TurboTax Freemium Funnel: Critical Analysis and UX Teardown - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brandonscottread/turbotax-design-1a37356adc61 <comment><USER2> I stopped using TurboTax some years ago and switched to TaxAct as a less bad alternative. I didn't believe them to be necessarily tons better than giving money to TurboTax, but I figured at least it wouldn't just keep solidifying a market leader who was capturing a significant market based mostly around actively lobbying to keep it that way.

In the last two years I took a leap to CreditKarma's tax offering. It is a bit basic and not quite as endlessly full featured, but it is simple, efficient, pretty quick and quite fast. It's also entirely free. The first year I used it I ran my numbers in a competing product to check, I was self employed at the time, which meant my tax situation wasn't exactly easy that year.

Anyway, the numbers lined up perfectly. So I used CreditKarma to file and have been happy with it ever since. Honestly at this point I'd pay for it, just to give them a more solid business model and development budget, but as far as I know they don't even have a paid option!

I filed in February this year. It was easy.

I actively avoid Intuit products now.

(Though, pragmatism wins here to some degree: I did use their self-employment accounting tool for a few years even when I had switched away from their tax software. That tool makes it annoyingly easy to keep accurate books and Xero just wasn't as good and simple at what I was looking for. If I was doing it again today, I'd definitely again look for alternatives. And frankly I think I'd find them now.)

<comment><USER3> too bad they sell your tax information, in all likelihood to companies like Equifax. now they don't have to ask your employers your salary anymore, you can just tell them.

<comment><USER4> Do you have evidence or justification for this claim?

<comment><USER3> From their privacy policy [https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/privacy](https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/privacy):

When We Share the Information We Collect

Affiliates: We may share certain information with our affiliated companies, such as Credit Karma, to help us provide our Services and manage your account.

now, it seems fine for Credit Karma Tax to share information with Credit Karma. what exactly counts as an "affiliate" though? I mean, "affiliate marketing" is a common term, and that's pretty darn broad. I read it in the broadest terms possible, which would be "everyone we have a business relationship with", necessarily including TransUnion and probably other CRAs.

<comment><USER4> I believe affiliate has a more restrictive meaning that just "everyone we have a business relationship with" but I'm not a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, and almost purchased that too.

It has been brought up a few times here: companies like H&R Block have lobbied to keep things complicated.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be- fre...](https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple- hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it)

Unless I have some special deductions to take care of, the government should just send me something like "we have received forms x,y,z from a,b,c. This is your AGI, what we/you owe. does this look correct?"

<comment><USER6> The ridiculous tax code isnt the fault of TT, even though they lobby to keep it that way. It's the fault of the cowards we keep sending to DC. Take it up with them.

<comment><USER7> And yet whenever we try to eliminate "loopholes", there's some group complaining vigorously to keep that complexity. The new tax law simplified taxes for most filers by increasing the standard deduction (by eliminating exemptions).

<comment><USER6> How do you know the new tax law simplifies filing since it didn't apply to 2017?

<comment><USER8> It's pretty much guaranteed that fewer people will itemize this year.

<comment><USER9> You generally need to do the itemized calculations to see which one saves you more money. Thus, the result is kind of meaningless as you do the same work either way.

The only way to simplify taxes is to actually remove deductions.

<comment><USER10> I (and probably the vast majority of people) don't have to do any calculations to know I'll have less than $24,000 in deductions because $24,000 is ridiculously high amount.

<comment><USER9> You can deduct state taxes which adds up. Really 24,000$ is easier to hit than you might think.

<comment><USER11> You can only deduct 10k of state taxes starting next year

<comment><USER12> Which I think is BS for numerous reasons. A few being, the income tax is not how the federal government was supposed nor should be funded. We need appropriated funds and taxes, not a slush bucket that ebbs and flows. Also, states that want to use income taxes to take care of their citizens ought to have priority and not penalize them. Encouraging subunits to be responsible for their needs is a good thing. Decentralizing services is beneficial by design, even if not as efficient. The US is huge and the needs of the states are so diverse we should leave it to the states to address their own needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This might not apply to many who frequent HN, but not enough people know about Free File options.

If your adjusted gross income is less than $66,000 you can likely file your federal and potentially state taxes for free.

If you make more than $66,00 AGI, the IRS provides fillable forms that are pretty easy to use for your federal but might not be applicable in all circumstances.

[https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal- taxes-f...](https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for- free)

<comment><USER14> Many states also offer an online filing option.

For example, California has CalFile[1] which covers most situations. There are also some options for free federal filing if your AGI exceeds $66,000 as the requirements set by Free File Alliance[2] members vary depending on the offerings (e.g. FreeTaxUSA[3] doesn't have AGI limits).

[1] [https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/CalFile/index.asp](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/CalFile/index.asp)

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

[3] [https://www.freetaxusa.com/](https://www.freetaxusa.com/)

<comment><USER15> I've been using DIY tax, [http://www.freetax.com](http://www.freetax.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> America, one of the few developed nations where doing your taxes involves paying a third party to help you tell the government what it already knows.

TurboTax and HR block lobby considerably to prevent the government from making the process of paying taxes free, fast, and painless for the overwhelming majority of taxpayers.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be- fre...](https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple- hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it)

<comment><USER17> There are lot of things that government does not know e.g., how much I donated to Goodwill or other charities, or if I have multiple homes with mortgages , then which one is my primary residence.

We can argue that the tax code should be simpler but that's a different argument.

<comment><USER16> The overwhelming majority of folks don't donate enough to charity to hit the tax write-off level.

Countries with sane tax collection systems make it easy for you to add those deductions, either on paper or with a web service run by the government, for free.

And your mortgages, unless they are from international banks, yes, the IRS already knows about those too. Let me put it this way: if it goes through a US domiciled bank, the IRS knows about it already.

Yes, people with complex tax returns do use accountants to file their taxes in countries with sane systems too, but the overwhelming majority don't need the complexity for the equivalent of a w2 and/or a couple of 1099s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If one has a simple tax situation, I'd recommend looking at Credit Karma (US) or SimpleTax (Canada).

Unfortunately, I've found TurboTax is better with weird corner cases. It helped me figure out I was eligible for the American Opportunity Tax Credit (US citizen going to university in Canada) which alone was a few thousand dollars that I would have missed if I had filed a 1040-EZ on paper. It has handled 401k->roth rollovers and cost basis, reporting capital gains (when I divested from Bitcoin), paying taxes on Canadian RRSP capital gains, and sales of Restricted Stock Units. I'll probably pay to use it for the foreseeable future.

In Canada, the tax system is less arcane, so the tax software companies have to give it to university students for free to get them hooked. It's too bad that even if I move to another country, I'll have to file US tax returns for life.

<comment><USER19> I would always advise filing the full 1040 even if the EZ would work for you. If your tax situation is simple you leave most of the lines blank, but it will prompt you to check out a lot of stuff that you would never see if you filed an EZ, including the American Opportunity tax credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's not _that_ hard to do your taxes on your own, especially if you have last year's as a model to check yourself. For computationally-oriented folks, I imagine you probably want to have a mental model of how you're presenting yourself tax-wise (instead of just blindly trusting Turbo Tax). In that case, most of what you're getting with Turbo Tax is UI.

<comment><USER21> There's a lot of deductions I qualify for that I didn't know about until I hired a real accountant. I also didn't know about depreciation recapture on the sale of a rental property. I didn't know about depreciation at all. If I hadn't hired an accountant I never would have known to take the depreciation, and wouldn't have learned that your depreciation gets recaptured even if you don't claim it.

If your tax situation is even remotely complicated it pays to not do it yourself. You don't know what you don't know.

<comment><USER22> Many folks here are web/software people. Many of us would actively argue against a business owner building their own website precisely because "you don't know what you don't know", and your time has a certain value. Focus on your business, leave the tech/web/software/marketing to professionals, etc.

At some point it makes sense to DIY; at another point, switching to a professional makes more sense. Figuring out where that line is can be years of "penny-wise, pound-foolish" behaviour of DIY with respect to tax prep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm almost afraid to ask:

What's the FLOSS analog to Turbotax?

Just to be clear-- I'm talking about a wizard that asks laypeople a clear set of curated questions and ends up with a set of tax forms that are very likely filled in with the correct answers.

<comment><USER24> [http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net](http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net)

It seems to be relatively well updated but I wouldn't be surprised if it made errors.

<comment><USER23> Opentaxsolver starts with the following imperative sentence: "Select tax program." That means I must know _a priori_ which tax form corresponds to my particular tax situation.

Choosing the correct tax forms is the job of the software, not the layperson. If it cannot or will not perform that job then it isn't a wizard (or at least not on the same level of time-saving as Turbotax).

If it's not a wizard then it isn't the FLOSS analog of Turbotax.

Edit: clarification

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I tried [https://www.freetaxusa.com](https://www.freetaxusa.com) this year since I dislike Intuit so much for their lobbying. The site works very well and has a pretty similar flow to TurboTax except no auto import of financial account info.

I'm not sure the trustworthiness of the company/site. I didn't see any red flags in the privacy policy but would love to hear from others if they've used this.

<comment><USER26> I've just filed my taxes yesterday with them since TaxAct decided to jack up the price to $80 for federal + state (used to be $30 back in 2011)

Seemed very straightforward, perhaps not as good on the suggestion front as far as potentially reducing your tax burden though.

They also managed to import my prior tax PDF from TaxAct flawlessly, so that's a plus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I do hate that they lobby for keeping taxes hard to file, but I have no issue paying them $60 to do my taxes. The website is such a great user experience, and they earned that money in my estimation. Why should it be free? They clearly put a lot of work into their site.

My only other issue with them is that they keep emailing me telling me to get started with my filing, but I already completed my tax return weeks ago.

<comment><USER28> It's not that TurboTax should be free. Obviously no one is arguing that.

The argument is that the tax code shouldn't be so complicated that you need to pay a fee to file your taxes smoothly and with little risk of getting it wrong (and getting audited/fined).

<comment><AUTHOR> And yes, that's the deeper argument :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was with this article until the last paragraph, "Millennials rightly demand more from their products and services than any generation before, and are increasingly skeptical toward disingenuous brands like Walmart and McDonalds. They abhor deceit and trickery, and increasingly gravitate toward brands that align with their values."

Really? Only millenials (whatever that means) are characterized by these values? How do you figure? My experience has been exactly the opposite, actually. But Brandon Read appears to believe that purely because of my "generation", I gravitate toward deceit and trickery. Okay, thanks for that valuable insight, Brandon. Whatever.

<comment><USER30> I don't think calling out the standard values of one generation necessarily means he's taking shots at other generations. I just think that millennials have been hit with more advertising over the course of their lives than the generations before them, and are therefore more distrustful in general. I think that's all he's trying to say here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> In Canada, I've switched over to [https://simpletax.ca](https://simpletax.ca). It's free, (supported by donations), and works well even for more complicated filings.

</comment><comment><USER32> QuickBooks Self Employed is actually a really nice product that I use for my consulting and SaaS companies. I linked my business checking accounts and credit cards with it and can easily tag all transactions (income and schedule C). It also handles estimating quarterly taxes and allow me to make quarterly payments online via eftps.gov. Finally at the end of the year it exports everything right into TurboTax.

</comment><comment><USER33> eh. mediocre only because he sets the stage early as TT being able to do this devilish stuff because they've studied user behavior for a decade or decades and know you. making TT out to be some devil that knows you personally.

honestly it's standard predatory sales technique that many many companies use, including amazon. (like pretending that prime day prices are actually a bargain)

</comment><comment><USER10> I am baffled why anyone would ever use TurboTax. It's full of these dark UI patterns and tricks and comparable products exist for a very small fraction of the price. Out of curiosity I looked up what TurboTax would have costed me and they wanted $100 (I have business income) whereas I used TaxHawk for $14.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm selfishly happy that tax year 2017 is the last year I'll probably be filing a personal US tax return (at least a substantial one) for a long time. Maybe in 2036 they will have solved this.

<comment><USER35> Did you renounce US citizenship? I think that's the only way to remove the requirement to file a US tax return.

<comment><USER34> No. There are lots of other ways. (Renouncing is bad for many reasons; I'm patriotic, although the US has a lot of problems, and there's essentially a 10y tax on unrealized gains at exit, plus lifetime visa problems.)

1) Make <threshold income. (Admittedly, that sucks.) I think it is around $3k/yr.

2) Move to a place which under Section 933 of the IRC can make its own tax laws for bona fide residents. I'm doing Act 22 (and Act 20 for business, and some other things) and taking advantage of the opportunities in the Isle of Enchantment, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. There are some similar opportunities for US citizens in the other US territories, but PR is the best one I think, and is certainly the biggest and most developed.

Essentially, until 2035, you pay 0% short term, long term capital gains or dividends. Under Act 20, businesses pay 0-5% on exported services revenue (i.e. anything sold outside PR: SaaS, consulting, etc.). It's pretty nice. Infrastructure is an issue (although gigabit internet is $60/mo), and some costs are higher, but overall it's a good deal. It's hugely popular with cryptocurrency people after crypto to crypto trades started getting taxed fully as st cg.

(Actually I have to file 2018 too, although it will be for <$100, since I think I have some US bank accounts which earn interest.)

<comment><USER35> That's interesting. But you still have to file a US tax return, right?

<comment><USER34> Only year-of-move (and year-of-return, but I an uncertain if the US will exist in 2036.) If you have no US liability, because all of your income is PR- source, no need to file US returns in the intervening years. It's possible I'll have some US source income, though, but obviously the goal is to minimize that in favor of PR source income. There are a bunch of complex sourcing rules.

This is different than the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), where you get a $100500 (indexed) deduction, but have to file to claim it.

<comment><USER35> That's interesting. I left the US many years ago but still have to file an income tax return as well as FBAR. But I don't live in PR.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I spent all but 2 years 1998-2011 doing same. FATCA just keeps making it worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I bought the turbo tax CD which claimed to come with phone support from CPAs. The CD worked fine for the most part but the phone support was basically a scam.

<comment><USER37> I used their online video support this year. I thought it was pretty good. You get an appointment, the. They all you (on time!) and open a little video window in your browser. Overall I felt more confident in my return knowing a CPA looked at it, mostly because I could describe my individual situation and confirm I was reporting it correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't believe you need to read any of their clever commentary to use the service. You can ascertain the purpose of each screen by looking at the available options and click through ignoring all suggestions to pay them more.</comment>


Coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system <comment><USER2> The enemy of my enemy is my friend.</comment>


Show HN: Floppy Bird Game of Thrones Edition - <AUTHOR> http://lukeweil.github.io/floppybird-game-of-thrones/

<comment><USER2> That music could really make anything sound incredibly dramatic.</comment>


Microsoft kills project Spark - <AUTHOR> http://forums.projectspark.com/yaf_postst214854.aspx <comment><USER2> For anyone else: it was a game creation toolkit [http://welcome.projectspark.com](http://welcome.projectspark.com)

Go watch the first video - imagine UE4 or Unity but way easier. Everything from world building to AI. Would have been really cool for teenagers to make stuff with, as you can get good results really quickly. You don't even need a PC or a keyboard.

<comment><USER3> Looks really cool, I wish Unity's UI builder was as intuitive.

Is there anything that comes close to this in scope/quality for any other platform?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> should re-use the domain as Projects Park , a graveyard for some nice ideas, they could put their wi-fi mesh research in there too :(

</comment><comment><USER5> And it's not open sourced, because they don't want to cannibalize their next idea.

But it's not open sourced, so no one wants to take a risk on getting frozen out of their next failed idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> They were demo'ing this at E3 in 2013. Launched 2014.

Total project public life: about 2 years.

Oof. I feel bad for anyone whom invested heavily in that one.

<comment><USER7> Not the first time MSFT is taking the difficult decision to kill a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm more disappointed that by killing it, they've fully killed the one chance Conker had of getting a decent new game after Conker's Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64. Okay, they technically killed that late last year when Conker's Big Reunion was cancelled, but still. No more Project Spark = not even a chance of development resuming on it. It also means the fan project to recreate Pocket Tales in 3D in Project Spark looks to be dead too.

No, Young Conker is not a good alternative. As the thousands of dislikes and hugely negative coverage proves.

But yeah, it's a shame. Looked like a good engine for making games and game worlds, and possibly a good way for companies to bring back retro characters and franchises as part of episodic campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER9> My kids tried really hard to play it - it was super complicated and worst of all - way too slow! Otherwise, they kinda liked it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Too bad. Maybe these types of projects need to contain a full great game along with the builder portion so more copies will get out there.

</comment><comment><USER11> Damn, I was hoping to try it at some point.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was wondering about this ever since MS bought Mojang, really.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yet another case that makes me wish consoles had no Internet connectivity.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps you mean "wish consoles did not require connectivity to a central server"? Because peer-to-peer would mean things like this could continue working despite discontinued support.

<comment><USER13> Good point.. in the old days, Internet connectivity was expensive so a lot of games supported LAN-based multiplayer. Those were awesome days. You could certainly achieve the same with the Internet today if you didn't have a central server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shame. Maybe they will open source it so it can be ported to a less obscure platform.

<comment><USER16> What would you consider a "less obscure platform" than Windows and XBox One?

<comment><USER17> Android, iOS, Blackberry OS10... Pretty much everything? Each has orders of magnitude more users than XBox.

<comment><USER18> You're comparing mobile devices to an Xbox? Not really the same use case... at all.

<comment><USER17> Well, yeah, if the Xbox was usable I'm sure it wouldn't be so obscure. Which doesn't change the guys premise that if they opened sourced it, it could be ported to a less obscure platform.

<comment><USER16> Are you using "obscure" in the sense of "closed" and "proprietary"? Or are you using it as "relatively unknown"?

<comment><USER17> Im using it in the sense of "Relatively small userbase.", whereby a "less obscure platform" is any potential gaming platform with a larger userbase.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is absolutely at fault for WannaCry - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/mortoray/microsoft-is-absolutely-at-fault-for-wannacry <comment><USER2> Garbage article. Of course if everyone did everything correctly the first time, we'd be in an entirely different world.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, MS did it right this time: Released a fix.

How many times has MS never released a fix and a researcher been forced to publish 90 days after submitting?

Not the case here and they did good. It was everyone else's fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title is clickbait, but I actually enjoyed the discussion of Windows' design within the article.

One key thing that the author has missed: Ransomware works very well even without SYSTEM level privileges. The goal here is to encrypt files the user has access to, therefore if you move SMB Server into the user's context you haven't really hampered WannaCry's overarching goal.

Back in the early 2000s there was this assumption that malware needs root/SYSTEM to be successful. The last five years has shown that that assumption is incorrect, with a lot of popular malware never even attempting to escalate, and happily performing their function as the user (since that's where all the "goods" are anyway).

There are a few exceptions to this, like stealing cached AD credentials, but overall you can do a lot just by having the ability to install evil browser extensions, turn on the webcam, and encrypt files.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, you wanna cry? Cry all you want. MS did the right thing.

Look. I get all the cry about changing OS versions. This becomes more evident when you move up the ranks and into management. One get to see the true cost of doing business.

The problem here is that MS gave a lot of notices regarding moving from XP. They even did an extended support...remember? 10 years was enough time to:

1\. Move to a newer version of Windows.

2\. Change dependency on Windows...seek alternative.

3\. Hire the professionals.

Companies need to hire professional IT staff, not the f _ing FLY BY NIGHT SPACE CADETS, to run their operations or they risk getting what they paid for. Simple as that.

This is now shared responsibility. Different times. Thinking we can go around blaming the vendors is a waste of time.

Employees are also the weakest f_ing link. How many companies do you know of spend time educating their employees about malware, phishing etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Yet it seems the WannaCry malware has gained full control of the system. > This is only possible if the SMB component is not segregated. We know from > Samba that this protocol can run as isolated software.

Hmm, I connected to local file sharing service on Mac Os and see /usr/sbin/smbd running as root. Is there any user isolation in Samba? And anyway there should be central process running from root to be able to switch to user after authentication. After all, it's a file sharing service and it should have access to files.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to commend Microsoft for issuing the fix months ago.

There was some interesting discussion recently about Microsoft's potential role in creating an environment where users feel the need to disable automatic update. Disabling it for fear of system reboots, loss of performance, unexpected changes, or what have you.

Reworking automatic update so that it feels like an essential, useful feature to the end user could be a productive next step for Microsoft. Software bugs aren't going anywhere.

<comment><USER8> Then why did WannaCry even pose a threat? Perhaps Microsoft needs to think about the consequences of shoving Win10 down the throats of their users via critical security patches.

<comment><USER9> > Then why did WannaCry even pose a threat?

In the case of entities like the NHS: Because many large organizations are locked into abusive contracts with IT providers that prevent them from upgrading past 2008-level software without exorbitant fees.

In the case of China, rampant pirated software that cannot be updated without revealing the fact that it was stolen.

The idea that this is a repercussion of "shoving Win10 down the throats of users" is just an incorrect and sour read of the situation. Win8 also got a security patch.

The idea that Microsoft is on the hook for the results of neglected machines, stolen machines, or machines under the rule of IT contractors that are trying to turn due diligence into profit is a very unfair one, by any standard. But even if you hold it, _the solution would be a subscription-with-updates-model of software like windows 10_.

I'm not going to defend Microsoft's missteps in Win10 marketing, or the occasional (and quickly retracted) ad shoved into the lockscreen. But I am trying to be absolutely fair when I point out that no Win10 machine at default configuration is vulnerable to WannaCry and Microsoft issued patches to supported versions of Windows as fast as anyone could expect them to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My impression reading the article is that writing an OS is easy, let alone writing a secure one.

</comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr: hindsight is 20/20

<comment><USER12> I think the article has a point. How is the principle of least privilege hindsight?

<comment><USER9> I think the article is dead wrong, you don't need system privileges to encrypt user data. Users have write access to their own data.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but that wasn't GPs line of reasoning. Even if it doesn't apply in this case it's valid criticism that you can't just attribute to hindsight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr: Microsoft has historically under-invested in security engineering, especially with regards to software architecture.

I sort of agree. Microsoft's direct competitors in this area (Google with Android, Apple with OS X) seem to be doing better than they are. But software security is _hard_ , and it can't be solved just by throwing money at the problem; it requires a good development culture and practices, and in a company as big as Microsoft, building that is also hard. Microsoft is also saddled with considerably more legacy code and backwards-compatibility requirements than Google and Apple are; and SMB, which contains the relevant exploit, is absolutely legacy code.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps Apple, but Google with Android? Really???</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those who left Gmail behind, how do you live without bundling? - <AUTHOR> I switched from Gmail to FastMail last year and loved it, but fell way behind on my email. I've realized that the way Gmail separates promotional, social, updates, and forums has a _huge_ impact on my ability to stay on top of my inbox. I'm really surprised it doesn't come up more often when discussing FastMail/ProtonMail etc. Am I missing something? How do you live without that feature? Do I just get more email than most, or is there some other workflow I don't know about? <comment><USER2> I'm also a user of FastMail, and the thing is, I always struggled with this gmail "feature".

I want to be able to organise my emails as I want, and FastMail gives me exactly that.

I use a different username for each and every service, while keeping my domain as same, so I receive all emails to this domain and sort them as I want.

<comment><AUTHOR> So do you just have a ton of inbox rules/filters set up?</comment></comment>


H.264 is Magic - <AUTHOR> https://sidbala.com/h-264-is-magic/ <comment><USER2> Absolutely love this:

'Suppose you have some strange coin - you've tossed it 10 times, and every time it lands on heads. How would you describe this information to someone? You wouldn't say HHHHHHHHH. You would just say "10 tosses, all heads" \- bam! You've just compressed some data! Easy. I saved you hours of mindfuck lectures.'

This is a really great, simple way to explain what is otherwise a fairly complex concept to the average bear. Great work.

<comment><USER3> RLE a given. It's true that the average person rarely understand that this is what computers call compression, but everything after that involves a bit of thinking. Optimal huffman.

<comment><USER4> IMO Huffman is conceptually more complicated (not the implementation, but the logic) than arithmetic coding.

And Huffman isn't optimal unless you are lucky, unlike arithmetic coding.

<comment><USER3> I never learned AC. It's on my overflowing stack of thing to read about.

<comment><USER4> AC is conceptually stupidly simple. All you do is encode a string of symbols into a range of real numbers.

To start your range is [0, 1). For each symbol you want to encode you take your range and split it up according to your probabilities. E.g. if your symbols are 25% A, 50% B and 25% C, then you split up that range in [0, 0.25) for A, [0.25, 0.75) for B and [0.75, 1) for C.

Encoding multiple symbols is just applying this recursively. So to encode the two symbols Bx we split up [0.25, 0.75) proportionally just like we did [0, 1) before to encode x (where x is A, B or C).

As an example, A is the range [0, 0.25), and AC is the range [0.1875, 0.25).

Now to actually turn these ranges into a string of bits we choose the shortest binary representation that fits within the range. If we look at a decimal number:

        0.1875

We know that this means 1/10 + 8/100 + 7/1000 + 5/10000\. A binary representation:

        0.0011

This means 0/2 + 0/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 = 0.1875. So we encode AC as 0011.

\---

The beauty of arithmetic coding is that after encoding/decoding any symbol we can arbitrarily change how we split up the range, giving rise to adaptive coding. Arithmetic coding can perfectly represent any data that forms a discrete string of symbols, including changes to our knowledge of data as we decode.

<comment><USER5> Nice explanation. Can you explain how to remove ambiguity relating to string length?

"0" = 0.0b = 0 falls in the range [0,0.25) so it's a valid encoding for "A"; but isn't it also a valid encoding for "AA", "AAA", etc.?

AA = [0,0.25) * [0, 0.25) = [0, 0.125), and so on.

It seems that adding "A"s to a string in general doesn't change its encoding.

<comment><USER6> You either reserve a symbol for "end of stream" or externally store the length.

It's the equivalent to pretending a Huffman stream never ends and is padded with infinite 0s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The lossy transform is important, but I think what's actually most important in video compression is getting rid of redundancy --- H.264 actually has a lossless mode in which that transform is not used, and it still compresses rather well (especially for noiseless scenes like a screencast.) You can see the difference if you compare with something like MJPEG which is essentially every frame independently encoded as a JPEG.

The key idea is to encode differences; even in an I-frame, macroblocks can be encoded as differences from previous macroblocks, and with various filterings applied: [https://www.vcodex.com/h264avc-intra- precition/](https://www.vcodex.com/h264avc-intra-precition/) This reduces the spatial redundancies within a frame, and motion compensation reduces the temporaral redundancies between frames.

You can sometimes see this when seeking through video that doesn't contain many I-frames, as all the decoder can do is try to decode and apply differences to the last full frame; if that isn't the actual preceding frame, you will see the blocks move around and change in odd ways to create sometimes rather amusing effects, until it reaches the next I-frame. The first example I found on the Internet shows this clearly, likely resulting from jumping immediately into the middle of a file: [http://i.imgur.com/G4tbmTo.png](http://i.imgur.com/G4tbmTo.png) That frame contains only the differences from the previous one.

As someone who has written a JPEG decoder just for fun and learning purposes, I'm probably going to try a video decoder next; although I think starting from something simpler like H.261 and working upwards from there would be much easier than starting immediately with H.264. The principles are not all that different, but the number of modes/configurations the newer standards have --- essentially for the purpose of eliminating more redundancies from the output --- can be overwhelming. H.261 only supports two frame sizes, no B-frames, and no intra-prediction. It's certainly a fascinating area to explore if you're interested in video and compression in general.

<comment><USER8> This is really interesting and the imgur picture you linked (with your explanation) explains it really clearly!

But when seeking, why wouldn't any local media playback seek backwards and reconstruct the full frame? It's not like the partial frame after seeking is useful - I'd rather wait 2 seconds while it scrambles (i mean "hurries up") to show me a proper seek, wouldn't everyone?

What was your Internet search for finding that imgur frame? What is this effect called?

<comment><USER9> >why wouldn't any local media playback seek backwards and reconstruct the full frame?

Most codecs/players do. VLC used to be criticized for being different in that regard. One possible advantage is istantaneous seeking, as there's no need to decode all the needed frames (which could amount to several seconds of video) between the nearest I-frames[1] (the complete reference pictures) and the desired one.

[1]: plural, because prediction can also be bidirectional in time

The use of incomplete video frame data for artistic purposes is called "datamoshing".

<comment><USER10> I try to use VLC when I can because it offers intuitive playlist support, but for high-resolution H.264 and friends I usually have to switch to Media Player Classic.

VLC is willing to let my entire screen look like a blob of grey alien shit for 10 seconds instead of just taking a moment to reconstruct frames.

And its hardware acceleration for newer codecs is balls. Sucks because otherwise, it's right up there with f2k for me.

<comment><USER11> I stopped using VLC when I found mpv [0]. I really like it because it exposes everything from the CLI, so once you're familiarized with the flags you're interested in using, it's easy to play anything. For everyday usage it "just works" too, as expected of any video player.

[0] [https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

<comment><USER12> How does it compare to mplayer? My biggest complaint about mplayer is it still doesn't play VFR videos well.

<comment><USER13> I've tried it.

* Sane defaults (encodings and fonts, scaletempo for audio)

* instantaneous play of next and previous videos

* navigation in random playlist actually works

* Easy always on top key binding

* Most mplayer key bindings work

I'll definitely keep on trying it for a while.

<comment><USER14> Does it include all the codecs by default? I think this was a major reason VLC succeeded the way it did. With all other players (BPlayer anyone?) you needed to find and install tons of codecs while in VLC it just worked.

<comment><USER13> It has played everything I've thrown at it so far...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought I'll learn something special about H.264, but all information here is high level and generic.

For example if you replace H.264 with a much older technology like mpeg-1 (from 1993) every sentence stays correct, except this:

 _" It is the result of 30+ years of work"_ :)

<comment><USER16> Also the fleeting mention of b-frames, which mpeg-1 doesn't have. And I believe mpeg-1 doesn't use 16×16 macroblocks.

Still, it's a good overview of generic video compression.

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#B-frames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#B-frames)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#Macroblocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#Macroblocks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice article! The motion compensation bit could be improved, though:

> The only thing moving really is the ball. What if you could just have one > static image of everything on the background, and then one moving image of > just the ball. Wouldn't that save a lot of space? You see where I am going > with this? Get it? See where I am going? Motion estimation?

Reusing the background isn't motion compensation -- you get that by encoding the differences between frames so unchanging parts are encoded very efficiently.

Motion compensation is when you have the camera follow the ball and the background moves. Rather than encoding the difference between frames itself, you figure out that most of the frame moved and you encode the different from one frame to a shifted version of the blocks from a previous frame.

Motion compensation won't work particularly well for a tennis ball because it's spinning rapidly (so the ball looks distinctly different in consecutive frames) but more importantly because the ball occupies a tiny fraction of the total space so it doesn't help that much.

Motion compensation should work much better for things like moving cars and moving people.

<comment><USER18> Your example seems to assume translation only. I wonder how difficult/useful it would be to identify other kinds of time-varying characteristics (translation, rotation, scale, hue, saturation, brightness, etc) of partial scene elements in an automated way.

Along the same lines, it would be interesting to figure out an automated time- varying-feature detection algorithm to determine which kinds of transforms are the right ones to encode.

Do video encoders already do something like this? It seems like a pretty difficult problem since there are so many permutations of applicable transformations.

<comment><USER19> _I wonder how difficult /useful it would be to identify other kinds of time- varying characteristics (translation, rotation, scale, hue, saturation, brightness, etc) of partial scene elements in an automated way._

That's how Framefree worked. It segments the image into layers, computes a full morph, including movement of the boundary, between successive frames for each layer, and transmits the before and after for each morph. Any number of frames can be interpolated between keyframes, which allows for infinite slow motion without jerk.[1] You can also upgrade existing content to higher frame rates.

This was developed back in 2006 by the Kerner Optical spinoff of Lucasfilm.[2] It didn't catch on, partly because decompression and playback requires a reasonably good GPU, and partly because Kerner Optical went bust. The segment- into-layers technology was repurposed for making 3D movies out of 2D movies, and the compression product was dropped. There was a Windows application and a browser plug-in. The marketing was misdirected - somehow, it was targeted to digital signs with limited memory, a tiny niche.

It's an idea worth revisiting. Segmentation algorithms have improved since 2006. Everything down to midrange phones now has a GPU capable of warping a texture. And it provides a way to drive a 120FPS display from 24/30 FPS content.

[1] [http://creativepro.com/framefree-technologies-launches- world...](http://creativepro.com/framefree-technologies-launches-world-s-most- advanced-digital-imaging-software/) [2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20081216024454/http://www.framef...](https://web.archive.org/web/20081216024454/http://www.framefree.com/)

<comment><USER20> John do you know where all the patents on Framefree ended up?

<comment><USER19> Ask Tom Randoph, who was CEO of FrameFree. He's now at Quicksilver Scientific in Denver.

<comment><USER19> Some venture IP company in Tokyo called "Monolith Co." also had rights in the technology.[1] "As of today (Sept. 5, 2007), the company has achieved a compression rate equivalent to that of H.264 and intends to further improve the compression rate and technology, Monolith said."[2] (This is not Monolith Studios, a game development company in Osaka.) Monolith appears to be defunct.

The parties involved with Framefree were involved in fraud litigation around 2010.[3] The case record shows various business units in the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Jersey, along with Monolith in Japan and Framefree in Delaware. No idea what the issues were. It looks like the aftermath of failed business deals.

The inventors listed on the patents are Nobuo Akiyoshi and Kozo Akiyoshi.[4]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBfss0AaNaU) [2] [http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070907/138905...](http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070907/138905/) [3] [http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/x8gi572m/superior-court- of-...](http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/x8gi572m/superior-court-of- california-county-of-san-francisco/canyon-capital-a-cayman-island-company-v- kozo-akiyoshi-et-al/) [4] [http://patents.justia.com/inventor/nobuo- akiyoshi](http://patents.justia.com/inventor/nobuo-akiyoshi)

<comment><USER20> Great dectective work. I suspect the IP is now a total mess - with luck nobody has been paying the patent renewal fees and everything is now free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related, how h265 works: [http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=167081](http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=167081)

This is a great overview and the techniques are similar to those of h264.

I found it invaluable to get up to speed when I had to do some work on the screen content coding extensions of hevc in Argon Streams. They are a set of bit streams to verify hevc and vp9, take a look, it is a very innovative technique:

[http://www.argondesign.com/products/argon-streams- hevc/](http://www.argondesign.com/products/argon-streams-hevc/) [http://www.argondesign.com/products/argon-streams- vp9/](http://www.argondesign.com/products/argon-streams-vp9/)

<comment><USER3> Heh, happy to see doom9 still alive and kicking. They were the n°1 resource in the early days of mainstream video compression.

<comment><USER22> It's not really alive and kicking. The forum is still active but the rest of the site hasn't been touched since 2008.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love how you can edit photos from people to correct some skin imperfections without loosing the touch that the image is real (and not that blurred, plastic look) when you decompose it in wavelets and just edit some frequencies.

Don't know in photoshop, but in Gimp there's a plugin called "wavelet decomposer" that does that.

<comment><USER24> I guess this is the plugin you are talking about? Interesting.

[http://registry.gimp.org/node/11742](http://registry.gimp.org/node/11742)

<comment><USER23> Exactly that.

There was a question about retouching photos some while ago ([http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/48999/how-do-i- take...](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/48999/how-do-i-take- flattering-photos-of-people-with-acne-scarring)) that using wavelets was a good use of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I recently experienced this as follows: [https://www.sublimetext.com](https://www.sublimetext.com) has an animation which is drawn via JavaScript. In essence, it loads a huge .png [1] that contains all the image parts that change during the animation, then uses <canvas> to draw them.

I wanted to recreate this for the home page of my file manager [2]. The best I could come up with was [3]. This PNG is 900KB in size. The H.264 .mp4 I now have on the home page is only 200 KB in size (though admittedly in worse quality).

It's tough to beat a technology that has seen so much optimization!

1: [http://www.sublimetext.com/anim/rename2_packed.png](http://www.sublimetext.com/anim/rename2_packed.png)

2: [https://fman.io](https://fman.io)

3: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/89inzvt161uo1m8/out.png?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/89inzvt161uo1m8/out.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER26> You could give FLIF [1] a try. With the help of Poly-FLIF [2] you can render it in the browser. Don't forget to try the lossy mode, it gives better compression with negligible loss in quality.

1: [http://flif.info](http://flif.info)

2: [https://github.com/UprootLabs/poly- flif/](https://github.com/UprootLabs/poly-flif/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Chroma Subsampling.

Sadly, this is what makes video encoders designed for photographic content unsuitable for transferring text or computer graphics. Fine edges, especially red-black contrasts start to color-bleed due to subsampling.

While a 4:4:4 profile exists a lot of codecs either don't implement it or the software using them does not expose that option. This is especially bad when used for screencasting.

Another issue is banding, since h.264's main and high profiles only use 8bit precision, including for internal processing, and the rounding errors accumulate, resulting in banding artifacts in shallow gradients. High10 profile solves this, but again, support is lacking.

<comment><USER28> It's easy to make a 4:2:0 upscaler that doesn't color bleed. Everyone just uses nearest-neighbor, which sucks, and then blames the other guy.

<comment><USER29> How would you make a 4:2:0 upscaler that doesn't color bleed?

<comment><USER28> 50% solution: bicubic or bilinear. 90% solution: EEDI3. (kinda slow) 99% solution: use the full resolution Y plane for edge-direction.

<comment><USER27> I don't think that can accurately restore the details that have been created by subpixel-AA font rendering.

But if you have source/subsampled/interpolated comparisons that show 99% identical results i would be interested to see them.

Of course all that is useless if you don't have control over the output device. Just having the ability to record 4:4:4 makes the issue go away as long as the target can display it, no matter what interpolation they use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "See how the compressed one does not show the holes in the speaker grills in the MacBook Pro? If you don't zoom in, you would even notice the difference. "

Ehm, what?! The image on the right looks really bad and the missing holes was the first thing I noticed. No zooming needed.

And that's exactly my problem with the majority of online video (iTunes store, Netflix, HBO etc). Even when it's called "HD", there are compression artefacts and gradient banding everywhere.

I understand there must be compromises due to bandwidth, but I don't agree on how much that compromise currently is.

<comment><USER31> >No zooming needed

Isn't the images above the text a zoomeed version?

>Here is a close-up of the original...

<comment><USER30> I took it to mean that we had to zoom to see that the holes were gone in the compressed version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> By the way, this is an incredible example of scientific writing done well. It's very tangible jelly-like feeling that the author clearly has for the topic, conveyed well to the readers. This whole thread is people excited about a video codec!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It means a lot to me. Yes, I try to convey my sense of excitement about technology to other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anyone who likes this would probably also enjoy the Daala technology demos at [https://xiph.org/daala/](https://xiph.org/daala/) for a little taste of some newer, and more experimental, techniques in video compression.

<comment> dao- Note that Daala has been discontinued in favor of AV1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1)

Previously Daala was presented as a candidate for NETVC but apparently this didn't go anywhere? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NETVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NETVC)

<comment> TD-Linux A lot of Daala tools are now being copied into AV1, the largest being PVQ: [https://aomedia-review.googlesource.com/#/c/3220/](https://aomedia- review.googlesource.com/#/c/3220/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just yesterday, I've read this one:

[http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/fall03/cs218/paper/H.264_MPEG...](http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/fall03/cs218/paper/H.264_MPEG4_Tutorial.pdf)

How does DCT work:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2aEzeMDHMA&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2aEzeMDHMA&)

</comment><comment><USER35> Very well explained. But I could have understood it all without the bro- approach to the reader. You see where I am going with this? Get it? See where I am going? Ok!

<comment><USER36> Maybe I'm in the minority here but I think it adds a bit of color to an otherwise dry topic to write about.

<comment><USER37> I remember loving this style when I was a novice, e.g. Beej's networking tutorial. Not a big fan anymore, either, but certainly valuable for (part of) the target audience, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The part about entropy encoding only seems explain run-length encoding (RLE). Isn't the interesting aspect of making use of entropy in compression rather to represent rarer events with longer longer code strings?

The fair coin flip is also an example of a process that cannot be compressed well at all because (1) the probably of the same event happening in a row is not as high as for unfair coins (RLE is minimally effective) and (2) the uniform distribution has maximal entropy, so there is no advantage in using different code lengths to represent the events. (Since the process has a binary outcome, there is also nothing to gain in terms of code lengths for unfair coins.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Can someone explain how the frequency domain stuff works? I've never really understood that, and the article just waves it away with saying it's like converting from binary to hex.

<comment><USER40> It's a bad analogy. Binary and hex are just different _formats_ for representing the same number. Spatial domain and frequency domain are different views of a complex data set. In the spatial domain, you are looking at the intensity of different points of the image. In the frequency domain, you are looking at the frequencies of intensity changes in patterns in the image.

A good way to develop an intuition for the fourier space is to look at simple images and their DFT transforms: [http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~emmanuel/courses/cs545/S14/slides/lec...](http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~emmanuel/courses/cs545/S14/slides/lecture10.pdf) (3/4 of the way through the slide deck).

This analysis of a "bell pepper" image and its transform is also helpful: [https://books.google.com/books?id=6TOUgytafmQC&pg=PA116&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=6TOUgytafmQC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=dft+image+intensity+changes&source=bl&ots=m8lUh6N0ms&sig=dXNH4GYn39FVen9nZ7pv30zss5k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicnYfFpI_QAhWs6YMKHcoqBOIQ6AEIRjAG#v=onepage&q=dft%20image%20intensity%20changes&f=false).

As for why you want to do this: throwing away bits in the spatial domain eliminates distinctions between similar intensities, making things look blocky. In the frequency domain, however, you can throw away high-frequency information, which tends to soften patterns like the speaker grills in the MBP image that the human eye isn't that sensitive to to begin with.

<comment><USER28> > Spatial domain and frequency domain are different views of a complex data > set.

Or in this case, a real data set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > discard information which will contain the information with high frequency > components. Now if you convert back to your regular x-y coordinates, you'll > find that the resulting image looks similar to the original but has lost > some of the fine details.

I would expect also the edges in the image to become more blurred, as edges correspond to high-frequency content. However, this only seems to be slightly the case in the example images.

<comment><USER42> You can see exactly that with the speaker grill and the text (This type of transformation is notoriously bad at compressing images of text, and is why you shouldn't use jpg for pictures of text)

In this context, the edges of, say, the macbook are not "high frequency" content, since they only feature one change (low to high luminosity) in a given block rather than several (high-low-high-low-high) like for the grill.

<comment><USER41> You should have a look at the Fourier transform of a step-function. It has high frequency components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What are directions for the future? Could neural networks become practically useful for video compression? [1]

[1] [http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects...](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2000-01/neural- networks/Applications/imagecompression.html)

<comment><USER43> Suppose I have a table of 8-digit numbers that I need to add and subtract for various reasons. Do I A: have a child, train them how to read numbers, add, and subtract, and then have the child do it or B: use a calculator purpose built to add and subtract numbers?

Neural nets are always expensive to train. You'd better be getting something from them that you can't get some other way.

<comment><USER44> Yes, you don't need the machinery of learning when you already have an algorithm you're happy with. Adding a table of numbers, I don't think anyone hopes to do much better than we already do with our circuits and computer architectures.

With video compression, I think most would agree that there might be better architectures/algorithms that we haven't stumbled upon yet. Whether specifically "neural networks" will be the shape of a better architecture, I don't know. But almost surely some meta-algorithm that can try out tons of different parameters/data-pipeline-topologies for something that vaguely resembles h.264 might find something better than h.264.

Neural nets are expensive to train. But so is designing h.264.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> H.265 gets you twice the resolution for the same bandwidth, or the same resolution for half the bandwidth.

<comment><USER46> H.265 gets you half the file size for ten times more in royalty fees, or saving 50% of bandwidth for 1000% more in royalty.

<comment><USER47> Do you have a reference for that?

I was under the impression that the first 100,000 units are free, and then 20c per unit afterwards to a max of $25m.

H264 drops to 10c per unit after 5m units, to a max of $6.5m.

You need to be shipping 125 million units annually to hit the full $25m.

Yes it's more, but it's not quite ten times. And notably if the chip maker pays the royalties, then the content creators don't need to (though that was excepted indefinitely with H264).

Parts regurgitated from a quick google for reference [1]

[1] [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/03/hevc_patent_terms_th...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/03/hevc_patent_terms_thrashed_out_but_look_whos_not_at_the_codec_party_microsoft_and_google/)

<comment><USER48> HEVC got an additional licensing pool in HEVC Advance that demanded significantly greater license fees on top of MPEG LA's.

Said group's demands are basically _the_ reason Netflix started considering VP9.

<comment> TD-Linux Two additional, as Technicolor later dropped out of HEVC Advance and is now licensing theirs individually: [http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured- Ar...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured- Articles/Technicolor-Withdraws-from-the-HEVC-Advance-Patent-Pool-108941.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ya'll wanna get the most out of your H.264 animu rips? Check out Kawaii Codec Pack, it's based on MPC and completely changed my mind about frame interpolation. [http://haruhichan.com/forum/showthread.php?7545-KCP- Kawaii-C...](http://haruhichan.com/forum/showthread.php?7545-KCP-Kawaii-Codec- Pack)

<comment><USER49> a) offtopic

b) Leave codec packs in 2000 where they belong. They are a great malware vector and also good at messing with settings they shouldn't.

>KCP utilizes the following components: MPC-HC - A robust DirectShow media player. madVR - High quality gpu assisted video renderer. Included as an alternative to EVR-CP. xy-vsfilter / XySubFilter(future) - Superior subtitle renderer. LAV-Filters - A package with the fastest and most actively developed DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders. (Optional) ReClock - Addresses the problem of audio judder by adapting media for smooth playback OR utilized for bit perfect audio.

I'm actually using MPC-HC and AC3Filter to deal with some files where I couldn't hear the centre channel on VLC (on stereo speakers). Everything else isn't really needed.

<comment><USER10> oh crap it's the topic police. I use it specifically for madVR and interpolating frames for high-quality low FPS anime. It looks really great. The best I've found for this particular purpose. Be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if across a lot of videos, the frequency domain representations look similar and if instead of masking in a circle we could mask with other (pre- determined) shapes to keep more information (this would require decoders to know them, of course). Or maybe this article is too high-level and it's not possible to "shape" the frequencies.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's certainly possible to use any arbitrary shape. The way it really works is that there is a quantization matrix - which essentially is a configurable mask for your frequency domain signal.

Yes, I've dumbed it down in the article to a simple circle to illustrate the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is a really well written article. Exactly why I love HN. Sometimes you get this nice technical intros into fields you thought were black magic.

</comment><comment><USER52> Articles like this are what makes HN great, and not all those repeated links to the visual studio 220.127.116.11.0.1.pre02-12323-beta3 changelog.

</comment><comment><USER53> Even better H.265 with 40-50% bit rate reduction compared with H.264, at the same visual quality!

<comment><USER54> But much higher hardware requirements for both encoding and decoding. Encoding is like 8x slower too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The PNG size seems to be misrepresented. The actual PNG is 637273 bytes when I download it, and 597850 if I recompress it to make sure we're not getting fooled by a bad PNG writer.

So instead of the reported 916KiB we're looking at 584KiB.

This doesn't change the overall point, but details matter.

      $ wget https://sidbala.com/content/images/2016/11/FramePNG.png
      --2016-11-04 22:08:08--  https://sidbala.com/content/images/2016/11/FramePNG.png
      Resolving sidbala.com (sidbala.com)... 18.104.22.168, 184.108.40.206, 2400:cb00:2048:1::6819:1112, ...
      Connecting to sidbala.com (sidbala.com)|188.8.131.52|:443... connected.
      HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
      Length: unspecified [image/png]
      Saving to: 'FramePNG.png'

      FramePNG.png                      [ <=>                                             ] 622.34K  --.-KB/s   in 0.05s

      2016-11-04 22:08:08 (12.1 MB/s) - 'FramePNG.png' saved [637273]

      $ pngout FramePNG.png
       In:  637273 bytes               FramePNG.png /c2 /f5
      Out:  597850 bytes               FramePNG.png /c2 /f5
      Chg:  -39423 bytes ( 93% of original)

<comment><USER56> Why even compare PNG and H.264 to begin with? PNG is a lossless compression format. A better comparison would be something lossy like JPG, which could easily shrink the size to ~100 kB. The point still stands, but at least it's a more relevant comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Well done. The only thing that could make this better is an interactive model/app for me to play around with. The frequency spectrum can probably be used while retouching images as well.

A video on youtube led me to Joofa Mac Photoshop FFT/Inverse FFT plugins [1] which was worth a try. I was unable to register it, as have others. Then I came across ImageJ [2], which is a really great tool (with FFT/IFFT).

Edit: if anyone checks out ImageJ, there's a bundled app called Fiji [3] that makes installation easier and has all the plugins.

If anyone has other apps/plugins to consider, please comment.

[1] [http://www.djjoofa.com/download](http://www.djjoofa.com/download)

[2] [https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/download.html](https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/download.html)

[3] [http://fiji.sc/](http://fiji.sc/)

<comment><USER58> I published a set of utilities that I developed for playing and to help myself learn about frequency analysis here, you might find them interesting:

[https://github.com/0x09/dspfun](https://github.com/0x09/dspfun)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I found this explanation of Xiph.org's Daala (2013) very interesting and enlightening in terms of understanding video encoding: [https://xiph.org/daala/](https://xiph.org/daala/)

Related:

BPG is an open source lossless format for images that uses HEVC under the hood, and is generally better than PNG across the board: [http://bellard.org/bpg/](http://bellard.org/bpg/)

For a runner-up lossless image format unencumbered by H265 patents (completely libre), try [http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/).

</comment><comment><USER60> A real fun read. Had an assignment a couple of weeks ago where we used the most k most significant singular values of matrices (from picture of Marilyn M.) to compress the image. H.264 is on a whole other level, though ;)

<comment><USER61> Now the Question is - Manson or Monroe - and which one would be easier to compress? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I enjoyed this for the most part and even learned a little. But it started out very simple terms and really appealing to the common folk. But then about halfway through the tone changed completely and was a real turn off to me. It's silly but this "If you paid attention in your information theory class" was the spark for me. I didn't take any information theory classes, why would I have paid attention? I don't necessarily think it was condescending, but maybe, it's just that the consistency of the writing changed dramatically.

Anyway super interesting subject.

</comment><comment><USER63> Really cool stuff, one thing though seems a little odd:

> Even at 2%, you don't notice the difference at this zoom level. 2%!

I'm not supposed to see that major streakiness? The 2% difference is extremely visible, even 11% leaves a noticably bad pattern on the keys (though I'd probably be okay with it in a moving video), only the 30% difference looks acceptable in a still image.

</comment><comment><USER64> I like this video explaining the difference between H.264 and H.265 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIesyNuxkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIesyNuxkg)

Simplistic as it is, it touches on all the main differences. The only problem with H.265 is the higher requirements and time needed for encoding and decoding.

</comment><comment><USER65> Damn, lost me during the frequency part.

<comment><USER66> Sometimes it's just easier to learn the math. (I am not kidding.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> What is the latest in video compression technology after H264 and H265?

The article discusses lossy compression in broad terms, but have we reaped all the low hanging fruit? Can we expect some sort of saturation just like we have with Moore's law where it gets harder and harder to optimize videos?

</comment><comment><USER55> If the author truly wants 'magic', how about we take a 64KiB demo that runs for 4 minutes. That's 64KiB containing 240 seconds of video, and your H.264 had to use 175 for only five seconds on video.

We can conclude that 64KiB demos are at least 48 times as magical as H.264.

</comment><comment><USER68> This was a good and interesting read. Is h.264 an open standard ?

<comment><USER69> Doesn't look like it; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC)

> H.264 is protected by patents owned by various parties. A license covering > most (but not all) patents essential to H.264 is administered by patent pool > MPEG LA.[2] Commercial use of patented H.264 technologies requires the > payment of royalties to MPEG LA and other patent owners. MPEG LA has allowed > the free use of H.264 technologies for streaming internet video that is free > to end users, and Cisco Systems pays royalties to MPEG LA on behalf of the > users of binaries for its open source H.264 encoder.

<comment><USER58> It is an open standard. Anyone can purchase and implement it, and it was developed by ISO. The technologies are not royalty free in the US. Don't conflate the two. *

Edit: I emphasize this mainly because the terms have a specific meaning in standards jargon but also because it places the blame for software patent abuses on the wrong parties (the standards developers rather than the lawyers and legislators).

<comment><USER68> OK, so it is open, but not free ? Is it available for academic purposes free of cost ?

<comment><USER70> You have to pay royalties to actually use it, but if you just want to read the thing, you can get it for free from the ITU. [https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201602-S/en](https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201602-S/en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> The comparison doe not make any sense, and no h264 is not magic!!: \- The guy is comparing a lossless format PNG to H264 which is a lossy video format, that is not fair. \- he is generating a 5 frame video and compared to 1 frame image, only the I-frame at the begining of the video matter in that case al the others are derived from it, P-Frame. \- What is the point of having that comparaison we already have images format comparable to the size of a H264 I-frame and using the same science (entropy coding, frequency domain, intra frame MB derivation...)?

<comment><USER72> Did you read the article?

The point you are making here is PRECISELY the point that the author was making in the article: that a lossy format can be far, far smaller. He then goes into the details (from a high-level point of view) of what kinds of losses H264 incurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> An enjoyable, short and to the point article with many examples and analogies. But my favorite part was this:

"Okay, but what the freq are freqX and freqY?"

</comment><comment><USER74> "1080p @ 60 Hz = 1920x1080x60x3 => ~370 MB/sec of raw data."

I apologize if this is trivial. What does 1920 in above equation represent?

<comment><USER75> 1080p is 1920x1080 px

Btw question is trivial but don't feel apologetic about asking questions. None of us know everything and in a field we don't know, our questions will be trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Try scrubbing backwards. H264 seeking only works nice if you're fast- forwarding the video. Actually, that is kind of magical.

</comment><comment><USER77> Do H.264 and WebRTC have different use cases? Or do they compete directly?

<comment><USER78> Let's say you want to video chat with someone using only web browsers, you would establish a direct peer-to-peer connection with WebRTC and then you could stream H.264 video to each other. I'd say WebRTC and H.264 compliment each other. However, the shared stream or data need not be H.264.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Great Write-up, thank you for your time and effort!

</comment><comment><USER80> Wow, now tell me how H.265 works!

</comment><comment><USER81> Copyrighted and patented magic.

</comment><comment><USER82> Well written article.

</comment><comment><USER83> Too trivial, too general, too pompous. I'd downvote.

</comment><comment><USER84> I need hacker

</comment><comment><USER85> I need hacker

</comment><comment><USER86> time to make move on: h.265

</comment><comment><USER87> Nice

</comment><comment><USER86> time to move on: h.265

</comment><comment><USER86> time to move on H.265

</comment><comment><USER88> H.265/HEVC vs H.264/AVC: 50% bit rate savings verified

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016/01/h-dot-265-slash-hevc- vs...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016/01/h-dot-265-slash-hevc-vs-h- dot-264-slash-avc-50-percent-bit-rate-savings-verified)

</comment><comment><USER89> So what's the final car weight? It looks like you stopped at the Chroma subsampling section..

<comment><AUTHOR> 6.5 Ounces! or 0.4 lbs. Thanks for the feedback! I added the final weight into the conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> This is great as a high-level overview... except that it's _way too_ high- level. These are all extremely well-known techniques. Is there any modern video compression scheme that doesn't employ them?

In other words, why is H.264 _in particular_ magical?

</comment><comment><USER91> > _" If you don't zoom in, you would even notice the difference."_

First of all, I think he meant "you would NOT even notice".

Second of all, that's the first thing I noticed. That PNG looks crystal clear. The video looks like overcompressed garbage.

</comment><comment><USER92> Well explained. I was thinking of reading about h264 and this is an amazing starter. Thanks Sid!

</comment><comment><USER93> s/magic/lossy

</comment><comment><USER94> "This concept of throwing away bits you don't need to save space is called lossy compression."

What a terrible introduction of lossy compression. This would mean that if I empty the thrash bin on my desktop, it's lossy compression.

The concept of going through all compression ideas that are used is pretty neat though.

<comment><USER95> > This would mean that if I empty the thrash bin on my desktop, it's lossy > compression.

It is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> MB is 1024 * 1024 * bytes not 1000 * 1000 * bytes. Unless you're a HDD/SSD manufacturer.

<comment><USER97> MiB (mebibyte) is 1024 * 1024 bytes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Ugh. Comparing the file size difference between a lossless PNG and a LOSSY H.264 video of a STATIC PAGE is absurd. Calling it "300 times the amount of data," when it's a STATIC IMAGE is insulting in the extreme. It really doesn't matter if the rest of the article has insights, because you lost me already.

<comment><USER99> He clarifies right after that he got to those numbers because he used a lossless vs lossy encoder. Really should've kept reading

<comment><USER98> "right after that".

No he didn't explain "right after that." He rambled on and on, and even after all of that, he STILL doesn't bring up JPG.

It's an inherently stupid comparison to make. You can't polish a turd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Sorry if I was unclear. The comparison with PNG is very intentional to illustrate the vast difference in the compression efficiencies involved. I do state the difference clearly here though:

> This concept of throwing away bits you don't need to save space is called > lossy compression. H.264 is a lossy codec - it throws away less important > bits and only keeps the important bits.

> PNG is a lossless codec. It means that nothing is thrown away. Bit for bit, > the original source image can be recovered from a PNG encoded image.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surface Pro hardware issues after just two weeks - <AUTHOR> http://www.i4edge.com/2013/03/01/microsoft-surface-pro-hardware-problems-with-just-two-week-use/ Is anyone else having problems with their surface pro screen or other hardware issues? <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.i4edge.com/2013/03/01/microsoft-surface-pro- hardw...](http://www.i4edge.com/2013/03/01/microsoft-surface-pro-hardware- problems-with-just-two-week-use/)

Is anyone else having hardware problems with their Surface Pro?</comment>


Ask HN: Patent for your idea? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering at what point do you file patent for your idea.<p>Also, is there a way to find out if someone else have filed provisional patent for the same idea? <comment><USER2> You patent inventions, not ideas. If you choose to file, you may have to give away information that could be useful to your competition.

A few reasons to patent: . you really have a defensible invention, in which case you should be doing this with a patent attorney . to gain negotiating advantage, in case you get drawn into a patent fight . to give the impression you've invented some truly innovative tech - some VCs like this . to increase company valuation, in the eyes of VCs and others

A few reasons not to patent: . if you disclose your tech, it could be easily copied without your knowledge . a patent on your invention is not worth the cost to file or defend your patent

</comment><comment><USER3> This is base on what little I understand of US Patents (does not apply outside of the US)...

I could be wrong but I don't think you can patent an idea, but rather, a specific process, method, technology, etc... That said, the overall cost of a patent can be quite expensive, ranging in the 5-figures all told. Its a process at that.

As for your original question, I guess like most things, it depends. Personally, I would like to see the idea gain some traction first before you attempt to make any unnecessary expensive decisions towards doing a patent, especially if you don't have the money to lose.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you've got $10,000+ to spend on doing so, and have a reasonable expectation of that being a wise expenditure of resources.

It often happens that patents appear to have significant overlap, so "the same idea" is a problematic way to look at it. These aren't really evaluated thoroughly until and unless legal proceedings result.</comment>


Netflix's new European expansion will add Germany, France and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/21/netflix-france-germany/ <comment><USER2> They will also expand to Belgium, here is how our monopolist prepared Netflix's coming... It's kinda frustrating

So, take this use- case: Telenet is the market leader, they provide telephone, fax, internet and digital TV. All together the cheapest combo is 64 € / month. Since Netflix came to Europe, they added a package called Rex en Rio.

Rex is the lite Netflix alternative, it's 15 € / month. (1000 movies, 1000 series, not the latest series), whileRex's big brother (RIO) is 25 € / month (2000 movies, 2000 series and the "latest").

So, having "everything" from them costs 65 + 25 € = 90 € month, that's 123 $. But let's say i buy Netflix and want to stream in HD, that's 2,3 GB / hour, while i have a limit of 100 GB/month (more expensive packages also have a limit of 100 GB/month).

That means if i chose Netflix, i can watch <50 hours Netflix per month, for having broadband, i have to pay Telenet 0,5 / GB.. So watching a 3 hour movie (Lord of the Rings) will cost me an additional 1,5 € that i have to pay my ISP for 1 movie through a third-party..

:-(</comment>


How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thatdavidhopkins/how-a-tv-sitcom-triggered-the-downfall-of-western-civilization-336e8ccf7dd0#.7jtul07as <comment><USER2> I used to think along the lines of the author - that nerds needed protection from bullies - and maybe from the most violent ones that is true.

But greatness does not exist in a vacuum. Strength of mind comes from resistance, just as strength of body does.

Blessed are those who have a smattering of enemies, for they shall become heroes.

Any nerd who allows someone with 30 fewer IQ points to dictate the terms of their lives doesn't deserve the title of nerd.</comment>


Comedians are coming for one of Instagram's biggest joke aggregators - valiant-comma https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206914/fuckjerry-jerry-media-comedian-backlash-joke-stealing-vulture <comment><AUTHOR> > "We welcome a renewed conversation about how best to address this paradigm," > a spokesperson says.

Not that I'm surprised, but what a garbage statement. We've been stealing things, yes, but goodness, what a great opportunity this is for dialogue!</comment>


Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-thrusters-after-37 <comment><USER2> Discussion exists: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369)</comment>


Goat2Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://www.sweetfarm.org/goat-2-meeting <comment><USER2> This is great!

My company has been getting musicians in our morning meetings on Zoom, it's really an awesome way to start the day.

Recommend checking out [https://www.spresence.com/](https://www.spresence.com/) if you're looking for talent (I am not affiliated)

<comment><USER3> Somewhat relatedly, my kids had their guitar lessons over Zoom this week and I found Zoom has an "original audio" option that bypasses noise cancellation, etc. Makes a huge difference for music - before I enabled it, the guitar sound was fading in and out constantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. The SweetFarm team has been very creative. I once saw you could feed the animals by making the donation online and seeing the live video.

The team is super down to earth and I think this Goat-2-Meeting is just hilarious. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER5> Next up, zoo-m.

<comment><USER6> If nearly two dozen farms made a coalition, they could call it Goatvid-19.

<comment><USER7> Cowvid-19 has a better ring to my ears.

<comment><USER8> It reads nicely but doesn't sound good

<comment><USER9> What are you talking about? It sounds great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just wrote to them asking if they offer the service in Spanish so my girlfriend can include it in her online classes of philosophy for her highschool students. I'll post here if they do.

<comment><USER11> With cows that go "mu" instead of "moo", and chickens that go "clo-clo" instead of "cluck-cluck"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is genius. Farm animal sanctuaries educate consumers about the cruelty of animal agriculture while providing a compassionate home for rescued farm animals to live out their lives. People tour the sanctuaries and meet animals that they would never otherwise meet, and learn that they're at least as interesting and lovable as the dogs and cats we would never consider eating.

These nonprofit organizations are expert in caring for animals, so it's surprising to see such a tech savvy response to the pandemic. The pandemic has shut public access to sanctuaries, but this idea means potentially _more_ people can now meet these animals. Another great story about human creativity and adaptability in the face of crisis.

<comment><USER13> >Farm animal sanctuaries educate consumers about the cruelty of animal agriculture while providing a compassionate home for rescued farm animals to live out their lives.

There is nothing evil about animal agriculture done right per se. The term you're looking for is an industrial farm. There are (or were) many farms where herds and flocks are raised with compassion and respect even if at the end of the day they are destined for a dinner plate somewhere.

Please don't paint the entire farming/animal husbandry profession with the same brush. There is a very big difference between the places that treat their animals/livestock well, and those that show not even the merest semblance of care for life in general. I'm totally with you on being disgusted by what industrial farms get away with; but I've also been part of an Op where meat cows were run and treated well. It is what you make it; and while it can seem like it takes a cold heart to do the worst part of the job (culling for market), the care that goes in to raising them the rest of the time and keeping the herd safe, contained, happy and healthy is extremely hard (and relatively uncompensated) work, which only becomes more sustainable by being smarter about your inputs.

It's frustrating when people only seem to want to talk about how Ag is full of people like the guy who is running. A herd the next pasture overwith a bunch of underfed Longhorns, that'll break down our fencing to get to our ladies' protein tubs. Think he can be bothered to be held responsible? Nope. He's out of contact on a regular basis, and every time, we ended up eating the time cost of repairs or separating the herds.

Sorry if it's a bit ranty; but I won't tolerate the assertion farming and cruelty go hand-in-hand. It's hard, unforgiving, largely thankless work to the rest of the world. Sometimes the only thing making it emotionally tenable is the fact you at least haven't stooped to the level of making your animals' lives hell in order to make it work yet; and that at the end of the day they still do exactly what they are there to do for you. Day in, day out. More reliable than some people that way.

<comment><USER14> > I won't tolerate the assertion farming and cruelty go hand-in-hand.

You don't need to hold it yourself, but if you don't tolerate other people saying it? I'm fine with that assertion, and in fact given my morals that assertion naturally follows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's cute, and hopefully it will generate money, but it would never replace petting a real goat. I feel like this age is the answer to that college essay question, where it's proposed technology will remove the need for travel to have those experiences, and physical travel will become a thing of the past. Pick a side and defend your argument.

<comment><USER16> We humans have far more senses than the 5 that are taught. Touch is one of them.

Our human brains will always respond to touch.

<comment><USER17> Touch is one of the 5 senses.

<comment><USER18> _Technically_ GP didn't say touch wasn't one of the five.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> yes invite a goat to your meeting! It'll be fun until this Silicon Valley company sells your trade secrets to your competitor because they have been recording all the meetings you have openly invited them to.

I still like the idea somewhat though

<comment><USER18> It's like that recent commercial with Jeff Goldblum and the dog with a microphone on it.</comment></comment>


Mobile payments firms in India are now scrambling to make money - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mobile-payments-firms-india-now-233520002.html <comment><USER2> "Paytm, which has raised more than $3 billion to date, reported a loss of $549 million in the financial year ending in March 2019."</comment>


Startup idea: YouTube transcripts - <AUTHOR>

On our blog (Medgadget.com) we embed lots of videos. Unfortunately, we don't have time to create transcripts under the videos. As everyone knows, transcripts are super useful: most people would rather read a transcript and then check the video, then watch a video to begin with. It would be nice to have a service that provides a convenient way to insert a code that generates a transcript just under the embedded YouTube.<p>Am I right or am I wrong? <comment><USER2> <http://speakertext.com/> Hope it helps

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be really nice. The problem is to generate the transcript. Even YouTube speech recognition system is crap when there's not a perfect, clear sound. Maybe you could use the transcripts that are already on YouTube when the uploader has created it, but of course it wouldn't be so useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you thinking of a service to automate the paperwork for a staff of human transcribers? The state of the art of computer transcription is even worse than computer translation.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://speakertext.com> offers this I think. Their captionbox is pretty slick.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not exactly the same but closely related, I think:

<http://dotsub.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I would definitely prefer a text over a video.

</comment><comment><USER8> Transcripts would be cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Say, I subscribe to this service. There are lots of youtube videos out there. I pay for each transcript. So, once I embed a code, a human being transcribes the video, and transcript shows up. The system can be setup so posts in draft/pending mode in WordPress tell the service that a transcript needs to be generated.

<comment><USER9> Make it a transcription market - give the transcriptors rights and royalties to their transcriptions.</comment></comment></comment>


Johns Hopkins coronavirus map changes "Taiwan" to "Taipei and environs" - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/johns-hopkins-coronavirus-map-taiwan-china-5c461906-4f1c-42e7-b78e-a4b43f4520ab.html <comment><USER2> Gosh I don't want to politicize this. I just want to applaud that Lauren Gardner and project team have autonomy to act in this matter, and the institution is not getting involved.

I tried to have a dialogue with a private institution and a PhD in cartography on Twitter on this same matter, with regards to an article they posted. They ignored not just me, but removed other comments on their blog that were calling their attention to the issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it interesting that they said they would change it back as soon as they found out about it. That suggests it's not an institutional decision but rather it's some sort of individual acting, I wonder if they someone else or just took it upon themselves to change the name to be more in line with what China would prefer?

<comment><USER4> Or I suppose it could even have happened due to an upstream change in some open source geo library. That would also explain them seeming to be unaware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of an excellent malicious compliance on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/8s58d3...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/8s58d3/diplomatically_compliant/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this. The reality distortion has a ripple effect. The exchange with a private institution I mentioned in another comment on this post: [https://twitter.com/raywu/status/1234219329350037506](https://twitter.com/raywu/status/1234219329350037506)</comment></comment>


Tesla Model X SUV Is Coming In Early 2015 With Gull-Wing Doors - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/16/the-tesla-model-x-suv-is-coming-in-early-2015-with-gull-wing-doors/?source=gravity&cps=gravity

<comment><USER2> I don't see the under-promising and over-delivering the post mentions. If anything, if true, it is now under-delivering in my opinion. Base on what I saw before, it was assumed that the gull wing doors and 3rd row seats were standard. Now, according to the post, the 3rd row seats are optional. Thats a very different. I wouldn't mind if they decided to do optional gull wing doors for some customers but making 3rd row seats an upgrade totally downgrades the expectation if nothing else for me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gullwing doors seem really awkward and create more problems than they solve (low garage roofs, ski racks etc). I hope they are an option, rather than standard.</comment>


Learn Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Classical Greek and Other Ancient Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/learn-latin-old-english-sanskrit-classical-greek-other-ancient-languages-in-10-lessons.html <comment><USER2> I'm kind of disappointed this isn't higher; I regret not upvoting it yesterday before I fell asleep.

I have wanted and seen that others on the forums have wanted Old English and Latin added to Duolingo. There seem not to be many resources for learning OE (but the few that there are, are pretty good.)

Anyway, thanks for the link. I will lean heavily on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are also some pretty obscure ancient languages there -- besides the obvious Latin, Greek, and OE, there's things like Tocharian and Gothic, which I've never seen more than just the names of, but there's actual lessons on the site!

</comment><comment><USER4> My advice for those who want to learn Latin: Don't. It's a horrible language.

Fuck you Livy I still get nightmares.

</comment><comment><USER5> [2014]

Learn those languages in just 10 lessons...</comment>


Session hijacking attack with Firesheep, a Firefox extension (1M+ downloads) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/codebutler/firesheep#readme

<comment><AUTHOR> For more info: <http://codebutler.com/firesheep></comment>