Ask HN: What's the single best piece of advice you've ever heard? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've always liked this quote by Ira Glass

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through."

<comment><USER3> > Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of > this.

Many people who strive to excel feel this always to an extent via higher expectations on themselves than people around them hold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll paraphrase it because I can't remember how it went. Choose some interest/activity aside from your career and commit to pursue it for the rest of your life. Such a sustained effort will one day prove to be of immense value. If you don't make your choice right now, you never will. I didn't, and I didn't, and at the age of 70 how I wish I had.

<comment><USER5> It's never too late!

Could you put some examples or make some suggestions? I'm looking for a new hobby, which, apart from being a hobby itself, could help me in other aspects of my life.

<comment><USER6> How about climbing? It's awesome exercise, and has been the source of many of my friends and countless road trips for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have two:

My mom told me once that I am not responsible for the happiness of others. Prior to that, it was a tremendous burden for me when loved ones were unhappy and I felt like there was nothing I could do.

The other one is "No matter where you go, there you are". My early career was marked by short stints at different companies because I was looking for the perfect work environment. Eventually, I realized that the only constant amongst those places was me. I now fight the urge to escape whenever things aren't going how I want them to because, ultimately, I will still be me wherever I go and it is better to deal with my issues than change the world around me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Know your audience.

Knowing your audience is critical to communicating effectively and impacts every human interaction you'll have.

Two people with an arbitrary goal having separate conversation with the same person can have vastly different outcomes predicated on how well they know their audience.

Some examples off the top of my head:

1) Teaching a novice; understanding their skill level and learning style to guide how you teach and what you teach.

2) Asking for a favor from a colleague in a different department; understanding their priorities, pressure points, and professional goals to position your request in a way most likely to be accepted.

3) Traffic stop; understanding the LEO's concerns to ensure a smooth stop and preferably a warning for the reason you were pulled over.

4) Giving a presentation; different people care about different things, understanding your audience allows you to choose the messaging that your audience cares about and resonates the most.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't believe your thoughts.

Stop calling them "my thoughts" \-- observe how they emerge and investigate if you're the one causing them.

<comment><USER10> Wow, genuinely interesting but complicated advise. Literally wouldn't know how to do that but I certainly wish I could attribute thoughts better.

<comment><USER9> You can start by investigating your thoughts with a sceptic mind.

Especially the ones creating emotional response.

For example "I am a failure."

How do I know this is true? Does failing at one or n things classify me as something?

Would I have failed if I wasn't trying? Was there learning involved?

Do I have a recollection of succeeding at something at least once?

This example is a bit long to show multiple ways of questioning.

Emotionally charged thoughts are more often than not unoriginal and irrational.

You can also look at Byron Katie's "The Work" methodology.

\---

As for investigating the emergence of your thoughts, simply point your attention to where a thought comes from when you notice you have a thought.

Like, why am I thinking that I am failure? What happened right before that? Did I decide to think that thought before I did?

You may discover that most thoughts are repetitive, unoriginal and automatic. Are they "your thoughts" then if they're just happening to you? Are they "yours" if they happen to a bunch of people?

And, bonus: do you act on all your thoughts? If not, what decides if you'll act? Observe these decisions. Do you will them into existence? Are they happening to you?

"What makes me tick?" Is a question I have curiosity about. These are some directions to put your attention in if you have this curiosity, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Making mistakes is part of human nature. It's best to expect that a lot of things will go wrong, items will be lost, deadlines won't be kept, driving won't be done correctly, your boss won't know that doing $thing will cause $badthings (including annoyed employees), code will be written suboptimally, people will say stuff that hurts other people, people who hurt other people will claim they acted perfectly normally, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Have emergency savings, preferably a bare minimum of 3 months' worth of expenses, available. Depending on your risk tolerance and income stability, 6 or 9 months might be appropriate. It's absolutely amazing the peace of mind and freedom to take risk that having emergency savings can give you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Go for a run in the morning. Even if you have a crap day, at least you've gone for a run.

It applies to things other than running, too.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Always try to be the dumbest person in the room."

Surrounding yourself with smart people is the best way to learn and improve.

<comment><USER15> This is a very interesting way to look at things. I will try that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Want to get something done, do a little bit at a time.

\- My grandma... miss you supergran.

</comment><comment><USER16> Beware charm. Charming, charismatic people can use their charm to mask a multitude of faults and deceptions.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't take advice from someone, with whom you don't want to trade places.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't be an asshole

<comment><USER19> I came here to post "Don't be a dick", but glad to see that someone already has it covered.

Throughout my career, I have worked with countless people that were happy to piss off others to get stuff done, and while it might get something done in the short-term, it damages them in the long term.

It doesn't matter how junior they are right now, that junior developer you shat all over might be the senior developer that tells the MD not to hire you when you rock up for an interview after being made redundant. That contractor you tried to short-change over a delivered piece of work might be the reason why you are struggling to hire people with similar skills, or the reason why a company is keen to pursue you for not delivering. That person you harassed at work might be the reason why people keep leaving your company.

All of these scenarios has happened to me in the last five years, and I'd say that my career has been shaped by the experienced of others. I'd also say that it shapes the career of many people. Hell, you only need to see the recent issues at Uber to see a company that will fail to attract top talent, and employees that will struggle to work in any team with previous co-workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let it not be said you never got what you wanted because you never asked.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like this quote ( and piece of advice ) :

I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, "Liquidize your assets, buy Powerball tickets, it works!" – Bo Burnham

</comment><comment><USER22> "I go first" \- heard it on a Tim Ferriss podcast.

Be the first to volunteer, to put your hand up with a question, to introduce yourself to others, to open the conversation.

It avoids those awkward moments when a group of people look at their shoes wondering who is going to respond. It also helped me address my general reluctance to be the first responder.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Don't piss into a power socket"

(in pt): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcI_2zvwejk&list=PL2332BC2EB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcI_2zvwejk&list=PL2332BC2EBB3870B8&index=22)

<comment><USER24> I guess you don't know your audience ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Always ask,"Is there anything else I can do to help?"

Don't just ask once if you can help, everyone else does that. Be the person who asks again and again. People will take notice and tell others. It's the quickest way to new opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER26> Living well is the best revenge.

</comment><comment><USER27> Relax and answer will come . If you can not make decision - just stop thinking about it for few days(if it's possible, of course). Answer will come from where you can not expect.

</comment><comment><USER28> The worst mistake to make is to be afraid to make mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Few worthwhile efforts are every successful on the first attempt.

Failure is a necessary part of eventual success. It provides improved context and insights. As a young man, I thought that something must be wrong with me because I always failed when I tried something new and so I usually gave up.

Guilt has nothing what-so-ever to do with failure.

Failure is just another useful metric.

</comment><comment><USER29> Health is a precious resource you don't squander. Lack of it can take down even the richest of men. Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER30> From the Thief II game:

To use thy chisel is to blunt its edge 'gainst the stone. To not use thy chisel is to waste its edge.

I know it is some drivel invented to stuff out the in-game story, but it stuck. I tend not to use some nice thing as I might break/waste it, so I use this text as an occasional prod that it's fine.

</comment><comment><USER31> Learn to rest, not to quit.

</comment><comment><USER32> Keep your. Humility on the way up. Dignity on the way down.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't take advice from anyone without skin in the game, for they have no tangible downside to being wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> "teach them to ride a bike one at a time"

(as parent of twins trying to be "fair" :)

"apologise early"

</comment><comment><USER35> Treat people like sovereign nations

</comment><comment><USER36> what you want to learn has been learned before a thousand times.

never fear walking on a well-worn path.

</comment><comment><USER37> Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for.

</comment><comment><USER38> Work hard. Be strong. Don't complain.

</comment><comment><USER39> Either you earn or you learn

</comment><comment><USER40> Don't take any advice.

</comment><comment><USER41> Read the classics!

</comment><comment><USER42> health is your greatest wealth.

</comment><comment><USER43> Just let it go.

</comment><comment><USER44> Smile more. Because it will make you happier and everyone around you happier. Everything will become easier if you smile more.</comment>


'Star Wars: Despecialized Edition' Restores the Original, Unedited Trilogy - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/star-wars-despecialized-edition-removes-alterations-to-the-original-trilogy <comment><USER2> I just watched through the depecialized trilogy last week.

It goes a lot further than restore and "unedited". As an example, the 4th episode (first movie) received a ton of enhancements. They used sources ranging from the laser disc edition to photos. The result is something that looks absolutely beautiful and very comfortable to watch on a modern display.

I think it's a lot closer to what we expected the "special editions" to be.

As a side note... I used the "Machete order" when watching the movies. Made me appreciate Episode 2 and 3 a _lot_ more than I had previously. I quite enjoyed them in the context the order creates.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/geekdad/wp- con...](http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/geekdad/wp- content/uploads/2012/02/machete_order-580x142.jpg)

IV, V, II, III, IV (no I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope Disney will be more forthcoming on this issue than Lucas.

But one has to wonder why he wouldn't give congress an original edition. Maybe they're lost?</comment>


Show HN: Comp.fyi – Open compensation data by company and level - <AUTHOR> http://levels.fyi/comp.html <comment><USER2> Great work on launching this and levels.fyi. How does comp.fyi ensure freshness of salary data?

I feel like sites like Glassdoor became a victim of their own success. It became the salary site for years, so naturally it accumulated data going back years. Last I checked, their salary numbers are significantly lower than current industry comp since it has been going up over the past few years and it seems like they don't drop old data from the averages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely a problem even for us. Right now, we're focusing on getting as many people to contribute as possible (over at [http://levels.fyi/addcomp.html](http://levels.fyi/addcomp.html)). We've tossed some ideas around about only showing / averaging the last 10 salaries submitted for a certain company and level and ensuring some minimum date of submission. Glassdoor also suffers from not having granularity of level for engineers and I think that may be why salary data is so broadly ranged.

<comment><USER3> Why not show recent aggregates alongside overall aggregates?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you're right, could do both

<comment><USER4> A graph would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the numbers in the career trajectories? Means? Medians? Maxima? It's hard to make sense of this.

Can anybody vouch for the accuracy of the data? A friend of mine works for one of these companies, gets (or claims to get) excellent reviews, and makes nowhere close the "career trajectory" numbers.

BTW, salary data for H1B applicants is public and could be used to validate the base salary numbers, to some extent. Although it is not a given that H1B workers make the same as non-H1B. And then of course there is the stock, which is a mystery.

<comment><USER6> I can vouch that the Google numbers are plausible, but only because of stock appreciation. The actual numbers that a new hire would get are somewhat lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could you clarify what convention you use for the stock value, given vesting? E.g. if you have a base salary of 100k and a 100k stock grant, vesting over 4 years, do you count that as 100+100 total comp (upper bound)? Or would you count that as 100+(100/4) total comp ramping up to 100+(100/4)+(100/4) in the second year if you are given a similar stock grant next year (lower bound)?

My own preference would be to value stock grants for total comp comparison purposes by the expected value of the number of vesting events, or, equivalently, to impose a discount rate on the future grants based on the turnover rate in the job category. I've never seen that applied to total comp comparisons; presumably it would be a moderate value somewhere between the lower bound and upper bound.

<comment><USER8> In the comp submission form [1] we highlight the fact that the comp figures should be what your are earning total (ex. what shows up on your W2). Some companies actually factor in the stock appreciation during compensation adjustments (Amazon does this). Although it's not perfect, we think it answers best the question most people are after: Where can I earn the most amount of money?

[1] [https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the visualization you're doing with how salary scales at different companies. It's often overlooked

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome! how did you guys end up collecting all the data in the spreadsheet?

<comment><AUTHOR> We collected all the data through a form we had on our main site at [http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi). We've gotten enough responses to where we decided to create another site specifically for visualizing and understanding this information!</comment></comment>


500TB for a University - <AUTHOR> As the case in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423146
the solution given by: wazoox
I need 500TB of storage for a university
i need actual examples and solution
Thanks. <comment><USER2> do dell/hp sales reps hang out here?</comment>


APIs Are Key to Industry Growth - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apievangelist.com/2011/06/19/apis-are-key-to-industry-growth/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if now's the time to think about what happens when an API provider goes away. Since APIs are the DDLs of the web, it would a good idea to have replacements. That's why I like OpenStack.

</comment><comment><USER3> sinzone, is that you? =)</comment>


Home Science Archaeology Stonehenge-Like Structure Found Under Lake Michigan - <AUTHOR> https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/stonehenge-under-lake-michigan-3125445/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently there are skeptics who are disputing whether these structures are human made or even that the drawing represents a dinosaur. So guess it needs more research.</comment>


Tips to Ace a Coding Exercise - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ltse.com/six-tips-to-ace-a-coding-exercise-e0a8d67d96c9 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, author here! I'd been thinking about how all the advice, discussions and books that have sprung up around white board algorithm interviews makes them seem more inevitable than they actually are. Discussing different kinds of interviews can help candidates do their best, rather than being surprised or knocked off balance when they encounter these recent interview formats.</comment>


The Apple TV Aerial Video Screensavers - <AUTHOR> http://benjaminmayo.co.uk/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-screensavers#b8-2 <comment><USER2> My favorite so far is New York City at night, GTA 2 style [0].

[0] [http://a1.v2.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/us/r1000/000/Fea...](http://a1.v2.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/us/r1000/000/Features/atv/AutumnResources/videos/b10-2.mov)

<comment><USER3> I didn't see any marching bands. Great link though, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's an osx screen saver picking the same video feeds:

      brew cask install aerial

<comment><USER5> You can also just download the file from the Github page: [https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial](https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that if anyone wants to commit heresy and use these screensavers on their Android TV (or any other Android) device, they can use Aerial Dream ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codingbuff...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codingbuffalo.aerialdream&hl=en)) and set it as default under Settings -> Daydream :)

<comment><USER7> I use this on my Shield TV and it's great. I also have an ATV4 as android AirPlay doesn't work nearly as well. Makes it confusing sometimes to tell which input the TV is on haha.

<comment><USER8> Woah. I totally missed the news about nvidia's android TV device. Is it too locked down or buggy (my main critique of most android TV devices)?

<comment><USER9> I think it's the best equivalent to an Apple TV in the Android ecosystem. Great performance and 4k, but way less apps (notably no Amazon Prime TV app).

If you're into cord cutting they do have an app for Sling streaming cable service.

Chromecasting to it is straightforward, and on par with Airplay. That was the one thing holding me to iOS for a long time.

<comment><USER8> > but way less apps (notably no Amazon Prime TV app).

Doesn't it use the Google Play Store?

<comment><USER10> I agree with the best STB, at least all the ones I've used recently.

There's an unofficall Amazon Video app that I've been using for quite awhile with little problems, the ShieldTV does use the Google Play Store and I've used other stores like Aptoide and AptoideTV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been using them as screensaver for a while now. Here it is: [https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial](https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial)

<comment><USER12> Installable through Caskroom via

        brew install Caskroom/cask/aerial

These videos look amazing on just about any screen. I've got a 15" MBP Retina connected to a 34" Dell Ultrawide and I've caught people just _staring_ at the big screen with many of these videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which brings us to one often debated question in our company: Are those screensavers real footage or animated? Anybody has an idea on the making of?

<comment><USER14> They are definitely real. In the SF one that goes over the bridge, you can see the shadow of the filming helicopter at the bottom of the screen.

<comment><USER15> And when the lens flares show up at the beginning of SF you can really see how hard the image stabilization is working to keep the image steady.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been running these as a Kodi screensaver for a few months now, but it pains me that they aren't 4k! Not a big deal for 1080p movies sitting back 12 feet, but this kind of stuff is like artwork hanging on my wall; I walk up to it, so every pixel counts. I hope that they're shot in 4 or 8k and Apple is sitting on hi-res versions until the Apple TV can support them.

</comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate the publicity, but I first posted this in October 2015. Any reason why it is gaining traction today?

<comment><USER18> It looks (from searching past submissions[1]) like this was the first time it was posted to HN (surprisingly).

1: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=benjaminmayo&sort=byDate&dateR...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=benjaminmayo&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you want to download them all

curl [http://benjaminmayo.co.uk/scripts/apple-tv- screensavers.json](http://benjaminmayo.co.uk/scripts/apple-tv- screensavers.json) | jq .[].assets[].url | xargs wget

<comment><USER20> jq?

<comment><USER19> [https://stedolan.github.io/jq/](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there anyway to get this to play on the Windows 10 logon screen, instead of a picture background? I found the Windows version for the screensaver on the link below, but no way to set it as the logon background.

[https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/](https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wish there were footage of a large urban area in China. Would there actually be too much pollution to get a clear shot in most areas?

</comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone done a Windows screen saver of these?

If not, then I will.

<comment><USER24> found on GitHub, not tested: [https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/](https://github.com/cDima/Aerial/)

<comment><USER23> Just skimmed through the code. It's nicely done (way neater code than I'd ever write). Seems to pull down each video to stream directly, unless cached locally (toggable), there's also some/day night code in there, and it supports multi monitors.

Totally usable and saves me a job. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Every time I see the screen saver with The Great Wall, it blows my mind that the wall is 5,500 miles long.

</comment><comment><USER26> San Francisco "Night #5" is actually morning.

</comment><comment><USER27> Will these actually work as screensavers. If you loop the same video(s) over and over again... seems like burn in could still occur.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this copyrighted?</comment>


Our Bookless Future - <AUTHOR> https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/our-bookless-future/ <comment><USER2> This is really missing the point, IMO. The difference between paper print vs digital "print" is not the issue. The problem is more that TV, movies, social media and YT have created a post-literate culture where the primary model of communication is visual and emotional, not textual and abstracted.

That culture is extroverted rather than introverted, geared towards triggering simplistic emotional responses rather than exploring complex arguments with nuance, and actively hostile to abstraction and focused deep insight.

This mode has always existed, but long-form writing used to offer a potential refuge from it. Without a strong written culture that refuge ceases to exist.

<comment><USER3> TV series might not be as long as books but all the multi-year long series people put however many hours into them as the series was long. Breaking Bad had 62 episodes, average 45 mins each = 46hrs of watching that show. That feels like more time than most novels.

<comment><USER4> The amount of people who have the means to produce a TV-series is probably smaller than those who could write a book though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of comments are debating the important of physical reading versus screen reading. I think that's actually missing the point.

> "Behind our screens, at work and at home, we have sutured the temporal > segments of our days so as to switch our attention from one task or one > source of stimulation to another. We cannot but be changed."

This part rings true for me.

Last summer I read Cal Newport's "Deep Work" and then "Digital Minimalism," in which he gets very into this topic of hypermedia and distracted living. It greatly influenced my thinking about how I use my time, and made me more conscious of the need to focus and actually be present with one activity at a time. This has greatly increased my productivity and lowered my stress level, so I highly recommend it.

Newport argues that a lot of what is "wrong" with today's computers (in every form factor) is the very thing that makes them so useful: they can do so many things. So unlike a paper book, which is really only for reading, a screen is for displaying all kinds of things, and if we are reading on a screen with notifications turned on then we're probably reading distracted which means we aren't reading well.

I read almost exclusively on my iPad or phone. I find it quite comfortable to sit on the couch and read from either device, but I prefer the iPad (mini). When I occasionally still read a paper book I find the experience is really no better or worse than reading on the iPad, except that the iPad has hundreds of books stored in the space and weight of a single magazine.

However, I do think one reason the experience is qualitatively equivalent it is I don't do a whole lot _else_ on my iPad, so I don't find it to be a distracting device. I associate it with reading.

Another relevant book on this topic, "Moonwalking with Einstein," is all about memory. That book essentially makes the case that (educated) people in the pre-internet era had to hold a lot of material in their heads, because you couldn't google stuff, and so everyone practiced using their memory more, committed more "important," things to memory, and generally did a better job retaining things they learned.

All of these are interesting, complex side effects of the internet and the ever more ubiquitous computer, and I think there is a lot for us to think about here. On a personal level, we have some opportunity and perhaps obligation to ensure our lives are enriched by these technologies and push back on the negatives that come with them. But just FWIW, I don't think trying to switch back to only reading on paper is, by itself, the answer :)

<comment><USER6> I agree with your points about distraction, and I think "Deep Work" is a critically important book. That said, it's easier said than done.

I only have one iPad and I do use it for many things including work, and it is shared with family members. That makes it full of distractions.

I have thought about getting a second iPad dedicated to reading, but since you can't uninstall Safari, I feel I'm going to end up getting distracted by the Internet. I'm not confident I have the self-discipline to never go on the Internet when it's just a tap away.

I do think having an iPad-like device with no functions except a book reader would be an interesting product.

<comment><USER7> But aren't you talking about an ebook reader like a Kobo or a Kindle then? They exist already.

<comment><USER6> I have both, and they are just too slow. I think if I were reading fiction page by page, it would be fine. When I read non-fiction for learning, it's very difficult to skip forward/back, re-read sections, highlight/annotate, flip to the footnotes and back, jump to the table of contents and back, etc. All of these actions are frustratingly slow on the Kindle or Kobo. The iPad is fast enough to make a good reading experience. But the distractions.

<comment><USER8> Annotating on the Kindle is a real pain but looking up footnotes is quicker than a book with end notes. Highlighting is a bit slower but has the advantage that you can export all your highlights in a pdf or spreadsheet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This line from the article really caught my attention:

> In sum, Wolf says, the paper reading brain has better memory, more > imagination, immersion, and patience, and more knowledge than the screen > reading brain.

I've been torn for years about how to feel about my reading and writing habits. I love reading physical books, especially when I'm trying to develop a deep understanding of some topic, and I have, at times, made concerted efforts to take notes on paper and keep my daily schedules and to-do lists in notebooks. But at the same time, I love reading the articles and other types of content that are surfaced by users here and on other sites.

I can't be certain (could just be confirmation bias of some sort), but I personally find that what Wolf said in that line is true. When I read and write on paper, I feel like I have a deeper connection to what's there and am more able to reason about it. Reading and writing on a computer feels more detached, like I'm just consuming the content without understanding or just dumping out ideas without thinking.

<comment><USER10> I believe this is simple conditioning. There are many people like me who learn _better_ from ebooks, online-papers and pdf's rather than dead-tree books. We can annotate, attach notes, add/remove highlights and most importantly: _search_ without needing a painful index and simultaneously study 2 or more books on the same subject with little trouble in shifting context.

With paper books, all this is very painful - too much jugglery needed.

<comment><USER11> I've found all of these things to be unhelpful compared to just having a notebook next to my book, the added writing down of information helps me retain information better.

I question the benefit of search beyond finding a sentence or two. Most large ideas require more than a sentence or two to explain something, and ignoring the context before and after could limit my understanding.

<comment> frosted-flakes In any case, most substantial non-fiction books have both a table of contents and an index.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eh, cry me a river.

To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall; and at that, less than 13% of women were literate[1].

The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century.

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

<comment><USER13> _> Eh, cry me a river._

Such substance.

 _> To put things in contrast: the Russian Empire, home of many great writers, such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Checkhov just to name a few, had a literacy rate of about 24% overall_

Like another poster commented, Russia had serfdom until well into the 19th century. Look at central and western Europe, if you want to see a literate society in that time.

Also, what is your point with this? Poor societies had bad literacy levels? Illiterate peasants don't care for books? I struggle to see the point with that observation.

 _> The truth is, reading has never really been the pastime of the masses, save, possibly, for a brief period in the 20th century._

Not dying of diharrea before the age of 5 has also never been the pasttime of the masses until a hundred years ago. What the hell does that mean? If people start dying of preventable diseases again that we should not worry?? If indices of progress start stagnating, or in this case, _regressing_ , then we must wonder how on earth we are doing so badly.

<comment><USER12> My point was that great literature doesn't need the involvement of 90% of the population to exist.

If 90% of the people stop reading books "deeply" (and that's assuming they ever did), we still get to have Tolstoys of our day for the people who want to spend their time that way. This is no loss for humanity.

You picked "reading books" as your metric of progress, but that choice needs to be justified. If, instead, you picked "watching programmed television", you could be similarly concerned as more people are cutting cable, but fewer people would take this argument seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I strongly agree with this quote from the article: "What bibliophiles really fear isn't the disappearance of books but the elimination of the time and space needed to enjoy them."

I absolutely love reading books but it takes a really conscious effort to carve out time and space in the day to to it. I need quiet and I need my other interruptions to pause.

I own a ton of paper books but I've recently switched to Kindle. I find that having a small and self-illuminating reading device makes me way more able to take advantage of reading time when I find it.

</comment><comment><USER6> The following assertion interests me greatly:

> She points out how the "physical and temporal thereness of books" provides a > tactile support for the reading circuit's development that e-books do not, > while noting e-books nonetheless continue to spread to classrooms and > children's bedrooms.

Why would this be the case?

Is there a measurable difference between dedicated "paper-like" e-book readers like the Kindle vs. e-books on multi-use digital devices like mobile phones, tablets and computers?

<comment><USER15> I imagine it could have something to do with the physical fixedness of a book. I can remember the positions of the line breaks in some of my favourite books as a child and it wouldn't surprise me if the physical layout of the words on the page (and how far through the book you are) somehow factored into the way the brain stores the memories of reading the book.

With an ebook you have the same little device with exactly the same dimensions for every book (no memorable covers or different formats) and there's no physical indication of how far through the book you are. And you can change the font size.

<comment><USER6> I think all these points are valid. As someone who spent the first 30 years of my life reading physical books, the transition to e-books has been difficult for a lot of the reasons you mention.

I wish the author was more specific on what "reading circuit development" means.

The frustrating thing about e-book reading devices is how slow they are. Flipping to the table of contents or flipping around the book just doesn't work. Mobile devices, tablets and computers are faster, but the experience still isn't as good a physical book. And then there are distractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I miss my Palm TX. It managed to be so poor at almost everything it tried to do that uninterrupted reading was the only thing it was really good for.

A pocket device without notifications. Can you even still imagine? I barely can, and it's only been eight years.

<comment><USER17> I like my kindle for so many reasons, especially the screen which doesn't strain my eyes. But this is by far the biggest benefit over reading on my phone or a tablet.

<comment><USER18> I'm in the same boat. I wonder how soon e-ink readers will get great response times and then share the same problem as modern tablets compared to the old palm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author got pretty much everything in reverse. Books are Lindy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)

</comment><comment><USER15> >In these later letters, Wolf sounds like the kind of alarmist digital enthusiasts often deride. After all, they say, reading is not dying; it's thriving. Wolf herself quotes a study from the University of California, San Diego, showing that an average user consumes 34 gigabytes of data per day—the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words.

How is that the equivalent of nearly 100,000 words? I appreciate people read a lot of text messages, articles, posts, etc. But they don't read 100,000 words worth of those things on average a day by any means. 34 gigabytes of data is also definitely not 100,000 words, more like 5,100,000,000 words or 17,000,000 pages.

Is it based on some 'a picture is worth 1,000 words' argument?

Reading is not thriving. It's hard to find anyone that actually reads books, even if you count reading on eReaders, even if you count listening to audiobooks! People consume a lot of data because they're watching Netflix, YouTube videos and Instagram (and downloading the same JavaScript over and over again on every website).

The whole article is just bizarre. It conflates so many unrelated things and doesn't seem to have any real thesis. People not reading books doesn't really have anything to do with people using phones except for the indisputable fact anyone here will attest to: going back to reading books after not doing so for a long time is _really_ hard. You find your mind wandering, you find it hard to read linearly one line at a time without skipping around, etc. The kind of reading you do of a blog post is totally different from the kind of reading you do of a novel. That people read pamphlets in the 18th century has _nothing at all_ to do with the decline in people reading books today.

I literally have students coming into tutorials that _cannot write_. They cannot write down answers on paper. They struggle to _write_ (to write!) because they've been told they can just type and never have to write. It's absolutely bizarre, but that's what they're told by their school teachers, apparently. They also can't sit still and read something without getting out their phones. Students complain that their lecture notes aren't put online and they have to actually attend lectures and take notes themselves even though it's been proven again and again that handwriting notes in lectures is much better for information retention and synthesis of ideas than typing or god- forbid not taking notes at all.

Personally, I'm really unsure whether I would even let kids have access to the internet. I had a lot of great experiences online as a kid (I have very fond memories of RuneScape from ages 9-12), and I learnt computer programming online. At the same time, I think you have to be really careful to limit it. It shouldn't be the primary means of entertainment. Mobile devices are probably the main issue: avoid them and at least you can ration and supervise their access to the internet. It can be a tool for research, homework and learning (and fun and games) without the dangers. The mixed messages ("don't share your personal info online" \+ "put all your personal info online on Facebook and Instagram") are unhealthy and confusing to kids too, I think.

<comment><USER5> I also "lol'd" at 34GB being equated to 100,000 words. A sibling poster suggests it was supposed to be 100k books, but I'm skeptical, it sounds to me like just a false correlation (the author saw somewhere that people read as many as 100k words per day and elsewhere that they consume 34GB of data and mistakenly connected those two dots).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sunday morning follow-up reading:

Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/08/reading-in- th...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/08/reading-in-the-age-of- constant-distraction/)

Analog Anchors for the Online Adrift

[https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/analog- anchors-f...](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/analog-anchors-for- the-online-adrift)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Just a few years ago, the Kindle was being blamed for the death of the > traditional book. But the latest figures show a dramatic reversal of > fortunes, with sales of ebooks plunging. So what's behind this resurgence?

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/how-ebooks- los...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/how-ebooks-lost-their- shine-kindles-look-clunky-unhip-)

<comment><USER2> There's a thriving independent self-published Kindle market which isn't included in the sales of the mainstream publishers. So there is no "dramatic reversal of fortunes."

<comment><USER11> Also ebooks are so freaking expensive when I can get used copies for pennies on the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Personally, I too find a future without books depressing. I do not have any scientific data to back me up on "physical books being better than digital ones", it's simply my personal preference. As someone that spends all day on the computer, I cherish the moments I spend doing something like reading a book, or running, or cooking. Something that feels a little more connected with reality.

</comment><comment><USER23> > his copy survives crisp and clean to this day, with only the first and last > pages cut.

Like TAOCP, then, eh?

</comment><comment><USER24> Timely article for me. I'm getting ready to move, and have been giving books to Goodwill and throwing some away. (I doubt even Goodwill have takers for Access 2 or VB 3 books.)

I really treasure books, but I'm not finding not so much as I did in the past.

</comment><comment><USER25> >It won't be long before all living memory of a time before the personal computer is gone.

And there is some evidence that maybe 100 years after that time all living memory of a time with the personal computer will be gone.

<comment><USER26> Maybe we ought to be printing manuals, documentation, manufacturing methods, etc on Tyvek.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article is the epitome of "back in the day, everything was better". There are no links to back up claims or credentials, and lots of relative facts without context.

Paraphrasing "rich kids are more literate than poor kids despite both having a lot of screentime" doesn't prove anything about books and literacy.

This is a pure opinion piece with cherry picked facts.

<comment><USER28> This is really a book review; if you want all the figures and facts, read the book it's reviewing and discussing. Heck, they even tell you they won't be repeating it all there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yet for more time stories were essentially oral and the oral tradition of being read to while working, and of reading aloud to one another kept knowledge alive for many people. Oral story telling and reading aloud presumes high literacy when a shared activity

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how books compare to scrolls, or clay tablets.

</comment><comment><USER31> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER32> The effect of a bookless society can already be seen for centuries: suffice to compare development of societies that use them vs those that don't. There is a clear correlation between GDP and the number of centuries (millennia in Chinese's case) written medium has been in use.</comment>


Pi Day is a lie: celebrate tau, the true circle constant instead - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/3/14/17119388/pi-day-pie-math-tau-circle-constant-mathematics-circumference-diameter-radius-holiday-truth <comment><USER2> 2pi pops up in a lot of equations, which makes them a little less elegant (like the PDF of the normal distribution). Also it would be nice for area of a circle to have symmetry with things like the area of rectangles and triangles and such.</comment>


Serving Customers in New Ways: Walmart Begins Testing Associate Delivery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.walmart.com/innovation/20170601/serving-customers-in-new-ways-walmart-begins-testing-associate-delivery <comment><AUTHOR> Fun fact: the mobile app for associate delivery was written in F# using Xamarin.

Source: I work at Jet, but not on this product.</comment>


AI could get 100 times more energy-efficient with IBM's new artificial synapses - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611390/ai-could-get-100-times-more-energy-efficient-with-ibms-new-artificial-synapses/ <comment><USER2> Replace AI from the title with Deep learning and it would make sense but of- course in todays world any computing related news just don't make sense until you have AI in it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well written reporting, to the point, and with counterpoint too. As far as IBM's research efforts, yeah they have drawn lots of duds over the years...

</comment><comment><USER4> IBM's claims of AI in the past have been a bit overdone by the marketing department (Watson) so I forgive anyone for being a bit skeptic here.

<comment><USER5> full disclosure, I work for IBM. But it does link to a fairly informative research paper published in Nature.

"The computational energy efficiency of 28,065 billion operations per second per watt and throughput per area of 3.6 trillion operations per second per square millimetre that we calculate for our implementation exceed those of today's graphical processing units by two orders of magnitude."</comment></comment>


Big backlash is building against Windows 8. Will Microsoft listen? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/19890/a_big_backlash_is_building_against_windows_8_will_microsoft_listen

<comment><USER2> Pre rant disclaimer: I have yet to use windows 8, and I rather enjoy Unix based OS's.

But lets be honest with a few things, this sentence irks me: "In hindsight, I suppose that Microsoft's quest to combine a desktop and mobile OS into one was damn near impossible to begin with." And there seems to be so much backlash against attempting to do so.

I'm pretty sure this is the direction all OS's we will be using are going to end up in the coming years. Some people will cry and yell and holler that there is no way something can be made for both keyboard, mouse, and touch screen. I see this as simply a failure of vision. That's absolutely the way things are going to be going, and it's coming sooner rather than later. (I actually think the OSX launchpad is pretty close to allowing this implementation) Devices are getting smaller and smaller. I use a Mackbook air. but guess how it gets hooked up at home? That's right, wireless keyboard and mouse, nice big monitor, I never see the actual computer. It's only a matter of time before my laptop gets replaced by a tablet that has comparable hardware specs. The OS allow for my normal desktop interfaces, along with a nice touch screen interface. I'll use it to pick out movies to play on my TV, from my couch. I"ll use the same device to write code at my desk. My kids will use it to play video games, both mobile, and on the TV. I'll use it to send email in the backseat of a car moving at 65mph. (As a wireless comms guy, I fully appreciate the technology it takes to perform that last action.)

But the bottom line is, It's going to happen. Sooner rather than later. And Windows, and every other OS, is going to try their damndest to build the first, and/or best implementation of this model. Windows my not have it sorted out yet (like I said, I haven't used it yet) but they HAVE HAVE HAVE to try. I'm sure they'll produce something useable eventually. Everyone has their Vista moments...

</comment><comment><USER3> The purpose of the consumer preview is to collect data. It's not primarily a marketing tool.

If the biggest complaint one can muster is that a new OS is unfamiliar (which is the vast bulk of non-ideological criticisms), it's hard to envision a meaningful backlash among users.

As every blogger notes, Microsoft is not Apple. People will not be camped in line at midnight to purchase copies of Windows 8. Microsoft does soft rollouts of its OS - the fact that there is a consumer preview is obvious evidence of that.

Most Windows users upgrade their OS when a new computer is purchased, not upon the OS's release. The few who will upgrade their OS as soon as it becomes available probably have availed their selves of the beta or RTM versions and thus have had time to become familiar with it.

</comment><comment><USER4> As much as I want to support the backlash, it sounds just conservative and reactionary. The start bar is gone? Really it seems like Microsoft has grown a contingent of users who are even more conservative than itself.

<comment><USER3> It's a contingent of Tech bloggers - a group known more widely for their criticism of Microsoft than their praise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I fear that developers will flock to developing Metro apps in the future instead of regular windows apps. And thus forcing desktop users to use the crappy metro experience and crippling the desktop experience even further.

They need to do something progressive but a touchscreen OS for the desktop is _not_ it imo. I'm sure though that it'll be a blast on a tablet.

If they can manage to explain it well to new users and to have 2 different app ecosystems it might just work. If either fails I don't see it ending well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cue the 30-page MSDN blog post explaining with charts and graphs that "no, seriously, our focus groups think this is the best user experience ever!"

</comment><comment><USER7> What I'd really like is Windows 7.1, not Windows 8. However, I doubt that Microsoft will ever come around and embrace incremental upgrades (or switch to a subscription model, or subscription-level pricing that would fund such a form of development).

<comment><USER3> > _"What I'd really like is Windows 7.1, not Windows 8."_

100 years later, a faster horse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a loud critic of Windows 8, one aspect of the counter-argument that bothers me is the argument that we're simply unwilling to accept change, sticking to what we know, etc.

I adapt to and accommodate change willingly and eagerly _where it benefits me_. The problem with the change in Windows 8 is that it provides a significant negative change for desktop users. It forces a seriously crippled experience all so Microsoft can try to funnel desktop users to their mobile experience.

<comment><USER9> I'd be very willing to delve into the OS more if there was more readily available help to transition people from the Windows interface we know to the new Metro style. Right now it's mainly an OS only for people who already know how to use it, but that includes virtually nobody outside of Microsoft.</comment></comment>


How Don Knuth's computer skills helped his college basketball team - <AUTHOR> http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/09/13/the-electronic-coach/

<comment><USER2> Reminds me a little bit about this article on Shane Battier: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1)

It goes into how Battier gets to see the charts and statistics for the players on the opposing team, so that he'll have better odds when defending against their jump shots.

</comment><comment><USER3> best part:

fed to an ibm computer, capable of making 50k calculations per _minute_

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671519>

</comment><comment><USER5> I think nowadays such analysis plays a big part in sports. For example when Germany's football team beat Argentina in this year's World Cup I couldn't help but think that the German coach knows something the other coach (legendary Diego Maradona) doesn't.

<comment><USER6> I lack specific examples or links, but had heard a few years ago that U.S. pro sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots, to think of two, use a lot of "Quant" analysis in addition to traditional coaching methods. I'm sure everyone is doing it across pro sports now.

<comment><USER7> Interestingly enough, Bloomberg has started offering "Quant" tools to MLB teams: <http://www.bloombergsports.com/proofferings/>

They specialize in providing data and analytics on financial data. Clearly they didn't think it was too much of a leap to go from analyzing securities to analyzing baseball players.

As far as specific links, the Red Sox employ Bill James (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James>), who is a fairly famous statistician, to help them run the team. He invented Sabermetrics, "the analysis of baseball through objective evidence". (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jerry Lucas used his own memory system and his personal collection of data on opponents to his advantage during his extremely successful basketball career.

The video at the following link discusses it briefly. At the moment I can't find any more detailed discussion of it.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK6yf3qaT4A>

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the K in Knuth supposed to be pronounced?

<comment><USER10> From: <http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/faq.html>

It's pronounced: Ka-NOOTH

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Knuth seems very tall. I wonder if he plays basketball as a hobby.</comment>


Online Data Retention Bill passes Aussie House of Reps - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/03/data-retention-bill-passes-parliament/

<comment><USER2> I think this is where you can find more result. [http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislati...](http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5375)

Just to draw distinction, I assume the bill is amending to keep the telecommunication data, rather than the content of the communication for certain period of time. I am not sure on which spectrum of privacy most people fall though.</comment>


Postgres Explain Visualizer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dalibo/pev2 <comment><USER2> Is this different (in a fundamental way) from [https://explain.depesz.com/](https://explain.depesz.com/) ?

<comment><USER3> I would say that for a visualization tool, the visual language is pretty fundamental. So I would say yes, [https://dalibo.github.io/pev2](https://dalibo.github.io/pev2) is much more accessible than [https://explain.depesz.com/](https://explain.depesz.com/) even if it hides some details.

<comment> munk-a Eh, except this tool seems to obscure some pretty useful information. It's certainly a nicer to look at thing, but the removed information about query portion detail is pretty vital to quickly working out issues.

<comment><USER4> What are you missing? I'm not sure it removes anything, if you click on the node you get the detailed info and to me it looks complete.

<comment> munk-a Sorry - my comment was a bit poorly worded. That information is now obscured away from easy visibility being behind a click - it is still there behind the click (not entirely removed) while being removed from a surface view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Alternative that also works well: [https://tatiyants.com/pev/#/plans](https://tatiyants.com/pev/#/plans)

<comment><USER6> It's not so much an alternative as it's the original inspiration. That is explained here:

[https://github.com/dalibo/pev2/#disclaimer](https://github.com/dalibo/pev2/#disclaimer)

> The pev project was initialy written in early 2016 but seems to be > abandonned since then. There was no activity at all for more than 3 years > and counting though there are several issues open and relevant pull requests > pending.

<comment><USER5> Looks like I missed that part, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice, but would be great if it could show it as a Gantt Chart too. The current display shows everything starting at the same time, so doesn't estimate the total wall clock time.

Now are there similar explainers and visualizers for MySQL and Presto?

<comment><USER8> That's unfortunately impossible to know when a node starts doing some work with the information returned by EXPLAIN.

<comment><USER7> True, but showing the critical path puts a lower bound on it, and neatly shows what is serial and what may be parallel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Adding to readme an example of generated output would be nice...

<comment><USER10> Check the bottom of the README

For a complete example, see this codesandbox.

[https://codesandbox.io/s/pev2-ry2dd](https://codesandbox.io/s/pev2-ry2dd)

<comment><USER11> There's also a link to a demo at the top: [https://dalibo.github.io/pev2](https://dalibo.github.io/pev2)

Pick a sample plan and submit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's super useful.

Related question: does anyone know of anything similar for SQLite? Best I've found is SQLite Browser, which just splits the output of EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN into a table.

<comment><USER13> I haven't seen one, but SQLite doesn't really support very complex indexes. If your database has gotten complex enough to warrant studying query plans and tuning queries, it might be time to consider switching to a more powerful RDBMS.

<comment><USER12> I have a somewhat special use case as I'm using an in-memory SQLite to drive a video game, so I do tune every query for performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are great! I'm in a position where I have to teach people about query optimization often enough and using some combination of these visualizations will help get the point across in a more friendly way. So far screenshots of the explains and then walking through them have been okay but I think its more of a passive acknowledgment that explains are a thing versus actually a deep understanding. Hopefully this will help me cross the gap.

</comment><comment><USER15> isqlw (aka SQL Query Analyzer), the client for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 had an amazing visual explain tool. To this day, that's probably my favourite ever GUI SQL client, it was just so damn responsive and well-thought-out. I never made the switch to SQL Server 2005 so never really properly tried the later Visual Studio-esque version, but it seemed slow by comparison.

Screenshots:

[https://www.sqlshack.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/machine-...](https://www.sqlshack.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/machine-generated-alternative-text-execution-plan.png)

<comment><USER16> SQL Server Management Studio still has a great GUI for query plans and the database engine reveals more than ever.

There's also Azure Data Studio for a cross-platform version: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data- studio/what-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/what- is)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> looks nice!

i personally always loved pgadmin's graphical explain. i'm pretty visual and for me it is ideal to get a good first intuition on what's happening.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm familiar with SQL, but not Postgres. Is there a good example plan/query that I can use to test this demo?

<comment><USER19> The page has a sample button on the top right, it gives you a lot of samples to try out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> similar for Redshift: [https://crst.github.io/vrqp/vrqp.html](https://crst.github.io/vrqp/vrqp.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank you. Good work

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks like a very good job, congratulations!

</comment><comment> stef-13013 Great job, really...

In the meantime, and even with the help of vue.js, front dev. remains such a mess :(

(But what you did is just pretty cool)</comment>


The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/the_mystery_of_the_millionaire_metaphysician_slate_republishes_one_of_the_greatest_magazine_stories_ever_written_.html?via=gdpr-consent&via=gdpr-consent <comment><USER2> A little more information:

[http://www.marcsandersfoundation.org/about/the- founder/](http://www.marcsandersfoundation.org/about/the-founder/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wanted to see if anyone ever cited him, seems not [1].

[1] [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22C...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Coming+to+Understanding%22+Monius&btnG=)

</comment><comment><USER4> The link in the article to the institute was broken. Here is an updated link: [https://www.comingtounderstanding.com/](https://www.comingtounderstanding.com/)

Interesting the institute calls itself "Ammonius", not A.M. Monius. And the author of "Coming to Understanding" is clearly identified as Marc Sanders.

<comment><USER5> > And the author of "Coming to Understanding" is clearly identified as Marc > Sanders.

The Slate article is a republishing of a Lingua Franca article from 2001. Author identification was presumably only added after the author's cover was blown.

The 2000 and 2007 versions of the document don't mention his name. The acknowledgements in the 2010 version mention his brother, Dr. Michael Sanders, and the included review by Zimmerman mentions the author's name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh, that A. M. Monius thing again.

"Does reality have a purpose? Why are things intelligible at all?" Those questions run into the usual problem when looking for a First Cause:

"God created the world."

"Then who created God?"

"Shut up, kid."

Some philosophers get into this mess by starting from the assumption that there must be something more than the physical universe, so that it somehow "makes sense". With that bias, you get things like this paper. Plus a big chunk of theology.

<comment><USER7> You have that problem with any theory, not just religious ones. You could argue that God was created the same way we were - by another God. Which eventually leads to "Gods have always existed", which is similar to Big Bang's problem of "matter has always existed".

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

<comment><USER8> It's similar only if you misunderstand the questions physics seeks to answer. "If we rewind time according to present observations and theories, what do we see?" The answer is a Big Bang event, but that is just the answer to the question posed, not the deeper one posed by the wiki article. If you ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" physics has no single clear answer. Science takes very limited questions and seeks to answer them in a limited fashion with a high degree of confidence. Metaphysics plays word games with philosophy because hey, who can really gainsay you? Maybe it's D-Branes, maybe it's eternal inflation, maybe it's the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The problem is that popular science and people who don't know better misunderstand the nature of what physics actually does and tries to shoehorn theories into the questions they want answered.

<comment><USER9> I think the question in that case is what existed before the Big Bang, has a vacuum always existed before? Or are we on a constant loop of universes forming and disintegrating.

<comment><USER10> I think the answer is that the concept of "before the Big Bang" doesn't make sense. Time is a part of the universe, and so there is no "missing" time or space before it. I think Steven Hawking said that it's like asking what is north of the north pole.

<comment><USER11> I think the heart of the issue is that the big bang is confusing to our understanding of causality. What caused the matter to exist in the original singularity? Before it was a singularity, was it some other form or had it always existed as such? What triggered the big bang?

Based on the first law of thermodynamics we can figure that a constant quantity of energy (in the form of both energy and mass) has always existed, but then the question remains - why does it exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's a metaphysician? A doctor who doctors doctors?

<comment><USER13> A person who studies metaphysics.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy dealing with questions like 'What is there?'.

<comment><USER14> Odd, I'd have expected the term to be "metaphysicist."

<comment><USER15> You're thinking of a person who studies physicists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Home experiments to derive the speed of light? - <AUTHOR> http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/357/5450

<comment><USER2> In the introductory optics class I took in college, one day the professor said "Let's measure the speed of light!" and pulled out a ruler.

The class laughed.

He then set the ruler on the table. The ruler was one of those where the tick marks are raised, not merely printed on. The ruler was metal and reflected light well.

He then shone a laser at the ruler, so that the light bounced off and hit the blackboard. The lines on the ruler acted as a diffraction grating and a diffraction pattern was visible on the blackboard.

He marked the peaks with chalk, then went back to the ruler and used the ruler to measure the distance from where it had been to the blackboard. He then used the ruler to measure the distance between the marks he had made for the diffraction peaks.

From those distances, and the separation between the lines on the ruler, and the frequency of the laser he was using, it was a simple calculation to get the speed of light.

Or course, in a sense this is cheating, as you have to know the frequency of the light source, so he had to use that as a magic constant in his calculation.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there are many ways of doing it with wave interference phenomena, but that requires you to know the wavelength. Doing it entirely based on speed of propagation is much more tricky, because it comes down to measuring small time differences.

<comment><USER4> I've done the direct propagation measurement. Took about 20 hours (design, build, runs, analysis, report) in a four-person team, to obtain a value of .97 c. Laser, beam restrictor, beamsplitter, rotating mirror, and a 40 meter hallway with a mirror at the end. As the photons are traveling from the rotating mirror down the hall and back the mirror rotates slightly. Measuring the angular displacement of the beam with respect to the rotation speed gives you c. We used a low-res linear CCD array and oscilliscope, but you could probably do it at home... maybe with a dSLR sensor with suitably high response. You'd need a measurement of the CCD pixel density, but that wouldn't be too hard to find online. Then just handling the time sync issues.

<comment><USER5> You can actually do it with a pulsed laser (hook up a laser diode to a function generator), a stationary mirror, and a photovoltaic cell. Hook up the function generator and the photovoltaic cell to an oscilloscope, mount the mirror a suitably long distance away, and you can actually see the timing difference between laser pulse and detection at the photovoltaic cell. Vary the distance and you can subtract out the delays in detection and such.

I did this as an experiment in a junior physics lab last semester. It felt like cheating. All you needed was twenty feet of space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Starting with something like a GNU Radio board (<http://gnuradio.org/>) and a commercial antenna, you could put together a basic CW or ICW radar in a weekend without too much trouble. A little bit of care is required to not break any local laws or piss people off.

Simply, you would send out a radio signal, bounce it off a target and measure the time between when you sent the signal and when it was received. That delay is inversely proportional to the speed of light. Take a bunch of samples to integrate away short term clock inaccuracies (but don't integrate too long, because some types of clock noise will make your answer worse and not better) and you'll get a pretty good estimate of c.

Another GNU Radio based experiment would be to attempt to pick up multipath reflections of TV or radio broadcasts off large geographical features or buildings. Basically, you would capture two signals - a direct version of the broadcast and a delayed version. The errors would be large, but you would be able to get fairly close to a reasonable estimate of c (in air).

Before doing either of these experiments, mocking them up with a speaker and microphone or two ultrasound transceivers is a good idea and will save you a bunch of time. 40kHz is easier to work with than 2.4Ghz for sure.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've done it with a microwave and some marshmallows (I taught this lab to some first year college students long ago when I spent a term as a college physics instructor).

It's similar to tzs' method below, in that you have to know the frequency of the microwave's radiation, so it's not entirely satisfactory.

But, given that, it's a really nice demonstration of standing waves with a cool result to calculate.

The method is to cut a bunch of marshmallows in to small chunks (or just buy mini-marshmallows), spread them on a tray in a microwave and turn it on. After a while, you'll see that the marshmallows are bubbling up in some spots, and not cooking very much at all in others. Measuring the distance between either the lows or the highs gives you the wavelength of the standing wave.

Given that wavelength and the frequency of the microwave radiation, you can calculate the speed of light.

I'm going to punt on it and leave the calculation up to the reader, mostly because I haven't thought about this in 15 years or so and I'm sure I'd miss a factor of 2 somewhere:).

Also, this will not work unless you can get a microwave where you can turn the turntable (the rotating plate thingy) off. Most microwaves didn't have a turntable in the early 90s, but this isn't true any more.

<comment><USER8> This is covered in the link only it uses a chocolate bar instead of marshmallows.

EDIT: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O2Keu6o3i0>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting answers there. I remember doing the capacitor experiment in a first-year physics course in university. Though we were measuring mu sub 0, the permeability of free space. The formula is just reversed though.

It should be an interesting and cheap way to measure the speed of light.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't the face that you cannot achieve a perfect vacuum make measuring the true speed of light to exactly c impossible?

<comment><USER6> Not really, no. The speed of light in air is very nearly identical to the speed of light in a vacuum. Wikipedia gives the refractive index of air as 1.0003, which is the ratio between the speed of light in a vacuum and the speed of light in air.

The use of air as a medium rather than a vacuum is unlikely to be a significant source of error in an amateur measurement of c.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You don't use experiments to 'derive' the speed of light. You use Maxwell's equations.

<comment><USER12> Well, if you're going that way, I'd say you can't derive it at all, because the speed of light is a defined constant.</comment></comment>


MetricsGraphics.js – D3-based library optimized for visualizing time-series data - bog-bog-bog http://metricsgraphicsjs.org <comment><AUTHOR> As I usually point out when D3 libraries come up, using a library like this will only get you so far. It's amazing how many feature requests are sprinkled throughout the comments here, and every one of them would be trivial changes if you're working with the underlying D3 principles.

Spend a little time learning how D3 works. It will be well worth it. To get started, read through any tutorial you find written by Mike Bostock.

Required reading: Let's Make a Bar Chart[0], Thinking with Joins [1], How Selections Work [2], General Update Pattern [3], Nested Selections [4], Object Constancy [5], Working with Transitions [6], Three Little Circles [7].

For more tutorials, check out this list on the D3 wiki [8].

[0]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/bar/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/bar/)

[1]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/join/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/join/)

[2]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/selection/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/selection/)

[3]: [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3808218](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3808218)

[4]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/nest/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/nest/)

[5]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/constancy/)

[6]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/transition/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/transition/)

[7]: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/circles/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/circles/)

[8]: [https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Tutorials](https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Tutorials)

<comment><USER2> Because the first thing I should be expected to do when choosing to use a library to achieve my data-viz goals is to read through a dozen tutorials about a needlessly-complex API.

<comment><USER3> Because if data-viz is actually your goal, and not a secondary aspect of your work, then you SHOULD read tons of tutorials and learn the low level workings.

The advice the parent gave is meant for people working on projects where visualization is important. Not for those just needing to show a few plots quikcly in some other kind of project.

If you work is heavy on data-viz then you very much should read into all this. The same way we wouldn't consider someone a programmer if he just bought some shrinked wrapped software and installed it.

Plus the "needlessly complex" accusation is total BS. In fact it's considered one of the best designed APIs by most experienced developers -- check the interwebs for references to that, and is amazingly coherent, giving you only what you need for any specific problem, instead of forcing you to tons of boilerplate or irrelevant trivia.

<comment><USER2> I'll give it another shot (I have to for my current project) -- but I don't think my initial assessment is "total BS".

I understood what D3 was doing under the hood, and experienced a lot of friction/confusion when I needed to build and manipulate a specific SVG tree structure.

The fact that D3 expects me to understand the low-level SVG structure and yet provides me with a model that doesn't intuitively mesh with this model is the source for most of my confusion and frustration, I expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on an extremely well-done library. Glad to see d3 getting addition options with a much higher level of abstraction for those users who just want to make a common visualization with a minimum of fuss.

I've just started my on take on a high-level chart library based on d3, one that leverages React components [1]. I'm hoping to retain an equally simple interface as MetricGraphics. In fact, I'm sure I'll draw a lot of inspiration from this excellent chart library.

My library is still very early stage, but I'd love to get feedback on possible directions from React users and others interested in dataviz (someone mentioned candlesticks, which I'm noting down in my todo).

1\. [http://esbullington.github.io/react-d3/](http://esbullington.github.io/react-d3/)

<comment><USER5> Here's a horizontal bar chart that could complete your examples. [https://github.com/laem/react-horizontal-bar- chart](https://github.com/laem/react-horizontal-bar-chart)

It's the same building principles : chart is a React component, svg written as JSX, using d3's scales (no axis in mine, but bar info as tooltips instead).

<comment><USER4> Very nice! React components are really the perfect level of abstraction for a chart library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I implemented something similar with Dygraphs. The "killer feature" with that was instantly zooming to any detail (e.g. from 1 year to a time window of 10 milliseconds). The client would instantly show the level of detail possible with the current dataset, and fetch the detailed datapoints in around 100-200 ms.

Anyway, I believe zooming to be a very typical feature for time-series (e.g. Google Finance supports that), so I hope this library has good support for it too.

<comment><USER7> Hi - one of the authors here (Dygraphs is fantastic, btw!)

We've talked about this quite a bit internally (nothing formalized in a github issue), and are still figuring out how we want to handle it, if we want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh! This is sadly a bit too late as I've recently switched from Highcharts to Flot because I did not want to buy the so-expensive commercial license for Highcharts.

I like how minimalistic the graphs look. Though, missing the pie chart.

I might just switch to this if I see that it's going somewhere ;)

<comment><USER7> Hi - one of the authors here. We've had the pie chart request before. We will probably never implement pie charts. I agree that there are cognitive issues with them, and given that at least for our immediate needs there are better alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I am actively learning D3 itself, I really like the style of this library and its abilities. It makes almost 100% of the same design decisions I would make when plotting the kinds of charts it does. I've been looking for an open-source project like this for ages. I know about a lot of others (like nvd3) but never quite felt like anything provided the level of interaction (specifically hover states) I wanted. I'm excited to give Metrics a shot.

</comment><comment><USER10> A major 'feature' of D3 is its ability to update the dom with the new svg elements.

Given that libraries like Ractive and React handle dom updates in a much more sane fashion (just re-render the entire virtual dom instead of mucking around with individual nodes), all I really want is a library to generate path attributes for the svg elements, and hence find paths.js to be a much simpler option.

<comment><USER11> > A major 'feature' of D3 is its ability to update the dom with the new svg > elements.

A major feature of D3 is its ability to update the dom incrementally as data changes.

FTFY

> Given that libraries like Ractive and React handle dom updates in a much > more sane fashion (just re-render the entire virtual dom instead of mucking > around with individual nodes), all I really want is a library to generate > path attributes for the svg elements, and hence find paths.js to be a much > simpler option.

So it's more sane to "re-render the entire virtual dom instead of mucking around with individual nodes"? Is it insane that D3 does the mucking around for you so that you don't have to re-render the entire dom? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

<comment><USER10> It would if D3 did so in a transparent, intuitive manner. One of the major issues beginners (including myself) face with D3 is the steep learning curve due to the fact that it isn't always clear what exactly a method does and the API can almost feel cryptic at times. I remember adding one method at a time in the chain to 'reverse engineer' the behavior (I could've read the source, but plunker's auto update makes it easier to experiment). If you look at the questions on Stack Overflow, a large percentage are in fact around the dom behavior.

tldr: D3 was an excellent tool when it came out, but I personally find Ractive + Paths to be much simpler and straightforward options. I think you'll agree if you give it a shot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've looked at a LOT of time series graphing libraries over the last few years. Well done on MetricsGraphics for making it look great, powerful and easy to use: [http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/interactive- demo.htm](http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/interactive-demo.htm)

<comment><USER13> Indeed. It looks nice, but I need to code in it a little before releasing a conclusion. I still have HighCharts as the standard for this.

Nice to hear that, I am looking at some right now...

What would you recommend for maximum compatibility? (IOS, Android, Browsers) ?

<comment><USER14> IMO, HighCharts is still the best for flexibility and aesthetics.

<comment><USER15> Just a quick plug for my angular directive for highcharts [https://github.com/pablojim/highcharts- ng](https://github.com/pablojim/highcharts-ng)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome. I just happened to be thinking of how to do this... I think you just saved me a lot of time and effort.

I'd like to have zooming for my graphs. Any ideas about adding that? If I can manage it/get to it on my own I'll let you guys know.

<comment><USER17> It looks like the library dynamically fits the chart inside the dimensions you provide when instantiating it. So you probably could (on zoom) instantiate a separate graph based on same data inside different height / width constraints.

<comment><USER16> Sound idea - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some nice stuff here. My feature request: this badly needs a vertical crosshair for the multi-line charts, to see what are all the values at that point on the x-axis at once.

<comment><USER7> Hi - we've actually talked about a number of implementation ideas for this, and probably should add a github issue for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can't wait to see a graphite front end based on this.

<comment><USER20> That's an interesting idea. I'm the creator of Giraffe[0], a graphite front end using Rickshaw[1]. I was just toying with idea of trying out a branch / fork that uses this instead...

Mostly out of curiosity, but I liked some features of it and was wondering how they compare to Rickshaw.

If anyone wants to chip in, I'd love to hear from you. Generally looking for more core contributors to the project.

[0] [https://github.com/kenhub/giraffe](https://github.com/kenhub/giraffe) [1] [http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/](http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Neatly done ! Pushing 3 more:

[1] [https://github.com/fastly/epoch/](https://github.com/fastly/epoch/) [2] [http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/](http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/) [3] [http://square.github.io/cubism/](http://square.github.io/cubism/)

<comment><USER22> And a nice packaged solution: [http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/)

<comment><USER23> I really like grafana but unlike the parent's suggestions, it uses Flot not D3 as the charting backend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These are pretty, but I put absolutely no faith in a "confidence band" implemented by anyone who doesn't feel a need to explain their formula. It's surprisingly difficult (serial correlation, for one thing.)

</comment><comment><USER25> I just realised that this project has been released under the mozilla github account — this (might) mean that it'll be actively maintained, and perhaps better documented than other libraries around.

:thumbsup: Looks really great

</comment><comment> d--b This library is great: it's clean, it doesn't have the useless feature that you usually see in charts, like animation and oversmoothing. But why in the world would you tie this to bootstrap and jquery?

</comment><comment><USER26> This seems to offer a small subset of the functionality of plottable.js

</comment><comment><USER27> I like opinionated libraries like this with sensible options.

</comment><comment><USER28> Couldn't find in the docs. Does this support epoch timestamps? Does it support more granular x-axis ticks, eg hours, min, sec?

</comment><comment><USER29> I would love to use this -- I just wish it had a stripped down version without the dependencies: especially no bootstrap....

<comment><USER7> Howdy - one of the authors here. I believe to my knowledge the only thing that requires bootstrap.js is the popover stuff, which we plan to decouple anyway.

Make an issue on github and we'll get to it soon: [https://github.com/mozilla/metrics- graphics/issues](https://github.com/mozilla/metrics-graphics/issues)

<comment><USER29> Awesome, thanks! I will do so :) (I'm currently in the process of ripping Bootstrap out of an app for performance reasons and styling flexibility -- flexbox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not too shabby. Check out dygraphs for some inspiration. Lots of powerful features and handles huge datasets.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cool, but needs candlesticks!

<comment><USER32> The confidence band example comes close. Might work until real candlesticks are implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> These look fantastic! I will definitely be using this library in the future.

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks great, but Highcharts is still way ahead for visualizing time series data.

Highcharts: [http://www.highcharts.com/](http://www.highcharts.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> what about a live data option ? That's the one feature of highcharts I use the most.

</comment><comment><USER36> oh wow.. i'd love to see an addition to this for tessera.

</comment><comment><USER37> where does this fit between rickshaw and flot?

</comment><comment><USER38> On the scatterplot examples, when it automatically highlights the closest point to your mouse pointer (maybe using some kind of underlying voronoi field) I nerdgasmed.

<comment><USER39> The scatter highlight is super sexy. Digging through the project on GitHub I can't find the code that makes that happen. Anyone know where the magic is?

<comment><USER40> [https://github.com/mozilla/metrics- graphics/blob/master/js/m...](https://github.com/mozilla/metrics- graphics/blob/master/js/metricsgraphics.js#L1264) possibly

<comment><USER39> Geez. I've been trying to learn d3 for a blog post and holy shit is it impossible to analyze. So much obfuscation. I might liken raw HTML SVG info to machine code and d3js to assembly. It's pretty nasty.

I feel like a scatterplot highlight should be the easiest god damn thing ever. The fact that it's this complicated seems like a clear indicator that something is broken, but I'm not sure what exactly. I might be inclined to blame the architecture of HTML/DOM?

<comment><USER40> > I feel like a scatterplot highlight should be the easiest god damn thing > ever.

For a charting library, yes I would expect this to be easy. But to be fair, D3js is not a charting library. The OP here is showing their version of a charting library based off of D3js.

Remember, D3 = Data Driven Documents, which can be leveraged for extremely fast interactive visualizations

For further clarification here is the goal/definition from D3js.org:

"D3 allows you to bind arbitrary data to a Document Object Model (DOM), and then apply data-driven transformations to the document. For example, you can use D3 to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. Or, use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction."

A charting library wouldn't give you the flexibility to do this: [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/d8e15a0ab7f85818a5bd](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/d8e15a0ab7f85818a5bd) or this: [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/shuffle/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/shuffle/)

Edit: a must see are the creations from the man himself. Mike Bostock [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WordPress Product Demos SaaS - <AUTHOR> https://wpdemo.cloud/ <comment><AUTHOR> wpdemo.cloud is a service for people who sell WordPress products, such as plugins and themes. You can simply configure a template WordPress site and save its state. By calling a specific URL, the template will be copied and provided to your customer. Your customer can play around with your product as an admin, while your product is safe, since you can encrypt it using ioncube before uploading.</comment>


Developing Game Audio with the Web Audio API - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webaudio/games/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know of good tutorials for actually composing game music and creating sound effects?

There seems to be a disparity here because, for example, there are tons of tutorials on 3d modeling, photoshop pixel art, animation, lighting, etc. but the sound side of things seems sparse.

<comment><USER3> For good sfx you really need raw source material to get the physical properties sounding realistic. This can mean recording your own or starting from a sound library. Perhaps part of the problem with making sfx from scratch is that you need a lot of plug-ins to really get the most out of your material, which means spending a huge amount of time (for a pro sound artist this is a life-long career and many thousands of dollars) getting to know sound properties and how they are affected by signal processing. The big game companies go to pro sfx houses who have massive libraries to work with and dedicated recording equipment and foley rooms. The big studios, for example, have foley specialists whose techniques are top-secret to her and her team, and their audio is then passed on to another team of specialists for treatment.

For a really good read on soundfx see the Star Wars book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Star-Wars-J- Rinzler/dp/08118754...](http://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Star-Wars-J- Rinzler/dp/0811875466)

I can't recommend this book highly enough for an engaging history and deeper look into sfx, it comes with a bank of sounds for you to listen to from the film, as you read.

For an unexhaustive selection of raw material see <http://freesound.org> (don't forget to attribute!).</comment></comment>


Show HN: AppEngine Dashboard - An MVP Android app to monitor your instances - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.friedran.appengine.dashboard

<comment><USER2> Yes.</comment>


Continuing elaborate scam targets photographers - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2019/01/16/how-an-elaborate-international-scam-is-making-the-rounds-among-instagrammers-and-photographers/ <comment><USER2> easy to see this in a hindsight, but should probably ask their contact at newspaper if this contact is legit. Also it's more common (at least in my experience) to connect someone throught an introduction email, than just to cold-email someone and say "Paul Graham from YC tells me to work with you"</comment>