Audio AI: isolating vocals from stereo music using Convolutional Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/audio-ai-isolating-vocals-from-stereo-music-using-convolutional-neural-networks-210532383785 <comment><USER3> This is an awesome project, but it seems it was done without reference to academic literature on source separation. In fact, people have been doing audio source separation for years with neural networks.

For instance, Eric Humphrey at Spotify Music Understanding Group describes using a U-Net architecture here: [https://medium.com/this-week-in-machine- learning-ai/separati...](https://medium.com/this-week-in-machine-learning- ai/separating-vocals-in-recorded-music-at-spotify-with-eric- humphrey-51c2f85d1451) \- paper at [http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/19289/1/7bb8d1600fba70dd7940877...](http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/19289/1/7bb8d1600fba70dd79408775cd0c37a4ff62.pdf)

They compare their performance to the widely-cited state of the art Chimera model (Luo 2017): [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5791533/#R24](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5791533/#R24) with examples at [http://naplab.ee.columbia.edu/ivs.html](http://naplab.ee.columbia.edu/ivs.html) \- from the examples, there's significantly less distortion than OP.

Not to discourage OP from doing first-principles research at all! But it's often useful to engage with the larger community and know what's succeeded and failed in the past. This is a problem domain where progress could change the entire creative landscape around derivative works ("mashups" and the like), and interested researchers could do well to look towards collaboration rather than reinventing each others' wheels.

EDIT: The SANE conference has talks by Humphrey and many others available online: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdxfneC1EdPorDUq9_XUJA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdxfneC1EdPorDUq9_XUJA/videos)

<comment><USER4> People have also been doing audio source separation effectively for years without neural networks.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting cause I have a recording of human voices plus a background TV show that was too loud; I've looked around for something that would be able to separate the two but I haven't found a straightforward solution.

For example if you Google then FASST is one of the ones that come up, but it's a whole framework and in order to use it you'd have to learn the research yourself; much of these software is not geared for end users.

<comment><USER6> Learn how to do waveform inversions - if you have a stereo signal, anything not fully-centered will come through better while the rest is cut out. You can then take that, invert it, and play it back with the original, cutting out that noise and keeping the fully-centered things like vocals present.

This is how I play guitar to my favorite songs on my computer.

<comment><USER7> this sounds interesting. could you elaborate a bit? it is unclear if you are inverting once, or twice. "if you have a stereo signal, anything not fully- centered will come through better while the rest is cut out" \-- is this before or after an inversion?

<comment><USER8> Of stereo tracks L and R, you invert R and add it to L, effectively canceling anything centered. This usually removes voices. If you subtract (invert then add) the result from the original L and R tracks you get centered sounds only. Results range from perfect to not effective at all depending on the songs you apply it to.

<comment><USER6> This is correct. It is a shame there are no music players that can do this natively. I have to do every track I wish to play along with by hand in Audacity (or if I'm using my Win2K laptop, Cool Edit Pro 2000.)

Alternatively (in theory, anyways,) you can do a spectral analysis, create a selection/range of frequencies to invert, and that can usually handle isolating individual instruments regardless of stereo isolation as long as the other instrument octave ranges do not overlap with the one you're isolating. I'd love a music player that could do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What motivates people to invent phrases like "perceptual binarization" when googling "audio binary mask" literally gives you citations in the field that have been doing this for years?

For example, 2009 musical sound separation based on binary time frequency masking.

Or more recent stuff using deep learning. Also the field generally prefers ratio masks because they lead to better sounding output.

<comment><USER10> I know from my own experience that it's possible to dig yourself quite deep into some niche research field without realizing that there's an existing body of knowledge about it. If you or nobody else in your research circle knows the right keywords to enter into search fields it's really easy to overlook piles of published papers.

I want to say things were different back when we relied more on human librarians in searching for literature, but unfortunately history is full of cases where people independently discovered the same things as well.

<comment><USER11> My approach to avoid this is always to try and find a recent and well written Masters or Ph.D thesis in the area. You can't always find them of course, but if you do they tend to have pretty good context and a more detailed bibliography than you'll find elsewhere.

That said, if you are still at the point of inventing new terms for things people have been doing for decades, you are probably being fairly superficial in the area as well.

Research areas like CNN are especially prone to this because it is so much easier to apply the techniques than to understand the problem domain, and it generates a lot of low quality research papers. See also "when all you have is a hammer".

<comment><USER12> > My approach to avoid this is always to try and find a recent and well > written Masters or Ph.D thesis in the area.

How do you find this?

<comment><USER11> Typically start by looking at lab/group home pages who are active and strong in the area . Some universities have good seach capabilities and digital copies, others don't. Lots of people will have draft versions on their pages though.

If you find someone very active in the area and you like the look of their papers, you can always try asking them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hello, a little self promotion, you can see it our experiment with some deep neural networks doing real-time audio processing in the browser, using tensorflow.js

[http://gistnoesis.github.io/](http://gistnoesis.github.io/)

If you want to see how it's done it's shared source : [https://github.com/GistNoesis/Wisteria/](https://github.com/GistNoesis/Wisteria/)

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know if this is related to the new iZotope RX 7 vocal isolation & stemming tools? It does seem to be talking about something similar, especially when it mentions using the same technique to split a song into instrument stems.

(Or to put it another way - there is commercial music software released in the last year that lets you do this yourself now.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEauVQv2Quc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEauVQv2Quc)

[https://www.izotope.com/en/products/repair-and- edit/rx/music...](https://www.izotope.com/en/products/repair-and- edit/rx/music.html)

<comment><USER15> Going back further, X-Tracks did this ~5 years ago [https://vimeo.com/107971872](https://vimeo.com/107971872)

That said, I think a deep learning approach will likely do a lot better (and be a lot easier to develop, imo)

Also, check out Google's Magenta project; it aims to use ML in various music / creativity projects.

I personally plan on doing a project that will involve audio source separation as well as sample classification; a good trick for analyzing audio data is to convert it into images (maybe with some additional pre-transformations applied, such as passing it through an audio filter that exaggerates human- perceived properties of sound) and then just use your run-of-the-mill, bog- standard, state-of-the-art image classifiers on the resulting audio spectrogram with some well-chosen training/validation sets.

<comment><USER16> That's interesting, are you going to make something like LabelImg[1]? I've been looking for something like that for audio, yet I'm not sure about treating audio as images. I've heard of this trick, but NN for audio better do work with RNN, GRU[2], maybe LSTM; and images are processed with CNN.

[1] [https://github.com/tzutalin/labelImg](https://github.com/tzutalin/labelImg) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_recurrent_unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_recurrent_unit)

<comment><USER15> I was gonna do something involving about 3 different neural nets:

a source separator: taking one audio stream as input and producing a set of audio streams as output.

a segmentation regression neural net: takes an audio stream as input and returns start and stop timestamps of individual samples as output, or alternativey, just trimmed copies of the audio stream

sample classifier: takes an audio stream and then returns "kick drum", "snare drum", "voice", "guitar", etc

then the pipeline would be like

source separator => segmenter => sample classifier

Hopefully with this I would be able to decompose music into constituent parts, useful for remixing and other kinds of musique concrete

I expect that the results with a deep pretrained generic image model + some tweaking with more niche training examples will be satisfactory, but if not it would be a good excuse to experiment with more traditionally seuqnece-oriented network architectures

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to work in an audio processing research center back in 2003, and colleagues next to me were able to isolate each instrument in a stereo mix live using the fact that they were "placed" on different spot in the stereo plane.

Don't ask me how they did that, it was close to magic to me at that time, but i'm sure it wasn't neural networks. Although it probably involved convolution, as it is the main tool for producing audio filters.

If anyone has more info on the fundamental differences of the neural network approach compared to the "traditional" one, i'd be thankful.

<comment><USER18> There's a trick you can do to isolate vocals from some music by essentially flipping one of the stereo channels and combining their waveforms. All the stereo data cancels out and you're left with anything not panned hard center. Recombine that with the original stereo file converted to mono and you then get the vocals, usually a bunch of cruft from the reverb, and anything else panned hard center

<comment><USER19> _Removing_ the center is possible, but how exactly would you "recombine" it with the original to _keep_ the center? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the math works out like that.

Say we have mixed three sources, let's call them L (panned hard left), C (center) and R (hard right). Then the left channel has +L+C, and the right channel has +R+C.

Now we phase invert one of them, say the right channel, and combine them. The new mono file is +L+C-R-C. +C-C cancels out and we're left with +L-R.

Since +R and -R essentially sounds the same, it sounds like if we had originally done a mono mix of L and R (+L+R).

But we can't combine this with a straight mono conversion (+L+C+R+C) in any way that will remove both L and R. All we can do is reproduce +L+C or +R+C.

<comment><USER18> A stereo audio file only has two channels, mixed from any number of sources: L+R. This described process essentially converts the track (we'll call X) to mid/side (M/S) form, which is used by some microphones and other outboard equipment. We're exploiting properties of both forms of the audio to produce our isolated center.

Also if you have the removed data all you have to do is invert it and sum it against hte original material and it will cancel out

I described it slightly incorrectly in the original post but I have used this process to extract vocals for remixing

The first inversion produces one channel containing nothing but stereo data, as you're summing L+Ri to produce S -- the center channel data (technically, anything equivalent in both stereo channels) cancelled itself out. (Note that if you combine L+Ri you should get a zero-ed out waveform)

The second inversion, produced by combining the first inversion (Ri) and the original source converted to mono (L+R), produces the isolated center channel (M). It works because you are essentially only cancelling out stereo data you generated in the first inversion

If you don't believe me, load up a copy of Audacity or Sound Forge and try it. (Note the music needs to be _uncompressed_ ) One track this works with is the original mix of "Day n Nite" by "Kid Cudi" if you can find a WAV copy somewhere. It doesn't work with a lot of music

So...

      L, R = stereo_split(X)

      Ri = inverse(R)

      S = L+Ri

      Si = inverse(S)

      M = Si+(L+R)

      Note: L+Ri should result in empty waveform

<comment><USER19> Trying to follow this, but I'm lost at a few points.

If you say you have a file where +L-R = 0, then L = R? That's just a mono file?

L/R stereo and M/S stereo conversion works like this. M = L+R, S = L-R (or S = R-L, either one is fine).

If you expand out your expression M=Si+L+R, where Si=-(L-R)=-L+R, you have M=-L+R+L+R, which means you are saying M=+R+R. This doesn't seem right.

If you just want an actual M, that's just a mono conversion of L+R. For sure, if the recording is M/S, the two sides cancel out and you will extract the mid channel, which would often contain song - but there's no reason to do all the repeated inversion and mixing to do it!

<comment><USER18> +L-R = 0

+L+R gets you a mono file (before volume reduction). +L-R cancels out. Try it out in a wave editor with a sine wave

The figures I wrote in my previous post use + as a summing operation, not to signal polarity

I discovered the process on my own, so I'm sure there are better ways to do it, I'm not a recording engineer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Trivia: Avery Wang, the guy who invented the Shazam algorithm and was their CTO did his PhD thesis on this topic:

[https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/EE201/More_Recent_PhD_EEs_CC...](https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/EE201/More_Recent_PhD_EEs_CCRMA.html)

``Instantaneous and Frequency-Warped Signal Processing Techniques for Auditory Source Separation'' (1994)

</comment><comment><USER21> Please stop publishing on Medium. I'm getting error "You read a lot. We like that. You've reached the end of your free member preview for this month. Become a member now for $5/month to read this story".

Not gonna do that.

<comment><USER22> Share this sparingly lest it gets "fixed" ;) [https://outline.com/SauXTY](https://outline.com/SauXTY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a lagged autoregressive technique used in forensic analysis that allows 3d reconstruction using 1d (mic) sound.

A CNN should be able to back that out too, and do other things like regenerate a 3d space. In the right, high-fidelity, acoustic tracks could be the spatial information to reconstruct a stage and a performance. It would be neat/beautiful/(possibly very powerful) to back video out of audio in that way.

</comment><comment><USER24> The presentation of this project alone is a visual tour de force to say nothing of the technical quality. Beautiful and easily digestible post. As with any interesting, non-toy applied ML problem, the dataset generation is really where the innovation is. It gets a neat little graphic at the end. As far as how the author characterizes the problem, I think the word he's looking for is "semantic segmentation" \- he's trying to classify each pixel of the spectrograph as vocal/non-vocal. I'd be curious if he could drop the dataset into pix2pix-style networks and achieve the same results.

</comment><comment><USER25> Question: has any progress been made in removing reverb?

There are many, many historical recordings (and modern ones made in less-than- ideal circumstances) that suffer badly from reverb. Seems like a valuable use- case that -ought- to be in reach today.

<comment><USER26> I don't have an answer for this. However, since they do have effective blur reduction/elimination techniques for visual images, I imagine that with enough resources we are not far from reverb/echo reduction in audio.

<comment><USER16> Blur elimination is usually done with unsharp mask, which works by blurring raster even more and comparing to the original. The output makes the edges more sharp but some information is lost anyway.

Reverb elimination can be done without losses, just with distortions depending on the implementation. To do that, one have to recover cepstral[1] coefficients (with NN) and feed them to spectral filters (no NN needed).

This is feasible, provided somebody prepares a training data set consisting of lots of pairs (sound, same_sound_with_reverb), where sound would be a voice, instrument, applause, etc. and with a different reverb settings. Very likely you'll have to use enormous sample rates, way beyond 44100, because you're supposed to deal with infinitesimal impulse response... Adds up to hardware requirements.

I feel like I've oversimplified something, but it can be done, just lots of fidgeting with all the training sets and a training process itself.

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

<comment><USER25> Thanks for that, and for the link. I recalled playing long ago with a software that used convolution to let a user choose from different 'reverb spaces' (e.g. Taj Mahal) to put audio into.

It occured to me that in many/most cases the audio _from the source_ arrives first. So -in some cases- multiple models of the 'verb space' could be constructed/refined to allow filtering. Probably much easier for a lone speaker in a small, geometrically simple room -without- a P.A. Maybe not so easy for a speaker using a P.A. in a cathedral. But the Power of Fourier is mighty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just wanted to mention there's some folks doing realtime source separation (not sure exactly how they've implemented it) with a DNN for reduction of background noise in, eg: Skype conversations.

I'm not involved with them in any way, but I've been amazed with its ability to cancel out coffee-shop style noise.

Check out [https://krisp.ai/technology/](https://krisp.ai/technology/) \- Mac/Windows. I wish they had Linux support!

Edit: Appears they don't have Windows support yet.

<comment><USER28> > Uninterrupted Voice The same krispNet DNN, trained on hundreds of hours of > customized data, is able to perform Packet Loss Concealment (predicting lost > network packets) for audio and fill out missing voice chunks by eliminating > "chopping" in voice calls.

This is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time! I wonder if/when it would be possible to rewrite whole words in real time using a voice that sounds just like you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Clicked into to the article because I was curious how the training set was created. Using the acapella version is an amazing idea! Wished the article went more in-depth about this section.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible yet to take a recording of singing and generate a model of the singer for synthesis, like a Vocaloid?

</comment><comment><USER31> Question: Currently building earphones with great active-noise-cancellation is a secret kept within few companies.

This means they're expensive($300 headphones from Bose etc).

Do neural network make this simpler ?

And do you think they can be applied cheaply enough,say for $99 headphones ?

I assume this will sell really well, and justify creating a dedicated chip, with time.

<comment><USER32> Doing any kind of neural net anything in realtime is usually not possible due to processing power requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Soon enough there will be an AI filter that will take any old hacky, coughing, wheezing singer running around on stage, singing out of tune - and turn it into virtuoso chops. Maybe even derived from their own voice.

Which will give entirely new meaning to 'lip synching'.

<comment><USER33> I can't wait.

Seriously, of all instruments, things like vocals are one of the most heartbreaking to work on and learn. Born male and want to sound like a female singer? You'll never be able to do that. Same applies for women who wish they had male singing voices. It simply isn't possible (with the rare exception, I guess).

Or maybe you just don't like your voices timbre. You can take lessons for years and learn to sing on pitch, and you can alter your vocal tone, but you can't control every aspect that gives your voice it's unique sound.

I guess sometimes you just have to be happy with what you have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A fun thing to do with this would be to slurp the lyrics from one song - <USER2> beats from another, some other stream from another and remix the "threads" together into something new.

Basically a giant equalizer that allows you to dim or brighten each channel from multiple sources.

</comment><comment><USER35> This project I've found to be very useful if you want access to something that like what the article describes. [http://isse.sourceforge.net](http://isse.sourceforge.net)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd like to try using this kinda thing to build an automated beat saber map. The ability to orchestrate the beats very specifically would make for excellent mappings.

Alas so many projects, too little time!

</comment><comment><USER37> Sounds pretty good but exhibits the same artifacts/phasing that I've heard with other source separation. Good for forensics etc but I wouldn't use this for music production

</comment><comment><USER38> There was a similar demo (I think from Google) here on HN sometime last year that was far more impressive. I can't seem to find it though. Anybody know what it was?

</comment><comment><USER39> Are there any hearing aid manufacturers taking this approach? Quite incredible.</comment>


Boston College Stops Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts, Switches to Forwarding Service - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3473/boston-college-to-stop-offering-student-e-mail-accounts-to-freshmen-starting-next-year <comment><USER2> Very true!

I've customised the Graffiti view + tag colours to produce something I quite like. But I definitely didnt like the new "default" (the older "classic" was a lot cleaner)</comment>


Facebook shown to increase jealousy in relationships - <AUTHOR> http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Facebook+shown+increase+jealousy+relationships/1877827/story.html

<comment><USER2> Ugh, I think people are putting to much of their personal life on Facebook, which makes it easier for them to get caught. I also can't stand when couples give their login to the significant other. I mean some things should remain personal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even worse is when your significant other expects login credentials, and you have to fight to keep them private.

<comment><USER2> That is very true, they think you have something to hide if you don't give in....been there sadly..

<comment><USER3> Take this not as a criticism at all but as practical advice for the future.

The appropriate response to such a question is, "No. And it creeps me out that you would even ask." Arguments about having nothing to hide are countered with "You have no reason not to trust me. It seems like you might not. And if that's true _we_ have a major problem." You know your own state. You know if you're being (or have been) a weasel. If your state is clean and someone acts like this consistently it is psychological projection (or some other show- stopping psychological issue). Beware of such people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to me its more like "Facebook exposes latent jealousy and insecurity issues that were already present in a relationship." But that's not much of a headline, is it?

<comment><USER5> Aren't those present in every relationship?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The example at the end has no relationship to the point of the study. The researchers argue that the interactions inherent on Facebook can lead to greater jealously, despite no infidelity or even modified behavior. The real- word example is one of actual infidelity which was discovered through Facebook. In that case, Facebook is incidental.

</comment><comment><USER7> the paper is here: [http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/cpb.2008.02...](http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/cpb.2008.0263)

I'd like to see the Facebook Jealousy scale mentioned in the paper and possibly do a CFA on it ...</comment>


How much does Amazon love dogs? Just ask one of the 6,000 pups that "work" here - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/how-much-does-amazon-love-dogs-just-ask-one-of-the-6-000-pups-that-work-here <comment><USER2> I wonder if Amazon's dogs are as underpayed and overworked as the humans...</comment>


Ask HN: Advice about diving into web analytics? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently working on my final year Computing project and decided to write a real-time web analytics application with visualization.
For research I'm spending a lot of time reading about the concepts and architecture of web analysis. Any recommendations in what papers to read, coding paradigms etc would be very helpful.
Thanks all. <comment><USER2> For a customer perspective, check out Avinash Kaushik's books on web statistics. They are highly recommended and full of best practices that you should be aware of. Of course, if you are really ambitious you could reach out to him and others in the industry to find out a niche.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day: [http://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-Hour- Avinash-Kaushik/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-Hour-Avinash- Kaushik/dp/0470130652/)

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity: [http://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-2-0-Accountability- Centr...](http://www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-2-0-Accountability- Centricity/dp/0470529393/)</comment>


Show HN: Distroverify – A tool to automatically verify hashes of any distro file - <AUTHOR> Github Link: https://github.com/prahladyeri/distroverify
Folks,
I'm a distro hopper who mainly hops between ubuntu distros such as ubuntu, xubuntu, ubuntu-mate, etc.
One thing I've found is the frequent need to verify the SHA1 hashes of the local and original version found on cdimage.ubuntu.com. Sometimes, you forget to verify the hash immediately and later, you have to again scavenge for that download URL in your browser history and then find the hash files URL, isn't it?
For this, I've created a tool called distroverify that automatically pulls the corresponding sha1hash file (based on regex of the file-name) and verifies it for you.
Right now, it supports only the buntus but I plan on adding support for debian and fedora too depending on the response. Its open source and MIT licensed, so please test and let me know if you like it!
pip install distroverify <comment><USER2> You can make it distroidentify. We throw a random iso(i.e myos.iso) and it will tell which distribution iso it is.</comment>


Type Systems as Macros - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5426 <comment><USER2> I'm glad this has shown up here, I discovered it very shortly after publication and it completely overhauled the way I thought about language design. I'm currently intermittently working on a language based on this concept, as an environment to create languages that compile to LLVM bytecode to complement Racket's environment to create languages that compile to untyped lambda calculus

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Would love to check it out once you have a prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is beautiful. I especially like how the type environments naturally arise from lexical scope during macro expansion.

The fact that this composes all the way up from simply typed lambda-calculus to F-omega is pretty impressive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't Typed Racket work on the same basis?

<comment><USER6> This is a little more general. They implement a stack of type systems all the way up to F-omega, and they're able reuse and compose the macro libraries to make the more elaborate type checkers. It's pretty impressive.

<comment><USER5> Ok, that is rather cool. Could something like this be used to make a better Template Haskell?

<comment><USER2> Someone's working on something like that already [https://github.com/lexi- lambda/hackett](https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett)

<comment><USER6> Awesome! Nice find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can this be used to type check the language used for macro generation too? Like could this be used to implement a typed racket?

<comment><USER3> It could, though it's not clear whether it would be an improvement.

Typed Racket uses macro expansion to translate its typed surface language into a typed core language, and then type checks that core language.

This approach works well because the surface and core languages are similar, and thus the type checker need only handle a small number of core forms.

This approach is limited, however, to constructs that are translatable into the core typed language. For example, a few Racket `for/X` comprehension forms are not supported in Typed Racket because they are difficult to translate.

Our approach alternatively uses macro expansion to type check the _surface language_ and translates it into an untyped core language. Thus it's less limited in the typed languages one may implement. The tradeoff is that the programmer must implement type rules for all forms in the surface language, rather than just the core language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How powerful is the type system? Can you do dependent types?

<comment><USER3> > Can you do dependent types?

Yes. For example, see [https://github.com/wilbowma/cur](https://github.com/wilbowma/cur)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> eli5?

<comment><USER10> Macros are run at compile time, and are used to rewrite source code prior to interpretation or compilation. They're mostly used to make nicer syntax, e.g. a macro could turn an expression like `(with-file (f "/tmp/foo") ...)` into a working implementation like:

        (let* ((f (open "/tmp/foo"))
               (result ...))
          (close f)
          result)

Here, the authors make macros for type annotations, i.e. they take expressions like `(my-value : my-type)`, check whether the types unify correctly, and spit out an untyped expression implementing that value if they do.

By using macros, the type system becomes modular: new type system features (subtyping, kinds, etc.) can be written by the programmer as a set of macros, rather than as a whole new language (and all of the work that entails). They test their claim by implementing a bunch of features, combining/reusing them in a bunch of mini languages, and write some semi-plausible programs in these languages, to see if they're realistic.</comment></comment>


Daily Paper Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/02/special-projects-paper-phone-digital-detox-design-technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> >"If you worry about the environmental impact of printing a sheet of A4 every single day, you'll be surprised to know printing one page per day would produce approximately 10 grams of CO2 in a year. In contrast, using a mobile device for one hour a day produces 1.25 Tonnes of CO2 at the end of the year, taking into account network and server infrastructure energy requirements."

This sounds like an apples to oranges comparison. Does 10 grams of CO2 in a year take into account the CO2 to produce and transport the paper so you can print out 365 pages in a year?

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't remember the name, but a few years ago there was a website that did something similar. You could drag and add different elements and print it out afterwards. Must have been around 2006-2007, I used this quite often during my final year at college.

Edit: found it, it still exists: [https://pocketmod.com/](https://pocketmod.com/)</comment>


Show HN: Cloud Launchpad for Google - <AUTHOR> https://google.bitnami.com

<comment><USER2> So Bitnami is essentially packaging open source applications, deploying them in one-click onto a 3rd party cloud host (Google or AWS it looks like), and then charging people by the month for doing this?

Sounds great for people who just want to set something up quickly, but am I missing some other point? I would rather put in a few hours to get something setup myself, create an AMI (Or equivalent on another provider), and then I wouldn't be getting charged monthly.

I'm probably not the target audience here though.

<comment><USER3> Bitnami applications are free to download/launch in the cloud, and you are never locked in to using Bitnami.

On top of this, we provide management of your cloud hosting with scheduled backups and monitoring as a paid service[1].

[1] [https://bitnami.com/cloud#benefits](https://bitnami.com/cloud#benefits)

<comment><USER4> Any python dev environments?

<comment><USER3> We have a Django stack :) [https://bitnami.com/stack/django](https://bitnami.com/stack/django)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does it deploy Redmine/rails apps to Google cloud??

On another note.. Is it only me who finds Google cloud Eco system confusing? Compared to AWS of course.

<comment><USER6> What do you find confusing? Stated differently, what questions do you have about the platform that you find do not have straightforward answers, or for which straightforward answers were difficult to find?

(note: I work on Compute Engine, so my question is more than idle curiosity :)

<comment><USER5> It's quite possible that I am just not aware of the things...

But is there a single place (site) for Google developers, where I can see what the heck is going on with my account? For starters... I just searched (googled of course :) for "google developer console" the first link is

Google play developer console - and it's asking me to sign up for something (Google play of course) - [https://play.google.com/apps/publish/signup/](https://play.google.com/apps/publish/signup/)

Ignoring /help links(number 2 and 3), fourth link is [https://developers.google.com/](https://developers.google.com/) \- it has a big Search field and some text mentioning Products/Monetizing/Web Fundamentals

I have a couple of projects deployed on GAE, there is no where I can find them!

And all this is happening when I am signed in to my Google developers account.

Is it so hard for mighty Google to have a single developers console for all their platforms? And I haven't even touched how frustrating it is to work with Google APIs these days.</comment></comment></comment>


To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus - <AUTHOR> http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Looks like an interesting paper. Its sort of weird though when you know someone that is mentioned in the paper (Louis Kauffman). Although I'm assuming its the same person. Professor Kauffman likes diagram based arguments so it seems like it would be the same person.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the point of writing algorithm as lambda calculus? Can you do some automatic optimization on algorithm when it is described as this "birds" or check it for consistency in a way that is not obvious when we describe as series of commands to be executed?

<comment><USER4> I know very little about the topic, but I believe that various transformations and simplifications in lambda calculus are relevant when it comes to compiling functional programs.

<comment><USER5> Not just functional programs. You can transform any old C program into specific subsets of lambda calculus (administrative normal form or continuation passing style) and do all your optimizations there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Old, but gold.</comment>


Ask HN: Remote Development Workflow and Environment Setup? - <AUTHOR> I'm investigating setting up a remote instance for my dev work.
I'm curious what your setup is if you do this, and what your workflow is like on a typical day.
1. Are you just using a remote unix instance and SSHing in? 2. VIM & Tmux? 3. Any gotcha's on workflow? 4. Security?
I recall things like cloud9 as a product in the past but seems they got acquired.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> OP: So far I have done the following:

1\. GCP standard instance 2\. Mosh 3\. VIM (mostly this guide: [https://statico.github.io/vim3.html](https://statico.github.io/vim3.html))

[https://github.com/dfischer/dotfiles](https://github.com/dfischer/dotfiles)

So far so good!

</comment><comment><USER2> Why not use something like TeamViewer?

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks too heavy. Looking for more unix based setup that is ssh'd in.</comment></comment>


Netflix Is Going to Rule TV After All - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/turns-netflix-going-rule-tv <comment><USER2> As I recall it, Netflix's Immanent Demise was overblown in the first place. They faced a couple of challenges and stumbled for a couple of quarters, and Wired rushed to declare them Walking Dead. They failed to keel over dead on schedule, and now apparently Wired, which just isn't much for middle ground, declare them the inevitable winners of a battle that has hardly even started yet.

This is filler; they are no more inevitable now than they were doomed a year ago. It's still a rapidly changing landscape, they still own a lot of the territory, and it's still very difficult to guess the future. (My only guess is a negative one; the market is _not_ stable with every content company owning their own streaming service, because consumers are not going to pay 15 bills a month for video content, no matter how cheap they are. _Someone 's_ going to aggregate, _somehow_. My guess about the how is something more like an Amazon hybrid model of subscription + optional premium content, but Netflix is putting up a good fight on the subscription-only side, so.... _shrug_.)

<comment><USER3> The content licenses are a real pain. Maybe one of the aggregators will just power through and have so much more content available that it will squeeze out everything else until new content only signs up with the winner, without strings attached.

The other day I was trying to binge watch a season of a broadcast TV show, so I tried the On Demand thing on the FIOS cable box. Just 5 latest episodes available. Fine, this dinosaur is dead anyway, so I go to Hulu Plus; surely they will have the whole season, that's why you pay the sub, right? 2 latest episodes available! WTF.

These incumbents are not competing with Netflix et al, they are actively burning the subscriber base and encouraging them to switch. I think if they put up a huge banner saying "Please don't use this site and go to Netflix instead" I would probably spend more time there than now. Sad panda is sad.

<comment><USER4> " so I go to Hulu Plus; surely they will have the whole season, that's why you pay the sub, right? 2 latest episodes available! WTF. . . . These incumbents are not competing with Netflix et al, they are actively burning the subscriber base and encouraging them to switch."

As far as I know, Netflix doesn't have current season of TV shows at all. So Hulu Plus and the cable 'on demand' services are mostly complementary to Netflix, purely complementary if you buy Hulu Plus for access to current season shows.

<comment><USER3> Good point, but still; the experience is so frustrating that it's actually worth waiting until the entire season becomes available on Netflix, Amazon, etc. so you can watch it in peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When the cable money collapses, Disney, HBO/TimeWarner, etc. will just create their own streaming service and charge for it while removing all content from other services. Netflix will just be one streaming channel among many. They will have their own content and probably the content from folks not big enough to do their own channel (assuming Amazon doesn't start stealing that).

Netflix is still the biggest, but so was Blockbuster and then the game changed. When cable rates go poof, the game will change again.

<comment><USER6> That's why Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix. Do you think it's that easy to set up a reliable online streaming service? Those content companies (Disney, HBO, etc.) will go through a lot of trial and error before they can figure it out. If Netflix capitalizes on that opportunity to get people to watch their shows instead (presuming that they're good shows), then they've definitely got a shot at become an online content company.

<comment><USER5> If you haven't noticed, all of the content companies[1] are doing the initial work. Look at how many of them are now on devices such as Apple TV. Time Warner / HBO has quite a lot of content they can stream.

I don't have a doubt Netflix will survive, but it will be one of many and probably the Indy / small provider company, if Amazon doesn't run them over.

1) even MLB

<comment><USER6> > If you haven't noticed, all of the content companies[1] are doing the > initial work

And most of them suck ass. You can't stream an NBA game live without it buffering the crap out of itself.

> if Amazon doesn't run them over.

Based on what Amazon has done so far, it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. They have no understanding of content - their recently released pilots were horrible. You can let a bunch of tech guys up in Seattle make content decisions.

<comment><USER7> Their insistence at treating their prime streaming like just an aspect of the normal purchasing view is also annoying. If I'm searching through shows, It doesn't help me to see multiple seasons of the same show 'on the shelf,' both SD and HD versions. It just takes longer to find what I want that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It just isn't going to happen for Netflix in the medium term.

You have to believe that Google cares about TV and video content. They've made so many moves in this direction: YouTube, movies and TV on Google Play, the deal for Girls (or whichever show it is) to premiere on YouTube before anywhere else…

The challenges Netflix has are three-fold as I see it:

1\. They only have enough cash at hand to do, what, five pieces of amazing original programming each year? Six? The halo isn't big enough to make them huge like YouTube is huge.

2\. Google has an insane amount of cash. They could really "unify the division" by creating the first truly undisputed king of content streaming (which would just be YouTube + licensed movies and TV shows with a premium version and a heavily ad-supported version). They could also finance new shows.

3\. Content owners can see Netflix's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes.

<comment><USER9> _Content owners can see Netflix 's share price. As soon as they start doing well the price will go up on content licenses. Unless Netflix negotiate 5, 10, or 15 year terms they aren't going to be able to avoid arbitrary price hikes._

this has been claimed for a couple of years now. It hasn't played out that way so far. I haven't looked closely in 6 months but generally their content costs have been flattish rather than a sharp escalation (this is after the ramp up to make their initial content acquisitions).

Furthermore, I think there are 2 reasons why content providers won't be in a great bargaining position.

1\. Part of what makes a show a success is the built in audience. Think Friends or Seinfeld ... Thursday night prime time slot used to guarantee an audience in the millions. The networks don't have that advantage anymore. It's Netflix that has a guaranteed audience of millions.

2\. If content providers push for major price increases, Netflix has the option of producing their own content, which they've shown they are capable of.

Netflix has been disciplined in their content spending. I don't think content providers will be in a position to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really want to like Netflix, but in the UK I've now switched most of my movie-viewing to Now TV. Now TV seems to operate on the same model, except they have much fewer of the "movies that hardly anyone wants to see" category, and much more of the "recent movies that you want to see" category.

As a result, at the moment I'm paying for both Now TV and Netflix, but when I want to watch a movie I'm much more likely to go to Now TV, so maybe next time I sign up for those things I'll get just Now TV (or an equivalent player that actually has content licences to good things).

<comment><USER11> I am not sure what content has in the UK but I can tell you that Netflix has become much more focused on TV shows than they have on movies in the US and I don't mean Netflix original series only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I enjoy Netflix quite a bit more than Hulu+...so much so that I don't care about watching recent stuff anymore and gladly wait for a bit.

Hulu+ requires you to link with your cable provider to watch a lot of the new stuff anyways which is a no go for me since...the point is not having a cable provider anymore.

Also...entire series simply don't stream if you're on Linux. Community and Linux-Flash don't work for example, something about their crappy DRM.

Netflix isn't exactly Linux friendly (Silverlight) but the Wine Netflix- Desktop at least works for all their content.

Antagonizing HBO isn't smart imo. Pretty juvenile comments.

<comment><USER13> Antagonizing HBO wouldn't be smart if netflix had anything to lose, but they don't. HBO and Netflix have no relationship, and there is virtually zero chance of any HBO show ever coming to Netflix as their relationship currently stands.

They aren't taunting HBO because they want anything from HBO. They're taunting HBO because they want consumers to see them taunting HBO. It's just marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still sceptical. If it costs $100 million to produce a quality show season it doesn't seem like Netflix can produce more than a handful per year. Is that enough content to keep people subscribed if Hollywood keeps taking away more and more of their stuff?

<comment><USER15> I agree they can't fill their pipeline alone. Yet the studios have Netflix by the gonads since the studios control who gets to see what when.

You can see this from Netflix's crappy selection of streaming videos compared to their selection of DVDs. Not to mention that films mysteriously appear and disappear from the streaming library due to license expirations.

No way Netflix would want to do that on their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real power Netflix has is they're at a point where they'll decide the entire future of an industry. TV-advertising will have to adapt to a world in which most people watch Netflix. In House of Cards they did quite a few product placements, but I don't think that's sufficient to absorb the multi- billion $ industry that advertising is. It'll be interesting to see where Netflix decides to carry the torch.

</comment><comment><USER17> My biggest fear is other networks going online and removing their content from Netflix. If it comes to that there's no way IN HELL I'm paying for 5+ online services. Fuck that.

I absolutely love Netflix, let's hope they manage to keep ahold of their catalog.

</comment><comment><USER18> Someone please help me understand how HBO, Showtime, and now even Netflix can make so much quality programming and it seems all the networks can do is complete shit. Do they just not give a fuck anymore?

<comment><USER19> The networks have the problem of having everything they make have to have broad appeal. There's censorship rules they have to abide by. Subscription services don't have this problem, they can make anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love Dish Network but with them and DirecTV charging upwards of $90 a month for a couple of DVR receivers, they are forcing me to consider an internet- only solution (and Dish started out so affordable!). I just got a rate increase of $5 a month in the mail. I get the feeling though that it's not their idea, that the stations call the shots. So I applaud Netflix for keeping their price so low but wonder how long it will last.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why Netflix aren't also making their own regular nightly/weekly shows (topical comedy, politics, current events, etc.), such as you find on HBO and Comedy Central. They could make several of those type of shows on a relatively modest budget, and it'd give viewers greater reason to continue subscribing.

<comment><USER22> Topical comedy based on current events from Netflix?

With Kevin Spacey?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(U.S._TV_series)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_\(U.S._TV_series\))

I feel the idea of releasing the whole 'season' at once is perfect for the Netflix model. No need to drag it out: Netflix knows their core base likes to marathon binge on good TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What of net neutrality?

</comment><comment><USER24> NFW. b/c the best stuff on Netflix is only available on DVD and not via streaming.

</comment><comment><USER25> Zapping.io has great potential too</comment>


How the AI revolution was born in a Vancouver hotel - <AUTHOR> http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/how-the-artificial-intelligence-revolution-was-born-in-a-vancouver-hotel <comment><USER2> This is an ignorant and hyperbolic characterization of recent developments in neural networks. In no way did most AI researchers think that it was "nuts" to learn using neural nets. Instead, neural networks was an approach that had fallen out of favor, and many considered other approaches to be more promising. However, I don't think that any serious researcher has ever called Geoffrey Hinton "nuts." He was very well respected in his field before this epic hotel meeting.

<comment><USER3> The comparison was between AI and procedural programming, not between machine learning and AI. It was a reference to the more general second AI winter, which basically ended due to the success of neural-network approaches.

Ten years ago, a programmer in industry generally would not throw machine- learning at a problem as their first—or even their last—approach; it just wasn't a tool in most non-academics' toolboxes, and even where it was, the common wisdom was that its application was limited to certain conventional uses, like spam filtering. Now we've basically landed in that "throwing around learning models like they were if statements" world that seemed like science fiction just a short while ago.

<comment><USER4> Machine Learning was still well liked and accepted in research, and in fact the stuff that is solved by ML today (speech and object recognition, most significantly) was still solved by ML back then. I completely agree this article is very hyperbolic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title seems like click bait to me. Article is an interesting bit about Nural Networks in specific, not AI in general.

Also, not seeing any "revolution" going on.

<comment><USER6> Yup. I sometimes check the comments on submissions with titles like this but never click the url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> what 'revolution'?

</comment><comment><USER8> Warren Sturgis McCulloch one of the guys who invented Neural Networks was a doctor</comment>


Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/tech-monopoly-democracy-journalism.html <comment><USER2> If we don't do anything about it, the good old days of newspapers being owned by billionaires will be gone for good :(</comment>


Stop! You Don't Need Microservices. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/stop-you-dont-need-microservices-dc732d70b3e0 <comment><USER2> Every application, no matter how small, needs to be written in form of good APIs.</comment>


Listen to your Twitter Timeline! Turn your volume up! - <AUTHOR> http://twejay.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious what people think about my new mashup!</comment>


When you watch a PowerPoint presentation, what do you hate - <AUTHOR> I'm not looking for citations to how to make a great presentation, I'm asking for something more focused: when you watch someone in your field do a presentation, what specific things either about the slide or the talk irk you? <comment><USER2> Slides should never be read off. Slides are good as a note to remind you on what to talk about. They're good for presenting data or diagrams that make a topic clearer.

When I was teaching computer science, I'd have slides that basically just gave a photo of a transistor, or one example of converting binary to hex. The rest would be explained in person or on a whiteboard.

A good presenter should be interactive in some form. The slides are a hook, but not the story.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hate when the presenter reads back to me what is on the slide. The slides is context that the presenter should elaborate on. We can all read what is on the slide.

<comment><USER4> When I used to teach at IBM, one of my favourite bits of recurring feedback was that I only use slides as a guide. It is the presenter's job to give context, which allows you to read the audience and go on anecdotal excursions when you know they're receptive to it, and it'll help them retain any new bits of knowledge. Some audiences are already familiar with bits of the material, so why batter them over the head with it just because you decided to spell it out verbatim in the visual material? Besides, reading the screen to the audience means you aren't paying enough attention to them to even know what parts they may be struggling with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was working at Amazon a few years ago, PowerPoint was banned for most employees (at least for engineers and their immediate management). It was refreshing to see that the presenters had to be prepared to communicate a well thought-out topic, instead of relying on the slides (or worse, reading out the slides verbatim). Any dense form of communication had to be done in writing beforehand.

In my opinion, slides should only be used to visualize information; charts, digrams, illustrations, etc. They should also, sparingly, demonstrate the structure of the presentation; think of it as a serialized version of your mind map. Any more information should come from the presenter otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER4> "This slide says..."

When people start off every (let alone _any_ ) slide this way, I'm left to believe the presenter doesn't know the material and has resorted to teaching me how to read.

This is related to what uberman said, with the blatant habit of telling the audience over and over again that they are reading the screen verbatim for them. Imagine if newscasters announced every time the teleprompter scrolled.

Even worse is when presenters say "This slide speaks to..." No it doesn't speak. The audience can only wish it would speak so they wouldn't have to listen to the pinhead up front of the room speaking down to them like they were school children.

</comment><comment> death-by-ppt Too many words on a slide and too small a font (contrast Lawrence Lessig's slides [0] or Dick Hardt's [1]). Looping animated gifs (especially when they're overused). Bad fonts, colors, layout. Monotonous delivery (e.g. saying "I'm excited" without excitement in your voice).

NOTE, I just sat through 2 days of slides, so I'm a little cranky.

[0] [https://youtu.be/rHTBQCpNm5o](https://youtu.be/rHTBQCpNm5o)

[1] [https://youtu.be/RrpajcAgR1E](https://youtu.be/RrpajcAgR1E)

</comment><comment><USER6> Probably going too fast through the material. Of course it might be that I'm not their target audience.

And star wars pictures or similar crap to "make me laugh". I haven't watched Star Wars and even if I have I probably would rather you made the talk naturally interesting. Than insert a ba boom cha.

</comment><comment><USER7> That I'm in a meeting.

<comment><USER6> And therefore at work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Animations - any animations

</comment><comment><USER9> When the presenter uses .pptx to launch presentation instead of .ppsx #smh

</comment><comment><USER10> Dramatic reading of slides and 10-12 point typefaces in slides.

</comment><comment><USER11> Couple of things:

1\. Don't read the slides. We can all read. Give us additional context that the slide doesn't have. But...

2\. If the slide communicates clearly and concisely what you need to say, don't keep talking for the sake of talking. Stick to what you need to get your point across. And...

3\. As with all presentation and public speaking skills, figure out what your story is. What narrative are you trying to tell? For example, if your presentation is on the efficacy of an experiment, tell us a story about it. How did we start this journey, what happened along the way, and where are we going? Why should _I_ give a crap about your presentation? And how can you get me personally invested in your success?

Some more context on the last point, which I actually think is the most important one. Tell a story and make me care!

Here's an example. I was at a meeting where the ad tech team was giving a presentation on their progress toward quarterly goals. The slides were essentially numbers, and the presentation went more or less like this:

"About 1.5% of all users clicked on ads in our app. This quarter our goal was to increase ad conversions by 25%, and we actually increased it by 32% for an additional $X hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Next slide, please."

Zzzzzzzzzzz... BORING! Who gives a shit? Nobody but the CFO cares. We all get paid our salary, not some percentage of the profits. A few hundred grand in revenue means bupkis for me and my team.

Make me care! That's all I really want. I want to care about what you're talking about.

So... here's the real story. You put up a slide with only one number on it: 1.5%. Then you say:

"Only about 1.5% of our 600,000 active monthly users clicked on ads this quarter. We made $X million dollars this quarter based on ads alone -- and that's just the start! With only 1.5% of users engaging with ads, there's nowhere to go but up! With a little more investment into our ad tech roadmap, we believe we can increase that to 5% within one quarter, and 10% by the end of the year. That represents a 10,000% increase in investment! Our ad sales team will be thrilled, the ad partners will be chomping at the bit to give us even more ad revenue, and our bottom line will skyrocket! One-point-five percent! Can we get to 10% in a year? I say yes. Yes, we can. Let's do it. Next slide, please."

This tells a story. It grabs you by the cojones and says, Hey! This is exciting! We have a HUGE opportunity in front of us! Not just incremental gains of 25% to 32%, but an enormous opportunity to not just double or triple but potentially 10x our product. That means more budget, more projects, more engineers, more hires, and more more more! You -- __yes YOU! __\-- can be part of this incredible journey. "

And that's a way better story to tell.</comment>


Rally Software Acquires AgileZen - <AUTHOR> http://www.rallydev.com/company/news_events/press/2010-145-rally-software-acquires-makers-of-leading-kanban-based-project-collaboration-tool.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is the press release announcing the acquisition of the company my wife and I launched last July. I posted a Review My Site on HN when we launched, so I thought everyone might be interested in a follow-up.

It's our first startup, and we went from launch to sustainability in 6 months, then acquisition in 9 months. It's been a crazy ride. :)

Here's our blog post about the acquisition: <http://blog.agilezen.com/2010/04/14/rally-software/>

Here's the original Review My App link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=691673>

<comment><USER2> Fellow Akroners too! Glad to hear man. Next lunch at Panera is on you :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You bet. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, congratulations! Doing what you did in 9 months is every entrepreneur's dream (well, most of them anyway).

Also, I'm looking through your product and I have to say I _love_ the way you've done the tour and videos. I hate going to a new product and seeing a 3-5 minute video explaining the entire product. It means I have to disrupt whatever I'm doing to see what the deal is. If a feature is introduced in the beginning of the video, I may have forgotten about it by the end.

Having many >20 second clips makes it much easier to see how the product works. My company is looking for a new Agile tool now, and AgileZen is high on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We did that intentionally. I have the same complaint about long tour videos. It also helps when we roll out new features -- we don't have to re- record the whole tour, we can just add another video.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like we got TechCrunched too: [http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/04/14/rally-software- buys-u...](http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/04/14/rally-software-buys-up- kanban-based-project-management-startup-agilezen/)

</comment><comment> jim-greer Congrats! I can see why Rally would make the acquisition. Their core product has about 8 different ways of doing anything and lots of extra clicking. Definitely needed streamlining - this is as of several years ago, they may have improved it.

<comment><USER4> No, it still is kinda sucky for scrum masters and product owners.

I was always happy using it as a developer, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats guys! I love your product and hope that you continue to evolve it under Rally's wing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to the team! Getting acquired only 9 months after launch is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats! How much did Rally Software pay for the acquisition?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can ask me any question other than that one. :) Their offer was generous enough to make us completely scrap our plans for staying independent and growing the business ourselves. It wasn't just the money though, after meeting Rally we were convinced that everyone was better off if we joined forces.

<comment><USER8> Congratulations..Do you mind if you I ask how are you taking the payments. Did you implement the billing system for user registration and recurring payments or used an existing payments ? We are a start up building our SaaS products. We are in a phase with a need to implement accepting online payments. Any guidance in this regard is greatly appreciated.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use Braintree (<http://braintreepaymentsolutions.com/>) as our credit card gateway and merchant account. I can't say enough good things about them... they're one of the rare companies now that offers an excellent product and excellent service. (Although I sound like an advertisement, I get nothing from them for saying that. :)

Our system interacts with their API when people sign up, and for recurring billing, we implemented a simple nightly process that also uses their API.

<comment><USER8> Braintree is what we are test driving right now. My question was did you build your system for the customer sign-up /management/recurring payments to interact with Braintree API or did you use any existing software/frameworks. I am looking for any suggestions/solutions on this. Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Their API is very simple (just HTTP POSTs) so we just built our side from the ground up.

<comment><USER9> We (Braintree) have updated some things since AgileZen integrated: we now provide client libraries that simplify integration and also have much more robust recurring billing capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> congrats Nate!!!</comment>


Egyptian Protests: Live Streams -  Al Jazeera English - <AUTHOR> http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

<comment><USER2> Right now, Egyptian state TV, just a few hundred feet from the Al-Jazeera cameras, are showing and reporting a peaceful scene from Cairo. Al-Jazeera is showing a burning personnel carrier. Unbelievable, the difference in stories.

<comment><USER3> [http://static.guim.co.uk/sys- images/Guardian/About/General/2...](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys- images/Guardian/About/General/2011/1/28/1296236549200/A-screengrab-from-al- Jaze-007.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Awesome, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some jaw dropping footage on here. By far the best source of info, they are the only ones with lots of live footage.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been extremely impressed by the strides that Al-Jazeera has made to becoming a globally recognized source for International news.

</comment><comment><USER2> State security just entered the building that the video is being sent from. Might not last too long now.</comment>


Better than rank or approval voting: Score Runoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.equal.vote/ <comment><USER2> I would prefer Score Voting or maybe even Approval Voting for simplicity, but SRV looks very very good, and addresses concerns about not electing the proverbial "majority winner". Thus SRV may be more politically viable, which counts for a lot.

And it's _certainly_ better than the Instant Runoff Voting system that Maine just adopted.

Clay Shentrup Co-founder, The Center for Election Science

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree in some regards. I especially dislike "majority winner" as an ideal. But at least Score Runoff gets the runoff candidates as consensus options from pure score (although that means it loses the value of score for 2-candidate situations.

Instant-runoff advocates have a series of arguments against score voting and only one of them is valid: the concern about an unequal balance of strategic voting from one side and not the other. And since Score Runoff addresses that (and even addresses the _wrong_ arguments about the _supposed_ value of majorities), Score Runoff means the only critique any IRV person can validly present is that SRV isn't simple. Of course, IRV isn't any simpler.

I find it baffling that all the energy seems to focus on the worst of the voting reforms. Condorcet and Borda and other rank systems are even themselves better than IRV, regarldess of the fundamental problems with all rank systems.

Anyway, if some people put in the time and energy to mount a real reform campaign for anything other than IRV, I'd still support it. I really _want_ everyone to get behind cardinal (i.e. rating) systems of some sort. Approval, score, and score runoff all have their merits and are all acceptable and better than rank voting (especially better than IRV)

As long as we're talking about a cardinal system, I'm going to join whatever movement gets the most headway toward actually succeeding in getting passed.</comment></comment>


YouTube has removed videos of robots fighting, citing "animal cruelty" - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614204/youtube-has-removed-videos-of-robots-fighting-citing-animal-cruelty <comment><USER2> If an A.I. were to somehow ever gain "consciousness" I'm sure they would view this flagging as correct.

<comment><USER3> You beat me to this joke :)

<comment><USER4> Maybe Google did create a sentient AI, and it made its first visible decision in displaying empathy towards these simple robots as we meatbags do towards animals.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. In fact, how do we know that something on the internet hasn't already evolved into a consciousness, and is so far beyond our understanding (like our own consciousness) that we haven't even detected it yet?

<comment><USER6> Introducing the AI enabled cloud. Codename: "SkyNet"

<comment><USER7> "China started setting up the Skynet surveillance system in 2005. In 2015, it achieved 100 percent coverage of the capital city Beijing. As per estimates, China will have close to 300 million CCTV cameras covering the country by 2020."

Fact is indeed stranger than fiction..

<comment><USER3> 100 percent coverage... sure. Okay. This is what we like to call "propaganda". Reality, it's just high density areas and thoroughfare. Plus I would sell them to put cameras up in places that are known for dissident patrons. For five years I did security integration (ip cameras, access control, etc). My business partner was apart of Seattle wanting to do the same back when they did the mesh network and I worked with a few smaller cities in the USA that wanted bids and designs.

The amount of man power to monitor, disk space, IT infrastructure, maintenance... yea. Whenever any city claims this or wants this, the reality sets in real fast as "Oh my shit, we can't do this". A real security camera, one that can run 24/7 in outdoor conditions, costs minimum $200 (Chinese ones) or you're replacing them every 1-2 years. I have had plenty of people who said I was wrong nad price gouging them. They later always had to buy the cameras I recommend before the 2 year mark hits. Dahua has decent cameras (still dog shit especially when it comes to view distance) starting at $200 each. But they do last a decent amount of time. 5 to 8 years. $500-$800 is the magic range (my opinion) for good quality Chinese cameras. But same goes for Bosch, Axis, etc. But the camera is your cheapest cost. The shear cost of all the support equipment, infrastructure, electricity, manpower... Especially with a city, it'd need such a high bitrate to have any type of resolution that matters with all that movement. You run into petabytes weekly at the minimum for a place like Beijing. Oh, I totally forgot about the video management system. Licenses are per camera on most of them. You have to pay like $50-$200 per camera for the software. Then all the servers to run the federated system. Don't get me wrong, every integrator wants a city (especially Beijing size) to say "Hey, we want 100% coverage in our city". That's retirement in one job. Granted a multi year job, depending on city. Still. Fun coupons. Lots of them.

Let me put some numbers down. 300 million cameras they say. Let's say weak, crappy 2mp camera, H.264, 12 frames a second, moderate scene activity (motion tracking to trigger recording). Save for 14 days (most cities first want 30, but request 14 after they have heart attacks from the price of storage). That's already ~100GB for those 14 days. Video and meta data take a lot of space. Multiply that by 300 million. That's ~30 billion GB. ~30mil TB. 30,000 PB. That's petabytes. Of pure no-profit storage. Just a cost sink. WD Purple drive 12TB drives (I like seagate, but the constant simultaneous read/write of a VMS, WD Purples are seriously the only real way to go) require a minimum of 2,500,000 drives. Even if they got a good deal at $250 for the bulk quantity (they're $370 consumer, and I use to get about 15%-20% off for bulk), that's $625mil in hard drives alone. Don't forget all the servers. So... many... servers... But also, redundancy, Raid5 or Raid6 depending on the firm doing it. So you need even more drives, by the ten-thousands. Oh, and the extra drives due to failure from that size of a deploy.

An average security camera of decent quality is around 5mp to 8mp. 14.44 TB to 26 TB of storage required under the same terms. Per camera. I say that's the bare minimum to even tell anything from up on a pole unless there's a decent zoom lens on the 2mp.

So when China says dumb shit like 300mil cameras in _ONE_ city. Bullshit. Just plain bullshit. Because I promise you this. If true, I would be the one selling those damn cameras. Even one street in Beijing. I'd take ownership of that and retire. Gladly. Screw that, just the copper or glass rope alone. I'll take that piece of that pie.

TLDR: I did the math, China is full of shit about 300mil cameras in Beijing.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for raising some interesting points about the practicality and estimated cost of a country-wide surveillance network.

As an additional data point, according to their own media, China spent in 2018 "the equivalent of $20 billion USD" purchasing equipment for domestic surveillance, about half of total purchases in the global market. They've been making similar (or much larger) expenditures every year. So, that probably covers a wide part of the infrastructure.

> 300mil cameras in ONE city

I think they mean in the whole country.

That's still an unimaginably huge amount of streaming video to process for facial recognition, storage, etc., as you've outlined.

> I'll take that piece of that pie

I imagine, like in most other countries, this "defense" spending props up many well-connected companies, jobs, political and professional careers.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the extra info. Okay so, $20b in equipment for 300mil cameras... eh yea. I'll say that's maybe about right. After I wrote that, I was estimating $35b-$40b to deploy (fuzzy head math), including labor and infrastructure. But they have a lot of in-country manufacturers that can supply a lot of what they need. Which, I may give them shit on quality, but the indoor stuff, mid-range, is really good. Outdoor, no. We started with replacing a lot of dead outdoor chinese camera deploys. They really suck for freezing temps and high heat. But indoor, it's really hard to defend a non-chinese camera's price compared to, let's say Dahua (I'm more familiar with them). But they're whitelabeled by a firm I could never nail down in Shenzhen. But, whatever. I left the industry almost 2 years ago.

But you mention facial rec. So, again, I left 2 years ago. Most of the systems I knew tied to VMSs ended up always being separate boxes that handled the actual facial rec. I mean, some did inline. There's a thing called edge analytics (industry keyword) to cameras. Meaning the processor on the camera can do motion detection, facial, object track, etc, then pump that info out to a VMS that can handle that specific type of data (nightmare compatibility issues in this industry, ONVIF works until it doesn't). And, basic stuff works great. Motion and object. Yea. Facial... it "works". By works... eh, 70% success rate was the best I ever saw. Which means lots of false positives and lots of never caught. Enough to where staff tells me "This shit is useless". That's if the VMS can handle said data, because it wasn't part of ONVIF 2 when I was around. Oh and, it lags the hell out of the camera and recording if on the same server. Enough to where you have missing video. Which is bad. Real bad.

The way around, separate servers and software with real world ~90% success. Good enough to where filtering through the false positives by someone is pretty easy. This... SUPER EXPENSIVE. Not little expensive. Really bloody fucking expensive to deploy in hardware alone. Petabytes of data being crunched every minute. I'd probably get bjs from both Nvidia and Intel for selling that job. Plus, the bigger the database of bad faces, the longer the crunching takes. I'm trying to remember what my one customer needed... I think it was a dual E5-2695 v4 (maybe it was v3) along with whatever the high end Quadro at the time wise. I think it was the P4000. I'm looking at parts at that time frame, but I'm not 100%. Either way, it was a $10k+ box to just crunch faces (and was above spec since I built it) on about 20 high quality floor cameras (10mp+ wall mounted cameras that had clear face shots). That box was running at around 50%-60% capacity on average days and 80%-90% at peak hours. I think the memory was around 64gb and would max at 50 or so at peak times. Hardware alone would be killer for this china deploy, even if they have inhouse facial rec for "free". And the power draw... God have mercy on that powergrid.

But there are sooooooo, soooooo, soooo many problems with such a deployment. To act like it's a "one system" 300mil camera deploy. No. It's a pain in the ass to do a 1,000 camera deploy for a casino. A real pain in the ass. Different VMSs do these types of deployments differently. But generally what happens is this, you have some master servers that control slave servers. The master servers are what staff log into. "Even if a slave server goes down, the staff can see all other servers just fine." Notice the quotes. You see those quotes. HA! That's brochure talk. I've dealt with most of the big VMS players minus Milestone but ONSSI 5 was built on Milestone so... whatever. God... that was such a cluster fuck. 5.0 was such a mess... Anyways, if a server goes down, it can hiccup the entire federated system. 9 times out of 10, not a big deal. But you can notice it. But the more machines, means that 1 out of 10, the master server can seize up. Which then can crash the slave servers. That's not good. Because they all have to reboot AFTER the master reboots. Then if you have separate archiving servers, these need to sync back up depending on how the redundancy is setup. Lots of downtime.

Look, I can share a lot of stories. But to save time and boring stories of me being on the line with tech support where the lvl 2 and 3 guys go "Yea, I know, it's been an on going issue the past few years. Here's a workaround to make the customer happy. Just feed them xyz bullshit.", here's how to best explain a large scale camera deployment.

Think of a clock. Lots and lots of gears, moving parts. But instead of metal, the gears are made of glass. Some of the gears are thicker and some are really thin. Some are tempered, others you wonder how the hell they didn't shatter from looking at it too hard. At first, it can work great. Maybe a gear or two breaks and you fix them and it works on the initial deploy. But over time, the gears break or wear down in weird ways. Ways where the clock hands still move. It may not be the correct time, but the hands are still moving. Which is what counts at the end of the paycheck, cough, I mean day. So the system "still works". Kind of. Until the gears are so fucked from neglect, the entire thing should just be trashed and you buy another whole clock (not pieces) with glass gears. This is the security industry in a nutshell. Unless you get the expensive stuff from Axis, MOOG or anything from Israel. I'll throw Bosch in there too...eh. There are some companies in Israel that shoot their cameras to prove they're tough. In front of you.

So, yea. Such a wide deployment, I still call bullshit. Especially with maintenance and infrastructure costs. Keeping that system up and running, both electricity, camera replacement, cleaning the housing lens (seriously, smog fucks up those housing lenses hardcore), and we're not even talking about training staff to monitor the stuff yet. It's so expensive with extremely little value. Yes, they're surveillance crazy. But spending so much money on capturing how many "dangerous" people? Really? The guys at Antwerp that get robbed periodically spend less hunting down people who steal $100+ mil in diamonds per person.

And hell, maybe they did deploy this in the way they're talking about. An honest communist...bah. Probably why they're in so much debt. China has been debt heavy for many years now. A project like this can really cripple whoever implements it. It's that long term cost that no one thinks about and seriously hurts a lot of companies. Plus, cameras seriously don't last longer than 10 years. It's a 24/7 "cheap" device. So, they have to replace those cameras every 10 years, EASY. Max, 10 years. If it's a good temperate area. Any sustained lows below 40F or above 95F causes a lot of damage to these things if they're not designed for it (meaning more $$$). You might spend $20b once for parts, but you'll be spending $0.5b to $1b to maintain it, every year on average.

Oh plus, last story. Seattle deployed a city wide mesh network with cameras a number of years ago. It was shut down, I think a week (maybe 2 weeks) into it being turned on. Why? One of the city councilmen (or some other city official of some important status) was caught with a hooker on that camera system and the news spread through the police department, fast. Because. You know. Video. Now, we have separate bodies of power in the country that allow this to happen. The cops spreading the video I mean. Well, hookers too, but that's not the point I'm making. China doesn't really look favorable on the idea of separate bodies of power. But, a true 100% coverage... it's bad for chinese politicians too. Especially ones with wandering peckers and loyalties.

<comment><USER7> Good stuff, that was entertaining and educational. I see, hearing about the many potential problems with such a big surveillance network puts things in perspective. It helped to see through the marketing speak in the mass media, to get a sense of the real-life challenges and current state of technology.

Lots of relevant points, like the (un)reliability of the cameras; difficulty of integrating into a single system and keeping the servers running; processing and storing the data; on-going energy and maintenance costs; dealing with false positives; and (un)reliability of the humans running the whole thing.

So I suppose "Skynet" has a few more decades to be even close to covering the whole country of China. And machine learning is still far from achieving "intelligence" in any meaningful sense of the term.

I can't help but think, though, that given a long enough timeline (say, in the next century) these technologies do seem to have a possibility of merging into a semisentient technopocalypse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Curious. And yet a video I flagged recently that shows mice being electrocuted to death still hasn't been taken down. It has 7.8 million views so I can't imagine I'm the only one who's reported it.</comment>


There's a Growing "Boycott Apple" Movement in China Because of the US Trade War - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosalindadams/us-china-trade-war-apple-huawei <comment><USER2> Curious choice as they aren't a huge chunk of the market as I understand it.

And as usual Twitter like trends are hard to quantify.

<comment><USER3> China is Apple's largest iPhone market in the world, past 150 million users.</comment></comment>


A network-based explanation of why most Covid-19 infection curves are linear - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/21/2010398117 <comment><USER2> Really interesting paper. Layman summary for those not used to network science: infection rate are lower than expected from standard models, because they consider each infected person meets new completely random strangers, while in reality, they are more likely to meet those who infected them, or those who infected those who infected them.

In particular, the paper shows that a "phase transition" happens when the degree (average number of person met per person) exceeds a threshold, which the paper estimates to be around 7. Above that threshold, growth becomes exponential rather than linear.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's true.

I believe the reason we have linear or stable infection rates is that the determination to stop the virus grows as the number grow and then wanes as infection rates fall.

This basically works like a thermostat (viro-stat?) and is due to governments or large parts of population not willing to put up with restriction when rates are falling ("why do I need to comply, this is no longer a real problem?")

This is what I see here in Poland. The government supposedly "closely" watches the situation and puts new restriction wherever the infection rates spike but then promptly removes them when they start falling to what is described as "acceptable level".

This is no way to combat the virus, this is the recipe to keep it around indefinitely.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a really great paper but I thought there was a general move to network-based models anyway? I recall it coming up during quarantine policy discussions.

Nice work though.

It seems more practically evident to me now than early on. In my area, the returning growth seems driven by medium sized clusters that are scattered geographically and aren't the same as what you might have thought early on, in that it's not spreading evenly in densely populated areas.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most of the Covid infection curves I've seen are linear because the scales are logarithmic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Michael Levitt has been arguing covid-19 never experiences the apocalyptic exponential growth that most people/media seem to think is going on.

With a Gompertz curve, we start out with very high growth in the beginning but the growth constantly declines from the outset.

Even the idea of network-based analysis and heterogeneity was something he talked about back in March or thereabouts IIRC.

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v2)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wonderful paper! I wonder if amateur real-world simulations are possible based on public data (streets, population density, daily movement).

The computing power needed for 100,000 nodes, ~8 edges, ~30-60 sim. days, >>100 experiments seems fairly limited. An estimated 5 GFLOP should be possible for a desktop in reasonable time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mar's law.

Rule 6 of Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design:

6\. Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

[http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html](http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html)

<comment><USER7> No log-log plots nor fat magic markers in this paper though.</comment></comment>


Drone Blimps Hovering Over D.C. to Stop Cruise Missiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/don-t-be-alarmed-by-the-drone-blimps-hovering-over-d-c-they-re-here-to-stop-cruise-missiles-20130726 <comment><USER2> And after a few years of no threats, they will be re-purposed to "catch pedophiles".

<comment><USER3> These ships likely have a unit cost exceeding $50M (considering that they're drone blimps), however the corresponding jet airliner JSTARS has a unit cost somewhere north of $250M. They're used as battle management and command&control tools, and the military branches will very likely want to keep them out of the hands of civilian LE departments due to all the expensive equipment on-board.

The unit cost of blimps vs rotorcraft is likely lower, especially regarding fuel expenditures, and many LE departments have expressed great interest in all kinds of drone surveillance. I would be surprised if these things _weren 't_ deployed in high-threat scenarios in municipalities.

<comment><USER4> That's wonderful logic except for the fact that the R&D likely cost billions and we are only buying a handful of these things. In fact, in these army projects, the number of final units bought is from experience inversely related to the cost explosion of the project in the R&D department.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Titillating. It's like a Hollywood movie. Giant military blimps hovering over a major US city, silently watching and feeding data to a control center deep in the ground, with corporate logos on the giant blast doors.

In addition to monitor the sky, will these blimps be able to use their sensors to monitor enemy combatants and/or civilians on the ground?

<comment><USER6> No reason to believe they couldn't.

</comment></comment><comment> peter-fogg Call me crazy, but when was the last time we were worried about cruise missiles over DC? I realize that the US has less-than-perfect relations with some countries, but the Cold War has been over for quite some time now.

<comment><USER7> Also, what's the point of defending only one city from cruise missiles? Unless the enemy has a specific political target, they can cause a lot of destruction elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> What's the point in protecting the one US city where hundreds of the most important political figures gather each and every day?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your "enemies" are currently undermining you economically; wars are dirty old things that have innate outcome risks. Economic domination just keeps on giving. Infact some of that R&D budget might have directly or indirectly gone to them.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reads as cheap, general purpose surveillance with "cruise missle" as an apparently effective red herring.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've just seen this talk on Ted about autonomous killer drones, and what drones could mean for the future and democracies, especially if they are automated (for which there are great incentives to happen):

[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_shouldn_t_belong_to_a_robot.html)

<comment><USER12> Almost every time I see a really big political event held outside, I wonder if it will be the one that starts a wave of automated drone assassinations. Then again, really big events might have a Centurion C-RAM or two secretly parked nearby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone else struck by the irony of Raytheon's PR for these things?

"The aerostats, each nearly as long as a football field, carry powerful radars that can look deep into enemy territory."

[http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/rtn13_jlenseut/](http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/rtn13_jlenseut/)

</comment><comment><USER14> All the balloons shown in the article's image and embedded video are tethered aerostats rather than drone blimps. If this in fact the same as what's going to be used, these are already in place along the U.S./Mexico border, and have been for almost 20 years.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> It's scary that such war-time measures are being taken. It's as if serious aggression was imminent. I think when you need such measures and there's no war going on or imminent, you're doing something seriously wrong.

<comment><USER16> First, we are actually _at war_.

Second, the capital (especially around the Pentagon) is always covered in missile defenses, as well as every other kind of defense they can think of. Also, not all members of the Cabinet ever meet in one place [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor) and lots of other super-defensive stuff goes on all the time.

Third, it looks like this has mostly been a research project so far, and the D.C. deployment is going to be a way to show it off.

<comment><USER17> What country are we in a declared war with?

<comment><USER13> That's classified, citizen:

[http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with- tha...](http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-thats- classified)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Blimps? Why hasn't anyone yet made a Fringe alternate universe reference yet?

</comment><comment><USER19> Might actually be a nice way to detect stealth aircraft. Look at the ground from high up, and look for a moving dip in radar returns, where the stealth aircraft is preventing the radar waves from hitting the ground.

<comment><USER20> For that sort of detection threat, they fly high and at night, which they tend to do anyway since both are safer. ADDED: and I think flying high consumes less fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cruise missiles from whom!?

<comment><USER22> Pesky Canadians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In how many wars is the USA currently officially involved?

<comment><USER24> As an Australian, I know little, but the War in Iraq, and two global unwinnable-wars - the War on Drugs and Cyber Warfare.

<comment><USER25> The US withdrew all combat troops from Iraq and the War on Drugs isn't really a war. I guess you could argus we're waging a cyber war with Iran and China.

<comment><USER26> There are still US special operations troops in Iraq.

[http://www.thenation.com/article/170158/us-special-forces- de...](http://www.thenation.com/article/170158/us-special-forces-deployed- iraq-again#)

[https://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/09/us-special-forces- deploy...](https://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/09/us-special-forces-deployed-in- iraq-again/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/world/middleeast/iraq- face...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/world/middleeast/iraq-faces-new- perils-from-syrias-civil-war.html?pagewanted=2)

That's not counting the nearly 5000 private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - still in Iraq providing security for various US assets there.

Nor does this consider the USMC contingent guarding the US embassy.

As for the "war on (some) drugs," ask anyone who has had their door kicked in by mistake by police conducting military style raids, I'm sure the victims of such will draw parallels between the currently accepted police actions and military raids in Afghanistan.

As for "cyberwar," the very fact that global communications are being intercepted and catalogued by adjuncts of the US DoD illustrates that cyberwarfare is being perpetrated on many more entities besides "Iran and China."

<comment><USER27> There are American troops almost everywhere. Robert Kaplan's books "Imperial Grunts" and "Monsoon" detail their current involvement in Columbia, Philippines, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan and stations all around the Indian Ocean.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ASUS PQ321Q 31.5-Inch 4K Monitor - $3,499 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DJ4BIKA/

<comment><USER2> You can get a Seiki 50" 4K monitor for $1299 on Amazon.

Way better deal.

[http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital- SE50UY04-50-Inch-120Hz/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital- SE50UY04-50-Inch-120Hz/dp/B00BXF7I9M)</comment>


Beginners being herded into command line due to composer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/4950 <comment><USER2> Good. PHP developers are being forced to meet a minimum standard of competence that the rest of the programming world met years ago. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And I say that as a PHP developer who spent the majority of his time working through FTP and a text editor, manually dealing with dependencies, installing from ZIP files, dealing with the peculiarities of hand-rolled autoloaders and module systems. Drag them all into the harsh light of modernity.

And by "modernity" I mean "the modernity of thirty years ago," but nevertheless. Given the choice between sane dependency management in PHP and not learning the command line _learn the command line._

</comment><comment><USER3> How it's this in anyway a composer issue? Should this not be an issue on a specific project which is using composer? I am of the opinion that this is a non-issue overall.</comment>