Nest Cam smart camera is 'always on' even when 'off' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34922712 <comment><USER2> Link bait.

 _" A team at ABI Research found that even when in "off" mode, the camera on the Nest Cam continued to draw a current of 340 mA, indicating that it was, in fact, still operational."_

 _" Nest Labs said no video data was transmitted when the camera was off."_

<comment><USER3> > Nest Labs said no video data was transmitted when the camera was off.

Nest Labs investigated Nest Labs and found that Nest Labs did nothing wrong.</comment></comment>


Apple Successfully Implements OpenID Connect with Sign in with Apple - <AUTHOR> https://openid.net/2019/09/30/apple-successfully-implements-openid-connect-with-sign-in-with-apple/ <comment><USER2> The working document linked to by this press release:

[https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign- in...](https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign-in-with- Apple-differs-from-OpenID-Connect.md)

 _Since September 2019 all spec violations have been addressed by Apple, as recorded in the next section. The section thereafter - "Peculiarities" lists specific implementation choices by Apple that differ from what most implementations provide, but are not spec violations per se._

The previous HN discussion about the spec violations:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311000)

<comment><USER3> And in fairness to Apple, most OIDC implementations have peculiarities. The Go OAuth library has a handful of quirks for specific providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug (but I hope that's okay, again): IRMA Authentication is an open-source app [1] and protocol that offers privacy-friendly attribute based authentication and signing using Camenisch and Lysyanskaya's Idemix [2].

It's currently heavily focused towards The Netherlands, where citizens can obtain attributes such as name, home address and age. These attributes can then be selectively disclosed directly to a service provider, without the identity provider being able to see the transaction [3]. Multiple disclosures are also unlinkable as long as the attributes themselves are not identifying.

The fact that the identity provider is not at all involved with the transaction is an enormous privacy win compared to OpenID Connect, especially in the case of centralizing providers such as Apple – and less so in for example the domain of education single sign-on.

It's not currently using the verifiable claims data model, but it would very much fit it. It also doesn't use a 'blockchain', simply because it's not necessary to do so, and makes it all a lot less complicated.

[1] [https://github.com/privacybydesign](https://github.com/privacybydesign)

[2] [https://privacybydesign.foundation/publications/](https://privacybydesign.foundation/publications/)

[3] [https://privacybydesign.foundation/meeting- slides/slides-8-3...](https://privacybydesign.foundation/meeting- slides/slides-8-3-19/ringers-8-maart-2019.pdf#page=2&zoom=auto,-68,540)

<comment><USER5> > Shameless plug (but I hope that's okay, again)

I find lots of cool shit on hn because people decide to share their side projects that I wouldn't otherwise have seen.

It only becomes a problem when people don't disclose they have a bias or connection to a product when they should.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't call it a side project - it's supported by the government and city of Nijmegen but very cool

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I don't currently use Apple products, does this mean that people can use their own OpenID Connect identity providers with Apple (like if I run an Open ID Connect server at idp.example.com, I can add it as an authentication source) or is this just for using Apple's Identity Provider to allow your own apps to log-in via your Apple account?

Open ID Connect is essentially a an OAuth2 implementation. The original Open ID 1.0 concept, where you could use any identity provider with any service provider, is pretty much dead:

[https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-decline-of- openid/](https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-decline-of-openid/)

<comment><USER8> Decentralization always fails, centralization is inherent to society and human nature. That's why we generally centralize around areas that turn into huge metropolitan cities, and why 99% of git usage is on Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket. We're a centralization-loving race. So OAuth 1.0's dream of decentralization resulted in only a few OAuth providers ever lasting long.

<comment><USER9> Except that TCP/IP, email, and the web has shown that it can also be otherwise. Big sites come and go. I don't think you can always state general rules along these lines (cities are different from hosting source code). You have to look at the friction vs advantages per scenario. The web, for example, has little friction due to Google providing the grease, and massive long-tail advantages in decentralization. OpenID has a lot of friction in its implementation, and few known identity providers exist for most individuals... not to mention trade offs in the implementation and profile details available per provider create incentive for developers to only put a "sign in with Facebook/google" button on their sites/apps.

<comment><USER10> On the last point... in general, a lot of sites, in order to let users participate only really care about having a name and email address or phone for contact needs. Most don't really even care about that. Why not let any number of other systems take care of that. For that matter, they also handle validation.

I'd rather let FB/Google/Twitter and now Apple deal with verification details, and let them participate in a site. It also means, on doesn't have to deal with persisting or dealing with passwords (that can be breached) etc.

Of course, I'm still inclined to allow local/passworded accounts and ensure salt+hashing of passphrases, etc. It's just in a lot of ways much easier as a user.

Depending on the site, I'd often prefer Twitter (until my short account ban/lock, which made life more difficult for a few days... FYI, don't rile up the communists too much).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really great. So many people were up in arms about Apple releasing an implementation that didn't comply with OpenID. Good on Apple for addressing the issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad they've got the tech right for the actual authentication, but their email relay is still far from usable.

It's limited in very fundamental ways, that will prevent many companies of any scale from using it. It's very difficult to make it work with an email service such as SendGrid, and it's limited to 10 domains you can prove ownership of, and 10 specific email addresses.

I work for a company that charges users and ships physical products – our payment providers and shipping providers all need to be able to contact our customers if they choose to use those services, but this would be essentially impossible (or a prohibitive amount of technical work at scale).

It's a very poor implementation. I wrote an obnoxiously long blog post about this. [https://danpalmer.me/2019-07-02-on-signing-in-with- apple/](https://danpalmer.me/2019-07-02-on-signing-in-with-apple/)

<comment><USER13> I've rarely seen vendors sharing e-mails with payment and shipping companies, and would consider it somewhat icky for privacy reasons, especially when done without the user's consent.

It also seems that you could set up your own relay allowing those providers to contact your customers. In fact, that would be the privacy-conscious alternative even to your current implementation.

<comment><USER12> Many delivery providers need to be able to contact the person they are delivering to. This is standard practice. The same is true for many non- trivial payment providers (such as PayPal/Klarna).

This data is shared for the legitimate interests of the customer. You've bought something and asked to a) pay for it, and b) have it delivered. I think it's reasonable to expect that the companies involved in this can contact you for the purposes of fulfilling your request.

This is all done under GDPR. The companies hold the data only for as long as they need, for the purposes explicitly requested by the user. This will all be included in privacy policies.

> It also seems that you could set up your own relay allowing those providers > to contact your customers.

This might be technically possible, but introduces many concerns such as deliverability and spam ratings. Relaying email in this way is non-trivial when you're doing it at scale. For services sending ~100k emails a month or more, this requires careful planning because it's very easy to become filtered as spam.

<comment><USER14> What stops the user from consensually providing this information in a form field at checkout, if they wish for such contact?

<comment><USER15> 1\. You already gave those downstream vendors your contact information so they can, you know, ship your package to your home and charge your credit card.

2\. 99.99% of all users probably want to be emailed tracking information or payment confirmation information. Adding such a checkbox only adds friction to their funnel in order to please an incredibly small minority of people using their site.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for that . A couple of things: 1. I don't think an E-mail address is really necessary in order to ship a package or charge a credit card. 2. Friction and convenience used to be acceptable reasons to collect personal info without consent but maybe that's starting to change. I highly doubt the 99.99% figure but having no data of my own I won't dispute it. I trust that you have seen such an opt-in rate for sharing E-mail addresses in your past user research.

<comment><USER12> > I don't think an E-mail address is really necessary in order to ship a > package or charge a credit card.

For credit cards, no it's not (but would be for pay-later, PayPal perhaps, Alipay, AmazonPay, maybe).

For shipping, most shipping companies have the option to handle the customer communication. When creating an order you provide them an email address and/or phone number, and they will send notifications. Many use these channels to provide the user the ability to reschedule deliveries, select delivery windows, change their delivery address, etc. This process is often also white- labelled so you may not realise that it's actually with the delivery company.

These details are not stored long term, only for the purposes of doing the delivery, any applicable returns process, and any insurance claims, etc.

It is possible to not do this, but assuming the retailer wishes to provide the same level of communication it means a much deeper level of integration, as tracking data needs to be ingested by the retailer. Given the industry has no standards for this, and "integrations" are SFTP + cron jobs once a day + CSVs, this can be pretty difficult, error prone, and result in a poor UX where you don't actually have the granularity of data to send an email when the package has been delivered.

> Friction and convenience used to be acceptable reasons to collect personal > info without consent but maybe that's starting to change.

We have found that it is within the user's expectation that we will share contact details to the third parties necessary to complete their order in this manner. It's in our privacy policy that we do this. We also check that all of our suppliers understand their GDPR responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish Apple would actually publish the configuration document too (under the well-known URL, as listed in the peculiarities). It makes it one less step for OpenID clients to follow.

I wonder what their rationale is, for not doing that (given how easy it is, compared to all the other things they fixed).

But overall this is great news.

</comment><comment> yoz-y This is maybe the first time I see a positive open letter. Kudos to both parties.

</comment><comment><USER17> Slightly off topic, but it's been frustrating to me that large organizations only want to implement OpenID providers and not consumers. What Apple has done makes it easier to bring your Apple identity across the internet, but it's ultimately an identity that Apple owns.

<comment><USER18> Basically, if you're a large org, you _must_ be an OpenID Provider (OP). Optionally, you might _also_ be a consumer.

If an org supports social login, for instance, they are likely a consumer and a provider.

The user authenticates at an external OP (like Apple or Google), but a local account (or "identity") is always created by the service provider, which should be stored in an OpenID Provider.

> but it's ultimately an identity that Apple owns.

I would say that's slightly inaccurate.. it's ultimately identity information that Apple owns. And of course, Apple owns your account with Apple.

But the minute you "sign in with Apple" to any service, they too are creating a local identity for you (sans password). That identity begins with the information provided by Apple (e.g. name, email address, etc.), but can expand over time to include additional information provided by the user, not Apple.

<comment><USER17> You are correct in that quite often who implements provider vs consumer depends largely on market position. There is technically no reason Apple can't become a consumer, other than they aren't interested in doing so. Also consider that, should Apple choose to eliminate your account, then you've lost whatever you use Apple to sign in with unless those downstream providers offer some kind of recovery mechanism.

<comment><USER18> > Also consider that, should Apple choose to eliminate your account, then > you've lost whatever you use Apple to sign in with unless those downstream > providers offer some kind of recovery mechanism.

Yes, some kind of recovery mechanism, some ability to set a local credential post-registration, or some ability to link and unlink external accounts, e.g. Sign in with Apple, then link your Google, FB, and Github accounts. Then, if you lose access to your Apple account, you still have additional options for authentication.

The latter two options are something I wish more organizations offered..!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like Apple fixed all of the critical issues here [https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign- in...](https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign-in-with- Apple-differs-from-OpenID-Connect.md) but left in some "peculiarities," some of which are _quite_ unpleasant.

> _The scope value of only the very first request by an application is > respected. If an application initially requests only the name scope, and the > user allows it, it is then impossible to later also request the email > scope._

So if you don't ask for the user's email right up front, you can never ask for it again later?!

<comment><USER20> How is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER21> How is it not? Consent to releasing information should be supported on a granular on-demand level. If I initially only need name, I'll ask the user to consent for that. If I later on need an email (lets say for some additional functionality user is trying to access), I'll ask for email separately. This is much better than being constrained to only the initial scope being respected, resulting everyone basically request everything right away, faced with a situation where they can't do it later.

<comment><USER2> Can you offer a real-world example of when this would be the case for a product where logging in is required?

<comment><USER22> Even from a user standpoint... oops I clicked the "cancel" button when I meant to click "confirm" and now I have to go through the signup process all over again because the developer is not allowed to ask me again.

<comment><USER23> Last time I touched permissions the app was able to give the user a link to iOS Settings page where the user can grant previously denied permissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So they actually responded by fixing those issues? I wonder if they went as far delaying the release for that. If that's the case, +1 to Apple for privacy

</comment><comment><USER18> For those of you interested in this topic, check out Internet Identity Workshop: [https://internetidentityworkshop.com/](https://internetidentityworkshop.com/)

Great little "un-conference", hosted semi-annually in Mountain View, CA. Where a lot of the nuts and bolts were worked out for OpenID Connect.

In fact, today IIW 29 is coming to a close. Next gathering in April, 2020.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thankfully. I do not use sign in with Google or Facebook and I would not feel comfortable signing in with any Ad company's credentials.

</comment><comment><USER26> has sign in with Apple launched yet? It was the Big Thing in iOS 13 that I was personally most excited about but honestly, if it has launched, I haven't seen it yet.

edit: from the comments it sounds like it has launched, but currently being implemented in a voluntary manner. Looked at the 9to5Mac article on iOS 13 support of apps and it looks like I just don't use any of them unfortunately.

Love the idea still and hoping it gains heavily in adoption.

<comment><USER27> Apple was planning on making SIWA support mandatory, but pushed that back to 2020.

<comment><USER28> For new Apps it is mandatory, existing apps have until April of next year to support it before updates will start getting rejected.

<comment><USER29> Only mandatory if you use Facebook/google sign in.

<comment><USER30> Any third party sign-in.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, sorry, was over generalizing it. They did make that first-party exclusion for SSO thankfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can someone explain who is OpenID, what's the OpenID Connect Self Certification Test Suite, and why it is so important that Apple follows their spec?

<comment><USER30> OpenID Connect is a profile of OAuth 2 that adds authentication and identity information. Sign in with Apple was a partial implementation of OpenID Connect, for sharing authentication as well as an email address and the user's name between Apple and other apps/services.

As a partial implementation, there were both difficulties using existing third party libraries and known security issues in Apple's implementation. This was shown initially by manual inspection, then by Apple's implementation failing the freely available certification test suite published by the OpenID Foundation (I believe run by third parties, not Apple themselves).

The OpenID Foundation published an open letter both to ask Apple to fix these issues, and to inform other operators that there were security issues with Apple's implementation.

A complete implementation solves known security and interoperability issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> sorry for this but this page is messing with the mouse scrolling, how can I prevent that? I've seen other several pages that do the same

</comment><comment><USER33> Say I have a web service with users but don't offer an email service with my core offering. Im guessing by using this I wouldn't be able to build iCloud Mail into my main service; allow my users to view, receive and send iCloud Mail through my web service?

</comment><comment><USER34> Still not to spec. And no PKCE? Oy.

<comment><USER35> But it is to spec. [0]

"Since September 2019 all spec violations have been addressed by Apple, as recorded in the next section. The section thereafter - "Peculiarities" lists specific implementation choices by Apple that differ from what most implementations provide, but are not spec violations per se."

[0] - [https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign- in...](https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign-in-with- Apple-differs-from-OpenID-Connect.md)

<comment><USER36> That list of "peculiarities" is pretty disappointing. The lack of a discovery endpoint is sad; it isn't that difficult to provide and it _greatly_ reduces the obscurity of configuring RPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Apple's online credential/auth* user experience is terrible.

I can't wait till Apple fixes their account auto-lock feature. On weekly basis I have to unlock my account because someone is trying to login with my email. I contacted the customer service to see if something could be done to avoid auto-locking. The only suggestion was to pick another email address that's not common.

Also in order for me to unlock I have to supply my password along with answers to my 3 secret questions. Additionally my recovery email cannot be the same as my account email.

Why Apple's online is terrible compared to their hardware/software?

<comment><USER38> To be honest I read all your complaints as a "screw Apple for protecting me".. pretty disrespectful. Their answer is expected. If your email is something like "email@example.com" \- there are like few hundred thousends of Smiths there.. And the complaint that recovery email cannot be the same as account email - so you want your account to be compromised without ANY way to recover it? Those seem like complaints of a completely "security oblivious" customer.

<comment><USER37> I am talking about the basic user experience for my iTunes music, video and apps. Apple's "protection" of my account isn't better or stronger than other popular online services, such as, Facebook, Dropbox, or Gmail. I have more sensitive data in my Dropbox and Gmail accounts than Apple's. And yet I go through trouble each week to unlock my account. Why do I need to be troubled by it to get access to things I paid for?

So here is a real story why I complained about requiring a different email address than the primary one. So a few years ago my apple account got locked due to their extra "protection". I tried to reset my password. I was given two options: to recovery by email or answer secret questions. Unfortunately I no longer had access to my works email and my answers weren't matching. It took another year till I could remember the exact answer I entered at the beginning. Till then my hundreds dollar of digital goods were locked out.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: courteous.ly shows people your current email load (Google mail only) - <AUTHOR> http://courteous.ly

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for feedback, HN. The goal is to make email less opaque. You put a link in your sig to a abstracted version of your email load. ("high", "normal", "light")</comment>


Growth hacking: Leading indicators of engaged users - <AUTHOR> http://www.richardprice.io/post/34652740246/leading-indicators-of-engaged-users <comment><USER2> All of these examples concern social networking products... I would curious to hear more from B2B online services. Tell us more about Salesforce, Atlassian, Zoho, Box...

<comment><USER3> I believe for enterprise/B2B services sales guys are the "growth hackers" and I believe for them it must be how many million dollar checks you can get over quater/year. However, I'd love to hear from anyone with enterprise sales experience on this topic.

<comment><USER4> Based on my experience of enterprise s/w sales for about 6-7 years, the answer depends on the ticket size of the deal and service delivery model. If it is SaaS based ($1-$10K p.a) then a lot of what applies to Dropbox applies to your b2b product too. At $15-20K or above you need to have inside sales reps who smile and dial. You start breaking even at this point. when you hit $500K deal sizes its time to bring in the rainmakers. Happy to chat more if you need specific help. buzz me at adass at filepicker.io

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> WOW. Great article...NOT. All of those "Growth hackers" indicators are just normal activity indicator.

"Someone sign up on my service and does something on my service that's expected of them to do?" BOOM! Leading indicator... No shit Sherlock...

As a marketer I'm getting tired to this buzz word shit around growth hacker...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's harder than you are suggesting to find a leading indicator of future engagement. You want to find a metric that is relatively foundational, and is going to produce engagement across a variety of dimensions later on (visit frequency, tendency to pay, tendency to add content, tendency to invite others etc).

For instance, when signing up to Facebook, there is a bunch of stuff they want you to do: add friends, invite people, add content like photos, and come back on day 1, day 2, and so on. It turns out that it's the first activity that is more predictive of future engagement than the others, and specifically 7 friends in 10 days is an important threshold. You can't figure that out from your intuition alone, and you definitely can't get the values of # of friends in # of days just by consulting your intuition, or your sense of what's obvious.

At the same time Chamath from Facebook was keen to point out that there was nothing mystical about what the growth team at Facebook did. He said the best way of describing what they did on the growth team is that they:

\- Measured things

\- Tested things

\- Tried things

His main take-away was that one should be extremely rigorous and analytical when thinking about what drives engagement, and not rely on your gut, or company lore.

<comment><USER6> _one should be extremely rigorous and analytical when thinking about what drives engagement, and not rely on your gut, or company lore._

Except the end result is usually the exact same.

A wildly inaccurate model for the sole purpose of impressing advertisers|investors|stakeholders with fancy, meaningless charts.

The conclusions you can draw from these models are either utterly obvious, or false. I'm looking forward to hear about a single example of the opposite.

<comment><AUTHOR> Every company at the conference was an example of the effectiveness of growth teams. Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Twitter and so on have all found that being rigorous about optimizing their growth models has increased growth and engagement.

They were also at pains to mention that you cannot A/B test your way to a great product. You need deep insight and intuition to build a great product. But once you have a great product, you can help it grow faster by being rigorous about optimizing the drivers of growth.

<comment><USER6>
      "If, on a graph, the plotted data does not match the
       initial hypothesis, make the line fatter."
       -- J. Meals

Or, to repeat myself, yes, it's rather easy to come up with these models and tweak them to sell your team|book|conference|etc.

I'm still waiting for an example where such a model predicted something non- obvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> An amusing quote, but I don't think Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Pincus, and the CEOs of the other companies are all being deceived by fatter lines on a graph!

<comment><USER6> Well, since you seem reluctant to provide an example, I'll try it with a question:

Did Myspace have growth hackers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Reluctant to provide an example? In my comment above I said that all the companies at the conference were examples of effective growth teams.

I suggest that we respectfully agree to disagree.

<comment><USER6> Except I didn't ask for "effective growth teams" but for instances of successful "growth hacking" (where the conclusions were not utterly obvious to begin with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Taken at face value, Dropbox's indicator is particularly interesting:

> ChenLi Wang, who runs the growth team at Facebook [sic: Dropbox?], said that > the leading indicator of an engaged Dropbox user is when they put at least > one file in one Dropbox folder on one device.

Basically - the leading indicator is any use at all. The other business' all had, relatively, a much higher threshold.

This is probably because Dropbox is immediately useful and stupid-easy to use.

Of course, it's hard to take this at face value since we don't know how everyone is defining an engaged user (and each definition isn't directly comparable to the other services' definitions).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the typo correction re. Dropbox - fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was curious: when optimizing a leading indicator, what sort of effect does that have on said leading indicator?

Presumably there can be a correlation-not-causation effect, and optimizing said indicator wouldn't have as much as an effect on engaged users as it did on the indicator itself. Does anyone know of a situation where they had an increase in the leading indicator but none in engaged users? Might the relationship change over time?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good question. You need to find a leading indicator that really is causal of engagement, and not just tangentially correlated with it.

Chamath stressed how critical it is to both minimize the time it takes to deliver a user their first 'Aha' moment, and then to continue to deliver those moments as regularly as possible. Presumably how many friends you have is causal, to some degree, of those 'Aha' moments - I expect that many of the 'Aha' moments on FB are to do with seeing cool content from your friends.

Nabeel also mentioned that it's also important to have various KPI metrics that you are aware of. His view was that there should be one over-arching operational metric that is broadly predictive of future engagement, and that the growth team should focus on that, but that, for any given tactic that you try out, you should be aware of its effect on a number of KPIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought this was going to be 'leading indicators of enraged users'... which would be a pretty interesting thing to get analytics on to identify user pain.

Erratic mouse movements, page refreshes, etc ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It would actually be good to be able to get leading indicators of enraged users too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What do people use for onboarding?

</comment><comment><USER11> The great thing about "user engagement" is it means whatever you want it to!</comment>


How to Land a Six-Figure Software Developer Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/164192/how_to_land_a_six_figure_software_developer_job.html?tk=rss_news

<comment><USER2> So what is wrong with

      {
      object* p=NULL;
      p = new object();
      p->foo()
      delete p;
      }

Do they just mean the missing semicolon? If so that's a pretty lame interview question.

<comment><USER3> foo() might throw an exception, leaking "p". Stack allocation should probably be used instead of heap allocation here, anyway.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for reminding me why I'm never going anywhere near C++ ever again in my life.

Good answer though, I was stumped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone read "Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job"? I have only browsed the table of contents and it looks pretty promising in terms of figuring out what areas of software development to review/improve before attempting to interview for a developer position.

<comment><USER5> The best way to find out what skills you need for the kind of job you want is to look at job descriptions. Some of them have a lot of fluff, but the best ones are very detailed and the requirements are truly what they want you to be able to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Come work for Blue Frog Gaming. (well, close to 6 figs, and def there once we IPO).

</comment><comment><USER7> I bet this thing gets gamed faster than you could bubble sort all the round man-hole covers in every gas station in your zip code.

What a bunch of B.S. Do you really think you can "game" your way into a 6 figure job by answering a few brain teasers? And if so, how long would you last?

Competent hirers look for "demonstrated performance". Technical questions are sometimes necessary, but hardly sufficient to find that out.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a soon-to-be college graduate (as of this June), I am especially curious about this. I majored in Psychology, and did a lot of stuff with abstract math, but have limited formal CS training - yet it seems that's exactly what companies want. I don't get it. I've been coding for fun for over 12 years (e.g., BASIC, C++, perl, PHP), one of my projects even successfully scaled and got acquired, but it's hard to find employment. And besides doing my own start-up, I really would love to code for a living!

Should I go get a Master's in CS? Spend time this summer working through SICP, and then an algorithms book (I took Discrete for fun, as an elective), and then something else?

Any advice would be much, much appreciated.

<comment><USER9> It's pretty easy for an HR person to weed you out because of your degree. Talk to actual engineers you know in the industry. If they think you can cut it, I'm sure they'll be happy to pass your credentials and a recommendation on to a hiring manager.

The masters in CS can't hurt either; you just need to decide how you want to spend your time.

<comment><USER10> I agree. After you get your first job and get some experience you'll be good. It's just finding a way to get past HR. They just look at credentials and may ignore your unconventional interest in programming. Don't worry though, after that first job you are good. Recent experience and your reputation in the industry will outweigh your undergrad degree.

The CS degree won't hurt but I would only do it if you already had research in mind that you wanted to pursue. That seems to be the key to enjoying grad school - chasing your passion and interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I signed up with GlassDoor.com to see what the Java interview questions were like. I only found three (nationwide) and they are not exactly illuminating:

"Create a small table driven site to display items from a database table."

"What do you think of Jakarta software?"

"How many people use the websites you've worked on?"</comment>


Ask HN: Can we upgrade vanilla Markdown? - <AUTHOR> So markdown is loosely defined somewhere on the web and it seems like the syntax is set. However, couldn't we start versioning it and incorporate the new features that these alternate flavors provide? <comment><USER2> You could, but the point of something like Markdown is its extreme simplicity and predictability. The more features you add the more unwieldy it becomes. Look at HTML - great that you have have super-rich documents, but the downside is that 99.99% of what's on the web is way overdone. You can't read news articles without downloading cast amounts of cruft.

There used to be a joke that all program specifications expand until they include the ability to send and receive email, and I'd suggest that today all markup specifications expand until they include the ability to to display streaming video.

</comment><comment><USER3> Checkout CommonMark [http://commonmark.org](http://commonmark.org)

The spec is still not final. Github is going to base their flavor ontop of it [https://githubengineering.com/a-formal-spec-for-github- markd...](https://githubengineering.com/a-formal-spec-for-github-markdown/)

</comment><comment><USER4> there are 89 flavors of markdown.

there will never be a standard markdown.

and not just because of xkcd927...

if you have a muddy puddle, you can't make it clear by adding more dirt. you have to replace all the muddy water with clear water.

markdown needs to be abandoned, and replaced with a superior version of light- markup.

(unfortunately, neither restructured-text nor asciidoc is superior.)

sooner or later -- probably later -- the tech sphere will see the need to do that replacement. until then, it would be a major disservice to assert markdown upon the world-at-large.</comment>


1ML – Core and modules united (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://people.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/1ml/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419784). I was really curious to see if there had been some progress since the last paper, but not just yet!

<comment><USER3> Following peer review comments, Andreas has significantly revised his paper, and simplified some of the derivations, particularly in the "type inference" section, making the type derivation rules more algorithmic and easier to implement.</comment></comment>


Regex was taking 5 days to run. So I built a tool that did it in 15 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/regex-was-taking-5-days-flashtext-does-it-in-15-minutes-55f04411025f <comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to compare it with red-lang.org Parse DSL.</comment>


The Botanist (2018) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/Yv_pJh9hKcA <comment><USER2> A poignant portrait of a probable genius surviving in utter poverty.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like this guy while in quarantine the past few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I watched this and really enjoyed it.</comment>


EFF, CloudFlare Asks Court Not to Force the Internet to Enforce Trademarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/eff-cloudflare-ask-federal-court-not-force-internet-companies-enforce-music-labels <comment><USER2> The EFF is fighting for the right thing here, but it loses credibility when it mischaracterizes legal procedure to make things look extra-scary.

E.g.

> Often this order is initially drafted by the entertainment companies.

Courts usually _require_ parties making a motion for some relief to submit a proposed order that has the desired effect. It saves time and makes it clear to the court exactly what the party is asking it to do.

The article also uses the phrase "secret order" like a million times. Obviously they're not secret because links are posted right in the article. What they're talking about is a (temporarily) sealed temporary restraining order.

15 USC 1116(d)(8) states: "An order under this subsection, together with the supporting documents, shall be sealed until the person against whom the order is directed has an opportunity to contest such order, except that any person against whom such order is issued shall have access to such order and supporting documents after the seizure has been carried out."

If you read two provisions before that, 15 USC 1116(d)(6), you find why the order is sealed: "The court shall take appropriate action to _protect the person against whom an order under this subsection is directed_ from publicity, by or at the behest of the plaintiff, about such order and any seizure under such order."

<comment><USER3> I noticed this with another EFF post earlier this year. I'm sure this sort of dire tone plays well on Reddit, but I hope it's not becoming a strategy.

<comment><USER4> Remember when SOPA was "breaking the Internet"? There's nothing new about the EFF's sky-is-falling rhetoric. It's just activists being activists.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's exactly an overblown characterization of SOPA. If you thought DMCA abuse was bad, SOPA would have ramped it up to insane levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I would encourage you to support any proposal that would result in the maximum engagement by the MPAA in Internet governance. Of all the things we do to protect our industry, this one is fundamental. Ron Wheeler put it well when he said if we're not there we don't count."

\- [https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/112456](https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/112456)

<comment><USER7> For context, that was one (US) Sony Pictures and Entertainment (which is specifically the US wing of Sony dealing with content production and licensing) executive emailing another in June 2014, as leaked via Wikileaks. IIRC Sony is not one of the larger studios, so if we learn anything it is that this degree of scheming is present even in the tiny cutesy wee little megacorps.

Incidentally, in another of Wikileaks' public interest projects, consider pledging some cash to uncover TPP @ [https://wikileaks.org/pledge/](https://wikileaks.org/pledge/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Trademarks are generally restricted to a single domain [1], which would mean that these music companies would only have rights to the Grooveshark mark when used in a music context. If there's a company out there that sells a product for grooving pavement that they call "Grooveshark" and sell it on groovesharkpaving.com then there's no domain overlap, but the court's order still asks CloudFlare to block them.

[1] Business context, not domain name. So "computers", or "food".

<comment><USER9> You are absolutely correct, however one would need to examine the filing classes to be sure because if any part of the trademark class includes "xyz delivered over the Internet," then they could potentially have a claim to any possible use. However, I would love to start a mountaineering equipment company called GrooveShark and see what would happen when I file a trademark. I could potentially then have ISPs block the so-called 'real' GrooveShark for infringing on my equally valid mark. I could potentially use the case law from the current case as a legal argument to block the other GrooveShark. That might be fun.

<comment><USER10> k.c seems like a much cooler trademark. you can still take a swing at grooveshark.com, and if you have any money left, you can head over to facebook.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _the court said that CloudFlare has to block every user with a domain name > that contains "grooveshark," no matter who owns the site_

What is the legal basis for this?

"Grooveshark" is long and unique, but by this principle, could King.com shut down every domain that contains the word "candy"?

<comment><USER12> They've gone after every game that uses the word 'saga', so they might try to.

<comment><USER13> As have Zynga with "With Friends" and Scopely with "With Buddies" and Microsoft with "Windows" or MikeRoweSoft [0]...

You can quickly lose a trademark if you don't actively defend it (weird, considering patents and copyrights) so companies quickly get over zealous.

That said... For reasons that defy explanation, courts have been known to uphold trademark protections for common words ("Windows") even though trademark law explicitly forbids trademarks on common language words and phrases.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft)

<comment><USER14> >You can quickly lose a trademark if you don't actively defend it (weird, considering patents and copyrights) so companies quickly get over zealous. //

It's oft repeated but not true AFAICT. Genericisation can be a problem, but another company using something as a trademark for a distinct type of good/service won't make your mark more generic. You lose a registered trademark by not paying your renewal fee.

If you wanted to codify someone else's use then you could grant them a license, you don't have to sue them or start infringement proceedings or whatever. You're free to ignore one infringement and pursue another.

This is like saying you have to prosecute every person who steps on your land or you lose the right to prosecute trespassers; if you allow a right of way to be established then yes that's probably not going to help you. But you're allowed to let someone in to your garden and you're allowed not to sue people who make incidental incursions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know why the EFF is praising ICANN for not becoming the Internet's trademark enforcer. Every new gTLD must deal with the Trademark Clearinghouse.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> I had no idea there was no concept of "safe harbor" with respect to trademark. The especially bad part here is while copyright seems to benefit small and large players alike (while imposing costs on small and large players), trademark benefits accrue primarily to big players, and costs to small players and individuals.

<comment><USER17> Why do you feel copyright benefits small and large players alike? I agree the relative advantages of some forms of IP are greater than others, but the scales seem to be tipped towards large players in most cases.

<comment><USER9> I highly disagree. My little company, iCouch has a registered trademark. With that protection, we've been able to easily fend off infringement and potential infringement from some rather large players. If, hypothetically, Apple were to attempt to use that name, it would instantly destroy our brand value that we've spent over 5 years building (in the behavioral health tech industry.) a little guy having IP protection prevents and has prevented getting steamrolled by a much better funded company. Without that protection we'd have a huge exposure to our brand being co-opted either intentionally or not by another company. Copyright and trademark protection is especially valuable for the little guy; even more so that someone who could 'win' by simply having a massive marketing budget.

There's an almost visceral opposition to IP protection among some factions on HN; but imagine if every time you start a company, a competitor instantly starts using your name. Imagine if every piece of content you create is instantly cloned by a competitor. You'd never be able to succeed because you'd have no way to differentiate yourself from the other company of the exact same name doing the exact same thing as you using your exact code and selling to your customers using your information. It's kind of like a world with absolutely zero friction.

<comment><USER18> IANAL, but I know I do know a little bit about this stuff. Don't take this as legal advice.

I'm sorry to say this, but the Apple scenario you've set out isn't _always_ going to be true. There's a thing called "Reverse Confusion" which says effectively (in my non-lawery words):

Why should some tiny wee company stop the well established brand reputation of a larger company? Big company has so much goodwill and reputation under this mark (from overseas or something like that), they should be able to use it.

On the face of it, it doesn't make much sense, but there's case law around it. If you're worried about something like that, definitely talk to a lawyer. Obviously this depends entirely on where you live and your local laws, but this case has come up in New Zealand very recently (I think it might still be being tried) with Uber. The taxi company were still able to use their trade mark, even though someone already had a mark in a vaguely similar domain before Uber were even around.

here's the first link I found on it if you wanted to read up about it more.

[http://definitions.uslegal.com/r/reverse-confusion- trademark...](http://definitions.uslegal.com/r/reverse-confusion-trademark/)

<comment><USER11> From that link:

 _The first user [the smaller company] is virtually always the prevailing party in any trademark litigation._

 _The doctrine of reverse confusion is intended to enable small, senior users to protect their trademark rights against junior users whose marks have gained commercial strength through extensive marketing._

 _reverse confusion can be a powerful weapon in the arsenal of lesser known companies in terms of protecting their trademark rights and as leverage against larger users._

<comment><USER18> Sorry, yes you're right. I should've read the link I posted, I just assumed it would be the same as how its treated in New Zealand. Obviously reverse confusion is dealt differently in different parts of the world.

Looks like US treats reverse confusion as if it were simply direct confusion. I'm pretty sure that's not the case where I live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would just add a rule into the loadbalancer config, if the request is coming from the music industry or a government agency redirect them to an empty website. (I am kidding).

<comment><USER20> I wish you weren't. Seriously, if we can't vote people in to make sane choices with policies, lock them out.

It might sound stupid, but they would at least have to learn a little bit about the internet before they made their next move.

<comment><USER21> If you want to do one better, put up something like "website blocked" as if it were some overzealous corporate firewall deciding that the site was bad.

With any luck, they'll think it's their own fault.

<comment><USER19> This is brilliant!!! :)

<comment><USER21> Bonus points if you have the site blocked under the 'file sharing' category or something like that :)

<comment><USER19> I was kinda curious, is it legal to put that picture on your website on your own?

<comment><USER21> If you're copying logo or using someone else's trademark from a real firewall page, that's a bad idea. But it can't be too hard to create a generic 'block' page that looks similar enough to real ones without using anyone else's images or logos to be convincing.

<comment><USER20> Just don't use anything federal to try and imitate.. that ends badly pretty much every time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This case is another example that secret court orders have no place in a democracy. This practice has to stop before it becomes even more widespread in the USA, the UK and other European countries.</comment>


Ask HN: What exactly will happen on debtpocalypse? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They already have the solution, but it's unpalatable to each party's dogma. They'll posture until the last minute and then do what they figured out they had to do weeks ago.

It's little more than a reality tv show at this point.

<comment><USER3> As I understand it, the differences aren't even ideological any more. According to Nate Silver's article from the other day,

[http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/its- all-...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/its-all-over-but- the-face-saving/)

the Boehner bill (which has been passed by the House and rejected by the Senate) and the Reid bill (which may or may not actually exist yet) are pretty much identical in all important ways. The main sticking point is whether to kick the can down the road 'til the middle of election season (which the Republicans want) or 'til slightly after the election is over (which the Democrats want). Both parties have high-minded-sounding justifications for why their preferred option is the right thing for the country, but...

I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the whole charade at this point. I know how this movie ends, it's just that the two leads are still arguing over who gets to look like the hero in the final scene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing. There will be a small market panic before, then it will happen. After it will be similar to when the government doesn't pass a funding bill, government workers furloughed etc. The market will recover. Everybody will have a good y2k laugh. The US will not default.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the unlikely event that the debt ceiling isn't raised, the government will need to decide which debts not to pay. I imagine it won't want to default on any bond payments, so that will leave any non-bond payments such as federal wages, medicare, medicaid etc.

In addition to this, the US credit rating is likely to fall, and potentially confidence in the dollar. If the value of the dollar decreases then this will lead to imports becoming more expensive, leading to inflation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Instead of empty opinions, check what the market is betting on. And still that will be off either way, but at least they put their money where their thinking goes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing. I still believe our politicians aren't stupid enough to actually let the government default. It just may come down to the last minute.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you want a prediction on what the politicians will do, how the markets will react, or how various countries' economies will be affected?

</comment><comment><USER9> Obama invokes 14th amendment, debt may be downgraded, we move on</comment>


The Future of Music Genres Is Here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.echonest.com/post/73516217273/the-future-of-music-genres-is-here <comment><USER3> Ah, genres.

In the 90's, I was into Breakbeat Hardcore and then later Jungle, which transformed into Drum & Bass, which was subdivided over time into Ragga, Neurofunk, Tech Step, Hard Step, Jump-Up, Clown Step, Liquid Funk, Ambient Drum & Bass, Drumstep and so on.

Of course, what I understand under "Drum & Bass" is very different from a 18 year-old teenager who thinks late-period Pendulum is the greatest thing on earth.

Now, during the early 00's a lot of the old-schoolers were annoyed with the direction drum and bass took. The tracks became cheesier and cheesier, and a lot of the old vibe was gone.

They turned to Garage, Grime and Breaks and found a fertile playing ground in the fledgling Dubstep scene. Lo' and behold, there it was, the fat dubby bass of their youth.

Alas, again, an 18-year old teenager today has a very different picture of "Dubstep" compared to that of the people who originated the sound. No more dub, a lot of cheese. Somewhat similar to the entire drum and bass story. The genre has been appropriated by the masses.

And well, the circle goes on and on. The same thing applies to older genres such as "Electro", which in the 80's meant something entirely different from what it is now.

So in a sense, how useful are genres really?

<comment><USER4> I see the same thing happening in metal. When I was in highschool, there were a few genres -- mostly 'thrash/speed', 'death', 'black', 'progressive' and maybe a couple more. In college I kind of got away from metal, and in my late 20's got back into it. After getting back into it, I thought "what the hell happened?!!?" There are now so many genres, I don't even know where to start. The hardcore punk of the 80's and 90's was now a legitimate "metal" genre, and every band that had even a _hint_ of hardcore in it got "-core" added to their label. So now you have 'thrashcore' 'deathcore', and my favorite, 'metalcore'. Hardcore was originally supposed to designate a band that was a punk band that incorporated metal aspects into their songs. So it was already a mix of metal and punk, so what the hell is 'metalcore' supposed to be?? A metal band with aspects of punk, I suppose, but I still think the label sucks.

Then you have 'progressive' added to anything that isn't consistently in 4-4 time. Or the even dumber label, 'math metal'. There are even subgenres of prog now, including the dumbest sounding name ever, 'Djent,' which is supposed to be the sound that an extended range guitar makes when palm muting a low string through some shitty digital distortion.

I don't even want to get into the "post-" prefix either. The first time you see a redditor talk about the "post-hardcore progressive deathcore" band they love, you feel like shooting yourself in the face.

<comment><USER5> No offense, but your comment reminds me all too much about the elitism that surrounds music criticism. I listen to a wide range of metal. I, for one, encourage the experimentation and the cross pollination with other genres.

Who really cares whether this, for example: ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry0dHtwD4TU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry0dHtwD4TU)) is metal or not? Mostly people who care more about being "fucking metal" than music. Is it such a surprise that liking a kind of music can be about more than just social capital?

Yes, as genres get more complex, genre labels also become more complex. And sometimes the defining characteristics aren't clear. So what? This isn't a bad thing. If all "prog" was the same, then it'd be boring. There'd be no point in having yet another prog band. You'd be constrained by the label into doing a certain thing. People rightly chose not to do that. A genre gets you 80% there in terms of guessing what a band sounds like, and that's okay.

<comment><USER6> Seriously.. that's not metal. Just because a metal band once made a song that sounded a little like something on that album (when they crossed over to general acceptance) doesn't change the objective FACT that it is a sad version of some prog rock crap from the 70's.

Javascript is not strongly typed. Nothing can change that fact.

Genres in music aren't more complex now. They are becoming more meaningless. When the new set of kids come through and don't understand the historical context and meaning to the way the same term lumped music tone and song structure together, it puts on display how much "music" IS just fashion. Metal implies a certain set of social perceptions that the listener wants to evoke, but the correlation to the music is all gone.

Maybe someone wants to wear the metal coat of armor instead of being labelled a pansy light-alt-rock fan, but that link is more the latter than the former.

So many times, the genres' names sound more like how someone wants to present themselves philosophically vs. what is actually engendered in the production of the sound being labelled. Minimal house, neurofunk, metal, death metal, etc.

And there is no point in ever having another prog band or song. Same with jam bands and songs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like tags might be a better solution to classifying music than over- broad categories like "rock".

Making genres more specific and granular just makes categorization more confusing and contentious. But use of multiple tags to categorize a song could allow different people to simultaneously apply the labels they prefer.

Or perhaps a better solution would be "x sounds like y, z, etc."

<comment><AUTHOR> These genres come from people talking about music using whatever organic / natural words they use to describe music. We've done the work to map those into single-term "genres," as it's been shown many listeners appreciate the flat categorization. There are similarities between genres in the API, so you can quickly see which genres sound like others.

<comment><USER7> _it 's been shown many listeners appreciate the flat categorization_

Huh, that's interesting. Did you discover that with internal analytics or a survey, or an outside source?

If it's something internal, you could blog about your discovery. It would make an interesting read for us music nerds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They pretty much nail the limitations of "genre" in the second paragraph. It's a blunt way to organize a record store, when you can only group physical products one way.

Genres are deeply ingrained in people's heads, but they're a vestige from record stores and radio stations with limited playlists targeted at specific mass-market demographic points. The more you listen and explore on your own, the less meaningful they are.

Sure, people say things like, "well I'm listening to a lot of jazz these days." They might even specify "bebop." But those tags are only slightly meaningful, and as others have illustrated in the comments, it's still limited and misleading. And whatever tag you decide to use has a different meaning for everyone who uses it.

Listen to serious record collectors or music aficionados talk about music... nobody _really_ talks about genres. They talk about bands and musicians and songs. And many of the relationships between the bands and musicians and songs they're talking about span or confound most notions of "genre."

When it comes to products which use music genres, I think they serve best as boot-strapping discovery tools for people who don't know much about music. They're good for the person who comes in saying "I don't know anything about Country music." Having a section that presents some "definitive" (yes scare quotes) Country music might be helpful. As people develop their own tastes, genres become not so useful.

I've worked at three different companies, one concert promoter and two streaming music services, where "genre" was deemed to be an important component of the presentation or the product. And 3 out of 3 implementations I've seen only resulted in contention and dissatisfaction. It always came down to one person or small group of people defining categories so hopelessly inadequate that nobody who cared about music was really happy with them. In the end very few customers used features which depended on grouping things by genre, and algorithmic suggestions ended up being much more highly favored.

Anyway, my general opinion is "genres suck." I'm glad EchoNest is tackling it dynamically and providing an API for it. Maybe it will improve the experience for products which have focused on the experience of browsing Genres.

<comment><USER9> This is my experience with movies as well. I find the use of genres (a la Netflix style of taste profile builder) annoying. Why should I be shoe - <USER2> as a comedy movie watcher or a horror movie watcher? Maybe, I only watch specific comedy movies that are made by Judd Apatow? Is there a genre for me then?

On the other hand, this ingraining of genres is everywhere. Fiction for example. Why are you supposed to be into Fantasy just because you read Tolkien?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to this 'Moombahton' (a 9-day wonder that emerged about 18 months ago after someone deliberately played a Reggaeton record at the wrong speed) accounts for more music than 'Techno'. Sorry but 'LOL no.'

discogs.com is a much better resource for the music taxonomist.

</comment><comment><USER11> Music Popcorn reminds me of a favorite idea I'll never use: a self-organizing mp3 dj. It simply makes a weak link between any two songs that get played in order, makes an anti-link between a song that gets skipped and the previous song, and then makes stronger links for awhile, presuming the user is paying attention if she's skipping songs. It gives some weight to playlists, but not too much: if you want the playlist you play it, so we have to be careful not to burn grooves in the network that way.

This would make the 'random' mode function better, so that when I'm listening to relaxing music in the evening and get served bass music, skipping it makes that less likely to happen in the future. The player itself doesn't know what 'genres' are, though it knows albums, artists, and playlists.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you look at the history of music as a whole, rock is not ill defined. It's a pop music movement from the last 60 years, with a lot of similar characteristics. Of course, it sells itself as a myriad of subgenres, because part of it's idea as a musical movement and as a commercial product is to be very specifically tailored to it's target audience, but "Asking for Rock is only slightly better than 'Play me some songs that are music.'" it's not true, from 'Play me something done in the last 2200 years from anywhere on earth' to 'Play something done from 1960 to 2013 that identifies itself as some subgenre of the Rock family' there is an enormous difference.

</comment><comment><USER13> I used to spend hours upon hours looking at the various genres of electronic music using Ishkur's Guide [0].

It's funny to see how different things are today. The gray areas are much grayer.

[0]: [http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic- music-guide/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was all prepared to be cynical about this, but their big genre diagram both included our household's favorite obscure genre ("nl folk", ie Newfoundland folk) and started off playing a track which was clearly in the genre but not in our very extensive collection. Cudos to them!

</comment><comment><USER15> I found it interesting that they having "Video Game Music" listed as a genre. I'm not sure you can classify video game music under a single genre.

I listen to video game music quite a bit (some sub-genres more than others), but you can find pretty much every genre listed here in at least one video game.

Sure, there may be a few video games that feature music that doesn't fall into any other "genre", but if somebody told me to describe what video game music sounded like, I couldn't do it, like I could with most other genres.

I don't really care, I know this is just someone's interpretation of a genre. I just found it interesting and thought it was worth mentioning.

</comment><comment><USER16> So I used the Echonest API on my final masters project, which created a shared music taste profile based on people in a given location, and used Echonest's built in smart playlist to play music in the space.

As a part of the application, I also built a D3 visualization quite similar to the one in this article for the tastes of the individuals and the tastes of the location.

It's amazing how much you can learn about a person's taste, given the combination of their genre tastes. <hipsterbash> For instance, you can safely assume that if the person likes hipster-electro-pop, their love for old western twang country might be out of irony. </hipsterbash>

<comment><USER17> Is the project available anywhere? I'd love to play with it!

<comment><USER16> Working on reinstating the domain name. I let it lapse, and it went into redemption status.

If you'd like, you can shoot me an email (address is in my profile) and I'll email you when it's back up and running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting to see, as I've been working to break out the traditional "dozens of" talk show genres into "hundreds of" with Player FM's podcast directory ([https://player.fm](https://player.fm)).

This visualisation is way cooler than my side menu though :).

I see tags are mentioned in the discussion here. Tags/keywords are great for power users, but most people just don't think "I want to listen to X and Y without Z". They just think "I want to listen to Electrohouse" etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> How is Funk Metal the biggest category of metal?

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks interesting. Echonest have done some amazing stuff in the past.

Can anyone find a flat list of all the genres?

<comment><USER21> J-core and psytrance don't exist, but progressive psytrance does and sxsw is a genre.

[http://pastie.org/8639680](http://pastie.org/8639680)

<comment><AUTHOR> psytrance is there, as "psychedelic trance"

we're adding j-core now, thanks for the suggestion!

sxsw is why this is special, we will be adding and changing these over time. It's clear that genres don't have to directly correlate with musical style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> also, code examples: [http://musicmachinery.com/2014/01/16/new-genre- apis/](http://musicmachinery.com/2014/01/16/new-genre-apis/)

</comment><comment><USER22> How do you categorize someone like Los Amigos Invisibles?</comment>


How people name sensations depends on those sensations' salience - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21735010-scents-and-sensibility-how-people-name-sensations-depends-those-sensations <comment><AUTHOR> Study is at [1]

[1] "Hunter-Gatherer Olfaction Is Special" [ [http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...](http://www.cell.com/current- biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(17\)31616-0) ]</comment>


Hilary Clinton: Internet censorship damages national economies - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261282/clinton-internet-censorship-harmful-to-governments/?olo=email&no1x1 <comment><USER2> is it about Wikileaks?.. oh, no, not at all.</comment>


Show HN: Explore Ancient Rome in Virtual Reality - <AUTHOR> https://unimersiv.com/ancient-rome-virtual-reality/?showhn=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

We just shared the Rome VR experience on the Unimersiv app, available on the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift.

The Rome VR experience will let you explore the most famous monuments of Ancient Rome as they were centuries ago.

Here is a 360° render of the experience: [https://kuula.co/post/7ftG2](https://kuula.co/post/7ftG2)

Let me know what you think!

Baptiste

<comment><USER2> That looks awesome!</comment></comment>


DNA sequenced of woman who lived to 115 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15278823

<comment><USER2> It's great that she donated her body to science instead of letting it go to waste rotting in the ground.

It's also great that they didn't try to patent her genetics and that they're being shared with other researchers. This is how it's supposed to be done.

<comment><USER3> It is a nice thing to do. But even if she didn't, nature would have found some use for the components in her body.

<comment><USER4> The problem with this is that the benefit to humanity from analyzing the effects of extreme old age on the human body and investigating the questions of extreme old-age heritability that super-centenarians raise is much greater than the benefit from the decomposition of an old lady's biomass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just read this on a Dutch newspapers' site. Not sure why the BBC site says her identity is secret, she is mentioned by name and it even has a picture of her:

(dutch article) [http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2672/Wetenschap- Gezondheid/ar...](http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2672/Wetenschap- Gezondheid/article/detail/2969042/2011/10/15/Oudste-Nederlandse-vrouw-had- bijzondere-genen.dhtml)

<comment><USER6> Maybe the BBC writer can't read Dutch? They certainly can't write English judging by the clunky headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool, but an awfully small sample size. The really exciting thing will be when DNA sequencing is cheap enough that we can sequence thousands, even millions, of genomes just to see what we can find out.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, at least in the current environment, such endeavors would be shut down by "privacy" advocates.

I was a student at UC Berkeley when we wanted to offer every student a chance to sequence their genes. However, because of the efforts of the vocal minority (I certainly wanted to sequence my genes), that was cancelled.

I'm afraid of similar cultural artifacts limiting society's advance. I would have loved if everyone got sequenced so we'd have tons of meaningful data to do more genetics research.

<comment><USER9> Privacy concern for your genome or other medical data is no small matter in the USA.

I used to work on a research program for electronic medical records. At some point I realized that virtually no doctor was interested in what I was working on. However, HMOs and insurance companies had great interest. I came to conclusion the main application of my work would be to deny insurance to those with pre-existing conditions.

Sure enough, years later I had to apply for my own insurance and was denied because I had once been on high blood pressure medication for a month.

Genetic information is worse than a medical record. One can find out they may be predisposed to Parkinson's disease. There is little a person can do with this knowledge. However, an insurance company can definitely use it to deny coverage. It's like a credit rating that can never be repaired.

<comment><USER8> That's true, but if you have full control over who can see your information (i.e. "I allow it to be anonymized and used for genetics/cancer research in exchange for information about myself, for myself"), it's not a problem. I just get frustrated when the will of the vocal few override the welfare of the silent majority.

<comment><USER10> You really didn't understand the GP I believe. The 'silent majority' are the people who would suffer from this, they won't benefit. A select few will profit (vastly) from being able to sell insurance to those who don't need it and withhold it from those that do.

You having control over your information is a pipe dream, try facebook for starters and now think 'all my medical information, past, present _and_ future' instead of your friends graph.

Privacy advocates tend to be a bit more educated about these risks than the general public and maybe know a thing or two about what has already transpired.

And for the record, you can't anonymize a genome, it _is_ you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love how little we know about ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes but how many children did she have!</comment>


Is University Necessary? A professor debates a student. - <AUTHOR> http://consideronline.org/2013/01/22/is-university-necessary <comment><USER2> If you are a sophomore or junior in college right now, and you get a job offer doing (for example) Ruby on Rails, you will likely learn nothing in your final years of college that will help you with doing Ruby on Rails in that job.

But maybe the job will involve more than just a web frontend to a database. Maybe you will will need to optimize a solution somewhere, and you'll think, "Hey, I bet I could use simulated annealing for that". Or you'll think, "Hey, I could write a simple grammar to solve this just like the first problem in my compilers class". Or "I can simulate the system variance by convolving the individual component variances" and thus you'll be able to provision your system better. Or whatever.

Sure, you could have figured out how to do all of these by carefully reading wikipedia. But how would you have even known the right questions without having been exposed to the material?

And then, of course, there's that next job ten years from now, that isn't Ruby on Rails. It's something else, maybe even in a different problem domain altogether, where the Ruby on Rails expertise doesn't give you any advantage. Wouldn't it be nice to have a good solid grounding in a wider base of material?

Several times in my career, I've been brought in to tackle a problem that has been vexing other (and maybe even better) programmers, and I've said, "Well, I don't know much about it, but I think we could solve that problem using X", where X is algorithm or technique I learned in graduate school. It is great to be able to have those moments, and I know had I not gone to school (and gotten my MS) I would not have those insights.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's really not that hard. The branching logic is simple.

If you have a better, _actual_ alternative to university, do that. Else, do university, which is an established default for those who can afford it.

If you can't afford it, the debate isn't even relevant.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Look at current job market.

2\. Look at unemployed graduates.

3\. Define "established default", or better "establish _good_ default".

<comment><USER3> That almost seems to say something, but I can't tell. Would you care to make your point for those who don't have access to divine revelation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An education is necessary. Some schools are good at delivering that. Some are crap and you are wasting your time and money. And of course, lots of opportunity outside of school to learn as well.

<comment><USER6> I think "necessary" needs clarification here. What you intend or expect to be able to do or understand dictates what's necessary or sufficient. There is no necessity for an education when your goal is simply to feed yourself; many menial jobs that are entirely within the grasp of people who have no formal training or education will satisfy this need.

In more of an HN demographic context... I'm in the "socialization" camp. College/university can serve a similar purpose as attending primary and secondary schooling, i.e. to further develop your social skills with other people as you age. While this can be found in other places, I'm not sure how effective it can be for those of us who wouldn't otherwise go out of their way to interact with others.

In the vein of preparing you to _do specific, non-obvious things_ , I would agree with you that education is necessary; I do think we should get out of the "high school -> college -> job" idea that seems to have turned into a fallacy over the last decade or two.

Trade schools can be a good example of this; in my opinion, apprenticeship is also a great alternative, though in the US those are -- as far as I know -- almost nonexistent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about a CS student who gets a full-time job offer as a sophomore? Why stick around and pay for school if you can instead be paid to get more valuable real world experience.

<comment><USER8> Meh, maybe it's because I came of age during the first bubble... but I see life as a series of opportunities that open and close; they open and close in part based on your own attributes (e.g. you need to meet the minimum qualifications for the job, and you need to apply or otherwise make yourself available,) but also based on time, chance, and other things you don't control.

I got out of high school and got my first programmer/sysadmin job in '97 or so. (I had a few years of cable monkey and hardware/windows work in high school.) - But that was almost entirely timing; The minimum requirements in '97 were really low, due to the dot-com bubble; Pure luck, really. But then I was able to learn enough that I made the cut when the minimum requirements went way up after the crash. (There is no way I would have made that cut right out of highschool.)

If I had gone to college... well, it was really, really hard to find a job in my field with no experience, four years after '97. Maybe I would have learned enough in school to make the cut, maybe not. Maybe I would have been able to convince an employer that I was that good without paid work experience, maybe not[1].

Also, if someone else is paying for school? that's a big opportunity there, too, and it's possible that opportunity might not be there in a few years. (Is it a bigger opportunity than a job in the field you want? I don't know.)

But that's how I'd look at it.

[1] As a sidenote... if you are badass enough to go to school and have a job/internship in your field at the same time? that's best of all. Many of the best people I know did that. It's really difficult to pull off, though. I don't think I have what it takes to pull that off, not without stretching the school over 8+ years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm recycling a comment I made two weeks ago because it's relevant here, and it saves me the typing and thought-bandwidth of retyping the exact same thing in a slightly different way.

The absolute worst thing I've ever done for myself was to go to college. I had a 50% scholarship towards one of THE top electrical engineering schools in the country (not MIT, but you'd be in the right state if you were guessing), and I toughed it out for four years. Due to financial aid f&ckery, I made the choice to drop out with around half a year of credits left to complete my BS. I had my own IT consulting business at the time, and I made a pretty decent run of it for about a year at which point I realized I was a MUCH better 'technology person' than 'business person'. I made the jump to full-time sysadmin for other companies at that time, and haven't looked back since. NONE of the skills I use today (either in my 'day job' as a nix sysadmin or 'real job' as a musician/bandleader) came from my college experience. I had over $100k worth of debt (slightly less now, almost 10 years later) and no degree. If I had to do it all over again, I would've skipped college entirely, gone straight into the 'failed' consulting business, and taken the extra four years of earnings instead of the staggering amount of debt. I have never once felt limited due to my lack of degree. The fact that I don't have one is easily eclipsed by what I've achieved professionally, and companies have had no problem bringing me on at top dollar (according to the various sysadmin salary surveys I read) to do my thing.

I'm not saying my path is for everyone, and as always Your Mileage May Vary. However, if I had a time machine I'd go back and slap my younger self around until he decided to forgo college entirely :-) In my experience, it wasn't worth it - from the 'you NEEEEEED a degree to get a good job!' perspective AND the 'crushing amounts of debt' perspective.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As a college student, I'm always torn about whether or not it is worth it to get my CS degree. Sometimes, my classes seem really useless, but at other times, I feel like I'm learning a lot socially at college.

<comment><USER10> Unless you have a revolutionary and marketable idea and are 110% confident about executing it with the utmost discipline that will guarantee something that you can call "success", please stay in school. Sorry if my tone is dick- ish - I'm just sick and tired of these debates about the value of college.

<comment><USER11> You'll never have that level idea unless you make it happen, and staying in school is not the way to do that.

<comment><USER12> Which is why most successful startup founders are college dropouts. Wait.

(Btw, if you are being sarcastic and referring ironically to the last line of the counterpoint, my apologies for misreading you.)

I would be interested to know whether there are any cohort studies on dropout success. I know overall dropouts tend to make much less money and perform much worse on many other metrics. However, that may simply be because the weak drop out.

But overall, I guess it is an unsafe bet. If you can't seem to pursue your passion with a few hours of classwork a day in your way, you're going to have a hell of a time doing it while also working ten hour shifts as a waiter because you couldn't get a more lucrative, easier job thanks to your lack of higher education.

College is easy. If you can't pursue your passions while also doing college, you're gonna have a problem either way.

<comment><USER13> I believe most drop-outs didn't drop out because they wanted to - ie family problems, lack of funding, etc.

That's probably why the statistics favour the students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since gailees's counterpoint is pretty lackluster, let me offer a different one:

University was never meant to be a system of general education. But because of the prestige garnered by graduates, it slowly began to be a status symbol. Instead of being a system of truly advanced knowledge, it has become an extra pipe on the education system, bringing to the table little intrinsic value. The concept of the university, in short, has been eroded by its growing recognition of the incapacity of its students. And because the university has access to funding that the public school system does not, it was able to expand itself to attempt to meet these needs; the price it paid was a loss of vision.

Entire swaths of the university curriculum should be torn out and moved into high schools, which in turn need to be re-conceived to produce fully-grown adults who find the choice between going to college and going to work to be a real choice. In such a world, the university is not at all necessary: it is where you go for that above-and-beyond level of intellectual rigor, but that is not a requirement for all people. Professor Holloway talks about the discipline and structure a university provides, but I ask why this is absent in the halls _before_ one reaches university. For it _must_ be, else these particular characteristics would not define the common student's need.

The university is necessary only because it is our latest patchwork fix on a system that is a conglomeration of patchwork fixes itself. If only Professor Holloway had advocated his ideas for secondary education, and considered the implications of such reform on the university due to the consequent changes in the nature of the applicant, I would have agreed with him fully.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it's important to note that "is university necessary?" is not the same as "should a person go to university?" The second question is largely pointless because whether or not the university, as an institution, is necessary is determined only by the mean benefit it provides to society. Individually, everyone is different. College is for some people and not for others.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would love to see the Onion's take on this point/counterpoint.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wrote the counterpoint, and although I really respect Professor Holloway's point, I really think his argument is stuck too much in the past.

<comment><USER16> I think you're young and ignorant, you should stay and school and gain perspective before moving to the real world.

<comment><USER17> I think you made an _ad hominem_ attack and your concept of the real world is aged and out-of-touch.

<comment><USER18> I think it's an _ad hominem_ attack only when the character assertions bear no relation to the argument at hand. In this case, for him to call the OP young and ignorant is perfectly relevant, the implication being that he only dismisses higher education because he is not experienced enough to realise the value of it.

<comment><USER19> It's not relevant to the argument if there is only a weak implication that going to University would change the ignorant part, not to mention that he provides no backing to the idea that if you go to college you will "grow up" and become less ignorant. This smacks of a circular argument without actually evidence.

<comment><USER18> His criticism isn't about the OP's lack of time at University, it's about his lack of life experience. I mean, the guy's a sophomore at college, after all. It's not outrageous to suggest that he's a bit naive and/or idealistic.

He doesn't need to provide a "backing for the idea" - Holloway's point did that adequately. And for me, personally, reading the counterpoint just convinced me of the validity of Holloway's argument further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even though I'm actually overall pretty positive on the value of higher education, the argument lost me at:

> "The question is, "Can you be successful in truly meaningful ways without > going to college?" The answer for most of you is "No.""

... because it sets up two simultaneous No True Scotsmen: any given counterexample can either be dismissed as not "truly meaningful success" or not by "most people".

</comment><comment><USER11> Higher education is important. College is optional.

</comment><comment><USER21> Education is necessary. Schooling may not be.

</comment><comment><USER22> No, it's clear: university is not necessary. From a business perspective, universities have been a bubble for some time now: as Americans, we're expected to think and produce at the highest level of global citizens, to make our people thought workers... and yet we bitterly lament the exporting of our wealth to China to support manufacturing that we as the general public are too holy to embrace. We sent those jobs over there and inflated unemployment by expecting that everyone in the country become scholarly. It's unbalanced and degrading to our people. Have you ever eaten artisanal food? Real Parmigiano- Reggiano instead of shaky Kraft cheese? Real Boeuf Bourguignon instead of Campbell's Chunky Cow Nuggets? Then you understand the value of tradesmanship, of learning a craft. If we want to take back manufacturing, to reduce unemployment, and to keep American products the pre-eminent craft in the world, we need to get over ourselves. Americans are smart regardless of our level of education. Let's stop degrading the working man, the trade skill worker, the apprenticeship: the things that make us human are the things that require a lifetime to master, not the ones that are learned from a book. College is not always the answer. Not being haughty better-than-thous is the answer. We should appreciate American craftsmanship. Meanwhile, I'll eat the real Italian cheese while you eat the American cheez product. -From a college graduate and Silicon Valley entrepreneur. And foodie, if it's not obvious.</comment>


Climategate: The Smoking Code? - <AUTHOR> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-the-smoking-code/

<comment><USER2> _I tried to write this post in a manner that transcends politics_

Pretty much failed in that regard, then.

Also, there's no point bitching about IDL just because the author doesn't understand it. That doesn't make it a bad language.

If you wanted to read something about the code that isn't from a biased point of view and is from someone who can actually read code and write about it, well, there's my blog.

[http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/12/bugs-in-software-flash- messa...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/12/bugs-in-software-flash-message.html) [http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/12/whoops-theres-third-bug- in-t...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/12/whoops-theres-third-bug-in-that- code.html)</comment>


OS X 10.8.5 update breaks Skype, G+ Hangout on mid-2013 Macbook Airs - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5216

<comment><USER2> Uh, I tried upgrading to 10.8.5 in the middle of nowhere with bad Internet and it broke my OS X install. Fortunately I have the installer mirrored in a different volume and installing OS X over the hosed volume fixed it.

Ran into the same problem with 10.8.4. Apparently it does not happen with 10.9…

</comment><comment><USER3> I was wondering why I wasn't getting a video option on skype for days... grumble

<comment><AUTHOR> I was able to get it working by replacing AppleCamera.plugin. See [http://community.skype.com/t5/Mac/Camera-not-Working-on- MacB...](http://community.skype.com/t5/Mac/Camera-not-Working-on-MacBook-Air- today-s-last-version/td-p/1927641)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Facetime camera doesn't work with 32-bit apps?

 _Facepalm_

<comment><AUTHOR> "As a workaround, use an external camera for 32-bit applications that require a camera on MacBook Air (Mid 2013) computers."

Genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dear Apple,

Do not ruin the Macbook.

That is the last thing from you that I still have lots of respect for!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with the constant rejections as a cofounder? - <AUTHOR> An HN comment on a different article really resonates with me.
That as a cofounder you get constant rejections from literally everyone, including people who won't even use/pay the product that you are building.
For those of you who are cofounders, that must be taking a huge toll on your emotional health, right? How do you deal with these? <comment><USER2> It's really tough. I bet that a good % of failed early stage startups fail because the founders simply can't keep up with the rejection and negativity.

The simple truth is you just have to keep trying, for years and years possibly, before something really hits.

Try not to think of them as rejections. Re-frame it as "this person isn't the right user for us right now." That removes the emotional bent from it, and maybe will force you to ask the question of "who IS the right user for us right now, and who's the right user for us tomorrow?"

</comment><comment><USER3> Ignore it and fight through it!

It's the equivalent of sore muscles that professional athletes feel after training day after day.</comment>


Game Show Problem (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://marilynvossavant.com/game-show-problem/ <comment><USER2> I really only understood the Monty Hall Problem intuitively when I sat down to write a simulation of it to convince someone else that the math (which had already convinced me) was actually correct. Here's Julia code for it:

        function monty_hall(switch::Bool; n=3)
          winner, guess = rand(1:n), rand(1:n)
          reveal = setdiff(1:n,[winner,guess])[rand(1:end)]
          if switch
            guess = setdiff(1:n,[guess,reveal])[rand(1:end)]
          end
          return guess == winner
        end

This allows you to simulate the switch and don't switch strategies:

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(false) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.33166

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(true) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.6676

But more importantly, you can see that in the don't-switch case, the reveal choice is dead code – it has no effect on wether the original guess was right or not. That's the key insight: since the original guess had 1/3 chance of being right before the reveal, it _still_ has a 1/3 change of being right after the reveal. Before the reveal the other two choices also each had a 1/3 chance of being winners, but after the reveal their combined 2/3 chance is concentrated entirely on the door that wasn't revealed, making that the best option.

The code also lets us see what happens with a generalized Monty Hall problem for more doors:

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(false, n=4) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.24862

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(true, n=4) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.37462

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(false, n=5) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.19763

        julia> mean([ monty_hall(true, n=5) for _=1:100000 ])
        0.2666

Even for higher numbers of doors, it's better to switch.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a shame that the title doesn't reveal what this is -- it's the original appearance of the Monty Hall problem, when Marilyn Vos Savant answered the problem correctly, only to be criticized (wrongly) by any number of well- educate academics, like this one:

"Since you seem to enjoy coming straight to the point, I'll do the same. You blew it! Let me explain. If one door is shown to be a loser, that information changes the probability of either remaining choice, neither of which has any reason to be more likely, to 1/2\. As a professional mathematician, I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error and in the future being more careful. -- Robert Sachs, Ph.D."

Doctor Sachs was entirely wrong, as were about ten thousand other academics who ganged up on Vos Savant in the months following the appearance of this column.

The real outcome is that, if the contestant doesn't change doors, his probability of winning is 1/3, but if he does change doors, his chance goes up to 2/3\. Details:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem)

<comment><USER4> Is there a particular reason that so many people were wrong... that seems like a glitch in the matrix almost. I'm hungover, and suck at math, and understand after she explained it...

Even after she explained it she still received so many replies saying she was wrong, I just am wondering what's going on here that's causing this. That's just so bizarre.

<comment><USER5> From the wikipedia article: "Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation confirming the predicted result."

<comment><USER3> Now I don't feel so bad for not getting it at first. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I finally got it! It's because whether the host has opened a door or not _doesn 't matter_.

You know from the start that one out of three doors has a car behind it, and his opening one of the remaining doors doesn't change it. He just shows you what you already know.

When you select your door, you know there is a 1/3 chance that your door has a car behind it, and a 2/3 chance that it doesn't. The host opens another door, and there is _still_ a 2/3 chance your door has no car. It has only been proven that the door the host opened has no car behind it.

EDIT: To clarify, I'll rephrase. When you select your door, you know it has a 1 in 3 chance of hiding the car, and importantly, you know that there is a 2 in 3 chance that the car is _not_ behind your door.

When the host opens his door, you still know there is a 2 in 3 chance that your door doesn't have a car behind it, but are now guaranteed that, if you chose the wrong door in the first place, you will now choose the right door.

It's not that the host's door is eliminated from the possibilities, it's that you can either open your door or effectively open _all the rest of the doors_ to find the car. Which would you choose?

<comment><USER7> Correct. Intuition fools us in this situation. To illustrate, extend it to 100 doors, only 1 car. You choose 1. The host opens 98 doors with no car (remember s/he knows where the car is so can always do this). NOW do you want to change your door for the single door held by the host? Of course.

<comment><USER6> Thanks :) I updated my initial comment, and noticed that you'd replied only after I edited. After thinking about it some more it seems so intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Understanding this problem means you can differentiate between the two scenarios below:

(1) If the host reveals an empty door at random, your odds are 1/3 and you should switch.

(2) If the host reveals a door at random that happens to be empty, your odds are 1/2 and it doesn't matter.

The reason that so many people get confused is that they read the words and their minds automatically jump to scenario 2.

<comment><USER9> "And a very small percentage of readers feel convinced that the furor is resulting from people not realizing that the host is opening a losing door on purpose. (But they haven't read my mail! The great majority of people understand the conditions perfectly.)" — Marilyn vos Savant

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I guess I'm part of that small percentage! But I really do think that's the case. Even if people say the words ("the host opens a losing door"), they may not be processing what it means ("the host purposefully opens a door that is known to be losing"). I wonder if I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it easist to understand if you increase the number of doors. Imagine you have to pick one of ten then the host removes eight wrong answers.

<comment><USER11> Thank you! This is an incredibly intuitive explanation of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who like these sorts of problems, I find this to be another tough one to wrap your head around:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_or_Girl_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_or_Girl_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think people incorrectly try to simplify the problem by combining equivalent events without adding the probabilities of those events.</comment>