Thank God It's Friday Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://feint.me/2010/04/thank-god-its-friday-syndrome/

<comment><USER2> Since the majority of people in america have monday to friday jobs, and many do not wish to go have drinks on a tuesday, friday is a day to gather with friends. People who plan parties and events know that most people have more availability on fridays and weekends so they plan more parties and events on those days.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the expression "thanks god" could be interpreted as a strong desire to leave what you've done this week behind, as if you didn't care at all about it.

<comment><USER4> Nine-to-five day jobs suck, news at eleven.

Not everyone on earth is busy working on their awesome successfull fulfilling startup, you know.

I feel like this every friday, as I'm sure almost everyone else does, and I'm not in a position to change much about it any time soon.

<comment><USER3> Ok, but making it a trend wont help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bust my ass Monday through Friday; in any given week, I've built networks, deployed servers, launched new services, designed fliers and marketing or promotional materials, interacted with scores of clients, sat in on meetings involving everything from personnel to computer security issues, cleaned up hacked websites, scoured workstations clean of viruses, and sometimes even presented seminars locally.

On Saturday and Sunday, the phone gets quieter. I typically only get a couple of calls. I get to sleep in until 8 or so. I get to work on my truck or my speedster, or the garden, or any one of my other projects. Friday evenings, my girlfriend and I go climbing down in Rancho Cordova.

I'm not less busy on Saturday and Sunday, but the stuff I do on those days gives me the energy to get started on Monday again.

So, yes, thank "god" it's Friday.

(Hmph.)

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty cool spin to the story you did there, I hadn't seen that perspective yet. Enjoying downtime doesn't have to mean loathing uptime!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> " _'If you were only going to do one thing today, what would it be?'. Simply answer the question and the app will take care of the rest._ "

Sure.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article seems stupid to me.

He seems to be saying procrastination is caused by a fixation on the weekend but he goes on to say that can't be fixed (Under "An Alternative to the Week?"). Then he lists ways to fix the thing he just admitted couldn't be fixed.

The list gives suggestions that are either not related to his point (what does reflecting on each day have to do with loving the weekend?) or are just flat out stupid (You should go out drinking on a Tuesday and come in Wednesday with a hang over just to avoid drinking on Friday?).

I'm all for fighting procrastination but I don't think finding ways to not look forward to the weekend has anything to do with that.

<comment><USER8> I find blog posts like this annoying. Someone takes a common phrase, reads it as if every word is meant in the most literal way possible, then takes pot- shots at it.

I enjoy my work a lot, but after 5 days of it, I look forward to two days where the hours of 8-5 can be spent with my family. Thank God it's Friday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me, counting down days from 365 to 1 produces "Thank goodness it's May syndrome".

</comment><comment><USER10> On a related note, I always feel awkward when people say "enjoy the long weekend" or something similar. Even before I started my own business, I never had a predictable weekends-off job schedule.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think for many it's actually: "Thank God I can sleep in tomorrow."</comment>


Ask HN: Visiting San Francisco in September, recommend startup event? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am..
* currently in London
* working at a startup
* as a developer, market engineer, and entrepreneur
Planning to
* Check out Silicon Valley sometime in September, for 2 weeks,
* planning to meet as many people as possible
* tapping into the startup energy.
Can you recommend an event around this time, where I can do this in a scalable fashion?
Many thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> <http://meetup.com> and <http://eventbrite.com> are your friends for finding local events. Many are not going to be announced until much closer to the actual event but something to check out if you wanted to meet like minded folks who are attending events of your interests.

Aside from the above sites, also plan to visit a few coworking spaces while you're here. Some are open to the public and its a cool way to meet entrepreneurs and hackers of all kinds. Two very popular ones are Noisebridge (in San Francisco) and Hacker Dojo (in Mountain View)... They're roughly 45 mins drive apart but you can take public transportation to get between the two places. They also house events, classes, and meetups.

There are also incubators that are somewhat open to the public that you can check out (I think StartX at AOL in Palo Alto is one).

Lastly, check these out:

<http://paulgraham.com/seesv.html>

[http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/04/silicon-valley-places- that-...](http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/04/silicon-valley-places-that-paul- graham-cant-get-into/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's this: <http://www.hackersandfounders.com/> I don't live in Silicon Valley... yet, so I can't comment on what these are like. There's a possibly I might be down there during the same time, so feel free to contact me if you want to meet (contact info's in my profile). Also, maybe go through the SF Hacker News profiles on the Facebook group and write some "cold emails" to people: [http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_114326995294656...](http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_114326995294656&view=doc&id=122632927797396)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is something that i wpuld like to learn also. Is your trip already planned? How much does it cost?</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for a highschool programmer? - <AUTHOR>

tl;dr: Do you have any good suggestions for a highschool student and programmer in regards to what to do after graduation?
Hey there HN, I've only been a reader since about a month ago but Hacker News has got to be the site I visit most. I love not only the links and topics of discussion but also the community. I've been busy thinking with my parents about what I should do after graduation and, to be honest, we're overwhelmed. We don't have a lot of money, but I have good enough grades to go to at least a middle rate university. I'm extremely interested in math, computer science and engineering, and have been programming since elementary school.
So, I'm turning to you, HN. Should I try to go to college (my grades are good enough and I could, but I would probably have to take out student loans), or do you think that in these times trying to enter directly into the workforce is a better idea?
Also, do you have any suggestions for projects I should try to build? Any languages or areas of programming that you think I should look into? I program in C and Python and a little Java, is there anything else that I should really look into? Maybe Lisp?
p.s. to see some of my projects, check out http://www.peterdowns.com/projects/ <comment><USER3> A good university is the best place in the world to meet other programmers. Go to the best school you can - once you're there, you'll be shocked how fast you improve when you're surrounded by other young hackers. The classes are a bonus - you won't be able to tell in advance which they are, but there will be a couple that will blow your mind wide open.

The hacker crowd is not necessarily obvious at first glance; even the best schools are full of "thirteenth graders" and disaffected professors. But rest assured it's there. (The local ACM chapter is often a good place to start looking.)

Applying doesn't cost much; don't be afraid to apply to MIT and Caltech. You might get in! The usual strategy is to apply to a couple "stretch schools," three or four you think you'll probably get into, and a "safety school." (Write the applications for your safety schools first - the essays get easier fast.)

Community college is a backup. Work towards selective schools for now - <USER2> have early application deadlines. Community college, on the other hand, you can wait until practically the day before school starts. They're always there if you need them. That's what they're for.

Finally, don't worry about money. That's what financial aid officers are for. If you get accepted, they'll figure out a way you can afford to attend.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for excellent advice. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep going to school, but remember, school is a means to an end. Don't just go because you think it's expected. Go to learn that last 10% of what you don't know.

Even a genius isn't born with knowledge. It has to be acquired.

Trust me, and I really hope this does not come across as a dig, but however much of a badass coder you may be, you have no idea how much you don't know. If you dive in and work your butt off, you'll advance like crazy, opportunities will come, and you'll realize how much you don't know.

Lastly, I will offer some advice that you probably won't hear from a lot of Hacker News users. Corporate coders aren't all just drones who don't understand new tech. Most corporate coders write a lot of code in their spare time. There's no reason why you can't take a corporate coding job, and write iPhone apps at night. Obviously, it's easier to go to school full time, but take it from me, I worked two jobs, supported a wife and baby AND attended college at the same time.

Was it hard? Yeah. But I've been a coder for over 11 years now, launched several of my own products and am working on another right now. I've done massive work for several Fortune 500 companies and make well over six figures and climbing.

And I did it all on a community college degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice. I hope my original post didn't give the impression that I thought I didn't need to keep learning - on the contrary, I need to learn a lot more than that last "10%". You've given me a lot to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Community college can be a great way to save money and if you manage it correctly you don't have to lose any time. Going to community college for a year or two to burn through their math classes (high probability of transfer, and 4 year University math classes are often effectively taught by grad students anyway!) and you'll probably save in the neighborhood of 10-20k. Computer classes in those places tend to be more vocational and rarely transfer. Most states have a way to determine what would transfer ahead of time and guaranteed admission for Community college graduates above a certain grade point average.

So if you go that route you can do your last two years at the best state school in your state with most of your prerequisites done and well on the way to a math major. If they offer lectures to their CS classes online and you can test out of the classes, read through those and do so for the first year's worth (just introductory stuff anyway).

You can save a lot of money this way, and if you do well in community college, think college is your thing, you could always try to transfer to a more prestigious (expensive!) school.

The thing is, if your state has a good school and you go the community college route, you'll have as good a resume as anyone who did the whole four year haul there, but at almost half the cost.

If it turns out that you are one of nearly half who don't complete school, finding this out at community college costs doesn't sting very much at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> I recommend community college for now. It's cheap, easy, you'll be ahead of everyone in the class, yes, but you'll learn that there are a lot of things you probably don't know about yet.

Notice I didn't say you'll learn them :-), that will be up to you, but for instance, you'll be exposed to ideas and concepts you haven't encountered in your hobby programming.

Once you're in school, apply Google Summer of Code. Working on an Open Source project in a team is _invaluable_.

I also learned to program from doing hobby projects, but writing real code that others use and look at is a whole different world. I regret I waited till I was done with my college years before I started getting into Open Source development.

Good code you can show people and contributions are invaluable both to learning, your resume, and getting scholarships to a four year Uni when you decide it's time to transfer (if).

Good luck, keep coding!

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely get a university degree in software engineering. The workforce will wait for you. Opportunities will wait. Fail to get the university degree in computer science and your career will likely be hampered for life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely continue with school. You can most likely test out of certain classes, but the main benefit of attending university is not necessarily the piece of paper you get at the end, it's the experience, the people and the ideas you get exposed to. Don't hurry to join the workforce - you can always freelance, do consulting work, and summer internships while you're in school - but at no other time in your life once you join the workforce will you be able to focus so completely on learning and discovering yourself and the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> I highly recommend continuing with your education. It's going to be tough going into the job market without job experience and no college degree.

If you're interested in hardware as well as software, maybe you can look into the Arduino (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino>).

</comment><comment><USER10> Go to college. The college tuition will not be a problem if you can start taking on client work at your spare time. Simply go to less party and begin looking for clients.

Besides, you can gain some real-life work experience while you are in college. By the time you get out, you'll be more ready that everyone else.</comment>


Hotspot: Get your friends to come... - <AUTHOR> http://hotspotapp.wordpress.com/

<comment><USER2> "Hotspot is an app that helps you meet up with your friends in real life."

Seriously? Who needs an app for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you had a second to check out the video?

<comment><USER3> The video looks interesting but in real world practice, I don't know if I'd personally ever have this kind of problem. Honestly I think it sounds nice on paper but I'm clearly not the target audience.</comment></comment></comment>


Cracks in Reality: How our Systems Fool Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/eubanks20120611 Third installment in the series of articles that ask if intelligence is self-limiting because motivation ultimately undermines survival. <comment><USER2> What is the actual use case for a "self-modifying singular intelligence"? Define the problem you are trying to solve (as an actual task, not nebulous stuff about beliefs) and I reckon you will find more success.

There is a one nice way around the intractable problems of maintaining a huge model of the world: don't. Rodney Brooks' famous saying: "the world is its own best representation." And it isn't necessary or usually even helpful to translate all incoming data into some propositional model. Again: what is your use case? If you are just trying to satisfy some essentialist intuition of what it means to be intelligent and what 'must be' inside minds, then you will be lucky to ever get anything meaningful done.

If you want to write an agent to do something without ongoing guidance, and you have not thought out the task from the beginning to get a specific algorithm, do not start by making a monolithic program that makes lots of vague high-level decisions like "how much reality" based on abstruse constructions of data. Start with the data which is always available, processed minimally, and see how little you can do. Implement walking before you implement steering and implement steering before you implement path- finding.

</comment><comment><USER3> _In extreme cases, state-adopted nominal realities may be purely driven by motivations, and have little or no connection to reality._

This essay was just a little too unfocused for my tastes. As an observer of many types of organizations of people, the predilection to spin is endemic. It's not just "in extreme cases"

I scanned the article and kept trying to find some meat, some kind of clear and forceful statement that the author was supporting. Instead it seemed like he was saying a lot of good things, but lacked the intestinal fortitude or insight necessary to actually get anywhere. I was left with a version of "it may be a property of monolithic systems that their motivations are at odds with an accurate perception of reality." That's almost useful, but not quite. There are a lot of interesting places to go _from_ that statement, but we didn't go there. Hell we could have started deconstructing Aristotle and talking about how the tension between the usefulness of categorization versus all abstractions are leaky creates holes in what is knowable. Or we could have moved forward to sociology and discussed the role of the individual in large groups. Or we could have talked AI. Lots of cool places to take this train of thought.

That's a shame. It's obvious the author is well-educated and has thought this through. Sure wish he would have taken us somewhere a bit more interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something I struggle with in writing what amounts to a long argument in discrete chunks. I was already 1000 words over my limit, and had to find an artificial stopping place. But partly where this is headed is the thesis that our systems of government are not very similar to ones that would be designed from scratch for survival as an individual intelligence apparatus, and that by comparing the theory to practice we can (possibly) improve them. The flip side of i is that if we aren't going to be serious about survival, we should create bureaucracies and economies so that they fail gracefully. Or else we should adopt an evolutionary, rather than singular, strategy: colonize other planets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the group of problems we need to solve in order to design effective government and stable markets.

<comment><USER5> > we need to solve in order to design effective government

Is there actually any demand for "effective govt"? (Yes, lots of people claim to want it, but do you really think that there's large scale agreement on what that means?)

<comment><USER4> Isn't effective government a system which can maximise the following function?

G = SUM(Fi(W)) from i to WorldPopulation

Where W is the physical configuration of matter in the world. Fi is the function associated with citizen i that defines his notion of 'goodness'.

Bad government is one which tries to maximise an alternative function:

G = SUM(Fi(W) * Di) from i to WorldPopulation, where Di is some factor for each individual and where some Di are much greater than other Di. i.e. some individuals have much greater say over the configuration of the world which is chosen...

<comment><USER5> Isn't effective government a system which can maximise the following function?

almost certainly not.

For example, many people think that "effective govt" involves some notion of "justice" and/or "fairness".

One concrete example is Obama's position wrt capital gains taxes. He wants higher rates even if that results in less revenue. (Higher rates with less revenue means that there's less capital gain, which means less wealth produced, aka less total stuff. Since there's less tax revenue, there's less govt spending.)

A significant number think that "effective govt" propagates certain values/behaviors and discourages others.

Yes, there is disagreement on what "justice" and "fairness" mean and there's also disagreement as to the values/behaviors to be encouraged/discouraged.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team - <AUTHOR> http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-agrees-to-acquire-carbon-design-team/ <comment><USER2> Great for Carbon. The situation for hardware design firms (right now, and often) is brutal - the degree of difficulty to consistently book enough new work to keep your talented team members employed is incredibly high, and more companies are moving this work in-house.

There are a number of these firms in the Seattle area, and all of them are struggling. Acquisition is often preferable to closing your doors, which could well be what happens to others.

<comment><USER3> Can I ask what your connection to the industry is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An Oculus controller to go with the headset is looking more and more likely. I'm guessing that it will be similar to the PlayStation Move controller but with infrared instead of visible light tracking. They're already doing infrared tracking for the headset, so it would be easy to track a couple of controllers as well.

<comment><USER5> I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

<comment><USER4> Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick or two.

<comment><USER6> A wireless version of the Peregrine glove would fit:

[http://theperegrine.com](http://theperegrine.com)

<comment><USER5> But the gloves don't fully reflect the positions of each of the fingers. It only senses when the touch points on the glove are being contacted. I couldn't flip the bird at someone in VR, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is it said that Oculus acquired them, instead of Facebook? Doesn't Oculus not really exist anymore (as a company)?

<comment><USER8> Since they operate independently and likely have their own cash pile for stuff like this, the legal entity making the purchase is actually Oculus. Same with like Nest/Google AFAIK.

<comment><USER9> I wondered the same thing about Nest/Google the other day.

It could also be an abstraction on the part of Google/Facebook to hide their associations with the brand, to avoid brand reputation damage of some sort.

<comment><USER10> Facebook is taking this holding-company approach to WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus. Unilever, P&G and Nestle should be wary of another holding company controlling their customer channel, especially after the Axciom partnership which gives Facebook access to the _offline_ purchases of Facebook customers. The consumer goods companies should fund new social networks, to diversify their online reach.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big- data...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big-data- partnership-2013-9)

"Audience Operating System .. allows advertisers to tie together your "digital persona" even if you've changed your name due to marriage, the use of a nickname, or because you sometimes use a middle name. It also figures out whether someone who has moved addresses or changed phone numbers is the same person or not."

<comment><USER11> So Facebook are profiling everyone to an ever more extreme degree; soon Facebook will tell you what you want and you'll like it or else :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So why would Oculus acquire Carbon Design, rather than contracting them to design/build their products?

<comment><USER13> Why would a company hire an employee rather than contracting them out to do the same work?

Bingo. User Bane understands why:)

<comment><USER14> Did you just contract out your answer to bane?

<comment><USER15> He only needed the answer once -- so a pretty smart move :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So Carbon Design is now the Occulus Bellevue office, or did Occulus already have an office there?

<comment><USER3> Carbon is in North Seattle next to UW. Oculus was already building up an R&D team in Redmond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it is pretty safe to assume they're working on hardware to compliment the Oculus headset; gloves, a controller and or other accessories perhaps a full body suit comprised of sensors to map body movement.

I am well and truly excited for the future of virtual reality, Oculus are definitely at the forefront of greatness here.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does Oculus acquire anything at this point. Don't they mean Facebook acquires Carbon?

<comment><USER19> Yeah, although the scope of the acquisition is currently limited to the scope of Oculus ("operating independently") within Facebook. I've also seen announcements regarding PayPal acquiring companies even though PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay Inc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If Oculus is into acquisitions, it'd be cool to see them acquire Oblong, to add some UI & interaction technology.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope they make affordable VR gloves.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if tactile VR gloves will be reality soon. I'd imagine that there will be some tiny nano linings inside the glove that could be controlled digitally, which would create a tactile sensation, such as holding a gun or a steering wheel.

Moving on from just hand gloves, we could even produce g-force enducing hydraulic chair, for example, when a car accelerates inside the game, the chair would lean you back, causing you to feel gravity pulling you back to the ground, when inside the game, it would feel like you were being thrust backwards to your seats.

</comment><comment><USER22> I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

<comment><USER23> Oh my God I thought these bullshit cries of doom stopped. It's such a simple matter of business. If Oculus did that, no one would by a Rift. That would be bad for Oculus, Facebook, and consumers. The much more likely thing to result from the Facebook buyout is they use their $2B to build a better product and market it better to compete against new behemoths butting in the VR marketplace like Sony and others that are surely about to jump on the bandwagon. That would be good for the consumers, and thusly good for Oculus and Facebook. There are literally _zero_ good reasons Facebook would ram down tacky social media bullshit onto the Rift. That's bad design, bad business, and no one would like it.

Isn't rabid Facebook hating getting old now?

<comment><USER24> I think characterizing discussion of the effects of facebook on oculus as 'Facebook hating' is a pretty cheap dodge of a significant event. A lot of the strategy changes people are making around the facebook purchase are legitimate ones based on reasonable observations of facebook. It's a terrible thing for those of us who were really excited about oculus for so long, but things changed and a reasonable discussion is going to happen.

I think that the argument that facebook adding "tacky social media" components to oculus would be bad for business is incorrect. Facebook has done quite well with the model, as their company shows.

For many of us, we realize that facebook will likely succeed with oculus in some way. It will just be a different kind of party than we want to go to, is all.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple set to get Beats in $3.2B deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/08/report-apple-to-acquire-beats/8868913/ <comment><USER2> Beats headphones are crap, sure. And their streaming service isn't as mature as Spotify. But three billion dollars isn't about headphones or online music streaming or Dr Dre's drunken celebration. It's about growth.

Apple has a chokehold on the iPod market. They've rocked the market with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and those products will be cash cows for a long time. But where is their next growth going to come from? A watch? I doubt it.

All the granola 16-year-old white girls already have their iPhone. There's no room for crazy growth among middle class white people. Apple needs to use it's expertise to pursue new markets, which is exactly what they're doing.

Tim Cook isn't afraid, he's strategic. Beats by Dre is a high-end consumer lifestyle brand that GREATLY appeals to black, hispanic, urban-context, young men and women. They sell expensive products. They care about design. They represent a way of living. They're Apple in another market.

Beats is about to be Apple's international foray into a completely new growth segment. And it's genius.

<comment><USER3> I was given a pair of Beats Studios almost two years ago, so maybe that makes it easier to say this but, speaking as a non-audiophile, they're... good? I read a lot about how terrible they are, but in my experience, they're comfortable, their noise cancellation is great at work, and I have never noticed degraded audio quality (once again, as a non-audiophile).

Could someone point me to a defacto better pair of headphones in the same price range as the studios ($200)? I'll give them a shot; I have no problem admitting that I might very well be missing something when listening to music.

<comment><USER4> Sony MDR-V6/MDR-7506 [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-150-over-ear- headp...](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-150-over-ear-headphones/)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The MDR-7506 is a "studio standard" for reference/monitor headphones in pro audio and video. The frequency response is not "enhanced" at the low end like the Beats and many other modern headphones. I don't think the curve is really flat- they always sound a little bright to me (thought in that hear- more-detail sort of naturally pleasant way), but they're definitely more flat than the Beats. The 7506 is like $90. The V6 has the same drivers, but doesn't have a gold plated plug (seriously). I got my V6s refurbed for $50. The closed earpads passively block external sound pretty well, and they're relatively comfortable. They don't come in green or pink, but they sound good, are still made with some metal parts for durability, and they're way cheaper than Beats. Source: work in a couple different TV production studios, a friend that's in the audio/acoustics industry, and a lot of reviews at B & H.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beats Studio released a new model in 2013 that is significantly better than the 2008-2012 model. Beats is not "crap". Overpriced, perhaps, but there's not much competition to stop that.

Reading the audiophile boards, the trends seems to be that the Beats Studio is now roughly competitive to the venerable Audio Technica ATH M50 , widely considered to be one of the most popular entry-level audiophile quality over- ear headphones. The main difference is not audio quality (the M50 probably has an edge here) but rather comfort and ear fatigue, with the Beats just being more comfortable.

I love my M50s but admit they do lead to sweaty-ear.

Examples:

[http://www.head-fi.org/t/683959/new-beats-studios-2013-vs- au...](http://www.head-fi.org/t/683959/new-beats-studios-2013-vs-audio- technica-ath-m50) [http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear- headph...](http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear-headphone- black-new) [http://www.head-fi.org/t/673273/new-2013-beats- studios](http://www.head-fi.org/t/673273/new-2013-beats-studios) [http://www.head-fi.org/t/675031/new-redesigned-2013-beats- by...](http://www.head-fi.org/t/675031/new-redesigned-2013-beats-by-dre- studio-v2-in-red-white-unboxing-newbeatsstudio)

The main legitimate complaint about Beats is not that they're one of the two best sounding headphones under $300. It's that the market will bear that much of a price difference when the ATH M50 is $150. But, people will pay a lot for a wide selection of colours and a bit more comfort. And price can be seen as a feature.

In short - Beats sells decent quality for its class, overpriced for what you get, but between comfort and colour selection, customers don't seem to mind. These guys will fit with Apple's philosophy well.

</comment><comment><USER7> What Beats has in its corner, that Spotify doesn't, is a favorable relationship with the music industry, particularly the artists themselves. I've never used Beats streaming service but I was aware of it because of musicians like Trent Reznor plugging for it before it even came to market. Apparently they make deals where the artists get paid substantially more than Spotify. Beats is in a unique position to get music that other services can't, and could potentially have a monopoly on distribution of new releases from some major artists in a few years.

Thats what Apple just bought here, I'm fairly certain they could give a hoot about the technology, its the artist relationships and favorable streaming contracts that they're after.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't apple itself have a great relationship with the music industry and a huge foothold in the consumers mind? Apple seems more than capable to build their own streaming service if they wanted to

<comment><USER9> Apple may have a great relationship with the music _corporations_ , but not necessarily with the artists themselves. The big businesses are still taking the large slice of the pie and giving the artist very little back.

A streaming service where the artists can sell directly and pick up a larger percentage of the pie will quickly gather a large catalogue of new music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beats aren't that amazing, yet so many people wear them. My v-moda's cost $300 and have incredible sound. Worth every penny! [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A39PPDK?pc_redir=1399523882...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A39PPDK?pc_redir=1399523882&robot_redir=1)

</comment><comment><USER11> If the deal closes _, any guess on what happens to Beats Music?

Doesn't seem to be room for that and iTunes radio (and iTunes itself) as separate brands.

_I think it will based on, eg, the Dr Dre video where he's bragging about it -- makes me think the deal is already done.

<comment><USER12> it'll be itunes radio 2.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not a snark at all: was there any more information in this clip that hasn't already been discussed in FT, NYT, etc. USA Today almost makes it sound like a done deal, but there's nothing substantial here that I can see.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure how much of any of this I believe until we have some word from Apple. Under the Jobs regime, such premature talk would have almost certainly spoiled the deal. We'll have to see how Cook responds to that.

<comment> k-mcgrady The drunken celebration video featuring Dre was all the proof I needed. He wouldn't do something that stupid unless everything was agreed. They're probably waiting until the markets close to officially announce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone looked to see if Beats might have an interesting patent portfolio? Something perhaps to augment Apple's recently granted patent on bioinformatic earphones?

</comment><comment><USER12> Now samsung will buy Chambers by RZA [1]! j/k

[1] [http://wesc.com/chambersbyrza](http://wesc.com/chambersbyrza)

</comment><comment><USER16> 3.2 billion for an equalizer with deep brand recognition. AAPL must be swimming in cash.

</comment><comment><USER17> Please tell me this is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Billion is the new million.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apple's next acquisition is going to be Monster Cable.

</comment><comment><USER20> I dont understand this. I've never even heard of "Beats" before today. Does apple know something I dont ?</comment>


Why I hate Rails - <AUTHOR> http://kakubei.blogspot.be/2012/05/why-i-hate-rails.html <comment><USER2> The author lost me at complaining that you need to know Ruby to know Rails. In case this was not self-evident, the Rails guide itself says plainly and early:

"If you have no prior experience with Ruby, you will find a very steep learning curve diving straight into Rails." [http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#guide- ass...](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#guide-assumptions)

Where did anyone hear and/or read otherwise? Similarly with all the other complaints. To me, they sound like straw men.

<comment><USER3> The author lost me when he said "I'm not a programmer."

<comment><USER4> He lost me at "hate Rails"

<comment><USER5> He lost me at the blogspot subdomain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bought a how-to-play-guitar DVD but I still can't get a gig! I even practiced every night for a month, man this sucks!

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, whoever told you that learning Rails was easy was lying. I don't know a single experienced Ruby / Rails dev that would say Rails is 'beginner' friendly. In fact, most of them would probably tell you that you should first be experienced in other languages / frameworks.

<comment><USER8> I work with Rails for the last 8 years, and I can say it's somewhat 'beginner friendly'. At least based on the juniors/"non-developers" I taught it to (at this very moment, I'm mentoring a jr dev with C# background who was having a really hard time trying to learn a simple Python framework, and is finding Rails 'the most obvious thing in the galaxy'). The fact that a lot of things on it are conventions helps

The extra layers that were added recently, such as Coffeescript, SCSS and the whole asset pipeline thing really add a bit to the complexity, but still, it's all _there_...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would argue that rails is productive, but not easy if you are unfamiliar with its decisions/concepts.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Why I hate earning a living" ... because they expect me to work!

"Why I hate doing a marathon" ... because I have to run!

"Why I hate eating food" ... because I have to cook!

Seriously, this guy should find something better to do with his time. If he could be bothered.

<comment><USER4> The great thing about natural selection is it filters people like this out :)

<comment><USER11> You think so but no :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This website is completely unusable on my tablet.

<comment><USER13> This is just the default "dynamic views" theme for Blogger. And it's also unusable on my (android) phone. Bizarre that Google hasn't fixed any of the glaring issues.

<comment><USER14> Works fine in Chrome on my 4.2 android phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hasn't this been on the HN frontpage recently?

<comment><USER16> Yes it was. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5303381></comment></comment>


Google Deceptively Tracks Students' Internet Browsing, EFF Says in FTC Complaint - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade <comment><USER2> According to the FAQ, "It's also possible that Google does not use student data for any of these purposes—but unfortunately, Google has refused to articulate the reasons" so it seems like the EFF's position on Internet-hosted applications is that the specific uses of each kind of data should be described in a privacy policy.

I think it's a tenable but extreme position, because basically they are objecting to Google reserving the right to develop new features in an empirical/data-driven way.

I think most people don't think of e.g., their privacy w/r/t tax data being compromised when their tax prep software company mines it to make data entry simpler, or to make it easier to understand the consequences of various filing choices by visualization, etc. Similarly, I don't think Google is invading my privacy when it takes my search queries and uses not only to produce SERPs for me but also to notice that when people type cyombinator it is likely a typo for ycombinator.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's asking much for Google to put a wall around the profiles and associated usage data for these school related accounts.

<comment><USER2> As I said, I think reasonable people can disagree about it, but I think they are demanding that the wall have a shape like "this data will be displayed back to you while you work on it and to your teacher during the grading period and otherwise it will not be used," whereas many people are totally happy for the wall to be "we will use this data to help you learn and allow your teacher to evaluate your progress." Lots of people object to advertising to kids, not so many people object to building a better word processor or kids-oriented theorem prover or whatever, including ideas that haven't been thought about yet but are (in the developer's honest opinion) wholly motivated by the purpose of education.

EFF basically doesn't trust a cloud software company to have any discretion, but I think most people are willing to take an informed risk when they entrust their data to someone else's instructions or computational resources; otherwise they'd write the software themselves and run it on their own device and so forth.

<comment><USER3> Your example seems fine to me. My kids use Google Docs for school, and use it both for collaborating with other students at home, and to submit homework to the teacher. That seems to fall in your example.

The risks that you describe also sound reasonable for adults to assume. However, Google, being who/what they are (organizing the world's information), shouldn't be surprised when "watchdogs" ask more of them, particularly in this case. They deliberately entered this education space. It's not just about plain advertising (to me). Whatever profiles are built from children's use of Google's services (that they are required to use through school), should be carved out from their normal data harvestinf and user profile nurturing. It should be up to Google to develop a "win/win"model whereby they can protect students and properly monitor app performance. It doesn't sound too challenging for a company like Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree It's depressing how perfectly normal and natural the idea of tracking users has become.

I know this isn't a popular opinion on Hacker News, but why should there be any tracking whatsoever when using an OS? Are people saying that they're perfectly fine for their Windows/Mac/Linux distribution to track everything they do? The apps they use? The sites they visit? Because that's basically what ChromeOS does. It even tracks the documents you print to your desktop printer (routed through Google's cloud print service).

You aren't even anonymous when you use ChromeOS - you must be signed into your Google account. Just as a reminder, your Google account = your name, your date of birth, your location and optional phone number. In other words, some of your most personal and private information all tied to the activity you conduct on ChromeOS.

Google states that it does not read the content of your emails in GMail (emails are scanned by computer), but you could argue that your browsing habits are just as private and personal. No such assurances on how they handle this data. Does Google disassociate the identity of the user from their activity? If not, then who sees this data at Google? How long is this data kept for? These are important questions, but you won't find answers in Google's privacy policy. (And you're unlikely to find many in the tech community asking Google about them either.)

I would never recommend an OS that tracked the activity of students so relentlessly, especially when many students are too young to understand the horrendous privacy implications of using ChromeOS. Other companies like Microsoft are rightfully criticised for their tracking in Windows 10, yet Google gets a completely free ride. It's just baffling.

<comment><USER4> What alarms me is how important privacy has suddenly become, despite a distinct lack of actualization on the "nightmare" scenarios we keep hearing.

<comment><USER5> I would hope that privacy is perceived as important prior to the nightmare scenarios becoming "actualized," because afterward would be too late.

Unfortunately, I don't think that perception is as widespread as it needs to be, despite your alarm.

<comment><USER6> If the nightmare scenarios _ever do_ become actualized, then any amount of perception or hand wringing up that point is moot.

Did you stockpile food and water for Y2k? Fear of uncertainty and the unknown is both natural and irrational.

<comment><USER5> The point is to _avoid_ the problem, rather than to stumble into a state from which it is difficult to restore the status quo ante.

Please do not mistake "anticipating risks" for "fear of uncertainty and the unknown." This a risk for which the likelihood currently appears low, but the consequences could be grave and hard to reverse. At least to my mind, that warrants a bit of attention.

<comment><USER6> The point is that there isn't a nightmare problem supported by evidence, and that irrational fear causes a cognitive bias which leads to such slippery slope fallacies (e.g. Y2K scare).

You're more likely to be negatively impacted by slipping in your shower, yet I bet you have spent more energy hand wringing over tracking. Just as parents have given overt attention to vaccines causing autism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I think it's great (but insufficient) that students and kids have greater privacy protection than adults, it begs the question why all of us shouldn't enjoy the same level of protection.

Just because one becomes an adult does not mean that an adult is less deserving of the same level of protection.

<comment><USER8> One difference is that an adult can choose not to use Google. They can also (usually) choose to install ad-block or ghostery or a similar plugin and thwart the tracking.

If using Google is mandatory for a class, then the students don't have any choice in the matter. And I think school computers are locked down to prevent installing browser extensions, so that option isn't available either.

Also, because it's a pet peeve of mine, it _raises_ the question.

<comment><USER9> Google can also be mandatory for a company your work for, or a client you provide services to. Yeah, you could opt out to work for that company/client, but that's no different than attending another school.

There's really no difference. It's all about network effects. We're seeing Google docs, Dropbox folders replacing what Microsoft Office was in the past. Vendor lock-in by network effects.

You may like it or not yourself, but let's not pretend it isn't something that it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the EFF's problem that this information is stored on Google servers?

Syncing settings to an account seems like one of the prime selling points for a school using chromebooks. A child loses their chromebook, or gets issued a different one the next September all their favorites, apps, etc are there ready to go when they sign in.

[https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/2914794?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/2914794?hl=en)

<comment><USER11> Let's try this exercise. Replace "Google" with "Lenovo".

Lenovo sells computers to schools. The computers upload everything entered onto the computer to Lenovo by minors without consent. Everything uploaded is data-mined. You can switch it off in some obscure setting.

You would have people carrying pitchforks here instead of saying "really?". Google doesn't get a pass. This is shady. Should be off by default.

<comment><USER12> > Everything uploaded is data-mined

From the article: "Google does not use student data for targeted advertising"

So... what's the problem?

The data is uploaded for a clear and legitimate need, the ability for school's to loan out chromebooks on demand. The data is not used for advertising.

Near as I can tell the complaint is this nebulous "it's being data mined" with no elaboration or evidence.

<comment><USER13> Also from the article:

"EFF's filing with the FTC also reveals that the administrative settings Google provides to schools allow student personal information to be shared with third-party websites in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge."

"Google told EFF that it will soon disable a setting on school Chromebooks that allows Chrome Sync data, such as browsing history, to be shared with other Google services."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Chrome's sync data is supposed to be encrypted at least with your Google account password. They could be doing all that (mining, tracking) but there is a clear, legitimate purpose to this feature: providing the same environment across computers.

<comment><USER3> Syncing data between chrome environments is different than mining usage data across google's properties. It sounds like that's the beef here. Children are required to use the Chrome systems, and parents have no say in the matter, or control over how Google uses the data.

<comment><USER15> Where did they present proof that Google is data mining vs. just syncing data across devices?

<comment><USER16> If it was only being synced, it would be encrypted with a client side passphrase. It is not.

<comment><USER17> You can set a sync passphrase that is separate from your Google password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People seem to be conflating "tracking user behavior" with "tracking user behavior without consent or transparency". Yes, there are plenty of people opposed to the former, but that is a moot point with respect to Google.

The latter, however, is symptomatic of a much bigger issue: there is a pervasive belief amongst many of the silicon elite that users simply aren't capable of making effective decisions regarding tracking, and therefore it is best if they are not allowed to make those decisions. I have heard this directly from many people, and each time it leaves me surprised.

If Google were to provide real transparency into the information they track about me, that would be fantastic. I likely wouldn't even look at it, but I would know that organizations like the EFF and ACLU would serve as ombudspeople for the public. Furthermore, whichever of the big internet players does this first will likely generate a tremendous amount of brand loyalty and free marketing.

I suspect current behavior won't change without legal intervention, which will potentially be adversarial, which is a shame since there are people at these companies who are much more qualified than lawmakers to anticipate and plan for the future.

It's amazing that a company (and industry) that self-identifies so strongly with taking novel approaches to solving hard problems can get mired in such status quo bias.

<comment><USER19> [https://myaccount.google.com/](https://myaccount.google.com/)

you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or delete it.

<comment><USER20> > you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or > delete it.

A) In no way do I believe that is _all_ the data Google tracks about me. It's just what they choose to present to you. B) How do I have any guarantee that it's actually deleted?

<comment><USER21> (Tedious disclaimer: not speaking for anybody else, my opinion only, etc. I'm an SRE at Google. I can't respond to most of the things in this thread, so don't bother asking.)

"If Google were to provide real transparency into the information they track about me, that would be fantastic."

"In no way do I believe that is all the data Google tracks about me."

The second comment here is why there's no point in doing the first one. It doesn't matter how much information we release about this, when people are determined not to believe it.

It is a frustrating experience for the people who work on them to pour time and effort into making sure a privacy policy is really _precisely_ accurate about what is happening, and then see threads like this where people will go looking for loopholes that aren't there, and because English is fairly ambiguous they'll eventually find a way to misinterpret the words to support what they wanted to believe all along.

Here's an interesting hypothetical question: if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? (I make no claims about whether this is what's happening, because I can offer no evidence, I just think it's an interesting question)

<comment><USER20> Honestly, I used to trust Google a lot. Then things like the NSA leaks happen, and other questionable Google changes, and I'm sorry, but I lost that trust. I use as little closed-source stuff as possible now.

I'm sure it is frustrating, but you'd have to thank the people in charge for that distrust. I wasn't born with it, the cloud-providers earned it. I used to think this was tin-hat territory myself.

IMO, the solution is to stop storing things in the cloud, and start giving me the tools to do it myself. I have no idea how to work that out financially. If google made a "maps app" that was open-source and I could run on my own server, but charged for it, I would probably buy that because I like the service so much. But as it stands, I try to avoid using it as much as possible, because I simply _can 't_ trust Google.

EDIT: Forgot to answer this

> if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the > people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, > then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on?

At the end of the day, Google just doesn't do enough to make me think that they are "making sure the bad things never happen". I'm sure there are a lot of people who are trying hard to make that true, but how can I know that is true for everyone? What can you offer me other than root access to your servers? I'd honestly like a good answer to this, because I just don't have one.

And the amount of data/power that Google has is just too much for me to think that they won't "get greedy" some day. If up until today, Google was a good company and wasn't abusing anything in any way, and suddenly tomorrow they turned evil, why would they erase my data first? They still have it, and I have no control over whether or not Tomorrow-Google will keep it.

> ...then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on?

The side of trying to validate whether or not things are as they say on face- value. Whether thats Google's side or not is up to them.

<comment><USER21> > Then things like the NSA leaks happen

So I don't think that's the cause here, because:

[https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/what.html](https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/what.html)

"Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users' data are false, period."

"Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' Internet activity on such a scale is completely false."

And you have chosen not to believe a statement made in the strongest possible terms. If you won't believe this, then I do not think there are any words that you would believe, so there's no point in trying to get more published.

> What can you offer me other than root access to your servers?

Indeed, and we can't do that because it would invalidate the very security that you want.

> If up until today, Google was a good company and wasn't abusing anything in > any way, and suddenly tomorrow they turned evil, why would they erase my > data first? They still have it, and I have no control over whether or not > Tomorrow-Google will keep it.

The easy solution here is to not keep any of that data in de-anonymised form for longer than is necessary, but then people don't want to believe the privacy policies which say this is happening...

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying Google deliberately handed data over to the NSA. I'm saying the NSA (and others) are try getting to it one way other other. It's not necessarily that Google is untrustworthy, but that if the data does get out, however that happens, it will be quite devastating.

> And you have chosen not to believe a statement made in the strongest > possible terms.

A) It's not in the "strongest possible term". Quite a bit of weasel-wording there IMO.

B) How does a statement's strength validate it? I can strongly say any lie I want.

> Indeed, and we can't do that because it would invalidate the very security > that you want.

I agree. And I would like a solution to this. There's just not a good way for me to trust cloud providers.

> The easy solution here is to not keep any of that data in de-anonymised form > for longer than is necessary, but then people don't want to believe the > privacy policies which say this is happening...

> The easy solution here is to not keep any of that data in de-anonymised form > for longer than is necessary, but then people don't want to believe the > privacy policies which say this is happening...

I don't see how that's at all relevant.

A) Just because one asshole on the internet doesn't believe the policy doesn't mean Google should just give up on it.

B) That doesn't address my point. Tomorrow-Google will still get access to my data, unknown to me. I can't verify the "trustworthiness" of a company every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "… Google's "Sync" feature for the Chrome browser is enabled by default…" "… since some schools require students to use Chromebooks, many parents are unable to prevent Google's data collection."

Doesn't "enabled by default" mean that parents should be able to disable the sync feature?

That being said, I would assume that any tracking features would be separated from syncing features on a machine built for a student. Google appears to be attempting to correct that, after EFF's prompt: "Google told EFF that it will soon disable a setting on school Chromebooks that allows Chrome Sync data, such as browsing history, to be shared with other Google services."

</comment><comment><USER23> > EFF's filing with the FTC also reveals that the administrative settings > Google provides to schools allow student personal information to be shared > with third-party websites in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge.

What? Is the EFF complaining here that Google gives schools the ability to share their student's data with third parties and that is wrong (by Google)?

</comment><comment><USER24> "If Google wants to use students' data to 'improve Google products,' then it needs to get express consent from parents."

This is true.

<comment><USER25> It is not actually true. The school district acts as the agent for the child and it is their responsibility to spell out in contracts what the vendor can do with the data (in most cases). They are bound by various state and federal laws on what they can allow as well as what they must require of vendors but in general the parents don't have to provide consent on a case-by-case basis. Of course, parent can talk to the district about it and potentially have the child not use the service but this is not something vendors would ask of each parent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> An example of student privacy invasion using good old fashioned paper surveys and leading questions: [http://www.thecanary.co/2015/12/01/children-branded- potentia...](http://www.thecanary.co/2015/12/01/children-branded-potential- terrorists/)

Note that "The surveys were supposed to be anonymous, and when concerns were raised about pupils being identified, assurances were made they would be destroyed." turned into the survey results being handed to the thought police.

(There are various programs trying to combat "islamic extremism" in schools in the UK, all of which seem to be proceeding in clunky bureaucratic ham-fisted ways.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Off topic comming up. I feel the one thing that will really get Google in trouble is this hypothetical senerio--right out of a bond movie:

Google has the ability to look at all our internet history. They have the ability to read our emails. That can match up ip addresses with street address. They can most likely figure out what most people do for a living. (yes, some of this spying in illegial, unless advertising purposes?)

Could you imagine looking at the Internet history, and emails of the Titans of business around the world? Looking at the information that stock/investment types pass around.

Looking at all this information, collating it, data mining it, etc., and then buying and selling stocks/bonds/etc.?

Yea, I know it's illegial. It just seems like it would be tempting? I know the SEC is probally, or I hope they are, watching out for this kind of hypothetical behavior, and no--I don't think the founders of Google would ever even think about doing someting like this. If I worked there, and had access to sensitive files on those servers; It just seems like it would be hard to not look at that information, and make a few bets? Yea, I know they have great internal security, and have strict policies, but there's always a guy who would be willing to break the rules? I don't think I could not look at that information, and try to predict the future? (In reality I would never do anything like I proposed, but it sure would be tempting?)

<comment><USER28> People are attacked _physically_ over tiny sums of money. Occasionally someone is _murdered_ over sums small and moderate sums of money.

If people can be tempted by money to commit terrible crimes of violence, we should expect it would be easier to tempt someone with either larger amounts of money or less risk of getting caught.\

Mining data - from any source - is a lot less risky than murder, with a very low probability of being caught. Sometimes, selling data can be incredibly profitable.

What is the probability that all of the current _and future_ people at google will overcome that temptation? Even if people currently at google somehow resist the temptation, the open-ended nature of the data means that _someone_ will eventually break.

<comment><USER29> Nevermind the possibility of intelligence assets/agents working undercover at companies like Google and Facebook.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Weekend Tech Valley - <AUTHOR> http://techvalley.startupweekend.org/ <comment><USER2> Let's go kick some ass! Or at least have a blast :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mubs always puts his foot in these sites, lets support him!

</comment><comment><USER4> yay for nerdom.</comment>


Does anyone remember...? - <AUTHOR>

What the site is called that lets you listen to two songs, then rate which one is better? I'm sure there's more than one, but any help is appreciate. <comment><USER2> <http://www.songfight.org/> ?</comment>


The Rise of The Social Media Vigilante - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nkhumphreys_89452/the-rise-of-the-social-media-vigilante-91f21a734128 <comment><USER2> This exposes a risk of not using social media. One could be ostracized or harassed due to false content on social media and never know precisely why. Imagine the paranoia that would create, given the clear temptation for people to subtly harass the accused.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very true, and something I had not considered. A persons right to face their accuser is limited if the person does not know they have been accused in the first place</comment></comment>


YouTube autoplay gave a lost Japanese classic new life (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/35465/1/midori-takada-through-the-looking-glass-interview <comment><USER2> The problem with Youtube autoplay is that at some point it just keeps recommending the same 3-5 songs you've already listened to over and over again. I was listening to music on Youtube just now and they just auto-played the previous playing song. Because of this you can't rely on Youtube to play music at say a party unless you make a playlist in advance (which Youtube doesn't allow you to do while you're listening to music on desktop, which is just negligently awful UX).

Why can't they fix this? It'd be extremely simple to implement basic logic to prevent recommending you the same songs you've already listened to over and over again - or even perhaps give you the option to prevent recommending you songs you've already listened to altogether. But as it is right now, there is no way to customize your recommendations other than selecting "not interested" on individual videos/channels.

How is Youtube's recommendation engine this awful? How come you still can't search for and queue up your next video while you're playing a video? It's not exactly rocket science to fix these. Isn't Google supposed to have the "best" engineers?

<comment><USER3> > How come you still can't search for and queue up your next video while > you're playing a video?

I have actually gotten this feature about a week ago. I suppose it's slowly and quietly rolling out.

But without that, you can add to the end of a playlist that's currently playing, as long as there's a buffer after the current video. The tab that's playing the playlist reloads the queue when proceeding to the next video.

<comment><USER4> As in you're working on a YouTube team? Sounds like great forward progress! Can you give any comment on the repeated autoplays? Seems like that would indeed be a relatively simple feature that would add a lot of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related: The Youtube algorithm also recently lead me to this Japanese musician I wasn't familiar with: (Ryo Fukui - A letter from slowboat) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVV_z1lBNLo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVV_z1lBNLo)

Sounds like it would go really well with winter.

<comment><USER6> Ryo Fukui has been very popular for a long time with the /mu/ sort of crowd. There's a group of artists (ryo fukui, animal collective, neutral milk hotel, the antlers, mount eerie, destroyer, the avalanches, gsybe, etc) which are basically a clique in the music recommendations graph. Although they aren't very close to each other genre wise, they are safe bets as a recommendation for anyone who listens to any music in the /mu/core 'genre'.

<comment><USER7> What's /mu/? Is it something related to 4chan?

<comment><USER8> Yeah. It's a board on 4chan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Then there was the strange period where a stuck anode somewhere in the Youtube recommendation engine seemed to be offering up Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love" to everyone...

<comment><USER10> In general, whatever model Youtube uses seems to get really obsessed with certain concepts every once in awhile.

A few years ago, for about a month it was obsessed with videos of red-hot knives cutting through things. It was ridiculous. To the point where "professional Youtubers" with no previous history of videos like that needed to ride that wave just to be relevant.

Think about it: some person in their house heating up a kitchen knife over the stove so they can cut through a bar of soap, simply because an algorithm decided that's what people on some video site want to see.

Then it was Family Guy clips, which is still happening.

And "relaxing low-fi music to study/relax to", which I'm pretty sure at least a billion people on planet Earth have seen recommended to them at some point.

I'm sure there are many other examples, those are the ones I remember.

<comment><USER11> YouTube kept offering me videos of lockpickinglawyer for months and months despite having no interest in lockpicking or lawyers then one day I finally gave in and watched a half dozen of them and now it's my entire recommendation feed.

<comment><USER12> Oh you too? Youtube been shoving his videos at me for the last month or two. The only thing I could think of is that Youtube started data mining a back log of old google searches and got to the mild interest I had in lock picking from like 10 years ago.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's that specific... I got them and so did loads of my friends. I think the algorithm just decided that everyone with vaguely nerdy interests will now see lockpickinglawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Radicalization by Youtube recommendations is real, and I'm living proof. My music library is nothing but Japanese jazz fusion and city pop now.

<comment><USER15> hmm, can you share a good starting place for Japanese jazz fusion?

<comment><USER14> The short answer: click any of the links below and let the algorithm guide you.

The long answer:

Casiopea ([https://youtu.be/vKOekWuzk3o](https://youtu.be/vKOekWuzk3o)) and T-Square ([https://youtu.be/3p9L7CV-HcI](https://youtu.be/3p9L7CV-HcI)) are the standard bearers of the genre.

Masayoshi Takanaka's An Insatiable High ([https://youtu.be/9cuxrkZeai8](https://youtu.be/9cuxrkZeai8)) is one of those albums that the algorithm pushes on everyone, and for good reason. Extremely funky. The Rainbow Goblins ([https://youtu.be/MzYD56hKF-8](https://youtu.be/MzYD56hKF-8)) is also impressive - a concept album based on a children's book. I'd recommend anything 1985 or earlier from Takanaka - after that, he starts to get a little cheesy.

Another personal favorite is Naoya Matsuoka. Everything that comes up when you search his name is great, so here's a live video that won't (unless you search the kanji): [https://youtu.be/-yQv7_tK3X8](https://youtu.be/-yQv7_tK3X8)

Other favorites:

Piper: [https://youtu.be/sopcI4vTsuU](https://youtu.be/sopcI4vTsuU) [https://youtu.be/x8NgdjffLIY](https://youtu.be/x8NgdjffLIY)

Makoto Matsushita: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP6GoSnDKGw&list=OLAK5uy_mS3...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP6GoSnDKGw&list=OLAK5uy_mS3gdysbxM6a2Dqhdbr5Gz7Y8lNCGNITQ)

AB's: [https://youtu.be/bDaQw8Tw8Jg](https://youtu.be/bDaQw8Tw8Jg)

Noriki: [https://youtu.be/HdG-Xg2n108](https://youtu.be/HdG-Xg2n108)

Himiko Kikuchi: [https://youtu.be/l_4WcHNjjV0](https://youtu.be/l_4WcHNjjV0)

And some channels that post a lot of various j-fusion and city pop:

Xerf Xpec: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkfmbKrdAH3_NHkbAZhWqIw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkfmbKrdAH3_NHkbAZhWqIw)

Marcel the Drunkard: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqMLGyzBt5zkPqCLrF5l10Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqMLGyzBt5zkPqCLrF5l10Q)

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised you didn't shoehorn Tatsuro Yamashita in despite your username, haha.

<comment><USER14> finally someone noticed! but they asked for fusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Musical taste is very highly subjective. There is arguably "bad" music, but there's a great deal of "good" music which fails to break through into popularity. Or which, having once been popular, falls from grace. Johann Sebastian Bach is a notable instance of this -- he'd languished into near complete obscurity until "rediscovered" (IIRC by Mendelsohn). One consequence is that a large portion of the Bach opus has been lost.

More recently there've been experiments in which multiple groups are exposed to non-mainstream music, separately. Each group picks "hits", but what's popular among one group isn't generally shared with others.

2\. The music industry itself acts as a gatekeeper to the genre, both in selecting hits _and_ in blocking access to alternative productions (or of alternative acts' and songwriters' access to the hit-making machine). Barry Kerner has covered one response to this in his book _Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929_ , covering among other elements, fakebooks, songsheets, cassettes, and MP3s:

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular- music/articl...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular- music/article/pop-song-piracy-disobedient-music-distribution-since-1929-by- barrykernfeld-2011-chicago-il-university-of-chicago-press-312-pp- isbn-9780226431833/585836C307B79FD42768F57984F8ECCF)

The "New Books Network" podcast series has an extended interview:

[https://newbooksnetwork.com/barry-kernfeld-pop-song- piracy-d...](https://newbooksnetwork.com/barry-kernfeld-pop-song-piracy- disobedient-music-distribution-since-1929-university-of-chicago-press-2011-3/)

3\. The YouTube channel responsible for promoting the works in question ... has seen them taken down due to copyright claims. Ironic irony is ironically ironic.

<comment><USER18> > Johann Sebastian Bach is a notable instance of this -- he'd languished into > near complete obscurity until "rediscovered" (IIRC by Mendelsohn).

I believe that was Beethoven, not JS Bach.

<comment><USER17> Not according to my sources.

As an example of the lost Bach works, he composed a full five liturgical years of works: a cantata for each Sunday, and for each Holy Day (ten or fifteen per year), a Passion for each of Christmas and Easter. Of the five years, we have two and a fraction -- that's well over 100 works that are lost to all time.

By contrast, Beethoven never lost popularity or awareness. So far as we're aware, _none_ of his works are lost, and there are in fact numerous "juvenalia" \-- immature works, not included in the standard opus catalog, which survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Never would have expected this to make it to the front of HN, but I'm glad it did. This album is well worth listening to, especially the closing track Catastrophe Σ. Even though it's something of an ambient classic today there's not a lot of music that sounds like it outside of the Steve Reich school of minimalism. It captures a little of the explosion of creativity that took place in Japanese culture in the 80s and 90s, and it's great to see that it's managed to break through to Western audiences.

For the record I also discovered this album through YouTube. Through discussions with my colleagues I get the feeling that a lot of what gets recommended to me on YouTube isn't unique to me. Millions of hours of content uploaded a day and somehow we all end up watching the same stuff. Funny how that works.

</comment><comment><USER20> An article that sheds more light on the Japanese reissue scene: [https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3446](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3446).

</comment><comment><USER21> Ironically, for all the discussion of YouTube in the article, it links to the music on SoundCloud.

<comment><USER22> And if you follow the YouTube link in the article, you'll find that the "video" was taken down due to a copyright claim.

<comment><USER23> Since that YouTube buzz, the album as been remastered and re-released. (And the artist went on tour after years of inactivity!!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> not bad but also not quite as good as Hiroshi Yoshimura Green is just amazing for this kind of ambient sounds [https://youtu.be/D7aYjRl_6Zw](https://youtu.be/D7aYjRl_6Zw)

<comment><USER25> Came here to post exactly this.

 _Music For Nine Post Cards_ is also a real gem: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyY7NU4cbtY).

Much respect to the uploaders giving these albums a digital rebirth.

<comment><USER26> It is a true gem.

However Yoshimura has been a legend among collectors and in ambient circles long before Youtube was around and I think we should give greater credit to the countless labels that work on re-issuing these long lost gems and making them widely available. In this particular case it's Empire of Signs and Light In The Attic: [https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3538-music-for-nine- pos...](https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3538-music-for-nine-post-cards)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Youtube used to be excellent for discovering new music. A while ago I was really into Baroque music and kept finding new and interesting composers I've never heard of.

This seems to have completely dried up by now. These days autoplay seems to always end in a rather short loop of the same songs and the breadth of obscure stuff, especially for classical music seems to have gone in general.

I find that Spotify is way better for discovery these days, even though it's quite useless for classical music for various reasons(mainly because there's no single 'artist' with classical music).

</comment><comment><USER28> If you enjoy this or want to venture further go look for An Insatiable High Lp and Casipea (Mint Jams). Suuuuper smooth fusion.

<comment><USER29> Funnily enough both of those were recommended to me by the YouTube algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And I'm learning to make my own Micro Turbine Engine. Few months ago my feed was full of Synthwave Music. Youtube sometimes work s in mysterious ways.

By the way check this crazy russian's channel. He made a turbo shaft BMW. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb9_Bhv37NXN1m8Bmrm9x9w/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb9_Bhv37NXN1m8Bmrm9x9w/videos)

</comment><comment><USER31> The first track is very reminiscent of Geoff Knorr's work on the Civilization V soundtrack. Maybe they have a common inspiration somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obligatory plastic love link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso)

a japanese funk classic i'm very glad i was introduced to via autoplay</comment>


Verified Software with Albatross - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitbook.com/read/book/hbr/alba-lang-description <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, but I don't know enough about the field to say whether this is an important/well supported/used language, or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> The language is currently being developed. It is fully supported.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Request for Articles? - <AUTHOR>

Recently quite a lot of people on HN seem to be complaining about they're seeing the same old topics get rehashed and the lack of genuinely new content.
So I'd like to propose we make this a "Request for articles" so people can request articles on particular topics and encourage people who have knowledge in those areas to write about them.
So what topics would you love to see more written on ?
(some examples: landing pages, how to approach VCs, failure stories, how to design effective adverts, how to estimate market size) <comment><USER2> The business side of startups e.g. user acquisition is imho not covered enough on HN.

<comment><USER3> Otherwise known as "marketing", "promotions" and "sales". Words that too many here seem to consider dirty. I'm not really sure why. They require creativity and a willingness to take risks in the face of uncertainty. I wholeheartedly support the call for more business-oriented articles.

<comment><USER2> Surely it's just my terminology obsession, but I prefer the term user acquisition because that is actually the goal of your marketing. For example, sending your app/game to review blogs is a standard marketing practice, but you can't rely on it to get users. You need more deterministic stuff like SEO, content marketing, etc.

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm being pedantic, but real marketing is user acquisition. Contacting blogs is PR and it has very little to do with marketing(maybe with the exception of positioning). If your marketing strategy is to contact blogs and tweet, you don't have a marketing strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More crazy ideas and apps. Less cynicism and punditry.

More hardware hacks like - [http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/12/save_sensor_data_to...](http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/12/save_sensor_data_to_google_spreadsh.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see more articles relating to good coding practice using PHP. I know it's got a bad rep, but it's a good tool for people who know how to use it well. That said, most tutorials and code examples out there are just terrible--ugly code, and not secure. There are programmers who write great code, but it seems they're not the group writing about it.

<comment><USER7> Is <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2015794> along the lines of what you're looking for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good idea. But can someone please add an easier way to navigate this site? I mean everything is all over the place. And really good things get pushed to pages that nobody probably even reads.

</comment><comment><USER9> I definitely hope to see more "case studies" or rise to glory stories of startup much like airbnb. It really help to keep me grounded and focus on sticking with my gigs. And not give up.

</comment><comment><USER10> creating llc's and some legal info.</comment>


Help, I'm getting killed by international wire-transfer fees - <AUTHOR>

I found a really great and affordable SCRUM based development team that is based in Argentina. The problem is is that their bank charges $70 wire-transfer fee and mine charges $35. Which means I am paying an extra $105 per invoice.<p>As a self-funded startup this is a hard pill to swallow. Any tips or advice on ways to avoid these fees? <comment><USER2> Have a look at this company it might be a lot cheaper <http://www.xe.com/fx/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that's quite expensive. As another poster mentioned, looking into a currency exchange service such as xe.com would be a good idea. Essentially you do an ACH transfer to them and then they do a transfer to the recipients bank account. Not only is the transfer cheaper than a wire, but you should get a better exchange rate.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could solve it the way that my employers have: take your end of the cost out of their invoice.... I didn't think it was the best solution ever, but I honestly didn't have enough leverage to do anything about it, either. I'll probably just bill more next time =p

</comment><comment><USER5> xe is awesome.. been using them for 10 years now

</comment><comment><USER6> can you use western union?

<comment><USER7> Generally speaking, that's even worse than bank transfers...</comment></comment>


Security by obscurity: The No Lock People - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/garden/14nolock.html

<comment><USER2> It's not so much the crime of theft that bother's me. If I'm not in the house and my apartment is ransacked, whilst not ideal, is not really a problem.

My main concern is for the safety of my girlfriend and myself.

[EDIT] I just wanted to point out some of the security measures that I have in my home (In South Africa).

1) I live in a walled off (3m walls) estate with permanent patrolling guards. 2) The walls have an alarmed and electrified fence on top of them, (about 1m in addition to the 3m wall). 3) Entrance to the estate is controlled via a single guarded entrance. 4) The entrance has camera's. 5) I live in a 3rd floor apartment with a balcony, the only way to the access the balcony is to climb two stories.) 6) The door to my apartment has a security gate.

That been said; my neighbor on the 3rd floor was robbed. A ninja, I presume, climbed to the third floor and stole his wallet and mobile phone.

His girlfriend woke up with the criminal standing in his bedroom, she screamed, he chased and the criminal jumped the 3 stories to the bottom floor and GOT AWAY!

After that incident I installed a security gate on my balcony.

<comment><USER3> That does not seem to be a fun place to live. It almost sounds like a voluntary prison sentence.

<comment><USER2> Yup. Everyone lives in tiny cages and the result is that we've lost, or are loosing, our sense of community.

I want to outline part of the reasons why we choose to live in "voluntary prisons." I, thankfully, at age 26 have never been a victim of crime - But I do know several people that have not been as lucky:

* My friend's cousin was stabbed in a shopping mall in the gaming arcade! He unfortunately didn't make it.

* The same friend's grandmother was strangled to death in her bed - The criminal stole her car.

* My previous boss had a "home invasion," this is one of those terms that tries to soften the reality of such a situation. 4 armed criminals entered her house. They hit her husband over the head with a bottle and tied him and her up in the living room. After awhile they untied her and made her walk into each room. (She wasn't raped, but apparently the gauged her reactions to each room to figure out if she had hidden anything of value in said room.) Before they left the house that defecated and urinated on the living room carpet.

* A friend's parent's owns a hotel - He went to the bank to draw wages for his workers (Most are paid in cash, because they don't have bank accounts.) He was followed from the bank and 2 guys criminals entered his property with 9mm hand guns - He gave them his entire staff's wages.

To get a first hand account of some of the things that go on here I would recommend watching a documentary about the South African Special Task Force. I believe it's from 1999.

It's 3 x 60 minute episodes.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQSndb1DcqY>

I know I'm painting a fairly bleak picture of South Africa - It's a remarkable and truly beautiful place with amazing people (Minus the criminals.) It's just this fucking crime that's making it a horrible place to live.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry to hear it is that bad. Is the trend worsening or improving ?

<comment><USER2> I think it's improving. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Around here, number one thing insurance checks is whether there's evidence of a break-in. If thieves walk in through an unlocked door, you're not covered. I don't lock my door to keep thieves out, I lock my door to make sure insurance gives me a new laptop if someone happens to break in.

<comment><USER5> And you use an unpickable Modeco door lock? You changed the lock yourself to make sure that no previous tenants or a janitor have a key?

<comment><USER6> You're missing the point about the insurance company.

<comment><USER5> The point is that the insurance company can claim this but it wouldn't stand up in court. They would have to demonstrate that it an unbroken door proves negligence on your part - which would mean demonstrating that it is impossible for a thief to get past the lock otherwise.

<comment><USER7> No, they can simply deny your claim and then the burden of proof is on you to prove that you locked your door and the thief gained entry by picking the lock. Remember, in any dispute the person who wants the money is the one who has to prove their claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I lived in Amsterdam and drove an old car (Citroen DS). It was pretty beaten up but still a classic and parts were pretty expensive.

The locks were pretty bad, you could lock the doors but a screwdriver would be enough to open them so they didn't provide much security.

One day the glass on the passenger side front window was smashed in, but there was nothing in the car so that was an expensive fix.

After that I left the doors unlocked, worked for years.

Every now and then I'd find a door open in the morning but no more smashed windows. The car was very tricky to start (with the gearshift lever) so they never managed to steal it.

In the winter a homeless person would sometimes sleep in it, we sort of had an understanding that if he didn't mess it up I was ok with him using my car as his base.

Interesting town, Amsterdam :)

<comment><USER8> I don't lock my car or my garage for this reason. None of the security on my car does anything to stop a cinderblock, and that's the likely attack vector. I live on the border of the west side of Chicago --- a very high-crime area --- and garages and cars are busted into all the time.

A couple times it's been clear that someone had been in the car. But I've never had my garage door and car windows destroyed.

<comment><USER3> > None of the security on my car does anything to stop a cinderblock, and > that's the likely attack vector.

I think your profession is shining through there ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So… Joyce Weisshappel, where was it that you say you live? Hope the people in your building don't read the Times.

I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years on the border between some sketchy neighborhoods and some very nice areas. On my last day before moving to Tokyo, my car was broken into. I had always been careful not to leave anything of value inside the car, but on the last day I was tired from moving and had parked in the nice neighborhood, so I wasn't as vigilant.

I think this article says more about New Yorkers living relatively disposable lives. Many New Yorkers move every few years, and sell off their valuables (rent money!) and lead minimal lives.

The other half live in secure buildings and pay piles of money for maintenance fees and doorman tips. I don't know if I can count that as not locking the door.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh man. I've been noticing this divide for a long time now. Im a sorta-lock person. Im not opposed to locking stuff, but I don't go out of my way for it. I used to lock much less, when I had roomates -- convenience really. I don't lock up my bike either, when I'm at the coffee shop or bakery or whatever anyway. My garage is never locked. I live in a "bad" neighborhood and have yet to be robbed. Some say it is only a matter of time, but statistically this is unlikely.

This area seems to contain the best anecdotal evidence for something like karma too. Seems those who are most fearful, and super lock everything also get robbed a lot. Those who don't worry about it don't get robbed as often.

Anyway I think its funny that the people who are afraid of robberies and "double lock" and "tripple lock" talk about how its "inevitable" they will get robbed, and that it makes "common sense" that the extra locking is required. Of course if that was so true, the number of "no-locks" reporting 0 robberies would be way fewer. Seems that there is a huge amount of fear manipulation happening in the lock industry.

<comment><USER11> When I was in college, I never locked my POS car because I figured there was nothing worth taking in it. One night some kids got in it and took everything that wasn't nailed down - absolutely nothing worth anything to anyone else, but stuff that cost me a lot of time and irritation.

I always lock my car now, and I wouldn't ever fail to lock my house either. Not putting up that minimum barrier is just foolhardy.

<comment><USER12> Car lock can be easily destroyed. Locking your car when you have nothing valuable inside may cost you the lock. That was in the case of my friend. Also possibly window if interested party has just a stone on him.

<comment><USER11> Maybe. In my case, it would have definitely made the miscreants move on to the next car. At least if the offender breaks something, insurance will pay for it (if you have insurance), and you have something concrete to file a police report on.

<comment><USER12> Insurance will pay and raise your insurance premium because you become higher risk person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Theft and burglary are, in the vast majority of cases, crimes of opportunity. That's the only point I can think of that favours locking one's door. Otherwise, if you have something someone really, really wants to steal, they'll find a way. Bit like IT security ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> Should have probably left the original title alone since the article has just about nothing to do with 'Security through obscurity'. The whole thing is a bit over the place to begin with as it throws some very different kinds people - people who are well-off enough to have security staff instead of locks, people who just don't believe they're in significant danger of being burglarized, etc - under one facile heading.

<comment><USER10> I think that there is an intersting divide here, that meshes nicely to "lock/no-lock", which is mostly attitude/fear based. The no-lock is: "meh, its not worth worrying that much about" and the lock is: "i must lock my doors, im afraid of being robbed".

Personally I feel locking is partly a totemic ritual, involving more magical thinking than people are willing to admit about it. Seriously ask people why they lock the doors when they have a giant window right next to it, and they say "its safer" and "it keeps out the burglars". Point out the window, and they say "it just works ok".

<comment><USER15> The purpose of locking doors where I live, at least (San Francisco) is to prevent street people from coming in and sleeping in your hallway, and protect your stuff against petty theft by fairly desperate people who will try doorknobs looking for stuff they can quickly grab. Locks are quite practical solutions for both problems.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough. In the places I have lived (a fairly affluent suburb of Chiacago, and a college town in the middle of nowhere), the hysterical response is very common, probably because there is no practical side to it -- people who want in will break in anyway and mostly everyone else keeps out. Sure there is the occasional drunk college kid who is somehow lost and crashes on the wrong couch, but they are mostly harmless, and very appreciative when you don't call the cops.

<comment><USER15> Location, location, location!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guarantee none of these "No Lock" people have bothered to read the fine print of their insurance policies and they don't own firearms.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure I understand the point of the article. Security through obscurity does work in the sense that it decreases crimes of opportunity (I'm sure this is true even in the world of IT). Obviously it doesn't prevent someone who is motivated from getting in, but I don't think any reasonable person would suggest that it does. Does having a lock on something decrease your chance of having it stolen? I think the answer is: Absolutely, yes.

If you don't believe that security through obscurity is effective the following experiment should easily be able to confirm this: Place a couple of expensive bikes propped up on the street in random locations around town. A day later repeat the experiment, this time putting a lock on the bikes. Now I'm pretty sure no one is actually going to perform this test, precisely because the outcome is so obvious.

</comment><comment><USER18> In computer security circles (AFAIK) security by obscurity is not security. You always assume that the attacker has your source code, the layout of your computers etc. If you translate that over to this, you assume that thieves know that your door is unlocked and you have valuables. It would be a no-no.

</comment><comment><USER19> I lock everything. Is it that inconvenient to do? I know a lot of people that don't lock their stuff and I really don't understand why. But I guess my stuff is safer with other people leaving their property unlocked. Given a burglary it will be much easier to steal other peoples stuff than mine. It's like the joke, Q: How do you escape a wild animal? A: Be faster than the slowest person in the group.

<comment><USER10> Im not so sure: a crappy easily broken lock suggests more value than unlocked. Further question: are your people who don't lock stuff constantly being ripped off?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm somewhat in the middle.

We always lock the doors at night, not because I think it will stop someone who really wants to get in the house, but because it will act as enough of a delay and noisemaker for me to grab a weapon and stash the wife and dogs in the closet. Actually, probably just the dogs, the wife is pretty handy with a gun.

<comment><USER21> This is exactly why I lock my doors and use a door chain. If they wanted to get in, they'd make enough noise to wake me and everyone else in the house up. Hopefully it would give me enough time to wake up and get to my gun.

If I didn't live in an apartment, I'd install an alarm system for the same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My dad is the only one in his block who does not have a security system and is also the only one whose house has not been broken into.

Edit: Ooops, forgot to add that I think it's simply because he doesn't call attention to his house. If he doesn't need protection, then maybe he doesn't have anything of value, right?

<comment><USER23> On my block, the only two houses without alarms were the ones hit. (They both got alarms and no one has been hit since.)

As someone else said, this type of crime is one of opportunity, usually. It's easier to burgle a place without an alarm, so often that's what happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a middle ground. My condo has a coded lock and takes four digits to get in. Lots of my friends and colleagues have the code, as does the doorman, cleaning service, etc. Never had a problem.</comment>


Is Tech Too Easy to Use? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/technology/tech-friction-frictionless.html <comment><USER2> Yes.

But if it wasn't, there wouldn't be the tremendous amount of usage that we see today and the "top tech" would still be C64/386 levels of performance/accessibility.

I really dislike Microsoft for what they have done to the computer world, but I also recognize that we wouldn't be where we are if not for them and others like them.</comment>