Unbricking a $2k bike with a $10 Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://ptx2.net/posts/unbricking-a-bike-with-a-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> > A simple fix is to just use the previous power value if ever: the cadence is > non-zero and the previous power is non-zero and the current power is zero. A > slight improvement is to keep track of the slope and factor it in when > calculating the predicted value.

Looks like somebody rediscovered the Kalman filter without realising it :)

I recall implementing one for an IoT device, to de-noise gas sensor readings a few years ago.

Pretty fun read. Makes me wish I could gather the courage and patience to get back into hacking on embedded stuff

</comment><comment><USER3> That's horrible that Peloton was able to do this. Maybe there's more to the story, but it seems like the court allowed them to shut down a competitor for simply building a similar (relatively obvious) product?

In fact, the CEO of Peloton had the idea for Peloton... IN A FLYWHEEL CLASS. That's insane.

<comment><USER4> Clicking through the Verge links it sounds like Peloton had a patent that Flywheel infringed on.

We'd need to do a lot more reading to have on opinion on that case.

<comment><USER5> These are the patents I assume:

[https://patents.google.com/?inventor=john+foley&assignee=pel...](https://patents.google.com/?inventor=john+foley&assignee=peloton&oq=john+foley+peloton)

They are as absurdly simple as you would expect, so I assume Flywheel simply didn't want to/had the money to fight this. Like, here is the ultra-obscure "KETTLER World Tours" in 2018 having you race online against others on archived footage retrieved over the internet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YfhyDrp5Yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YfhyDrp5Yg)

<comment><USER6> Is there enough prior art to bust the patent? I'd be interested in donating to the EFF specially to invalidate this patent.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame that more exercise bikes don't have open APIs. Zwift is an absolutely awesome way of keeping in shape if you like cycling, but the barrier to entry is that you need to own a bike and a bike trainer that are both pretty expensive. Maker projects like this one always make me happy, because it's repurposing an old piece of equipment to function just as well as a new one. Next step would be adding smart controls to the resistance ;)

<comment> emb-fit It's a $2k training bike. You could spend $1k and get a really nice brand new road bike and a smart trainer that controls resistance like a Wahoo Kickr Snap (or several others) for ~$500.

I just don't get why the Peloton thing is so popular when you can get a smart trainer and a bike you can actually take outside for sooo much cheaper. You could even sign up for Zwift and a Trainer Road subscription and come out waaay ahead of $50/month.

The protocols coming out of these things have become pretty much a standard as well. Get an ANT dongle for your computer and the data can be consumed from so many apps, even an open source project like Golden Cheetah. Or just read the data from a head unit that already supports it.

<comment><USER8> > I just don't get why the Peloton thing is so popular when you can get a > smart trainer and a bike you can actually take outside for sooo much > cheaper. You could even sign up for Zwift and a Trainer Road subscription > and come out waaay ahead of $50/month.

You'd be surprised how much twiddling and research you need to do to find a correctly sized bike and which smart trainer (elevation? resistance? etc?) to get something that will work for the average person. It's the same reason people go for iPhones or Macs or anything else that 'just works', the time cost for getting to where one can actually use it vs. just unpacking a box w/ a 'good enough' smart bike means that a shiny package like a Peloton will always be preferred for a large chunk of the population.

<comment> emb-fit Go to any half decent bike shop and say you'd like to spend that much on a bike/trainer and they will bend over backwards to make sure you get exactly what you want and need. They will very likely even throw in a custom fitting using all the special tools they have at their disposal.

Not sure what twiddling you are doing with resistance and elevation, smart trainers pick the resistance based on what the app tells it to do in real time.

By no means can a 'large' chunk of the population afford $2,500 up front plus $60/month.

With a real bike on a trainer some people might even decide to try riding outside, who knows...

<comment><USER9> > By no means can a 'large' chunk of the population afford $2,500 up front > plus $60/month.

Where did you get $60/mo from? GP mentioned $50 which is also off base... A peloton sub is $13/mo. The only way you could pay $60/mo is if you're financing the bike.

<comment><USER10> Peloton has 2 subscriptions available: one for just the app without the accompanying bike which is $13/mo, the other that accompanies the bike which is $40/mo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the reason I bought a Keiser bike instead of a Peloton, it has a simple display that works with Bluetooth sensors (I use my watch to record my sessions). I use the Peloton app in an iPad (I could pair the bike with the iPad app, but don't).

The bikes are about the same price, but the Keiser screen is a simple LCD display that's much cheaper to replace if it gets broken and is fully usuable without a subscription.

Plus, I think the bike looks better.

[https://www.keiser.com](https://www.keiser.com)

<comment><USER12> Hmmm. Both of you are getting me very close to pulling the trigger on the M3i. Just so I'm clear, you have to buy the "M Series Converter" bluetooth device as well so it can connect to 3rd party apps, correct? Or I could just record an Indoor Cycling workout manually on my Apple Watch, right?

<comment><USER11> I had to get the converter to sync with my (Garmin) watch, so I imagine that you'll need it to pair with apps. It wasn't really clear whether I'd need the converter or not, but turns out that I did -- I figured I'd return it if I didn't need it.

I haven't actually tried pairing it to my iPad or other devices.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Products like this make me furious.

Selling a product whose interface/API/whatever is deliberately obfuscated so that the manufacturer also has a monopoly on a subscription service or an app for said product is blatantly anti-consumer, anti-competitive, anti- environment, and should be illegal.

Fuck Peloton. Fuck Flywheel. Fuck all the proprietary IoT companies.

And apparently fuck _me_ for having the gall to want to control my air conditioner from my computer rather than GE Android app #12 that has God- knows-what baked in and that's going to be abandoned in two years anyway.

Nobody should ever feel like they have to throw out an otherwise functional refrigerator-sized appliance because of software obsolescence.

I am absolutely willing to die on this hill. We need a GDPR-sized hammer to fix this.

<comment><USER14> Its a pretty good hill to die on. Everything IOT should be forced to communicate over transparent and self-documenting protocols so a. anyone can write an app to control said device and b.[0] Alexa/Cortana/Siri can query to set up a voice control interface.

[0] Maybe in the future when their capabilities get a bit better, but the gist is every device should respond to a 'hello' ping with a list of commands and NLP'able descriptions such that for an air conditioner 'alexa set temp 67 degrees F' just works.

<comment><USER15> This kind of response is a big part of why I have given up building commercial IoT products for now. It's great to want to have some super abstract high level self discovering protocol, but when you actually start to build on it it really hampers the product.

If you want to build a smart light switch you are trying to get the response time very low and worry about things like syncing behavior around the network. Doing these things ends up being very domain specific and you do creative engineering to make it happen. These are very different than the requirements for say a vacuum cleaner.

Then we have standards that come out like Bluetooth mesh or HomeKit that say this is exactly how a light switch should work. Great, except your light switch has this cool feature that Philips did not think of in the committee meeting and now you are forcing it in and your product once again suffers.

These standards all suck, some small percentage of your customers want custom access (rightfully so), and a large percentage are comparing you on price and experience. The outcome is a closed off product. With maybe a cloud API.

Like I said this is why I don't want to work on these products anymore. You cannot win.

<comment><USER16> I completely understand and sympathise with this sentiment, as I'm sure many others will.

It's one things to want standards, but when it's still an emerging field, with so much different functionality, it's an impossible task.

Any poster who advocates standardization at this stage would probably be wise in reading about the early computing days, when you had so many different standards, before it crystallized behind IBM MS-DOS. Or even HTML, where would we be today if MS had listened to "standards" and not released XMLHttpRequest/MSXML library.

No ajax, no modern web.

This is a perfectly normal, and perhaps desired, period of experimentation where standards will just hold the industry back.

<comment><USER17> You have a valid point about velocity being held back by standards. But you don't do yourself any favors, IMHO, pointing to the modern web as an example. If anything, the modern web is the perfect cautionary tale. Walled gardens, app churn, bloated apps. No way to use part of a service without all the crap that comes with it.

The modern web could stand to let off the gas.

<comment><USER18> Are walled gardens and app churn really the fault of AJAX requests, though?

For that matter, would removing AJAX and modern JS have fixed anything, or would people have routed around the problem? Any alternate web I can imagine just ends up with everyone using Flash/Shockwave/Silverlight/Java applets, which are even worse. A handful of diehards stay on plain HTML, just like they do today, while everyone else moves to gigantic ad-ridden behemoths.

<comment><USER17> Walled gardens aren't the result of Ajax, no. They're the result of insufficient or missing standards (or at least lack of standards enforcement).

How many times do you encounter a website that doesn't support your OAuth provider of choice? So you keep 2 or 3 around, and oh this site only does their own password based auth, OK I'll use my password manager to make a one- off for this site.

Keep in mind, JS itself was developed by one browser vendor (Netscape IIRC) because there was a lack of a standard for interactivity on the web. These tools arise out of need, but because of capitalism the players creating the tools don't work together. They stand to benefit if they can "win" and starve the others until the other solutions die, so that's what they hope to do. It's anti-consumer.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it should be illegal for apps not to allow certain levels of interoperability and freedom to migrate. Hence a previous poster's term, "GDPR-sized hammer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome project. I wish more smart devices offered a "run it locally on a Pi if you're paranoid or a control freak." I avoid IoT devices in general because I have no idea where the data is being stored, if it's stored securely, or if it's being sold. I prefer to manage this all myself.

<comment><USER20> >I wish more smart devices offered a "run it locally on a Pi if you're paranoid or a control freak."

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the "smart device" (from the manufacturer's point of view)? The business model often seems to be locking you in to a subscription (rent seeking) or selling your personal information (surveillance capitalism).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just wanted to plug repair.org who is working to protect actions like this (I have no connection to the org). You can join as an individual member to support their mission financially:

[https://repair.org/individual-supporter- membership](https://repair.org/individual-supporter-membership)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great reverse engineering project.

What it points out to me, painfully, yet again, is that cool stuff can actually do everything its bought to do without a "monthly service fee." And yet here we are.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to see the discussion here focusing mainly on "open from the producer/manufacturer" side, when what I think is the really important point here is that " _opening_ from the consumer/user" side can be easy and empowering: companies and services will come and go, but your ability to take control effectively depends only on your willingness to discover and explore.

I avoid a lot of "smart" products in general, but feel comfortable with working on the equipment I do have --- whether it's maintenance, repair, or modification --- and I think that's the most important thing to keep in mind; to not be scared of treating things as anything other than mysterious black boxes. It seems that a lot of people treat "reverse engineering" as some equally mysterious and imposing idea, when it's really just about problem solving or figuring out how something works.

Also, I don't think the RPi is necessary here; the bike is a Bluetooth device, so any computer with a Bluetooth interface can receive its data and process it. I'm not an RF expert, but rebroadcasting BT seems like it would create more interference.

<comment><USER24> > Also, I don't think the RPi is necessary here; the bike is a Bluetooth > device, so any computer with a Bluetooth interface can receive its data and > process it. I'm not an RF expert, but rebroadcasting BT seems like it would > create more interference.

The rebroadcasting is done because the goal was to get the data into a proprietary piece of software that expects data to come in over Bluetooth.

And rebroadcasting will actually be just fine on the air medium because right after receiving is exactly the time when the bike won't send another message.

The RPi is complete overkill of course, a tiny $3 nRF52 module could do that job just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > First, the node binary needs permission to advertise Bluetooth services:

> sudo setcap cap_net_raw+eip /usr/local/bin/node

Use AmbientCapabilities= in the unit file instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's much better, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Drat, I was hoping this would _also_ have a recipe for unlocking/reinitializing the attached Android-based tablet, on some of these bikes. Then it could run other biking apps - or just provide reading/music while riding. (Maybe even: it could do the BLE translation?)

The community hasn't figured out how to root the tablet, yet, but there are some hints as to the manufacturer/boot-launch-software – [https://www.reddit.com/r/FlywheelAnywhere/comments/gexqte/ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FlywheelAnywhere/comments/gexqte/has_anyone_wiped_the_software_on_their_flywheel/fq1wz19/) – if anyone has any ideas or is interested in a challenge.

<comment><USER27> I'm trying to create an Android recovery for a peloton, which is similar [https://github.com/Goayandi/mediatek_mt8176_development/issu...](https://github.com/Goayandi/mediatek_mt8176_development/issues/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Was it really "bricked"

<comment><USER29> No; this is hyperbole, and cheapens the meaning of the word bricked. It's core function still worked perfectly. The app no longer works. The app was always a subscription service. There was an offer to swap (for free) with another bike, which continues to let you pay to another subscription service for similar or better functionality.

I'm all for hacking your gadgets, and open APIs, but let's get a sense of perspective.

<comment><USER28> "I reverse engineered the data feed protocol on my spinner" would have made me click.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reading into this - flywheel apparently stole patented ideas from peloton including streaming on demand exercise classes? And that's why their service is shutting down? How is that supposed to be a protectable/patentable concept? That sounds like some first class patent trolling at face value.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't just patent infringement — they stole corporate documents and assets from Peloton Levandowski-style. There are other companies doing exercise streaming like Mirror which haven't had to shut down so I don't think this is some kind of massive patent roadblock for the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There are other machines, like rowing machines, for which an open solution is hard to incentivise, since the machine, the app, and the sensors will all come from a single vendor.

I'm a little surprised, however, that Peloton, and Peloton-alikes ever happened because cyclists have training devices with open interfaces: Bikes, mounted on smart trainers that have standardized wireless links and protocols, connected to a choice of apps.

All it takes is taking the rear wheel off a bike. Or not even that for the most basic trainers, which clamp the rear axle and provide resistance to the rear tire. A fascinating case of a market segmentation that is less susceptible to being breached than one might think.

<comment><USER33> I have one of those Tacx trainers where you just put your bike in. It's a hassle. You need to use their own quick release to hold the bike in place. The cord with the gear shifter (which sets the resistance) is always somewhere where it's annoying the rider and the shifting control itself doesn't fit on all handle bars. It's also really noisy.

I have been tempted very often to just buy one of these ready to use training bikes because of the frustration of: put some yoga mat cut-outs underneath the Tacx to suppress the vibration of the spinning weight, get the bike from the cellar, exchange the quick release, store the old one somewhere where it's not getting lost, put the bike in place by its rear wheel, place the front wheel in a fixed position, get a fan to put in front of the bike trainer, mount the gear shifter, which clumsily hangs on the handle bar because my handle bar is too big. (It's a standard road bike handlebar)

Did I mention this thing was really loud?

I'm also sometimes worried about the fixed pressure on my carbon frame but I think that's actually unreasonable.

<comment><USER34> But they are quite cheap and they fold away. The next tier up 'wheel-off' trainers are much quieter. But you've still got all that faff (add chain oil to the mix when taking the rear wheel off) of getting the bike upstairs, the wheel off, mat down (for the sweat), positition the fan etc. But I don't have a load of space so a dedicated exercise bike is a complete no.

By the way, clip the resistance switcher on the top of your front wheel rather than your handle bars. Fits well there and is out of the way but still reachable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If the bike doesn't take you anywhere when you pedal it, it's still a brick.

</comment><comment><USER36> There are standard BLE GATT attributes for reporting power output, cadence, etc. from indoor bikes (and tons of other standards for other fitness appliances, smart scales, blood sugar measurement devices, etc.). If the vendor had used these standard attributes there won't be any need for reverse engineering their protocol.

Moral of the story: choose appliances that support standard protocols.

</comment><comment><USER37> Some interesting info here. I have a Garmin speed sensor and a "dumb" mag trainer (CycleOps Mag). Given the trainers known resistance curve, I was thinking about trying to come up with a script to approximate power based on speed.

Basically I want a home brew alternative for Zwift and TrainerRoad virtual power.

<comment><USER38> That would be a cool project. Do you already know the resistance curve, or you're just saying SOMEONE knows it? I'd worry that it would be impacted by heat, but perhaps not significantly.

I've got a Peloton, have a Stages power crank on my road bike, and previously had Favero Assioma power meter pedals (highly recommended product BTW). I ran the pedals on the Peloton for a few rides to get a feeling for how close the calibration was. (surprisingly close, in my case).

<comment><USER37> Saris (now owner of cycle ops) has an approximate graph on their blog. It's probably not very accurate, but I could probably get close enough by taking some "known" points, some approximations and applying some math to the problem.

The other option is to see if I can dig into the zwift or trainer road code. Both of those applications support "virtual power" for this specific trainer. Which is another way of saying that SOMEONE knows it. I'm sure that Saris actually shared the exact curve with Zwift and Trainer Road, but I'm not sure they'd share it with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow, I love expensive equipment that can't work once the company goes out of business. If you want to have a subscription based hardware device the hardware should be free.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is the kind of article I love to see on HN. Someone had an issue with a product and solved it using clever technical skills and deep dives.

</comment><comment> Maha-pudma The 2k exercise bike aside, this is a brilliant article. I love reading stuff like this and wish I had the smarts/knowledge to do this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER41> You left out step 3 on your ToDo list: 3) Spoof the data to the social media apps and make yourself into a super-human athlete!

(Probably best done with a different account.)

</comment><comment><USER42> An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

Mitch Hedberg

<comment><USER43> They can fail quite spectacularly: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1SjQfwLieU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1SjQfwLieU)

<comment><USER44> Sometimes they eat people too :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Imagine inventing the wheel and expecting that in the distant future, the wheel itself would stop working because of a stupid reason like this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why would a bicycle need a subscription service?

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm fairly open-minded, but sometimes a product comes along and blows me away with how preposterous its central pitch is.

And then I discover there is actually a market for it, and I am further dismayed... And amazed at the robustness of Say's Law.

Anyway, this bike and the whole associated product is preposterous.

</comment><comment><USER48> > a $2k bike

Maybe that's your problem right there. Get a simple bike, leave the house (ok, I know there's Corona, I didn't say congregate), find someplace planar, and cycle in the real world.

In Amsterdam, a decent used bike will cost you the equivalent of 80 USD, maybe less.

<comment><USER49> Amsterdam also has a large public cycling culture, with a public infrastructure to support public cycling

It also has a climate geared more towards outdoor cycling.

Not everyone has one or both of those factors, making indoor cycling more reliable, safer, and more enjoyable</comment></comment>


Treasury places digital currency addresses on sanctions list - <AUTHOR> https://fcw.com/articles/2018/11/28/cryptocurrency-treasury-sanctions-iran.aspx <comment><USER2> Really problematic for currencies that are untracable like monero... the transaction isnt stored to-from unencrypted so only you with your transaction key can show it to who you paid to reveal the proof that you made the transaction... [https://www.getmonero.org/resources/user-guides/prove- paymen...](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/user-guides/prove-payment.html)

This just really messes with the concept of making peoples money less valuable than other peoples by blacklisting addresses, wont work id say for cryptoNote currencies ...

plug: checkout [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) for ai market forecasts

</comment><comment><USER3> nice. until someone starts offering the 'swatting' equivalent on BTC.

for a price, they will forward BTC from sanctioned address to your target. Zero repercussions and all funds of victim's wallet are now useless (in the US at least) and they will receive hell from most US agencies during the investigation.</comment>


IQ scores in relation to web browser choice - <AUTHOR> http://www.aptiquant.com/IQ-Browser-AptiQuant-2011.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is the first time I've ever heard of ads for a "free IQ test" actually leading to the real thing!

The paper uses the word "significant" quite a few times, but never mentions the significance level, or confidence intervals, or any other indication of the statistical quality (or lack thereof) of this data. The large number of subjects (100K) suggests that the results may be valid, but it would be nice to see this quantified.

Also, the author says "the test worked properly in all of the major browsers", but doesn't explain how he established that, which is important to rule out the possibility that a problem with the test in some browsers skewed the results.

Still, the graph at the end (showing distribution of browser usage across IQ percentiles) is entertaining.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the "free IQ test" thing made me wonder too. I always thought that intelligent people would not be very likely to click on those ads.

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, what would the usage of adblock be by IQ percentile? Opera's high showing may be due to it's adblock extension still not being as mature as those of Chrome and FF, and so the average Opera user might be less likely to use it. There's no doubt that Opera users would tend to be geeks and nerds anyway, but you could say the same thing of the top FF users. I'm not convinced that the methodology supports the apparent conclusion that the smartest people use Opera, just that of those who took the test, Opera users scored best.

<comment><USER4> I bet adblock usage peaks between 120-130 iq and drops off on either side.

This is a wild, completely speculative hunch for which I have no evidence.

<comment><USER3> So I get putting a lower bound on it, as it would take exposure to technical communities (even if it's just 4chan) that usually comes from inquisition and information-seeking, but what do you propose as the means by which there would exist an upper bound?

<comment><USER5> I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?

<comment><USER3> They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves.

I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...

<comment><USER6> It's also potentially the case that intelligent people recognize that it's silly to be completely upset over ads and that few sides with really obnoxious ads have good content in the first place. Perhaps, to them, it's just not worth the trouble.

But neither is trying to convince anyone on the internet that you're smart in the first place.

<comment><USER7> So we're all just projecting what we do onto the smart people here, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple of points. First: In the paper, Aptiquant claims that over 100,000 took a Weschler (IV) test in 4 weeks. According to wikipedia, a Weschler test takes about 15 minutes. That's an awful lot of people looking for free IQ tests, and spending 15 minutes each on the site. Second: Check out Aptiquant's site. Maybe I'm stupid, but I was unable to find a single active 'Free IQ Test' link.

And another - Aptiquant's results (if they are real) are from a self-selected group. Does the need to take a free online IQ test relate to your IQ?

<comment><USER2> I couldn't find a time estimate on Wikipedia, but Pearson (the publisher of the WAIS-IV) says that it takes 60-90 minutes ([http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en- us/Prod...](http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en- us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=015-8980-808)).

It's also not clear to me how they determined correlations between scores on their on-line version and on the standard pencil-and-paper version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This study almost seems believable until you read the last paragraph. Since when are Web Standards "common knowledge"? How does understanding how IQ relates to browser choice help IT companies save the extra money they spend making websites work in IE? And does this conclusion mean that only IT companies have websites, or only IT companies invest the extra money to make them work in IE?

I didn't click on the IQ test... but I did click on the study. Dang.

</comment><comment><USER10> Amusing, but it's kind of a truism. Changing your browser requires cognitive capacity. Those who change it the fastest have the highest cognitive capacity. Even without other explanations, that explains variations of version within a single browser, and to some extent Chrome and Firefox.

The really surprising thing for me was Opera. You can't explain that with mere willingness to update or try something new.

<comment><USER11> Popular browsers are "dragged down to 100" by the mass of people who install the browser because of techie friends, or fashion.

In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals using firefox and chrome rather than opera.

<comment><USER12> > In the second graph you can notice there are many more high IQs individuals > using firefox and chrome rather than opera.

You can also notice that as IQ increases, the numbers of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari users eventually peak, but the number of Opera users never does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> IQ will be lower the more market share, so this is silly.

<comment><USER14> not necessarily. Let's say my browser is targeted toward people with low IQ, and I get 10% of the market, biased heavily toward low IQ. Suddenly, people with high IQ realize that it's a great browser for them as well, and they all start using it - I increase market share AND raise correlated IQ levels.

It is more accurate to say that increasing market share will tend to shift average IQ score toward the population mean.

<comment><USER13> Your last statement is indeed the phenomenon I was intending to describe.

However access to the internet (and tools) has gone to the wealthy and educated first, who tend to have higher IQ (as measurable by most tests) than the poor and uneducated. Hence adoption of new browser technology is often among the cognitive elite (for access reasons) and penetration toward the masses (average IQ) depends on the overall appeal and not just a small fad among those with early access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Who uses Opera and why?

<comment><USER16> I've been using Opera for about 11 years now. When I started, there was nothing that was better. Even with that huge advertisement widget. It still is extremely competitive, if not leading in most things. For casual browsing it is unmatched.

It's not about one feature; it's the completeness of the whole browser. Things that you'd expect in Firefox/Chrome in extensions are built in here. It's still as fast as Chrome to the user, never mind silly benchmarks. Give it a spin some time.

<comment><USER17> I gave it shot for a while because I needed the Turbo feature. I liked using Opera, it was fast and the new chrome-like GUI is nice. However... as soon as my internet was back at full capacity I changed back to Chrome. You say you like it because of the completeness, but I found that it was missing quite a few small things which I cannot live without. Off the top off my head I can only remember two things -

Tabs cannot be dragged in and out of windows

Text cannot be selected and dragged into the URL bar

<comment><USER18> > Text cannot be selected and dragged into the URL bar

You can right click the text and select "Go to web address". It's quicker in my opinion.

<comment><USER17> but i dont want to go to a web address, i want to drag some text into the url bar and have my default engine run a query on that text

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale > tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers.

AptiQuant needs to review their correlation/causation definitions. Resisting change is one plausible explanation, but the only thing the data clearly show is that the people who scored low on this IQ test tended to be using out of date browsers at the time they took the test. "Resistance" implies agency, which correlation studies do not establish.

I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce user intelligence.

<comment><USER12> > I choose to go with the reverse explanation: older browsers actively reduce > user intelligence.

Do you have any reason for that? Because frankly it just sounds ridiculous.

It would make sense that someone with a higher IQ would be able to consider the possibility that their browser was replaceable and take the necessary steps to replace it. But I don't see how which browser you use could have an appreciable effect on your intelligence.

<comment><USER19> It was a joke, along the lines of xkcd comics. See: <http://xkcd.com/925/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Excellent. Now I can convert all of the people I know who still use IE to opera. "SMART PEOPLE USE OPERA, YOU WANT TO BE CONSIDERED SMART, DON'T YOU?!"

<comment><USER21> Did you see the second graph? Firefox is the most popular browser among people who were in the 99th percentile.

<comment><USER4> But Opera had almost no users below 50th percentile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps some browsers are particularly hard to use and you need to use those extra IQ points figuring out how to get them installed or running. In other words, this might be a dubious accomplishment.

<comment><USER23> Highly speculative. Conversely, maybe there's some subtle, innate quality that higher IQ people appreciate about certain browsers.

Either way, as an Opera user, I have some ammunition next time I find myself in a childish browser argument ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The study mentioned that they collect operating system data as well; the subsequent writeup on that might prove quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER25> <sarcasm> In a similar study, they do an association study between IQ and shower frequency... </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER26> Lynx?

Or using telnet on port 80?

<comment><USER27> I for one exclusively use GNU wget for my surfing needs! Through GNU Emacs of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> HAHAHAHAHA - I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously !!!

</comment><comment><USER2> The aptiquant.com site now says this was all a hoax.

</comment><comment><USER29> hahaha... judging by the IQ score, only the Opera devs are still using Opera :p

</comment><comment><USER30> _It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies_

So, dumb people keep IT employed.

<comment><USER31> Or, dumb people reduce functionality for the rest of us because work has to go into handling their mistakes rather than coding the better product the devs really wanted to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would think IQ in relation to websites being visited would be a better. Rupert Murdock websites = lower score, that sort of thing.

<comment><USER33> Thankyou, sir, for misspelling Rupert Murdoch's name, and treating us all to this delicious dose of irony.

<comment><USER32> I don't care.</comment></comment></comment>


Golang style error handling in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://blog.grossman.io/how-to-write-async-await-without-try-catch-blocks-in-javascript/ <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: Instead of

try { const res = await asyncFunction(); } catch (err) { throw err; }

Use _await-to-js_ library

const [err, res] = await to(asyncFunction()); if (err) { throw err; }</comment>


Assange begins mansion arrest, but his 'source' feels the heat - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/assange-begins-mansion-arrest-but-his-source-feels-the-heat-2163607.html

<comment><USER2> The hero here is Manning, who will probably spend the rest of his life in prison, declared a non-person, tortured and deprived of rights even regular prisoners get.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "Not only had it been the world's worst screw"

I would sue her for slander ;-)</comment>


The Question of Quantum Supremacy - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2018/05/the-question-of-quantum-supremacy.html <comment><USER2> This is a pretty dense read.

My summary (and I'd appreciate correction from those who follow this more closely):

There is a set of problems where the runtime complexity increase exponentially as the problem size increases on classical computers.

If you can show you have a device where the time complexity only increases linearly and you are faster in clock time then you have shown that your device is superior to classical computing.

Here Google chooses a problem and shows that their 9 qbit quantum device (which they developed) shows exponential speed up between 5 and 9 qbits.

They project that speed up and error rates forward and find it should achieve quantum supremacy at 50 qbits.

(At least that's my reading. Corrections and expansion very welcome)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I believe you catch the gist of it.

It's a calculation which proves there is indeed a complexity point whereby quantum computing will exceed classical computing ... by proving mathematically that adding enough qubits will suffice that.

Keep in mind this proof still hints at "a class of problems/calculations" which qubits will overwhelm, not a general overwhelming of everything. At least that's my reading.

Still this mathematical proof is indeed interesting.

<comment><USER4> gp> it's a calculation which proves there is indeed a complexity point whereby quantum computing will exceed classical computing

'Prove' is correct for the research but a bit strong for the language of your summary

The important caveat:

tfa> determination of the smallest computational task that is prohibitively hard for today's classical computers.

'today's classical computers'.. or more timeless: 'contingent on p!=np'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The arXiv links: \- [https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263](https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263) \- [https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06678](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06678)

</comment><comment><USER6> Didn't understand the relation between quantum computing and nitrogen fixation.

<comment><USER7> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.03590](https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.03590)

Elucidating Reaction Mechanisms on Quantum Computers

"We show how a quantum computer can be employed to elucidate reaction mechanisms in complex chemical systems, using the open problem of biological nitrogen fixation in nitrogenase as an example. We discuss how quantum computers can augment classical-computer simulations for such problems, to significantly increase their accuracy and enable hitherto intractable simulations. Detailed resource estimates show that, even when taking into account the substantial overhead of quantum error correction, and the need to compile into discrete gate sets, the necessary computations can be performed in reasonable time on small quantum computers. This demonstrates that quantum computers will realistically be able to tackle important problems in chemistry that are both scientifically and economically significant."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I understand the problem correctly it involves generating random strings. If so, then it seems like cheating since quantum effects are random and classical computing isn't.

<comment><USER9> That's not really what's going on here. Typically when quantum computers are compared against classical computers, it's assumed that the latter have access to a source of randomness. It's not the randomness by itself that should make this hard for a classical computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are they saying that their simulations of quantum computers with classical computing aim to break new ground in terms of computation?

<comment><USER11> They are saying that they want to demonstrate a convincing point from where it's infeasible to use the tactic of breaking new ground classically to simulate quantum devices breaks because the exponential complexity means that the classical devices are beyond our capability as a society, and will remain that way for at least a long time if not forever. At that point having a quantum computer that is constructible and can do these problems is at least valuable for this task. Until then the only point of quantum computers is that it's an interesting idea. But, quantum supremacy is just a first step; simulating quantum devices of various sorts is important science, but there is a long way to go before quantum computing can be implemented that is useful for the rest of the feasible tasks that people talk about using it for. I would like to see a list of the tasks that are understood to be targets for quantum computing and a projected timeline - has anyone got one? When do people in the community believe that we will have a workable device that can do Grover's algorithm for 10^52 bits?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do companies 'work directly' with Google (like Groupon does)? - <AUTHOR>

This TC article got me thinking:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/groupon-google/
I'm a complete outsider on this topic, but from what I've read (or convinced myself, sorry, no specific references), you can't just call up The Google and get help.
The statement in the above link is the source of my question: "we're working directly with Google."
When a company, like Groupon in this case, says they are 'working directly' with Google what does that mean? <comment><USER2> Probably marketing fluff for "we put in an exclusion request for those URLs through the webmaster console." If you have an inside contact, you can get an intro to someone who can quickly fix things that way. If not, hope Matt Cutts takes pity on you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link helper:

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/groupon-google/></comment>


Tales from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Guidance Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html

<comment><USER2> This is the cool stuff.

I could care less about building a RESTful social widget interface. I couldn't care more about building a system to land men 300Kmiles away on a rock with a computer with less horsepower than your digital watch.</comment>


Making Cents – the meager royalties paid out to bands by streaming services - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/

<comment><USER4> "make something, price it for more than it costs to manufacture, and sell it if you can... Pandora and Spotify are not selling goods; they are selling access"

except that's always what the record industry has been selling. at least Pandora and Spotify are honest about what they are. If i bought your vinyl record, do i actually own that or is really just a proxy for personal usage license? Can I play that record at my wedding, or in my office, or at a party with more than some arbitrary number of people?

Intellectual property is not a physical good. The recording industry has coasted along for the last 50 years or so on this strange phenomenon that allowed their IP to be sold as though it were a physical product while at the same time getting IP protections _in addition to_ the revenue of a physical good, and they've made a ton of money doing so - more money than they ever should have. Now the gravy train is ending.

Getting paid per-play rather means that artists are finally seeing how people actually value their music. You can't use law to make your music more valuable. If you want to earn more then make more music, or go on tour, or put some effort into selling your music for soundtracks and the like. The rates spotify pays represent the actual value to the consumer - they aren't making a profit, and if spotify were any more than what it currently costs, i wouldn't pay for it. You might think your song is worth more than $10/mo in streaming royalties, but you might also be wrong.

<comment><USER5> So then you presumably believe that Matt Inman at The Oatmeal was wrong to be upset at Funnyjunk for appropriating his comics; after all, he had no right to claim them as his own property.

And, of course, what you're saying about the market valuing music is that the market values music at zero; the price of music on streaming services is simply the premium people pay over free pirated tracks in order to have a nice user interface.

<comment><USER4> please stop inventing the argument you want to argue agaist. nowhere in my post did i say creators shouldn't own their IP, or that piracy was right. nothing here has even the slightest relevance to matthew inman. piracy is illegal, it's not part of "the market". theft values everything as free, it has no relevance to this discussion. i didn't say anything about piracy. that's not the debate here.

<comment><USER5> _Intellectual property is not a physical good [...] You can't use law to make your music more valuable._

<comment><USER6> I don't see how the OP's statement that no amount of lawmaking will make people want to listen to more of a specific song has anything to do with piracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The streaming services don't make money either. In fact, Spotify makes a loss. A substantial loss. An eye-watering loss [1]. And so does anybody else who tries to get into this business. The trail is becoming littered with the corpses of plucky companies who've tried to make a buck in this business. Why is that? Quite simply, the music business is a cartel. It used to be the Big Six; now there's just three. Three companies who own the rights to most of the last half a century's worth of popular music. Here's the problem with Spotify's business model: they don't own what they're selling. The labels do. And so if Spotify makes a profit then the major labels can just renegotiate their contracts within a year (they typically have break clauses), and gobble up all those extra earnings.

You see the music business is a /nightmarish/ labyrinth of copyright legislation, so to even start playing in this game you need a staff lawyer (or three). There's recording rights, which you have to pay to one arm of the label. Then there's publishing rights, which you have to pay to a completely different arm of the label (or, if you're unlucky, a different label - <USER2> with the erstwhile EMI's catalogue), and that's just to play some radio. If you want to do on-demand streaming, of the type that Spotify provides, then you have to pay mechanical reproduction royalties. Whaaa? I hear you say. Well, it takes a while for the law to catch up with these things so they've just repurposed the laws that were already there. Would you believe, you even have a different bunch of people to pay if you want to reproduce the lyrics. Now, take all that and multiply it by the number of countries you want to stream in, because you're gonna need to strike deal with a different branch of each label in each country. It's insanity.

The one beacon of light is the much maligned DMCA act, which (aside for enabling content owners to persecute twelve year old children) allows those wanting to stream music in a radio-like fashion to just pay a central collections agency a fixed rate. That simplifies the business significantly - no more negotiation and complex contracts, and no more need to have such detailed reporting (less staff, less code). The only thing is that it's applicable only in the US, as there's no EU equivalent (or anywhere else, for that matter). And it doesn't cover on-demand streaming. But it's a start.

Music startups really need to push for an overhaul of the copyright laws because the landscape has fundamentally changed and what exists currently is both arcane and archaic. We need a complete legislative metamorphosis, lest the major labels continue to move their contractual blessing between startups - ideally, of course, shortly after a tasty IPO - which all resembles the classic pump-and-dump scam.

I hope it happens.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/10/spotify-is-having-a- good-20...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/10/spotify-is-having-a- good-2012-revenues-could-reach-500m-as-it-expands-the-digital-music-market/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm coming out with my first cd soon... a seven-song mini-album. I printed 300 copies as that was the smallest I could go without it becoming a CD-R instead of a redbook. They'll arrive in a couple of weeks, and I'm thinking of selling them for $10 apiece. I spent a few years writing the songs and figuring out how to record and produce them as professionally as I'm able. I spent countless hours on the project and somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 on production costs. Despite that, I know the drill - I don't really have expectations of making a lot of money on this, or even meeting my costs. But I do intend to try as hard as I can to maximize my revenue.

It's amazing what kind of culture has sprung up in the selling/delivery sphere. All these companies spring up to "empower" the indie musician and they invest in all sorts of signaling to make sure we know we had better sign up for their services or else we're not taking our career seriously. Examples:

CDBaby: keeps $4 of every cd sale, even though you've already spent $1-$3 per every cd you manufacture. As opposed to just setting up a paypal link or merchant account on your website, and shipping it yourself. 2.9% + $0.30 sounds a lot better than $4. (Shipping costs are additional either way and passed on to the user.) I have trouble imagining at what point I'd want to spend $3.41 _per cd_ to save myself the effort of just sticking a mailing label to a padded envelope and dropping it in my mailbox.

Bandcamp: keeps 10% (by way of keeping every 10th chunk of revenue for itself). It's based around the belief that people will pay more if it's freely available, or will tend to pay more than the "suggested" price. I haven't really dived into their studies but I just cannot believe there isn't a flaw in them. A lot of it seems based off of the logic that if it worked for Radiohead or NIN (with their already built-in audiences) then it should also work for small indie musicians. (And Radiohead and NIN have also since stepped away from the free/pay-what-you-want model.) At any rate, 2.9% + $0.30 sounds better than 10%, since I have to do fulfillment on my end either way.

iTunes/digital media: $0.99 no matter what. $6.93 for a seven-song album, and you can't set your own price. If you have a major label you can apparently set your album price higher but smaller indies don't seem to have access to that privilege. Plus, if your digital album costs $6.93, then you've basically destroyed your options of selling your hard-copy.

And everyone knows the common complaints about spotify and pandora.

At any rate, I'm considering going through a lengthy staged release process, in an effort to measure all sorts of conversion and gather data along the way.

1) Release physical cd only, with no music previews. At this point, the few hundred people on my mailing list are already interested in the cd anyway, so we'll see how far that goes, along with recommendations to friends. Maintain a list of addresses for people who indicate they won't buy until it's released digitally.

2) Marketing music previews of each song and on an album level, through promoted Facebook posts (friends-of-friends) and advertising. The general principle here is to still not ever release the entire full-length tracks, and funnel people to buying the physical cd.

3) Release digitally to services that are not on-demand and can't be downloaded. This means Jango and Pandora. Jango also allows me to buy paid plays and get a bunch of demographic data points to see which tracks are popular with which groups. I can then use that to do more targeted ads over at facebook or maybe through google.

4) When things are really dying down physically, finally release through iTunes and bandcamp (allow full previews) and other sites where you can actually buy the tracks digitally, and see what happens with "discovery"

5) When I'm finally ready to just trash the whole project, release it on Spotify and forget about it to start working on the next cd.

<comment><USER9> If you are hoping to sell 300 copies, my guess is your best bet at building a career would be to give everything away free, setting up a website where anyone can download free mp3s if they give you their email address and zip code. With this info you can book tours, tell prospective labels "I had 10k downloads" etc.

Even if you were able to make $10 per cd, you're still in the hole. Maybe better to chalk the whole recording thing up to marketing expense and use it to give you better leverage in the future.

<comment><USER10> _tell prospective labels "I had 10k downloads" etc._

Pfff, you can buy that for $50 and the labels know it.

 _Even if you were able to make $10 per cd, you're still in the hole. Maybe better to chalk the whole recording thing up to marketing expense and use it to give you better leverage in the future._

Something tells me you're not a musician,

<comment><USER9> I've been on tour before, gave everything away for free, slept on couches...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest acts make their money touring.

Pandora should help smaller bands line up shows in towns where they are popular, and help them promote those shows to interested fans. They have the data and the consumer relationships to do it.

Bands would appreciate this service far more than a meager check. And it would be much cheaper for Pandora (those song royalties eat up all their revenue). I listen to hundreds of bands on Pandora, and I'd definitely attend more shows if only I knew when they were playing locally.

EDIT: Even $100 is far better than a check for cents. And such a service would increase attendance at shows. They key is that bands would _appreciate_ it, whereas they feel angered by insulting little checks.

<comment><USER5> Small acts make fuck-all touring. Members of bands who have put out multiple records on well-known indie labels routinely make $50-100 for a single show. Touring revenue is great if you're one of a few big ticket acts; it is a lie we tell ourselves to justify not paying for albums from almost all of the rest of them.

<comment><USER12> Apparently they make the same fuck-all when we buy the albums. "Paying" for the albums is just a lie we tell ourselves to justify handing all of the money to a middle man so we can just get our music right now without actually having to do anything about the injustice of the big fat mess the music industry became?

<comment><USER5> No, that's not true, because the middle-men were actually paying the artists. But, nice try.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes. But I've danced so now I'll say. The retail model was crummy to artists even when it worked. It's ending. Streaming isn't picking up the slack. Piracy isn't hurting as much as we're led to believe but it sure as hell isn't helping. I'm saying that _we_ have a resposibilty to support the artists we like (and in some cases to figure out how best to do it) or we're all going to be listening to hobbyists. I'm arguing for a return to patronage. Connected 21st century patronage.

<comment><USER5> How exactly was the retail model crummy to artists? The conventional wisdom seems to be that the model was crummy because artists barely, if ever, recouped royalties. But that was often because their advances were calibrated to prevent that from happening --- which is again how the publishing business model works.

The thing the retail model seems to have done is provide predictable income streams to artists. What seems to be looming after the retail model, between streaming services and Kickstarter, is a model that provide patchy and unpredictable incomes to well-known artists and a hobbyist position for virtually everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think the article discusses how royalties were paid for traditional radio, does it?

Anyway, I've definitely discovered multiple bands through Pandora, and then bought their albums/seen them in concert/etc.

<comment><USER14> Traditional radio pays a much lower % of sales to the licensing companies.

Pandora and Spotify are being fleeced by comparison.

With the shift to Internet / satellite, the licensing companies made a huge land grab on the fees. The radio business has a few large organizations that go to bat for the whole industry. They're old lobbying groups with quite a bit of leverage, having been entrenched in DC for decades, and it's one of the reasons licensing fees have remained reasonable for radio. Internet radio / streaming has no such lobbying groups (yet).

<comment><USER15> To be fair, radio doesn't completely _replace_ sales of singles and albums the way Pandora and Spotify do.

You can't compare on-demand services to radio.

<comment><USER13> Pandora does not replace such sales. You cannot queue up an album or particular song to listen to. It's cultural role is very analogous to traditional radio.

Spotify is very different, of course, and that's why they have a different royalty structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Zoe Keating is always worth-while reading about this, including being open about where her royalties come from. For eg (this was the post that got represented as "pay me in data"): [http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/35737991443/what-i-want- fr...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/35737991443/what-i-want-from- internet-radio) (there's a spreadsheet with the breakdown in there)

That one got featured in the NYT, prompting a couple of follow-ups: [http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/41955905309/a-blog- about-a...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/41955905309/a-blog-about-an- email-about-a-blog-about-a-news-article)

[http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/42057406771/where-does- the...](http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/post/42057406771/where-does-the-filthy- lucre-come-from) (I loved the internet-expertise implied by _Several people advised me to consider touring as a revenue stream since "that is where artists make most of their money"._!) More pertinently though: _"Live performance is usually my revenue stream with the highest expense ratio: flights, hotel rooms, commissions, crew, advertising, etc…"_

</comment><comment><USER17> Recorded music's value has dropped very close to zero (even 99 cents seems too much depending on the song sometimes).

Live performances will always be the profit center. Recorded music is only good for promoting a band's concerts; you can't copy the live concert experience.

<comment><USER18> Ask any musician during the pre-internet era and this would be their assessment:

Recorded music will always be the profit center. Live performances are only good for promoting a band's records; it's easier to sell 1,000,000 records than it is to sell tickets for 1,000,000 seats.

<comment><USER19> no, pre internet bands still got dicked on record sales and made their bank on live performances.

<comment><USER20> From the article referenced above;

" megastars like Lyle Lovett have pointed out that he sold 4.6 million records and never made a dime from album sales. It's why the band 30 Seconds to Mars went platinum and sold 2 million records and never made a dime from album sales."

Jaw-dropping...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is a rebuttal to this article and other streaming attacks that I linked to a while back posted on music site hypebot. Worth giving it a look. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4834767>

</comment><comment><USER22> > But I have simply stopped looking to these business models to do anything > for me financially as a musician.

That's too bad, because there are opportunities. You could completely discount the revenue most artists get directly get from streaming and look at the services as the free option of the freemium model. They're getting their product to a far larger audience than they would have if there was a cost right out of the gate, and some of those free users will turn into paying ones. I know I have purchased albums (from iTunes) of artists I've discovered on Spotify. I'm positive that for Galaxie 500, some of their Spotify streams generated additional revenue in other channels.

</comment><comment><USER23> These are token royalties, I don't see the moral difference between these services and piracy. Music discovery has always been a liability for artists, the illusion that sharing is somehow worse than this sanctioned exploitation is pure hypocrisy.

<comment><USER24> >the illusion that sharing is somehow worse than this sanctioned exploitation is pure hypocrisy.

Consent makes all the difference in the world.

<comment><USER23> Not in any measurable business sense. As a means to explain public dissonance regarding this current market, then yes.

<comment><USER24> You mentioned a moral difference, not a business difference.

<comment><USER23> I see no moral difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Pressing 1,000 singles in 1988 gave us the earning potential of more than 13 > million streams in 2012. (And people say the internet is a bonanza for young > bands...)

If you had 13 million streams, you would easily sell a few thousand albums. The internet _is_ a bonanza for artists - it gives you exposure and allows worldwide sales at very low cost.

<comment><USER26> Saying this to Damon Krukowski is a bit like attempting to teach one's grandmother to suck eggs, no? He presumably knows something about this topic.

<comment><USER14> There's never anything wrong with challenging a supposed authority on a subject.

I don't care who the person in question is. Albert Einstein should still be challenged on his calculations.

Krukowski knows what he's talking about? Good, then he has nothing to fear from a little debate.

<comment><USER27> If you want to "debate" it might help to come with more than assertions that don't really have much of a basis in fact.

<comment><USER25> If there were no assumptions it wouldn't be a debate. It's just my opinion®

[http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/08/a-look-inside-zoe- kea...](http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/08/a-look-inside-zoe-keatings- earnings-as-an-indie-musician.html)

$85k in sales over 5 months, 1.5 million plays on Spotify.

Another thing that prompted my comment is an apparent disregard for scale in the article - 7000 plays is _nothing_. Kids playing acoustic guitar get 500k views on youtube every week (not a qualitative judgment, of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How much money would radio station pay per listener that heard the song? I assume its far less than pandora pays and pandora is just radio on the net.

<comment><USER29> FM radio stations don't pay this royalty at all.

<comment><USER30> I can't wait for the day when Clearchannel crumbles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think a relevant issue that is the direct result of spotify/pandora/itunes is that we no longer consume albums, but rather individual tracks. Artists used to (and many still do) value producing a collection of songs that when listened sequentially meant something much more than listening to each song individually. Therefore, albums should theoretically be worth significantly more than the sum of the value of each individual track, but today's services have essentially destroyed this model. Don't get me wrong, there are obvious benefits of being able to consume only the tracks you like most, and I understand that we can still choose to listen to albums in their entirety, but the vast majority of people do not. A serious consequence of this is that consumers value music and the music industry as a whole significantly less than they once did. I also think there is an opportunity within the music-tech space to recreate the album-listening experience in an elegant way.

</comment><comment><USER32> What does pay-per-play even mean? IRTFA, and then searched again to see if I missed something for the terms 'start', 'finish', or 'duration'. I did not. I get how crappy it is for musicians to get ahead in the world, but it would be for everyone if we could be open about what the basic unit of currency is in this economy.

Most of the time for my paid Rdio account, I listen to stuff I know I already like. Sometimes I don't, and I don't listen to more than 10-30 seconds of a song. Does that count as a play? Other times I'll go find tons of stuff within the app, but it's still all within Rdio-land.

Also the stuff I stream on Rdio, I already paid for much of it within iTunes, but I prefer to have everything under the same hood. First world problem, I know. Do I get a discount for everything that I bought on vinyl, cassettes, CDs, and mp3s on other formats?

I play thousands of songs each month, should I be paying 1 cent each?

<comment><USER10> _I play thousands of songs each month, should I be paying 1 cent each?_

Assuming a song is 3 minutes long on average, and assuming you play 1000 songs (including maybe 1000 others that you didn't like and only listened to for a couple of seconds), that's 50 hours of musical entertainment, which at a penny a song would be $10.

So yes, you should.

<comment><USER32> I pay $10 to Rdio each month, and paid a lot to iTunes before that.

I definitely don't listen to one sucky song for every one that I like.

Sitting at a desk coding and listening to music in your free time is an easy 200 hours a month.

So all your assumptions are false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> They had < 10k plays in 3 months. That's not album sales nor requests; that's just number of times their music played via a bot-stream. That's so low it's practically irrelevant.

They sound like someone who started a blog a decade ago, stopped after a few years, only updated it twice since, and are upset their AdWords income is low.

<comment><USER34> The article seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning that this is residual income from 3 albums made over twenty years ago that weren't huge successes in the first place. Why would anyone expect to be making any meaningful amount of money from them at this point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I always thought that the benefit of services like Spotify and Pandora was to get a band's music to people that wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to it. This in turn would prompt listeners to go buy the band's music on iTunes or Amazon.

Good music is really hard to find. I search around iTunes all the time and come up with nothing. So ANYTIME I hear a song that I like I buy it within the same day (usually the whole album).

For bands that aren't seeing this sort of conversion on sites like Spotify and Pandora, this might tell you something about the demand for your brand of music.

</comment><comment><USER26> The observation that Spotify is in business solely to increase its own capitalization and not directly for music-related reasons ties in nicely to this post:

<https://itself.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/like-a-business/>

Spotify appears to be an organization related in some way to music, but in fact its purpose is merely to turn money into more money. This is _not_ the way many businesses in the real world actually operate, and a good thing, too, because operating that way is pretty toxic.

<comment><USER36> isn't that exactly what every single company aims to do?

the music is a means to an end, the end being making money for the shareholders...

<comment><USER26> No, as the linked post points out.

Many businesses do not have the goal of simply turning money into more money. For a long time, the goal of GM was to make cars. It would be insane to open, say, a used bookstore if making money were your _sole_ goal. But some people are really into books and want to buy and sell them, not necessarily even running their businesses in the most ruthlessly efficient way for making money. That's not what they're into. There are businesses whose goal it is to make, say, quality hand tools, or knives. There are businesses that deliberately manage how many clients they take on in order to ensure that they can turn out a quality product, _even though_ a less good product would probably _not be detectable_ by their clientele and would increase their profits. This is known as having pride in one's profession or in one's craftsmanship. Of course they also have to make money to stay in business.

There's a famous example of a largely technological company rejecting the mantra that their purpose is to turn money into more money---Craigslist.

There's also a famous if apocryphal example of an individual programmer having the kind of pride in craft that would lead to the decision not to do something that would increase profits, namely the Story of Mel.

The whole shareholder thing is a stupid myth that needs to die, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was in Australia last year, and in walking around downtown Brisbane I noticed a two person band playing on a street corner. There was quite a crowd around them, and their music was good. They had a suitcase open in front of them, with what looked like a couple hundred bucks in it, a stack of CDs, and a sign that said the CDs were $15 each.

It's likely they 'salted' the suitcase with cash, but even so, it looked like they made some decent cash for a couple hours work.

I bought one, and really enjoy it. The band is PLUDO, btw.

</comment><comment><USER38> The artist's share of income from record sales and radio play has been next to nothing throughout the history of the record industry. Any experienced artist will tell you the real money comes from live shows and merch (which can still be pressed discs). This is why file-sharing only hurts the labels, not the artists. The artists actually get more exposure without losing much royalty income from the illegal downloads, which actually help promote the band and draw bigger live crowds to gigs where they can actually make some money.

<comment><USER5> This isn't true. Artists could make a middle-class living off record sales, augmented somewhat by touring and merchandise, during the major-label days. It's true that they made very little on royalties from album sales --- but that was often because they'd been advanced more money than they could ever expect to recoup. That's a business model common to all of publishing (music and books and otherwise), and it offered artists a predictable income stream in exchange for selling more of the upside to labels.

The closer you look at record labels, the more they look like venture capitalists.

(If you wanted to make a pointed critique of venture capitalists, I suppose you could also invoke the comparison in the other direction.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What model of payment would be better than the current one?

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a lot wrong with the article, but the biggest problem is conflating owning an album with listening to a radio stream on Pandora. You can't play Pandora on demand, and the upside for the artist is primarily exposure - <USER3> pennies for the audio bits being played. Pandora and similar services all provide links to online sources to buy the tracks you are hearing, and people commonly use these.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's unfair to compare streaming one song to selling an album. A CD enables me to hear a track an infinite number of times, with Hi-Fi quality, in my car, living room or on the go. With a €3.49 Spotify subscription, one play is heard on the PC, requiring an Internet connection and not in top quality (only 160 kbps). The article seems to compare the rent of an apartment to buying a two- floor house...

<comment><USER10> you're right, but...

 _Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one-- one-- LP sale._

A two-story house is not worth 300k times more than the monthly rent on a small apartment. 300 times yes, 3000 times make. Not 300,000 times.

<comment><USER10> Since then I've noticed a correction on the article which suggests the multiple should be 3000, rather than 300,000.</comment></comment></comment>


The Web Is Beautiful, Mobile Is Beautiful - <AUTHOR>

It's a beautiful thing having the internet in my pocket where ever I go. I can access virtually any information I want by just pulling my mobile device out of my pocket.
It's a beautiful thing, the web. I can access a constantly growing network of information, and I can even add information to it. I can use and build systems that do amazing things with this information, without too much friction.
Why can't these two beautiful things work well together? Why is it that the state of mobile platforms doesn't take advantage of the power of the web platform? Sure, my phone has a web browser, but how often do I use the applications built on the mobile web vs native mobile? Not often. Why? because the mobile web is less capable (I think intentionally). Why must it be this way? What can we do to change it?
The desktop world enabled freedom to hack any app you want. Your computer is your tool. This isn't the same for my phones.
Why am I not seeing a mobile app that allows me to access a strong web platform that gives these web apps the power of the native platform (much like Chrome for the desktop). That way I as a developer could create an app and release it to the world much like a website is released into the world (without a walled garden–app store).
Will this ever be, or are we doomed to always have these mobile devices closed and controlled by big companies with their own interests? <comment><USER2> Well part of the problem is that mobile browsers just aren't very good. This is changing. I find that Chrome's integration with the task manager makes using web apps more convenient now.

Still my instinct sometimes tells me to look for the mobile app first. This might be because on mobile I am often forced to a ghetto, broken mobile site. Maybe there are some things I expect more from a phone app like GPS/Maps based applications. Sometimes I get tired of dealing with sites that don't care that I'm using a touchscreen to enter text.

Google has made attempts at addressing this issue by rewarding mobile friendly sites but in my experience it has led to more sites forcing broken ghetto mobile sites on me.

The big issue is that there is a lot of big sites out there with lots of legacy code that assumed a desktop. And now that it's wrong many sites have adopted a strategy of having 2-5 different versions of their site. With the desktop site taking priority and mobile site sometimes being fourth place behind iOS and Android. All maintained by different teams and with separate frontends. This is obviously a big mistake since many sites can scarcely manage the development one version of their site (looking at you eBay) let alone 4.

</comment><comment> rebekah-aimee I think it's getting better. Tablet-like devices are still a relatively new platform, and improvements like what you're asking for are inevitable as more hackers gain expertise in the platform and all its nooks and crannies.

Browsers in particular improve by necessity, because of the issues with security. In particular with mobile devices! And of course if the code isn't allowed to become stagnant--if it's always being changed in some way--other improvements will likely show up too. Of course, we can speed up the process of making a better browser. Firefox for Android is a thing, albeit one I haven't personally tried yet; maybe it does a better job with things like web forms (which are a pain to fill out on phones).

The browser is only part of the problem, though. The fact that web site maintainers would rather have you download an app client than let you just work off their site (on a young platform they aren't really familiar with yet, remember) is nothing new. I think it often makes things easier on them, programming-wise. But the problem becomes that they compete for space on users' phones. I don't keep a lot of apps on my phone, and I don't like downloading new ones for services I'm ambivalent about or won't use often.

It's worth remembering what happened to email clients. Most people don't use them any more on their laptops; they use Gmail, which is online. Yet on phones, we're back to using email clients (probably because the browsers are pretty awful). The space problem will, I think, help cause demand for better browsers, and then website apps will shift back online.

Also, there's this. [https://xkcd.com/1174/](https://xkcd.com/1174/)

There are certain apps that should be apps, though. Some apps can be web sites, and that'd be a good thing. Other apps--the ones that are useful when you're not connected to the Internet (which is infrequent but happens)--should stay apps. It's nice to be able to disconnect the Wi-Fi and still play Tetris.

I wouldn't mind a BuzzFeed app if it downloaded and compressed certain articles based on filters I defined, and let me access them offline to kill time in a doctor's office or whatever (this is probably way beyond the BuzzFeed folks, though--just an example). I wouldn't mind a HN app that downloaded the top stories as cached/compressed versions, either. Again, this would be the shape of an email client, but convenient time-killers always have a market.

This might be a good startup idea if anyone wants to take a crack at it: a content aggregator that stores articles (based on user-defined filters) from certain sites, as compressed archives on your phone. I'd do it myself, but I'm already working on something!</comment>


HubSpot Acquires Performable - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/06/16/is-hubspot-about-to-buy-performable-announcements-in-10-minutes-rumor/

<comment><USER2> Congrats - this is going to be a true powerhouse team. With both D-cancel and Dharmesh working on the new marketing landscape, they could be quite dominant.

</comment><comment><USER3> MARKETING SOFTWARE DOMINATION. HOLY HELL.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know of ~sale value? If they were really going well, what's the point of being acquired just as they were reaching Series B.</comment>


Why We Open Sourced Our Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sendgrid.com/open-source-documentation/ <comment><USER2> Let us not forget how Adria Richards was fired by sendgrid for publicly expressing her discontent with sexism at tech conferences.

<comment><USER3> With a polite and well argumented blog post, I presume?</comment></comment>


Cave Complex Found Under Giza Pyramids - <AUTHOR> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/13/caves-giza.html <comment><USER2> The guy seems like a crackpot-if you look up his site its full of 'psychic workshops' and other mumbo-jumbo. But still...deep in my geeky heart I totally hope there's a huge cave complex under the pyramids full of traps and ancient artifacts.

<comment><USER3> They make for interesting reading in between highly logical activities such as javascript or python sessions. Somehow they can relax the brain, provided you read them like fiction and consider dividing any 'truths' by pi*pi to arrive at some remnants of possible unknown ancient events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue._

"Thin air"? Those must be some very high-altitude caves. How in the world does one encounter thin air underground?

But it sounds very Indiana Jones. Could be an interesting movie..

<comment><USER5> Maybe he is referring to the oxygen percentage. Thin meaning they could not go on without special breathing apparatus.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how far ancient Egyptians could have gotten without breathing apparatus? Or have the caves changed that much over time...

<comment><USER5> Good point, but I would guess that the caves ecosystems are in flux over time. Another comment said something about guano being an influence so if the number of bats back then was not near the number now then it is feasible that the Egyptians could have gone further without breathing tools. That and the part of the cave that the Egyptians went down might not have been the where the present day explorers are trying to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy may be making this up or exaggerating claims, as others here suggest. But does it seem odd to anyone that Zahi Hawass can simply dismiss the claims outright with the bizarre statement that "There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau."

There is nothing left to be learned? Really?

As the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Hawass has turned Egyptology into a one-man show. If you watch any television coverage of a new discovery related to ancient Egypt, it's Hawass who gets the interview and Hawass who takes credit. Nowhere is there mention of the other people who work at the digs, do the research, or interpret the results.

Maybe Hawass gets so much attention because reporters are lazy and don't try to contact anyone else for an opinion (as opposed to Hawass insisting on being the only spokesperson.) But the real danger is that Hawass's domination of the field may be holding back other interpretations -- and insights.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well I suppose most have been hoping, not for a complex of dirty caves under the general Gizeh plateau, but for a big room under the Sphinx. At least I have been. Then again, research in the summer of '9 and publication immediately on September? Sounds fishy, but is a bit logical, coming from the author of the Cygnus Mystery (knock-off theory based on the _general_ ideas of Hancock & Bauval, themselves a bit stretching it).

Symbolist Egyptology still has a long way to go, and a lot of cuckoos to leave behind I guess. Even so, Hawass' attitude has become truely totalitarian, and reminds one of the late 19th century US Patent Office, or Royal Academy of Sciences: We know everything, whatcha gonna say to us?

PS: The Rostau isn't directed downwards.

</comment><comment><USER9> Venomous spiders! Why would any scientist dare go in there!</comment>


Show HN: Hustling Sunlight – anagrams in black and white - <AUTHOR> http://hustlingsunlight.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> This is based on a book one of my friends wrote:

      + https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/45806

Thought it would make a cool website and the rest is history

–

// the stack is rails+fullPage.js</comment>


American Letter Mail Company - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company <comment><USER2> The fact that the USPS has a postal mail monopoly has always confused me. Other countries like Sweden have a plethora of competing mail delivery firms (including dedicated "junk mail" firms that only deliver junk mail. Delivering junk mail is a popular job for teens to do on the weekend)

<comment><USER3> FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and private couriers are all active in the letter and package delivery business. The USPS doesn't have a monopoly, at least not in the strict text-book sense of the word.

USPS just delivers letter mail at much lower rates than the others. And does so at a fixed rate to any address within the US, whether that's a neighbor across the street or a family member in a tiny town in the mountains.

<comment><USER4> The USPS absolutely has a legally enforced monopoly in the textbook sense of the word. It's just not over the entire market of letter and package delivery.

> The USPS actually has two legally enforced monopolies, as per Title 39 of > the US Code. One is over the delivery of anything defined as a "letter," > which is within certain size and weight limits. The second is over the use > of your mailbox...there are criminal violations if anyone puts anything in > your mail box that is not US government approved "mail.

> ...parcels were never subject to the delivery monopoly. Indeed, UPS was in > that business first, and USPS entered afterwards. ...This is why DHL, FedEx, > Amazon... and others are free to enter and exit the parcel business. It is > defined as a different market.

> FedEx is another fascinating story. There was a need for express document > delivery among professional services, such as law firms (this was of course > long before e-mail). The USPS was too slow and unreliable. FedEx and Fred > Smith threatened to litigate the issue to death...so the USPS allowed an > exception in the delivery monopoly for "extremely urgent material."

[https://fee.org/articles/an-expert-explains-the-postal- monop...](https://fee.org/articles/an-expert-explains-the-postal-monopoly/)

<comment><USER5> Is that law ever enforced? I get packages from Amazon couriers and FedEx in my mailbox all the time and I've never heard of anyone going to jail for that. I can only imagine how much I'd get laughed at if I called the cops about a delivery person dropping a package off in my mailbox. Maybe I'd need to call the USPS Inspector General

<comment><AUTHOR> The Wikipedia article is literally about the USPS monopoly being enforced.

<comment><USER5> The company in the Wikipedia article went out of business nearly 200 years ago, so I don't think the legal situation is necessarily the same (backed up by the anecdotal fact that I can send a letter via Fedex). The Wikipedia article also doesn't mention anything about how the government apparently has exclusive access to MY mailbox, which is a big surprise to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> _about how the government apparently has exclusive access to MY mailbox, which is a big surprise to me._

Enforced where I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why was postage so expensive at the time?

According to an inflation calculator I looked up, the $0.18 postage mentioned in the article is equivalent to about $6.00 in today's dollars.

<comment><USER7> Horses are still just as expensive as they were. Railroads are faster now, and more efficient through diesel-electric engines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Early disruptors. Pretty amazing story. Wonder what the pitch looked like back in 1844.

Today's first class postage costs 55 cents. And almost 180 years ago the cost to send a letter from NYC to Boston was basically half that at 26 cents. Feels like today's price hasn't kept with inflation.

Can we conclude that this disruptor company affected prices for over a century and a half by simply introducing a little competition?

<comment><USER9> I think we can conclude advances in transportation technology made it cheaper to deliver the mail. Trains, trucks, planes.

<comment><USER8> Sure - thats certainly one reason. But why would a near monopolistic business (USPS) cut their prices?

<comment><USER10> Because they aren't a business and most years they don't turn a profit. They were effectively government subsidized for most of their existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This page is probably a good place for someone who wants to practice their editing skills. The article has the facts, but the style is lacking (it has awkward phrasing, unnecessary passive voice, and sentence fragments).

</comment><comment><USER12> Spooner is also the author of 'No Treason'/'The Consitution of No Authority', essays refuting the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution:

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

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of IPSA (Independent Postal System of America) which I have vague memories of. I think they lasted until some time into the 1970s.

</comment><comment><USER14> According to wikipedia, ALMC founder Lysander Spooner "considered government monopoly to be an immoral restriction". Also according to wikipedia, he was a socialist and a member of First International.

Can anyone more familiar with US history and/or political science explain this to me? How can you be both a socialist and against government regulation of business?

<comment><USER15> Lysander was a Libertarian, and Anarchist, and a Socialist.

His polital opinions were (and are today) very rare in that he was Left libertarian, where most people that label themselves libertarian are Right Libertarians.

Also most people that label themselves Socialist, are Authoritarians Socialists (meaning socialism via government violence)

Lysander Spooner is one of my favorite philosophers, his work No Treason the constitution of no authority was one of the first things of his I read, and still find it fascinating

<comment><USER16> It should be noted that the word "libertarian" was originally invented by left libertarians of the most extreme variety (anarcho-communists, who deny private property altogether) to describe themselves. From there, it quickly became a catch-all self-identification for pretty much everybody on the anarchist and minarchist left, covering anarcho-socialists, mutualists etc. There was no "right libertarian" as a commonly understood term until the 1950s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did the ALMC deliver letters to every single address in the United States? I don't think they did. They weren't trying to "compete" with the USPS so much as skim off the profitable routes.

<comment><USER18> The USPS does not deliver to every address in the US.

I don't know what specifically causes the USPS to deliver to a specific area, but there are entire incorporated cities, some with reasonably large population and density, that don't receive mail _at all_ except to the local post office. Even UPS and FedEx's low-cost all-but-the-last-mile services regularly lose packages because they hand them off to the USPS.

<comment><USER19> I was surprised to discover you're correct. Here's a look at that: [https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available- us...](https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available-usps-mail- delivery-limited-may-think/)</comment></comment></comment>


Advice for New and Junior Data Scientists. What I Would Have Told Myself - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rchang/advice-for-new-and-junior-data-scientists-2ab02396cf5b <comment><USER2> Rang a few bells when a few years ago we tried to use clustering the archives of some of Reed Elseviers publications , New Scientist (50 years) and Flight International (100+ years).

Id put together a few tests - but we couldn't get Anyone to take notice.</comment>