Your battery status may be used to track you online - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/02/battery-status-indicators-tracking-online <comment><USER2> This was a terrible idea from the start. In the best case scenario, what is supposed to happen? The sites I visit suddenly start being served as shells of their former selves in order to save the compute cost of rendering them? Web designers are supposed to figure out an entirely new design mode for the whole site to cater to visitors with low batteries?

Now back to the real world, where many sites I visit peg my desktop CPU trying to serve so many ads and so much tracking to squeeze every possible cent of profitability from my visit. If there's a war against ad-blockers, did we think these sites would relent and say, oh, OK, I see you might be low on battery, I'll serve just the content you want _this time_?!

No, this is a purely client-side concern, with plenty of purely client-side mitigation which can be put into place. That the protocol actually specified 14m degrees of granularity -- from what at the very least ought to have been a binary setting -- makes me wonder if the point wasn't user tracking all along.

Missing from the article: Do all user agents actually provide this information in request headers? Is there a way to shut it off?

<comment><USER3> As a web application developer, one idea that comes to mind is that, if I were writing an app that supports offline usage, I'd probably want to be aware of a low battery situation so that I can save my state and warn the user that the app needs to shut down to avoid data loss. I might also switch from online mode to offline mode, again letting the user know (and letting them override the choice, maybe.)

I can't see any reason to make use of the battery status server-side. But, there's also no way to prevent the information from being sent, once you make it available to javascript code on the device. If the standard api didn't send it, then you'd just see ad-hoc apis gathering the data locally and sending it.

<comment><USER4> However, I don't think the battery state needs to be as granular as it is to support those use-cases. A simple boolean hasLowBattery or a much coarser 0%-25%-50%-75%-100% enumeration seems like it would have been sufficient.

<comment><USER2> If anything, I would propose the mode should be a user-controlled bit called simply: "LOW"

Maybe I request low mode because...

      I hope you serve me less crappy ads
      I haven't bought a new phone in 3 years
      I am running other apps which need more CPU
      I find too much interactivity distracting or confusing
      I just want to read black text on a white background
      I hate your website, but need to visit it for some reason anyway
      ...
      I have full battery, but I need to conserve it
      I have low battery

EDIT: Fuck, I just realized, this already exists, and it's called NOSCRIPT. Wait, we could call this LOWSCRIPT!

<comment><USER5> So much truth in here... this proposal would be very welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surely the answer here is for the browser to not give such fine-grained information. For example always give the charge level to the nearest 10 percent and the battery life to the nearest 10 seconds.

<comment><USER7> Or just Green (high), Amber (medium) and Red (low). There's no need for more granularity than that.

<comment><USER8> Or take the iOS approach. The phone is either in a low power mode or not.

The benefit is that the user doesn't need an additional setting for each potential web app to set the threshold for a low power mode, it's all done once at the OS level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because web developers have this dream of replacing native apps, the industry has been busy removing piece by piece the sandbox that browser apps live in. They want to have all the power and features of native apps except one: app store review and approval. But if you have all the power of native without any moderation, plus the wild west of user-hostile ad-networks... actually i don't know where it leads but it's not good.

<comment><USER10> I have that dream but didn't ask for the sandbox to be removed. Having users approve use of location data is quite fine by me, and clearly superior to the way it works with native Android apps, where the user has to approve a bunch of permissions at install time, not knowing for sure which ones are actually necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, I'm surprised how much info is available in desktop chrome. Events get fired when I unplug my laptop and plug it back in: [https://www.audero.it/demo/battery-status-api- demo.html](https://www.audero.it/demo/battery-status-api-demo.html)

I searched Chrome settings for "battery" and found nothing. I did find this article with instructions for turning it off in Firefox: [https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery- invading-...](https://www.hackread.com/smartphone-laptop-battery-invading- privacy/)

I'm not opposed to the concept of a battery API, but as others have commented, it would be just as useful with a lot less granularity.

<comment><USER11> Chrome has fixed the granularity a long time ago [https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/637776d1183...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/637776d1183dd286f040349341e1881023851ef9) and I guess most other browsers have fixed it as well.

<comment><USER10> They've closed the window but left the door open. See the link I posted. When the page knows "Battery will be discharged in 18365 seconds" it doesn't matter that the battery percentage is only two digits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mobile device fingerprinting has been a big deal for a long time. Multiple startups have been created to do it and some have been acquired. And many adtech companies incorporate this functionality.

I hope some day soon your mobile OS let's you choose to restrict the device information available to sites and apps. It really ought to be a user's choice whether to make the tradeoff between providing more info in exchange for supposedly better functionality or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> about:config, dom.battery.enabled = false

Plus ad blocking and "social button" blocking, as a preventive measure for this kind of issue.

The Web is the new Wild West.

<comment><USER14> You are now one of 10 people with that flag disabled. Not sure that makes you less trackable.

<comment><USER15> This has always been an interesting question. What is anonymity (less trace- ability) - hiding in the crowd or uniqueness?

<comment><USER16> What is the argument for uniqueness?

<comment><USER15> Example - Satoshi Nakamoto of Bitcoin fame

<comment><USER17> Not really anonymous. People have a pretty good idea of which bitcoins are his. He just never does anything with them, so that knowledge doesn't serve much of a purpose.

It would be sort of like setting your browser's user-agent to a unique identifier that you never change, but then never actually using the browser for anything. It's not the unique ID that hides you, it's the fact that you never use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone building a cross-platform battery monitor that depends on APIs like this being available, I think the best solution would be to treat battery status like the location information, where the user is asked on a case-by- case basis whether to provide the information.

You might argue that this sort of stuff should only be available to native applications, that browsers should not attempt to replace native apps or even recreate an OS within themselves (something Chrome is often criticized for). The thing is, my battery monitor has native apps and yet users have been asking for web-based clients, be it browser extensions or plain web pages. And with some platforms loading a website or installing an extension has much less friction than installing a native app.

Sure, extensions can have access to a lot of stuff webpages don't have. But I would rather use standardized APIs that work across all browsers and are well documented in more than one website, than have to rewrite my extension for each browser and not have it work on plain old pages.

If the battery API was made to work like the location one I think everyone would be happy - users are informed and in control, developers can still offer features based on it, and it raises red flags when it needs to ("why is this advert asking about my battery status?").

</comment><comment><USER19> Worth noting that Safari on iOS doesn't support this API.

<comment><USER20> I guess sometimes I'm happy using "the IE6 of 2016"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do I disable this in Chromium? I feel like I ask this question at least once a month, by the way. Last time, it was for WebRTC information leakage...

</comment><comment><USER22> why is this even available to websites?

        navigator.getBattery().then(function(a) {console.log(a);})

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Battery_Status...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Battery_Status_API)

<comment><USER23> To be able to load a less resource intensive version (i.e. disable animations, reduce refresh rate, remove canvas elements etc...) of a website if the battery is low.

<comment><USER24> Yea ok...but who does that really ? lets face it, this is just some extra signals so they can track you more easily. I know it was never intended to be used as tracking information but the least they could do is be less precise about your battery percentage.

<comment><USER25> This is ridiculous IMO. Instead of providing false (or "less precise") data let's not provide that data in the first place.

My guess is this is just another part of the attempt to move desktop features to the web browsers so that people don't have to write actual applications. Personally, I don't like this trend.

<comment><USER26> As I noted elsewhere, it's about more than "so that people don't have to write actual applications" (although I grant you that you have identified a real thing).

For the ideologically inclined, it's also about disintermediating the relationship between users and developers. Web sites don't need an app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Uber had done some data science on battery levels too: [http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/uber-surge-pricing- batter...](http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/uber-surge-pricing-battery- life_us_573f2057e4b0613b512a0130)

</comment><comment><USER28> These types of articles are silly in that they leave out the context that nearly every variable that is pseudo-unique to you is already being used and that this is a common practice known as fingerprinting that has been done since forever. Headline: "New variable x can be used to track you". Well, yea. Add that to the size your browser window is, what plugins you have installed, your IP address, and many more ways a website can use to surmise a relationship between two disjoint events.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's just another data point to add to a long list for fingerprinting.

See: [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

<comment><USER30> I was about to post the same link in another response, but then I saw you'd already posted it. It's quite scary, really.

Here's my result:

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 119,205 tested so far.

Privacy is great...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Every time these new user tracking hacks come up (like the one based on Audio API etc.) I wonder why in the world this is not handled in a manner similar to Android where it prompts you to give permissions to the any specific API its going to use.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not mine, since I have JavaScript turned off (how do you know I have JavaScript turned off? Don't worry, I'll let you know every time there's a browser exploit or privacy hole due to JavaScript — so at least thrice weekly).

</comment><comment><USER33> Shouldn't things like this be illegal? I mean, you are not allowed to use TV cameras anywhere, unless strict rules are obeyed (closed circuit, etc).

Why should we allow companies recording other features that can identify us?

<comment><USER34> But this is more like saying "I'm walking in a shop, the shop shouldn't record what tipe of shirt I'm wearing". It's not something hidden if the phone is giving the info out. The only thing we could do is stop the phone from sending the information in the first place.

<comment><USER33> But your shirt is also radiating information :)

(btw, I don't think this should be a technical debate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This, and certain other capabilities, should be guarded like access to location data: Available upon user agreement only and just on secure connections (i.e. TLS).

</comment><comment><USER36> Such abuse of technology was the main target of the "EU cookie law", not the use of session cookies that all sites are warning about now.

</comment><comment><USER37> Bullshit..</comment>


If Steve Ballmer Ran Apple - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2013/if-steve-ballmer-ran-apple/ <comment><USER2> From everything I've heard I fear Google is next up on this Ballmer path. They are turning off R&D and looking to capitalize on what they have after a decade of crazy growth from new things that fell out of R&D. It's bizaar to watch them do this, but this at least explains their motivation. As to how they let this start happening to themselves... oh well. Slippery slope

<comment><USER3> Definitely doesn't seem that way from the inside. We're constantly productizing new research that comes from R&D. Self-driving cars, Glass, DistBelief, etc.

In fact, one thing that's unusual about Google is how much R&D actually makes it into products (unlike, say, Microsoft, whose research group turns out great stuff but rarely does anything with it). In that sense, it's less pure blue- sky, but more applied. I think it's more akin to the Manhattan Project, Apollo program, etc - scientists and engineers working closely together to redefine what's possible. (We even internally refer to the ambitious projects as moon shots). SpaceX and Tesla are doing work in a similar vein - an virtuous cycle of innovations and research.

<comment><USER4> This is mostly (edit: completely -> mostly) inaccurate (edit: untrue -> inaccurate). Just because we aren't vocal about what gets tech transferred doesn't mean it doesn't happen (disclosure, I work for MSRA, one of the MSR labs; I assume you work for Google).

Google differs from MSR in that almost all of their researchers work in product teams on products. Their contributions are highly visible as a result, but they don't really get to take the risks that we get to in a research lab setting. Much of the work that Google capitalizes on comes out of universities: Google then hires the researchers and allows them to continue working on the research as a product. For example, Google did not take the big initial risks on self driving cars (DARPA funded that), but they've bought into it and think its product ready (which is a risk in itself, but a different kind). And if your researchers are working on products (emitting their experience), they don't exactly have time to do new research (collecting new experiences for later emission). Google's 20% time was supposed to help fix that, but its not clear that this works.

I (and many of my colleagues I think) have a lot of respect for the Google way. At the same time, it is quite clear that the results of both systems are very different.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't MSRA behind that amazing live English-to-Chinese translator [0]?

It's interesting to contrast Google's and Microsoft's approach with ours at Wolfram Research (at 0.3% their size, of course [1]).

We've come to see that it is very fruitful to live in a murky space somewhere between "commercial product" and "research project".

I'm thinking specifically about Wolfram|Alpha.

It's an enormous and daunting project. We've tackled a lot of very hard problems, and obviously have a long way still to go.

It has the weird property of being a thing that ships every week, but not one that the parent company depends on financially.

And so we kind of do our own thing, encoding domain knowledge, adding content, curating data, and designing frameworks, even if some if it won't ever make us any money (e.g. who will ever pay for dog vision [2]). We mostly just do things because they're cool or fun.

But it's been incredibly useful to drive innovation elsewhere in the company.

For example:

1\. Alpha's unit system (the best in the world, the authors claim) is already in Mathematica 9.

2\. Alpha is inspiring us to bring high-level semantic data and reasoning to Mathematica 10.

3\. The automatic analysis in Pro is being souped up and will form part of Mathematica's predictive interface (automatic suggestions to "perform logistic regression", and so on).

4\. We're working on taking the natural language understanding frameworks we've built for Alpha and using them to translate natural language queries into structured SQL or hierarchical document queries.

5\. The domain specific languages we've invented to represent things in the real world are going to be exposed in a soon-to-be open format we're calling the Wolfram Data Format (which I hope will succeed where RDF is failing).

We wouldn't have though of any of this stuff without Alpha. And it wasn't explicitly driven by either commercial or basic research, but rather some kind of eccentric blend of the two.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu- nlQqFCKg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu-nlQqFCKg) [1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=600+people+%2F+%28numbe...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=600+people+%2F+%28number+of+employees+at+microsoft+%2B+google%29) [2] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apply+dog+vision+to+ima...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apply+dog+vision+to+image+of+a+lady+bug)

<comment><USER4> Yes, a semi-research project with lots of peel offs works well. It is nice that Wolfram has a nice product with good profits that can bankroll something like Alpha. Seemingly inefficient (not directly profitable) experimentation is a great way of driving innovation and invention. Contrast with Apple, who has a razor sharp focus on profitable products: they don't make many mistakes, and they aren't taking any risks these days.

As an aside, I don't think the mostly constructed knowledge representation approach taken by Alpha will scale in the long run. You guys might want to look at playing around more with machine learning. On the other hand, there are gaps in machine learning that are best filled by DSLs and explicit construction.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Fewer arrows has worked well for Apple.

We _are_ taking machine learning more seriously (I claim some credit here). My team is integrating ML into Mathematica 10 as we speak. And we've experimented with deep learning. I think some interesting things will come out of that in the future.

I think a hybrid approach is pragmatic. There is much computational knowledge that can't be assembled from web scrapes, as Google's purchase of Metaweb indicates (anyone remember Google Squared?).

<comment><USER4> I am seriously looking forward to see what you guys come up with!

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Likewise, my eyes are always peeled for the latest stuff from MSR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to disagree with one of the final conclusions of the article. For me, at least, it's far easier to imagine life without Apple or Amazon than it is to imagine life without Microsoft.

Say Amazon goes bankrupt tomorrow. All of their products stop working over night. Many people are upset because you can't get things as cheap, but for the most part they go to other online retailers, of which there are many. The Kindle is pretty easy to imagine life without, as are most of the other services. AWS going black would frustrate much of the web, but most of that could be taken up by the litany of providers in that space.

Apple is a little trickier, but to my knowledge (take with a whole shaker of salt) they don't have a huge ongoing set of services, and most Apple skills are pretty transferable to other *nix style services. If anything, I could imagine that Linux might get a whole lot of extra designers. The iPhone would be missed, and there would be some havoc as people rush to alternatives, but it doesn't do anything truly special that an S4 or equivalent doesn't do. The iPad would be missed also, but it's the same story.

Microsoft though has its fingers in so many pies that if it disappears over night it would basically stop much of the planet. There are a lot of devices running Windows Mobile still. There are loads of applications in use that simply won't run on anything but Windows. Millions of people that don't have the skills to use anything but Office/Windows. Earth without Microsoft would be drastically different. Outlook/Exchange is huge also. There are masses of IT staff that would simply not know how to use anything else.

Now, that's not to say that they haven't done a lot of work to take themselves out of that position. Windows 8 was, as I think everyone here would know, a train wreck. There are developers developing for the web, Android and iPhone that 5-10 years ago would have been developing applications that would only have run on Windows. I just don't think either Apple or Amazon have the irreplaceability in so many fields that MS does.

<comment><USER7> Why would you think that Microsoft's overnight disappearance would cause the sudden failure of things like Outlook/Exchange?

They are deployed software. Sure, they would stop being updated, but I reckon that for most organizations they would become legacy software over the years.

<comment><USER6> The thought experiment was that the companies went bankrupt _and_ their products stopped working. A world without the company or its products. That probably should have been clearer, since if Amazon went bankrupt most of its products probably _would_ go dark (unlike Apple/MS).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's see where Microsoft is vs where Apple is in 3 years. Apple has 0 innovation going on. OS X and IOS are stale as anything. They are riding on earlier success and eventually will fizzle out.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, Apple is doomed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Beleaguered is the preferred term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft, infamously, has been willing to lose billions year after year on new products in the hope of future success. They spend as much as anyone on basic research and incubations with no certainty of productization. For better or worse they've also taken on major redesigns of existing products focused on future scenarios at the risk of damaging short-term success (e.g., Windows 8, office 2007). None of those things fit his narrative about narrow short-term profit maximization.

(The example of the above he does mention - Xbox - he dismisses because it's not that profitable! So when something is profitable it's a sign of narrow short-term profit focus, but if it's not it's irrelevant because profit is what matters. Huh?)

Microsoft does seem to have trouble turning its R&D activity into breakthrough products, but his attempt at a narrative explaining why just doesn't fit the facts and doesn't make sense.

</comment><comment><USER11> The premise is wrong. Ballmer grew Microsoft profits but he did not maximize profits for Microsoft shareholders. In fact MS share price was famously flat for far too long, and jumped 8% when Ballmer announced his resignation. It's Apple and not Microsoft which delivered amazing shareholder profits. Some basic fact checking before writing an article would be nice.

<comment><USER12> Are you thinking of capital gain? That's not profit per se.

<comment><USER11> I'm thinking of what the article said, "doing a good job for Microsoft's shareholders" as Ballmer claimed. He did in fact not do that. Please look up the share price, it has been flat below $40 during his entire reign. And MS isn't issuing some amazing dividend either.

<comment><USER12> I think the article does a pretty good job of elucidating why the traditional view that a manager's job is to generate the maximum profit for shareholders (narrow view or the Milton Friedman mantra) no longer works - yet the contemporary holy grail as taught in management schools that advancing a broad range of stakeholder interests and also pursuing corporate social responsibility agenda (broad view) does seem to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the most intelligent summary of Ballmer's tenure I've seen. It falls back on more facts and numbers than I think all of the others I've read combined.

As technology people, we look at companies through a different lens than investors, shareholders and the like. We want to be impressed, we want to be given a new toy that disrupts existing markets and allows us to develop software in some new way, but that isn't the only way to make money and create value.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like someone's noticed that Apple no longer makes the most profit in smart phones and started planning the next era of Apple myth-making.

Time to revisit this piece now that Samsung (and therefore Android) profit share has caught up with market share enough to overtake Apple:

[http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/winning](http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/winning)

"The iPhone, on the other hand, currently accounts for two-thirds of the mobile phone industry's total profit. Mobile carriers need the iPhone today. Computer stores did not need the Mac.

It's easy to pick and choose the numbers you want to back up the theory you prefer. So if you're rooting for Android to dominate the industry, it is tempting to focus on unit sale market share, and to attribute Windows's historical dominance to its massive unit sale market share. But you can flip that around, and argue that because I am rooting for the iPhone, I cherry pick the data to fit the story I want to see unfold — and so I say profit share is what matters, not unit sales, only because that's the figure that puts Apple's position in the best light.

But I like the odds that I'll be proven right. Money is how you keep score, because it's the one thing whose value everyone agrees upon. That's what money is."

<comment><USER15> Samsung profit share has nowhere near caught up with Apple.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not- de...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-dethroned- apple-in-mobile-profits)

Looks like you've been taken in by misinformation.

<comment><USER14> Strange, _my_ Appleinsider link, from a few days after yours, shows that Samsung have closed the gap massively over the last year or so and was within 3 percentage points at the end of last quarter, a whole two months ago and just before the new iPhone announcement. Not generally a big sales period for Apple.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple- takes-53-of-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/31/apple-takes-53-of- smartphone-profits-samsung-at-50-remainder-lose-money)

They've been publishing that data for years and never once questioned it before. I wonder what happened that got one of their staff so riled up about the issue? Oh yes, probably Samsung overtaking Apple in smartphone profit share.

<comment><USER16> Are you emotionally invested in Samsung's success (or Apple's failure)? Because if so, Gizmodo's right over there dude. I come to HN to read insightful analysis, not to read a bunch of people Grubering about whatever imaginary tribe they think they belong to.

<comment><USER15> The linked article is pretty Gruberish. If you don't like analysis of an opinion piece, perhaps this was the wrong comment section to read.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, very true. My grumpiness gets the best of me sometimes.:(

I guess I wish the HN response to a Gruberish article would be people analyzing it for what it is, not people gloating about how they think their team is, uh, winning or whatever, then arguing about the numbers that they think proves it. Maybe the post I was responding to was some sort of pro- Android Gruber parody or something. If that's the case, then it was awesome, because it really captured some very subtle nuances about how that brand of commentary operates.

<comment><USER14> I'm just fascinated by the myth-making that surrounds Apple.

How could anyone read an Apple pundit claim that profit is the only metric that matters and not nearly die of cognitive dissonance after so many years of excuses/reasons why beleaguered Apple's Mac OS 9 and X was better. And yet it's par for the course.

And now here's an article which claims to be about Ballmer (a figure of fun for the Apple crowd) but is really about how Apple is morally superior for not being capitalist!?

It's hilarious, fascinating and a bit sad. And strange to be at the inflexion point where they go back to all the stories from the Windows vs Mac OS days e.g. they've already cast both Google and Samsung, to play Microsoft's role as the evil villain who copied all their good ideas and didn't deserve success.

And have you read the Appleinsider piece that gets trotted out to defend Apple's profit share lead? It's a very, very odd read. But you mention that Apple have not got the profit lead anymore and you get several links to it, and several repetitions of the "Samsung numbers are dodgy" talking point. It's a very organised media bubble.

<comment><USER17> And the "Google copied Apple" trope is such garbage. _Danger, Inc._ was the innovator here, releasing their first Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick 5 years minus 3 months before the iPhone. Danger co-founder Andy Rubin left them a year later (let's hear it for non-compete unenforceablity in California!) to co-found Android, Inc., which was bought by Google in another couple of years, still 2 years prior to the iPhone's release.

There's no way in hell the first Android phone could have been released 5 quarters after the iPhone without it being long in gestation.

<comment><USER15> You can't expect anyone to take this seriously. The hiptop was nothing like the iPhone.

And in 2007 before the iPhone was released Android looked like a blackberry clone: [http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-ve...](http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2012/05/2007s-pre-m3-version- of-android-google.html?m=1)

<comment><USER14> Well the Hiptop had an app store, which the first iPhone didn't, so there's certainly differences, but they're both basically PDAs.

<comment><USER15> You're forgetting the Sharp Zaurus, why are you being such a Danger fanboy? /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "Ballmer did exactly what our capitalist system dictate he do: he maximized > profits to the benefit of Microsoft's shareholders. The implications of > suggesting he was a failure are far more profound than most of his many > critics likely realize."

I'm not sure I get this point. Are Apple and Amazon not also running successfully under a Capitalist Marketplace?

<comment><USER19> Apple of course prints money, far more of it than Microsoft, so I don't really see where this author is coming from. Amazon is more interesting; Amazon famously posts loss after loss, preferring to reinvest it all in R&D an infrastructure. It's on open question as to why their stock retains such a high valuation (see e.g. [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/12/12/amazon_s_zero...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/12/12/amazon_s_zero_profit_business_strategy_it_s_amazing_but_someday_we_may_all.html)). I think the answer for most people (including myself) is that a) I don't want my Prime going anywhere and b) Jeff Bezos is a genius.

<comment><USER20> Amazon has been operating at near breakeven point for a long time. Most of the years the make some money, sometimes they lose a bit.

Their stock holds up because they increase their revenue, and market share, at a huge speed. This is reasonable. In fact, that's what most startup companies do after raising Series A, B, C, etc. funding - they usually spend a lot more than they make (i.e. "burn" cash) with the goal to grow the market share as quickly as possible. Amazon is a public company with significant cashflows, so they use internal funds to grow.

Here're the latest approximate revenue/profits number from Amazon (all in billion):

2007: $14 / $0.5

2008: $19 / $0.6

2009: $24 / $0.9

2010: $34 / $1.1

2011: $48 / $0.6

2012: $61 / $(0.04) (loss of $40 million)

This is a very impressive growth (in revenue) for a large company. Having said that, one day it will stop, so by then Amazon will need to show impressive earnings, or its stock may get punished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think you could probably replace "Steve Ballmer" with "Tim Cook" here. From my perspective, Apple seems to be all about the profits. Wasn't it under Tim Cook that the first dividend in decades was paid out to share holders?

<comment><USER22> The money belongs to the shareholders. Piling it up and doing nothing with it isn't the best use, so returning some via buybacks and dividends makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hard for me to follow his argument when he dismisses Xbox in a footnote for the exact reason he lauds others (relevance, not profits).

<comment><USER24> Yes, but Xbox did well in spite of Ballmer. I believe Ballmer and Gates were pushing for Xbox to run Windows XP on launch (like actual Windows with Office) and the Xbox team had to fight hard for it to be a game console.

The only reason Xbox even happened is that Microsoft management was terrified that the PS2 was effectively a computer being sold by the millions - a real threat to Windows and Microsoft. If the Xbox team didn't stick to their guns, the original Xbox would have been a monstrosity.

You could say the Surface was a poorly executed version of the same idea. iPad is killing PC sales, so try and jump in and take market share. Too bad Microsoft doesn't have people who really "get" the iPad building and selling the Surface. They eliminated the Courier team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Emphasizing "shareholder value" as a corporate strategy has always seemed self-evidently short-sighted and foolish to me. I find that it is frequently embraced by the sort of people who look for quick answers to complicated problems; who prefer their answers simple and free of nuance. The same bunch who hold a near-religious faith in the ability of Free Markets to solve all of man's problems in the most efficient way possible. If only things were so simple. You'd think that 2008 would have been enough to put neoliberalism behind, but sadly it is not so.

</comment><comment><USER26> So you want someone like Ballmer running a corporation's existing businesses, while you have a more "visionary" CEO who works on entering new businesses. Is that a lesson here?

<comment><USER16> If there's a lesson, and there may not be, I think that it's that a company shouldn't get 100% into either mode of operation.

A company that's totally focused on breaking into (or creating) new markets can get so wrapped up in chasing the next big thing that they neglect their existing customers, or they don't know what to do when a couple of years go by without some big huge new innovation.

On the other hand, a company that's totally focused on maximizing profits from its existing products can eventually become a dead end too. It becomes very risk averse, and unwilling to cannibalize any of its existing products with newer, more innovative products. It becomes obsessed with the idea of using every product to sell every other product, such as the ubiquitous Windows branding that has pretty much killed every Microsoft product that wasn't Windows.

Maybe there's a middle ground, but I fear there isn't. I think there's just a natural boom and bust cycle for tech companies, and the best they can hope for is to survive the next bust and get to the next boom.

At the heart of a lot of this is are the forces that drive the stock market- in the tech industry at least, you can't just carve out a niche for yourself and constantly improve in that one area. You may make a ton of money, but tech investors only care about growth. It's like publicly owned companies have forces acting on them that make them grow and grow and grow until it kills them. It's not sustainable and it kind of sucks that it has to be that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> there is a french proverb that goes like "with if, you can put paris in bottles"

you can make anything happen in your imaginary 'if' world in this imaginary world, steve ballmer changed apple in my imaginary world, apple will change steve ballmer and ... well, you know how the rest of the story goes

</comment><comment><USER28> An insightful and balanced article about Steve Ballmer. But the author goes seriously awry in the last paragraph:

"Ballmer did exactly what our capitalist system dictate he do: he maximized profits to the benefit of Microsoft's shareholders. The implications of suggesting he was a failure are far more profound than most of his many critics likely realize."

Actually not at all. The best way to serve shareholders is to not focus on profits more than you absolutely must, and instead to focus on doing things insanely great.

And there is a personal lesson as well. I like money as much as the next guy, maybe more. But I know from experience that my best work is when I don't think about money at all, when I think about pleasing clients, and creating great stuff, and changing the world.

</comment><comment><USER24> Microsoft Research is actually more about scoring government contracts than it is about making amazing products. Microsoft has worked on smart houses, wireless sensors, iptv, all kinds of things and they end up with products like the Kin...

And to the point of maximizing profits as the goal of capitalism... well if you care about only having rich shareholders and think investors should be the only meaningful winners in the equation, well then short term capitalism will continue to wreak havoc every few years.

</comment><comment><USER29> AAPL stock would stay at $400 for the next ten years?

Fuck Ballmer.</comment>


2020 Taiwan presidential election based on EOS blockchain contract - <AUTHOR> https://taiwan2020.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Best vote for the winner.</comment>


Startup exemption: crowdfunding bill passed House; rally in DC Nov 17 - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupexemption.com/

<comment><USER2> Now if only they would pass the Startup Visa...</comment>


Android Users Are Stickier Than iPhone Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/06/19/android-users-are-stickier-than-iphone-users/ <comment><USER2> Are we ready for some "Hello I'm iPhone", "Hello I'm Android" ad-war?</comment>


Turning down an acquisition offer 9 months after starting a company - <AUTHOR> http://durga-ydydt.posterous.com/turning-down-an-acquisition-offer-9-months-af

<comment><USER2> Always great to know the perceived value of your company though...</comment>


How much can I sell my startup for? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/28/how-much-can-i-sell-my-startup-for/#1W7HmebOrpFreH18.99

<comment><USER2> _When does a startup stop being a startup? [..] The company may even have reached profitability, but growth has slowed to low-mid double digit percentages._

A good article generally but I'm tiring of attempts to narrow the definition of "startup" to meaning an extremely high growth, unprofitable business. That's a _type_ of startup and while those types of startup are common in this community, it's a myopic definition in general.

<comment><USER3> An example would probably make this comment a lot more valuable.

If you're sick of hearing of "high growth" as the only type of startup... why not point out some examples that you think better fit the term?

Here's a freebee: Steve Blank's startup definition is that a company is searching for a business model, and when it's found the model, it is no longer a startup.

<comment><USER4> It has to find _and validate_ the model, but that's an amorphous goalpost. Startups stop being startups retroactively. They could look back a the recent past and say, "that point in time was when we finally validated the business model that we're now kicking ass on, that's when we stopped being a startup and became a fast-growing company."

<comment><AUTHOR> that sums it up well to me, the switch is not so immediate for most companies</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MS and GH: MEH - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davelnewton/MS_PLUS_GH_MEH <comment><AUTHOR> I'm no MS fan (although my opinion has changed relatively recently from "Ew gross" to "Hm").

But knee-jerk reactions always bother me, regardless of which side of the aisle they're from.

In this spirit, to counter sites like [https://github.com/upend/IF_MS_BUYS_GITHUB_IMMA_OUT](https://github.com/upend/IF_MS_BUYS_GITHUB_IMMA_OUT), there's now a MEH side of the argument, in hopes of fostering at least some reasonable discussion.

Issues filed on MEH may (or may not) be merged into the main README and PRs will be reviewed and merged (or not) as seems reasonable.

I'd rather have an actual discussion rather than just MS IS ALL TEH BADS because ultimately they're _not_ all teh bads.

They have a lot of unfortunate history to contend with.</comment>


Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587 <comment><USER2> Before becoming a Dropbox user I was aware there were other cloud-storage services available, but it was the good word-of-mouth that prompted me to try Dropbox. They're a great example of how to win in a crowded market through sheer awesomeness.

Good timing probably also played a role, though. I went with Dropbox because sync'ing files between my desktop, laptop, and iPhone had become a huge hassle. They wouldn't be worth it to me as a USB key replacement, but as a way to manage today's proliferation of devices Dropbox is golden.

<comment><USER3> I'm wondering if anyone uses/has used Syncplicity? IMO, it's better than Dropbox.

<comment><USER4> Syncplicity is so hard to _say_. When it comes to recommending stuff, a simple name like Dropbox helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great presentation.

I found it interesting that they only came upon the virality of the product after the fact, and that their initial thoughts for marketing tended toward AdWords. In hindsight, the double-sided incentive for sharing DropBox with a friend seems obvious-- but that doesn't make it obvious at the beginning...

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit old, wasnt this posted here before?

BTW, they need a new Adwords consultant. Box.net doesnt spend anything near that much per conversion and we probably advertised on the same keywords they tested.

<comment><USER7> It's 3 months old. Here's the original discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the reality all technical founders I've met want to be true: If you build a good enough product, competition or not, existing market or not, people will come to you.

I also know plenty of people who are cynical about that reality. So, what's going on? Is it just a matter of _how_ good the product is? It can't just be great, it needs to be amazing?

</comment><comment><USER9> Fantastic presentation. I'll probably end up reading it a few times, and I got one benefit already: I just took page 12 of the presentation, and actually applied it to a web-site I'm building. Not live yet, just a landing site.

<http://viewpst.com/>

Of course, one of DropBox' biggest advantage is the name! It's clear, concise and accurate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can we please stop calling things that aren't products "minimum viable products"? (Re: Slide 11)

</comment><comment><USER11> You know what I'd like to see them do? Have a "growing storage" like gmail, as an incentive to sign up right now (so your dropbox storage starts growing right away), and as a conversation piece to improve the viral nature (one more hook to tell people: "so it syncs all your files, and the amount of storage you have is always growing like Gmail).

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't seem to think of a good 2-sided incentive way of driving traffic to an entertainment website.

"If you get 5 people to click on your link to our site, we'll give you a tshirt."????would something like that work? stickers are 50 cents apiece, or less.

thoughts?

edit: its a free site, nothing to buy (thathigh.com)</comment>


Show HN: Handle Your Business: a succinct guide for the self-employed - <AUTHOR> https://www.petekeen.net/handle-your-business <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

A few months ago, after seeing so many of my friends struggle with estimated taxes and then having to owe the IRS, I decided to dump everything I've learned about running my business into this short ebook.

There's a sample chapter here: [https://www.petekeen.net/organizing-your- consulting-business](https://www.petekeen.net/organizing-your-consulting- business)

And if you sign up for the mailing list you'll get another one for free.

Please ask questions! I love talking about this stuff.

\--Pete

</comment><comment><USER2> You should have said that this is a book in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why's that?

<comment><USER2> So that people will know. Titles are to inform, be descriptive.The way it reads, it sounds like a blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that makes sense. The title comes in just under the 80 character wire as it is, but I'll try to work it in next time.

In any case, my initial comment explicitly said "ebook" at least once. I'm not trying to mislead anyone :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Impossible Colors - arseny-n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color <comment><AUTHOR> I've used this as an example of (non)-vector spaces in a linear algebra class before. Light perception is based off the stimulation of three color cones, so three (positive) values. The light available to us stimulates those cones in certain ways and three light colors are enough to form a "basis" of the space of perceived colors. But the fact that the values are always non-negative means that there are possible cone-stimulation values that are never achievable by our light.

However, super-saturating your eyes with a color and then removing the stimulus effectively allows you to also "subtract" out some light and therefore reach parts of the perceivable-color-spectrum otherwise unobtainable.

I thought it was a clever application but my students didn't seem too impressed!

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to think you've almost certainly then impressed more people with this knowledge just posting it online here.

Thanks for sharing, what a neat thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you have a VR headset, I recommend playing around with showing different colors to either eye. You can get some really nice iridescent effects, very hard to achieve in real life and impossible on flat screen (well, you can cheat a bit by doing a cross-eye 3D image). Be sure to try both complementary and analogous colours and put iridescent objects into ordinarily looking environment, if you simply change colour balance on one eye camera the effect will be too unpleasant.

<comment><USER4> what VR setup would you recommend for someone without any? I've got a ps4. I don't want to overspend on deprecated / imminently-obsolete gear, but would love to experience it at home. is there a sweet spot beyond "toy" level but short of $$$$?

<comment><USER3> If you are fine with Facebook then Oculus Quest is the sweet spot at the moment. It does not have photorealistic rendering like PC-based VR but it is self-contained, does not need a PC but can be connected to a PC to play PCVR titles, has solid library on its own and being wireless is huge advantage. There are strong rumours that they will announce new Quest model on September 16th at base price of 299$ - but do not quote me on that.

I'd avoid PSVR, it is obsolete in 2020.

<comment><USER5> what about the valve index? Oculus' facebook connection makes it flat out not in consideration for me

<comment><USER6> The index is great, honestly. The knuckle controllers are fantastic (though there's some issues with the surface mounted joysticks not having great longevity), the HMD is fantastic, and the support seems pretty top notch (bad controllers being RMI'd).

The biggest thing seems to be the long lead times between ordering and arrival.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something this reminds me of is the mccollugh effect.

WARNING: the following link contains a literal infohazard basalisk image that if stared at for a few minutes will alter your color perception for a significant period of time - potentially months. It is not behind a spoiler, which would be against the rules on English Wikipedia

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

<comment><USER8> >It is not behind a spoiler, which would be against the rules on English Wikipedia

On the desktop site it has a spoiler box saying, "Show at your own risk."

<comment><USER7> That's funny. It didn't for years up to at least a month ago or so and also doesn't seem to on mobile now for me, but I didn't check it on desktop before posting the comment!

Edit: it was hidden Aug 16th[1] but previously hiding it has been reverted[2][3][4] for at least 2 years per WP:DISC[5]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect&diff=973267966&oldid=969390752) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect&diff=885452869&oldid=885217380) [3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect&diff=879014653&oldid=878883404) [4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCollough_effect&diff=845979838&oldid=841436792) [5]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fyi on a semi-related topic I learned from a fascinating Youtube video... the color "brown" is a psychological construct[0]. But from an RGB perspective ... there's no such color as "brown"; it's actually just "orange" in a particular context: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU)

[0] pedantic alert: yes "every color" is ultimately a mental construct of the brain but hopefully you know what I mean

<comment><USER10> This is based on the simplistic view that hue equals color. Modern perceptual color models like CIECAM02 define "color" through a much larger number of influences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As neuroscience advances, what is the likelihood of _truly_ novel color experiences?

I don't mean discerning ever finer gradations in existing colors, but entirely new color qualia.

What would it be like? Would our brains be able to integrate this new phenomenal experience?

And most importantly, if color is a property of brains rather than something in the external world, does that imply the number of "possible colors" is infinite? I.e. seeing as biological brains "choose" how to internally represent a particular wavelength of EM radiation, is the seemingly Platonic realm from which these colors are plucked from inexhaustible?

We currently have aesthetic preferences over existing colors. I would want to know whether these possible colors can be enumerated, searched through, and have a utility function placed over them so that each human can find what is to them "the best possible color."

<comment><USER12> > As neuroscience advances, what is the likelihood of truly novel color > experiences?

No need for neurosciences, just some fancy spectral filters like those on IMAX 3D glasses. With some practice using these glasses you can experience a six- dimensional color space. When you remove your glasses, this six-dimensional space collapses into the common three-dimensional color space. But with the glasses, you can distinguish many different colors that look exactly the same to regular humans. That white wall? It looks a perfectly uniform white to most people, but you can see clearly that two very different kinds of white have been used here and there.

A similar effect can be obtained indoors by lighting objects with monochromatic lights, but it is not as dramatic as with glasses.

<comment><USER13> I used to work in highway paving, and I learned how to tell the temp of asphalt with polarized sunglasses. It's not the same as a truly novel color experience but its a neat party trick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I highly recommend this Captain Disillusion video about color if you want to learn more about color theory: [https://youtu.be/FTKP0Y9MVus](https://youtu.be/FTKP0Y9MVus)

You may have to watch the video multiple times though, because the information comes out of a firehouse.

</comment><comment><USER15> My favorite ever "Impossible Color" illusion:

 _Eclipse of Titan_

[https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage- et.html](https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-et.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't miss the link down the bottom - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy) \- human perception of colour varies wildly between different people. Basically the opposite of colour blindness.

</comment><comment><USER17> If curious see also

2011 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2273081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2273081)

</comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone see "yellow-blue" as mentioned in the article? When I try, it just cycles (although not discretely) between yellow and blue.

<comment><USER19> Try it when you are really tired, and or after having some good sativa, if that is safe and appropriate for you.

I find my mind extremely receptive to these sorts of things when I'm very tired on the edge of sleep.

A good sativa actually opens up quite a bit of pattern recognition and other subtle visual perceptions. One example I can think of is a cardboard box that actually has the manufacturer's logo lightly embossed. You can't really see it at least I never did. But one evening after a good meal and the sativa, I looked at that box and could totally see the subtle difference in the circle for the carport. Interesting lie, I have remained able to see it. Like a little doorway opened.

<comment><USER19> Past edit time error correction:

>looked at that box and could totally see the subtle difference in the surface of the cardboard. Interestingly, I have remained able to see it.</comment></comment></comment>


Eureka! Why you shouldn't use ZooKeeper for service discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.knewton.com/tech/blog/2014/12/eureka-shouldnt-use-zookeeper-service-discovery/

<comment><USER2> Service discovery needs to be as available and resilient as possible.</comment>


iOS Push Notifications - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182566 <comment><AUTHOR> > We know there's interest in implementing the Web Push spec, and thank you > for your feedback.

> There's nothing to announce right now, as Apple generally doesn't comment on > future products/development.</comment>


24-Bit vs. 16-Bit Audio Test – Part II: Results and Conclusions - <AUTHOR> http://archimago.blogspot.com/2014/06/24-bit-vs-16-bit-audio-test-part-ii.html <comment><USER2> More people really need to watch this video. [http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml](http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml)

<comment><USER3> This is such an awesome video. I really hope there's a follow-up at some point, because as someone with a decent amount of experience with computer graphics, but only a fairly general understanding of sampling theorem, the stuff that would naturally come next is what most interests me, namely:

\- What happens when you start combining waves together to create more complex signals? This is pretty important, since any real instrument produces hundreds of harmonics with complex attack and decay properties, so decomposition of the fundamental frequencies won't be as accurate as with toy examples.

\- Following on from that: the effects of aliasing. It definitely exists and I have a very good understanding of aliasing with respect to computer graphics, but what effect does aliasing really have on an audio signal? In CG it's something that's talked about all the time and there are tons of papers about it, but it seems (from the outside at least) that audio guys only ever talk about aliasing in very hand-wavy terms.

\- Although we can't hear sounds (much) above 20KHz, we can detect artefacts such as "beats" produced when harmonics are slightly mismatched. Is is possible to show that such information either isn't lost, or that what is lost is either below the noise floor or outside the audible frequency range? This particular one is a fairly common complaint made by audiophiles about 44KHz/Nyquist, so it would be nice to see it addressed head-on.

FWIW, I'm a bit of an audiophile myself, but not one of those people who thinks they can hear a difference between 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed, let alone 16/44 vs 24/192\. Generally the noise floor in the original recording is too high to tell the difference, even if you could hear a difference in artificially constructed pathological cases. But I am interested in really understanding what information is lost, what isn't, and why that may or may not make any difference. In other words, what are those pathological cases? This video is a really good start and clears up a lot, but in some ways it only scratches the surface.

<comment><USER4> I can point you to a follow-up on one of those: An example on Wikipedia [1] lets you hear the effect of aliasing on a sawtooth wave.

When audio is aliased, the high harmonics will wrap around the Nyquist frequency and come back as audible, inharmonic tones. Aliased audio really sounds quite bad, in a way that would make any listener say "oh god make that horrible noise stop".

This is probably why it's easier to recognize the effects of aliasing in video than in audio -- you're not hearing much aliased audio. Aliased video is fairly common and seen as acceptable in some contexts, while anyone who produces aliased audio is going to fix their mistake before inflicting it on listeners.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing#Online_audio_example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing#Online_audio_example)

<comment><USER3> Presumably though the effects of aliasing will also also produce distortions at a smaller scale, which might not be as obvious. That would result in a loss of information, but would not be quite so easy to spot and filter out. The pathological case is really just a good illustration of what happens and why, whereas what's trickier is understanding the true impact it has on real-world data.

For instance, you won't notice Moiré patterns in photos very often, but it's easy to construct a test image that demonstrates the problem. The underlying issue of sampling error hasn't gone away in the photo: it just gets lost in the background noise or among smooth-shaded surfaces without hard edges, which makes it harder to see. But maybe now and then you'll have a sharp edge in a real-world image where the effect is noticeable. Depending on how close it is to the pathological case, it might not jump out and make itself immediately obvious.

I mention Moiré patterns because these are (I believe) precisely the same effect as the given audio aliasing example. Moiré patterns aren't a form of sampling error per se, but they can be caused by uniform sampling (which is how digital quantisation typically works for both audio and images).

<comment><USER5> Moiré patterns are the same thing, but if you put your video signal through an analog low-pass filter before sampling, then you wouldn't get Moiré patterns. Audio is typically low-passed before sampling for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to point out the potentially non-obvious here. This is a test of delivery format.

There still are benefits to using 24-bit audio in the recording and processing stages. This is in large part due to most recording systems expecting 0dbVU = -18dbFS and the subsequent processing that can bring the noise floor well into the audible range (dynamic range processors are notoriously effective at this, and heavily used in modern music). We could take a simple example of a snare drum being recorded at 16bit, being EQ'd with a +6db boost anywhere on the spectrum, then compressed with a reduction peaking around 10db (not uncommon). After brickwall limiting in the final mix, this track will easily have a noise floor (via quantization error only) > -68dbFS best case. (-96db starting. -12dbFs peaking snare, +6 + 10 to noise floor, assuming limiting with no gain reduction) -68dbFS is already audible in a critical listening scenario. With dozens (sometimes hundreds) of uncorrelated signals being subjected to similar processing, this noise floor raises well into the audible range for even a modest playback system.

While I realize that delivery format is the only thing important to most people, it is important to differentiate since the article does make a point to separate out musicians, sound engineers and hardware reviewers. These are groups of people that _should_ be aware of the benefits of higher sample resolution. Since it's fairly obvious that most people in these categories are confused about their ability to discern delivery formats, it's not beneficial to confuse them even further about working formats.

To be more succinct, the difference between 16bit and 24bit is largely inaudible when the source material is worked in a higher resolution format and properly converted.

<comment><USER7> > There still are benefits to using 24-bit audio in the recording and > processing stages.

An analogy of what you said:

It's similar to HDR for audio[1] (but not exactly like it). HDR can be used for photography that, once composed and edited, will present more realistic information to our eyes. For example, with HDR you wouldn't have an overexposed sky - however the HDR is only used in order to _get to_ that final 16 bit image (and even with 16 bit your eyes have a hard time discerning different colors).

The same applies to audio. __Listening __to 24-bit is pointless, however, if you are editing something you want to retain as much information as possible until the final render so that you don 't run into clamping issues as you described.

Therefore, sites that provide 192/24 downloads are valuable. If I'm a DJ getting music for my gig I do want those production quality files, as I cross- fade between two songs I don't want artefacts popping (excuse the pun) up.

On to my own opinion: 24-bit is still not good enough. DAWs should be working in floats. Audio needs to go true HDR, 24-bit is a cop-out. Why would you even used a 24-bit int when floats are there and ready to go? Imagery went floating point, what, 10 years ago? Why can't audio catch up? Being able to exceed the clip in my DAW in a channel, and then wrangle it back down in another would be awesome.

 _Unrelated: That Xiph video really amazes in terms of what nature does. We rarely care about it (we do in terms of e.g. intercontinental fibre cables), but nature does all of this when we send a signal to a speaker. Even normal sound does actually have a band limit and does behave (albeit, far higher dynamic range) exactly the same way automatically. Shoot a signal down a fibre cable that can 't handle it, and you'll get Nyquist. Too high frequency for RTP air? Expect distortion (that we can't hear). You don't even have to include electronics to get nature to impose these limitations for you, you have to do no extra work. Completely amazing - a deeper level of logic that is mind boggling._

[1]: [http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/audio-for- multiplayer-b...](http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio/audio-for-multiplayer- beyond-mixing-case-studies-from-battlefield-bad-company- frostbite?from=ss_embed)

<comment><USER6> 192khz however is not beneficial to the processing though. There is an argument that can be made for 96khz in a limited set of cases of processing as a form of implicit pre-process upsampling, but itt can actually be detrimental. (see for instance: [https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering- forum/968641-some-...](https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering- forum/968641-some-thoughts-high-resolution-audio-processing.html))

Since this is a discussion about bit-depth, I don't see much of a reason to clutter it with a discussion about sample rate. This subject is already difficult enough for most people to understand it seems.

<comment><USER7> I might add that it's factually impossible to determine what it means, from the listener's perspective.

As far as "limited cases", I work at an ISV, so I am preconditioned to not accepting limited cases - as demonstrated by excessive overtime just this very week. Our customers do some really crazy shit with our software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slight problem - DXD is not PCM. It's downsampled DSD, which isn't a true PCM format and is of debatable value in a bit-depth test.

DSD uses single-bit delta-sigma modulation at a very high sample rate. You have to downconvert it before you can hear it, and this adds noise/dither/distortion. One of the problems with DSD is that it's not entirely clear what useful bit-depth you're left with after downsampling, because there are theoretical reasons for criticising one-bit sampling. See e.g.

[http://sjeng.org/ftp/SACD.pdf](http://sjeng.org/ftp/SACD.pdf)

A useful test would start with high quality unmastered and unprocessed 24-bit PCM recordings and A/B them with 16-bit downconversions. (Remember, even orchestral recordings are mixed in a studio and the individual stems usually have some dynamic processing and gain riding, even if it's not as obvious as dance music pumping.)

I'd expect a test like this to use a bit meter like Bitter to confirm there's useful information in the lower bits, and not just rely on a vague estimate of the dynamic range.

[http://www.stillwellaudio.com/plugins/bitter/](http://www.stillwellaudio.com/plugins/bitter/)

Ironically, all of the reviews of the Bozza track say that the BluRay audio version sounds cleaner than the SACD source used here. (I have no idea if this is true. But if someone has both and wants to do a blind A/B, that would be interesting.)

It's also worth mentioning there are easy-to-find test tones you can use to check how clean your audio hardware is at extreme sample rates. They're not directly relevant to bit-depth tests, but they're a good torture test for audio.

[http://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_highdefinitionaudio.php](http://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_highdefinitionaudio.php)

<comment><USER9> It doesn't make sense that it is unmastered. We want to test the difference of a properly made 24 bit output downsampled to 16 bit and the original.

There is difference between 16, 24, and 32 bit recordings, but it just so happens that 16 bits are enough to give an effective 120dB dynamic range, if you use proper dithering. If you do not want to use dithering "because it's not pure", you still have 96dB of dynamic range. So with dithering 16 bit allow you to represent a mosquito and a jackhammer in the same room. And even without (and that isn't a good idea, as the noise now consist of harmonic distortion which is a lot easier to hear than dithered noise) I really doubt anyone can tell the difference, 96dB is still quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was posted here before, but it's a great article if anyone still didn't read it yet: [https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil- young.html](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm really glad there have been more audio related posts on HN lately. Maybe it's just my own bias, but seems that print/online media related to audio is dying off and is now limited to forums and hobbiest sites now. The few that are still around are difficult to take seriously with some of the snake oil that gets reviewed. (Carbon fiber disc stabilizers anyone?) I would love to see a serious attempt at an enthusiast "magazine" done again...

<comment><USER12> I agree - audio technology, music production tools and of course music itself have always been topics of interest for me. However there's a whole jungle of misconceptions half-knowledge to browse through before you find good content.

For audio production tools and other related niche topics, I can recommend createdigitalmusic.com

<comment><USER13> I have long had the idea for a HN for music. I have found few places that resembles, such as the muffwiggler forum and some stack exchanges...

<comment><USER11> Ha! I used to chat all the time with Muff Wiggler on KVR... I still lurk there but rarely post. My handle is Stupid American Pig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r There's a lot of great data here, and the author obviously tried to cover all of the bases. Unfortunately I'm still bothered by a couple of aspects.

Firstly, the question of "can you hear a difference" is completely orthogonal to the question of "which do you think is 24 bit". By using the answer to the second question to infer an answer to the first, you're entangling them. If someone could reliably hear the difference but on half the songs they preferred 16 bit and on the other half preferred 24 bit, their own answers would cancel each other out.

Secondly, all it takes is ONE PERSON who can reliably tell the difference [1] to prove that the difference is audible, even if it's only to a very small subset of the population. The test was structured to detect the abilities of a group, not a single person. I'm perfectly willing to believe that as a group, people on average can't tell a difference, but that doesn't tell me whether _I_ can tell a difference.

[1] Reliably telling the difference would mean being consistent on double- blind A/B testing, repeated enough times to achieve statistical significance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the conclusion ("there was no evidence that 24-bit audio could be appreciably differentiated from the same music dithered down to 16-bits") is not correct.

EDIT: I'm not sure if the conclusion is correct or not, but the logic that lead to the conclusion has flaws.

50%/50% accuracy means a random guess - people can't distinguish 24-bit from 16-bit.

But if accuracy is less than 50% for a large enough sample it means the difference between 24-bit and 16-bit is heard.

Article said: "As a subgroup (total of 31 respondents), the self identified respondents with a "good amount" of musical background did not do well. In fact, this group of respondents consistently scored worse than the combined result."

People with persumably better ears ("musicians" and "hardware reviewers") were less accurate than regular people, especially on Vivaldi. I think this means they did well. This means they heard the difference - it is not possible to be significantly less accurate than 50% without hearing a difference. They failed on deciding which one is "better", but they were able to differentiate 16-bit music from 24-bit.

<comment><USER15> _This means they heard the difference - it is not possible to be significantly less accurate than 50% without hearing a difference._

For small sample sizes being far of is quite likely, for example the chances for getting at most 1/3 of 31 (11 or less) 50/50 guesses right is 1 in 14.

<comment><USER14> I agree that sample sizes are small, and there is no proper analysis done - the difference can be only from a chance.

But the article states the difference is statistically significant and then draws a wrong conclusion from it (not accurate => can't differentiate).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Perhaps the 16-bit sample really did sound better in some cases?

The lowest bits of a D/A converter are the most non-linear. By avoiding them you might get a more accurate waveform overall.

This would explain the people who were confident that they knew which was which, even when they got it consistently wrong. It would depend greatly on the specific D/A converter so you'd expect it to go both ways.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but no!

        1.0 1.1 1.9 2.0 2.1 2.9 3.0

is still a better approximation of a linearly increasing list of numbers than

        1.0 1.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 3.0 3.0

and I doubt that any 24bit DAC or ADC in existence will interpolate as bad as I did in this example. Whatever distortion due to quantisation the latter creates, the former will create less of it.

<comment> mark-r Your example is overly simplistic. Dithering is what allows a low bit sample to emulate a high bit one, and I don't see any evidence that you applied any; even if you did you wouldn't get a feel for how it operates with such a short sample.

<comment><USER16> The initial statement was: "lowest bits of a D/A converter are the most non- linear. By avoiding them you might get a more accurate waveform overall."

You can of course apply dithering to any signal to mask quantization noise.

It's just that a perfect N-bit DAC will require less dithering to mask its quantization distortion/noise than a non-perfect/not-quite-linear N-bit DAC which again will introduce less quantization distortion/noise than the (N-k) bit DAC.

In fact, you could say that a N-bit DAC is just "perfect reproduction" plus a non-linearity that amounts to the step-width of 1-LSB, e.g. it's resolution.

And a 24-bit DAC that unfortunately is off by 8 LSB (2^3) along its 0...2^N-1 to 0V..Uref curve is still as good or better as a 21-bit DAC (24bit-3bit) in reproducing a waveform, and still better than a 16 bit DAC. A graphical representation of this is commonly found in datasheets and called "integrated non-linearity."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quality reports on audio depend, as far as I know, entirely on conscious reporting of quality that's accessible to a test subject through introspection.

By definition, this makes it easy to debunk "golden ears." Because loudness (energy) determines what we pay attention to in sound, this is why sonic detail that's low in energy compared to the total can be dropped without test subjects being able to report the missing information. And maybe this is valid. If we can't report our experiences, are they really experiences?

But I find this unsatisfactory if only from the point of view of experimental design. Does the brain really throw this information away at a low level? Does our ear "compress" audition on the way to other parts of the brain? Or does our subconscious experience uncompressed music differently?

</comment><comment><USER18> While the conclusion is in accordance with what I would expect, I think the study suffers a lot from not having a control group. From these results, there is no telling if participants screwed up in replay, or if they were all just guessing anyway or whatever. This should be redone with at least one sample pair where one of the samples is deliberately reduced in quality is delivered to a subset of the participants.

</comment><comment><USER19> Shoot, most people won't be able to tell 8 bit audio from 16 bit audio. Try the following:

        sox highres.flac --bits 8 lowres.wav dither

Wave is required because flac doesn't do 8 bit and we want to be 100% certain nothing sneaky is going on. You might be able to notice a slight increase in background hiss if you are in a very quiet room.

<comment><USER6> That background hiss IS the difference. I'm not sure what you think the difference would be otherwise, but the increase in the noise floor caused by quantization error will be the difference between the formats.

I also don't know what 'lowres.wav' is (is this linked in the article?), but on classical or jazz recordings the difference is very noticeable due to the lower 'average' amplitude of the recordings. If you did this on a modern pop recording that's smashed to hell and back... then yeah, many people won't even notice the noise.

<comment><USER19> No, most think that if you reduce something to 8 bits that it will sound like NES-powered voice mail being played back through a piezo buzzer.

If you converted something to 8 bits and used proper dithering, no one who heard it would exclaim "You monster! That is only 8 bit audio!"

Where as if you reduced something to a low bitrate mp3, people would notice immediately and call you out on it.

<comment><USER6> That is an issue. People don't understand what bit-depth reduction sounds like. That doesn't change the fact that the hiss is the difference. That is the quantization noise floor, and the primary artifact of the conversion.

Rather than try to goad people into thinking that there is no difference, it is better to educate them on what the difference actually is (or could be). From there an honest interaction can be had regarding the potential perception of these differences.

Quite simply, just because some people are misinformed about what qualitative effect is occurring, that does not discount the fact that there is a qualitative effect occurring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why are there so few women in the audiophile community? Do female audiophiles face the same adversities as women in tech?

<comment><USER21> > Do female audiophiles face the same adversities as women in tech?

How would that work? There isn't even any opportunity to be excluded from being an audiophile.

It's the exact same thing that accounts for a lot of the discrepancy between men and women in professional tech: the fact that men, on average, like gadgets more than women.

<comment><USER22> I really doubt men like gadgets more than women per se, it's a social/cultural/education thing that leads them to move away from those interests.

<comment><USER23> No it's not. [http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy- trucks...](http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's all about obsesive compulsive. I count myself on that group... I bought every recommended pair of headphones promising more and more magic but one day you come to notice that it's just a sound equalizer and some people like it some way... some other. so 192kbps 44khz and mdrv6 to a 30$ player; that's it.

<comment><USER25> not really. headphones range a lot within the frequencies you DO hear.

also, the weight vs outside sound isolation ratio varies with price.

those are all observable and measurable things.

speakers, they also vary on those audible frequencies, but after you are past $150 per speaker you are only dealing with quality after very loud volumes.

over $3000 for a home system? just be honest with yourself and confess you are buying the prettiest furniture that match your decor.

<comment><USER26> True. What often seperates a good speaker from a mediocre one is how it behaves at high volumes. Most speakers made for home use regardless of the price lose composure when cranked high. The main culprit is usually the dome tweeters (a type of hi-frequency driver) that start to compress at high volumes. The solution is to use a compression driver (CD) with a waveguide but mostly for aesthetic reasons, there are virtually no commercial speakers on the market that use CDs.

The alternative is to use public announcement (PA) speakers. Virtually all of them are equipped with CDs, but they are relatively large, and unless you have a dedicated listening/home theater room, they won't really fit a home's decor well.

<comment><USER27> The other option is ribbon tweeters: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweeter#Ribbon_tweeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweeter#Ribbon_tweeter)

They sound great. Sometimes too great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As I said in the other recent 24-bit audio thread, any improvement in sound quality offered by using 24-bit will be inaudible for the vast majority of listeners, the extra low-level detail of the increased dynamic range lost in the noise floor of a typical room.

<comment><USER29> You mean it's inaudible for ALL the listeners. There is no subset of listeners that would be able to tell the difference between 24-bit and 16-bit listener with any type of statistical significance.

<comment><USER28> Downvoted for saying "vast majority" instead of ALL? Sigh.

For ALL the listeners in this specific test? Yes, almost certainly. Naturally, just randomly picking a song, even one that subjectively sounds really good, and listening to 16-bit or 24-bit versions of it at moderate volume in a typical room will _absolutely_ prevent anyone from choosing correctly with any statistical significance. The OP's test was doomed to fail from the outset.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to detect any difference under any circumstances.

<comment><USER9> 16bit gives you an effective dynamic range of 120dB - noone, and I challenge to to prove me wrong, can detect differences beyond that. To quote from the last articel, that is enough to record the difference between a jackhammer and a mosquito in the same room.

<comment><USER30> > that is enough to record the difference between a jackhammer and a mosquito > in the same room.

That is utterly laughable. Stated like someone who has never actually tried to record sounds with large dynamic range. But I suppose it's how you define "record". So if a mosquito is 40dBA, and a jackhammer is 130dBA, that's a difference of 90dB. Now I don't know of any preamp that has such a low noise floor, but assuming one existed, if we set the gain staging such that the jackhammer is 0dBFS, then the mosquito is peaking at -90dBFS. Thats 6dB above null, or ONE BIT. So your "recording" of the mosquito is one bit flipping on and off.

Quite the recording! Statements like these are what make recording engineers roll their eyes and think here we go again.

> 16bit gives you an effective dynamic range of 120dB

16 bit gives you 96dB of dynamic range. And less than that of usable dynamic range. You may say "effectively" as is, once dithered, but then you're accepting that the recording is done at a higher bit depth and then dithered down, thus refuting the original statement that 16 bits is enough dynamic range to record said sounds.

<comment><USER9> Dithering give roughly 120dB dynamic range in 16bit audio, that is the mosquito 30dB above the noise floor. That isn't ideal, but I struggle find a situation where it matters. If the volume is low enough for the jackhammer to not damage your ears, you wouldn't be able to hear the mosquito anyway. One could argue that if we had the audio equipment it would be nice to represent the mosquito and the jackhammer without gain control, but with all the dynamic compression we have seen the last decade, I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some confidence intervals for the hypothesis would be really handy. Still, great article!

</comment><comment><USER32> Discussion of this test at hydrogenaud.io: [http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=106156](http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=106156)

</comment><comment><USER33> What I would like to know is:

Is there any individual human who can reliably distinguish between 16 and 24 bit audio? If somebody believes they can, where can I send them to establish whether it's true or not?

<comment><USER34> you can hear the difference between summing 16 channels of 24bit audio vs. 16bit audio in a daw. 24 sounds better. then when you render it, you can't tell the difference between a 16bit dump and a 24bit dump.

i think the recent aphex twin release was out on 24bit and 16bit, it would be a great test subject matter for the foobar abx plugin.

with all types of music, you can train your ear to listen for what mp3 hiccups on. i know nothing about classic music, but i can spot a 320kbps mp3 a mile off due to terrible sounding high hats and crashes in genres where they are prominent. disco records also suffer very badly, just something about how they were recorded. i wouldn't know what to listen for in classical.

<comment><USER35> High hats and crashes are exactly the thing I noticed improved when switching my music from MP3 to FLAC many years ago. The difference is _very_ obvious to me; I really don't think it's placebo.

That said, I've heard that AAC handles them much better, and that modern MP3 encoders do a better job. I haven't had a chance to do an A/B test to check that. I'd love to confirm that AAC has solved this problem, because my music collection is taking up way more space than I'd like!

<comment><USER36> Try opus. I was amazed how good that sounds at ridiculously low bitrates. I'd be surprised if you can tell the difference between 80kpbs opus and FLAC (i.e. raw) files outside certainly very rare corner cases. And unlike mp3, those corner cases don't sound terrible, though that's subjective. Even at 64kbps the difference wasn't obvious without careful listening - to me, YMMV :-).

If you do try it, make sure to use the 1.1 encoder (which deals with difficult samples by detecting that and upping the bitrate more aggressively than previous versions), and you might as well increase the maximum framesize the maximum (60ms) since you're not interested in low-latency applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Furthermore, 20% used an ABX utility in the evaluation process suggesting > good effort in trying to discern sonic differences.

Take those results with a (large) grain of salt.

<comment><USER38> Doesn't matter - the respondents didn't know which sample is which.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > biological gender

This is getting ridiculous. Just call it "sex" already.

</comment><comment><USER30> Try repeating the experiment without the dither.

<comment><USER40> That would allow the subject to easily tell the difference between the two samples by looking to see which had all 0's in the 4 lowest bits.

<comment><USER30> This makes no sense to me. Please explain. The difference between 24 and 16 is 8, not 4 for one.

Are you saying the "16-bit" sample files actually had noise added to the least significant 4 (8?) bits? This is not dithering. Dithering is adding noise BEFORE truncation. A dithered 16 bit rendering of 24 bit audio will only be 16 bit. An undithered 16 bit rendering of 24 bit audio will also only be 16 bit.

<comment><USER41> I think the GP is basically saying, how would you propose to run an internet survey asking anonymous audiophiles to blindly A/B (no peeking at the bits) full and truncated files? The dithering is probably the least questionable part of the methodology.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advertising Rates - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I've just been contacted by a person interested in putting advertisement on one of my sites. He asked about advertising options and rates.
I'm not incorporated and am running it myself as a side-project. For the moment I'm using AdSense and getting about €0.6 CPM, with about 500k pageviews a month. This is the first person to contact me about ads.
How do I continue? What rates should I start with, and will the fact that I'm not incorporated be a disadvantage here? Any other help? Thanks guys! <comment><USER2> What kind of advertisement are they asking for? Looking at your site, it looks like they want a display ad, right?

500K pageviews per month is quite a bit! How many unique users do you have?

I sell advertising space for a well known media company and we only have about 200K pageviews a month. Our lowest CPM is $5 and our highest is $15 depending on the demand for the particular page, position and any other special tweaks like geotargeting.

What I'm trying to say here is $1 is way too low.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> They didn't specify yet, but I'm guessing yes, they want to display an ad.

I have about 78K unique visitors.

It would be nice to be able to demand a higher CPM, but I don't have the experience to get that yet. I'll try putting Adsdaq on it, who knows, maybe I could get a $2 cpm there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this is a side project, so don't overcomplicate this.

charge a lump sum for a length of time that will approximate the pageveiws at a rate you think is fair, but more than what you're making now (ex: €500/mo @ €1 CPM). if more people start asking or you start making more via adsense, you can start raising your rate. use the proceeds to incorporate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, great advice! I was focusing too much on CPM and rotating ads.

I am experiencing huge growth though (constant 30% a month for the last 7 months) so I should probably ask €600/month @ €1 CPM, or charge per week.

<comment><USER3> perhaps. if you sell by the month, you've locked someone into paying for the full month. if you sell by the week, someone might pay for a week and then quit.

depends on how much effort you're willing to put into ad sales/maintenance.

<comment><USER4> I personally would probably go higher than $1 per 1000 views, but then my CPM is higher than 0.6, but for $1 you can use adsdaq which allows you to set your own CPM price, but of course you would not get 100% fill up rate, but I would assume that even with a 30% fill up rate, if you can get ten pence more or 40 pence, it probably would be worth it.

I have no experience of such thing however, but I would at least try and ask for 1.2. You should remember that the 0.6 is through a middle man. And in any event the person would get back if they really want a deal and if they aren't really so keen then you hard loose much. So going for higher than you would be comfortable to settle with might be a good idea.

And congrats! 500k page views is quite an achievement!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking me to Adsdaq, looks very interesting! Apparently I can set backuptags, so if I have less than 100% fill rate I can put AdSense back. I won't risk earning less because of this.

The advice on going a bit higher is great. It's typical negotiating stuff, so I'm guessing the person is expecting this.

Thanks very much! The site has experienced enormous growth and I've had to switch servers twice the last year. It's taken 3 years to get this far but it's finally at a point where some money is coming in instead of going out. To think I was about to abandon it because it was costing me too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> can you give us your url?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it's <http://seenly.com></comment></comment>


Virtual Geometry Images (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://graphicrants.blogspot.com/2009/01/virtual-geometry-images.html <comment><AUTHOR> For context, this is a blog post from one of the pivotal engineers on today's Unreal 5 release: [https://twitter.com/BrianKaris/status/1260591486250266624?s=...](https://twitter.com/BrianKaris/status/1260591486250266624?s=20)</comment>