Sony Unveils 'PlayStation Vita TV,' a Tiny, Sub-$100 Game Console - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/09/playstation-vita-tv/ <comment><USER2> This is quite a clever product from Sony, it's a good reuse of existing technology and repackaged for a different market. There's plenty of casual gamers who won't want to invest $400 into getting a PS4, but want something they can play some games on their TV and get access to streaming services, so it's great for their needs. It's great for gamers who may have to share one TV with their PS4 on, but have access to another so they can continue gaming without having to unplug and shift it.

Sony seems to be putting some really strong ideas forward at the moment, it's interesting to see.

<comment><USER3> > want something they can play some games on their TV and get access to > streaming services

Roku has been around for years and everyone that wants your list already bought one (or a competitor). Other than a slightly fancier controller cannibalizing higher end sales yet not being completely compatible with the higher end, and a much larger ad budget, I'm not sure what if anything Sony brings to the table better than the numerous established competitors in exactly the same space.

Its the "memory stick" of streaming boxes.

If I was in the market, I'd probably be more likely to purchase one of those generic android PCs with HDMI out, so I have the same apps my phone and tablet have on my TV, or buy yet another Roku, which has worked well for many years for me doing the exact same tasks being claimed as "new" by the sony device.

<comment><USER4> Game Quality. That's the key difference, at least compared to its direct competitors. IMO that's a large difference, and not one that Roku and the like can compete with. It's a serious value-add, and as long as the media services are as seamless as it's competitors, it's a good choice.

<comment><USER3> Ah but its hardly the only "attach to a TV to play games" device out there. You have an extremely narrow window between "don't care / angry birds is good enough" and "Must have major title XYZ or its worthless". So you're J6P with your $700 TV and $150/month cable subscription and there's a $100 device thats not nearly as good as a mere $300 xbox, err...

Back in the industrial era there was this car called the Edsel which tried to wedge itself into a ecological niche too small for it to fit in, and it became a legend. Not a good legend BTW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ouya just got owned. At least, for me, anyway: I wanted to get one, I'll get this instead due to vastly better game quality, and a great platform for indies as well. Nice move, Sony.

<comment><USER5> Well, the Ouya still has some selling points over this device - we've got the Apple/PC division going here, since Sony is notorious for being one of the most hardcore we-control-your-device DRM fans while Ouya prides themselves on openness. With ease of porting from Andriod and very low development overhead, Ouya will still have some selling points for developers too.

I hope the marketplace has room for both devices. But yeah, Ouya will have to take this as a serious challenge - they'll have to move _fast_ and get any outstanding flaws in their devices and libraries locked down.

<comment><USER4> Okay, I'd agree with that; I do think however that Ouya's main issue right now is actual game quality, which this device kills. Unlike mobile phones and the like, I don't know if Worse is Better really works (yet, anyway, we will see in the future!).

I hope this makes the microconsole guys sit up, take notice, and start pumping money into some of these indie studios if they want to compete with this device. One can dream, right? Hy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sony is betting that there are a huge number of people out there that just want netflix + a few games. I think it's a smart bet.

<comment><USER7> Don't most televisions come from the factory Netflix etc capable? My Sony Bravia from like 4 years ago had it as a 'new' feature so I'm sure it's standard by now.

<comment><USER8> I on purpose bought the best top of the line tv from a manufacturer that didn't include the built in junk. I have never seen one that is implemented decently. I would rather have a "dumb" tv that starts fast that I can use for a decade while I swap the "computer" every year if I want. TV manufacture companies have zero interest in keeping your Bravia software up to date. Think of your TV like a first generation android. You knew there is better software that could run on your TV (even when you bought the device), but the manufacture just won't bother releasing an update, ever.

<comment><USER7> They've actually released quite a few updates that add new channels/apps. But the look and feel of the interface is basically the same. I just want to be able to choose a service and browse selections and play them, and it works fine for that.

There's always the option to connect it via HDMI to whatever TV streaming box is out there. But I'd rather not connect another device and have another remote, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's such a shame that Apple still hasn't added a gamepad and app marketplace to the Apple TV, especially after the success of the iOS App Store and the dominance of games on the platform. It seems so obvious, but such is Apple's notoriously frustrating blind spot towards games.

<comment><USER10> I'm willing to bet that the Apple TV has a very weak processor and a similarly weak graphics card, or none at all. Without those, you're limited to (essentially) angry birds, and other games that aren't really associated with the big screen.

I think that Apples reluctance to add gampad/app support is because of the _experience_. Apple knows that all its devices sell on the seamlesness experience they provide. Assuming that the Apple TV has lower end hardware, they're only going to be able to provide a sub-par experience, which will essentially be a loss to them, brand wise.

EDIT: Ok, so the processor is the A5, with 512Mb of RAM. This (like I said) is only really good enough for fairly simple games, or poor quality complex ones. Definitely not what you'd expect to play on a "big" screen, so a degraded experience, and not one able to compete with the other big players in the market.

<comment><USER11> Most of the best games ever made fit into systems with far fewer resources than this. It's just a matter of focusing on the things that matter.

<comment><USER10> Your point about choosing the things that matter is the pertinent sentence. Apple doesn't want to put _any_ focus on game, as media streaming is the focus of the device.

Consider the possibilities:

1) Apple implements _amazing_ support for games on the Apple TV. Consumers who want to play AAA games on their TV won't buy it - they'll get a traditional console instead. Consumers who play the kinds of games that the iPhone/iPad/iPod support _also_ won't be drawn to it, as they've already got their iPod/iPad/iPhone, so why would they want to play the game using a worse interface, slower, and when they could be watching TV.

2) Apple implements _mediocre_ support for games on the Apple TV. This (like I said) will muddy their brand, as well as possibly taking personnel away from the core focus of the device - streaming, and again muddying their brand.

Either way, it's really not worth it for Apple. In the first case, the fraction of consumers they attract is really so tiny that it's not worth it for them to implement gaming. In the second case it's a net loss for them, both in terms of effort/payoff, and in terms of damage to the brand.

<comment><USER12> What if Apple releases a $499 AppleTV / iOS game console / Mac Mini? Heck, they could probably make it more expensive and still sell a buttload.

<comment><USER13> At $499 that's squarely in AAA-console pricing territory, and Apple is not geared up to fight the PS4 and Xbox One... nor do they particularly want to.

I think there is a miscomprehension of the iOS gaming market, or casual gaming on mobiles in general. People don't play Angry Birds or Temple Run because they are fans of the games (in the same way you'd play Halo or Civilization), they do it to kill time.

Mobile games are intentional time-wasters for when you're standing in line, riding a bus, sitting in the doctor's office, etc. This is diametrically opposite to AAA-console gaming where users actively seek it out as something to do and dedicate time towards it. Platforms like the PS Vita straddle this weird middle ground - and it's arguable that Apple could potentially capture this middle ground also.

Either way, an AppleTV/Mac Mini fusion device wouldn't.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for saying what I've been finding difficult to put into words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some more info from the official page that is not included in the wired newsbite ([http://www.jp.playstation.com/psvitatv/hardware/](http://www.jp.playstation.com/psvitatv/hardware/)):

[Disclaimer: I don't speak Japanese]

Base package for 9,954 yen includes the console, 2m HDMI cable, AC adapter. "Wireless Controller (DualShock 3) is necessary".

Value Pack for 14,994 yen additionally includes one DualShock3 "PlayStation Vita TV edition (white)" plus USB connector and an 8GB PSVita memory card.

The controller is also available separately for 5,500 yen.

The system features a 1 GB "Built-in memory card" and "maximum power usage"(?) of 2.8W.

In the video an ethernet port is visible, but the site does not specify whether the system actually has builtin WiFi (though I'd guess so, considering the PS4 streaming).

<comment><USER15> > Value Pack for 14,994 yen additionally includes one DualShock3 "PlayStation > Vita TV edition (white)" plus USB connector and an 8GB PSVita memory card.

Looks like it's still going to use proprietary memory cards then. It's too bad, if it took an SD card or supports a USB mass storage device it would have been an easy sell for me (assuming it comes to the NA market.) Having to factor in the cost of an overpriced memory card makes it a harder sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this originally got greenlighted as a "gaikai" player, gaikai being a competitor to onlive which sony bought and has promoting as part of the playstation 4.

As the article mentioned, ps4 games are supposed to allow remote play on a vita device, so this will actually be useful in my household where the tv with the ps4 is being occupied, but that seems like niche problem to solve.

Being able to add to the installed base of the Vita is a good thing for sony which will drive more game development, and if they can work out how not to cannibalize ps4 sales by offering gaikai direct (assuming it really works; color me skeptical that it will be a lag free experience), plus the video services like netflix, this may turn out to be a nice device for Sony.

<comment><USER17> It would be really cool if you could use a PS4 plus one of these boxes to do dual screen co-op as an alternative to the usual split-screen local co-op.

This is certainly a niche use (and Sony may not see it as being in its interest since it might cost them a small number of full PS4 sales), but it would be pretty cool and Sony has done plenty of nichey things in the past like using 3D tvs to do full screen co-op where each user sees a different image on the same tv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is clever, you often see them release a scaled down previous gen, but never a handheld designed to plug into a TV.

I can see this as a pre-emptive strike on Apple and some kind of controller for the apple tv.

The back catalogue of PSOne games and vita games is a great idea, Sony just need to make sure their online services are up to scratch.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, but I wonder why they explicitly mention only the DualShock 3 controller. Would not the DS4 be the better option, considering the PS4 connectivity and the launch date?

<comment><USER19> Seems like they could have used some of the DS4's new functionality to retain some of the touchscreen capabilities from the Vita as well.

<comment><USER14> I thought about that too, but then you'd have _three_ game tiers: No touch (VitaTV + DS3), single non-video touchpanel (VitaTV + DS4), and the Vita handheld :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I never could adapt to the shape of the Vita. I had to hold it in a very awkward position to avoid touching accidentally the touch sensitive back panel. This seems like a viable option for me to play games released in the console and with a good price since I already own a ps3 with controllers.

Very nice move from Sony, the low price makes their games available to those not wanting to spend the extra money in their 'big' consoles.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why this will support PSP and PS1 games but not PS2? Surely it will have more than enough power to handle those?

<comment><USER22> It's not powerful enough to handle PS2 emulation. Even the PS3 can barely do it for a handful of games.

<comment><USER23> I didn't know the PS3 did complete emulation of the PS2 at all. The earlier PS3s that supported backwards compatibility actually contained the PS2 hardware (the first gen had both the cpu and gpu, and the second gen PS3 had the GPU and used emulation for the cpu).

I know that there are a lot of PS2 games in the PSN store, but I was under the impression that those were actually recompiled for the PS3 and did not use emulation. Are those actually emulated?

<comment><USER22> The early ones were ports, they were recompiled and enhanced with higher resolutions and/or framerate, trophy support, etc... They're titled "HD Collection" or "HD Remastered".

Many of the later ones are actually emulated. I think they're called "PS2 Classics" or some such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tell me this supports the Vita as a controller and I'd be sold. I really miss being able to plug my system to my TV like I could with the PSP. (Honestly, if they could just release a cable for the Vita that connected to my TV, I would be ecstatic!)

While we're on the subject, when the heck is Nintendo going to release 3DS support for the Wii U?!? I'd like to finally retire my GameCube w/GameBoy player.

</comment><comment><USER25> There are a few games (including the flagship Uncharted) on Vita that are going to need patches to remove touchscreen/backpanel/camera requirements to play or finish the game. The [edit: accelerometer] can be replaced with the one built into the SixAxis controller.

A shame they didn't have the forsight to demand that all Vita games should be completable solely with the buttons.

<comment><USER26> I think the SixAxis's motion control is just an accelerator, not a gyro.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, edited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sony should have switched to Android for the PS4 and this $100 console. They could have completely hijacked the Ouya market / the lower cost Android game market. It would have given the PS4 a substantial built-in leg up over the XBox One on launch as well: it'd come out of the gate with a marketplace of tens of thousands of games.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a great idea, but personally I'd have preferred it if the product was a docking station that came with a Vita. And had an option of getting just the docking station if you already have a Vita.

One of the things I really like about my PSP Go is the docking station that allows for easy TV play.

<comment><USER29> The Go is underrated. Solid state 32gb PSX that looks decent on a HD TV and has a wireless controller?

Yes please.

<comment><USER28> I love it. It's also very small and portable. Available homebrew and ease of using custom firmware also adds a large hook for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is great. The PS Vita really has more than enough power to express a modern video game. I hope that this becomes popular and makes it more viable for large game companies to spend less time on graphical detail and more time on pursuing original ideas.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bold move by Sony but the PS Vita is fundamentally borked by ignoring / excluding the Android ecosystem. Having owned 3 PSPs and dozens of UMDs I would rush to buy a Vita _and_ the TV version, the hardware quality was always fantastic and the PS Vita looks a lot better than any sub-7" android/ios device for gaming, but being deliberately incompatible with everything I've bought in the last couple of years is just silly.

<comment><USER32> They deliberately ignored it because Android at the time would have been a horrible choice. The PS Vita was released in late 2011. About a month after ICS was unveiled. This means it would have ran either 2.3 or 3.2, either of which would have been terrible choices.

Not to mention the overhead of Android and maintenance burden of using an OS that has to support so many other devices and functions. This might be your reason for not liking the Vita but I doubt it applies to many others. There are countless Android console style devices and judging by their lack of mainstream success, I seriously doubt this would have caused the Vita to fare much better than it has.

<comment><USER31> Sony's been making android devices for a long time including this little gem back in the 2.x days:

[http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/sony...](http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/sony-psp-phone.jpg)

<comment><USER33> I am typing this comment one of these, and I find quite sad that when it dies, no-one made a continuation or substitute of it :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Looks like a flop to me. We need less devices hanging off the back of the TV, not more, and anything this does the PS4 should be able to. It will probably cannibalize PS4 sales too with these low-margin devices, as well as cheapen the Sony brand by running low-grade games, which will look even worse blown up on an HDTV.

<comment><USER35> I thought so too until I read the article. Buried at the bottom is the ability to stream my Playstation 4 content within my house to this box. That's awesome. I hope it works.

My wife does not want all that stuff dangling from my television, but what she really hates is a game console hanging from my television. If my game console can be in my basement, and I can duct tape this to the back of my TV upstairs, then we both get what we want.</comment></comment>


Driverless Cars Get Green Light in California - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/49167063 <comment><USER2> Industries that will be disrupted: \- Taxi, shuttles, buses and limo services \- Truck drivers, Delivery, Food delivery (auxilary: train and air transportation as well) \- Insurance industry \- Fleet management (time to write an app for managing 1000+ automated self-driving vehicles) \- Policing. We won't need the CHP much in the future

And that's just from ~20 seconds off the top of my head. I'm glad lawmakers are allowing the future to happen and I hope this puts pressure on other states to join in.

<comment><USER3> It's fun to speculate on what will happen when driverless cars become mainstream. Essentially, the question boils down to: "What would happen if every car owner in the world suddenly had a 24/7 personal driver?"

\- 7 year old kids can now own and "drive" a car.

\- Need a lift? Ask your dad/friend to send his car to pick you up.

\- Forgot your laptop at home? Send your car back and ask your flatmate to put your laptop in the car.

\- Leaving New York for some vacations in Miami? Take the plane and pick up your car whenever it arrives.

\- Want to take a nap? Pull down the windows and windshield curtains.

\- Traveling abroad for a few weeks and don't know what to do with your car? Set it to taxi mode and profit.

<comment><USER4> I think eventually, car ownership will go down significantly, since companies managing fleets of electric cars can do it far more efficiently than private ownership of long range cars. Uber is faster than walking to the car you parked half a mile away. There's always 'free parking' for your large house party in the city. You can also create small cargo only cars for small deliveries like that laptop situation. It's far more efficient from an energy/vehicle cost/liability stand point. Amazon prime 'local' might just replace stores from a pure efficiency standpoint. The number of total cars neccesary will decrease and the large amount of real estate devoted to cars will decrease significantly. Car maintenance costs will decrease with predictable schedules, and economies of scale that come with fleets.

<comment><USER5> Car sharing only works well for urbanites without children living with them. The rest of us keep a lot of _stuff_ in our cars: strollers, child seats, spare clothes, shopping bags, diapers, pens, ski racks, toys, first-aid kits, etc. Even with computer driven cars I'll still be willing to pay a lot to avoid the hassle of loading and unloading every day.

<comment><USER6> What if you kept all your car stuff in some sort of modular compartments that could be easily loaded and unloaded? At the moment there isn't much incentive to do so, but that might change with this scenario.

What I'm getting at is while your argument seems sound, and may in fact prevail, when you change one piece of the puzzle sometimes other solutions become possible.

<comment><USER7> > What if you kept all your car stuff in some sort of modular compartments > that could be easily loaded and unloaded?

Where am I going to put these containers when I don't have a rental car?

Lugging them back and forth to the house is not a practical option.

<comment><USER8> Maybe your driveway is replaced by a compartment container. Maybe (certain kinds of) cars will be able to automatically load the compartments. Or maybe you're completely right.

<comment><USER7> > Maybe your driveway is replaced by a compartment container.

Lots of folks don't have driveways, garages, and so on.

More to the point, they may not be at a "personal storage location" when they're dropping off the rental car.

<comment><USER8> s/(driveway|garage)/$WhateverSpaceYouCurrentlyParkYourCarInThatWillBeEmptyIfYouAreRentingInsteadOfOwning/

<comment><USER7> I can't leave my stuff in the street, especially since it isn't the same location every time I park. In other words, there's not necessarily a dedicated space that will be empty if I'm renting instead of owning, let alone one that I control

In fact, folks who don't have dedicated/owned spaces are probably the best audience for rentals.

Moreover, even if I'm willing to take said stuff into my residence, I may need said stuff on my way to the drop-off.

<comment><USER9> It's getting kinda pointless. I'm suggesting something that might happen in a future where self-driving cars have completely disrupted _all_ of transportation. You're countering "there's no dedicated space" - well, just _maybe_ , that can change? It's not even a full space, it's just a "dock" to load the containers.

In fact, even today, people who don't have a dedicated space (even if that space shifts around a bit, ie. is a "pool" space on the street) _can't_ own a car: Where would they leave it? People who are renters today already have to deal with not leaving stuff in the car, so this discussion doesn't apply to them.

Long story short: Your original argument was that not owning your own car will not be be an option for you, because you leave a lot of stuff for your kids in your car. My argument is that, with a bit of fantasy, maybe this isn't an insurmountable obstacle.

> I may need said stuff on my way to the drop-off.

Why would you drive your self-driving vehicle to the drop-off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'll be interesting to see whether and how much protectionist BS makes it into the final regulations. I'm all for very strict safety regulations on these vehicles. The first accident caused by one could set the industry back decades, Challenger-style, unless the vehicles are so demonstrably safer that legislators can resist the inevitable panic of their irrational constituents. But I hope any such regulations are driven by the actual need to make the vehicles safe, not by the desire on the part of existing stakeholders to make the vehicles' introduction as painful and difficult as possible.

<comment><USER11> Existing stakeholders will protect their turf and rely as you say on the 'panic of irrational constituents.' And it would be irrational given the amount of human error already occurring--people falling asleep at the wheel, texting, drunk driving, carelessness, etc. Also, the market will take care of this without State regulations--who would want to purchase a perceived unsafe vehicle?

<comment><USER12> A large part of the problem is that much of the total risk of driving is borne by people other than the car's occupants. People in other cars, pedestrians on the sidewalk, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see this being disruptive at all. I think they will be adopted in industrial applications, such as self driving dump trucks on mine sites, where humans are not riding in the vehicle, and where there will be significant cost savings.

There is also the human factor. People aren't going to give up their livelihood quietly, and people won't be willing to trust their life to a computer.

Also, who's going to control these vehicles, government? Does that mean that the government has the power to redirect a car to anywhere they please, depending on the passenger, who has been identified by facial recognition?

Trains/trams/buses are proven, already exist, and are a much better solution for public transport.

<comment><USER14> Does the driver have to be awake? Sleeping and driving can become the new texting and driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I predict that we will have to legislate Driverless as the default state of all vehicles within the coming decade. why? because at greater than 10% penetration of automated vehicles, those people still in 'manual' mode will become more and more reckless.

</comment><comment><USER16> Whether or not you believe in the climate crisis or global warming, I strongly recommend all proponents of driverless cars to read The Energy Glut[1] in order to get a good idea of one potential scenario of how America will end up if every man and his dog can use a car to get anywhere. If anything, the studies which are referenced in the book are rather hard to ignore.

As a quick example of the sort of thinking in this book: more cars on the road means that there will be fewer people willing to risk being outdoors anywhere near a road (i.e. most residential areas in this day and age), resulting in higher levels of obesity. As more people become obese, fewer people are willing to walk or cycle ever-decreasing distances, so they get a car -- increasing the number of cars on the road. After that, we enter a rather vicious circle. The average weight of the world population will increase rather quickly, and we will end up like the people in Wall-E. I'd rather ride my bike, but thanks for the offer.

[1] <http://zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/the-energy-glut>

<comment><USER17> Then let them be obese. It is not my responsibility to make sure other people don't get fat. We shouldn't stifle innovation ( _if_ that's what you're getting at) because we're scared that people will get.. even more fat.

And isn't obesity more about diet than it is exercise anyway?

<comment><USER16> Hah, that's a fair approach. From what I can understand, obesity is more about the lack of opportunities to exercise rather than the amount of calories eaten (see [http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/01/17/maps-show-striking- corr...](http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/01/17/maps-show-striking-correlation- between-car-travel-and-obesity/) for an example, although obviously correlation != causation). It seemed to be the case that as the number of cars on the road increased, calorie intake actually went down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome and revolutionary. No more looking for parking spots- just send the car to the nearest garage or back home. Also the cars could coordinate to minimize traffic. So many possibilities!

<comment><USER19> Not for a while: "The regulations would allow vehicles to operate autonomously, but a licensed driver would still need to sit behind the wheel to serve as a backup operator in case of emergency."

Given the current state of the technology, this makes sense. And in the future, we may yet have fully driverless cars, instead of merely autonomous ones.

Edit: The way google has been testing these cars, AFAIK, is through a special "experimental vehicle" permit.

<comment><USER20> Indeed -- They'll have to be on the road for years before they are allowed to operate without a person inside.

I have a few concerns about the short term ramifications.

1) The person behind the wheel can't do work, read, eat, or apply make-up if their primary responsibility is to second-guess the computer. So the most tantalizing benefit of being driven wherever you want is going to have to wait until some future day.

2) A vehicle that obeys the speed limit and makes a full stop at stop signs is going to infuriate some drivers. They should probably avoid matching the speed of adjacent cars when possible, to prevent blocking aggressive drivers that want to pass. These cars are probably going to avoid the fast lane.

3) I can see plenty of scenarios where an autonomous vehicle acts safely but still gets in an accident. Slowing to avoid a collision could result in being rear-ended, or a human driver might merge into the car because he failed to check his blind spot. So there will be accidents. I assume the cars will have to be rigged with video cameras and telemetry to prove that the car's programming was not at fault.

<comment><USER21> _They should probably avoid matching the speed of adjacent cars when possible, to prevent blocking aggressive drivers that want to pass_

As a sibling comment said, this is unsafe. The Google car actively avoids being in another car's blind spot as much as it can.

<comment><USER20> My concern is mostly for edge cases, like stretches of two-lane highway where both lanes are going the same speed because of congestion. Is the car going to fluctuate its speed often, to try to isolate itself from neighboring cars? Or would it reduce its speed even further below the limit so that the left lane is constantly passing?

Keeping the left lane moving faster is probably wisest, but it's going to infuriate the drivers behind the autonomous vehicle, even though they're in the slow lane.

How far would a car go to avoid being rear-ended? Would a tailgater be able to cause the car to accelerate? At what point would the car stop trying to avoid an accident because it's safer to get rear ended than continue avoiding? When you put these things on the road, human drivers are going to start messing with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You just know this will lead to Google Street View getting updated a little more often as the cars get to navigate themselves around constantly.

Oh right, except for this: "The regulations would allow vehicles to operate autonomously, but a licensed driver would still need to sit behind the wheel to serve as a backup operator in case of emergency."

<comment><USER23> _"In 2009, Google obtained 3,500 miles of Street View images from driverless cars with minor human intervention.[citation needed]"_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd love to see other cars in their testing group too. Don't get me wrong, I harbor no ill will towards Prius or their drivers, I just don't fit in them.

Public transit with these installed would be fabulous as well. You'd still need someone behind the wheel as backup, but it would be great to have a potentially tireless public transit system.

<comment><USER10> How big are you? The latest Prius is essentially a full-size sedan in terms of the front seat. What kind of car do you prefer?

It's hard to imagine that this tech won't be available for all classes of cars once it is sufficiently well tested.

<comment><USER24> 6'6" and built like an NFL lineman. Last time I got in one, I couldn't sit up straight, my knees were resting on the dash and I couldn't close the door. I'd prefer something in the full size category but would rather it was a van, SUV or truck so I didn't have to squat down so low to get in. I do a lot of outdoors stuff that takes me on some rough roads and I usually have need of hauling and some cargo space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> lr--rw-rwx Ok, driverless cars are cool, because they have this robot touch which is appealing to computer scientists. Furthermore, we will get there eventually, as they will drive saver and (without a driver) will decrease the costs for transport and logistics industries.

But does it affect the average human? It just strikes me how many anecdotes I read in connection with selfdriving cars ala' "calling the car to pick me up from work".

Assuming that most HN users are from the US I can just conclude that public transport is really bad and people do not use their bike there. E.g. most people here (Europe) just do not need the service of a car in their daily life. So in the end it's a logic step, but I do not think that it makes sense to actually buy a self-driving car for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't it a requirement for "driverless" cars to still have someone who can take over control of the car during emergencies? I mean, the Google cars that were driving had someone sitting in the passenger seat, I thought.

I don't think we'll see truly robotic cars anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER26> I welcome our robot overlords. I do wonder, however, who's going to do quality assurance on these cars. The first startup launching MVP driverless cars with a horrible accident record will set back the industry for years.

<comment><USER27> I think that's the whole point of setting out requirements that autonomous vehicles must meet before going into production/sale. Just the same as current car manufacturers have to meet certain safety requirements, in the future manufacturers may have to prove some level of reliability, robustness, and exception handling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow. Technology is really changing the world now. What's next? Flying automated cars? I cant wait for the next invention! The government/inventors should better make these driverless cars very functional and safe to use since we all know that computers cannot think right away unlike human when it comes to urgent incident situations. <http://sommer-solen.dk/cctv-have-en- afskraekken..>.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the big reason why high-speed rail in CA is a terrible idea and destined to become an expensive white elephant. Driverless cars will start to become available just about the time that the rail line is complete, after the inevitable lawsuits, engineering problems, and construction delays. Why would I buy a train ticket to LA and then deal with getting from the train station to my final destination when my car can drive me directly door to door?

</comment><comment><USER29> So, as times change ... where will I be allowed to go to drive, myself..? For people that enjoy driving; because, as has already been suggested by this thread, these autonomous cars will probably be very boring on the road.

I suppose race-track memberships and racetracks will become more common --- or perhaps they'll be like a horseman's club - a hobby for select members.

Maybe the USA could even get a Nürburgring ... or one per region.

<comment><USER12> Sure. We still allow people to fly planes, don't we?

I expect that once a drivers license is not a requirement to exist in much of the US that the standards for being allowed to drive will be tightened significantly though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone else find it amazing that we have driverless cars but yet, most subways and trains still require drivers/operators?

<comment><USER30> Unlike cars, trains can't stop on a dime if there's an obstruction on tracks. Nor can they swerve to avoid it.

<comment><USER31> Is this an argument that a human driver is required? To me, it sounds like if there's nothing you can do, the computer's job is much easier, not harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I keep imagining the technology used with recreational vehicles. Spend a day as a tourist in Chicago. Hop in the RV and go to sleep. Wake up in Memphis. Visit Elvis, enjoy waffles & fried chicken, then hit the hay and wake up the next day in Orlando. No down time.

</comment><comment><USER33> What would be potential startups in this space? Besides the obvious "fleet of driverless cars that drive people places."

It will be revolutionary, and Google is only going to get a plurality of the profit that comes from it.

<comment><USER34> Curbside delivery. Build a truck that has a bunch of different little cubbies. Load it up and send it around. App on the customer's phone beeps when the truck arrives and gives them a locker number and an unlock code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Out of curiosity, what happens when someone spray paints the cameras on a car?

Because the car will stop if someone jumps in front of it right?

So it's a sitting target for a gang to vandalize it.

<comment><USER36> How is that different than slashing someone's tires?

Where do you live, Rio de Janeiro? I don't think there's a city in the U.S. where "random disabling car vandalization for fun by gangs" is actually a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Imagine the possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER37> Imagine your next Über driver.</comment>


First Unexplained Wealth Order in UK against wife of jailed Azerbaijan banker - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45812210 <comment><AUTHOR> I changed the rather click baity headline (16m spent in harrods) coz this is a really big anti corruption deal in the UK. London is awash with dirty money - it's really screwing our housing market, and this is a step in the right direction.

Now we need laws that say we will jail our bankers if they are found helping launder money revealed under these laws.

And have similar laws everywhere else - Delaware and Nevada I'm looking at you.</comment>


What Does Your Pricing Say About You? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macdougherty.com/macblog/2010/11/what-does-your-pricing-say-about-you.html

<comment><USER2> The contrary is that if you are targeting the low end market, you need to price it that way from the start, and stay away from enterprise deals that require custom work.</comment>


Introduction to the Detroit civic tech ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://www.semichiganstartup.com/features/Detroit-civic-tech-093014.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Story doesn't mention it but we're hosting Code Michigan, a civic tech hackathon, at three locations in the state this weekend including Grand Circus at 1570 Woodward in Detroit. Any HN'ers please introduce yourself to me.

Details:

www.codemichigan.com

<comment><USER2> The turtle shell pattern matching seems like an interesting, but roughly solvable problem - don't even need anything as complex as a NNet or Deep learning, an SVM, or heck even a well trained correlation filter (UOTSDF, MMCF, ...maybe even MOSSE) can be used after first registering the image (DNets maybe). It's nice to see a Detroit based tech activity that isn't recruiting (most end up in Ann Arbor). Too bad i'm pretty busy this weekend or i'd join in.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Indian Government filtering Internet? - <AUTHOR>

Recently I have been frequently stamping into blue messages saying "This Url has been blocked as per DOT/HIGHT COURT guidelines". I was visiting some media sharing websites and some websites with supposedly pornographic content. Are there others who have seen similar messages? Or is it just my internet provider trying to get smarter? Is Indian government doing the 'American thing' too? <comment><USER2> [http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=internet+censorship+india](http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=internet+censorship+india)

<comment><USER3> Seems like a very ironic thing for him search for.</comment></comment>


New Nokia smartphones confirmed to go on sale in early 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://metropolitan.fi/entry/new-nokia-smartphones-confirmed-to-go-on-sale-in-early-2017 <comment><USER2> Nokia name will be licensed to another Finnish company, HMD global. If they can turn out the quality of the Lumia line in an android phone, it'll be on my Christmas list for next year</comment>


Atlassian Planning U.S. IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/australian-software-tools-maker-atlassian-planning-u-s-ipo-1443213301 <comment><USER3> Every time I come across one of their products I am underwhelmed. Jira and Bamboo both feel half a decade behind the game and are each clearly large, fumbling beasts that seem to get in your way more than they do assist you. Their ecosystem is very closed and you can feel the pain of this when you visit an organisation that's drunk their cool aid and is now locked in. I'm making it all sound a bit fire here - which it's not but I really just don't think that they're good, modern products.

<comment><USER4> Show me an alternative that is (a) able to be hosted and (b) isn't designed for startups.

There are lots of agile tools but most of them deliberately ignore the enterprise space.

<comment><USER5> I've been looking hard at JetBrains' YouTrack.

The bug/issue tracker we're currently using is not terrible, but it's a little painful. However, we've just barely gotten people trained to use the current system. I can either accept the current, somewhat clunky system, or go through another year of retraining and hope the slicker tool and the additional features are a net win.

At least JetBrains actively works on their products. Our current tool hasn't changed in three years, and that was just a reskin of the UI to a more bootstrappy css.

<comment><USER6> My day job / team uses YouTrack. We'd love to replace it (because the admin side of running an instance is pretty terrible), but it's been by far easier for people to use than anything else we compared to.

Huge downsides:

\- Doing centralized authentication in a large-organization environment is basically impossible. Its LDAP implementation is broken for anything else than a couple very standard schemas that they've tested against & you can't make it authenticate using a Windows domain. They've recently split out the user management, etc., components into a separate product called Hub, but it's the same code and suffers from the same problems. [NB: Hilariously enough, other JetBrains products work just fine in this regard.]

\- The thing uses some custom proprietary database. Integrating backups into your normal workflow is painful. Upgrades are VERY painful (oops, the old version had a database that didn't enforce some constraints that the new one does, please go fix all your issues by hand), although there's some auxiliary API and tools for exporting individual issues as -- if I recall correctly -- JSON objects that was an 80% solution.

Upsides:

\- The UI does the expected thing by default in all cases we could find. It is also fast & responsive, relatively uncluttered, and doesn't have a bunch of extra things to click in order to create/comment on/edit issues.

\- Searching for issues is very fast and powerful.

\- Batch updating issues (which we tend to do a lot) is extremely easy. Make a custom search describing the issues to update, then update all of them with a couple clicks.

The admin downsides were (for us at least) bad enough that I'm not sure I'd recommend deploying it if you already have a working, integrated system. If you're starting from scratch, though, or committed to replacing another system for whatever reason, it's a pretty good choice.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, good to get some real impressions from someone who has used it. We already use TeamCity, which is why I was looking at it in the first place. I guess they haven't quite rolled the two together yet, so I might wait on that.

Upsource also looks very interesting, is that also something you have used? We don't really have a good tool for doing code review at the moment. Also, the VCS browsing capabilities look to be miles ahead of what our current setup offers (almost completely unusable, hijacks the browser back button, no searching, definitely no chance of static analysis, links sent out in email notifications constantly pointed at the wrong thing, etc.).

<comment><USER6> Upsource is good for browsing. We're still in the process of finding a "good" tool for code review (using a bunch of in-house stuff at the moment which is great for review, but bad for branch management). It uses the same authentication stuff, Hub, as YouTrack does.

Currently we're looking very hard at Critic ([https://critic- review.org/](https://critic-review.org/) is a demo site, code's on github) because it looks to offer the closest workflow to what we use.

We're specifically looking for something sorta similar to Gerrit as far as how reviews work, but while actually supporting a feature-branch-heavy workflow where we tend to review branches rather than individual commits, and frequently rebuild/rebase feature branches.

Obviously, if your workflow is different then your needs for a review tool may differ wildly.

<comment><USER7> If your code is on GitHub, you might be interested in Reviewable ([https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io), disclosure: I built it). It's made for incremental full-branch review (though will also do per-commit if you wish) and deals gracefully with rebasing. As a bit of social proof, Mozilla's Servo project ([https://github.com/servo](https://github.com/servo)) moved their code review process from Critic to Reviewable a couple months ago...

<comment><USER6> Anything where we can't host the tool and point it at git repositories on a server we control is a complete non-starter for us, unfortunately. This is mostly because our development and test environments are not connected to the Internet.

Other than that, I took a quick look at your product and it's feature-wise close to something I would want to use. Only comments I would make would be that non GitHub projects generally want the review tool to handle the branch management (a.k.a storing pull requests, flagging their status, etc.): of course only focusing on GitHub lets you not worry about that and get a product running much sooner... You should spend some serious time looking at your page load times as well - I'm 10msec away from your server and the demo code review at [https://reviewable.io/reviews/Reviewable/demo/1](https://reviewable.io/reviews/Reviewable/demo/1) took nearly three full seconds to load, even with most static assets already cached since I didn't timeline it on the first attempt.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for taking a look! Unfortunately, developing self-contained tools that customers run behind a firewall is a complete non-starter for me. ;-)

Developing against the GitHub API does carry some non-trivial advantages: among other things, I never actually clone any repos. This wouldn't be possible with a raw git repo. I'm considering adapting the tool to AWS CodeCommit, though, which might be a decent middle ground. Making my own equivalent of pull requests is actually the least of the changes I'd need to make, though.

And yeah, performance is a never-ending battle... But considering that all the work is done in the browser (fetching sources, diffing, formatting, etc.) I think it's actually not too bad. Again, like running in the cloud, it's a trade-off of in favor of flexibility and development speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the co-founders (Mike Cannon-Brookes) did an AMA on reddit a few days ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3lrvpv/iama_mike_cann...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3lrvpv/iama_mike_cannonbrookes_cofounder_of_atlassian_ama/)

Some quotes:

Q: "What was the scariest, most panic-inducing thing to happen to/at Atlassian?"

A: "The most topical fear we have at the moment (and one of the reasons you see us spending so much time on it right now) is that Atlassian is growing faster than the Sydney (and Australian) technology industry. That cannot be good for our long term domicile here - we must continue to diversify product + engineering overseas, or risk running aground."

Q: "...before Atlassian for saving bookmarks which you sold pretty early. What did you learn from that business that helped the most with Atlassian?"

A: "Overall? It was a fantastic lesson. Failure (or forced sale type success in a smart decision before we hit the wall) taught us many things. How to get customers. How to build software. How to prioritise our day. How to get a business name. A domain name. How to run books. Get investors on board. How hard it is to make $1. Harder to make $10 still etc."

And the other co-founder (Scott Farquhar) did an interview on ABC's lateline show earlier in the week: [http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4317805.htm](http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4317805.htm)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to see a postmortem on Atlassian's rise to fame where other tools haven't succeeded.

I remember reading a brief comment by Joel Spolsky saying he wasn't too worried about "those blokes from Australia". At lot more people I work with know more about Jira than Fogbugz.

IMO Atlassian do OK tools. But nothing to justify the hype they are always receiving. What am I missing - Price? Features? Implementation pain (or lack thereof)?

<comment><USER10> JIRA offered a good compromise between closed and open source: full source code was available, which enabled local custom modifications to prove out the viability of enhancement requests. Atlassian also provides free JIRA to open- source projects, e.g. keep code on Github, move issue tracking to cloud-hosted JIRA for workflow not supported by Github issues.

It is encouraging to see a bootstrapped company reach IPO, even if it took them a decade to reach their $3B valuation compared to Github's attainment of a $2B valuation in a much shorter time. Atlassian's forward-thinking private investors provided liquidity to employees, which supported their long road to the public market. From a 2014 interview, [http://fortune.com/2014/04/10/atlassian-the-3-3-billion- soft...](http://fortune.com/2014/04/10/atlassian-the-3-3-billion-software- company-youve-never-heard-of/)

 _" The $150 million it recently raised isn't going into its bank account — instead, its new investors are buying shares from past and present employees in an effort to offer workers some liquidity and retain talent ... 'the Accel Partners round was mostly about founders, and this [T. Rowe Price] one is about employees. Now neither of the founders are selling anything. So this is a little different. We've been profitable for 10 years, so we don't need the cash, we have a lot of cash in the bank. It's more a case of wanting to get a partner [that knows about public markets] on board..'"_

From a 2011 review of Atlassian culture and self-service sales, [http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture- stupid-h...](http://www.managementexchange.com/story/its-culture-stupid-how- permeating-information-culture-leads-corporate-success), with a talk about internal systems: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=mALn4nyi7Qs](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mALn4nyi7Qs)

 _" Atlassian CEOs have instilled an information culture throughout the company with the core value of "Open Company, No Bullshit". The result is a bottom-up democracy of information where information sharing is the norm and information hoarding is a foreign concept ... Product pricing is public, including discount policies. Prospective customers can download software and try it free for 30 days. All documentation is public and available for anyone to access. Bug reports and feature requests are public, allowing people to 'vote' on their preferred features."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Saying that 'Jira is better than lots of other tools out there' is sort of like saying that breaking your finger is better than breaking your femur. Although technically true, that's not to say that breaking your finger or using Jira is enjoyable.[1]

[1] n.b. I have never broken either my finger or my femur, but I have used Jira[2] quite a bit over a period of 8 years.

[2] I am also amused by the origin of the name: "Although normally styled JIRA, the product name is not an acronym, but a truncation of Gojira, the Japanese name for Godzilla,[6] itself a reference to JIRA's main competitor, Bugzilla." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIRA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIRA)

</comment><comment><USER12> Atlassian' founders are constantly in the press talking about the australian startup ecosystem and its flounderings, asking that government do more to help, and so on. I've always wondered why, given their patriotism, they aren't going public on the ASX first. Obviously they'll make a lot more money this way, but going by what they've said in the past, it doesn't seem like that's the biggest priority anymore. (I haven't met the guys and would love to have this problem so take this armchair analysis as it is, but I'm curious if anyone knows more about the why here.)

<comment><USER13> You're right - they will probably make more by listing in the USA. Tech valuations on US exchanges are higher than on the ASX - even with recent falls, the NASDAQ is sitting at an average price-to-earnings of 22 vs the ASX200 IT index sitting at about half that.

The Atlassian founders are known to be good at putting their money where their mouth is. Perhaps they feel they can make a greater impact with the extra funds than with a single statement.

</comment></comment><comment> nevi-me If I hadn't decided to move to JIRA I'd still be saying Atlassian sucks because of the lackluster Bitbucket issue system. It was my biggest complaint because I was being cheap and not wanting to spend the amount of money I spend on a day's lunch to get a better tool.

JIRA does feel clunky, but after spending the time configuring it, I find it helps me more than getting in the way. I've tried a number of other tools, especially for Agile development, and I ended up feeling like our team would need multiple told to get things done. By trying JIRA out on work projects and personal ones, I'm now a bit more productive, and my team is getting there too.

The price felt a bit 'steep' after the 10 users, but I've convinced my company that the price per user is nothing as it's how much we bill our clients for a few minutes if our time.

The listing makes sense, they've been profitable for a long time, and should have a possibly sustainable share considering EPS and other requirements of shareholders.

<comment><USER14> > If I hadn't decided to move to JIRA I'd still be saying Atlassian sucks > because of the lackluster Bitbucket issue system.

You'd say an entire company sucks because one feature of one of their products is underwhelming to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe they'll finally fix Jira's email spamming: [https://rule1.quora.com/Does-Atlassian-Give- an-F](https://rule1.quora.com/Does-Atlassian-Give-an-F)

<comment><USER16> You can disable some of the email spams in JIRA. For example you can disable notify anybody when a ticket is created in your Kibana board. But I find those spams really useful regardless. I read all of JIRA mentions, tickets just created in my queue, and everything coming from JIRA so I know what's going on. Well, I am in a DevOps role so maybe that's a whole different experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I recently migrated jira/ Confluence / Stash / Hipchat from the cloud versions to self hosted for a company going through the IPO process.

So we went from the Crowd based setup to LDAP / postgresql backed versions of the products. The big surprise for me is how divergent the products are. User setup and the cross application links are so different. The underlying postgres schemas are different. So the migrations were fundimentally different. (In hipchat's case it is understandable as the self hosted version of the softwre was new and somewhat beta)

It reminded me of how back in the 90s I heard that Microsoft kept the developers of different products in the Office suite apart.

Thus when you go to link the applications together you get weird redundancies and it all doesnt work as it should. Partly that is because the licensing is so separate. Atlassian support was pretty good in that they worked with us on it and also they provided unofficial scripts to help withthe process. They also recommended using Crowd to manage users which to my mind only added a layer of complexity - you should be able to add users directly from LDAP.

I ended up enjoying the migration project because I got to work with postgres which is great software.

Atlassian is bloated and in my opinion they havent worked on cross application connectivity enough. It should be seamless.

My company (at the time) ended up hiring a fulltime person to manage the complexity (ie an Atlassian admin) plus a few consultants to get the workflow stuff down.

It is good when you have jira and confluence running well - but it takes a lot of time and money to get to that point.

<comment><USER18> > My company (at the time) ended up hiring a fulltime person to manage the > complexity (ie an Atlassian admin) plus a few consultants to get the > workflow stuff down

Offtopic - I have recently been trying to break into full-time consulting / contracting. May I know how you went about hiring the consultants for the migration ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome news! When I 1st arrived in USA (from Australia back in 2009) I never knew of Atlassian when their tools were brought on-premise at Coupons.com. Boy was I proud to hear it's an Aussie product. Yap, it was expensive.

As time went on and I moved on to do my own gig. I wanted to go cheap so I explored many alternative products to replace Jira/Agile, Bitbucket, Confluence, Bamboo etc.. what I ended up with is different tools with different interfaces sticky taped together working just OK.

This got frustrating and I decided to dump them all and move to Atlassian OnDemand. The overhead of managing & educating staff on all these tools was just not worth the pennies saved. This is the power in Atlassian products, their tight integration and consistency. Yeah there are quirks here and there but those always get resolved and features added over time.

Anyways I love Atlassian products and I hope their IPO is a success! Long journey to get this far but well worth it. Solid company!

</comment><comment><USER20> Honestly I like trello the best for day to day issue tracking. It gets clunky if you try to do too much at once but that is intentional. JIRA _can_ be okay but there are a lot of caveats:

* well customized to fit the business (i.e don't let those 'non-practicing-entities' with nothing else to do go crazy creating and reworking convoluted workflows)

* small number of users (or performance sucks)

* well organized (you tend to get 'dumping grounds' of bugs and tech debt that just accumulates). I like trello's concept of card 'decay'.

* deep pockets (you gotta 'buy in' to the ecosystem and not get stingy about who gets access)

* ignore features - don't try to shoehorn, use what you need and forget the rest

</comment><comment><USER21> Jira is okay. Confluence is okay. I find the installation and management of each okay. We don't use Hip Chat but I imagine with all the focus on Slack lately, chat is not a big portion of Atlassian's growth story.

What is strange to me is how on-premise focused their business is. This is a market at or beyond its peak. Perhaps that is the reason for the IPO at this point?

<comment><USER10> Atlassian started on-premise and later moved to cloud. Github started with cloud and later moved to on-premise. It would be interesting to compare the current revenue split/growth at the two companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those looking to get past the paywall very quickly and easily, quick gif tutorial.

[http://gfycat.com/FarflungUnderstatedIcelandgull](http://gfycat.com/FarflungUnderstatedIcelandgull)

Sorry about url, gfycat so weird with their url generation

</comment><comment><USER23> They should fix their incredibly slow OnDemand hosting - unusable! - <USER2> un-automatable upgrades and operations, and add realtime multiuser editing.

</comment><comment><USER24> How does this company trudge on despite their products sucking so badly?</comment>


Fix a bug in Ruby's configure.in and get a ~30% performance boost - <AUTHOR> http://timetobleed.com/fix-a-bug-in-rubys-configurein-and-get-a-30-performance-boost/ <comment><USER3> This post (and the blog overall) shows how the forgotten art of tracing/debugging executables can seriously affect web 2.0 community - <USER2> the last person who knew assembly will retire we are all doomed :)

<comment><USER4> Fortunately there will then be a huge demand, and hence a large reward, for people to invest time into learning it once more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The post's title is misleading, since this only affects threaded Ruby programs, not all of them.

It's a good patch and the author knows his stuff, so there's no need for sensationalist titles.

</comment><comment><USER6> What the heck is that picture?

<comment><USER7> It's the brain bug from Starship Troopers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> dupe

</comment><comment><USER9> 30%. Thats, insane. Oh wait, its for the MRI (Matz Ruby Interpreter). Hm, that makes this news for me a tad less interesting because everybody is already running 1.9 (yarv)?

Patching MRI is nice but a switch to 1.9 has more benefits than just speed.

<comment><USER10> > everybody is already running 1.9 (yarv)?

Nope, no more so than everybody is already running Python 3.

It's only for pthread linkage, anyway; it's avoiding a 30% performance loss, not giving everyone a 30% performance gain.</comment></comment>


Ad targeters are pulling data from your browser's password manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/30/16829804/browser-password-manager-adthink-princeton-research <comment><USER2> Is there any way a browser user can protect themselves from this now?

More details here: [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/12/27/no-boundaries- for-u...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/12/27/no-boundaries-for-user- identities-web-trackers-exploit-browser-login-managers/)</comment>


China offers 5-year tax breaks to chip makers, Sw Developers to bolster industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3011377/china-offers-five-year-tax-breaks-chip-makers-software-developers-bolster <comment><USER2> US bans will only serve to motivate the Chinese to work harder to develop its own independent technology ecosystem. It is painful today and tomorrow but it will be a boon for the Chinese in the long run. By looking at the long history or rising power vs established power, established powers always try to sabotage rising powers in order to maintain their status as long as possible. Eventually, rising powers will succeed. It has happened with the UK overtaking the Spaniards, the US overtaking the UK, the Germans overtaking the British before WWI. The US is desperate to delay the painful process.

<comment><USER3> If it was all so cut and dried as all that, China's own protectionism should have destroyed them.

<comment><USER2> For developing countries, moderate protections of its own industries are needed to foster their own. However, as they grow stronger, they are gradually opening up their markets. China is just doing that. Baby birds are protected by their mothers when they are little. Once they grow up, they should be able to fly and face challenges themselves. China is opening up, at a slow pace admittedly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To my knowledge, China had _already_ been running the scheme giving semiconductor companies 5 tax free years since 2012.

They were either obliged to run from some special designated industrial parks, or something like that thought.</comment>


IMVU: Detect failure with statistics - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/poisson.pdf <comment><USER2> So, here's what this is about.

One-sentence summary: If you're monitoring something to look for problems, you shouldn't treat each observation independently; multiple somewhat-low or somewhat-high observations may be a sign of trouble even if each on its own isn't enough to worry about. In more detail:

Suppose you have some number you're monitoring. It might be network latency, number of customer signups, temperature, fraction of your email that's spam, whatever. You would like to be notified if it starts behaving unexpectedly -- maybe your network is down, someone just trashed your company in the media, a fan has failed, or your spam filter has gone nuts.

There's a technique called Holt-Winters forecasting, which looks at historical data and assumes it's made up of something constant, something periodic (e.g., daily variation), and noise; it generates predictions, which include a measure of uncertainty as well as a predicted value. Then some guy called Brutlag developed a way to compare observations with Holt-Winters predictions from the past, and determine whether each new observation is suspect.

However, Brutlag's analysis basically treats each new measurement independently. So, e.g., suppose you have a number that's always non-negative (number of customer signups, say), and suppose the H-W prediction says that a value of 0 isn't too improbable. Then Brutlag's approach will not complain even if from some point onward _every single measurement is 0_ \-- because each one, on its own, is reasonably plausible.

Evan Miller has a more sophisticated way of looking for anomalies. Each time a new observation comes in, he looks at the plausibility of that observation, just like Brutlag does; but he also tries adding up the last N observations and comparing them with expectations for the sum of N consecutive observations, for N=2,3,...T (for some suitably chosen limit T). So if you get, say, a lot of zeros, they may not be very implausible on their own, but getting five zeros in a row might be enough to trigger a warning.

Miller gives an example where IMVU caught a network problem using this technique -- they were watching the number of customers who invited contacts to open an account -- which wouldn't have been caught by the Brutlag method, for exactly the reason given above: they had a run of quite-low measurements, but none of them on its own was low enough for the Brutlag method to complain, because Brutlag's lower confidence limit was zero.

</comment><comment><USER3> Caveat: I only skimmed the paper.

The combination of two things set off alarm bells: firstly, the problem observed is that a continuous sequence of zero readings is erroneously treated as an "ok". Second, the variance is modelled as a normal distribution (Section 3.1). Since the normal is symmetric, if the mean is sufficiently close to zero readings below zero will be within one standard deviation. You can't ever have readings below zero in the type of systems under consideration. It seems this is the flaw in the original work, and furthermore this assumption is carried through to the fix (with some ad-hoc modifications [remember, I only skimmed the paper]). It seems to me that a cleaner model would drop this assumption of normality and use an asymmetric distribution (say, the Poisson) in its place. I would be interested in any comments from those who read the paper in more depth.

<comment><USER4> This is precisely the approach they take. Section 3.4 ("The Model") begins, "The heart of the model is to treat incoming events as a Poisson process..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is somewhat tangential, but might help if other people are attempting to do similar things in the future...

A relation of mine is a pharmacist at a hospital. At his workplace, they have automated drug dispensing machines that can be used by employees to obtain medication for patients - saves a lot of time and work for dispensing normal stuff like painkillers, etc.

These machines use a statistical method to flag when an employee is pulling out more than the usual amount of medicine, as there are infrequent cases of employees selling/using it themselves.

The machines were programmed to use standard deviation for this - if what you draw is within 2 standard deviations of the mean of all users, you're fine.

The problem is that, on one occasion, an employee in a small section was a junkie and pulled out so much of a certain drug that the mean was skewed to the point that they were still within 2 std dev of it, and it wasn't noticed for a few months.

So, to wrap up the story, you probably don't want to purely use statistics to test for failure. You want some basic sanity checks in there.

<comment><USER6> "All the models are wrong but some are useful". I think that in this case the model was just wrong... or a bit simplistic.</comment></comment>


Regular-expressions.info - <AUTHOR> http://www.regular-expressions.info/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the old post where somebody fixed a bug in Atom by fixing the regex Catastrophic Backtracking[1] issue.

HN Post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993470)

[1] [http://www.regular- expressions.info/catastrophic.html](http://www.regular- expressions.info/catastrophic.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Can I release code from employment that had an ISC license? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I want to release some code that I have written and another co-worker as well. Obviously, I wouldn't do this if this weren't the case, but there's an ISC license attached to the codebase.
Does this make it legal and safe to release parts of the code into the open source community? <comment><USER2> This is a good time to visit a skilled copyright and licensing lawyer and get an opinion letter and not a good time to depend on random opinions.

</comment><comment><USER3> IANAL.

Unless you are the copyright holder, I don't think it is up to you to release the code.

</comment><comment><USER4> No.</comment>


Tell HN: Launching HackingAdvertising.com - <AUTHOR>

For years I've occassionally tried to use Google Adwords and Facebook ads to promote my products, but I've never been able to get very good results.
I keep reading about people who are able to get great results, but am never able to reproduce their efforts.
So I've finally thrown down the gauntlet. I'm going to attack advertising like any good hacker. Break it down, test it, iterate, analyze, look for opportunities, etc.
And I'm going to publish the results. Why the hell not. There's so little information out there about this stuff that this might be very helpful to people.
Anyways check out my efforts and let me know what you think:
http://hackingadvertising.com <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the clickable link: <http://hackingadvertising.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> i've been wanting to do something like this forever! let me know if there is any way i (we?) can contribute

(im currently doing a/b with resumes - sort of the same thing)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice initiative.

added your blog to my RSS subscriptions

</comment><comment><USER4> is that a blog? I thought you had made an app.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a blog to start. It's more about the content now.

If I can figure out some way to "appify" it I certainly will. I'd love to make it so that people can more easily explore advertising through these mediums as a cost effective and conversion effective means.

For the time being, though, it's just a blog showing the results of my experiments. Blogs are way easier to get up and running.</comment></comment>


How I built a profitable bootstrapped side project - <AUTHOR> https://www.getdeckchair.com/blog/how-i-built-a-profitable-bootstrapped-side-project/ <comment><USER2> I made my side project profitable quickly with a relentless focus on costs. The only fees I have are to Apple (dev license) and Delaware (for the LLC). Any service I wanted, I found an open source project and figured it out. I use the free tier at red hat open shift for hosting. If you let yourself get nickel and dimed by layering on SaaS products, you won't get anywhere.

Of course, I'm talking about building a profitable, low-touch side business, not a mega company.

<comment><USER3> So let's say you built app A and spent 80 extra hours hunting for free SAAS products.

Similar app B saved 80 hours using more popular SAAS apps but has a SAAS bill of $100 a month. But he had a full 2 week headstart in development.

You don't think app B could end up getting more money?

That doesn't mean you should spend $600 hosting on Heroku. But swearing off all costs may be a bit much...

<comment><USER2> My interpretation of a business is a repeatable mechanism for generating profit. Starting a business takes lots of effort and time. Once you have it running, a good software side business should take very little time. You put the time in at the beginning. Once it's working, you should be able to make money without trying.

By using pay-for SaaS companies, you might save time, but as a one-man developer, I'm not in a race for success. I want to build something that lasts ideally for years if not decades that sends cash directly into my bank account. If you rely on an SaaS product, you will be paying them money for decades. And if they go out of business, you need to put more effort into finding a replacement.

By building everything myself, I pay nobody anything, and the only risk is that I go out of business. And if I build more side businesses, I can reuse my existing infrastructure and reduce their costs as well.

<comment><USER4> Why not use SAAS to launch faster, then replace SAAS with in-house after you've built market share?

<comment><USER2> For many things building it yourself doesn't take that much longer than doing an integration with a SaaS product. Usually I need 1 or 2 features that are a small piece of a much larger product.

<comment><USER3> Do you have concrete examples? Maybe this is getting too complex to use abstracts for.

<comment><USER2> server monitoring to ensure that it responds and is running. I solved it with a cron job. Lots of other server monitoring software with bells and whistles, didn't need it

<comment><USER4> New relic sever monitoring my friend. It's _free_ (emphasis because I was shocked when I looked up pricing) and takes all of 5 minutes to setup (no exaggeration, it uses yum for 99% of setup).

[https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/servers/new-relic-servers- lin...](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/servers/new-relic-servers- linux/installation-configuration/servers-installation-redhat-centos)

<comment><USER3> How is it free when it says it is 10 cents per hour per host? There is a LITE plan but it seems like no alerting?

<comment><USER4> Hmm, it looks like they have changed their pricing strategy. When I first signed up it was no strings attached free as a loss-leader to move you towards using their application monitoring products.

[https://blog.newrelic.com/2011/11/08/server-monitoring-is- he...](https://blog.newrelic.com/2011/11/08/server-monitoring-is-here/)

So far I appear to still be grandfathered into the the free server plan?

Anyways, I guess you can disregard my original comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow! We built an open source app for holiday management [1] (with a very close UI to this one) and I always thought it would make sense to sell it as a SaaS. I'm glad to see someone actually did it!

[1] [https://github.com/diacode/holidays](https://github.com/diacode/holidays)

</comment><comment><USER6> > If a soldier deployed in Iraq has the time to code...

LOL. True. I was running night raids in 2004 and coding during the day on an app for a commercial real estate company. If anything it was a way to cope, but hey I found the time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I always wonder why it is so difficult to find good markets. Sometimes, it seems that coming up with a good product-idea is harder than building the actual product. Why does it work that way? Is this a flaw in how the free market works? Or is this just me - a developer - not knowing what other people need from me.

<comment><USER8> The market itself doesn't know what it actually wants.

Generally its a case of throwing ideas out there and watching what people nibble on, or stumbling across something that everyone has trouble with that you can easily solve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice post. Can you clarify what you mean by proftiable, I'm assuming you're covering all costs and also paying yourself a decent salary?

If so, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope he hosted the blog on its own server.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately: [https://getdeckchair.com/](https://getdeckchair.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulation on shipping. I'd love to hear about what you mean by 'profitable'. I don't want to be too nosey, but people mean all sorts of things from covering your hosting with a bit of beer money, to quitting your job and working an hour per week.

</comment><comment><USER13> We hugged it to death

<comment><USER14> _I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say if you are relying on Product Hunt and Hacker News to send you all your traffic, you are still screwed._

Heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm trying to see how this particular service improves on having a shared outlook calendar where everyone reflects their vacation. Can someone point out the benefits? (This is not a criticism, I am trying to understand the service)

</comment><comment><USER16> Congrats on the cool SaaS business! Quick suggestion. The logo at the top of the blog should link back to your homepage, instead of the blog index.

</comment><comment><USER17> Site down, read here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160530160943/https://www.getde...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160530160943/https://www.getdeckchair.com/blog/how- i-built-a-profitable-bootstrapped-side-project/)

<comment><USER18> I hit F5 to refresh and it came back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I noticed that he put the following at the bottom of his landing page. There is on link to see the actual reviews.

"Rated 4.2/5 based on 144 reviews"

Anyone has any metric that something like this helps?

</comment><comment> tuna-piano As of writing this, the main site is down, and the blog has missing image links.

Why do people host static sites on anything besides s3 (or similiar)? It's dirt cheap, (almost) always works, and can handle any traffic spike you can hope to receive.

Instead, simple static sites seem to crash and burn when receiving spikes in traffic. I do not understand it.

<comment><USER20> Because not everything needs to be on amazon. Also, the blog at least is wordpress, not "static".</comment></comment>


Chimpanzees Spontaneously Dance to Music - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-12-chimpanzees-spontaneously-music.html <comment><USER2> This looks a lot like stereotypical behavior seen in many captive animals: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypy_(non- human)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypy_\(non-human\))

FTA:

"Many stereotypies can be induced by confinement; for example, cats pace in zoo cages.[11] Pregnant sows whose feed is restricted bite at their stalls' bars and chew without anything in their mouths.[12] In laboratory rats and mice, grooming is the most common activity other than sleep, and grooming stereotypies have been used to investigate several animal models of anxiety and depression.[13]

Examples of stereotypical behaviours include pacing, rocking, swimming in circles, excessive sleeping, self-mutilation (including feather picking and excessive grooming), and mouthing cage bars."

<comment><USER3> The left to right swinging is the textbook example of animals undergoing prolonged extreme stress and insufficient stimulation. It's probably the most recognizable sign.

It's baffling that any researcher was honestly thinking otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Ya. It's almost enough to give the researchers the benefit of the doubt. Nah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "researchers played music to a group of chimps (three adult males and four females) and found that all of the chimps responded to the music by moving in dance-like ways—though the degree to which they danced varied greatly between them. [...] the chimps had different moves."

So, we have 7 chimps that responded to an unusual sound (we really don't want to call that danceable music) from a source unknown to them in 7 different ways, and we have n researchers that were set out to interpret that as dance? And these researchers can make a living out of that and get published?

p.s. I skimmed through the original article. It looks like science and this might even be a standard approach in this field (I don't know) but ... I cannot describe what I think of it.

<comment><USER6> No kidding. This is a quintessential example of what is wrong in research. If you were to just read the paper you'd definitely come to the conclusion that the researchers want to make—that monkeys dance much like we do. Then you go and watch the video and find their conclusion...biased at the least.

The instances in which this type of tomfoolery becomes truly malignant are the ones in which it's less obvious. I.e researchers have hidden or hashed the original data and then published something that we can't unscramble.

I'm literally expecting to hear "everybody dance now" and end up hearing that charade instead. Lol.

<comment><USER7> Which is the really super awesome part of science. You find chimps that don't care when they hear music. You find chimps that make "dance like moves" when you play atonal non-syncopated note structures, you find chimps that make "dance like moves" when you play dialog. Then you go through and plot your results and you show that this particular study isn't really indicative of what is going on.

My mother once lamented "How can they call that science? That isn't a valid way to test that statement." And I reminded her, publishing a paper isn't "science", forming a hypothesis and a set of experiments to prove or disprove that hypothesis, and then _having others test your hypothesis in different ways and getting the same result._ THAT is the scientific process. And after that happens you know something new and you can demonstrate it on demand, each time, every time, because you _know_ what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not music, but machine noise. And the animal moves in a rhythm unrelated to said noise. So I'd guess it's a sign of stress.

<comment><USER9> There is a genre of music called "noise", which is much like what the term sounds like.

I remember coming home from a noise concert with a friend one day, and going down in to the subway, where there was a construction worker hammering away with a jackhammer. My friend and I found ourselves really enjoying it, and appreciatively nodded our heads to the beat.

Lots of experimental and avant garde music is also frequently described as "noise" to people who aren't fans of it. Back at the dawn of the rock-and-roll genre and of jazz, people to whom these were new types of music also frequently characterized them as "just noise". I've heard the "that's not music" accusation being thrown at heavy metal and dissonant traditional Japanese music.

That's not to say that chimpanzees must be fans of what was played to them, but the realm of music is much wider than most people that listen only to mainstream music appreciate.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that is a fair comparison/conclusion because you could also then argue that torture is pleasurable because we can find some people who feel that (at least a subset of torture) is pleasurable to them and therefore people who feel that torture is torture should learn to enjoy it as pleasure.

<comment><USER11> I think this points to the conclusion that you can literally enjoy anything if you contact it repeatedly with the right attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is truly bizarre is how rare rhythmic entrainment seems to be [1]. Powered oscillators naturally entrain to one another, like the synchronization of metronomes. Since neurons are powered oscillators, it would seem that even simple animals would be able to move to a beat.

Yet, we are unable to train mice, birds or primates to tap out the beat to a song!

My theory is that all animals have extensive defense mechanisms to prevent motor entrainment to external stimuli, since that would make one very vulnerable. Therefore, they only exhibit entrainment during ritualized mating, etc.

Humans have evolved to let down our defenses, on occasion, to support social entrainment. Yet, it is still really hard to dance or appreciate music when we are uncomfortable or stressed.

One test of this theory would involve giving animals drugs like mdma to see if it helps them loosen up and appreciate the beat. It works with people, after all. But I suppose proposals like that would be taboo science. Or, perhaps it would be unethical to give chimps mdma?

[1] [https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-016-1013-x](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-016-1013-x)

<comment><USER13> >>> My theory is that all animals have extensive defense mechanisms to prevent motor entrainment to external stimuli, since that would make one very vulnerable. Therefore, they only exhibit entrainment during ritualized mating, etc.

Wow, seems very reasonable! It made mi think about it in a bit different way: as other animals are thought as "following instinct" and "closer to nature" maybe this inhibition systems are way more advanced in humans than in other animals. It would make explaining dance harder, but would fit great to big literary topos "men vs nature".

Is it completely your theory or was it inspired by something that you could recommend?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13239-6#ref- CR80](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13239-6#ref-CR80)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I spent a lot of time with Chimps in West Africa, getting to play with, carry and interact with them a couple of different times [1]

Sitting with a fully-grown chimp on your lap with her face inches from yours while she grooms your beard is a very, very special experience. It's impossible to spent more than 10 minutes with them and not clearly see they are us and we are them. Their facial expressions, they happiness, their playfulness, their grief. Everything about them is like looking in a mirror, or watching a ~5 year old child play.

Absolutely amazing.

I have no doubt they would dance to music, and do _a lot_ more things that show intelligence and higher thinking.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfdo3s8tPUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfdo3s8tPUk)

<comment><USER15> I am certain we are them. Emotions and feelings are entirely an animal trait in us.

Whether they are us is a more complicated question. What are their language and reasoning abilities? Apparently no animals ask questions, even after being "asked". Seems that questioning and reasoning is what makes us human (sapient).

I'm pointing this out because most people would say that it's the emotions and feelings that distinguish us. That's not the case.

<comment><USER16> > What are their language and reasoning abilities? Apparently no animals ask > questions, even after being "asked".

I might misunderstood your statement here, but e.g. dogs can understand a lot of things people say, not just purely pre-learned "commands" but the context of what is going on. They also ask (simple) questions all the time, but they use their body language for that. Most of the time it's some form of "what's going on", but pretty much every dog lover knows the specific "are you taking me with you" pose & look when you dress up to go out, and they're unsure if you'll take them too. Now, obviously it's nothing nearly as complex as "Why do we exists" which are uniquely human type of questions to ask, but IMHO very comparable to the level of my kid when he was 1-2 years old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't gone through all the research to fully understand the argument, but I watched the videos. Not convincing at all.

If I were to make this claim, I'd show a chimpanzee at rest in the video, without any music, then start the music. And actual music, not this loud machinery that would make me sway left and right due to stress.

Edit: not saying that chimps don't dance. Just that this is a very unusual setting.

</comment><comment><USER18> The cages these animals are in looks horrendous and I think that any result that comes forward from such an experiment is biased at the very least. With the current state of technologyouldnt it be more possible to set up these experiments in their natural habitat? I'm thinking about a large amount of cameras that track the animals. At least the animals have a better habitat to live in because this view is abhorrent, and so far I've het to see an animal experimention plant that has a beter environment for animals.

And in another light, how valuable is this kind of research where an extremely intelligent animal is out in solitary confinement and is given tests? There is so much information lost in the process due to interpretation and external factors. Let alone the hilariously low N size.

Also horses, elephants and a large swath or other animals have been shown to appreciate music. I don't even get why this party got funded to study an even higher echelon animal of which it is very reasonable to assume it is able to dance.

</comment><comment><USER19> Those rooms look like torture rooms and then that music.

<comment><USER20> Honestly the choice of music could make this a response to an unusual stressor, but an expert could probably infer from posture and facial expression whether they are in distress.

<comment><USER21> Agreed, this is a lot of speculation from short clips by people who probably don't know what they are talking about or what conditions these animals were really in.

But I have to say the article description:

> He was subjected to periods of piano music with a repetitive bass note for > 24 days.

combined with the choice of music in the videos is just asking for the internet outrage machine to react.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> upon hearing some very rhythmic joyfull children music our dog when he was younger would jump on his feet and start kind of happily bouncing around, not just like running or jumping, more like rhythmically walking and turning while swinging body (very profoundly shifting weight between the paws of different sides) from side to side - it was as close to dancing as i suppose a dog untrained to dance can get, reminded a lot how very young children do it.

</comment><comment><USER23> That "music" sounds like what they would play to someone being tortured to keep him awake for days.

</comment><comment><USER24> Birds can dance too - with really good rhythm. Dogs, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER25> They never tested this before??

</comment><comment><USER26> I checked the video and it sounds like torture to my hears.

I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same tracks in Guantanamo...

</comment><comment><USER27> This is kinda disturbing. Animal experimentation that saves lives is being disrupted while this kind of thing, with no observable value, and clear detriment to the animal, persists?

Sure, I am curious about animals and music, but this just seems to misrepresent both.

Someone please explan how I am wrong and overreacting, since that is usually my rally cry in comments.

<comment><USER28> Sometimes science involves learning things for which an immediate economic benefit is not apparent. It could very well be that a decade or two from now, our knowledge that animals brains universally react to rhythms is a useful datum in cracking some critical piece of knowledge about how brains work and, potentially, how to fix them. Or, alternately, it could turn out to be practically worthless. But we don't know, and knowing more things is almost always not worse than knowing fewer things.

Also, your argument assumes a lot of things: 1.) animal experimentation is being disrupted, 2.) playing music for chimps is clearly detrimental to them, and 3.) the resources that went into this study (these particular chimps, these researchers, and their funding) could have gone into some specific but unidentified better study which did have an pre-observable value. If all of those things are true, which has definitely not been established, than I would grant that science is likely not being conducted in a way that is maximally efficient, but unless there's some hugely valuable experiment that is being overlooked for this, I don't see why you're disturbed.

<comment><USER29> tho if there is one field that almost always results in nothing from random experimentation, it's psychology.</comment></comment></comment>