Suicide by Culture - <AUTHOR> http://250bpm.com/blog:113 <comment><USER3> I was so interested to read about a somewhat similar situation with the Shaker Church in the USA:

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

The members took a vow of celibacy, and the church depended on new members joining. As of today, there are just two offical Shakers left, both quite old.

<comment><USER4> Without immigration US is in the same boat as Japan with a falling population. Long term I suspect cultures with positive population growth to beat the competition, but that may take a long time.

<comment><USER5> Not American and my culture is all about massive childbirth, but this sentiment seems strange to me. How does that solve the problem?

If your panda bears are failing to breed, surely the solution is not to just import grizzly bears and pretend the panda bears never existed there? I guess it's a type of solution to the problem of "lack of bears", but is it really a good thing?

<comment><USER6> I think people are missing the point being made by RyanZAG, in that you are not really fixing the problem of -->childbirth<\-- by having mass immigration. Imagine if these new immigrants then a few generations down start also not having a high birthrate, and the problem continuous... It's not about the damn bears...

<comment><USER5> No, they certainly get the point. They just don't like it for political reasons. The downvotes are political, not because they don't understand the issues.

<comment><USER7> So, given the chance of a graceful way to walk back your implication that people from different places are analogous to different species of animal, you are choosing to double down on that? It is not a political perspective that people are not like different species of bear: we can talk with each other, understand each other, love each other, marry each other, start families with each other. Not only _can_ we do these things, we _constantly do_. If you're making a different point and just chose a particularly ... inelegant analogy, then please do clarify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow that's well below replacement fertility. Also dysgenic since intelligent and responsible people are _more_ likely to follow the moral fad. For me it demonstrates the importance of obeying my conscience and not caring what neighbours and other people might say. It's easier for me to do that nowadays since I'm not dependent on a local network of reciprocal favours in order to survive. But still I wonder how many neighbouring families both secretly wanted another child but were each afraid what the other might think.

<comment><USER9> It's not a moral fad at all. Women, including highly educated women, typically prefer having more children than they have [1]. 60% of women in the EU say they have less than the ideal number children. Women all over the world want more children than the replacement rate (makes sense) and in the developed world they have fewer children than this.

The reason women have fewer children nowadays is because of women's liberation - specifically in terms of education and professions. Working and studying requires time and dedication, and that conflicts with having and raising a child.

I don't really know how to solve this problem other than force women to choose between careers and children as they currently do. The best thing I can think of is subsidizing child care, trying to get more jobs that can support a family (so one parent can work and one can child raise), better maternity and paternity leave, and maybe making it more common to take a year or two off around 18 to 20.

1 - [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/11/birth- rates-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/11/birth-rates-lag-in- europe-and-the-u-s-but-the-desire-for-kids-does-not/)

<comment><USER10> >The best thing I can think of is subsidizing child care...

Since most childcare providers are women and programs with high adult to child ratios are preferred doesn't this lead to the strange situation where a large parts of the workforce are taking care of other people's young children?

This story reminds me of two similar stories. One was a fad in England where middle class wet nurses were employed by the wealthy. The middle class then passed their children down to the lower class and the lower class to the lowest class. The result was the lowest class mothers wet nursing a half dozen children.

The second story was that in communist Russia the early leadership was obsessed with economic efficiency. The thought of mother's raising their children was considered a waste of resources and so the idea was that the state would take over raising and caring for children. Professionals would be better equipped and trained and, more importantly, more efficient! The result was a nearly feral generation of children that almost collapsed the country.

Raising young children is just very labor and resource intensive. Forgoing having children frees up a tremendous amount of economic resources and can temporarily boost consumption. In economics this is known as the one time "generational dividend" that if squandered leaves society poorer and not richer.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I agree that's a problem too. The problem seems to come from when women entered the work force, society neglected to take a roughly equal amount of men from the work force. This resulted in a surplus of labor and therefore diminished costs of labor, and therefore families needed to have two people working, and now they don't have the time and resources for children.

I'm a believer in the idea that we should be using productivity to ease the obligations of labor. Ideally we could get back to one person per household working, or even better, both parents doing part time work (though I believe this plan requires socialized medicine). This would give plenty of time for child raising and wage earning, and distribute the burdens evenly among parents.

In recent years women have faced a declining happiness according to self reported results. We also have dwindling populations in the developed world and exploding populations in the under developed world where ideally that would be reversed and we could send the developing world doctors, engineers, teachers, etc. I see these problems as connected by the fact that women are structurally limited by society from pursuing their biological drive towards children whereas men, who don't face declining happiness, live in a society that encourages their biological drive (sex).

<comment><USER11> One person per household working did not really worked for lower class. That is origin of kindergaden - four years old alone whole day because both parents work 12 hours a day (in Germany). Meanwhile rich had kids with nannies whole day, because women needed to "represent familly" (read look good and spend time at parties) else husbands career could suffer for social reasons.

Women are not really struturaly limited to have more children. Most families could afford one more child if they wanted to. Not being at home is preferable then to be at home for women. There is a reason fight for female right to have career happened when large part of population was able to have one person at home - that situation largely sux for too many personality types and on top of it, you are fully aware of your lesser status.

It would be the same with man at home. He would become restless and unhappy too.

And sex has nothing to do with anything. Contraception made it so.

<comment><USER10> > Most families could afford one more child if they wanted to.

The counter argument was made in Elizabeth Warrens book The Two Income Trap where her research showed that the single income family of the 1970's had more disposable income than the two income family of the 90's after adjusting for housing, healthcare, transportation and childcare and showed that the majority of those expenses were primarily driven by children.

A household with children has less ability to make trade offs in the big four than a household without children. For example affordable schools and childcare may dictate more expensive or more distant housing.

The result is that children have a disproportionate impact to discretionary income beyond immediate needs for food, shelter and clothing. If you consider children as just another discretionary way of spending income people in many cases will make the rational choice to _spend less_ on children if the cost is vastly increased.

In other words if the choice is between a minivan and instant coffee and a Mercedes and Starbucks many women may rationally choose the later.

If children were like any other discretionary purchase this wouldn't be a problem but children are also a societal asset (or liability). Current public policy in many countries has shifted to privatizes more of the costs while socializing the benefits.

For example Social Security benefits is a pay—as-you-go program but there are no adjustments to benefits based on the economic value of the children that a household contributed to the current generation that is paying it. If the costs of raising those children were fully socialized it wouldn't be an issue but otherwise it is a transfer of income from those who raised children to those who did not.

<comment><USER11> That does not explain stats for European countries with good free public schools.

I did not meant money so much through. More like, overall lifestyle and your ability to do things that are not children related. With one child, mom can have work she takes seriously and is important for her. She can be competitive there, if you will. With four, nope. Whether you value yourself as entrepreneur, passionate programmer, artist, reader of books, gamer, whatever, you are more or less ok with one-two childs. With four/three, you have to forget about that other identity of yours. Forever.

Have you ever derived confidence or was praised for being good at something or achieving something? One more child may mean good bye to all that.

Moreover, 1970 had poor people too. There was less gap between poor and rich, but it existed. Poor people still exist. Taking about past families as of 1960-1970 usa affluent upper middle class were historical norm is weird. I have noticed tendency to take richest parts of society as the norm, ignoring majority of population for most historical periods.

Imo, a lot of effort and money into childrasing is consequence of widening gap between classes of people. If the difference between bad school and good school did not meant so much for future life, the good school districts would not be so expensive. That is zero sum competition and it does not matter how many incomes you have. You simply need more then competitors.

<comment><USER10> >That does not explain stats for European countries with good free public schools.

It may still hold if public policy transfers income from families with children. This could range from mercantilistic suppression of exchange rates that favors exporters to the detriment of households to public spending for the retired. France has worked to develop policy that is targeted at raising the fertility rate with some success.

[https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/france-boosts-birth- rate-w...](https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/france-boosts-birth-rate-with- incentives-for-parents)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The differences to the current situation seem more interesting than the similarities.

Now :

\- widespread easy access to contraception \- low early life mortality \- massive agricultural automation and machinery \- pervasive educational opportunities

<comment><USER13> You're missing the economic burden of extra children in modern urbanized settings, along with the rise of women in the workplace which further lowers fertility.

As far as I can tell, this trend is global in every modern urban setting, some are just further along.

<comment><USER14> The Muslims in my city seem to have no problem raising large families in a urban environment despite having less financial resources than the other cultural groups, so the explanation cannot be entirely economic. Culture and religion seem to play a very important part

<comment><USER15> The thing is, in our culture it's no loger cool to dedicate your life to selling doner kebabs. Pur definition of success includes high skills and specialization. That produced the society that attracts immigrants and that can't be reproduced back where they came from.

But it also puts high price tag on children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It feels like there's an angle missing to that story. One has to assume there was a reason for that much agriculture being there in the first place and a reason why it suddenly wasn't in such a high demand anymore, it can't just all be "lack of labor" because then people would probably have starved due to the lack of agricultural products being available.

<comment><USER17> It's not just lack of labor, but lack of profit. Farm efficiency has increased incredibly in the last 200 years. People tend to forget that in 1850, a huge proportion of the population were farmers. Today it's down around 1%.

Consider the implications though: each farm may become more efficient, but that increases the food supply, lowering the food price. Then you add in a shrinking population, lowering demand, lowering the price further.

Sure, for the right price you could hire labor for your farm, but then you'd lose money on every sale. It's not lack of labor so much as lack of labor at prices you can afford.

And this is happening today. A friend of mine is from a large farm family in southern Kentucky. Grain prices are getting so low because of high yields that even with the best technology on hand they can barely make a profit. This is great for consumers (cheap food) but short term fluctuations put smaller farming operations at serious risk.

So to answer your initial question of why there was so much agriculture to begin with: it was required to feed the population.

<comment><USER18> It is also the case that marginal farmland can support a small subsistence farmer but be uneconomical for incorporation into large-scale agriculture. Such land will usually end up as woodland/scrub or grazing land over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a neat story, but IMO the article doesn't do a good job linking this small subculture to modern society. Just because you see the same effect (low childbirth) doesn't mean the cause is the same, and it doesn't mean the outcome will be the same.

<comment><USER20> Well, we are seeing a hollowing out of many rural communities in the US, there's an analogy there.

<comment><USER21> Tractors. When my wife's grandfather was born in the early 20th century a family farm in north central Iowa was limited to about 160 acres or a 1/4 section. So each section could have four family farms and a Township with ~50% agricultural utilization might have 300 farm families in the township and some people living in town. That's about a 1000 people.

Today a family farm there is about 1200 acres. That's 1/7 the rural density. The economic catchment for the town no longer has enough customers to support the businesses it once did...and that all happened before Amazon and UPS and Walmart thirty miles away and Costco up in Minneapolis and cars got faster and safer and roads got better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some questionable assertions here.

"Sexual abstinence brought in the familiar zoo of weird behaviors, ranging from coitus interruptus to having sex with animals."

Uh yeah.

</comment><comment><USER23> Their situation sounds very familiar here in Singapore, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world.

<comment><USER24> Which is interesting, as I've heard Singapore held up as an example of successful universal healthcare. I wonder what correlations there are between the two larger trends.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how the same "only one child" rule will work out for China, in the end. It might be the same, but given the wildly different scale (plus different times: more and more automation coming our way) - it might actually turn out very well for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I recall I've read somewhere that the problem of finding a partner exists in China as well.

<comment><USER26> China is said to have 60M men who will never be able to marry. I wonder how that will play out.

<comment><USER27> They won't get married.

A interesting historical parallel is early Australia. Due to more men than women being shipped as convicts to Australia (something like 50:1), many women in Australia were rather reluctant to get married. Why get married and be under the power of your husband when you could live "in sin" and move on if your defacto husband was not up to scratch.

<comment><USER25> Interesting. What were the long-term effects of this? Did women get more rights/sooner, compared to other parts of the world? Or was it just "a phase" with little long-term impact?

<comment><USER28> In the opposite case in modern day USA, black men are much less likely to marry than their peers. The sad cause of this is that such a high proportion of marriage age black men are in prison, that the ones that are not have their pick of all the women left. It turns into this: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/rev...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/revisiting- the-marriage-supermarket.html)

<comment><USER27> Yes marriage doesn't work whenever the gender demographics gets extreme. My favourite example is the Paraguayan War [1] when almost all the men of Paraguay were killed.

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

<comment><USER29> Even though the gender imbalance is long gone from that war, there's still an attitude among Paraguayan women that there aren't enough men around and they'll have to share. Wife and a mistress or two is pretty common still. (Lived there for several years)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> i wonder if it would have been possible for single families to exploit the "one child" culture later on by having a lot of children, thus providing much needed brides and grooms and profiting from the wealth gained by marriage. sure, this would have been a long-term investment and might have lowered you social standing in the beginning, but there'd also be pressure for the others to marry your kid to other protestants (even if those are less wealthy) than to outside catholics.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm not convinced of either the facts or the narrative here.

As to the facts, it does not look to me like Slovakia had particularly low fertility.

See e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia)

"Half of all women born before 1930 had three or more children compared to one-third of Czech women of the same birth cohorts": [https://www.demographic- research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25....](https://www.demographic- research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25.pdf)

As to the narrative, I've never heard of a society breeding itself into prosperity. In 2005, the 10 countries with the highest fertility in the world were: Niger, Mali, Somalia, Chad, Burundi, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, East Timor, and Angola.

Bottom 10 on that list were: Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Malta, Portugal, South Korea, Singapore, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hong Kong, and Macau. A somewhat mixed record of success, to be sure, but would any of them want to trade places with any country in the top 10?

[http://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Health/Births...](http://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Health/Births-and-maternity/Total-fertility-rate)

<comment><USER32> > _As to the facts, it does not look to me like Slovakia had particularly low > fertility._

He speaks of ONE part of Slovakia, and ONE community/religious group in that. And even that, in the past, not now. Those demographic numbers are, as such, irrelevant.

> _As to the narrative, I 've never heard of a society breeding itself into > prosperity._

You'd be surprised. The reason the list doesn't look impressive is that fertility is one factor, and those countries lack the others (and have few hopes of getting it). Instead look at China, India, and the like for better examples.

Plus, it's reversing cause and effect, as countries with major growth tend to decrease in fertility rates.

<comment><USER31> > Instead look at China, India, and the like for better examples.

That would be China, which for most of its phase of economic hyper growth had a rather brutally enforced low fertility policy?

<comment><USER32> There's a delay between adding such a law, and it having measurable demographic impact. That the law coincided with the growth is not the reason for growth: the prior population boom was the reason -or part of the reason- behind both the growth and the need for such a law.

They didn't have an economic boost while suffering from the effects of sub- replacement/low fertility rates. Instead they've developed a huge population that was enough to fuel a huge growth, so much so that they had to slow it down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the long run all that matters is demographics.

<comment><USER15> Nope. In the long run all that matters is culture.

Small community may thrive. Community that was absorbed by different culture, no matter how large, is no longer yours.

<comment><USER33> > _In the long run all that matters is culture._

Genetics seems to play a key role in the development of culture and social structure. If you move 1M Mexicans in Tokyo, their offspring will not act like Japanese people do, regardless of the environment. They would exhibit different behavioral and voting patterns.

<comment><USER19> That's not because of their genetics; it's because of a tendency for groups of people to reproduce their culture. If a family in Mexico City adopted a baby from Tokyo, the kid would become a part of Mexican culture, to the extent that the Mexican culture accepts people who don't look Mexican. They would not be a part of Japanese culture.

<comment><USER34> It's both.

Large groups of people carry characteristic sets of genes which drive behavioral patterns, as well as culture which also drives behavioral patterns. On a large scale, the differences between Japanese and Mexicans are driven by cultural and genetic differences.

The degree, balance, and nature of those differences is complex and up for debate, of course. But to state that Japanese and Mexicans have no distinguishing behavior-driving genes _at all even in the slightest degree_ is basically the left-wing version of young-Earth creationism.

<comment><USER35> Do we have any evidence at all that any of the behaviour differences between populations are genetic? I'm not well-educated in this area, but I'm aware of no such evidence. Educate me?

As far as I can tell (again, in my relative ignorance), the assertion that "genetics seems to play a key role in the development of culture and social structure" is just as foolish and unsupported as the claim that you dismissed.

<comment><USER36> I'm honestly curious in why you think it's likely there are no genetic differences. Everyone accepts physical attributes, most people accept the brain is responsible for consciousness and personality and is a physical object.

Would it not be completey bizarre if there were zero differences in the one most complex organ we do not understand?

Would you argue that no group of people are taller? Or could run faster? Or perhaps have varying levels of visual acuity? What would cause such differences to suddenly just completely stop because it's related to the brain?

[http://m.pnas.org/content/106/7/2118.abstract](http://m.pnas.org/content/106/7/2118.abstract)

<comment><USER37> One reason to believe there are no _meaningful_ genetic differences is that we've seen large-scale migration leading to different cultures among genetically similar people, and similar cultures among genetically diverse people. There are a lot of people with the same Anglo-Saxon stock in "red state" America, in "blue-state" America, and in the UK with rather different cultures, political preferences, social norms, etc. There are a lot of ethnic Russian diaspora communities who did not lean towards communism during the 20th century. (Yes, this is a pointed example, but I think we need to be clear about what our examples are, or everyone is going to argue about their own unstated personal stereotypes and we won't be discussing anything productive.) There are plenty of second-generation immigrants in America, like myself, who have basically assimilated into the dominant culture and carry little of their ancestors' culture beyond what was impressed on us in childhood via nurture.

Meanwhile, there are lots of different genetic groups making up America, even within a race - the American definition of "white" is extremely genetically diverse and contains lots of backgrounds that have formed separate identities in Europe, and you don't see a lot of cultural separation on those lines. You see cultural separation on _visible_ lines like actual skin color, language, recency of immigration, etc. But all of that is more easily explained by humans making conscious choices to associate with certain people we think are like ourselves, not genetics.

Tendency towards aggression, as your paper shows, is an individual characteristic, and something that can be overridden in either direction by social norms. (Even within a fairly homogenous genetic group, there's a huge amount of individual variation in aggressiveness.) I'm certainly happy to concede that genetics matters a lot at the individual level, but it's a large leap to find that it matters at the cultural level. If you introduce one million people without (or with) this gene _slowly_ into a culture of people with (or without) this gene, letting them assimilate, letting them have children and raise them within the existing culture and intermarry, would we expect a chance in cultural norms for people with this genetic background? Possibly, but I certainly wouldn't expect one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/20/modernitys-fertility- prob...](https://jacobitemag.com/2017/06/20/modernitys-fertility-problem/)

Nick Land's ideas at least marginally relevant to the OP as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER39> This too: [http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of- patriarchy...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fascinating. How widespread was this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the map, the region is around 20x50 km.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They could have hired, and married, immigrants.

<comment><USER15> Immigrants usually have zero desire to go to remote, poor areas. Maybe at some point they did, but today they target large urban areas. That makes sense - <USER2> locals can't make use of a piece of land, recent immigrants will struggle even more.</comment></comment>


Warn HN: Elance clients are stealing code from GitHub - <AUTHOR>

I've hosted source code for a couple of my side project iOS apps on Github (that are like 90% done), and it looks like somebody is claiming them as their own on Elance and bidding for developers to complete them.
My code:
https://github.com/sapanbhuta/Cents
https://github.com/sapanbhuta/Clean
Contracts on Elance:
https://www.elance.com/j/ios-app-bug-fixes/67713491/
https://www.elance.com/j/ios-app-update-needed/67714378/
I'm all for open-source and code sharing for the sake of learning, but something about this just seems disgustingly wrong. <comment><USER2> This is probably not the place for me to go off on tangent, but why are you getting upset? Do you think he can finish this project on elance for $500 dollar? How is this going to affect you?

He is scummy guy. Ok. Agreed. But like eru said, you make your code available under MIT license. You can't have it both way of putting your code under a license like that and then complaining when someone uses it in a way you don't like. It seems very hypocritical to me to be angry if he is using your license properly. If I put $100 dollar out to charity and they don't use it in a way I see fit, that is my fault, not theirs.

Worst case scenario he makes someone to finish the app and makes a lot of money off it. And then you have a right to be angry if he violated your license in any way. But also you should think that you are very angry because you had app 90% of way done and someone gets all credit for taking it that last 10%. But then that is your fault for not taking it that last 10% yourself.

I will most likely lose all my 10 hn point for this but I would just drop a note to elance and then forget about this issue. Don't be vindictive about this. You are amazing person and have an amazing day, be more happy :) Good luck on being a doctor, forgot about this guy.

<comment><USER3> > He is scummy guy. Ok. Agreed. But like eru said, you make your code > available under MIT license. You can't have it both way of putting your code > under a license like that and then complaining when someone uses it in a way > you don't like. It seems very hypocritical to me to be angry if he is using > your license properly. If I put $100 dollar out to charity and they don't > use it in a way I see fit, that is my fault, not theirs.

That's almost true, but not quite. Does the MIT licence allow you to remove attribution?

<comment><USER4> Was attribution removed? The only links in the elance posts that I can see are links to the original repository.

Yes, he can profit from them. That's the entire point of MIT/BSD licenses, so that companies can use certain libraries and/or components in their commercial software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In this particular instance the elancer might have violated the license. But if they were more careful about preserving attribution (and a few other cosmetics), it seems like everything would technically be above board.

Before you use an open source licence, especially the MIT style licences, you should ask yourself, if you are OK with a random stranger profiting off your work commercially.

In any case, I advice against suing, since it's unlikely you are going to see any money. (IANAL.) I also doubt that a random elance developer will be able (or willing) to finish your work for 500 USD.

<comment><USER5> But he should atleast ask github to ban this fraudsters, worst case senario sue github for supporting users who violate such licenses. Maybe sending a leagal notice to github would get you results. Atleast there is no doubt that he violated the license

<comment><USER3> Yes, sending a friendly note to github seems like a good idea. But don't expect too much apart from the satisfaction of seeing his current account banned.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but moraly we should all mark these individuals and there emails and other info, so they are banned for ever. This individual is probabely using this work to show off on his resume. This is fraud, we all should take this very seriously.

<comment><USER6> > we should all mark these individuals and there emails and other info, so > they are banned for ever.

This seems a bit over the line. So the elancer has no way to right this wrong? OP should just message the person. If he doesn't fix it then contact the site admins, etc. But hosting code with MIT license as others have already mentioned is permissive. I'm not a big fan of the online witch-hunt when someone messes up. If they learn from it and move on they're still a target and have already been banned forever but what should be an evolving community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think you're right to take offense, this person is blatantly claiming credit for your work. Their repository on Git doesn't even show it was forked from yours.

I'd suggest you get in touch with GitHub and Elance; they'll probably have one or both accounts suspended, and hopefully they'll abandon the endeavor after that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> NOTE: Hey guys, OP here, just to clear up the confusion the github.com/sapanbhuta repo is mine. I included it for comparison purposes. The elance site is the other person using the code as his own. Hope that makes more sense lol

</comment><comment><USER8> As others have said - long as proper attribution is provided in the finished product, it's within the terms of the license that you put up. In the future:

* If you don't want your code available to the public, use a private repository - either Github's paid plans or Bitbucket (free private repos) or something similar.

* If you want your code publicly available, but not to be used in this way, use a different license - GPL/LGPL, CC BY-NC-SA, etc. Research to figure out which one works best.

</comment><comment><USER4> You released these apps under the MIT license. This means that people can do with it what they want, as long as attribution is given in the app or when source code is used in binaries

If you did not want this, you should've released it under a different license (e.g. GPL).

Why are you upset?

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for this post. I myself have a small app that I am thinking whether to publish as GPL or other licenses (MIT or Apache). But I am worried about some shady users who would rather distribute the binaries without the source.

I would react the same. At least, before other users change my own code or even profit from it, they should try to contact me. But MIT license does not oblige users to disclose the source. Nothing against MIT license, but it's somehow not a good fit for stuff that don't require the full source in order to run.

Why not release a new version, and publish it as GPL? That would be clearly a violation if they accept bids on Elance like that. Or try dual licensing.

<comment><USER10> If you release under GPL, are you prepared to hire lawyers to enforce the license terms? It's ok if someone isn't, but in that case, why bother?

<comment><USER9> >If you release under GPL, are you prepared to hire lawyers to enforce the license terms? It would be good if one can hire lawyers, but to be honest, most developers working on side projects are not (at least in my honest opinion).

>It's ok if someone isn't, but in that case, why bother? At least there is some sort of protection, and at least to scare away those who cannot afford the risk of being sued. Who knows, a lowly developer now might be able to turn things around and finally afford lawyers at his whim. Or even gain some backers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Controlling access to Github repositories requires a paid account. The price of a free account is an open source licence.

<comment><USER11> Incorrect. A free account means your repos are publicly accessible, it does not mean the code in those repos is under an open source license.

<comment><USER10> [IANAL]

If the source code is publicly accessible, it seems _ipso facto_ legally infeasible to assert closed source license terms up in it. That's not to say that the terms could not prohibit compilation, interpretation, and other forms of machine execution. But the source is open by the author's choice when the terms and conditions of Github are accepted.

<comment><USER12> When magazines used to print sourcecode listings they very much retained the rights to those listings. They didn't allow redistribution in print or on tape.

That doesn't seem to be a complicated case and I'm not sure what would be different with hosting the code on github under a weird licence "read but no other use".

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Of course here the license used was MIT, but like all licenses the reason it was a license is that the rights holder was a rights holder. If the code was in the public domain then license choice would be moot.

The bigger point is [IANAL] that "open source" only has legal relevance in regard to concepts like trade secrets (a common connotation of "closed source") where revealing the source code might be subject to tort. Any rights that others have derive directly from copyright law and the way in which the rights holder decides to assert their rights.

Putting something in a public Github repository makes it open source, but "open source" is mostly a common language phrase not a term of legal art.

<comment><USER13> > "open source" is mostly a common language phrase not a term of legal art

The term "open source" does have an official definition[0]. It doesn't mean what most people think it does and that is one of the reasons Richard Stallman has criticized it[1].

[0] [http://opensource.org/docs/osd](http://opensource.org/docs/osd)

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html)

<comment><USER10> It's a certification of particular licenses. It's not a legal standard. That's why public domain is a grey area for OSI: [http://opensource.org/faq#public- domain](http://opensource.org/faq#public-domain) and the failure to certify Creative Commons Zero.

Carving public domain source code out of the definition of "Open Source" is the sort of thing trade bodies do. But it's something that one can argue before a judge. The copyright status and license are all that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If he/she is going to submit the presumed finished product to apple store, could you not intervene there?

</comment><comment><USER5> He changed the license by removin ur name and placing his. This it self is a violation of the license.

</comment><comment><USER5> DO u not see whats wrong here, he created a github repo changed the name on the license to make it look like he created this open source project. This is called FRAUDE. Down Vote me if u hate me for speaking the truth.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am pretty sure all his other repos are fraud to.

</comment><comment><USER5> I suggest you sue this fucker directly, he has violated the lincense terms and condition. [https://github.com/sapanbhuta](https://github.com/sapanbhuta)

press fedral charges on this asshole.

<comment><USER15> Uhm... that appears to be OPs account, just saying.</comment></comment>


The Dwarfs and The Fast Marking Algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://jaspervdj.be/posts/2010-07-11-the-dwarfs-and-the-fast-marking-algorithm.html

<comment><USER2> Short summary: instead of relying on initialization to a known value, ignore the initial values of the array and rely instead on a consistency constraint (data may be random, but won't be random and satisfy the constraint) that you can set and check. A neat trick you can probably use in other places as well.

<comment><USER3> Anyone know the name of this algorithm? There is a similarly solved classic problem in complexity theory: Given an O(m) list of O(n)-bounded integers, determine if there are duplicates in O(m) time and O(n) space.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if it has a name (it seems to simply be referred to as "an efficient sparse set representation"), but I think I initially remember seeing it introduced in "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" in an exercise at some point in the past.

A good description of it is here: [http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/using- uninitialized-memory...](http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/using- uninitialized-memory-for-fun-and.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems trivially incorrect. If both arrays are randomized at the outset, there is nothing to prevent them from containing valid data indicating a state having objects marked. In fact, if you free one set of arrays used by this structure and immediately allocate another, there's a good chance that your "random" initial state will, in fact, be the exact one you just freed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The trick is in the counter variable. Read the update section, and the source code (it's not much, really).

<comment><USER6> Right, you neglected to mention the use for the counter in your prose.

<comment><USER7> I'm often left confused by people who downvote me without leaving a correction or counter-argument, so I guess I ought to explain why I've downvoted you here.

Who is the "you" in your sentence? The author of the comment to which you reply? They never mention the counter. The author of the original article? You're not replying to them.

And the counter isn't mentioned in the original prose, but it's clearly mentioned in the description of the algorithm. Surely that's reasonable. It's a single variable, hence constant to allocate in both space and time.

So your comment seems to make an unreasonable criticism that doesn't add value, and that's why I've downvoted it.

<comment><USER6> I was referring to jaspervdj, who is both the author of the comment to which I reply and the author of the original article (well, I presume).

The article states: " _an element in_ array _can, by chance, point to an element in_ marks _, but this won't matter since the element in_ marks _won't point back, and so we can determine it's fake._ " This sentence is missing the part where the counter is made use of, and as such is erroneous. The mentioned element _can_ point back, and its index must be compared with the counter to ascertain whether it is valid.

Although that is a small omission, it is in no way trivial, and probably the source of all the confused comments the posting received.

<comment><USER7> OK, I missed the coincidence (by which I mean they are identical, not that it's by chance) or the names of the authors. That clears up my confusion on that point.

Regarding the lack of mention of the counter in the section of the description you mention, I thought it was obvious. In the section before he says: _we keep the number of marks set._ That means, to me, that if the element in _array_ accidentally/incidentally points to an element in _marks_ that accidentally/incidentally points back, it's not counted as pointing back because it's known (by using the counter) not to be valid.

It is subtle, I agree, but for me the explanation is clear enough already. Adding more detail could simply overwhelm the reader with words, without letting the reader see the wood for the trees.

I agree, now that you've expanded it, that your point is valid, but I, personally, prefer the version as it is.

In this I expect we should simply agree to disagree. One person's "necessary detail" is another's "pointless nit-picking."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/10/29/the-destruction-of-alderaan-was-completely-justified/ <comment><USER2> Alderaan was demilitarised, but more importantly, it was a member of the Empire, represented in the Imperial Senate by Princess Leia until that institution was dissolved shortly into Episode IV. The destruction of Alderaan would not be at all analagous to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the dozens of major cities ravaged by strategic bombing during WWII; it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there, except in this case Texas would have virtually no military of its own.

To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output.

This article amounts to little more than historical revisionism and I suspect its author is pushing this agenda at the behest of the more conservative Moffs of the Imperial Remnant.

<comment><USER3> > it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons > because the Federal Government was unpopular there

No, it would be more like attacking Richmond Virginia prior prior to secession in an attempt to prevent the massive deaths of the American Civil War.

> To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the > Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was > not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an > important Core World with a large population and significant economic > output.

You still haven't addressed the core utilitarian argument; did the destruction of Alderaan save more lives than it cost? While it might have appeared to be destroyed simply to punish Leia, it's extraordinarily unlikely to have happened for any reason other than the express directive of the Emperor, a master manipulator and politician whose sole goal was maintaining power over the entire galaxy, who clearly felt the destruction of Alderaan was the best way to achieve that goal.

I would say the only reason the destruction of Alderaan cannot be justified is because ultimately it did not prevent the ensuing civil war. Blowing up a planet would have been a tremendous deterrent, however the Empire quickly lost that ability due to an asymmetrical suicide attack by jihadists. (akin to the US Cole bombing)

Had the Death Star remained a credible deterrent, the Rebel Alliance would have withered, unable to obtain the backing of the planetary systems necessary to build and maintain a credible space navy.

You comment amounts to little more than a weak justification for the pervasive poverty and lack of economic opportunity which followed the destruction of the only source of stability in the galaxy.

#palpatine2016 #vaderdidnothingwrong #deathstarwasaninsidejob #protontorpedoscantmeltquadaniumbeams

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This really is about rhetoric:

The article is an excellent example of a popular rhetorical trend, especially on the right[1]: Say something outrageous, provocative, and aggressive to take the initiative, to force the other side onto defense. (EDIT: And to frame the discussion; that is, to define the debate in terms of issues in your favor and omit issues that don't suit you; people will sheepishly follow whatever terms are set.)

Think of the things that GOP presidential candidates and other politicians say, day after day, that meet those criteria.

Putting someone on the defensive and forcing them to articulate and make explicit something that is intuitively obvious, but which they haven't had to put in words before - it's a fun game but ultimately is a waste of time. It's much cheaper to make spurious attacks than to defend against them, and as a defender you can spend your whole life jumping through those hoops and never get anywhere - which is one of the attacker's goals.

\-----

[1] I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the left as on the right.

<comment><USER5> Provocative maybe, but I don't see what's outrageous about it. You have to look no further than the Arab Spring to see that rebellion destroys order and disorder is worse for ordinary people than a politically repressive government. It's the history of the world: the overthrow of the French monarchy by radicals ushered in untold chaos and violence before the establishment of democracy.

The article poses the legitimate question of whether it's acceptable to sacrifice a planet to preserve galactic order. Let's reframe that: was it acceptable to burn Atlanta to the ground to preserve the union? Is that such an outrageous idea?

<comment><USER6> Which is why the U.S. should have stuck with the British empire like good little drones.

<comment><USER5> If we'd stayed with the British maybe we'd have universal healthcare already.

<comment><USER7> We also would have ended slavery earlier. That could have been worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've often found parallels between the death star and the atomic bomb. Both are weapons of incredible destructive power that would be difficult to use without deliberately killing untold numbers of non-military citizens.

The justification for the use of the bomb in WWII can be debated but one interesting point I have heard is that for Truman to not authorize it's use would have amounted to political suicide. After pouring so much money and research into the project it would have been difficult if not impossible to then change course and say "well, we have this absurdly powerful weapon the likes of which the world has never seen before, and we know it could end the war in the pacific theater with near immediacy as well as likely establish The United States as the predominate world hegemon for years to come. We also spent years and billions of dollars developing it, but now we're just going to put it on a shelf and end the war another way." People would have been outraged. It's easy to look in hindsight and judge the morality of an act of war but often these judgements ignore the political motivations of those actions and only take into account the strategic benefit with respect to the cost of civilian lives.

With the death star there may have been a similar situation where the momentum behind the project was simply too great to build it then not use it, even if only to prove its power.

(For the record I have strong moral objections to the use of the bombs over Japan and don't mean to condone their use in the above comment, only to provide a short summary of a popular theory as to _why_ they were used)

<comment><USER9> Few people know that the USSR was invading Japan from the north at the time. If we had just pressed on a bit longer, the Allies would have won anyway. However, we would have had to split the spoils with the USSR. So dropping the bomb served two purposes 1) it ended the war a bit earlier so the Soviets were not needed, and 2) it sent a message to the world that we would do whatever it took (in this way it is just like the fictitious Star Wars event). Wonder why we bombed civilian targets? B/c we only had two bombs. If they didn't do the job it would have been too late (per point #1).

<comment><USER8> We also bombed civilian targets because the destructive power of the bomb was still relatively unknown and Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not yet been bombed as they were non military targets. If we had bombed an area that had already been attacked it would have been more difficult to assess the damage that the bomb was capable of and those two cities were "clean slates" so to speak. I can search for citations on this if you like but it's been quite a while since I read up on this so it might require some digging through my notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively building an expire of it's own - whose own actions, particularly against rebels in China, were far closer to the actions of the Galactic Empire than the US.

There is an intrinsic difference between attacking a mortal enemy that is your near equal during a period of Total War than suppressing dissent and rebellion against ragtag rebels by killing millions of civilians, which Japan most certainly did.

In WW2, America was the great friend the rebels in Star Wars never had.

<comment><USER11> Here's the rub with that argument though, Japan was not a great power in 1945. Indeed there were few enough targets left to drop the bomb on which had not already been devastated by conventional bombing.

What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end, as had been demonstrated on island after island. Even had Japan been persuaded to surrender without a total victory Germany post 1918 and the "stab in the back" theory that arose served as a reminder that militaristic cultures can rise again.

The dropping of the bombs fundamentally challenged that mindset. It ushered in a weapon that no force of arms, no military culture, no level self-sacrifice or ultimate effort could stop. It enabled the occupation and subjugation of Japan without having to stage an invasion.

Atomic weapons then and now are things which are essentially impossible to fit into a legal / moral framework - other than to view them as the ultimate insurance policy against humanity's darkest nature. They keep us as a species in check. Organised religion didn't stop war, so humanity created it's own biblical flood, and fortunately has never had to unleash it.

<comment><USER12> > What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no > problem fighting to the end

I really don't buy that. It smacks of dehumanization and propaganda. I can't answer whether waging conventional war on Japan to the end would have been too costly a decision, but let's not excuse ourselves and say it's because the extreme nature of their cultural values makes it necessary.

<comment><USER11> It is absolutely about extreme cultural values. Some times extreme cultural values are good things, sometimes not. Some cultures fight to the death, others do not. The overwhelming evidence was that the body count, on both sides, of an invasion of Japan would have far surpassed that of the dropping of the bombs.

To be fair to you I am not singling out Japanese culture in this scenario. The World Wars, and history in general, are replete with cultural significance, from cultures that abandon a sense of self in attack or defence, or both, to those which view themselves as culturally superior such that occupation is preferable to annihilation. None is better or worse than the other, but the idea that different cultures manifest different responses to the same stimuli cannot be controversial, and that therefore how different cultures are treated by others is necessary.

<comment><USER12> You're making a values judgement on how hard a nation and people should fight to defend themselves. And whatever Japan's stance at the start of the war, they were certainly defending their homeland at the end of it. I'm not saying that the calculation of lives was incorrect. All I'm saying is that the "evil culture" reasoning is designed to rationalize to the masses, and it's a distortion of reality. I don't disagree that cultural values can be problematic. I just think it was a bullshit excuse in this particular case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the movie Clerks, there is a discussion about how the rebels took the lives of any independent contractors who happened to be working on the second Death Star at the time of its destruction.

However, George Lucas later addressed this issue by saying that these independent contractors were in fact merely "large termites" (Geonosians). (I am not making this up.)

</comment><comment><USER4> For those seriously interested in the topic of 'justified' military action, there is a clear, very well-established and followed (including by the U.S.) international Law of War. The fundemental considerations are: [1]

* Necessity: Does it provide significant military benefit?

* Distinction: Distinguishing between military targets and civilians

* Proportionality: One shot from a mortar does not justify flattening a town.

* Humanity: I'm not sure of the definition, but think of it in context of "crimes against humanity".

For an example of a serious analysis of a real issue, here's a great writeup of the question of bombing civilian trucks in Syria:

[https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law- war...](https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war-part-1/)

[EDIT: Added definitions to the terms]

\----

[1] I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so my presentation of it might be not quite right in one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER14> "So, Alderaan was a legitimate military target. Was the level of force used against it justified? It's a tricky question, but it seems the least bad of all the alternatives. Consider another option the Empire could have taken: invading Alderaan, removing its leaders and installing a pro-Empire regime. However, putting boots on the ground in this manner would likely have destabilized not only the planet but also the entire region, creating a breeding ground for religious terrorists and draining blood and treasure for decades. It's not hard to imagine a Jedi State of the Alderaan System (JSAS, for short, though they'd likely prefer the simpler Jedi State (JS)) arising from the ashes of some ill-conceived invasion and occupation."

This guy is arguing that it would have been better to nuke all of Iraq into a glassy plain (civilians, historical sites, and all) rather than provide a potential breeding ground for ISIS. This completely ignores the fact that the occupation of Iraq was not conducted with, shall we say, anything resembling basic competence. The occupation was also cut short early out of political expedience. Palpatine would not have had to worry about approval ratings if his occupation of Alderaan had dragged on! Finally, it's worth noting that, as reprehensible as daesh's actions may be, they amount to nothing even close to the atrocity of nuking a city.

So, based on this argument, the destruction of Alderaan was _not_ justified.

<comment><USER15> If you are trying to give the linked article a fair shake, perhaps you should be comparing it to Afghanistan, not Iraq? My impression was that we (the US) had some evidence that the government of Afghanistan was actually involved in attacking us, whereas the justification for the second war against Iraq was largely "They kind of look like the guys who did it" \- there was noise about "weapons of mass destruction" that was later proven to be a lie, but the impression I got from my more right-ish friends before it was debunked was that this was largely a ploy to get the weapon-hating left to go along with it.

<comment><USER14> His allusion to a JSAS arising from the ashes is a pretty clear reference to ISIS. The Taliban, by comparison, predate the U.S. invasion by decades. Hell, the U.S. supported them against Russia when Russia was trying to occupy Afghanistan. For a real mind-trip, go watch Rambo 2 again sometime. It's surreal watching Sylvester Stallone play rugged, manly, ball-games with his heroic comrades: the Taliban (Yes, the film really does refer to them _specifically_ as Taliban)!

<comment><USER15> Eh, but my point was that I don't think there's a rational argument justifying the second war on Iraq, while there were rational arguments justifying the war on Afghanistan, thus if you are trying to justify another act of violence by comparing it to the war, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to compare your act to the Iraq war.

My impression is that you are right that wiping out Iraq did a lot more to destabilize the area than the adventure in Afghanistan, though, mostly because Iraq had a much more functional government before hand.

The timing of Rambo 3 was unintentionally hilarious, not only now, but at the time it came out, as it came out right as relations were warming; Time named Gorbachev "man of the year" in the same year that Rambo 3 hit theaters.

But yes, he does go on and on about how hard it is to conquer the people of Afghanistan in ways that seem downright un-American if you are watching it in a post-9/11 era, as I did.

Really, I think that the whole Rambo series is better if you remember that Trautman shoots John at the end of "first blood" in a scene reminiscent of "Of Mice and Men" \- Rambo 2 and 3 have got to be... fever dreams? an afterlife? an acid flashback? as John dies.

<comment><USER14> Interesting idea. I may have to dust off the Rambo DVD's and watch them with your theory in mind.

<comment><USER15> Also note, first blood part 2 was "Rambo goes back to Vietnam" \- essentially, the movie tries to explain why John Rambo was so screwed up and angry in the first place. "I'm coming for yoooou" \- really, even rambo 2 wasn't a "go USA" film the way that Rambo 3 seemed to be.

Rambo 3 is what you want if you want to watch the horse game with a dead goat. I personally can't come up with a theme tying rambo 3 back to the original Vietnam theme, other than the Taliban fucked up the Russians very much like the Vietcong fucked up the Americans. Maybe that was the point? a kind of redemption for Rambo, this time he gets to defend the people who just want to be left alone? Or maybe it was just "hey, we've got an action movie franchise, let's make an action movie!" \- and it certainly can be enjoyed on that level, even though it lacks any future governors.

(As another tangent, I think it's interesting to compare the minimalist "drop me into the jungle with nothing but a knife" vs. "all the gear" views of masculinity that are in constant conflict throughout the series. I... man, sometimes I wish I was in college and I could spent a week on an essay about 80's action movies and what they say about our shifting ideas of manhood.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who doesn't know anything about the Star Wars universe: What happens after the fall of the galactic empire? I like to imagine a centuries long dark ages ruled by chaos and anarchy.

<comment><USER16> @lprubin reminded us about Asimov's Foundation series, so here is a quote from Wikipedia which is related to your question:

 _" With the Galactic Empire in fatal decline, Hari Seldon, inventor of the science of psychohistory, predicted a 30,000 year interregnum of barbaric Dark Ages until the rise of a New Empire. So Seldon created a plan to shorten this interregnum from 30,000 years to 1,000 years."_

<comment><USER17> Asimov's Empire is in no way related to the Star Wars empire, so it's not really relevant to the question at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ironic or not? Without knowing anything about the author or publication, poes law is in effect for me.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure it matters what the author is thinking. The point remains that under an ethical doctrine that a great many people - perhaps most, I'm not sure - tend to espouse, one does have to concede that the Empire really isn't so bad.

I wouldn't go so far as to compare the Rebellion to ISIL for various reasons. But it's true that the Rebellion and the Old Republic had a strong theocratic undercurrent going on, and that's something to think about.

If anything, I think the article's compelling because it asks us to have the courage of our convictions. Regardless of whether you (or the author) side with the Rebellion or the Empire, a realistic analysis of the story is much more complex. And that's valuable, because the real world is complex, and yet it's very common for us to try to cast current events in terms of the simplistic moral narratives we learn in stories.

<comment><USER20> That's the lovely thing about this piece. Often times when I read these thinkpieces, I know a bit about the author and his or her biases, and have to exercise some discipline to not let that color my opinion of the article too much.

I've never heard of Sonny Bunch, so in this case it is pretty easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _The destruction of Alderaan, then, is more analogous to the atomic bombing > of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than it is to a "genocide."_ Yes, it was horrible, > and yes, it would be nice if it didn't happen. But it was an attack on a > legitimate military target and defensible under Just War Theory, an attack > intended to save lives by deterring other major powers from beginning > conflicts of their own.*

It always amazes me that people think that (enabled by specially crafted and promoted nationalist histories of course -- especially the kind taught at school).

First, the war was ending and Japan was surrendering, they just had a few save-face conditions instead of total surrender.

Second, those two cities were not military targets -- cities full of men, women and children, civilians.

Third, the main issue was not Japan, but to do a live demonstration of the new assets, and instill fear on any post-war (that is, cold war) enemy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Old story: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II)

</comment><comment><USER4> I suppose these people would have supported the British Empire against the Americans, the Soviets as they oppressed their client states, Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Kurds, the Serbs oppression of the Bosnians ... and every other act of imperial, government oppression. All in the name of order!

<comment><USER23> I thought that was the point of the piece - that most Americans _do_ support the U.S. over ISIL, the U.S. over Iraq, the U.S. over Panama, the U.S. over Vietnam. In all those cases, we are the hegemon deploying vastly superior weaponry over a small band of rebels.

I viewed the article as an awareness-raising satire, making people think about how they may root for the underdog in Star Wars, but in their daily lives, they're just glad to be on the winning side.

<comment><USER4> I agree that military superiority is not what fundamentally defines right and wrong military action in people's minds, including mine. But there are other differences between, for example, Saddam Hussein suppressing the Kurds and the American Revolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And that is how you make pro-warfare propaganda as to justify military incursions and any collateral damage.

The End.

</comment><comment><USER25> Whether or not something is a legitimate military target does not change whether or not the rules of war apply. Destroying Alderaan was genocide. There is no splitting hairs about it. It was a war crime.

Just because genocide saves more of your guy's lives than a protracted ground war doesn't make genocide any more just. The danger to yourself of an invasion is supposed to be a deterrent. You're supposed to weigh whether or not your cause is worth having a lot of your own people die before you commit to using violent power.

I also wouldn't call the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "not genocide" and I certainly wouldn't say it was justified, regardless of whether or not it gains any future, official designation as genocide. It was mass-scale, indiscriminate killing. Is "genocide" the only unacceptable form of mass, indiscriminate killing? The implication was that it would continue until the Japanese surrendered or were wiped out.

His understanding of genocide seems to be limited only to race, but the real definition extends to culture and national units. Alderaan is certainly a nation--it has its own monarchy. While theoretically that doesn't guarantee they are a distinct culture from other planets, practically speaking it is a guarantee. Alderaan being a planet--therefore comparable to our own planet-- probably has several distinct cultures wholly contained within it.

Even by his own false, limited definition, there's no reason to definitively state Alderaanians are not any less a distinct race of people than the Serbians are from Bosnians, or Hutus are from Tutsis. Interstellar travel is portrayed more akin to sailing between continents than flying between major international hubs, and even that level of mobility is still unable to prevent Earthlings from stratifying into distinct races.

Since the author is doing his own work to draw parallels to the Middle East and Daesh, the US didn't just nuke Iraq in 2002 when the Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf kept lying about their capabilities. And we would not be justified in nuking Syria or Saudi Arabia today. There is no conceivable justification for wiping out an entire people.

What Mr. Bunch has really discovered is the Myth of the Supervillain. Every villain sees themselves as the hero. No villain identifies as evil. They all have a post-hoc rationalization for why their terrible, terrible actions were justified, because we can always rationalize anything by appropriately cherry- picking who we consider human and what laws do and do not apply to non-humans.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone ever feel like star wars became mainstream all of a sudden? I mean a few years back mist of my friends would've laughed at me when I brought it up. Now everyone can't wait to see it! What happened??

<comment><USER27> Lucas made the prequels to wow starry-eyed kids, and kids grow up to be nostalgic adults. That move, more than any other, is why Disney laid out 4 billion dollars for the franchise. They plan to sell to those kids, and their kids, and so on until there's not a dime left to be made.

I think Lucas got ripped off, frankly. Disney is going to make their money back on the movies alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pro democracy rebels vs a war mongering despotic regime that came into power by a coup over a democratic republic. The choice is also pretty obvious to me, though not the same one, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you enjoy thinking about and exploring these types of questions, I highly recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

</comment><comment><USER30> Leaking of coming Star Wars movie advertisements into HN is strong with this one.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's incredibly tacky publish a comic piece that draws these analogies between a weakly-plotted space opera and an actual current war where thousands of people are dying, and passes it off as meaningful analysis.

<comment><USER32> it's also marketing for a new star wars film

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If your social order requires the destruction of entire planets in order to persist, I think your social order is probably shit.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Nope. You can't justify killing large number of civians. You just can't.

Hiroshima is morally unrepeatable. Dresden bombing is a crime.

Of course, your propaganda can always tries to persuade that it is acceptable. It's not! You should always seek ways around mass killings.

</comment><comment><USER34> > The Imperial Grand Moff Tarkin is no worse than Democratic President Harry > S. Truman — and no one worth listening to considers Truman to be a monster.

OK. So how do we start considering Truman to be a monster? He slaughtered 129,000 people, mostly civilians, in cold blood.

The author makes a perfectly sound argument that the Empire was _no worse than_ America, and then somehow drives that to the conclusion that the Empire was good by refusing to budge on the cultural dogma that America can only possibly be good. There's a much simpler answer here, it seems to me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Marxist Wookie interpretation. It is true that the Force and its Dark Side are not Good and Evil. They are the two dialectical poles around which life evolves. Like Eros and Thanatos or Yin and Yang. That's from a universal perspective. However, from a living being perspective, there is a sweet zone around the point of equilibrium where life grows from the contradiction between the two poles. Outside of these bounds, life dies. Life breeding its own destruction is fundamentally unjustifiable. So the destruction of Alderaan is unjustified.</comment>


The Code of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (Pluralsight Free Course) - <AUTHOR> https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/moon-landing-apollo-11/table-of-contents <comment><USER2> Having just installed uMatrix I'm still working out which sites to enable to get it running without compromising myself.

I could run this on my AppleTV, however I imagine its not so easy to control the spyware.</comment>


Top job boards for software devs - <AUTHOR> http://www.maxmasnick.com/guides/jobs/ <comment><USER2> If we're saying for "for software devs", I think that <http://dice.com> has to be mentioned.

It's the top or a top board for contract programming.

While hn talks about start-ups a lot, we should certainly consider that a start-up is not for everyone, not even for everyone who's a good programmer.

</comment><comment><USER3> AngelList has just launched a talent-matching service: <http://angel.co/jobs>.

See exactly who you'll be working with, how much you'll be making, details on equity, who has invested, etc. All from some of the choicest, funded startups.

<comment><USER4> This is awesome. Now if the site just supported faceted search..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where would you go for embedded jobs? I realize that HN is not typically for devs who program close to the hardware but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the discussions here. I do however feel a bit lonely since I don't know RoR/Node/<anything web> but have spend years working on embedded stuff. Where's the job postings me?

<comment><USER6> Hello husted, Thanks for asking. I am in a similar situation. I love embedded, but also like the culture here on HN. Jim

<comment><USER7> Fellow embedded dev. here, what's a good job board for us guys?

<comment><USER5> If we had any web skills we could build our own site :-) In my part of the world positions are mostly filled by word of mouth but I guess that's true everywhere. However I'm looking to relocate to another country and I wouldn't mind working in a small shop again.

<comment><USER6> If you are thinking USA, shoot me an email. Most of my contacts are telecom and medical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great list, but do keep in mind of language/tech specific job boards. To give a concrete example, if I was looking for Perl developers (or to work as one) I would surely check out jobs.perl.org first. Such focused boards or mailing lists usually exist for most popular technologies and might give more solid leads. YMMV of course.

</comment><comment><USER9> The conversation of which job boards should be added to the list is happening at [https://plus.google.com/105563832196530779426/posts/4hqn8dLP...](https://plus.google.com/105563832196530779426/posts/4hqn8dLPGsd). I suggested my company there, rather than in this thread, per the OP's request.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tossing my recently launched email list into the mix: <http://startupfrontier.com>

Still in it's infancy, but I'm interviewing startups that are hiring and sending out the interviews each week. The idea is to provide applicants with a more personal look inside companies, since traditional job listings are either extremely sterile or trying too hard to talk about nerf guns and foosball.

</comment><comment><USER11> Since you're 'Asking HN' it might be appropriate to mention more explicitly about where you want the developer to be. You seem to have chosen US focused boards. Are you excluding remote developers? I think the websites that people look at are very region specific.

P.S. My favourite new thing is jobstractor.com so perhaps you should ensure that you're tweeting your job ads in a suitable manner.

<comment><USER12> thanks for the mention. I'm hoping to improve <http://jobstractor.com> in the new year so any feedback from HNers would be welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it be too bad if I suggested to add <http://job4dev.com> to the list? Not only we have a regular way for companies to add job listings to the website, we are also aggregating all the top feeds on the "paid" list; except for LinkedIn (which never seemed to have a "hacker" focus) and authentic jobs (which seemed to be more inclined to web and graphic design). We also aggregate the job listings from the Python mailing list. Adding the same functionality to other boards is not hard at all.

Listing and companies get their own "page", where people can get more information before applying, or even help with by adding more information.

There are a couple of other "semi-features", things that I worked on for a while but never got the users to see it/test:

1) bookmarking of external listings: a place (<http://job4dev.com/jobs/bookmarks>) for job seekers to manage all the listings that interest them

2) Resume building.

</comment><comment><USER14> What do you guys think about niche job boards? I run the following two of them and it's free to post there

<http://jobs.pythonweekly.com/> for Python related jobs

<http://jobs.nosqlweekly.com/> for NoSQL related jobs

</comment><comment><USER15> It's Ruby only (including Rails, of course) but I've been running <http://jobs.rubyinside.com/> for the last few years.

It looks formulaic on the surface (due to being run by Simply Hired) but we've run a few hundred ads from folks like Scribd, TechCrunch, Expedia and New Relic, and all listings get sent out in an issue of Ruby Weekly (10k subscribers) too.

To balance it out, the folks at <http://toprubyjobs.com/> are running a Ruby and Rails job board too. It's cheaper than mine but gets you into the Ruby5 podcast I believe.

</comment><comment><USER16> There was a TechStars company called <http://grouptalent.com> who sponsored the last Seattle Startup Weekend. They're a high-end job board positioning themselves to help people finance their bootstrapped startups.

</comment><comment><USER17> You're focusing on full time only sites as opposed to freelance?

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://agilescout.com/jobs/> is a good place to post Agile positions. It's $49.

</comment><comment><USER19> No mention of indeed.com? Or even usajobs.gov?

</comment><comment><USER20> I would add in the forrst job board as well

</comment><comment><USER21> What about joelonsoftware.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's the same as StackOverflow Careers.</comment></comment>


Dad patches Zalda to learn daughter that girls can be heroes - <AUTHOR> http://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=3274

<comment><USER2> This is just awesome. I wish there was more choice in games to have a girl/woman be the main character, and hope the gaming industry catches up before my daughter gets old enough for this.

I also hope he does Gears of War next ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> a learnee is a teacher

a teachee is a learner</comment>


Show HN: JQBX – Social Listening Web/Mobile App - <AUTHOR> https://www.jqbx.fm <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I posted a comment a little while ago that gained some traction so I'm posting my solo project here. JQBX is a social listening platform that lets you listen to music in real time with anyone anywhere. You can also chat, vote, and save tracks that other people have played. JQBX uses the Spotify as the backbone for all this so you need a Spotify Premium account to use the app. Happy to field any technical questions anyone has. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Can whole playlists be added to the queue? If not, have you planned to add the possibility to do so?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they can- theres a comment somewhere that explains how. In short: Click the "Playlists" tab, select your playlist, click "Add Playlist to Queue"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> FYI, the term "social listening" has an entirely different meaning in the marketing industry (it means social media monitoring). So some people might get confused as to what you're showing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks- I'll start changing the language, had no idea. What would you call something like this though? Curious what might convey the idea better.

<comment><USER4> You could say "Group Listening" or "Collaborative Listening" possibly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect, works for me! Will use "Group Listening" from now on. Thanks

<comment><USER5> I'd agree with that approach. 'social' is burdened with a variety of meaning, and a lot of it not too positive. 'group listening' sidesteps any of those possible concerns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is by far my favourite new app, I love finding out about new music from all sorts of people, and it's great to just put on when you have some great DJs in the room.

One suggestion I have is to have some sort of "Schedule" (or "Happy Hour") function for the rooms. Because the issue I have is when I log on and check out if there are rooms I like are active, most of the time there wont be any DJs in the room. I'm not usually going to hang out in a room by myself (nor I expect other people to wait around for more people to join). So, if we had a function where admins/mods of rooms can send out a message/email to people who have favourited the room to "come back at 8:00PM EST for Happy Hour". And also have schedule messages for people in the room so they know when to come back and there will be more people.

Could definitely be one of the /bot functions too (I saw one of the EDM rooms doing this but it requires some organization by the admin's part, which most people wont bother with).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

You actually can do that already- I think I just need to make it more obvious. If you're an admin of a room you can 'broadcast' a message to all the people who have saved your room. The message gets sent via email to those users. Keep the feedback coming though if you have more- just shoot me an email.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think making the "Schedule/Happy Hour" more of a thing would help more. Sending a message is good, but it leaves it up to the admins to organize/think of doing it every day. What about on the "all rooms" page above each "Genre" description of a room, there could be a "Happy Hour" time slot that admins can enter and will show up. That way, this will attract people to come back that havent even favourited the room (or will require people to check their email, haha). So they can see immediately "hey, there isnt anyone in this room now, but if I come back from 8-12 EST, there might be some more people here".

Thanks again for creating this program, really hope this stays active for years to come.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I think I see what you mean now- like a suggested activity window for each room. Cool idea, I'll add it to the roadmap. Thanks again :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For somebody who consumes as much music as I do, this is one of the greatest things ever created to discover new music.

Especially...if you get a handful of like minded individuals in a room putting their minds together to make the best set ever.

I usually listen to about 8 hours of music a day on the application and have added around 4,000 songs to my Spotify Library. Most of the songs are songs that I have never heard before.

I also think that tying it to the Spotify Premium subscription is important so that the site can avoid any issues with labels.

In the past there was another site like this called turntable.fm while it was shut down I gained a bunch of friendships, and I could honestly say it is the reason why I became a developer.

In other words its awesome.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. I was a DJ back in the early 2000s using Shoutcast [0] to stream. A lot of issues with obtaining music and obviously streaming rights.

This is so easy to whip up your own station with a legit music source. Barrier to entry is much lower than having to figure out how to configure all of the software and connect to the actual stream server. The DJ software had some cool features like fade-in/fade-out, etc. but the music and the DJ's ability to speak to the audience were the important part. The chat element here could replace that. Something like this seems like it could be the next evolution in online radio.

Awesome work!

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

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember this from a recent discussion about cross-platform mobile stacks, so I now know it is built on React Native :) Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Mobile is React native, Mac Desktop app is electron + react and website is react. For anyone else wondering.

<comment><USER10> Would be interested to learn more about how you share components/code between RN and React!

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to shoot me an email jason[at]thebestagency.com if you have anything specific. At a high level a lot of the components end up being pretty different because the UI is naturally pretty different. They share some functions but the "DOM" is mostly rewritten. But the redux actions and reducers are all pretty much the same (small changes depending on how to store state but that could definitely be abstracted away).

<comment><USER11> > But the redux actions and reducers are all pretty much the same (small > changes depending on how to store state but that could definitely be > abstracted away).

Are you using a monorepo? The reducers/actions are copied/pasted for each version? Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure how the licensing works, but would it be possible to allow guest users to act as a "speaker" \- and only require Spotify Premium when upgrading to DJ features?

If I have a group of 100 people in a similar physical location, I'd like to be able to have 100 speakers in sync. Requiring them all to create an account, let alone purchase Spotify Premium, is unfortunately too much to ask.

If you have some control over the payment model, I'd even be interested in paying an extra fee as a DJ in order to enable more remote speaker connections.

<comment><USER13> In that scenario, you would have to have 100 accounts. It is possible to get licensed to do that (i inquired about it for an app i wanted to expand www.r3vl.com) but those music API services require a 6 digit sum of $$$ for commitment... so i moved on

quick edit, if those 100 speakers were simply ONLY broadcasting, you could get licensed as a radio, but if you want the ability to have others select songs, it is pricey

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Definitely going to check this out. I'm a big fan of social listening sites. I run a bot in a room on Dubtrack.fm[1]. Before Dubtrack we were on Plug.dj. I love that you have Spotify integration.

Any chance you'll add the ability to queue up YouTube and/or Soundcloud songs?

1\. [https://www.dubtrack.fm/join/chillout- mixer](https://www.dubtrack.fm/join/chillout-mixer)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you'll like JQBX then! Re. YT & Soundcloud: I'm exploring it. My goal was to get everything feature complete w/ just Spotify to keep things focused. But once all the kinks get sorted out it's definitely on the roadmap.

<comment><USER15> Maybe add Apple Music as well ? Not sure if it supports this kind of integration. Really great app btw. Thx for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First of all - awesome app will give it a good testing this week! I've been using Discord's party-listen (or whatever it's called feature). Spotify enforced some random restrictions like - if I'm talking for more than 30 seconds then it assumes that I'm illegally streaming to music so it pauses the song immediately.

Have similar silly restrictions been enforced on JQBX to your knowledge?

<comment><AUTHOR> No but I'm sure our scale is a bit different and I can see how that could be an issue since they probably don't want to dish out cash for streams to people who aren't there. I take care to make sure that you're not AFK but it's on the scale of hours and not 30 seconds/minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome! I'll use it at work with colleagues. We have tried [https://www.ampme.com](https://www.ampme.com), which I really didn't like. It was more targeted at playing exactly synchronised on the speakers of multiple devices to boost the volume (and at least when I tried it, it was mobile only).

Great work! Looking forward to using it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah I played around with ampme and sounds like their case as I remember it. Our use case is more for listening to music in sync with other people and voting / chatting in real time.

You can also use it w/ colleagues not in the same office. A lot of people have had success using it in their office if they work remote or have a lot of employees that do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That looks amazing. Does anybody remember grooveshark? It had their own little group of popular DJs who would live-edit their playlists and thousands would listen in. This leads me to the question: Do I need to know the person(s) I'm listening with or can someone actually generate a following through your platform? Also, what do you need camera access for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

1\. You don't need to know the person in order to listen with them. What you do is you create a room (or join an existing one) and then you can either step up and DJ in the room (with friends or strangers) or you can just do nothing and listen to what people play. You can also make rooms private if you want to do it w/ just people you know.

2\. I need camera access so you can upload your avatar. I should probably only request it at the time of upload however- so that's my fault and I'll look into fixing it.

3\. I didn't try that Grooveshark feature but it sounds similar. It draws a bit of inspiration from turntable.fm which has been out of business for a couple years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been using JQBX for a month or two - I hang out in _The Jungle_. Very nice software; congrats @jqbx_jason. The bots are fun.

I have struggled to log in on mobile, it would be great to integrate Facebook's official log-in API for those of us with FB-based Spotify accounts. Otherwise the process is quite painful.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been on JQBX just about every day for a while now. The sense of community on this site is amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Couldn't do it without you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been a fan and user for over a year. JQBX is a great replacement for turntable.fm

</comment><comment><USER22> I love this app!

My only problem is that it's too fun — I have a hard time using it at work because I get too engaged chatting, saving great tracks and adding my own to a channel.

Next I plan to use this at the gym to keep myself and a few friends workout playlist in sync.

</comment><comment><USER23> As an aside, I love the color design of this site. It's dark, which I prefer, but it has a lot of color. The colors might be a bit.. awkward, but for some reason I still love them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm glad you're liking it the way it is now!

I totally agree that the colors are in a slightly awkward place. The design sort of grew from where I originally started and now I think I need to find a different, maybe less saturated, shade of dark blue to put everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome for a silent disco home party! Or silent disco's for larger areas where connection is an issue

With that in mind; maybe voting for the next song instead of current?

</comment><comment><USER25> Been addicted for a few months now, really great to see how it's shaping and developing in this rich community. Hope it sticks around for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER26> I remember finding this few weeks ago, and one thing I found lacking was a way for multiple users to add songs to the same queue... Is it possible now? Or at least are there any plans for it?

(in case it's not clear what I mean: IIRC, last time I checked, if you had multiple DJs only the songs from the first DJ would play, followed by all the songs from the second one and so on)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey- it still works the same way w/ multiple DJ's. I thought about adding another 'mode' for a single queue (similar to how soundbounce used to work) but it's put on hold for now while I clean up some of the other details and make things more stable overall. It may come eventually but it'll probably be a few months.

A quick hack would be to make your Queue playlist collaborative and then multiple people could update it- but that may not be exactly what you're looking for either.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for your reply.

For now I'll check JQBX again, because last time I was so focused on finding a collaborative queue app for my workplace that I hadn't stopped to see its public rooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How do I import my already created play list from my account. I can't seem to see the playlists I'd like to play as a DJ.

<comment><AUTHOR> Click the "Playlists" tab (center of the page on the website, separate tab on mobile) then click on the playlist you want and on the top right click "Add Playlist to Queue". And the playlist will get added to your queue.

<comment><USER27> Wow I'm blind. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a really good app. Surprisingly addictive and fun. Come hang out in the jazzcats room!

</comment><comment><USER29> I really love this concept. I usually use YT recommendations to find new music, but it's too narrow-minded to come up with things which are totally new to me. Dumb noob question - would making this app "Spotify agnostic" amount for a complete rewrite?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Not a complete rewrite, but definitely a refactor of all the logic for playing audio and syncing audio between users (and some UI changes). I would also need to do a dive into each platform's API specifics and make sure they give permissions to pause, search, seek, and play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love this! But I get "Sorry <song> not available in your country" for many songs even though I can play them on spotify directly. Some of these songs are actually added by me when DJ-ing. Any reason for this?

<comment><USER31> It's due to Spotify's regional licensing of music rights as it relates to labels in various countries and really has nothing to do with jqbx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The download for macos seems to be a bit broken, it's meant to be going to download.jqbx.com but it's not redirecting. I think it might be a cert issue (firefox dev edition). Looks cool though, going to give the web app a go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks- looking into it now. It works for me on Chrome, will check FF dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Squarepusher, avalanches? Damn, how well do you know me? I gotta try this later.

<comment><USER33> I spoke too soon, don't have a mac but would be interested if linux was an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very cool! I'm impressed! Even just as a replacement for the Spotify UI.

<comment><USER34> I have a feature request :) Would it be possible to show the time a track has started to play in the history? Someone made a comment about a track he was going to play next, but I only read it ~20 minutes later so I don't know which track he was referring to. Maybe this would also be interesting in cases where you can't check the current playlist right now but want to know which track was playing at a specific time.

<comment><USER34> Oh, I just noticed that the currently playing track is shown next to a comment. So I can figure out the first case. But if I'm e.g. driving and can't check the playlist right now it would still be useful to be able to check later what was playing at a specific point in time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Will this work with / any plans to make it work with a Sonos speaker?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I definitely want to make that integration work. As it stands it's a bit of a pain since it's not included in Spotify's connect API. I have a Sonos so I feel your pain.

A quick fix (if you run OSX) is to download the Mac App and then direct your Spotify App to your Sonos speaker. Then it will work as expected. For now thats the only way to hook them up w/o a wire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Any way to create a general front-end that can hook into multiple streaming services? This looks cool, but I'm on Google's whatever-they're-calling-it-now music subscription plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to do it but it's tricky since I would need 1. some sort of universal identifier for each track so I can keep everyone in sync 2. API access to search, play, pause and seek. TBH I'm not sure if that's possible but I'll definitely look into it once I take care of the remaining high priority issues/features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm having an issue where songs will play but it randomly moves to the next song without finishing the current song. Is anyone else seeing this? Is there a Spotify setting I need to change?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried clicking "Sync Audio" also what version are you using (Mobile app or Web App)? Feel free to shoot me an email jason[at]thebestagency.com if you want help troubleshooting.

<comment><USER37> I'm using the Web app, looks like it was something on my end causing the problem. All good now, thanks for the quick response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any particular reason this can't work with Spotify free account?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, their API doesn't let allow for music streaming / playback access unless you have a Spotify Premium account. Also even if it did there would probably be an issue w/ keeping people in sync assuming Spotify wanted to continue to play audio ads for free users of their API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I could see this being super popular, looks really well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate it, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great but you are dependent on Spotify. I don't use spotify, I often listen off youtube for example and it would be good fallback.

</comment><comment><USER41> Any plans to support Apple Music?

<comment><USER42> I bet Apple Music does not have an API as open as Spotify's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah they don't have a Web API. They have a mobile SDK though so it would be possible for the iOS app (not sure about android) only at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The ghost of TurnTable.fm!

</comment><comment><USER44> Chinese app Xiami already has this</comment>