One More Thing: 'iTunes Match' Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/06/one-more-thing-itunes-match-will-upgrade-your-ripped-music-for-24-99-a-year/ <comment><USER3> Is this perpetual? For example, could I pay my yearly subscription fee, torrent anything I want, upload it and get a legit version? If so, this is $25 a year for all the music I want.

Which, if the labels have agreed to that, it's very surprising. It's sort of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy: they start getting a cut of this fee from every participating pirate, which is a lot more than they used to get ($0), but a lot less than they wish they could get ($15 per album).

<comment><USER4> Here's what I don't understand about your (and a lot of people's, I don't mean to pick on you) comments, please help me understand this:

Pirated files are not necessarily identifiable as such, not in the digital world. If I download some albums from what.cd, you can't tell they're pirated, maybe I ripped them with the exact same version of LAME. What I'm trying to say is that today, having a pirated file isn't a property of the file, it's a property of how you got ahold of that file.

I don't understand what you mean when you say the service "legitimizes" (paraphrase) existing music. All it does is exchange one set of bits for another set of bits, and this set of bits or that set of bits don't make an audio file legitimate or illegitimate.

I mean it's a bit like transcoding, isn't it? Except instead of doing it yourself, you're paying Apple to do it. The fact that a third party is providing the service doesn't necessarily mean that the process as a whole is legit, in the same way that taking a PDF of a book to FedEx Kinko's to print doesn't make the copy legit, in the same way that buying a Windows upgrade to upgrade your old pirated Windows doesn't make the resulting license legit.

I realize we're in kind of a special circumstance here because Apple has paid the music labels a lot of money, but we're just speculating about what the contents of their license enables them to do, which is probably only to be indemnified in the event that people use the service with pirated music (but not to indemnify the actual users).

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> _The fact that a third party is providing the service doesn't necessarily mean that the process as a whole is legit, in the same way that taking a PDF of a book to FedEx Kinko's to print doesn't make the copy legit, in the same way that buying a Windows upgrade to upgrade your old pirated Windows doesn't make the resulting license legit._

Except that once you use iTunes Match, the resulting audio files are legally licensed, in the same way they would be had you purchased them from iTunes. Here the third party, Apple, is providing that legitimacy as a service ostensibly due to licensing agreements between Apple and the industry players. While actually grabbing the files off of a tracker is still not necessarily legal, the ultimate outcome of the process is that you will have legal copies, thanks to Apple and whatever licensing deals they've made. In other words, everyone wins: I get my music, Apple provides a (hopefully) decent service, and the music industry has found a vector for tapping into those supposed loss in sales.

<comment><USER6> And if Apple or this service is de-legitimized through Apple going out of business and shutting it down in a decade or two (hey, it could happen) - <USER2> due to licensing disputes down the line with the record companies. Well.. Hope you backed up the original files. That's a good question, actually:

If you keep the old files around, and five years from now cancel the subscription.. ultimately it's likely you've paid much, much more than the original collection was worth. Are the old ripped files still legitimate, or do they cease to be?

<comment><USER7> All songs from iTunes are DRM-free, so they will continue working even if you cancel the service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does this remind me of sending "You've won a boat!" letters to suspects on outstanding warrants?

</comment><comment><USER9> If it's DRM free, how will the yearly subscription work? It's not like the tracks can expire.

<comment><USER10> This was the curious bit for me as well. So for $25 all my music 'upgrades' to 256 bit AAC, can I replace the MP3's I ripped with 128bit MusicMatchJukebox in '99 and are sitting on my filer?

And what is this $25 really paying for? Is Apple empowered by the labels to license me a DRM free digital copy?

If I pay the $25 annual fee will it automatically 'upgrade' any songs that come on over a torrent link? Is this really a one time license to every single song in the iTunes store? (Seriously, there is probably an mp3 or ogg file of every song in the iTunes library out there) If I put them all on my machine and then pay my $25 does it go 'ding' and now I own a legitmate digital copy? (if so its a screamin' good deal)

Can I get immunity from prosecution by this? I mean if I've got the insta- legit card in my iTunes and a metallica song comes across the intertubes and metallica comes calling can I just show them the itunes copy?

It's a bold move, and one which I support, but I wonder how its going to look once its put into practice.

My guess, is that if you have a $25 subscription you can put a CD into your Mac and it will 'register' those songs as being available to you. But we will see, could be very very interesting. Or not.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Yes, that seems to be what Apple is selling. "You had CDs that you ripped to MP3s with crappy quality a while ago. Pay us $25 and we'll trade your crappy-quality MP3s for 256k AACs."

2\. I don't think they're giving you a license. You're supposed to already have a license for the song you already have. Apple is merely replacing a likely lower-quality copy with a higher-quality copy.

3\. Doubtful (to the point that I almost said no). You aren't going to get immunity from prosecution, but I'm guessing that Apple isn't going to try too hard to find people that have pirated their collection and I think the music industry knows that. It isn't Apple's style (there's no product key on their OS, no activation on their products, etc.). They might do something that tries to figure out if it was a legitimately acquired track, but maybe they'll just go the "we can't match that track" route if it's flagged. Just like #2, you're going to be in the same license and legality position that you were in before.

This is a convenience measure - for you and Apple. For you, this syncs your music between all your computers/devices. For Apple, if they can match the tracks, they don't have to store all the extra tracks as duplicates on their storage. A syncing service wouldn't be useful to you if it only dealt with the music you bought from Apple. They know that it's only useful if it does all your music and so they created a matching service to be bandwidth, time and space efficient. The service costs money to create and run and so they're charging a small fee for it. It's highly doubtful that it will change anything on the legal end.

<comment><USER10> "2. I don't think they're giving you a license. You're supposed to already have a license for the song you already have. Apple is merely replacing a likely lower-quality copy with a higher-quality copy."

This is the curious bit. The music companies have argued in the past that I didn't get a license to convert my audio into digital form (aka rip an MP3) when I bought my CDs. So your postulate that 'you already have a license' would not be valid to a company that held I didn't get any rights other than the court stipulated 'archive copy'.

Anyway, I don't know one way or the other. But I have seen other companies take a similar approach unsuccessfully, and its interesting to see how Apple is moving the conversation about digital media along.

Since it would be possible to keep a non-DRM copy in perpetuity on disk, I'm really curious about how this will implement. It seems on its face to be something the music industry is currently very invested in preventing. And frankly I don't think 150M$ + some fraction of $25 one time from iCloud subscribers is going to cut it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I am curious about is if there would be anything stopping someone from paying the $25 once to convert all of their previously pirated tracks to "legit" 256 kbps AAC tracks...this seems strange to me.

<comment><USER13> Considering that the "sync" just takes "minutes" I think the only thing you're getting is a bunch of freed up disk space thanks to a mass delete of your library and a 1-year licence to stream those songs from iTunes.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't delete the originals, it just gives you access to the 256k versions from other devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> mp3.com tried something very similar without music industry permission in 2000. It was brash and very forward thinking; they pre-ripped a ton of stuff, would identify your CD when you put it in and then unlock it for you to be played through the site. My buddy's brother was working there at the time and when he told me they were trying this, my immediate reaction was "They are gonna get sued into oblivion." Which, of course, they did.

<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-235953.html>

<comment><USER16> Interestingly, today's Apple announcement is harmful to Michael Robertson's _other_ music-related endeavor, mp3tunes (cloud "music locker" service).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are the mp3s going to be in the cloud? Or on my hard drive?

... because it seems like it would be trivial to "spoof" an mp3 for downloading (take a random mp3, perhaps cut to the correct length, add the correct id3 tags and tell iTunes Match to download it).

<comment><USER11> I'm guessing that they're going to use an audio hash to look at the file and determine what song it is. It's probably more reliable than using ID3 tags which might get mixed up (especially around remixes, live versions, or just generally missing information).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#Finding_similar_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#Finding_similar_records)

<comment><USER18> If the audio hash & protocol gets reverse-engineered, though, it'll make filesharing very quick--- instead of having to trade mp3s, you can just email your friend a list of hashes.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure how that would work, for the hash to be the same you would need the original song right? If they use sha1 or something like that how are you going to go from hash to song?

<comment><USER18> I was thinking of the case where iTunes computes hashes of your mp3s locally, then uses those to tell Apple which songs you have. You're right that if Apple requires you to upload the actual files, and then computes the hashes on the server-side, it'd make it much more difficult (you'd have to either have the original file, or generate a hash collision).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This could be actually pretty interesting, though iTunes generally fails to read many tags properly. I wonder if there's a limit to the amount of tracks. I'd definitely pay £20 a year for access to all of my music in the cloud legally, however I'm running Linux and on an Android. I guess it's just a benefit to being in the Apple ecosystem. It'd be wicked if Google did the same thing, and in the UK.

<comment><USER21> Seems to be 25,000 tracks excluding iTunes purchases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> iTunes Match premise: Once a pirate, not always a pirate. Pirates are willing to pay $25 / yr for legit 256 kbps AAC tracks of stuff they already have? And you must keep paying $25/yr in perpetuity for access to these tracks?

<comment><USER23> This should actually be really attractive to pirates. You know all those albums you downloaded, but could only find in 128 kbps? Well, spend $25, and all those can now be 256 kbps. I absolutely _loathe_ iTunes, and that's attractive enough to me that I'm considering reinstalling it.

<comment><USER24> Or maybe just make file system objects that appear to be songs?

<comment><USER25> It seems to be using perceptual hashing to match tracks; you'd need to find actual crappy versions of the songs you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apparently, this is U.S.-only: <http://twitter.com/#!/adrianweckler/status/77813858793832448>

<comment><USER19> I'm sure it will be extended to countries other than Canada soon ;p In a way I'm proud that we get excluded from all these kind of things. Shows our current laws are hated by the MPAA/RIAA people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this different than what mp3.com was trying to do about 5 year ago (I think it was mp3.com)? I seem to remember them having a service where you could put a CD into your disk drive, have their service recognize the CD and all of the sudden, you had the MP3s.

I'm guessing it is b/c this is 5 years later and b/c of Apple's clout, but I could also be missing some nuance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ah.. I didn't understand it this way before. I'm not sure how I'm justifying this to myself, as I have never bought an itunes album, haven't bought a physical album since 2004, and don't listen to music on my ipod, but I really do like this. It should cost £15.29, I'm going to expect £20 as a low estimate.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure how people are surprised by this. If you already have the track on your hard drive and now you have to PAY to listen to it then Apple isn't really giving you anything you didn't already have (convenience, obviously). It's a nice service, but realize that they have already lost the sale.

<comment><USER30> I would argue that you had a source file that may have been of lower quality and AAPL is basically giving you high quality rips of all of your music (DRM free) and hosting it so that your other devices can access it as well at any time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a treasure trove of marketing information. Apple will know your entire library and what you are listening to and when. Not exactly a privacy concern, but its something they can potentially make money off of somehow.

<comment><USER19> They already have it if you signed up for genius or whatever it's called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My iCloud is Youtube, Vevo and other legal services I access from my mobile to my non mobile computing devices. THus and for me I dont understand the hoopla of music in the cloud as it exist ubiquitously now and is free.

<comment><USER33> A lot of youtube music content is not available on mobile devices.

<comment><USER32> Really i rarely have an issue finding current non popular (Top 40) music via YouTube. If it's a current top 40 song I will find it on Vevo if not found on YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen This is pretty awesome! It means I can access legally purchased and ripped CD collection via iCloud. I'd happily pay $25/year for that convenience (even though I don't buy CDs anymore, it's all iTunes).

</comment><comment><USER34> Purchased music won't count against iCloud storage. With that in mind, this is brilliant. Convincing enough to be habit changing. Pandora and Grooveshark apps are the only reasons I might not pay.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would have loved for this to have a more expensive option so we can finally get Napster/Zune/Spotify-style jukebox subscription.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious whether this $24.99/yr revenue is shared with the labels who own the "pirated" music as part of the deal.

<comment><USER12> I would definitely think it would be shared, I highly doubt the labels would agree to it otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Extra revenue stream for Apple: sell the database of which users pirated which songs to the RIAA so they can sue.

</comment><comment><USER37> No Streaming? Is that true?

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't believe the fit the Music industry is throwing about Google Music and Amazon CloudDrive but they still made this deal with Apple.

Props to Apple. Shows they've got the muscle to get what they want.

<comment><USER39> The difference is Google Music and Amazon CloudDrive give nothing to the RIAA. But Apple gave over $100 million up front and will give a cut of each iCloud subscription to the RIAA going forward. The RIAA's outrage is just a shake down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I, for one, will pay the $25 amnesty fee after being a pirate for fifteen years.

<comment><USER41> What makes you think you are getting amnesty?

<comment><USER40> The fact that I'll be paying $25 for a blanket validation of my music collection. Once the payment is made, I'm as good as gold. At a substantial discount.

<comment><USER42> The question remains if you are only "gold" as long as you pay your $25/year. Once you stop, does your newly acquired goldness go away?

<comment><USER43> No idea, but if you were at the Keynote today, you would have seen the obvious, "nudge nudge, wink wink" in Steve's eyes.

<comment><USER40> Again, the deal brokered with the music industry equates amnesty. There is no simpler way to look at it. Unlike your Flickr account, for example, you still retain purchase rights after your yearly account expires. The way I see it, that's acquiescence by the labels, via a third party, that you in fact have paid for that music, with the added benefit of an upgrade by a licensed partner. As if you handed Apple a list of music, no matter how big or distributed, that you'd like to own. Granted, under the conditions of their license agreement, but on an average .10% of the cost of the license per song (assuming 25,000 mp3's), shit man, you'd be soft not to take the offer at least once and upgrade your current library forever.

Forever, you say? Once you pay for something, regardless of the amount, it's yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> ...and hands over your entire library to the music police.

</comment><comment><USER45> Let me correct the title for you ' One More Thing: 'iTunes Match' Will DOWNGRADE Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year'. There much better.

I have my music ripped if VBR at low compression and FLAC. Clearly, itunes isn't dishing out nearly the same quality Music in return

<comment><USER46> Please provide double-blind test results showing you can distinguish between FLAC and an iTunes Store copy.

<comment><USER47> There are other reasons for using lossless audio files, such as archiving, and avoiding degradation through re-encoding.

<comment><USER48> also disks are cheap, and flac amounts to a digital copy of the physical CD. You could decode it to the original WAV files from the CD if you wanted to

<comment><USER49>
      > flac amounts to a digital copy of the physical CD

So long as your CD doesn't include any square waves, you're golden.

<comment><USER50> > So long as your CD doesn't include any square waves, you're golden.

Could you explain what you mean by this? Are you referring to certain patterns that fall within standard Redbook audio parameters that FLAC then fails to encode properly? Or perhaps to characteristics of CDs or CD playback equipment that are difficult to duplicate on modern-day computers? I can imagine something like preëmphasis being problematic sometimes, but that seems to have little to do with square waves.

<comment><USER49> I mentioned square waves specifically because I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about how going WAV -> FLAC -> WAV on 'unnatural' waves like sawtooth or square waves failed to come back out exactly alike. It was just a little sarcasm on my part. IIRC the article was on HN so I expected people to pick up on that.

<comment><USER46> That would be an encoder bug. I seriously doubt it still exists.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Facebook's Winning The War Against Yahoo, Patent By Patent - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/04/yahoo-vs-facebook/

<comment><USER2> It is very disheartening to see that something like privacy settings have not exempted from this 'lets patent everything we can get our hands On' mentality. Sure these patents may be used today only for defence but in the future when Facebook in Yahoo's shoes, who is to say they wont try to sue their competitors out of the market?

</comment><comment><USER3> I could comment on how this reads more like a paean than as news reporting, but no. I can't get over the fact that Facebook has a patent on selecting a region of an image and associating information with it. I think I'll just go home now.

</comment><comment><USER4> We will see more of these articles, a lot of people have stock in Facebook and this lawsuit directly affects the price. There will be a big PR fight for a high IPO valuation.</comment>


Ask HN: Salary/equity aside, what would your ideal job offer consist of? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> \- Working 4 days a week.

\- 6 weeks of (paid) vacation

\- Private office, with a door

\- Ability to partially work from home

\- No on-call

These are probably less about the offer and more about working environment:

\- Freedom to choose my tools (incl. laptop, development OS)

\- No Agile

\- No team, or very small team with smart colleagues

To summarize, the above are about satisfying two needs: for authonomy, and to not be worked to the bone.

</comment><comment><USER3> The freedom to work on whatever I wanted (it would be computational chemistry for the next 5 years)

Enough salary to not worry about money.

All of my work and datasets are open source so everyone can benefit.

The ability to mentor juniors as I enjoy teaching.

The ability to work my own hours - because this is more productive (I frequently do 4-5 hours work, take a 2 hour nap, then do another 4-5 hours) every day

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots of paid vacation. And not the "unlimited" kind, I mean dedicated days that roll over and pay out when you leave.

</comment><comment><USER5> In order from most realistic to pipe dream: Meetings don't happen without agendas and needing input from everyone. Hard problems where half-baked solutions genuinely can't work for the business (this is why I gravitated to ads and payments). If I conduct interviews, attract a good portion of strong candidates I'll be excited to work with, and filter out the ones who can't code at all. Don't put me on call for stuff I didn't write with no runbook (corollary: get runbooks written before the whole team moves on). Windows of undisturbed time for deep work. Support DSL design; don't limit me to blub languages and libraries that the median candidate can handle. Let me ramp up on formal methods and start using them.

</comment><comment><USER6> \- working 5 days a week, 4 to 6hs per day on my own schedule (most of the time)

\- 8 weeks of paid vacation

\- interesting and high value work

\- private office when I need/want to go

\- remote whenever I don't need/want to go to the office

\- 5x the salary needed to mantain a frugal style of living

</comment><comment><USER7> Flexibility, autonomy, clarity in strategy, open communication, a genuine effort to do the right thing and a clear drive to win as a business from which all the other points flow.

</comment><comment><USER8> Earning more than >= $100k/yr as a remote dev. I'm from the Philippines.

<comment><USER9> there're jobs like that? wow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Signing bonus, RSU's of publicly traded Co, relaxing WFH-friendly environment

</comment><comment><USER11> Some cash would be nice to get as well :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Working remotely as a dev.</comment>


Programmers Need to Learn Statistics or I Will Kill Them All - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statistics-or-i-will-kill-them-all

<comment><USER2> While undated on that page, the essay is from 2009 and was originally discussed here on HN at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041744) in January 2010, with many comments.</comment>


Building a Process for Growth Experiments - <AUTHOR> http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/building-process-growth-experiments/

<comment><AUTHOR> As growth continues to evolve from its hacker-roots into a full-blown profession, there is one thing that will always stay constant.

Growth is experiment-driven marketing.

I got a great look into how big companies are building growth teams in one of my episodes of SaaSquatch Radio when I was talking with Brian Balfour, VP of Growth at HubSpot.

We went over the importance of building a growth team and how to create a place for structured and process-driven growth. He's had previous talks and articles that go in-depth on how he applies the scientific method to their growth initiatives.</comment>


Cosmic Rays Threaten Future Deep-Space Astronaut Missions - <AUTHOR> http://www.unh.edu/news/releases/2014/10/ds21nasa.cfm

<comment><USER2> We're not going to get far in space until we get most of the mass from Lunar/asteroid mining. As the saying goes, once you're in LEO, you're halfway to anywhere. And once we don't have to lift the mass from Earth, we can afford proper shielding.

Another saying, "You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs."

</comment><comment><USER3> Not news.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? 2017 Edition - <AUTHOR> A similar question was asked just under a year ago. So I thought it is about time to ask again for 2017.<p>2016 edition is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746 <comment><USER3> [http://webacademy.io](http://webacademy.io) \- a collection of the best learning resources for Web Developers and Startup Founders(still work in progress).

[http://hackertribe.io/](http://hackertribe.io/) \- a community of hackers and founders.

[http://lumiverse.io/](http://lumiverse.io/) \- discover great educational videos.

[http://fictionhub.io/](http://fictionhub.io/) \- fiction publishing platform.

</comment><comment><USER4> SuperMathWorld.com, it is awesome because we let kids actually make video games in a mathematical sandbox!

There are a ton of math learning solutions but most of them are pop-up worksheets slapped on top of a game. In SMW the math is integrated so every interaction has a mathematical property.

The "making games" part is possible because we expose the editor in WebGL game, because we really want to put kids in control of their experience-- nothing helps move a kid's mindset from "math sucks" to "math is fun" like being able to create your own world of math toys.

We're in beta, launching June 1 and always looking for collaborators! Reach out if you're a math or physics geek, we can make some pretty neat visualizations/interactions using our engine.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on an update to the border search whitepaper that I helped write for EFF in 2011 (the 2011 version is at [https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border- search_2.pdf](https://www.eff.org/files/eff-border-search_2.pdf)).

The update will feature new legal analysis, including references to court decisions that have come out in the meantime, fewer elaborate technical suggestions, and more concern for the problem of how border agents may react to noticing that you've took precautions against searches (not only for whether the precautions are effective).

There's been a lot of awareness of the risk of searches of electronics at the border lately, so hopefully we can get some up-to-date and informed guidance out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm working on Cachoid -- a Varnish-as-a-service platform -- [https://www.cachoid.com/](https://www.cachoid.com/)

Site caching is so underrated I had to do something about it. In fact, I recently announced its first public beta. The one USP is this: you create a Cachoid and it automatically starts caching your site. No need to get into the nitty-gritty details of caching or get your hands dirty. It just works!

The difference between Cachoid and other platforms is that we guarantee memory allocations per Cachoid (Varnish instance container on steroids), which is crucial to achieve speed. A multi-tenant content distribution network doesn't always have a memory-store SLA for its tenants.

More info: [https://www.cachoid.com/](https://www.cachoid.com/)

Quick overview of its architecture: [https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level- architect...](https://www.cachoid.com/blog/2017/01/15/high-level-architecture- of-cachoid/)

Docs: [https://www.cachoid.com/support](https://www.cachoid.com/support)

<comment><USER7> Looks like a cool project, good job. I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users. Good luck with Cachoid!

<comment><USER6> _> I feel like your pricing section should drop the "upgrade" verbiage and instead use something like "buy now", seeing as most of your traffic there will likely be new users. Also, those buttons lead to a login form—I would default to a sign up form, with a link like "Already have an account? Sign in." to reduce friction for new users._

You're right, I didn't see it from that angle. Plus the registeration link would auto login already registered users anyway.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >2016 edition is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11259746)

Wow, mfw I'm still working on the same projects.

What was going to be a Berzerk clone[0] has turned into an attempt at a more general purpose framework for games in C++ and Lua[1]. Eventually, I'll get around to actually finishing something in it. Mostly it's just a time sink for self-education.

And I'm still slowly working on a HN-like forum in Hack[2].

[0][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/berzerk)

[1][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/sdl_framework)

[2][https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum](https://bitbucket.org/kennethrapp/basedforum)

<comment><USER9> Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere?

Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket?

<comment><USER8> > Have you deployed the HN-like forum somewhere?

I tried getting it to run on OpenShift but their HHVM cartridge wouldn't allow me to run Composer through it instead of PHP, which I had to be able to do, and their version of PHP was out of date.

Given the state the project is in, I haven't bothered trying anywhere else - it wouldn't be worth spending money to host.

>Also, off-topic, but why bitbucket?

Free private accounts, not as much social media nonsense as there is with Github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just finished up my dissertation and I've been working on taking some of the deep learning and RL techniques I've used for my research to build something new.

We just launched Optimail ([https://optimail.io](https://optimail.io)) - <USER2> uses reinforcement learning to automatically optimize drip email campaigns.

<comment><USER7> This is really cool, great job. Who is your target market? I've been (slowly) delving into machine learning/AI and found parts of your marketing copy hard to understand, so couldn't imagine somebody with a marketing background being able to grok it.

<comment><USER11> Hey thanks! I'm Jacob's co-founder at Optimail.

We only just launched yesterday, so I think we are still working to find that exact product-market fit. At the moment, however, we're targeting medium- to large-sized businesses that use drip email marketing campaigns, such as onboarding campaigns, lead nurturing campaigns, and retention campaigns.

Thanks for the feedback on the copy! If you are feeling extra generous and have a second, shoot me a PM and let me know what parts you found confusing. We want it to be accessible to non-technical marketers who might be using older software like Mailchimp, etc. (After all, a main benefit of using AI here is that you don't need to get into confusing automation-building stuff like multi-branching decision trees.)

<comment><USER7> Sorry for the late response. I'm a developer and a few sections I had to Google definitions for were:

> Our suite of advanced analytics, including Cohort Analyses, Sequence > Analyses, and Algorithm Metrics will unlock new insights in to your > customers and campaigns.

> We use a combination of deep reinforcement learning and hierarchical > Bayesian models to quickly and accurately learn about your customers and > optimize your campaigns in real-time.

I think you could simplify those a bit, maybe hitting from a higher-level with a link to a more detailed explanation of how Optimail does its thing. I totally get the value in using these terms, but for the landing page I would imagine using simpler language may result in non-technical users being able to grok the benefits of your product a bit better.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the feedback - it's so hard to hit the right level of description. I'm definitely biased here after just leaving academia since I keep thinking "if we don't mention the hierarchical models they're going to think we're frauds!" \- ha.

But you're absolutely right - our goal is to appeal to developers as well as marketing types, so perhaps this level of detail is just confusing and unnecessary on the landing page.

Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any other feedback - I really appreciate it!!

<comment><USER7> Will do! Btw, I signed up yesterday and _really_ like the look of everything! I'll try and give it a spin in the next month or so whenever I'm ready to set up a campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a few years now, I've been working on an autonomous vehicle ([https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile](https://github.com/gtagency/buzzmobile)) that some friends and I hack on. We just recently hit what I'd call 1.0 in terms of a huge system refactor to make the entire system much more robust and testable.

I started working on this recently: [https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut](https://github.com/joshuamorton/tut), and might go back to it. After seeing Kenneth Reitz's Pipenv I wanted to do something similar but a bit more extensive that included testing tools and some other stuff. And tut is the WIP result. Think Cargo for python.

<comment><USER13> This is useful. I am currently building an autonomous gokart in ROS.

<comment><USER12> Heh, we're a student organization, so there's lots of membership turnover, and that forced us to really upgrade our documentation and build tools over the last year to prevent all kinds of weird issues and allow quick onboarding.

I made it my mission over the last year or so to build something better than rosunit and rostest, because having to more or less copy launch files for every test seems arduous. I ended up with the test_utils library that we'll probably spin off into its own package soon, but its a much, much nicer interface for writing tests for ros, and at this point seems to be relatively stable, with one or two minor changes I need to make.

Glad its helpful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760](http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760) \- Left-Hand Path, a Dark Souls-inspired horror RPG for the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch VR platforms where you cast spells by drawing arcane symbols in the air.

It's going rather well - 87% positive reviews on Steam and people saying things like _" In years to come, I think this will be seen as one of the seminal VR titles"_ (paraphrase from a recent review on Reddit.)

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://remotejobseu.com](https://remotejobseu.com) \- Remote jobs open for developers from European time zones. It aims to solve a job hunting problem when browsing popular remote job boards.

Offers are hand-picked/filtered and companies are verified (lightly, as much as one can tell from a fast look at public info; mostly regarding remote environment). It should also be fast, with well-formatted data - so far, so good.

<comment><USER16> This is really cool

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For the last two years we have been building out an AI-driven anomaly detection service that monitors critical equipment for failure: [https://shprd.com](https://shprd.com). We make it possible for small & medium sized companies to be able to get the huge cost and manpower benefits of predictive maintenance as a turn-key solution - connect cheap sensors to motors, boilers, A/C compressors and monitor them for correct behaviour, alert on abnormal performance and before failures (a full list of what we monitor is at [https://www.shprd.com/deployment](https://www.shprd.com/deployment)).

We are using various ML modelling methods to understand each sensor's normal operating behaviour - more info on the tech is at [https://www.shprd.com/technology](https://www.shprd.com/technology)

We are just coming out of our R&D phase and into full commercialisation. Any critique of the explanation site or other info welcomed!

</comment><comment> andrew-lucker I'm working on a port of OpenAI gym/universe to the Rust Programming language. It will be awesome because everyone is interested in AI now, and Rust is cool too.

[https://github.com/andrew-lucker/rust-openai](https://github.com/andrew- lucker/rust-openai)

</comment><comment><USER7> Currently finalizing things for the launch of Keygen[0], a RESTful API for managing software product licenses—everything from individual users to the machines they're allowed to use.

Been in beta for the past few months and am excited to finally launch, having spent nearly a year developing it any chance that I get.

I'm currently working on wrapping up some great _business-ey_ features such as an admin dashboard that will allow users to visually monitor metrics for each product to get insights for popular license types, as well as other crucial metrics like license churn, overdue license check-ins, usage across different machines and more.

Been a long road, but I'm excited to try and put my sales hat on soon. It's a service I've always needed for developing small niche desktop apps.

[0]: [https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh)

</comment><comment><USER18> Blog Enhancement Suite: [http://blogenhancement.com](http://blogenhancement.com)

It's a growth tools suite for bloggers (as explained on the landing page.) Right now we're in pre-launch but we're launching in late Feb / early March (a couple weeks). It's awesome because:

1\. It gives bloggers social/growth tools never before accessible.

2\. It provides a new/different source of revenue.

3\. It can replace the redundant/impractical "timeline" widgets offered by FB, Twitter, etc. Those currently act more as a glorified social channel promoter than anything actually beneficial to the blog itself.

4\. It's free (for the basic version).

5\. It's powered by Snapzu, our Reddit/HN like voting community platform.

Would love any feedback, and am open to answering any questions. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER19> I act as a business dev and advisor for the internationalisation of DronesBench [http://www.dronesbench.com](http://www.dronesbench.com) , an innovative tool for the diagnosis of drones from Foggia, Italy. With a novel benchmark for efficiency of drones, two academic collaborations and a pre- series completed, commercialisation is going to follow by the end of April. Educational (for high schools, universities, flight schools) and professional (manufacturers, repairers, certifiers) packages offered.

</comment><comment><USER20> A hobby microprocessor based computer. I'm finally moving from design to prototyping this month.

A programming language that I've been designing for about two years now. I'm in the initial bootstrap phase, and about to rewrite the compiler in itself. The goal is to use it as an experimental test bed, as an example, the compiler should use a tracing inference model I wrote a thesis on, for automatic type inference, and function overloading. The overly-ambitious goal is "As easy as Python, as safe as Rust".

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://brandfox.io](https://brandfox.io) \- It's awesome because it lets Instagram users leverage a resource that does nothing other than gather likes. It's also awesome because it lets brands advertise using authentic images and compare/purchase influencers.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am working on an open source project that makes building cross-platform mobile apps as easy as writing ONLY a JSON markup [https://www.jasonette.com](https://www.jasonette.com)

I did a Show HN about three months ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179)) and was so grateful for all the great constructive feedback I received, it really encouraged me to keep evolving the project. And I really have come very far since then.

So I thought I would share what I have achieved so far:

1\. The original release was iOS only, but so many people told me I should build an Android version, so I did. Now both iOS and Android are completely open source on Github and they both use the same JSON grammar. Here's a recent post where I talk about how I designed the JSON-to-Native mappings on both iOS and Android: [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross- platform-...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform- mobile-apps-using-nothing-more-than-a-json-markup-f493abec1873#.r0m9f21t8)

2\. I've implemented functional programming in JSON. Yes, a function in JSON. I had to come up with a JSON grammar that can represent all aspects of a function like invocation, arguments, callbacks, call stack, recursive calls, subroutines, etc. If you're interested, check out the post I wrote about this: [http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional- programming-...](http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming- in-json/)

3\. I've implemented a "require" for JSON, so it can be used to parallel process multiple JSON objects from different sources, which I think is great for people who want to build a mobile app for their decentralized apps. I personally think decentralized apps will take off in 2017 and going forward for many different reasons, so this means a lot to me: I wrote about this here: [http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/](http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/)

These are just some I have worked on personally, but the REAL cool part is that the community has really picked up and many people have been contributing to the project. And I think THAT's the main reason why it's awesome. The fact that some nobody with no track record can just release something that resonates with enough people and anyone from around the world can just jump in and help. This is my first ever experience with an open source project and everything feels so magical to me. I hope to update you guys with even better news in the future!

<comment><USER13> I would love to chat if you think about raising money for this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm working on [http://oppsdaily.com](http://oppsdaily.com), a daily email for software devs who want to solve the problems others face at work.

The email consists of a brief, 5 question interview, asking about a problem someone faces at work and the software they wished they had (that they would buy) that would solve the problem.

Each day I receive a handful of responses from developers who want to learn more, and I try to connect them to the interviewee

<comment><USER9> Hey there! Read your medium post yesterday about a competition. Great work there man! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am working on [https://www.aihello.com](https://www.aihello.com) which is Machine Learning platform for ecommerce sellers.

Thinking of selling something but hate working just by gut feeling? AiHello will give hard starts (sales, competition, price, profit etc) and whatever you plan to sell.

We help online sellers launch their product quickly on multiple channels like Amazon,Ebay, Jet.com etc as we have inventory management built in.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm currently working on an open source search engine for the internet as a whole. Google has been getting too smart for its own good and that actively deteriorates quality of technical searches where precision matters.

I'm also hoping to use it as a platform to test some of my theories on how to apply traditional IDE search techniques to help find and understand code snippets.

Plus its just a fun way to see if I can write code that "scales".

</comment><comment><USER9> An app which connects you anonymously with other people online, based on similar interests. Just published an MVP on Play Store ( and will soon release Apple ) and now I'm planning to go for a few user acquisitions who would help me build a better version of this. I'm calling it Matchr.

You can find it on [https://matchr.in](https://matchr.in)

<comment><USER26> I like the idea of these kinds of apps, but I really don't want to create a Facebook account just to use them. Are you planning on adding other authentication options in the future?

<comment><USER9> Hey! Which account do you suggest should I add? One of the biggest reasons I chose facebook was the authentic data I got : less fakes, more genuine information. Plus, can't risk email+password with an app like this, anonymity without verification is scary.

<comment><USER27> Twitter does more verification for new accounts than Facebook does these days. I have several completely non legit facebook accounts btw, i dont see that verification worthy at all.

<comment><USER9> But doesn't twitter have a huge amount users with incomplete profiles (or eggheads)? Or is it an assumption?

My main concern is that I won't be able to get the user's picture and basic info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just launched [https://betapage.co](https://betapage.co) 2.0

<comment><USER29> I did not understand what the website is about. You could put a summary at the top of what the website does, that would be very helpful. I browsed for 10 seconds and left.

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> An app that replaces 80% of all apps.

It will destroy millions of jobs.

<comment><USER31> That's been done, it was called The Last One: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_\(software\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am putting together an autonomous vehicle event at a racetrack and a spec vehicle for competition. Http://selfracingcars.com/event

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone else think startups are just incredibly boring?

<comment><USER33> Some are. Some aren't.

I create hobby-projects for fun, I have two (I think?) that I charge money for. They'll never be "real" companies, but they cover their costs which is all I wanted.

I see broad trends on sites like this, for example you can pretty much pinpoint the moment that every other Show HN started adding "Deep Learning" to their submissions. That kind of herd-mentality is pretty depressing, but also fascinating to watch in action.

Startups as a meta-topic are fascinating, although again I have that same feeling of depression and sadness when I read "Growth hacking" tips that basically boil down to fancier ways to spam and mislead, but I appreciate reading about real people and real-projects. The posts that start out "I posted on my blog, which has 50 million readers, and suddenly I was profitable" are pretty unrealistic.

Simple projects that have slowly become more and more popular, like the guy who is frequently talking about his webcounters, are a breathe of fresh air from the hype.

I'm sure I could code a web-counter. I'm sure that it'd never become super- popular, because long-tail counts for a lot. Then again I do have a few readers of my blog ..</comment></comment>


Ask PG: HN about to turn 5? - <AUTHOR>

I note that PG's HN account [0] is 1810 days old, and the submission with ID 1 ditto[1].  1810 is very nearly exactly 5 years - so is HN about to turn 5? <comment><USER2> I wrote HN about 6 months before I launched it. Reddit was getting bought when I wrote HN, and I didn't want to mess up the acquisition for them, so I postponed launching till after the deal had closed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg>

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1></comment>


The CDC and States Are Misreporting Covid-19 Test Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/ <comment><USER2> To make matters worse, not only are they not distinguishing viral qPCR testing from antibody-based testing, they are most likely using point-of-care lateral flow immunoassays (the ones that look like pregnancy tests), which have a greater false-positive rate. As a quick aside, beware of antibody test results, unless they use a specialized test called ELISA, which is the gold standard for antibody testing, but is more expensive and requires samples to be sent to a laboratory. Even if they did use ELISA, this is very concerning.</comment>


Low Latency Financial Data Has Arrived - <AUTHOR> https://www.tagnifi.com/low-latency-financial-data-has-arrived/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a very similar model to quandl: curated, normalized data, APIs & Excel addin, financial data. Free to start, and pay for premium access. How are you differentiated?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quandl is a great company and it's an honor to be compared with them. However, we're quite different in that we collect and own our content. This vertical integration allows us to develop rich features that our clients are demanding. For example, we're in the process of rolling out right-click source data in Excel that will allow you to see how we calculated a value along with a link back to the source filing at the SEC. Without having control over the content it will be difficult to roll out these types of features. Another example of this is with our point-in-time capabilities for back-testing. Every item we collect is date-stamped so that you can run back tests based on what information was actually available on a date in the past. Without owning the data this is very difficult to accomplish.</comment></comment>


How can improve blog traffic - <AUTHOR> i want to improve my blog traffic, right now i have a normal traffic, is there any other tactics to promote my blog <comment><USER2> If you haven't yet, try with Social media marketing and then with your internal network. Still, "Content is King". Focus on producing long-form quality content which is rich in keywords.</comment>


Show HN: ServerlessFORM – no back end for a simple form needed - <AUTHOR> https://www.serverlessform.com <comment><USER2> This is about as severless as "the cloud". There are still server just other peoples.

That doesn't make it useless, just misleading.

Edit - I guess I should be clear, this was a short rant about the term "serverless", not the product itself, which looks quite nice for static sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. My goal was to make something so that static sites that need a simple email or contact form don't need to setup anything serverside.

<comment><USER3> Calling it _serverless_ when there is in fact a server feels weazily though. That taints your product.</comment></comment></comment>


Did you learn anything from your failed start up? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious to get the communities take on whether you learn more from start ups that have failed, than start ups that have succeeded.
Here is my thinking:
I've read many of the "keys to success" type of books, e.g. "Good to Great" or "The Art of the Start", but the information always seemed either inapplicable or flawed. Ultimately it seems very challenging to know why we have succeeded, but our brains are very capable of designing reasons in retrospect. It's my understanding there are a wealth of studies that support this theory. In "The Black Swan" Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes into some nice detail on the topic. Basically, we create narratives that make sense. "Our company was successful because of our culture" - that sounds good, but who knows if that really was the cause. The solution is not to look at all the companies that were successful to see if they also had a similar company culture, but to look at the companies that failed to see if they also shared that trait. If they did, then that trait is not THE key to success. But successful entrepreneurs(/people) are very prone to create a narrative cause to their success, and attribute that cause to actions - instead of chance.
Have you learned more from your failures or your successes. If you have had a failed start up, did you walk about stronger? Do you think you would have learned more had you been lucky and successful? Could it easily have gone either way, or was it doomed?
Thanks for your thoughts! <comment><USER2> Very thought provoking.

The biggest lesson I learned with my failed ecommerce startup was not understanding who my customer was.

We started out as a B2C and before we knew it we had other biz's wantint to use our site (think costco for autoparts).

We were so focused on being this huge retail source that we missed our best customers.

Sadly when I finnaly woke up to this reality we were $400k in the hole and 3 years into things.

I suggested a pivot before I knew what a pivot was. My partners voted to stay focused on consumers. We cratered 4 months later.

Lesson learned= Know your customers and what they value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Did you raise capital for the company? So what would you have done differently, or asked another way, how do you approach a new business idea now. Do you start with consumer research? Just focus on a light weight MVP to look for market validation?

<comment><USER2> Sorry just saw this.

Yes we raised from angels. It was a painful exp.

Challenge your assumption. In my case coming from a b2b background I had the pain point of having to call around to a bunch of different sources to get parts. I wrongly assumed consumers had the same pain point.

I move much more methodically now in terms of who is my actual customer.

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, my biggest learning from my failed startup was that I should show respect towards what I am doing. About two years ago everybody started to speak about startups. It sounded so sexy to become a startupper. So I wanted a startup. I found a nice idea I sat down write the whole strategy alone planned all the way till IPO and till sunbathing on my huge yacht. Than I went to a developer company and spent all my money to have the Final Product created. I have not even told my mother what the idea was. To say it short I didn't have a clue about startups, not to mention lean, idea validation, etc. I lost all my money and the project was a total failure. Than I "stood up" and spent a year on learning, reading and discussing the industry. I started to respect my own time, money and efforts. A month ago I had a new idea that still looks promising. Having my previous learning and being in the "advantageous situation" of not having a lot of money to spend, now I follow lean, think and rethink, test each assumption and talk with as many people as I can. Overall I become a much more opened and friendly person. My friends keep on saying I am a new person (in a good meaning).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jorcsa. That's great. Someone once gave me this piece of advice - "work very hard to find out why your start up will fail. if you can't, you've found a good one, but the quicker you can find out why, the quicker you can move on to the next one."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I learned a lot about how the market works, about timing, about how to pick partners and about managing expectations. It was an invaluable experience in terms of realizing that you shouldn't internalize all of the hype that gets spewed about how to make a startup work and that everyone's journey is based on a lot of variables that may or may not cause you need to do a lot of reflection before, during and after.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reply. So it sounds like in your experience there is a lot of chance, or randomness, at play, but what you can control is your expectations (don't buy hype). Is that right? What were your take-aways about timing and picking partners? Curious how you do things differently now.</comment></comment>


IP leak affecting VPN providers with port forwarding - <AUTHOR> https://www.perfect-privacy.com/blog/2015/11/26/ip-leak-vulnerability-affecting-vpn-providers-with-port-forwarding/ <comment><USER2> Its worth noting that to pull off this exploit against a victim you have to both have a VPN account that is on and using the same server as the victim AND trick the victim into visiting a link on a host that you have connected to that VPN server (with a port forward through to you).

It works because the traffic never exits the given VPN server as an internal route exists. The simplest method to fix this as a VNP provider is simply to use a second IP as the exit only IP and force all traffic from clients to leave by it.

</comment><comment><USER3> One way to mitigate this attack is to have different entry IPs to exit IPs - which is being done by Mullvad.

I have to wonder how many people have exploited this in the past decade or even longer.</comment>


The iPhone is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/the-iphone-is-dead-766bc536caab <comment><USER2> > _iPhones don't age well On my iPhone 6+, most apps crash on first open. Apps > freeze for 5–10 seconds whenever launched or switched to. I lose 3–4% /min > on my battery and Apple Support insists that my battery is perfectly > healthy. I went through "apps using significant power" and uninstalled most > of them._

Not to be too critical of this author, but this whole post is full of personal anecdotes extrapolated onto the half a billion iPhone users worldwide[1]. iPhones actually age quite well, as their resale value proves. And that doesn't even take into account their long-term security updates and patches.

1\. [https://www.quora.com/How-many-iPhone-users-are-in-the- world...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-iPhone-users-are-in-the-world- currently-How-many-Android-users-are-in-the-world-currently)

<comment><USER3> My iPhone 5 still works fine. Admittedly it's not loaded with apps. Most of the things he does on his phone I do on my iPad instead.

<comment><USER4> So, what does your iPhone 5 work fine for?

<comment><USER5> I would make a bold assumption here: calling, texting? ;)

<comment><USER3> Maps and weather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The last company I'd have storing my personal data is Google. In fact, any of the arguments he presents are moot to me due to the alternative being an Ad agency's product...

<comment><AUTHOR> Does Google Drive+Photos monetize its data even though it's a subscription product?

<comment><USER6> Have a look at the EULA for Google Drive, they take the rights to use the data for promotions and improvements of the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a lot of useless personal anecdotes in this blog post, but one resonates with me strongly: Apple needs to better handle spam calls. In fact the entire mechanism dealing with how we make phone calls (authenticating callers) is ripe for disruption.

<comment><USER8> A big selling point of a phone to me is a built in blacklist feature. Problem is I only get that after the fact, or if I hunt for it while physically shopping. They don't usually bulletpoint it as a selling point, but it should be a standard feature.

I don't own an iPhone, but I assume you have the same trouble I do with spam texts/calls and no real decent blacklisting solution (most apps just don't work and I'm not going to throw money after money to find the one that does work in that pile of shovelware they call the play store.

<comment><USER9> Not sure if it works on IPhone but on android I've had very good luck / experience with "Truecaller: Caller ID, SMS spam blocking & Dialer". It doesn't catch them all, but it did decrease the amount of spam call / text I get within a month from 23 to 1. So that is nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Saw there was a survey that the iPhone loyalty has decreased a little but was at record lows even though still 80%

"Separately, Cowen conducted a survey of smartphone buyers and found that iPhone loyalty appears to be trending lower. In fact, repeat iPhone purchase intent is at a record low (within the context of Cowen's quarterly surveys). To be fair, iPhone loyalty is still incredibly high, with 80.5% of respondents planning on buying another iPhone when the time is right, but that's down sequentially from 87.6%. "

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/01/18/is-iphone-x- demand...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/01/18/is-iphone-x-demand- somehow-already-waning.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think anyone can write an article like this favoring their choice platform. Doing real complete comparison is hard. There are literally hundreds of features to compare. Include apps like this author and you're writing forever. The hard part about choosing iPhone or Android is just the sheer magnitude of differences. Security, cost, aging, support, apps, os, hardware ... but maybe more than anything perspective matters.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just pay for iCloud then half of your issues will be moot.

<comment><AUTHOR> What issues in particular beyond device storage and background photo syncing? I don't think it cuts the issues in half. Using iCloud creates its own issues as well (like paying for yet another cloud storage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > 2018

> people writing shitty blog posts and still using clickbait to get views

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is my post marked as flagged?

<comment><USER14> Because the title is "The iPhone is Dead" instead of something like "Why I Switched to Android".

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying! Will be more careful with my titles going forward.</comment></comment></comment>


Your local Dragdealer became more trustworthy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/370ff43bcb31

<comment><USER2> I used the original Dragdealer on a project 2 years ago and enjoyed working with it. I pushed it quite a bit, had it set to a step-sequence style slider/marker thing, dragging through dynamically added or subtracted steps. It took quite a beating before slowing down. It's eventual slow down in my app could have been due to code on my side trying to do too much on the page in response to the drag position.

I look forward to trying this new one.

Combined with cool stuff like pushState, it doesn't surprise me that web app capability is getting pretty damn interesting and is set to steal chunks of native app thunder. Whoever gets a good web-app store happening will be my hero! Not sure what the hold up is.

Really like the demo page: [http://skidding.github.io/dragdealer/](http://skidding.github.io/dragdealer/)

I didn't notice at first that the top header is actually a page-swiper to the config settings. Cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked working with Dragdealer. It's awesome that a JS lib written 4 years ago is still useful, considering the moving speed of the industry. The code wasn't rewritten much, just a few known bugs fixed.

The big increment is having a public repo with tests and documentation to build on. I'm sure there are many other people who could come up with better performance optimizations than me, that's why I worked to make this available</comment></comment>


Blankfein Says Tariff Strategy May Help Pressure China - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-14/blankfein-says-tariffs-might-be-an-effective-negotiating-tool <comment><USER2> So now I assume that the tariff strategy probably helps china. Just assuming the opposite of Blankfein is almost always the thing.

<comment><USER3> Assume whatever enriches GS to the max is the opposite of what is said. The world is run by (and serves at the pleasure of) them.</comment></comment>


Download Android L Preview - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/preview/setup-sdk.html

<comment><USER2> Although I understand this is a preview, the requirement of Nexus 5 and 2013 Nexus 7 makes me nervous. I've had flagship devices like the Galaxy Nexus left behind way too soon. iOS 8 is in beta, and a quick search brings up pages that say the iPhone 4S (first released in 2011) will be supported.</comment>


Show HN: An Interactive Explanation of the Trie Data Structure - <AUTHOR> https://trie.now.sh/ <comment><USER2> Cool stuff. What are the applications that you believe can be achieved using Trie?

</comment><comment><USER3> thats cool</comment>


Human-robot teams work better when there's an emotional connection - <AUTHOR> https://news.umich.edu/humans-robot-teams-work-better-when-theres-an-emotional-connection/ <comment><AUTHOR> The original article is available here: [https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol19/iss5/2/](https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol19/iss5/2/)

Abstract:

> Although different types of teams increasingly employ embodied physical > action (EPA) robots as a collaborative technology to accomplish their work, > we know very little about what makes such teams successful. This paper has > two objectives: the first is to examine whether a team's emotional > attachment to its robots can lead to better team performance and viability; > the second is to determine whether robot and team identification can promote > a team's emotional attachment to its robots. To achieve these objectives, we > conducted a between-subjects experiment with 57 teams working with robots. > Teams performed better and were more viable when they were emotionally > attached to their robots. Both robot and team identification increased a > team's emotional attachment to its robots. Results of this study have > implications for collaboration using EPA robots specifically and for > collaboration technology in general.

<comment><USER2> If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the robots are well maintained and repaired faster. I don't think this is much different than people just taking pride in their work, which I suppose could be classified as an emotional connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The title reminds me of this promo for the movie Prometheus. The fictional company made an ad for their latest generation robot, with new emotional features. They claim it will work much better with humans.

[https://youtu.be/qgJs7uluwlU](https://youtu.be/qgJs7uluwlU)

</comment><comment><USER4> Humans plus anything perform better when they form an emotional connection with it, whether the thing is human, animal, robot, or rock.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you have a machine that needs to be cared about, stick googly eyes to it. Works every time. Where there is a face, there is a name, where there is a name, there is care and maintenance.</comment>


POSIX.1-2017 - <AUTHOR> https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ <comment><AUTHOR> One of manything that every developers need to read at least once.

</comment><comment> ainar-g Often the POSIX documentation for e.g. utilities is better than some man pages on Ubuntu. Really underrated document.</comment>


Kevin Rose: "One Of Us Has To Leave" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/kevin-rose-one-of-us-has-to-leave/ <comment><USER2> My guess is that the root cause is really Digg's (relative) stagnation. They all expected to sell out years ago and the drudgery and risk is probably getting to them. They took too much VC, shot for the stars, and missed -- the social bookmarking Friendster. Alexis and Steve of Reddit should feel pretty smart right about now.

<comment><USER3> Well, they supposedly have 75 employees, so maybe that says something about how the company was run...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like how they changed "one of us is going to leave the company" to "one of us has to leave" and still treat it like it's a direct quote.

<comment><USER5> By "they" I hope you are referring to Michael Arrington, who likes to call himself a "journalist".

He is good at manufacturing news and stroking drama when there is none.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...the fact that Digg has no iPad strategy"

Ah dear the iPad stuff just gets funnier and funnier.

</comment><comment><USER7> I doubt this very much. People have been leaving digg in droves. Jay was fully vested and probably bored.

<comment><USER8> Jay founded Equinix. After five years, how could he possibly remain interested in yet another news aggregator with gross revenues that are less than his personal wealth? I just find it interesting that Rose is the new CEO. I've always felt that Rose was an actor that Jay hired to play a part, in order to feel like he was putting his film-school background to good use (which is also the reason for the frat-boy fart joke tv show that Rose does).

<comment><USER7> It says "interim" CEO. So there'll be a search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I watched the most recent Diggnation podcast and Kevin Rose had a hell of a time trying to figure out the difference between a megabit and a megabyte.

<comment><USER10> How many CEO can make the difference

<comment><USER9> He's a creative guy but I thought he was supposed to have reasonable tech chops!

<comment><USER7> You thought wrong. But a lot of effort (PR) has gone into making you think wrong.

<comment><USER11> cf. [http://mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-of- how...](http://mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-of-how-business- really-works-owen-byrne-digg/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kevin's been effectively absent for a year and now is charging in with a mind to rework the imminent V4 release of Digg. Sounds like a risky move; hope it works out for them.

Edit: To clarify, I'm hoping that this move doesn't signal a second-system mindset settling in at Digg HQ.

</comment><comment><USER13> Quibbling over the delayed launch of Digg V4. Ahhh, the perils of waterfall release cycles.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the very idea that there's a launch of a _Digg V4_ with multi-year dev cycles seems weird to me. Usually you don't do websites as if you're rolling out a new release of Windows.

<comment><USER15> I can kind of see the point. Website users are infamous for hating change. So it can be easier to make big changes / redesign, and then fix little things, rather than to make small changes that are constantly getting pushback.

<comment><USER14> Hmm, I can see that reasoning, but I think it might overall be worse. If you change a ton of things all at once, you do get the user gripes over with all at once, but you also have less continuity than if you introduce a few changes here and there. I'm not sure that a website wants to give users the retro feeling they experience when they were used to Windows XP, installed Vista, and now feel like everything's weird and different.

Admittedly that's wishy-washy, and I'm not against bundling up some amount of changes into groups to roll out, especially since presumably some kinds of changes depend on each other anyway. It just seems wrong if it's becoming a huge thing equivalent to traditional product-release cycles.

<comment><USER16> You can release a new version all at once and avoid user gripes by launching the new version on a subdomain so users can get used to it. Digg did this with their last version and probably will with V4. Facebook and Zappos did as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Absolutely fantastic. I hope one day to be able to get into a hissy fit with one of my co-workers and just stop working for a year (but still get paid).

<comment><USER18> You might be able to get away with it if you own (at least part of) the company. :)</comment></comment>


Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/experian-sold-consumer-data-to-id-theft-service/ <comment><USER2> I did a double take when I saw this because I've been in contact with Equifax recently because I started receiving SPAM form a non-existent email address that I shared with them.

I have a Catch-all address setup on my Domain so that I can give every site I interact with their own custom email address. In this case it was email@example.com. Since the email address doesn't exist, and they're the only company I've shared it with, they're the only ones with a record of it's existence.

When I emailed them asking if they'd had a security breach or if they were selling email addresses they responded saying they would opt me out of marking emails. When I responded with the context and header info of the emails I received and asked if this was in fact from them things turned. About an hour later I got a response, the tone had changed significantly and they indicated that the incident had been escalated to their security department and that they would be in contact with me as their investigation progressed.

I can say this has been the best response to the dozens of emails I've sent to companies about the same issue. The worst was Best Buy whose response was something along the lines of "Eat D __k, we do what we want. "

<comment><USER3> that's not exactly a difficult email address to guess, I would think that in this case (specifically this case) equifax would have a very good claim that it wasn't them that leaked it. If instead you had used a hash or something unguessable then you might have a case, but I could easily go and sign up to my favorite nigerian viagra supplier with all the usual suspects firstname.lastname@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com... and you'd go right on blaming the facebook, airbnb, etc.

<comment><USER2> This is a classic case of engineering a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

The first question you have to ask your self is for what reason would anyone choose to do that? Shits-and-giggles and malice against me personally are about the only legitimate reasons someone would do that.

Spammers wouldn't want my dummy addresses in their list, and harvesters who sell emails to spammers wouldn't either because I could easily invalidate swaths of their lists by disabling my catch-all giving them a bad reputation.

I mainly do this to see how my email address gets around. If and when I contact a company about my email address receiving SPAM, I don't name and shame in any public capacity. Its of little consequence how they respond because the damage is done, its not like they can undo the SPAM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This Dilbert comic is 100% apt today: [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-10-14/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-10-14/)

<comment><USER5> Perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Except there's actually no such thing as "identity theft" \- it's a mere figment of the credit industry's (tracking industry's) fantasy in which they're omniscient, and an attempt to slowly push the responsibility for bank fraud onto uninvolved third parties. In reality, some would-be bank fraudsters got ahold of some non-secret information.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Identity theft is just a particular method of fraud with a name that mitigates the responsibility of the institutions that enabled the fraudsters.

I don't know if it is one one of those terms that was invented by one of those PR agencies that invented terms like "climate change" to mitigate the visceral impact of "global warming."[1] But it certainly has ended up as a term that obfuscates the responsibility of banks to stop treating public information like passwords.

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

<comment><USER8> I think 'climate change' is generally used now because 'global warming' implies the entire globe will become warmer, when in fact some areas, due to complex interactions, will actually become cooler. That, combined with the political posturing (on both sides), has made it useful to use a more general term. IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, is it fair to say that the credit system in the US is fu __ed up? Oligopoly of 3 agencies have pretty much entire control of your fate. Yes Fate. Purchasing power means cash and since credit = cash these companies control the cash that you have at disposal. Which means your FATE. Its insanely difficult to pierce oligopolistic structures and Cartels because of obvious reasons. But some day some startup needs to tackle this. The system works for most but doesn 't work for many.

<comment><USER10> Yes absolutely. I currently cannot buy a house despite having a six-figure income for 4 years, money in savings, and having no debt save my student loan. All because of bad decisions I made in years past.

<comment><USER11> I thought credit rating things only lasted 7 years. Are your credit transgressions more recent than that?

<comment><USER10> Most are, but (from what I understand) there are ways items can stay on for longer. For example, if your account is sold or resold to a collection agency, I believe the clock resets under the new creditor.

<comment><USER12> This is not accurate. The clock only "resets" if you take action on it. It can be resold every 6 months and unless you contact a creditor about the debt, nothing changes.

For small debts in the 4-6 year range it's usually fine to let them just fall off your report (although there's certainly a moral ambiguity there). Larger debts will almost always be litigated well before the 7-year mark, and entering into litigation does reset that clock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks cylo for the post. Sadly we can't seem to trust the credit agencies or Government agencies with data protection. We need a politician who will champion some sort of legal offence (Federal?) for digital data protection breaches whatever the industry/company (above anything that already exists) that will scare companies enough that they start taking digital identity seriously. Maybe that's a pipe dream but I get the sense after reading this article that regulators just don't carry a big enough stick or have too light a touch when punishing serious infractions.

<comment><USER14> Agreed and I'm somewhat supprised (UK peep here) that no data protection act is in place. UK had first version of the act in 1984 (oh the ironic choice of dates, govermental humour maybe).

With that I'm amazzed there is nothing in the USA, must be something beyond class action suits?

<comment><USER15> I think protecting data is a hopeless goal. The penalties need to be for fraud, and the responsibility for identity verification needs to be the creditors.

Hospital admissions and discharges used to be published every day in the paper. People used to have their social security number printed on their checks. Someone's birthday was a day of celebration, not a personal secret.

I want to get back to a place where routine facts about me do not need to be secret or something I worry about. The onus should be on anyone granting credit to verify that the person is who they claim to be, and it should take more than a few bits of public information to do that.

<comment><USER13> ams6110, I wish for a world where your quote "I want to get back to a place where routine facts about me do not need to be secret or something I worry about" were true.

However, pandora's box is open and we can never ever go back.

When you say, "The onus should be on anyone granting credit to verify that the person is who they claim to be" I couldn't agree more. This goes to the heart of my argument, you cannot trust those granting the credit. The invisible hand isn't working here. The only other option is to use fear to keep them in line... fear of a regulator that has teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sort of insinuates that ID theft is not meant to be a core focus of Experian.

<comment><USER17> > _Sort of insinuates that ID theft is not meant to be a core focus of > Experian._

The post is saying that a service that aids scammers purchased data from Experian.

Seeing the title, I initially thought it meant that Experian sold data to an ID Theft-prevention service, which would be less bad.

<comment><USER18> I read it the same way, but that would have been pretty bad in and of itself. Why should an ID theft prevention service have data on me unless I have a business relationship with them?

<comment><USER17> Going back a step, why should Experian have data on you?

<comment><USER19> How else would credit history (and credit in general) work?

<comment><USER20> Voluntarily?

If you want to use credit, you have to let lenders collaborate to determine whether they're willing to lend to you, if that's their criteria for making decisions.

If you don't want to use credit, they get no special pass to store and use personal data about you.

I'm from Europe, where generally personal privacy gets more emphasis than it seems to in some places, notably the US. We have explicit laws about collecting and processing personal data, but certain organisations seem to get a free pass for no apparent reason. As this story demonstrates, the risks are still there.

That said, perhaps we shouldn't be too worried. The last time I paid a little real money to get hold of my personal credit report from one of these credit reporting organisations, it was so riddled with obvious errors, including more than a few wildly inaccurate data points, that I was on the phone to them for something like half an hour to get them to correct everything. At that point (I kid you not) the woman on the phone asked if I would be much longer because it was the end of the day and time for her to go home.

<comment><USER21> I'm convinced that those 'errors' on reports are actually phishing.

When I ordered my reports I paid with postal orders, so as not to leak any financial information back to the agencies. I'm glad I did so, as the details ( other than my mortgage ) were laughably incorrect.

I was on the verge of writing to correct them and then caught myself - that's exactly what they want, isn't it? So hopefully by now they've diverged even further from the truth.

<comment><USER12> Were they negative elements or just factually incorrect neutral/positive elements? Correct or not, if your credit report is pulled and there is wildly inaccurate (negative) information you can still be declined, and not many people know that you are entitled to a free report if you're declined based on what's in that report.

<comment><USER22> In my experience, most every place that declines you based on report data will send you a letter saying (in very general terms, but still) what criterion you failed, as well as the information about where to get your report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do "underground" credit rating agencies exist? I don't mean credit rating agencies for carders and scammers, I mean agencies that track things they're not supposed to track. Agencies that keep the data on file for longer than they're supposed, keep track of how many times a particular ID asks for refunds, or to get their security deposit back, material like that.

It would have to be out of the Caribbean or some place with lax data privacy laws, and strict confidentiality laws.

<comment><USER24> There's a ton of those that are fully aboveboard, you just don't hear about them. One exists for return tracking, one exists for how many applications you've filed for credit cards, one exists for landlord/tenant court entries that saves them forever (they insist they aren't a CRA but under the law they clearly are) -- there's a ton of them other than the Big 3 and there's almost no _effective_ regulation around them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those of you interested in learning how the _cough_ scam _cough_ system of credit scores works and how to maximize the system, here is a talk I have found very informative. It's a dirty business and industry...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU)

</comment><comment><USER26> The world should calm down. Take a few years to review what we've done in last 50 years.

<comment><USER27> Yeah. Let's rent a holiday cottage with all of us and talk it though.</comment></comment>


How I trained sheet reading using the Web MIDI API - <AUTHOR> http://scm.io/blog/hack/2015/07/piano-trainer/

<comment><USER2> This is great! I'm learning to read sheet music and play the piano at the same time and have found the same problem: I'm just memorising the music, not _reading_it.

Just this weekend I tried jalmus, but couldn't get it running and ended up trying to write something kinda similar to this:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/philip_roberts/status/61775984704...](https://mobile.twitter.com/philip_roberts/status/617759847044542464) Mine just does one note at a time though and I didn't know about webmidi, so was using node with electron shell for midi access, definitely gonna switch it over to webmidi now though, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> Stay tuned for awesomeness like this in my interactive sheet-music site Soundslice ([https://www.soundslice.com](https://www.soundslice.com)). :-)

This, plus the ability to load in whatever piece of music you want to learn, plus the ability to listen to real audio recordings (as opposed to synthetic/MIDI), all available from the web, equals a lovely future for musicians.

</comment><comment><USER4> From a musician's point of view this sounds like a dangerous idea. Training your hands on random sequences of notes which do not make sense musically and relying on visual feedback feels like it will do nothing to build the skill which you actually need which is the ability to associate hand movements to musical patterns.

But then it is probably just what you need if you want to play crazy atonal music. What do i know?

<comment><USER5> Atonal (actually, I'd argue microtonal) music is totally where it's at though...

<comment><USER4> good luck with microtonal on a midi keyboard, though..

<comment><USER5> Every midi workstation I've used for a while lets you make +/\- cent adjustments.

Then there's the tonal plexus and similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found this a while back and have been really enjoying it. [http://www.synthesiagame.com](http://www.synthesiagame.com)

With a laptop that folds flat, you can prop it on the music stand of your piano. Would be best with a touch screen, I think.

<comment><USER7> No need for a laptop if you have an iPad. Synthesia has an app. My iPad sits on my music stand connects to my digital piano via USB-MIDI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a first step toward writing your own ear training software, like EarMaster Pro. It has chord training, interval training, etc. This is probably closest to melodic sight-"singing" (you can use a midi instrument too) which is randomly generated melodic sequences, although it's aimed at singers so no chords.

There's also sightreadingfactory which generates random music to play as well. This one allows you to pick an instrument, level, time signature, and key. But it isn't interactive. It'd be great if they added web midi.

</comment><comment><USER9> "All numbers aside, I'm also feeling a vast improvement while playing piano. Instead of reading each note separately, I'm seeing patterns (within each chord) and distances which really astonished me. Of course, there is still room for improvement and I'm looking forward to the challenge."

Thats what we do when we learn to read anything. You don't read the individual characters but rather the entire words or even parts of sentences.

But he is right that it's cool.</comment>