benefit people.

> given an almost certain quick small win + saving CPU time and bandwidth and > a bit of planet while we're at it!

How much CPU time do you think you're talking about, anyway? Here's what doing this in a naive manner which will break things looks like:

        cadams@jupiter:~ $ gzip -9 < bbc.html | wc -c
           32259
        cadams@jupiter:~ $ curl -s http://www.bbc.com | perl -pe 's/\s+/ /gs' | gzip -9 | wc -c
       30859

So we're talking an extremely small amount of CPU time and one packet saved. That's might seem useful until you look at this in context of a page which loads a couple MB of content and uses multiple seconds of CPU time:

[https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_NT_W4S/](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/170424_NT_W4S/)

Image compression, enabling gzip on the remaining resources which lack it, etc. are all going to save more data on individual files and have the nice property of not breaking anything else.

<comment><USER25> I'm not saying don't do the other things too, but a ~5% saving (maybe more at a more typical gzip TX setting) for no semantic change at all saves some outgoing BBC resource but is more significant for the RX side in CPU, etc.

Anyhow we can agree to disagree but many of my clients over the years have been very happy with 5% resource savings, although 5x is nicer when available... B^>

(And yes I'm fudging CPU and bandwidth, but with a compressor involved and the CPU often being a bottleneck on lower-end devices for example, I think that simplification can be justified.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> always love how you optimise the news front page. are you guys still running the Perl backend and "Html Put" :) @joseph_wynn ? a former BBC News CSD here.

<comment><USER13> Nope, the Perl backend went away a long time ago! (at the point of switching from news.bbc.co.uk -> www.bbc.co.uk/news). The site is dynamically generated at origin now.

<comment><USER32> There used to be this resident Perl-guru in an obscure area, back when we were sitting over in TVC (FM&T J area), who would debug stuffs for us when things were not working right. Can't remember his name though (Scott? Paul?). I wonder where he went...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good to see it is a PWA now. :)

</comment><comment><USER34> LinkedIn should hire this guy

</comment><comment><USER35> Acknowledgements... nice bit of ass kissing there! 12 months for a single page overhaul, that's pretty costly.

<comment><USER4> When you put it like that, yep, pretty costly! But a large chunk of this project has been building up the frameworks, infrastructure, tooling, and processes that enable us to migrate from our legacy PHP 5.3 apps running in 2 physical data centres to ~the cloud~.

Also, did you read the part about _we have collaborated with over 60 other developers and testers from all around the BBC to build this page_? That's actually the best part — News websites are pretty simple; you just display headlines, summaries, and images in various formats. So part of this project was building the lego blocks that we're going to use to rebuild not just the rest of the BBC News site, but also parts of BBC Sport and potentially other BBC products too! So yeah, costly for one page. Hopefully very cost-efficient in the long-term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's nice someone cares about performance in modern websites. Shame about the BBC being no better than any other clickbait website as far as news goes. Truly, my licence fee well spent.

I never understood that. Surely, since you're already paid for you could just report the news and not bother with clickbait since you're not getting paid for the clicks?

</comment><comment><USER37> The BBC news page should be a HN/reddit style list, with some enhancements to identify specific story types.

Every news outlet's landing page is a UX disaster, that only meets the needs of the organisations ego, and not the needs of an actual user.

<comment><USER38> The first rule of UX is "you are not your user", and you are breaking it (I'm guessing the BBC has done significantly more user research than you). I think your comment is basically "I want a website to look like this, therefore all users must want a website to look like this".

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Am I supposed to trust any news from a domain that spells "wildly inaccurate"? Am I in how people react to "fake news" experiment?

<comment><USER40> From the site

> A collection of guides & opinions about programming and the state of the > web, from a developer at BBC News.

It's a username. Your equivalent would be bhaavan,com</comment></comment>


Why don't more women work in cybersecurity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/11/why_don_t_more_women_work_in_cybersecurity.html <comment><USER2> I really don't get the "hackathon" thing. I hear people refer to them, and they are supposedly popular, but I've never heard about one happening in real life or had any conversation about one with anyone in the industry. If people I know are participating in these things they sure are keeping mum about it. Where do hackathons come from? Where do they happen? Who organizes them? How do people hear about them? Or is this just another media-hype bubble over nothing?

<comment><USER3> It happens mostly in large cities like SF, NY, Austin, Seattle, near where tech center is, Most Hackathons I know attract students and young professionals. There are some more professional hackathons like AT&T's. Facebook for example has a FB Hack and you can compete for the trophy at FB Headquarter, I don't know the first hackathon but my impression is FB's hackathon has turned into a popular icon and everyone soon follows.

Major League Hackathon is an organization going around US and now some part of the world to help organize hackathons.

I've been to FB's, Google's, a couple NY Hackathons, MIT Hack, and a few other smaller student-init hackathon events. I basically hear them on twitter, on facebook, or from friends.

<comment><USER2> I'm in Seattle, that's the funny part! I used to work for Google, too, and I never heard about any hackathons there, though it was a few years ago now.

If it's primarily a student thing, it makes sense that I wouldn't be hearing about it, though, as I'm long past that part of my life and have no connection to the academic world.

<comment><USER3> Sorry if I wasn't very specific. I was referring to [https://sites.google.com/site/appsscripthackathonnyc/](https://sites.google.com/site/appsscripthackathonnyc/). Yeah, I am in my mid twenties and I can say I am not very attracted to Hackathon anymore. I usually went alone and that was probably a mistake, although the spirit of most Hackathons is to form team with strangers...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/alan-turing-deserves-apology-from.html <comment><USER2> Whether it's Alan Turing, slavery, war crimes, or anything else, the best apology to someone who is dead would be to stop doing the same things to those who are living.

<comment><USER3> Agreed 100%.

In this instance, the apology is to stop discriminating based on sexuality.

<comment><USER4> So...you want to remove the added legal protections homosexuals have?

EDIT: No, really? Is that what you want, because that's where the discrimination is.

<comment><USER5> If you're referring to hate crime legislation that makes it a federal crime to perpetrate crimes against homosexuals, you should know two things:

First, the Matthew Shepard Act that would extend hate crime laws to sexual orientation STILL HASN'T BEEN PASSED. :P It's been stymied under 5 congresses, which you can read about here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_Act#111th_Congr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard_Act#111th_Congress)

Second, and most importantly, the Matthew Shepard Act does not exclusively protect gays and lesbians. It protects everyone. If some psychotic gay person goes out and starts murdering straight people just because they're straight, that too would be a federal hate crime.

If you want to claim that the law would disproportionately protect gay people, maybe that's because straight people aren't targeted and murdered just because they're straight.

Ever think of that? Jerk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

I do understand and appreciate the argument that murders and crimes should be punished equally, regardless of who the target is.

But hate crime legislation isn't really about the direct victim of the crime being prosecuted.

Hate crime legislation is about crimes committed with particular intent, and as such are about the mindset of the criminal in question, and ability to create a climate of fear amongst a particular group of individuals.

So, yes, we should prosecute all crimes equally. But to deny that hate crimes don't exist, or that they don't have a broader intent, is to deny reality. It is fundamentally different to say "Lets go beat up some fags/chinks/paddies/etc" from saying "Lets go find someone to beat up"

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

Final note, hate crimes are innately about discrimination. The fact that hate crime legislation recognizes that reality is not creating discrimination. The discrimination already exists out in the populace.

<comment><USER6> Why does it seem that political gays are all about the feds? One would think they'd be in the states rights camp by now and pursuing things at the state level.

That said, hate crimes legislation is a horrible, destructive idea. Any deviation from the idea that we all are equal individuals with the same protection under the law is bound to lead to bad things.

<comment><USER7> Both are happening. However, basic employment protections are near impossible to gain in some states, such as the deep south.

On hate crimes, however, I disagree. A hate crime is not about targeting one particular individual; it is a terrorist act designed to instill fear in a community. A burning cross, a lynching is to create fear in black people, for example. "Don't date white women" was one in the 60s south. Attacking someone in front of a gay establishment is a clear message to invoke fear of congregation in the gay community.

<comment><USER6> It's too subjective. With enough imagination and the right judge and lawyer almost anything can be spun into a hate crime. History indicates that would inevitably happen. Look at the ridiculous applications of RICO and Patriot Act.

And it's all pointless. Assaulting people (instilling fear of physical harm) is already a crime. There's just no need to complicate it.

Now, I'm against employment protections period. But if I weren't, I certainly wouldn't want the feds involved. Inviting the federal government into an area has typically proven to get you far from what you want. People should focus on state laws. If you're in a state with laws you don't like, then move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The British Government has been doing terrible things to many, many people all around the world, for many, many years.

If they start apologizing to people one by one... that'll take a while.

<comment><USER9> I saw that Benjamin Zepheniah on TV, saying the Monarchy should be abolished because the Royal Family had blessed slave ships.

What he didn't bother to say is that pretty much the entire world (including Africans) participated in the slave trade at that time, and that Britain had taken the lead in the fight to stamp out slavery. The first time in history that former slave-holders had fought to free slaves. Literally fought, with warships blessed by the Royals.

So yeah, we've done some terrible things - but on the whole (even under New Labour) the UK is a powerful force for good in the world, and we deserve credit for that. And we're to "undo" the effects of everything we've done... Well let's say that Zepheniah wouldn't be sitting in an air-conditioned TV studio wearing a handmade suit, hatin'.

<comment><USER8> You're absolutely right. I just couldn't resist making a very vague reference to the old joke of using machine guns against people armed with kiwis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not just the government though. If you asked people at the time if what had been done was correct, how many would have said yes?

Attitudes change (for the better in this case). An apology from a government doesn't change history.

<comment><USER11> there's some truth to this. As a child I recall being taught that some scientists thought hormones could treat homosexuality, as it was considered an illness.

It's amazing how ignorant we were just 50 years ago, and likely still are :)

What's particularly sad about Turing was that he was such a great war hero. We make movies about famous spies capturing machines behind enemy lines, when the reality was largely Turing and I believe a group of polish refugees slaving away in basements building computers.

<comment><USER12> Captured machines did play a fair part in the codebreaking!

I would say the saddest thing about Turing related to the Government is simply that his work went absolutely unacknowledged for so long. I actually visited Bletchley Park last weekend and a curator told me of a woman in her late eighties who, even now, had an ingrained attitude of "I can't talk about it". (She was a Wren working at Bletchley).

I think it was thirty years or so before anyone even knew the massive contributions this man had made to our science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Touching fact regarding the statue in Sackville Park: the sculptor's own personal computer, a 20-year old Amstrad CPC, was buried underneath the statue as the "sacrifice".

</comment><comment><USER14> The damage has already been done. It is not reversible. Apologies do not mean much usually. They probably mean less than nothing coming from a government.

<comment><USER15> I agree that they don't mean much, but I wouldn't say "less than nothing." Rather, I'd say they count for "something slightly more than nothing."

If the government of the UK were to apologize, the story of Turing's mistreatment at the hands of the government would fill a news cycle. It's not much, but it's not nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You think _that's_ overdue - the Greek government still hasn't apologised to Socrates!

</comment><comment><USER17> _The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing_

How?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Australian government apologized for the treatment of the indigenous people of Australia.

I think apologies matter a lot. Even though Turing is dead and has no family to apologize too, an apology would make a point about how prejudice warps the world.

<comment><USER17> Okay. But how?

<comment><USER18> Just doing something like Vatican said sorry to Joan of Arc for her death. All it needs is a statement from UK government said "we are sorry for forcing Alan Turing to commit suicide. And we are sorry for cutting short his potential contributions to human being."

Maybe ask Morrissey to hold a memorial concert and play some Derek Jarman's movies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of a spoken apology, but I would prefer that someone non-gay be involved as a figure head. I'm not gay, but I feel very strongly that the treatment of Turing was despicable.

Someone straight needs to be a figure head so that people can't easily dismiss any apology as somehow tied to the agenda of a gay rights group.

<comment><USER18> No problem for this. And I know a straight figure head is much better for this purpose.

At the other hand. The UK government can always say those standard lame excuses such as "because of cold war, we have to prevent Turing to be used by communists spies".

At the other hand, I wonder why gay right activists ignore Turing's story for a long time. I learned Turing's story pretty early on (I am just always curious of private lives of great minds since I was a kid)

<comment><USER17> _I wonder why gay right activists ignore Turing's story for a long time._

That is fortunate. I wouldn't like Turing to become another archetypal wicked scientist in tv shows puppetry inventory. Compulsive schizophrenic Nash seducing boys, autistic Newton, insane Cantor crawling on the floor whispering "infinty, infinty" are enough for me already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Homosexuality was illegal in many parts of the world at the time, and it was believed to be morally incorrect by citizens (in most cases), just like how the majority of people see cannabis as a very harmful drug today. So if anything, it should be the world apologising, not the British government alone (whos apology would likely be meaningless anyway, due to the change of power since that time.) The same goes for discrimination against women and blacks.

What's done is done, and thankfully we are now open to the thought that we were wrong in our moral standards. And in a lot of cases, we now fight strongly for the rights of people who were once discriminated against.

To me, an apology is only worth something if the person/people apologising had an opinion which conflicted with the general opinion of the population, otherwise who's to say the victim wouldn't have thought the same if he/she was in the same situation? (i.e. not gay.) That's not to say the general populations' opinion was right, but that it can be massively rub off on your own.

</comment><comment><USER20> The British Government should apologize to a lot of people..

<comment><USER21> I see your point, but Peter Andre's actually Australian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's not really a good idea is it? The people who perpetrated this are dead, it was under an earlier Government. Further more the whole situation was likely whipped up by the right wing press, Sir John Gielgud's treatment was another appalling example of this. The general populous at the time were not really bothered either way about a person's sexuality.

The best way is to remember him would be to create a large research institution in his honour. Apologizing changes nothing in this instance.

</comment><comment><USER23> Given the current problems the British government are having holding the country together, an apology to Alan Turing is NOT something I want them to be thinking about.

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% for gay rights, laws against discrimination, etc (my mum is gay, and is 'married' to her partner), but I think priorities should lie in making life worth living for those still with us at this time.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just googling around, there's a lot of stuff that the British government has to apologize for, but hasn't. Specifically

* Irish Potato Famine

* Acadian Expulsion

I'm sure there's more.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure why you're being moderated down. The conditions causing the Potato Famine to have such devastating consequences are known to be a political issue rather than than an ecological one.

Wikipedia has a fairly extensively referenced article on the issue <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)>. See 'Causes and contributing factors'.

<comment><USER24> I generally just assume that it's common knowledge that it was genocide by neglect, and was copied and improved upon by Germanic efficiency 80 years later. As evil as the holocaust was, the groundwork was laid by the British (and Canadians/Americans) the century before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised there's so much negativity about this post. Alan Turing made huge contributions to mathematics and philosophy.

But not only that, he was a war hero. How many other people in the 20th century contributed so much to the world on both practical and theoretical levels?

And the British Government drove him to suicide for no good reason.

I think his story deserves far more recognition.

</comment><comment><USER26> Apologize so that successive generations do not have to continue arguing about whether they should.

<comment><USER27> OK, appeasement is certainly one solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Governments do not even hold themselves responsible for the previous adminstration's fiscal measures let alone the laws that were in place generations ago. Nor should they. The dead are dead. Let's expend our energies on being decent to ourselves, the living.

</comment><comment><USER28> At the very least we should apologize for the chemical castration! WTF is that? Yeah not good.

</comment><comment><USER29> Barely on topic, I know, but the slate statue of Turing at Bletchley Park is really cool: <http://www.stephenkettle.co.uk/turing.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> Hrm. Alan Turing was definitely a hacker, and so is jgrahamc, but the resulting discussion here isn't particularly hackery...

<comment><USER31> I scroll down to bottom of these threads just to see where you've reliably complained about them.

<comment><USER30> Well, then, "hi!". Sometimes I'm at the top of the threads too, because they aren't appropriate:-)

<comment><USER31> I certainly sympathize, but it isn't always black and white. Even the ultimate arbitrator of appropriateness here jumps into politics from time to time [1]. And hackers _are_ interested in the law for at least a handful of reasons particular to our culture: 1) many hackers are outside of the social mainstream, which puts them at increased risk of majority-oriented persecution, 2) many hackers are reclusive by nature and value their ability to "be left alone," which is at odds with collectivist governments that want everyone to jump on for their latest scheme, and 3) the law is a codified set of rules and procedures, about which hackers can reason, finding incongruencies more readily than the mainstream population.

Perhaps we should pick our battles, and call out more egregious violations such as name calling and thoughtless recitals of canned talking points, rather than engaging in the sort of constant nagging that will just blend into the background noise.

[1] e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664314>

<comment><USER30> I've never said that these topics aren't interesting - my point is that they are poisonous: they are more likely to set off flame wars, because people are pretty set in their opinions, and that they're likely to attract people who are _not_ hackers yet who are interested in politics/economics/etc... This last point is especially important.

Also, in this case, I was really just making a direct observation of the conversation... it's pretty much all off on a tangent, and is very much 'politics'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't think of anything more insulting than a government that has no interest in science deciding to do a big honoring Turin publicity stunt in the hope of a gain in gay voter support.

There is also considerable doubt that his 'treatment', which had ended a year before, was a cause of his suicide - rather than a feeling that his work wasn't leading anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER33> ...funding a million sterling pounds research institute in his name.</comment>


Compile and boot linux kernel in 15seconds - <AUTHOR> http://bellard.org/tcc/tccboot.html

<comment><USER2> Fabrice Bellard is one the most impressive hackers around. His other accomplishments include QEMU, launching FFMPEG, and discovering the fastest (at the time) method for calculating digits of pi.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard> and <http://bellard.org/> for more info on the guy. I wonder what he's doing these days?</comment>


Why we listen to new music - never-the-bride https://pitchfork.com/features/article/listen-to-music/ <comment><USER3> Listening to new music is one of my favourite activities. Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - it must get so dull.

There's so much good stuff out there, and it's so exciting to find an artist, genre or new combinations of sounds I've not heard before.

Bandcamp is great for this – better than Spotify or Apple Music. You can explore by artist, genre tag, label, and by people who have bought/wishlisted an album. Plus there's lots of interesting smaller artists who are not on the bigger platforms.

<comment><USER4> > Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff

I have a lot of emotional/memory attachments to certain music - it ties in with a lot of specific events in life. Listening to those 'same old stuff' albums/songs can take me back to places when I want to reminisce. I can get some of the same feelings, even smells and tastes sometimes, with the 'same old stuff'.

Not all of those are 'old' like decades ago - I've got some stuff that I started digging in to just a few years ago which is now in my 'heavy rotation'.

<comment><USER5> Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Music can take you back to points in your life in a way that few things can.

People should always listen to new and old music, like books or movies/shows, sometimes repeated listens, viewings, or reads, can open up new aspects of the music, something you didn't see or hear before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Listening to new music has got to do with openness and as we age we tend to be less open to new experiences. I think best way to listen to new music is not just about a new band or new albums but more about new genres. I used to not enjoy jazz, found it elitist and quite frankly I didn't even get it. About 10 years ago I started listening jazz and anything that's got mixed with jazz, like jazz-funk, or jazz fusion and I learned more about music itself while enjoying new tunes.

People have the tendency to outright deny than to try new things but if you think about it, it's just picking up patterns and how they make us feel.

<comment><USER7> When I was around 15, mainly listening to heavy metal bands (Iron Maiden and alike, so not just basic rock chords/riffs), a friend of my father introduced me to prog rock, that I liked, and told me : if you like this, you will go from heavy metal to prog, then from prog to jazz, and finally to classic music.

And he was right (although I'm not totally over with that journey as I like listening to classic music, but I'm not completely into it)

<comment><USER8> I found piano trio's to be quite nice compared to other forms of classical music. In part, I realized, it's because it sounds a bit more like a band compared to complete orchestra's.

My favorite piano trio: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52IMaE-3As](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e52IMaE-3As)

<comment><USER7> Great piece indeed ! I knew I already heard it (and the comments told me where). Great interpretation.

As a fan of dissonance, I'm more listening to Stravinsky, but I also like some Dvorak (not sure to spell the name right). But I still think I'm not ready yet (despite being nearly 50)

Thanks for the link anyway !

<comment><USER8> Well, I'm 31 and what helped me was a girlfriend who was brought up with this stuff and dragged me to every opera and classical music performance in town (I exaggerate a bit, but you get the idea). Forcing yourself to getting a lot of exposure is a method that, albeit uncomfortable, worked for me.

Dvorak is a favorite of mine as well. I'm a fan of Dumky. I haven't listened to Stravinsky while knowing it was him, so I'll have a look!

Edit: listening to the soldiers tale of Stravinsky. It sounds like video game music that could almost be in a Zelda game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use the Music-Map for my "music journey". Every other day, I start from an artist I already like and travel through the names until I stumble into an area I have not been to before:

[https://www.music-map.com](https://www.music-map.com)

<comment><USER10> This is really great. Every now and again I'm fortunate enough to stumble onto a new / unknown artist to me. Weirdly, Grooveshark was really good for this (as it gave me some of my very top favorites through a Grooveshark Premium thing -- Quiet Company and Justin Townes Earle) but I've found generally limited utility in going from those new bands into either Google or Spotify's "More Like This" functions.

Looking at the map for Quiet Company yields a list of names that are mostly foreign to me that I'll be plowing through as I work.

<comment><USER11> I miss Grooveshark, it's radio feature brought me so much amazing music.

Surprisingly, Youtube Music has pretty decent music discovery in the form of it's radio feature, sort of like Grooveshark.

I wish they would combine Google Music's functionality and organization with Youtube Music's discover-ability and expanded library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This from the website that built an empire on discovering and promoting new music - but today reviews Tik Tok videos [1] and treat Taylor Swift and Beiber like they are Richard D. James.

[1] [https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/tiktok-report-benees- supalone...](https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/tiktok-report-benees-supalonely- and-the-inexplicable-power-of-vibeyness/)

<comment><USER13> Methods of discovering and promoting new music change over time, especially compared to the peak days of a niche electronic music artist in the 90s.

Tik Tok is an absolutely _massive_ recent source of new music growth [0], Taylor Swift and Beiber are absolutely massive artists with almost unparalleled influence across multiple genres, their riding of new vibes throws off tsunami wave effects.

They're doing their job, and doing it well, the effects of giving their first 10 in a decade to Fiona Apple's new album for example, you're just not the target.

0 - [https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/tiktok- vid...](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/tiktok-video-app- growth-867587/)

<comment><USER12> > Taylor Swift and Beiber are absolutely massive artists with almost > unparalleled influence across multiple genres.

Massive like Rick Astley? Hootie and the Blowfish? Your argument attributes artistic quality with an artist and their machine's size and reach. I'm sorry, but this doesn't justify critical notice or attention.

As for their influence - I'm at a loss for what you mean here. What genres are these two artists influencing - other than pop? Maaaybe hip-hop with their use of the millenial whoop [1] - but even that is a stretch.

> their riding of new vibes throws off tsunami wave effects.

This is what Madonna, MJ and basically every mainstream artist has done for eons - co-opting genres and trends to remain relevant (Kenny Rogers even did disco).

> you're just not the target.

Thanks for the patronizing tone. As a DJ, signed artist and music nerd of more than 20 years, I think I understand a little about the nuances of this stuff. I actually used Aphex as I thought it may be relatable to a tech crowd, but I could have said a number of artists (new or old) from many different genres to make the point.

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

<comment><USER13> _Your argument attributes artistic quality with an artist and their machine 's size and reach._

I didn't mention or consider artistic quality in my comment, and didn't mean to suggest popularity is quality.

 _This from the website that built an empire on discovering and promoting new music..._

Is what I originally replied to, if "new music" implied quality music, than this is a miscommunication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still like exploring "new" music, but new music that I've fallen in love with over the past year is Elvis, Judy Collins, James Taylor, and Curtis Mayfield/The Impressions. It's hard for me to justify giving modern music a chance when I haven't even given the established greats a chance. The modern music will still be around in 10 years. Hopefully by then it will be more clear what's standing the test of time, at which point I'll give it a listen.

Same thing happened with Kanye by the way. In the 00s I (mostly) wouldn't touch it, but it's now clear it was highly influential, important music and I've begun to revisit it.

<comment><USER15> Music is culturally contextual and temporal in many ways. Think of Floyd's The Division Bell, an album which tries to capture the feelings and emotions that resulted from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Or think of RATM's self-titled album, which was a reaction to the police brutality and race tensions that were churning in the late 80s/early 90s. Or even MGMT's Little Dark Age, which is filled with opinions surrounding our modern affection of social media and smartphones.

You're living in today, and there's music being released that touches on the common struggles we're all going through as human beings in today's world. If you wait 10 or 20 years to listen to modern music, you're purposely removing yourself from this conversation.

If music is just nice sounds to you, then that's totally fine, but for a lot us it's much, much more than that.

<comment><USER14> I think you're being uncharitable by saying anyone who prefers older music only likes music for the "nice sounds". It may also be I have more interest in music history than most.

But even if I want to watch a tv show or read a book, I similarly want it to be something that is more important than just "well it came out yesterday so must be relevant". If something can still be relevant a decade after it came out, that's when you know it's really good.

And for the record I love music. I'm a multi-instrumentalist, I've played professionally in weddings, bars, played buckets in a street performing band, and continue to study music, actively taking classical piano lessons, composing songs. I play every day.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why you're presenting this dichotomy that you can only listen to old music _or_ new music. I listen to and love both, I'm surprised that someone like you who clearly has a deep interest in music would rule one out.

> And for the record I love music. I'm a multi-instrumentalist, I've played > professionally in weddings, bars, played buckets in a street performing > band, and continue to study music, actively taking classical piano lessons, > composing songs. I play every day.

This comment makes your perspective particularly strange. Do you only play covers? Have you ever tried writing your own music? If so, does that mean that you wouldn't listen to _your own_ music until a decade after you wrote it? Because it's a bit hypocritical to only listen to music that is more than a decade old, and still expect people to give _your_ new music a chance considering it hasn't stood the test of time.

Do you think Elvis would have ever had a chance to make a living off of his music if everyone was like you?

> anyone who prefers older music

You're not just saying you _prefer_ older music though, you're saying you're not even giving new music a chance:

> It's hard for me to justify giving modern music a chance when I haven't even > given the established greats a chance.

That's pretty absurd in my opinion.

<comment><USER14> it's not like I have some hard line policy. If it makes you feel better I actually have listened to some music that came out post-2010. For example they released some remastered Beatles tracks last year and I didn't wait 10 years to listen.

<comment><USER15> So you're saying people shouldn't listen to the music you've composed until 10 years after you release it. Good idea, I was going to ask for your soundcloud link, but now I'm thinking I won't bother until 10 years from now when you've proven that you're good enough to grace these ears!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can no longer enjoy the music the way I did as a teenager. I automatically picked up the lyrics, I still remember them to this day. I sought new music, new bands. There was a peak when I was around 18-19 and after that I listened to music less and less. Similar thing happened with movies.

I followed sites like pitchfork but today I'm just not interested. I started noticing that music on my hard drive would get bigger and bigger and I had no time to listen to all of the stuff I wanted.

I do have some moments where the spark lights up again. There was a recent live 12 CD The Rolling Thunder Revue that I gobbled up and learned a lot of lyrics automatically. Or the new Arctic Monkeys album, or Kendrick Lamar's butterfly.

What my conclusion from this is, I'll just let the Lindy effect filter all the good stuff and I'll come back to the music from decades ago when the time is right. A bunch of new music and new movies are just forgettable, even the critically acclaimed.

I guess I'll miss out on a lot of present culture but I really don't go around circles where present cultural references are mentioned regularily.

<comment><USER17> Funny I'm the same way I think. I used to be so into music, I was always listening to something. I had a massive collection of pirated music lol. Always looking for something new to check out.

When edm and dubstep blew up I was always out at shows, festivals, random dj nights. Tried writing a lot of my own music, even had small release

Then idk I got my first job out of college around 24 and stopped searching or even listening. I only have music on in my car and like stuff from high school, concerts I go to are just bands from high school

I think part of it is there is no scene for music any more? Or I'm so out of touch. But bands used to be big on the radio, but there's so many release sources. there's no filter anymore. Everyone used to listen to the radio. Now everyone's Spotify is custom and completely different

<comment><USER18> > I think part of it is there is no scene for music any more?

There are plenty of music scenes, but I do think they are not as big and influential on overall youth culture anymore.

What subcultures revolve around changes over time and we might have had an oddity in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s were the subject was primarily the music genres that evolved during that time? When I was a teenager, pretty much everyone that was in a scene, associated themselves strongly to one music genre with basically no overlap. You were either into Techno, Metal, Hip Hop, Goth or Punk and the life/fashion styles that come with it.

But when I asked my mother, who was a teenager partying hard in the 60s/70s when bands definitely were big on the radio, what the subcultures revolved around, from her perspective it wasn't music, but political and socio- economical stances. For example hippies: Music definitively played a big role in that scene and many iconic songs came from it, but it was not the main thing the scene was about.

And I think it could be the same thing these days. Music is still important to people and evokes a lot of emotions, but it is not the main thing the youth cultures are build around.

<comment><USER19> > "I think part of it is there is no scene for music any more?"

> There are plenty of music scenes, but I do think they are not as big and > influential on overall youth culture anymore.

I think what changed is that gate-keeper, hyper-promoted acts don't hook as much of the youth as they once did.

We have this one local music festival that's made up of hundreds of acts playing in dozens of small venues. The audience is huge but it's dispersed over 10 city blocks so you don't really get that crushing mob feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Being an exemplary candidate for this article, and a hobby musician myself, I listen to new music searching for that effect where on the first listen, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. It's exceedingly rare to find that nexus of musical innovation and recognition which seems to cause it.

I find production and sound design are a good space to innovate in, while letting recognizable melodies, scales and rhythms keep everything digestible.

</comment><comment><USER21> Art (and music) is not something for endless consumption. Music is something we tie to our experiences, to our life, to times we've known, etc.

There's no real need to always seek new music, obsessively, unless you particularly enjoy to (or you have business reasons). You're not a bad person, or more shallow, or lesser art lover, for not doing so (in fact many very deep creators of art had a very limited set of artists and works they liked).

Having a set of songs, artists etc that speak to you, and you have grown into -- what most people do --, can be even deeper than endless "crate digging" and collection/consumption approach to music...

<comment><USER22> In my opinion, this is no different from saying there's no need to watch new films or TV shows that come out, or even older ones that you haven't seen before. Why do that when you can just watch Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, the Godfather, and 2001: A Space Odyssey? Why check out books you haven't read before when you have [insert childhood favorite]?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with repeatedly returning to old stuff you like. But I don't see how people can be satisfied doing _nothing but_ that. Fantastic new art is being created all the time, and the amount of people creating art is also increasing all the time.

The point of endless digging is to try to find other stuff that you may end up liking as much as, or perhaps even more than, the older stuff. It's not simply to consume for its own sake: it's to discover things you otherwise might be missing out on and would be thankful you found. How can you even know if that'll happen or not if you aren't exposed to lots of new things?

Also, what does it even mean to "endlessly collect" music in the modern day? You just listen to stuff you haven't heard and turn it off if you don't like it and save it to a playlist/favorites list if you do like it. There's no cost to trying albums you haven't heard before, like there was in the past. If you do really want a physical copy for whatever reason, it's easy to listen online first and decide whether or not you should get the physical copy.

This seems akin to lamenting that people are "endlessly collecting" new shows, films, and documentaries by browsing Netflix.

<comment><USER23> > In my opinion, this is no different from saying there's no need to watch new > films or TV shows that come out, or even older ones that you haven't seen > before.

Sure, the same argument applies, but that seems to be a feature rather than a bug. There's no need to obsessively seek out new movies or TV shows, unless you particularly enjoy doing that.

<comment><USER22> I'm not saying obsessing about it. The parent implied they never sought out new things to listen to. Looking for something new to watch every so often is a pretty standard activity, I think.

<comment><USER23> On the contrary, the parent's point seems pretty clear about the obsessive aspect: "There's no real need to always seek new music, _obsessively_ [...]".

<comment><USER22> True. But I think they were presenting a false premise, because the parent they were replying to made no mention of obsessiveness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> (This ended up being a love letter to my musical journey, if that doesn't tickle your fancy then don't waste your time)

I like discovering new music. Very few people in my circle of friends like the music I choose to listen to. I think I have a specific pathway to how I got here:

I wasn't into Faith No More, I didn't like Epic at the time it was a hit, until I heard Midlife Crisis. That song blew my young teenaged mind. Cue the Angel Dust album and the weird, beautiful, jagged aural landscape it created. I researched Faith No More for their history, found The Real Thing, the song in particular but also the album are both highlights. Where my journey forks way off the known track is where my research came across Mike Patton's previous / parallel band: Mr. Bungle.

I found their first full-length album (self-titled, Mr. Bungle) on tape, and bought it. Holy fucking shit it was a chaotic mess of who-the-fuck-knows, what even is this? It's musical instruments, but they're being, I don't know, just bashed at incomprehensibly. I paid a hard-earned $25 for that tape though, so I was determined to get my moneys worth out of it, so I listened and listened and kept listening (I didn't have a huge catalogue of other music) and I eventually "got it". In the end you'll find patterns in the chaos because it is, after all, music; composed, designed, written, planned. It's up to the listener to put in the effort.

Mr. Bungle was the gateway drug that opened my mind to the joys to be found in complex, difficult, and original music, and part of my personality, how people know who I am, is defined by my obscure tastes and knowledge of music that's forever hidden only just under the surface of mainstream popularity (I'm by no means very deeply knowledgeable).

I get great joy finding new music that I like, and I'm always surprised when I find something new to me, but not new to the world, and wonder how I'd missed it all these years when it's exactly the kind of thing I would like.

My source of new music is pretty much exclusively ThreeD radio[0] a local independent, volunteer-run and listener-funded station in little ol' Adelaide, South Australia. There's a lot of gravel, but there are diamonds hidden amongst it.

[0]: [https://www.threedradio.com/](https://www.threedradio.com/)

Edited to add: I've only listened to Trout Mask Replica twice, so I'm a good five listen-throughs away from any semblance of understanding of that musical masterpiece.

</comment><comment><USER25> When I listen to the same music over and over it rapidly becomes deadened. When I have it fully internalized I stop truly "listening" to it at all. A static music selection becomes a wasteland. It can recover given time - if I don't listen to something for a couple years it can become fresh again - <AUTHOR> like grazing land, I have to keep moving.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone else grow "numb" to a track after listening to it for a while? 400-500 plays seems to be the limit for me, and the period between plays doesn't seem to matter, after which it evokes no pleasing feelings, and even causes a little annoyance as if some part in the brain is "sore" from it.

<comment><USER27> Hedonic treadmill.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As I've aged I've discovered that new pop music tends to be a reflection of the current youth culture and it's something I'm not interested in. I still listen to new music produced by artists that were in their prime when I was younger though. They aren't culturally relevant but either am I any longer.

I've also found that I enjoy digging into older music And genres I would have never considered when I was younger. Robert Johnson is about as primitive as can be but it truely is fantastic blues, a genre I never much cared for. Or finding different folk music from way back, or genres like Bluegrass and their fast picking guitar legends like Norman Blake.

So yeah it's not new music but it's new to me. But what I wouldn't give to hear what Kurt Cobain would be making today if he were still alive.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, theres lots of great old music that it's new at the same time. And it comes with the perspective of time, one has the ability to see how it aged. The most im impressed with is forgotten music that has aged very well and feels ever more relevant; that is music with essence. Sometimes despite being a bad recording it still moves the needle in the positive direction. In modern music the newness factor sometimes obscures the essence and one is not able to fully asses it at the present moment.

<comment><USER28> Agreed. To me it's fascinating to hear people singing about the same themes and problems of their day. Or even breaking the assumption that everything was simpler or more pure.

Hearing Robert Johnson singing about squeezing his lemon and quipping (yeah that's what I'm talking about) is pretty funny. Or Hank Williams just reminiscing about going out, getting loaded with his girl, grabbing some after bar food, and causing a ruckus everywhere they go.

These are popular themes in pop music of today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Listening to new music is tough. You won't know if you will like it and odds are you won't like it as much as whatever your favorite music is at that current moment in time. So I understand why people don't do it. I listen to new music (largely through Spotify's Discover Weekly) but often have to force myself. The thrill of finding an entire world of music by an artist sometimes even a new genre is what keeps me going. My best friend and I share new music with each other and it really has added a lot to our relationship. As a rule of thumb for life, breaking out of the comfort zone generally seems to be the right thing do do. Anyways hope all of you are listening to new music and enjoying it ..... eventually :)

</comment><comment><USER31> As an artist I battle with this everyday, curious people actively seeking for new music are really hard to find

<comment><USER32> I feel the same, but I don't think that's the issue; the problem is that there is such extreme amounts of new music coming out everyday, and "everybody wants to reach everybody", i.e. a lot of artists are going for maximum exposure. You can hardly contact relevant blogs etc, because lists are being sold so unscrupulous bands can send out thousands of promo emails.

That said, there really should be a recommendation service focused on small but active artists. I hate that spotify etc is turning music into an on-demand commodity rather than a socioculture art form. For the interested, music journo Liz Pelly has a lot of good pieces on this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I only listen to music when I'm working on, and on spotify there is only a few "Workout" playlist created by spotify that never really get updated. When I search for Workout playlist for user created playlist, there's a huge range of music that doesn't even feel like workout music. Curious if anyone has found a good workout playlist that gets updated with new music.

</comment><comment><USER34> "The Rite" may have been technically groundbreaking, but it sounds TERRIBLE. We've seen plenty of artistic experimentation over the centuries leading to new artistic genres, but early experiments like these are almost always awful. It takes someone with skill in aesthetics to turn the new into the beautiful, and it's rarely the inventor who does this.

<comment><USER35> It works better if you think of it as a soundtrack/score to a movie. There's lots of stuff going on that you're missing by just listening to it without the visuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Henry Rollins uses a great food analogy:

Listening to the music you know and love is like carbohydrates, discovering new stuff is the protein(the meat).

<comment><USER37> Unless you're doing keto ....

<comment><USER36> Which seems unhealthy and extreme when looked at through this lens!

<comment><USER19> IDK. K has a promising therapeutic future.

That doesn't change that you and Henry are absolutely correct, tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Since internet I listened to all new music from the 20th century. A lot of "old music" from foregone age was new to me. So new music is a relative term. However, and that is my personal opinion, most new music from 2000-2020 I think is total utter crap, I rather listen to something from 1914 with horrible sound quality than something from 2014.

<comment><USER39> > most new music from 2000-2020 I think is total utter crap

Oooh here we go. What music have you listened to? Popular music or the very long tail of new artists and bands that are now able to produce and release good music from their home without the big publishers (although spotify, soundcloud, apple music etc are now the big publishers).

Because I personally disagree. I'm more into metal myself and I dig a lot of the stuff that came out after 2000. New genres and subgenres have popped up or come into their strength (folk, djent, synthwave, etc). I'm listening to a varied playlist right now of skillful musicianship, most of which from after 2010: [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2h4EoZIoRbUAJnHlHE1eHM?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2h4EoZIoRbUAJnHlHE1eHM?si=Uwds1kRBTO- jkBxrgK0NDw)

Anyway I object to a statement "this is utter crap"; you're presenting your personal opinion as a hard fact which is a big part of everything that is wrong today.

<comment><USER38> >Anyway I object to a statement "this is utter crap"; you're presenting your personal opinion as a hard fact which is a big part of everything that is wrong today.

That is how you interpret my personal opinion, I never said if things are wrong today, I just stated that today's new music is utter crap in my opinion. There is a lot of good music played by nowadays musicians.

I have no problem with you disagreeing with my personal opinion, but I do have a problem with you telling that I imply other things than I am telling.

>"this is utter crap", I never said that, there is a difference between "I think" and "This is", Don't twist my words, you are being dishonest in this conversation for doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you'd like to be adventurous, I highly recommend the Nief-Norf folks[0] who are streaming live music in support of modern chamber music, and having old streams available. Some really great music here. They're raising money there, but encourage people to listen for free if you can't support them. Full disclosure: I'm acquainted with Megan Ihnen, one of the people who run Nief- Norf... you should check out her singing, her voice is a force of nature, for example here[1] (where the recording doesn't do her any favors, alas, but it's better than nothing).

[0] [https://dots.livemusicproject.org/virtual-norf- space/](https://dots.livemusicproject.org/virtual-norf-space/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb4OYwDurWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb4OYwDurWo)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't think my dad has willingly listened to a new song in the last 30 years.

<comment><USER42> I added my parents to my Spotify family plan. My mum created a playlist called "Kitchen" that contains all her favourite songs she could remember at the time and plays nothing else!

They still listen to the radio more and then complain about the adverts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I use Spotify Discover Weekly. In the 30 recommendations, there usually is one I like. Than I check out the Album and artist and with a bit of luck I have hours of new music to listen to.

<comment><USER35> Discover Weekly is pretty great, although it tends to have a lot of covers of songs that it knows I already like. Turns out way more people have covered The Beatles than I ever would have guessed. Sometimes I'll click through to the artist page if I really like their voices, but for the most part I just skip to the next song in the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Maybe I'm the odd one out but there was some study that showed most people stick to the same tastes they developed in their teenage years - music, food, hobbies, etc.

Is this just how old people become boring or caricatures of themselves?

Perhaps this is my own personal experience but it's hard to adapt to something new when the rush of nostalgia when listening to old jams is so satisfying. You "fall in love" with the same albums and songs all over.

</comment><comment><USER45> > Listening to new music is hard.

It's harder if getting familiar with a piece of music also makes it boring to you for a while.

I enjoy threads like [1], [2] about strategies for discovering new music.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194107)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161002)

</comment><comment><USER46> I have mainly 2 ways of discovering new music: a) Concerts and festivals (if I like them, I check bandcamp) b) The newsletter of a pirate metal music site (they have new releases which usually are new albums, so if I like the cover, name or genre, I check them out on YouTube to decide if I buy them). I'd say I buy about one album per month on average (sometimes I get the whole back- catalogue, sometimes nothing).

</comment><comment><USER47> 58 years old, graduated high school 1979, 30 years old in 1991. I do listen to things from that time, but there's sooo much interesting music that came out after that. Different genres of metal like metalcore and doom metal, nu metal, then EBM (NOT EDM)/synthpop, K-pop, dubstep, on and on. It's exploded since my "cutoff" date, I'm not limiting myself.

<comment><USER30> you're NOT EDM statement made me chuckle as well as an image of a 58 year old jamming out to some BTS(which I will admit I am loving recently). Keep living life to the fullest. "I'm not limiting myself" is a beautiful way of putting it.

<comment><USER47> BlackPink in your A-RE-A!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I remember stumbling upon a hypothesis when I was studying musicology that suggest that music is appealing to us because is has to do with our most primitive senses when in our mother's womb, both for rhythm (heart beat) and melody (mother's voice). We then build on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER49> Finding new music is tough. At one point I discovered acid jazz and wanted to listen to more acid jazz, but I didn't really know where to find new stuff. As far as I know, there isn't really any good way of finding recommendations tailored to you.

</comment><comment><USER19> Over 50 here.

I was just discussing this with my sister, my lack of nostalgia for old favorites.

What I feel is more like the opposite, it's repulsion to overplayed music. As in - I sometimes leave a store when I can't handle Clear Channel music playing overhead. The 5 bazillionth hearing of "Tears in Heaven" or of any artist beginning with 'Sir' triggers a fight or flight response.

I'm not overstating my case when I claim that (for me), listening to overplayed music is indistinguishable from abuse. Even the artists that I adored in my teens/20 are becoming unlistenable. David Bowie was the most recent to go. Pink Floyd is close behind.

If music is medicine, it's all Fentanyl by the time Clear Channel gets done with it.

It makes me continually grateful for all the access we have to new artists.

\- - - - -

PS: The Beatles catalog is just a preschool songbook now. Fight me.

<comment><USER50> When I was in elementary school (in the 90s) we all sang Beatles songs with the teacher in our "music" class. My parents didn't listen to The Beatles so I had no idea who they were, I just though the songs we sang were silly nursery rhymes. Even later Beatles songs like "Bungalow Bill" or "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

Obviously not all Beatles songs are like that and the musical difference between McCartney and Lennon was one of the biggest contributors to their breakup, but yeah... a lot of their music today is treated as inoffensive background noise for grocery stores and elevators.

<comment><USER19> > Don't understand how people are happy to listen to the same old stuff - <USER2> > must get so dull.

It feels like being force-fed doughnuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> No man ever steps into the same river twice

<comment><USER51> I believe the process of renewing one's experience of listening music is more interesting than renewing the playlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> For most forms of passive audio-visual entertainment, we strongly prefer new to old, for example:

* films

* jokes

* stories

* news

* documentaries

Music is unusual in how much we _don't_ seek out new items.

</comment><comment><USER53> I grew up with boomer parents (one went to DJ school) who blasted only Beatles and yacht rock, explaining anything made after their youth was not even music. It spawned in me a lifelong curiosity and dedication to new music. I do on rare occasion reflect back, but never to The Who, who was my unfortunate childhood alarm clock and constant soundtrack as I played/gardened outside. (The DJ wired the yard for Who sound).

<comment><USER19> > I do on rare occasion reflect back, but never to The Who, who was my > constant soundtrack

I opine that any song can be weaponized thru overplaying.

This may be an unpopular opinion.

<comment><USER47> It's popular opinion with the US government [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- latin-america-40090809](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40090809)</comment></comment></comment>


Pablo Escobar's hippos keep multiplying and Colombia doesn't know how to stop it - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pablo-escobars-hippos-keep-multiplying-and-colombia-doesnt-know-how-to-stop-it/ <comment><USER2> They know exactly how to stop it. Dumb people complained when one of them was executed. So they actually are refusing to stop it.</comment>


FairPlay DRM May Be To Blame For Widespread iOS & Mac App Crashes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/05/apple-issue-causing-widespread-app-crashes-fairplay-drm-may-be-to-blame/

<comment><USER2> So much for the Apple "ecosystem"!</comment>


Tiny Indian state proposes world's biggest experiment with guaranteed income - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/17/tiny-indian-state-proposes-worlds-biggest-experiment-with-guaranteed-income/ <comment><USER2> I think it might help some people like artists, writers, etc, but in the long run, I think it will just create inflation, and in the US it will create higher home prices.

Any time more money is injected into an area, it creates inflation. For example, when women started to enter the work force starting in the 70/80s, it lead to a dramatic rise in prices. Of course, I'm not saying that women entering the workforce is bad, I'm saying that when households effectively started doubling their income, it didn't result in more saved money, it resulted in higher house prices.

The same goes with the income tax deduction for mortgage interest. The idea is that more money would go back to the mortgage payer, however, all it did is factor into the calculus of buying homes, so people could funnel that "savings" into a higher mortgage payment.

If the US decided to give everyone $1000/month for free, I'm pretty sure that would just make the house prices higher by the equivalent amount.

<comment><USER3> I would need to see data before I believe that women entering the workforce resulted in higher home prices in a significant way. I have no proof, but I guess it allowed women to more accurately value themselves in the market, therefore helping them pair up with other high income men, and causing home prices to go up where dual high income households tend to congregate. But on the other end of the spectrum, women may have displaced men and caused pay for men to go down, thus total household income would not have risen as much. Even more, men and women on the lower end of income scale are less likely to marry, therefore would have even less purchasing power when (or if) buying a home.

[https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/marriage-is- fo...](https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/marriage-is-for-rich- people/)

<comment><USER4> > have no proof, but I guess it allowed women to more accurately value > themselves in the market, therefore helping them pair up with other high > income men, and causing home prices to go up where dual high income > households tend to congregate.

This makes sense to me. Even more so if we make the assumption that it's easier to be a married couple making $200K combined (e.g. 125K and 75K) vs one member of the marriage making $200K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nitpicking a minor detail since this is a common misconception:

> Most recently, it became the country's first organic state, eliminating the > use of pesticides and fertilizers.

"Organic" does not mean "eliminating the use of pesticides and fertilizers". You can still use /organic/ pesticides and fertilizers, some of which (e.g. copper salts) can pose risks to health and/or the environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> When a UBI experiment runs for only a limited-time or can be ended abruptly by a new government (e.g. Finland's just-finished 2-year trial run, Ontario's 2017 project ending abruptly after a year, or Stockton's proposed 18-month trial), the data it provides is of no value whatsoever when determining the viability of a permanent scheme.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of things I am super interested in is how the outcome of this experiment is measured. How do people end-up using this money, how local economy is impacted and does this address any issues like poverty/education.

</comment><comment><USER8> As I understand it, some small Indian tribes already have something very much like guaranteed income for their members, funded from casino profits. Anecdotally, the outcomes seem to mildly positive - worth noting, but not _that_ dramatic; the social issues in Indian country are quite simply huge, and it's not _quite_ clear that even a guaranteed income is enough to make a dent. I'm not aware of any formal academic paper analyzing these outcomes, however.

<comment><USER9> Different kind of "Indian".

Indian tribes = Native American / First Nations tribe in US/Canada. Derived from misunderstanding by the stupidest explorer that ever lived, Christopher Columbus.

Indian = from India, a country in Asia. An Indian state in the country of India is the topic of this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I just missing it or does it not say how much they are giving per person?

<comment><USER11> Reading between the lines, it sounds like it's going to be mainly redistributing income from hydro-power generation sold to the rest of the country, which makes it sound similar to things like the Alaska Permanent Fund (i.e. a dividend paid from exceptional resource revenues which is below local subsistence levels rather than a taxpayer-funded redistribution programme)

Some Indian sources (which also don't seem to have a figure_ suggest they're also proposing top up the fund by cutting other subsidy programmes, so it'd also be interesting to see the _net_ impact on different sections of society if it happens</comment></comment>