Uber Isn't Worth $17 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-isnt-worth-17-billion/ <comment><USER2> I'm not arguing that Uber is worth $17 billion, but the author completely brushed off the entire reason why investors are valuing it at $17 billion. Only in the last paragraph did he mention that Uber may be looked at as a "logistics" company and not a taxi service.

Hello? Of course that's what investors are banking on when they value the company at $17 billion. Uber is not a taxi play, just like Amazon is not just a book seller.

A great analogy of this article is when people were saying Amazon wasn't worth $3 billion back in 1997 because the online book market wasn't big enough.

Could Uber fail to become a logistics company? Of course. But it's not delusional to think otherwise.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not arguing that Uber is worth $17 billion

No one is arguing that. Investors are valuing Uber at $17 billion, which means future value, not current worth. I know you know that but many people seem to be confused by high valuation by looking at current revenues which is weird from supposedly tech bloggers. And you're right about its future in logistics too. Huge potential there.

<comment><USER4> I believe we are experiencing a Startup Valuation Bubble, evidenced by extreme purchases such as WhatsApp for $16 Billion (and instant messaging company), Oculus for $2 Billion (a research company with no product), SoundCloud, etc, etc etc.

While other companies like Satellite companies are selling in the hundreds of millions, not billions.

I don't think these gross over-valuations are sustainable.

These are all companies that a few years back, would have, _at best_ , sold for a few hundred million.

<comment><USER5> Well of course it's all useless companies, but then how could we suck Graham's and stupid fuck Andreesen's dicks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another point: it would help to know the terms associated with this investment to decide if it was smart.

Author treats stock as if it was a public company, which is understandable. i.e. these investors bought $1.2B of stock at a $17B valuation, and would need to see massive market growth, massive share, and margin stability to make 2x their money.

However, it's reasonable to assume they got preferred stock. So their return profile looks like: if Uber is worth anything more than a couple billion dollars (which they may view as near-certain), they get their money back + interest. Then they hold an option should Uber execute like Amazon, as others have suggested, and dramatically exceed their near-term market potential.

Valuing this is quite tricky: presumably the people who invested $250M less than a year ago thought: I only have to clear ~$400M to get my bait back, now that number is 3-4x higher.

While it is highly likely that the new investors have some sort of preferred return, it's possible (though less likely) that have a participating preferred or some other more complex instrument. Maybe the market price for straight preferred was "only" $12B valuation, and the company said: "How about we 'guarantee' you a 2x return, with a participating preferred instrument, but we want a 50% higher price, so in an upside case we are diluted less?"

This stuff is pretty common in these later rounds, though admittedly more on the "bubble unicorns" than the true unicorns, who have utmost market leverage. But you can see how even just the vanilla preferred stock would really change your personal calculation of whether you want to put your nest egg into Uber at this price.

<comment><USER7> This is an important point. Further to that, Uber should be a company with very clearly understood ROI. They put X number of dollars into a new city and get Y number of users and make Z number of dollars over a few years. Because they've done this in dozens of cities, they've got these numbers down. From Uber's perspective, any money they raise should look as much like debt as possible. Why? Debt means existing shareholders won't be diluted. If a growth company can safely issue debt, it always will. Probably not realistic for Uber to issue 1.2B in straight debt today (interest on that would amount to roughly 20-40% of their current revenue), so they would seek as much of the economics of the raise to resemble debt as possible. The more it resembles debt, the less we learn from the headline numbers about implied valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author fails to mention Uber is creating a new market, and shouldn't be valued at the size of the existing market it is disrupting.

Aaron Levie had a good tweet about this: "Sizing the market for a disruptor based on an incumbent's market is like sizing the car industry off how many horses there were in 1910."

<comment><USER5> Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We've had taxis and black cars for decades, it's nothing new. What happens when every existing taxi company has an app? Because that's what's happening.

Then what we have is Uber/Lyft/whatever trying to avoid any regulation, while everyone else with the same thing are actually doing it. So disruptive!

<comment><USER9> > We've had taxis and black cars for decades, it's nothing new.

People drank coffee before starbucks.

<comment><USER10> Not sure about the point you're trying to make, but if you somehow think Starbucks is "disrupting" coffee consumption, please think again.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coffee_c...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coffee_consumption_per_capita)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've given up on valuing start ups. I've come to realize that I'm not that smart after I didn't agree with Facebooks valuation. These companies are worth whatever the market/people agree to pay for it. It doesn't have to make rational sense. I've accepted this, because I don't argue when someone wants to pay $10 million for a painting because it's the only copy that exists and is a thousand years old. So why argue when it comes to the value of a company determined by the market? If the owner insisted that his company is worth that much, we might have a disagreement, but with the market saying Uber is worth $17 billion? $17 billion it is.

<comment><USER12> Come back in five years. You may find out that Facebook was not in fact worth as much as people thought. That doesn't mean that you were wrong (except in the very near term). And, if you aren't going to jump on the bandwagon based on the greater fool theory, then figuring out that the market is temporarily wrong is a good way to avoid losing a lot of money.

<comment><USER13> I came here to post _Neither is Facebook_ but found this thread, instead. Basically, there's a lot of people tasked with finding places to invest money who need to look busy and the US - nay - the west - is pretty dry on real productive organizations right now. Software slash services has become the excuse for capitalism, and fundamentally we're just delaying the inevitable. Growth has stopped. Resources are finite. It's official.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great write-up. For those interested and not already aware, Damodaran's own site has lots of great posts on finance and valuation. This article seems to build on his original analysis done here: [http://www.aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-disruptive...](http://www.aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-disruptive- cab-ride-to-riches-uber.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Uber might become the first $1T company in the world and it's not about processing taxi fees at all.

It's about that self-driving cars are already safer than humans. In 5 years potentially, nobody would drive their cars by themselves anymore, because self-driving cars are 5 times safer than humans driving them. For that reason, people would have to pay 5 times more for insurance if they want to drive the car themselves --> nobody would drive cars by themselves anymore.

Then, where do you order get these self-driving Google cars? You order them through Uber([http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/)and](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/uberauto/\)and) that's why they can raise at a valuation 100x of their $200M revenue ([http://techcrunch.com/.../leaked-uber-numbers-which- weve.../](http://techcrunch.com/.../leaked-uber-numbers-which-weve.../)).

Uber menttioned that the ground transportation market in San Francisco is around $22B and this is for 800,000 people ([http://qz.com/218717/what-people- who-think-uber-is-worth-17-...](http://qz.com/218717/what-people-who-think- uber-is-worth-17-billion-believe/)). Now multiply this by 10,000 so that you are at 8B people and you have a market of 220 trillion dollars. Now that number is probably a bit too high, but that's why Uber is valued at $17 billion right now.

</comment><comment><USER16> I didn't see anything about how UberX/Lyft been able to create new demand via much lower fares when compared to taxi cabs.

I very very rarely ever took a cab and preferred to walk, bus, or drive because of the cost. Now with UberX and Lyft, I often just call one because the cost is 35 - 50% less than what a cab costs and the experience is so much nicer with app payment and pleasant drivers (feedback loop).

</comment><comment><USER17> Of course Uber isn't worth $17 Billion dollars right now - no one would argue that. The valuation is based not only on what the company is worth right now, but on what investors expect it to be worth in the future.

My startup got into an accelerator at a $500,000 valuation. Were we worth that when we started? Of course not. The hope was that we would be by the time we got out.

<comment><USER18> Investors are as stupid and biased as any other subset of humanity...they just have more money with which to display their prejudices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Once someone said a company is worth people are willing to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER20> _> > "For my base case valuation, I'm going to assume that the primary market Uber is targeting is the global taxi and car-service market."_

Uber is not (only) competing with taxis and car services. They are competing with _vehicle ownership._

This single assumption dramatically affects the size of market Uber is serving.

<comment><USER21> Uber has recently made it irritatingly difficult to figure out what their rates are, so let's go with Lyft, which has very similar prices. Their SF rates are $1.35 per mile[1] -- assuming that you never have a waiting fee, never hit a minimum fare, and never pay during surge pricing (yes, yes, "prime time tips"), and, mysteriously, never pay their "safety" fee.

If you drive 7,000 miles a year (so, about 5,000 miles less than average), that's $9,450 dollars per year.

The TCO of a Honda Civic, assuming 15,000 miles a year (more than twice what we're assuming for the Lyft rider!) is on average a couple thousand dollars less per year [2].

Rideshare is not a reasonable substitute for car ownership for anyone who is cost-conscious, and it will never be until and unless autonomous vehicles exist.

[1] [https://www.lyft.com/help?article=1263247](https://www.lyft.com/help?article=1263247) [2] [http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2014/tco.html?style=20049...](http://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2014/tco.html?style=200498302)

<comment><USER20> Fair point — but doesn't this assume price per mile remains constant over time?

<comment><USER21> Well, I was making very conservative assumptions about true cost per mile. The real cost per mile could decrease substantially before it catches up to the numbers I put in my post.

And there are some pretty hard lower bounds on this. Drivers gotta eat, man. At $1.36 per mile, if you get 20 paid miles per hour (which I don't think anyone genuinely does on a regular basis), that's $26.72 per hour -- gross. Take away 20% for Lyft, driver's making $21.38 an hour. Take away $2 for gas for those 20 miles, it's $19.38. Another $1 for maintenance costs, and you've got a real income, pre-tax, of about $36k for a year of full-time work. There may be some room for downward pressure on that price, but there isn't a lot.

(In actual fact, I assume that average per-mile prices for Lyft rides are much higher than $1.36, due to prime time tips and wait time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting that the author gets to a valuation of ~$6B, because that's approximately the current valuation of a number of unprofitable internet startups (Yelp ($5.52B) and Pandora ($5.67B) leap immediately to mind).

I've been joking with my friends that you can probably subtract about $4B from current internet company valuations to get to the "correct" number given revenues and market sizes...but really, if you take Yelp and Pandora's current valuations down to 35% of their current value (35% is the ratio of $6B/$17B), the number is about right (e.g. $2Bn for Yelp, which gives a price/sales of ~7).

It's a little scary to think that the market for growth stocks may be overvalued to the tune of 65%, but the ratio passes the sniff test for a lot of stocks that I'm following.

</comment><comment><USER23> From what I understand, the value of Uber is in 1) user experience, and 2) logistics technology.

Regarding 1), this isn't much of a barrier to entry. Competitors could easily copy their UX, curation, app etc. I suspect that this will happen, forcing Uber and future competitors to lower their prices.

Regarding 2), I don't know much about their technology, but something makes me question whether Uber will really have that much of an advantage in logistics technology 10-20 years from now.

Finally, I've always thought that cars are an extremely inefficient way to get around, especially in cities. I suspect that there will be innovations in transportation, and that there won't be too big a market for traditional taxis 20 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER24> All I can think of when it comes to Uber is that the day that Google announces their partnership with Uber to bring self driving car services to the masses, it will be the equivalent to the baptism scene in the Godfather 2 for taxi drivers everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am flattered that so many of you read my piece and felt the urge to respond. To begin with, I hope I did not come through as claiming a monopoly on the truth (and fair value). I tried to make my best assessment of what I think Uber's value is today, given what I know about the company.

It is true that I valued it as a car service company but that is the only business where it has a business model that works right now. As many of you argue, there are potential markets here (moving, car rentals and even car ownership) that Uber could enter. If that is the argument for the extra $12 billion, the pieces are in place to estimate whether you can justify that addition. These additional markets (especially car ownership) could make the potential market much larger, but the question then becomes whether Uber's business model can be expanded into these businesses, while preserving the its profitability. Take, for instance, the driverless electric car market which is the alluring possibility. Even if you are an optimist on this development, I am still grappling with the role that Uber will play in this market and the profitability that will ensue. Will Uber continue to play the middleman role, and if so, who will it be negotiating with? If the electric cars are owned by Google or some other large entity, will Uber have the bargaining power to demand a large slice?

In closing, here are three beliefs that I bring to the table. First, I am a believer that DCF is a tool that can be expanded to cover almost any narrative you may have. Second, I have no illusions about being right, when there is this much uncertainty about the future, but I would rather be transparently wrong (where you can see the assumptions that i have made and change them to reflect your narrative) than to be opaquely right. (I think that providing absurdly large valuation ranges as your base valuation is a cop out, as is making fluffy statements like "I think Uber has lots of potential and is worth a lot") Finally, I think that there is a big difference between pricing (where the number you attach to an asset is what people are willing to pay for it right now) and value. I have a great deal of respect for the pricing process (which is what delivered the $17 billion for Uber) but I also think that pricing is driven by mood and momentum, both of which can get ahead of the facts.

</comment><comment><USER26> What people fail to understand is that Uber, Lyft and co are much more than the Taxi market. They are in the transportation business.

People like me that would never have taken a taxi in San Fancisco use these services. They are creating new markets.

When you really think of it, car ownership for a majority of the people is really silly as most cars are idle 90% of the time.

Car manufacturers should be afraid because once Uber, Lyft and Co start a subscription business (pay a fixed amount monthly for a generous travel distance monthly) fewer people we see any reason to own cars.

That will be a good thing.

<comment><USER27> You... wouldn't use a taxi, but you'd use Uber?

Why?

Cars aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Any kind of subscription business won't work in the 'burbs and beyond, which is the majority of the country.

SF reality distortion field in full effect. Yo.

<comment><USER28> I'm not in SF, but the whole taxi experience is shitty in LA:

1\. Long waits (~10m minimum usually)

2\. Unreliable (they'll take calls and never manage to show up)

3\. Bad attitude/customer service

4\. Constantly trying to rip you off by taking weird routes or trying to use the meter on flat-rate airport trips

5\. High prices for shitty cars compared to Uber's range of services

I'd ride taxis, but only when I had to. The bus system was a more pleasant and reliable way of getting from one place to another. Uber has really changed that. For the 30% of the population that lives in cities it's a realistic alternative to dealing with a car, particularly if you're not a kid chauffeur.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Uber is worth $17 Billion because that is how much someone paid for it.*

The question as to Uber will ultimately be worth $17 Billion when those investors try to sell their shares is another question.

And to that question, the Aaron Levie tweet is a good heuristic - "Sizing the market for a disruptor based on an incumbent's market is like sizing the car industry off how many horses there were in 1910."

*of course they only bought part of it, but the easy math of 'they bought x amount for y, so total worth is z'

</comment><comment><USER30> A very well thought out article.. however, of the future markets that the author dismissed, "moving services" does not look as unbelievable. (article says-- "Uber could extend its reach into other businesses such as car rentals, moving services and even driverless cars, but I don't see evidence")

Ton of companies-- amazon, google, postmates, insta cart-- are looking for viable local logistics. And Uber can have a play in that; initial experiments in New York seemed encouraging.

</comment><comment><USER31> The question is how quickly and effectively Uber can branch out and dominate all the "Uber for X" concepts that other start-ups are chasing. If Uber stays in the car service industry? Then yes, they're pointless.

If they develop "Uber for housekeeping"? "Uber for babysitters"? "Uber for take-out"? Then yes, Uber is worth $17 billion.

</comment><comment><USER32> The author of this article seems to have an impressive background: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswath_Damodaran](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswath_Damodaran)

Given his experience, I'm struggling to understand why he's so quick to dismiss the possibility that Uber will successfully expand into tangential markets, or that it's at least reasonable for investors to bet on that possibility.

In the spreadsheet the author provides, the possibility of growth into additional markets seems complete ignored. Even if the chance of such growth was small, surely it should factor in to the valuation to some degree?

</comment><comment><USER33> Has Professor Damodaran, the author, reviewed the same internal documents that Uber's professional investors have seen?

</comment><comment><USER34> This article makes a lot of hand-waving, possibly incorrect assumptions to arrive at its conclusion.

It may or may not be the right conclusion, but it provides very little analytical insight, and is mostly useless.

<comment><USER35> Why do you say that, he goes into detail on all assumptions he makes and includes the data points he used to make his conclusion as well as variants on all important points to show how they affect the outcome.

If there are incorrect assumptions that he made then point them out, your yourself are hand-waving by saying vague statements about the article.

<comment><USER34> Point.

Incorrect assumptions/starting points: * Customers pay Uber, and Uber takes 20 percent of the fare, while the rest goes to the drivers. [actually, this varies by uber type, and can be significantly less than 20%]

* How you estimate Uber's future cash flows depends, mostly, on three things: the size of its potential market, the size of Uber's share in that market, and what percentage of gross receipts Uber takes. The assumptions you make on each question can dramatically affect Uber's valuation, so let me walk through mine. [This is correct in that small changes can dramatically affect the valuation, and makes some assumptions about Uber being unable to innovate past its current market segment. Estimating these numbers is basically a poorly educated guessing game, and materially changes the analysis, and thus makes the conclusion poorly substantiated]

* For my base case valuation, I'm going to assume that the primary market Uber is targeting is the global taxi and car-service market. [ Most of the arguments in favor of Uber's high valuation are around extending the market, not supplanting it, and thus the author completely ignores the entire basis of the valuation ]

* Assuming taxi revenues in the rest of the world add another $50 billion to this total, I arrive at a total market of $100 billion. [ "Let's just guess at 50% of the market, hand wave." ]

* The bad news is that the market will be tough to dominate. Unlike technology companies in other businesses, like Google, Facebook and eBay, the network effect and winner-take-all benefits are limited. [ Unsubstantiated ]

* That, along with the regulatory restrictions protecting the status quo and the competition Uber faces from Lyft, Hailo and others, lead me to estimate a market share of 10 percent. [ Woof, handwave ]

* My instincts tell me that Uber's slice will decrease over time, but I'm going to make the optimistic assumption that the company will find a way to differentiate itself and continue to claim 20 percent of gross receipts. [ More handwaving ]

* Other assumptions are going to affect my estimate of Uber's value: how much it costs to operate the company,3 how much it spends to grow the company,4 the tax rate it pays,5 and how costly it is for Uber to borrow money or attract new investors.6 [ Great, we've determined that small changes in profitability/operating expenses/market size dramatically affect valuation, but let's just guess at all of the major parameters. Not that the author has a better option, just that it makes the conclusion highly suspect ]

Also, though not explicitly mentioned, the author picks an arbitrary return on capital, 10 year time horizon for NPV, and other makes assumptions/simplifications that drastically affect valuation.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla exec says Google slowed YouTube down on non-Chrome browsers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-youtube-down-on-non-chrome-browsers/ <comment><USER2> Yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a poor choice of technology rather than an outright nefarious decision. Polymer [0] uses the shadow dom api [1] extensively, but shadow dom v1 still isn't fully implemented across all vendors and shadow dom v0 is deprecated and slated for removal in April 2019 [2].

This feels more or less like some premature dogfooding of Polymer. It probably would've been advisable to serve the old version until modern non-Chrome browsers caught up, but Shadow DOM v1 will be implemented eventually so my guess is they made the decision to transition those users now.

[0] [https://www.polymer-project.org/](https://www.polymer-project.org/)

[1] [https://www.polymer-project.org/3.0/docs/devguide/shadow- dom](https://www.polymer-project.org/3.0/docs/devguide/shadow-dom)

[2] [https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4507242028072960](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/4507242028072960)

<comment><USER4> > This seems like a poor choice of technology rather than an outright > nefarious decision.

How would you tell the difference?

<comment><USER5> How can you ever know someone's intent? I don't think it makes sense to assume malice in this case.

\- Because YT makes money on eyeballs and runs on every terrible device specific browser under the sun. Making users experience worse intentionally only really hurts them.

\- Because we're in a forum of devs that are all about chasing the latest features and polyfilling everywhere that doesn't have them -- it's practically SOP. I totally believe performance problems like this wouldn't get caught in testing when everyone has a corp network connection and powerful laptops/workstations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know what to think here. On one hand, Google is writing code to make YouTube faster on its own browser. This is reasonable. On the other hand, Google is also using its dominance in internet video streaming to make Chrome look like a better product than the others. This is anti-competitive.

It is wrong to optimize for your own ecosystem, without optimizing for others?

<comment><USER7> It's a symptom of a greater problem, which is that Google (the search engine) owns Chrome, Youtube, Android, Maps, Gmail, and a whole host of other services that are tenuously linked at best (outside of the fact that all the data gets fed into advertising algorithms)

Quite frankly, the company should be broken up forcibly by the government. All of these services should be profitable on their own, not used as loss leaders to grab as much ad data as possible and stamp out any sort of competition.

<comment><USER8> the only actually profitable part of the company is AdSense; the rest would just go bankrupt if it was on its own

<comment><USER7> Or they would be forced to charge for their services and actually compete in the market. Fastmail/protonmail exist, there's no reason Gmail couldn't charge $10/mo and provide the same services

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you append the magic URL argument "&disable_polymer=1" then things should load instantly in Firefox and Edge.

<comment><USER10> Is there a Youtube setting to keep this enabled?

<comment><USER11> Doubtful, that would be account wide, not scoped to your browser. An add-on (or just a bookmark) is your best bet.

Oh! You could change user agents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > He notes that YouTube "still serves the pre-Polymer design" to Microsoft's > Internet Explorer 11, which launched in 2013 and has been replaced by Edge, > and suggests that Google could have taken the same approach with Edge and > Firefox.

Okay, but without new features? Does the pre-polymer design served to IE maintain feature-parity with the shadow DOM (or its' polyfill equivalent)? Because YouTube never _seemed_ slow to me on FIrefox, but I'd hate to miss new features.

<comment><USER13> What new UI features does a video-catalogue website _really_ need, though?

They've reached or passed maturity and are adding dubious features like the miniplayer that keeps playing the video you've just back-buttoned out of. Things that benefit advetisers, not users.

The truly beneficial features should be server-side; culling those awful 'Top 10 Shocking ...' videos from my recommendations, for example. Or realising that just because I watched one programme about military re-enactment, once in ten years, I probably don't want to watch another 30.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I understanding this right? It didn't actually slow it down... it just didn't speed it up for those browsers when it added features to make it faster for Chrome?

<comment><USER15> The new version uses new features which only Chrome has implemented. For IE it still serves the old version, but for FF and Edge, it serves the new version together with a compatibility layer that makes it slower. So they could have just served the old version, but they decided to serve a new, slow version instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to see an internet without Google. I'm probably in a large minority though. But they are so awful.

<comment><USER16> Look at where the internet was before google and all the tech that improved because of google. I think many people underestimate how much of the internet, web server hardware moved forward was directly or indirectly because of google. And many if not all the major web based companies that exsist is because of the tech google introduced and open sourced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The new redesigned gmail is another site that loads a lot slower on FF than in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER18> What about for Safari, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER19> So basically the Mozilla exec is saying that the Chrome implementation of the Web Components W3 standard is _a lot_ faster than Mozilla's implementation.

Because that is what YouTube's frontend is currently running under the hood: Web Components and Shadow DOM. Both W3 standards. No magic at all.

<comment><USER20> FTA: "YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome". Shadow DOM v0 never was a standard, merely a proposal in a draft.

<comment><USER19> Both Polymer v2 (previous version) and Polymer v3 (current version) are based on Shadow DOM v1, as can be seen in the docs ([https://www.polymer- project.org/3.0/docs/devguide/shadow-dom](https://www.polymer- project.org/3.0/docs/devguide/shadow-dom), [https://www.polymer- project.org/2.0/docs/devguide/feature-ov...](https://www.polymer- project.org/2.0/docs/devguide/feature-overview)) so this statement is VERY strange.

Although it's true that only Safari and Chrome (through WebKit and Blink) currently have the best support for Web Components, and polyfills are required for everything else due to flaky support.

Google even mentions this in the Polymer README:

"Web Components are now implemented natively on Safari and Chrome (~70% of installed browsers), and run well on Firefox, Edge, and IE11 using polyfills. Read more below."

Source: [https://github.com/Polymer/polymer](https://github.com/Polymer/polymer)

<comment><USER20> Well, if I check the source of the desktop_polymer.js on Youtube I see v0 API calls in it, and not their v1 equivalents. (e.g. createShadowRoot vs attachShadow). I might be missing something, since I obviously don't understand how all of that works, but it seems supportive at least?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How ACH works: A developer perspective – Part 4 - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-perspective-part-4/ <comment><USER3> I used to do the ACH files for a large cellular provider. The thing that surprised me the most, and which you won't find by reading the spec, is that very clearly some banks present a fixed-width text field to their employees and the employee can then key in whatever the heck they want with no further validations about whether it conforms to spec when they are done. We would routinely get back returns where the reference #s to correlate back to the original transaction had obvious typos and now referenced transactions we had never sent, or where the date field was off by 1 and partially in the account field (somebody hit delete), or where the name field ran over or started early. It would always be some small bank you had never heard of, and the only conclusion I could come up with was that I needed a better manual reconciliation interface than I had expected I would to handle letters in numeric fields and fixed-width fields not starting and ending in the right place.

The second most surprising thing was that we'd get back returns after a full year had elapsed. Most return reasons have time limits, but banks will push through the fraud reason without apparent limit and you'd better be ready to handle it.

The third most surprising thing was the account verification system - <USER2> 'verify' by sending through a special transaction and waiting a week. If it hasn't returned to you after a week, must be good! I don't think anybody designing a system today would come up with such a mechanism, but that's what we have for ACH...

<comment><USER4> A lot of services verify by making those two random <$1 deposits and having customers enter the amounts in, then withdrawing them immediately. This appears to be faster than the verification system.

The first business I encountered that used the "real" verification system was Fidelity, and I found that quite annoying.

<comment><USER5> Banks frustrate me, and I don't think there is any technological excuse. I suspect the systems are antiquated and they are not motivated to change. They use security as a cover for their slowness.

<comment><USER6> I think security, and maybe more so stability are very valid reasons for banks to move slowly on these systems.

It may appear archaic from the outside, but these systems are pushing $39 trillion dollars a year (22 billion transactions) [1]. I can see why the big banks are hesitant to change things drastically.

[1] [https://www.nacha.org/ach-network/timeline](https://www.nacha.org/ach- network/timeline)

<comment><USER5> Security would be a good reason to be slow, but I suspect that isn't the reason.

<comment><USER4> Banks are conservative, too. Which is generally good, but that in itself is part of the reason why the process is slow, in addition to genuine concerns about security and reliability.

In some ways security isn't such a big deal for financial transactions, because they can be undone. Checks are very insecure. ACH is insecure because you can take money out of anyone's account with the information at the bottom of the check, but ACH transactions can be reversed for at least 45 days after they are made.

You also have to ask "how much?" How long is it reasonable to wait for change? The system for same day ACH has existed for years. Very few banks have opted in. Should the Fed set a deadline and say, everyone has to be on it by 2020? (It's the nature of such deadlines that they are be extended, but something will eventually happen.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part 1: [http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a- developer-...](http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer- perspective-part-1/) (HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7636066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7636066))

Part 2: [http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a- developer-...](http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer- perspective-part-2/) (HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740967))

Part 3: [http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a- developer-...](http://engineering.zenpayroll.com/how-ach-works-a-developer- perspective-part-3/) (HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007838))

</comment><comment><USER8> These write ups on ACH by the zenpayroll team are fantastic. I've had to implement similar files, like settlement files, EFT files (for Canada), etc, and they are not fun, and the various rules you have to deal with when interacting with financial institutions can really boggle the mind.

One institution I was dealing with had a spec for a fixed-record-length file, but when I received the file in production, they truncated it to the last non- whitespace character, which was something not in the spec.

</comment><comment><USER9> In terms of overall n/w utility across banks from a regulator perspective ACH being quite bilateral(or multi) it seems nice, but i guess the returns part makes it look more credit-risky(for ODFI) than most multilateral netting transactions should be.Wanted to know if there are any insurance products that thrive on this very credit risk ODFI takes?

I haven't seen a lot of payment gateways but does ODFI place block limits or OverDraft limits on the originator and does it vary from bank to bank?

<comment><USER10> The ODFI usually places a daily limit based on the anticipated types of transactions, how risky your business is, how well they "know" you, and a variety of other things.

All of that depends on the bank, and is somewhat negotiable. We had much better luck talking to a local bank where we were able to get a meeting with the head of the business banking division.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for the great series!

Is there any chance you could go into how you developed a relationship with your ODFI? Like how you found them, how early in your development they were willing to work with you, what type of compliance checks they required, what type of fraud prevention you guaranteed, etc?

This seems to be the biggest obstacle as a startup in the very early stages of exploring ACH.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone in the banking industry explain why there is no security on ACH similar to how there is for credit cards?

20 years ago when I first wrote a program to generate ACH files it struck me as crazy that all that was needed to take money from someones account (given an existing ACH relationship with a bank to send the file in the first place) was an individual's bank's public routing number and the individual's personal checking account number - both of which were at the bottom of every check they write.

I get that fraudulent charges can be reversed, but that's also true on credit cards - so why the lower security on ACH?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't speak for NACHA (the governing body that came up with ACH), but I believe the goal was to make it an electronic equivalent of a paper check.

If you think about it, it's pretty easy for someone to create a fake check based on someone's account/routing number (which, as you correctly say, it's not private information because is on the bottom of every check you write), put it in an ATM machine and debit someone's account without their permission. ACH is really no less secure than the current security protocol for checks.

Not that I think this is a good idea, but this might be a possible explanation of why ACH was designed this way.

<comment><USER5> I can't use my debit card without a PIN, so I would hope that other people cant debit my account without it. Otherwise I'd like to have the same privilege.

<comment><USER13> That's just it, people _can_ debit your account with nothing more than the routing number and account number. They can present a fake check with your info to a seller, and it will wind its way through the entire ACH pipeline, ending with a credit in the fraudster's account, and a debit in yours.

Hopefully, you will notice it in a timely manner and get your debit reversed. Without action on your part, the fraudulent transaction will most likely never be questioned.

<comment><USER14> It's honestly surprising to me that there haven't been more large-scale "attacks" / frauds committed along these lines.

If anyone knows I'm genuinely curious: why hasn't it been exploited on a large scale or what, if anything, prevents it from being exploited?

Edit: jeffasinger & edawerd largely answered my question in their posts above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mainframe-tastic. I'm surprised it's not EBCIDIC.

<comment><USER16> I wrote some ACH handling software a few years ago. While reading through the 200+ page spec I came to the conclusion that it was originally designed to use fax machines as the delivery channel. Or maybe telegraphy.

<comment><USER17> 9 track tapes. Physically couriered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Small typo: 'Debit to checking account: "37"' should probably be 'Debit to _savings_ account'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've updated the post.</comment></comment>


First CIA Instagram Post - <AUTHOR> https://www.instagram.com/cia/ <comment><USER2> That's just what they want you to think.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We've been a long time lurker but now we've created an account"

</comment><comment><USER4> A reminder that a significant proportion of HN readers lie outside the USA, and do not regard the CIA as an asset or benefit in any meaningful sense. Some of us feel the same way about the CIA as we feel about the FSB, and MI6 and DGCE (the list is endless)</comment>


Summertime Web Design for 100 Minutes a Week (#wywof) - <AUTHOR> http://whileyouwereonfacebook.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm in on this. I'm going to work on a personal website for this challenge.

I've tracked how I spend my time online using RescueTime, and it's amazing to look at see how much time I could be using to work on my own projects, instead of reading about other projects. 15 minutes per day would be a great step in the right direction.

For me however, it's more like While You Were On Hacker News ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, one big block of time is worth more than the equivalent in small blocks of time. Rarely do I find a task taking less than 15 minutes (especially in design, which I'm admittedly weak at), and I usually can't get into the "flow" at set times.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a great idea.

It reminds me of daf yomi in studying talmud, "a page a day".

A page a day is barely a burden, yet in 3 years you can have thoroughly read Misner's Gravitation, Programming Erlang 3 times over, and any number of grad- level textbooks. In 1 year, you will have read a good-sized textbook at almost no perceptible time cost, and with very high comprehension.

If he can give this a 43things style UI with publicly stated goals, integrate it with book lists and codebase repos worked on, it could be amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> @pook Hope this means you're in…? I'm going to start on it for a redesign of my site, but with one change. I'm doing 15 minutes a day (105 a week).

<comment><USER4> I'm joining, definitely.

I just started my own similar project: One Month Codebase [http://zipwith.blogspot.com/search/label/one%20month%20codeb...](http://zipwith.blogspot.com/search/label/one%20month%20codebase)

The idea for my project is to focus exclusively on a single codebase to study, experiment with, and contribute to, each month. And write it up in such a way that those who haven't yet gotten the courage to jump in, can try their own hand at contributing to OSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've started a Slinkset for this project as well. If you're participating, add your blog posts and such to it: <http://wywof.slinkset.com/></comment>


Put Down Your Forks - Introducing Protected Branches - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assembla.com/assemblablog/tabid/12618/bid/96330/Put-Down-Your-Forks-Introducing-Protected-Branches.aspx

<comment><USER3> Branch? Fork? With a decent DVCS, they're the same.

Did you just clone your team's repository in order to work on it? Congratulations, you just forked. Even a checkout from a non-DVCS like svn is really a fork, if you think about it.

The best tooling passes this equivalence all the way to the user. git does an excellent job of it.

Then all you have left are semantics and namespacing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is very spot on. However, forking downsides are very real - <USER2> repositories to maintain, which results in harder to setup infrastructure (kicking off builds of 30 repositories is more work to setup than kicking off builds of branches in 1 repository). Installing webhooks or server-side hooks is also a bigger pain in a fork network.

<comment><USER3> > kicking off builds of 30 repositories is more work to setup than kicking off > builds of branches in 1 repository

In git, just pull them all into one repository. It's trivial, provided that you are able to list the repositories and branch names (which is a namespacing problem).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I saw the title, my first instinct was worrying about you getting sued for making an inappropriate joke

<comment><USER5> I'm offended by that. Please smile while I take a photo of you, post it on the Internet, and get you fired.

<comment><USER6> "Welcome to Anonymous Corps Mega Enterprise (ACME),

Our publicist team is currently writing a letter to your employer on PasteBin while all our engineers are coordinating our sheeps to take down your employer's infrastructure until they decide to fire you.

Meanwhile, please enjoy this bucket of hate messages from our most recents intern.

Cordially, The Internet"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like a subset of what Mercurial's ACL extension ( <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/AclExtension> ) supports. ACL allows you to restrict by branch, but also by file path within the repository (so you can, say, reject any changeset that touches conf/security.ini on the default branch, or any changeset that touches authors/tom.jpg on any branch).

Sadly, ACL is not widely used or supported. It works on a machine where team members work as their own unix users, but it doesn't work under a shared login setup out of the box (although it's not hard to make that work). Bitbucket doesn't support it. I'm not aware of any installable repository managers that support it. This is a shame, because it's basically really good.

<comment><USER8> Shameless plug: HgLab[1] does support ACLs, which can in turn be coupled with LDAP-based authentication.

[1]: <http://hglabhq.com>

<comment><USER9> Man, _hg_ lab _hq_? That's a bit confusing! Did you consider something like "gethglab.com" instead?

<comment><USER8> Yep, quite a few people tell me that. gethglab sounds nice, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The core team members work with the main repository in branches.

Actually, at my work, we all work in forks on BitBucket. Pull down from upstream before pushing to our fork, and sending a pull request to be reviewed then merged into upstream.

Works really well, especially with BitBucket's "Sync" button in the web UI for keeping your fork up-to-date with upstream.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like that idea. I've never felt like github forking was a pain or something, but this may solve the problem of having a lot of forks going in several directions when upstream is not proactive enough in accepting pull requests : it will be way easier for one fork to rebase an other one.

One UX concern, though : it's not clear in the article if it's the case, but you should really let filter branches by owner/protected and third party ones, else it will be really hard to retrieve upstream version or features branches.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems pretty much like what Subversion's had since... ever? if you just use your AuthzSVNAccessFile right.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are self-hosting, both git and mercurial have that too. I am not sure if SAAS Subversion hosts allow to use AuthzSVNAccessFile - however Assembla Subversion has Protected Directories</comment></comment>


Testing for Developers: why you should be doing Unit, Integration and QA Testing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-04-23-why-unit-integration-and-qa-testing/ <comment><USER2> _" By leveraging internet services like Amazon Mechanical Turk, we can significantly reduce the cost compared to in-house testing and even outsourced testing."_

Unfortunately, this means that your testers are going to include random people who know nothing about your application or your domain - and very little about testing (why would someone who was a trained tester settle for Mechanical Turk wages?). They might find some obvious problems, but they probably won't find subtle problems. Unlike a QA team that works closely with a team of developers, they won't be able to offer you meaningful feedback about how you could improve your product. And if they're going to be paid low wages to test code written by people they've never met, they're really not going to care very much about doing a good job. As in most cases, you'll get what you pay for.

</comment><comment><USER3> QA is all about situational ethics. It's the very epitome of tactics and triage. Unit testing, integration testing, black box,beta testers, internal QA, outsource...-they are all arrows in the Quiver. Anyone who tries to sell you one fits all is setting your snakeoil.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice way of dealing with a near religious debate within the dev community. Huge fan of TDD from a process perspective, sometimes it can feel like ice skating uphill selling it though - well written and supported post.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Having an internal QA team is not a practical solution if you want to deploy your application frequently.

By having testers who are not connected to your company nor care about its success, you overlook a crucial feature of having in-house QA. It doesn't have to mean weeks of non-stop manual regression testing. It means having a team working in tandem with developers to create unit, functional, and integration tests for rapid deployments.

I've used mechanical turk and similar services for data entry and other repetitive tasks, and it can be useful. But quality, usability testing, and sanity checking are the last areas I would consider handing over a mechanical turk service.

The notion that "In-house QA is killing your business" is one of the most laughable tech articles I've read all year. The hyperbole from Rainforest is over the top.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. If you cannot deploy frequently with in-house QA, it's because the in- house QA isn't doing automation, not because you haver in-house QA

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your product can be the best. But i, like google and others use siesta-js for unit tests and interface tests with mouse simulation. Its all js and runs natively on every browser

See the demo: [http://www.bryntum.com/examples/siesta- latest/examples/brows...](http://www.bryntum.com/examples/siesta- latest/examples/browse-all-desktop.html)

It can record your actions and generate the tests.

Worth looking.</comment>


Comprehend Systems (YC W11) Wants To Make Data Analysis Less Of A Pain - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/27/comprehend-systems/

<comment><USER2> Please let this be an accessible (read: affordable) alternative to Spotfire and Tableau. I can glean from one of the small screenshots it's similar software.

How about a video demo? I sense it's a cool product, but if the only way to get a demo is via your rep, chances are it costs too much for me.

<comment><USER3> We are definitely a good alternative to Spotfire and/or Tableau, and we offer competitive pricing depending on your situation. If you think you would find Comprehend Clinical useful, request a demo and we'll set something up.

Feel free to contact me with any questions at my username at comprehendclinical.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being neck deep in clinical data ETL right now, I would love to hear some details on how one does real-time ETL and reporting while leaving data in place. Most of the clinical systems I've worked with have some pretty ugly data structures under the hood that are just barely relational. For a simple example: they might take a question that is a yes/no question and store the answers on two rows in the database: one for yes (with a value of 1 or 0) and one for no (also with a value of 1 or 0).

I long ago gave up on the thought that one could leave the data in place and work on it (vs traditional data warehousing approaches). If these guys have solved that problem, that's a product all on its own.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your comment. I'd be happy to talk about it with you more, and potentially setup a demo against your data. If you're interested, please email me at my username at comprehendclinical.com, or fill out this form: <http://www.comprehendclinical.com/demo.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For reasons of HIPAA, this is an appliance rather than a 'cloud based' system?

<comment><USER3> Yes, we sell Comprehend Clinical as a deployable Enterprise Java application that our customers install in house.

Besides just HIPAA, the clinical industry also has to comply with Title 21 CFR Part 11 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_21_CFR_Part_11>). There is a lot of discussion about how to take advantage of cloud computing while remaining compliant, but as of yet there's no definitive answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There should be a blog just about YC companies at this point.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, TechChrunch, did you ever find out if people were dying as soon as possible?</comment>


Show HN: Audience Pick – A Crowdsourced Film Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.audiencepick.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a film project where all the decisions are crowdsourced. That means every decision made for this film will be done collectively, through polls, and the majority vote will always win. These decisions will range from picking a script, to selecting an actor for a role, and eventually deciding how this film should be distributed. This could be an amazing experience, or a complete disaster. Who knows? Everyone decides. Your feedback is much appreciated!</comment>


Show HN: Music Video Dispenser - <AUTHOR> https://www.musicvideodispenser.com/ <comment><USER2> Awesome... any plans to let others contribute ambient/other effects? If you allow monetization, you could take a cut as well per sale.

Long term, as others have asked, would like to see a "timeline effects" editor. Given an audio clip, allow for the insertion/removal/overlay of effects at various time points. Make the export/import of these "timeline effects" possible via some format. Once rendered, it is no longer needed, but the timeline definition file would be nice to have for sharing during the creation phase, and for subsequent regeneration.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a cool monetization model. More effects are coming up for sure, and we would definitely like to see what sorts of awesome effects the community can come up with!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like a start to a remake of the visualization plugin for Winamp, Milkdrop2. Apparently opensource now.

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/milkdrop2/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/milkdrop2/)

There's many many presets/scripts made for it.

[http://ghostco.de/milkdrop_pack/](http://ghostco.de/milkdrop_pack/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdL_JSsY6qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdL_JSsY6qo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoshHRG1Qbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoshHRG1Qbk)

I see someone started to port it to the web: [https://github.com/gattis/milkshake](https://github.com/gattis/milkshake) (though it did not work for me in chrome.)

Edit: here's one that works, you can edit the presets:

[https://butterchurnviz.com/](https://butterchurnviz.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This has potential, IMO.

I'm mostly a music tech teacher and sometime music producer, and a very basic programmer (of the use some modules with a lot of stackoverflow reading!), and I just produced a few python scripts to make some stock videos for my tracks that have been released; there were about 80 or so, so I knocked up a script to take the CSV output from the distribution company and tie that up with the image from the release to make a video background, and then another script to set ffmpeg to make a video with that static image, then uploaded all of them to YouTube. I would have liked to make them more interesting by using some of ffmpeg's visualisation abilities in there, but I didn't want to spend too much time on it given the amount of plays they are likely to get (rounding over all of them... zero, although they've streamed and sold reasonably well given the zero promotion we've done).

Reason for doing all that is that the distribution company does something similar, but only 5 minutes of the track (most are 7 minutes plus). I'd think there would be some market in finding distribution companies (mine is Labelworx) and being able to produce interesting, automated videos?

<pedantry mode on> HN: It's not a graphic equaliser, it's a spectrum analyser in the demo video </pedantry off>

<comment><USER5> I'd like to know more about what automated video solutions you think distribution companies would like to use. There are companies like Rotor already doing this for individual musicians, but their offering seems a little complicated. Would you mind if I emailed you?

<comment><USER4> No, email away (not sure how much help I'd be!) - email is my HN username @ gmail.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Allowing multiple backgrounds, and rotating the background at different points by reacting to the music would be a nice touch - I kept waiting for the background to change.

<comment><USER7> me 2

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks freaking awesome! It would be super cool if you could link this up with one of the many HQ royalty free photography websites like Unsplash[0].

[0] [https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused about what makes this special. Is it just an image behind an equalizer graphic?

<comment><USER10> Easy YouTube export is the new feature here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea. Could really use some more ambient effects.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Soundcloud copied this and added it as a pro feature.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sweet project. The equalizer is going to make it seem a little repetitive, but I'm sure you've got other equalizers planned.

A lyrics-based music video generator would be a cool thing to tackle, although that'd require timestamping.

</comment><comment><USER13> THANK YOU! I needed something like this badly. I created my own static image videos using Adobe Premier but it took way too long. Kudos!!!

Market this towards music producers. Mainly those who compose instrumentals. Hip-Hop, Dubstep, EDM, etc...

</comment><comment><USER14> Really nice web service. Already started pushing it on some of my friends that are making music, and they love it. More effects would be very much appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is really weird, I began working on a similar project recently, although I tried to implement all of the audio processing and rendering client-side using canvas and ffmpeg.js. Kept running into memory issues though. Using a MediaRecorder was going to be my next step.

One suggestion: on the export screen, you provide two options. I would add some text that clarifies what quality basic and full HD are (or how else these two options differ).

<comment><AUTHOR> We looked at using ffmpeg.js too since we wanted faster-than-real-time and constant frame rate rendering. It's too slow though, so we went with MediaRecorder instead. Thanks for the suggestion on the export screen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great, I've been making music for fun and have been looking for an easy way to make Youtube videos for them because I want to release them under Creative Commons later. My only option was doing it via a video editing software (which I find cumbersome).

Thank you, this helps me save a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Adding a few demos would be great (esp since its not supported on firefox)

<comment><AUTHOR> We added a YouTube video! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv0-D6hVaU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv0-D6hVaU8)

<comment><USER17> Awesome :) any plans to opensource part the code ? I am esp interested in learning how u managing to support high CPU usage and resource cost

<comment><USER18> +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if I'd call the output of that a music "video". I was expecting something that perhaps splices together video segments from youtube in tempo with the music.

</comment><comment><USER20> Waiting for the EXPORTING screen box for ages & decided to terminate.

2ndly yeah what so great of having an image with equalizer bar moving..

Did i miss anything ?!

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome! great work.

I'm a programmer, but - I've always wondered how does one go about making/generating such videos?

</comment><comment><USER21> Only watched the demo... thought that the ARRL's Podcast had started playing! Same song!

</comment><comment><USER22> I tried to do this with a song of mine. Every time it got to 100% the page crashed out.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was expecting a kiosk machine, kind of disappointed, but its still a cool project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe we can kickstart a physical kiosk machine? I heard they're all the rage nowadays [0].

[0]: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13584488/snapchat-snap- in...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13584488/snapchat-snap-inc- spectacles-vending-machine-snapbot-available)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neat!</comment>


Vizceral – Netflix's traffic visualization tool open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Netflix/vizceral <comment><AUTHOR> This was just presented at Monitorama, here are some pictures people posted:

[https://twitter.com/jessfraz/status/748201403789676544](https://twitter.com/jessfraz/status/748201403789676544)

[https://twitter.com/Serginio89/status/748202913843937280](https://twitter.com/Serginio89/status/748202913843937280)</comment>


How misaligning data can increase performance by reducing cache misses (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://danluu.com/3c-conflict/ <comment><USER2> I only wish that at $DAY_JOB I ever encountered a performance problem that was as subtle as "oh you're not properly using the L2 cache". It's more like, "why did you choose an N^3 algorithm when you can do it in N log N" or "why is your design to write the same file on disk 1,000 times to perform one operation?" sigh

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't wish that on anyone to be generous. After long, hard battle, only those with perverse perseverance may find such solution and only a few can find joy in doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is also discussed in section 4 of Jeff Bonwick s 1994 paper "The Slab Allocator: An Object-Caching Kernel Memory Allocator".

<comment><USER5> bcantrill (who worked with Bonwick @ Sun) is always touting that paper as a classic of systems research. I finally gave in and bought a copy of the proceedings from Usenix where it was presented. Probably the best paper in a first-rate class of them.

<comment><USER6> And if you _really_ want to see me tout it, check out my Systems We Love talk on the slab allocator![1] ;)

[1] [https://systemswe.love/videos/down-memory- lane](https://systemswe.love/videos/down-memory-lane)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Old Cray computers had the best memory bandwidth when the fast dimension of an array was of length 64*n +- 1.

</comment><comment><USER8> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7004927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7004927).

<comment><USER9> It would actually be a nice feature to have in HN, if it gave you previous submissions automatically.

<comment><USER10> There's a button which does that: "past", up right under the post link.

<comment><USER11> Oh! I don't know why I never noticed that.

You know what would make it better is if it added the number of past submissions just like total comments.

2 past

5 comments

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This whole article is some sort of nonsense straw man. Of course if you space small amounts of data spaced out so that they are all far apart you will have bad performance. When people talk about 'alignment' they are talking about 32, 64 or 128 bit for atomics and 128, 256, and 512 bit for SIMD. Putting 8 bytes at the beginning of a 4096 byte section and the next 8 bytes right next to it isn't 'unaligned access'.

Two cache lines of 64 bytes each are cached on even a single byte access, so of course it will be faster to pack data together, but who thought differently? It also saves TLB cache misses as well and if accessed linearly will be prefetched.

<comment><USER13> This isn't about scanning a table where the elements are allocated contiguously, it's about scanning a linked list where the elements could be anywhere; the next element is almost never going to already be in the cache. That's already bad enough (a cache miss on every step down the list), but those items are all page-alined (they are all in the same position relative to the 4k memory page that they are in), then they all have a lot of memory address bits in common and end up evicting each other out of the cache, slowing your scans down. If you only scan the list once then it's no big deal, but if this is some frequently-accessed kernel data structure (list of processes or threads or GDI objects or what have you), then it's a big problem.

One fix is to ensure that these objects are stored at locations that don't share so many common bits, or for the CPU to actually have a hash function that it uses on the address, rather than using the address as-is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This must be somewhat related an idea I read about recently. Indexing a binary heap other than the natural way can avoid cache misses and increase priority queue performance: [http://playfulprogramming.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/cache- optim...](http://playfulprogramming.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/cache-optimizing- priority-queue.html)</comment>


Jonathan James - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_James <comment><USER3> Looks like Steve Heymann has a history of this:

"The case was picked up by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann in Boston, the cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Heymann indicted Aaron on 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage. The case has been wending through pre- trial motions for 18 months, and was set for jury trial on April 1." [1]

Appears that Jonathan James and Aaron Swartz both had the same prosecutor after them...

[1] <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/aaron-swartz/>

<comment><USER4> > "who won a record 20-year sentence"

I know this is common verbiage, but it's frankly sickening. Do they view their targets as people, or are they merely a collection of scalps?

<comment><USER5> Gonzalez stole real money, I'm sure causing many people a great deal of trouble and distress. He said in chat logs that he aimed to steal $15 million and retire. It's really not that much different from pickpocketing or bank robbery, except on a much larger scale, and I'm quite happy if pickpockets, bank robbers, insurance scammers, and other criminals get serious time.

This is quite different from Aaron Swartz who wrote a slightly more advanced recursive 'wget'/'curl' to download something he already had access to.

<comment><USER6> Punishment is unfortunately needed for deterrence. But 20 years? Does anybody here have any grasp about how long 20 years are in prison?

Where I'm from the maximum sentence is 15 years in prison.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that stood out to me too. There are people in the UKwjo have been released or sentenced much shorter terms for FAR more heinous crimes. We're talking juveniles who have tortured and killed infants, people who have beaten children to death, people who raped multiple women and much more.

I know he stole a lot of money but this is compared to people who have destroyed lives, many of whom enjoyed doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant, journalist David Gregory blatantly violated Washington, DC firearms law, on air. He won't face charges:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/12/nbc_s_davi...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/12/nbc_s_david_gregory_won_t_face_charges_for_displaying_ammo_clip_on_tv.html)

I hate to say it but if these trends continue we'll be well on our way to a new sort of feudalism, where laws are selectively enforced and the little guys who hold political views or who are part of minorities that are despised by the powers that be get hit hard while the people who are rich or politically connected get a break. We've seen it with drug laws (where even cocaine possession translates to much different charges when the accused is white and affluent vs black and poor), with prescription drug abuse, with tax laws, with gun laws, with computer crime (where a corporation can install rootkits on people's computers with few legal ramifications), etc.

<comment><USER9> and I hate to say, especially since I just created a new account to rebut this, but David Gregory's holding a magazine has zero basis for reference in this discussion. None. Its a bit of rightwing talking point at the moment, but it has _nothing_ to do with aarons trial. So, no, not relevant. I don't care how much karma you have, or how long you've been on this site. I've been here for four years, maybe commented a dozen times at most. You're using a blatant talking point of the right wing to what? Make some grandiose statement about "where we're headed"? As if David Gregory getting prosecuted for making a point about magazine capacity would have some how made aarons situation more.....fair? Really? This is kind of despicable.

<comment><USER8> This has nothing to do with the debate about guns and everything to do with prosecutorial and judicial discretion and the abuse there of.

Does the law matter? Does the law apply equally to everyone?

It certainly doesn't seem so. And if you look at the _other_ examples I gave, this is all of a piece, irrespective of gun regulation. If you are wealthy and connected then many laws don't apply to you, or there is always a way around them. The prosecutors or judges will look the other way or go easy on you when you violate firearms law. Or, as with Rush Limbaugh, when you abuse prescription drugs. It's not a partisan issue, it's about class and status.

In the case of Aaron Swartz we have just such an example of being on the wrong end of prosecutorial discretion. JSTOR didn't go after Aaron, but the government decided to. They treated him like a terrorist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think one thing that users of HN are picking up on during this crisis is the sense that in some ways, "hackers" are alike--whether a relatively egregious case as in this article, a very mild to innocuous case such as Swartz's, or a truly innocuous case like reverse-engineering open source software--in that we are all curious and we are all sometimes foolish. What the justice department and the masses among us forget is that even very successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were and are hackers, and that in the case of the former's hacking (Jobs' blue-boxing days), it could have gotten him in really, really big trouble.

So I think a big part of this is that we know that people make mistakes and that justice is absurdly harsh and out-of-proportion, not to mention the fact that as hackers, we definitely have the ability to do really insanely great things with our lives.

But one thing to remember is that the justice system in this country is absurdly harsh to a lot of people. It's absurdly harsh to minorities and to drug users for example, too. The fact is, the way that justice is executed in this country needs to be re-thought for everyone.

Edit: I just wanted to add to this. The key to a better outcome is greater kindness. Kindness to others and kindness to ourselves. There will always be foolish people like Swartz's prosecutor or the people at MIT. But in this technological age, in first-world countries, our immediate needs are usually taken care of. The things that make a true difference is kindness. The kindness of mentors, the kindness of friends and lovers, the kindness of strangers. Swartz's prosecutor could have been more kind. Even Swartz, I think it could be said, could have been kinder to himself, loving himself and taking more caution for himself instead of placing himself in such peril. We all need to be kind to others and ourselves as much as we can, without putting ourselves in danger. Sometimes a little danger is what it takes to change things, true. But kindness is what we all need more of in this age and what, I think, we truly desire. RIP Aaron.

<comment><USER11> The vast majority of people will never experience the harshness of the US justice system, except those that chance or circumstance chooses. That really sucks, because how is anything supposed to change for the better if there isn't the awareness and outcry against the unfairness of the system?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control. I die free."_

That is a sad and powerful statement.

<comment><USER13> It is a testament to how control of this country has been completely wrested from the hands of the middle class since the 60s and 70s and taken over by megacorporations, the military-industrial complex, and the ultrawealthy. I recently read about this phenomenon in the book _Who Stole the American Dream?_ , by Hedrick Smith[0]. I highly recommend it.

The first signs of change appeared in the 2012 election, as the young people voted for marijuana legalization (and gay marriage) in two states and the hundreds of millions spent by the wealthy on campaign ads (enabled by the Citizens United ruling) failed to produce material results. Unfortunately, it appears that the older generations' viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.

0: [http://www.amazon.com/Who-Stole-American-Dream- ebook/dp/B007...](http://www.amazon.com/Who-Stole-American-Dream- ebook/dp/B007MEWAX2)

<comment><USER14> Well I mean the guy commited crimes and entered private systems. Its not like he is innocent. Are you saying you want it to be legal to hack into any random system in the world ? (that would remove all the fun of hacking)

PS: And I have done some hacking, stolen some files, financial information a long time ago, but I agree that it is highly illegal and should be punished and I do regret my actions. Thankfully I stopped before it was too late

<comment><USER15> >highly illegal

This is the problem. It should be "illegal" but not "highly illegal" -- the penalties should be along the lines of trespass, e.g. 30 days in jail or a $1000 fine, not 30 years in prison and a million dollar fine.

More than that, the crimes need to be defined with actual specificity. Read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act sometime if you want to scare yourself. It's preposterously vague. How about we repeal that in its entirety and defer to the laws that prohibit the actual bad stuff, like fraud, identity theft, misappropriation of trade secrets, etc.

If all you do is get root on a server and then leave, the penalty should be a $5 fine and a stern warning, and the same penalty for the "victim" who put an insecure server on the internet.

<comment><USER16> Not to go too far off track here - but should I get a penalty for not locking my door at home?

<comment><USER15> OK, forget the fine then, we'll just go with the stern warning.

The point is that they should both get the proverbial slap on the wrist -- the person who breaks in should be chastised but hasn't caused any real harm and the person who allowed it to happen should endeavor to be more careful and not redirect responsibility for something trivially harmful that they could have themselves prevented if they deemed it worthy of the required effort.

<comment><USER16> So, what your are saying, is that I shouldn't be penalized if I don't lock my door at home, but I have no basis to complain if someone comes into my house, snoops around, looks in drawers, and then leaves without damaging anything.

I'm actually ambivalent about this, but I'm always intrigued as to whether people's sense of "Protect yourself on the internet or you deserve what you get" translates to "Protect yourself at home, or you deserve to be burgled".

Indeed - one could take it so far as, "Protect yourself with a weapon late at night/in your home, or you deserve to be beaten/mugged/etc..." - but, in general, we recognize the black and white line somewhere between "ssh server" and "put in hospital with contusions" - I think the "snooping around my house with unlocked door" is the gray area.

<comment><USER15> I think there is also an argument that the internet is different, both because pretty good security is reasonably within reach for the typical server operator (unlike the cost of e.g. vault-quality doors and walls in a home), and because your government _can't_ protect you from the wider internet because most of it is outside of its jurisdiction.

In that situation having a bunch of mostly harmless curious kids banging around creating antibodies in the system is probably a net positive, so that you find out your security is broken when some kid (who isn't trying to avoid detection and steal your trade secrets) is the one who opens your eyes to the vulnerability instead of the eye opener being a Chinese company selling your secret formula for near-cost on the world market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Our government used to hire the brilliant minds who taught us about our security flaws. See here for RTM: [http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/08/us/living-with-the- compute...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/08/us/living-with-the-computer- whiz-kids.html)

Even Sean Parker of Napster, Facebook, and now Spotify glory was offered a job when he was younger. Somehow something changed in the past 10 years.

<comment><USER18> And imagine the world if Jobs and Wozniak had been hounded by federal prosecutors...

<comment><USER19> I read an article today which pointed out how Feynman went around cracking safes during the Manhattan Project. Something fundamental has changed in the society ... Imagine the present if people like Jobs/Woz would have been locked up for phone phreaking.

<comment><USER20> If you're interested in reading more about it, his shenanigans are told in further detail in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!"

[http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious- Char...](http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious- Character/dp/0393316041/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem I have with the justice system in cases like this is that there are curious people, they will have, probe, poke, tickle, whatever systems are available. The justice system, as mentioned, only sees those making these "intrusions" in black and white terms -- criminals.

In the case linked, "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems"...This is bullshit. First off, you should have sufficient redundancy in your internal systems, especially for life critical code, that an intrusion affects the front line, not things like your source repository. Further, you should have regular backups and checkpoints -- checksums, etc. to be able to compare and identify anything compromised.

Laws to guard against lazy employees should not be allowed.

A bogus case.

<comment><USER22> She shouldn't have been walking down that dark alley at that time anyway.

<comment><USER23> I sincerely hope that you didn't post this analogy sincerely believing it, as the two are diametrically opposed.

<comment><USER22> It absolutely was sincere. I'm not sure why you think they are "diametrically opposed". In both cases it is victim blaming.

<comment><USER23> Except that what grandparent was pointing out what not a case of victim blaming at all; rather, that the response was completely disproportionate to the act.

If you have a really nice sports car and I open the hood to see what engine it has and how it works, yes, I am in the wrong for not asking your permission first. However, if you then try to sue me for $100k because you claim that you had to have expensive maintenance done, you had to get the entire car diagnosed and $20k of repair done, etc. then you are clearly responding in an inappropriate manner.

That's what the whole "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems" is about.

I hope you see now how that is very much different from the "she was asking for it" kind of BS.

<comment><USER24> Securing top-secret facility after a beak-in (where we know keyloggers and such were installed) is a bit more expensive than popping the hood of the car. At minimum, whole OS and all software packages have to be reinstalled from known clean media, and whole software stack needs to be recreated from scratch, without using backups (which could be compromised too). If you're properly paranoid, add new hardware too (most of the current hardware is programmable at some level, i.e. needs to be replaced after a breakin). And then you need to invalidate all passwords on all the systems and have everybody to reset their passwords. And not only user login passwords - <USER2> router passwords, domain passwords, service logins, everything.

I can easily see how such work can take, for multiple systems, several weeks and 41K is not an outrageous sum for completely recreating the system. Especially when something controlling life-preserving equipment is involved - which means additional testing, etc. - it's not a website that you can just push into production and if some page glitches the user would tell you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We cannot see into Aaron's thoughts of course but if I had to guess, maybe he thought he was going to be Bradley Manning-inged which might drive anyone over the edge.

Stripped naked and thrown into a cell "for his protection" (he got a whopping 100 days off his 30 years to life sentence for that abuse btw, so that will teach the people that did that right?)

Perhaps we should use this energy to help the living Bradley Manning in protest as it does little to help Aaron or his loved ones now.

<comment><USER26> Yes, but spread the net wider. Manning isnt the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article does not mention that the real J.J. in the TJX case could have been '7 foot tall' Stephen Watt, a former Morgan Stanley employee with the aliases 'Jim Jones' and 'Unix Terrorist'

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/watt/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone who argues for any punishment, should first have experienced a sample of the same treatment. How can someone who doesn't know what it means and feels to live through a punishment wish to inflict it upon others. Seems like the behavior of a beast.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great interview of Jonathan James with Frontline: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interv...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interviews/anon.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure we should glorify Jonathan James or even compare him to Aaron Swartz. His "hacking" of the DoD was undeniably illegal, and his sentencing seemed appropriate for his actions. We will never know if he was innocent or not of the TJX case. It's tragic that he killed himself, but, at least to me, his actions seemed on the whole more malicious than Swartz's ever was.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I'm not sure we should glorify Jonathan James or even compare him to Aaron Swartz."

I just posted the Wiki article in no way did I glorify him. However, to suggest I am in error to even compare his story to Aaron's is well....an error.

"His "hacking" of the DoD was undeniably illegal, and his sentencing seemed appropriate for his actions."

Illegal is an absolute term, an act is either illegal or not, there are not degrees such as "undeniably illegal." As to your observation that the sentence was appropriate, keep in mind that James was 15 at the time of his alleged hacking and he was the first minor tried by the US federal government. Further, the federal prosecutors (Janet Reno, in particular) used James story as a political gain by threatening James with adult charges carrying more than 10 years, all so they could "prove the Justice Department is willing to get tough on juveniles offenders accused of cyber crime." So James took a plea deal and at 16 was on 6 month house arrest and probation to 18 and he had to stop using computers for recreational use, shit even drunk drivers can drive again.

"It's tragic that he killed himself, but, at least to me, his actions seemed on the whole more malicious than Swartz's ever was."

I only want to address this as devil's advocate, but in terms of James' act being malicious, James acquired $1.7 million in NASA software, he did publish it or sell it, rather he did it to learn more coding. Further, he said he only pursued his exploits because he wanted to explore, which seems to be the very opposite of malicious, after all anyone who was malicious and in control of the Space Stations life sustaining systems could surely have caused more damage than copying the code if they were truly malicious. Whereas Aaron breached a system and copied information with the intent to redistribute it in mass to the detriment of the system itself, which fits the very definition of malice. I am in no way justifying anyone's actions and condemning another's actions, simply highlighting that your word choice of malicious really does not seem fitting for James as much as curious, whereas Aaron intended to destroy a system albeit one that many feel unethically controlled the flow of knowledge which should otherwise be open and free. Besides assuming Aaron did have intent and malice toward the system, is he any more legally culpable than say someone who takes bread to feed the hungry where they are otherwise being starved?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_%28hacker%29>

</comment><comment><USER32> How is this on the front page? This isn't recent or relevant to anything.

<comment><USER33> The circumstances of Jonathan James's death are very similar to the death of Aaron Swartz...

<comment><USER34> They sure are but I think the most significant part is the depression. Mental health is an unspoken issue in the industry.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DJ in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://lukeandersen.github.io/reactor <comment><USER2> very, very cool but calling something music-related "Reacktor" is a really good way to get a nastygram from Native Instruments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, you can obviously see where my inspiration came from ;) I'll look at naming it and moving it to it's own host soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a DJ, a few requests on an amazing start:

\- sort by Key \- sort by BPM \- move the song dragging it (need to line up by the kick) \- cue points

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking into bpm detection and cue points are on each player (they just might be hidden on a small screen). Will look into key and dragging the waveform.

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any leads on bpm detection? I tried doing it in Python a while ago for a project and the library I used was always 5-10bpm off...

<comment><USER5> There was a nice article on the beatport tech blog. I didn't manage to find it when I searched yesterday. Basically what they suggested was applying a low pass filter to isolate the base drums, then count the most common intervals between peaks (basically some kind of transformation) and then reconstruct the BPM from there by applying a range from 80-160 or similar. Hope this gives you a rough idea.

I implemented and tested it and it worked quite well with electronic music.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! Was it this one? [http://web.archive.org/web/20160304012151/http://tech.beatpo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160304012151/http://tech.beatport.com/2014/web- audio/beat-detection-using-web-audio/)

(no longer on the beatport site; tech.beatport doesn't seem to exist any more and the current beatport blog starts at 2015)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's the one, I was looking at this post that uses Spotify and echonest too [https://jmperezperez.com/bpm-detection- javascript/](https://jmperezperez.com/bpm-detection-javascript/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't seem to work in Firefox.

<comment><USER8> Same for me, can't get it to work :-(

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh bugger, what version of Firefox and OS are you using? I admit I only built it with Chrome but I did test it last night on Firefox osx and it was working ok.

<comment><USER7> Latest Firefox on OSX. Song from A plays but no sound ever comes from B despite adjusting faders. I tried it in Chrome and it works great there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! I hacked the exact same thing a while ago. Also with soundcloud integration (and some filters and stuff). I'll take a peek at the code when i get to my computer in the next days. Maybe there is something where i could contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, keep me posted.

<comment><USER5> Just checked, your repo seems to be private. (or I'm a bit blind :))

Here is the link to what I hacked back then: [https://github.com/letier/boombox](https://github.com/letier/boombox)

I'm planning on doing a complete rewrite, when I finally find the time. This thing was build pretty quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's really cool.

Yeah, sorry the repo is private until I get it cleaned up a bit. This has been built quite quickly as well ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had fun with this. I found it kind of hard to mix without auto sync. Sorting by key/BPM will be a good feature.

</comment><comment><USER10> amazing work, I loved playing with it. I'm a DJ nub tho :( would be really cool to have a very quick tooltip getting started mixing the first song kind of thing

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, good point. I want to try and stay away from sync capabilities but it would be a great idea to show how to beat match using the app. Thanks.

<comment><USER11> this is pretty great man! i've been playing with it for a couple hours now. my only complaint is that it's pretty hard to time the drop since there seems to be some lag between when i click and when the track starts playing (could just be my computer though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the playlist somewhere on soundcloud? I really liked it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is very cool! I wish I would know how to be a DJ. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Link for source code?

</comment><comment><USER15> Really cool, but we need the crossfader. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's coming soon, I just need to fix the logic for controlling the volume faders and the crossfader together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is incredible!!

</comment><comment><USER17> why is the crossfader disabled?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, haven't had a chance to build it yet

<comment><USER18> [https://gist.github.com/scneptune/7498000](https://gist.github.com/scneptune/7498000)</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Berners-Lee tweets onstage from the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/228960085672599552

<comment><USER2> And he appeared there, sitting at a desk with a NeXT Cube, keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

(Though I think the monitor was a prop, as it appeared to be glowing bright yellow, which a bluish greyscale monitor shouldn't do. It was probably a shell with a light inside, to illuminate him and act as a stadium-visible version of monitor illumination.)</comment>