Will the U.S. Senate Allow Big Media to Hold Blind People for Ransom? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/will-us-senate-hold-blind-people-ransom-big-media

<comment><USER2> This tactic of bundling feel-good legislation ("free puppies for orphans act") with bad legislation ("extend copyright for a billion more years rider") is so lame. I wonder if there could be a constitutional amendment that required separation of concerns with new legislation. As in, if a vote is primarily about, say, healthcare, but someone throws in a rider to build a new bridge to nowhere in their state, the entire thing could be challenged in court.

<comment><USER3> During the US Civil War, the Confederate States Constitution had a section like that, to limit bills to only contain one subject. Article I, Section 9(20):

> Every law or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one > subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederat...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America#a1-s9)

<comment><USER4> Something like this could work well with a more dirdct democracy approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is clearly some deeper political dialogue going on here. Would someone please explain it for those of us who have been living under rocks? I apologize in advance for not paying attention in advance.

<comment><USER6> Personally I thought the article was well written and understandable.

Bill to allow books to be translated for blind people (in deference to copyright law) is getting passed

There is an attempt to link this bill to another bill that allows performers (who more or less have to yield their rights to their studios) to demand removal of their performance (and thereby, the work in question) from public view.

So, linking a good law (let us translate this for the blind) to a terrible law (this film features me (one of our performers), so you MUST take it down) so that it has some hope of passing.

Maybe I don't understand what you don't understand, did what I just write help?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised to find that I disagree with the EFF wrt moral rights.

In Canada we have moral rights, so for example if as a contractor I wrote code for an application I can, in theory, use my moral rights to stop the use of my code when the app is used for a reason I disagree with. In reality this never happens as companies typically ask you to waive your moral rights as a part of your contract.

<comment><USER8> What's the difference between moral rights always being waived, and moral rights not existing?

The EFF is complaining about the European version of moral rights, which can't be waived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the point the author was trying to make, and also a hard time making sense of any of the supporting arguments. Not sure where to begin.

I guess I'll start with the title. What is making a problem for blind people?

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, the EFF are being rather deceptive here:

>"The treaty would also allow "performers" (which, remember, usually means Hollywood producers) to restrict the availability of their performances" //

Moral rights aren't transferable, if they were then they'd merely be bought by the studios along with the other rights and there would be no cases ever to answer.

>"Whilst it is fair that an artist receives attribution for their work, to allow them to control how the performance is used after its fixation goes too far." //

The idea is to provide a very limited control. The case mentioned in the article wouldn't impinge moral rights: Moral rights come in when you defame yourself by means of trickery or some other such conceit - actors act and it's quite clear that the actress in the OP (Garcia) is acting and that she was hired accordingly. If she didn't want to be in a specific type of film she should be sure to get a better contract - contract law would then allow her to sue.

Primarily moral rights means attribution. It also covers something like modifying a work to present a _real_ person as having said something they did not. I'm surprised at the EFF's apparent position here. It must be Art.5(1)(ii) that the judge mentioned is supposed to have felt bears on the case of the Actress in the OP:

>"(ii) to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his performances that would be prejudicial to his reputation, taking due account of the nature of audiovisual fixations." [1] //

It doesn't sound like the Actress's performance would have prejudiced her reputation as she was hired to perform as a character - her claim appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the premise of acting and in particular a complete misconstrual of the process of producing a film. The Treaty doesn't make provision for anything like "an actor can prevent distribution if those of feeble mind could confuse the actor with the character they portray". I have enormous sympathy with the actress's fear of reprisal but this treaty really appears irrelevant to the situation she is in. That said I could see a plaintiff wishing to raise issue under the treaty in court - perhaps that's why the judge mentioned it?

In [2] EFF say:

>"If every person captured doing something creative on film could claim a copyright in it, service providers could find themselves flooded with takedown notices under the DMCA, resulting in the silencing of all kinds of lawful speech."

Seems highly fanciful given Art.12 allows for rights of Art.7-11 to be transferred. Art.6 rights concern fixation of performances, so once that's done a performer's rights would be exhausted there. Basically leaving only Art.5 - attribution and "misrepresentation" of the performance.

That actors, artists, etc., might choose to exercise their moral rights - perhaps using the DMCA if that is enabled in the ratification [I don't know if it would be] - rather than the DMCA being used almost exclusively as a weapon of the massive multimedia conglomerates – to ensure no presentation without profit – seems like a very strange objection for the EFF to take. Oh noes the DMCA might be used by an actor to ensure their acting credit isn't removed from a show they were in; whatever will we do now?!?

As for the idea Google will get swamped with actors or performers issuing DMCA notices, that process surely will not change and their involvement is _de minimis_ \- [which I understand to be] take down on a properly issued complaint, reinstate on a properly made counter-statement and then wait pending a court decision? Almost entirely automated I'd expect except for acting on the court decision?

\---

[1] The Beijing Treaty text - [http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_2...](http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_20.pdf), start with Art.5 and then Art.12 to get a good overview in about one page of text. Articles 1-4 and 19+ are pretty much boiler plate.

[2] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/every-orc-author- rehea...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/every-orc-author-rehearing- judges-challenge-5-second-copyright-garcia-v-google)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is complete nonsense. I am not impressed with the authors' argument in the least.

 _The Beijing Treaty acknowledges this reality through a provision that allows the full transfer of rights to the producer of an audiovisual work; a provision that was prompted by the U.S. delegation during the last round of negotiation of the treaty, in response to Hollywood demands [PDF]. Thus, these new monopoly rights will serve only to enlarge the bulging copyright portfolios of the motion picture industry, leaving performers no better off than before._

In other words, the Beijing treaty contains a provision - at the request of the motion picture industry - that all the rights of a performance be transferable to the producers, rather than having every individual actor or other performer being able to exercise a veto over release.

This will have exactly _zero_ effect on the copyright portfolios of the motion picture industry (in which I work) because this is _the way things already work._ Job #1 for the junior producer/production manager is making sure that anyone who performs any sort of creative service whatsoever for a film signs a release which transfers all rights in that performance to the production at the time the person completes work on the set or hands off the asset (eg an original music recording for the soundtrack).

If you don't have releases for everyone who participates in the film, then no distributor is going to hand over a check. Because while the studios do still put out a certain number of pictures, the contractual situation for most movies is that they're made by an outside company on a very tightly regulated budget, and the production company usually has very little cash flow for a long time after the picture's release unless it's a surprise hit or a blockbuster with lots of merchandising tie-ins (which is only about 50-100 of the 5-6000 commercial film releases in the US every year). Distributors, by contrast, tend to have quite a bit of cash flow, so if a distributor were to fork over money for the rights to a film only to have the release held hostage by one or more of the people in the credits, it wouldn't be a very sustainable model. That's why one of the (many many) things you hand over to a distributor to get paid is a big bundle of signed release forms for everyone who appears on camera etc.

If it wasn't for this provision being added to the Beijing treaty, then any participant _would_ be able to hold the release of a film, which would be a completely unsustainable way of doing business. Any would-be producer who overlooks the business of getting signed releases from all the participants doesn't get very far; failure to do so makes the film unsaleable until the remaining producers, if any, go through the tedious business of getting in contact with everyone who worked on the film and begging for a retroactive release.

 _The Beijing Treaty would also require U.S. law to be changed to recognize a new set of "moral rights" of performers, which include the right to attribution for a performance, and the right to preserve its "integrity". Moral rights are strongly recognized in civil law countries such as France, but the United States has always resisted recognizing them—and for good reason. Whilst it is fair that an artist receives attribution for their work, to allow them to control how the performance is used after its fixation goes too far. It impinges upon the separate First Amendment rights of the producer of an audiovisual work, limiting their creative freedom to meld the contributions of performers into a unified whole copyright work._

Oh, the _same_ producers whose 'bulging copyright portfolios' the authors were just grumbling about, and are now attempting to defend? GMAFB. 'Moral rights' are a fine concept - attribution is often the _only_ benefit performers get from participating in a film, especially low-budget ones where owning a piece of the revenue is worth a bit fat $0 - I myself own a chunk of 4 or 5 feature films, and the reason that I don't know the exact number off the top of my head is because I long ago resigned myself to the reality that none of them will ever show a dime of profit (for reasons which have nothing to do with Hollywood accounting, and everything to do with amateur lack of marketing).

As for preserving integrity, this is again something that is already accommodated for in professional level contracts. It's not to limit the right of the producer/editor/director to cut an actor's favorite line or use one take rather than another, or even to cut an actor's performance out of the film entirely if the quality of the performance or the overall dynamic of the story means it runs better without. That sort of provision is designed to ensure actors don't find their performance incorporated into what turns out to be a porn movie, or so that actors ostensibly recruited to participate in some family-friendly Christian movie don't find themselves edited into _Extreme Gore Horror Part VII_.

Moral rights in the US for still pictures, sculpture etc. are articulated through the Visual Artists Rights Act. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act). Motion pictures are dominated by contractual arrangements, the same way as they are everywhere else, due to the sheer logistical complexity of production/ Contrary to what the EFF is claiming, the acknowledgement of moral rights is not an awful attack on US film producers; has it not occurred to the authors that countries with a strong moral rights tradition also usually have healthy film industries, and that moreover the film industries of those nations are not typically mired in copyright litigation?

I'm quite annoyed with the EFF and these two authors here. Yeah, it's good to point out the horse-trading involved in tying ratification or implementation of one treaty to the terms of another. But the complaints about the Beijing Treaty are ill-informed, self-contradictory, and exhibit zero interest or awareness of how the motion picture business works, nor to have thought through the actual language of the treaty ([http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_2...](http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_20.pdf)) such as the distinction between moral and economic rights and the absolute transferability and assignability of the latter.

I don't work for a large film studio or IP owner. I work on films with small budgets, and tracking and managing all the paperwork involved in transfer of rights is one of the biggest and most expensive administrative overheads. I'm hoping to go into production later this year on my own film, which is going to require at least 30 sets of releases/rights assignment contracts. The Beijing Treaty could be ratified tomorrow and it's going to have exactly zero impact on my creative endeavor because that level of exhaustive compliance is already the industry standard for any commercial offering. Insofar as it's damn hard to recoup the costs of making a film, and as even 'no-budget' films typically cost quite a bit of money to make, I'm actually quite supportive of some regulatory consistency that would reduce the administrative overhead of international distribution and make it easier to negotiate with distributors in individual markets rather than through regional sales agents, aka middlemen.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sad to see EFF arguing against the woman who was tricked into appearing in _Innocence of Muslims_. Sure, the law she is using to arguing her case might not be a good one, but it's still cruel to throw her under the bus.

<comment><USER13> Assuming her story is entirely true, there is _still_ the argument that we shouldn't ever whitewash history. _Innocence of Muslims_ now has an important role in history, from the abuse of the actors involved to the bloody protests that claim the "film" as the protagonist.

Yes, it's tragic that someone is caught up in this against their will, but censoring it in the US doesn't make it any less relevant to recent history. At this point in time, not being able to watch the film is the same as censoring any other video with historical impact.

I can't imagine being in the actress's position, but facts cannot be erased - only censored.</comment></comment>


Why is Chrome and Firefox not supporting Win x64 bit yet?  - <AUTHOR>

Seems odd that among so many innovations, native x64 support has lagged behind. Chrome on Windows 7 x64 crashes frequently, Flash sucks and FF is no better either. IE 9 though is rock solid on x64 bit. <comment><USER2> Chrome used to crash frequently for me on multiple Windows 7 64-bit machines, but it runs rock solid now. It turned out the problem is that Chrome auto- updates flash, and their software frequently crashes on 64-bit windows. One one computer, I had to disable Flash altogether. On the other, it was enough to disable Flash hardware acceleration. In both cases, Chrome is now completely crash-free.

On your broader question -- why not native 64-bit app -- I think the key reasons are 1) level of effort, 2) performance and 3) plugins:

1) Supporting 64-bits means a lot more than recompiling. It will need to be a separate development effort, probably doubling the resources required for the project.

2) 64-bit pointers are twice as large, and 64-bit programs take up more memory. Due to caching, this also means that the programs run slower.

3) All the plugin partners face similar problems of effort and performance. A 64-bit browser will necessarily ship with a lot fewer plugins than a 32-bit version.

Right now, a browser maker looking at a 64-bit version sees a lot of effort for a slower version with less functionality. And that just doesn't seem like a good bet.

</comment><comment><USER3> FF4 is rock solid too on x64, under Linux that is. Not sure about Chromium though, I have it but hardly use it.</comment>


Windows 8 to support Multi-Booting - <AUTHOR> http://windows8news.com/2011/02/03/microsoft-submits-multibooting-patent-application/

<comment><USER2> I think one key reason the iPad succeeds is that, there's no boot taking place when you want to use the device. So for light computing such as browsing the web, checking email, watching a quick video, the iPad works very well.

Of course, there's the portability aspect. but with something like this, if it comes to fruition, people could start using their computing devices more readily, which would open up for some very interesting uses.

Just my 2 cents ;-)

<comment><USER3> If there is no boot taking place, then how come an iPad takes around half a minute to turn on if it's been powered off, and not left in sleep mode?

<comment><USER2> I think my comment was poorly worded. I just meant, that its quicker to start using the device than a laptop say booting Windows 7.

Of course, i realise that the iPad can take time to 'get ready' too, but it was a very generic comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prior art <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/exo>

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't want to reboot every time I want to do something different.

I've tried to dualboot Windows and Linux from time to time, but I end up never doing it because rebooting is a hassle. I can't imagine rebooting just to watch a DVD on my laptop.

<comment><USER6> I think I've finally found the "holy grail" of dual booting. My laptop now has Windows and Linux on different partitions, and either one can run in a VirtualBox inside of the other. That way, no matter which OS I booted too, I still have access to everything in the other.

<comment><USER7> How did you do that? Last time I tried, it left Windows nearly unbootable.

<comment><USER6> Take a look at [http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33356](http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33356) (win7) or [http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9697](http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9697) (winxp).

Protip: never use VirtualBox's "save machine state and close" feature if you plan to dual boot like this. Its too easy to forget and boot to that OS directly next time...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peter Norvig's Election 2008 FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/election-faq.html

<comment><USER2> Yes, we hate politics here....except this is a fantastic summary that has nothing to do with technology aside from the author. Still, if he had included technology issues in the analysis, Obama "wins" hands down, especially in specifics:

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/>

[http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/CBCD3A48-4B0E-486...](http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/CBCD3A48-4B0E-4864-8BE1-D04561C132EA.htm)

<comment><USER3> Just the URLs are pretty telling.

<comment><USER2> Facebook co-founder runs his web op:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

Gotta say, that's pretty cool. From dunce of the ranch to black technocrat...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill It is TREMENDOUSLY biased, as Norvig has been in previous elections when he wrote about the topic.

One example: he mentions McCain receiving Fannie Mae money - but, Obama (despite his much shorter stint in the Senate and indeed, politics at the national level) is #2 on the list of those receiving the most money from Fannie Mae (McCain is about # 50 on the list) .

Source: [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae- an...](http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and- freddie.html)

<comment><USER4> All the claims from both sides about "receiving money from" X corporation are rather misleading, since those numbers include employees. What, do you expect the candidates not to accept money from people just because they work for a given corporation?

If I worked for Fannie Mae and gave a hundred dollars to McCain, does that somehow affect what McCain thinks of Fannie Mae? I don't think so.

<comment><USER2> Well, not more than McCain's _campaign manager_ receiving $15k/month from Freddie since 2005 and ending _last_ month.

<comment><USER4> I never said that there weren't other influences going on, I was just saying that such (un-broken-down) numbers were rather misleading.

On a side note, I'm an Obama supporter ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, no, no, no, no. Bad upvoters!

Seriously. This is a politics piece. Worse, this is a partisan politics piece. Worser, this is a partisan politics piece masquerading as a FAQ.

<comment><USER6> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

>Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

<comment><USER5> Is that a new guideline, by the way? It wasn't there in the old days -- presumably it postdates the "flag" feature.

In any case, I don't like that guideline much. Complaining about offtopicness is, in my opinion, the best substitute for downvoting. Sure, it means that every political story acquires a boring "!HN" thread, but that's exactly the point: the boring thread is the punishment for the story, and is designed to suck out all the oxygen from the _actual_ political debate which would otherwise ensue.

I know I post rather a lot of comments complaining about political stories. This isn't because I'm not interested in politics -- it's actually because I'm very interested in politics and have to actively stop myself from getting involved in internet-based political arguments (something I swore off many years ago as a waste of time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I should write a Greasemonkey script that switches #FF00FF to... any other color.

<comment><USER5> I should write a Greasemonkey script that switches politics links to... I dunno, blog postings about wrapping bacon around things which one would not normally wrap bacon around.

Greasemonkey can do that, right?

<comment><USER8> Yes.

I'll even be glad to write the RegEx for you -- that's something I don't normally volunteer to do.

It'd be like that old George Carlin skit, where he says we should replace the word "kill" with the word "fuck" -- Changes everything. Picture an old Western. The bad guys are all standing around the sheriff, who is tied up. "We're not just going to fuck you sheriff. We're going to fuck you slow....."

You could substitute "Election" with "bacon". "2008" with "Weasel-like", and maybe FAQ with "Nosehair"

"Peter Norvig Bacon Weasel-like Nosehair"

(Apologies for the profanity. Kinda hard to do Carlin without it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'The words "Nobel", "Economics" and "Scientist" do not appear on McCain's page.'

LOL, very telling! :)

<comment><USER10> _"Nobel", "Economics" and "Scientist"_

When was the last time any of those words were used to describe a great business leader? Someone like Jack Welch, etc (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch>). Maybe the Google founders... but I rarely hear them described as great from a business sense.

As for counter examples from McCain... it wasn't hard to find:

[http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/c9068...](http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/c90681b9-5dfe-4de4-8057-ceedb30c228d.htm)

300 economists, including multiple Nobel winners, that agree with McCain on his "Jobs for America" plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought there was "NotHackerNews" et. al. for a reason.

<comment><USER12> This is more evidence of the bizarro universe taking ours over. For the first time I can recall, Peter Norvig is being labeled "NotHackerNews"

<comment><USER11> It's a hacker writing about politics. Unless he developed some algorithm to determine the winner based on number of lies and non-answer-answers, I don't really give a damn about his "objective" analysis.

<comment><USER13> Well, then it fits as well as any of PG's essays that don't explicitly discuss 'hacking' and those never get this complaint.

<comment><USER14> That's the benefit of owning the keys to the server room :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what the heck are we supposed to do with this?

I can say something like "Heck yes! This is a good article" I would supposed that would generate very little discussion.

Or I could say, "Gee. I disagree with a lot of these points. I think the author oversteps in many instances." and immediately were arguing politics again.

So this is an article that I think is a worthless waste of time on this site. It exists only so that like-minded people can upvote it.

POS posting.

<comment><USER15> Might I recommend <http://nonhackernews.com> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "FF00FF means maximum red and maximum blue in the naming convention for web colors and is the magenta/purple background here. It is garish, but that's what you get when you combine two extremes."

OK, that is WAY too funny on at least three levels and deserves it's own comment.

</comment><comment><USER17> Surprised by the tax charts.

They are are actually sticking to their left/right positioning.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone able to access the link? Seems to have been down for the last couple of hours, even though the main site norvig.com comes up just fine.

<comment><USER19> I also had trouble at first but its okay now. You can always use the google cache of course (note that it looks the same way): [http://184.108.40.206/search?q=cache:WpuLq6wYdewJ:norvig.com...](http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:WpuLq6wYdewJ:norvig.com/election- faq.html+site:http://norvig.com/election-faq.html&hl=bg&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=bg)

BTW, why doesn't Norvig use googlepages or blogger? Research?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> all I'm going to say is aside from presentation there's very little difference between Obama and Mccain (both support the bailout, the Bush doctrine, FISA, - need I go on?).

I'm going to have to agree with PG on this one: <http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> Biased. On the list of supposedly conservative people who don't like Palin it has Andrew Sullivan. He abandoned the war bloggers years ago and went kinda lefty.</comment>


Nexus 6 - Low in-call speaker volume - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=80817 <comment><USER2> I purchased a used Nexus 5 because I got tired of all modifications and dropped support on my verizon branded phone. I assumed that as a Google product it would have the best functioning version of Android.

But in the past few weeks it's become readily apparent that Android 5.0 is beta software. It just has too many major issues like the one in OP. For me, the most major issue is the memory leak that causes the entire home screen to be knocked out of memory. Usually a few times a week the leak is so bad that the currently running app will be closed down while it's in the foreground!

<comment><USER3> The only thing that has consistently frustrated me with Android on Nexus devices (Can't speak for non-Nexus devices) is the "safety" feature when plugging anything into the headphone slot.

Seemingly randomly it will cut volume to 50% to protect hearing and you can't turn up the volume until you agree to a notification warning you about the potential dangers of high-volume listening.

I use this in my car. I need the volume max -1 click. Plugging in my phone and then wondering where the music is is infuriating. I don't want to have to pull over out of traffic just to unlock my phone so I can agree to a notification and then turn up the volume again. This wouldn't be a problem if it only asked me once, but it tends to "forget" at random times, usually when I'm in a rush and don't want to fuck with my phone.

<comment><USER4> You can disable that if you root your phone or install a custom ROM. Just saying.

<comment><USER5> No shit.

This should be a disclaimer when buying the phone then.

<comment><USER6> Iphone does the same thing when the media volume is set above the "safe" limit. It's a regulatory requirement not some Android bug.

<comment><USER7> From where did you get that regulatory requirement information?

<comment><USER2> "Now all personal music players sold in the EU after February 2013 are expected to have a default sound limit of 85dB.

The user can choose to override the limit so that the sound level can be increased up to maximum 100dB. If the user overrides the limit, warnings about the risks must be repeated every 20 hours of listening time. "

via [http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21294537](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21294537)

The "repeated every 20 hours" would explain why OP was seeing the warning seemingly randomly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OP: did you edit the title? it was "Should The Inability To Hear On A Nexus 6 Be A Small (Low Priority) Issue?" and it looked appropriate enough to me. This is about Google's neglect more than about the issue itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Not sure why the title was edited. This was my post. It was my intention to get conversation going around why Google feels it is low priority for a phone to be able to fulfill its primary function effectively.

<comment><USER8> It's shameful that somebody at Yc feels like protecting Google (or anyone) by switching topic titles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Depends on how many video/audio ads Google wants to shove down your throat. Not many yet, so I guess it's not a high priority yet ;)

Google has the annoying habit of ignoring bugs that don't affect a lot of users, no matter how critical they are. This has been discussed previously on HN, not long ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118)

<comment><USER9> _Google has the annoying habit of ignoring bugs that don 't affect a lot of users, no matter how critical they are._

Is there a cultural thing within Google, where people talk about how stupid and deluded general users are?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nexus phones have had bad bugs at launch since day one.

I had on of the older one's (2? 3?) and it had a bug where it would randomly restart during a call. Restart -- 3 min of booting before you can call back. This was an issue for something like 8 months after launch before it was fixed.

<comment><USER11> Or the Nexus 4 bug where notifications wouldn't be seen when the phone went to sleep when wi-fi was enabled. 4.4.4 fixed it, but the fix was a really long time coming. If you were rooted, it was a one-line fix to some config file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The amount of issues that have emerged with Lollipop on all the Nexus phones is absolutely unacceptable for a Phone Operating System.

And Google's stewardship is starting to show cracks.

<comment><USER13> _Starting_ to show cracks? It seems to me like it's only getting better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow...I've been burned by bad speakers before, and I was holding out for the Verizon launch on the March 12th. The phone looks amazing, but I'm not willing to risk it, especially if this issue gets marked as a low priority. Maybe it is time to get an iphone after all.

<comment><USER15> For what it's worth, I just recently upgraded from Nexus 5 to Nexus 6 and I have had absolutely no problems with the device, especially with call volume. Literally everything is a step up.

I wouldn't let this sour you entirely, if your device has a problem, return it for a new one. I had an issue with my Play-store-purchased Nexus 4's earphone jack, prolly my fault, Google replaced it within a few days, paid for shipping and everything.

There are a lot of business decisions that go into applying resources to problems, and we can't all assume we know those business decisions and the circumstances that are involved with making them. This could be a very small but vocal segment of the nexus 6 user-base, if it is a small problem, it should be treated as small priority.

Personally, as a type-1 diabetic, it sucks seeing research done specifically for type-2 diabetes, but, unfortunately there are less of us, so it's seen as a lower priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hmm, sounds annoying. I remember the Galaxy Nexus having a painfully low loudspeaker volume, but never problems with the phone speaker.]

</comment><comment><USER16> I've wanted to hear things like podcasts on the private speaker before--would be nice if they exposed that as part of this fix.</comment>


IA Writer for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/ia-writer-for-mac/

<comment><USER2> I like IAWriter on the iPad. I've actually used it to write several full- length articles on my iPad while on the move. I wrote "The problem with blogging" on IA Witer, for example.

I'm not entirely sure what niche it fills on the Mac, though. I have already shelled out for WriteRoom there, and that pretty much does everything I need it to.

On the other hand, it'd be nice if the MarkDown formatting worked on the iPad version.

Still, good work, keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER3> I had the pleasure of beta testing the app for a while before it was launched and thought the price cheap. It's really interesting to see how many people have come up with issues with either pricing or the features without trying the app first.

But even more interesting are the "reviews" that came out immediately after the app was launched. Reviews by people who obviously had not tested or even purchased the app. They judged it based on screen shots and their own assumptions. Gizmodo being the prime example here.

Given the pricing expectations of the Mac App Store, people's tendency to pay based on how easy they think it was to build the app (something this minimalistic practically codes itself) and the mentality that if I don't find something useful, nobody else must either, I really feel bad for people who are new to the app business.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that they sell the lack of features as a feature in itself. I remain skeptical of their tagline about better tools and better craftmen, at least as it concerns their product being the better tool.

I'm an avid Emacs user, so I guess I'll never understand this trend towards minimalist editors. If you want to go full-screen, you can do that in emacs (you can even get the same kind of layout and look and feel with something like darkroom mode), and most decent editors anyway. Is having features in the editor really so distracting?</comment>


Is Math a Young Man's Game? (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2003/05/is_math_a_young_mans_game.html <comment><USER2> (2003). I have a simple theory. Math is not a young man's game, but math at these levels is extremely demanding and all consuming of one's mind. As you get older life gets more complicated, you get a wife, kids, dog, etc. Your mind is no longer focused on one thing and one thing only. So it's exceptionally rare to see someone with a normal life do extraordinary discovery in mathematics past a certain age. Paul Erdős is often mentioned as a counterexample to the young mathematician. Yet, Erdős pretty much lived for mathematics and didn't really have a set place let alone a normal life with wife and kids. I'm not saying that this is the only contributing factor, but I'm willing to bet it's a big one.

<comment><USER3> The thing I find fascinating about both this article and now your comment is that regardless of who's game it is, it seems to be taken as fact that it's a MANS game. You said "you get a wife"...I suppose history isn't littered with too many breakthrough female mathematicians.

<comment><USER4> Not many, but a few. Gender aside, nobody would think of Emmy Noether as anything less than one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived.

<comment><USER5> Unless, of course, you consider her a physicist and those as less than mathematicians…

<comment><USER6> I'll happily look down on applied mathematics, but classifying Emmy Noether as only a physicist would be ridiculous, as a large part of her life's work was indeed pure mathematics. I can't imagine the abuse of history needed to assert otherwise.

And remember, even Hardy, most famous of the Purists, often slummed it with (hold your nose) physicists and on a few occasions even with (the horror) _biologists_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://xkcd.com/447/](http://xkcd.com/447/)

</comment><comment><USER8> About 6 months ago I began writing a library[1] that focuses on topology (much of what was discussed in the article) and geospatial stats. I am by no means a math genius, and my library does nothing too novel from a mathematical perspective. Still, it has been nearly all consuming to grok the immense amount of math that goes into this sort of thing. I can only imagine the creative energy it must have taken to actually design these algorithms from scratch.

[1] [https://github.com/morganherlocker/turf](https://github.com/morganherlocker/turf)

<comment><USER9> As far as I can tell, your library does topo_graphy_, not topo_logy_. Topology ignores such things as corners, distances, and convexity. That makes it hard to combine with GIS systems.

<comment><USER10> What? Everything about this comment is wrong.

> "Topology ignores such things as corners, distances, and convexity."

No, that's what topology is.

> "That makes it hard to combine with GIS systems."

No, GIS systems rely heavily on topology. Here are two definitions:

Topology: 1. the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures.

Topography: 1. the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area.

<comment><USER11> The code samples used to demonstrate that library loads a trees.geojson file with features like 'oak' and 'maple', so I think he definitely meant 'topography'. What makes you say it's a topology library?

<comment><USER10> See the authors comment above. The library does do a lot more than topology, but the see the sections titled: joins, measurement and transformation. These are all topological functions.

<comment><USER4> Measurement is not topological.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maths is a game for anyone with the inclination to play. [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/16/1206569109.abstract)

<comment><USER13> I don't get it. What's so special about the link?

<comment><USER14> The authors are 65 and 90 years old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Similarly, I believe, due to the vast amount of information accumulated in all different fields in the last century or so, polymaths have simply ceased to exist. The last true polymath I know of was John von Neumann. I guess it just can't be done anymore.

<comment><USER15> I'd put Alan Kay forward as a living polymath. It's a shame that research has become siloed -- so many great discoveries came about because someone had insights perpendicular to their field.

<comment><USER5> Are you talking about Alan Kay as in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay) ? He doesn't seem to have made any major contributions to physics, mathematics, the natural sciences or basically any other field, apart from software engineering.

<comment><USER15> Polymath needn't mean 'makes major contributions to multiple fields' (though, of course it, it can.) It means someone has deep knowledge across a wide array of subjects, and typically draws inspiration from fields which are orthogonal to their primary field of interest. In Kay's case, it's applying the concepts of biology, genetics, mathematics, and architecture, to computer science, to create Object Oriented Programming.

A major breakthrough in his primary field (computer science) came about because of a wide (rather than narrow) field of study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my view the simple explanation that there's more to learn before reaching the cutting edge seems credible.

Biology is another area. I live in a town where there's a lot of biology research, and there are start-up businesses, but they aren't formed by kids who skipped college to get rich. Instead, the typical start-up founder could be anywhere from 40 to 60. It takes a long time to learn biology.

Another possibility to consider is that math research takes more time now because it resembles more of a search than an inventive process. If proof is computer-aided, for instance, then an Edisonian approach could be applied to finding a proof for a theorem (or at least, finding important steps), resulting in discovery of proofs being a matter of time, even for the most brilliant mathematician.

(edited for spelling)

<comment><USER4> Make no mistake, math research is very much an inventive process.

In particular, it's much more than just proving theorems. Mathematicians need to come up with ideas worth investigating, and that (in addition to writing proofs) often requires creativity.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely, and thanks for clarifying. My thought is simply that the creativity has evolved towards work that takes longer to reach fruition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've thought about this for the last few months. I'm in my 30's and never really cared about math until the last couple years. I'm discovering that it has become somewhat easier now for me to understand and learn new math. I had the usual engineering calc set and hated it. But now that I actually have some goals associated with it I have been able to make progress. I've been particularly interested in ASR and AI/ML. I was deficient in the math needed for it but now I'm getting up to speed rapidly. I think the key is to have had some in-depth exposure to math earlier in life though.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25630/major- mathematical-a...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25630/major-mathematical- advances-past-age-fifty)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think ageism is implicit in modern Western culture. The Fields Medal has ageism built right into it: "a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians _not over 40 years of age_." Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal)

However, skimming down the list of Abel Prize winners, those guys are no spring chickens, and do great work in mathematics well into their senior years.

</comment><comment><USER20> Everything in this article is about youth, not being male, so I don't get why they chose to put "Man" in the title. Are there not any young women born as genius?

<comment><USER21> He is referencing a quote by G.H. Harding "No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game." Try reading the article before getting insulted.

<comment><USER20> I didn't know that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Erdos said no.</comment>


Facebook Didn't Kill Digg, Reddit Did - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/07/13/facebook-didnt-kill-digg-reddit-did/ <comment><USER2> And that happened, IMHO, because the people behind reddit didn't behave like jerks and the people behind Digg did.

One example of being jerks: [http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/sense-of-humor- failure-at-digg.h...](http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/sense-of-humor-failure-at- digg.html)

After that I was unbanned, but not after an employee of Digg defamed me in a blog post by making false claims: <http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/unbanned-from- digg.html>

And here's an example of how reddit people weren't jerks when I inadvertently brought the site great slowness: <http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/tale-of-two- cultures.html>

<comment><USER3> Reddit never seemed to have to bother trying to make any profit. They still haven't.

Digg wanted to make money.

If Conde hadn't bought Reddit, then it would likely have been a far closer race.

When your competition isn't interested in making money, you're always going to be at a major disadvantage.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure. Digg was pretty much already dead when that deal went through.

<comment><USER3> Not how I remember it at all. At that time Digg was quite a bit larger than Reddit. Then later Digg decided to really push the revenue generation, and users fled to the obvious free alternative.

<comment><USER4> 2006 - You're totally right. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> None of these things killed Digg. Digg was simply a transitional meme.

Prior to the Internet you had mass media controlling distribution. The Internet comes along and you have things like Usenet and the proto-Web.

Then comes the first crowdsourcing sites to allow people to find content without employing people to curate that information. Slashdot was certainly early in this trend.

What Digg allowed is a certain band of people to control the information flow. People would get paid to promote submissions as it became clear that a front- page submission generated a lot of pageviews.

But what became apparent with all these community sites (and this includes forums) is they start with an early group who provide value to each other. This group ends up becoming insular. De facto standards form. But even in the Usenet days you had the "September" problem (where new college freshmen would get Internet access and not understand the "rules" and conventions that were in place and would ask questions that had already been answered, etc).

Basically all these social sites get worse over time as the masses flood in.

Digg died because the idea that there is a central source for news was a holdover idea from the old media days. Reddit understood this. Global reddit is basically useless. The subreddits are the only remotely interesting thing about reddit.

People complain about how HN is getting worse. That's probably true and it is true (and will continue to be true) of any such social site in the future.

I've heard the same complaints about Twitter.

Facebook for most people is not a source of news. It doesn't have the same link-sharing mindshare (IMHO) for most people that other mediums have. Ultimately I think the biggest use case for Facebook is still sharing photos. People go to Facebook to find out what their friends are doing. Very few go to find out what's going on in the world (much as Facebook would like that to be the case).

I'm surprised at how some wax lyrical on how amazing reddit is. It's just a minor tweak on a long trend of existing prior art (the subreddits). Personally I think it's a cesspool full of trolls. Proggit (programming.reddit.com) is (IMHO) just awful.

<comment><USER6> > Proggit (programming.reddit.com) is (IMHO) just awful.

So I went over there, and the first article is about protocol-less links, and the first comment notes that they have performance issues in css for IE7 & 8\. The second article is a link to dadgum and the first comment is about optimizing network communication.

It's not HN, but awful is an overstatement.

<comment><USER7> It seems like proggit is dying. I've been subbed to it for a few years and there used to be a lot more submissions. I don't have data to back it up and hopefully I am wrong but if I am not I imagine us programmers prefer to go to sources totally dedicated for programming instead of a mixed bag. It would make sense for proggit to be dying out though because Reddit used to be primarily for tech and has of course now shifted out of tech and into everything.

<comment><USER8> I stopped following proggit months ago for the simple reason that there's too much not-about-programming posts. Too much of the content was "announcing my iphone app!", "omg industry gossip!" and stackoverflow repost variety. And I was sick of it.

I tried for about 2 months to politely explain to posters why their posts didn't fit the guidelines and then I quit and gave up. Why fight an inevitability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The value in Digg was the tribe it created, not the software, not the ads, not the human beings keeping the lights on. It was the tribe of people who found interesting news on the internet and shared it.

FB, Reddit, HN did not "kill" Digg. The tribe growing up and or moving on to other things ended Digg. A similar tribe is at Reddit now, but a similar tribe used to live at Slashdot. Before that they probably lived on Usenet message boards or wherever.

In college, the comp sci program I was in had a private message board that ended up having a very similar vibe to digg/reddit/slashdot. Tech heavy, at times very heated political and religious debate. Eventually the original group graduated and it's never been quite the same.

It seems that each generation has something like digg, slashdot, reddit, whatever... that is "the thing" for hanging out and sharing/complaining about the news of the day or whatever is interesting. They might look like fads because on the internet they peak and crumble pretty quick, but really it is probably a natural cycle that communities and tribes go through.

Eventually HN and Reddit will become irrelevant to certain groups and the tribes that live there will move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.

I'm guessing the next site like this already exists or is going to be built soon, so any guesses as to what it will be if it's already out there?

<comment><USER10> From my perspective, Reddit is qualitatively different from all the sites you mentioned. Reddit is the first large news site which allows its users to create their own communities.

Most of the content on Reddit these days isn't technology- or politically oriented at all. This has changed over the last year or so - there are subreddits for pretty much anything. What makes these communities special is that a lot of them have very specialized and very diverse knowledge, not necessarily related to the subjects Reddit's early adopters were interested in. There are subreddits for science, fitness, finance, sex, art and just about any other subject people would be interested in following. What gets to the default front page doesn't even begin scratching the surface of what the ecosystem has to offer.

I have the contrarian opinion that Reddit won't be displaced for a long time in the realm of primarily text-based news sharing and discussion.

<comment><USER11> Reading your comment, I think reddit is like a moderated usenet.

I think the only thing that would really kill reddit is if the people in charge try too hard to monetize it, like Digg did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nobody killed Digg. Digg committed suicide by telling it's original, loyal user base to go fuck themselves in it's quest for more money and a broader audience. Digg became too greedy.

But it was pretty obvious much earlier on that Digg had zero respect for its users. In many ways, Digg had a very old school broadcast attitude: the users were merely part of the product, only the advertisers mattered.

<comment><USER13> The problem digg faced is that their loyal customers were not sufficient to warrant the amount of money they had raised. If they had done nothing, it would have been suicide as well.

<comment><USER14> The problem they faced, then, was in deluding themselves about their valuation, and raising more capital (and incurring greater obligations) than they could meet.

Digg were apparently sustainable at their prior valuation, and with their existing userbase.

Icarus problem.

<comment><USER13> by this logic nearly all startups are delusional. I don't think I'd frame it this way.

<comment><USER14> Not quite.

Digg was _viable_ previously. Hence the Icarus problem. They tried to fly too high.

Most startups are stillborn. That's a different Greek myth.

<comment><USER13> yeah, but I think they believed they could grow into something bigger. I.e, the same thing all startups believe, and typically fail to do.

Don't get me wrong, I think they'd have been far better off taking far less money and simply being a profitable property. I think nearly all startups would be better off doing this. I just don't believe that digg did anything abnormal for a typical startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's the blog post TechCrunch flamed me about (called me a liar and whatnot). I wrote it after I tried the alpha of diggv4, but before it was released to the public; I have no idea what happened internally, but the resulting product was indeed pretty devastating -- the final self-inflicted wound after years of encouraging power users and sacrificing the best interests of the userbase: <http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin- rose>

</comment><comment><USER16> Actually Digg killed Digg with the redesign. One time after the redesign I went to the site and there was NO CONTENT anywhere. It wanted me to make friends with people before I would get to see any content.

I logged in. Still no content. That was the last time I visited digg.com, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

My guess is that if the acquirers just rever to the pre-redesign version Digg will come back to life.

</comment><comment><USER17> Reddit Didn't Kill Digg, Digg Did

I read a bit of the discussion on Reddit, and there were surprisingly (to me) many people that had used Digg before. Then something called "v4" came and Digg became unusable to many people. As I understood the discussion. Digg didn't care. So its users looked for alternatives and moved to Reddit. Digg still didn't care. People got used to Reddit and stayed. Digg still didn't care.

Yesterday I looked at Digg.com for the first time in years. Only a quick look and I spotted already a number of beginners mistakes only in the front page design.

For example the clickable headlines to the stories: they are the main content. Yet they are very /very/ light and hard to read on the white background. WTF. You want your main content to have /good contrast/ and stand out, and secondary stuff (like "points" or "who submitted" or "vote buttons") to have less contrasts as to not distract from your main content. Yet, even such basic things Digg gets wrong. I didn't dare to digg further.

</comment><comment><USER18> The tipping point, IMHO, was when Digg banned people from typing the following number: "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0."

As soon as that happened, Digg lost the alpha nerds. The rest was destiny played out over time.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was struck by the authors comment "Well, they haven't redesigned since what appears to be 1997, which has pleased their user base who like the simple look."

How long before web designers start complaining about reddit the way they complain about craigslist's design?

<comment><USER20> The complaints will happen when that simplicity impedes information flow. It's not a matter of visual aesthetics, it's a matter of usefulness. CL's design impedes its usability, independent of its aesthetics.

In Craigslist case, there are clearly better ways to browse housing spots than in a list of links with non-standardized location information in the linktext. In Reddit and HN, part of the joy is serendipity...you don't need to aggregate the content behind each link at once...because of the voting system, you don't worry that clicking on the top link will be a waste of time. That's not the case with CL's chronologically ordered list.

Reddit has made some concessions with allowing thumbnails of image-based posts to show up. Otherwise, its minimalistic approach serves a real usability purpose and is not simply the result of stagnation.

<comment><USER21> Uh... picture subreddits are 75% of reddit's frontpage traffic and my little startup thinks that there are better ways of browsing pictures than a long list of thumbnails where the title is even larger than the thumbnail preview.

<comment><USER22> So, you'll be competing with Pinterest?

<comment><USER21> No. Pinterest is more tuned towards sharing pictures with people that you already know.

Picc.it is tuned to sharing pictures with people you don't know, but share your interests.

Think of it as the difference between glomping onto a pre-existing community (e.g. Facebook friends), and creating a new one (e.g. Reddit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> IMHO, Digg killed Digg.

In any such ecosystem where the inmates are running the asylum, pissing them off is not a good course of action.

The tribe knew that it was the reason why Digg was what Digg was. But arrogance on the part of the upper management at Digg was its downfall; they couldn't come to terms with the basic fact that the people were responsible for Digg's success. So they decided to tweak it, "enhance" it, modify it to "Digg 2.0", and the people revolted.

Lesson: if you are a user-driven site, listen to them. Don't piss them off.

</comment><comment><USER24> As an ex-Digger, I can tell you that it was Digg that killed Digg for me. At one point in time, Digg was cool. Granted, it was still mostly a rehash of news from Reddit, 4Chan and other sites, but the audience base was large enough to provide original content as well, and the UI was considerably better than any of the other sites.

What killed it (for me anyway) was that Digg suddenly allowed advertisers to start posting away. Ads popped up everywhere, and every other post from directly from Mashable. Digg was no longer cool, and mostly, it was Mashable's alternative site. :)

I switched to Reddit. Reddit didn't like all the Digg users migrating over initially, but attitudes have cooled over time. I can't really see a move that Digg could make at this point that would entice me back.

</comment><comment><USER25> My take - Digg killed itself. Kevin Rose either sold out to advertisers or had a tin ear for his site's community.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to be a huge Digg fan, and checked it religiously. Digg v4 is what completely drove me away.

The Digg v4 idea was good, but poorly executed. They shouldn't have suddenly forced you to follow other people to get your news. They were trying too hard to become a social network like Twitter / Facebook. Instead, I think they should have integrated with Twitter / Facebook to find top news, rather than starting their own social network.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am surprised no one has liked to ncomment's rendition of the how the digg vs reddit war went down.

Part 1: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2009/04/08/war-13/>

Part 2: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2009/12/17/war-23/>

Part 3: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2012/01/06/war-33/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Personally, I feel Digg killed Digg. They were their own worst enemy and drove people to alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER29> No, sorry, as someone that used Digg regularly on a daily basis, Digg killed Digg.

The day that Digg changed their interface was the day they lost a huge portion of their users, including me. I went back once more after that, and then never again.

</comment><comment><USER30> In my opinion (and I was there), the never ending side projects killed Digg. Revision3 (especially), Pownce, Wefollow, etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> I left Digg for Reddit because Reddit's community at the time valued articles with content over images. As Reddit has absorbed Digg's old user base, so too did it absorb much of the culture of Digg. Reddit no longer seems to have much focus on reading and has instead become a place to find funny images, much like Digg in its heyday. It feels inevitable that the culture of a website like Reddit will change over its life span but it bothered me to see it happen first-hand.

<comment><USER32> But with Reddit, there are thousands of others who agree with you, who have created tons of subreddits that would be relevant to whatever your interests. Obviously some communities are more active and more interesting than others, but they're around if you look. Here are some great article-based reddits:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/offbeat/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/>

<comment><USER27> <http://ww.reddit.com/r/tldr>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would place almost all of the blame of Digg dying on Digg itself.

</comment><comment><USER34> DIGG killed Digg. The week after V 3.0 launched was a mess. Tons of corporate sponsored posts (AKA intrusive adverts), often multiple submissions by the same person on the front page at the same time, and other weirdness.

Reddit was right place, right time to pick up the exodus. I don't think it did anything to kill Digg.

</comment><comment><USER35> I was just thinking about this yesterday when I read the Digg article. I used to read Digg all the time, until it got to the point where the comments in each Digg submitted article stated how that article/news story was on reddit first. This is when I found out about reddit... haha

</comment><comment><USER36> Facebook, Twitter, Reddit didn't kill Digg. Digg killed Digg.

Kevin got caught in a situation where he had to please investors and they were looking at what other people were doing and he stop innovating and started copying.

That's what killed Digg. Nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER37> One thing I never understood about Digg is why at one point they had around 300 employees and an incredible burn rate- only do less successfully and less efficiently do what Reddit was able to do with 5-10 employees.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe I'm the only one, but I moved from digg to reddit entirely because digg was blocked at work and reddit wasn't. I've worked at four different places in the last five years and at each one I expect to see reddit blocked as well, but no one has gotten around to it. Maybe my situation is atypical, but I have to believe that the lack of availability of digg to office-bound slackers had to have played some part in it's demise.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think businesses face significant hurdles (and are likely to die) when the founders lose interest in running them. Digg. Twitter (Dorsey left but came back and saved it). Yahoo. Flickr. MySpace. The list is endless.

Even Microsoft is not the same since Bill Gates handed the reigns to Ballmer. They're just too big (Office/Windows cash cows) to actually die from that.

Founder disinterest is lethal.

</comment><comment><USER40> As I remember it, Digg forced some updates on it's users that they (we) did not like and were very vocal about. Facebook does the same thing, except there were other options for Digg users (reddit), Facebook users have a steep cost of moving to another service - I would actually argue Facebook users have no other options

</comment><comment><USER41> To simple put it there was a time when Digg used to be as simple as Reddit, then Kevin Rose got consumed by his own fame of this and that, the kid forgot to focus managing this one and other companies as well (Digg, Pownce, Milk). Did anyone remember Leah Culver? hehehehehe.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would say diggs attempts at manipulating the front page and banning people, blocking posts, and unfairly pushing some content to the front helped kill it. When I lost faith in the democracy of Digg I just stopped going and spent time with my votes elsewhere (reddit)

</comment><comment><USER43> Reddit is a bit like the craigslist of news aggregators. They've resisted the lure of monetizing in any big way and continue resolutely to put their users first. Digg got overambitious and sold out and their users smelled it and left.

</comment><comment><USER44> Digg was killed NOT by Facebook OR Reddit...but by its power users. Those killed Digg.

</comment><comment><USER45> > What did Reddit do right that Digg did wrong? Well, they haven't redesigned > since what appears to be 1997, which has pleased their user base who like > the simple look.

Reddit was founded in 1997?

</comment><comment><USER46> This article will be useful for the zero people who think Facebook killed Digg.

</comment><comment><USER47> Digg actually killed themselves. Reddit was just there to reap the rewards.

</comment><comment><USER48> Digg v4 killed Digg. Reddit filled the void. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm pretty sure it's Yahoo! that pulled the trigger.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is news?

</comment><comment><USER51> Digg did not kill Digg. Nor did Reddit, nor Facebook. People using Digg killed it. The same people are now killing Reddit, making it little more than a place to regurgitate memes, nerd pop culture, and rage comics. Reddit and Digg both used to be places to go for interesting discussion based off decent links. Over time, good and insightful discussion gave way to quick-to-consume, funny one-liners. You can see it happening in popular subreddits. Recently the moderators of /r/science started taking a heavy hand and deleting irrelevant comments.

This isn't a problem with the sites, it's a problem with the users of these sites. This is democracy in action. It's cable news. People voting don't want to see challenging, thought-provoking content. They want to see things that confirm their biases, or things they can repost to facebook for quick laughs from their friends.

<comment><USER52> > People using Digg killed it. The same people are now killing Reddit, making > it little more than a place to regurgitate memes

1) With sub-reddits, this hasn't become as big of a problem unless a lot of users still keep the sub-reddits that annoy them. There is a reddit for everyone, especially since anyone can create their own sub-reddit. While Digg only had one idea tribe, Reddit has many. Moreover users that create their own sub-reddits can police them with other like-minded users.

2) Reddit is able to fit more content per page given their design. I don't have to keep clicking the next page link to get more.

<comment><USER53> I _like_ reddit, almost completely because I've subscribed to several small subreddits that have a good community, high quality content, et al.

But there's a tricky problem. Subreddits like /r/programming dominate, while more focused subreddits like /r/ruby (or whatever) languish. If I have a ruby link and I care at all about karma, I'm going to post it in /r/programming.

<comment><USER52> Well that's the price for avoiding garbage, you have to do a little more work. It's not impossible to successfully have a branch of an existing sub-reddit. Just take a look at the offshoots of r/gaming: r/gamingnews and r/games; or even the branches off from r/politics like r/progressive and r/libertarian.

In your case, ruby already has a good news site and it doesn't need reddit. Rubyflow is more than sufficient imo

<comment><USER53> "That's the price for..." implies that this is constant across alternatives, but it's not. One alternative is a hierarchy with subtrees feeding into nodes higher up, so that /r/programming/ruby posts would appear in /r/programming. This has its own set of problems where the price to be paid is not the same as for reddit's completely flat model. I'm not saying this hierarchical model would be better, but it would have different pros and cons.

Call me an optimist, but I can't help but think that there's something better than what's out there now.

<comment><USER52> > "That's the price for..." implies that this is constant across alternatives, > but it's not

Well if there isn't, as I've already mentioned, you can make your own sub- reddit.

> Call me an optimist, but I can't help but think that there's something > better than what's out there now.

hmmm you're right... Reddit's sub-reddit's is imo a half-assed implementation of an idea tribe paper that showed up years ago on HN. To this day I can't find it.

Anyways the gist of the idea, is that everyone belongs to an idea tribe / group aimed that making wikipedia better. All of these groups have differences in what they think are accurate, right, cool, etc... However many groups have things that they agree on. The paper talks about how great it would be if we could have something that would highlight those commonalities.

<comment><USER54> > Well if there isn't, as I've already mentioned, you can make your own sub- > reddit.

That doesn't mean anyone's going to use it. It takes a long time to grow a community. I would love for /r/trueskyrim to take off because /r/skyrim has become 99% garbage, 1% content. Unfortunately trueskyrim hasn't had a post in 6 months.

The only reason /r/Games ever took off was because it was started by the mods of /r/gaming and got lots of attention on /r/gaming's front page. Don't get me wrong /r/Games is wonderful, but without the publicity that it got from /r/gaming I doubt anyone would use it.

<comment><USER52> > Unfortunately trueskyrim hasn't had a post in 6 months.

Why not seed it yourself for a few weeks and see what happens?

> The only reason /r/Games ever took off was because it was started by the > mods of /r/gaming and got lots of attention on /r/gaming's front page.

It's not like you can't work with the mods of other sub-reddits. r/libertarian is on r/politic's sub-reddit page

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Reddit did not kill Digg. Digg killed Digg. Reddit's big break was Digg v4, when most of the community finally jumped ship.

<comment><USER56> I would argue that the "big break" was actually a bad thing for Reddit. The massive influx of disenfranchised Digg users contributed to the decline of quality on Reddit big-time.

<comment><USER57> reddit's quality is in renascence currently, as the big and popular subreddits (e.g. pics, science) have figured out what the 'moderate' button does. until every single one of the default subreddits start moderating, the main reddit will be rubbish.

<comment><USER58> And I would credit /r/askscience for it. They have shown how wonderful banhammer is, with mods that don't hesitate to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> no, Digg killed digg. They didn't listen to the community and they lost user data and did nothing to recover it, at least that was my experience after loosing several thousand diggs on my user account and then being reset to 0. You can't imagine the piss off.

</comment><comment><USER60> I loved digg. When it was first out, I was able to get roughly 70,000 people to my website per week by just posting an article and having my friends digg it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Actually, IMO Hacker News killed Digg. All the news here would have been in Digg otherwise :)

<comment><USER61> Tsk tsk. The Lack of a sense of humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I also used to read Digg all the time, but over time it became a cesspool of pro-microsoft trolling, and I left in disgust. Imagine being attacked every time you expressed legitimate disappointment with vista. I expect we are going to witness something similar this fall on reddit (and even here) when that new polished turd gets released.

<comment><USER30> Really? I don't remember seeing any pro-microsoft trolling - perhaps it was hidden by the much larger Apple fanboy contingent.

<comment><USER62> > Really?

Yes, _REALLY_ My memory seems to function better than yours.

<comment><USER63> Another former Digg user who never saw anything of the sort, and in fact saw far more pro-Apple stuff than anything else.

<comment><USER62> I think we all understand how selective memory works, but thanks for the reminder.

Let me restate that the pro-microsoft trolls were the reason I left Digg _in disgust_.

<comment><USER63> There's something about writing " _in digust_ " in italics that makes me laugh uncontrollably.

Looking through your past comments it is clear that you have some sort of grudge against Microsoft, so perhaps I am not surprised you were downvoted after all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


John Hunter's World Peace Game, Roger Ebert, and the PLATO System - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brianstorms/the-story-of-john-hunters-world-peace-game-roger-ebert-and-the-plato-system-4b3bb571fa2 <comment><USER2> I remember Plato. In our lab, it was used mostly to play John Daleske's Empire, a space game. It was graphical and the coolest thing around!

Then years later, working on 802.11 radio drivers, I ran into John at a job. One of my youthful heroes! And a regular guy, plugging away writing software for industry.

Anyway, most folks who saw Plato were affected by it. Lightyears ahead of other text-terminal computers of the time.

<comment><USER3> I remember seeing one - a time when I'd never seen a terminal that wasn't an ASR-33 teletype - hidden way back in the faculty section of a college computer department. I was given 15 minutes to try out 'Oregon Trail'. Mindblowing display concept.

PLATO definitely looked like an inevitable future. Unfortunately, in most places the educational establishment was not ready for it. Even 10-15 years later most people still wondered what use home computers could have. Recipes? Games? Tax returns? Anything else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My aunt gave me the author's book as a gift a few years ago. It was quite an astounding read.

<comment><USER5> I loved The Friendly Orange Glow. I wish people currently put more emphasis on the "fast round trip" like the PLATO designers did

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I studied at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and we had a Plato system donated by Control Data for e-learning.

It was rather awesome esp when I discovered the games "directory" ... it had a asteroids clone.

<comment><USER7> This is very impressive. That'd have required a lot of bandwidth between the computer and the terminal. Did it have the plasma screen or was one of the later CRT-based ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also of note, Ray Ozzie, who was best known for creating Lotus Notes (later causing IBM to purchase Lotus), also worked on PLATO [1] while an undergrad at U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lotus Notes was based in part on his experiences using the PLATO Notes group messaging system

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

</comment><comment><USER9> I have to wonder what the best in class teaching systems are for computers these days. Not "edutainment", but real educational approaches.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ebert newspaper articles from 1962 are in the medium article. Discusses helping high school students using PLATO in 1962!</comment>


CSS3 - A Practical Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://leaverou.me/ft2010/#intro

<comment><USER2> FYI, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the slides.

Took me a minute to figure that one out.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the tip. Too bad the iPad doesn't seem to let you open up a keyboard window if there aren't any text inputs on the page. I'll have to check it out later from a more fully featured computer.

<comment><USER4> On Android, you can long-hold the menu key to bring up a keyboard at any time. Maybe iOS has a similar, undocumented feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think you can really claim "full browser support" with an asterisk that says "assumes latest beta". That's really not helpful when you're trying to figure out if you can _actually_ use something. That said, this is a pretty nice preview of what's coming with CSS3.

(If you are looking for that kind of information, <http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html> is by far the best resource I've found anywhere online for it, although I don't think it includes all of CSS3.)

<comment><USER6> It does not actually say "full browser support" does it? All I see is "browser support" with an asterisk to indicate her determination is based on most recent builds.

I don't think this is in any way meant as an authoritative reference for browser compatibility.

I think its purpose is that suggested by the title: a practical introduction. A subscript might have been: How to use CSS3 instead of various klduges to achieve interface effects.

In my opinion, anyone using the newer markup and style tools should be testing cross-browser anyway.

Anyway, I think its a great presentation.

<comment><USER7> It says "full support" in the browser icons. I assumed, and I guess samdk did also, that this implied she was talking about the browsers.

<comment><USER8> By "Full support" I meant that it fully supports the feature (without a prefix or huge deviations from the spec). It doesn't have anything to do with browser versions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's best if you read the rest of the information that I posted along with this, here: [http://leaverou.me/2010/10/my-ft2010-slides-and-csss-my- pres...](http://leaverou.me/2010/10/my-ft2010-slides-and-csss-my-presentation- framework/)

I mention quite a lot known compatibility issues with the presentation, including the Firefox 3.6/Win problem (it works fine in my FF3.6 for OSX) along with an explanation of why it only works in latest versions. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for the link. For anyone who prefers a downloadable version:

<http://leaverou.me/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ft2010.zip>

</comment><comment><USER10> Absolutely fantastic presentation, filled with clear information I didn't know yet. (box-shadow has a spread value too? cool!)

</comment><comment><USER11> You know - if you don't believe you can build a good enough application with these tools such that users will feel motivated to spend 30 seconds installing a new browser... then how on earth do you motivate yourself to learn these tools?

I don't understand this attitude in web development that panders to this contradictory sentiment. It's like saying - yeah, really we believe all web applications are actually worthless and people only use them while they represent the path of absolute least resistance.

Maybe this sentiment is true. But then, how does any web developer convince themselves they are creating anything of value? Surely if you're going to spend all this time on this stuff, then you HAVE to believe that you are creating something of value. And if you do believe this, then surely you believe that people would be willing to spend 30 seconds of investment upgrading their browser.

<comment><USER12> You are assuming that users:

(a) know what a web browser is (b) know that it can be upgraded, and how (c) aren't prevented from upgrading due to school/workplace/etc (d) realise the benefits that come with using something newer than IE6 (e) given all the above, decide that your app and others like it aren't worth the install

At least one of (a) through (d) is false for many users.

<comment><USER11> You're assuming that users:

a) Haven't heard sufficient word of mouth buzz about the application such that they question why it performs so poorly for them. b) That this word of mouth doesn't cause them to seek out the source of the problem - i.e. the old age of their browser. c) that they don't look forward to using a platform that allows them to enjoy the application when they are blocked from upgrading at work/school etc, d) that it is not possible to infer the increased value of upgrading from observing the experiences of those who have, and e) given all of the above, still decide that your app is of no value to them.

That is to say, if you assume a) through d) then you assume your app is of little value and you shouldn't be building it.

<comment><USER12> I'm definitely assuming (a). I think we have different user stereotypes in mind. I think that lots of people spend little to no time hearing about, or talking about, applications they aren't using already.

These are the kinds of people that go to mint.com not because they've heard about it, and are excited about it, but because they typed "track my finances" into Google and it was the first result.

<comment><USER11> Well I don't disagree that in one sense you're making your life harder for yourself by adopting a platform that has a smaller install base...

But I do want to challenge the idea that you're necessarily making the right decision by trying to appeal to the widest possible install base. It might just be that this is more harmful than is commonly accepted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Site doesn't seem to work in Chrome 7 on Mac OS X 10.6 -- or maybe I just couldn't figure out how to use it.

<comment><USER9> Forward arrow worked well for me (same browser + OS) - though occasionally slow/janky. The presentation's creator mentions that it worked best on Firefox, I think.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't work at all on FF3.6.11/WinXP

<comment><USER15> It says Firefox 4 in the presentation

<comment><USER14> oh ok, thanks! I wouldn't know because it never went further than page 1 :)

<comment><USER16> Works fine for me on FF 3.6.12

<comment><USER14> Pretty strange, no luck on 3.6.12 as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not very practical if you need the bleeding edge browser to even view the slides. Couldn't get past the first slide in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox on my Mac. And I keep that shit updated.

CSS3 will be a wasted effort if 1) not all browsers implement it in a sane way (looking at you IE and mobile Safari) and 2) people actually update their browsers.

The only things I use that are "CSS3" are shadows and rounded corners. If it doesn't look 'OK' in IE7 I don't do it. If it doesn't work in IE7, I design around it so it does.

The minute you require the nightly build of any browser to run a tech demo you might as well be running flash. The beauty of HTML5 and CSS3 is the promised ubiquity. Capability without wide adoption will turn CSS3 into the next Silverlight.

</comment><comment><USER18> The presentation is nice, but I strongly disagree with the author's chosen method of drawing browser icons:

      .browser-support dd:nth-of-type(3) { background-image:url("img/opera-logo.png"); }
      .browser-support dd.no-support:nth-of-type(3) { background-image:url("img/opera-logo-white.png"); }

And looking at the calculated width example reminded me of the box-sizing property [1], which would simplify that particular use case.

[1]: <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#box-sizing>

<comment><USER8> I just didn't want to clutter it with duplicate things like
Opera
. I kinda agree with your point though, it was something I also wasn't very sure about.

I also agree that box-sizing is better, I have also used it in a few places. I mentioned it in my talk too, I just didn't put it in the slides. I just wanted to experiment with calc() a bit too :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given that navigation isn't working for me on Firefox 3.6, can we retitle this to "CSS3 - An Impractical Introduction"?

</comment><comment><USER20> With all the browser prefixes (moz, webkit, o etc) do they eventually get changed to the proper thing when the spec is finalized?

It's sad that, as mentioned in the presentation, CSS3 should reduce markup. but to do something like -moz-transition: 1s ease-in; -webkit-transition: 1s ease-in; -o-transition: 1s ease-in; transition: 1s ease-in;

What is there reasoning for not just doing transition, why do they all put their own vendor prefix on it?

<comment><USER8> Yes, eventually the prefixes get dropped. In some engines sooner than others. Eric Meyer recently wrote a nice article about this, on ALA: <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/prefix-or-posthack/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Loved the presentation, but alternately excited then saddened when it came to features and then browser support.

It really makes me wonder that anything ever gets developed on the web when there's this gradual and incomplete adoption of features/standards. Imagine what it'd be like if there was a world-wide HTML5 Release Day, when all browsers updated and suddenly everything Just Worked _wistful sigh_

</comment><comment><USER22> I liked the presentation, but as another commenter said it made me a little sad as some of the features are quite ill-supported (in the latest betas) and so realistically I think we're looking at several years until they can be used (unless MS suddenly decide to push IE updates hard or someone makes an IE- specific virus that takes out a few high-profile companies).

@Lea Verou: I also liked the backgrounds and was thinking about mimicking the darker wood one, then noticed it in the credits. But then the DA page says CC- BY-NC-ND and I wondered if you personally knew the artist or had just emailed them to get the extra derivative and commercial use permissions?

One other comment - I had to look at the filename to find out what your company was called looks a lot like "fresiset" in the logo.

</comment><comment><USER23> This should make it a lot easier for developers to code a sense of design, a bit like AS3 for Flash.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not working on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera on Windows 7.

<comment><USER25> Working on Chrome 7.0.517.41 with Windows 7.

Use the arrow keys if you weren't already doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How much of this works on IE6? Or even IE8?

<comment><USER27> Isn't that kind of a ridiculous question? Obviously, none.

<comment><USER26> Not really - I can't know everything, and Microsoft would have had to add something to IE to justify a new release right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Crashed Safari/Snow Leopard 3x, after zooming the processor like Flash on steroids. NRFPT.

</comment><comment><USER29> If the author can't make it so that it tells me, on page 1, how to get to page 2, then I wonder about how credible a source they are for anything to do with UX.

<comment><USER8> The slides were initially made to complement my talk at Front Trends 2010, so it wouldn't make much sense in that context.

<comment><USER29> No, not in that context. But maybe when you posted them on the internet, maybe that's a different context? And being a CSS expert, you were quickly able to add the sentence "Use the arrow keys" in a nice, small, print at the bottom. Right? Being an expert?</comment></comment></comment>


Hey, Twitter, Enough Of This Crap About "Here's How You Can Use The Word Tweet" - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-trademarks-tweet

<comment><USER2> It should be irrelevant that "twitter" and "tweet" were already words. I couldn't name my company "Apple Music", I'd be chased down and butchered by both Yoko Ono and Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a back and forth about this between Chris Dixon (@cdixon) and Chris Sacca (@sacca) on Twitter if you care to check it out.</comment>


Generate the Perfect Cookie Recipe - <AUTHOR> https://thecookie.website/ <comment><AUTHOR> A little side project during lock down to experiment with Svelte/Sapper and, more importantly, generate a recipe for your PERFECT chocolate chip cookie based on desired color, mouthfeel, surface texture, and thickness. You can also adjust the recipe for the exact number of cookies you want to make. Please let me know your feedback!</comment>


CppCon 2015 Pikus "Live Lock-Free or Deadlock (Practical Lock-Free Programming)" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVBvHbJsg5Y <comment><AUTHOR> I watched this talk (as well as "Part 2": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1obZeHnAwz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1obZeHnAwz4)), and it was great. One of the best introductions to lock-free programming that I've found.

Together with "Part 2", this talk mostly covers "Acquire" and "Release" semantics with regards to C++ Atomics. But the discussion points are sufficiently general that I'm certain any programmer will find it relevant.

Lock-free Multithreaded Programming is a mysterious art that requires good knowledge of memory barriers and the like. Its rare to find a video, such as this one, that so clearly goes over the concepts.</comment>


Ask HN: Any idea on whats up with Spark.apache.org? - <AUTHOR> Its offline for me and I suppose globally <comment><AUTHOR> its back up now!</comment>


Don't change link colors in emails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitofnews.com/dont-change-link-colors-in-emails/

<comment><USER2> That's a good bit of info to know, thanks for sharing. I daresay it won't be the last bizarre spam rule that gmail implements.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - GonnaLaunch: One step pre-launch landing pages - <AUTHOR> http://gonnalaunch.com/

<comment><USER2> Definitely gotta work on the design. I just don't see the use for this. Creating one page signups is relatively straight forward...</comment>