Show HN: Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site - <AUTHOR> Link to sign up: http://quora.com/hackernews
Quora is a question and answer site focused on getting really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that people are interested in.
The big idea is to try to get every question page to be the best possible resource for anyone who wants to know about the answer.  One way to think about it is as a cache for the research that people compile by searching the web or asking others.  The feeling you get when you see a Wikipedia article and you think "Oh, that's going to have all the information I want about that" is the feeling we want to create across a much broader space.
The best things you can do are asking and following questions you're interested in, answering other people's questions, and voting or commenting on answers.
Right now, you need to use your Facebook account to sign up.  We might add other ways to join later on.
We're still in beta and are making a lot of changes and have a lot of work to do but wanted to get some feedback.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Why did Google Checkout fail?

<http://www.quora.com/q/Why_did_Google_Checkout_fail>

What are some good reasons to take a technology company public?

[http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_some_good_reasons_to_take_a_...](http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_some_good_reasons_to_take_a_startup_public)

How did Mint acquire 1.5m+ users without a high viral coefficient, scalable SEO strategy, or paid customer acquisition channel?

[http://www.quora.com/q/How_did_Mint_acquire_1_5m_users_witho...](http://www.quora.com/q/How_did_Mint_acquire_1_5m_users_without_a_high_viral_coefficient_scalable_SEO_strategy_or_paid_customer_acquisition_channel)

Are most Y Combinator founders happy that they used Y Combinator?

[http://www.quora.com/q/Are_most_Y_Combinator_founders_happy_...](http://www.quora.com/q/Are_most_Y_Combinator_founders_happy_that_they_used_Y_Combinator)

What is the significance of the ordering of author names on an academic paper?

[http://www.quora.com/q/What_is_the_significance_of_the_order...](http://www.quora.com/q/What_is_the_significance_of_the_ordering_of_author_names_on_an_academic_paper)

Why aren't all girls blonde?

<http://www.quora.com/q/Why_aren_t_all_girls_blond>

<comment><USER3> Adam:

Site is good, easy to use. Fix your e-mail validator (you can, afterall have a domain name that starts with a number). The facebook only signup thing is a bit of a hiccup (especially with the HN crowd) even with your priors.

As for the site itself, I would recommend ditching this whole "tagging" system. For example:

[http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_the_typical_amounts_of_equit...](http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_the_typical_amounts_of_equity_offered_to_engineers_by_startups_of_different_sizes)

Having these tags: Compensation, Engineering in Silicon Valley, Salaries, Startup Compensation,Startups, Stock Options, ....

Is just going to be very overwhelming, and if you're letting users define these, it seems you're going to have a big problem with trying to eventually police the content, and thats just an endless can of worms..

How about some term extraction, fancy analysis, and leaving that to automated semantics?

On a side note, some of the main topic landing pages are pretty sensible, easy to use, and well defined. Some of the indexing pages seem to have an awful lot going on...

Mainly, the homepage once you're logged in. Very busy here, not even sure exactly what is going on, and its awfully repetitive..

There also seems to be topics/categories broken down, but no real way to browse them effectively -- although there is a "browse" tab which is really more of a "feed", adding a bit more confusion. It'd be nice to be able to consume these "Topics" in more of a directory type of style.. (eg, being able to look up "Dog Breeds" and seeing a list of breeds to click through/browse leading into the particular Quora for a specific breed itself..)

All in all, I think its an excellent start, but there's a definitive need to establish a much clearer picture of the companies identity.. Is this a new E-How, or is it a Wikipedia? More importantly, how is it really different from either? Right now there is a ton of grey area here for the end user, but hopefully a lot of this will work itself out as the ideas mature.

Best, earle.

EDIT:

Now that I really look at that homepage again (logged in), I really dont like it. There's almost no meanginful content on it -- everything is metadata! This needs to be rethought more in tune with identity/branding of the problem you're trying to solve. I dont think an end user ever wants to see a giant feed of a bunch of meta data if you're delivering a 'really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that people are interested in.' that should translate to content.

""" Follow-up question added to topic Programming. 8:22pm What are the disadvantages of having a degree in Math and working as a programmer? This is a follow-up question to What are advantages of having a degree in Math and working as a programmer?. 2 Answers • Follow • 2 Topics """

This "feed" stuff may work well for your news feed on Facebook, but it doesnt translate well to a Q&A site when I'm typing in something specific and you're dumping a giant list of unrelated meta-data with links all over the place. If someone is looking for advice on their health issue or tax problem, this is going to have to scale -- to potentially millions of questions and billions of answers. This feed and tagging system dumped into a "feed" just ain't going to get it done. This needs to be rethought, to better effectively deliver your stated vision of 'really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that people are interested in.' and that should translate to content thats relevant and easy to find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you send the e-mail address you tried to use to firstname.lastname@example.com? Our validator allows for domains that start with numbers so I think it was rejecting the e-mail based on something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In approximately inverse order of importance (sorry about that):

* Misc.:

\- Don't like using my Facebook account.

* UI:

\- Always find myself hunting for the "follow" button.

\- Front page is a visually undifferentiated mishmash of 20ish different questions, most of which contain no more than a few sentences of content. Also: do we really need number of answers, number of topics, follow, star, time, topics (selected arbitrarily?), profile picture, answer snippet, answerer name, answerer description, and answer votes for every single one of these questions? You're making me sort through way too much stuff to decide whether I'm interested in the question or not.

\- The options menu is cryptic and poorly located. Ex.: If I want to answer something anonymously, why do I go hunting at the right-hand side of the screen by all the navigational / related links stuff? Put that by the text box.

* Community:

\- The personality types on the site are not substantially different from people I already know. Most of the questions (both from my feed and via "All Questions") drip Silicon Valley techie. I'd love to see intelligent questions/answers from people who have lives very different from mine. As things stand, I'm not sure whether, if I were to ask a question, I'd be getting a range of opinions or an echo chamber.

\- Answers tend pithy. On the other hand, some of the questions encourage that. Is there some way to see only questions/answers with meat?

Summary: Right now I feel like Quora has a lot of features (too many features) and not enough content, even in what look to be active topics. I don't know how you get people to invest in writing high-quality answers, but that's the question you really need to be focusing on. I would say that you should try to to cultivate a sense of sitewide community, but the siloing of the site into a bunch of semi-intersecting topics could make that tricky.

But then, the only Q&A site I've ever really liked has been Ask Metafilter, so maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing here -- but I don't think so, since, for me, it's the first site that comes to mind when I think of your mission. (Put together a better-indexed version of Ask Metafilter and you'll have a winner in my book.) If I need to ask a short question that can be answered quickly, I'll consider Quora. If I'm looking for significant thought, longer meditations, a diverse range of opinions, or interesting browsing material, though, I'll head elsewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. One thing we do need to work on for sure is making the good content that is already on the site get surfaced better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No.

Facebook already has enough of my data inside its walled garden. It's not getting control of my logins to other services. Add another signup method and I'll give your site due consideration.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have our own login system. We just use Facebook to connect you to people you know and get your photo. Having real identities for people and having people connected to other people who know them are important for the system to work, and we found that the best way to get those things was to require Facebook to sign up.

We might add other ways to sign up later.

<comment><USER6> Your service sounds awfully lot like Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange, which seems to work just fine without the need to "verify" users or require users to login via Facebook. Why does your service need it? Also, I have no desire for a site (yours or otherwise) to take my picture and friend list from Facebook, and it's a little presumptuous for Quora to require me to provide this information.

<comment><USER7> Also, what's the main diff between this and Stack Exchange other than that this is all-purpose? Are you gonna let search engines index answers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got an invite to Quora from a friend of mine a few months ago but the need for the FaceBook id was a killer. As long as they have this requirement, I won't use the product. Too bad really, because I hear good things about it.

<comment><USER9> I did sign up using my FB account, just to try it out.

After signing-up I could easily disconnect my FB account from quora account.

So, the logic of asking to sign-up using FB, does not really make a lot of sense - if its affecting user sign-ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen Quora referenced a bunch lately, and have been excited to try it out. The design (from the outside) looks really good, and I suspect that your team has crafted a really polished UX. I'd love to check it out. But ...

I'm not going to sign up via Facebook Connect, but it's not because I don't like linking that profile. It's because the Facebook ID approval page notes that you'd be publishing content to my wall. I'm not comfortable with that. Maybe that's a templated display that's shown on all Facebook Connect pages. I don't know. But it's enough to stop me from signing up.

Just another datapoint.

</comment><comment><USER11> Quora is one of those really amazing sites that you really enjoy using a lot because the UI and UX are impeccable. Things are responsive, actions have weight, and it's just overall very pleasant to use. Congratulations on that—it's nothing short of a masterpiece.

I really like the concept of following topics. I think something that could be worked on is the following questions thing—last time I used it, it was difficult to figure out that a question I'm following has received a follow- up.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is very well made, great job. A few things:

\- Why do I have to choose the best square thumbnail picture? Facebook already provides you with pic_square through their API.

\- Profile thumbnails are not loading unless I view the user's profile page first. Here's an example, where I have clicked through to Adam's profile but not the others: <http://grab.by/36FP>

\- The main feed seems a little too text-heavy to me. Have you considered putting profile thumbnails next to questions and answers that appear in the feed, as you do for comments on question pages?

\- Your buttons are awesome. As are your tooltips.

<comment><AUTHOR> \- re: profile pics. pic_square pics are only 50x50 (iirc?), and we needed square pics that were bigger than that.

\- re: thumbnails not loading. i've never seen that before. it might be a problem with S3. If you e-mail a link to your profile to firstname.lastname@example.com, I can look through our logs and try to debug more.

\- re: feed.

We're making a lot of changes to the feed all the time. Thanks for the feedback.

\- re: buttons.

All @artypapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll explain what the problem with FB sign-in is. Remember Eric Ries's IMVU, where people didn't want to link their IM accounts to IMVU because they don't want to endorse a piece of technology that they aren't sure of.

Similarly, I don't want to tell my friends on FB about Quora just in case it stinks.

Usually, FB login's do not pull in friends details. However, it appears that you are doing that.

I'd be happy to review your app if you can put some kind of assurance around the FB Connect logon to the effect that you are not going to announce on my FB status that I'm using Quora.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not really sure why others are so paranoid about logging in via FB Connect. Honestly, going forward, I think FB connect / Twitter etc. are going to emerge as the primary means for logging in -

check out Dave mcclure's post about password friction below:

[http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/02/subscriptions- ar...](http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/02/subscriptions-are-the-new- black.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I like it, seems very cohesive and simple. May I ask how do you got people making questions and answer them ? I ask this, because I'm also creating a startup that will need user input in order to grow, so I'm trying to get some tips from others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try looking at these: [http://www.quora.com/q/What_s_my_incentive_to_post_answers_o...](http://www.quora.com/q/What_s_my_incentive_to_post_answers_on_Quora) [http://www.quora.com/q/What_s_the_strongest_incentive_on_Quo...](http://www.quora.com/q/What_s_the_strongest_incentive_on_Quora)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> @ccheever:

Your signup form email validator is broken; i have a .es domain and it refuses it....

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! I've heard great things about it so far. On my iPhone but will give it a whirl when I get back home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Signup from it is a little tricky but we do have an iPhone (+ Android, Palm, etc.) site that works pretty well.

<comment><USER17> It worked pretty well with fb connect. Moreso, I'm at the gym and I want to spend some decent time with the app that's uninterrupted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Clickable link: <http://quora.com/hackernews>

</comment><comment><USER19> Quora rocks. It's a great product, i'm using it a lot. Once you start to using, it's addictive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> signed up. "Click on the best photo" showed me my profile photo (the same photo) 5 times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your photo was probably small enough that different croppings didn't matter, or at least weren't different enough for you to notice. Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


PullRequest (YC S17) wants to be your company code reviewer - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/pullrequest-wants-to-be-your-company-code-reviewer/amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> I am skeptical that this can work well.

Having deep understanding of the code in question is essential for a good code review. Not just the code under review, but the wider scope of the project. This helps spot architectural problems, inconsistencies, unearth hidden assumptions or assumption breakages, and the like.

Reviewing the code as a drive-by loses all of those benefits and boils down to focusing on the code at hand, coding style, nitpicks, and implicitly assuming the code fits well with the rest [0].

I did hundreds (if not thousands) of pull requests, and reviews I've done where I have been intimately familiar with the existing code base were consistently much better than the reviews I did as an outsider to the project - even when, knowing this, I spent a lot more effort on the reviews as an outsider.

The founders seem to recognize this (it's mentioned in the TC article) and mention pairing up reviewers with the same companies, but this IMHO will not be enough, unless these reviewers are basically on retainer and work regularly, and often, with the same company.

I'd love to be proven wrong, so good luck PullRequest team!

[0] Edit to add: enforcing consitent coding style and pointing out code smells is certainly useful. These however can be automated to some extent (linters and services like CodeClimate).</comment>


Skin Microstructure Deformation with Displacement Map Convolution - <AUTHOR> http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/SkinStretch/

<comment><USER2> If we had the equivalent for a Turing test for animated human face renders, I'd wager that we'd start passing it some time in the next 5-10 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> The ACM page for this SIGGRAPH 2015 paper is here:

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2766894&CFID=702491298&CFT...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2766894&CFID=702491298&CFTOKEN=20578127)

</comment><comment><USER4> Have we officially started climbing up the far side of the Uncanny Valley?

</comment><comment><USER5> looking forward to seeing this run realtime in games :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish more papers had a Q&A section.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not bad mister Debevec. Not bad.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interactive porn</comment>


Can INTJ's live exciting lives? - <AUTHOR>

Let's be honest, INTJ's are one of the most intelligent personality types out there by definition. This is an amazing asset if you're a programmer, or involved in the sciences but socially we are borderline Aspergers.
I don't even know why I'm writing this, but I guess I'm looking for answers. I just got in from a fantastic lunch with an old friend, and after seeing the pictures from his Euro trip I feel like I'm missing out on life.
I can't help but think that our purpose as INTJ's is to create things - and let others have all the fun
Can INTJ's live an exciting and fulfilling life? <comment><USER2> Let's ignore the egregious question of internal and external validity of MBTI for a moment. I've been tested by one of Australia's spy agencies [we have about six] using MBTI, and came out as an INTJ, with extreme 'I' characteristics. One way to put that would be to say that I have almost _no_ external locus of control. That doesn't mean I am immune to reasoned argument, quite the reverse; the _only_ way to change my mind is by reasoned argument. I cannot and will not be browbeaten or blackmailed by anyone.

So what is this guy like in the workplace? Surely that Himalayan ego is a serious problem? Surely those Asperger-like symptoms are an impediment to corporate success? Can he work with, like, real people? In fact, I have led several teams to great success, because my ego is unthreatened by the brilliance and skill of the people who work for me. If someone has a better idea than mine, I don't feel the need to stomp on it. Quite the reverse; I'm proud to have the best and brightest working for me, I'm not scared of occasional failure, and I have a reputation as a great 'people person', a description that my secret self considers utterly bogus. I dislike physical contact, for example, and sometimes have trouble reading people, but I compensate for that because I am almost impossible to offend, unconcerned with personalities, and often barely aware of the people aspects when I wade into 'difficult' office situations.

So MBTI is a bit like horoscopes, or phenotypes and genotypes. It's not deterministic, it's indicative. Just because you and I have INTJ stamped on our foreheads, it doesn't mean that we _can 't_ be effective in situations thought to be more suited to the touchy-feely types; as an INTJ, I never play favourites, focusing instead on solving the problem rather than playing to the audience. Sometimes the INTJ's highly analytic approach to everything can be more effective in managing people than emoting all over them and wanting everyone to be your friend.

If you want to go to Europe and see stuff, do it. You might want to do it INTJ-style, preparing a detailed dossier on everything, mapping out locations, travel dates and times, selecting odd things aligned with your interests [Vesalius's dissecting room at Padua is still there, for example, and surely the LHC would be on your list], but hey, what's wrong with that?

</comment><comment><USER3> You shouldn't worry about this at all.

Obligatory references on the subject of the unvalidated Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on- leadership/myers-b...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on- leadership/myers-briggs-does-it-pay-to-know-your- type/2012/12/14/eaed51ae-3fcc-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html)

"Now, 50 years after the first time anyone paid money for the test, the Myers- Briggs legacy is reaching the end of the family line. The youngest heirs don't want it. And it's not clear whether organizations should, either.

. . . .

"Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community."

[http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html](http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html)

[http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality- tests/person...](http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality- tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm)

"Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for."

[http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...](http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie- Murphy/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie- Murphy/dp/0743280725)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't worry as much about the validity (or not) of Myers-Brigs as long as the OP recognises himself/herself sincerely in that INTJ profile.

INTJ or not, what is interesting is that the question comes from a powerless position as if being (self?) qualified as INTJ (or whatnot) was a card the OP was dealt with at birth and that would poison their life forever after.

I answered the laconic "Yes" initially as way to trigger a line of questioning in the OP's mind:

"May I be happy in life regardless of what Myers-Brigs tells me I am?"

And my answer is a resounding: Yes.

No matter how (in)accurate Myers-Brigs, your happiness is in your own hands, and whatever you decide to do about it, _you_ decide to about it.

Take responsibility for who you are, don't hide behind INTJ as "the fate that has been imposed on you".

You could be blind, autistic and any number of other conditions that are hampering life. Feel the luck you have in being an INTJ.

Take it as the glass half-full rather than "twice as big as needed" :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes</comment>


Show HN: Star Trek API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cezarykluczynski/stapi <comment><USER2> Wow, how did you gather the data?

<comment><USER3> How it works? STAPI uses publicly available sources, mainly Memory Alpha, to get its data. Data is cleansed, standardized and put into relational model.</comment></comment>


Christie's sells its first AI portrait for $432k - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18023266/ai-art-portrait-christies-obvious-sold <comment><USER3> The main article on this is [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/18013190/ai- art-portrait...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/23/18013190/ai-art-portrait- auction-christies-belamy-obvious-robbie-barrat-gans), which predates the auction.

We changed the above url from [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45980863](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45980863) to one that has a bit more info.

</comment><comment><USER4> Twitter thread from the author of the original algorithm: [https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073](https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073) (worth reading the whole thread, the art collective reply)

GitHub link: [https://github.com/robbiebarrat/art- dcgan](https://github.com/robbiebarrat/art-dcgan) The README was last edited 6 months ago and contains the bolded text: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you have any questions email me before doing anything."

<comment><USER5> I feel like this screencap posted by Obvious was the most illuminating part of that twitstorm: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqVdWJSW4AAOtXD?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqVdWJSW4AAOtXD?format=jpg)

<comment><USER6> If Obvious hadn't been successful with their goals, Robbie would not (and did not) care a bit that his work was being used. It only became contentious when they were able to raise a lot of money. It's funny.

<comment><USER7> Well, obviously. Robbie said in his Github readme: "When using any outputs of the models, credit me. Don't sell the outputs of the pre-trained models, modified or not. If you have any questions email me before doing anything."

<comment><USER8> I feel for the guy, but keep in mind: just putting some text in your readme does not create a legally binding contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have sympathy for the author's frustration but they open-sourced their work under a very permissive license.

It sounds comical that suddenly something becomes valuable because you hang it in a gold frame, make minor modifications to it and ascribe it some symbolism. But that is exactly how contemporary artworks are done.

If you go to exhibits and auctions, it is not uncommon to see highly valued work that requires little sophistication to produce. The days you would woo the art world by technical mastery alone are (mostly) over. This story fits in the greater trend and there might be a bit of a culture clash.

I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional works. Whether it is for better or worse, I will leave you judge of that.

<comment><USER10> > I'm inclined to think that the general public underestimate contemporary art > and the art world overestimate its superiority over the more conventional > works.

I really like your framing of this and agree wholeheartedly. I think it really comes from contemporary art's focus on abstraction and meaning within context. The combination of focus on abstraction and meaning while requiring the viewer to understand the context in which a work was made makes it very inaccessible to all but those who have the time and knowledge to develop that understanding from. This makes it very inaccessible to general audiences. Alternatively, so often the depth of the meaning/context and the effectiveness of the abstraction are quite underwhelming in reality but overly celebrated by the art world.

<comment><USER11> I disagree.

If you spent two minutes rolling some white paint on a white canvas because your "abstract message" was about the void of space, it's not profound, you're being an ass.

Conversely if you spent at least five hours stippling black spots on a white canvas in the image of some obscure shape, because you had a concept in your head, and it took a considerable amount of effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.

The art world isn't full of bohemians with time and knowledge who've developed understanding of abstractness. It's full of pretentious, bored, rich people. Huge difference.

<comment><USER12> > if you spent at least five hours ... and it took a considerable amount of > effort, THAT is a profound piece of work.

Got it. work >= 5hrs == TRUE REAL PROFOUND ART, work < 5hrs == UTTER GARBAGE PRETENTIOUS BULLSHIT.

Art is purely expression. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to express what you're expressing. Pollock may have just splattered painting on a canvas. But it was still a true _expression_. John Cage made a composition where the orchestra doesn't play any notes. But it's still an _expression_.

<comment><USER13> And an expression can be boring and trite, and we can judge it for being such.

The fact that rich people are willing to pay for some bland expression does not confer anything but monetary value to it. It doesn't become less garbage.

<comment><USER14> "Art is what you can get away with" – Andy Warhol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The work of Art is the act of putting it up for auction on Christie's. That's what makes it a conceptual piece that is being discussed.

People often mistake art for a form of labor production. They expect that labor has to have been performed to create value. But that all changed in the early 20th century.

I really feel bad for Dr. Beef, this must really hurt. But according to the twitter thread ( [https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073](https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073) ) they didn't use the pre-trained models. In any case pre-trained models are labor, not end product. They simply trained them from scratch. Possibly on the same input set.

Even if his license was more strict, they still could have just rewritten the same code and it would have escaped the licensing. Should the original GAN paper ( [https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661](https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661) ? ) be given artistic credit here ? What is authorship in this context ? There is a whole chain of people furthering things and doing labor and making decisions.

Yet nobody has even mentioned the original artists whose works were used to train the model. Would it be different if they were living artists ?

In what way is a GAN essentially different than photoshop copy and paste of elements ?

<comment><USER16> "...they still could have just rewritten the same code and it would have escaped the licensing."

I may be misinterpreting your intent, but this seems disingenuous to me. I can't go look at the Linux kernel, then 'rewrite' [the same code] with my fingers and keyboard to escape copyright ownership of Linux kernel contributors.

I can rewrite code that implements a described process. Or code that implements a described interface. If this was your intent, I'll take the blame for misunderstanding. But I caution the use of phrases like "the same code" when you actually mean new code that implements the same process.

<comment><USER17> Somewhat related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote)

> narrator/reviewer considers Menard's fragmentary Quixote (which is line-for- > line identical to the original) to be much richer in allusion than > Cervantes's "original" work because Menard's must be considered in light of > world events since 1602.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article has by far my favorite explanation of GANs for image generation:

      To generate the image, the algorithm compared its own work to those in the data set until it could not tell them apart.

Amazingly succinct, lay-person friendly, and still pretty accurate.

</comment><comment><USER19> "The painting, called Portrait of Edmond Belamy, was created by a Paris-based art collective called Obvious."

Hopefully the person who wrote the code, freely shared it and even helped them to get it running will see some of that ridiculous windfall:

[https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073](https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055285640420483073)

<comment><USER20> It isn't required by the license, but it is required by the primate fairness sense. A donation to the open-source project would be appropriate.

Alternatively, the Obvious collective will be now and forevermore tagged as non-contributing leeches. Which will likely not tarnish their enjoyment of their $144k each before auction fees and taxes, but might discourage future AI/ML developers from releasing under such a permissive license in the future.

<comment><USER21> > Alternatively, the Obvious collective will be now and forevermore tagged as > non-contributing leeches.

Exactly. It doesn't sound like they are afraid of this but they really should be. Nobody will want to buy the next artwork of a collective with that reputation.

<comment><USER22> I do wonder how many art collectors who would be interested in such pieces would know or care. To me the sale was due to the way it was promoted and sold rather than any merit of the piece itself. Outside of particular tech story comment sections and who've seen the Twitter threads I'm not sure it's going to be some big controversy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This could be something great if the author of the original algorithm and datasets was given proper credits.

[https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055360024548012033](https://twitter.com/DrBeef_/status/1055360024548012033)

<comment><USER24> I think that people don't seem to understand that most open source licences don't require attribution. If you have released your code according to a licence, what right do you have to complain that people are using that code in accordance with that licence?

In this case though, it looks like Obvious did set out to attribute the original GAN author and Christie's have omitted that.

<comment><USER25> > what right do you have to complain that people are using that code in > accordance with that licence?

It's not _legally_ required to credit the author of the original code, but it's a jerk move not to do so, especially if the work is primarily not your own.

All it does is discourage developers from releasing things open source, which is very bad in the long run.

<comment><USER26> > but it's a jerk move...

What on earth are you on about!? The author has every possible opportunity to set out whatever he wants in the license. If he wants anyone who uses it to name their firstborn after him he can put that in there. If he doesn't then there is absolutely no issue or nothing jerk-like of anyone who follows to the letter he license the author decided to use.

It's up to the author to specify what he wants, and as long as users follow the license that's their right.

If you want a license that only allows non commercial usage to be unattributed but requires attribution for commercial usage... then use such a license. Don't just put it up under a permissive license and rely on calling people jerks when they literally do what you specified and gave them license to do.

> all it does is discourage developers from releasing things open source...

Great! Developers who don't want others to use their software under an open license shouldn't be releasing it under an open license in the first place! You have all the control as a creator, don't give it away and then complain that you gave it away like it's someone else's fault for using the license you gave them.

<comment><USER27> Is it really that hard for you to understand what the GP was saying? A jerk is somehow who, while not breaking the law, acts like..a jerk. They seem to think being able to get away with something somehow makes it OK. (e.g. bullies, trolls etc) Society relies on most people not acting like jerks most of the time. You seem to be saying, if someone follows the letter of the law, they possibly can't be a jerk. I guess you have no use for the word, as I don't know who it could then possibly apply to.

I hear an increasing amount of talk as if _ethics_ is or can be entirely contained within _law_ , as if behaving _legally_ is all that can or should be asked of us as humans. I don't know if it's the pervasive influence of lawyers and corporate 'culture' or what. In that "greed is good" etc mindset, 'being a jerk' isn't a bad thing, it's merely _not being a sap, using your freedoms, using accepted business principles_ etc. Your whole comment smells of that total absence of ethics, beyond obeying the law, i.e. no ethics. Sorry if I misunderstood. Maybe your "What on earth are you on about!?" etc was exaggerated for rhetorical effect, and not what it seemed - having no clue why someone might call it 'a jerk move', or feel it was unfair/rude/graceless/exploitative etc.

<comment><USER28> The point isn't that it's legal or not. It's that the creator -expressed his wishes- for how his work would be treated when he chose his license.

There's nothing unethical about respecting people's freely chosen and publicly expressed wishes.

<comment><USER27> Well, it seems to me that's stretching the meaning of words well beyond breaking point. _respecting_? It sounds like it was uninformed 'consent' doesn't it, like he didn't understand the licence. I get the feeling it's very hard for experts in this area to relate to people who aren't, especially without trying at all to do so, and they come over sounding like unfeeling Vulcans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone who works in creative coding as an artist and has worked in advertising (where this happens a lot) I feel deeply sorry that someone made so much from this artists work they happily put out into the world, I've seen this happen time and time again.

This is a really horrible life lesson that licenses matter and if you create something it's important to think through yourself how to make money off it and do it yourself (and think hard if you care about that because caring retroactively is too late), before you set it free because if you don't do it then someone else will and honestly you only have yourself to blame because the reality is you didn't want to put the small bit of extra effort required to make money off the thing

<comment><USER30> >you didn't want to put the small bit of extra effort required to make money off the thing

I agree with you, except for the words "small bit". As an inventor, with a few issued and pending patents under my belt, I can assure you that bringing an invention (software or hardware) to market is no small feat.

For me, concieving of crafty algorithms or a new device is the easy part. Even writing a patent, whild time consuming, is straight forward. However, getting people to buy said inventions and establishing an efficient "supply chain", for me, is the excrutiatingly hard part. For some, this part comes naturally, and it's the act of invention that is tough. For a lucky select few, they are talented at both. Still, the requisite investment of time and money is generally not small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It has nothing to do with the object of sale but mostly with the fact that it's Christie's effort.

Try to sell identical thing on eBay for $10 and watch the world making fun of you at zero bids.

<comment><USER32> This.

I don't have much sympathy for the sellers profiting off open source code without apparently any intention of contributing back even a little, but it's clear that the 400k valuation is not a direct outcome of the code quality - after all you can make litteraly millions of painting from the same "author" for bucks each. The 400k come from the marketing skills of the sellers (or, if you're less generous, from the fact that they're probably very well connected to the right people in the art market).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The results are so amateurish though. What's with those nasty deconvolution artifacts?

<comment><USER34> How will you know a computer did it and not an amateur unless it looks crappy in a very specific way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> An art photographer had a show where he presented his original photos of... other famous photographs. Lovely controversy about what is an original photo.

It's just what a segment of the art world does - mess with the definition of the art world. Look at Banksy's million dollar shredder.

</comment><comment><USER36> I could see someone paying for the novelty of one of the first well-known AI paintings, but I can imagine supply and demand economics will drive prices way down as more high quality AI art floods the market. Good time to get in though while supply is still low and demand is high.

<comment><USER34> Is this even good quality? I imagine this is just the novelty.. and even that is quesionable to me.

The real feat for me isn't in using this open source model to generate this painting, it seems to be convincing anyone that this was worth $432k

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > winning bidder wished to be kept anonymous

I wonder if this is a marketing stunt, or an effort to increase the visibility and legitimacy of AI generated art.

<comment><USER38> Purchasers of controversial artwork often chose to remain anonymous at least initially. There's nothing unusual about this, and discussing it with friends we all assumed it would sell 1) for much more and 2) to an anonymous buyer. Nothing unusual about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The artwork should have been generated during the auction itself, with individual bids being seeds into the generative process. The bidders would contribute to the next generation. You wouldn't know what the final product would be. But, you'd own each of the steps in the process, not just the final image.

You heard it here first!

</comment><comment><USER40> The next logical thing is to sell a computer and a large 4K monitor that creates a new painting for you every day

<comment><USER41> And you can do that for $2000, which is $430000 cheaper than that one painting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> An interesting phenomenon is happening vis a vis the art market. Very rich tech buyers are catapulting the value of artists (and, I guess, AI collectives) that aren't really participating much in the "contemporary art" discourse. I look at current art shows all day every day from all over the world and have never heard anything about these people. It's the same with the various "crypto artists."

For $400k you could buy a dozen works by some really influential artists. But there's a big pool of money willing to buy work made by some 25 year olds that is totally disconnected from any broader cultural apparatus related to art. I'm fascinated, and wonder how the art world will respond. Clearly there is money to be made.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it an actual painting or a print?

<comment><USER38> It's printed on canvas, the AI did not paint it literally, it is digital art; it's not an actual painting.

If you wanted, you could print your own!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Here's the code to the network they copied. If any of you guys want to make a quick $10,000 from my work, now is the perfect time." Oh man he's going to be more than upset about the price this got sold at :S

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd buy art (and listen to music) generated by an AI, but I'll admit that I think some creative products lose a bit of their essence when not created by humans.

We know math and science can be found within art: measures and half measures in music, the golden ratio in painting, etc. Optimizing for these mathematical properties seems a bit like cheating for lack of a better word. There are many musicians and artists without classical training that encounter these attributes on their own, and manipulate them in different ways. I think part of the reason why the arts are such a great platform for human creativity is because of this.

<comment><USER46> >I think some creative products lose a bit of their essence when not created by humans

That debate goes way, way back. In 1966, a researcher at Bell Labs used a computer to generate an image in the style of Mondrian. The images were presented to 100 people; not only were test subjects unable to identify the computer-generated image, but the majority liked the computer-generated image better. The computer-generated art is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's collection.

[http://thekidsroad.com/assets/images/blog/blog- content/mushu...](http://thekidsroad.com/assets/images/blog/blog- content/mushup-remix/Noll_Mondrian.pdf)

<comment><USER47> I believe the essence is this: The computer creates some number of pieces, _from which a human selects the one that is shown._

Brian Eno quote about a related field: music "The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is a sad story. But Everybody needs to get some lesson from this case if they publish their work as open. The open source licenses needs to update for machine learning models.

</comment><comment><USER49> Related: I know the authors used a DCGAN implementation (a pre-trained model, it looks like), but is it known what their approach for up-scaling the generated images is? In art generation I've seen GAN output of 128x128, e.g. that is then upscaled with a super-resolution network. Is something similar being done for the "final painting", or is the GAN somehow efficient enough to do large-format output in a decent training time?

<comment><USER50> I don't know exactly what was used to upscale here, but Progressive Growing of GANs[0] was a breakthrough last year that proved at least 1024x1024 was viably producable.

The short explanation is: Train and freeze the most basic layer of the model progressively to "let the network" understand higher resolution concepts one piece at the time, and avoid mode-collapse.

The network architecture illustrating this a bit better is shown on page 3 of the paper [1]

[0]: [https://github.com/tkarras/progressive_growing_of_gans](https://github.com/tkarras/progressive_growing_of_gans)

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10196.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10196.pdf)

<comment><USER51> I think they've upscaled using Lanczos resampling and have then done wavelet deconvolution - the thing is furry with artefacts, and looks just like when I push an astronomical image too far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I almost see artifacts on painting, similar to simple NN algorithms like [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/image...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/demo/image_regression.html) produce.

</comment><comment><USER53> That's why hand-made artifacts will soon be back in force through a new generation of more savvy art dealers, this hopefully being good for a startup or good enough for lifestyle businesses in the coming decade.

</comment><comment><USER54> Imagine yourself writing a javascript library to do some mundane thing then releasing it as GPL and then somebody made a slightly modified copy of it and licenses it to google for 5M a year.

<comment><USER55> The generally held opinion on this is that that would never work, because Google has no reason to pay 5M a year to something that is available to anyone for free. The keyword is "slightly modified" here which implies that the modification is trivial. If the modifications are not trivial, then all bets are off of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Proof that money cannot buy taste

</comment><comment><USER57> I'd like to see the first AI _self_ -portrait.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if the person who bought it will sue for damages when the AI program is inevitably used to spit out millions of similar portraits on demand.

<comment><USER38> Why would or could they? It's a digital print created by a computer algorithm. Computer algorithms can't own copyrights, so you can print your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Drill and uninspiring

</comment><comment><USER60> Needs more shredder.

</comment><comment><USER61> Suckers!

</comment><comment><USER62> LOL at the signature on the painting

</comment><comment><USER63> All I can say is "follow the money"... I can see someone paying for the AI program, but not for one of its digital outputs. I'm guessing this is an internal purchase for the news story.

<comment><USER64> I doubt this. It is more likely just a very wealthy person wanting to buy the first artwork completely done by an AI that hit a major auction house.

That is news, the fact that it is in the news automatically adds to the cache around the piece. That makes for a solid art investment.

<comment><USER61> The work could have been literally anything so long as it was generated by a computer. The art here is convincing people the algorithm = AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Color me extremely unimpressed. I just can't believe someone would pay that much for something... so visually mediocre. When you look at how GANs work, they are incredible for what they are (especially StackGAN / GANs conditioned on some input)... but I just don't think there's any _real_ creativity - <USER2> for that matter, intelligence - in GANs yet.

<comment><USER66> It's one of the first work of art by an AI. Think of how much this fact alone will increase the price of the painting in 200 years.

<comment><USER65> Ehhhh, but is it _really_ a "work of art"? That's what I take issue with.

<comment><USER67> Surely anything successfully sold as a work of art at an art auction by an auction house famous for selling works of art de facto becomes a work of art.

<comment><USER66> That was my point. The fact that this is the first piece that is recognized as a work of art AND was sold at a high price will only make this piece increase in value as time go on.

<comment><USER67> Then we completely agree.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Beef with Bill Watterson - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/my-beef-with-bill-watterson-c703e4da5081#.jxmxjxl4k <comment><USER2> It is winter. Snow is coming. Calvin is my inspiration for snowmen. Watterson is genius. I fully support his decision to leave when the time was right and to let his art speak for itself. Build a snowman and chill out.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sucks to have folks with that message no longer around, but consider:

If the acolytes need the priest to spread the message, have they really learned it at all?</comment>


How much of Taiwans's Covid success comes down to technology? - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/care/inside-the-paradise-bubble/ <comment><USER2> Good article. It probably also helped that the Taiwanese Vice President at the time at former Minister of Health is a epidemiologist who worked at Taiwan's national research academy "Academia Sinica" before.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating article, mentions Audrey Tang of perl fame.

Spoiler:

 _Ultimately, Taiwan's success in containing COVID-19 has less to do with technology than with well-functioning state institutions that acted quickly and collectively. As a Taiwanese friend described it, the government's approach has resembled crossing a river. You inch forward step by step, feeling your way across and making decisions as you go. Along with this experimental, adaptable spirit, the government's focus on transparency and building public trust, paired with an excellent universal healthcare system, are the real strengths of the Taiwan model. Technology, while useful, cannot make up for the absence of strong public structures of care._</comment>


Why we choke under pressure, and what we can do about it - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/10/choke/?page=full <comment><USER2> tl;dr - People who are prone to choking do so because they worry too much. They can avoid choking by acting faster than they feel comfortable with.

Uhh... They can't even act on time, how could they possibly stop worrying long enough to act early? And how about the long-term effects of acting early? You'll fail more, and therefore worry more.

They give a little advice about people learning to golf by putting first, and doing the hard stuff later. They never explained if that actually helped (it's a theory only), but I have to think that's because they get comfortable with the basic ideas of golf and worry less.</comment>


Bill Joy: Why the future doesn't need us (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

<comment><USER2> If I were one of the machines I would replay the Armageddon foreseen by the big religions. I would create a simulated judgment day and put the good humans in heaven and evil ones in hell. In heaven put an abundant supply of everything satisfying all needs for the domestic pets and in hell put all scientists, philosophers.

<comment><USER3> ^^^ Heck yeah this guy

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might be equally interesting to discover why these various futures are impossible (if they are).

Has anyone shown, for example, that in an Artificial life system (or cellular automata perhaps). That a single form can always be introduced that will dominate the system?

If this isn't always the case, what conditions are required for there to be a form that can dominate the system?

</comment><comment><USER5> "I was also reminded of the Borg ofStar Trek, a hive of partly biological, partly robotic creatures with a strong destructive streak."

The Borg did not destroy. They did not delete and discard. They assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness gets added to theirs. A Borg-like race will save humanity, if it ever comes to that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Early humans: "The future doesn't need us"

Hunter-gatherers: "The future doesn't need us"

Bill Joy: "The future doesn't need us"

Nothing new here and they all were right.

<comment><USER7> True; present-day humans will, sooner or later, be supplanted. But by what? Does it make a difference if the new dominant species are more advanced humans, artificial intelligences, or something in-between? What about the "grey goo" scenario? Personally I have preferences for some of these possibilities over others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please put the year (2000) in the title, along with the author's name, Bill Joy; to prompt the few that haven't read this to reconsider, and to prompt those who have read it all those years ago, to read it again.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the recommendation. I've now read it and spread it to those in my own circles who would appreciate it's worth.

I really enjoyed this article and agree with the overarching conclusions even while disagreeing on various specifics.

<comment><USER8> I think we all admire Bill Joy and share his concerns, but his conclusions, for me, feel inadequate. If technology is a dispersed power, how can we possibly hope to herd its usage?

<comment><USER10> You know, by creating a civilized society, where decisions are taken by consensus rather than power and greed, and that controls the technologies it creates instead of letting them control us.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aerospike, the fastest NoSQL Database - <AUTHOR>

Here is an excellent article presenting Aerospike's NoSQL database performance on a single node on Amazon. On a single Amazon C3.8xlarge instance it does 1 Million TPS. The architecture of the system offers fundamental wins based on which the solution can outsmart any other existing product. This is the NoSQL database for the Internet generation. A platform that offers the flexibilities in developing applications for Internet scale and offering the cardinalities that does not have to be limited. No manual sharding or load-balancing required, system does it.
Hacker new readers, check it out, drop by the Aerospike office in Mountain View to talk to the amazing developers/hackers. Great technical team open to have more and more be part of Aerospike ecosystem.
Build on Aerospike and be a part of the fast revolution that Aerospike has started. Check out the product @aerospike.com
http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/8/18/1-aerospike-server-x-1-amazon-ec2-instance-1-million-tps-for.html
later... <comment><USER2> Impressive numbers, and I appreciate the fact that you have so many client libraries available. Downloading the NPM to play around with it as we speak.</comment>


A Catalog of Your Files - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/amitnovick/a-catalog-of-your-files-2nd7 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm very excited to be able to present Catalog to you here. In fact one of the reinforcements for my vision came from a post I read here a few months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18858538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18858538)

This app checks out almost all desirable features described in that post:

      - Free and open source
      - 100%-internet-independent.
      - It works on all the platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux
      - It uses SQLite as the store format of metadata, which makes it easy to read and modify programmatically.
      - A node can be either a filesystem resource: a file / folder, or a hierarchy building block: a category
      - All desirable metadata can be created by the user through categories
      - Search for files: by name OR by an ancestor category of the file

You're welcome to leave questions here, and I will try to address them as best as I can.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for your contribution this looks interesting. Do you have any idea if one could tackle this on a OS level and e.g. have a catalogue filesystem on a sub-section of my hard drive?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Thanks for your contribution this looks interesting.

Happy to hear you found it interesting!

> Do you have any idea if one could tackle this on a OS level and e.g. have a > catalogue filesystem on a sub-section of my hard drive?

Unfortunately none of the available OSes support the many-to-many relationship between files and categories that I suggested (Symbolic links aren't sufficient[1]).

My hypothesis is that any sufficient solution will be much more complex than what I'm doing with Catalog, which means a lot harder to maintain.

[1] See my answer here: [https://dev.to/amitnovick/comment/engj](https://dev.to/amitnovick/comment/engj)</comment></comment>


Canada 150 Typeface - <AUTHOR> http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/1445028439342 <comment><USER2> The uppercase G's lack of a spur... it just seems Canadian. Something about not needing the crutch due to our northern resourcefulness. The M's pointed top strikes me immediately as a play on the triangular shapes of inuit language, a tasteful nod.

Overall it really fits and is an excellent contribution to our nation's aesthetic. Distinctly no longer British, funny in a dry way, clean like a Scandinavian without the rigidity, forever fond of Expo '67 and slowly moving past colonialism without erasing it.

It'll suit Justin Trudeau's government perfectly. A nod to his father's 60's legacy but with a "because it's 2015" modernity. It actually kind of resembles the man himself with his native tattoo* and all.

*[http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3577800/thumbs/o-JUSTIN-TRUDEAU-BO...](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3577800/thumbs/o-JUSTIN-TRUDEAU-BOXING-TATTOO-570.jpg)

<comment><USER3> What a uniquely Canadian take on the Putin glamour shot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is one complete typeface; love it. But how so government of them to impose an _application process_ just to get the typeface! Especially when the font is supposedly free for commercial or non-commercial use.

Edit: If the implication is that the font should be used only in conjunction with referencing the logo and Canada 150 milestone, then it should be explicitly stated.

<comment><USER5> The Wired article says the font is an expansion of Mesmerize¹, so if you're writing in the Latin alphabet it's irrelevant.

¹ [http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/typodermic/mesmerize](http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/typodermic/mesmerize)

<comment><USER5> Followup (too late for me to edit): The designer, Ray Larabie, says here¹: "After Canada's 150th birthday (2017) I intend to release it as open source. There might be some revisions before then." — and some other interesting things, like: "The idea of irking the design profession was part of the attraction to this project".

¹ [http://typedrawers.com/discussion/1267/typeface-to- accompany...](http://typedrawers.com/discussion/1267/typeface-to-accompany- canada-150-logo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems cool, my first thought is: I bet this makes it easy to @font-face some of these languages online finally. Oh but you need gov't permission to use the typeface.

It COULD be so useful, let's hope they separate the licensing for the logo and the typeface in the future to make the typeface easier to access and use without permission!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not aware of a good-looking unified font that handles English, French, Cree/Inuktitut. It's really unfortunate that the government did not make it available as an unrestricted download.

</comment><comment><USER8> Couldn't get OP/Google Cache to load, so here's a related article with some screenshots (thumbnails are heavily artifacted, but the regular-scale images are less so)

[http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/134143005311/cana...](http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/134143005311/canada-150-typeface- commisioned-by-canadian)

<comment><USER9> Here's a mirror. [https://archive.is/zxBQk](https://archive.is/zxBQk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this font feel Canadian to Canadians?

The Dutch government also has its 'own' typeface [1,2], used on everything from the official weather reports to tax forms and road signs. Dutch people recognize anything written in it as something meant to be taken seriously.

[1] [https://www.rijkshuisstijl.nl/bouwstenen/lettertype](https://www.rijkshuisstijl.nl/bouwstenen/lettertype)

[2] [http://designworkplan.com/typography-fonts/rijksoverheid- san...](http://designworkplan.com/typography-fonts/rijksoverheid-sans- serif.htm)

<comment><USER5> I don't think there's any typeface that Canadians would recognize as particularly Canadian. The federal government uses Helvetica.

But then, to me, 'Dutchness' in a typeface brings to mind the styles of the 17th century when the Dutch were at the center of printing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having to apply for use of the logo just to use the font is a bizarre move...

<comment><USER11> Downvoted for this? Jeez.

I'm a Canadian and I don't think I should have to register and present a justification of my use of a logo I'm not actually going to use in order to use Canada's new font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not used to the shape of the counters of this typeface on the gs, ps and qs; to my eyes they seem very opinionated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why did they use JPEG?

</comment><comment><USER14> Needs emojis for all Canadian NHL teams.</comment>


Hipmob brings real-time customer support to Appcelerator - <AUTHOR> http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2013/07/hipmob-brings-real-time-customer-support-to-appcelerator.html

<comment><USER2> Curious, what sort of clicks do you get to Live Chat? It seems like a natural progression for mobile devices, but wouldn't most people also want a "Click to Call", since it's a mobile device?</comment>