Build apps not businesses. - <AUTHOR> http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/12/28/build-apps-not-businesses/ <comment><USER2> _It's the ultimate resume_

This is absolutely true, and the heart of the distinction. If you are happy with a regular job, then definitely go that route. Building weekend apps and such will keep you up-to-date and you'll be highly prized anywhere you go.

However! For many of us, we simply cannot be happy in a regular job. For whatever reason, it rankles and chafes us. For lost souls like this, we need to find a way to monetize and build businesses in order to escape.

I envy people who love their jobs. It seems like a simpler, more satisfying life. It's just never been that way for me.

<comment><USER3> _> I envy people who love their jobs. It seems like a simpler, more satisfying life. It's just never been that way for me._

We don't have some mental deficiency, absent in you, that stops us from hating our jobs. We have simply found jobs that we don't hate. Just like you.

Just because you are self-employed, doesn't mean that you don't have a job. And if you don't have a controlling share in your company any more, you aren't any more self employed than me.

<comment><USER4> It's not just this.

I could have the best job in the world and because I'm not working for myself, I'm not going to be happy.

<comment><USER3> _> I could have the best job in the world and because I'm not working for myself, I'm not going to be happy._

This statement is not internally consistent. If it is the "best job in the world," then by definition you would be happy to do it. It reminds me of people who say things like "I like my chips to be TOO salty!" No you don't.

It also sounds like a self-imposed rule put in place for reasons of contrarianism, which would be deeply maladaptive and self-defeating, but as accusing people of contrarianism is becoming a bit of a meme round here, forget I said that.

EDIT: I appear to have been contrarian over the issue of accusing people of contrarianism. If the internet implodes in the next hour, my bad.

<comment><USER5> _If it is the "best job in the world," then by definition you would be happy to do it_

No. Somebody could, in a logically consistent way, be unhappy when doing absolutely any job.

<comment><USER3> In this case all jobs are equally bad (and equally good,) therefore the words "best job," or even the words "good job" or "bad job" can have no meaningful interpretation.

<comment><USER6> No, it could be the case that someone is unhappy whenever they're working. For someone like that, the best job is one that pays a lot for a small amount of work. The lower the pay rate, the worse the job.

I think that's a meaningful interpretation. In fact, I think this situation is pretty common among people in the world.

<comment><USER3> Touché. Although I think bringing higher reasoning into what was clearly a bit of pleasingly pointless formal logic pedantry is a bit unfair. Like taking an assault rifle to a waterfight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DHH doesn't lambast side projects, doing things for fun or even giving things away - Rails is the obvious proof of that. DHH lambasts the weird aversion we software guys have to charging money for things.

Absolutely build apps for the fun of it, feel free to scratch your own itch, but if you build a useful product, try charging money for it before you give it away for nothing. If nobody wants to pay for it then you can always GPL your code and hope for the best, but releasing software under Free licenses by default robs you of big income opportunities.

<comment><USER8> _weird aversion we [...] have to charging money for things_

I have exactly this problem right now. I think my biggest block right now is that

 _try charging money for it before you give it away_

is not an effortless thing to do. One has to invest money and time to set up a payment gateway, and then one has the responsibility to respond to customers and maintain the app.

What would you suggest I do in a situation like this?

<comment><USER9>
        One has to invest money and time to set
        up a payment gateway, and then one has
        the responsibility to respond to customers
        and maintain the app.

Setting up a paypal account takes minutes and will be enough in such an early stage.

<comment><USER2> Beware lock-in, though. If you're doing 1-time payments it's not so bad, but subscriptions are basically impossible to migrate from one platform to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why are we even having these discussions?

If you want to build a business, do so.

If you want to build an app, do so.

If you want to play games all weekend, do that, and if you want to build a small tool just for your own use, do that.

Trying to come up with a strategy that all developers should follow misses the point that we are all individuals with our own needs and goals.

<comment><USER11> Thou art a sage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> People build apps because it's easy. If you're a half decent developer building an app, you _can't fail_ and that is huge. Getting people to actually pay you for something is hard and fraught with uncertainty and danger. No wonder most people choose to build apps.

<comment><USER8> _Getting people to actually pay you for something is hard and fraught with uncertainty and danger._

Just to be more explicit about these dangers and uncertainties:

      - It takes time to set up a payment system, and it's not
        nearly as fun as building the app in the first place
      - When you start charging, you take on responsibility for
        the app, and supporting users
      - If no one buys it, you've wasted the time and money you
        put into setting up the payment system

<comment><USER13> someone should build an app which simplifies payment. Create an account, choose the payment option you like and here is the code you have to include in your app, byebye.

<comment><USER14> I think PayPal is like that. For the price of an extra middle man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If your goal is to do what you love, sure. If your goal is to do what you love and maybe get lucky enough to have it turn into a business, maybe... sure, still might work, but might not. If your goal is to start a business, this is terrible advice.

</comment><comment><USER16> _It's fast_ _It's fun_ _It's the ultimate resume_

Sure, if you're trying to land a job, the build apps not businesses approach can work (and is possibly better than the opposite approach, cost/benefit- wise). If you're trying to become your own boss, you need to consider the alternative.

<comment><USER17> Not at all. The article mentions David Heinemeier Hansson but it completely misunderstands DHH's philosophy, if anything DHH in favor of this kind of approach- working on the side along with a stable job until you are reasonably confidant that your app has traction at which point you can jump onto your app and monetize it. There really is no point in trying to "build a business" when you don't even know your idea is even remotely feasable. The kind of obsessive tunnel vision about "building a business" is a waste of time of the programmer.

<comment><USER18> _There really is no point in trying to "build a business" when you don't even know your idea is even remotely feasable_

Exactly. And a large part of the problem is the way people approach this by trying to find a "new idea." Most businesses aren't new ideas, they're either copycats (nothing wrong with that) or fresh approaches to existing ideas.

A social network for dogs is something that you can't know is feasible before you try it. OTOH a timecard app for remote workers almost certainly is feasible and its success depends on your execution.

If you want to start a business, solve a problem a business has in an interesting way. If you want to build an app, build the most amazing thing you can think of and forget about how to make money with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the blog

 _David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals is known for lambasting businesses that seem oblivious to the concept of profitability. I don't really agree with him._

In his website

 _About me

Short answer: I happen to like doing fun things for profit._

</comment><comment><USER20> How many projects are only a couple of hours in length? I started down this road, and ended up with a list of "learning experiences"; nothing that I'd inflict upon anyone else.

I guess I'd add "... but don't release it". If it's just to build up a portfolio, you can usually make the source code available and maybe a demo.

I do like the idea of "programmer portfolios", however.

<comment><USER17> Oh yes, damn learning. That pesky little utterly useless thing. Heck burning for eternity in the fires of the underworld is preferable to having learning "inflicted" upon oneself.

<comment><USER21> I think he's saying that the result of his learning experience, while valuable to him, is not something that you or anyone else would find usable or enjoyable.

<comment><USER20> Yep. And "releasing" something worth a damn typically means making sure it's documented properly, hosted somewhere nicely, etc.

Plus there's that other part where the first two times I implement something it looks like utter trash, and then the third, hey, that's alright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S There are some differences in approach that need to be considered.

If you're building an app purely for fun, you can expect users to create an account before they start using your software.

If you're building a business, you may need to allow people to try your software without creating an account at all. The alternative is a super-high bounce rate. This could arguably be called a UI issue, but it's also marketing.

If you don't think about stuff like this from the start, chances are you're going to need more than a trivial rewrite if your idea starts to take off. If you're intent on bootstrapping in your spare time, that can be a killer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having fun in _everything_ that you do should be the goal. Even if the motivation is purely profit, you should still try and have fun. Otherwise what, ultimately, is the point? Eventual riches will be meagre compensation for decades of unhappy toil. This is an extension of the John Lennon quote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Unless you're forced to do something to avoid catastrophic personal circumstances for you or your dependents I guess.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit of both. You need the app, and the best apps are ones that solve problems you know well. They can become businesses if the problem is one you share with a wide enough number of people. I guess the thing to keep in mind, is if you don't think about profit from the outset, even if you don't initially seek profit, you'll never be able to make profits.

<comment><USER22> I realize all that I have said has been said before, and better, by others. It's still worth keeping in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I may be over-thinking this, but when I read articles like this I relate it to the difference between "social norms" and "market norms." When you're doing something in the realm of social norms (e.g., for fun, for helping other people, for recognition, etc.) it's great because you get that warm fuzzy feeling inside for doing it. The minute you cross into market norms (accepting profit for what you've done), it takes on a different form entirely and can lead some people to be less productive or motivated in their pursuit. Not that either way is necessarily good or bad, it's just that when social crosses into market the initial spark can lose a lot of its appeal. That might be why a lot of weekend projects are never properly monetized. Apps built for fun are great when they're purely in the social norm realm (and stay that way), but lose a little bit when they cross into a for-profit.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it comes down to what your motivations are--money or fun. Then there are companies like Twitter that have no obvious revenue model when they get started, so do you call it a business? And how often do the Twitters of this world really scale up enough to actually call themselves a business. Given you're a developer, you're going to focus more on the creation of the product. Whereas someone without those skills is going to approach it from a business perspective in all likelihood. If it's just a weekend project, I would say go have some fun with it. But if you're going to invest some time in it as a way to make a living, it's worth doing that ground work before you even get started to make sure people are willing to pay for it.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Why do you have to choose to do just one?

<comment><USER25> Because it's hard and not contrarian enough to do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Heh... interesting post with the opposite perspective as my post from a week ago or so. ([http://emphaticsolutions.com/2010/12/10/build-businesses- not...](http://emphaticsolutions.com/2010/12/10/build-businesses-not- apps.html))

What we can agree on, obviously, is to encourage folks to get off their ass and ship something. What is best to focus on is up for debate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Surely it depends what your goal is.

You wouldn't leave your job to build apps, but you might to build a business.

Of course apps are fun to build. But making something profitable involves doing a lot of things which are not fun, marketing for example. At this point, someone simply making an app is likely to walk away and just build another. After all, their goal was simply to have fun.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe there's some truth in this...

It's scratching those little itches that often times leads to a business, while many times, the business first product 2nd leads to pivot, after pivot, after pivot.

I think both work, and the answer lies in the middle. Scratch your itch, and then see if it can become something bigger. I think Balsamiq is a great example of this.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be comparing apples and oranges. If your goal is fun, build an app. If your goal is money and freedom, build a business. Sure one _might_ morf into the other, but if you have a goal, work towards it, don't just hope to stumble into it.

<comment><USER30> Great point drndown2007!

From the article itself I couldn't agree more on "The ultimate resume". A passionate developer with a lot of cool tiny projects (as his playground) can get plenty of job offerings - as long as the ideas show potential and are executed well. Also, as Sahil mentioned, one of the projects can start small but grow into a big successful business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "I've gotten more job offers because of the stuff I've built than the schools I've attended."

I feel like this may be true for many in progress students at middle to high tier universities - however once you have a degree from MIT/Stanford/Caltech/Cal, the interest in candidates for full time jobs shifted from having miscellaneous side projects and contributions to FOSS projects to having a decent GPA and a degree. I feel that the writer of the article could try to discuss that the two are at least tantamount, the degree from a distinguished university is a display of four years of hard work, weekend side projects most of the time span the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER32> Build businesses, not apps.

But hey, whatever floats your boat is right.

<comment><USER33> Or build apps that may become profitable enough to turn into a business.

Don't set off to build a business for the sake of building a business, build something for the sake of building it and then see how it goes.

<comment><USER34> I agree with you. But in a way, isn't that the 37Signals story? Basecamp was a byproduct of their consulting job -- something they just made for dogfooding. They realized they could make money and then released it as a business.

Along with the "build a business" mantra, they also build apps, but they are pretty quick at converting them into businesses when they see the opportunity. When they don't see a business opportunity, they do other things (like releasing Ruby on Rails)

<comment><USER33> It's exactly what 37signals did. They scratched their own itch by building an app that they wanted to use. It then happened to make a ton of money and eclipsed their consulting revenues. They didn't start off to make all this money, but it was a byproduct of the passion they put into building the app. Many great software success stories are similar to theirs.

<comment><USER32> For every 37signals there are at least just as many examples of companies that set out to build a business...and built it. I can see why scratching your own itch may be the better way in certain situations. But I can just as easily see going all out to build a _business of apps_.

Is there even a way to gauge which one is "better" other than personal preference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ironically, that's a good business idea for someone: 'MonetizeMe.com'

It would be a company that specialises in taking a working web-app and setting up the payment gateway and other details necessary for making it a commercial endeavour. In return they get a slice of the profit or something. While the original developer doesn't need to endure the headaches of commerce to reap the benefits.

</comment><comment><USER36> I love that this guy, and people who think like him, are my competition.

</comment><comment><USER37> An app without a business is like a vine without a trellis.

</comment><comment><USER38> Alternative, even more slick and witty phrase:

Build success.

</comment><comment><USER39> Building things is more fun than marketing.

</comment><comment><USER40> When I opened the link, I thought it showed an error page...</comment>


Ask HN: How can outsourcing be improved from the contractor's side? - <AUTHOR>

I think it's safe to say that outsourcing development work is hard to get right and filled with disappointing results but I am curious of any ideas on what should the contractor be doing / providing / using (apps or setup) to facilitate a good outsourcing outcome. <comment><USER2> Communicate. It doesn't matter if you're on location or working remotely. If you communicate clearly, understand things before you start work on them and get your message across then you will have success. For each new feature or task, make sure you understand what the outcome is expected before you start. I have wasted a lot of time the times I have not followed this advice.

Prioritize. Get your client to help prioritize their work. If they have a list of features to implement, ask which ones are the highest priority. Help them understand that you are only one person and that only one thing can take priority at a time.

Read. Read a book about your field for at least 15 minutes per day. At this rate you will finish one or two books a month and be far ahead of people who do not read. Be constantly improving your skills and learning new ways of doing the things you are currently doing. (I admit this is advice I have implemented for a couple years but have gotten away from recently in the last month.)

Your question might have been probing for the tools to use. The tools don't matter as much as the person behind the tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreeing 100%. 'Communicate' can be unpacked into 1. asking a lot 2. systematically eliminating fuzziness 3. use visual tools (drawing, screenshot, references)</comment></comment>


What the Spitfire can teach us about nurturing innovation and radical ideas. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2293662/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> Full of factual errors and bombastic opinion masquerading as truth. British air-to-air kills during the Battle of Britain were heavily weighted in favour of the slower, older Hurricane (which was more numerous in service, and perfectly capable of mixing it with the majority of Lufwaffe aircraft in 1940). The RAF, which began re-arming in late 1937/38, actually had newer aircraft than the Luftwaffe, and a home mover's advantage in that pilots who were shot down ended up landing in the UK (able to go back into battle if British, but destined for a PoW camp if German). Finally, unlike the Lufwaffe, the RAF had the world's first integrated air defense network, with radar pickets to detect inbound bombers, control centres to direct the interceptors, and radio-directed fighters.

The myth of the Spitfire is over-hyped because it's a lot simpler than the reality of the situation.

<comment><USER3> There's also the fact that the German air force was not structured to meet the challenge of mounting a long-term bombing campaign over hostile territory. The Luftwaffe's bomber force was structured to provide close air support bombing for advancing tank forces. Their bombers had neither the range nor the durability necessary to fly and fight for long periods of time over enemy territory.

The entire Battle of Britain was a grievous strategic error by Goering.

<comment><USER4> I'm with you until that last line.

If you look at what Germany was trying to do - invade the UK - then the only real course of action for them was to indeed launch the Battle of Britain. They had momentum, they were pressing the attack.

While true that the Luftwaffe didn't have exactly the right equipment for a strategic bombing war (nobody did, actually, it wasn't perfected until the allies needed to do it), you're playing too much of a Monday Morning Quarterback blaming Goering.

Strategically, the only mistake the Germans made during BB was to switch from targeting tactical targets to bombing cities. It's doubtful though if this really made much of a difference in the end.

Fundamentally though, there was nothing overly wrong with the German approach to the BB. It was a tough assignment that they perhaps were a little overconfident in being able to pull off, but in the end, they just lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A technicality: Supermarine Spitfire was by no means a from-scratch project. The team already had long experience with cutting-edge-performance, low-wing, all-metal monoplanes: the Supermarine S.4, S.5, S.6 and S.6B [1] planes that raced in the Shneider Trophy [2]. Also, certain key components (engine -- RR Merlin, propeller, avionics, weaponry, sight) and theory (the wing profile from NACA) were CotS (if highest-end).

It's main opponent -- the Bf109 -- had racing heritage as well, in form of Bf108.

Supermarine's racing planes were built on contracts from Royal government, so the company had experience in working for this kind of customer.

Curiously enough, one weak point of the Spitfire -- the narrow undercarriage -- was something with which the team had less experience, as the S.4, .5, .6, .6B were all floatplanes.

So yes, innovation all the way, but built upon solid experience (cue the proverbial shoulders of giants ;-) )

\----

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_S.6B>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneider_Trophy>

</comment><comment><USER6> "It is only a small exaggeration to say that the Spitfire was the plane that saved the free world."

There are many other reasons why Britain was never invaded in 1940: the Dunkirk evacuation saving the trained part of the army, the extensive early warning system, including radars, the preliminary work on the Enigma machine brought over by escaped Poles etc. Chief among them, I would argue, was the fact that Hitler didn't really want to fight the British after France fell, and didn't expect he would have to. The lack of investment in submarines and strategic bombers, the half-hearted and late starting planning for Sea Lion, the minimal commitment to the Mediterranean front (North Africa, Malta, Gibraltar) etc. only make sense in this light. The fact that, with proper planning and resources allocated, the German military was more than capable of taking on the British in an across-the-water operation was proven earlier in the same year by the successful operation in Norway, and next year by the capture of Crete.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the Spitfire as an aircraft and a legend, but the simple fact of the matter is that had as much to do with the outcome of the Battle of Britain as Ava Braun's skirt.

If the entire RAF had been equipped with Hurricanes, and not a single Spitfire seen combat until the fall, the result would have been exactly the same.

The UK had numerous advantages over the Germans during this battle. All of them combined to create the outcome we now know as history.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe he's stretching the truth a bit to make a point, but his point is a very good one.

Look at fusion research: can we say even now which of tokamaks, laser inertial confinement, Focus, Polywell, magnetized target fusion, sonofusion, and even cold fusion is likeliest to produce results? I know lots of people have opinions, but the fact is, we don't know. And yet look at the funding profile: we've placed a huge bet on ITER, a smaller one on NIH, and by comparison, practically nothing on any of the others. This is not the right way to do basic research -- particularly not when it's this important.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a defensive fighter, we can forgive its lack of range. There are a few negatives: carburetor rather than fuel injection (negative G's), no deflection-capable gunsight and a weak punch (rifle-caliber MG, although a lot of them). All of these were addressed in the years past '40.

As a product of the '30's, it was quite a piece of work. Along with the Zero, the best pre-war fighters out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting note: there are about 44 airworthy spitfires remaining: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_Supermarine_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_Supermarine_Spitfires)

If seen the ones on display in Seattle, but I can't recall if I've seen one fly (went to a lot of air shows as a kid).

<comment><USER10> They used to fly a Lancaster Bomber, Spitfire and Hurricane past the annual summer show where I grew up.

(And there's a Lancaster Bomber Flyby in the English Midlands this Sunday, incidentally).

<comment><USER11> That's the Battle of Britian Memorial Flight. I saw them a few years ago, they flew over my house as it happens. The size difference between the spitfire and the lanc is remarkable.

The sound of 50 lancs flying towards you at 20000 feet must have sounded like death approaching.</comment></comment></comment>


How to get started with DJing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@asantash/how-to-get-started-with-djing-495c275be5e4#.2ajfzv1c4 <comment><USER2> Okay, so I was a rave DJ in the early 2000s and opened for some of the most popular DJ's in the world at sold out clubs and I'm about to give some real advice.

Yes, all of this stuff about producing music is important, but people who can mix records are a dime a dozen. You need to be able to do it, but it's not enough to get gigs.

The way you get gigs is to be popular. You need to go clubbing every weekend. You need to go to after parties. You need to promote on social media. You need to throw your own parties and book other DJ's so they'll book you at theirs.

Nobody is going to book you on talent. You get booked because you get people in the door and that really only has a little bit to do with talent and a lot to do with personality and networking.

You'll never make a living that way, though, because nobody pays money for local DJ's except at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Alternatively, you can spend 10 years in your bedroom learning how to be a really good music producer and hope some popular DJ signs your single and then gradually build a following and then maybe in five more years you might make what a junior sysadmin makes.

<comment><USER3> > Alternatively, you can spend 10 years in your bedroom learning how to be a > really good music producer and hope some popular DJ signs your single and > then gradually build a following and then maybe in five more years you might > make what a junior sysadmin makes.

Or you could become a junior sysadmin right from the start and treat music production as a hobby with no intention of turning it into a career. Although, I have a feeling many young people wouldn't listen to advice like that.

<comment><USER4> > Or you could become a junior sysadmin right from the start and treat music > production as a hobby with no intention of turning it into a career.

I know a couple of people who did just that. ;-)

I was slightly shocked how much money they invested in synthesizers and other equipment, but it was clear they did this for the fun without any intention to make a living from it. And other people have expensive hobbies, too.

Incidentally, most of them were actually sysadmins or programmers. ;-)

<comment><USER5> Yep, did just that: [http://i.imgur.com/FYT3mKy.png](http://i.imgur.com/FYT3mKy.png)

> I was slightly shocked how much money they invested in synthesizers and > other equipment, but it was clear they did this for the fun without any > intention to make a living from it. And other people have expensive hobbies, > too.

I have a friend who fixes up old cars (old Chevys, etc... from '50s - '60s)

My rule of thumb is to spend less than he is each year :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> * Love good music. If you don't love or don't have good music, blending songs together will never sound good.

* Try out Xwax or Mixxx (based on xwax) for free. They are open-source. You don't really need all the other distractions of modern systems to play good music. All that comes later when you run out of things to do with good music. Any easy effects will sound canned to the slightest trained ear.

* Harmonic mixing is incredibly hard to get right. Forget about it until you know you need it. No formula can tell you the key of one song matched with another, as soon as they make a chord progression not in sync it can all go to hell. The people selling these keying programs gloss over that important fact so they can take your money.

* Corollary: it's way more important to trust your ears than a DJ program. Software is constantly wrong about BPM and key, but you have a natural talent for rhythm and harmony. Trust it.

Disclosure: I help maintain Xwax and have been djing for over a decade. I really hope you give djing a try and trust your instinct to rock the house.

<comment><USER6> Addendum: If you perform using Spotify this is technically illegal, however most artists I know find it more important to share their music than to buy it every time. So if you're not buying the music please help people discover what it is so they can buy it if they love it.

<comment><USER7> I'm not an expert here, so I would invite contrary interpretations. I know you can't setup speakers outside and play Spotify, but it should be legal in a venue that pays ASCAP. When I worked for a radio station in the early zeds we were told many times that their ASCAP license allowed us to play music regardless of the source, so ASCAP should supercede the Spotify prohibition on public performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm going to seem like an elitist prick, but in my opinion DJing is absolutely useless if you don't produce/compose. Basic 2 decks DJing is fucking boring, learn how to play instruments and all the theory behind pop music, then figure out the software and hardware to play live sets. Obviously you're going to need to understand the basics of mixing to play live sets, but playing a regular DJ set in front of an audience to me is the same thing as covering stairway to heaven or wonderwall. Keep practicing until you're actually good. All of my friends who could play instruments had a much easier time getting into producing than the people who never learned a single scale. And it's not just the composition aspect, it's all the sound design, sampling and just understand the programs that gets easier.

<comment><USER9> >I'm going to seem like an elitist prick, but in my opinion DJing is absolutely useless if you don't produce/compose. Basic 2 decks DJing is fucking boring

Exhibit A for the defence: this utterly masterful set by garage legend DJ EZ. He deftly plays with the build and release of tension without relying on formulaic drops. There is still enormous creative mileage in traditional two- deck mixing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OraL6lKoyXE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OraL6lKoyXE)

Selectors don't even mix in the traditional sense, nor do they compose or produce, but there's a tremendous art to what they do. If you're unfamiliar with sound system culture and clashing, I'd suggest the Red Bull Culture Clash as an accessible introduction, particularly Rebel Sound's 2014 performance starring the inimitable David Rodigan. It's worth watching the "making of" documentary on their performance; it took months of painstaking preparation to play 40 minutes of music.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKDSgMddOO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKDSgMddOO0) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ishaG9pyMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ishaG9pyMA)

The problem as I see it is that technology has made DJing too accessible. Every two-bit hipster with a Macbook thinks that they're a DJ. Back in the day you needed decks, you needed to learn to beatmatch, you needed to hunt down white labels, you needed to get dubplates cut. There was a barrier to entry, an apprenticeship you had to serve before you could call yourself a DJ. The term has now been diluted to the point of meaninglessness, but that doesn't diminish from the artistry of great DJs.

<comment><USER8> >The problem as I see it is that technology has made DJing too accessible. Every two-bit hipster with a Macbook thinks that they're a DJ.

This is the point I was trying to make. I'm very familiar with soundsystem culture, I've been making a living from it since I was 17. Obviously there's some good sounding stuff you can do while mixing on two decks, you just gave decent examples, but in my opinion it's never going to be as mind blowing as Birdy Nam Nam or Araabmuzik absolutely killing it on some freestyle stuff. It's never going to beat a great vinyl jungle set with an experienced scratcher, and it's certainly not going to beat some of the crazy live sets people in the downtempo psytrance scene play.

I went to a rave on halloween, and there was these two guys doing a live set. One guy was just doing regular 2 decks stuff for the rythmic section, while the other guy had an mpc, a controller and electronic drums plugged into his computer for the melodies. It was great seeing the drums used as melody, I've seen thousands of sets in my life and I was mind blown. There are no videos of him playing live, but here's his soundcloud.

[https://soundcloud.com/swa-swally](https://soundcloud.com/swa-swally)

<comment><USER10> A little off-topic, but why is there just so much good music out of Montreal? And any more good recs for somebody who likes swa-swally and mstrkrft?

<comment><USER11> Montreal has cheap rent and everyone who's career focused leaves for Toronto or New York. In their wake is our amazing music scene :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shame the author promotes the use of Spotify so much, for two reasons: \- the ridiculous amount of money going to artists (i.e. the ones who do want money for their music), although you could argue that you would generate revenue for every play the song gets, rather than a one-off amount when buying it (although, pretty sure it still doesn't compare); \- having Spotify means everyone will ask you to play your favourite song, and you'll have less of an excuse not to, which is a massive PITA.

Contrary to what the article says, Mixxx is cross-platform (GNU/Linux, Mac, Windows). I really recommend that amazing piece of Free Software. It is the only DJing software I use.

<comment><USER13> She's not using Spotify for performances - she's using it for discovering and selecting music. Once she knows her tracks, then she buys them.

<comment><USER14> Another option which is big in the industry and unmentioned here is Beatport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who is a Systems Engineer by day, and a DJ by night I can highly recommend anyone that has even the slightest interest in Djing to just jump in and give it a go!

Don't get caught up in the details (Hardware/software, CDs/mp3s/vinyl etc) just yet - try and find your starting point and progress from there. The barrier to entry has never ever been lower!

When I started, there was no choice but a pair of Technics SL1200 / SL1210 turntables and a big record collection (CDJs had not even been introduced!). Now you don't even need to invest a fortune in building a vinyl collection!

over 20 years later, here I am - I do at least 2 gigs every week (try to just stick to Fri and Sat nights, but could have more work if I chose to, although Djing until 3 or 4am on a week night is not exactly compatible with the day job!

I still have the original set of technics turntables that I bought in 1994, they still work - although I have moved on to a serato setup using the CDJs provided by almost all venues these days! I'm too old now to lug a massive box of vinyl around hahaha.

One last point - I'd echo previous comments that in reality its not about how technically brilliant you are. Like a lot of things in life, its really about who you know! so get out there, meet the promoters, other DJs, venue owners / managers etc. thats the key to getting a foor in the door.

<comment><USER16> > (CDJs had not even been introduced!)

I had the Denon dual CDJ decks approx 1993-ish. Cost me $1000 (wince).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Couple of weeks ago I randomly came across a building here in Munich that looked absolutely spectacular. It's shell looked like it was made out of very small cubes and millions of them. Looked at the doorsign...turns out it is the HQ of Algoriddm, the company that makes Djay Pro (recommended by the author) :)

EDIT: would love to see a "How to get started with music production". Just started using Logic Pro and with all its plugins it seems very overwhelming at first.

<comment><USER18> I've also recently started with Logic. My advice would be: don't worry about all the details of the software, it'll take a long time to master all the features. Learn the basics of it, and just start messing around with sounds to produce a complete song. Don't worry about technicalities, just finish. It's more important what you have to say with music, than how you say it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Step 1: have an actual passion for good music, weird music, music outside of the mainstream. Dance with it, vibrate to it, understand how it makes you and others feel.

Step 2: whatever. If you understand the music, the sound, the acoustics and the sensations it makes little difference what medium you choose.

Mixing and beatmatching are secondary to this. You should want to show people great music above all. The mix should just prime people to make them receptive to it.

<comment><USER20> DJing is interesting because, while people who listen to DJs would not notice any difference in this approach, people who are familiar with mixing or are DJs would say strictly that this is not DJing.

This is in contrast with, say, playing the violin. There's no debate over if somebody is actually playing the violin - one does or does not.

I think the point of this, beyond any snobbery, is that there is a craft to DJing that is of great value to the DJs and those who are familiar, but its impact on the typical listener happens to be negligible.

So if you're interested in DJing because you primarily care about others' responses to your DJing, this is a satisfactory route. If you're interested in learning the nuances of a craft involving highly technical and intricate mixing then that's an altogether different path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was into techno, house and electro DJing for a long time. I'd say the best advice for enjoying djing is not to dwell on the technical aspects any more than they interest you. I'm rather out of touch with the current state of things, but I used to find progressive house DJs who obsessed over perfect mixes rather dull. When you're picking records think about how they'll sound in a club. People only care about your blends when they're really bad.

I dunno, just do whatever entertains you.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great book to get started - and whilst it is a little dated technology wise the fundamentals are great along with a very entertaining tongue-in-cheek presentation/writing style.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-DJ-Properly-Science- Playing/dp/05...](https://www.amazon.com/How-DJ-Properly-Science- Playing/dp/0593058119)

</comment><comment><USER3> Next stage: How to master a DJ mix using multiband compression.

<comment><USER23> also called "Soundgoodizer" in some DAW :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article should start off with "First buy Turntables and then buy Vinyl"

Step 2 - once you have mastered beat-matching on this then you can fuck around with the new fancy electronic systems.

Step 3 - learn to get good at it.

#1 its all about fun and the tactile pleasure of controlling your music, something that the digital age has robbed many of us from, CD's are a happy medium between Vinyl and Digital but are even now outdated.

You will never get anything as satisfying as rooting through record bins at a vinyl store, taking it home and mixing it in a full manual process - I am glad it is making a return :)

<comment><USER25> Vinyl is so heavy that it's a burden, but there's nothing like playing on real decks to teach you the ropes.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely! Until you have tried to keep a 2+ minute mix going on belt drive decks you wont understand how much joy MP3 with its zero wow and flutter brings haha</comment></comment></comment>


4,000-year-old termite mounds found in Brazil are visible from space - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/cp-4tm111318.php <comment><USER2> "The mounds, which are easily visible on Google Earth, are not nests."

This sentence from the article kindly submitted here ignores that Google Earth imagery includes imagery taken from airplanes as well as from satellites. Statements that such-and-such an object (a classic example is the Great Wall of China) is visible from space, or from the Moon, go back to eras long before human space flight. Most such statements are wrong.

As other comments previous to mine have noted, various specialized imaging devices in satellites (or on airplanes) can have a higher resolution than human-eye vision. But the headline "are visible from space" is surely an exaggeration. Space flight has been going on since 1960s, but there has been no report of the termite mounds till now, it appears.

<comment><USER3> Most things outdoors are visible from space with a high enough resolution/zoom camera. I've always thought the statement "viable from space" was closer to meaningless rather than exaggerated.

"Visible from space with the naked eye" would be more meaningful but rarely is that claim made.

<comment><USER4> In this case it's more visible on google Maps, which was actually taken from space vs high resolution aerial photos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A video overview:

"... two hundred million of these mounds covering an area similar to the UK. This means that 10 km^3 (about 4000 great pyramids of Giza) of soil have been excavated, making this the greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by an insect..."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXlS48mptbM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXlS48mptbM)

And the paper:

[https://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...](https://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(18\)31287-9)

</comment><comment><USER6> Geologist here. This reminds me of the previous story about massive paleoburrows (also in Brazil) that are thought to have been dug by extinct giant ground sloths [1,2].

The geological background for both of these stories seems to be that certain types of iron-rich soils ("cangas") found in South America have been found to erode extraordinarily slowly [3], in part because the iron oxides recrystallize to form a hard surface known as a duricrust [4]. This slow erosion combined with deep chemical weathering leads to old, thick soils that can hold a lot of ancient surprises.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18236249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18236249)

[2] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburro...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows- south-america/)

[3] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1200101X)

[4] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670371...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703714000805)

</comment><comment><USER7> > The amount of soil excavated is over 10 cubic kilometers, equivalent to > 4,000 great pyramids of Giza ...

> he mounds are extremely old--up to 4,000 years

Soo they can build 1 Pyramid of Giza per year ? :D

<comment><USER8> Maybe faster. Their "building" capacity might have been growing with time.

<comment><USER9> I feel like this could be the prelude to a high school math question on exponential growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "visible from space", still waiting from the picture from Space. I can smell the bullshit or the google map picture highly zoomed... but if they can zoom on your house they can zoom on those too, no need add this in the title.

<comment><USER11> here you go: [https://www.google.be/maps/place/12%C2%B036'17.1%22S+40%C2%B...](https://www.google.be/maps/place/12%C2%B036'17.1%22S+40%C2%B059'50.6%22W/@-12.6047448,-40.9995787,935m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d-12.60475!4d-40.99739)

edit: you can find the coordinates in the xlsx file they attached to the paper: [https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.061/attachmen...](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.061/attachment/ea8ff799-cee4-4870-a166-33db96a248bc/mmc2.xlsx)

<comment><USER12> If you click on the post office of the closest town and look at the images, the town looks nice and clean, but there is literally not a human soul to be found. What's going on there? [https://www.google.be/maps/place/Ubiraita/@-12.589317,-41.00...](https://www.google.be/maps/place/Ubiraita/@-12.589317,-41.0099978,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOgVbGgspsBG2DHY7gURDvXLJRzkodcDJyTSnRe!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOgVbGgspsBG2DHY7gURDvXLJRzkodcDJyTSnRe%3Dw152-h86-k-no!7i2560!8i1440!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zMTLCsDM2JzE3LjEiUyA0MMKwNTknNTAuNiJX!3b1!8m2!3d-12.60475!4d-40.99739!3m4!1s0x76a0bb2bbbe0df5:0xa08afc30a5ca7190!8m2!3d-12.5893161!4d-41.0099968)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> a reddit user accurately commented something along the lines that "even my penis can be seen from space", so this whole "can be seen from space!!!!1" meme is really bit ridiculous.

a quick googling tells me that the highest resolution for satellite imagery is around 40 cm (16 inches). So yes, lots of things are visible from space, including puddles, dogs, small bushes, etc.

<comment><USER14> I had always interpreted the meaning of the phrase to be "visible by the naked eye from someone in close orbit in space." Was that ever a good interpretation even though now it is perhaps not?

<comment><USER15> > I had always interpreted the meaning of the phrase to be "visible by the > naked eye from someone in close orbit in space."

These termite mounds are certainly not visible by the naked eye, even from a plane.

I'd say that "visible from space" means visible by a current earth observation satellite, which is very far from the naked eye. The worldview satellites that take these images are huge telescopes pointing downwards.

<comment><USER16> First time I heard it was in a documentary back in the 80s and the phrase was referring to the great wall of china.

With the allowed legal resolution being 0.25 meters and spy satellites certainly having better accuracy, the phrase will soon be obsolete and cease to amaze anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actual study posted 2 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18493704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18493704)

</comment><comment><USER18> "The termites' activities over thousands of years has resulted in huge quantities of soil deposited in approximately 200 million cone-shaped mounds, each about 2.5 meters tall and 9 meters across."

200 million mounds!?!? Over an area the size of Great Britain?

Can anyone take a stab at how many termites and/or termite hours it took to make this happen?

</comment><comment><USER19> Everytime I read something about termites I can't stop thinking about Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Retreat from Earth".

Awesome short story, go read it. (or listen to it on youtube, but the mouth sound the narrator makes are awful imo)

</comment><comment><USER20> Everything is visible from space with a large enough lens...

</comment><comment><USER21> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504253)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a bug planet

</comment><comment><USER23> If you have the tools for it, theorically everything is visible from space.

</comment><comment><USER24> Doesn't that just mean the space cameras are getting better?

<comment><USER25> > The mounds, which are easily visible on Google Earth

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Most (if not all) google maps 'satellite view' stuff is aerial photos stitched together. So - visible from a plane.

<comment><USER26> Also these aerial photos were available before the internet. Eg. in Ireland you had to buy them from OSI (Ordinance Survey Ireland) Google simply collected them all for every region and stitched them all together, and also made them free! Which is quite handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> None of the 3 attached images show how it looks from space.</comment>


UTC might be redefined without Leap Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ <comment><USER2> The rotation of the Earth is a terrible timekeeper. We used to have 6 hour days. Now it wobbles. Major earthquakes throw it off. On the other hand, ignoring this leads to weird results. In Rome, the priests used to control the Calendar, and they had to decide how many leap days to put into the cycle. Senators served through the end of the year, and they had influence over the priests. By the time Julius Caesar implemented a new calendar, this sort of political drift in the calendar had January in the middle of summer.

I guess people don't like mid-summer January because it makes historical comparisons more difficult. Not impossible, just awkward.

It's a horrible messy dilemma. Leap seconds don't seem as dramatic as the Roman intercalary days, but there's the same battle between synchronicity and simplicity (where simplicity = something short of insane perturbations).

Maybe none of this matters for radio broadcast time signals. Maybe you just want a fixed counter everyone's synchronizing to, and people should convert to the Earth's messy system at the last possible moment.

Fun story about the awesome 13 month Calendar that we could have adopted (except for Hitler): [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the- calendar/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-calendar/)

[http://www.livescience.com/38083-earth-core-day-length- patte...](http://www.livescience.com/38083-earth-core-day-length-pattern.html)

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-rotation- sum...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-rotation-summer- solstice/)

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110316-japan...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110316-japan- earthquake-shortened-days-earth-axis-spin-nasa-science/)

[https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PLATETEC/RotationQk2004.HTM](https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PLATETEC/RotationQk2004.HTM)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#Motivation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#Motivation)

<comment><USER3> Do earthquakes also change how long it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun? Because it seems like the earth's orbit should be more or less constant (ignoring relativistic effects).

<comment><USER4> I don't believe so - earthquakes should only affect the number of days (rotations) that occur during an orbit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I'm reading the linked projections correctly, even the worst predicitions put us at less then three minutes off from the earths rotation by the year 2100, and it will take somewhere in the area a _thousand years_ to be off by an hour.

I'll be frank: if we haven't progressed to the point that those offsets generally don't matter by those points in time, we've probably already failed as a species.

I say we drop leap seconds.

<comment><USER6> It is the heavens that set the time for humanity, all else must either imitate or pick another name. Abandoning the leap seconds means breaking the connection between utc and what the people consider time to mean.

It is not so much that the actual times drift apart very fast, it is that the clock tries to corrupt the meaning of the word "day".

If leap seconds cause problems for your application, you probably should find another source of synchronisation signal.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, another source like... seconds.

Plenty of applications need to know a precise number of seconds (or milliseconds or nanoseconds) between the present and a past or future date/time. Leap seconds throw a wrench in that. Whether UTC should serve the role of an unaltered time source is indeed a matter of debate (and for good reason), but it's pretty clear that we do need an unaltered stream of seconds (upon which UTC - or an intermediate between UTC and various timezones should UTC fill this role as advocated - would base itself, as would any other applications that require said unaltered stream of seconds).

This isn't even mentioning more far-fetched things like space travel (at which point the non-constant rotational parameters of an arbitrary planetary body are neither relevant nor appropriate for system-wide/galaxy- wide/universal/multiversal timekeeping).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At root, this is all just a quibble over terminology. The fundamental problem is that there are two reasonable time standards for different applications: mean solar seconds for ordinary day-to-day timekeeping, and cesium seconds for applications that require a precision of more than a second per year. These two standards drift, so you have two choices:

1\. Let them drift

2\. Introduce a computational complication (leap seconds) to synchronize them

But the dispute is not over which of these is "right", the dispute is over which of these two options gets to go by the label "UTC". This could be easily resolved by simply defining two UTCs, one with leap seconds, and the other without. You could call them UTC-L and UTC-N (or UTC-S and UTC-N if you wanted to mollify the French ;-).

<comment><USER9> "Like UTC but without adding leap seconds" already exists; it's called TAI ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time))

<comment><USER8> Then what is really at issue here? Is it really a dispute about whether WWV broadcasts (what is currently known as) UTC or TAI?

<comment><USER10> Basically, yes. (Not only WWV, but also DCF77 et al., of course.) Several countries have enshrined UTC in law, so it's a pretty big thing.

<comment><USER10> ...and just to add that this enshrining in law was most likely done with the general expectation that UTC would keep a close relationship with solar time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I read about leap seconds, somewhere in my mind I wonder if wouldn't just be easier to blow up a bunch of "booster" nukes every few years. ;)

<comment><USER4> Would that actually alter the spin of the Earth? I assumed that you'd be more likely to have more success by making a few passes past the planet with a sizable asteroid.

<comment><USER12> IvyMike's plan is silly, but it sounds a lot more feasible than this one.

<comment><USER4> I don't know enough about any of this to judge which one is more feasible. Detonating nukes on the surface is "easy", but would it be effective? How much energy and money would it take to divert some asteroids? I haven't done the research, and almost certainly won't :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OT: Does anyone know what sort of calendar Martian rovers use? Is there a NASA calendar for solar system operations?

<comment><USER14> I can't speak for the rovers, but in my experience you start with the UTC time and the convert to a UT1 for space launches. We have to correct for the difference, which is called DUT1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUT1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUT1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why don't they just use TAI time in places where leap seconds are not practical?

<comment><USER16> Because that's _everywhere_. Whether _everywhere_ should "just use TAI" is exactly the question (only they're not talking about TAI as far as I can see, but a new standard which would I _think_ map 1:1 to it).

<comment><USER17> Right, so why make a new standard that looks just like this old one?

<comment><USER18> TAI currently differs from UTC by 35 seconds, so if you literally switched to it, every clock in the world would jump 35 seconds. If leap seconds are abolished, UTC and TAI will remain 35 seconds apart forever.

<comment><USER15> And then that time will be neither UTC not TAI. Either we'll have to call it something different (like GPS time: always offset from TAI by certain number of seconds), or a different name will have to be made for what used to be called UTC (time tied to earth rotations, from which zoned wall time is to be delivered). Great. That's exactly what [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/) is about.

<comment><USER18> I don't know if that's true. We already have a name for the time that is tied to Earth rotation, "UT1". Users who care about positions of astronomical objects can refer to that. UTC was always a bit of a compromise, which partly tracked UT1, but only up to the nearest second.

On the other hand, I think the idea of abolishing leap seconds is to no longer derive wall time from earth rotation, and to derive it from atomic time instead. So "UTC" would still refer to "the source of wall time". As I understand it, this is the point of changing the derivation of UTC: there are lots of laws in different countries that say that wall clock time is tied to UTC, so if we want to switch from earth rotation to atomic time, it is easier to change the definition of UTC than to change the laws in all those countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see that the solution the author proposes on the "right+gps" subpage is basically the same as what Dan Bernstein has proposed for many years now, except using GPS time rather than TAI (which only differs in the seconds offset). Sounds like the sanest approach to me.

<comment><USER19> Dan Bernstein proposed it and Bradley White wrote the code in the time zone package used by Unix-like systems. The point of "right+gps" is that all of the pieces needed to implement such a scheme are already deployed and tested and with appropriate caveats anyone can decide to use that to avoid leap second issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even if UTC were redefined the number of the time-related bugs wouldn't decrease.</comment>


Stingray manual released - <AUTHOR> http://www.theblot.com/exclusive-stingray-maker-asked-fcc-to-block-release-of-spy-gear-manual-7739514?1

<comment><USER2> "Released" may be a bit of an overstatement. Here's an excerpt:

The StingRay is a [REDACTED]. The following features and capabilities are provided by the StingRay:

\- [REDACTED]

\- [REDACTED]

\- [REDACTED]

\- [REDACTED]

\- [REDACTED]

The StingRay unit is shown in Figure 3-1 and is [REDACTED]

Figure 3.1: Stingray Unit [REDACTED]

</comment><comment><USER3> The one thing that's not redacted is the existence of a 2100 MHz converter. I guess that suggests UMTS support rather than only GSM, which means they've either broken the authentication UMTS terminals do of the network or they have the full cooperation of the network operators.

<comment><USER4> They (NSA, GCHQ) stole many SIM card authentication keys, so they can probably eavesdrop on UMTS conversations with them: [http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2015/02/nsa-and-gchq- steal...](http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2015/02/nsa-and-gchq-stealing-sim- card-keys-few.html)

<comment><USER5> There currently is no need to use stolen SIM card authentication keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, looking at Appendix B, it seems that the hardware is using something with a 4 clause BSD-style license. Could they be using OpenSSL for this product, perhaps?

Other than that, it seems that the Kingfish is their portable unit that's designed to be out in a field location, judging by the remote antenna input on the unit, and a section discussing battery charging. The Stingray unit seems to be something that's in a more controlled location, and as such, has an ethernet port, serial port, and a pair of usb a ports. External hard drive ports, perhaps?

<comment><USER7> What would the use of open source software matter?

<comment><USER8> If its GPL code.... We could try to make a request for the source.

<comment><USER7> You may not understand how the GPL works. Just because I have Linux on my Banana Pi board doesn't mean I need to share with anyone the source code for every piece of software that is running on it.

If you did somehow make a request under the GPL, you would probably get vanilla source for a large number of software packages such as the Linux kernel and a libc implementation. You would not get the proprietary components.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Too bad most of it has been censored. This means that even though the manual has been published a lot of it is useless.

I'm not that familiar with the US FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act). But why is so much of the document censored? Is the US government just allowed to censor whatever they please in documents they have to send due to FOIA requests? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

<comment><USER10> Just glancing at the document, the censoring is marked "Ex.4" (exemption #4) in all places.

Exemption 4 is: "A trade secret or privileged or confidential commercial or financial information obtained from a person". [[https://www.sec.gov/foia/nfoia.htm](https://www.sec.gov/foia/nfoia.htm)]

Add: Frankly, I directly jumped to the (redacted) PDF of the user-manual, without even bothering to read the article. But the article nicely explains this, too...

<comment><USER11> There's absolutely no way that everything they marked "FOIA Ex.4" is exempt under than that wording. If trade secret laws were that strict, then literally _everything_ would be a trade secret. The "exemption 4" marking is a big middle finger to the MOIA requester. But it does raise the question of what's so important about Stingray and Kingfisher that everything about them has to be kept under wraps? We know in general what they do. We know that they have delicate screw threads. Unless there's some general and very obvious 4th Amendment abuse going on, I can't see why you'd keep it under wraps.

<comment><USER12> Not necessarily.

Stingray is actually built by the Harris Corporation, so it seems entirely logical that a public corporation would consider the technical manner it's designed to glean intelligence from a standard cell phone a trade secret.

They are, after all, selling that very product to the US Government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those wondering: Stingray appears to be "a once-secret cellphone surveillance device distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement," taken from the first line in the article.

So, not the car or bicycle, as I was secretly hoping to see.</comment>


Show HN: PushdUp User Submitted and Curated News - <AUTHOR> http://www.pushdup.com

<comment><USER2> Nice start. One thing to keep in mind is a great user interface is probably what's going to get people to use it and keep coming back. I'm mildly addicted to Flipboard largely because the interface it so brilliant and makes it super easy to consume or add my own content to.</comment>


Greplin Users Have Uploaded 6 Billion Files — And Now They Have In-File Search - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/11/greplin-users-have-uploaded-6-billion-files-%E2%80%94%C2%A0and-now-they-have-in-file-search/?x

<comment><USER2> 'Uploaded' is a bit of a misnomer. I presume what's really meant is that users have imported 6 billion files. Uploading implies a very purposeful and specific action.

If I link my GDocs account and 100 files (many of which I don't know exist) get imported that's a very different metric than "uploading".

I'm bearish on Greplin though. Haven't really seen the value proposition (yes, I know what they do).</comment>


Programming on the Toilet - <AUTHOR> http://brianslam.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/programming-on-the-toilet/

<comment><USER2> Disclosure - this was first posted on Reddit but kind of fitted with my experience so I thought I'd stick it up here</comment>


Show HN: Are we clear enough about our offer? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Feedback/Are-we-clear-enough-about-our-offer

<comment><USER2> No. Your elevator pitch should start with the simplest explanation of the value your product provides, THEN explain how it delivers that value.

For example, "Golearn is Yelp for higher education. It helps students find the perfect school by mixing official information about the institutions with social commentary."

...or something.</comment>