ZCash (formerly Zerocash/Zerocoin) technology preview - <AUTHOR> https://z.cash/blog/helloworld.html <comment><USER2> Actually, zerocash is significantly different than other altcoins, in that it replaces digital signatures with zero knowledge proofs. It's technically very interesting, and seems like a believable next direction for Bitcoiners. The other direction would be some variant of ethereum.

If you don't believe that a general purpose one-size-fits-all blockchain technology can be easily and safely created, but you would prefer more privacy and security, Zcash is a frankly compelling idea, and deserves a look.

Monero uses a different scheme (ring signatures, essentially mixing in fake and real digital signatures) for privacy. To my knowledge, they don't duplicate the 'blinding' type of hiding about bucket recipients and ownership that zcash does.

Note also that BIP47 and the like are trying to add some of these privacy features into Bitcoin core, so there's lots of angles on improved privacy.

<comment><USER3> Two questions I've yet to receive answers on:

\- my laptop is stolen in a compromised state (eg logged on, nothing left encrypted); can anyone trace my transactions?

\- I've read suggestions that Zcash themselves can deanonymize every transaction, thanks to generating the initial "Genesis" block. Is that roughly right? (Ignoring obfuscation techniques like getting many other people to create separate signatures)

I'm definitely concerned that this comes with a lot of asterisks next to its claims.

<comment><USER2> 1) Laptop stolen, unlocked, you never encrypted anything: yep, you're hosed as far as I know. How else would your wallet be able to tell you a balance?

2) The creation of the genesis block involves a trust 'game' of sorts, in which many participants are asked to pick a number. The statement from zcash, which a better cryptographer than me could verify, is that only one of the participants need be trustworthy in order to make this step safe.

I think anyone can participate in the genesis block creation, so you may be just who they need to get the genesis block in good shape. :)

On a different note, it would take a juvenile and short-sighted thinker to _want_ to be able to deanonymize the transactions; not that those people don't exist, but most rational adults would not wish to be emotionally and personally liable in some way for knowing the identities of the money launderers, child pornographers and others who will undoubtedly be drawn to a technology like this.

<comment><USER4> Ah, two of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse rear their ugly heads:

8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" [...] like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles.

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

<comment><USER5> I think this moral panic (for lack of a better term) is omnipresent because it's actually true to some degree. You can't seriously claim these groups wouldn't benefit from anonymous, secure payment systems. However:

\- They already have anonymous, secure payment systems (cash, drugs, jewels, shell companies, etc)

\- The cat is out of the bag, so they're going to have it anyway

\- These proverbial Horsement do more than just move money around; there's still plenty of room for detective work.

Splitting the atom gave us nuclear power, viable cancer treatment, smoke detectors, and also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the threat of radiological terrorism. The proverbial sword is always double-edged.

To make an actual point: I think we'd do well as a community to acknowledge the degree of truth these moral panics hold, because I suspect we frustrate a lot of people by being dismissive of what they perceive to be an apocalyptic problem.

<comment><USER6> >These proverbial Horsement do more than just move money around; there's still plenty of room for detective work.

This. Taking away everyone's privacy because somebody might use privacy to break the law is dumb. You want to bust drug dealers? Bust them for selling drugs.

<comment><USER7> "Taking away" is interesting language. The ability to transfer money without either meeting in person (meetings can be surveilled) or generating records subject to disclosure (shell companies and laundering schemes can be deciphered through forensic accounting) is unprecedented. We've never lived in a time when people had cryptographic certainty of the secrecy of their transactions.

<comment><USER8> Cash and dead drops provide both of those properties. There are many other ways to investigate crimes. Just because the internet is new doesn't mean that human rights don't apply for this new communication medium.

<comment><USER7> Government-impervious money transfer as a human right is nebulous at best. The internet has not changed the legal or ethical status of money laundering. At best you could say it has always been a human right, but it's certainly never existed in the US or Western Europe.

Cash transactions carry substantial risk: both parties must be physically present in some place to make the deal. They can be tailed, the meeting place can be under surveillance, they can be raided, they can murder each other and run, etc. It's also impractical to deal with large amounts of cash due to the risk of robbery/theft (including civil forfeiture), and legitimate entities won't take suitcases full of cash for large purchases. Infiltrating and exfiltrating large amounts of money from the legitimate banking system is also very likely to leave traces that can be understood by sufficiently skilled/motivated forensic accountants.

Whereas flipping some bytes in the firehose of cryptographically secure bytes already coming in and out of every home is undetectable and basically risk- free.

Some much more concrete human rights are ensured through taxation: food, shelter, water, health care, police, education, national defense, etc. If you make taxation effectively optional by running a perfect, free money-laundering system, some of them may have to go.

<comment><USER8> You clearly don't understand how money laundering works or what it is. Anonymous payment systems do not make it any easier to launder money, tax offices can still figure out that you have unregistered income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> zooko-zcash Hi folks! I'm the Founder and CEO of the Zcash company. It's really great to have this much interest in a project that we just released in alpha "Technology Preview" form two weeks ago.

There are a lot of good questions in here, some of which I answered in an AMA a few days ago: [https://forum.bitcoin.com/ama-ask-me-anything/i-m-zooko- wilc...](https://forum.bitcoin.com/ama-ask-me-anything/i-m-zooko-wilcox-ceo- of-the-zcash-company-ask-me-anything-t5413.html)

I can't wait to release the next iteration of the Zcash software, in — fingers crossed — just a couple of weeks. We'll continue to have lots of blog posts and technical discussions from us along the way. This is only the beginning!

<comment><USER9> Hi Zooko,

Has there been any serious discussion about incorporating the results of PQCRYPTO in your protocol so Zcash is still secure and viable (at >= 2^128 security level) after the development of practical quantum computers?

[http://pqcrypto.eu.org](http://pqcrypto.eu.org)

<comment><USER10> Hi, I'm one of the ZCash scientists: Section 8.1 in the full paper describes how to get anonymity that survives quantum computers. ([http://zerocash- project.org/media/pdf/zerocash-extended-2014...](http://zerocash- project.org/media/pdf/zerocash-extended-20140518.pdf)).

The zero-knowledge proof itself offers statistical privacy in the face of unbounded (so more powerful than quantum) attackers. So surprisingly, you are mostly fine. But you would need to take two steps to protect yourself. First, you have to use each zcash address only once.

Second, you need to use a post quantum secure means of notifying the recipient they got a transaction and of the coin commitment openings. The built in mechanism in ZCash, which posts a ciphertext to the blockchain encrypted under the recipients public key is standard off the shelf public key cryptography. It's efficient, but is of course not post quantum secure. Nothing requires that you use this mechanism, however. You can always post a garbage ciphertext and inform the recipient some other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For anyone interested in how Zcash (formely Zerocoin) works and who understands German, I've written my Bachelor thesis about it in 2013: [http://www.math.uni- bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grun...](http://www.math.uni- bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grundlagen%20von%20Bitcoin.pdf) (see Part IV)

<comment><USER12> Note that the Anonymity section of this describes Zerocoin. Zcash is an implementation of Zerocash which is a later and more efficient, but cryptographically quite different protocol (by the same and additional authors).

<comment><USER11> Oh didn't know that! Thanks :) I thought that Zcash was just a new name ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> We believe that privacy strengthens social ties and social institutions, protects societies against their enemies, and helps societies to be more peaceful and more prosperous._

It's time to have a serious conversation about whether this is actually true when it comes to _financial_ privacy.

Our society is governed by money. Money governs our production directly, and it governs our regulations indirectly since votes can be purchased. Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, but we use money that doesn't allow us to withdraw our consent without opting out of the economy entirely. Your complaints about money in politics or unstoppable violent cartels around the world are complaints about tyranny, and we should be fighting that tyranny.

Anonymous currencies go in the other direction. I'm glad people are building them, but we need to start talking about the implications of using them. Everything about our society will be decided by the people with the most money if people accept anonymous currencies. Democracy isn't possible when you can't hope to detect when influence is being purchased.

We're already most of the way there: dollars are anonymous to everyone except the governments that regulate banks. Since those governments have been purchased, those regulations can only really be used against those who haven't already purchased strong representation in the government already.

I think we need to go in the opposite direction. We need currencies that everyone can track so individuals can decide whose power they'd like to submit to. If I know someone is buying influence and I want to reject their power to do so, I can stop accepting any money they've used in that way. People accept money to influence politics because other people will accept that money. If other people stop accepting that money, it won't be possible to buy influence anymore. The people who sell their goods, services, and labor will set the rules by their decisions about what money to accept. Wealth won't govern our society, production will.

This is merit capitalism. I think it's closer to the world we want to live in. I hope you'll join me in reconsidering whether financial privacy is actually a good thing.

[http://meritcapitalism.com/](http://meritcapitalism.com/)

<comment><USER14> That's... actually a really interesting idea, but you have to consider who you're building the system for - governments, or normal everyday people?

There is a principle, that I think has basically been proven at this point, if not academically:

A: In any non-optional system used by n people, the bad actors using that system are < n/2 (read: not a majority)

B: It is impossible to prevent bad actors from misusing any system.

C: Trying too hard means the system necessarily damages good actors.

Therefore:

D: Any system that punishes bad participants more than it helps non-bad participants is degenerate.

Bitcoin can be seen as a rejection of a system suffering from C. For perfectly legitimate businesses and people, sending money is an unmitigated pain in the ass, substantial bites taken by middlemen, arbitrary negative action (c.f. civil forfeiture, paypal freezes) and so on. Bitcoin solves almost all of those problems, but makes lives easier for the bad actors too (but not enough that it substantially increases corruption in the world - bad actors gonna bad act)

Now, if your hypothetical system is _strictly_ opt-in, perhaps with social pressure for politicians and such to use it, then I'd have no trouble with it. Were it to become the de facto currency, on the other hand, the problems we have with government overreach and data mining just become a _lot_ worse.

If we accept B as true, then it makes more sense to design for the case of innocent, law abiding people first, out of fear of harming them due to C.

Put another way, I'm a lot more worried about government misusing things under color of law, than I am worried about government corruption. At least regular people can oppose the second one in good faith, while the first one always comes with the "it's legal, so?" baggage.

<comment><USER13> It's strictly opt-in, but you won't be able to buy anything if everyone else requires auditable money and you don't want to opt-in. The more people who adopt it, the less tenable it is to stay out.

Governments are people. People who use this system nefariously can be sanctioned by refusing to accept money they've touched. We're so afraid of governments misusing their power because our checks and balances have failed miserably, but it's not so bad that anyone wants to use the ultimate fallback of revolution. Merit capitalism is a check that the people control directly. People don't need to revolt to reclaim power anymore.

<comment><USER14> You're going to have to convince people that adopting this tool is better for them than what they have now for it to stand a chance of adoption.

From a purely selfish standpoint, I would not want to use this system, because I don't want advertisers, insurance companies, malcontents, stalkers, debt collectors, busybodies, three-letter-agencies, data brokers, or any other random with an internet connection to know that I spent money at a hypothetical STD clinic or received money for participating in a scientific study.

This plan introduces a _huge_ number of of unknown unknowns, where right now, we've got a pretty good idea of how widespread the corruption is, the forms it generally takes, and what, if anything, we can do about it. And since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I can look backwards to see how behavioral data is abused right now, and say with _complete_ certainty that it would be abused more under this system.

No thanks.

<comment><USER13> I agree that conservatism has virtues. Change does introduce unknown unknowns. I think there's a good strategy for handling them: when people do undesirable things, sanction them.

Change is inevitable. Zcash is here, so regulation is dead. Conservatism isn't an option: we have to choose how to adapt to change. I think merit capitalism is the right choice.

Thanks for your questions! Good talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope I'm wrong, but if ZCash delivers on the technical promise the blowback from legislators and law enforcement is sure to result in a net loss of privacy for everyone. Enabling illegal profiteering from the very real pain and suffering of others almost always results in government actio (appropriately so); but also legislative over-reaching (eg. mandated sentencing legislations, zero tolerance policies, warrantless wiretapping) because ZCash's message of economic and societal benefits will be utterly lost amid stories of how the tech hurt people.

ZCash is very impressive. Brilliant even. But for those who want better privacy... elect leaders who share the concern. Donate to the EFF and ACLU. Advocate for a 'privacy czar' as a cabinet/ministerial level position.

<comment><USER16> I think many prefer non-violent direct action, for good reason. The cost to the government to spy on you is so low, cryptographically enforcing privacy is the only way to guarantee it.

<comment><USER15> If successful ZCash cryptographically guarantees more government regulation and surveillance to counter the very real and also the very irrational fears of harm anonymous payments make possible. It will have opposite the desired impact on privacy if it takes off. I want to be wrong about this, but experience tells me otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those of you concerned about pump and dump, they've specifically addressed it in a blog post [1]. And they are open sourcing a ton of stuff. But that's addressed in their blog. So to me, the lay man, it seems like they won't be doing a pump and dump. I say lay man because I'm really not qualified to assert that my statements are indeed correct.

[1] [https://z.cash/blog/funding.html](https://z.cash/blog/funding.html)

<comment><USER18> From that link I see this:

> With this approach, the founders are incentivized to support Zcash for the > long haul (at least for four years), and they have limited ability to pump- > and-dump.

I don't see how anyone can audit that statement since the transactions are encrypted [1].

[1] [https://z.cash/tech.html](https://z.cash/tech.html)

<comment><USER19> > I don't see how anyone can audit that statement since the transactions are > encrypted

Couldn't one audit the code? Provided zcash itself doesn't have 51% or more of the mining network post launch the open source code should be verifiable and needs to have some special case to route the "founder reward". Though I admit I haven't looked through the source code so I may be missing something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's some stuff on zerocash:

Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from Bitcoin: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocash:%20Decentra...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocash:%20Decentralized%20anonymous%20payments%20from%20Bitcoin%20\(extended%20version\)%20-%202014-05-18.pdf)

Zerocoin: anonymous, distributed e-cash from bitcoin: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocoin:%20anonymou...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocoin:%20anonymous%20distributed%20e-cash%20from%20bitcoin.pdf)

How to explain zero knowledge protocols to other people's children: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/How%20to%20ex...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/How%20to%20explain%20zero%20knowledge%20protocols%20to%20other%20people's%20children.pdf)

GGPR paper, NIZKs without PCPs: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Quadratic%20s...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Quadratic%20span%20programs%20and%20succinct%20NIZKs%20without%20PCPs%20-%20GGPR.pdf)

Snarks for C: Verifying program execution succinctly and in zero knowledge: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/SNARKs%20for%...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/SNARKs%20for%20C:%20Verifying%20program%20executions%20succinctly%20and%20in%20zero%20knowledge.pdf)

Secure sampling of public parameters for succinct zero knowledge proofs: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Secure%20samp...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Secure%20sampling%20of%20public%20parameters%20for%20succinct%20zero%20knowledge%20proofs.pdf)

[https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark](https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark)

FWIW I think that confidential transactions and even SNARKs will eventually make their way into Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER21> There seems to be plenty of privacy-oriented altcoins around. How does the privacy model of zcash compare to others, like monero or dash?

<comment><USER22> I can't do an apples-apples comparison to the ones you listed because I'm only familiar with Bitcoin and the original Zerocash paper. I can say that the zkSNARK approach to crypto-currency is certainly _novel_ and they have a great team of competent cryptographers and engineers on the team.

That is to say, Zcash isn't a hobbyist effort, it's the result of serious crypto engineering. It's not clown-shoes privacy.

<comment><USER21> OK so basically appeal to authority etc. Not much that a common guy can understand.

Sounds to me like a product that is only designed for really smart people...

<comment><USER23> Most people don't understand how the Internet works, yet they manage to use it every day. Same goes for existing mainstream financial systems.

<comment><USER21> Well the question really is, how do the masses start to use this? If only couple of smart people understand it, it won't help much. There are already lot of "like bitcoin, but anonymous" coins, which haven't gained that significant success. If most of the people can't understand why this one is "the shit", they aren't going to see difference between this and the other privacy-promoting altcoins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For those of us who'd like to buy, which platform would be best? I'm only aware of Coinbase but they seem to be a Bitcoin-only exchange.

<comment><USER25> Its in beta right now and the current blockchain will be reset at 1.0 invalidating current coins. So buying in right now is pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish someone would come up with a bitcoin alternative that isn't based upon speculation to get people interested in it.

<comment><USER26> Why?

<comment><USER18> [http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-15-network-failure- cla...](http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-15-network-failure-claims/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> With it use BTC or have a new money supply, or both? Will it be launched as a Bitcoin sidechain, or are there any plans to make it one after launch?

<comment><USER28> Zcash runs it's own blockchain.

The original zerocash team approached the bitcoin developers over a year ago asking to integrate some of their ideas into the bitcoin blockchain and were turned down entirely. So they went underground and developed zcash.

Zcash still seems to share quite a bit in common with bitcoin, however. For example, they are sticking with the 21,000,000 coin market cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We need to talk about the elephant in the room. A totally untraceable digital coin is gonna be Christmas for organized crime.

<comment><USER30> Cash and gold already exist. They are already celebrating Christmas, every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How can the state trace transactions as to collect tax on transactions made with Zcash? If the state cannot trace the transactions and this becomes black economy 2.0 then will it not face banning and seizure from the authorities?

Ie how can we build roads and schools in a Zcash economy?

<comment><USER32> How does the state trace transactions made with paper cash?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> No links in the article but I found an ArchLinux AUR package for ZCash:

[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zcash- git/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zcash-git/)

Builds from source, pulling from Github.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, that is one cool domain.

<comment><USER35> Definitely! I wonder what a single-letter domain costs?

<comment><USER28> $1,118.00 USD, apparently. [0]

[0] [https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results.aspx?...](https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results.aspx?domain=p.cash)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Correct me if I'm wrong but this is a for profit company telling me to use the currency, no commodity, they created and control in order to have privacy?

How about I just stick to actual money?

<comment><USER37> I don't think they will actually control anything, once it takes off; just like no single entity really controls Bitcoin.

<comment><USER36> > just like no single entity really controls Bitcoin.

That's just not true. The core developers do control it. Look at the problems its having with the blockchain limit. Yes in theory anyone can fork it and people can run the fork, but that theory has now been tested and it failed.

Similarly, if ZeroCash took off, the "official" devs would be the ones to control it. And they're a for profit company on top of it. I can't think of a worse idea than that. A commodity "currency" that is controlled entirely by a for profit company.

<comment><USER37> You mean like the US Dollar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It bothers me that there are "investors" for this and a CEO.

What happens if it takes off? There's one or two founders and a couple investors that essentially control the flow of money in the system. Bitcoin was appealing precisely because it lacked a center control.

Is there something I'm missing here?

<comment><USER39> If they're making a decentralized currency and things are sane, then the code is all open source, and their authority is only in developing the official client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nothing new here. Add it to the pile of hundreds of other altcoins.

Why is this here? Feels like the pump-and-dump world of altcoins is being done here to pump up this post.

<comment><USER41> > _Why is this here?_

Actually there's a precise answer to that. In yesterday's popular Keybase.io thread, the submitter (rdl) said "Along with Zcash, it is the most amazing crypto-engineering project I've seen in years." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037297)

That was evidence the community might find it interesting, and the project hadn't had discussion on HN yet, so we invited an earlier submitter (malgorithms) to repost it. From there it received significant community interest.

> _Nothing new here. Add it to the pile_

Whoa, this is exactly what we ask commenters not to do when discussing new work on Hacker News. The ratio of dismissiveness to substance in your post is too high. Substantive criticism is fine, of course, but not this; it degrades the discussion.

If you know something or have a genuine insight—including a critical one—you're more than welcome to share it. But "nothing new here", "add it to the pile", and "feels like" is far too weak to justify a dismissive swipe. A comment like this would be better phrased as the question, "What is new here?", in a spirit of curiosity not snark.

<comment><USER42> ^ This is why Hacker News is worth coming to. Snark and quick dismissal lead to negativity and thoughtlessness, which rapidly kills communities.

Thanks for everything you do, dang.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What resources did you use to learn PHP? - <AUTHOR> To complement the recent post regarding Python resources, I figure this is a great time to ask what resources (books, websites, tutorials, etc) people used to learn PHP.
I really want to learn PHP and MySQL properly this Christmas, and while I've completed the basic tutorials you'll find at the major websites, I want something that covers everything in-depth and facilitates the learning experience with good quality, relevant examples that you can see yourself actually using.
So I guess this question is really two-fold:
1) What resources did you use to learn? 2) Did you like them? And if you could do it again what resources would you use and in what order? <comment><USER2> As with all languages, I think it requires being goal driven -- have something you want to build -- and look up answers as required.

If you have the time, I recommend building a framework complete with a simple ORM. Nothing will give you a quicker broad overview of any language's strengths and weaknesses.

Also, most of the 'learning' about PHP is wrapping your head around the included gigantic library of function calls and methods. There are a lot of people who don't. When I was first learning, I'd search for ways to get specific things done and almost always come across code where people manually implemented things and I'd find out later that there's a function call that does the job. Sometimes thats due to people not knowing about the fucntion and sometimes that due to the post being outdated, so always look for the dates on which advice is given. There are PHP5 ways to do things and pre-PHP5 ways to do things.

Because of that, spend a few _days_ browsing the included library. And, make sure you browse the comments people have left in the online documentation. They are generally good quality, contain code samples, etc. If someone posts bad code, others are quick to point out the flaws.

In the case of PHP, there is a lot of bad advice out there in general, so choose wisely.

And, there are a few things that are hard to search for because they require searching for single characters and search engines generally suck at it. Some examples:

@ as in @function(x,y) - used for error suppression. & as in &$foo - pass by reference instead of by value (automatic with objects but not arrays) $ as in $foo(x,y,z) - dynamic function calling. the value of the string is the name of the function that will be called. $ as in $foo->$bar - same thing with object methods. $$ as in $$foo() - double dereference function calling. yuk.

Finally, I'd also browse around <http://www.stackoverflow.com> and look at the php-tagged questions and answers.

<comment><USER3> The PHP website is one of the most complete and easily navigable and searchable language documentation websites I've ever used, and I directly blame it for my being so well versed in PHP that PHP has (grudgingly) been my tool of choice for years.

The quality of the documentation on php.net has actually gone down since they started wrapping everything in objects and using automatic documentation generators like doxygen. That's great for reference, but not so great when you're trying to learn it. The documentation for SPL (largely <http://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/> ) is an example. The php.net website has traditionally been good for both reference and learning.

On the other hand, a lot of that "bad advice out there" is actually in the PHP documentation (like building query strings directly), which has caused it to pop up in other places. The comments on the documentation nodes are a great idea, but use anything in them with caution. If one comment says "Here's how I solved this problem..." there might already be function that did that and the poster didn't know about it.

As for pass by reference working with objects but not arrays... I think a lot of confusion over this comes from PHP4's crappy object model when objects were passed by value (which doesn't make any sense in an object model) and that people like to think of arrays like C arrays (which are just pointers). That arrays are not passed by reference by default seems to fit the immutability of other base types (however, I use the word "immutability" with caution there, since it's not strict immutability in PHP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all: Programming is learned by practicing, get off HN, books and just do it.

If you are a person who can master a practical subject (typing code) by just reading specifications, I'd recommend stop using PHP and maybe switch to a more thoretical language; LISP, prolog, mathematica why not?

If you are a "mechanic" type of person why learn by experience, just start programming, don't worry, you'll learn!

I recently programmed a site in PHP more or less boilerplaty. The idea to avoid ugly, boring code is to abstract things away, supposedly by a framework or by yourself. Nevertheless if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't find it.

A thing i would probably use next time is MYSQL-classes as described in [http://www.justincarmony.com/blog/2008/10/25/php-design- bigg...](http://www.justincarmony.com/blog/2008/10/25/php-design-biggest- database-oversights/).

A thing i would probably use next time is MORE regular expressions for sanitizing input. Learn regexp, it's a time saver!

1) I too started with basic tutorials, but bit by bit startede gravitating towards PHP.NET, finally landing in some nice PHP-framework. I see PHP as a great language, but not a great framework. There are no prepackaged 'concepts' of programming as in, for instance, ruby on rails. There is however lots of nice low-level type of oppurtunities for clever hacks if you know the technical bits, as in C.

2) I wouldn't think about it, as for always, i would start typing away. It's not LISP, Prolog or Haskell where a lot of planning is involved.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I started learning PHP, after basic tutorials of PHP, I jumped on MVC framework called Symfony (<http://symfony-project.org/>). It's a great framework and the documentation is really extensive with some basic examples as well. You might wonder isn't starting with MVC was more extensive, but here are the adavantages I found - 1\. MVC helped me to automate many things, so it was faster productivity 2\. It showed me how to organize and structure the code 3\. Though initially it kept details unknown from me, it was good because it didn't baffle me a lot initially.

Once I started get going with my actual application, I started reading more details of PHP as on when required. But MVC helped to accelerate my process of building the real thing instead of investing of time in reading tutorials.

Also, I found these tutorials are good for plain PHP - <http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/> . It also explains the MVC and all. So you might want to read these tutorials, and then start with Symfony.

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm also interested in what your views are with learning inside a framework such as CakePHP?

I ask this because I can see the upsides (learning in an environment which fosters really good habits and quality code, however I can also see the downside insofar that you are for the most part 1-step-removed from a lot of the core functionality which is important to know.

<comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of Code Igniter-- I actually think you'll produce much better PHP code if you learn a framework. It's really easy to design poorly with PHP and a good framework can help build up good habits to take with you long-term.

CI is a light enough framework and you can diverge from it when needed to do lower-level stuff. It also has a great user guide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At University. They gave us handout sheets. The coursework used SQL and PHP to have an online register of school employees (eg, teachers).

</comment><comment><USER8> Just asked the same thing...Thanks everybody for the help</comment>


A man repopulated a rare butterfly species in his backyard (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2016/7/6/12098122/california-pipevine-swallowtail-butterfly-population <comment><USER2> Is interesting that there are two species repopulated here, not one, but the most interesting of both is disregarded.

Aristolochia is easy to culture, even if it grows like a climbing tangled mess. If you want to do something similar in your garden do it, will be a rewarding activity, but remember that this plant should not be touched with bare hands frequently.

Neither be drank. Is claimed by chinese medecine as having some properties as herbal tea but in fact it contains Aristolochic acids, that are known as carcinogenic and nephrotoxic substances. Renal failure is perfectly possible.

Enjoying this strange mottled creature with your eyes is perfectly safe. For the rest, use garden gloves.

</comment><comment><USER3> I searched a bit. This species is not endangered, it is spread over CA, just very very rare in SF. (Also there might be a subspecies, not really sure).

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

[https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Battus- philenor](https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Battus-philenor)

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic. Makes me want to see what I can do to benefit the Scottish ecosystem just a little. I've heard planting a patch of wildflowers in your garden is a good start.

<comment><USER5> Plant natives that are suited to your soil type and support bees. Wildflowers might not be good because they generally need less-fertile soil than a tended garden. Also put out bee houses and bird nesting sites, and leave autumn leaf fall in situ overwinter as a place for critters to hibernate.

<comment><USER6> _and support bees_

And all other pollinating species as well, there's way more than just bees :) But good adivce about native plants: around here there's a bit of a hype in certain circles and people are all over what they call 'bee plants' but forget that non-native plants which happen to have pretty flowers usually do not provide anything but nectar for a couple of generalist species, so not all native ones, plus don't take part in the reproduction cycle because they aren't wanted food for the caterpillars.

To get native plants, which support the most biodiversity, essentially the best thing you can do in a lot of situations is: not too much. Leave your lawn grow, current herbs (if any) will develop and other will fly in as seeds. Then for instance mow once in spring and once at the end of the summer (hard to tell eaxctly, depends on what grows currently and soil type). Remove what you mow: otherwise the nutrients make it back into the soil so the fast-growing plants which thrive on nitrogen (grass, nettles) get a jumpstart while the slower growing ones (most flowering ones) don't get a chance and won't get enough space and light. Don't mow everything at once, you'd take away shelter and housing for may fauna. Likewise be sure to leave pathches uncut during winter in order to e.g. not get rid of the eggs of butterflies. After one or more years you should see transition into a native meadow i.e. also flowering herbs instead of just grass.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any further reading?

<comment><USER6> Not in Egnlish unfortunately. But what I wrote is pretty much the generic way in which 'good' meadows etc are being preserved and developed and that's not going to be different from grassland management done by nature organizations your area, so your best bet is to contact them and ask recommendations.

And/or join for volunteering; thing is: removing all cuttings is key, and quite some work, so in places where it cannot be done with machines (most of them, meadows don't like to be ran over with heavy machines because it compacts the soil on dry terrain or ruins it on wet terrain) people will be very happy with some extra hands and in return you'll learn all these things firsthand. At least that's how it worked for me.

<comment><USER5> Cuttings can be repurposed as compost for the food-forest part of your garden, which exists alongside the wildflower-meadow part. (Grow flowering perennials, and this will help with supporting pollinators.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i am happy theres alteast some people concerned and working for our environment instead of passing stupid laws and doing fk all.

it's not hard to make your yard or environment more friendly for the local wildlife, and its super important to do so with current conditions.

for example in my country, even in 'protected' areas, insect populations are down by as much as 85%!. Thats just because people are a bit lazy and put pavement in their backyards instead of some simple grass and flowers.

take time for your environment, not for yourself, but for the next generation of people to be able to enjoy life.

don't expect government or politics to resolve such an issue, they are only out for money and forever hampered by budget issues and childish disagreements between politicians.

</comment><comment><USER8> We have come to a realization that in order for one to be considered of importance, one must own and get paid a large amount of wealth and income. Question is, why can't the value of giving be considered of same importance? Giving can be any services, time, materials or more importantly your experience and your honest to god effort to provide help.

<comment><USER9> Because of control.

Wealth and income are easier to control than what you describe. So the society is built around worshiping and paying certain figures so everyone else gets caught up in this loop in hopes of getting where these mediatic figures are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If there was no catastrophic population collapse, how do more butterflies in the wild help to reintroduce the species?

I'd think they'd eat all of the last of those plants and that's it.

And if it was catastrophic collapse it should be able to bounce back from the few remaining or from surrounding populations, no?

</comment><comment><USER11> What a splendid story. Good on him.

</comment><comment><USER12> Clearly a waste of time if he wasn't getting paid for it. Imagine all the other wasted efforts of time and money that other people would do if we as a society paid them well enough to have excess time and money to do these sorts of pointless non-entrepreneurial adventures. What if he put all this effort in and makes the world a better place for nothing?

(Heavy satire / sarcasm)

<comment><USER13> Sadly, most people would just watch Netflix.

<comment><USER14> We are not used to be free. Economic restraints force us to do things we don't want to do instead of watching Netflix. So most don't understand what "just watching Netflix" means. If you set out to "just watch Netflix" as your main activity, you would very very quickly get fed up and depressed, and thus stop watching Netflix.

Those fortunate ones with enough wealth to have the option to just watch Netflix for a year and don't do much else, don't do that and are happy with it. And neither would the less fortunate once after an initial learning phase. Humans must learn to be free, but they can. We want to take part, show our contribution, feel proud. As soon as we have found a pleasant way to contribute, we do.

Yes, conditionless basic income would change work ethics. People who fill up supermarkets displays or serve food to unfriendly customers at unhealthy hours would maybe just stop going to work. I would be happy for them, and I hope it would happen today.

There is a lot of work that is needlessly tiring, badly paid, and in which you are badly treated, but people just stay in the status quo because they see no way out. Once there is a way out, the jobs will have to change, and that rapidly. That would be progress for society I still hope to see in my lifetime.

<comment><USER15> We have been free. We were free for millennia.

But... if you look at the most free animals in nature: cats, after domesticating humans and getting guaranteed safety, shelter and food. They have independently decided to sleep and murder their lives away. Their contributions to the art world via social media (a task they've mostly trained their humans to do) is probably the nost significant and vacuous the world has every seen. Their obsession with small mammal terminating is probably better for the biosphere.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Binney: "Things won't change until we put these people in jail" - <AUTHOR> http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2017/02/11/news/usa_nsa_bill_binney_integrale_eng-158062766 <comment><USER2> That was a pretty good interview. I read about Binney before Snowden and I think Snowden knew about him as well. That's why he had to get all that data out otherwise he would not be believed.

I remember Binney sort being painted as a crazy conspiracy lunatic.

It is interesting how he stood up to them but was afraid for his life for a bit there. Wonder if he knew of any cases of people being suicided on US soil by the US govt or just a general precaution. Wonder if anyone from that dept. would leak anything...

<comment><USER3> I'm really grateful that we have folks like Binney thinking about the bigger picture. It's not as though our government has not made mistakes in the past; during the Korean War for instance, we killed ~20% of the North Korean population [1], largely with napalm. That, in my humble opinion, is an unacceptable civilian casualty ratio. Binney is the kinda guy, were he around back then, who would have spoken up and said "This ain't right."

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

<comment><USER4> I've watched Binney speak before and I sense very little personal remorse about his own involvement. Maybe it was just the times I caught his speeches, but he seemed to be a geek who never really stopped to think about what he was doing until it was too late.

He was one of the principal forces behind the "Five Eyes" agreement that "allows" for the end-run around our Constitutional protections, for example.

Still, I find 'purity' useless in the real world and it's important to have folks like Binney speaking out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, this will never happen and like so many gov documentaries that bring to light abuses by groups, people will be outraged and then life will happen.

I wish the FBI or relevant body could get their shit together and say "hey, we really should look into this and do something about it."

:-/

<comment><USER6> I agree. Even General Hayden complains about how ridiculously over-classified the US cyber warfare operations are.[0]

Why can't we have a well informed debate over the new cyber weapons that our government has developed? I didn't know about operations like Nitro Zeus until a few days ago. (That's where the US used software to infiltrate Iran's power grid, radio communications, surface to air missiles, etc. in preparation for war back in 2009). How are normal citizens supposed to understand the stakes when we can't even see most of the information? If they were able to do that attack back in 2009 I shudder to think of what they can do in 2017...

[0][http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/off-message-michael- ha...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/off-message-michael-hayden- hillary-clinton-2016-221276)

<comment><USER7> > Why can't we have a well informed debate over the new cyber weapons that our > government has developed?

Because some of these new toys would be denied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting conclusion:

 _" Would you advise young people to put their talents at the service of the NSA?"_

 _" I am an advocate of infiltration: joining the ranks of those working and coming out through the ranks of the administration of that agency, whatever the agency may be: the CIA, the FBI, whatever. As long as you preserve your character and integrity, you do the right thing, and that is what we need: people doing the right thing. It's the only way to change things, in the end. The other way is to come from the outside and put them in jail"._

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else read the title and think "these people" were bankers?

<comment><USER10> We don't need to put the bankers in jail (though it would help). We just need to realize that we no longer need them. We have all the tools we need to have a Lyft of financial services. Banks are like premium horseshoeing services. Thanks but horses are a niche market now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Tom Drake took the software we had for ThinThread, basically after the NSA > cancelled our programme, and ran it against the entire NSA database in > February 2002. We found that all the data about the attack was in there, > where they were going, who they were connecting with, actually even the date > of the attack: 9 /11._

I'll bet I could design a system to reveal the exact dates of terrorist attacks after they've happened too.

<comment><USER12> I think the point was, the data was there but it needed to be identified, adding more data by spying more random people would not have increased the chance of this happening.

<comment><USER13> Yes, the point is that after every attack, the intelligence agencies push the narrative in the media that it wasn't their fault for not stopping the attack, but the problem was that _they just didn 't have enough spying powers_.

And usually everyone takes this as fact, and the government ends up giving them more powers, because "they are the experts, and if they say they the problem was that they needed more spying powers, then it must be true."

People need to push back against this narrative, and show everyone the facts. And the facts are that mass surveillance can't stop terrorist attacks [1]. The attacks that are usually prevented are those where the agencies received some strong tips that those people were planning something, and only then the surveillance becomes effective. But they wouldn't need mass surveillance powers for that. They just need a warrant (a regular one).

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_f...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.html)

<comment><USER14> That's not the narrative here. The narrative here is that they _did_ have the tools they needed to identify the threat in advance, but for reasons basically of venal nest-feathering corruption those tools were not used, and so the attack proceeded unhindered.

You've only got Bill Binney's word for it, to be sure. But let's not lose sight of the matter at hand in the rush to make points which are strongly held but tangential.

<comment><USER15> Binney is currently saying mostly the right things. That isn't to say that his story is especially believable. His team of heroes developed a system that "would have worked", had it been used. Yet he also tells us it has been used quite a bit since then, only with all the human rights protections stripped out. It seems as though "terrorism" still happens? Also, in future, we ought to build fewer super-powerful surveillance machines with "To Violate the Constitution, Press This" buttons.

<comment><USER16> I think he said that it didn't work because another feature that got changed was including all data, instead of relevant data.

<comment><USER15> If the system has facilities for classifying data by its "relevance", one would expect those to be used by those who fired Binney yet arranged for his system to be installed anyway. If the system relies on only "relevant data" ever being entered, then it's useless and always was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An in depth interview w/ Bill Binney is available here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs)

</comment><comment><USER18> > I hold out very little hope for any of this to change, but we as citizens > need to keep resisting anyways. Gut some government agencies, cut the > budgets, stop the revolving door of lobbyists.

I don't like this idea but I respect it. I might even support it. Problem is that evil people will use this sentiment and turn it around to say they want to cut taxes so these agencies have less money to spend which leads to smaller government. Evil people like Ronald Reagan have argued that with starve the beast and we know how that worked. Please do not support tax cuts in an effort to gut government agencies. If you want to gut government agencies, do so directly.

<comment><USER19> "evil people like Ronald Reagan"

I guess it's true that every opinion exists, and they just need a person to have them.

<comment><USER20> I doubt he was evil, but his economic policies did nothing to help the American people.

<comment><USER21> Ever heard of Nicaragua and Iran Contra?

Even if it can be largely attributed the Bush Sr, Reagan was still President and ultimately responsible.

The strikers banned for life?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When will open-minded inquiries into 9/11 become non-taboo?

<comment><USER23> There has already been a thorough inquiry into 9/11 ([https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf](https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf)).

If any of the conspiracies peddled since then had any credibility, Russia, Iran, and China would have been all over it. Get real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)</comment>


A natural experiment study of the effects of imprisonment on violence - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0604-8 <comment><USER2> My theory is that prison is only effective on people that are already fairly morally grounded and with pretty healthy social and mental dynamics. So those folks can and do bounce back.

But prison does nothing to help with mental illness or help give folks a sense of community once they're out.

<comment><USER3> They may have a sense of community, it just might be one that is harmful to your own.

My own theory is that prison has been set up to remove potential criminals from the street, chosen via a demographic of education/ethnicity/wealth/gender/aggressiveness, during their prime years of being a nuisance. The results don't have to be particularly fair.

There's no real intention of transformation or revenge, just a form of quarantine.

Looking at a chart of incarceration rate over time and murder rate over time, this last a better indicator of crime than most, you can make a case that the big ramp up in jailing somewhat matches the peak and fall of murders. It's tough to find causalities in anything, but I rather like that one.

<comment><USER4> _They may have a sense of community, it just might be one that is harmful to your own._

By some accounts, prison is an opportunity to network and gain mentors and knowledge towards furthering a career as a criminal.

 _There 's no real intention of transformation or revenge, just a form of quarantine._

If considered as a criminal networking opportunity, it's likely to transform people into those who would seek revenge, and it would have the opposite effect intended by quarantine.

EDIT: I'm reminded of a folk dance group I was once a part of. Usually, we were obscure, and the one or two new people who might show up would become immersed in what we did, and would quickly learn to dance. Once, there was a local newspaper article about us, and 16 newcomers showed up all at once. It was very difficult that evening, and I think a lot of the newcomers didn't learn much.

If we want incarceration to make people less criminal, not more criminal, then the prisoners should not be spending their time with criminals. The prisoners should be spending their time with mentors, teachers, and counselors.

<comment><USER3> By 'revenge' I'm referring to revenge by society by putting people in an unpleasant situation for a term.

<comment><USER4> _By 'revenge' I'm referring to revenge by society by putting people in an unpleasant situation for a term._

Sure, but revenge tends to beget revenge in a vicious circle. This is why forgiveness is key to robust societal systems, when imperfect communication is taken into account.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Tit_for_two_tats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Tit_for_two_tats)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Being sentenced to prison had no significant effects on arrests or convictions for violent crimes after release from prison, but imprisonment modestly reduced the probability of violence if comparisons included the effects of incapacitation during imprisonment.

So in the final accounting, probation increases the probability of violence while imprisonment reduces it. Imprisonment reduces violence while the offender is in prison, and it doesn't seem like it increases arrests or convictions afterward.

<comment><USER6> In final accounting, in the words of the authors:

These results suggest that for individuals on the current policy margin between prison and probation, imprisonment is an ineffective long-term intervention for violence prevention, as it has, on balance, no rehabilitative or deterrent effects after release.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the words of the authors. But the final accounting according to the _data_ of the authors: during incarceration they commit no crimes against society and after incarceration they resume committing crime at the same rate as if they had not been locked up. So, longer incarceration reduces crime.

I don't know if that conclusion is actually true or not. It seems as though it would be as long as criminality didn't _increase_ after incarceration to an extent that more than canceled the reduction during incarceration, but they claim that doesn't happen. Well, okay then, longer sentences reduce crime by, as they say, "incapacitating" the criminal during his incarceration.

They seem to be burying that lede.

<comment><USER6> > So, longer incarceration reduces crime.

Killing them would also reduce crime ([https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells.png)) but I don't think that this is enough of a metric to judge something as good for society

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if we had prison cities where prisoners can live "freely" and have their own economies and stuff? Let's see how they like trying to live normal lives with other people who have no qualms about stealing and killing to get what they want, just like they may have done themselves to innocent people before they were imprisoned. Will the criminals learn to get along or will they end up killing each other? I wouldn't care because they're in the prison city and not anywhere near me and other normal people, which is what prison is for right? Maybe we can even free those who prove themselves to be outstanding citizens in those prison cities.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER9> You seem to be under the impression that the prison population is made up primarily of violent thieves and murderers - that is not the case.

<comment><USER8> We'll have nonviolent prison cities separate from the violent ones. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Prison is cheap torture. That's the long and short of it.

Torture is traumatic. Traumatized people are violent.

Simple.</comment>


Apple is as "boring" as it's always been - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2015/01/26/apple-is-as-boring-as-its-always-been/

<comment><USER2> > If anything, Apple's position as a "boring" company is the result of > adhering to a business philosophy rarely prized in Silicon Valley, a > philosophy which values finished products that ship by the millions over > unfinished futuristic prototypes which are more likely to take up space in > tech blog headlines than on store shelves.

They're ignoring the iWatch/Apple Watch which is exactly that, and unfinished futuristic prototype that was announced in September 2014 and isn't set for release until some undisclosed time in "early 2015" (as of today, it is not out yet, no release date either).

And I know full well that a bunch of fanboys (like the article author) are going to justify it by "well Apple wanted to get Watch Kit into developer's hands!" and you know what, that's fine, but it still discredited the article's point that Apple only announces hardware they're actually ready to sell.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, it was pretty boring when they announced the iphone. Hardly anyone talked about it.</comment>


Turntable.fm Hits 140,000 Users in Its First Month - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/22/how-many-users-does-turntable-fm-have-2011-06-22/ <comment><USER2> I'm still pretty excited about turntable, but not because the music is so phenomenal.

Turntable is the first web service that gives me the sense of physically hanging out with friends while online.

I consider chat rooms or IM to be v1.0 of simulating real-time social interaction on the web, like sitting around a campfire and talking.

But people don't do that very often IRL - they meet at places that have something interesting going on and chat in a low-intensity way while also listening to music, watching a show, eating, etc.

Turntable gives a nice integration of passive entertainment, active participation, and social interaction that makes me feel like I'm hanging out at a club with friends. I can go see which friends are there & what they're doing, listen to a little music, or just say hi.

I think that's cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> The music industry would be crazy to nix this. Imagine selling special tracks exclusively through turntable.fm, branding rooms for DJs and celebs, etc.

Shazam pushes $100 M. in purchases towards iTunes etc each year. Turntable could blow that away.

But the industry is going to see people uploading DRM free tunes and freak about not getting enough of a cut.

<comment><USER4> That kind of vision doesn't exist in the music industry. They shut down Muxtape. They'll shut down this.

<comment><USER3> And yet they have allowed 8track to exist.

The founders are hoping they can exist under the protections of DMCA streaming radio.

<comment><USER5> The question is whether Turntable will have to make so many compromises with the labels that the site loses its appeal. You can't skip through something like more than two songs in a row in 8tracks. You could see how those kinds of restrictions could potentially ruin the fun of Turntable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was pretty excited when this first came out. I listened to it all night. But, eventually I felt there was something still uncomfortable about the whole experience. Some people said it was their new Pandora. I can't say I feel the same.

I get a little frustrated when I can't find a room playing stuff I want to hear. And then I get even more frustrated when I give stuff a thumbs-down but still have to listen to it and hope the next DJ doesn't suck. I feel like I've been too spoiled by personalized music services. Personally, the chat room isn't really a valuable feature.

<comment> brown9-2 Seems like it's a lot more fun if you can join rooms with friends or people whose tastes you know intersect yours

<comment><USER7> Exactly. When nobody I know is on, I just use Pandora - with a crowded room, I can't skip a song I hate. And with friends, you get exposed to new music from trusted sources, and everyone ends up trying to play something that's equally palatable.

(Unless your friends are jerks and decide to play Tool's LAMC.)

<comment><USER8> So excited that you just referenced Tool's LAMC. To thumbs up this comment, press 1. WEEEEE-SKRUM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Turntable.fm is a lot of fun. I've been using it with offsite coworkers to create a sort of shared music space.

Unfortunately, it seems like only a matter of time before it gets shut down by the RIAA or riddled with enough advertising to make it sickening.

<comment><USER10> They use MediaNet for now... totally legal.

It costs them around $.002 per listener of a serendipitous play, and 10 cents for the DJ (which is an on demand play)... This could get expensive pretty quickly, so I'd imagine they are negotiating/looking for another source.

Also interesting - to be DMCA compliant, they'll also have to follow other groundrules, so users:

1) May not see ahead in a playlist past the currently playing song

2) May only play or pause the list

3) Can only play 3 songs per artist per hour, maximum

4) Can only play 4 songs from a single album in three consecutive hours, maximum

5) May skip ahead only 6 times per hour.

<comment><USER6> What about the feature which lets you upload any mp3 you want and play it to the crowd? A lot of my files don't have the artist information, I don't know how they plan to pay to play the song.

<comment><USER11> I've found it will usually try to match against tracks in their database (sometimes to my chagrin)

I've never tried a completely untagged file before though... so report back when you find out?

<comment><USER12> Untagged files are not processed properly by the uploader. You'll get a "General Upload Error". This also seems to happen when there are multibyte characters in the ID3 tags.

<comment><USER7> I've had that error occur several times, and then the file finally made it through.

It was from a Russian band, tagged with presumably non-ascii characters, but it finally went through, and I really really doubt they have some of the other things I've uploaded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Turntable has got me thinking. It seems to me there would be a market for doing something similar for "real" DJs, where they could stream live sets to listeners. I know I love to listen to a good electronica DJ when I'm coding or just chilling, but I can't always take my laptop with me to a live set. Obviously it could be done with justin.tv or ustream for example, but something more customized for sound should exist. If it got popular one could even have a profit-sharing scheme with the DJs like justin.tv has (or is it ustream?), so not-super-famous DJs could earn some cash on the side.

What do you think? Would anyone ever use a service like this?

<comment><USER14> I've thought about this as well. I used to record my DJ sets with an mp3 player that had line-in. I'd just spin, record, and then upload when I got home the next day (and even do my podcasts this way on my home gear). An iPhone app that did the same for name brand DJ's would be excellent. They could record or even stream to a room of their own (or their label or the nightclub itself). I'd love to login to the Club Amnesia room and be able to listen to sets from their Ibiza parties in the last week. The right execution would totally work for EDM fans I think. I tried something similar with podcasts: bestdjpodcasts.com but what TT has is much more compelling IMO.

<comment><USER15> If you don't care about streaming you can use something like fIRE2 from Audiofile Engineering and upload direct to Soundcloud. There are other similar products in the app store, and you could probably even use the built in free "voice memo" app. Streaming live is hard because you generally have no control over the uplink wifi and 3G is too slow.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, thanks for that! I know lots of DJs are using SoundCloud now, so maybe a TT-Soundcloud type integration with some branding elements and the like would do the trick. How great a tool would TT be during say, Armin Van Buuren's weekly A State of Trance show to interact with his fans in realtime. I know guys use Twitter now but I feel like Twitter is being forced into being this tool because this tool doesn't really exist. This would bring some context to the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just tried to request site access ... kudos to these guys ... the request process itself was hilarious! Attention to detail ... that's where it's at.

<comment><USER7> I have a facebook account, and a friend who was a member, so my process was mostly just annoying. I guess they didn't want to deal too much with tracking referrals on their own end, so relegated the process to Facebook?

<comment><USER17> What did you find annoying about it? I clicked to log in, not knowing if a friend was already a member, but I guess someone was, because a few seconds later I was in. It was very simple and quick, it didn't annoy me at all.

<comment><USER7> I find it annoying that I basically have to use Facebook to gain instant access. To be fair, I have no idea how the alternative login method works, but apparently you have to wait until they make it through to you in the queue - so if I invite a friend who doesn't have a Facebook account, I end up disappointing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks like a cool site, but I don't have a facebook account and won't create one for the purpose of logging in to another site.

<comment><USER7> Someone should write a quick bash script that'll automatically create a facebook account with random information, specifically for this type of circumstance.

Obviously it would break the TOS, but it would give you a way of checking out some Facebook-only services. And if you have anarchist-leaning feelings, you'll also be sticking it to The Man by adding noise to their signal.

<comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure you can't create a working Facebook account using a quick bash script.

<comment><USER7> The biggest problem I can see is the e-mail verification, but I imagine even that sort of thing would be scriptable. It's all just squirting characters over HTTP, right?

<comment><USER20> In theory, yes, but the problem with this kind of complex scraping is that you're constantly chasing the moving goalposts of facebook's code updates, which are frequent.

See also: poker bots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Isn't the first month, like, the least indicative month, out of ALL the months? If they have 200,000 next month and a million in a year, we'll talk, but this site has all the indicators of being a that's-cool-move-on thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to know more information about how people were able to download the streamed music, and what they did to stop it.

Also, it would be nice if I could automatically scrobble the songs played to Last.fm.

<comment><USER3> You can Gabe K built a turntable.fm scrobbler -

<http://gabek.github.com/TurntableScrobbler/>

<comment><USER7> Awesome! Thank you.

I only wish his site wasn't a migrane generator.

<comment><USER22> Here's another one called Turntable.fm Extended (has a few other features, like notifications):

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnciafhfaahhafklck...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnciafhfaahhafklckmcabbncbgcjpeg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just discovered it, ... and now I can't stop trolling in the coding soundtracks room! IRC+music+game-mechanics - no wonder they hit that usercount!

</comment><comment><USER24> This might be off-topic, but the guys who created turntable.fm, they are also the co-founders of Stickybits.

So what's going on ? Are they running both companies or ?

<comment><USER6> <http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/08/turntable-addiction/>

_"When Stickybits didn't take off the way they hoped, Seth Goldstein and Billy Chasen pitched existing investors ($1.9mm raised) this idea and ran with it."_

<comment><USER24> So Stickybits is in the dead pool I assume.

Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know a way to get around my work firewall so I can access Turntable.fm from work?

</comment><comment><USER26> This site is addictive. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sorry don't use Facebook. Sounds like a toy to real Dj's

</comment><comment><USER28> This site is actually pretty cool. 5 different versions of the chicken dance. I appreciate that.</comment>