The difference between isolation levels and consistency levels - <AUTHOR> https://dbmsmusings.blogspot.com/2019/08/an-explanation-of-difference-between.html <comment><USER2> The Herlihy-Wing paper defining linearizability is a good read [https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf](https://cs.brown.edu/~mph/HerlihyW90/p463-herlihy.pdf) and explains the difference with good examples, although it might be too mathy/formal for most people's taste. An interesting result in that paper is that the implementations of what Abadi calls isolation notions (which Herlihy and Wing call multi-object correctness criteria) are not modular - at least for (strict) serializability. For example, if two systems implement serializability using two-phase locking and multi-version concurrency control respectively, then they can't be modularly composed to get a serializable global system for transactions that span objects from both systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> > For many years, database users did not have to simultaneously understand the > concept of isolation levels and consistency levels

This statement might technically be true, but it hasn't been the case for many years, including much of the time that "CAP Theorem" has been a part of popular discourse in industry. If you take a traditional RDBMS with ACID transactions and ANSI defined isolation levels such as Postgres without extensions (single master) you can still have inconsistent reads if your architecture includes async streaming replicas used for distributing reads. This feature was added in version 9.0 - 10 years ago. Microsoft SQL Server had it at least a decade before that.

</comment><comment><USER4> While interviewing candidates at my last gig, I was taken aback by how many of them confused consistency with isolation in databases. Most who came from a Mongo background did not understand isolation at all and confused it with consistency.

Concepts such as Optimistic locking and Pessimistic locking are also not well- known any more, either, much to my dismay :(

<comment><USER5> Why were you taken aback? From TFA:

> _" For many years, database users did not have to simultaneously understand > the concept of isolation levels and consistency levels. Either a database > system provided a correctness/performance tradeoff using isolation levels, > or it provided a correctness/performance tradeoff using consistency levels, > but never both. This resulted in a blurring of these concepts to the point > that many people --- even experts in the field --- confuse isolation levels > with consistency levels and vice versa. For example, this talk by a PhD > student at Berkeley (incorrectly) refers to causal consistency as an > "isolation level". And this paper from well-known researchers at MIT and > Harvard --- including a Turing Award laureate --- (incorrectly) call > snapshot isolation and serializability "consistency" levels. I am confident > that all these well-known researchers know the difference between isolation > levels and consistency levels. However, as long as isolation and consistency > could not be tuned within the same system, there has been little necessity > for precision in the parlance around these terms."_

So I wouldn't say it's uncommon or unexpected of non-experts to confuse the two concepts...

<comment><USER4> This experience pre-dates the publication and my knowledge of the existence of this article. #timeTravelImpared

<comment><USER5> Haha, but seriously. I didn't mean why you were taken aback given this article; I meant why you were taken aback given _most developers_ do not understand this distinction, seldom have the real need to, and even experts are fuzzy on the details.

Maybe I misread your tone, but to me it was like "programmers don't know how to program" (like in the FizzBuzz anecdotes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [ _Shameless Plug_ ] [https://medium.com/open-factory/nosql-newsql-a- smorgasboard-...](https://medium.com/open-factory/nosql-newsql-a-smorgasboard- market-e8cbce4ae8a9)

The article throws some light on consistency and isolation levels in modern distributed relational databases (aka _NewSQL_ )</comment>


Launch HN: Dropleaf (YC S17) – subscription service for indie PC games - <AUTHOR> I'm Vikram, one of the founders of Dropleaf (http://dropleaf.io), a subscription service for all-you-can-play indie PC games.
Zi (Rygeko) and I started Dropleaf because, as gamers, we feel that space around games could be so much better. With the rise of tools that make games easier to make, more people from diverse walks of life are creating games. That means the potential for more games that speak to a wider set of people, and we think that's really good for the industry. We want to encourage that trend in a few ways:
Discoverability: It's hard for smaller developers to find people who love their games, and it's also harder for gamers to find games that will resonate. Our focus on indies and our discovery tools mean that we'll be able to connect devs with the players who will connect with their art.
Diversity: We think the industry wins when gamers, devs, and media are more diverse and inclusive. One of our goals is to encourage that with our community and the way we think about what we do (You can read more about our community here: http://bit.ly/2uyCsFK ).
Dollars: Pricing trends in the industry don't favor smaller developers or gamers. Gamers are less likely to take a risk on buying a game they don't know much about, so it's harder for indie developers to gain traction. And when indie devs can't make money, they can't make games. So our customers play a flat monthly fee, and devs get paid based on time played. This means games people like to play will be rewarded, and players won't have to worry about the cost of entry.
We're really excited to launch Dropleaf! We'd love to hear any questions you have, or learn about your favorite games! <comment><USER2> Sadly I think game developers will now optimize towards wasting as much times as possible without convincing the user to quit. Longer loading times, more cut scenes, more fluff essentially.

Short games with a small but great single player story campaign will die out against the rocket leagues.

<comment><USER3> Our revenue model doesn't focus exclusively on global time played. So we hope to minimize time wasters that aren't fun. But you're absolutely right, there is definitely risk there. We hope our curation will also help combat that, since it's something we want to actively avoid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the most common mistakes in the industry is to think that games are different than other types of software. That people "consume" them and move on to the next game. That's wrong. Only a very few games get all the play-hours. Most people ever really play one game. The "game of their life". For some it's starcraft, for others it's minecraft. Games _are_ software, the same rules kind of apply: there are only 15 (say) unicorns per year.

A subscription service doesn't make sense in this context because it doesn't make sense for the unicorns to collaborate with you.

What I wish would exist however, is YC for games.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely an interesting perspective, but I think steam stats say something a little different, there are hundreds, if not thousands of games that move 100K+ units (and see significant played time from their users) each year. That's a whole bunch of games that a significant number of people fall in love with.

But beyond that, I think you just made the case for those games to sign up for a subscription model! If someone's playing a game, say minecraft, month over month, then that developer is getting paid month after month. In other words, if a game takes over someone's life, it'll almost definitely do better per- user on a subscription platform than on a store front.

By the way, check out Flare: [http://www.flaregames.com/flare- accelerator/](http://www.flaregames.com/flare-accelerator/)

<comment><USER4> You - and your YC partners - gonna learn again what a killer app is :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally acknowledge that we're going to need to find a couple of those to get really big, and it's something we're working on!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I applaud your goals with your community, and wish more game developers and game-adjacent companies would think similarly. I've worked on games that didn't care, or didn't put the effort in, and so ended up with fairly toxic communities. When I was at Runic Games, I was amazed to see how inclusive and positive a gaming community around the Torchlight series was, but it definitely took work from the very beginning to make it that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I really appreciate hearing that :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you say that devs get paid based on time played, I'm assuming this is platform wide hours, and not per player?

Have you considered alternative rev share models? Whenever I see this sort of service, I'm concerned that it is going to make shorter games and genres with low replayability even less viable than they currently are. Games that people play for hundreds of hours, like Terraria, Rimworld, or Factorio are going to get the dominant share of the revenue.

You can argue this is fair, but I hate to see the industry moving in a direction that makes games like Inside less viable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually we agree with you wholeheartedly.

Revenue is distributed on a per-user basis, we think that's hugely important! Thanks for the question :)

<comment><USER7> You should try to categorize the games by replayability. Story heavy games will be weighted differently than sandbox games.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a potentially interesting idea, how would you see a system like that working?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does the split with the Indie devs work?

If I pay a 5 USD subscription and just play 2 games, one for an hour and the other for 10 hours; who will get what and when?

Also, being a subscription model, does this imply now all of these games are online-only? If I'm offline, a game does not know if my subscription is valid/active. How is that handled?

What happens later, when I cancel my subscription? I don't see an easy way for you to protect the games once a user has downloaded all of them and cancelled your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not going to post our revenue split numbers exactly, but what I will say is that we distribute revenue based on played time on a per-user basis, each calendar month. We share revenue with our devs, with the supermajority of it going to them. In other words the developer portion of revenue will be split 10:1 in your example.

You do need an internet connection to launch games, you're right about that!

We use both an API and some encryption to make sure that a game which is saved to your computer is only launchable through the client. If you cancel your subscription, you're going to have a bunch of files you can't use.

However, we don't ever want you to lose the characters you've fallen in love with, even if you leave us, so your save files are yours to keep, and should be compatible with any other windows or steam build of the game!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a hobbyist indie dev, I think it's a great idea. My main concern for the platform is the same as indies in general: discoverability. How do you plan to grow the platform and make people aware of it? People won't subscribe without games, and devs won't spend time modifying for a platform with no audience. Seems like a chicken and egg problem. What's your goal in subscribers for one, two, five years?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a great question - first of all, we require very, very little(usually zero) technical integration work for games that aren't heavily dependent on steam!

As far as growing our brand, we're going to use all of the typical avenues that a games company might! Twitch and Youtube influencers, physical presence at cons, and twitter/fbook/instagram.

It's taken some work to get things moving, but now that we've got great games like Evoland, Cluster Truck, Redout and tumblestone, we think we've got a virtuous cycle instead of a chicken and egg problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a full-time employee, husband and parent of 4 children, I love this idea. Currently, buying games is a huge time risk for me. There's a very large chance I won't ever play it. However, paying only $5/month and being able to try a game out with no strings attached (psychologically) is a really nice idea.

<comment><USER3> One of our teammates said the same thing! He loves playing Pankapu with his kid. [https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu](https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu)

I hope you will give us a try and let us know what you think :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope you will be picky curators - I hate how so much of steam EA/ex-GL/etc is literal trash when it comes to indie games. Not talking about one person pixel art games, but talking about what's effectively cruft autogenerated rubbish to try and profit for $0.99 a copy.

I would love to subscribe if so.

<comment><USER12> In your opinion do you think those games should be omitted entirely from Steam? Or, do you think platforms like Steam need to organize their storefronts better from their front pages?

<comment><USER11> 50-50 IMO

One example: [http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/)

This is literally just the demo for [https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning- car...](https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning-cars) being sold for money. It's unmaintained and runs like crap.

Some of the ones that are obvious beginner games that aren't really polished have their place in EA/ex-GL, with people actually passionate about it and trying to build a product. Kudos to them for trying and good luck. This is a great thing, provides visibility for these creative minds, and all that.

And then you have [http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkk...](http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkka)

This publisher deserves to be removed from Steam completely. It is not beneficial to the platform or to the players, and would probably cause increased refund request support load / chargeback or dispute load.

<comment><USER13> Steam offers refund? Last time I bought a game that I can't play due to technical reason, they refused to refund.

<comment><USER14> They have for a while now. If you've played for less than two hours, and aren't requesting multiple refunds in a short period, it's automated now AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really cool idea. Glad to see the subscription model being used in video gaming. How do you install and control game software? How do you uninstall it when someone unsubscribes? Do you use an application manager similar to AWS WAM to manage the application locally?

<comment><USER3> Our client acts as a downloader, installer, and launcher. So the game is installed on your local machine entirely. We don't remove the games when you unsubscribe, they just become locked. That way you can pick up where you left off easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's the process like to get a game on the platform? Are there any requirements for exclusivity? Any expected monthly revenues for a reasonably popular game? This sounds like a good idea and I'm looking to publish a title at some point within a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Shoot me an email at email@example.com

Our process isn't super formalized yet, but we think we make it pretty easy for devs. We don't really have expected revenue numbers, since we just launched!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of games are more like "one-play" movies or tv shows these days.

Given that it's so much easier to create "video game content" than in the past, it makes sense to treat it more like Netflix, for the casual consumer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks interesting! If your service gets popular, won't the price have to go up to scale with the time spent playing games and the number of games in your catalog?

$5/mo seems like way too little to go around.

<comment><AUTHOR> 5/mo is just introductory pricing. It's our thank you to our earliest users who sign up while we're still working some things out!

We expect the full price to be 9.99 a month, but for anyone who signs up now, they'll keep their plan for the life of their subscription!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's the difference with playonjump.com?

TBH there wont be a "netflix for games" until the big ones sign up for that

And they wont since such a service would be a big pay cut from selling games for 60 bucks

<comment><USER14> We're seeing the big companies move in that direction as well (Xbox Game Pass, EA/Origin Access, PSNow)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely - subscription means recurring revenue, which is a whole lot easier than having to sell individual copies of anything!

Even if you end up doing a little worse per-unit gross, chances are your COGS goes down a fair bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool - do try [https://halfchess.com](https://halfchess.com)

How much revenue could I make if I were a part of your program?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks for reaching out. It looks like halfchess is a mobile game entirely, does it have a windows build?

<comment><USER20> Thanks for responding. Not currently.

It's ReactJS; so possibly can be wrapped with electron (etc) or do you mean windows smart-phone. In which case, it can have windows build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> humble bundle ([http://humblebundle.com](http://humblebundle.com)) has a game subscription plan as well. While they hook you in with AAA games, most of their bundle is indie. I feel most people subscribe because of the price, but I wonder how many people actually play their games in the age of Steam?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know what you mean, I have north of 200 games in my steam library. Finding games that seem interesting enough to buy isn't a problem, but finding the games which are going to most deeply resonate with me is almost impossible. It's like opening the fridge, seeing all the stuff you have and then closing it again because you have no idea what you want to make for dinner.

We're hoping our discovery system will fix a lot of this. Instead of wall o' games, we want to show you games that are specifically on the list of things you're going to love!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That seems like a really cool idea. I know at least a few of those games support OSX - any plans for a mac client?

<comment><USER3> It's on our radar. Right now we're focusing on a solid Windows experience before we build a client for both Mac and Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are you hiring ???

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite yet, but very soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks very interesting!

What does your Linux support look like?

<comment><USER3> Non-existent currently. But a Linux client and games is on our radar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Whats your tech stack at Dropleaf?

<comment><USER3> It's .NET, Azure, SQL Server, Windows. We're definitely an anomaly in the start up space here but all of the engineering team worked at Microsoft at some point in our careers, some of us on those very products. So all else having been equal we went with a stack we had a hand in building and we were familiar with.</comment></comment>


Amazon's Alexa for Landlords Is a Privacy Nightmare Waiting to Happen - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/amazons-alexa-for-landlords-is-a-privacy-nightmare-wait-1844943607 <comment><USER2> > For example, your landlord could connect their own account to your device

Wouldn't this mean the tenant could buy stuff on landlord's account?</comment>


Show HN: View HN/Gmail/Hotmail/RSS/FB/IG/Twitter/more from one browser tab - <AUTHOR> https://feedhero.com

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, the motivation for Feedhero is to allow users to view many different sources of content in one tab. I was tired of opening several tabs every morning to check out Hacker News, Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, Instagram, and other sites.

Originally scheduled to be completed in 3 month, Feedhero took over a year to develop as a side project. Most of the time was spent integrating OAuth and repeatedly overhauling the UI. It is powered by Backbone, Rivets, Node, Memcache, and Mongo. All social media and email accounts are connected via OAuth.

I learned quite a bit during this process. If I were to do it over again, I would probably use a JS framework with native framework data binding and inline event handler declaration. Also, looking forward to Mongo 3.0 to be released for row level locking.

Mobile apps are coming soon using the same user accounts. I'm looking forward to writing in Swift. Feedhero would not have been possible if not for all the wonderful open source packages out there. Thanks for reading and any feedback is welcome.</comment>


Removed gendered pronouns; replace with neutral, singular "they" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/pull/1055 <comment><USER2> What's interesting to me is the argument that feminists have "too much time on their hands" if they are concerning themselves with submitting real gender neutral patches that make sense (ie. not this). Compare that to the creation of "languages", fake patches, and troll accounts in order to attempt to discredit actual points made by feminists.

I find the second immensely more of a "waste of time".

<comment><USER3> I have to say, I support this type of thing. It is social commentary in a way. Every patch that gets merged (as this one did) that is absolutely ridiculous shines a bright light on the fact that it isn't the content of the patches that matter.

If you can't tell the difference between an obvious troll with an email address "email@example.com" and a ridiculous patch from a real one, I think the community needs to take a beat and think about why. Why could it be taken seriously? Why wasn't it challenged? Are we so terrified of being called a sexist that we will do insane things?

<comment><USER4> I would argue that changing language to be gender neutral hardly counts as insane.

<comment><USER3> They wanted song lyrics changed, they wanted libraries that are provided upstream changed (which the author has no control over).

Both of those requests are insane.

<comment><USER4> They are trolls. They are disappointed that project maintainers are empathetic and merging the pull requests. What do they do? They ask for an impossible request and demand it again and again in the hopes they'll piss someone off.

The aim of it all?

To make all feminists look like crazy women who you just can't get along with!

How does this help anti-feminists?

It will inspire you to just tell _your_ woman[1] to get in the kitchen whilst you pick the chili dog out of your neckbeard, dust curmbs off of your formidable beer gut, and submit your newest groundbreaking post to /r/theredpill.

Forgive the rant, but I've seen way more sexism today than I care to see. The apologists are just as bad if not worse.

1\. Because owning people is definitely ok and part of being a man

<comment><USER5> >To make all feminists look like crazy women who you just can't get along with!

Because any disagreement with fringe feminists, or "SJWs", is misogyny?

<comment><USER4> Does disagreeing with the popular male opinion make me a "Social Justice Warrior"?

I'm curious... how do you, whatever your background may be, define what is a fringe feminist? I'm interested in how you figure out what is important to a feminist and what makes her a fringe feminist? Are you, or have you ever been totally or partially female?

Furthermore, what would you consider an "acceptable feminist"? How can feminists fight for their rights in a way you approve of?

<comment><USER6> >the popular male opinion

I'm sorry, but opinions don't have genders.

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty commonly used phrase, "The popular X opinion". However, I guess it would be more accurate to say "The opinion most commonly held by X". I still think you are being pedantic though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't discuss this.

I beg of you all.

</comment><comment><USER8> I generally approve of gender-neutral language, but there are two big problems with this pull request:

1: "They's" is wrong. Don't do this with a blind global replace, but read what you're modifying.

2: Some of the changes are a quote from a song. No idea what that quote is doing in the code, but misquoting is not an improvement.

It doesn't help that the person proposing the change is behaving like a troll. But if someone wants to do this change correctly, I'm all for it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Handled with class by Chris. No drama, no fanfare. Good job.

<comment><USER3> It is a troll: email@example.com ([https://github.com/Feminist-Software- Foundation](https://github.com/Feminist-Software-Foundation)) ...

What is amazingly sad is that an obvious troll was taken seriously. Has the discussion gotten so skewed that obvious trolls can't be seperated from real complaints?

Swift action was taken out of fear -- fear of being called a sexist, fear of being judged... it just makes me sad all around.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't sure if it was a troll or a mentally unstable person (although trolls arguably are too,) but either way this was still an excellent way to deal with this.

Ideally Chris would've made the troll improve the correctness of his edits, in which case they might actually end up having a net positive effect, but it was still handled pretty well.

<comment><USER3> Really? Gotta be honest, I found it sad. Not on behalf of the troll -- it is a clever sort of social commentary (if it was intentional social commentary). Pointing out with a bright light that we will apply insane patches rather than even be lightly brushed with the label sexist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "They" is plurals. It doesn't make sense to replace all he's and she's with they.

<comment><USER8> It does, but you need to do it correctly. "They's" is stupid and wrong. Had it been changed to "they're", it'd be fine.

<comment><USER4> I thought this too, but apparently "They's" is correct? I'm not all too sure, but all in all none of it seems like a big deal to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do people join the "Feminist Software Foundation" when they've given up on actual software development and instead prefer to incite needless gender warfare?

<comment><USER12> Why don't you ask them directly? The email address listed in their github profile is: firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment>


Programmer/Jack Of All Trades Seeks Employment  - <AUTHOR>

(Read to the tune of Unannounced YC Company seeking first hire (programmer/jack of all trades))
I'm not highly publicized but you may have heard of me (some have).  I'm employed, and I'm looking to move to a more challenging position.  It's cliché, but I want to tackle difficult problems.  Not everything I work on is hard, of course, but I like doing new things in new ways and pushing my boundries.
Depending on the task, I usually program in Perl (fluently), Python (basic) and know my way around a Linux system; I like programming /and/ systems administration.  I'm flexible.
I like companies who do interesting things.  I like writing software that doesn't explode, but understand the pros of getting something written quickly to prove a point.
I don't like being put in a box, and like to work on systems administration, server optimization and programming.  I'm not a Rock Star programmer like Matt Trout or Randal Schwartz, but I can write PostgesSQL, MySQL and SQLite schemas, and have a keen intuition that helps when solving customer-problems, or debugging odd situations.  I want to learn more.
Are you profitable?  Run by really smart people?  Do your customers love you?  Do you like pina coladas?
If you're interested in hiring someone who's pretty decent and work around Santa Monica send an email about your company to email@example.com <comment><USER2> I'm getting a Javascript alert on your webpage (<http://symkat.com>). Something about being "unable to find a syntax highlighter for brush" (Chrome on Windows)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm unable to replicate this on Chrome under Mac. Can you post a screencap? Was the root domain the URI you got the error on? Are you able to access the following URLs:

[http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushPerl...](http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushPerl.js) [http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushBash...](http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushBash.js)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, cannot reproduce, now.

The root domain was where I got the error. I can access two urls now, but I can't exclude the possibility I couldn't when I saw the error (my network is occasionally less-than-reliable)</comment></comment></comment>


China: Don't call yourself Dumbledore - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29688381

<comment><USER2> Sound advice for anyone choosing a name in a foreign language. I lived and worked in China and met numerous men with lofty names like Jenius (yes, with a J) and King (1). I also worked with a Western man who renamed himself Dragun (yes, with a U) when he moved to the heavenly kingdom.

edit: (1) This one is likely a translation of Wang into English.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I work (remotely) with a gentleman named Wizard. It's still surprisingly difficult to take seriously.</comment></comment>


Cloudflare Stutters and the Internet Stumbles - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloudflare-stutters-and-the-internet-stumbles/ <comment><USER2> Poor timing given their IPO aspirations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too true.</comment></comment>


37signals Launches Highrise - lightweight CRM - <AUTHOR> http://www.highrisehq.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been looking forward to highrise for a while now.

Shame they've limited it to only 25 contacts in the free version, makes it very hard to evaluate :(

</comment><comment><USER3> hey danw, you can get a 30 day trial with all the features on. I was more disappointed with the pricing and the cases feature not being available.</comment>


The Simpsons by the Data - <AUTHOR> http://toddwschneider.com/posts/the-simpsons-by-the-data/ <comment><USER2> If Homer was the smarter, calmer, saner parent most of the time and Marge was the dumber, short-tempered, crazy parent most of the time, The Simpsons would get slammed for attacking women. Same if Bart was the smart, obedient, respectful child and Lisa that less smart, rebellious child.

Similar if Lenny and Carl's roles were reversed. The Simpsons would be slammed for making the black guy the dumber one.

It's simply safer to make it so white (well, yellow in The Simpsons universe...) males are the ones who are dumb, impulsive, try out hare-brained schemes, and so on, and since it is out of those things that most of the comedy arises, those characters are going to get the most words.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any evidence for this or is it pure speculation? One counter- example I can think of is Modern Family, which was a less smart, rebellious child who is female -- the Haley character -- and has not to my knowledge received any criticism for "attacking women".

<comment><USER4> Modern Family though also has Hailey's sister who is smarter than the lot of them and a much younger wife married to the patriarch without falling into a gold-digger/mail-order bride stereotype. Other than Haily and stereotyped mom(s) they're OK on the whole.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say "other than Haily". Even with that character in mind, I don't consider the show to be sexist. My point is that having a flawed female character doesn't imply that the show will be perceived as "attacking women" as tzs seems to be suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It blows my mind that even The Simpsons has become a target of gender bias accusations.

The Simpsons is probably one of the tamest, least hostile television shows I can imagine at this point. Comparing The Simpsons to the rest of TV, without bringing the broader premium cable, internet and subscriber systems into the mix, The Simpsons displays fairly mild jabs at so many tropes, and usually does so in ways that are at least a little more interesting than the rest of TV.

Beyond all of this, Matt Groening is fairly progressive in his humor. And even though, he's long since had much direct influence on the content of the show, his initial creativity still brought forward more unique themes in the 90's than what was previously common at that time. So many topics found a voice in The Simpsons' animation than ever before, and previously simply had no voice at all.

At this point, I'm pretty fatigued at this endless death march of character assassination wherever character may be found.

People who constantly look for a fight in anything at this point instantly lose my respect.

<comment><USER6> It's fair to point out that Simpsons dialogue is 75% male and 9 out of 10 of their most prolific writers are male. That's a significant data finding.

There is a gender imbalance in The Simpsons. There's also a gender imbalance in film (1). That doesn't indicate ill-intent but it may be reflective of society and media as a whole.

1\. [http://polygraph.cool/films/](http://polygraph.cool/films/)

<comment><USER5> Servere fallacies detected in your argument.

1\. The Simpsons, as a microcosm (an individual show among a broad selection of shows) is not required to adhere to distributions and averages or promote any particular reality. To point out that it deviates from a pre-supposed preference for "normal" represents a needling criticism of an invalid detail.

2\. As a property of a larger organization, and indeed _The World At Large_ , the show is an individual offering available within a selection of many other offerings that cater to a broad array of tastes and preferences. That it's being attacked for "not being average and normalized" seems to be part of an effort silence anything which is not gruel.

3\. In what way does the enduring popularity of a single show, one that has outlasted so many others, reflect poorly on society? Shows like The Simpsons do well, not because of artificial constraints preserved by some gender bias conspiracy. That the authors are male for _THIS_ show, and that males write male characters well, is not a symbol of malevolence, when there were thousands of other shows which had just as much budget and opportunity, and have aged even worse than The Simpsons, despite having perhaps more preferable themes that cater to a different audience.

4\. Why not shine a light on the horrific gender bias of other shows? If we're picking out targets, I have my own. Are those also perfectly fair, valid and sensible? Want to hear them?

<comment><USER7> pyronite didn't criticize the simpsons for it and as you say, an individual show should not be criticized for this.

It is fair to say though, that there are more movies that fail the bechdel test¹ than there should be. If you compare it to the reverse of the bechdel test you can see there is a bias so large, it can't be founded in the preference of movie viewers alone.

I believe very much that everyone falls prey to biases, stereotypes or even outside factors like a possible gender imbalance in voice acting. I would not criticize anyone for this, because if you fall prey to something it is never ill intend. I do however also believe that these biases are harmful to society at large and in many cases could be easily avoided by more awareness of content creators.

I'm not against stereotypes, they are even valuable to get a story across, but you should be aware of how you are utilizing them.

¹ [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bechdel_test](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bechdel_test)

<comment><USER8> Why is the Bechdel test morally important?

The Bechdel test can be failed by a movie which simply only had one woman in it, or was about a genderless robot, or was mostly about a heterosexual romance, or any number of other possibilities that have nothing to do with misogyny or any other form of gender bias.

<comment><USER7> As said, no individual movie should be criticized based on it.

It is however very relevant when half of all movies have no real female characters in it, while something like 95% do have strong male characters in them. It's really sad when disneys "Frozen" becomes the positive outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Regarding gender imbalance, it's also true that the women on the Simpsons usually represent the voice of reason, leaving it to the men to bring the idiocy. Presumably giving women more air time on the show would require them to create dumber women characters.

So it's possible that the imbalance in "words spoken" can be partly laid down to a conscious decision that "it's just funnier that way."

<comment><USER10> This is actually true for most comedy shows. Like you said, men do idiot stuff and women pull them back on track / are the voice of reason.

I believe this comes from two reasons:

\- We are more inclined to believe men try and do dumb stuff. And we're more receptive, culturally, to men having "bad traits".

\- TV's main demographic is women. Therefore, the "relatable character" ends up being a woman.

[EDIT] Why is the parent being downvoted? The imbalance may be bad, and the first step in fighting it is to understand why it happens.

<comment><USER11> In one of my college marketing classes, I've heard something similar as the reasoning for commercials as well.

<comment><USER10> Yep.

But, there is one thing in TV that is totally men dominated. Sports.

I'm not an expert on the matter, but it's what I've read somewhere.

Funilly, I don't know how the demographics for News Channel are, but I'd expect it to be pretty even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Though there was more male dialogue than female on the show, the men were constantly portrayed as stupid, weak, aggressive, drunk, selfish, not responsible...

<comment><USER13> And the women were also weak, whiny, indifferent or overzealous--

Everyone is flawed on that show, even ol' Painty Can Ned.

<comment><USER14> Even if they had their own flaws, Lisa and Marge being morally superior to Homer and Bart is a long-running premise of the show.

<comment><USER15> > morally superior

I'd say, totally superior, this was in 2000:

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

"Lisa has become the (first female) President of the United States and tries to get the country out of financial trouble."

And I don't consider that "morality" was the major aspect of Lisa's superiority.

<comment><USER16> Bart becomes chief justice of the Supreme Court in the episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This study assumes that Simpsons characters are manufactured purely for the use of the show. It ignores the possibility that the characters are created for the cast, not the audience.

Every TV show is a creation of a team. That team has certain members. You have to use these people. Absent special circumstances, such as one actor wanting to play at being a director or do a solo piece (Alan Alda, MASH) the work has to be balanced across the cast. Sometimes this is even dictated by contract. Recent seasons of TheBigBangTheory seem to follow contract math regarding screen time. Many episodes seem to alternate between male and female groupings. Friends did this, but TBBT seems more mathematical. One could probably reverse-engineer everyone's contracts from screen time alone.

So perhaps TheSimpsons' gender bias is based on the writers creating characters for the voice actors they have available, a cast setup long ago. Maybe they even are writing characters specifically for voices created by that cast. That would also create a gender bias.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was just shy of 4 when "Bart Get's an F" aired and I'm a little jealous of all the folks who were the right age to experience that Simpsons era as the episodes aired. It's still fun to go back and watch them, but I remember seeing adults in stitches with laughter as they told Simpsons jokes.

<comment><USER19> I also think that humor doesn't age well, it's largely generational. The Simpsons is better than most humor, because their jokes are generally stronger. They rarely go for the obvious joke (throw away the first 2-3 jokes you come up with, because they are too easy), and there is basically no sarcasm on the show (ever notice how all sitcoms are just sarcastic barbs for 22 minutes, and have been for decades?).

That said, it can be hard to appreciate just how excellent it was for its time, since it changed the way a lot of series to follow write their humor.

<comment><USER20> >and there is basically no sarcasm on the show

My sarcasm detector is exploding. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNGXoHQ0mps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNGXoHQ0mps)

<comment><USER21> A sarcasm detector.. That's useful. (An actual invention on the show)

[https://frinkiac.com/caption/S10E22/1040572](https://frinkiac.com/caption/S10E22/1040572)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd argue bart was more the main character in the first few seasons. Even though dialogue count doesnt support it. There were a number of key episodes about him. Though others existed around the other simpsons too. Like homer becoming the safety inspector, lisa meeting bleeding gums murphy.

<comment><USER23> He was the focus of the marketing for sure. I remember Bart Simpson t shirts everywhere, video games starring Bart Simpson. "Do the Bartman" etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Culturally we don't laugh at women in the way we laugh at male buffoons. It's exactly the same reason there are far fewer female comedians.

</comment><comment><USER25> Lisa was an inspiring character. We all laughed at Homer and Bart but we wanted to be Lisa, with her diligence and smarts and musical ability. I think that counts for more than how many words she said.

<comment><USER26> Maybe for you, but growing up my friends and I all wanted to be cool and rebellious Bart. I found Lisa to be one of the most dull characters in the series, and most episodes that focus on her to be on the boring side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Never thought about this, good that it's completely provable:

"If we look at the supporting cast, the 14 most prominent characters are all male before we get to the first woman, Mrs. Krabappel, and only 5 of the top 50 supporting cast members are women.

Women account for 25% of the dialogue on The Simpsons, including Marge and Lisa, two of the show's main characters. If we remove the Simpson nuclear family, things look even more lopsided: women account for less than 10% of the supporting cast's dialogue.

A look at the show's list of writers reveals that 9 of the top 10 writers are male."

<comment><USER27> How about taking a look at the voice talent to understand why the characters are largely male dominated? Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer account for the largest majority of characters on the show. They have incredible flexibility and range. Nancy Cartwright voices Bart (not accounted for in the male/female numbers) and several other male characters, and thus expands the male repertoire. Yeardley Smith (Lisa) and Julie Kavner (Marge) have pretty distinct voices, and while incredibly talented, don't contribute many more characters to the show outside of "soundalikes" like Marge's sisters, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >a pattern of patriarchy

Americans and their political correctness, 'nuff said.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Simpsons are just stupid.

<comment><USER30> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

We detached this one from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12599045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12599045) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


CarDroid: Android built into cars. Please vote so we can get funding - <AUTHOR> http://nissaninnovationgarage.com/gallery/idea/14902

<comment><USER2> Can already do some of this, though not as integrated - an OBD2 to bluetooth adapter plugged into the OBD2 port and Torque running on an Android phone. I don't like the idea of tying something that will obsolete so quickly (an Android device) to a car, though - look how badly supported 2 or 3 year old Android devices are. Are ones in cars going to be supported any better? I'd rather a standard dock so that a smart phone can be slid in, held in position securely (not a stupid suction cup on the windshield), get access to power, OBD2 data, audio, steering wheel audio remote controls, and a GPS aerial (given it won't be under the windshield anymore)

<comment><USER3> Aren't we currently in a situation where your car software / hardware just doesn't update - ever? Apart from very recent models, I don't know of many systems that are even possible to upgrade. And if they do, they often require payment.

I don't think Android situation is much worse here, even if you were stuck on only one major release.

<comment><USER4> Newer Fords come with a USB port for firmware updates. I don't remember the system they use (MyTouch? Ford SYNC?) but I remember my brother-in-law mentioning doing a software upgrade on his F-150 before hooking up the trailer to go camping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm somewhat surprised (or perhaps I shouldn't be) at the generally negative tone of the replies here so far. Maybe this specific project isn't the winner or the exact right idea, but I am _extremely_ bullish on the basic idea of getting car nav / "infotainment" systems all running a common OS (be it Android or iOS).

I think it is an absurd inefficiency and possibly one of the most anti-DRY things out there that nearly every manufacturer has its own totally-different way of doing things on the HUD. Every radio operates differently, nav systems have varying degrees of quality, and overall the UX is about 50 shades of crap :) Reminds me of the days when every phone manufacturer had a different os -- and we see how well that worked out for everyone.

I think the future of automotive UI rests on the adoption of a standard os. Though I'm partial to iOS on my own phone, I'm happy to see either iOS or Android in our cars (or both).

Imagine this: You get in your car -- the UI is familiar and comfortable (though adapted for automotive use). You have access to your music library (sync'd from iCloud) instantly, you get your choice of GPS apps (Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps -- lol, sorry just kidding), you can use radio services like Pandora or Spotify, etc. And yes, the manufacturer will have to make a custom app for the "manual stuff" like air conditioning controls, etc., but that's still a lot better than essentially having to reinvent the whole os.

Anyway, you get the idea. I'm very excited about this stuff and am fairly confident it's the way things are going. Whether or not this specific project is a winner is somewhat irrelevant - its a step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Coming from my experience with my Android phone, I would not want Android controlling any mission critical function.

If its for non critical functions, thats different. There was a survey about this sort of thing done very recently.

[http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/report-automakers- shoul...](http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/report-automakers-should-put- brakes-car-app-hopes/2012-09-24)

<comment><USER7> Mission critical? That thing in the console of most cars is already anything but mission critical.

They want to replace the entertainment (including the navigation) software, nothing more. Android should be capable of doing that just fine and might bring some life into a rather dull field.. These systems have so many flaws and limitations that make them look like they're from the 90s (based on my experience with brand new Audi, BMW and VW [1] cars in the last 3-5 years). These systems easily set you back for more than 1000 EUR (usually far more) and are limited in terms of supported filesystems (like 2GB limits on SD cards), numbers of files or folders (truncating your playlist) and just .. so .. slow..

I'd love any 'mainstream' component that is integrated into the car, running on hardware that isn't far worse than my phone.

1: References: Had an A3 with ~every option~ as a company car in 2007, a VM Golf GTD with ~every option~ in 2010 and rented a lot of decently sized BMWs when travelling.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the idea, please vote if you like it: Most cars already have a big LCD in the center console for navigation or entertainment, but each manufacturer writes their own software for it. My idea is to have it run Android, which would allow anyone to make apps specifically for cars, entertainment or information-based, taking advantage of special API like vehicle speed, fuel, error codes, etc (from OBD2 or ECU). This would bring huge value for car manufacturers(offsetting the development cost) and customers would love the limitless customization possibilities. Here is how it would look like: <http://s13.postimage.org/8bt3a7kdj/Car_Droid.jpg>

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, a lot of manufacturers use .NET actually. Microsoft started pushing for integration into those systems back in the WINCE days, and has made significant headway. The "SYNC" based players are just the latest iteration.

Figure the car development cycle is about 3 years, and realize Andriod was just starting to exist in the minds of car designers when this year's models were being designed. It'll be a while, but I wish you the best.

Bet you dollars to jelly beans that the Google driverless cars have Android though =)

<comment><USER9> This is definitely already happening - I tangentially work on a number of projects embedding Android into transport, and it's really just a matter of time before manufacturers adopt Android as a matter of course.

For example, the top two manufacturers of in-flight entertainment systems are already transitioning to Android (Thales and Panasonic). There are a number of benefits using Android like this, least of all you can take advantage of the hardware expertise that already exists for building Android backed devices, and leverage the larger amount of software talent available.

Of course, there are problems. All these embedded systems have very long shelf lives, much longer than a typical handset. A IFE unit in a plane might be expected to last 15 years _at least_ , a car is hopefully going to spend a decade or more on the road. The hardware is not going to be upgraded - don't expect updates to later Android versions.

This presents problems for third-party development, assuming manufacturers offer it. Ideally, you'd hope for a manufacturer supplied SDK that offered you easily consumable information and telemetrics (vehicle speed, fuel level, etc) and an open app store. Car companies may not see an advantage to offering it at this time.

So really, the challenge isn't to convince car manufacturers to use Android: most are almost certainly already considering it for their high-end models. Instead, it's to get a tech eco-system that's _open_.

<comment><USER10> > _For example, the top two manufacturers of in-flight entertainment systems > are already transitioning to Android (Thales and Panasonic)._

Hmmm, on a flight a couple of years ago my IFE screen (Panasonic I believe) crashed, and I was treated to linux kernel boot messages and then a bunch of SDL (the hoary old linux graphics/game library) error messages as it messily failed to restart properly...

It definitely had a bandaid-and-chewing-gum feel, so using something like Android would probably be a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something worries me about commodifying driving distractions. Every day I see several people fiddling on their phones in the front seat, and I know I'm no less guilty. How much thought have you put in about safety criteria for these car apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't thought about safety to be honest. Reason being cars already come with proprietary operating systems in the center console, so this wouldn't be any different safety-wise.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but most proprietary systems have only basic interactivity, which you might consider to be a feature rather than a flaw. Some even disable interaction while driving. An average driver already can't control much more than the steering wheel and pedals at once.

That said, I'd be totally down with some passive applications for a console. Maybe a navigation plugin that helps find the cheapest gas without wasting extra miles to get there, or a roadtrip meal planner that helps direct you to restaurants you like at proper eating hours.

Hopefully no Facebook though, and definitely no GTA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, so maybe a moderated app market would be a good solution, with apps being placed in two categories, one category that works whether driving or parked, and the other would only work when the car is parked.

<comment><USER12> How about not trying to solve this problem by artificially crippling the software up-front and instead just leave it up to national governments to regulate this sort of thing? We don't have special software in mobile phones to make them turn off when they're in a car, we've just made it illegal to fiddle with them while driving.

The same should work just fine for certain dashboard interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you want to know why a car running android is a bad idea, take a ride in an 8 year old BMW/Mercedes with (back then) state of the art navigation system. While the car itself is probably still nice, the "smart" part just feels horribly outdated - because it is. The length of these two innovation cycles differs by a factor 3-5. For the same reason, a "smart" fridge running Android isn't, either.

If, on the other hand, you propose introducing a reasonably standardised protocol for interfacing your phone with the in-car audio, video and input systems (plus readouts from the internal sensors), I definitively agree. This allows you to update the "smart" bit every two years on contract, but you can use the controller and screen (with longer innovation cycles, even though they are still below the typical ttl of cars) integrated in the car.

<comment><USER14> Tesla just pushed OTA updates to its in-car software yesterday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone else with more than 50 tabs open freaks out about weird bird songs and ambient noises: Disable the sound on _this_ page, which is auto-played..

Drove me crazy for 5 minutes..

</comment><comment><USER15> For things like OBD monitoring I sort of prefer my own Android device. There are already bluetooth based dongles for reading OBD. Car manufacturers would probably lock their OS down hopelessly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've seen one, pretty nifty (but messy with all the wiring). The idea would be that the manufacturers don't lock it down to allow outside developers to bring value to the platform and utilize additional APIs. I made a mockup of how it would look like: <http://s13.postimage.org/8bt3a7kdj/Car_Droid.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It has always been a dream of mine to get desktop-like computing wherever I am; in the car, in a phone, on a bike, all sorts of craziness. The biggest drawback that I've always come up with is boot up and shut down times and when boot up and shut downs are allowed to happen. You can turn a car off and the radio/nav/etc. instantly turn off. That isn't true with computers/phones/tablets.

There are android-based radios for my car that I was considering, but the first question was how long it would take to boot up when I turned my car on. My i[Phone|pad]/nexus7 takes a good minute, id go insane waiting on that every time I turn my car on/off.

I've always wondered what are different about computer-like appliances and computers when it comes to booting them up and randomly shutting them down, even the the middle of preforming a task?

<comment><USER17> Seems to me it would be easy for the android console to go into standby while the car is off. Basically turn off all the radios and just keep ram alive so it can come up instantly when the car turns on again, using minimal battery. You know, like your laptop. ;)

<comment><USER16> Yeah but that would die out eventually, like your laptop. These newer cars with sophisticated systems probably do something like you're talking about. My macbook will write the contents of ram to the hard drive once the battery dies and load up form that image next time you boot it up, maybe that is a way to handle it in cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had a custom-built carputer in my vehicle for 5 years now. It first ran Windows Embedded, and now Windows 7. The front-end UI is a commercial application called Centrafuse(<http://www.centrafuse.com/>) at the moment, but there are open-source options available, namely Ride-Runner (<http://guino.home.insightbb.com/roadrunner.html>).

From a hardware perspective such a system is simple - I have a nano-ITX board, a 12V DC-DC power supply, and an SSD. You can package this into a double-DIN opening without issue. OBD-II connection is via Bluetooth to an adapter plugged into the diagnostic port under my dash. GPS comes from a USB receiver. Currently I use wifi to connect to my home/work network and load content, but a 3G/4G dongle is an easy mobile solution.

However, by far the best solution suitable for commercial, rather than hobbyist, use is from QNX. Check it out: <http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/> It's what powers most OEM systems, such as BMW's awesome iDrive system.

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't forget to add NFC. I want to tap a location through to the onboard Nav app from maps, contact, or an appointment on my phone.

Everytime I want to go somewhere new I have to type with that damn on-screen resistive nav screen keyboard. When 80% of the time I've already got the info in a contact, meeting, or search result on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are already android devices that fit where a car stereo does: [http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/bluetooth-hands-free- car-...](http://www.parrot.com/usa/products/bluetooth-hands-free-car- kits/parrot-asteroid)

The only difference would be the integration of key data points from the car itself. But then we stray from navigation and entertainment into core functionality of the vehicle. And at that point I'd want the device to be proven to still be fine for the operating parameters of a car, which requires a different level of engineering/quality than an entertainment and navigation system.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just out of interest does anybody know what OS these car interfaces typically use? iDrive etc?

Is it Linux underneath or something totally bespoke?

<comment><USER22> Ford (don't know about others) use this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Automotive>

Update: Fiat, Ford, Kia, Nissan all listed as references: [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en- us/evaluate/wind...](http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en- us/evaluate/windows-embedded-automotive-7.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My buddy created KillNanny, an app that hacks a touch screen car radio named AppRadio, so that you can run your android directly through it. His still-beta efforts can be seen here:

<http://appradioforums.com/Thread-KillNanny-Video>

It is very cool, even though it is still in an early state.

</comment><comment><USER24> im starting to get really fed up with sites that require a facebook account to do anything.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Log in to use your Facebook account with Nissan Innovation Garage."

I don't exist.

</comment><comment><USER8> Submitted to Reddit to try and spike the contest in your favor. Good luck!

Totally agree. This would be ideal for infotainment systems. No one is arguing this should be running the ECU.

</comment><comment><USER26> It would drain your battery before a full day is up though ;)

I've often thought a similar thing like this would work well for entertainment systems on flights too.

<comment><USER9> Flight entertainment systems are moving to Android, but a number of factors (primarily the A380 and 787s both being severely delayed) mean this roll-out is taking a lot longer than originally planned. Both Thales (<http://www.thales-ifs.com/topseries.aspx>) and Panasonic ([http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/panasonic-testing- an...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/panasonic-testing-android- based-ex3-in-flight-entertainment-system/23521)) will be moving to Android IFE systems.

<comment><USER27> The A380 has been available for a while and I've flown on them with Qantas a few times.

They use a Linux based system not an Android one.

<comment><USER28> Was probably meant to be the A350 - which is the Airbus competitor for the 787 Dreamliner:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> what a bunch of bullcrap....facebook login required to vote = no vote

</comment><comment><USER30> Pass - the partnership with Nissan is the turn off.

</comment><comment><USER31> Which Android antivirus will it have? I'd rather not get malware on my car.

<comment><USER32> Since when Android needs antivirus?

<comment><USER31> Since it has been targeted by more malware families than Mac and (GNU/)Linux combined?</comment></comment></comment>


Spanish football league defends phone 'spying' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44453382 <comment><USER2> > The broadcasting of football matches in public places without a paid licence > cost the game an estimated 150 million euros (£132m; $177m) a year, it said.

Sounds suspiciously familiar to the way questionable data have been represented about money lost due to piracy in other industries (software, movies, music). I am very skeptical about those types of claims.

<comment><USER3> That's a bad one I agree. I think a better argument for enforcing their rights is the fact that if they don't, they are effectively punishing establishments that actually do pay to license the broadcast.

<comment><USER4> > I think a better argument for enforcing their rights

I don't think anyone is arguing that they shouldn't be enforcing their rights. But that they shouldn't use use people's phones as listening devices to do so.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but OP took umbrage to how the estimated losses were calculated, and a statement like:

> The broadcasting of football matches in public places without a paid licence > cost the game an estimated 150 euros (£132; $177) a year, it said.

would not be anywhere near as convincing as a statement with monetary values multiplied by a million. Focusing on the unfairness of what unlicensed streamers are doing avoids that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well... I hope this is something GPDR covers. If there was a case to start seeing the impact of the new law, this seems like a good example.

<comment><USER6> Would GDPR even cover this? I don't see why La Liga would need to include any personal information about the user in their data. They are concerned with identifying the buisness streaming pirated matches, not who is watching.

Edit: The official statement actually answers this

>The codes will not refer to your name, but to your IP address and the specific ID assigned by the PPP when you register.

<comment><USER7> If someone's recording the sounds around me, I don't see anyway that's _not_ personal information about me.

<comment><USER8> Who would be the guilty party here? If your phone is spying on me, I'll likely get angry with you. The fact that you're a victim of the football league isn't my problem, you're the one doing the spying.

<comment><USER9> La Liga of course. They are recording data about me, without my consent. Doing it through some third party (the phone owner) doesn't absolve them.

<comment><USER8> You're probably right, but doesn't the owner of the phone share some responsibility?

<comment><USER9> I would think so. I would love to see authorities going after both. That would set a wonderful precedent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you generate a fingerprint of the audio on the phone, you would not leak too much information about the environment. Shazam, for example, computes the spectrum, picks the strongest peaks, and uses the relative positions of small groups of peaks in time and frequency as features to search for in known recordings. Those features are quite sparse and you can not reconstruct the audio from them. You could however identify more or less every audio signal in the environment you have a copy of to compare against.

You could do better by sending out the fingerprint you are looking for and compare it against the past couple of seconds or minutes on the phone so that you could only report a match if one occurred. This would avoid leaking what music you are listening to or what you are watching on TV unless it is what they are looking for. If you report a match with GPS coordinates, the server could throw away everything but the position so that the position is not easily linked to a user.

This still reveals all the living rooms in which someone watched the match and used the app, so it's not perfect. If you have a map of all relevant businesses, you could just count matches in the proximity for each or you could only keep matches from locations from which a certain minimum number of matches were reported which should also get rid of most living rooms. This is still not perfect, it, for example, potentially leaks how popular different places are but from a privacy perspective of app users it seems acceptable to me, at least given you trust them to do it right.

The real issue, at least in my opinion, is that they turn the app users against the business owners of the places they like to watch matches at. I am not against them trying to track the ones down that are not paying, they have a legitimate interest in that. But the way they are trying to do it seems wrong to me. There are probably some app users that would welcome if everyone had to pay but I guess most don't really care whether their favorite sports bar pays or not and even more would not want to cause trouble for the business owner even if they think they should pay. In consequence this is a feature that many if not most app users would not want to use even if there were no privacy issues. They still put it in hoping that nobody would take notice and that they could get away with it, at least for some time.

<comment><USER11> Private home licenses are different from public locals licenses and signals are also slightly different. Actually what bars do is buy a home license and use it for public locals.

What I would find infuriating is they get away with it. Data Protection laws are very strict for the little guy, we will see what they do with the 500 pound gorilla.

I'm not optimist. These laws did nothing to curb "legal spam" until GDPR. I'm very satisfied with how all the idiots that flooded us with spam are now begging me to allow them to keep doing it. Good riddance!

<comment><USER12> That's why sports broadcasts in English pubs contain a beer glass in the image[1]

[1] [https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/special-shows/the-mystery- hour/c...](https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/special-shows/the-mystery- hour/culture/why-do-pub-tvs-have-a-pint-glass-in-the-corner-715/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting only Android users are targeted thanks to Google's frivolous approach to privacy and surveillance. At what point does Google take responsibility?

Here is an OS and permission system that works against its users based on open source technology by a surveillance loving company actively involved in building a techno dystopia. That summarizes everything wrong with tech today.

But even worse is the army of short sighted and self serving apologists happy to hand wave and diminish everything when not muddying the waters. If this is what a football league is doing one can only imagine what governments and other nefarious interests are upto with Android. When surveillance infrastructure is there it will be used exactly for that.

<comment><USER14> Android has had the exact same permission model as Apple for years now

<comment><USER15> The app is using the app for background audio monitoring. Ios apps can't do that without displaying a big bar showing they are recording.

I'm assuming la liga app is background audio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The sooner there's a _Netflix for sport_ the better. Allowing fans to watch matches at a reasonable price, without having to sign up for channels and sports they're not interested in is such an obvious move, but the way rights are distributed means we'll be stuck in the dark ages for years.

<comment><USER17> I don't think this is the problem, at least in the UK market.

For English Premier League there was initially just Sky bidding. Prices got pretty ridiculous for the matches as the football association could keep on putting price up and as so many people take Sky just for sports, they had no option to accept.

It then has got even more loopy. BT under the ex-CEO got into the fray, with BT and Sky bidding against each other for matches. Fees skyrocketed even more.

Now Amazon is bidding for live matches, so there is a 3 way bid driving prices even higher.

Even buying Sky Sports by itself is still really expensive, about £35/$50/month via NowTV. Plus you'd need BT Sports (~£10/month) and now Amazon Prime (~£8/month) to watch all the matches.

Sports are just going to keep on getting more and more expensive until the end customer stops paying, as the market will just work that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just wondering, are the games broadcast on paid channels or on public and free-to-view ones?

This approach would make sense if the games are on paid channels and the nominal fee for those only covers viewing for one person (in which case it makes sense for establishments to pay more, given they're showing it to more people).

But if the games are broadcast on free channels, then there shouldn't be any difference whether or not a person is watching it at home or a bar is showing the game - in either case, the TV advertisers are the ones paying for the game, and this revenue depends on how many people watch the channel (so showing off the game in a bar actually benefits everyone).

I feel like in this situation it's the latter, and the people from the football league are just greedy (what a surprise) and any excuse to try and extort money is a good one in their book.

<comment><USER19> Showing the TV program in a bar is a public performance, and the license only allows for private use. Regardless how you interpret the benefits of public display (and I agree 100% with you), it's not our decision but the licensor's.

<comment><USER18> Anything that can be received for free over the air without signing any kind of license agreement should not count as "public performance" in my book.

<comment><USER20> Aereo thought so too. Their business model was based around hosting colocated TV antennas, from which they streamed broadcast TV to users on a 1:1 basis, geofenced by broadcast market. The Supreme Court shot this argument down.

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

The problem is that this is the business model of broadcast networks in a world of cable TV. The statutory retransmission fees funnel some cable TV revenue back to the broadcasters. It doesn't really make sense from first principles, but it has been a pragmatic compromise.

The messed up thing about Aereo is that after being shot down by the Supreme Court, they tried to get a license to operate as a cable company but were shot down on that front, too.

<comment><USER21> Maybe they should have sold a share rather than leasing it? If a user owns an antenna and views their own stream, that's a private performance.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that would be an interesting twist.

My guess is the RF tech is a lot easier to deploy when you can plan for some percentile of peak utilization, rather than 1:1 with the user base. Even then, they'd undoubtedly face legal challenges, so they must have made the judgment call that the odds were on their side. Which may have been a reasonable conclusion. A lot of the judgments were actually on their side until the circuit split and the final Supreme Court decision.

After all, one wouldn't imaging that leasing an old-school aerial antenna would be a legal issue.

It was a hot topic on HN several years back. I may be biased, as my wife did PR for Aereo through the firm she works for. But I definitely buy the logic that what they were doing was technical a private performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article doesn't say what this app does - is it for match schedules, news, or what?

But this is probably a good example of why I generally refuse to install apps unless I genuinely need to. Almost all apps that people install can be replaced by using a web browser. Yet I see my friends installing tons of apps for no specific reason. Each one increases your attack surface.

</comment><comment><USER23> > It added it had received the microphone data only as code rather than audio, > and that it could match that code with audio data from a match.

That sounds funnily absurd to me. By that line of argument, even sound is not really audio. After all, it's being encoded as air pressure waves :-)

EDIT: Pardon my ignorance. Based on Google Translate's translation of their statement [1], it seems that they are using some kind of perceptual hashing which is quite interesting.

[1]: [http://www.laliga.es/noticias/nota- informativa-138](http://www.laliga.es/noticias/nota-informativa-138)

<comment><USER24> I guess they mean that they just have a summary of the sound, not enough to listen to it or anything. It would be a bit like just having the hash of a piece of data, not the data itself.

<comment><USER23> Thanks. You are right. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The actual statement from La Liga is in spanish, I translated it with DeepL [1] here:

>Privacy policy of the LaLiga app.

>Regarding the new privacy policy of the LaLiga app, we would like to make some clarifications.

>Origin

>LaLiga has the responsibility to protect clubs and their fans from fraud in the broadcasting of football matches by public institutions (HORECA). These fraudulent activities represent an estimated annual loss of 150 million euros for Spanish football, which translates into direct damage to clubs, operators and fans, among others.

>For this reason, LaLiga has implemented a new functionality in its official app with the sole purpose of detecting these fraudulent exploitations, transparently informing about them and asking users for their express and specific consent, with or without their being able to lend it freely.

>This new functionality for fraud detection is enabled in the app since last Friday, June 8, 2018, only for Android system users and nationally*.

>Functioning

>When a user downloads or updates the APP, the operating system of your mobile device will prompt them through a pop-up window to provide their consent for LaLiga to activate the microphone and geopositioning of their mobile device. Only if you decide to accept it, the microphone will pick up the binary code from audio clips, for the sole purpose of knowing if you are watching football matches played by LaLiga teams, but the content of the recording will never be accessible.

>We protect user privacy

>LaLiga has implemented appropriate technical measures to protect your privacy if you authorize us to use this feature. These measures are detailed below:

>LaLiga will only activate the microphone and geopositioning of the mobile device during the time slots of matches in which LaLiga teams compete.

>LaLiga does not access the audio fragments picked up by the device's microphone, as they are automatically converted into binary code on the device itself. LaLiga only accesses this binary code, which is irreversible and does not allow you to obtain the audio recording again.

>If this code matches a previous control code, LaLiga may know that you are watching a particular match. If it does not match, the code is removed.

>The codes will not refer to your name, but to your IP address and the specific ID assigned by the PPP when you register.

>We will periodically remind you that LaLiga may activate your microphone and geo-positioning and ask you to confirm your consent.

>You can revoke your consent at any time in the mobile device settings.

[1] [https://www.deepl.com/translator](https://www.deepl.com/translator)

<comment><USER25> This would be the corresponding translation of the analysis linked upthread, from [https://reversecodes.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/analizando- la-...](https://reversecodes.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/analizando-la-app-de-la- liga-para-android/):

Leaving aside the first part where they try to justify themselves by talking about economic losses and other stories, in the third paragraph they already begin to say things that do not agree with reality.

        This new functionality for fraud detection is enabled in the app since last Friday, June 8, 2018, only for Android system users and nationally*.

They say that the functionality of collecting microphone and location information was enabled on June 8, 2010, so version 6.4.0 released on February 21, 2018 with SHA1 efd50120f73c0d674492126ce9e9198da57c8287 has the ability to collect microphone and location information in exactly the same way as the latest version available. It may have been implemented in an earlier version, it's a matter of looking at it, but with this example it's enough to dismantle that part of the release. Unless the'functionality' they refer to is that of asking permission and not that of'spying on users'.

        (....) the microphone will pick up the binary code of audio fragments, with the sole purpose of knowing if you are watching football matches of competitions played by LaLiga teams, but the content of the recording will never be accessed.

There's little to say here, it's obviously outrageous to say that the microphone doesn't record audio clips. It is also contradictory to say that the recording is analyzed (in any way, it will be seen later) and in the following line that the content will never be accessed. What we mean by that is that they record and then immediately delete, because the moment they do anything else about the generated file other than delete it they are already accessing the content.

Now they tell us how they protect the privacy of the user....

        LaLiga will only activate the microphone and geopositioning of the mobile device during the time slots of matches in which LaLiga teams compete.

This time slot thing is very relative, if a Spanish team plays in China when it's 5 a.m. here, they can activate the 10 million terminals and record them.

        LaLiga does not access the audio fragments picked up by the device's microphone, as they are automatically converted into binary code on the device itself. LaLiga only accesses this binary code, which is irreversible and does not allow you to obtain the audio recording again.

Tjis is wjere the statement loses all credibility it could have. On the one hand, they tell us that La Liga does not access the audios, that they transform them into binary code automatically in the device (obviously, in computing everything is binary data, which does not mean that they are not recording an audio that can be played later) but if we give them the benefit of the doubt, what they are trying to tell us is that they are generating a progressive hash with their application after recording the audio and in the terminal itself? or in other words, do they mean that their application does what Shazam (valued at EUR 400 million) does? But in this case it is much more complex, because Shazam can build a database of songs that are a finite and concrete ensemble; but to recognize that the ambient sound corresponds to a football match in a bar are already big words.

It is quite clear at this point that what they do is that, but obviously they do not do it locally, but they send the recording to another service to identify it and maybe I have searched wrong, but at no point in the general conditions of use and privacy policies of the application I have seen that it is mentioned that the data collected are sent to another company for analysis, really do not know how these issues go at the legal level, but in the legal notice on privacy and cookies makes a mention to

        Your personal data will not be transferred to other persons or companies to be used for their own purposes. However, some entities subcontracted by LaLiga may access Personal Data and information as Processors or Sub-processors to provide LaLiga with a necessary service. In particular, LaLiga receives assistance from:

        (a) Service Providers. Sometimes, we share your information with our third party service providers, who help us provide our services. Examples of service providers: hosting, metrics and analytics.

That's generic again and in my view leaves the door open for unlimited data traffic, so any company can become a service provider overnight, right?

From this point on, the following points already seem to me to be pure rejoicing of those who have written it and those who have approved it as a serious statement.

        (...)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator \--

There's more, and then a technical analysis, thanks JorgeGT!

<comment><USER11> The signal for public broadcast is different from the home licenses. They can choose a few seconds fragment where they know volume peaks at certain points and create a hash. Then calc probabilities. Seems feasible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They should be prosecuted for unlawful surveillance.</comment>


Realistic Plan to Jump-Start U.S. Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-04/here-s-a-realistic-plan-to-jump-start-u-s-growth <comment><USER2> Good thing the media called off the recession.</comment>


Ubiquity hardware sends telemetry and it cannot be turned off - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/07/ubiquiti_networks_phone_home/ <comment><USER2> This change is a firmware update that was likely automatically installed on unaware customers equipment. Very shady.

They claim this is to "gather crashes and other critical events strictly for the purpose of improving our products", but to be honest; how often does that happen in routers? They are very barebone anyway, and were there to be any issues, they would be notified by the customer.

Having it forced with no way to opt-out is also an indication of hostility. They claim they will release a firmware update without telemetry, but no dates have been set.

<comment><USER3> They have a workaround until the firmware updated. You just need to put a firewall rule to block the url they are sending crash data to.

I have so many other devices that are snooping and constantly sending data (phones) that I don't really care about my USG sending crash data.

<comment><USER4> I think commercial routers have a different standard to be held up to than consumer phones and iot devices.

The workaround is really lame and and blocks all traffic to the data leak domains.

I don't want to send crash data. I also don't trust a non-open source, non- documented, non-auditable submission of data from my network to theirs. They claim it's only crash data, but I don't know. They can also change it at any time as they've lost my trust by adding data leaks to a firmware update I accepted without knowing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm so sick of the analytics theme as a way to increase revenue, instead of just innovating and making your product better. It just feels so lazy to me, and part of a checklist for any MBA type now.

<comment><USER6> Especially because most don't really use that data. It's stored because bandwidth and storage are cheap. But from all I've seen and heard, most don't really get any information from it they couldn't have gotten by just asking users.

<comment><USER7> >just asking users.

That's way easier said than done. Plus, then you have to trust users. If I want to know how often feature X is used on platform Y, having some basic telemetry is way more reliable than sending out a survey to users.

<comment><USER8> > having some basic telemetry is way more reliable than sending out a survey > to users.

True, but this fact isn't important. What's important is having respect for your users and their preferences.

<comment><USER7> That's so unrelated that I'm not really sure how to respond.

<comment><USER8> You're responding to a suggestion to ask users for permission by saying "that's hard" and "telemetry data is more reliable".

Both of those points may be true. I'm claiming that the fact they may be true isn't important, though, because respecting user wishes, particularly about privacy, tops those considerations.

<comment><USER7> No, I was responding to a suggestion to ask users _for the data that could otherwise be gathered by telemetry_ by saying that telemetry is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is unfortunate. I was hoping the bad noise after this was announced would be enough for them to listen. I was literally about to buy one, and now it seems I'll just be upgrading my linux router, again.

Does anyone, literally anyone at all make hadware you can trust anymore? I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

<comment><USER10> The modern mindset for technology is not that it should enable users but that it should herd users, like cattle. A whole lot of people in this industry who like to think of themselves as technologists have this mindset. We should be surprised at the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://community.ui.com/questions/Update-UniFi-Phone- Home-P...](https://community.ui.com/questions/Update-UniFi-Phone-Home- Performance-Data-Collection/f84a71c9-0b81-4d69-a3b3-45640aba1c8b)

They will allow opt out. For now ...

<comment><USER8> That was a disappointing response as well. Opt-out is better than nothing at all, but isn't exactly wonderful for privacy-related things. It should be opt- in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still haven't seen Ubiquiti officially acknowledging controller-level phone home. "unifi-report[.]ubnt.com" has not been mentioned anywhere in their announcement.

</comment><comment><USER13> This has been disabled in the latest testing release and will be opt-in in the future: [https://community.ui.com/releases/UAP-USW- Firmware-4-0-69-10...](https://community.ui.com/releases/UAP-USW- Firmware-4-0-69-10871/37101df7-b0b4-482b-968f-27633f3daf91)

</comment><comment><USER14> Any good open-source alternatives?

<comment><USER15> I use OpenWRT and couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER16> OpenWRT isn't really an alternative to the UniFi stack, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This sounds like it's against GDPR...

</comment><comment><USER18> HTTP/3 with DoH cannot come fast enough.

<comment><USER19> How is that relevant with telemetry? If anything, that would make it harder to block their analytic domains and stop it.

<comment><USER18> The router itself will have limited wiggleroom to snoop.</comment></comment></comment>


Depressing Dave - <AUTHOR> https://www.docdroid.net/ZzCc7qp/depressing-dave-pilot-script-it-will-get-worse-before-it-never-get-by-collin-158027.pdf.html <comment><AUTHOR> hope amazon makes it!

[https://studios.amazon.com/projects/128527](https://studios.amazon.com/projects/128527)

</comment><comment><USER2> Hilarious...would be awesome if it got made!</comment>