Common Misconceptions in the US. - <AUTHOR> http://www.qriously.com/2011/12/common-misconceptions-in-the-us/ <comment><USER2> One thing that is completely missing (unless I'm being daft) is the sampling method for gathering data. How many people responded to give the results. Possibly fairly quite a low since for some states there appears to be no data gathered at all?

However, a fun thing to do!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't think it's a serious study (nor that it meant to be), but really fun nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Iowa's not looking too good in this survey. Maybe we should rethink their pecking order in the presidential elections.</comment>


Renting vs Buying, Foreclosures and Job Growth across 50 US Cities - <AUTHOR> http://insights.truliablog.com/vis/rent-vs-buy-q3/ <comment><USER2> This is why I don't buy the home I live in as an investment. It conflates two very important things:

* My home.

* A large financial investment.

Changing one affects the other. I'm skeptical that life circumstances will magically align so that when it's a good time for me financially to sell my home, it will also be a good time for me to change location (or vice versa).

So I rent.

<comment><USER3> The counter argument is that the rent you are putting down is not being invested into your home. I think that is a very cogent argument, but it relies on your ability to sell (or willingness to sell later on).

I concur with your analysis though, and don't plan to buy for a long time (ie, when I am ready to put down roots for 10-20 years).

<comment><USER4> Roughly speaking, if you save the difference between the rent and mortgage price, you should end up with the same upside that a purchase would have netted (although if rent > mortgage, then renting only makes sense for a short term stay).

Many people think home buying is a good financial strategy because most people don't have the discipline to save this extra cash. It benefits the buyer in the same way a forced retirement savings plan would.

<comment><USER5> _Roughly speaking, if you save the difference between the rent and mortgage price, you should end up with the same upside that a purchase would have netted (although if rent > mortgage, then renting only makes sense for a short term stay)._

Roughly speaking you _might_ wind up with the same upside. I consider rent+invest the more risky option even if you _do_ have the discipline to do it, since there are lots of scenarios where you wind up behind.

What does winding up behind mean? It means being 85 years old, retired, and not having enough money to pay the rent. I think it's worth buying a house just to have the peace of mind of knowing you'll have somewhere to live once you're retired.

<comment><USER6> Yeah... Peeps I know in the Republic of I who bought are average 100K in negative equity, meaning, even if they sell, they still owe 100K. The risk depends on the market levels. 7% annual rent to price, or 3.5 times median income is the general long-term trend (OECD report), and if your house is way above that then worry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is missing an important point - if you buy, you are stuck there until you can sell it again. That loss of flexibility represents a significant cost of its own.

<comment><USER8> Also it involves concentrating your financial risk in one highly leveraged asset.

<comment><USER9> Yes and No. You typically are only risking your equity when you buy a house (which, with a 30 year mortgage, is basically just your down payment).

<comment><USER6> Ah, no no no no no!!!

House prices can and do drop 40-60% from a peak. If you got a 95% mortage, you can really be hammered.

<comment><USER10> In most states, mortgages are non-recourse loans, meaning that in effect the bank has to eat any losses, if you choose to play hardball. If they foreclose on the house and repossess it, the loan is considered settled, and they can't attempt to collect the difference, even if the house is worth less than the value of the loan was.

<comment><USER6> Pfft. I thought that was just California. One would think that that would have encouraged them to underwrite a little better.,, And who the fuck would rate any tranche of non-recourse loans AAA?

How long does it stay on your credit history (officially)?

<comment><USER11> 7 years is the typical number I've seen for how long things stay on one's credit history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure I understand the prevailing view that renting is always better than buying.

I bought an apartment in San Francisco in 2001 and frankly, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Before I did so, I calculated out the cost difference of renting vs. buying. After taxes, my living expenses were only a few thousand dollars more a year to buy vs. renting.

If I want to move, I don't have to sell my place, I can simply rent it out. Given current rates, I can do so for more than my monthly mortgage payment. Not only that, but my property is worth about 40% more than what I paid for it. I can actually use my equity in my house to finance another home and flip one to a rental.

Maybe purchasing isn't for everyone, but it certainly is for some. In the end, it depends on your finance situation and location.

<comment><USER13> Yes, you're special because your home is in an area where people want to rent it. Every home-owner certainly does not have this advantage. In your case it makes more sense to buy than in others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When calculating the cost of purchasing/ renting, are they including condo fees, property/school taxes. In some areas the tax/condo fees alone exceed typical rents.

<comment><USER15> This is one of the most overlooked cost for first-time home buyers, all the cost in condo fees and taxes are not going to contribute a cent to your equity either.

<comment><USER16> Also, utilities. I only pay for electricity at my apartment, and thanks to some 12" stone walls it's quite low. I talk to people my age who have bought homes and their utility bills can be as much as 40% of my rent.

<comment><USER17> Maybe it's different in your area, but most areas I have experience with, no utilities are included in the rent. Plus a lot depends on how the place is heated/insulated (or cooled/insulated).

<comment><USER11> The utility situation really depends on the area, yes.

For example, my experience renting in Chicago is that water, heat and hot water were typically included in the rent. That's most certainly not the case everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > it's cheaper to buy a home than to rent in 74% of America's 50 largest > cities

This "statistic" wouldn't happen to come from a company that earns its revenue primarily through the buying and selling of houses, would it?

Most Americans should rent, especially in today's dark economy. The average American is unskilled, has not saved for retirement and lives paycheck to paycheck. Such a person should avoid big purchases because accumulating debt is a gamble on future earnings.

<comment><USER19> When my wife got accepted to West Chester University in SE PA, we went looking for a place to rent in the nearby area. Coming from Harrisburg, where I could rent a house for $500/mo, I was blown away that a 2br apartment generally ran $1200/mo (Stop snickering, New Yorkers)

We decided to buy a 2br fixer-upper on the cheap and ended up with a mortgage of ~$600/mo. That was five years ago. We've since renovated the crap out of the house (it's now the nicest on the block), bought a second house in Philadelphia (wife's getting her PhD at Penn now, and I can now walk to work), and are about to put it out for rent. We'll be getting at least $1200/mo for it.

Renting's okay while you get your financial situation together. Maybe most people shouldn't live paycheck to paycheck. You don't have to be well off in order to make a budget. If you look at my social security statements, I was making jack squat while I lived in York PA, and still managed to squirrel money aside.

Some people's lifestyles are more conducive to renting. I quite like having a place I can mangle and customize as I see fit. Some people like not having to worry about maintaining their building and grounds. Maybe when I can't do things for myself, I'll go back to having a landlord, but especially given how low mortgage rates are right now, I feel fortunate to have bought a house or two.

<comment><USER18> You and your PhD wife do not sound average, which serves my point that buying a house is a gamble on future earnings. You both are investing in yourselves, improving your assets and generating wealth. The average American watches 4 hours of television a day, he isn't prudent.

> Maybe most people shouldn't live paycheck to paycheck.

Strike "maybe most" and I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Gross Rent Multiplier (GRM) is used in evaluating rental property investment. One rule of the thumb ratio is 1% for monthly rent over purchase price. For ratio over 1%, you will most likely make money after finance cost and taxes.

It can be used to evaluate renting vs buying decision for home buyer. If the likely rent for the house you are buying is close to or over 1%, buying has more advantage. If it's far below 1%, renting costs less.

<comment><USER6> So rent would be 12% per annum? Meaning if I pay 1k per month, the place is worth 120K? Enjoy finding that in a place that isn't shit-tastic.

I have heard 7% is a reasonable long-term.

<comment><USER20> Good deals of course are not plentiful. The 1% is a high threshold filter to recognize the few good deals right the way.

Rule of the thumb is a rough guess, gut feeling kind of guess. For quick guess without detail analysis, you want to build lots of cushion into the decision. The 1% will "most likely make money" because it has lots of cushion built in.

You can do more detail analysis with CAP/IRR/interest rate for more marginal deals.

7% annual GRM has too little margin IMO. Assuming operating cost (expenses+taxes) is 40% of gross, that gives you about 4.2% CAP rate. You are making a tiny profit after paying a 4% mortgage. Any down turn at rent, increase at expenses, or vacancy would bleed it into red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find the cultural differences with respect to home ownership fascinating.

In the US, people often own their own homes. Rarely do they own homes that other people live in. Apartments are typically owned a single owner/landlord (condos are different). Owning is a common dream, less so in cities (particularly New York).

In the UK, home ownership and the property market is an obsession. It is a common topic of conversation. People are heavily invested in their properties and often seek to buy more of them. There is a strong attitude of "if I don't buy now I'll never be able to afford to live here", particularly in London and the Southeast (less so now I suspect). The North and West are somewhat different. The market is highly speculative.

In Switzerland, the property market is essentially controlled. There is little real estate speculation. Transaction costs are high. Capital gains taxes on properties can be brutal, which strongly discourages speculation. Renting is not frowned upon. For tax reasons, people often buy houses and never pay them off. In Switzerland you get a tax exemption for interest but you also get deemed income from the effective rent the property is worth.

In Australia, owning one's house is a cultural obsession. People often end up owning multiple properties. There are few apartment buildings owned by one owner (it's much more like the American condo system).

I think of all the systems I've personally experienced, I like the Swiss system the most. It treats property as something you need to live not a financial instrument to speculate on.

That system isn't applicable everywhere however. Switzerland is unique in that it is fairly affluent, has a small population and very restrictive immigration. So somewhere like the US has >40 times the population so even excluding immigration, domestic movements of people can be incredibly large creating market pressures in places like New York that Switzerland will simply never experience.

Some years ago I saw an article (I'm sadly unable to find but the topic is covered elsewhere in depth) in the UK which showed that the rate of home ownership was inversely proportional to economic growth. The idea was that home ownership reduces labour market flexibility (which it clearly does). I don't know if the trend still holds up.

In Australia for example a family home can easily cost $1 million in Sydney. If the household income is $200,000 and that family wishes to move to, say, Melbourne and buy a new house they'll pay $20-50,000 in realtor fees and $50,000+ in stamp duty on buying the new house so they need to make back nearly $100,000 of after-tax income just to break even.

Sadly stamp duty is a cash cow for state governments in Australia so isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Yet I think it's a real problem. Transaction costs need to be relatively low. Financing requirements need to be relatively to limit rampant speculation, particularly in overheated markets.

<comment><USER22> Hey, Cletus -

Somewhat off-topic, but what's the rental situation like in Australia for those moving to the country? Are there substantial obstacles to a non-citizen resident like there are in other countries like Japan? My wife and I are planning a move, and this is something I've not been able to Google up very well.

<comment><USER23> Renting is quite expensive. The rental markets in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane is very competitive. It is not uncommon for 50 people to show up to inspect an apartment before renting. However, it is still possible to find some real gems (for example, massive old houses and really quirky places). Price is often relative to access and services, if you can drive you can usually find somewhere cheaper that doesn't have access to public transport.

As for restrictions on foreigners, there is nothing like Japan's rules. Bond is usually 4 weeks rent and rent must be paid in advance in most states. Tenancy laws strongly favour tenants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This graphic only tells part of the story and the easiest part of the story. What the rental/some of the economic fundamentals are right now. When deciding to purchase for investment and to a lesser degree a personal residence, the decision to purchase or not should be driven by the future not the present.

I am more then willing to invest in any city on that chart if I know some or better, all of these: \- population is increasing \- employment is increasing \- income is increasing \- the neighbourhoods I'm buying show pride of ownership \- public transit improvements (highway, LRT, subway) \- supportive government (proactive business development office)

Though this infographic is very cool/informative, buyers should concentrate more on the future then the present. Just because it's cheap isn't sufficient reason to purchase. And if you want to live in an area with a negative outlook renting IMO is best.

</comment><comment><USER25> For those of us (maybe just me) stuck on work computers in which we can't upgrade from IE7, is there any way to access the data in a plain text format?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bummer. We're using D3 and Isotope and I think D3 is breaking on IE7. It works for us on IE8, at least...

Anyways, if it's useful to you, the data we're pulling from is here: [http://insights.truliablog.com/vis/rent-vs- buy-q3/data/rvb-q...](http://insights.truliablog.com/vis/rent-vs- buy-q3/data/rvb-q3-formatted.csv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's really cool to see information like this laid out. I'm from Chicago, and even property downtown is not (as) expensive. I was always told that the bay was more expensive, but didn't believe it until I started living in San Francisco. We're planning on moving to San Jose, or somewhere a little further away to try and minimize that effect.

Chipotle is 50 cents more expensive across the board here. Damn.

</comment><comment><USER27> A big component missing here is location within a city. Having been in DC and Boston, they're on the edge of buy/rent, but a big question is could I live in the same neighborhoods or areas as I rent. If I can't, it's worth renting even if buying might be better because it's closer to where I want to be.

<comment><USER28> Same is true here in LA. The locations where there is a glut of housing is not the same places where people want to rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sort of a meta-comment, but that is a very very nice graphic.

<comment><USER29> Looking at the source, it seems to be built with jquery isotope plugin. I couldn't see any similar examples at isotope site. Any one else know more details on the implementation?

Also, the job growth numbers for each city look suspicious. Was there such a jump in growth rate in Jan '11?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you look on Isotope's site, we're just using a StraightDown layout, not filtering anything, and animating the dots within each div individually.

Can't speak to the job growth numbers methodology as they come from SimplyHired.com

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the info. Any tools you use for animating the dots and displaying the stats? Or is it plain javascript?

<comment><AUTHOR> The animations are done with JQuery's .animate method, and since the stats are all across different ranges we're using D3's .scale and .quantize methods to normalize our positions.

If you have more specific JS questions than that I can point you at @golike who wrote all the code for this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Surely buying is the safest long term scenario? I wouldn't want to be renting when I'm retired, as you become totally dependant on the rental market (i.e. if rents shoot up, you're screwed). Even if the housing market tanks and my house halves in value, at least I'll have somewhere to live.

If I look at my friends parents who live in some nice parts of London, there is zero chance they could afford to rent the houses they live in now, the ones they bought 30 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've said this before but this looks like a new discussion so I'll say it again: If you can switch jobs safely without moving, then yeah, buy a house. If, however, a job switch will involve a move, you're daft to do so. Too much risk in today's job market.

I'm thinking of the US marketplace, but I suspect it will hold up in similar areas as well. Houses can/will be illiquid at times.

</comment><comment><USER32> Viewing this from Australia, where the 1 BR flat next door sold for $370K ($388K USD) this is very attractive. The bottom few ones are priced $50-$150K. It's plausible to buy outright - _no mortgage._

However, unemployment ranges from 9% to 17%... I'm not sure how pleasant or safe that would make the neighbourhood.

<comment><USER33> I just moved from Melbourne, AU to Las Vegas, and its incredible. I have a running joke with friends back in Australia that you can go out for lunch in Vegas and buy a house with the change.

Having said that, I wouldn't trade my place in Melbourne for any number of houses here :)

<comment><USER5> Another important point which makes buying cheap US houses unattractive is that being a landlord is a much less attractive prospect in the US.

Being a landlord in Australia is just a matter of wandering down to your local LJ Hooker, handing over the keys, and watching as money starts magically appearing in your bank account. If you buy a block full of cheap houses in Las Vegas you'll be lucky if you can find an agent willing to manage them. If you do, you'll be lucky if he can actually rent 'em out. And if you do rent 'em out you'll be lucky if your tenants don't rip all the wires out for the copper and vanish across the border.

Oh, plus there's property taxes. Yeech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The New York times has a great site that lets you crunch the numbers yourself: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calcula...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calculator.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> anyone know of any tutorials to create this type of JavaScript? it looks fantastic

<comment><USER36> I was also struck by the eye candy. Looks like they're using d3, with Isotope for animations. The projects' websites should get you started:

<http://mbostock.github.com/d3/> <http://isotope.metafizzy.co/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Both San Francisco and San Jose are near the bottom in job growth. This surprises me, given the hiring market for engineers in the Bay Area. What gives?

<comment><USER12> I don't see why it is surprising. Tech employs quite a small percentage of people in the bay area.

<comment><USER38> Anywhere I can find stats on that? I'm curious to see what the actual breakdown is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there something like this for Europe?</comment>


Google Developing Stand-Alone Virtual-Reality Headset - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-developing-stand-alone-virtual-reality-headset-1455218948 <comment><USER2> I think making a stand-alone VR headset makes a lot of sense. Dual-purpose devices don't work out. VR is good enough for people to want to purchase a stand alone device. Or it's not good enough, and then it doesn't matter either way.

Also, a well made VR viewer that attaches to a phone (i.e. Gear VR) is just as big and almost as heavy as a stand alone viewer would be. So there are only marginal space savings to be made.

Making the best VR experience is not the same thing as making a mobile phone. Screens needs to be optimized differently, possibly using more than one screen. Chip cooling is a thing in VR. Faster sensors. Different appication stack. Support for positioning and control input. So many things are different from what needs to go into a phone.

Compared with desktop/console, the mobile eco-system is 10X the size and revenue and longterm this is where you want to build your product. Desktop and console VR, were the headset is attached with a cable to a big loud box, may make some sense in gaming and short term. But longer term that seems a bit silly. Look at the iPads benchmark scores - those things are already rediculously fast.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Most people's purchase decisions are based on price and they would happily accept a device that has inconvenience of sliding smartphone VS just putting on glasses. This if, of course, given that experiences are pretty close in quality. There are technically no reason that quality would be too inferior with smartphone based devices as long as smartphones have some additional bells and whistles. The smartphone is a powerful computer already equipped with tons of sensors, CPU, GPU, batteries and a large screen. I think only the field of vision may be bit impacted but I highly suspect average people would want to shell out another $500 for bit larger FoV.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there's a social barrier to VR being more than a niche device?

 _> There are technically no reason that quality would be too inferior with smartphone based devices as long as smartphones have some additional bells and whistles._

According to the Oculus folks, 90Hz is the minimal refresh rate for avoiding nausea in too much of the population. Their latency target with regards to refresh after head tracking input was 5ms, last time I read about it. There's a reason why their 1st commercially released device is going to cost $600 and require a hefty gaming PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blegh, paywall'd.

I have no idea if this article[1] is missing any key information from WSJ's but I found it via Google news and their primary source is the WSJ article.

Summary so far is that they're making two devices, one is an improved cardboard that presumably uses your device's screen but also provides additional sensors via Bluetooth/OTG.

The second device is a standalone headset.

No details so far on if these are both going to be HMD's or if this will be a Google Glass successor.

[1]: [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/11/google-developing- standa...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/11/google-developing-standalone- vr-headset/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting to see what's meant by "standalone." Will it be a VR Android with a VR UI? A variant of an Android TV UI? Material design with actual z-axis displacement and parallax.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it will be part of the nexus line; perhaps it will run apps targeted for the Nexus Player.</comment>


Car that Slide Parks itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news192784548.html

<comment><USER2> What is the practical purpose? Looks ridiculous to me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a pretty cool AI problem</comment>


Multiverse Collisions May Dot the Sky - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20141110-multiverse-collisions-may-dot-the-sky/

<comment><USER2> >The team concluded that a collision of two bubble universes would appear to us as a disk on the CMB with a distinctive temperature profile.

we don't expect them to be real bubbles with real walls, don't we? Thus, once the collision happened, the Universes get entangled, and, continuing the expansions, the matter/space from each other should continue penetrating deeper and deeper into each other (like 2 garbage trucks colliding in slow motion). So it should be not just CMB temperature disk - looking at that direction we'd be actually looking at matter/space from the other Universe.

<comment><USER3> >like 2 garbage trucks colliding in slow motion

The best description of a QM interacting multiverse ever

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This suggestion glosses over a major point. In inflationary models, it is often concluded that our _visible_ universe is a __tiny __fraction of the rest of the "universe", where by "universe" one means something like a bubble described in this article. I know of no model that would yield something where our visible universe's CMB "boundary" would be close to the boundary of the bubble.

If there is a collision between these bubbles, the imprint that would be left on the CMB would almost certainly be outside our visible universe.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't it depend on _when_ the collision happened?

<comment><USER4> No, not really. During inflation, points separated by a finite distance quickly see the distance between increase at a rate faster than the speed of light in vacuum. (This is not a violation of special relativity that says that information can not be transmitted faster than the speed of light.) So, if a collision happened at any point outside of the visible universe, its influence would have quickly been swept away from the edge of our visible universe. The only way that there might have been some evidence left would be if the collision had happened essentially exactly at what is currently the edge of our visible universe. Statistically, this is extremely unlikely to say the least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What if out universe was a matter universe and 14B yrs ago it collided with an anti-matter universe and that was the big bang? An our universe was just a little bigger than the other one? It seems like would explain a lot, like why the universe is so empty.</comment>


Lossy PNG - <AUTHOR> http://pngmini.com/lossypng.html

<comment><USER2> Hey pornel, I'm glad you found my lossypng code useful. It's great to see the algorithm made available to a wider audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thanks! It's awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what the objective is, but using the "before" example 475kb lena pic, a subsequent jpg at 61k looks very close to the original, and much better than the 61k blurred png.

There is a reason why jpg has survived the test of time. It delivers a good balance of quality, performance, and is well supported. Challengers like JPEG 2000 have not gained much traction because jpg gets the job done. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000)

<comment><AUTHOR> JPEG is very good indeed, but it can't compete when transparency is needed.

I've chosen Lenna as an example image because it's a classic, rather than as an example where lossy PNG can't be beaten.

But take any transparent image from Apple.com, and you can halve its size: [http://imgur.com/a/VLlqG](http://imgur.com/a/VLlqG)

(and images from pngquant2 are even smaller, but there are few that become too lossy).

<comment><USER4> This should be in your article! :) It motivates the technique much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author's tool is excellent and achieves impressive ratios.

But once you open the "I can accept information loss" door, it might be worthwhile to experiment with other image manipulations also. For example, consider dropping color depth. Some images survive that process well.

Here's a 1-minute experiment... take the lenna.png image from the article... open in GIMP, posterize to 27 levels (or whatever you think is acceptable), export back to PNG... 43% savings.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the second option in the article (pngquant2).

Last time I checked GIMP's palette generation wasn't very good - it supported only binary transparency and truncated bits unnecessarily.

I've wanted to replace GIMP's old algorithm, but haven't even managed to compile all the prerequisites for the monstrous codebase :(

One more thing I do in pngquant2 and haven't seen it done anywhere else is dithering only areas that need it, rather than dithering entire image. This minimizes noise added and makes files look and compress better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a godsend. Thank you to the developer, I'm already using it. It's cut transparent png-24s by 60% with no perceivable difference. Graphic designers rejoice!

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never understood how a format can be "lossy" or "lossless" in the first place. It seems to me that the format specifies how the image data should be rendered on a display device and any "loss" that occurs us always a result of the encoding process. For that matter, the concept of loss only makes sense if you start with a pixmap, and that is not always the case.

<comment><USER8> By definition, a CODEC starts with some series of bits (source) that encodes information into a new series of bits (encoding). A CODEC is said to be "lossy" when the results of the decoded encoding does not match the source, ie. information encoded in the source stream gets dropped.

Various techniques are used to accomplish this. One side of the scale is to simply degrade the quality of the original. The other is to use visual/acoustic changes humans have difficulty in recognizing. For instance, the human hear has a minimum distance between frequency and loudness of two tones. The softer tone is dropped in MP3 depending on "compression" level; thus, from a source fidelity standpoint, the quality is "lossy" since the encoded form no longer has the original's content. From a human ear quality standpoint, the quality is barely noticeable to most people.

<comment> iso-8859-1 Here's the issue I think gweinberg has: Imagine you encode an image to JPEG, with the "quality slider" cranked all the way to 11 (or whatever the maximum is). Now, the DCT blocks are tiny and the compression is super inefficient. But it exactly reproduces the input image, and you may say it's lossless. The same image encoded with PNG (deflate) might be way smaller, but that still does not change the fact that JPEG losslessly encodes this image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't used pngquant in years (the last time I used it was for supporting PNG transparency in IE6), but I happened to use the excellent linked tool ImageAlpha on an HTML5/Flash game we are in the middle of shipping and managed to cut 1.2MB out of 7+MB in assets from it. That's pretty impressive.

The interesting thing is that the blur filter gave zero benefit, but the "median cut" pngquant to palletize the images gave some pretty impressive gains.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is cool code but can someone explain why we'd need this? Do we not have a common lossy format that supports transparency? My primary concern is that people have an expectation of what PNG means and this completely subverts that.

<comment><USER11> That's exactly it: we do not have a commonly implemented lossy format that supports transparency.

<comment><USER12> Aren't you forgetting GIF? Not a great format admittedly, but in photoshop there's even a "lossy" slider.

<comment><USER13> The GIF format is not lossy. There is no "quality" option in the format itself; just a color depth option, same as PNG.

Photoshop uses the same tricks for "lossy" gif that this article uses for PNG.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've researched lossy GIF too: [http://pornel.net/lossygif](http://pornel.net/lossygif) but even lossy version wasn't better than PNG.

LZW is just a very poor compression. Even best case is taking ridiculous amount of bits (you can only add 1 byte to previously used pattern, so it's sequence of symbols for 1+2+3+5+6+etc. pixels resetting every 4k iterations), so there isn't even room for improvement.

So, GIF is awful. Should be forgotten.

<comment><USER14> Only reason GIF is still alive is its animation support. APNG and WEBP+animation are not there yet.

8-bit palette and crappy compression do not matter when you offer exclusive features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My first thought: "This would be great in ImageOptim". Then I noticed you are also the author of both awesomes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'd like to add it to ImageOptim. However, I don't want anybody to accidentally ruin their source images, so I'm looking for an elegant UI for lossy optimizations. Feedback welcome:

[https://github.com/pornel/ImageOptim/issues/17](https://github.com/pornel/ImageOptim/issues/17)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> On my browser (default browser on Galaxy Nexus) the pallete example and posterization example (tree and mask pictures) have weird scan lines. I guess the palette support is not perfect in every browser.

<comment><USER17> Demo images have added scrolling striped background with background- attachment:fixed to make alpha channel more visible.

backgorund-attachment:fixed is a bit buggy in Android Firefox, but images themselves are fine.

<comment><USER16> Okay, I understand now. Thanks for the explanation!

The page should explain this, since it looks a little weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't seem to find a license file in the GitHub repo. Since no permissions are granted by default, this is effectively not open source. I've opened a GitHub issue requesting the addition of a LICENSE file: [https://github.com/pornel/ImageAlpha/issues/9](https://github.com/pornel/ImageAlpha/issues/9).

</comment><comment><USER19> I love PNGQuant. Linux users with GNOME and Nautilus may enjoy this small Nautilus script that will let you call it from a right click in Nautilus:

[https://gist.github.com/ronjouch/6258621](https://gist.github.com/ronjouch/6258621)

EDIT: screenshot of what it looks like: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/368761/bugreport/pngquan...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/368761/bugreport/pngquanter.png)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is very cool. I've wondered for a long time if sophisticated, predictor- aware lossy compression could be done with PNG. I'd love to read a paper on how this works.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how far you'd get; since PNG's predictor selection is IIRC only done on a scanline basis you don't have as many opportunities to really leverage prediction. Lossy image compression typically operates using a combination of planar modifications (like subsampling) and block-level modifications.

On the flipside, part of why PNG does so well on lossless compression is due to the scanline-oriented predictor selection - that allows it to beat regular GZIP by identifying ways to losslessly compress 2D image patterns that aren't necessarily obvious in the 1D stream of bytes being sent to the compressor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the goal should be a lossless format for audio,video, and images so that the loss that keeps occurring over time as these objects are recompressed with lossy formats doesn't occur. PNG was that for images but now someone is suggesting a lossy format, of course it looks fine the first time but then when the next compression comes out and people move to that you incur another loss.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting but misleading. The author applied a blur filter which allowed the non-lossy PNG format to compress better.

That's not lossy PNG. The information is lost in the blur (or other pre- process) before PNG gets ahold of it.

<comment><USER23> _Interesting but misleading. The author applied a blur filter which allowed the non-lossy PNG format to compress better. That 's not lossy PNG._

 _The information is lost in the blur (or other pre-process) before PNG gets ahold of it._

As I understood it, I think that's opposite of what he's saying. He's saying blur helps restore info.

From the description, I understood the information is lost by deliberately omitting certain pixels that PNG rendering will try to restore from adjacent pixel data, and that he did a diagonal blur to influence the adjacent pixels to contribute better data to the missing ones. Blurring spread info into diagonally adjacent pixels improving results of using them to reconstruct missing ones.

// source is invoking three png utils, so didn't dig into what it's really doing, just saying I think the explanation is that _reconstructing pixels saves space_ and reconstruction is improved by letting diagonal neighbors contain more info on reconstructed pixel through blur.

<comment><USER24> Incorrect. PNG does not do reconstruction, just delta compression. By applying a diagonal blur, he is removing entropy in a way that the lossless compressor is likely to take advantage of.

<comment><USER23> I didn't say PNG did anything, so I'm neither correct nor incorrect about what PNG does (though on second read compressing is a better word than omitting, though either way the "guessed" pixel is where the information goes missing). I'm disputing parent's claim author said savings was from blur. He didn't. He said:

> _PNG has an ability to "guess" pixels based on their top and left neighbors > and successful guesses compress to almost nothing. Usually only few pixels > match a guess, but latest ImageAlpha 's "Blurizer" option manipulates image > data to match the guesses, making compression much much more effective._

<comment><USER24> What he said is correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The only time I use PNG is if I'm aiming for pixel-crisp, anything else is JPEG where fitting. I LIKE my PNGs to be pixel-crisp, and the only way to substitute that I could think of is put PNGs in /lossless and /lossy folders individually.

Maybe a quick JS speed test and if possible switch all your lossy to lossless? Would look weird on load without a splash screen though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lossy PNG tends to preserve crisp edges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was able to shrink an iOS app from 9mb to 4.5mb by using ImageAlpha + ImageOptim. There's a case study about TweetBot how they did the same ([http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html](http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html)).

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the status on browser adoption of APNG? Last time I tried it (a couple years ago) it required a Chrome extension.

For reference: [http://www.reddit.com/r/apng](http://www.reddit.com/r/apng)

<comment><USER28> The situation has probably worsened. Opera lost out-of-the-box APNG support with the switch to Webkit. Firefox has lost market share to Chrome on the desktop, and were never big in the (still growing) mobile market.

There is a simple Chrome extension that adds APNG support, but anything that is not installed by default is unlikely to be used by most users. 90% of Chrome users don't even install an ad blocker!

<comment><USER29> > 90% of Chrome users don't even install an ad blocker

You say that like it's crazy.

I don't install an ad blocker because I don't mind sites earning money for their content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would love to see this added to the PageSpeed Apache module.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've used this a bunch for iOs development. I keep meaning to ask pornel: we need batch commands! :-)

<comment><USER32> The linked page provides this:

"Batch processing Available from command line. ImageAlpha is based on pngquant. You'll find compiled pngquant executable in ImageAlpha.app/Contents/Resources directory."

So you should be able to script that.

Also for people on non-Mac systems, it appears this is available for Linux / Windows as well: [https://github.com/pornel/pngquant](https://github.com/pornel/pngquant)

Edit: Better link to pngquant: [http://pngquant.org/](http://pngquant.org/)</comment></comment>


What if Hudson loses its plugins? - <AUTHOR> http://java.net/projects/hudson/lists/dev/archive/2011-02/message/117 <comment><USER3> I applaud the willingness of Jenkins developers to stand up against Oracle. I wish you all the best guys!

</comment><comment><USER4> This was as overdramatic as I have learned to expect ever since the whole fork thing started.

Hudson cannot "lose" its plugins right now because there are no signifiant API/ABI changes between the two forks.

Also, I wonder how much these plugins are actually used? I've only installed mercurial on my servers and I'm pretty sure that will continue to be supported on any fork. As for the rest, as long as they are open-source they can always be forked too.

It's getting a bit tiresome to watch this unfold -- can't the new Jenkins community just go on with their life and make their fork as good as they can? They got what they wanted -- why the constant need to somehow prove something to Oracle?

Having such a big face-less enemy is the best thing that happened to this community as it gaves them something to bond against. I'm curios what will happen when the rush is gone.

<comment><USER5> Part of it is PR. If you're getting screwed by a company, you need to make sure people know.

The grunts in the field need to have a lot to backup any claims that company x will screw their organization over. If they don't have a solid laundry list of examples, it will never get past the 'steak and strippers' sales pitch.

By making this public the could save many, many, companies from being dependent on technology that oracle has crippled.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the answer is as simple because we don't know Oracle's side so to speak and from what I've read, I don't see where all the evil-ness is.

So, I don't know who's getting screwed here, but I'm siding with Oracle.

I wonder how would you feel to pay somebody full time for years to work on a project and then, when they leave your company, they fork the project and try their best to alienate all your users. Now, I've heard of burning bridges, but this takes it to a whole new level. If you think about it now, what exactly did Sun pay for when Kohsuke was working as an employee on Hudson? Apparently nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good stuff! Apparently even MS responds to inconvinient stuff entering HN front page. ([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archive/2011/02/15/a-modern- bro...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archive/2011/02/15/a-modern- browser.aspx))

Now lets see how Oracle responds.

<comment><USER7> Correlation is not causation. The post they responded to is big, by Mozilla and made the rounds.

I see no mention of HN, on which basis do you infer they responded because it was on HN's front page?

<comment><USER8> "It seems that others share this view. The discussion on YCombinator starts with this comment" - from the article.

<comment><USER7> Ah yes, I'd forgotten that mention of HN, I stand corrected.

Still, i fail to see how you can jump from that to "even MS responds to inconvinient stuff entering HN front page". If mention and quote is enough, then why would they have responded due to HN rather than DownloadSquad? Or the original Mozilla post itself? Or any other source such as Twitter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't really followed it all, but my guess would be: Hudson is now Jenkins, and Hudson is dead. Except for a name change, no biggie.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could someone please provide some context?

<comment><USER11> Oracle, the owner of the Hudson trademark, said that Hudson could not move itself to github even though the community wanted to. Oracle said the community would face legal action if they did the move anyway. The Hudson community responded by abandoning Hudson and renamed the Free code to Jenkins to avoid Oracle's trademark. Now all the plugin developers that previously wrote "Hudson" plugins are saying that they are now writing "Jenkins" plugins, and that Oracle has effectively killed one of their more popular open source projects.

Oooooops.....

<comment><USER12> Oracle strikes back with:

 _"You'll see more code coming from Oracle as well now that we are mostly caught up after having parts of the Hudson infrastructure stolen away from us during the Jenkins fork."_

[http://java.net/projects/hudson/lists/dev/archive/2011-02/me...](http://java.net/projects/hudson/lists/dev/archive/2011-02/message/134)

<comment><USER13> I think they are just starting to understand the amplitude of their mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://i.imgur.com/F8FIb.jpg> -fixed the menu ;)

<comment><USER15> Is there any standard or most common orientation for vertical text - <USER2> it seems off to me reading bottom-to-top rather than top-to-bottom.

<comment><USER11> There's not, in English anyway, but most books these days are designed to have the spine text upright when the book is stacked with the cover facing up. Not surprisingly, Oracle went with the opposite.

I believe there is a Wikipedia article that discusses the direction of text on book spines in detail, but I can't recall the name of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <Nelson>Ha, haw!</Nelson></comment>


Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-democracy.html <comment><USER2> This conversation has been had on HN a few dozen times now, so let me predict posts we'll see:

> Framing of Facebook as just the next stage in the evolution of mass media.

> Personal story about how Facebook helped someone find help or companionship > in a tough time.

> Admonitions about how Facebook's benefits are not worth the societal cost.

> A call for regulation.

> A call for a free-market solution.

> A post from someone who works in marketing about how "that's where the > audience is so we _have_ to give them money".

> Personal story about eerily accurate targeting.

> Personal story about how the targeting is totally inaccurate.

> Humblebrags about how long ago one hasn't used Facebook - "I haven't used > Facebook since 1914, when the Kaiser went to war."

> Pointing out that traditional media is just scared because they're being > disrupted.

> Something about "Facebook" being a black mark on one's resume.

I just wish there was something we could do other than repeatedly argue about the nature/scope/cause/solution of the problem, but the US political process is pretty broken.

<comment><USER3> Facebook is being targeted by cancel culture because of their refusal to entirely ban republicans off their platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will assume good faith, and point out that cancel culture's main weapon is Facebook. That's where they gather all their outrage and yield it against their perceived enemies.

<comment><USER4> Is it? Cancel culture seems to be primarily on Twitter, which is also more in line with their ideology than FB. FB feels more "normal people outraged about dog being abandoned".

<comment><USER5> Cancel culture is not primarily anywhere. For as long as humans have existed we have wanted to persuade our peers to avoid some things and embrace others; we have wanted some voices amplified and some quieted; we have wanted people to face the consequences of their actions and to reap what they've sown.

That's all cancel culture is at its root. It's been rebranded in America's asinine culture wars so we can pretend there's some insidious new threat to free speech while the real threats go perpetually unchallenged.

<comment><USER6> Clearly a difference in magnitude can be a difference in kind altogether. The ability for disparately frustrated individuals to all echo chamber their way into a fever pitch that affects the news cycle and the political cycle is quite new.

Twenty years ago, an insensitive (and probably intoxicated) comment at a bar would be forgotten about the next day. Today, someone says the wrong thing on the internet and a pitchfork mob is ready to cancel their humanity forever.

Has this sort of witch hunting occurred in human history? Yes, but we typically taught these lessons as cautionary tales of the hysterical past, not blueprints for the 21st century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Money quote at the end:

> Like industrial-age steel companies dumping poisonous waste into waterways, > Facebook pumps paranoia and disinformation into the body politic, the toxic > byproduct of its relentless drive for profit. We eventually cleaned up the > waste. It's an open question whether we can clean up after Facebook.

<comment><USER8> Source of 1619 project says what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personally I've been off of Facebook since 2008 but...don't hate the player, hate the game. Facebook makes big money serving ultra-targeted ads for their customers. But, it's not the only one: see Twitter, Google, etc.

Penalizing Facebook without also changing the incentive structure (personalized advertising) is a short-term, short-sighted fix.

<comment><USER10> How about hating the player _and_ the game?

The game is shit, yeah. But so's this anyone who enthusiastically said "yes, I would like to find ways to monetize people's desire to talk with each other, and do not care in the least if this involves being paid to spread disinformation, or making ad view money off of pushing people towards insane viewpoints".

Yes, this includes Google. This includes Twitter. This includes every damn online service that decides its primary customer is advertisers, not users.

<comment><USER11> And how much exacy are you willing to pay per Google search?

<comment><USER10> I started to think about this and now I find myself wondering if "internet search" is one of those things that should be a public good, funded by everyone's taxes. Like libraries - their mission is pretty much the same as Google's stated mission "make all the world's information accessible". Just take it out of the realm of commerce entirely.

<comment><USER12> I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it seems right:

If public libraries did not exist in this day and age, and someone floated the idea, they would be laughed at and/or fought in the courts of law and public opinion. "It would cause authors to starve! It's socialist/communist! There is no reason _I_ should fund _your_ perverse taste in books!" etc.

It is considered axiomatic in Europe, but in the US even things like public schools and public fire brigades are not controversial to some segments of the population.

Internet search _should_ be a public good, as should _internet service_ , and _email service_ , much like public schools and the postal service; but it won't happen any time soon just because it makes sense.

I think the reason it will happen in some form, sooner or later, is the fact the US is the de-facto hegemon of the internet by being the jurisdiction of Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS and Microsoft. The NSA+FBI+CIA are able, _by decree_ through NSLs, to read and rewrite the personal communication of probably 90% of the world population, as well as shape their search results. FB has already shown they can affect mood of population at large (in an experiment they did without consent and of which they were proud at the time!) - and they will surely cooperate with governments if "asked" (In the "speak softly and carry a large gun" sense of asking, but likely even without it).

At some point, likely after being burned by this (but possibly before), governments will likely setup a local hegemony if only to deleverage the US. Russia and China already did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Facebook helps me stay in touch with people I might not otherwise stay in touch with. It brings value into my life.

<comment><USER14> Would you not be able to stay in touch with them without Facebook? I deleted Facebook a number of years ago and still seem to be in touch with family and friends.

Personally I think facebook, instagram, and WhatsApp should be broken apart.

<comment><USER15> I'm completely against Facebook and agree with the sentiment to break up the company, but the fact that you're in touch with family and friends without Facebook says more about those people...it may not be the same for the GP or many other people where the people in their lives have a lot going on and prefer these platforms for convenience because "everybody is there".

We can't achieve change at a rapid pace by dismissing the experience of others.

<comment><USER14> I mean it's not like I'm handwriting letters over here (although I do do that from time to time). Between FaceTime, email, signal groups, and regular calls/text messages I've kept the close people close in my life. I understand people are sort of lazy and want to be where everyone else is out of convenience, but if that place is actively ruining the world I think we should expend a bit of personal effort to not let that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've recently been thinking about the parallels between social media and the Tower of Babel. Maybe ancient societies were onto something when they warned us of the dangers of everyone communicating with one another. Perhaps there's something more robust about a dispersed humanity where a message can't be distributed to everyone.

<comment><USER17> That's an interesting thought. Instant communication seems to pair badly with our inherent bias towards novelty and bigotry. In the past, we had gatekeepers (i.e media) that were educated enough to edit and contextualize communication to control that bias. Increasing the ability for everyone to communicate with one another has really unleased the worst of humanity.

<comment><USER16> Since you mentioned media's role, Matt Taibbi recently argued[1] that the media has somewhat recently departed from norms that were followed throughout the 20th century. To ensure the widest audiences possible, the CBSes and later CNNs of the world largely aimed to report stories from a "neutral" perspective (really a centrist perspective). Taibbi argues that in the last couple decades, though, even major media outlets have carved out biased perspectives to inspire more loyalty in smaller sets of people.

Point being that I think you're right that the media played an important role in contextualizing mass communication and controlling bias. Not only does social media disintermediate mass communications, the intermediaries themselves are now ignoring roles they historically performed.

[1] [https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity- era](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> By the same logic couldn't you also blame cell phones and the internet? And the radio? And the printing press... and any technology that increases the dissemination rate of information?

<comment><USER19> No, because "dissemination of information" is not why Facebook is so problematic. Their core philosophy of "connecting the world" is itself fundamentally flawed. There's entire fields of psychology devoted to understanding how humans connect and interact (including e.g. Robin Dunbar), and Facebook hasn't listened or followed any of it, instead preferring to build a platform that, in the end, actually breaks our ability to empathize and connect with each other.

<comment><USER18> If Facebook had acted morally according to your definition, wouldn't some other less moral company step in with their own version which would be more popular (I guess because it's engineered to be maximally viral rather than promote... social well-being) because free market. Which following that train of logic to me implies that social media basically should be regulated. What do you think?

<comment><USER19> "If I didn't do it someone else would" is a bit of a straw-man argument and rarely actually true. But to be fair Twitter exposes and presents some of the same problems. I'll admit it's a very hard problem because for Facebook to actually try to fix itself would, by necessity, also reduce its ability to generate revenue. I hate the "decentralized" bandwagon but in a case like this, providing something less centrally controlled would most likely be a huge improvement, but that itself is a very difficult problem too.

Or, to put it succinctly: it's a people problem, and people problems are hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> TL;DR: Recap of several recent revelations and reports about conspiracy theorists and bad foreign actors using Facebook as a tool to spread their messages. No suggestions for how to address the situation.

These articles would be much more interesting if they included any suggestions at all for how to address the issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal 2c on how to fix this is make everyone liable for what's on their website, regardless of who wrote it. I don't care if that breaks youtubes, facebooks, twitters and reddits business model.

<comment><USER20> How would that help if posting conspiracy theories and misinformation (other than libel) isn't illegal?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would help get rid of the most toxic stuff. Most of the conspiracy theories that are actually harmful for society are definitely crossing libel lines. Compare for example Roswell conspiracies against QAnon.

One is the goverement is hiding aliens in area 51, definitely not libel, not conductive to outrage, not dehumanizing political opponents, it does not actively harm national unity.

QAnon on the other hand claims Democrat figureheads are eating babies in satanic orgies, definitely libel, greatly harmful to national unity.

I furthermore think that just the liability would be great enough to completely change the face of this platforms, they would be on the defensive things that are not libel would definitely be censored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> non paywall - [https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200918165215/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook- democracy.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a "good" guy. When you think about connecting the world it sounded great at the time, what could be better than more contact with more people? Especially when you can make billions of dollars doing it.

Then it turns out that people are horrible and that over-connecting them can be fatally destructive. To deal with his cognitive dissonance at building something of nuclear-weapons-bad level, he became the comic book villain that we know today.

<comment><USER15> > I frankly think Zuckerberg started out as a "good" guy.

Nope. [1] He didn't start out that way. He just kept misleading people quite well every step of the way.

[1]: [https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/](https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >The most disturbing revelations from Zhang's memo relate to the failure of Facebook to take swift action against coordinated activity in countries like Honduras and Azerbaijan, where political leaders used armies of fake accounts to attack opponents and undermine independent media.

Same happened in Hungary and the EU can't give a flying fuck. But honestly I don't blame Facebook, the destruction of independent media is a complex problem not just a political one (adaptation of the market driven by Facebook and Google for example). Especially in East Europe, former soviet block where the kind of venture capitalism of the west/US never really existed. And like a vassal you have to pledge allegiance to the government either formally or informally.</comment>


Aereo to Shut Down All Service Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/06/aereo-to-stop-service-today/373632/

<comment><USER2> > CEO Chet Kanojia admitted there was no "Plan B" option

This drives me nuts with all the startup shutdowns, I don't feel they try hard enough, want it hard enough to keep adjusting (may I say pivot?). I don't think they could say now that "well, we have tried everything". Of course, it's their freedom to do that, it's just feels lame...</comment>


The Future of Search - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/brave-new-world-future-search <comment><USER2> "Meet your new search overlords" lovely! great material that puts our central focus of web dev into context.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like the five steps to prepare your organization for the new world of search.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can not agree more with what Adam said in this content.

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent read.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great read!</comment>


JamLegend's 'Guitar Hero For The Web' Lets You Play Any Song You'd Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/jamlegends-guitar-hero-for-the-web-now-lets-you-play-any-song-youd-like/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised bands uploading their music for a fee isn't a better business model than users paying for the privilege to upload and play songs they own.

I'd think a heavy metal fan would be willing to buy songs they liked after playing along to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why can't bands sell their song maps along with the music CDs. This will give the fans an incentive to buy the CDs instead of download them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Grats on the coverage guys! I blogged < [http://paulstamatiou.com/first- impressions-jamlegend-it-rock...](http://paulstamatiou.com/first-impressions- jamlegend-it-rocks) > about JamLegend almost a year ago after I heard about it from a cofounder (Andrew Lee IIRC) and I didn't think much of it at the time as I wasn't huge on gaming/GH/etc. And then the comments on my post started trickling in.. my readers LOVED it. I ended up giving out some 4,000 invites (<http://www.jamlegend.com/user/PStamatiou>)

JamLegend is a LaunchBox Digital (DC incubator) startup for those curious.

</comment><comment><USER5> Really impressive work -- the beat detection and game generation logic is top notch. I haven't seen any other rhythm game execute this well on uploaded songs.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've played with JamLegend before. It's really well done, and this feature seems to be one that is the natural next step for what people want from a music-oriented game. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER7> Damn it. I tried using Amarok (an hour-long piece) and it jammed uploading, and I need sleep. I want to see if it worked by tomorrow morning.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm really impressed that they're embracing existing tools for charting like EOF. GH4's custom song system is garbage.

<comment><USER9> You mean Frets on Fire?</comment></comment>


Help Zed find Matt - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2008-10-28.html

<comment><USER2> So Zed Shaw is dramatically less of an asshole than I'd always assumed based on his vitriolic writings. He's gone to far greater lengths to help this guy than most folks would in such a situation.

I'll point out that this sounds very much like Matt suffers from schizophrenia. I know this illness well as someone very close to me suffers from it, and when unmedicated behaves pretty much exactly like that. That's not to say the situation is any less dangerous, but probably not because someone is going to kill Matt--more likely because he'll get himself into dangerous situations because of his dramatic misinterpretation of events. Schizophrenics without friends and family to help keep them out of trouble, and medicated as necessary, often wind up in prison.

If my from afar diagnosis has any basis in reality (which it very well may not --I'm not a psychiatrist, and I only know what the website told me), the fact that Zed posted all of this information will very likely be taken as a sign that Zed, formerly a "friend" worthy of trust in a dangerous situation, is now Matt's enemy. Family and lifelong friends are not immune to this effect, so I'm certain a random stranger who wrote some nifty software won't be. Anything said or done that doesn't match precisely the worldview of a schizophrenic is viewed with suspicion, and very often the worldview changes from minute to minute as the mind flits from one misinterpretation to the next. This may explain why Zed can't get in touch with him: Zed is obviously part of the conspiracy, and his trying to call him frequently merely confirms it (there is no "right" action here; Zed certainly hasn't done anything wrong, it's just the way things go in the mind of a schizophrenic).

<comment><USER3> If Matt is suffering from schizophrenia he would be about the age it would be getting bad. That is one of the saddest things when a guy is doing great hits about 21 22 and then the disease first takes over. It is worse because if they were junkys or crack heads they could just get clean but that disease means lots of hospitalizations and an often fruitless attempt to find the right medication.

<comment><USER2> This is true, but as with many other diseases, now is the best time in history to be schizophrenic (though it will hopefully continue to get better). In the past ten to twenty years there have been some drugs introduced that actually work. They have some negative side effects, and seem to effect ambition among other things, but it is possible to control schizophrenia in many cases without hospitalization or constant supervision. Leading a normal life seems to be feasible for many, though it does currently require lifelong medication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a native of the US, so I could be wrong, but aren't you only supposed to call 911 for an immediate emergency situation?

<comment><USER5> Ostensibly yes, but in America it has basically become a synonym for "nearest police department".

We should only use it when we need a fire-truck/ambulance/police-car here as fast as possible, but it has become acceptable in most areas to dial it to report burglaries, vandalism, missing persons etc.

<comment><USER6> And Americans wonder why response times deteriorate?

<comment><USER7> Seems that it's more efficient just to let 911 take all calls and route appropriately. Taking calls, determining if the situation is urgent, getting the necessary information from possibly panicked callers, etc. I know that a law enforcement officer told us to always call 911 if we saw illegal activity, because if nothing else they periodically map the calls and use that to determine where to patrol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it clear that this isn't just some kind of alternate reality game? I mean, if he can find all this guy's info, he can't find his parents?

<comment><USER2> You sound so confident of that. Try to find who my parents are. I've been on the Internet since 1994. I have a trail 14 years long. I'll give you some keywords for the past ten or so: squid, webmin, texas, joe cooper (and the obvious "swelljoe").

Good luck. (And, if you _do_ happen to figure out where my parents are or their names, no need to post that data. I'll trust that your google fu is above and beyond the merely mortal. I will also be deeply impressed, because I couldn't find the barest of clues in the couple of minutes I searched...I really wondered, "Is it that easy to track down someones family?")

Edit: So some folks have decided to take me up on the challenge, which is fine with me. But I will make a humble request that you not actually call or email any of my friends, family, or acquaintances. If you think you've got a lead, just let me know via email and I'll tell you if it would result in an answer or another solid lead. (So far, no one actually has figured out any friends or acquaintances to call, and no one has gone beyond a virtual search, as far as I know. I'm just thinking proactively. The Internet does strange things sometimes.)

<comment><USER8> This is silly. I know where you work. In case of emergency, I would mail your bosses and have them pass word on to your parents.

<comment><USER2> So, in most cases I guess that would work. Not in my case (all email to my public company addresses goes to me). But in most cases, that makes good sense. I guess I don't really think about that since it's been so long since I've worked for someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope this has a happy ending.</comment>


Bitcoin falls below $13K - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/bitcoin-plummets-toward-13-000-down-more-than-30-from-record <comment><USER2> I see it dropping back down to $300-600 level over the next 6 months. It rose too fast to be stable.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's still below that on the page I use to check values, after hitting $19700 earlier in the week. That's over a third drop...

</comment><comment><USER4> Better sell now as long as there are enough fools willing to 'invest'.

</comment><comment><USER5> Headline is heavily editorialized. Original is "Bitcoin Tumbles Through $13,000 as Sharks Start to Circle"

<comment><USER6> Sites like Bloomberg often run A/B tests on headlines before choosing the winner. You can see the original title (another variation) in the URL.

<comment><USER5> When I posted the comment, the hackernews submission was titled something along the lines of "Bitcoin recovering from 13k drop"; it has since been changed.

<comment><USER7> Stating the obvious: because it's not recovering anymore. It is under 12k right now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As expected from a technical point of view. Meanwhile I have transactions stuck with over 40 euro's of fees. Pretty crazy and annoying. It's not my money and I warned for this still, I wish there was an easy way to up the fees or cancel transactions in this moment of collective panic. Or hey, perhaps I'm lucky and it gets back up in the mean time ;) I think there is money to be made helping people speed up their transactions for a fee.

<comment><USER9> I'm no expert on the subject, but isn't it possible to create a new transaction with higher fees, so that it is processed first. This transaction should also transfer enough out of the balance, so that the previous transaction won't ever be able to execute due to insufficient funds. (I'm not sure your wallet will allow it, but going at the protocol level I think you can (signing a transaction and posting it should do the trick) ).

<comment><USER8> That is indeed possible, thanx. I'm going to mess with that tonight.

<comment><USER9> Be careful as I'm not sure of myself regarding the protocol, (and you may end- up having your order executed two times, or maybe it has some built-in features to prevent this). You can probably experiment on bitcoin testnet. Depending on the amounts it may be judicious to find an expert to help you do the transaction. Good Luck.

<comment><USER8> I was sender as well as recipient which makes the risk less. Anyway, the order just progressed (and I did nothing), it (2 consecutive orders) was stuck for 33 hours at 600 satoshi per Byte (twice). BTC is really dead in its current from.

Problem was mainly that family started knocking on my door as I'm the tech guys that has been playing with BTC since forever. All of a sudden people want BTC so I recommend a paper wallet for the long term. Family members agree but panic completely in a time period of 1 week. Insane, I gave so many disclaimers (I literally said I feel BTC is dead in its current form and that they already missed the forks that may, or may not, save it)! So here's a free tip to anyone reading this: Say no. Say: Get your own wallets, get your own Bittrex/Gdax account. If they can't then they shouldn't have BTC or any coin in the first place. Past 33 hours took years of my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> the emperor wears no clothes.....now people are seeing that bitcoin is useless for anything except gambling. it is not dollar. it is not gold. it is not visa. it is not bank.

<comment><USER11> People liquidate assets during December Holidays for buying presents, vacationing, and so forth.

In other news, water is wet.

<comment><USER12> Really ? People sell stock to buy presents and go vacations ?

<comment><USER11> Sure, check the S&P 500 index price. It always dips come December.

<comment><USER13> I did. It is December and it is up. Granted the month isnt over, but certainly it can't _always_ dip in December. Even if it reliably did 60% of the time, that would quickly turn into a profitable trading strategy and it would stop happening.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does Buzzup.com have a chance to compete against Yahoo Buzz up - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzup.com Please give your opinion. <comment><USER2> Maybe or maybe not. Yahoo buzz has the scale but it lacks many social network features such as: comments, friends, etc.. The article below proves my point:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/has_yahoo_buzz_lived_up...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/has_yahoo_buzz_lived_up_to_the_buzz.php)

However, buzzup.com is just a another clone of digg. It all depends on how good users feel when they visit those sites. Many tech users are abandoning digg.com because it now covers a broad range of topic and some users can even have low quality articles on the front page by gaming the system.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't personally see anything unique about how the site operates. It seems to be more or less a clone. In its current state, my answer would be 'no.'

Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. i'm confused about the branding 2\. did yahoo register buzz? is this why you're changing the brand? 3\. the color doesn't have enough contrast. i'm squinting on my monitor to read the text. 4\. what's the distinction. your little paragraph is horribly written and didn't explain it.</comment>


Basecamp gets 220,568 comments in 48 hours of feature launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1241-basecamp-comment-improvements-48-hours-later

<comment><USER2> To be slightly more specific - they got 23,569 comments on TODO's/milestones (which was the new feature). About 10% of the total commenting. Still a good take-up rate though.</comment>


Building Sourcegraph - A large-scale code search engine in Go (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://text.sourcegraph.com/google-i-o-talk-building-sourcegraph-a-large-scale-code-search-cross-reference-engine-in-go-1f911b78a82e#.1wvq28y42 <comment><USER2> This was my talk. Thanks for posting it! Happy to answer questions.

To try out Sourcegraph, sign up at [https://sourcegraph.com](https://sourcegraph.com) and it'll take you on the tour.

Also, I'll shamelessly plug our Chrome extension, which "Sourcegraphifies" GitHub (adding jump-to-def and cross-references): [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sourcegraph-for- gi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sourcegraph-for- github/dgjhfomjieaadpoljlnidmbgkdffpack). It's the #1 Chrome extension for GitHub.

Finally, check out [https://sourcegraph.com/beta](https://sourcegraph.com/beta) to get early access to some new languages and super neat features we're adding soon.

<comment><USER3> Extension is cool. I know that hackernews comment is not the most appropriate place for bug report, but pressing DAG in [https://github.com/apache/incubator- airflow/blob/master/airf...](https://github.com/apache/incubator- airflow/blob/master/airflow/example_dags/example_bash_operator.py#L27) or set_downstream in [https://github.com/apache/incubator- airflow#L37](https://github.com/apache/incubator-airflow#L37) does not work. Goto definition works with both locally with emacs-ycmd.

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Filed! Thanks. I've taken bug reports and feature requests from airplane seatmates and when walking down the sidewalk in SF, so this is actually not a bad place to post them. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do not understand these free tiers + steep pricing. This is like you are looking to bank on those that really really need your stuff..

But I do not want to invest myself in your ecosystem just to see it die eventually. I want to pay you because I do not want the service to die. Do you plan to serve ads in the free tier ? Why not have the pricing more dynamic ?

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. We have a generous free tier that lets you see the value of the product (and get a lot of use out of it). Happy to help you get your company to see the value, too, if that's what you're interested in. If you want to chat further, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find Sourcegraph really interesting as a different approach to code indexing. Opengrok, Krugle, BitBucket Server and my own poor attempt searchcode and the downloadable server version simply index the source code as is which is to just index everything thats text (with some smarts on top usually). By comparison Sourchgraph builds parse trees and attempts to understand it.

I am not sure as to which approach is better for the average user, but I do think that if you are using a language currently supported you should give it a try and compare to one of the afore mentioned solutions.

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for the kind words! Ben here is just being modest...searchcode is fantastic. It has come in handy in many crucial moments when I couldn't find the code I needed anywhere else. Here's a link for those who aren't familiar with it: [https://searchcode.com/](https://searchcode.com/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great. I've been building almost the exact same idea for fun as a side project, but initially focused on deep analysis of TypeScript and ES2015+ specifically. Runs in Docker as well, spinning up containers to do analysis work, but written in TypeScript and run via node.

Definitely going to be following the blog. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER2> Very cool. Would love to chat and see if we can push this stuff forward together. I can't seem to find your email address. Could you please email me at email@example.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way of "git cloning" the [https://sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/sourcegr...](https://sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph)? It is linked in the article. It does not seem to be at [https://github.com/sourcegraph](https://github.com/sourcegraph) .

<comment><USER7>
        apt-get install docker protobuf-compiler
        mkdir foo
        cd foo
        export GOPATH=`pwd`
        export PATH=${PATH}:`pwd`/bin
        mkdir bin
        mkdir -p src/sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph
        cd src/sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph
        git clone https://sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph sourcegraph
        cd sourcegraph.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph
        make
        make serve-dev

good luck.

It doesn't actually run for me, just crashes, but you'll get kind of... most of the way there with that.

(oh, you probably dont need protobuf unless you run `make generate`)

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. We're going to do a big source release soon. Then this should all be easier. We're growing quickly and pushing out a lot of product releases soon and have been busy on those. Email is in my profile if you really want to figure it out, and I can direct you to the right person to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How can one add other public repositories not hosted on github (for instance from the Eclipse foundation)?

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Right now, just email us (firstname.lastname@example.com) with the Git clone URLs and we'll add them. Soon, you'll be able to add them yourself. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Ah great, I'll do that! Thx.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry for my naive question. What are the features this is adding over GitHub's source search?

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Unlike GitHub, Sourcegraph actually understands the code like your IDE. Unlike your IDE, it has all the code on GitHub and some other repo hosts already loaded up and built. (We're working on adding more languages beyond Go, etc.; check [https://sourcegraph.com/beta](https://sourcegraph.com/beta) for early access.)

Try out jumping to definition and seeing hovers at [https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/gorilla/mux/-/blob/mux.go...](https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/gorilla/mux/-/blob/mux.go#L93). This helps you understand code that you're browsing.

Check out global usage examples and refs of any function, such as those at [https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/info/GoPackag...](https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/golang/go/-/info/GoPackage/net/http/-/ResponseWriter/WriteHeader). You can get to this page by right-clicking on tokens in the code view above. This helps you quickly figure out how to use a piece of code and see best practices.

Finally, the code search is also semantic and is ranked by popularity. Try it out at [https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=new+http+request](https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=new+http+request).

Code analysis and search at this scale is tough, but we're going to do it right, because it'll help developers learn more quickly, write better code, and reuse more existing stuff. (We're not totally there yet, but if you want to help by adding language support or joining our team, email me at email@example.com.)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the details. Is this available as a self hosted application or enterprise edition? Useful for enterprises.

<comment><USER10> Hey there,

James from Sourcegraph here. Right now we don't offer a self-hosted solution and won't have one for the foreseeable future. Please email me your contact details so I can let you know when we do though.

firstname.lastname@example.com

Thanks, James

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems quite limited. I went to the site and it seems to work only on a few languages. Honestly, the best code search out there is GitHub. I learn so much on there and it works across every language.

Right now I am coding in Obj-C, Elixir, Ruby, and doing web development in React. That is my day to day so this seems quite limited.

<comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. Support for more languages is our #1 request by far. We're going to have more language support very soon. If you want to get early access, head over to [https://sourcegraph.com/beta](https://sourcegraph.com/beta) and we'll be in touch.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any interesting websites that don't use JavaScript at all? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Any Statically generated website doesn't use JavaScript.

Interesting Website will be WikiPedia. Source - [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/what-the-web-looks-like- with...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/what-the-web-looks-like-without- javascript-c7eaf09c9983)</comment>


The Linux way; never ever break user experience - <AUTHOR> http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/the-linux-way/

<comment><USER2> But they break user experience with absolutely horrible visual design and to me at least that has been a big turn off. It's like they don't even want new people to start using their stuff.

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about? Kernel developers don't care about visual design - they write kernel code!</comment></comment>


How Will the Semantic Web "Think"?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.michellesblog.net/social-media-and-society/how-will-the-semantic-web-think <comment><USER2> the semantic web doesn't have to actively "think" it just needs the ability to allow users of the web to properly define relationships itself democratically so to speak and display the internet using these relationships.

we're starting to see the formation of web 3.0 with social tagging, voting, rating, commenting, and flagging. this along with the vetting of user profiles via reputationing systems is solidifying the structure of the web we are to use in the future</comment>