Ask a real musician: opera singer dissects top 5 metal singers - <AUTHOR> http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/07/ask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers/ <comment><USER2> I teach music for a living (theory/voice), and I have to say, I feel like this validates a lot of my techniques when working with students.

Virtually all of my students want to sing pop/rock/etc. music when they first come in. My usual approach is to agree to work primarily in the genre of their choice, but to have _some_ "classical" training as well. I largely due this in order to promote healthy singing, whatever the genre, so that no matter what kind of music they want to sing, they are at least not harming their voices.

Notice that almost all of Friedlander's comments focus on the relaxation of the vocal mechanism ("Like the first singer, he performs with perfect legato, clear diction, and a consistent, organic vibrancy. He arranges his resonance space to create a shallow snarl without setting up any resistance for his breath", etc). I've found that, above all, some classical training seems to reinforce this, allowing students to create resonance rather than merely screaming, to avoid straining at the edge of their ranges, and to approach all genres with a strong grasp of basic music skills. Of course, all of this also improves their basic technique immensely-- pitch, diction, and aural skills are usually highly improved as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi guys - I run the site, and indeed HN caused a temporary meltdown (thanks for the link!) As of 9pm EST Aug. 23, it's back up, so feel free to visit, comment, etc. Again, thanks for the flattering mention!

<comment><USER4> Will the sound files be back? I'm getting a 'file not found'.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I just tested them (9:20AM EST 8/24) and they work fine. What's probably happening is that the site is shutting down processes (including audio streaming) as it gets overloaded (wow, there are lots of you guys!). But the site is also resetting itself in response to overloading, so if the site or any of its processes are down, just wait a few minutes to see if they're back online. Thanks for the link and the interesting discussion here! Due to popular demand, there will be a sequel at some point featuring other metal singers, including possibly ones mentioned here.

<comment><USER5> If you liked Rob Halford, then Geoff Tate from Queensryche should be a real treat. Anything from Operation Mindcrime would be worth a listen.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I wish Geoff Tate had been one of the singers reviewed in that article. It would have been interesting to see what she had to say about him. Tate has - from this layperson's perspective - an amazing voice.

<comment><USER5> "Suite Sister Mary" still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great stuff. I can't get over her reaction to Black Sabbath's 1970 song "War Pigs"...

Initial reaction: "Fourth guy is just bad throaty singing… Made my throat tight to listen to him. How long did his career last?"

<comment><USER8> haha, yeah. It was the only song I could even stand to listen to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Page seems dead; here's the Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.invisibleoranges.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fask- a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers%2F)

This was interesting. I wonder how much she was reaching to find something positive to say, because I would have though that, but for Dickinson, they all are rough. But then, I don't have any formal training or expertise myself.

I'd like to hear a real expert's comments on modern metal virtuosos, like Warrell Dane or Roy Khan. Anybody with real knowledge care to venture an opinion?

</comment><comment><USER10> I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5", but that's actually pretty okay, although I wonder how King Diamond got in there. Not the one known for his singing, and I don't think he's in the best-selling or longest- running band. But it was a different style, and one that at least contains a bit more than sheer endurance (c.f. most growlers).

I was surprised at the high marks Dickenson got. Not that I don't hold him in high esteem personally, but he's the only one where I know of a direct connection to opera singing. It must've been a Freddy Mercury tribute, where he sang Bohemian Rhapsody with Montserrat Cabbalé. And as opposed to her previous duet with Freddy ("Barcelona"), those voices didn't mesh at all.

Really nice article, I always thought that trained opera singers tend to look down upon those doing less "serious" work. Just shows you that there's more than one way to skin a cat, which is why this actually fits nicely into HN.

<comment><USER11> _I was a bit scared about what she'd consider the "top 5"_

She didn't rate them as "top 5". She got sent 5 unlabeled samples by the OP and was asked to assess their quality.

<comment><USER10> Well, I couldn't know that before I clicked. The headline here just said "top 5".

<comment><USER12> Can anyone _please_ let me know their reasons for downvoting this comment?

Lately I've seen a lot of what appears to be mindless pile-on downvoting of perfectly on-topic, polite, informative comments. It is making me wonder if there's some bot behaviour going on, or if something in the site's comment system is broken.

<comment><USER13> I didn't vote on the comment, but I can imagine it was downvoted for slightly rude tone "Well, I couldn't know that" and claiming not to read the article but only "the headline".

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the answer.

I must have read it in a different light then; to me it looked like a complaint about a misleading submission headline.

<comment><USER10> Thank you, that was what I actually meant. When I saw the headline here regarding the "top 5", I didn't know if my inner fanboy could handle e.g. having the singer of Slipknot amongst that set. I thought that my initial comment was evidence enough that I did RTFA.

And I actually inserted the "Well" to make it sound less harsh, but apparently that made it look a bit arrogant to a few people. The nuances of written language…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really great. I just had to fill my Spotify queue with Iron Maiden and try to sing along. Singing is one of those skills I really regret not having, but I sing anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> The site seems to be overloaded though, a HN induced meltdown?

</comment><comment><USER16> interesting article, would love to see more like this! for example, i'd be curious to hear her take on phil anselmo.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know much about Heavy Metal, but this gave me a strong urge to buy a couple of these albums :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Wonder what she'd say about Falconer.

<comment><USER19> Seconded. On the other extreme, I wonder what she'd say about Manowar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Jack Black should be in the conversation somewhere. The dude doesn't even need a microphone.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hm, yeah in music there aren't any rules, putting a 'real' musician to give her opinion should be considered a just for fun thing.

<comment><USER22> Yes and anyone can write poetry too.

There are always 'rules' to any real discipline. If you aren't skilled in something then of course we say 'he is a natural'. But if you go up to talk to a 'natural' you always find that they worked at it an incredible amount.

Fun read either way though. Her comments on Ozzie were the most surprising to me.

<comment><USER23> I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.

<comment><USER24> Alexander Pope disagreed:

"True ease of writing comes through art, not chance,

As he moves best who learns the steps of dance,

'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence,

The sound must seem an echo of the sense"

Learn the rules, then maybe break them.

<comment><USER25> Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.

<comment><USER23> I don't think you need to master the rules before you can break them, you certainly need to be aware of the rules though! How else would you even know you are breaking them?

<comment><USER26> You don't need to be aware of the rules. You might not even care whether or not you're breaking them.

<comment><USER27> By "The Rules" I think we mean an accumulation of techniques and practices developed and refined by many people over time because they have proved useful. If one has any interest at all in the ones art one will surely be aware of its history and of what others have done. How else does one become interested in the first place? In this respect some awareness of this heritage seems to me to be unavoidable.

<comment><USER28> It doesn't necessarily have to go back centuries, though. If you're doing rock, you might be intimately familiar with the past 50 years of rock, punk, metal, post-punk, grunge, etc., without having a clue about opera.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Test Pad - <AUTHOR> http://etherpad.com/FQMBcRK9x2

<comment><USER3> In that document, it says "Edits to the document are represented as mathematical functions that can be applied in any order, and have other special properties that make this realtime"

When the shutdown notice came a few days ago, and thoughts of trying to write a replacement were running through my head, I ran to "DARCS theory of patches" ( [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Understanding_darcs/Patch_theor...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Understanding_darcs/Patch_theory) ) which sounds like that.

Consider EtherPad a load of people keeping local DVCS repositories (of 1 file) and merging them on a regular basis - every second, or every few key presses, say.

You would get: add/changing lines in separate places (fairly easy - <USER2> line numbers). Changes in the same place (no technical solution to which outcome was intended, so pick one method of resolution that is at least predictable - e.g. order the contributors by order of who joined earliest and do what the earliest joiner did. If they delete a sentence someone else is editing then it gets deleted. If they edit a sentence and someone else deletes it, it's kept with the edit). If you're working together instead of trying to break it that seems like it would give a workable system.

If you stored the patches instead of just applying them, you'd then get the basis for the time slider system too.

Still, there must be more to it than that - and more to making it nice too (but I didn't find out what since they reopened it and plan to open source it).</comment>


The STEM Crisis Is a Myth - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth

<comment><USER2> If you are only looking and middle and upper class educated students in America. The poor urban educated students are not given much in terms of STEM. My local school district gives no regular science class for K-5th grade students.

<comment><USER3> The 'no regular science class' is actually a indicator of adherence to Common Core. Everything is either Math instruction or English Language Arts (ELA). Social Studies and Science are generally taught as units of ELA and not subjects of their own until Middle School.

That said, STEM fields have historically sucked at diversity and outreach to disadvantaged populations. It's hard to do science with no budget for supplies. It's getting better(tm) with programs like FIRST.

<comment><USER2> Until people organize and fight the systematic (unintentional I believe) dumbing down of poor urban students and see it as a form of racism which propels inequality nothing is really going to change.

This wasn't due to Common Core it is due to curriculum being mirrored by Standardized Testing.</comment></comment></comment>


Visualization as deliberate practice for programming - <AUTHOR> http://chadfowler.com/2003/06/08/code-kata-visualization.html <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone experimented with this or something similar? I know this is an old article, but it's a novel, potentially interesting practice.</comment>


Lets move this issue forward: gender inequality in tech workplaces... - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/07/women-offered-perks-job-ad

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to see good examples of how others have recruited, and not ended up with near-100% male developer employees.</comment>


Do you like "Monster Smash", the name of my whack-a-mole style iphone game? - <AUTHOR>

Hello!
I want to change the name of my whack-a-mole style iPhone game from "Thick Lips" to "Monster Smash". The official homepage of the game is at here: http://thicklips.eddyl.com
"Thick Lips" is not descriptive enough and sounds like it might be a racist slur against black (African) people.
I am a Chinese living in Hong Kong, and may not be familiar with American culture. So please advice me if "Monster Smash" has some special meaning in American culture.
In addition, other alternatives are "Smash the Monster", "Monster Smack", "Smash the Monster", "Hit the Monster", "Punch the Monster".
Thanks for your advice! <comment><AUTHOR> A follow up: How about "Tap the Monster"?

"Tap" is a easier vocabulary that more Chinese (who are not good in English) understands, comparing to "Smash".</comment>


SOPA and PIPA return as toilet paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/26659043/print-the-sopa-and-pipa-bills-on-toilet-paper <comment><USER2> Don't forget to send Lamar Smith some free samples. He definitely earned them.</comment>


Sandboxie's source code has been released - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/10/sandboxie-source-code/ <comment><USER2> Sandboxie was excellent and rather ahead of its time looking at it from this container age; I always found it very effective.</comment>


Ask HN: Does knowing the history of a programming language or technology matter? - <AUTHOR> I had a disagreement with an experienced colleague today. I argued that following the changes and developments of a particular technology or language and learning about their history if you are new to them is helpful. It can give you an idea about why the language changed and for what reasons and the direction it was or is trying to move toward. He completely disagreed with me and asked me to name one example of where knowing about a change in the language was beneficial. I gave my answer but it didn't seem to convince him. What does HN think? <comment><USER2> _Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it._

       --George Santayana, The Life of Reason.

_The past is never dead. It 's not even past._

       --William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Supporting older browsers.

It is impossible to properly support older browsers, which your users _will_ be using whether you think they will or not, without knowing a good history of CSS, HTML, and Javascript such that you know what browser had what bug with what feature and what the expected behavior will be for that browser such that you have fallbacks or workarounds in place to support that browser.

Not a major problem if you only support evergreen browsers - but you will be incapable of supporting older browsers without being familiar with the history.

Or for Javascript - ES6 code could make your code far more maintainable, lowering your technical debt, but you'll need to transpile it down to ES5 to work in current browsers. So knowing _where_ the language is heading is important.

Not all languages/software maintain backward compatibility. What if you are using an API that is going to undergo a major change and completely break everything you are doing? Being able to plan for that change and update your API could be the difference between your business shuttering or remaining operational.

</comment><comment><USER4> We are a product of our history - and the same goes with the community around any given technology, not to mention the technology itself. Understanding that history helps you to understand the mindset of the people who created the technology and why and how they designed it. Understanding that will in turn enable you to appreciate and utilize the strengths and weaknesses of said technology better.

One good example: the Unix philosophy. Unix originated back in the 70s, with slow, expensive time-sharing computers, many of which still used printing teletypes. Any text output was expensive in that it used ink and paper and took a long time. Therefore the principle of silence was born: if a program doesn't need to say anything, it shouldn't. See also the principles of smallness and modularity - each program should do one (and only one) thing well, but it should be easy to combine different programs to suit one's needs. You simply couldn't run any very large programs back then, and later on it turned out that chaining several together was actually a pretty good design principle anyway. (For more details, see ESR's "The Art of Unix Programming".) Knowing this history will help one appreciate the philosophy, understanding the philosophy will help one write good programs for that context.

Second example: take the Python language. Its community places a prime on "pythonicness" ([http://blog.startifact.com/posts/older/what-is- pythonic.html](http://blog.startifact.com/posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html)), a set of guidelines/rules/principles that strongly influence the evolution of the language. Knowing what is and what is not pythonic helps one write better, cleaner Python code, as it enables one to use the language as it is intended.

tl;dr: knowing the history and culture surrounding a technology enables you to use it as it was intended

</comment><comment><USER5> In a lot of languages there is several different ways to do seemingly the same thing, and it often helps knowing the history to understand why they got added but also why they got replaced.

Concurrency in C#/.Net is a good example. There is three[0] or more ways of doing concurrency, and without understanding the history, it seemingly doesn't make sense. C++ is another good example, in particular in C++14, it is important to understand C++11 to port code, but also understand why some things are done differently in C++14 (rather than just knowing that they simply are).

[0] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh156548%28v=vs.110...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/hh156548%28v=vs.110%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396)

</comment><comment><USER6> When debugging environment-specific issues, knowing the recent changes to a language can save you a lot of time.

There have been many times (in my experience) where a project's production, staging, and localhost environments may be running slightly different versions of a language/interpreter. When something goes wrong somewhere, being able to recall the unique properties / idiosyncrasies of their environment can help you debug very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER7> It may be hard to come up with a direct and specific scenario that would convince your colleague, but I believe the more you know about a language, the more "enlightened" you become on it and are ultimately (albeit indirectly) better at it in the grand scheme.

</comment><comment><USER8> uh, yeah? duh? In a language like ruby where there is frequent changes, its necessary to know where things are coming from and where they're going. The community itself is learning about what is and what is not a good idea, and its of course wise to learn that knowledge as well.

Now, is it important to know the nitty gritty details of who created the language and in who's garage? I think that is more trivia. But how the language itself has evolved is important to understand.</comment>


Kim Stanley Robinson still betting on utopia - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/04/3002670.htm

<comment><USER2> The audio recording of that speech is available: [http://garykemble.posterous.com/audio-kim-stanley- robinson-g...](http://garykemble.posterous.com/audio-kim-stanley-robinson- guest-of-honour-sp)</comment>


NHS cyber-security hero Marcus Hutchins arrested in US - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40820837 <comment><USER2> You can find ongoing development on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/Malwareunicorn](https://twitter.com/Malwareunicorn)

[https://twitter.com/MabbsSec](https://twitter.com/MabbsSec)

The latter user (@MabbsSec) is trying to get legal representation for him, being a citizen of the U.K.</comment>


Way to protect the US electrical grid is with open source - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-best-way-to-protect-the-us-electrical-grid-is-with-open-source/ <comment><USER2> items like transformers and high voltage circuit breakers that don't have any smarts to hack. The interface is 3 wires in, 3 wires out, and for a circuit breaker one wire for a signal to trip and one wire for a signal to close.

The instruments to monitor temperatures and gas pressures usually supply an analog signal to a controller.

The article seems to confuse the heavy items made of metal with the controllers.

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories [http://www.selinc.com](http://www.selinc.com) designs and manufactures pretty much all of the controllers and other smart stuff you could ever want for the grid in Washington state, and their gear is second to none.

Whatever poor guy at SEL has ground through all the math to implement the algorithms to protect generators, motors, and transmission lines needs to get paid which is going to be difficult if the product is "open source".

Whatever smart grid shit China has i'm Pretty sure we don't want.</comment>


Wikipedia: Terminal Event Management Policy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Management_Policy <comment><USER2> "The datastream will include a specially designed primer, or set of simple scientific principles and data that would be common to all extraterrestrial intelligences, providing a common base of reference to enable those receiving the signal to commence the mammoth task of decoding the encyclopedia. /The message will be accompanied by a short video message by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and images required for the re-creation of fundraiser banners/" (emphasis mine)

Seems like they're very serious about their banners, glad that gift to the world has a chance of living on in the lives of extraterrestrials in the case of our inevitable demise!

<comment><USER3> Hardly serious, read the first paragraph on the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title sounds like an SCP entry on a K-class scenario.</comment>


Tech Insider – Google's Instant Apps Hit a New Milestone - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-instant-apps-hit-a-new-milestone-2017-8/?r=AU&IR=T <comment><AUTHOR> I see this as a HUGE privacy risk.. Google will have access to Everything..

Yet another item in Googles updates I have to "uncheck" to ensure only apps on my phone have access to my data.

If this follows to its ultimate conclusion, I bet Google wants ALL apps only in its cloud so it has total access to ALL of your personal information.</comment>