Songtapper - Tap spacebar to tune: It knows song - <AUTHOR> http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain.bin?dotap=1

<comment><USER2> Here is a paper describing how it works: <http://cgi.sfu.ca/~gpeters/tapper/AAAI054PetersG.pdf> .

Basically, they start with the durations between each note, normalize for differences in tempo, and then create a string that for each note indicates whether the duration goes up, down, or stays the same between each note. Then find the edit distance between that string, and the strings in the database for each song.

You might have to read that a dozen or so times to make any sense of it, but it beats reading the paper if you have work to get done.

If you want to look into it further, <http://cgi.sfu.ca/~gpeters/tapper/tapper.cgi> .

</comment><comment><USER3> This simply can't work for anything other than very simple tunes. Rhythm is less than half of the picture in any modern piece of music, and there are a few basic patterns that repeat across hundreds or thousands of songs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice idea. Shame it doesn't work. Something where users could sing or hum the tune could actually work though. A true 'musical' search engine. I had this idea years ago but I think the implementation would be really hard.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sintresting.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were a program that could turn your hums and tappings into musical instruments? Everyone could be a musical maestro!

<comment><USER6> I've heard this idea from multiple places, so I expect it's one of those ideas that is easy to think of but difficult to implement. A similar idea was expressed in the plot of The Music Man, where children are taught to play instruments by imagining that they are whistling.

I wouldn't be surprised if the main implementation problem is that many people are naturally off-key when whistling or humming, and those on-key know the notes well enough that it is more efficient to simply enter music via a piano- like keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't get Smoke on the Water? Psh...

</comment><comment><USER8> I tried the start of Highway To Hell - very recognisable - and it gave me some Whitney Houston options or something.

Is this thing just random?

</comment><comment><USER9> Terrible.

Didn't get Yes, ACDC or Stevie Wonder.

</comment><comment><USER10> It got "Hey Jude". At least, that was the 2nd of the possibilities it mentioned.

I think that's kind of amazing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Needs more Bowie! Didn't get "Modern Love"

</comment><comment><USER12> Got "Down Town" by Emma Bunton on the first try. Didn't get "Exit music for a film", by Radiohead.

</comment><comment><USER13> I tried three diff songs, it failed on all of them. It even failed on "Happy Birthday..."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It got Happy Birthday and the Star Spangled Banner.

Couldn't get InaGaddaDaVida.

<comment><USER14> Aha, it's the Eliza trick: if you can look smart for the first fifteen seconds, many people will conclude that you're smart.

One wonders what percentage of people pick one of those two songs to try first. (I'm guessing that several other popular choices, like, say, "America, the Beautiful" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", are also pretty easy for the program to pick out.)

<comment><USER15> Apparently not "Row, row, row your boat" though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Saw this years back, tried it again just now to see if they got it to work by now.

It thought the VU's "Sunday Morning" was Guardiani Del Destino's "Rhapsody" (and their "Rock & Roll" was Sonata Arctica's "Weballergy"), the head of Coltrane's "Giant Steps" was Shakira's "Whenever Wherevr", CSN's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was "A New York Fairytale", Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" was "If Ever I Would Leave You", The Clash's "Atom Tan" was Mental as Anything's "Live it Up", and The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" was Toquinho's "Aquarela". FAIL.

</comment><comment><USER17> Simply terrible.

It couldn't even pick out the highly recognizable beat of that old favourite, Axel F!

<comment><USER18> Heh, Axel F was the second song I tried, and it recognized it.

Did you add the song after tapping it?</comment></comment>


Imagine BitTorrent Group Sysop Speaks Out as He Heads to Prison - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/imagine-bittorrent-group-sysop-speaks-out-as-he-heads-to-prison-130121/

<comment><USER2> _These IMAGiNE members were charged with several counts of criminal copyright infringement and they eventually received prison sentences ranging from 23 months in prison up to five years". ... "_

 _"... he mentions that in his opinion the case should have been a civil one, and he doesn't see why copyright infringement is a federal offense."_

Can anyone elaborate _why_ is it a Federal crime, like say kidnapping or bankrobbing?

<comment><USER3> I'm not American, but doesn't federal crime simply mean that the crime does not fall under the jurisdiction of states?

I can totally understand why it is a federal crime - copyright has to be enforced across the country. It'd be rather senseless to enforce copyrights by states.

Now, the real issue of course is as what he said: Why is this a crime? Shouldn't this be a civil issue, to be settled between the two parties? This is the part about copyright enforcement laws I don't get: how is it a crime?

<comment><USER4> > Shouldn't this be a civil issue, to be settled between the two parties

I kinda understand at least one reason why it's not that simple. In high profile cases like this, you could have hundreds of copyright holders wanting action. Coordinating all those people could be impossible, and thus legitimate cases would fall flat on their faces just for lack of cooperation.

<comment><USER3> If the copyright holders are unable to form a class action suit against one tiny group... I don't see why they should be entitled to going 'one level up' and getting federal involvement and making it a crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't imagine anyone going to jail so long for a non-violent crime.... though it's hard to understand where the limit is. I'd also like to see some people thrown in jail for other non-violent crimes.

Punishment seems hard to get right.

<comment><USER6> Would be interesting to see statistics of average sentence per crime. Something that would rank all crimes from highest average sentence to lowest, and where visitors can vote for sentences to go up or down. Crowdsourcing justice? Or is it better to leave justice in the hands of the few?

<comment><USER7> >Something that would rank all crimes from highest average sentence to lowest, and where visitors can vote for sentences to go up or down.

Sounds like something extremely likely to have the "voters" self-select in a way that biases the results. You can easily imagine e.g. prison companies exhorting all their employees to vote in favor of excessive sentences for the things in danger of having their excessive sentences reduced or eliminated, with the argument that if it happens they'll lose their jobs.

But more than that, it seems pretty obvious in general which crimes have excessive penalties: It's the non-violent not-for-profit ones with felony penalties. I'm sure you can think of specific exceptions (e.g. "not-for- profit" state-level espionage), but in general it's a very good heuristic.

In particular, the "assume profit from volume" characteristic of some of these laws is a major failure that needs to go. With the drug laws the limits are set sufficiently low that you have recreational users who just buy/have a lot at once entirely for personal use being prosecuted as distributors, and with copyright the number of copies made is so far abstracted from the actual harm to the copyright holder and is so hard to accurately measure that making it the deciding element in criminal law is a blunt instrument at best and to be less kind is exactly the sort of thing that can lead to the felony prosecution of someone like Aaron Swartz. If the government wants to prosecute someone for engaging in a for-profit activity, they should have to actually prove that you made a profit from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Frankly I think he just sounds like the bitter old man he is. At least the TPB guys are idealistic in a cute way, but Cherwonik just seems self-entitled and grumpy.

I might add that the continuous allegations of bribery and corruptness does not really help his case.

<comment><USER8> Agreed... I think his punishment is ridiculous, but his own justifications are equally so. He comes off like a whiny teenager who's been caught sneaking out with the car. And I don't think his "I bet I paid a thousand or so for hosting" complaint is going to win him any sympathy. To the uninformed, that's just going to sound like a burglar complaining to the judge that burglary tools cost money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In for a penny, in for a pound.

I wonder if he would had made any money from this, a better lawyer would had better represented him in court, and thus serve a lesser sentence. That is, even while facing more serious charges.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand why criminal copyright infringement exists. If there is no copyright holder to sue, then by all logic the works should be in the public domain, thus no copyright to begin with.

<comment><USER11> Not all copy right holders have the financial means to sue for copyright infringement. It should be a criminal offence, what is wrong is the level of punishment associated with different levels of infringement.

<comment><USER12> _Not all copy right holders have the financial means to sue for copyright infringement._

That _might_ be a good reason for funding state-provided attorneys. It's a terrible reason for making it a crime.

<comment><USER7> Providing state attorneys is a bad idea in general. You'll immediately get frivolous lawsuits everywhere if the attorneys don't have discretion to decline cases, and if they do then all you're doing is having the state prosecute a de facto criminal case where the penalty is a fine, except that you've unjustly reduced their burden of proof from beyond a reasonable doubt to the preponderance of evidence.

Having _for-profit_ copyright infringement be a misdemeanor is not without reason. But it should have to be _for-profit_ , i.e. actual money is proved to go into their pockets, not assumed to be for-profit based on circumstantial nonsense, and the penalty should be very low for first time offenders and no more than a year in any case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FAA says 181,000 drones have been registered since December 21 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dronethority.com/blog/2016/1/6/faa-says-181000-drones-have-been-registered-since-december-21 <comment><USER2> I guess we can all agree CES is drone central?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if DJI makes up the majority of that

<comment><AUTHOR> Phantom all the way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a lot of drones</comment>


Multiple staging urls for each branch under {branch-name}.staging.example.com - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sadkay/continuous-staging-2621c6410acc <comment> sahin-boydas interesting idea.

I hate that most of the time we can only test master/development branch in staging. It will be very interesting when we start to deploy every branch to a matching url. It can really help us to test branches before merge requests.

<comment><USER2> Well, that surely saves the reviewer time on pulling and checking the features/designs. Nice point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome work</comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody knows a temp mail service with an API? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If "temp mail service" means a way of receiving email using a temporary account then Mailinator does, but it's quite expensive. [https://www.mailinator.com/pricingmatrix.jsp](https://www.mailinator.com/pricingmatrix.jsp)</comment>


JSON relations in GDPR records of processing activities JSON object - <AUTHOR> https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/relations/19 <comment><AUTHOR> These relations are generated based on refs in JSON schemas with MOSP: [https://github.com/CASES-LU/MOSP](https://github.com/CASES-LU/MOSP)</comment>


Makefiles from the Ground Up - <AUTHOR> https://avikdas.com/2019/11/18/makefiles-from-the-ground-up.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a big fan of understanding the tools in our ecosystem, whether or not we use those tools directly. Make is one such tool that I initially used by copying other people's Makefiles, tweaking little bits and pieces to suit my needs. Only when I sat down and learned what Make offers out of the box did I grok those Makefiles I was using.

I know people might use tools like CMake, instead of writing Makefiles directly. However, it's still good to know this important part of the Unix ecosystem.

(I was inspired to submit this to HN based on the discussion around "An opinionated approach to GNU Make": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21812656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21812656) \- a fantastic article, but one you get a lot more out of if you understand the basics first.)

<comment><USER2> This would be a great introduction if it specified at the top that it pertained to GNU make. I had suspected as much, but I wasn't able to confirm for sure until I got to the end and saw that you linked to the GNU make manual for further reading.

I'll throw you an upvote anyway because I suspect most of your target audience is using the GNU toolchain, and because you posted this on your own website instead of using Medium. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You're absolutely right about not being upfront about being GNU Make- specific. I edited the post to mention it, and I also edited the follow-up post to say the same.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. That'll make things a little easier for BSD newbies getting familiar with make.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vectr – The Intellectual Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.vectrapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Vectr is the best way to learn new information. Check out the brand new app on Android and iOS! [https://bnc.lt/download-vectrapp](https://bnc.lt/download- vectrapp)</comment>


The Real History of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/cd93ec806124 <comment><USER2> Would you guys please stop it with the vote collusion and submission collusion?

</comment><comment><USER3> lol</comment>


US-VISIT to increase number of fingerprints on entry to USA - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/26/1944228 <comment><AUTHOR> I was already dubious about travelling to the USA from the UK. That the US government is planning to increase their pointless measures just makes me more convinced. Am I alone in thinking that any benefits for running a start-up in the USA aren't worth the hassle of entry? I think start-ups can be successful in Europe, e.g., London.</comment>


Knockout.js vs Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5112899/knockout-js-vs-backbone-js-vs

<comment><USER2> I've been using Backbone at Earbits (YC w11) [1] since February and have been very happy with it. We're running a pretty complex AJAX app that streams music along with providing a large set of functionality around the music itself (artist info, local concert alerts, track history, deep facebook integration, bookmarking favorites, event logging, running contests and promotions and so on).

For an idea of scale, we have: ~60 backbone views, ~120 javascript templates (underscore jst), ~30 backbone models + collections, 1 controller (the router)

And we have a fairly complex system of white-labeling that allows us to swap out javascript templates and augment view functionality for partner sites [2] and local sites [3] without adding a lot of overhead.

The combination of Backbone + Underscore + Jammit with Rails/Rack on the backend is working great. Even developers who are not familiar at all with Backbone and the ajax app, can dive in and understand everything pretty quickly.

Can't possibly recommend it highly enough, if you 1) are comfortable with Javascript, and 2) prefer to roll most of your own code so that you're not beholden to bulky rigid frameworks.

There are some quirks that annoy me, but overall I can't complain. One of these days when I have some more free time, I'll try and write a series of posts explaining how we're using it and our key learnings.

[1] <http://earbits.com> [2] <http://sfgate.earbits.com> [3] <http://la.earbits.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> The real competition to Backbone in this space in my mind is Sproutcore 2. At its core it's lightweight enough to be a drop-in replacement but has a vastly more sophisticated approach to handling dom updates, cascades of updates, data bindings and dealing with large sets of data.

</comment><comment><USER4> Every time I would try to learn and like Knockout.js, I was always put-off and immediately stopped from disgust after seeing all the data-bind attributes all over the place, destroying the separation between presentation and business logic.

But, after reading some of those answers, I'm very happy to see that you can now work with a fork of "unobtrusive" knockout. I'll definitely have to give it another chance.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend looking at Spine as well:

<http://maccman.github.com/spine/>

It's smaller than Backbone and IMHO also makes you write cleaner code. It has real controllers as well. Backbone has routes instead which works for a data- driven page-based application (say a CMS or something) but doesn't work that well for more GUI-like stuff (like a media player).

Unfortunately it doesn't have a big community and many users like Backbone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm happily using Backbone.js on several projects on the client side, including with VIE: <https://github.com/bergie/VIE>

One of the cool things is that Backbone models and views can be quite easily used also on the server-side with Node.js. In some applications both sides use the same models, with Backbone.sync being the difference - on client you communicate with AJAX, on server you communicate with a custom database connector.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish someone would write a very simple databinding helper to let backbone do some of that ultra easy UI databinding too.

<comment><USER8> Check out backbone-modelbinding: <https://github.com/derickbailey/backbone.modelbinding>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So far, I've seen every Knockout feature implemented directly or indirectly (via plugins) in Backbone.js

</comment><comment> sasha-dv Thank you for posting this link. I'm in the process of choosing between the two. So far knockout.js is winning.

<comment><USER10> I'm using Backbone at work to refactor a big project and the one thing I can tell is that I'm writting a lot of code.

It's coming to be very organized, but it makes the LOC bigger.

Also for starters I suggest that you have a look at some dependency management library like requireJS, if your code base its going to be big, you better get started with dependency management.

Good luck!

<comment> sasha-dv Thanks.

I'm working on a small project and while the code I'll write is small, my stack is rather colorful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is the ordering of answers so messed up on this particular stackoverflow question?

</comment><comment><USER12> I think Batman.js(by the Shopify guys) would be a good competitor in the space too.</comment>


Steam Audio – Free Spatial Audio Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/ <comment><USER2> Too bad it's not open source. The downloads and GitHub repo only host binaries + a C header file.</comment>


Banish TSA with this petition - Help - <AUTHOR> http://wh.gov/fx0D

<comment><USER2> No. The insistence on "innovative private companies" is not the solution. The solution is that the level of airport security needs to be made through public, transparent decision making. This may be the TSA. This may be boring private companies. This may be something else. But this petition is useless.</comment>


I won a 250k grant for my new online advertising startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2010/06/16/good-knight-brad-flora-gets-250000-grant

<comment><USER2> Congratulations! I look forward to hearing more about NowSpots.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was going to post this for you, I recognized you from previous threads.</comment>


Google+ has quietly turned off its shared circles feature - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/google-has-quietly-turned-off-its-shared-circles-feature/

<comment><USER2> _As of October 2013 Google+ had 300 million monthly active "in-stream" users who see or visit the Google+ stream of content, according to Marketing Land. Google has not provided Google+ usage metrics since then._

The current numbers must be down in the single digit millions by now. I don't know anyone who uses Google+ anymore (only a handful of people I know ever used it at all, compared to the hundreds of people I know on Facebook).</comment>


Python, the Magical School Bus - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/3269240

<comment><AUTHOR> is it bad form to 'first' my own link?</comment>


How should we promote it? - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys, Heres our startup - Mingle Trips - http://www.mingletrips.com . It is for single travelers to meet other travelers/locals while traveling.
All sorts of feedback is welcome. Especially, ideas on promoting it. Thanks. Manas <comment><USER2> Reach out to known travel blogs with a well drafted summary of what you offer. Attach some promotion to it. If you plan to charge, than offer a discount to readers with a code that references the website that is blogging about you. If you do not charge users, than offer private beta access to the first n readers to sign up with that invite code.

There's a pretty big chicken and egg problem with this, in that to make it useful you need a lot of users in each travel destination to make this work. If you're active on CouchSurfing, I would try to find locals in popular travel locations who would be interested in giving it a try, or maybe work out referrals with hostels to promote your site locally in exchange for promoting their hostels on your site. For example, for every 100 users they refer, they get 1 week of free advertising. You might even work with Hostel World to drive referral traffic to them with the hostels you've made agreements with in exchange for some free advertising on their site in a similar manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this one's easy - depending on your budget (I'm assuming you have almost none but one never knows): Advertise in travel magazines, hit up some of the travel agencies that cater to your demographic, call some of the travel apps and website services to partner, hit up all the blogs in your space, combine that with a press release targeting the industry publications and reviewers ( it's actually pretty cheap to do - check out Marketwire or others like it). I'd probably also give some of the dating websites a shot - you might get some traction from sites that cater to singles and travel that way. Try the vacation clubs too - many of these cater to singles also - could offer them co-branding opportunities.

Given your demographic I'd also post in University/ College sites. When it comes to hostels/ bed and breakfasts, you can probably contact some of the industry organizations to get lists and partnership or advertising opportunities - and of course call up hostels in some of the bigger cities to have them put up a notice for you. Get a list of journalists that write for travel sites and magazines and send them an intro email - maybe you'll get lucky and be picked up by one or two, offer an exclusive interview if they pick it up ( and stick with your promise).

All of this is legwork, but (except for the advertising) it's pretty cheap to do - just a lot of salesmanship - which is laborious but I figure you have more enthusiasm than money.

Hope that helps - good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats right. I do have more enthusiasm than money :) Thanks. I have reached out to bloggers on Linked in and gotten them to check out the site and recommend to their readers. I also contacted hostels in Europe but they didnt seem much interested so far. I will send many more mails now and see what converts. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello! Ive noticed that you and other have the same problem - so Ive tried to collect everything about how to sell and market a website here: <http://www.ideaoverload.com/Find-ideas/#Selling>

</comment><comment><USER5> How did you get 500 facebook likes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some basic FB Advertizing and also reached out to bloggers - some of whom have written about us. I also spammed some travel sites a bit :D So we have around 6k users and 500 fb likes so far. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How are you promoting it so far?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some basic FB Advertizing and also reached out to bloggers - some of whom have written about us. I also spammed some travel sites a bit :D and posted on CL and various free online classifieds.

<comment><USER6> How well did the advertising work? Was it worth it in your opinion?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think FB Advertizing was awesome. It is expensive for USA/Europe but you can target Asia for less than 10 cents/click. We were converting close to 30%. So it wasnt bad at all. But the problem with Mingle Trips is that it is not viral. so I could only get people as long as I paid for it. That was not a great model for a bootstrapped startup. Also, it works much better than listing on Craigs List since you get much fewer perverts. From CL, etc, we were regularly getting prostitutes and guys who only wanted to get laid and were pretty crude. This may not be the general trend. It is only my limited experience.

<comment><USER6> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Goodbye Android - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/goodbye-android

<comment><USER2> Josh Drake(the researcher who found the stage fright exploit) was interviewed on the last episode of the risky business podcast. His opinion is that iOS and Android are very similar in their level of security, but the barriers to entry in researching iOS causes security researchers to spend more time looking at android.

A state who can finance themselves around those barriers to entry may have similar exploits against iOS, but we're less likely to find out about them.

</comment><comment> jon-wood This is possibly one of the best reasons to use something like Cyanogenmod, giving you control over updates rather than waiting on manufacturers and mobile operators.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently using Cyanogenmod (on a Samsung Note 3) but have a problems where I really consider to switch back to the stock ROM:

\- Battery life is reduced quite much, I spent quite some time finding the root cause with BatterBatteryStat, but in the end, it are just the core services which seem to use more power, there is no app in the background. With Cyanogenmod it discharges in the night for ca. 30% without doing anything and disable WLAN. When I still had the stock ROM I was out in the mountains for 5 days and could take almost 400 photos without recharging. SlimROM was much better in this regard, but they didn't had the PrivacyGuard and so far do not support the Note 3 on their newer ROMs.

\- I tried to avoid Google Play, unfortunately a few apps depend on it (especially all the ones using Google Map). But my main problem is more that I've no idea how dangerous alternatives like Aptoide are. I accidentally downloaded some apps which were already fully unlocked, while only available for money on Google Play. I found a Java Program ([http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon](http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon)) to download apps through a Google Account on your PC and then transfer it onto your phone, but this is somewhat cumbersome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use TextSecure ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms)) by Open Whisper Systems ([https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/))

 _Supposedly the vulnerability is in stagefright, which is the Android framework responsible for audio /video encoding/decoding and playback. TextSecure doesn't do any pre-processing of received audio/video messages, so it seems unlikely that a vulnerability in stagefright could be triggered simply by sending audio/video to a TextSecure user._

 _TextSecure plays audio /video by handing it to the system's default media player. If there's a stagefright vulnerability, it's possible that the system's default media player is vulnerable. From TextSecure, that interaction should only happen by physically tapping on an audio/video attachment, then tapping through a warning dialog about insecure playback. At that point, it's out of our hands._

 _\- moxie_

[https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/whispersystems/2015-07/msg0...](https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/whispersystems/2015-07/msg00084.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Will this fare better than when it was submitted 3 days ago?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9968214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9968214)

That one was flagged and sank without trace.

[http://hnrankings.info/9968214/](http://hnrankings.info/9968214/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was quite surprised my submission wasn't already in HN. Hopefully the link will spark an interesting discussion.

<comment><USER5> Nope. And it's been flagged again. I don't know why people think a discussion about this doesn't belong here, but there you go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a shame people are associating the name StageFright with the vulnerabilities instead of the media framework itself because it's possibly the best named library I've ever seen ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm on a Samsung device, which means updates are pushed several months after Google pushes theirs. I'd love to go to CM, but then the camera quality is just downright awful because of a lack of TW drivers... Quite annoying</comment>


Patreon - Support makers' ongoing works - <AUTHOR> http://www.patreon.com/jackconte?u=1

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an amazing project - like Kickstarter, but rather than placing a large bid for a one off project, this allows you to give small amounts to regular deliveries. This encourages artists to keep creating content, without having to run another campaign for each mini project.

The site's not restricted to which types of projects it funds. It could be musicians, artists, YouTubers, developers (e.g. if you want to release new levels for a game, or keep creating mini flash/mobile games), or anyone else.

*This site has been posted before (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5671267>), but didn't get spotted as it was posted during a busy period, so never got the views to make it out of the new section.</comment>


Show HN: A toy interpreter for a minimalistic imperative language in 1.3k LoC - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bbu/simple-interpreter

<comment><USER2> Quite impressive. One improvement that I don't think would increase your lines of code might be to use a `realloc' for your variable storage, so you wouldn't run out of space or have a hard limit.

[https://github.com/bbu/simple- interpreter/blob/master/src/ru...](https://github.com/bbu/simple- interpreter/blob/master/src/run.c#L82)

And of course I want to test this myself with a few interesting programs.

In terms of computing power, I think this language is just shy of being Turing complete. It's probably in the same class as regular expressions.

I'm working on a similar project, with a minimal compiler for an integer-only language, and I expect it to have the same limitation at first. I think the easiest way to remedy that is to implement dynamic arrays or some form of recursion, although I'm not sure if the latter is sufficient.

<comment><USER3> > I think this language is just shy of being Turing complete. It's probably in > the same class as regular expressions.

If it is possible to code an infinite loop, that tends to be enough to bring a language up to the level of being Turing equivalent.

To put it more strongly, it is really hard to define a nontrivial language that has infinite loops that is _not_ Turing equivalent.

And in fact I can see how to simulate a cpu in this language, so there you go.

<comment><USER2> Not so. Without the ability to implement or simulate a stack, a language cannot be Turing complete. Otherwise, that limits the computational power to that of a finite-state machine. Even so, being able to implement a stack is not sufficient, because pushdown automata are defined as finite-state machines combined with a stack, and PDA's are a proper subset of Turing-complete languages. Given that a CPU in this case could be stateless or have a limited number of states, that does not change the class of language.

Anyway, I see the author has implemented arrays now, and more specifically dynamically-sized arrays, so I will concede that it is Turing complete. That wasn't really the intent of my post, as there are other ways to devise a language, but cool none the less.

For a view of the classes of languages in computation, see this hierarchy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy#The_hierarch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy#The_hierarchy) Here, the set of languages that Turing machines recognize are labeled as recursively enumerable languages.

<comment><USER3> Thank you, but I am aware of all that, and I asked for arrays above in part to be able to emulate a stack (or a tape, if going the turing machine route).

(I could emulate a bounded stack with a bunch of variables and conditionals choosing them, but that's pretty ugly, and brings home just how bounded the result would be)

> CPU in this case could be stateless or have a limited number of states

The bounded state is an issue, but it is for Pentiums as well. We have approximations of Turing equivalent machines in real life, and that's close enough.

Regarding these other things:

> pushdown automata are defined as finite-state machines combined with a stack

I didn't say it was impossible, I said it was _difficult_ with a _nontrivial_ language -- because I've seen people try, and accidentally make things Turing equivalent.

If you know what you're doing, like you for instance, then sure, you just leave out problematic features and make sure you don't leave the level of the Chomsky hierarchy you were aiming for.

But no, people always want handy things like assignment and arithmetic expressions and loops and function calls and so on. :)

A classic example is pure standard SQL (up to a few years ago), which had no loop construct, and the language was famously sub-Turing.

But if the embedding language puts some SQL in a loop, it's trivial to emulate a CPU with simple SQL, which won't surprise someone classically trained like yourself, but does tend to surprise random programmers in the wild.

(I hear a more recent SQL standard added loops, which I have mixed feelings about.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google checkout just shutdown us down - <AUTHOR>

5 months ago, one of my projects signed up and began using Google Checkout to allow customers to charge service available on our website. A week ago, out of the blue, Google erroneously  flags our Checkout account for violation, indicating that we are not charging items from the website we say we are. The email indicates there are 5 days to take action. I double and triple check that all the information in our account is correct. Then send emails and feedback indicating everything is correct. I hear nothing, then today, 5 days later, Google shuts down our account. After franticly trying to fix this, or call someone, search this out, I find there is no phone number to call, just a feedback form which does nothing. The account is suspended with no further action to take. My website it dead in the water. What can I do? <comment><USER2> Why not just switch your payment provider? You should be able to do a simple paypal IPN integration in less than a day.

      * Paypal IPN
      * Stripe
      * 2Checkout
      * Dwolla

and a host of others.

<comment><USER3> "simple" + "IPN"... right.

Go for Stripe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in your story and would like to know more so I could get in touch with Google. Please contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Google is notorious for shitty customer service. Avoid them at all costs.

I'd recommend switching to Stripe if your customers are in the US. They are fantastic and their support is amazingly fast to respond.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are based in the UK why don't you apply for an account with Nochex.com? You can have your own account manager and have direct telephone and email access to them, here at our offices in Yorkshire.</comment>


Effect sizes and power in cognitive neuroscience and psychology literature - <AUTHOR> http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/25/071530 <comment><USER2> For those not in the know, John Ioannidis is responsible for much of the current focus on reproducibility in science, following his seminal 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings are False." ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an Atlantic profile on his work, from 2010 [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies- dam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies- and-medical-science/308269/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love someone more adept at the statistics than me to shed some light on the veracity and implications of this study.

Based on the abstract it seems pretty damning for cognitive science research conducted over the last 5 years (the period covered in the study). Perhaps it extends even farther back if most of those studies were built on previous research.

</comment><comment><USER4> Post-hoc power assessments? c'mon e.g. Hoenig & Heisey (2001) provide evidence that several different approaches for calculating post-hoc power are flawed and can produce misleading conclusions. Once a confidence interval has been computed, there is no additional information that a post hoc power calculation can provide.

Nevertheless cog neuroscience has had a bad habit of using small samples, sample sizes that developmental cognitive neuroscientists have criticized.

<comment><USER5> Hoenig & Heisey (2001) discuss computing power after finding _non_ -significant results. This is a bit different from the current paper, which also looks at the power for significant findings. (The conclusion here being that studies are so underpowered that they should be finding a lot fewer significant effects).

<comment><USER4> post hoc power calculations are inappropriate as they merely restate the p-value in a different form. No new information is gained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full title "Empirical assessment of published effect sizes and power in the recent cognitive neuroscience and psychology literature" was too long. Authors: Denes Szucs and John Ioannidis

<comment><USER6> Direct link to paper: [http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/08/25/071530.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/08/25/071530.full.pdf)

<comment><USER7> What is with those awful blurry figures?</comment></comment></comment>


You can now stake your claim in Apple's $500M iPhone slowdown settlement - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/13/21322867/apple-iphone-batterygate-throttling-slowdown-settlement-claims <comment><USER2> This is just a class-action lawyer rip-off. I wish someone would make a form- mail generator to object to the lawyer fees, or to exclude from the class.</comment>


Facebook Home and Dogfooding - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2013/05/facebook_home_dogfooding

<comment><USER2> I think this is what's going on with Facebook.

They've had so much success in such little time. The Facebook platform managed to get an IPO and is now scrambling to justify its business model. To please shareholders, and partners, they have to "do something". So...they did. They made a mod that does Facebook without clicking on the Facebook icon.

To me, its lame. Then again, I've never created a multi-billion dollar company before. Come to think of it, I've never created a multi-dollar company either. I'm not privy on how to spin a product so that someone is willing to back me with money.

Facebook is an interesting company. To me (and I'm sure to most users) Facebook is just a fancy address book. Yes, it has applications running on and against it, but for the most part its a wall of text and pics to view bits of information.

As for me, I just don't understand what Facebook home is. I understand what it's trying to accomplish. That part is easy and self explanatory. But, what is it really? From what I've seen so far, its just a way to use Facebook without having to "tap" the Facebook icon to ... use Facebook.

That part is very disconcerting to me. Not because, its "Facebook all the time". But, that Facebook really doesn't know what else to do to leverage what its got. It seems like the engineers there are being paid to polish up Facebook over and over again.

Sure, it has a new search feature that they can claim to stock holders and business partners that its even easier to pin point the data needed. Other than that, I have no clue what Facebook will become.

Now, this is just the views of a man on the outside looking in. Facebook does have problems, but I wouldn't mind having those problems right now. You can say all you want about Mark, but he did create something that most people couldn't. And at a very young age. Many would dream to be in a situation where you have changed the world, made billions and still figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

Sorry for the long rant...Wait, no I'm not :p

<comment><USER3> Facebook is becoming a social search engine. Everything will be tied up to the ability to be able to find anything about anything/anybody.

<comment><USER4> That was the whole point of introducing Open Graph years ago. Their business model is still advertising, but more narrowly targeted than Google.

I honestly think Facebook has peaked as a social hub. I know more people abandoning it now than I ever have before.

<comment><USER5> Facebook provides trivial value add to the user. Except for those wanting to view adverts. But there's no exclusivity in advertising, clearly.

Facebook could provide value add, they could pivot, but they seem to be entrenched.

It's a constant surprise to me how, very rapidly, once innovative companies become mired in their past. It's fascinating. It's almost a death wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 It doesn't make a lot of sense that people aren't downloading Home because of missing Android features - most probably wouldn't know there was something missing until they ran it. The simplest explanation is that people don't download something they aren't interested in, as Gruber points out.

<comment><USER6> > The simplest explanation is that people don't download something they aren't > interested in

Agree completely. Regardless of whether or not android users would miss their widgets, a big problem is that, just judging from a small local sample of friends and coworkers, no one has any idea just what the point of the app is. Facebook's marketing campaign around this thing is absolutely terrible. From their constant advertising, I've surmised that it's, I don't know, some kind of live updating slideshow of friend's photos? My curiosity is not piqued enough to even bother an install.

The marketing of it is really just terrible, which really puts me off. The strategy of "be even more of a non-current-situation-engaging dickhead in social situations with our app!" I don't see a commercial of someone in an art gallery, ignoring the paintings, ignoring the person their with, and generally just being insufferably over connected and think "y'know, I should get that app."

May just be getting old though..

<comment><USER7> I think the marketing is particularly bad and devoid of messaging because what else are they going to say?

"Download Facebook Home, its an Android home replacement which includes none of the features of the basic Android launchers that you've been using since the day you got your phone. We'll move all of your stuff behind our wall of Facebook so it becomes more difficult to find."

I'm sure in a lot of cases it comes down to this: "Wait, if I install this I'll lose my weather widget? Forget it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we as a whole got a bit overboard with the theory "social networking is the future and whoever controls that, will control the internets"

Facebook is a very good utility but it's not everything. The social data might be good for advertisers but we have yet to see a single study where people ditched usual advertising streams for it. And there hasn't been a single innovative/exciting feature from Facebook since the News feed.

It just seems they are trying to be something which they are not. They are struggling at both ends. Can't create a good enough advertising platform nor improve the product from user perspective.

<comment><USER9> You don't think that graph search is innovative?

<comment><USER10> I still haven't been granted access despite signing up right as the beta sign- up form was available, but no - not really. It's an SQL query with some natural-language processing used to build the query. Neat? Maybe. Innovative? I see it as just another view on data that was already available to me through more-arduous means of searching.

<comment><USER9> Oh it isn't public (I don't use Facebook)? I recreated it with Neo4j and TornadoWeb for a presentation that I gave at a local Python meetup a few months ago. I found the idea around it very cool and i feel that it has a lot of potential to change the way we search/think about relationships.

[https://github.com/emehrkay/meetup- graph/blob/master/slides....](https://github.com/emehrkay/meetup- graph/blob/master/slides.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think he nailed the issue right here:

 _Facebook Home isn't an iPhone idea. It's just a bad idea. Facebook is an app, not a platform. A good home screen interface is one that accommodates any app or service, not just one._

Facebook is a service- a single service- that lots of people use. But those people use a lot of other services too. Facebook isn't as important to people as Facebook obviously likes to believe. Lots of people using Facebook != Lots of people using Facebook lots of time, especially on mobile devices whose entire purpose is to provide information in a portable fashion. They make calls, send texts, and sometimes, yes, make status updates and view images. But they also get directions, play music, display weather notifications, and store reminders.

Facebook handles a couple of these things fairly well at best. Between the fact that it is a single service and that most people I have to imagine are irked by having a social sharing service in between them and every task they want to accomplish on the device is enough to say "the app is good enough for me."

<comment><USER4> That's a great point. Facebook Home was simply a bad idea. I don't want Facebook taking over my phone, although I'm sure they would like nothing better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this a problem inherent with dogfooding, and not isolated to Facebook? Building it and using it doesn't mean you want to in the first place.

>It's always a sign of trouble when you've built something you don't want to use yourself.

I'm not convinced that this can be isolated to this alone. I doubt a homescreen alone would make someone want to jump ship from one ecosystem to another

>Why does everyone I know who works at Apple carry an iPhone? Every single one? Not because they have to. It's because they want to.

I was under the impression that this is an Apple culture thing? It's alleged that if you wear a competitor's brand on Nike Campus, you'll be politely asked to leave (or forced to buy a new pair of shoes while they burn yours). what _is_ Apple's culture's take on this?

>(Doesn't look like it, judging by the "via Twitter for iPhone" metadata on his recent tweets.

I know Twitter clients can still access the data, I'm guessing there's no easy way to do it

<comment><USER13> > I was under the impression that this is an Apple culture thing? It's alleged > that if you wear a competitor's brand on Nike Campus, you'll be politely > asked to leave (or forced to buy a new pair of shoes while they burn yours). > what is Apple's culture's take on this?

At just about every company there is some level of expectation that you'll use the company's products and not the competitors. It's true that there is a line some where between expecting employees to "back the company" and expecting a cultist devotion to everything they do.

However, not using products that you yourself work on is really bizarre. That's the type of thing that happens in enterprises where you work on projects you are assigned to, not ones you have an interest in. I wouldn't think that's how it works at Facebook.

<comment><USER14> FWIW, when I did my onsite interview with Google a few years back, I saw a pretty good mix of Apple and other brands (both laptop and phone wise). Didn't see a whole lot of tablets, but this was before they really took off. Maybe some companies are just less draconian and more forward thinking than others? Any company that told me I couldn't use a certain product or brand, no matter what it was, wouldn't have me as an employee for long.

<comment><USER15> Apple as a company draws a level of devotion from its users that Google cannot even come close to matching. There just aren't that many Google fanboys, and they're not very likely to be working at Apple (many are likely at Google). But there's no way that all the Apple fanbois could get a job in Cupertino, there are just so many of them, particularly in the Valley. So there are plenty of them who end up at Google and continue to use their iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Just walk around any coffee shop or conference in the Valley. Almost everyone will be using an iPhone. You will very rarely see an Android phone. And pretty much everyone will have a MacBook, of course.

In fact, I have gotten comments from people who have specifically noticed that I own no Apple products, because they find it so strange.

<comment><USER14> _Just walk around any coffee shop or conference in the Valley. Almost everyone will be using an iPhone. You will very rarely see an Android phone. And pretty much everyone will have a MacBook, of course._

This saddens me: so many hacker types accepting locked down platforms. As with many things in Silly Valley, I suspect it may have more to do with faddishness and hipsterism than anything else. Conferences I've been to (yes, in the valley), have been a pretty mixed bag, and tech enclaves I've known are also fairly light on the Apple product placements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this response completely misunderstood the point of the techcrunch article's mentioning of the iphone. It doesn't mean that Home was inspired by the iPhone, just that the people developing it could not possibly be using it on a daily basis (dogfooding) as a test of quality and usability, because they had iPhones which could not run facebook home. Therefore, the original thesis seems to be it was bad because it wasn't actually used by the people developing it, not because it was iPhone-inspired somehow.

</comment><comment><USER17> It can't be good for morale that Zuckerberg doesn't even use FB Home.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe Mike Matas isn't the target audience of facebook home. Does Mattel CEO need to play with Barbies?

<comment><USER19> That's a really bad example, obviously adult males don't with barbies. Maybe questioning his kids' toy chests would be more appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't there a story about Steve using a NeXTstation at Apple for email until OS X was up and running?

<comment><USER21> Did you use Mac OS 8 & 9? They were awful. No proper multitasking ("cooperative"), no memory protection, crappy TCP stack, and lots more bad stuff. Things were so bad they bought a replacement OS (NeXT) because their internal engineering had completely stuffed up. I don't think I could have gone from NeXT to MacOS 9/8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "It's always a sign of trouble when you've built something you don't want to use yourself."

Not true. More than half the products I've built during my career I would never use myself. The customers loved them, however, and paid me handsomely.

<comment><USER23> This is more true for consumer services, less true on the enterprise. Though it's a problem that great PMs need to overcome when building enterprise applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I might be in the minority but Facebook Home truly excited me. It got me thinking about buying my first android instead of another iPhone.

It's too bad AT&T discontinued it as I was just waiting for my contract to expire.

So, from my experience, I see this as a lack of Facebook getting outside the building and learning from how reviewers and vocal users want to use it. It's great to try something innovative but you need to foster a community around it so your message is amplified above the chorus of naysayers.

<comment><USER10> "It's too bad AT&T discontinued it as I was just waiting for my contract to expire."

If you're interested in Facebook Home, you can still get any recent Android phone and install the app as your device Home screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it still only available for download on the flagship devices? That seems like a pretty limited market.

<comment> k-mcgrady They added the HTC One and Galaxy S4 last week. Still a limited number of devices overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Does Mike Matas? (Doesn't look like it, judging by the "via Twitter for > iPhone" metadata on his recent tweets.) Why not?

Wait, why is he using Twitter at all?

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this is what's going on with Facebook.

They've had so much success in such little time</comment>