Show HN: Tesoro – Personal internet archive - <AUTHOR> https://tesoro.io <comment><USER2> For personal web archiving, I highly recommend [http://webrecorder.io](http://webrecorder.io). The site lets you download archives in standard WARC format and play them back in an offline (Electron) player. It's also open source and has a quick local setup via Docker - [https://github.com/webrecorder/webrecorder](https://github.com/webrecorder/webrecorder) .

Webrecorder is by a former Internet Archive engineer, Ilya Kreymer, who now captures online performance art for an art museum. What he's doing with capture and playback of Javascript, web video, streaming content, etc. is state of the art as far as I know.

(Disclaimer - I use bits of Webrecorder for my own archive, perma.cc.)

For OP, I would say consider building on and contributing back to Webrecorder -- or alternatively figure out what Webrecorder is good at and make sure you're good at something different. It's a crazy hard problem to do well and it's great to have more ideas in the mix.

<comment><USER3> Seconding Webrecorder (and the newly updated WAIL) - I had the chance of meeting Ilya Kremer at a conference a few weeks ago, and I can confirm what he's doing is top notch - I'm hoping to see more work around WARC viewing and sharing in the future.

(Disclaimer: I also do personal archiving stuff with getkumbu)

<comment><USER4> Is offline playback still relevant in the age of ubiquitous always connected Internet?

<comment><USER5> If your intention is to have a local archive of an online site, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not mine unless it's running on my own servers or computer - I created a really rough version of this several years ago that is saved to my computer (and from there into box).

<comment><USER7> I adapted a bash script someone posted here, it uses Firefox bookmarks (pages.sqlite). Cron runs the script and downloads every page I've bookmarked that month (after some filtering). I don't use it often but sometimes I'll awk-grep it; I'm a hoarder in real life too!

<comment><USER8> Would you mind posting it?

<comment><USER7> See sibling comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's just as much "my own" as The Internet Archive: a website Out There somewhere. Worse, it's much more likely to rot and disappear than archive.org. Now, if I could run this _locally_...

(Yes, yes, `wget --convert-links`, I know. Not quite as convenient, though.)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. The internet archive is great, but it's not so awesome if there's some ephemeral content you need to save right away, like Tweets or social media posts. Being able to trigger an archive immediately let's you save temporary content such as that which is more prone to deletion. I'm going to build a Chrome extension to click and make cloud copy of the page you're on, hopefully that will make it seem more personally controllable.

Do you think being able to download the archive locally would be useful?

<comment><USER10> This might sound insane, but if you modified this into a browser extension that runs locally (with options for one-off or continuous saving for entire browsing sessions) I would probably download it. Personally, I have well over 100TB of personal hard drive space in my home, and I would love to just download entire portions of my browsing history locally for archival reasons (and to truly defeat link rot).

As it is now, I personally wouldn't use it (but it's a cool project, definitely please keep working on this idea!).

<comment><USER11> _modified this into a browser extension_

I was just thinking about this last night while I was explaining my use of the Firefox tab groups extension to a friend. I use bookmarks and tabs to keep track of information. Neither is fully convenient and the whole system fails whenever a page changes or a link rots.

I would love a system that archives a page I bookmark so that the bookmark will always work to give me that information. Give me an 'ephemeral' checkbox if I want my bookmark to change when the site changes. Hmmm.

<comment><USER12> I made a browser extension [1] that automatically archives bookmarks to archive.is or (currently Chromium only) locally as MHTML files.

[1]: [https://github.com/rahiel/archiveror](https://github.com/rahiel/archiveror)

<comment><USER13> Cool, Rahiel! Thanks for doing this.

Here is a related idea I proposed a couple years ago to a Knight News Challenge on Libraries: [https://web.archive.org/web/20161104175911/https://www.newsc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161104175911/https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/how- might-libraries-serve-21st-century-information-needs/submissions/libraries-as- distributed-digital-knowledge-repositories) "Create a browser addon so when people post to the web they can send a copy for storage and hosting by a network of local libraries. ... While the Internet Archive is backing up some of the internet, it is another single point of failure. We propose developing data standards, software applications, coordination protocols. and hardware specifications so every local library in the world can participate in backing up part of the internet. ..."

Sad that the Knight News Foundation has changed their software and so all the old Knight News contributions are no longer available. It's an example of the very thing that contribution was about -- the need for distributed backups. Glad that info is still findable in archive.org -- until perhaps the Knight News Foundation puts up a broad robots.txt and makes it all inaccessible.

Thanks again for creating a great plugin!

<comment><USER14> What about IPFS for storing cached pages?

<comment><USER13> Great idea --thanks! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would be interested in an attestation service that can provide court- admissable evidence that a particular piece of content was publically accessible on the web at a particular point in time via a particular url.

I believe the only way to incentivise participation in such a system is by paying for timestamp'ed signatures, eg. "some subset of downloaded [content] from [url] at [time] hashed to [hash]" all tucked into a Bitcoin transaction or something. There are services that will do this with user-provided content[1]; I am looking for something that will pull a url and timestamp the content.

This would also be a way to detect when different users are being served different content at the same url, thus the need for a global network of validators.

[1] [https://proofofexistence.com/](https://proofofexistence.com/)

<comment><USER16> Interesting - it is trivial to prove something was done today rather than yesterday, by hashing with the most recent bitcoin block or some new info.

Is it possible to prove something was done in the past? All I can think of is some sort of scheme involving destroyed information.

<comment><USER15> _trivial to prove something was done today_

My focus is on the _something_ much more so than the _when_. I can do my own doctoring of any data, or use some service to make something that looks real[1]. Getting some proof that this fake data existed is not what I'm after.

Instead, I want multiple, completely separate (and ideally as independent and diverse as possible) attestations that _something_ was out there online, as proof that some person or organization intended for it to be seen by everyone as their content. Being able to prove that irrefutably seems nearly impossible today even for the present time, particularly against insider threats.

Your question regarding proving something in the past is going far beyond what I'm hoping for; it will take me quite a while to come up with anything that might be helpful for such a situation. I assume most would hit up the various archive sites, but my gut feeling is that it winds up being a probability based on how well forensics holds up / are not falsifiable.

[1] simitator.com - not linking because ads felt a bit extra-sketch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In what way could this considered to be "your own internet archive"? I see no way to register a user and save pages to a collection.

If you really want to create _your own_ archive, set up a Live Archiving HTTP Proxy[1], run SquidMan [2] or check out WWWOFFLE[3].

If you want something simpler, have a look at Webrecorder[4] or a paid Pinboard account with the "Bookmark Archive"[5].

[1] [http://netpreserve.org/projects/live-archiving-http- proxy/](http://netpreserve.org/projects/live-archiving-http-proxy/)

[2] [http://squidman.net/squidman/index.html](http://squidman.net/squidman/index.html)

[3] [http://www.gedanken.org.uk/software/wwwoffle/](http://www.gedanken.org.uk/software/wwwoffle/)

[4] [https://webrecorder.io/](https://webrecorder.io/)

[5] [https://pinboard.in/upgrade/](https://pinboard.in/upgrade/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points.

You're right, for now it's a single rate-limited HTML form and you'll have to manually collate the links to the archives you create. I'll be adding specialty features (with accounts) next. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> An internet archive can only provide value if it's there for the long-term. What's your plan to keep this service running if it gets popular? For example, archive.is costed about $2000/month at the start of 2014 [1]. I expect it to cost even more now.

[1]: [http://blog.archive.is/post/72136308644/how-much-does-it- cos...](http://blog.archive.is/post/72136308644/how-much-does-it-cost-you-to- host-a-website-of)

</comment><comment><USER18> Thoughts:

I like the look. Very clean. I like how fast it's responding; better than archive.org (though, obviously, they have different scaling problems).

"Your own internet archive" might be overselling it, as other commenters have pointed out; the "Your" feels a bit misleading. I think "Save a copy of any webpage." gives a better impression, which you use on the site itself.

The "Archive!" link probably shouldn't work if there's nothing in the URL box. It just gives me an archive link that errors. Example: [1]

Using it on news.YC as a test gave me errors with the CSS & JS [2]. This might be due to the fact that HN uses query parameters in their CSS and JS, which repeat in the tesoro URL, which you may not be parsing correctly.

Maybe have something in addition to an email link for submitting error reports like the above, just cause I'd be more likely to file a GitHub issue (even if the repo is empty) than send a stranger an email.

As other commenters have pointed out, archive.is also does this, and their longevity helps me feel confident that they'll still be around. Perhaps, if you wish to differentiate, offer some way for me to "own" the copy of the page, like downloading it or emailing it to myself or sharing it with another site (like Google Docs or Imgur) to leverage redundancy, or something like that. Just a thought.

All in all, nice Show HN.

EDIT: You also may want to adjust the header to work properly on mobile devices. Still though, nice job. Sorry if I'm sounding critical.

[1] [https://archive.tesoro.io/320b55cc9b78e271c94716ee23554da8](https://archive.tesoro.io/320b55cc9b78e271c94716ee23554da8)

[2] [https://archive.tesoro.io/a7bf03e247224bc3b4e5a7c1f2ad42b1](https://archive.tesoro.io/a7bf03e247224bc3b4e5a7c1f2ad42b1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! These are great comments - I'll look into the issue with saving Hacker News CSS + JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's the best way to automatically archive all of the data I produce on websites? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and so on. At some point these services will disappear, and I want to preserve them.

I know a lot of these sites have archiving features, but want something centralised and automatic.

<comment><USER20> The hypothetical system that makes most sense to me for this: a process that runs 24/7 on a server, watching your feeds on those services. Grabbing and saving everything via APIs or screen-scraping.

<comment><USER21> Is that creepy resource-eater bug-prone service what makes most sense to you?

<comment><USER20> Yes. Why do you call it 'creepy'? It's supposed to be a personal service, owned and controlled by the user who wants to archive stuff.

And all computations consume resources, and may have bugs. So what? They can be optimised. Bugs can get fixed. The process would, ideally, auto-update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice, post it on [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/)

They will love it!

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool tool, but by using it, you depend on it staying alive for longer than any page you archive on it.

This got me thinking about how a decentralized p2p internet archive could solve the trust problem that exists in centralized internet archives. Such solution could also increase the capacity of archived pages and the frequency at which archived pages are updated.

It is true that keeping the entire history of the internet on your local drive is likely impossible, but a solution similar to what Sia is doing could solve this problem: split each page to 20 pieces and distribute each piece to 10 peers such that every y pieces can recover the original page. So, you only have to trust that 10 peers out of 20 that store a page are still alive to get the complete page.

The main problem I can see right now would be lack of motivation to contribute to the system -- why would people run nodes? Just because it would feature a yet another cryptocurrency? Sure, this could hold now, but when the cryptocurrency craze quiets down and people stop buying random cryptocurrencies just for the sake of trading them, what then? Who would run the nodes and why?

<comment><USER24> IPFS [0] and it's sibling Filecoin [1] are dealing in a very similar space as your wonderings

[0]: [https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/) [1]: [https://filecoin.io/](https://filecoin.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The discussion 3 months ago on bookmarks mentioned several options for archiving pages (some locally): _Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks?_ | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064096)

extensions: Firefox "Print Edit" Addon / Firefox Scrapbook X / Chrome Falcon / Firefox Recoll

open source: Zotero / WorldBrain / Wallabag

commercial: Pinboard / InstaPaper / Pocket / Evernote / Mochimarks / Diigo / PageDash / URL Manager Pro / Save to Google / OneNote / Stash / Fetching

public: [http://web.archive.org](http://web.archive.org) / [https://archive.is/](https://archive.is/)

</comment><comment><USER25> You're going to get this service shut down if you let anonymous people republish arbitrary content while running everything on Google.

I (obviously) think personal archives are a great idea, but republishing is a hornets' nest.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is this any different to archive.is?

If I want my _own_ archive, Ctrl+S in Firefox usually works fine for me.

</comment><comment><USER27> You know your site actually does a better job reproducing webpages than archive.org. I've noticed that if you use a CDN to serve up CSS & JS for a webpage that you're trying to archive on archive.org, it won't render correctly. On your site, there doesn't seem to be a problem including CSS & JS from an external domain. Thumbs up :)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks! Could you point me to the pages where it worked well for you vs archive.org?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So this is like archive.is, but I can't search through archived sites?

</comment><comment><USER29> When you said 'own internet archive' I thought you meant some sort of program you could download that'd save your browsing history (or whatever full website you wanted) to your hard drive. I think that would have been significantly more useful here.

As is it, while it's a nice service, it's still got all the issues of other archive ones:

1\. It's online only, so one failed domain renewal or hosting payment takes everything offline.

2\. It being online also means I can't access any saved pages if my connection goes down or has issues.

3\. The whole thing is wide open to having content taken down by websites wanting to cover their tracks. I mean, what do you do if someone tells you to remove a page? What about with a DMCA notice?

It's a nice alternative to archive.is, but still doesn't really do what the title suggests if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER30> This might be a good use case for distributed storage (IPFS?).

Instead of hosting this directly on my computer, it would be interesting to have a setup where the archiving is done via the service and I would just provide somewhere a storage space where the content would end up being mirrored (just to guarantee that my valuable things are saved at least somewhere, should the the other nodes decide to remove the content).

I would prefer this setup, because it would be easily accessible for me from any device and I would not need to worry about running some always available system. With some suitable P2P setup my storage node would have less strict uptime requirements.

<comment><USER31> Hi jpalomaki,

Have you heard of InterPlanetary Wayback (ipwb)? [https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb](https://github.com/oduwsdl/ipwb)

InterPlanetary Wayback (ipwb) facilitates permanence and collaboration in web archives by disseminating the contents of WARC files into the IPFS network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is pretty cool. I have a chrome extension that let's you view the cached version of a web page [1]. Would I be able to use this through an API? I currently support Google Cache, WayBack Machine, and CoralCDN, but Coral doesn't work well and I'd like to replace it with something else.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cmmlgikpahieigpccl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cmmlgikpahieigpcclckfmhnchdlfnjd)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

Yup, API and chrome extension are next on the feature list. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think you should explain why you're paying Google to archive web pages for others, ie, how do plan on benefiting from this? If you have some business model in mind, let people know now. It's the first question that comes to my mind when someone offers a service that is free yet costs the provider real money. You obviously can't pay Google to archive everyone's web pages just for the fun of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

Great point. Right now this is just a single rate-limited HTML form to gauge interest. Next is to build specialty features that are worth paying for and make this sustainable. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> You should try and rewrite relative links in websites that get archived. I tested your app with a news site, and all the links go to archive.tesoro.io/sites/internal/url/structure/article.html

I also second the need for user accounts. If I am to use your site as my personal archive, then I would need to log in and create a collection of my own archived sites.

</comment><comment><USER35> I made a simple Chrome extension to automatically save local copies of pages you bookmark, if you prefer that instead: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/backmark-back- up-t...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/backmark-back-up-the- page/cmbflafdbcidlkkdhbmechbcpmnbcfjf)

</comment><comment><USER36> it would be nice to have a bit of explanation on how it works and why we can be confident that we can rely upon it

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Definitely, great idea :)

Briefly: Sites are archived using a system written in Golang and uploaded to a Google Cloud bucket.

More: The system downloads the remote HTML, parses it to extract the relevant dependencies (<script>, <link>, <img> etc) and then downloads these as well. Tesoro is even parsing CSS files to extract the url('...') file dependencies from here as well, meaning most background images and fonts should continue to work. All dependencies (even those hosted at remote domains) are downloaded and hosted with the archive, meaning the src attributes on the original page tags are wrangled to support the new location.

The whole thing is hosted on GCP Container Engine and I deploy with Kubernetes.

I'll write up a more comprehensive blog post in some time, which portion of this would you like to hear more about?

<comment><USER37> The issue is cost. Your costs are disk space for people's archives, instances for people's use, and bandwidth for the fetches and crawls and access.

How can you pay for this if it's free? It's unreliable unless its financially viable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally right, great observation :)

For now it's a free service with a single rate-limited form. Now it's time to work on adding specialty features that are worth paying for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Tesoro saves linked assets, such as images, Javascript and CSS files.

I'm confused. It looks like image sources in "archived" pages on Tesoro still point back to the origin domain.

Edit: it works as expected. I just didn't notice the relative paths.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

The site will rewrite absolute image URLs as relative ones pointing to Tesoro. For example, in the Chicken Teryaki example on the homepage, the main image is sourced from the relative location "static01.nyt.com/.../28COOKING-CHICKEN- TERIYAKI1-articleLarge.jpg", which looks like it's coming from nytimes.com, but you can check in the Chrome dev console that it isn't.

Have you found an example where it isn't working correctly? If so would you mind posting it here and I'll fix it :).

<comment><USER39> Unfortunately, this approach alone will only work for sites that are mostly static, eg. do not use JS to load dynamic content. That is a small (and shrinking) percent of the web. Once JS is involved, all bets are off -- JS will attempt to load content via ajax, or generate new html, load iframes, etc and you will have 'live leaks' where the content seems to be coming form the archive but is actually coming form the live web.

Here is an example from archiving nytimes home page:

[https://archive.tesoro.io/665dbeab57a4d57d8140f89cfedc69b5](https://archive.tesoro.io/665dbeab57a4d57d8140f89cfedc69b5)

If you look at network traffic (domain in devtools), you'll see that only a small % is coming from archive.tesoro.io -- the rest of the content is loaded from the live web. This can be misleading and possibly a security risk as well.

Not to discourage you, but this is a hard problem and I've been working on for years now. This area is a moving target, but we think live leaks are mostly eliminated in Webrecorder and pywb, although there are lots of areas to work on to maintain high-fidelity preservation.

If you want chat about possible solutions or want to collaborate (we're always looking for contributors!), feel free to reach out to us at support [at] webrecorder.io or find my contact on GH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Worth noting that Tesoro is the name of a major oil/fuel company in Texas.

</comment><comment><USER41> When a company went down, i downloaded every one of their clients with httrack and wget. Just to be sure their clients wouldn't lose their site. ( and some other things)

I wonder what this site uses

</comment><comment><USER7> How are you handling copyright infringement? Outside USAs Fair Use terms this looks like pretty blatant infringement.

<comment> iso-8859-1 What is there to handle? You take down stuff when you get an email? Most users of this will be so small that they'll never get noticed. Maybe they won't even be online, how are you going to know you were infringed? Maybe the crawler allows for spoofing the user-agent.

<comment><USER7> So, ignoring it basically.

If a person in the UK uses your service you're committing contributory infringement for commercial purposes, AFAICT.

Moreover, the ECD has different protections than DMCA. Particularly getting a takedown notice isn't required.

>Maybe the crawler allows for spoofing the user-agent. //

As a tort you only need to get a preponderance of evidence. IP of the crawler that made the copy puts the owner of that IP in court for contributory infringement, no?

If you make copies of parts of BBC sites and serve those copies from your server how is that not copyright infringement by you??

 _FWIW I like the service and do not like the copyright regime as it stands, particularly how UK law lacks the breadth of liberties of Fair Use._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Nice. How are you planning to pay the servers? Your service seems quite storage-intensive.

<comment><USER14> I got a dedicated server in France that cost me less than $20 USD/month. 16GB RAM, 1TB storage: [https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox- xc](https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-xc)

<comment><USER43> With no redundancy, no backup and no way to extend storage. I'm not sure how you'd archive the internet with low-range dedicated server deals.</comment></comment></comment>


Turn any bike into a cargo bike - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1616617044/the-lift-cargo-bike <comment><USER2> I profess I don't know the first thing about bikes, wheelbarrows, machining, metals, and nearly anything involved in bringing this product to market, but...

it _feels_ expensive, and they claim to be cheaper than dedicated cargo bikes. Is it a material/parts issue, a labor issue, or overhead? Is this class of product really so pricey? What do normal, mass-produced overseas bikes don't have that they can be sold at scale for $200-300?

<comment><USER3> One thing mass-produced bikes have is that they are mass-produced. Order 100k cargo bikes, and you will get much lower prices.

Another thing they have is less quality control. If your margins are low, you have to cut some corners. The converse isn't necessarily true, but typically it is, as high margin sellers need a good imago to keep attracting customers willing to pay their prices.

I also think their claimed $3000 for a cargo bike is a bit disingenuous. For that, one expects to get a dedicated cargo bike, with a stronger frame, better brakes, etc. such as [http://triobike.com/projects/triobike-cargo- bike/](http://triobike.com/projects/triobike-cargo-bike/)

This looks more like a people carrier. Those shouldn't be that expensive.</comment></comment>


RFC: Rejected YC concept built as an integrated Facebook app - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=239903829 <comment><AUTHOR> First off I apologize because you need to be on Facebook to use this.

Our YC app was rejected and my founder stayed at his job and I decided to go on ahead and see if I could make our idea work. The gist of what we submitted to YC was a platform where you could review anything like books, movies, cars, whatever. You could take these reviews and embed them into myspace, your blog, or just directly build off your profile on the site. The business model was to find affiliates, like amazon for books, and build revenues from there. I'd hazard a guess and say the business model was what sunk us more than anything else. Great for a lifestyle business but not really for growing something huge.

When Facebook announced that it was opening its platform up to integrated webapps I jumped on the chance. Building on top of Facebook limits my long term growth potential but gives the platform provides a lot. I really believe in what Facebook is doing here. In the future all apps will be social and building a community is really hard. Facebook solves this problem for you. There are downsides but I think in my case it is a win. If this really takes off it will take some work, but not be impossible, to spin it out into the original idea and have the facebook aspect just be a widget.

I've been working on it for a little over a week solid. There's a lot missing from what I'd like to have as a finished product, but I got the core done and decided I should put it out there and iterate on feedback. It's written in Django and uses python bindings for both the facebook and amazon APIs. I'd appreciate any advice or feedback, especially from this crowd. You can message me on facebook or email me directly at: jay at wardtek dot ca

There's more I'd like to write on this whole bit but I'll have to write a blog post later. Right now I'm just dead tired. I look forward to some interesting / useful feedback :)

<comment><USER2> The link doesn't work. Did you change your API settings to make the app public?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well crap ;) That'll teach me for writing stuff when I'm too tired to double check. I have no idea where I got that URL from....

<http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=3724b1a0743578308ce28e934c600377>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Startups should probably wait until they are successful before saying "And YC _rejected_ us". Saying it early doesn't really mean anything.</comment>


Loudness Penalty: Find out if audio will be turned down by streaming services - <AUTHOR> http://www.loudnesspenalty.com <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but personally I like the Dynamic Range (DR) measurement developed by the Pleasurize Music Foundation more. It also provides a one- value output that has a direct relation to the statistics of the input audio, and AFAIK it is a somewhat established measurand in audio engineering.

Self-plug: A while back I reverse-engineered the DR algorithm and implemented it as a Python script. It's [DRmeter on GitHub]([https://github.com/janw/drmeter](https://github.com/janw/drmeter)).

<comment><USER3> Is that similar to what replaygain uses for adjusting loudness?

<comment><USER2> TIL of ReplayGain, thanks!

From what I quickly gathered from the specs^1, Replay Gain (RG) and Dymanic Range (DR) are indeed similar in the grand scheme of things. Both algorithms employ percentile-based statistic of RMS values. While RG is determined by the 95% percentile of RMS values on 50ms audio frames, DR uses the 80% percentile on 3-second-long audio frame RMS values. So RG is definitely on the side of short-term analysis, while DR is long-term.

What differentiates RG more plainly though is its stronger psycho-acoustical foundation in regards to frequency response: It applies a so-called "Loudness filter" (modelled after the Equal-Loudness contour^2 found in human hearing) before doing the RMS statistics. The Equal-Loudness contour (also known as "Isophone" where I come from) is in turn modelled after non-linear response of the ear to sound pressure levels in relation to the frequency. It basically adjusts for what in layman's terms I'd call "Importance" of the different ranges.

Therefore I'd say RG is very much focused on what human hearing will _perceive_ as loud (too loud, or just loud enough), while DR focuses on "exposing offenders in all ranges of the spectrum". My educated guess would be: Loud bassy sounds would not harm an RG score, while having a significant impact on the DR, as its not attenuating low frequencies.

Would be interesting to see a comparison of the two!

[1]: [http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specif...](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specification)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal- loudness_contour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ironic that Spotify will apparently penalize the music for being "too loud" when their ads are regularly ear-splittingly loud. It's egregious. When listening with earbuds, I have to have a quick reaction on the volume control because the commercials literally hurt my ears.

<comment><USER5> Have you considered that this may be by design? Have you considered paying for the service?

<comment><USER4> Of course it's by design. And sure, I've considered paying for it, but I don't. Does that mean my complaints about the free service are somehow invalid? I'm still a customer, just a different kind of customer, and if they make the experience bad enough for me that I avoid it in some circumstances, that's relevant to their interests. If they didn't want free-tier customers, they wouldn't be offering the free-tier service.

<comment><USER6> The free tier is to get paid users. If you have no chance of being paid, Spotify hardly cares whether you stay or go.

<comment><USER7> I'm sure Spotify would rather everyone that isn't going to pay use their free product than move to competitor X.

<comment><USER8> Pros: they potentially play the Spotify ad to their friends, effectively advertising the service.

Cons: each playback means bandwidth + royalties cost.

So the question is, does the probability times the return from their friends bring more money than the free playbacks? I'd really like to know the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's hard to trust a service like this without some information on where they pull the numbers from. How did they determine which normalization algorithm each service uses?

The "give us your email address for more information" part also seems slimy.

<comment><USER10> TIDAL has openly said that they are using -14 LUFS for normalization while Spotify has said they are using ReplayGain. The other platforms required more investigation, and we're continuing to refine the estimates, but we feel that we've gotten pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused about why this website is using the word "penalty" to describe the process of normalizing songs to have the same loudness.

<comment><USER12> From the email they sent when I put in a sample song and asked for the more detailed analysis:

"Since streaming services are going to turn loud music down anyway, more and more people are deciding they would prefer to take control of this process themselves, and optimize their music for the best possible results."

and

"We recommend avoiding very large negative LP values, especially on YouTube because songs like this often sound "smaller" than those with LP scores closer to zero.

Hear it for yourself For example, compare the loud sections of these two Metallica songs on YouTube - The Day That Never Comes (LP -5.8)[1] and Hardwired (LP -2.4)[2]. Which has more impact?

Loudness normalization means you have the opportunity to make your music sound better, too. In our experience, LP between 0 and -2 on YouTube will work well for even the loudest genres. For example, Drake's recent hit God's Plan has a score of LP -0.8 on YouTube, and it sounds huge."

[1]: [https://youtu.be/dkNfNR1WYMY](https://youtu.be/dkNfNR1WYMY) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBHL3v4d3I&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBHL3v4d3I&feature=youtu.be) [3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER13> Ironic you pick on Metallica as example as they basically "won" the loudness wars[0] with the release of Death Magnetic. So ridiculously overblown and compressed that it was clipping constantly and heavily featured in mainstream media. Even one of the album's mastering engineers complained.

Lars thought it was great.

[0] [http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the- loud...](http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the-loudness- wars/)

<comment><USER12> Just to be clear, it is the site authors who wrote that about the two Metallica songs, not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For background there was a loudness war/race as has been an increasing tendency to increase loudness of music songs and by so removing dynamic range.

Background article on Loudness Race [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wasn't YouTube supposed to do this a few years ago?[0] Yet some videos at full volume are still quieter than other videos at 10% volume. Does it not work?

[0][http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube- loudness/](http://productionadvice.co.uk/youtube-loudness/)

<comment><USER16> This is about automatic volume reduction, not normalization. In other words, YouTube isn't going to adjust your volume up, only down if it's too loud (or saturated?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why do audio formats use a linear scale, instead of exponential (like our ears seems to use)?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what you are referring to with audio "formats," but audio _programs_ work in dB, which is logarithmic.

<comment><USER18> Audio is commonly represented in a format called pulse code modulation (PCM), where the amplitude of the sound is recorded using an integer or a floating point number (a "sample") anywhere from 12,000 to 192,000 times a second. Each sample is usually linearly proportional to amplitude rather than logarithmically.

I am unaware of any audio program which internally represents audio in dB. Waveform displays default to linear scales, though logarithmic scaling is usually available. Just about the only place where logarithmic scales are the default is frequency domain graphical representations like spectrograms.

<comment><USER19> Actually 32bit float is such a logarithmic format.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GoInstant widgets - building blocks for multi-user apps - <AUTHOR> https://goinstant.com/blog/new-release-goinstant-widgets--the-building-blocks-for-multiuser-apps

<comment><USER2> I am really excited about this release. Every app should be as collaborative and fun to use as Google Docs... we are trying to make it a little easier for developers to implement realtime collaboration, user presence, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks very interesting. Similar but with additional widgets that aren't in TogetherJS. Interesting to use eventing model and tie it more directly to lead scoring and qualification.</comment>


Show HN: Brook, a cross-platform(Linux/MacOS/Windows/Android/iOS) proxy software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/txthinking/brook <comment><USER2> nice, how it works around NTLM ( microsoft ) proxies ?</comment>


Should we get a different perspective on non-technical people? - <AUTHOR>

I started this thread because for years i've seen non-technical people being bashed on forums and in real life because of their background and/or other stupid reasons.After some years of experience in the industry and some amazing discussions i must say that the situation is more complex than it seems.
I had a meeting with some investors and developers recently and we were talking about non-tech and tech people and what are the differences between them and after a long debate/discussions we realized that we were speaking of non-techies from different perspectives.
Some devs thought of them as a 3rd wheel to the carriage , some found them important.Investors had a problem with the name, stating that a non-technical person is in a way the same as the word "business" and it's too generalistic.
So at the end of the debate we reached these conclusions:
A non-technical person can have many roles in a startup and it should be clearly defined before he joined one. A non-technical person can really suck or be a game-changer for the business. Being a genius developer doesn't mean you can do both parts at the highest level.
These are some points i remember from the discussion.There are more but i will stop here for now.
Best example we can refer to is Steve Jobs.He was a non-techie after all.Why Was he better- in a way-  than Wozniak and/or the entire team?Well Simply because of his vision and innovative style.Being Able to create a product in your mind in the highest detail is a trait few people have, yet overlooked by most.The only major flaw these kind of people have is that they are really nothing without a tech team.So yes, a hacker can be everything but not necessarily a visionary.
I believe we should give more importance to them because some of them can really make or break a company. <comment><USER2> how many of these bashers actually run successful companies.</comment>


Show HN: Merica Match – we made a game about the American presidential election - <AUTHOR> http://www.mericamatch.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm Mark Cooke, CEO of Shiny Shoe and project lead on Merica Match. Our goal with Merica Match was to do a Colbert-esuqe lampooning of the election within the context of what we believe is a high quality casual match-3. In the game players can choose from Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Cruz as they try to help their favorite candidate match their way to the White House. Merica Match is a re-imagining of one of our previous games with a new theme so we had some existing retention/monetization data to give us at least a little confidence that players would like the game and that it could be a viable addition to our portfolio.

While I wish we had released the game six months ago when many more candidates were in the pool, no Pokemon Go hoovering up mindshare, and even more political shenanigans to make fun of I'm glad we got this out in time for the conventions. Like most small studios launching a mobile game we're struggling for visibility and don't have a huge UA budget. If anyone has any feedback on the game I'd love to hear it. I can also answer any questions about development or design decisions.</comment>


Why Founders Should Emulate Wozniak, Not Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://trevorowens.tumblr.com/post/12432238865/why-founders-should-emulate-wozniak-not-jobs

<comment><USER2> Sadly, this is not one of the honeypots Wesley Tansey recently suggested I set up ([http://www.nashcoding.com/2011/10/28/hackernews-needs- honeyp...](http://www.nashcoding.com/2011/10/28/hackernews-needs-honeypots/)).

As someone who has seen dozens of Woz-founder-only startups march into the meatgrinder of obscurity, I can tell you that if you have to be one or the other, you're better off being Jobs.

Not that you have much choice about it though. If you're a natural Jobs you're not going to have much luck trying to turn yourself into a Woz. And vice versa.

More generally, I'm tired of these articles where people make up a straw man version of Steve Jobs and then attack him. I feel like I know more about Jobs than nearly everyone who writes this stuff, and I don't feel confident making generalizations about his character.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks pg.

My intent was not to bash Jobs, quite the opposite as I called him "one of the best CEOs ever to live" in the conclusion.

My goal is to reflect on what skills are really important in an early startup. The Apple II wasn't a success because of Jobs's leadership or because of his design focus like with the iPhone. Founders don't think about Markkula's role in getting the Apple II mainstream. Furthermore, Jobs had to fail over and over, wasting millions of dollars, before he tamed his bad habits and realized what would work. Then again, I only know what I'm talking about from reading Isaacson's biography and doing my own research. Thought this would make an interesting discussion.

<comment><USER3> "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

-Michael Jordan

<comment><USER4> Was he the one who actually came up with that? It sounds suspiciously like Nike ad copy. In fact, it would make a very _good_ Nike ad.

<comment><USER5> Yep.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      Steve Jobs played a minor role in Apple's early success with the Apple II

I disagree. Here's what Isaacson writes (p. 73):

 _If it had not been for Jobs, [Wozniak] might still be handing out schematics of his boards for free at the back of Homebrew meetings. It was Jobs who had turned his ingenious designs into a budding business, just as he had with the Blue Box . . . . To make the Apple II successful required more than just Wozniak's awesome circuit design. It would need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product, and that was Jobs's role._

For all of his foibles, Jobs was the quintessential founder, relentlessly pushing the business forward -- recruiting great team members, signing up investors, and polishing the product for a mass audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I noted that Jobs's hustling was important. His product vision, design aesthetic, and RDF were not, which is where most founders go wrong.

Not sure you read the book carefully--many investors laughed in Jobs's face not because it was a bad idea, but because he had BO and they couldn't stand him.

Also--Steve was lucky to be Wozniak's best friend, whom most talented engineers came to Apple because of. Mike Scott (the CEO of Apple since it launched the Apple II) is the person who built the team, not Jobs.

<comment><USER7> What's BO?

<comment><USER8> In the first half of the biography, it's mentioned numerous times that due to his fruitarian diet, Jobs believed that he rarely needed to bathe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This shit is beyond absurd.

How can anybody write an article with a straight face suggesting that you should emulate any of these people who were notable chiefly because they emulated no one?

Can we get special flagging functionality to deal with this personality cult bullshit?

<comment><USER10> second that

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I cannot understand how you could read this biography and arrive at the conclusion that any one person should be "emulated". What I took away was that all components of Apple's success were mutually inclusive. It's unlikely that it could have happened any other way. You can pick a thousand points along the line wherein the events might have not come together as they did, and you do not end up with the Apple that exists today.

I don't seek to "emulate" Jobs. I look at his life, and I hope to learn from his mistakes, as well as his successes. You should do the same from Wozniak's life. Likewise with your family and other mentors.

Reading "Steve Jobs" reminded me of reading Watchmen because he is often cast as the "American Entrepreneurial Hero". But underneath, Steve Jobs was as deeply flawed as any of us, and that is the truth of our humanity. None of us are perfect, yet we are all capable of greatness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Article is just trying to expel the misconceptions around Jobs and say that brilliant engineering is more important than design & reality distortion field in a startup.

<comment><USER3> Woz was the engineering genius. Jobs was the visionary entrepreneur. They both needed each other.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was not a visionary entrepreneur, that's the whole point. His vision led him to create product flops for 20 years. Markkula on the other hand got it correct with the Apple II from having the right industry knowledge.

<comment><USER3> Let's see. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Barack Obama, Bob Iger, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Dell, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Spielberg, Michael Bloomberg, Stephen Wolfram, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dick Costolo, Steve Case, Marc Andressen, etc. They all think he's a visionary. Should I believe them or you?

<comment><USER12> You should believe neither them nor trevor99. Look at the facts and draw your own conclusions.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for answering my rhetorical question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> According to Steve, you shouldn't be emulating anyone - be yourself. You'll never be a better Steve Jobs than Steve was - or a better Woz than Woz was.

The key thing I got out of the article is how important your co-founder is - one thing Steve seems to have is that he recognized talent very quickly (Woz, Ive at the age of 29) and developed them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or he just got lucky and was Wozniak's best friend from High School. Which is the true story.

<comment><USER14> Ive is much more responsible for Apple's current renaissance than Wozniak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"Wozniak had no desire to run any part of the company, he just wanted to be a mid-level engineer (he initially wanted to give plans for the Apple I away for free)."_

 _"[Jobs] who was mainly given no authority up until this point, was obsessed with (proving) himself and was able to get an opportunity to lead the Macintosh team. [...] He grabbed the best engineers from around the company and put them on the Macintosh team."_

So the only logical conclusion can be that founders should emulate Woz, not Jobs. Clearly...

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting tired of these YOU SHOULD EMULATE X INSTEAD OF Y stories...

You should emulate Bill Gates instead of Steve Jobs...

You should emulate Wozniak instead of Jobs...

Who cares?? I would be proud to emulate any of these great men.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry you don't like the title. Article is about the misconceptions surrounding Jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having read the same biography, I came to rather different conclusions: True, without Wozniak, there wouldn't have been an Apple I and II. However, without Jobs, the Apple I and II would never have SOLD. A company needs good engineering AND hustle.

<comment><AUTHOR> All Jobs did was get Wozniak to quit his job. Markkula was the one who got the Apple II beyond the hobbyist market which Jobs could never have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Take Jobs, Wozniak or Markula out of the picture and Apple fails. You needed a hustler/product guy, a brilliant engineer and a great business mind for success.

Jobs legend was created because he built upon his skills. He enhanced his ability to spot and aquire great talent and learned (the hard way) how to become a great businessman.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but the least important in the mix was Jobs.

<comment><USER19> Take a step back from being the author of this article, take a deep breath, and read through the whole of this comments page and try to get a feeling for the big picture.

From an non-vested point of view, I see an article presenting a point of view, 95% of comments disagreeing with the article, and the remaining 5% are you telling them they're wrong.

It feels like you've got a bit of an axe to grind. You've said your piece, now it's time to just accept that not everyone (or in fact most hacker news readers this morning) agrees with you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So what I'm hearing is that tenacious Steve failed a bunch of times before he finally hit one out of the park.

Sounds like an entrepreneur to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Founders today will not have the opportunity to learn the lessons Jobs did because they don't have the resources and klout that Jobs had."

Jobs was a millionaire when he failed a bunch of times and lost all his money. Are you a millionaire?

<comment><USER20> Nope. But I've certainly failed a bunch of times. And now I'm going for the brass ring again.

Work within your means, but reach for things that are out of your means.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree failure is important. It's easy to start with a large fortune and end with a smaller one though.

<comment><USER20> Basically what I'm getting at is: He had greater means and so could take higher value risks, but the basic mechanism is the same; it's just at a different scale.

In the end it comes down to having the vision and taking the risk. And one of his risks finally paid off. That is the essence of entrepreneurship, and something to emulate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your stretching pretty far here. "Vision" was what led Steve Jobs wrong for 20 years of his life. Markkula knew the industry and knew what would work, Wozniak had the best engineering ability of anyone. This was the magic combination and what founders should try to emulate.

It's not just scale either. Jobs was also famous and perceived as successful. He could be a complete asshole to people and they would still work with him. You should try that in your next startup...

<comment><USER20> Steve's "vision" failed him time and time again. He risked his own money and lost it. He risked other peoples' money and lost it. And then eventually he made it work. It doesn't matter that he leveraged other peoples' genius and vision. It doesn't matter that he stole everything. It doesn't matter that he was a little self-delusional or that he was an asshole. Under his direction, his "vision" finally materialized, and was wildly successful.

Now I wouldn't say that being a narcissistic asshole is a good strategy or something to emulate (after all, nobody's perfect), but pursuing a vision through all manner of trial and tribulation is a worthy goal, and something to emulate.

The people who make the biggest impact tend to be those who spend years, even decades in the harsh wildnerness, taking hits and taking falls, but never giving up because they refuse to believe that it can't be done. And then one day they do it, or die trying.

These people look at a territory and say "I'm going to conquer that." Most people will tell them they're crazy to even try, and that it would already be conquered if it were worthwhile or even possible to do so. "Just till the land like everyone else does" they'll say. And then these would-be conquerors get some other key people to see the vision and the possibility. They all work hard, doing what nobody else is doing, or would even try doing. They fail campaign after campaign, but keep going, eventually seeing some success. And then one day the visionary stands on the tallest hill, surveying their newly acquired "unconquerable" territory, and suddenly they're not crazy, but genius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> re: "if anything his most important contribution was just general hustling."

If you don't have "general hustling" going on your company isn't going anywhere.

<comment> wes-exp Even if we assume that Wozniak was much more essential than Jobs, the fact is that Jobs persuaded Wozniak to do the startup in the first place. And if I recall correctly from the biography by Isaacson, it took quite a bit of convincing on Jobs' part to get Woz to leave his secure job at HP.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right it did take a lot of convincing and hustling. It didn't take product vision from Jobs to make the Apple II a success however. Look at all the products Jobs tried to produce through his "vision," they all failed until the iPod.

<comment><USER22> The Apple II would not have had a keyboard or power supply without Jobs' vision though.

You're probably right that it wasn't the design aesthetic that counted, but Jobs' customer focus was still very important.

<comment><USER23> It's highly likely that without Jobs, we wouldn't have had the awesome velcro that holds the top cover of an Apple II closed.

For those that haven't had the privilege, first move the monitor and Disk II units off, then grasp the back of the top cover of the Apple II, and lift up. There will be a ripping of Velcro.

It's surprising that no one else ever seemed to copy this, and not something that'd ever occurred to me until now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Jobs without Woz would have found another company to run and another great idea to build.

Woz without Jobs would just be some really good engineer inside some gigantic company no one has ever heard of. He even is quoted in the book as having aspired to that.

<comment><AUTHOR> First statement is completely up for debate. Jobs did continue without Wozniak and he failed every product in the next 18 years and spent millions of dollars. Not something founders here can emulate.

<comment><USER25> It's worth checking out how many of Jobs' "failures" eventually came to pass. Crazy ideas like the stability of Unix with an Apple GUI..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It really all depends on what your trying to do yourself. Im not naive enough to think Apple would have worked without BOTH Woz and Jobs. Every company needs an innovator/inventor, but then what good are they if they have no clout with regards to how to get the product to market, or what exact product the consumers would want? Thus the title is completely incorrect.

The company would not be what it is today if either of them had went solo, FACT.

These constant articles/opinions etc regarding Jobs are now getting pretty tiresome. Love him or hate him, he was amazing at what HE done.

Whatever happened to letting someone Rest In Peace

</comment><comment><USER27> This article and the author's subsequent attempts to defend it demonstrate a colossal misunderstanding of valuable founder attributes. The role of the hustler is being horrendously under-appreciated. It would be easier to make the case that Jobs was the quintessential founder. Jobs basically willed the company into existence dragging Woz along and installing Markkulla for credibility. From the get go, Jobs had an impeccable talent for finding the very best employees, convincing them to join the crusade and then getting the best out of them.

The downvoting is warranted because the author doesn't seem to think there's a chance he's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think , if startup founders were to emulate anything from Apple's early days, it would be to emulate THE TEAM.

Founder-teams should consist of one brilliant engineer (Woz), one business guy (Markkula) and one design guy (Jobs).

Everyone should be themselves, but for a company to truly succed, a perfect combination of people is needed. And a perfect timing. Apple had both.

</comment><comment><USER29> A lot behind success has to do with luck (quote from pg's "How to make wealth"). Perhaps Jobs was unique in that he was lucky in business twice, not just the once like most who succeed in business (e.g Microsoft Windows & Office), then can't do it again no matter how hard they try, even with a fortune to help.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'll say it again: Don't follow in the footsteps of Woz, Jobs, or Gates: Seek what they sought.

</comment><comment><USER31> Steve Jobs was one of the hardest working man in the industry. Enough said.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is it possible that great founders can be different types of people (engineers, professionals, visionaries or some combination of the three)? Weird.

</comment><comment><USER33> a better piece for an argument on jobs ethos <http://goo.gl/yHRct>

</comment><comment><USER34> There wouldn't have been a Markkula there without Jobs' ability to bring him on to the team. Ability to bring together great engineering with great industry expertise is more valuable than solely Woz's engineering talent on it's own.

</comment><comment><USER35> Apple would not exist had Jobs not had the insight to turn Wozniak's hobby into a marketable product. Indeed he had much help to grow the company, but that help is a commodity far easier to find than a man like Jobs who could spy potential and lead those resources toward his vision.

In his early days, Jobs was a terrible manager, a tedious perfectionist, a narcissistic autocrat, and an emotional child - yet he had the passion, charisma, and vision to see potential and make it happen. Because of that, all his negative qualities become charming quirks instead of causing him to be kicked to the curb for good at 20. He was probably rightfully booted from Apple for those characteristics, and it was far easier for him to tame those demons than it would have been for Wozniak to take on Jobs' charm.

There's a reason there is only one Jobs and one Apple, yet thousands of Wozniaks and still one Apple - Jobs is a rarer and more essential talent. Wozniak was quickly replaced when he became disengaged - Jobs still can't be.</comment>


Writing Win32 apps like it's 2020 – A DPI-aware resizable wizard in modern C++ - <AUTHOR> https://building.enlyze.com/posts/writing-win32-apps-like-its-2020-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Looks interesting. Could use that for some installer stuff

<comment><USER3> Really awesome - have been looking for a way to get all that new style JS stuff of my plate for ages!</comment></comment>


Demis Hassabis: Artificial Intelligence and the Future [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEL4iR-d4L8 <comment><USER2> Overview:

* Demis Hassabis giving a talk at the Royal Society of Arts on Sept 29, 2016

* Examples from DeepMind

* Atari games, the discovery of an innovative strategy in Breakout

* Lots on AlphaGo, significance of intuition and creativity, move 37 in game 2

* Short mention of current work, "building an artificial hippocampus"

Near the end:

* Short example of newly published text to speech stuff

* Short example of unpublished musical composition stuff

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm left with the impression this guy will win a medal or a title or something. :)</comment>


Choosing 3M points on a 300-dimensional sphere - <AUTHOR> https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/choosing-3-million-points-on-a-300-dimensional-sphere/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a pretty correct approximation. An even better way is to assume vectors are uniformly distributed on the sphere. The dot product has expectation 0 and the variance is 1/300 (cf [http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/85916/distribution-...](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/85916/distribution- of-a-scalar-product-of-two-random-unit-vectors-in-mathbbrd)).

Chebyshev's inequality shows that the probability that the dot product be greater than 0.3 in absolute value is less than 4%.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to generate vectors uniformly on a n-dimensional unit sphere, generate them as i.i.d vectors of n standard normal variates and renormalize.

        x = np.random.randn(300)
        x /= np.sqrt(np.sum(x*x))

To see why consider that the joint pdf depends solely on the vector's distance from the origin.

<comment><USER4> That is not going to be uniform.

<comment><USER5> uh... yes, yes it is. see for example [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperspherePointPicking.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HyperspherePointPicking.html)

<comment><USER6> It's uniform if you reject points with length > 1 before normalizing (your link mentions this), but not uniform as written. It's a simple adjustment, but you do have to cull.

Edit: yeah oops, I goofed and I'm wrong. I didn't notice it was randn - normally distributed. No culling necessary.

<comment><USER3> If you try rejection sampling in 300 dimensions, you're gonna have a bad time.

<comment><USER6> Is it bad for a unit sphere specifically, or just a generally bad idea? I was just thinking the volume ratio of the hyper sphere to the hyper cube is always over 0.5 in any number of dimensions? But I'm not sure about that.

Or do you mean more that it sucks pretty bad to generate 300 rands and then throw them away, even once?

<comment><USER7> Nope, I was wrong --- the volume of the hyper sphere to the hyper cube is not always over 0.5.

<comment><USER3> It in fact decreases exponentially

<comment><USER6> Yeah, wild, I didn't know this. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n- ball](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n-ball)

Jeez, my intuition stinks. I initially thought it was obvious why the 3D sphere to unit cube ratio is > 0.5, by analogy to the 2d diamond embedded in a square, but in 3D the embedded octagon volume isn't 0.5. Obvious now, but that'll teach me not to guess.

Indeed, rejection sampling the 300 dimensional unit sphere will suck really bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a rough analogy to get intuition going:

Say we forget about dimensions and hyperspheres for a moment and just talk about quizzes. Specifically, a quiz of 300 true-false questions.

We have two students fill out the quiz at random, by flipping a coin. What's the probability that they answer all the questions the same way? 2^300 - vanishingly small. Similarly for answering all the questions in exactly the opposite way.

If we only have two or three dimensions, that's like a quiz with only two or three questions. If the possible answers to the questions are constrained, it's fairly likely that some students would get similar results just by chance. But the number of combinations goes up exponentially as we add more questions.

<comment><USER8> Oops, that should be 1/(2^300).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, I'm not understanding something. If you take a vector formed only of ±1 coordinates, it's not going to be within the n-dimensional ball, nor on the n-1-dimensional sphere, it's going to be at the corner of the unit hypercube, right?

Secondly, I don't understand by which measure the distribution of these vectors would be uniformly distributed or random. Normalizing the vectors to get the coordinates on the unit hypersphere is only ever going to land on 2^n different coordinates. Clearly in low dimension this wouldn't be a good way to select random points on the sphere…

Does his approach make sense only because 2^300 is so much larger than 3 million?

<comment><USER10> > If you take a vector formed only of ±1 coordinates, it's not going to be > within the n-dimensional ball, nor on the n-1-dimensional sphere

The points are going to be on a hypersphere, just not the unit one. The radius will be about 17, right?

> Does his approach make sense only because 2^300 is so much larger than 3 > million?

It has to be larger, I don't think it needs to be crushingly larger. As long as you're still sparse, all those extra digits on your random numbers don't matter. You can round it all the way to a single bit. Each dimension is only a tiny factor on your position on the sphere, so you get perfectly good coverage for something like dot products.

<comment><USER9> Ah, thanks, got it now. Points are on the circumscribed sphere, radius sqrt(300).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 300 dimensions seems like way too many to have any kind of spatial intuition about. For me, it's easier to think of a n-tuple where n is 300. I'm not sure really what the cardinality of each dimension in this problem is, but I'll assume its a) the same for every dimension and b) something like a subset of the natural numbers (like, one int per 100k english words or something).

The sphere part is a little confusing at first, but it's really just a fancy (and yes, elegant) way of specifying a constraint on the n-tuple. Given some radius R, it defines the constraint sum(n_i^2) = R^2 for i=1..300.

It might be useful to normalize R, and it is convenient to select R=300 so that the average contribution of each n_i^2 term is 1. At this point, you just have to pick 3M n-tuples. I would probably use a random number generator to a) fill in the n-tuple, b) adjust a constant factor to fit with real world R, and c) repeat 3M times.

</comment><comment><USER12> This general area is called "concentration of measure" in case you want to Google around and find other examples. A simple but informative calculation is to compute the volume of a unit n-sphere and the volume contained between radius .9-1, and then see how the ratio of these scales with dimension. You'll see that that almost all of the volume is contained close to the boundary (exponential in dimension.)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is called random projection. Here is the paper:

[https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~optas/papers/jl.pdf](https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~optas/papers/jl.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Are the points on the surface of the sphere as implied by the title, or in the unit sphere, as implied by the quote?

<comment><USER10> The size of the sphere doesn't matter because he normalizes the dot product in step 7.</comment></comment>


The Language-Language Matrix - <AUTHOR> http://langlangmatrix.com/? <comment><USER2> It's impressive to see how many runtimes Clojure has already been ported to.

I'm starting to get my hopes up for a world where a Clojure FRP core drives apps in a host of target languages.

<comment><USER3> What we see in Clojure (like other Lisps) is minimal syntax directed at the idea of homoiconicity. This means that the program's structure is similar to its syntax. It also means that we can represent the program as a data structure in the language itself.

So (1) Simple syntax, and (2) being able to represent the program structure in the language easily, both lead to making it easy to build compilers, interpreters and bytecode compilers. The barrier to entry for these tasks is lower in Clojure.

Many would also say that (1) and (2) make Clojure a joy to program in, but I'll leave that to the reader to judge for themselves.

<comment><USER4> > Many would also say that (1) and (2) make Clojure a joy to program in, ...

Yep, the opposing view being that the lack of syntax that some see as a benefit actually makes it inexpressive, compared to a language with more syntax that expresses its ideas more like human language (e.g. Ruby, Python).

> but I'll leave that to the reader to judge for themselves.

Same! Not made my mind up yet, currently struggling through the Clojure book.

<comment><USER5> I recently came across this new Clojure book:

[http://www.braveclojure.com/](http://www.braveclojure.com/)

Seems like potentially an accessible and entertaining intro to the language. Perhaps it could be a good way to get your feet wet before diving into one of the larger tomes.

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me, or does the fact that every other language is getting translated to Javascript suggest a lot of problems with the language that so many people are willing to write translators?

(I am not a big fan of JS myself, but I also don't feel I have used the language enough to be competent with it).

<comment><USER7> I'm more inclined to believed that people want to run their programs in a browser, and js is a requirement in that runtime environment.

Most devs are sadly quite reluctant to trying out new languages, and would rather recompile.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't expect any of my Python code to just run in the browser, whatever translation layer I am using (ok, maybe small snippets, but not any code that does anything significant). Its basically a whole different platform you are coding.

<comment><USER7> No, but a lot of devs are fine switching platforms, but not languages. I don't know why, I think it's fun, but many people are scared of new languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Try running phpjs (JavaScript → PHP) in PHPPHP (PHP → PHP) in PHP.rb (PHP → Ruby) in HotRuby (Ruby → JavaScript) in Narcissus (JavaScript → JavaScript) in Narcissus (JavaScript → JavaScript)!"

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's C in Common Lisp: [https://github.com/vsedach/Vacietis#readme](https://github.com/vsedach/Vacietis#readme)

</comment><comment><USER10> Omission: there's a very nice on-the-fly compiler, which supports writing an embedded intepreter, for (an old dialect of) Lua in OCaml, written by Norman Ramsey [1]. It's part of the C-- distribution [2].

[1]: [http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/maniaws- abstract.html](http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/maniaws-abstract.html)

[2]: [http://www.cminusminus.org/c-downloads/](http://www.cminusminus.org/c-downloads/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be interesting to do a "chineese whispers" type experiment on these and see what comes out at the end of translating code through multiple languages.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems a bit arbitrary to omit mention of Lua's native ability to be trivially embedded in C and C++ programs. Why limit yourself to transpilers?

<comment><USER12> Yeah I thought it was odd when they had N/A for Lua to C++. They have Clojure listed at Clojure to Java, why not have Lua listed as Lua to C++? It's darn close to the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cibyl and NestedVM seem to be in the wrong cell. These take C/C++ source and produce Java. Come to think of it, the Java target should probably be "Java/JVM" as NestedVM can skip Java, going straight to JVM bytecode.

Another suggestion of code I've played with before: [http://IKVM.net](http://IKVM.net) to run Java (JVM bytecode) on C#, errr, .NET CIL.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice. Some observations: Many languages compile to JavaScript(has highest number of source languages).

Java(I think JVM) and C++(native binaries??) has higher source languages.

Clojure has highest target languages(good to learn then).

Java to Java => Beanshell is interesting.

<comment><USER15> This indicates that JavaScript is a pain in the ass, which it is.

This is neither an argument against JavaScript nor was it indended as one, just a personal observation from a long-time JavaScript programmer.

<comment><USER4> > This indicates that JavaScript is a pain in the ass

Or as another commenter pointed out that people want to write for the browser and want to use their favourite language to do so.

<comment><USER15> Maybe when analysing the stats it helps to distinguish between the intention of the one implementing the transcompiler (e.g. fun, proof-of-concept, research, money, actual need in a project, ...) and the size of the user-base of the transcompiler (in relation to the user-base of the language that is transcompiled to).

Lets say JS's user-base is pretty huge in relation to other languages (which is not an argument for JS). The stats show that a lot of languages transcompile to javascript, so I would indicate a real need for such projects, otherwise there would probably just exist a few as fun/proof-of-concept- projects.

Similar situation for C/C++ (maybe due to lack of high-level features) and Java (due to lack of practical features).

On the other hand: languages that only have a few or no transcompilers that compile to them, does not mean, they are better useable. There could be other things that make writing transcompilers very hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No entry for (Common Lisp → Common Lisp) or (Scheme → Scheme)?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is pretty great, thanks! I would love to see the top row with the language names move down with the page. I really think that would make this easier to read.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am astonished that PyPy does not appear on this chart.

<comment><USER19> PyPy is an implementation. I guess you could call it manually to output C code (then it would sit next to Shedskin), but it isn't normally used that way.

I think there should be bounties for getting certain paths through the transpiler graph working.

<comment><USER18> Various of the other things in there are implementations. To take a direct parallel, compare it with PHPPHP. PyPy allows you to run Python code inside any Python implementation.

<comment><USER19> You are correct, it should totally be on this list. Both as Python on Python and Python -> C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have to agree with Yegge, good tools are a big problem ([http://googlehow.com/2013/10/09/stanford-seminar-googles- ste...](http://googlehow.com/2013/10/09/stanford-seminar-googles-steve-yegge- on-grok/)). His project becomes more important as more compilers are written - I hope it exists outside Google someday.

</comment><comment><USER21> no need to learn javascript as all languages can compile into it. :D

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice.

Isn't it a bit odd that "C/C++" is a single category? That works in certain contexts, but certainly (1) C is a much more common compilation target than C++, and (2) C is much easier to handle as a source language than C++. So in this table it does not make sense to think of the two as one thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Take the languages which can be compiled to Java bytecode, throw in IKVM.NET, add the list of languages which can be compiled for the CLR, and you might have the longest list of languages which can run on one platform?

<comment><USER11> Then consider that Javascript runs on the JVM, and add every language which can be compiled to Javascript.

Then consider that, via Emscripten, any language which targets LLVM can be compiled to Javascript, so add every language with an LLVM frontend.

The consider that C has an LLVM frontend, and add every language which can be compiled to C.

Yes, indeed! We now live in a time where your Chicken Scheme codebase can be compiled to C, then compiled to Javascript, then intepreted in a Javascript interpreter that is being interpreted on a Java interpreter that is being interpreted on a .Net interpreter.

<comment><USER23> Almost. The JavaScript bytecode is turned into JVM bytecode which is then turned into CLR bytecode which is then JITted and runs as compiled native code. I think. Did I miss something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> C++ on C++ = Cling, although it's a bit physics centric

<comment><USER25> Also this [https://github.com/stevedonovan/UnderC](https://github.com/stevedonovan/UnderC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There was a similar project mentioned here before showing transpiler chains, can't find it. Seems like it should be mentioned.

<comment><USER26> A quine perhaps? (Perhaps Endoh's crazy quine? [https://github.com/mame/quine- relay](https://github.com/mame/quine-relay))

<comment><USER19> No it wasn't a quine, it was in the same spirit as the linked page, a transpiler graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very nice. It looks to me like PHP.rb should be in Ruby -> PHP rather than PHP -> Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER28> no mention of recently announced scala.js. Otherwise, good job, I'll be monitoring the list!

</comment><comment><USER29> Python -> Scala = PyPy?</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to New Zealand. What Is Needed? - <AUTHOR> I want to move to Auckland this year. Is there anybody familiar with immigration process here?<p>Big Thanks <comment><USER2> I am thinking of the same thing as well. I am currently living in Canada but I am not canadian. You can try [http://nzready.immigration.govt.nz/?utm_source=newzealandnow...](http://nzready.immigration.govt.nz/?utm_source=newzealandnow.govt.nz&utm_medium=referral#/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Get IELTS Exam done - score more than 6.5 on scale of 9

Assess your qualification with NZ authority

Asses your Experience

Check the NZ immigration website to see how many points you have.

Lodge Expression of Interest, wait for response

Once they respond, submit application / pay fees and wait for result

</comment><comment><USER4> From where, and as what nationality? I don't have any knowledge of the process, but these would seem to be important bits of information that you haven't mentioned.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone used an iPhone development company? - <AUTHOR>

	We've got an extremely simple iPhone app we need developed to go accompany our website. My co-founder and I are too swamped with rails / android coding to do it ourselves. We've got wireframes and pseudocode written for the app, and suspect an experienced dev could knock out our app in 15 hours. Has anyone had used the development companies (e.g. iPhone Sculptors, TeraCode)? Whats their quality of output? Would they be a better fit for our type of project vs. just finding an freelancer? <comment><USER2> We do iPhone app dev on contract, my advise is for best results make sure your project mockups are really clear about what you need, iOS UI can be tricky to get right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alex- if you're interested in the work, drop me an email and we can talk

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Apalon.com are great. They've done a bit of work for me, and their prices are fair, and they're decent to work with.</comment>


New Effort Gives Tech Workers Additional Way to Donate to Charity - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/new-effort-gives-tech-workers-additional-way-to-donate-to-charity/

<comment><USER2> I put a policy in place at my company that the company would match charitable donations 2:1 up to $5,000 (you put in $5K and we put in another $10K). We match 1:1 after that (though if someone went nuts we'd cap it). Predictably, charitable donations went up.

Seems like other companies could do the same thing and now it is more of a grass roots crowd sourced thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see their faq says:

      Will people know how much I donate or who I donate to?
        No. That's confidential

I do wonder what happens when they get hacked. Also, it would be nice if they added American Indian College Fund to their education list [http://www.collegefund.org](http://www.collegefund.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would I funnel donation money via a third party who will then get a tax write off?

Seriously?

<comment><USER5> @korzun My name is Danny and I'm a co-founder of RaisedBy.Us. Thanks for your question!

Regarding the 3rd party issue: All donation methods (RaisedBy.Us or otherwise) involve a third party. Even when you go directly to a charity's website to make a donation, you will use a third party payment provider. The most common method is debit or credit card. This method actually involves multiple third parties that all take fees (an issuing bank, a merchant bank, a settlement bank and a network such as VISA, Mastercard, Discover, etc). This fee is called interchange and it typically inovlves a flat fee of 30 cents per transactions plus about 2.5% to 3% of the total value of the transaction. We thought this was pretty expensive. Donations through RaisedBy.Us charge 0% and no flat fee per transaction. We accomplish this by using a back-end provider that settles transactions with charities using checks and ACH methods (which are much cheaper the credit and debit transactions) and we charge the companies (not the donors) to access the service.

Regarding tax write off: RaisedBy.Us does not get a tax write-off for the donations that are processed through our program. Only the initial donor (e.g., an employee at one of our participating companies) gets a tax write-off for donations.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware of processing fees, to avoid it you can simply cut a check or do a bank transfer from your personal account when donating.

But I'm also pretty sure a non-profit can write off processing fees so it's not really an issue.

How would the employee get tax write off if the money is send to your company which is not registered as 501(c)?

For example if you claim a deduction on your taxes and get audited, would IRS be cool with 'I send money to XYZ which is not a 501(c) but they send it to actual charity, I swear'.

Offering receipt of donation to every company employee would work (I think), but I'm not sure if you are doing that?

<comment><USER5> Every employee gets a receipt of how much they donated to which charities. Their donation also shows up in their year end paystub and W-2, both of which can be used in their tax returns.

On fees, it's typically just the network fee (e.g., Mastercard) that gets waived. The issuing bank, acquiring bank and the processor, still take a cut.

Bank transfers have too much friction. You wouldn't pay your corner store with a bank transfer. You'd rather swipe a card. It's why you carry around your bank card (which as a VISA or MC logo). You wouldn't pay for something on eBay with a bank transfer. You'd use PayPal. An interesting point is that both PayPal, VISA and Mastercard on the bank-end are really just a series of bank transfers wrapped with a more refined consumer/merchant interface (card / POS terminal).

<comment><USER4> Gotcha, that's for clarifying it. With receipts this makes way more sense :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really like this idea, great job!</comment>


Hashtag Spam on Twitter is a Real Problem - <AUTHOR> https://venngage.com/blog/hashtags-are-worthless/ <comment><USER2> "Hashtags are worthless" ... for businesses trying to use generic keywords to drive engagement.

Who'da thunk it!

Yes, the content of `#marketing` is full of rubbish - go do the same search on Google and you'll see it is mostly SEO'd links.

But take a look at #RobotWars or #GBBO when those shows are on. It's a channel of like-minded individuals all participating in a shared experience. The same for a smallish conference. The event is a social object and the hashtag is the manifestation of people's delight.

Sure, you get the occasional spammer intruding, and a few companies fruitlessly trying to inject themselves into the conversation - but mostly it's just a global stream of consciousness. And I think that's very worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a bit of an issue with their definition of a "Questionable" account. I mostly use twitter as a way to aggregate a stream of news from people I think are interesting and as such my following/follower ratio is about 10:1.

When the author says Questionable accounts had "4.2x more accounts than were following them" that's not that surprising as that was part of their (flawed?) classification to begin with but I don't think it says anything about them being a bot.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not an heavy Twitter user, but seems like the problem here is with the generic tags. How were #music or #sales supposed to be useful, even if they were spam-free?

Hashtags seem to be useful when they are specific (such as for grouping conversations around a specific event that's currently happening) or as annotations/side-notes, often describing state of mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR

Generic hashtags get spammed. Most people expect this, except marketeers, who seem to think their brethren will not practicing their profession in their home turf.

</comment><comment><USER6> How do people usually consume hashtags? My Twitter usage is going to the homepage and looking at my feed, which is just posts from people I follow. I don't see how having certain hashtags would make it more likely for me to see a post.</comment>


Batteriser "debunk video" and skepticism is flawed. Video and Proof - <AUTHOR>

The debunking of the Batteriser was flawed. If you are still skeptical, here is some more information for to better understand their claims. First off, Batteroo released a video demonstrating why you cannot use a power supply box to "debunk" the Batteriser. Batteries and constant power supply boxes behave very differently: https://youtu.be/Rv5eHRnjGC8
That YouTube page also has a video of the Batteriser tested on flashlights. Check it out if interested.
This video and study published by Duracell claims that batteries thrown away on average have 67% capacity left. https://youtu.be/JglYXZgP740 .
Next point, this study by Dr. Rolfz in Switzerland claims that 10% of batteries thrown away contains 1.4v left when discarded. http://www2.ife.ee.ethz.ch/~rolfz/batak/ICBR2003_Zinniker.pdf This Swiss conference study is very interesting. The results show that the average battery in the test retained 33.3% of the battery's capacity...10% were considered "new" and it looks like over 60% had over half of the capacity. 30% of discarded batteries have 50% energy left in them...which is again a very significant point...this means if device could use the other 50%..., one can double the life of the battery.....The point that I want to pay more attention to is that the assumption is that Batteries would stop working at 0.9 volts...however with Batteriser we can draw the remaining power till around 0.6 volts which is gives additional life extension to the battery
Also interesting was their extrapolation that 20 million Swiss Francs (about $21.2 million USD) worth of battery value is thrown away every year in Switzerland!
The most important point from this article is that 10% of batteries had cut off voltage greater than 1.4 volts, which means that 1.5 billion batteries have greater than 1.4 cut off voltage. 1.4v is much higher than Batteriser's patent claim of 1.3 to 1.35 volts cut off voltage... <comment><USER2> I'm guessing that you have some connection to the people who are making the "Batteriser" (since you created a new user ID for the purpose of posting this defense of the product).

If you claim that the debunking video is flawed, I challenge you to send a prototype of the Batteriser to the person who made that video so that he can test it (or to any other well known organization). A test would be straightforward to do: pull two new batteries out of the same package, run them with two identical devices and see which battery fails first, the one with the Batteriser or the control. Run the test several times, swapping the devices on alternate runs of the test to make sure the device being powered isn't the cause of the difference.

 _" Also interesting was their extrapolation that 20 million Swiss Francs (about $21.2 million USD) worth of battery value is thrown away every year in Switzerland!"_

This is irrelevant to whether the device works as claimed or not. It makes your post sound like an ad, detracting from the credibility of your argument.

For reference, here's the discussion of the video that claims to debunk the Batteriser: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677900)</comment>


The Really Smart Phone - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576263261679848814.html <comment><USER2> The world is finally starting to take notice of how significant it is that everyone has these handheld computers in their pockets all day long. The amount of data that is being harnessed by apps today is impressive, but over the next few years, I think the market for this information is going to be enormous. I wonder who will "own" the information. I assume it will be the network providers.

They are going to need tools to make sense of the information they have. They have very detailed information on their phone users, but they'll have to think through how they can monetize the information legally. Could we see these companies developing the ability to say, "the user of the cell phone X, who is a 14 year-old girl, spent 2 hours in this store on this day". That data on an aggregate basis could be very valuable to companies--companies that would be willing to pay for this kind of insight. "We noticed a spike in teenage girls visiting your stores in the northeast within a day after launching your ad campaign. It didn't have as large of a spike in this region of the country however." I think investors would be willing to buy this kind of information too. Imagine the edge a hedge fund would have if they had this sort of insight into consumer trends.

I suspect there will be a huge need for tools to analyze and make sense of the data that this new market will demand. I'm sure there are already some startups headed down this path, and I'm sure large communication companies would rather use a vendor for this data analysis than learn to do it themselves.

I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

<comment><USER3> >I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

I agree. I also feel that we are going to see uses of this information that we haven't considered yet.

Urban planning seems a very low-hanging fruit. I'd bet you can predict crime to some extent too.

As I read this, I kept thinking about Roller Coaster Tycoon. Watching all those little people mill about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funnily enough, I'm one of the people mentioned in this article, and we're a 3 person startup making this real.

<comment><USER5> Can you post a link to your startup? I'd like to read more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can see the appeal of <http://color.com> to VCs.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is amazing data, and I expect that much more research is coming our way. It would be interesting to speculate on what kind of databases might be needed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isaac Asimov's Foundation, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER9> Despite my deep desire to see a big budget adaptation of World War Z, the truly most relevant zombie fiction of today is Stephen King's Cell.

</comment><comment><USER10> How would one get involved in this sort of programming/research? I basically want to understand the world (of humans) as a whole, the really big picture, and this kind of thing is right up my alley. I'm thinking I should learn R and statistics, but what else? I already study history intensively.</comment>