My Father the Werewolf - <AUTHOR> https://folks.pillpack.com/my-father-the-werewolf/ <comment><USER2> By far one of the better metaphors I've read regarding depression, especially how mine affects me and those I love. Heart wrenching, but wistful and happy. It seems the author has come to terms with his fathers struggle in a way not many do. Amazing writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> "It didn't cure his depression, any more than you can cure a werewolf by ripping out his fangs."

I don't have the same issues as the author's father, but I've often thought of almost exactly this analogy when treating my own issues. The idea sometimes is to make the condition tolerable, and at least for me, that would be the first order of business upon learning I was a werewolf: to remove my ability to harm others while wolf-ified. This is a tremendous article, I love it and I'm going to save it and maybe read it with my dad - not because my dad is like your dad, OP, but more because a few of your experiences line up really well with a few of ours. I'll read it with my wife too, because the story of how you remember your dad when you were young - I want to be that kind of Dad to my son. So, so, so much. Except without the later issues and whatnot. I do wonder just how possible it is, but I intend to give it a shot! :)

</comment><comment><USER4> A wonderfully written, really moving read. There isn't enough out there that really humanizes mental illness and makes it accessible - I feel like every time I read something like this it helps me better understand my own relationship with mental illness. I just think the werewolf metaphor is dead on.

<comment><USER5> I agree that this piece is exceptionally well written!

I also just wanted to mention, if you're looking for more things that humanize mental illness, that I've been particularly impressed by the podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour. Some episodes are better than others, but all of them give voice to deeply personal, human experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazing piece, thank you for sharing. One bit in particular stuck out: "After all, every werewolf story also ends up with self-imprisonment—ostensibly to protect others, but really so the werewolf can protect itself from the wounds of the world."

I've always seen the story of the werewolf as an allegory for the alcoholic, and your commentary gave me a lot to think about.

</comment><comment><USER7> This comment previously had a statement saying that there was a current of domestic violence. That is a false statement. The author was kind enough to clarify and respond in the comments below. My sincere apologies.

<comment><USER8> I am the author. There is no undercurrent of domestic violence, glossed over or otherwise, in the article.

My father had a psychotic episode once, due to a 1-in-a-million reaction he had to a misprescribed medication. My memory of this incident opens "My Father The Werewolf." During that episode, he was utterly terrified, and not in control of himself; in fact, he didn't even know who he was, or who we were. He gets a pass for it, as surely as he would get a pass if he had a stroke while driving, and consequently killed someone with his car.

Other than that one instance, my father never raised his hand to me, and I never once saw him so much as raise his voice to my mother. I even called my mom upon reading your comment and asked her if he ever touched her: she was offended by the notion.

My father was many things, not all of them good, but he was absolutely not a domestic abuser. He was the gentlest man I've ever known.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for your comment and clarification. I am sorry for the false accusation and for offending you and your mother. Forgive me for adding to the pain of your memory.

<comment><USER8> No apologies necessary! I understand that the opening of the essay has some powerful imagery that might be triggering to people with first-hand knowledge of domestic abuse. I just wanted to make sure to set the record straight, that my Dad was the victim there every bit as much as we were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating read, there's so many taboos and misconceptions when it comes to mental illness.

Hopefully articles like these help us understand more what is like.

</comment><comment><USER10> This was a fascinating read.

Slightly more fascinating was that was sponsored by a Boston area tech company who I know a little bit about since I interviewed there years ago. They have a cool business packaging meds for patients, aka the "pillpack". Interesting to see this as a community service project.

<comment><USER8> Just to add some context to this post: "My Father The Werewolf" was published on PillPack's in-house web magazine, Folks, which aims to tell humanist stories about people with health conditions. Folks publishes one story a day, fighting the stigma around being 'sick' by showing that managing health conditions is universal. We're fully sponsored by PillPack, which views reducing stigma around health conditions as part of its mission, but besides the mention of our parent company in the site logo (Folks, a PillPack Magazine), we don't advertise PillPack at all on our site.

I'm the editor of Folks, as well as the author of "My Father The Werewolf." Thanks to everyone who is reading the article! I'm really glad my Dad's story is moving so many people.

<comment><USER11> Since you're the editor, perhaps you could correct the caption on the last photo showing your Dad's friend John. "Left to Right" obviously doesn't apply to that photo.

<comment><USER8> That's ME John, not my Dad's friend John. But yes, changing now to be clearer! Thank you!

<comment><USER11> Oh, I see. I was thinking it was a before-the-murders photo, yikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _If you asked him on any given day how he was feeling, he'd reply: "It's the worst day of my life," no matter whether he was comatose with depression or talking to you on your wedding day. It was almost like my dad had lost his inner compass to tell you how he was feeling: even if he acted like he was feeling better, he'd tell you he was feeling worse._

I remember feeling like that. Having a good day, or starting to emerge from a particularly deep low, suddenly you feel more intensely, and you're doing more, and you see all the lost potential of the previous days. One of the nice numbing things about depression is that nothing seems possible. You can see the difference between what's possible for you and what's possible for other people, and it's humiliating, but the idea that _you_ could do better is a dead one with no emotional potency. Then your depression lifts a little bit, and you look back with the perspective of a slightly higher capacity to perform, and it's crushing to see the time and possibilities you wasted. It's like depression holds a little back so it can hit you one more time in the gut on the way out, to remind you that it will be back.

</comment><comment><USER13> _tl;dr_ ECT was used as an extreme form of treatment for major depression that had short term benefits, but ultimately resulted in a renewed version the same depressed person with damaged long-term memories, who ultimately relapsed into a depression with no obvious emotional or intellectual cause.

The subject's eventual death was natural, although arguably early, so from a ceratin point of view, maybe the treatment was at least clinically successful in warding off suicide proper.

<comment><USER14> The article deals with a lot of stuff apart from the clinical aspects of diagnosis and treatment. For example, it outlines someone who lost social connections as he grew older, a major causal factor in depression.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. I'm the author, so I'm obviously biased, but I wouldn't say the TL;DR here is about ECT either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "...my mother told me she thought he'd known he was having heart attacks but chose to ignore them as a way of killing himself. This, I think, is putting an overly heroic sheen on it, but the interpretation doesn't surprise me. My mother worshiped my father, and there's something noble about a slow, plausibly deniable suicide. "

I find it to be an extreme form of cowardice. I had a couple of close family members who always used to 'emotionally blackmail' when something wasn't how they wanted it. And it wasn't manipulation - they genuinely suffered. It was horrible. Like an inescapable black cloud. My uncle did it for so long, ignored his health issues on purpose that he eventually died. He wasn't even too old. I don't even remember exact cause, but it was something simple, couple of days in hospital and some pills would have made it go away. I had similar inclinations, but adopting stoicism helped me curb it.

<comment><USER16> I liked the part where you call people suffering from mental illness "cowards". The part where you blithely assert some millennia-old facile philosophy can solve depression was pretty good, too.

<comment><USER15> Maybe I didn't express myself accurately (English is not my mother tongue). I don't think depression is simple thing, banality to be solved by philosophy. I don't know how you read that from my post. I said it helped me _curb_ some instincts to 'let myself go' when things aren't going my way. Regarding 'cowards' \- again, you misunderstood. I meant that people who take the slow suicide path are cowards. It's a subset of mental illnesses as a much bigger sphere.

1\. It takes courage to take the blows life gives you and keep going, ("Do it for her" photo) 2\. It takes courage to actively take your life, hurt yourself physically 3\. It _doesn't_ take any courage to just let yourself go and fade away

I've had close family members 2 and 3</comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm not disappointed by new Macbook - <AUTHOR> http://256cats.com/why-im-not-disappointed-by-new-macbook/ <comment><USER2> blogger bought some Dell laptop, installed linux in a vm.

saved y'all the click.</comment>


Ask YC: Would you rather have 1,000 True Fans, or 1,000,000 casual users? - <AUTHOR>

So we've probably all read over Kevin Kelly's idea of 1,000 True Fans - I'm putting up a link to one of his posts on the subject here:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_reality_of.php
So, the question to you all: would you like to have only 1,000 'True Fans' of 1,000,000 'casual users'?
I'm calling the fans those who would pay to use your site, maybe once a year or once every couple of years, and communicate directly with you about your business.  The more passive 'casual users' would use your service for free and communicate very little with you, if at all, about your business. <comment><USER2> I think it would be tough to get 1M casual users without getting a lot of true fans.

</comment><comment><USER3> True fans, without a doubt. People who are interested in and care about your product will send you comments and ideas, and will evangelize for you.

That is, assuming you care about making the best possible product. If you're just looking for something to monetize and/or flip to a VC, a million idiots is great.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1M users... If you have their email, you could really leverage that on any future products/sites you make.</comment>


Google Rolls Out Home Energy Software - <AUTHOR> http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/google-rolls-out-home-energy-software/?hp <comment><USER2> Notice the fine print about how you get the data. You have to have a device installed by the power company. Few power companies do this, and few meters support it.

Wattvision does the whole thing, from your existing meter to your iPhone: <http://wattvision.com>

<comment><USER3> Is Wattvision's gadget going to be free? That's the big advantage of Google.

<comment><USER4> If you're interested, do contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can get you on our private beta, which is currently free.

<comment><USER5> [About wattvision.com home page]

Can you please change "info [at] wattvision.com" to "firstname.lastname@example.com"? It looks jarring and I don't think it is going to make any difference spam-wise. It would be nice if you cleared "email@example.com" on focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of an appliance where you can just plug it into the wall and plug anything into the appliance?

Basically it would act as a pass-through that could keep track of how much the thing plugged into the wall is costing. It would be nice if you could set a price on it and have it display in $/h or something but that's not necessary, just a running total would be fine. I can handle the watt-to-dollars conversion myself.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001&nm_mc=OTC- Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Electronic+Gadgets-_-P3+International-_-82715001)

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be interested in a watt vision beta if you have any.</comment>


The Muen Separation Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://muen.codelabs.ch/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking is there a micro-kernel out there that uses VTx to separate the parts, like protected mode on steroids, turns out there is. Thought I'd share</comment>


MacGap: Desktop WebKit wrapper for HTML/CSS/JS applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maccman/macgap

<comment><USER3> I'm building a framework some what like this but maybe better for some use cases.

It's still a work in progress but it's part of my tinderbox application.

<https://github.com/zbowling/tinderbox>

It embeds a node.js server in the background (soon it will embed a custom Node server were I forked libev to use libdispatch on the mac and run behind inside a secure XPC server that launchd will manage on the Mac). Then using a Unix socket, it serves up through a custom webkit protocol handler. Two way communication to the frontend from a custom webserver written in Cocoa.

Instead of going down the road of trying to write Cocoa code with Javascript, instead just surface what you need as you need to your own backend. It's abstract so that it can be reused in other applications on other platforms in the future. Node.js was a good solution because it offers sandboxing and eventbased IO which for my first use case (Campfire) made prefect sense.

Doing this kind of binding with a generated kind of interface is always going to keep fighting an abstraction. (Like fighting some C++ lib you wrapped and are trying access through SWIG). My approach you just use the tool best suited for the job and embrace both Cocoa and Javascript.

<comment><USER4> I'm wondering what it would take to run your project on an old, jailbroken iPhone with a static IP on my LAN. Have you tried this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sitting next to the developer of MacGap (we both work at Twitter), the first thing that I asked was "what about Fluid?" <http://fluidapp.com/> \-- and Alex's first retort was that this was open source, and free.

<comment><USER6> _"MacGap was forked/ported from Phonegap-mac. It's under the same license (MIT)."_

I'm more curious why he forked Phonegap-mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good point, but I felt that it was enough of a code change to fork - and callback-mac wasn't getting that much love (or accepting pull requests). However, it may be that that project gets merged back in, as I might be made the official maintainer.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious why Mozilla's Prism (XUL Runner) wouldn't be a candidate for forking in a project like this since it would allow for cross-platform (Windows/ Linux support)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've tried a lot of WebKit wrappers and the #1 problem is WebKit alone doesn't have things like a hardware accelerated canvas, audio support, WebGL, etc. etc. - basically a whole lot of stuff on the browser layer rather than the layout layer. This makes them totally useless for HTML5 games!

<comment><AUTHOR> It does, you just have to enable it (private interface). Just tell me what you need that's not working, and I'll enable it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> LocalStorage seems broken on the mac which makes it a bad platform to develop webkit apps in. (It does not persist across program runs)

In fact, if either websql or localstorage worked in cocoa webkit it would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this looks like just a bug. You can definitely get localStorage to persist data between instantiations. I'll fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed now.

<comment><USER8> thanks a lot, I can finally get off Appcelerator!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does something like this exist for windows?

<comment><USER10> appcelerator titanium, i'd guess - <http://www.appcelerator.com/>

<comment><USER11> Titanium desktop has the feel of being abandoned - even if not officially the case. For anything non-trivial, you're entering a world of hurt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a demo that we can see all of this in action?

</comment><comment><USER13> I've looked at callback-mac in the past with the idea of making a web app seem native on OS X, however there was a few issues with the system level integration, namely the system menu bar and right click menus. Any thoughts on how to address these?

</comment><comment><USER14> I like this.

I started working on my own WebKit Mac app framework with a slightly different take (a Heroku-style procfile and a pubsub backbone), but never released it. I'm happy to see others getting traction with similar ideas.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tried to build and test, the app should mention it requires >= OSX 10.7

<comment><USER16> It says quite clearly in the README: "Lion is required to build and run MacGap applications."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lots of alternatives listed in a similar story about a similar project here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315931>

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd love to port away from Titanium, any plans to support headless apps with system tray icons and menus?

(Which BTW are a PITA on Titanium)

<comment><USER19> Curious question, what are the problems of Titanium Desktop?

<comment><USER18> IMHO shocking documentation, very poor developer support via their Q&A stackoverflow clone and a somewhat flaky / buggy implementation (which could be mitigated by better documentation + developer support) or (open sourcing the framework) or (hiring someone to foster a developer community - <USER2> exists right now).

Maybe their paid support is better, but based on what is publicly available, I doubt it.

Incidentally, Titanium Developer (The build tool that compliments the framework) has been deprecated in favour of Titanium Studio, which is based on Aptana.

Many Titanium devs don't like Studio, and so have forked (the recently open sourced) Titanium Developer to remove some annoying anti-features put there by Titanium.

It's a shame; the Titanium tools are fundamentally good and are nearly there, but IMHO are frustrating to work with due to inadequate testing and an ineffective user feedback loop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> MacGap is a great project, thanks Alex for creating it and sharing!</comment>


FAA: 'No, you can't hijack a plane with an Android app' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/13/faa_debunks_android_hijack_claim/ <comment><USER2> It would be nice to get an actual technical rebuttal describing _why_ his stuff doesn't work rather than the sleight-of-hand English and PR responses in that article (The whole "industry standard robustness yada" bit makes my cringe).

Based on their responses it sounds like "Yes, these _systems_ are vulnerable but a good pilot will ignore the bad data so the _plane_ is not vulnerable." which does not exactly give me the warm fuzzies.

(Good point here at the bottom: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/hacking- commercial-a...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/hacking-commercial- aircraft-with-an-android-app-some-conditions-apply/) )

All his hack needs to be able to do is cause problems for the pilot (bad information etc.) for this to be a problem.

I mean, if there is no issue then surely he is now justified in publishing his work and them publishing in detail why it is not a risk.

<comment><USER3> Brief technical explanation.

The "attack" consists of the following steps:

1) Modify the desktop simulator FMS code to support commands in the data protocols (e.g. ADS-B). 2) Send commands through data link to utilize the newly created control channel.

What FAA is saying that

1) It is hard if not impossible to actually inject un-authorized code into an embedded airplane system (FMS, GPS, ...) due to strict quality controls in place. 2) Even if one succeeds with 1) then you still have limits of what FMS can actually do with the plane because it is a separate unit from other systems with well defined protocols (e.g. FMS doesn't control the lights in the plane).

IMHO, the whole "hack" sounds like a BS/PR action. Yes, you can "fake" GPS, ADS-B, and other communication protocols. However, there are other sources of information for pilots (e.g. the old and true magnetic compass) that can and should be used to validate and cross-reference the data. From a pilot's perspective, a "fake" GPS is no different from a "failed" GPS (yes, this happens). One should be ready to deal with this to qualify as a pilot.

<comment><USER4> Yep, hit the nail on the head.

Thing is, if you're able to inject un-authorised code into the FMS, chances are you have bigger concerns than a single aircraft getting hijacked.

It's the equivalent of saying "If I had access to a bank's mainframe and network infrastructure, I could steal millions of dollars with an Android App." Sure you could, but is the problem the fact you can do it with an Android App, or the fact you were able to inject the code in the first place?

<comment><USER5> Exactly. If I have that much capabilities I would buy the airline. It seems neater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been (perhaps foolishly) trying to work out what the actual attack here is.

I have strong suspicions... I saw a fascinating presentation a couple of years back* by the guy who built this: <http://maps.spench.net/aviation/> (requires the Google Earth browser plugin). He's using the Universal SDR (software defined radio) to listen to various bits of telemetry coming down from commercial airliners (including, amusingly, automated reports from toilet failures!) and plotting in real time all the planes he's detecting data from. He's using ~$800 worth of radio hardware to recieve those transmissions, but you can listen in on those bands for a lot less using something like this: <http://www.funcubedongle.com/> \- and I've heard talk about re-purposed USB cableTV dongles being useable down in the ~$30 price range.

What the USDR can do that the cheaper receivers can't though, is _transmit_ on those bands. Hearing how readily Balint decoded the ModeS data, I'm 100% sure that a technically competent but not-very-sophisticated attacker could very easily transmit their own data on those channels using a USDR with the appropriate TX daughterboard (and, in the context of the original article, could easily control the USDR transmitter with an Android app).

(I do vaguely wonder whether any of the radio hardware in a typical Android device is "universal" enough to be convinced to transmit on the bands required here - I'm not quite enough of a radio-geek to know and/or go looking right now. I _strongly_ suspect not, and that if the original article has kernels of truth in it, it's referring to external transmitters controlled by an Android app)

* <http://spench.net/drupal/video/mode-s-dorkbot>

<comment><USER7> I'm not going to comment on the first part since all of that data is readily available, in real-time, on various Internet sites already. No need for a radio.

As to the question about the radios in cell phones the answer is yes and no. Yes a lot of modern baseband are nothing more than an SDR, but that's only part if the issue. The other issue is getting appropriate signal levels into and out of that device. For that you need specific filters and antennas for the frequencies you want to receive and transmit. For example, an LTE baseband can work on any of the LTE frequencies (and then some) but specific handsets will have filters for the appropriate region the handset is sold in. While you can change these it's just easier and cheaper to use something like a USRP.

If your interested in radio at all I suggest you start liking into ameture radio. There's still a ton of interning tinkering with everything from Morse code to data communications from 3MHz all the way into the hundreds of GHz frequencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"The described technique cannot engage or control the aircraft's autopilot system using the FMS or prevent a pilot from overriding the autopilot," the FAA's statement explained. "Therefore, a hacker cannot obtain 'full control of an aircraft' as the technology consultant has claimed."_

That may be true, but this does not not seem to address the other claim that an attacker could inject false information into the FMS or cause it in some way to give misleading information to the flight deck, which could be nearly as bad.

<comment><USER9> So, apparently the full thing going on here is that if you have some other way to basically get root on one of the plane's systems (required in advance, not provided by this "exploit"), then you can cause a message to be displayed telling the pilot he's flying too close to some other aircraft.

The pilot will probably maneuver a bit to make room, and then will A) tell ATC about this, get a "what other aircraft" response, and B) look out the window, see there isn't another aircraft, and C) decide something's buggy with the system that's displaying the message.

Before this all went public, it would have been followed with D) maintenance crew looks into it after the plane lands.

Now that it's public, it will be followed with D) the plane lands ASAP and everyone on board has a nice chat with guys who have uniforms, guns and absolutely no sense of humor.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps that was the aim of this exercise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This guy has all the right pieces, but sadly nobody is going to believe him until he demonstrates it on a functional plane.

I saw this talk at Blackhat on vulnerabilities in ADS-B, which scared the shit out of me. The paper is a good read [http://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-12/Briefings/Costin/BH_US_12...](http://media.blackhat.com/bh- us-12/Briefings/Costin/BH_US_12_Costin_Ghosts_In_Air_WP.pdf)

tl;dr: once a second every commercial plane transmits its location, heading, and speed over an unencrypted unauthenticated protocol, and other planes and air traffic control take it for truth.

<comment><USER12> The lack of security in ADS-B is bad, but how much of a problem could you really cause with it? The best I can come up with is tripping some collision alarms. Even then, you won't be able to do too much before pilots and controllers in the area decide that ADS-B is messed up and ignore it in preference to radar.

<comment><USER13> Serious question: what do you think about the lack of security in Mode A/C then?

<comment><USER12> Those are far less spoofable because so much of the information comes in the form of un-spoofable things like echo delays and directional information.

You could spoof Mode C altitude, of course. You could spoof a distance from the radar that's more than what your actual distance is by delaying your response to the interrogation. But that's about it. You can't spoof direction, and you can't pretend to be closer than you really are. I'm sure you could still make a minor nuisance of yourself, but it's not going to be a very big deal, I'd think.

I think you'd have to either be very close to the radar or airborne to pull any of this off, too, which means that you likely get to play games only once, then the large men in black suits will come ask you to please stop.

<comment><USER14> They may even omit the 'please'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When dealing with Technology, the very moment you irrevocably rebuke something as an impossibility is the very moment it becomes possible.

The simple fact that no one has been able to accomplish it yet should not mean in the slightest 'No, you can\'t'.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Whatever data finds its way into the FMS, and regardless of where it's coming from, it still needs to make sense to the crew. If it doesn't, we're not going to allow the plane, or ourselves, to follow it._

The dude solved the halting problem? I really don't trust in people that think they control complex computers running turbofan engines through sticks and displays.

<comment><USER17> If it's possible to trick the FMS as it seems they are not denying. Then in bad weather the pilot could easily be given false information to say that he's flying straight and level when he's actually in a dive or inverted. If you depend on your instruments and they are giving you bad data then in the right conditions it could certainly cause a crash. There have been planes that have gone down over the ocean because they could not tell the difference between the water and the sky and they did not trust their instruments and are in an inverted dive when they think they are climbing. Imagine if their instruments said they we're climbing and they thought they we climbing but were really in an inverted dive!

<comment><USER18> The FMS does not override those types of sensors. It is more about signaling the path of other aircraft. Broadcast a false danger and a pilot/autopilot will alter the course.</comment></comment></comment>


Dream monitor for programmers: Kindle DX - <AUTHOR> http://tinyapps.org/docs/e-ink-monitor.html

<comment><USER2> It's not clear to me whether this setup allows using the Kindle as a 2nd monitor or only as a mirrored monitor.

If there isn't a significant lag when typing, I'd love to run my Kindle DX as a 2nd monitor and just use it for my terminal, freeing up space on my MacBook screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"It's not clear to me whether this setup allows using the Kindle as a 2nd monitor"_

Yes, it does. Here's a post by the VNC client's author, hawhill, describing a dual-monitor setup:

[http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1748866&...](http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1748866&postcount=1)</comment></comment>


NHS gets £40M to cut login times on its IT systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/04/nhs-gets-40m-to-cut-login-times-on-its-it-systems <comment><USER5> I work in the NHS, this is the current user experience

1\. Type in user name and password onto computer

2\. Logs in to windows, normally taking ~60 seconds, unless you've got the computer where the WiFi signal is poor (yes, WiFi on desktops!) and you get a 'no log in servers'

3\. Windows finally loads, click the icon for the software for viewing blood test results

4\. An internet explorer window opens, then closes, then after 10 seconds the software opens

5\. Type in your username and password, wait 10 seconds

6\. Now I want to prescribe some medications, close the first software (computer can't cope with two things open at once), click the logo for the prescribing software

7\. A Google Chrome window opens, slowly loads the prescribing software website

8\. Type in username and password

9\. Navigate through the slow and unintuitive prescribing software

10\. Oh wait, I can't prescribe this particular drug without checking a blood test result, close the prescribing software and go to step 4

11\. Some alarm goes off, so I have to lock the computer and run. Return from dealing with the alarm, go back to step 1

<comment><USER6> Likely causes:

1) PC is desperately under-provisioned, probably several years old and upgraded to Windows 10

2) Too large roaming profile (easy situation to get into and hard to spot other than "it's slow")

3) Too slow AD profile server to get the large profile from

4) Internal websites "should" use NTLM authentication if available, which would remove the requirement to log in again, but forwarding this outside the domain properly is remarkably hard

5) Smartcard auth can offer the dropin use case with no typing, but it's a pain to provision and costs more

In many cases you'd be better off with an IBM 3270 terminal but with higher resolution text and images...

In my previous job we built a Windows CE-based system that let you log in instantly by tapping a keyfob and brought the screen you were last using up anywhere on the site, running on fifteen-year-old hardware. It was for selling beer.

<comment><USER7> > probably several years old and upgraded to Windows 10

...probably still running Windows 7.

<comment><USER8> Probably 5 years old or older, maybe only 2GB of RAM, and back then already underpowered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked on a widely used NHS IT system and specifically looked at login times for it.

We had an issue at one site where instead of taking 30 seconds to log in it took over 20 minutes. Our JDBC driver was using the default fetch size and the network latency was killing it.

As you may be able to tell, that had nothing to do with authentication - <USER2> was a thick client that downloaded a bunch of reference data at login. I left that role well over a decade ago but I've been back into a hospital in the last year or so and it was still in use, in fact, I couldn't see that it had changed at all.

Good luck to them, it's money well spent, but I doubt £40m is going to fix much.

<comment><USER10> > JDBC driver was using the default fetch size... it was a thick client that > downloaded a bunch of reference data at login

not exactly sure what you mean, was the login sql query fetching more data than needed in that case shouldn't you tweak the query?

<comment><USER9> No, the data was necessary (though there are a stack of different optimisation strategies they could have pursued with varying trade offs).

Fetch size is a standard JDBC parameter for tweaking the number of rows paged in a database query. The Sun/Oracle default was 10 rows and the app needed to retrieve thousands. So it would retrieve 10, process them, retrieve 10 more, etc. Which was minimal overhead on most networks, but on a network with high latency it meant there was perhaps a couple of seconds delay with each fetch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sadly the only login system I've seen that truly made a positive difference in these types of organisations has been discontinued for years.

Sun had SunRay terminals with smartcards that allowed users to seemlessly move from terminal to terminal. It was a solution that would have been revolutionary if Microsoft had implemented it in Windows. Being Solaris only means that only a few of us ever saw what could be done and how easy logins and moving from terminal to terminal could be.

<comment><USER12> NHS staff (at least in my local authority) do have cards that they put into their keyboards to login to Windows.

It's still a joke that all systems don't hang off their AD/LDAP/jumpcloud/whatever though.

<comment><USER11> With the SunRays you'd login to everything, pull your card and your session and applications would still be running on the Solaris server in basement. Put the card back in and your session and applications would be right back to where you were. So unless applications automatically log you out after some time, there would be no reason to log in again.

Sure you'd still not have SSO, but you could just let everything running, logged in, in your session on the server.

<comment><USER13> That's how a modern Windows Terminal Server/Citrix/whatever infrastructure works, smartcards and all.

<comment><USER11> Cool, I did not know that.

Why any organisation would choose to deploy regular desktops if this option exists, and why wouldn't someone like the NHS not already be using this?

<comment><USER7> > and why wouldn't someone like the NHS not already be using this?

We all say "The NHS", but it's made up of a bunch of different companies.

[https://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the- nh...](https://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs)

        135 acute non-specialist trusts (including 84 foundation trusts)
        17 acute specialist trusts (including 16 foundation trusts)
        54 mental health trusts (including 42 foundation trusts)
        35 community providers (11 NHS trusts, 6 foundation trusts, 17 social enterprises and 1 limited company)
        10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts)11
        7,454 GP practices12
        853 for-profit and not-for-profit independent sector organisations, providing care to NHS patients from 7,331 locations13

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> somewhat unrelated, but... had an interaction with a state agency IT dept - <USER3> do some contract work on a project for a state agency, and we're being forced to move all server/hosting to in-house state IT. Our team was given logins, and on initial run through with the PM, he said "it's a little slow, but it may just be my login". Well... mine was slow too - doing an SSH in to the system brings up around 20-40 second pause, then asked for password, then ... another 20-40 seconds before a shell comes up.

I did some digging - there are errors in /var/log/messages and /var/log/secure (RHEL 7), and... most of this is caused by an initial hang while trying to reach an ldap server which doesn't exist - it just hangs and times out.

I pointed this out to their tech people, asking for some assistance, and had multiple back and forths where they kept saying "we're seeing you logged in". I had to keep replying "the problem is it takes 65-70 seconds to login - <USER4> surely can't be normal". No one ever said it was normal, but one guy wrote privately and said, more or less, "we deal with a lot of systems, and have standard setups. it's better to just have everyone just the standard configs for all systems, even if they're a bit buggy, but not completely broken".

I'm not even sure if I should be surprised by this, but... it was certainly disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER15> My SO works in healthcare in the USA. Logging in to the VA takes about 3-5 minutes. To do some research stuff she often has to doublen-RDP into a special machine that's allowed to see her anonomized datasets, inception-style. I'm a research engineer with lots of computational skills in a different field, but I can never help with a quick Python/scipy script because I'm not allowed to get near the anonymized data. It's frustrating because she could be at least 10x more productive, especially on data processing side, with a better IT situation. Most doctors don't know Python, but the ones doing research could use it.

The login thing is just obnoxious.

<comment><USER16> VA systems also run on Mumps, a language/runtime that is reportedly as pleasent as having the disease itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love that we've gotten down to the point we're no longer even pretending that we're going to consolidate the mess that is the NHS IT system. Much better that we just make sure it's easy to log in to the 57 different services than to actually rationalise the systems in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hilarious that this is a news story with zero content.

So they are spending 40 million to consolidate AD. Translation: they are Probably hiring a dozen consultants, buying Quest and Imprivata and moving one department of a hospital in 4 years. They may do a demo of Azure AD to check the AI box.

<comment><USER19> I think you're wrong on both counts - it's coming to multiple trusts (several friends and family have mentioned it), and despite the timing of the article is actually already in production or currently rolling out - I guess they forgot to release it before now.

<comment><USER18> If that's the case, I bet it's the implementation phase of a bigger project. That scope is too big for that amount of money in a government healthcare setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> About time this problem has specific funding.

With all the disparate systems an NHS member of staff needs to use, they really need a robust SSO and Context Management solution. Even with a wall-to- wall EPR like EPIC there are some huge gaps that other systems need to plug, hence multiple logins and extended waits before a user is productive.

<comment><USER21> EPIc does allow building out a tab or button for external apps/webpages that handles login?

Except apps that have nothing to do with patients... eg HR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've looked at nhs login [1] as a developer. The process is a mess of filling out forms, waiting months for reviews (the service is being rationed like many things in the nhs), answering questions about political imperatives and executive sponsorship, requests for more reviews and paperwork, etc. it's no wonder their previous attempts at this have failed, it's simply easier to meet budgets and deadlines (read: funding cycles) by rolling your own auth.

If this next one is going to work, they need to consider the developer experience as well as the end users.

[1] [https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-login/nhs-login-for- part...](https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-login/nhs-login-for-partners-and- developers/nhs-login-integration-toolkit)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have tried to investigate a similar (if much smaller in scale) problem at one job. Our logins were just taking entirely too long. Granted, we had a notoriously "it's on your end" unhelpful parent IT department to work with, but I found just trying to understand the list of steps that go in on the background for a single login to finish on Windows to be something of an occult science. Finding the tools to just measure the different times each step takes was almost impossible; I had hints for a few steps there, a suggestion for one step over _here_ , and so on, but nothing complete.

Even an empty profile on a relatively new computer, recently wiped computer was painful.

</comment><comment><USER24> I loathe every login screen except for Google's. Why is it that only one company in the world (and sshd but there's no login screen when set up properly) can get it right? Is it really a piece of software that requires hundreds of millions of dollars to get right?

And people who try to fix it so often make things worse. I was very excited about notion.so until I learned I will have to keep clicking magic links for eternity. (Yeah, I know, they support logging in via Google which reinforces my point.)

<comment><USER25> Odd. I dislike Google's very much. Although I use Google's with many accounts (personal/work/partner) sometimes URLs will just assume my identity is "logged in account index 0" and give me a permission denied, or pass me to a page which has no way of changing the active account. I found that most urls can have "u/1/" pretty much anywhere to change accounts but if they have rewritten the url before I see the permission denied or black-hole then it's useless.

There's also the fact that google recently forced Javascript and specific browsers to be used in order to be able to login. So I was locked out of my account for a while until someone discovered that the "rules" are a little more lax for Firefox useragents.

To add to this: I'm certainly no Microsoft fanboy but the best login I have experienced (in my life I think) is AzureAD with SAML. It seems to use Kerberos silently in the background to do saml handshaking. It's truly seamless and very fast.

Even if I'm logged in to outlook from office365 (from a non-enrolled computer) I won't even be presented with another login screen. I'll just be logged in like "magic".

<comment><USER13> > _There's also the fact that google recently forced Javascript and specific > browsers to be used in order to be able to login. So I was locked out of my > account for a while until someone discovered that the "rules" are a little > more lax for Firefox useragents._

There's a ton of threat mitigation and detection of unusual activities going on behind the scenes. This is a big reason why my company uses GSuite SSO - it's basically impossible to achieve a similar level of security with a DIY SSO setup. Auth is _very_ hard to get right with all corner cases considered.

JS trickery is key to detecting bots, and blocking super-outdated browsers like Konqueror that basically lack all modern security mitigations is a reasonable thing to do (and probably allows them to remove less strict fallbacks for those browsers that were previously abused by bad actors).

<comment><USER26> > blocking super-outdated browsers like Konqueror that basically lack all > modern security mitigations is a reasonable thing to do

Except they still allow browsers far more insecure, like IE. And they could do feature detection to see if the security features are implemented or not.

Blocking user-agents does nothing good for anyone.

<comment><USER13> IE has a much larger market share, so they probably spend a lot of extra time on IE special cases.

<comment><USER26> That means it doesn't have anything to do with security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I work for a system integrator that also offers Identity and Access Management systems. Some of our offerings have both modern directory services and SSO and multi-factor authentication solutions with access control policies like SAASPASS. Don't understand how this deployment would cost 40 million pounds even with IAM consulting and training.

It would be good to see the actual breakdown of the spending as it probably includes other spending as well. If not, then it is questionable spending.

<comment><USER28> I suspect you don't grasp the sheer size of the NHS. 2.15 _million_ staff (of whom, 1.4M doctors, nurses, and medical specialists), _at least_ 350 hospitals (depending on definitions) ... in terms of employment, this is the fifth largest employer in the world. This isn't about a single, universal, organization-wide SSO system: there are a bunch of systems, and it's a given that many of them are obsolescent, underpowered, legacy systems including exotic or proprietary kit.

Think of it in terms of SSO for an organization the size of the entire US Armed Forces and you'll begin to grasp the scale of the problem.

<comment><USER29> I think you VASTLY underestimate the size of US Armed Forces in terms of what's required for authentication, authorization, and access control.

US DOD has well over 4 million Active Duty, Civilian Employees, Contractors, etc. Though numbers are hard to pin down, since the number of contractors is in many cases not what is being paid for by the contract (e.g. firm-fixed price, and service based contracts like IDIQ which the contract holder dedicates cleared staff, but otherwise it's hard to know; compared to time- and-material/"butts-in-seats" where numbers are know by the Government per contract).

The US DOD attempted to move everything to MS AD at one point but hit a limitation in the number of objects AD let's you create (~2bn).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A startup in this space to watch: [http://iamrecognised.com/](http://iamrecognised.com/)

<comment><USER31> Yes, always nice to see security consultants run http-only websites.

If they don't show they have the basic know-how on how to set up a ssl cert, I don't want them touching auth.</comment></comment>


SQLite: the Case against Custom Application File Formats - <AUTHOR> http://stackful.io/blog/sqlite-the-case-against-custom-application-file-formats/

<comment><USER2> You know what they say happens when the only tool you have is a hammer?

SQLite is awesome, but there are tasks -some of which are actually quite common- for which it's overkill. Config files rank near the top of that list.</comment>


Steve Jobs isn't our Dad - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getjar.com/developer/

<comment><USER2> > "We started formally distributing free apps in early 2005 and are among the > pioneers of the modern direct-to-consumer (D2C) app store distribution space > when the iPhone was just an R&D project in Steve Job's head."

> "GetJar has been using the term "App Store" in press releases and in it's > positioning with consumers, trade, analysts and press since early 2009 and > it's only now that Apple has decided to send us a C&D."

Is it just me, or is this actually a good argument /for/ Apple owning the term "App Store"? People keep making the claim "it is an obvious name", but apparently it wasn't for GetJar: it wasn't until Apple gave that term meaning by applying it to their product that GetJar decided to use the term.

> "In conclusion, GetJar won't be subject to this kind of bullying. We're not > going to "Cease & Desist". We were here long before Steve & Co. We were > built by developers, to help developers."

As for this statement... I don't know... this entire article somehow makes it sound like Apple is telling them to stop running their service, when in fact all Apple is doing is asking them to stop using the term "App Store".

I mean, seriously: my full time job is complaining about Apple being a closed ecosystem, but there's something about this blog post that is off-putting and misses the mark; in fact, I don't even see how Apple being a closed ecosystem is relevant to this specific argument.

<comment><USER3> > Is it just me, or is this actually a good argument /for/ Apple owning the > term "App Store"? People keep making the claim "it is an obvious name", but > apparently it wasn't for GetJar: it wasn't until Apple gave that term > meaning by applying it to their product that GetJar decided to use the term.

It's a good argument for the term "app store" being original with Apple. However, being the first one to use a term, does not mean you "own" it.

Under the law, one can register a trademark, which gives one exclusive rights to the term under certain restricted conditions. However, as the article points out, Apple did not get a trademark free & clear.

<comment><USER2> Obviously, I mean in the restricted area of "term used to describe a software product or service", and "under the law" you don't need to successfully register a trademark for that (although trying and actively failing to register the mark will make your life very difficult in court); also, I feel like you are putting too much emphasis on the word "own" here as if I was going for some technical definition, as opposed to "when people think of that word, they immediately associate with Apple's App Store" (which really is all that trademarks really come down to: whether there would be viable confusion in the market if other people co-opted the name).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We got a C&D letter for App Store too. These guys at GetJar confuse the mark with the activity. And yes, there is something offputting about their response.

We took a different spin - an HTML5 parody videogame[1] and a name-the-store contest[2].

EDIT: here is our response <http://bit.ly/amahi-apple-whoa>

[1] <http://www.amahi.org/invaders> [2] <http://www.amahi.org/name-the-store>

<comment><USER5> >And yes, there is something offputting about their response.

Their response seemed fine to me. I don't see what's so offputting about standing up to threats from someone that doesn't even own the trademark they're threatening you over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Android was supposed to be FREE and open; yet developers can't choose their > billing solution"

Maybe I'm going off topic, but dev _can_ choose their billing solution, distributing their apps outside android market that is not part of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) (as Gmail app to cite another one)

</comment><comment><USER7> Uh oh. Some under appreciated heroes they are.

      > Or does Apple care more about the fact that we're trying
      > to give apps away for free to consumers?

Hardly. Apple also give apps away for free to consumers, if developer chooses to distribute it for free. Apple still makes money from selling hardware not ads. What'g getjar business model? Oh, yes:

      > We were built by developers, to help developers.
      > Not to help sell handsets or search results.

No mention about selling ads? Will having more free stuff attract more visits? Will it give more opportunities to show ads?

</comment><comment><USER8> Just call it an App Market and avoid the controversy/drama. There is also something unprofessional about their response altogether, "Steve Jobs isn't _our_ dad!!"

<comment><USER9> Or just Application Store.

Anyway I did a Google search on app store -apple. There are a lot of 'App Stores'. Apple will be busy sending letters.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=app+store+-apple>

<comment><USER10> Make that <http://www.google.com/search?q=%2B%22app+store%22+-apple> rather. The double quotes to connect the words and the + to make Google actually giving us the result we want instead of being Mr. Smartypants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Getjar are hardly good guys themselves. They knocked my mobile web directory mjelly.com off their index a while ago even though it had been listed in there for years. This was because they claimed it was a competitor to getjar. They recently did the same with Opera.

</comment><comment><USER12> Little tip: If you want to express that Steve Jobs isn't your dad don't write like an angry teenager would.

They should have been much more concise, clear and confident (consequently also a lot shorter). This is just awful writing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Direct link to article: <http://blog.getjar.com/developer/getjar-vs-apple/>

</comment><comment><USER14> So why can't you guys just call it "Download Center" or something like that? What are you gaining by fighting a company with that much cash, other than free publicity (which might turn out to be not free at all if they decide to come after you, even if they lose in the end)? Is this really a battle worth picking? I'd urge you to think this through with a cool head and try to apply some common sense.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't get it. How can they send a cease&desist for a trademark they clearly do not (yet) own? Is it premature litigation?

<comment><USER16> They claim they already own and have owned it[1][2]. The legal proceedings have yet to conclude on the matter so we don't yet know if that claim will be honored by law.

Edit: citation added :) "App Store" is considered a "Service Mark" trademark fwiw

Edit 2: another citation listing Apple as the *applicant

Edit 3: correction, apparently Apple cannot "own" the trademark until it becomes a (R) registered trademark? Nonetheless it seems they can still dispute the use of it as is currently happening with Apple v Amazon.

Edit 4: "The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand."[3]

[1] <http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html> [2] [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4010:6r...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4010:6r8hbi.2.6) [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark>

<comment><USER15> they don't own it, it's not been registered yet. and it has already been rejected once in the past.

[http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77525433)

<comment><USER17> Are you claiming that ownership, in trademark and service mark law, is defined by registration? That is not my understanding. While registration does secure ownership, ownership itself is defined by use, and registration is not a prerequisite for the commencement of legal proceedings over claimed infringement.

<comment><USER15> What kind of infringement is that then? (I 'm not a lawyer, just wish to know)

<comment><USER16> Trademark infringement, possibly limited by geography; Apple would be considered the owner of the SM. See my citation above. :)

<comment><USER15> Very doubtful they could go after that, considering that getjar is registered in Lithuania. But lawyers are crazy.

<comment><USER18> Is the Apple App Store available in Lithuania?

<comment><USER7> It is, since about April 2009. Still no iTunes Music Store though :(</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You're Not Invited - <AUTHOR> http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/youre-not-invited/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing how much fear of missing out motivates people. Exclusivity is a powerful motivator.</comment>


Inside Spotify's Plan to Take on Apple Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3049231/tech-forecast/inside-spotifys-plan-to-take-on-apple-music

<comment><USER3> I've been pleasantly surprised at my Discover Weekly picks, the existence of which was pointed out to me by my 12 yr old daughter. Now I'll have to look at the Fresh Finds playlist to see if I can find new bands that tickle my fancy. The continual stream of new playlists is one of the main reasons why I have no plans to switch from Spotify to a competitor.

For instance, Feelin' Good [1] has been my commute playlist this week. It's gems like these that make Spotify so useful for me and well worth the $20/mo for a Family plan.

[1] [https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxb...](https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxbmsRH9ko4z)

<comment><USER4> Completely agree. I think Spotify's biggest value-add is curated playlists -- I love that I have the ability to listen like Pandora radio if I want to be passive, but otherwise I can have fully-granular control over which songs I want to listen to without having to skip through a playlist.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Can Spotify plan on making local file synching not suck anymore? Over the course of a year they removed every common sense feature that made adding local files convenient, from drag-and-drop to simple filtering. Given that I discover most music through Plug.dj, and that most of those tracks are remixes unlisted on Spotify, the only thing going for them is the audio defaults to a louder volume. Once I can find a decent script to transfer my playlists, I'm not looking back.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. This year they even removed the ability to search among local files (!). Previously, you could at least go to the "Local Files" view and hit cmd-F (Filter). Filter now only works for playlists. The app search field doesn't match local files, of course.

It's an incredible oversight in an app which, by definition, has only a subset of the world's music; they are practically asking people to use iTunes to supplement their streaming selection.

iTunes has both local files and streaming, they really need to compete on that level. Fortunately for Spotify, Apple has made the Music UI as bad as the rest of iTunes; if Music had as good a UI as Spotify I would switch, easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised that the text "Beats 1" doesn't appear once in the article or in here. I think that Beats 1 (and the inevitable Beats 2, etc.) is, by far, the crown jewel of Apple Music, and should be what Spotify is focusing on. This morning, for instance, I got to hear Zane Lowe interviewing Dr Dre about his first album in 16 years. _Fresh Finds_ , even if it had the new Dre album, still wouldn't offer up what Beats 1 gives me.

Were I in charge of Spotify, I would've taken the $100mm spent on Echo Nest and bought Pitchfork instead, along with hiring every music critic I could find. Forget Fresh Finds; give me Robert Christgau's top picks of the week and a 24/7 radio station anchored by Pitchfork's podcast people.

<comment><USER7> Beats 1 is outstanding IMHO and actually the main reason I cancelled my Spotify subscription.

Dre/Iovine's connections are certainly helping here (some very impressive interviews and guest DJs) and the fact you have London, LA and New York perspectives means you have can keep in touch with the latest music trends from the places most of them start. As well as save songs from their playlists directly into your own.

If they expand it to places like Berlin, Seoul, Melbourne, Ibiza etc. it's going to be damn compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly the only thing Spotify (or any other music streaming service) has to do to compete is just be slightly cheaper. Each major streaming service is pretty much the same and doesn't foster a lot of loyalty. If Apple Music is $9.00 tomorrow, I'm switching.

Features like "Fresh Finds" are pretty shallow and will neither entice new users or keep existing ones around. Too much emphasis has been placed on generating playlists which are never that interesting.

None of the major streaming services get social right, a feature that would greatly enhance the music streaming experience and get users to stick around. The only one that comes close is Soundcloud, and while yes it's not a subscription streamer like Spotify, it has a good community around music.

<comment><USER9> Is it really worth even 5 minutes of your time for $1-$5 a month?

<comment><USER8> $12-$60 a year, every year, is worth 5 minutes yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Spotify is bundled with mobile phone contracts in the UK - my wife won't even try the Apple Music free trial because it's another UI she has to learn and Spotify is free with her contract. I think that sentence summarises my view of Apple's chances in the market: so long as they (Spotify and others) are slightly cheaper than Apple Music and are friendly with people like the big telcos, I don't see Apple Music adding much more than better branding and higher prices.

<comment><USER7> Apple Music has a few things going for it.

1\. It is integrated with the Music app. So you can have your existing and Apple Music in the same place. And of course it can be accessed via Siri, Apple Watch etc.

2\. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all this time.

3\. Beats 1 definitely brings something new. Especially since they are so well connected in the music scene. And of course with Dr Dre being on board you are routinely seeing exclusives not just from him but other people or Iovine know e.g. Compton the Soundtrack.

<comment><USER11> >2\. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all this time.

This was the case in ios a couple years ago but not any longer. I'd argue the UI/UX is much better. It's so easy to queue something up I just swipe the song to the left and if I want to save the song, do left swipe. The only thing with Spotify is you can get buried in menus and have to keep clicking back.

<comment><USER10> Spotify need to work on an easier way to create and edit playlists - <USER2> search within the playlist and an easier UI would be a massive improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Spotify, but I am constantly hopping between them and Pandora whenever I want to use radio. Spotify's radio is terrible. It is about as good as a traditional radio where they repeat the same 10 songs every hour. Hopefully they can leverage some of this tech into improving the radio as well.

<comment><USER11> I'm in such a huge bubble with Spotify. Everytime I use radio I get the same bands and songs. I feel like I can't get it to ever play anything new.

<comment><USER12> Yeah it's impossible. There's a band that consistently comes on one of my stations even though I have given it a thumbs down at least a dozen times. Pandora definitely wins as far as radio goes, but when I want to hear a specific song Spotify is awesome. However I also noticed that quite a few albums have migrated to Apple Music from bands that I frequently listen to which is a bummer. Then again that's what youtube is for :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Apple Music since it launched here in the UK. I recall cancelling my Spotify subscription the same day and promptly signed up for my 3 month free trial to Apple Music.

Whilst there is nothing I particularly dislike about Spotify, I found it's 'Offline Mode' particularly clunky.

When I play a song on Apple Music that I have in a playlist or album, I can replay tracks without the need for a persistent 3G/4G/WiFi connection. Whilst you can do this in Spotify, I understand you have to manually click a button to enable offline playback.

Furthermore, Apple Music will shows me which tracks are cached for offline playback, since those which are not are greyed out and un-clickable, whereas I don't recall seeing anything like it in Spotify. This feature is particularly useful on the tube (London Underground for people in the USA/Europe/Rest of World) where you have intermittent WiFi at stations (in fact, by the time your phone has connected to the access point on the platform the train is already pulling out of the station - so you've got to be fast!).

However, I feel like Apple could have done better with the Apple Music experience on iPhone and iPad. For example, what is the 'For You' tab all about? Just some bouncing spheres with labels of different genres? I quite like the 'New' tab since I can quickly find popular music, but it feels too much like the iTunes Store, where you click-to-buy.

Yet, I really like the artwork they've set up for artists, and I think the player is excellent. I can't say I use 'Connect' that much, but it is an incredibly convenient way to follow artists you like and, if you're lucky, hear some B-sides that didn't make it onto the album.

I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to continue my trial with Apple Music or go back to Spotify. I just want a solid music streaming service that will 1. let me listen to the artists I love and 2. help me find other artists who I will love. I feel like neither of the two fully satisfy those requirements just yet.

Edit: I forgot to talk about Beats 1. I'm really enjoying listening to Zane Low on Beats 1 radio after his move from Radio 1.

<comment><USER7> The "For You" tab is one that took a while to understand but actually one of their best features.

It's actually human curated playlists based on the artists you have already listened to or liked. It's definitely a point of difference between Apple Music and the other streaming services.

<comment><USER14> I would say the same about Spotify's Browse tab, and the Genre&Mood sections and the Discover sections.

All human curated and constantly updated playlists, nothing in other services compares, although I cannot use Apple Music since it is walled-garden only.

<comment><USER7> I think you misunderstand. "For You" is human curated but personalised for you. It will for example show an artist retrospective if I like a similar artist or a playlist that overlaps two genres I listen to frequently. I like Spotify's playlists but these are a step above.

And Apple Music is coming to Android/Windows so it won't be a walled garden for too much longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Spotify only lets you play music on ONE device at a time, even if you are on the same ip address. Lame.

I would try iTunes Music but, like a lot of people, I avoid Apple like the plague.

The Grooveshark playlist interface was far superior to Spotify!

</comment><comment><USER16> Pretty cool idea. I wonder how effective it is at actually filtering which artists will breakout. Also I wonder how this will affect the music discovery process in a meta sense i.e. will 'breakout' playlists like this accelerate the discovery process by turning mainstream attention to under the radar music? Or will it ironically take the music too mainstream too quickly and kill the hype before it has a chance to really take off?

</comment><comment><USER17> Spotify needs to fix their radio situation. I see their engineering posts about the machine learning algorithms they're using to intelligently recommend songs, yet all I ever hear is about a dozen songs on loop, no matter what the starting seed is for a station.

Apple Music's stations have been great so far, despite the rest of the UX of their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god awful, something Spotify does have a relative leg up on.

<comment><USER7> > despite the rest of the UX of their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god > awful, something Spotify does have a relative leg up on

You are definitely in the minority here. Spotify's UX is regarded as one of the worst around. Slow, clunky and the web/native hybrid approach really doesn't work.

<comment><USER17> yeah, hence why I said relative leg up on. Spotify is slow on desktop and annoying on mobile and they just don't seem to care. But compared to the mess that is iTunes on desktop and Music on iOS, it's a lot better.

iTunes looks like it is developed by a bunch of isolated teams who aren't allowed to see the other sections of the app while working on their own.

<comment><USER15> The Grooveshark UI was soo much better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been trying to use Apple Music but for some reason, even on my gig internet, it will take several minutes to start playing a song. By then I've switched back to Spotify and picked a song.. a few minutes after driving down the road Apple Music will kick in and interrupt Spotify with their song.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm certainly in the minority, but as much as I have enjoyed using the Apple Music trial, I doubt I'll stick around when it's over because unlike Spotify and Rdio, I still can't scrobble to Last.fm with Apple Music.

</comment><comment><USER20> Spotify's strategy should involve bringing back third party apps.

</comment><comment><USER21> Been with Spotify for about 3 years but the radio shows from Josh Homme and St Vincent are a HUGE reason I'll likely switch when the free trial expires.

<comment><USER22> I was reading the interview with Jimmy Iovine today and everything he said about curation rang true to me, but when I listen to Radio One, it's too much Top 40 and talking about the music. I love Spotify because it's just the music - just get to it, let me find whatever the curator saw in the music instead of explaining it to me. I get so mad listening to people in a studio talk about music they love or just filling time that could be another song with what is most likely an ad. It's my single biggest gripe with SiriusXM too, but at least I've been really happy with their curation.

<comment><USER21> Yep, that totally makes sense too - however, the two shows I mentioned are quite different from your typical radio show for the following reasons:

1\. For the St Vincent Mixtape Delivery Service, Annie Clark takes one story from a collection sent in by listeners. Its real life stuff such as a roadtrip a persons planning or a major life event they're going through. The tracks suit it and theres a call between Clark and the person who sent in their story. Gah, thats a bad description but trust me when I say its very unique.

2\. Josh Homme is Josh Homme - he's funny as fuck and makes great picks. Also had Alex Turner on interviewing too. Basically two of my heroes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's all about true music recommendation and discovery systems. These are systems that mimic how your friends my recommend or discover music for you.

</comment><comment><USER24> The fact Apple Music has 1/3 of the paying customers that Spotify has already shows you the power of distribution. The ability for them to build it into their on boarding flow for all new iphone purchases gives them an amazing edge especially in upcoming markets like China.

<comment><USER17> Apple Music has literally no paying customers yet, as they are all on free trial. I'm sure they will see a considerable churn from current numbers once people start getting charged and canceling.

<comment><USER25> All of Apple's previously paying Beats customers are in the 3 month free trial. Once that trial ends I'll bet those customers continue paying. I know I will.

<comment><USER17> When Apple acquired Beats Music, it was "believed to count just 300,000 paying subscribers."[1] That's about 3% of the current total Apple Music subscribers.

[1] [http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats- music...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats-music-rival- spotify-hits-15-million-paid-subscribers)

<comment><USER25> Yea, those were the reported numbers up to the end of December. I'll bet that their subscriber numbers started going up after that as users joined following Apple's acquisition, I know I did.

<comment><USER17> Why would Apple acquiring them incite an uptick in subscribers?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coding Horror: Get Your Database Under Version Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001050.html <comment><USER2> I have this problem. However I am using Java, and I work for an organization that is split into DB and Dev teams. We interact a lot - it's not like there's some huge dividing line. But the developers adapt to changes in the database - we don't push objects out to the database. So maybe we've set ourselves up for this problem.

This brings up a new question,though - is version control for a database another palliative for a broken system? In other words, if you have to version the database along with the code, have you already made a mistake?

In my case, there's no avoiding this "mistake", so I will definitely be discussing this idea with the DB team, for sure.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Django. I don't have this problem.</comment>


Timeless Life in the Grand Bazaar: The Rise and Fall of Turkey's Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/trade/timeless-life-grand-bazaar <comment><AUTHOR> One thing that struck me as I read this was the idea that I had always assumed that the loss of authenticity in markets was a modern thing, that they had changed to be more accommodating to tourists as time went by and as the volume of tourists increased.

But it seems like even well over a century ago at least some of the merchants were selling more of an appealing facade of their culture aimed at tourists in the markets.

<comment><USER2> That makes sense. But even if the trinkets were just a facade of culture, they were at least more unique back then. I visited the Grand Bazaar about 6 years ago and remember seeing the exact same mass-produced products in many of the shops. Globalization & mass manufacturing made the trinkets you can find in the Bazaar a lot more homogenous :-/</comment></comment>


Third Party JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617290548/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1617290548&linkCode=as2&tag=produc05-20

<comment><USER2> Another great Manning title. I like their books for the non-BS approach to teaching the topic. Gets right to the point.. I don't have time to read a 1500+ page book.</comment>


Klong – a simple array language - nils-m-holm http://t3x.org/klong/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Several times, over the years, when I've looked at a new and challenging (to me, in both cases) programming language I've thought, "If I put a day or two of effort in, I'm sure I'd eventually be able to make sense of this." The few times I've actually tried this, eg. with Haskell, I've been proven correct.

I've never felt the same confidence when looking at K - perhaps it really does suddenly "click" if you just sit down and start trying to do something useful with it, but right now, I really do just see gibberish. A couple of times I've glanced at a K tutorial and I've been confused by about the second paragraph (and not really able to commit any of the cryptic runes to memory). I sincerely wonder whether if my career, or perhaps my life, depended on it, I would suddenly find myself able to write and understand (!R)@&{&/x!/:2_!x}'!R (I took that from the Wikipedia page; it may or may not just be line noise, I can't tell).

Has anyone else experienced this and overcome it (with K, or something similar)? It hardly matters to me since I'm unlikely ever to have to write K, but it does make me wonder!

<comment><USER2> Heh, I'm in a similar boat to you. I actually tweeted the other day[0]: "Ah, APL/J/K. Time for my annual crisis of thinking everything I've ever learned about programming is wrong...". It's so interesting to me that some people claim fantastic productivity with it, while others find it completely impenetrable. I've spent maybe a day or two trying to get over the initial learning curve, but have never made significant progress.

On HN, geocar and beagle3 are both names that come to mind as proponents of these types of languages and have very interesting comments. You could search their name for more info, probably. There's a couple good breakdowns of code here[1] and here[2].

[0] [https://twitter.com/losvedir/status/636034419359289344](https://twitter.com/losvedir/status/636034419359289344) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9120246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9120246) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476016)

<comment><USER3> If you're actually interested in diving in, here's a K5 repl you can use from your browser:

[http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/index.html](http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/index.html)

There's a manual, and a guide to some programming techniques here:

[https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok/blob/gh- pages/docs/Manual....](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok/blob/gh- pages/docs/Manual.md)

[https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok/blob/gh- pages/docs/Program...](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok/blob/gh- pages/docs/Programming.md)

Examples and more discussion can be found in the same repo. This implementation is "unofficial" (reverse-engineered) and quite slow compared to the real thing, but it has a substantial portion of the functionality and is quite usable for writing meaningful programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool! I wrote (and am working on) a K interpreter in JavaScript called "oK". Might be useful to compare notes:

[https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok)

I'll have a deeper look at Klong's implementation when I have time to see if there are tricks worth borrowing.

<comment> nils-m-holm Feel free to borrow whatever you need! Note though, that Klong is based on the S9core toolkit[1] (included in the package), which might take some getting used to.

[1] [http://www.t3x.org/s9fes/index.html](http://www.t3x.org/s9fes/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two disappointments I have with K/Q is that

1) functions that take multiple arguments break the pattern of concatenating functions to build advanced expressions (yes, there is . but it's not nice to use)

2) the right to left evaluation means you constantly have to go back to the begin of the line to append functions

Both of these problems go away if you make it a stack based language with postfix notation.

<comment><USER5> Coincidentally, a stack-based concatenative array language is exactly what I'm working on right now.

It combines all the readability of K with... all the readability of Forth.

It's at [https://github.com/alpha123/vio](https://github.com/alpha123/vio) if you're interested, but very much WIP. The VM is rather simple if you feel like poking around.

Other notable features would be built-in parser combinators (with an unreadable postfix regex-like syntax). Concatenative parser combinators are pleasantly surprising to use.

<comment><USER6> It's be great if you had some examples to read through, or any documentation really. Even a minimal README.

I'm interested in the idea, but without anything to go on it's pretty impossible to look at.

<comment><USER5> Yeah sorry, it's a week old and I pushed it to GitHub just so I could link to something in that comment ;)

Something of a README is now up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People who want to learn a useful and (more) easy to read K relative might have a look at Kerf. It has the columnar database baked in. [http://www.getkerf.com](http://www.getkerf.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> A great article about K is [http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320](http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320) \- it introduces K as a magical, end-all programming language that is blazingly fast and would solve lots of problems...if only someone other than the author understood it.

As I understand it, the original K is closed-source and no one has really used it. All the derivative languages were reverse-engineered from programs and descriptions, and it spun into it's own family of APL-like languages. As far as I know, at least.</comment>