The Day the Music Burned - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html <comment><USER2> 50 years from now the problem will be that we have preserved digital masters in the form of session files for various DAWs and it will no longer be possible to patch together the correct hardware, OS, plugins, and virtual instruments to recreate the session. Artists and producers are encouraged to create stems or bounces of all the individual tracks for the purposes of long term preservation, but this does not always happen.

<comment><USER3> That's basically the reason Steve Albini gives for staying analogue: [https://youtu.be/p-uziD9AvrI?t=822](https://youtu.be/p-uziD9AvrI?t=822) . That said, in some respects I don't think (not an expert) the situation is clearly worse than it was in the analogue days: it may be difficult to use or replicate some DAW plugin effect in the future, but it's not as if some studio's physical plate reverb unit, for example, was easy to replicate in another place or at a later time either.

<comment><USER4> Yeah probably more forward compatible to send/bounce wet effects to their own tracks and print all the tracks as audio.

Then in worst case scenario you can load the raw WAV (or whatever format) tracks in a future DAW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading the list of jazz, soul, and rock artists whose material was lost just made me shudder. If an example of cultural devastation is ever needed, this is it. Jazz greats from the 40s and 50s. Popular music from the birth of rock and roll to the modern day. This is truly a tragedy. Why wasn't this material protected in, at least, a fireproof area, or, better, in some salt cave in the Utah desert?

<comment><USER6> To be blunt, there's a lot of it and it's not actually that valuable. We've had CDs for 30+ years. If there's an album UMG thought it'd be worth digitizing, remastering, and reselling, they'd have done it by now.

Humanity generates information (works of art included) faster than it can be reliably archived, and as that information ages and no one is interested in it, it becomes less relevant. Maybe it's a bit nihilistic, but I've come to accept humanity only has finite memory for a cultural canon, and things will drop out of it over time.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, most b-sides are b-sides for a reason.

<comment><USER8> As a counterpoint, here are the B-sides from that British quartet of yesteryear, most of which were only released as singles (until the discographies were published decades later). Some of these are better than the A-sides. YMMV.

P.S. I Love You, Ask Me Why, Thank You Girl, I'll Get You, This Boy, You Can't Do That, Things We Said Today, She's a Woman, Yes It Is, I'm Down, Day Tripper, Rain, Yellow Submarine, Penny Lane, Baby You're A Rich Man, I Am the Walrus, The Inner Light, Revolution, Don't Let Me Down, Old Brown Shoe, Come Together, You Know My Name

<comment><USER9> The Anthology series is also a really good example of using archive material effectively. For example, you can see how songs like Strawberry Fields Forever and Day in the Life evolved over multiple sessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Over the years the film industry has suffered enormous losses as well, in part because early movies used nitrocellulose based film stock which is highly flammable and susceptible to spontaneous combustion. The 1937 Fox vault fire is one of many examples of film loss that has continued to the present [0]. Sadly, the existence of a large number of silent movies is only known through reviews, film posters and past recollections of participants. Similarly, a great deal of video has been discarded, lost or reused. If I recall correctly some of the earliest Dr. Who episodes have been lost because the media on which they were recorded was reused.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire)

<comment><USER10> Not just Doctor Who; it was regular practice at the BBC to tape over old broadcasts. Also reminds me how there's no audio of de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June.

<comment><USER3> IIRC Doctor Who is in fact unusual in that audio recordings (fan tapings?) survive of nearly all the lost episodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Similar losses, though less dramatic and less all at once, have plagued the software industry too and in particular video games. An enormous amount of source code and assets for stuff made in the 80s and 90s in particular has been lost for good, which makes it far more difficult to preserve and update them. If there is some tiny silver lining possible out of these modern Library of Alexandria permanent destruction of cultural heritage events, it's that they might ultimately help push back against the IP maximalists and towards better using digital advances for promoting science and the arts too. Beyond reductions in term back towards something more sane (though attribution should perhaps be split off), it would also be good to see a requirement that all sources to produce a work must be submitted, encrypted, to the Library of Congress (or similar) in order to qualify for copyright protection. Then they could be preserved and released once the work enters public domain (or if otherwise lost the copyright holder could request a copy for a fee).

Back when copyright was purely a product of the written word the ultimate master information was also by definition included in every copy. It would spread as part of sales, and upon leaving the period of monopoly could then directly be utilized and fully contribute to further advanced culture. But over time we've lost that without the laws adapting in turn, which has resulted in real permanent losses.

Also, kudos to the Times for going back and investigating this and helping bring it more to light, including explicitly calling out their own lacking coverage at the time. That it was covered up so much by an organization that has helped directly lobby for more protection is salt in the wound.

> _A skeptic might argue that this is as it should be. In the 140-odd years > since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, countless recordings have been > made under the auspices of record companies. To conserve anything close to > all those recordings has proved impossible; it may not even be desirable. > The caretaking of canonical material, the Bings and Billies and Nirvanas, > must naturally take priority. To ask that the same level of attention be > lavished on all music, including stuff that holds interest only for > obscurantists, is to demand a preservation standard that prevails in no > other area of culture. If the sole vestiges of thousands of old recordings > are a few stray 45s lining the shelves of collectors — perhaps that's not a > cultural tragedy, perhaps that's a commercial-art ecosystem functioning > properly._

This sounds like an argument for all of that having been moved into the PD then long since and then letting culture at large take a shot at it all.

<comment><USER12> >Back when copyright was purely a product of the written word the ultimate master information was also by definition included in every copy.

Not strictly true. There is a difference between a copy of a Bach concerto and the original score in Bach's own handwriting, even if the copy captures all the notes perfectly. Original manuscripts can contain scratched-out parts which are nevertheless of great interest to scholars (for example, Kafka experts are deeply interested in every scratched-out word from Kafka's originals). Handwriting can convey information about whether the author was writing in a hurry, or had the luxury of taking her time. One could even fantasize about discovering hidden messages encoded somehow in the original handwriting, which would be totally lost in a naive word-for-word copy.

"See what large letters I am using to write to you with my own hand!" (Galatians 6:11)

<comment><USER11> I actually did consider things like author's notes and background material, but I stand by that not being the same as what you're describing anymore then I'd consider preserving a software project to also have to include every mailing list any dev posted to or all communications or whatever. Masters, source code/raw assets, and so forth are still final products produced from a development process, even if technical necessity then dictates they are then "compiled" into something targeting specific mediums.

Author notes, drafts, and original manuscripts, just like processes around music/movie/software production, can be interesting in their own right, but I don't think it's in the same bucket or has the same cultural implications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of old master tapes self-destructed due to bad chemistry.

The binder material used to adhere iron oxide particles to the tape backing was, in many cases, slightly hygroscopic; over time, the binder absorbs water, breaking down that adhesion and causing the oxide to flake off when the tape is unspooled. The only known remediation measure is to bake the tape at low temperature, which will temporarily reduce the moisture content sufficiently to allow the tape to be played back and re-recorded.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky- shed_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very impressive investigative reporting. Just a minor note. Whilst performance this might be the greatest, a few phrase seems out of place. culture wise the Alexandria suffer a bigger lost to humanity.

<comment><USER12> The scale is different, but the permanence is the same, and that's very profound because we tend to take it for granted that great works will no longer be lost like they were in the past. It's interesting to think about what will survive and what won't over a period of thousands of years. It seems almost unthinkable that any of the main Beatles catalog could ever get lost, library-of-Alexandria style. But on a scale of thousands of years, governments and nations will change, nothing is certain, maybe the whole Beatles catalog could indeed become permanently lost if the world gets taken over by dystopian censors. On a long enough timescale, anything's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That is a heroically long article of which all I don't really have time to read, unfortunately. But it seems to me that these companies have an ethical responsibility to ensure that this important art is not lost forever, even if they technically own it and could ensure it never sees the light of day. What a loss.

<comment><USER16> Just out of curiosity, would you have preferred reading it on paper? Long reads on screens are not so fun imo.

<comment><USER17> Printed to PDF the piece runs 36 pages, about 12,000 words, or roughly an hour's read.

It is long.

<comment><USER16> Exactly, it's more like a short book than a regular article, pretty long even by long-reads standard.

I was curious if people rather read content like this on paper than scrolling for an hour on a screen :)

<comment><USER15> I stopped reading when the article turned toward a history of the guy Aronson. I said to myself "Oh hell no, I'm not wasting my time reading about this guy I don't care about", I looked at the scroll bar and nope'd out of the whole article. Nothing to do with the delivery medium.

<comment><USER18> That was my exact process too, got to that section about Aronson, saw the scrollbar, and got out of there.

Looks like you followed my next step too, jumped into the comment section to see if someone posted about an interesting highlight that I might have missed by skipping the rest of the article :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> YouTube has a nice video of Brian May going thorough the master for Bohemian Rhapsody. It gives a good idea of what's on a master and also interesting insights into how they overcame some of the technical limitations of equipment at the time—like recording multiple times over the same track to make up for limited channels on the tape-based system. Really interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

<comment><USER21> I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst.

<comment><USER22> I understand your point, but what good are master tapes if they're not available to be heard? I think you could argue that destroying a musical distribution network has the same effect as destroying music: it's no longer available to be consumed.

<comment><USER21> Mastertapes contain the music precisely as recorded by the artist themselves. They're not meant to be listened to or consumed actively -- they're there to serve as indelible recordings and references. Scholarly work on Jazz, for example, relies extensively on the existence of master tapes. Here's why:

When you record music to a multitrack magnetic tape like most of the recordings in this vault, you then get the ability during playback, for example, to fade individual tracks in and out. This would allow you to, e.g. isolate the sound of _just_ McCoy Tyner's piano track on a classic Coltrane recording. Hearing his playing on it's own, without the rest of the band, could allow a music researcher to hear notes and sounds that might be masked by the final product recording, which _flattens_ the recording.

One way of understanding this issue, which might appeal to the HN audience, is this: The process of "flattening" tracks to make the final sound recordings that we end up hearing as consumers is a lossy form of compression, even if the sound file format you consume it in is described as "lossless."

<comment><USER23> That's all well and good, but the problem with this obsession with master tapes is that they don't last forever, and degrade over time, along with every time they're taken out and handled and run through a player to create another "remaster" that has no dynamic range and lots of clipping distortion, since that's apparently what consumers want these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Losing the master tapes is like losing the source code. As the years pass and new OS versions are released, eventually that old executable will stop working. Sure, you'll always be able to run it in a VM, but it'll never get any better.

</comment><comment><USER25> I read this as 'The Day the Music Died'. [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER26> Blame Capitalism.

If one company weren't hoarding master copies of these works of art for the purposes of profit, then the world would have lost nothing in that fire.

If music were owned by the people, we would never risk a single point of failure wiping out musical heritage.

<comment><USER27> Sure, if the people financed the creation of this music or purchased the masters, then they could own the masters too. Would you expect Apple to put its iPhones in the hands of the public for free and easy copying and distribution? Why do you think music should be any different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm deeply concerned about the impact that this will have on the music documentary. Without a fat idiot pulling a fader at a mixing desk in a poorly lit room so we can just hear the drum beat alone while describing an utterly standard 4/4 time, poorly played derivative drumming as "groundbreaking" I fear for the genre. We've already lost atmospheric cigarette smoke haze, what next?

</comment><comment><USER29> Biggest disaster? More like the _second_ -biggest disaster after the conflagration that took down what.cd.

</comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps this will serve the same purpose fire does in a large, old-growth forest.

<comment><USER31> I really don't see the analogy between the burning up of a library full of unique material and a forest fire.

If you felt that the library of Alexandria burning down made life better somehow for those that came after then I'm all ears.

<comment><USER32> I can see it from the perspective of "well, now others can have that same joy and accomplishment of rediscovery", which is a sort of a silver lining, I guess. But I agree, such losses have far more negatives than positives.</comment></comment></comment>


Supreme Court deals blow to computer patents in  9-0 ruling - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/06/19/supreme-court-deals-blow-to-computer-patents-in-9-0-ruling/

<comment><USER2> Presumably a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7916160).</comment>


Snaptalent now lets you buy job postings on the News.YC jobs page - <AUTHOR>

You'll notice in the jobs widget on the news.yc jobs page, we've added a 'your job here'link. Email sumon [at] snaptalent [dot] com for questions. <comment><USER2> If you don't feel like sitting on the jobs page and clicking refresh to see new jobs you can see all (well most) of the listed jobs here: <http://snaptalent.com/ads.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> So is this the beginning of the end of (free) _Ask YC_ type posts?

<comment><USER4> Of course not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess that means no to a "gigs" page that was requested the other day?

</comment><comment><USER6> I hadn't even noticed that jobs link. Useful.

</comment><comment><USER7> first time we see images in HN. video is next.</comment>


After 40 Years, C-Span's Founder Signs Off - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-40-years-c-spans-founder-signs-off-11555713751 <comment><USER2> I'm really addicted to their _American History_ lectures where they record real history courses on different topics and from different colleges and universities, I listen them as podcasts it's really great. It also contrasts with the decreasing quality of podcasts overall, where quantity now trumps quality and where authors now make _media tours_ of popular podcasts, so much so that you end up with the same guest on the same topic on several podcasts in your feed... it's television all over again...

</comment><comment><USER3> Time for rent</comment>


Russian government calls for bids to hack Tor - <AUTHOR>

I don't think that there are articles in proper news sources about this yet. Here is the guy who found it:
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4739669.html
And here's the call for bids on the government website:
http://zakupki.gov.ru/epz/order/notice/zkk44/view/common-info.html?regNumber=0373100088714000008
The task reads as "research possibility of obtaining technical information about users (user equipment) of anonymous network Thor". It offers 3,9 million rubles (about $100k) for the task. <comment> Alex-Galapagos As one of they guys on here ([http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4739669.html](http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4739669.html)) noticed, it's funny that the government organization is using email for contact: email@example.com . Yandex is a free service like Yahoo! in US. Let's put it this way, FSB has its own hacker group (called "Otdel K", you can read about it here: [http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D3%EF%F0%E0%E2%EB%E5%ED%E8%E5_...](http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D3%EF%F0%E0%E2%EB%E5%ED%E8%E5_%AB%CA%BB) Use Translator since there's no English version) and wouldn't need to publish this kind of ad publicly.

</comment><comment><USER2> Tor you mean? (not Thor)

<comment><USER3> Russian does not have either "th" phoneme. I would have been more amused if they'd called it "Luke".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> that should be Tor not Thor. Fun, eh?

<comment><USER5> The fun's over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thor? Marvel beat you to it. Thor's gonna be a woman.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's just embarrassing.</comment></comment>


"Must have advanced knowledge of Web 3.0" - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/cpg/1006991004.html <comment><USER2> I remember when Java first came out there were ads looking for "7 years Java experience"

<comment><USER3> Same thing with .NET. When I see these things I wonder, is it that recruiters really have no clue of what they are asking or are they doing it to "catch" the kind of people who like to bluff/lie on their resume?

<comment><USER4> Given how many programmers are out there, it wouldn't be too beneficial to create a job posting that catches, a couple dozen at a time, the job-seekers who are padding their credentials.

And some of the applicants are presumably thinking something like "I'm as familiar with this as I'd need to be to perform the job. And I'm not going to mouth off to HR about how they don't know how long Java has been in existence. So I might as well apply."

<comment><USER3> Well, if I was to apply to such a job and saw this kind of mistake, I would point it out in the best way I could.

E.g. "I've been developing in XX language since it was released", "The technology has been available for X years and I started using it shortly after it was made public".

Well, im not a native English speaker so I'm probably a bit short on vocabulary to express it here. But stuff like that, shows that you know what you're talking about without telling them in their faces that they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Duh, Web 3.0 is "internet appliances".

You can send your dirty dishes and laundry off to the internet to get washed.

<comment><USER6> Right, just stick them into the tubes!

<comment><USER7> Which can get clogged up with crappy posts like the OP, and then everyone slows down to look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The better definition I have heard of technology cycles (via Jared Spool). The numbers do not map to Web 2.0.

The first generation (1.0) is all the technology. "Hey, check out out my Motorola cellular phone. It weighs 5 pounds and is a true portable"

The second generation (2.0) is all about the features. "Text messaging, pictures, ringtones, games, address book, MP3 player, J2ME, comes in pink"

The third generation (3.0) is all about the user experience. The iPhone

</comment><comment><USER9> Dammit, and here I am still new to my Web 2.5 Code Terrorist job

[http://www.rubyrailways.com/forget-rock-stars-gurus- ninjas-a...](http://www.rubyrailways.com/forget-rock-stars-gurus-ninjas-and- zen-masters/)

</comment><comment><USER10> We're only doing Web 4.0 development now. 3.0 was so --- outre.

<comment><USER11> I did this a few months ago and wrote it down, so the numbers might be a bit off by now:

      Google results for "Web x.0":
      "web 1.0" : 989,000
      "web 2.0" : 81,800,000
      "web 3.0" : 2,070,000
      "web 4.0" : 102,000
      "web 5.0" : 25,700
      "web 6.0" : 41,300
      "web 7.0" : 12,000
      "web 8.0" : 8,190
      "web 9.0" : 2,030
      "web 10.0" : 5,260
      "web 11.0" : 392,   # meaningless results
      "web 12.0" : 1,220, # meaningless results

<comment><USER12> <http://www.google.com/search?q=web+78.0>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would pay to hear their definitions of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

The marketers got em good.

<comment><USER14> Web 1.0: Regular website

Web 2.0: Regular website with social functions

Web 3.0: Regular website with social functions and iPhone etc capability

Web 4.0: Virtual Reality

Web 5.0: Virtual Reality with iPhone capability

<comment><USER13> "Web 1.0" sites had social functions.

And I said "their" not "your" :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If by "advanced knowledge" they mean "can see into the future" then it at least sort of makes sense.

<comment><USER16> But that's _advance_ knowledge, not advanc _ed_ knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Compensation: no pay"

?

<comment><USER18> The subtext: Perks -> Lots of time for unsupervised web surfing ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Web marketing phrasology has broken the threshold and commenced 3.0!

When Web 2.0 companies just don't seem to cut it go Web 3.0!

Stellar!

</comment><comment><USER20> I worked on "Web 3.0" for over one year, and I'm still not sure what it was all about ;-)

</comment><comment><USER21> "Mr Data, Take us out at Web 3.0....... Engage!"

</comment><comment><USER22> I totally want to get certified in Web 3.0.

<comment><USER23> I'm still at Web 1.77.

Been working my way up to 2, but the new DOM's a bitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apparently, Web 3.0 is the logical progression of web 2.0 for a generation of recruiters who picked the impression that the higher the version tag, the better a system is. Reckless protologism ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism#Protologism>) rampant in blogosphere is to be blamed, to an extent.

</comment><comment> puzzle-out Well, I guess there is some justice - if you put out bullshit job descriptions, you should only get bullshit applicants.

</comment><comment><USER25> I installed web 3.0 but it crashes whenever my hyperspace drive goes into warp mode so I downgraded back to web 2.6 until the service patch is released.

</comment><comment><USER26> "previous marketing experience": make up a good enough definition and you've got the job.

</comment><comment><USER27> This post most likely does not actually represent a real management position.

</comment><comment><USER28> How long until the web 3.0 ninja listing is spotted?

<comment><USER29> You don't spot ninja listings, they spot you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hang on, we haven't had 2.5 yet

</comment><comment><USER31> I miss the: "Being a social media expert is a pre".

</comment><comment><USER32> People on craigslist are stupid. Dog bites man.</comment>


Jasonette: Create native iOS apps with JSON - <AUTHOR> http://jasonette.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand completely how this works, but I'm super impressed. Is there support for animations? Is this meant to be the primary codebase for a native app?</comment>


Astronomers find Super-Earth with Atmosphere - <AUTHOR> http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200924.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to a paper by David Charbonneau et al. "A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star" <http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3229> It contains more details.

And here is a page about the MEarth project <http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~zberta/mearth/> ... it seems that some nocturnal animals also find the telescopes highly interesting ...

</comment><comment><USER2> Check out the timelapse video in the gallery in this link. The telescopes are hard at work all night scanning all parts of the sky. Very cool.</comment>


There Are Few Libertarians. But Many Americans Have Libertarian Views - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/there-are-few-libertarians-but-many-americans-have-libertarian-views/ <comment><USER2> I didn't read Krugman's article about his chart and its reasoning, but I always found the Nolan Chart to help me understand political leanings and preferences: [http://imgur.com/mPbmgVk](http://imgur.com/mPbmgVk)

Using that chart it is a little easier to understand why there might be few Libertarians for the same reason there are few Statists; the terms both represent the pure ideals of those concepts and most people aren't totally studied in those areas to be able to fully dive in to either. Instead people have grasped some concepts and grafted them into what their political worldview already is.</comment>


Big Tech needs to act on concerns over 'surveillance capitalism' - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/37a0cb82-23c6-11e9-8ce6-5db4543da632 <comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the paywall. This is a letter to the FT from John Chen, CEO of Blackberry. I can't post it in whole, but the gist is:

 _The inevitable implications of a data-driven economy are right in front of us and we now stand before a moral, ethical and public policy crossroads. Recent events, where mass privacy breaches have occurred, have raised public awareness of the pitfalls of big data and the elevation of profit over privacy by some corporate actors. As a consequence, public authorities are demanding more comprehensive answers from Big Tech, and a healthy policy discussion has finally begun._

and:

 _The onus is on businesses to protect the data they manage, not exploit it. Every person should own their data. It should be yours, and yours only._</comment>


Building faster horses - <AUTHOR> http://rvivek.com/2011/07/building-faster-horses/

<comment><USER2> _"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" – Henry Ford_

Alas, there appears to be no evidence that Ford ever said this and nearly all appearances of the quote are from the last few years. Also - a tell-tale sign for bogus quotes - the wording frequently varies. And I'm pretty sure that by the time Ford came along, people were pretty familiar with the idea of the automobile. Oldsmobiles, for example, were around before Fords.

But Ford was indeed a proponent of understanding people's needs rather than doing what they (say they) want. From his autobiography:

 _The salesmen [...] were spurred by the great sales to think that even greater sales might be had if only we had more models. It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it. The salesmen were insistent on increasing the line. They listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If there is any defect in service then that must be instantly and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not merely a personal whim that is being voiced. Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy his every requirement--that is, of course, provided what they have does satisfy these requirements.

Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be "Model T," and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."_

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/13250680/Henry-Ford-My-Life-and- Wo...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/13250680/Henry-Ford-My-Life-and-Work)

Edit: I've submitted the "faster horses" line to the proprietor of the excellent site <http://quoteinvestigator.com> in the hope that it will catch their interest, in which case we might get to find out where it really came from.</comment>


Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica - <AUTHOR> http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2013/11/ice-lab-new-architecture-and-s.php#.UpbxlGRDsmk

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know more about how you can build a research station without an internal heating? I assume heat from machines or devices is pumped through the building combined with excellent insulation.</comment>


21 Rough Lessons Learned from Our Startup Failure - D-Train http://www.daryllu.com/2014/04/at-end-of-my-25-year-startup-roller.html <comment><AUTHOR> Great post.

>> _Research should weigh heavily on building your product / service WITH your customer-PARTNERS_

I have often advocated this from a business development perspective. It becomes a free way to elevate your customer to someone driving the iterations rather than a receiver. They are a gold-plated, VIP, so-important-they-make- suggestions- partner. An easy win.

>> _Market like a king with a blacksmith's earnings._

Really astute advice.

All in all a great list - accurate, brief and clear. What is next for you?

<comment> D-Train Thanks, ZenPro. Tried to make it concise, even though it ballooned to a list of 21.

The Next Move is a tough one. I'm trying to stay in the startup game. I'm not tired of peanut butter sandwiches yet. If I don't start another startup, then I'd love to help another early stage tech startup with business development (sales, marketing, the works).

I've learned a lot, and I'm eager to apply the lessons with others. Know of any early startups who I can help?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in London unfortunately, not the USA otherwise I would invite you along to our co-working space to cast your net.

<comment> D-Train Yeah, I saw that on your profile. Figured I'd ask anyhow! Thanks, ZenPro!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Great info that can help provide some insight on the highs and lows of starting a company.

<comment> D-Train Thanks, cmwalker25! Hoping these lessons help others avoid those traps.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do you go to Hackathons? - <AUTHOR> I am curious to hear what are the drivers to participate to Hackathons. Is it to code with other people? To meet new people? To find your next startup job? To prototype an idea you had for a while? Or else? <comment><USER2> I use to go to hackathons for few reasons: 1\. To have fun developing a new product and coding 2\. Meet new and interesting people 3\. Look at people skills for when I'm hiring for my company

<comment><AUTHOR> You say "I used to go". Any particular reason why you stopped going?

<comment><USER2> Actually no time :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fun to be in a context where I'm not meant to be working on my usual projects. Totally greenfield. If I were at home or in the office, I'd just work on my normal work.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the biggest downside then?

<comment><USER3> As I've got older, physical burnout. Many hackathons have a 24 hour limit and run through the night, it seems, and while I can still do 24 hours of work, I sure seem to know about it for the next week or two..</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup School Videos - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if there was a way to watch the presentations from Startup School 2009.  I heard lots of good things about the talks and would love to watch them. <comment><USER2> <http://www.justin.tv/startupschool>

The Paul Buchheit talk seems to be missing, unfortunately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it is. That's the one I want to see the most.</comment></comment>


We just launched an API for down-to-the-minute rain predictions - <AUTHOR> http://journal.darkskyapp.com/2012/dark-sky-for-developers/

<comment><USER2> Can't wait to try this, perfect timing for summer.</comment>


Android phones are iPhones that work - <AUTHOR> http://agevik.se/post/31668024653/android-phones-are-iphones-that-work

<comment><USER2> Wait, so he's complaining about calendar and ... iTunes? I haven't synced calendars over the wire since iOS2.0 - all caldav/exchange now and it works fine.

If there were valid critique like say, the lack of web intents on iOS, or the better focus on notifications in Android this submission might make sense.

Why is this even on HN?

</comment><comment><USER3> iCloud syncs everything across everything and even apple aren't tight enough to sell you a phone or device sans charging cable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hyperbolic post is hyperbolic. C'mon.

</comment><comment><USER5> The world had to know.

</comment><comment><USER6> Linkbait nonsense with no substance.</comment>


A geek, capital controls in Greece and Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://blog.vrypan.net/2015/07/22/greece-capital-controls-a-geek-and-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> I singed up with Xapo, but debit card is still in beta. Do you know when the first cards are going to be shipped? You could also open a bank account in Bulgaria and get a debit card from there. Many people that live near the boarders are using this solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to following your updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll do my best :-)</comment></comment>


Running out of savings just as getting close to traction - <AUTHOR>

In roughly 30 days, I will run out of savings and the ability to bootstrap my app - www.rewardcamp.com
But just as I'm running out of cash, I'm also gaining a bit of traction - inked a deal to onboard 50 new paying customers recently. But I gave big discounts to win the deal and so the revenue is nowhere near enough to pay for expenses.
To earn cash, I'd like to solve your problems in marketing/sales. These are skills I picked up over the last 2 years. Below is a list of issues I can help you with.
Contact me via this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MG8jdMOcNbKrvPw64hlW40sqged0_JaEJaO9Aa3KOOc/viewform) | 917-942-9499 | rsarcar at gmail dot com | comments below
Problems I can help with -->
Problem: No one knows about your app/website.
Solution: Get the word out via content marketing

  - Identify top blogs in your industry
  - Create list of content topics likely to be posted on industry blogs
  - Develop content
  - Post on industry sites
  - Bring traffic to your site
 Problem: Users visit your site but no one signs up for your app.
Solution: Increase user interest in signing up

  - Setup analytics to understand where you are
  - Understand core problem being solved
  - Rewrite website copy to increase visitor interest
  - Implement "call to action" buttons to make it easy to signup
 Problem: No systematic way to convert traffic into paying customers that can be scaled. Solution: Implement automation & processes for conversion and scaling sales

  - Implement system to collect email addresses
  - Write email sequence for autoresponder to warm up leads
  - Implement autoresponder
  - Implement CRM to followup with leads via phone call or webinar
  - Develop a sales funnel & phone script
 Problem: You have sales but they are slow. Solution: Sell in bulk using partnership marketing

  - Identify partners to work with
  - Create a targeted marketing campaign to develop relationship and build partnership
  - Ink deals with each partner
 <comment><USER2> Don't give discounts because that devalues your own product, and says that not even you believe the service is wroth what you are charging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I gave the discount because in one transaction I could sell 50 subscriptions. Also the guy I gave the deal to had helped me quite a bit earlier on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What does your app do exactly? I didn't get that from the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a loyalty app for online stores. Think airline miles for ecommerce stores.

<comment><USER4> You need to work on the copy and I hope you're doing A/B testing.

I would revise some of the copy to be shorter and see if that helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hacker News is not an advertising venue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup I know. Just trying to make things work.</comment></comment>


ARCore: Augmented reality at Android scale - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/arcore-augmented-reality-android-scale/ <comment><USER2> > ARCore will run on millions of devices, starting today with the Pixel and > Samsung's S8, running 7.0 Nougat and above. We're targeting 100 million > devices at the end of the preview.

That's...not great? For comparison, ARKit on iOS is going to support 400 million devices at launch (very rough numbers: ARKit runs on any new iPhone Apple's released over the past two years - iPhone 6S/SE/7 - and they sell over 200 million a year). Hardware fragmentation is a tough problem to solve.

<comment><USER3> The exact same thing stuck out to me as well. Mostly because they had to start the article with this sentence:

> With more than two billion active devices, Android is the largest mobile > platform in the world.

So they'll get it onto 5% of active devices, or one in every twenty. Not great, perhaps not even good.

I've not been a fan of android fragmentation for awhile now, and have been surprised that Google hasn't been able to do more to attack the issue. Even when Treble launched, I asked myself... is that all? Rock and hard place I guess.

I actively avoid android devices because of the issue. My last android device was a tablet in 2011.

<comment><USER4> The purpose of ARCore is for high-end Android devices to be competitive with the iPhone technologically, not to get on 2 billion devices, at least not now.

Therefore it's fine that they get only 5% to start. I assume it's going to turn into 10%, then 20% quickly. For some perspective the iPhone only has about 15% market share globally.

<comment><USER5> It'll only do that if ARCore itself takes off. With such small penetration, it's entirely likely that developers will just focus on Apple's ARKit.

<comment><USER4> _likely that developers will just focus on Apple 's ARKit_

Most likely someone will just build and offer an abstraction layer on top of ARKit / ARCore and solve the problem that way.

<comment><USER6> Google have already provided this themselves, plus hooked it up to a 3D rendering engine:

[https://github.com/google-ar/three.ar.js](https://github.com/google- ar/three.ar.js)

That's assuming you're okay with JS, but if you're going cross-platform then it makes sense if you need to have interactive scenes.

<comment><USER7> The problem with WebVR, is that just like WebGL, it is capped, versus what is possible in actual OpenGL ES.

<comment><USER6> I've been developing WebGL software for a client for the last few years and my client has had quite good success selling content based on the software and consumers are using the content. The vast majority of browsers fully support WebGL (1).

The biggest performance bottle-neck is the JS itself, specifically stock three.js is quite inefficient. However, that's just a matter of optimising three.js, or using WebGL directly if you need more fine-grained control. You can get a lot done in a browser these days.

<comment><USER7> I have seen impressive WebGL demos, but for some reason WebGL always makes the GPU sweat more than plain native code driving my fan at full speed, even though it offers less.

Maybe it is a consequence of using JS, I have never researched it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Occasionally I'll write an app for my kids or wife. Every time I'm thoroughly impressed by the Apple development ecosystem and thoroughly disgusted by Google's for Android.

This is no different. The Android development process is painful (the most verbose, cruft and boilerplate filled Java), cumbersome to organize and build (Gradle is terrible, and buggy) and debug (the integration with Studio is just clunky). About the only thing Google does better is testing releases through the developer console.

It's nice to see them finally providing something similar to ARKit. I just wish they'd work on all the other things that make Android development a horrible experience.

<comment><USER9> Eh, they've both got their pros and cons.

iOS:

\+ Swift

\+ Less screen sizes to worry about

\+ Less iOS versions to worry about

\+ XCode is much lighter on resources

\- Mac only

\- XCode might crash every now and then

\- Probably need an iOS device, as the simulator is very slow

\- $100/yr developer fee

Android:

\+ Kotlin

\+ Studio runs everywhere

\+ No developer fee

\+ More stable IDE

\+ Decent emulation

\- Countless screen sizes to worry about

\- Lots of Android versions to worry about

\- $25 developer account fee

\- Android Studio is resource heavy

\- NDK requires lots of JNI boilerplate

Though, with all of this AR stuff, I'd just go the Unity/Unreal route, as it will probably be very game-y and such.

<comment><USER7> Android:

\- Developer fee of $25 if you plan to actually publish to the store

\- Needs a quadcore Xeon with at least 16 GB and SSD to have an usable experience with Android Studio, or configure it to run in laptop mode

\- NDK requires lots of JNI boilerplate to call about 80% of Android APIs

<comment><USER10> > \- Needs a quadcore Xeon with at least 16 GB and SSD to have an usable > experience with Android Studio, or configure it to run in laptop mode

I'd disagree with the Xeon bit, I have a 6 year old Sandy Bridge quad core, and Android Studio runs butter smooth.

I'll confess to the 16GB of RAM and an SSD though. Although honestly an SSD now days is required for anything to be usable.

Android Studio is amazingly performant though, the Emulator is great, ignoring bugs and glitches and the occasional times it just stops working until I flip enough settings back and forth that it starts working again.

Of course a huge benefit is that I don't need Apple hardware to develop for Android.

<comment><USER7> I also rather develop for Android, but Android Studio resource requirements made me appreciate Eclipse again.

Apparently AS 3.0 will be better on that regard.

<comment><USER10> > I also rather develop for Android, but Android Studio resource requirements > made me appreciate Eclipse again.

There is a reason my dev machine is a Desktop. Better keyboard, better monitor, better performance. 6 year old machine, cost about $1500, performs better than the ultraportables a lot of people try to press into service for writing code. Even with a faster CPU, thermal throttling is a concern once the form factor gets to a certain size.

<comment><USER7> We don't get to chose what we get.

Usually the customer's IT assigns hardware to external consultants.

<comment><USER10> Ah interesting, when my team used external consultants, we did the inverse, we gave the consulting company a beefy requirements list and told them anyone sent to work for us must be at least that well equipped.

Paying by the hour, we were heavily motivated to minimize compile times. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I commented here on Tango 3.5 yrs ago: "remains to be seen if Google can persuade cellphone manufacturers to include 2 special cameras + 2 extra processors in their future devices." Looks like that was the case.

It appears the ARCore API is well designed and 1-1 feature equivalent to ARKit, i.e. VIO + plane estimation + ambient light estimation. The API's even share a lot of names, e.g. Anchor, HitTest, PointCloud, LightEstimate.

Now that stable positional tracking is an OS-level feature on mobile, whole sets of AR techniques are unlocked. At Abound Labs ([http://aboundlabs.com](http://aboundlabs.com)), we've been solving dense 3D reconstruction. Other open problems that can be tackled now include: large- scale SLAM, collaborative mapping, semantic scene understanding, dynamic reconstruction.

With Qualcomm's new active depth sensing module, and Apple's PrimeSense waiting in the wings (7 yrs old, and still the best depth camera), the mobile AR field should become very exciting, very fast.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems very odd that this comes out and seemingly replaces Tango. Google spent a lot of time going over new stuff with Tango in the latest Google I/O keynote and Google Lens, which was featured quite a bit, seems like it relies on Tango and its depth sensing hardware for their "VPS" stuff.

Also, when Clay Bavor was talking about Tango supported devices he remarked that the devices were getting smaller and smaller then implied it was coming to smaller, more traditional devices. I took this to mean they were close to getting the sensors ready for wide deployment but I suppose this could have just meant they were ditching the sensors because they felt the software was good enough.

I'm kind of disappointed. I'd hoped that he was saying that Tango sensors would show up on Pixel 2 (which was a long shot, from the leaked photos not really showing the many sensors you see on current Tango devices). Instead we have what feels like a rushed out me-too to match ARKit.

<comment><USER13> This does not replace tango, at least not technically. Tango has a depth camera which is not replaced here. The depth camera is useful for a variety of applications.

I hope tango will be continued to be developed. It is more robust for position tracking, and can do 3d scanning, etc.

<comment><USER14> > and can do 3d scanning

Very badly. I'm very disappointed by Tango in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like a lot of people on this thread think Google's goal is to beat Apple with the features, but in my opinion that's not the case.

Google really has nothing to lose by following iOS lead, it's good that they "gave up" on Tango and decided to follow ARKit because that means Google is not trying to beat iOS with Android, but trying to commoditize iOS.

You really can't beat Apple at its own game, it's best to let go of that foolish goal and focus on trying to nullify whatever leverage Apple has with their few years lead.

Sure ARCore won't be installed on a lot of devices now, but in a couple of years they probably will (This is not the same as the Android ecosystem currently being fragmented because AR provides an entirely new type of UX and will be significant enough for people to get a new phone), and as long as Android gets there Google will have achieved its goal--commoditize AR.

In the end, Apple will have made tons of money with their iDevices, Google will NOT have, but they will have gained enough AR user-base that they can use it as their leverage, everybody wins.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's funny how much marketing speak these big companies feel obliged to cram in. "At Android scale" -> "to catch up with Apple's ARKit"

It's actually impressive that Google is able to change direction and and get this software-only AR out the door so quickly to compete with Apple, but they still don't want to admit that's what they're doing.

<comment><USER17> Maybe having been developing an advanced AR platform since 2014 has something to do with the speed at which they can carve out and subset a "light" AR experience :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also it looks like Google is retiring the "Tango" brand [1].

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/google-retires-the- tango-b...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/google-retires-the-tango-brand- as-its-smartphone-ar-ambitions-move-wider/)

<comment><USER18> Tango has technically been a failure in terms of the specific AR hardware. No adoption and no real software support.

Apple's purchase of MetaIO and its focus on just SLAM is really the right way to go. Maybe improve it a bit via specialized hardware when available (progressive enhancement in a way), but at least start with SLAM.

Google didn't have to be behind on AR at this point in time if they had ditched the focus on Tango hardware and instead focused on SLAM.

But that is water under the bridge, Google is now on the right track after being forced to do so by Apple.

<comment><USER17> I think ARKit-style SLAM will turn out to be a fad, they'll be a lot of interesting toy apps, but AR without environmental understanding or persistence I don't think offers much beyond that. The basic ARKit demos we've seen are the same stuff we've been seeing for a while now demoed with third party libraries.

Including depth sensing HW _was_ the right solution, but Google doesn't have its own popular smartphone as a forcing function. I predict eventually Apple will include a depth camera, or they'll use dual-cameras to try and synthesize it, and once that happens, then all Android manufacturers will follow suite.

If AR is to be useful, it's got to be a lot better at tracking and drift, at making sense of the world, of supporting occlusion and mapping.

<comment><USER19> ARKit seems like the near term future. It's useful and no longer requires as much expertise since is available in the OS and is well documented. For a software library it's surprisingly accurate.

The Tango model of using extra hardware is probably much better, but seems further ahead. The software model works today on existing devices and lets people see how this is useful. Once you have that convincing people it's with the money to have the hardware added to the phone becomes easier.

Given how many Android phones are lower cost than the flagship was Tango ever going to be very popular? Apple could have forced the issue (like Lightning or the headphone jack) but people could always switch Android OEMs to get something cheaper if they don't see the value.

<comment><USER20> > but people could always switch Android OEMs to get something cheaper if they > don't see the value.

The kind of people that buy flagship Android phones would probably either see the value or be price insensitive enough not to switch over it.

OTOH, "works ok now" is often more important than "works better later", so getting something out that will work with today's flagships has value even if Tango would be practical down the road.

<comment><USER17> ARKit is a perfect example of "worse is better". Quite obviously inferior to the full Tango demos with occlusion and room mapping, and HoloLens, but simple enough to excite the imagination, and to enable "fake AR" experiences like Pokemon Go.

<comment><USER19> That's what I was trying to get at. Once people get a taste I think the demand for More capable solutions like Tango will be much higher than it would have been otherwise.

When Pokémon Go came out I was very disappointed to find it's much hyped 'AR' was really just rendering ok top of a live camera image with no tracking at all.

The demo of the ARKit version from WWDC is what I had been expecting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is something I have been personally pushing the Google AR team on for at least a year and well before ARKit came out. I'm glad to see that ARKit made them actually move on this.

Google had been dead set on pushing Tango hardware to OEMs in the hopes that they would be able to lower BOM on the hardware. Everyone in who has been in AR long enough knew that wasn't going to happen and that monocular SLAM in software was the way forward on mobile.

The key thing now for AR devs is that they will have fairly comparable monoSLAM capabilities available on both Android and iOS for their apps.

HOWEVER that just means that the tracking portion of the equation is solved for developers. A few years ago it was possible to make a cross platform monoSLAM app if you used a handful of tools like Kudan or Metaio. Obviously ARKit and ARCore are going to be more robust with better longevity, however the failure of uptake of AR apps was not because of poor tracking, it was because there is an inherent lack of stickiness with AR use cases on mobile. That is, they are good for short infrequent interactions, but rarely will you need to use the SLAM capabilities of an AR app everyday or even multiple times a week.

This is why I am so invested in WebAR, because you can deploy an AR capability outside of a native app and the infrequent use means it can have longevity and a wider variety of users.

Yes, for those apps that people use all the time it will be very valuable, but if you look at the daily driver apps like FB, IG, Snap etc... they are already building the AR ecosystems into their own SLAM. All this does is lower overhead for them. For the average developer it doesn't solve the biggest problems in AR.

Kudos to Google, but developers need to really understand the AR use cases, implementations and UX if they want to use these to good effect.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, this Dance Tonite [1] [2] thing looks pretty interesting.

[1] [https://tonite.dance/](https://tonite.dance/)

[2] [https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/dance-tonite- ever...](https://www.blog.google/products/google-vr/dance-tonite-ever- changing-vr-collaboration-lcd-soundsystem-and-fans/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Even with ARCore and the new ML system in Oreo, Google can't match iOS, due to the install base of Oreo being nothing now, and won't be over 20% for another 2 years. Apple's ARkit is going to bring a whole new swath of exclusive apps to iOS. These APIs currently can't be recreated on android, which means most apps wont be able to be ported with all features, if at all. It's becoming harder and harder for devs to be cross platform and Google is falling behind Apple.

<comment><USER17> I see it as precisely the opposite. It seems like the tendency to engage in platform wars obscures the larger issue that this is all going to settle down and converge over time and nothing Google or Apple is doing right now will be the final form of AR.

Remember early 3D in the 90s? We have S3 Virge VX, Voodoo 3dfx, PowerVR, Rendition Verite, Matrox, TNT, etc They had a huge disparity in capabilities, fillrates, APIs, most didn't support OpenGL, even 3dfx -- the card closest to what games settled on as a minimum set of functionality, only supported Carmack's miniGL. Early DirectDraw and Direct3D were horrendous and to get performance, Games had to be ported to each card's proprietary APIs, and effectively, Quake and Unreal became the Unity of their day, offering a higher level abstraction to building cross platform titles until the cards all converged on OpenGL.

And converge they did. Eventually most cards offered similar fillrate, multitexturing, and fixed pipeline options, the market settled on a common hardware featureset, and then competed on price and performance.

Later, programmable shaders disrupted the market again, and we went though iterations of pixel/vertex shaders from 1.0/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4 to 2.0 to 3.0 and then GLSL and finally something like CUDA.

I think we're going to see the same thing happen in mobile and whatever fanboys propose as some kind of insurmountable advantage will turn out to get commodified if it becomes successful. For example, if AR takes off, or if Apple adds a depth sensor and Tango-like functionality takes off and a huge startup market and VC funding coalesces around it, then roughly 1-2 years later, every Asian OEM will have Android devices with depth cameras and similar functionality.

The only reason for the discrepancy today is the hardware fragmentation. But the market follows the money and abhors a vacuum. Hardware convergence in capabilities always follows, and eventually developers end up with middleware to address it.

This does lead to "IOS first" for startups, but if you look at the App Store and Play Store today, practically every major game and app you want is available on both platforms. It'll take years for this to shake out, but if AR becomes huge, smartphones in 5 years will all have roughly a similar set of features.

P.S. My own opinion is that phone's viewport is too small for a great AR experience. It's a nice initial experience and visually impressive, but will quickly become tiring. The long term form of this has to be some form of glasses, because waving around a phone in all directions and holding it in midair while touching the UI is kind of awkward.

<comment><USER23> > My own opinion is that phone's viewport is too small for a great AR > experience. It's a nice initial experience and visually impressive, but will > quickly become tiring. The long term form of this has to be some form of > glasses, because waving around a phone in all directions and holding it in > midair while touching the UI is kind of awkward.

I'm 100% certain that's what Apple is preparing for. AR in a phone is a neat toy, a gimmick. The most perfect AR toolkit ever made still won't change the fact that you're holding a phone in your hand, interacting with it through a screen, etc.

<comment><USER19> I think you're dead on.

A number of people have speculated that this is an attempt to get some real world trial and have apps that are already ready so if they announce some sort of HoloLens thing in the future the software/devs are already 80% there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple and now Google are making it easier to produce AR apps, but the tech has been there for years. I made my first AR demo some 8 years ago for a big event I was working with (on a laptop).

IMO AR in smartphones and tablets is a fad that in 2 years nobody will care about. Remember all those gyroscope/accelerometer based games? Yeah me neither.

Maybe AR will be awesome when someone (Apple? Microsoft?) releases a pair of lightweight glasses that can produce stereoscopic images superimposed seamlessly over reality, but we are still very, very far away from that.

<comment><USER25> But AR glasses/implants will be the evolution of smartphones. There won't be a quantum leap from phone SoC to glasses SoC. Google Glass was an early demonstration of that.

So if one needs to evolve AR hardware from phones to glasses, then putting it on the phones is a prudent next step, isn't it?

<comment><USER24> > So if one needs to evolve AR hardware from phones to glasses, then putting > it on the phones is a prudent next step, isn't it?

Time will tell, but if we are let's say 10 years away from good AR glasses what difference does it make if smartphones of today can display AR content?

Obviously Apple (and now Google) are fighting in the marketing space, not technical one.

In truth the problem is really hardware not software.

<comment><USER26> I don't think it will take that long to have lightweight additive projection glasses with some sort of camera/depth sensor and eye tracking.

The processing power or battery for that form factor will not be there for another 10 years - but offloading processing and power supply to the phone in your pocket via well designed tethering is conceivable.

I think we'll have this in a couple of years, and you'll control it via voice recognition and hand gestures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sweet! This is amazing and I was hoping this was going to happen sooner rather than later.

How long until they update the ChromiumAR project with support for ARCore and when will that preview and then be available? I know that tons of people are waiting on that:

[https://github.com/googlevr/chromium- webar](https://github.com/googlevr/chromium-webar)

<comment><USER27> Is this what you're looking for? [https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/web/getting- started](https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/web/getting-started)

<comment><USER18> Thank you! I love Google for making the web a top priority on par with Andriod, where as with Apple it is an unloved step-child.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If someone can make a react native binding for both ARCore and ARKit, that'd be super amazing and make the bar to entry for AR apps much lower.

<comment><USER29> I will attempt to make a shitty, hacked-together version :)

<comment><USER30> That's the spirit! hahaha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now, someone just needs to build an AR library that abstracts the functionality of these two through a common API.

<comment><USER32> I would be very surprised if Unity didn't have it up and running in one or two months. They already support ARKit, Windows Holographic, and Vuforia more or less natively. Also, given the ground-level work they've done to enable support for VR without directly dealing with vendor-specific plugins, adding just one more is probably not that big of a deal.

<comment><USER33> This looks to ship with Unity support, as well as Unreal.

<comment><USER34> Yes.

There is a lot of discussion here about how Apple has a headstart on developer commitment with ARkit.

What will actually happen for the majority of games targeting AR is people will write it in Unity (or perhaps Unreal), and then set it to compile for iOS and Android.

The S8 was the top selling Android phone this year, so this can be rolled out immediately to phones. I just tested out the sample app on my Pixel. As time goes on, the percentage of Android phones with this capability will increase.

ARkit does not work on iPhone 6 or earlier, or the iPad Air 2 or earlier. It can roll out to a greater percentage of Apple devices right now, but Android has a larger overall market share any how. Two years from now, I expect AR on iOS and Android to be fairly on par (of course we have to see how the two stacks measure up against one another).

<comment><USER35> Where did you find the sample app? I've been looking for it with no luck.

<comment><USER34> I compiled it. I followed the instructions here -

[https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/java/getting- starte...](https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/java/getting-started)

Actually I followed them somewhat - I never opened Android Studio, I did it all on the command line.

Note you have to install two APK's, the ARcore service APK you have to download from them, plus the one you're compiling with gradle or AS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very interesting. Just paging through the docs the library doesn't seem like a very hard to use at all. The devil might be in the details and it's hard to say how rushed it was after ARKit but they had the parts and bits required for it already done in some form or another.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is there a difference in the core technology underneath ARCore and ARKit? Just generally curious.

<comment><USER38> ARCore is based on Tango which was derived from Flyby which was acquired by Apple and turned into ARKit.

<comment><USER18> I thought ARKit was derived from metaio's technology? [https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple- metaio/](https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/)

<comment><USER38> Informed conjecture from [https://medium.com/super-ventures-blog/why-is-arkit- better-t...](https://medium.com/super-ventures-blog/why-is-arkit-better-than- the-alternatives-af8871889d6a):

      Ogmento was founded by my Super Ventures partner Ori Inbar. Ogmento became
      FlyBy and the team there successfully built a VIO system on IOS leveraging an
      add-on fish eye camera. This code-base was licenced to Google which became
      the VIO system for Tango. Apple later bought FlyBy and the same codebase is
      the core of ARKit VIO.

      ...

      I don't have any hard insider confirmation on this, but I think the Metaio
      codebase would have helped with the plane detection and probably helped with
      the mapping/relocalization pieces of the visual tracker. FlyBy had by far the
      best Inertial tracker on the market, and it's this piece that makes ARKit
      magic (instant stereo convergence & metric scale in particular).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I ran (the sample app) it on my galaxy s8 and its a bit slow sometimes, but it tracks tables well. Floor not so..

Anybody knows where i can find more apk sample apps to test?

<comment><USER40> Hi, where is this sample app you tried? I don't see it listed in the OP announcement anywhere...

<comment><USER41> It can be compiled from the linked GitHub repository.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Also check out: [https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/28/8th-wall- raises-2-4-milli...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/28/8th-wall- raises-2-4-million-for-augmented-reality-tools/)

Supports Unity, and works on both iOS and Android out of the box. (I'm not affiliated, just a supporter.)

<comment><USER43> Very curious how they pitched this to investors... "We're building a platform geared to low end devices that will become obsolete within a couple of years. Invest now, and be part of our team's amazing journey towards acquihire!"

<comment><USER44> LOL. My guess would be "All ARKit and ARCore bases are belong to us". 8th Wall XR works on all the ARKit and ARCore devices. Why would you want to create an AR app twice when you can create it once? For free.

<comment><USER5> But why wouldn't I use something proven, like Unreal or Unity in that case?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm glad to see this, I'll enjoy experimenting (probably via the aframe ar api) BUT

What are the useful applications for AR outside of verticals?

I've not seen anything compelling in the phone only incarnation.

The headsets have a lot of engineering issues ie many years to overcome.

Even with headsets its unclear the value of adding the visual clutter and noise that most ambient/immersive computing demonstrations seem to assume.

Whatever value you can add generally requires constant headset wear for it to be ready to hand. This puts even harder engineering problems on the industry as it forces super light and easy headsets (google glass was not AR nor a technical path to it).

Not seeing it yet.

<comment><USER46> Headsets have nothing (or little) to do with AR. You're probably confusing AR and VR.

There are tons of use cases for AR:

\- [https://storify.com/lukew/what-would-augment- reality](https://storify.com/lukew/what-would-augment-reality)

\- [http://www.madewitharkit.com/ideas](http://www.madewitharkit.com/ideas) and their twitter [https://twitter.com/madewitharkit](https://twitter.com/madewitharkit)

<comment><USER45> Having seen most of those proposed in one form or another in the past my response is about the same.

Can't see any of them being worth putting a headset on.

Can't see any of them being worth launching an app on a phone to stare through a camera at.

Some of them need some pretty next level ai.

<comment><USER47> The heads-up display on a car windshield seems pretty useful.

The rest are pretty underwhelming. Lots of things that make great demos, but not many that feel like I would come back to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Do I understand correctly that one big difference between AR on Android vs iOS is that the next iPhone will have advanced 3d sensing abilities that are currently years away on Android phones?

</comment><comment><USER49> It can be seen from the video (from the way they avoid it) that the "augmentation" is always superimposed on the "reality". I.e. someone can't walk in front of the virtual objects you put on the table.

Is that a limitation of ARKit too?

What would it take to make it "real 3D"?

<comment><USER20> > It can be seen from the video (from the way they avoid it) that the > "augmentation" is always superimposed on the "reality".

I think you mean "inferred" rather than "seen", if it is an assumption based on avoidance, and there are other explanations; while HoloLens is better equipped than phone-holder software AR to avoid this, the one time I did get to use one there were some glitches when the "augmentation" should be obscured y the "reality". If ARCore handles that, in principle, but is currently annoyingly glitchy in practice on its current preview-quality state, you might reasonably avoid it in demos.

<comment><USER49> In live demos yes, but you would totally want to show it in a pre-recorded demo like this one.

<comment><USER20> Not if it was glitchy enough that you couldn't reliably get a good take.

Either "doesn't have that feature" or "feature is currently in poor state to demonstrate" are reasons to avoid demoing it.

<comment><USER49> You don't need to reliably get a good take to produce a video; you need one good take.

If it's bad enough that it won't look right even after taking the best of a large number of attempts, that's as good as the feature not existing for the purpose of my question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit skeptical about the performance to be honest: Great tracking for AR requires careful selection and tuning of cameras and IMUs (inertial measurement units -- essentially MEMS gyro + accelerometer).

Apple has very tight control over their components so they can do this but managing this across a million OEMs and device models (as it is with the Android ecosystem) is close to impossible.

Tango tried to solve the problem by specifying out a software and hardware stack for OEMs to use but now it looks like Google is just too jealous to let have Apple have a good time with ARkit, therefore the "me too".

<comment><USER17> Hence why it is available only for Pixel (which Google controls) and the Samsung Galaxy 8 (a large partner) because it can be precisely calibrated.

Why is it Google "me too"? Tango was released in 2014.The basic plane detection functionality that's in Tango is derived from the same mechanism that Apple uses. Facebook released an ARKit-like library at their conference before ARKit was even announced.

When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'", but when Apple is perceived to have done something first, suddenly everyone accuses Apple's competitors of being thieves and copying.

<comment><USER50> > _When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if > you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'"_

Generally people say that in response to everyone accusing Apple of copying.

<comment><USER17> That's mostly in reaction to Apple's history of claiming copying and its litigious look and feel lawsuits.

Remember "Redmond Start Your Copiers!" That was an official WWDC banner hung from the rafters by Apple, not some fanboys. Steve Jobs frequently gave interviews accusing rivals of copying, and then copying with the excuse "Good artists copy; great artists steal". All of those years of going on the offensive against everyone, has created a tendency of the other side to look for hypocrisy now.

There's something pretentious, and deeply hubristic and lacking in humility in Apple's marketing that I think has fanned the flames of these fanboy wars. In a way, their marketing reminds of the way Trump talks, only with a larger vocabulary. Replace "Great!", "Bigly!", "SAD!", with "Beautiful", "Amazing", "Breakthrough". It's just continuous repetitive of superlatives, even for minor features.

<comment><USER50> Your quotation I think is very important here.

> _" Good artists copy; great artists steal"_

The point of this quotation is that "good artists" merely copy other people, which is what Apple is talking about when they hang banners like "Redmond Start Your Copiers", but "great artists" 'steal', which means they take the good idea and transform it to make it better. And this is very much how Apple works, and this comes back to your original pseudo-quotation, _" it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'"_. Apple doesn't just blindly copy what other people are doing. They 'steal' the ideas and turn them into something great before releasing them.

<comment><USER17> Apple has done both, as had Microsoft. Microsoft didn't just blindly copy everything Apple did. As much as I hate Microsoft of the 90s, they did innovate too.

Apple doesn't blindly copy? What do you call Apple Music then? Ping? What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original.

In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?

<comment><USER50> > _Microsoft didn 't just blindly copy everything Apple did._

Not everything. "Redmond Start Your Copiers" was in response to some very specific copying over the previous year, though I don't remember the details anymore.

> _What do you call Apple Music then?_

I call it a subscription model to the iTunes store. Subscription models have been around for a long time, even though Spotify is the poster child for applying them to Music I don't think it makes sense to say Apple is copying Spotify (or anyone else) by having a subscription music service, it's the logical evolution of paid music services. You could certainly argue that Spotify proved the customer demand was there (as well as the ability to convince the labels to go along with this), but it's not like Spotify invented the concept.

> _Ping?_

An unmitigated disaster. But I'm not sure who you think that was copying. I can't think of any pre-existing service like Ping.

> _What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify?_

Provide a seamless "it just works" experience across all Apple devices, including integration into their customers' existing iTunes libraries, and into Siri, including the forthcoming Homepod. And I think it's fair to give Apple Music credit for iCloud Music Library as well, which is great.

> _That 's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and > Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't > actually improve on (make great) the original._

Can you elaborate?

> _In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo 's > deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?_

Apple Photos does it all on-device.

Also, I really don't think you can claim that using machine learning to classify photos is something that Google owns. It's been an obvious idea for literally decades, it's just taken until now before it was feasible to do.

<comment><USER49> So when Apple merely copies instead of "stealing", it was an obvious idea that had been around for a long time. It's the logical evolution to what they already had. It just wasn't feasible to do until the moment Apple copied it. Got it.

<comment><USER50> Your sarcasm is not appreciated nor warranted. If you disagree with any of the specific cases I talked about, feel free to tell me why I'm wrong, but merely being sarcastic about it isn't helpful.

<comment><USER49> Ok I'll bite:

\- If something wasn't feasible to do until the moment Apple copied it from others, why didn't Apple do it first?

\- Have there been innovations by companies that compete with Apple?

\- Have they ever taken an idea from Apple and made it better?

<comment><USER50> > _If something wasn 't feasible to do until the moment Apple copied it from > others, why didn't Apple do it first?_

I really don't know what you mean by this.

> _Have there been innovations by companies that compete with Apple?_

Where is this line of questioning going? I feel like you're trying to accuse me of saying that nobody but Apple is capable of innovation, which is nonsense.

> _Have they ever taken an idea from Apple and made it better?_

I'm sure someone has. I don't really keep track of that sort of thing though, so I don't have any examples off the top of my head.

<comment><USER49> > > If something wasn't feasible to do until the moment Apple copied it from > others, why didn't Apple do it first?

> I really don't know what you mean by this.

You've answered to Apple copying others with "it was an obvious step forward, just infeasible before". Which fails to explain why was it infeasible for Apple until after it became feasible for others.

> I feel like you're trying to accuse me of saying that nobody but Apple is > capable of innovation, which is nonsense.

It is a strong predictor of how you responded to the examples that were raised. The obvious question after seeing that is "is there a counterexample?"

<comment><USER50> I said automatically classifying users' photos to search was only feasible to do recently. It didn't become feasible for others first, it became feasible for everyone at about the same time (well, I suppose it was feasible for Google slightly earlier because Google's doing it in the cloud where they have more computing power available, versus Apple being limited by the computing power of the iPhone, but this appears to be such a relatively small difference that it doesn't really matter).

<comment><USER49> It was only feasible to do recently, in the sense that only recently did Google develop (and publish) the ML techniques that made it feasible. It wasn't some inevitability brought to us by Moore's law.

<comment><USER50> This isn't my area of expertise, but I thought the recent ML boom was kicked off by ImageNet, which came from the CS department at Princeton, and the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge? Google's been a big player in ML recently, but they're not the only ones researching this.

<comment><USER49> ImageNet is a manually-annotated database to train models. Google had the Image Search corpus internally too.

The advances in image and speech recognition of these times are due to innovations in deep learning by Google, Microsoft, NVidia, Stanford, U. Toronto, CMU, and many others. I didn't mean to imply it was all Google's doing. Rather that Apple wasn't there, which is why "just waiting for it to become feasible" sounds like apologetics.

Then there's also innovation in making a product out of the new capabilities, or integrating them into an existing product. I think dismissing that as "everybody was just waiting for the technology" is not realizing that, in hindsight, all products look obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Google took the names of the 2 best features of iOS 11 and combined them: ARKit + coreML = ARCore

Anyone else here got it?!

</comment><comment><USER52> Exciting to see competition here

</comment><comment><USER53> My real table is messy enough. Now I can make it messy digitally too!

</comment><comment><USER26> Will this work on both Qualcomm and Exynos variants of the S8?

</comment><comment><USER54> What's with the majority of the shots being crop shots, or shots that don't involve the object moving completely in or out of the frame? Seems to me like it's potentially hiding some visual defects

</comment><comment><USER55> I can't wait to dance with a hotdog.

</comment><comment><USER56> How does this compare to apple`s ARKit?

<comment><USER19> Hopefully someone will make a good write up.

From seeing ARKit examples that people have posted to Twitter the thing that has impressed me the most is the ability of ARKit to track your position even if you turn around and walk around, even all around in the office. I hope Google's version can do that as well because it seems like it would enable some really fun activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I don't get if there's app one can download to try this?

Doesn't look like it, uh?

<comment><USER58> There's a sample you can download and run on compatible hardware: [https://github.com/google-ar/arcore-android- sdk/tree/master/...](https://github.com/google-ar/arcore-android- sdk/tree/master/samples/java_arcore_hello_ar)

<comment><USER57> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'd rather they rewrote Camera2 API, which is the most horrible API I've seen in my 20+ years in this profession. It's so bad, one might think it's an elaborate prank, but no, Google does expect you to use it to interact with cameras. That's why all photo apps on Android are so ridiculously bad compared to iOS.

<comment><USER60> Yep, it's horrible. Activity + Fragment API is pretty bad too. And the worst was the first version of in-app billing or GCM (don't remember which one) API. You had to copy hundreds lines of code for a hello world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Google's ARKit

</comment><comment><USER62> Haha, check out the commits on their github for three.ar.js: [https://github.com/google- ar/three.ar.js/commits/master](https://github.com/google- ar/three.ar.js/commits/master)

> Build and increment to 0.1.1

> jsantell committed 26 minutes ago (failed)

....

> Fix linting

> jsantell committed 24 minutes ago (success)

edit: aww come on folks it's all in good fun

<comment><USER63> release days are fun

<comment><USER64> "Nazi" linting rules are not.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to change network route on Mac OS when using VPN? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
As I'm working from home, I often need to connect to my $WORK network via VPN. All's fine most of the time, but the speed is pretty bad and IT won't do anything about it.
The question is how would one change the default route and only use the VPN only for connecting to my $WORK network.
I'm using FortiClient if it matters and it routes everything via $WORK network.
Thanks <comment><USER2> As wmf mentioned, you may not be able to change the configuration of the VPN client.

You could, however, simply delete the default route yourself (from a terminal).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is called split tunneling. Many corporate VPNs lock the configuration so you can't change it.</comment>


Otto Aviation: Introducing the Celera 500L - <AUTHOR> https://www.ottoaviation.com/ <comment><USER2> The pronunciation is slightly different in English but in French Celera is pronunced exactly as scelerat [1]

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scelerat](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scelerat)</comment>


'Bitcoin creator': I do not have the courage - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36213588 <comment><USER2> So here we learn that the BBC, Andreson and Matonis agreed to send bitcoin to the address generated in block 9.

But why would this be simpler than simply signing a message or simply moving a small amount of bitcoin to another address?

<comment><USER3> It's not. Before this "experiment" began, there was already a balance of around 18 BTC in this address. So there were already coins to move around to prove he held the private key.

But lets say he does have the key, and the balance _was_ 0, the easiest way would be to just sign a message with the private key.

Unless he does not have the key or, he doesn't know how to sign a message.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: which database should I learn. - <AUTHOR> Hi I am changing my profession from financial services to programming. Which RDBMS should I learn? I am confused between MySQL PostgreSQL mangodb etc. please guide. <comment><USER2> Start with sqlite (Easy to set up, file based, good for playing and for embedded systems) then PostgreSQL or MSSQL if you are going to be in Windows land. MySQL later if you have to. It's fallen out of favor in some communities since Oracle bought it and it's just not as powerful as PostgreSQL though it does the job.

Also go buy the book "Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties" [1] (And everything else he wrote on SQL...) and actually learn what SQL and DDL is really all about how to properly model data. Lean some SQL and DDL _before_ you start messing with ORMs like Rails Active Record or SQLAlchemy and all that stuff.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Fourth/dp/0123...](http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Fourth/dp/0123820227)

Also, maybe just go read "SQL For Web Nerds" right now but take it with a grain of salt and again forget Oracle for now. It's old but good... <http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Blog Comment Similarity Detector (Free Code For Disqus) - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/11/blog-comment-similarity-detector-free.html

<comment><USER2> I used essentially this method as well for personas (personas.media.mit.edu) as so many web results were the same... except I kept track of duplicates to then employ further metrics to select 'the best one.'

Works well.

Although the tokenization is very much a poor mans. I have since open sourced my tokenization framework (for python) which handles real world text: <http://bitbucket.org/azinman/defuse/src/tip/smgtk/tokup/>

Aaron</comment>


You were born when? The French Revolutionary Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2017/07/you-were-born-when-the-french-revolutionary-calendar.html <comment><USER2> The French Republican calendar is covered by the Revolutions podcast, from Mike Duncan who did the History of Rome podcast. [http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/](http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/)

Much like the metric system, the structure of the new calendar was quite simple and elegant. Naturally, once the Reign of Terror came into full swing, the creators of the Republican calendar were executed along with anyone else who was insufficiently zealous. Today, the only people who use it are students of the French Revolution who have to decipher all these crazy dates.

<comment><USER3> I'm somewhat history-illiterate, and Wikipedia isn't illuminating in this matter. Why would the revolutionaries want to execute people who created the revolutionary calendar?

<comment><USER4> The French revolution included multiple power struggles between competing revolutionary factions [1], which led to numerous executions of revolutionaries by revolutionaries including some of the founders of the republic (the same happened in Russia in 1917).

The revolutionary calendar was partially reverted to the older Gregorian calendar with effect from 1802 (several years after the Reign of Terror) and fully abolished by Napoleon in 1806 [2]. He had become Emperor of the French and wanted to replace the vestiges of the Republic that had installed the calendar in the first place.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you have emacs, M-x calendar will bring up the standard Gregorian calendar, and p,f will give you the date in that calendar. So today is 20 Messidor, an 225.

<comment><USER6> > _today is 20 Messidor, an 225_

Hmm... according to my own implementation of the calendar[0] we are actually 30 Messidor, an 225. Same according to the Android app I use on my phone. Do you have a link to the source of Emacs' implementation?

[0] [https://github.com/seeschloss/floreal](https://github.com/seeschloss/floreal) and a graphical calendar here: [http://ssz.fr/republique/](http://ssz.fr/republique/)

 _Edit_ thinking about it, many implementations do not really go beyond 1806 and do not count leap years ( _année sextiles_ which have six extra days instead of five) after then (as before this date, leap years were supposed to be calculated from the actual sun movements instead of regularly spaced). This might be the reason for the change.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.windhorst.org/calendar/](http://www.windhorst.org/calendar/)

This page explains the inconsistencies. Apparently there are several ways to calculate the dates past 1806.

<comment><USER8> Pfff. Dates up to 1806 should be good enough for anybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure to get the problem. On the document shown as second picture, it reads (translated) : "Jean Thompson, born the ten floréal year twelve (30 april 1804)". So the regular latin date is clearly mentioned on that document.

Was it not the document used when whatever problem that John had occurred, and this document is just here to show an example of the alternative calendar?

<comment><USER6> > _" Jean Thompson, born the ten floréal year twelve (30 april 1804)". So the > regular latin date is clearly mentioned on that document._

I depends a lot on the documents. A lot of historical French documents only have the Republican date written. Even at the time anyway, it would not have been difficult to find the corresponding Gregorian date, even in England probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the good things that came out of the French Revolution was the metric system. Not so much with the revolutionary calendar.

<comment><USER11> Well, unfortunately it just didn't catch on. In many ways it made much more sense than the calendar system we still use today.

It also has the added benefit of celebrating an event most modern people probably can relate to and are in favour of (the bloody struggle and oppressive regime that came afterwards admittedly not so much though ...) instead of the arbitrarily fixed year of birth of a religious figure many people are more or less indifferent about.

On a side note, PHP interestingly has had native support for the Revolutionary Calendar for a long time: [http://php.net/manual/en/function.jdtofrench.php](http://php.net/manual/en/function.jdtofrench.php)

<comment><USER12> It is a cruel fact that 365 is so poorly dividable (prime factors are 5 and 73). 7 _4_ 13 is pretty much the closest we can get. I imagine having one extra day in the calendar is easier to swallow for most organizations (and people) than five extra days. And of course 7 day week has the advantage of familarity. 10 day weeks sound somewhat heavy, I suppose most people would have 7 day workweek and 3 day weekend. While 3 day weekend sounds nice, you also get about 30% fewer weekends. The 7 days of work would be fairly radical extension, can't imagine that being popular among anyone.

<comment><USER13> I would not mind working four days, having one free day, working another three days, and then having a weekend of two days, for example. Indeed, familiarity is the key here, but I am sure we could get used to a week of 10 (or any other number of) days.

<comment><USER12> That could be also described as a five-day week with alternating 4/1 - 3/2 work/free division. But of course such ideas don't fit into the french revolutions obsession with decimal system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are the metereological conditions in Belgium somewhat similar as for the calendar to make sense?

<comment><USER15> Yes, obviously. Belgium is France's neighbour to the north.

<comment><USER14> Ok, but as I know France for good wine and Belgium for beer. I thought the weather was part of what made those special.</comment></comment></comment>