What should Apple do with the iPod? - <AUTHOR> http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/apple-ipod/ <comment><USER2> Market it against the Nintendo DS.

I bought iPod Touches for my 2 oldest kids and my wife last Christmas. So, this year, instead of buying $30-$40 games, they have been able to buy several $2 games throughout each month.

It's been a blast, the savings are starting to really show, and they even like the games better.

<comment><USER3> "they even like the games better."

That's just what they tell you so you don't feel bad for getting them iPod touches. They secretly play Nintendo 3DS games at friends' houses.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I really wish people would start making some meatier games for the iPhone to go with all the 5 minute junk food distractions that are about as entertaining as bouncing a ball. There have been a few games of more substance, but for the most part, it doesn't hold a candle to the DS' library.

<comment><USER5> For "extremely meaty", try King of Dragon Pass, an indie PC hit from 10 years ago just released on iOS.

<comment><USER4> That looks like what I was talking about, thanks! I just downloaded it. Any other recs?

<comment><USER6> Carcassonne is also very complex and rewarding to master. It's also a great social game when everybody sits around one iPad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think as long as it remains profitable, they should keep it. The R&D costs are already well recouped so it's basically little more than a profit center. I understand Apple doesn't exactly need the money, but I think it would be a bad idea to kill off a licence to print money like the iPod.

<comment><USER8> Apple likes to keep a limited product lineup, so if a model isn't particularly necessary they can replace it with another product (such as an Apple TV variant), as well as consuming display space in stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Please please please make a waterproof one. The only reason I use my ipod over my phone for music is because I do not like to sweat all over my phone when I work out. Also for running in the rain (maybe for battery life on a long plane ride). If they made a waterproof ipod nano that would solve all my problems. Also if they for that direction just make headphones and a case that I can use to swim with. There is h2oaudio.com (which is awesome) but I would rather it just come straight from apple.

</2cents>

</comment><comment><USER10> It will become like the Mac business. Routine updates with nothing to announce unless it's special; unibody fabrication or designs like the Air.

That is until they reset their business.

The iPod product will be rebranded and remain iOS device that does everything but have a phone. iPod rebranded with iPhone form and function, except no phone functionality.

A Mac line, iPad line and a handset line. Face it, calling is now a feature on a computer. It's not a phone with features.

</comment><comment><USER11> The only graph that matters there is the first one, and no one should be surprised that units have dropped. They should be surprised that they've dropped so little since the iPhone does everything the iPod does and more.

% of revenue presented like that is misleading. The iPhone and the iPad are selling like hot cakes and making a ton of money, but they're not iPods.

Revenue growth at around -6% may look bad, but that just means they're making 1.48 billion minus 6%. If you don't think that's a lot of money, you're mad.

iDevice revenue breakdown.... what's the point of that graph?

Here's what Apple should do with the iPod. Keep innovating. $1.48 Billion is a lot of money. It's a business in it's own right.

IT'S MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS!!!!

</comment><comment><USER12> Obviously they don't have to do anything with it, it's still profitable and has high margins. There's obviously some potential to grow though.

The touch is basically a prepaid phone with no phone chip. They could add that phone chip and absorb the margin hit through scale in China, etc. Bound to happen sooner or later.

The nano is a redesign away from assaulting the global watch market (over $40 bln this year).

The shuffle, I could seem them innovating the form factor, why not abstract it right into the earbuds.

The classic is dead, growth wise so they can keep selling it but don't think it'd shock anyone if they shut it down tomorrow.

<comment><USER13> I think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either through flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod Classic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at all times.

<comment><USER12> Yeah well there was still a market for x-serves but it wasn't big enough so eventually they killed it.

The only way I can see them getting growth out of the classic would be to put the massive memory to work hauling HD video around instead of music. That does suggest an interesting iOS device maybe aimed at high end camcorders if they can find a tiny 1 TB drive in the pipe somewhere.

<comment><USER14> They're probably selling 20-30 times as many iPod Classics/year as they ever did xserves, even at their peak. The xserve also didn't do anything to act as a draw toward other Apple products, and required frequent revisions to keep up. I bet ongoing iPod Classic R&D budget is statistical noise.

<comment><USER12> I'm not making a close analogy and I'm not saying they should shut it down.

I'm just saying Apple will know when the classic isn't worth the time/energy/shelf space and I wouldn't be shocked if they announced this is the case in weeks rather then years.

And I guess I'm making a wild guess as to how they might keep an HDD based idevice relevant although I don't think that's particularly likely either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For what it's worth, I have a relatively large music collection (100gb+) and used an 80gb iPod for two years before getting a 32gb iPhone. The difference in usability was /huge/, to the point where I didn't miss the 50gb of space. If I didn't have a smartphone and had the option of a 128gb iPod Touch, it would be a no-brainer for me.

Personally, I don't think anything would be lost by discontinuing the iPod Classic, as long as something with a sizeable capacity replaced it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Apple would be nuts to get rid of the shuffle. Keeping the iTunes ecosystem strong is really important, as the kid with a shuffle today is best served by an iPhone in the future.

</comment><comment><USER17> Keep it around. Its a hook to get people to use the mac ecosystem. That's the product that started the resurrection of mac. I'm sure Apple will keep it around and keep on making minor changes to it overtime.

</comment><comment><USER18> They should do nothing. Keep upgrading the capacity upgrading periodically.

I bet that in the same keynote as the next iPhone release, Apple will rename the iPod Touch to just "iPod".

</comment><comment><USER19> With the iCloud service ramping up, I suspect that the iPod classic may get PC-less syncing at some point. But then it would have to include some sort of wireless option as well.

<comment><USER20> I'd be surprised if they spent the engineering dollars on writing the non-iOS code to do that and integrating wireless equipment into what I _think_ is the lowest-selling model of iPod, a product whose sales are rapidly being replaced by iOS-based iPods and iPhones.

<comment><USER21> If they thought about this ahead of time, perhaps developing for both platforms is similar enough they could add the feature to both the iPhone/iTouch and the iPod Classic at the same time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 200M iPod users are nothing to sneeze at: they represent an enormous pool of potential iPhone and iPad users, and Apple has been using the iPod Touch as a "gateway drug" for iOS for years now.

The Retina display 16G iPod touch has to be the lowest margin product in Apple's lineup, due to its place as a low cost stepping stone to the more expensive iOS devices.

It would be cool if they made the Nano a wrist mounted remote display for the iPhone, though.

</comment><comment><USER23> They should make it into a phone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Apple has always been one to do what THEY think is best, and then make everybody follow along. They did it with iOS and flash, basically saying "hey we don't like this, you shouldn't either, so we aren't going to let you use it." for better or for worse, this has always been Apple's Modus Operandi, and whether or not you believe in it, judging by their stock prices, it's worked.

One of the biggest killers of the iPod is the fact that the iPhone is no longer exclusive to AT&T. How many millions of people bought an iPod because they had Verizon and didn't feel like dealing with AT&T? This is only going to get worse with the iPhone 5, which will presumably be on all major carriers.

I think the emergence of Android has made all altogether killing the iPod unrealistic. I have yet to see an Android phone that handles music as well as the iPod does, and Apple knows this. I think what is going to happen is that Apple will revamp the line again in a year or so, and do something to make it relevant. I would say the iPod touch, ironically enough, is the one in the most danger of being killed off, what with it's big brother iPad owning the tablet market and the iPhone doing everything that it does and more.

</comment><comment><USER25> I still see a lot of nanos at the gym, but there are also a lot of people just using their iPhones / Droids. (And for actual street running, the nano is a bit better being smaller and lighter and not $600 to replace when you drop it.)

<comment><USER3> For street running I personally prefer my phone to a small dedicated music player. Having a phone means having access to all of my music via Google Music plus gps with apps to track my speed/distance progress.

<comment><USER25> I just think it's a little heavy to strap to your arm, and holding it in my hand seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I actually hadn't thought of the rumored new iPhone 5 design as a possibility of it being the next iPod Touch. Maybe that's why we haven't heard any iPod Touch rumors yet?

</comment><comment><USER27> The ipod shuffle is awesome, I use it everyday because it's tiny and I don't care what happens to it. I almost never use my ipod touch or classic.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not everyone needs or wants a smartphone yet. Keep it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think they should bring back the "old" Nano. A lot of people haven't bought the new one as they still like tactile controls and want a screen large enough to watch a video. They also don't want an iPhone or to pay for the touch. They shot themselves there.

There has been a lot of innovation with the iPod but some of it hasn't always been that great. Consider the "stick" shaped shuffle which reverted back to the old design in the latest revision. I consider the touch-based iPod Nano to be the same sort of unnecessary crock.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't we compare apples to oranges? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/132871/origin- of-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/132871/origin-of-comparing- apples-and-oranges#132907)

Because someone spoke a bug and we've been supporting backwards compatibility ever since.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need an operator defined on the set Apple × Orange to do so.

<comment><USER4> You need multiple metrics, such as vitamins, that can serve as LCDs to create a comparison point.</comment></comment>


123 Ways to Get More Website Traffic: A Sumo-Sized Guide - <AUTHOR> https://sumome.com/stories/get-more-traffic?src=social <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10843473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10843473) just an hour earlier</comment>


Red Hat and the CentOS Project Join Forces to Speed Open Source Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/1/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces

<comment><USER2> That sounds like very good news. I run my project on CentOS in order to benefit from the solid base which is RHEL, and from the contributions of the open source community. I believe that now these benefits will increase.</comment>


Keepass.com spreading malware acting as the official password manager site - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/berkcgoksel/status/1125727590440931329 <comment><USER2> I discovered this a couple months ago and posted in an Ask HN about an apparent attempt by the same person to trademark TrueCrypt;

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19311856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19311856)

At the time the download links on the non-official Keepass.com site seemed to point back to the official sources, but I noted of course that could change in the future, or could even be different depending on who visits the site.

I ended up submitting an objection to the TrueCrypt trademark application to the USPTO, but I'm not sure how much good it will end up doing. I was not able to pay a lawyer the several thousand dollars they wanted to draft the letter themselves.

<comment><USER3> Quoting part of your original posting here:

 _I have been working on a fork of TrueCrypt /VeraCrypt and wanted to be sure that before releasing the code that I am following all the license terms and giving proper attribution, as TrueCrypt has a somewhat non-standard open source license.

TrueCrypt has an old trademark issued back in 2007 but which expired after 10 years in 2017. As part of the licensing review, I discovered there is a new trademark application filed August 25, 2018 by Julien Clairet under a company named "DATA ACCESS" based in Paris, France.

I discovered [that] "keepass.com" is also apparently registered to Julien / DATA ACCESS.

There is a publication period when new Trademarks are announced and an opportunity to contest the validity of the claim. The new "TrueCrypt" trademark was published on February 20, 2019, and you have 30 days from the time that the mark is published to file any opposition.

I am preparing to file a response to USPTO._

First of all, a huge thank you from everyone that loves TrueCrypt for doing this.

How long will it be before you know if they issued or rejected the trademark? Is there anything else that can be done now that the 30-day deadline has passed? Would you mind posting a link to the trademark application?

<comment><USER2> Thank you and you're welcome. I did link the application in my original post, here it is again;

[http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn88092713&docId...](http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn88092713&docId=RFA20180829063346#docIndex=12&page=1)

Typically two months after publications they will send the Notice of Allowance. It hasn't happened yet but it could happen any day I suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For anyone confused by this Twitter sound bite, the story is that there are 2 main sites from which you can download KeePass Password Safe (the free, open- source password manager):

\- [https://keepass.info/](https://keepass.info/) is the _official_ site, which ironically uses a suspicious-looking .info top-level domain, but is in fact the legitimate source

\- [https://keepass.com/](https://keepass.com/) is an unofficial site which the Twitter article is reporting as spreading malware, but has somehow obtained the more legitimate-sounding .com top-level domain

And by the way, both of these sites come up on the first page of a Google search for "KeePass".

<comment><USER4> I have the same issue with Putty. I was helping a client debug an issue with an appliance they bought from my company (me on their computer, them watching over my shoulder) and asked if I could download Putty on their machine. They said yes, so I went to "[https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/"](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/") and clicked the download link and they flipped out. It's too fishy, they said, must be a malicious site. I went to putty.org instead (not affiliated with Putty), and clicked the "download putty" link and it redirected back to the other site, and from that point they refused to let me download Putty.

We then spent 3 hours getting approvals for me to get my own laptop on their internal network so I could use ssh from my Macbook. I felt bad because my company charges like $300/hr for our consulting services, so we wasted nearly $1000 because the main Putty download site seemed too suspicious for the client to be comfortable with.

I know Putty is legitimate and I know it's a free product, but appearances do matter. Presentation does matter. Although I do blame Microsoft a bit for not shipping an SSH client for so long.

<comment><USER5> How about using ninite.com for managing popular Windows downloads?

Ninite has decent corporate adoption by now. You could even push them towards Ninite Pro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a great world in which any video that accidentally includes a radio playing a song is immediately taken down, but this sort of thing can go on for years.

<comment><USER7> Well, it tells you who wrote the laws. DMCA, sure as hell wasn't written by Clinton, he just championed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For reference, the actual official site is [https://keepass.info/](https://keepass.info/)

<comment><USER9> oof, .info and .biz are almost always red flags

<comment><USER10> Faced with the .info and .com I would have bet all my money that .com was the legit one.

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, the .com page is page 2 of Google results, while .info is the first result.

<comment><USER12> Not for me - excluding ads, Keepass.com is the fourth result (KeePass.info, Sourceforge, Wikipedia, "People also ask" infobox, then Keepass.com).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Keepass.com is present in uBlock Origin's Badware Risks list, I couldn't even access it first.

<comment><USER14> I have my browser that I use for logging into sites behind three layers of security:

\- Google Safe Browsing

\- Pihole including a couple of regularly updated malware lists

\- uBlock Origin

It looks like Safe Browsing and pihole do not yet have this on the blacklist.

<comment> m-p-3 I submitted keepass.com on the report malware form on Google, for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disclaimer: I'm the founder/maintainer for AppGet (appget.net)

Issues like this were one of the main reasons I started working on appget. I died a little bit inside every time I saw a friend google an app and click on the first link (usually an ad) or click through the installation wizard as fast as they possibly could and not unchecking the toolbar, bundle, bonus, whatever else.

AppGet solves these issues from a couple of different angles,

1\. we only allow packages hosted on the official vendor, maintainer websites.

2\. All package manifests are simple YAML files on GitHub where they go through a PR/Review before getting merged.

3\. For your _tech normal_ friends or family, they can search for apps in [https://appget.net/packages/](https://appget.net/packages/) and click the install button, and we do the rest. No command line needed. 4\. We disable all bundled app installations by default.

For example here is the page for Keepass [https://appget.net/packages/i/keepass](https://appget.net/packages/i/keepass)

</comment><comment><USER16> Back in the days, when Google was still somewhat new, I tended to laugh a bit inside when my parents and other non-techies would search Google for a domain rather than to go in the address bar. They'd search for Ford or Ford.com, rather than just put Ford.com in the address bar.

Though I quickly realized it wasn't such a bad idea at all, for exactly the reasons such as this. Even I mess up domains sometimes, so I usually tend to use Google instead except for the ones I know by heart (or have bookmarked).

<comment><USER17> This only really works if you have an ad-blocker, or at least know to ignore the ads. Otherwise google will frequently end up frequently serving ads for a malicious product (most commonly seen for crypto products)

<comment><USER16> Fair enough, although surfing without an ad-blocker is like having random one- night stands without a condom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a super gnarly one to me because it is a PASSWORD MANAGER. Literally they could just supply a password manager that also sends all the passwords to a third party.

I get it open source, hard to keep the lights on, etc etc but I feel like if you take the steps of getting into a such a security heavy space, then you have to be able to keep up your end of the bargain.

In this case it might not mean registering every variation of keepass (keepass.com probably useful though) but it certainly means working aggressively with search engines to get things flagged, send push notifications to your users warning them of it, etc etc

<comment><USER19> > but I feel like if you take the steps of getting into a such a security > heavy space, then you have to be able to keep up your end of the bargain.

Why, if you don't earn enough money?

<comment><USER18> Because people have put their trust into you and you owe them something for that.

better to shut down a project and walk-away for example, then leave it up, never update it, have a vulnerability get exposed, and have everyone using your product get owned

<comment><USER19> > you owe them something

Definitely not.

The companies even sell products, for which everybody directly pays, and then owe even to the millions of users nothing once they have sold the product (actually sold the "license"). I've even had to buy the exactly same product (the license) more than once, every time I've changed the platform or even just changed the computer.

So if I publish anything as open source, free for anybody to use, I own even less to anybody with whom I don't have a paid contract for support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Keepas is not the only software involved.... [https://twitter.com/Gabry89/status/1125775980365217793](https://twitter.com/Gabry89/status/1125775980365217793)

</comment><comment><USER21> My company bought up as many related domains (e.g. misspelled, org, com) as we could think of to prevent this kind of thing.

A very cost effective way to protect your IP.

</comment><comment><USER22> uBlock Origin catches keepass.com correctly with the default filters.

Reaffirming my decision for the n-th time to never browse the modern web without adblock.

</comment><comment><USER23> opendns flags this as a phishing threat, which is nice:

[https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=keepass.com&server=ams16&...](https://phish.opendns.com/main?url=keepass.com&server=ams16&prefs=&tagging=&nref)

</comment><comment><USER24> Been using the KeePassXC[1] community fork for about three months now. The transition was smooth; it's pretty much identical to KeePass or KeePassX. Has TouchID integration for MBP which is super useful. Plus the source is available on Github and is actively maintained.

[1] [https://keepassxc.org/](https://keepassxc.org/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Same people are most likely hosting [https://7zip.fr/](https://7zip.fr/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Update: The sites are now all blocked by [https://www.squidblacklist.org/downloads/dg- malicious.acl](https://www.squidblacklist.org/downloads/dg-malicious.acl), which is a list I recommend everyone to put into their pihole.

Still not blocked on Google Safe Browsing.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just tested: uMatrix detects the site being a threat, preventing to load the homepage in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there an ICANN dispute avenue available for the Keepass to seize control of this domain?

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a way to figure out if an existing install was the compromised or real one?

</comment><comment><USER29> Report it here, [https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/](https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Let's get this shut down.

<comment><USER31> I don't know if it helps to have multiple reports, but Google's Report malicious software form is here:

[https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/...](https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of whitehouse.com vs whitehouse.gov back in the day...

</comment><comment><USER33> We can fly rockets to space and then land them on barges at sea, cure diseases, use technology to reduce global hunger, create synthetic organs, and trade trillions of dollars of money across oceans in microseconds, yet we can't figure out which of two computers in an online card catalog is real and which is going to empty your bank account.

<comment><USER34> counterpoints:

* private space missions were financed from the sale of a predatory business (paypal)

* government space missions originated from the cold war arms races (that continue to this day)

* a few diseases are curable, many aren't. pharmaceuticals profit more from treatment than cure, however. Some ailments such as anaphalaxis and diabetes that are mostly treatable have been receding into "uncured/undertreated" territory because phama keeps raising the prices of insulin or epi pens.

* much of hunger, say in Africa, can be easily treated if we could find a way to keep warlords and corrupt gov's from _stealing the aid_ , but our technology isn't helping us very much (not saying we shouldn't keep trying, but tech is of no use for this problem)

* synthetic organs sound great (if you need one). maybe this I concede is a victory for (bio)tech.

* trading money is really just trading information. Once the infrastructure is in place, it's a trivial matter.

deciding who gets to post content online is a much harder problem to solve. If you could make one call to google to have them de-listed from search, every company/political faction would be doing this to thier competitors/rivals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great reason to use your package manager or the Microsoft Store to get most of your software.

</comment><comment><USER36> That's a bummer, keepass is pretty great... but then again that's probabbly why someone targeted it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Heckuva name.

</comment><comment><USER38> Should be flagged as a porn site</comment>


The Art and Science of Leading Projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.teamgantt.com/art-science-of-leading-projects <comment><USER2> Not for me, but I do like that one of the sections is:

> 08 - Winning trust with communication

> Learn simple keys to becoming a better communicator and how to identify your > team's different communication styles.

Having experienced the pain of working somewhere where leadership tried to decree a single "right" method of communication for all developers that didn't jive with us at all, I don't take this for granted anymore.

In that case, management declared that in-person communication was so essential to the agile philosophy that all devs should be ok with being interrupted by anyone and at any time for the purposes of having a face-to- face chat (and WFH was not allowed unless sick). I now work somewhere where I don't see any co-workers in person on most days, and somehow we get tons more work done and stay in contact just fine. Weird how that works...

<comment><USER3> People constantly confuse communication with a lot of talking and collaboration with sitting in the same room or constant meetings.

<comment><USER4> good communication happens when there's good [shared] motivation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The book "Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager" is a high- level but pretty complete introduction to project management. It has good examples from non-technical projects, such as rolling out a new health program in a hospital. It uses official terms from the Project Management Institute's infamous "Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK) so information learned from this introduction can be carried over to more rigorous projects.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/194163110X/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/194163110X/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks, I think I might check this out. I have been toying with the idea of getting back into leadership. I hate seeing all of these people with terrible bosses.

All of my leadership experience is 1) outside of tech, and 2) not remote oriented. Now that I have some experience as a coder under my belt (~5 years), I'd love to get some training on remote leadership styles and perhaps lead a team and make something useful.

</comment><comment><USER7> Step 1 is not using a gantt chart to create some illusory impression of knowing exactly how complex projects will unfold.

<comment><USER8> Eh, I would say creating one (or something similar) is a useful exercise to help break up large tasks and think more thoroughly about how to split work within a team. It also helps to highlight possible bottlenecks and is a useful visualization so everyone on the team is on the same page.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't that just be a dependency graph?

<comment><USER10> What is the difference between a Gantt chart and a dependency graph?

<comment><USER11> Gantt charts typically have resource assignments and time estimates. Dependency graphs just say Bravo requires Alpha to be completed first (for example).

<comment><USER12> Dependency graphs can also be annotated with the resources required for each node or edge. Resources are estimated by summation, time is estimated by finding the critical path.

Gantt charts are a partial linearization of a dependency graph. People tend to fixate over the dates shown, allow schedule pressure to "correct" previous estimates, etc.

According to some early users of Gantt charts, they are a great tool for summarizing a plan, a terrible tool for developing and maintaining one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TeamGantt is a great help for planning, and this course is well worth doing.

In my team's recent planning of a major multi-month feature, TeamGantt tooling helped us plan, helped our leadership visualize milestones and goals, and helped our developers deliver on time and on budget.

<comment><USER14> your comment history luckily proves you are not a sock puppet :)

but this comment is still suspiciously smooth

<comment><USER15> and how does he know the course is worth doing since only classes 0, 1, 2 of 14 are released.

<comment><USER16> I had the same suspicions on first glance, but quickly realized he was referring to their web service, not the training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People have a tendency to classify some what complicated tasks as art or science. Leading a project is neither science nor art.

<comment><USER18> I think we're at a place where using the phrases "Art of ...", "Science of...", and "Art and Science of ..." are not interpreted with the literal definitions of art or science in mind. Typically, in colloquial (as opposed to formal) writing, "art" comes with an understanding of "all the steps haven't been quantified and some intuition is involved" and "science" tends to be "here are the steps to take and the items to observe and the things to change in response."

So I disagree: there is Art and Science to, well, most things; including leading projects.</comment></comment>


Dial-up modem sound slowed 700% is 100% creepy - <AUTHOR> http://www.noisemademedoit.com/dial-up-modem-slowed/ <comment><USER2> This is rather disappointing. The dial-up modem sound is digitally created, and a digital lengthening of each tone is much higher quality.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, they're attempting to do a time shift with some sort of echo-y dithering going on. Since it's digital, no dithering is needed!

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The sound starts off with a dialtone slowed down 700x but pitch adjusted. Guess what, that's exactly equivalent to the real dialone. (Instead of recording it for 1 second, you record it for 700 seconds.)

This rest of the video continues in the same manner. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

<comment><USER5> The point is less what it is than how one feels when it's heard. Sounds and music are often perceived passively and subtly influence your feelings at the moment, particularly the sort of "creepy music" the linked sound resembles most closely.

If you are only analyzing the component noises there's a good chance you'll miss the emotions evoked, similar to the way a joke isn't funny if you dwell too much on the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most of the time is the initial identification tones, followed by the line equalization phase where the modems are sorting out the exact response of the line. The sounds near the end that are sort of like white noise are the data transfer.

Part of the creepy is that the modems are using pitches that are not harmonically related. That is anti-musical (unless you are way out on the fringes) and denies you the ability to pigeon hole the sounds.

</comment><comment><USER7> Even more amazing is Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch software that did the job! <http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/>

<comment><USER8> Indeed that is a particularly nice sounding time stretch algorithm.

It sounds like a crystal forest on saturn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any sound slowed 700% is creepy. It's just the human brain associating high- pitch sounds with fun, children speaking,, bell ringing and other "nice" sounds, while low-pitch is of thunder, big animals (predators) roaring, otherwise associated with danger.

<comment><USER10> No, this is stretched 700% without affecting the pitch: <http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/>

<comment><USER9> I listened to it again, you're right. Sounds like a horror movie theme, maybe that's what gives the creeps. Although I have to agree with many others in this thread: it isn't _that_ creepy, I heard much better ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I slow something 50%, I would expect its speed to be halved. If I slow something 100%, I would expect its speed to be zero. Not quite sure how you can slow something by more than 100%.

<comment><USER12> 100% slowdown ("streched to 100% as long") would be half the speed. "Slowed down 700%" in this case means "stretched to 700% of its original duration".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds similar to the 'keening' sounds that whales make. What would the whale sounds speeded up to 700% decode to for a dial-up modem? :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> It just made me sleepy, not creeped out.

</comment><comment><USER4> Next week on Hacker News: "Hey guys, I took a picture of my cat this morning"

<comment><USER5> This is creative and unusual. Sound design is an interesting and relevant topic.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, yes. Relevant to Hacker News... debatable.

But I agree with jrockway - pictures of cats should result in immediate banning (unless it's something like <http://placekitten.com/>).

<comment><USER5> > Relevant to Hacker News... debatable.

So debate. I have used sounds and music while hacking. I know video game developers whose job title is "sound designer". This link, while not particularly advanced or profound, still inspired me to think about creating sounds in a way I hadn't before.

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

Seems well within the guidelines to me.

<comment><USER16> Exactly, this one link provoked me to try a few things myself and I learned a few new things without even expecting it today.

I took this same app to other sounds (chainsaw, smoke detector) and it was all technically interesting. The modem tone was still the most interesting to me.

Take modem negotiation to a frequency display and zoom in, and you can actually see what the dual-tone in DTMF stands for. Heck, it looks like a piano roll if you want to take it in that direction for inspiration. Translate the row and column into a set of musical intervals and you'll be able to figure out how to play basic songs on your touch-tone phone.

Just tell me this isn't cool: <http://imgur.com/sbtyY>

I just found the first modem sound I could find off Google. By looking at the frequencies in the image, it is dialing 1-415-489-3565, which is still an active Earthlink dial-up number.

Small posts like this drag me in directions like this all the time. It leads me to questions I wouldn't have bothered with asking before today. This is absolutely within the guidelines and I thank the submitter for the enlightenment I received today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also, Justin Bieber slowed 700% sounds like Sigur Ros.

<comment><USER17> I should add: it wasn't an original comment, and it is a bit true.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QspuCt1FM9M>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As one who ran a BBS and was constantly listening to these connections, I was expecting(hoping) to hear something I could understand.

At 2x speed up I think I recognize this as a 56k negotiation. I started using cable around that time so I can't tell the difference between x2 and K56.

</comment><comment><USER19> I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the picture on that blog was derived from a Shepard Fairey poster, which was derived from a Josef Müller-Brockmann poster about noise titled 'Noise Control' in 1960:

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kzaoY- eKntI/S-2gf01XkPI/AAAAAAAAAD...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kzaoY- eKntI/S-2gf01XkPI/AAAAAAAAAD0/Vnzr0aeB708/s1600/M%C3%BCller-Brockmann-02.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of FUture Sound of London - Dead Cities

</comment><comment><USER21> Whales on a combination of LSD and steroids or extraterrestrials? Not sure...

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only person who thinks the Lost intro music when they hear that? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MiwoDpbcdk>

</comment><comment><USER23> So this is what those 700%-faster-clocked-brain extraterrestrials get when they are tuning in on earth.

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't find it creepy at all. What were they expecting to find when they slowed it down?

</comment><comment><USER25> Woke up a few minutes ago because I couldn't sleep (3:19). Hello Day!

</comment><comment><USER26> Not creepy.

<comment><USER5> I agree but it does sound like music used by movies intended to evoke creepiness. It's because it sounds unnatural, far outside what we're used to hearing. Compare with, say, the Blaster Beam used by Jerry Goldsmith in the film _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Beam>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Creepy? I've seen, heard, and tasted worse thanks to the internet

</comment><comment><USER28> For some reason it reminds me of Broken Saints.</comment>


This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking <comment><USER2> The ending is the best part!

        > If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering
        > or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the
        > Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system,
        >  is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

<comment><USER3> Whoa there: Church and State!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The Administration does not support blowing up planets."

I guess we're going to have to wait until the Republicans are back in the executive branch.

<comment><USER5> "Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

"You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

"Fools.

"The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne _ball of iron_. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy."

\- Sam Hughes, "How to destroy the Earth" - <http://qntm.org/destroy>

<comment><USER6> I think when people say "destroy the Earth" they are talking more about it's habitability than what a Death Star can do.

<comment><USER7> Well, it recovered pretty well after a 6 mile wide rock going millions of miles per hour hit it right in the face and cause one of the biggest extinction events in its history.

If that didn't destroy its habitability for good, I'm not sure we'd be able to do it.

<comment><USER8> > "If that didn't destroy its habitability for good, I'm not sure we'd be able > to do it."

But we sure can make it a lot more miserable to live on.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but by this point we've redefined "destroying the Earth" to mean "making someone less comfortable."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now that they write a joke response to a joke petition, it would be nice to see a serious response to a serious petition.

<comment><USER11> While there are jokes within the response, I do not believe this to be a "joke response". The points he makes are good, and the call to action regarding careers in math and science is a fantastic way to handle a response likely to be read by 14-16 year olds throughout the reaches of the internet.

Paul Shawcross is still a long way from making amends for what he's done to help cripple our human space flight program, however.

<comment><USER12> The "Shawcross Option" might have been for the best for all we know. The shuttle was designed to be expensive, doing things that it never really needed to do. If NASA had ended the shuttle program sooner we might very well have a better space-exploration-only vehicle out on the tarmac right now instead of... what do we have now? Oh, right, nothing. I would add that the emphasis on non-human exploration seems to be about the best possible PR and science move for NASA, it has been cheap and generated positive buzz in the media as mission after mission has exceeded expectations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is inspired. I don't think it would have been possible to pen a better response here. Even the call to action was brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't tell you how happy it makes me to know our federal government has a sense of humor.

<comment><USER15> Sometimes we forget that the government is really a conglomeration of (mostly) normal people and just an amorphous blob of ludocracy.

<comment><USER16> Not in all countries, in fact, in most countries governments consist of goblins. I think there is a correlation between the national wealth and the percentage of normal people in the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That is hilarious! Can we all vote on making Paul Shawcross the official responder to all WH petitions? Ok, maybe just the silly frivolous ones?

</comment><comment><USER18> _"The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it."_

The White House blog doesn't link to the source article, so here it is:

[http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to- bui...](http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the- death-star/)

<comment><USER19>
        Estimated cost of death star $850,000,000,000,000,000
        Estimated current US debt         $16,437,339,543,399

        Cost of Death Star per US citizen      $2,705,101,099
        Estimated US debt per US citizen              $52,311

(Figures from (<http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/>) I have no idea if they're realistic or not.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems they have not altered the deal to respond to petitions if it hits a threshold. Let's pray these responses are not altered in the future.

</comment><comment><USER21> I deleted my reddit account in part because of the Obama-fellating. Can we keep the politics off HN?

</comment><comment><USER22> Stopped reading at "Death Star". Kind of ashamed that I blew 20 seconds typing this. Also ashamed that probably 50K in tax dollars were blown in responding to it.

<comment> T-hawk I am proud if $0.00043 of my taxpayer dollars went to this. It gave me more value than I get from the vast majority of $0.00043 increments of my taxes.

($50k/$2.9 trillion government taxation revenue * my approximate tax paid yearly = $0.00043)

<comment><USER23> Now I am as critical as anyone of frivolous public spending, but how in god's name did you get to $50,000 for this? At worst, this took one Friday afternoon of this government employee's time. Just how well do you think this guy is paid?

One afternoon of this guy's time at $50,000 would mean an annual salary of $26,100,000.

(261 workdays per year * 2 * $50,000)

In all likelihood, this was either done on this guy's own time or took like an hour....

Time well spent if you ask me :)

<comment><USER22> Meeting after meeting after memo after memo. The government can blow through money for no reason faster than you can possibly imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would've been more interested in a response for the more "realistic" petition for an interplanetary ship.

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/assign-nasa-do- fea...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/assign-nasa-do-feasibility- study-and-conceptual-design-gen1-uss-enterprise-interplanetary- spaceship/DB07k8jF?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl)

<comment><USER25> Added this one to the app also XD <http://projects.melignus.com/petition- heatmap>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As an American taxpayer, I applaud this use of my tax dollars.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Government is showing the early signs of "getting" the internet. This could get interesting.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is one of the best things I've read all day ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> Ahhh, the _Chief of the Science and Space Branch_ at OMB perpetuates achieving "the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs". Allow me to author a petition...

</comment><comment><USER30> When this pop-culture reference is forgotten and some historian ready this... they'll think we were all a bunch of loons.

<comment><USER31> Who says they woul be thinking incorrectly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just hilarious! May the Force be with you!

<comment><USER33> I think the Farce is strong in that one.

Seriously though, all it takes is a bunch of Star Wars reference to garner a bunch of Likes? No wonder there are so many actors in politics.

<comment><USER34> Everything that isn't a Star Wars reference in that response is fantastic and actually a little inspiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I added the death star data to my toy project I've been working on.

<http://projects.melignus.com/petition-heatmap>

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow! I never expected a C3PO division of NASA!

<http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER36> That was awfully a lot like hearing my parents say to me "you don't need the Brickbeard's Bounty LEGO set, you already have the Castaway's Raft, son".

</comment><comment><USER37> For all the talk of the Obama administration being anti-religon, they're relying on ancient myth to argue against technological progress

</comment><comment><USER38> This is the funniest part of the response by the Obama Administration:

"We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it."

</comment><comment><USER39> _applause_

</comment><comment><USER40> Wait, is private industry really going to put a human on the moon this decade?

Somehow that feels like vaporware.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hilarious, this made my day :D

</comment><comment><USER42> "working hard to reduce the deficit". Haha, good one.

</comment><comment><USER43> well played, obama administration. well played.</comment>


A warning about using Escrow.com - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@forEmil/escrow-com-the-escrow-service-from-hell-2035923fc9f8 <comment><USER2> Had similar terrible experiences with Escrow in the acquisition we just did ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12406892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12406892)). They're the worst.</comment>


Mode Studio – Python, R and SQL Editor - <AUTHOR> https://blog.modeanalytics.com/announcing-mode-studio-and-r/ <comment><USER2> On a related note, Mode's SQL tutorial is the best comprehensive introduction to the language that I've come across. If you go through all of it you can get from zero knowledge to 95% of the SQL skills you'll need as a data analyst.

[https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introductio...](https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introduction- to-sql/)

<comment><USER3> I am trying to learn intermediate to advanced SQL as my employer wants me to but apart from the the most basic keywords I don't see a lot of difference between Basic to Intermediate SQL. Or maybe by intermediate it means designing a good data model which shouldn't be concerned with SQL. My question is, if someone asks me to learn the advanced SQL constructs, where do I go? What do I look for?

<comment><USER4> I found that the book SQL Antipatterns helped me figure out some advanced SQL constructs. It presents a problem, shows the naive solution, takes apart that solution, and shows a better way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for something free, open source, selfhosted, or doesn't require programming knowledge (but allows SQL if needed), there's Metabase: [https://metabase.com/](https://metabase.com/)

Disclaimer: I work on Metabase

<comment><USER6> Metabase is great but try as I might, I cannot get it to connect to a Postgres database over SSL. So... I'm using Redash instead, where it was easier to make that happen.

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6435#issuecommen...](https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6435#issuecomment-346477236)

[https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6095](https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6095)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This blog post asserts that Mode Studio supports R Notebooks. It's worth noting that these don't appear to have anything to do with the R Notebooks that you get in RStudio[0].

They appear to be identical to its Python notebooks except for the language, like running a Jupyter with an R kernel.

[0] [https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html](https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat related, but I absolutely love Mode. In a previous role my team used it extensively - by far the easiest tool of its kind I've used. Great support too.

Can't recommend their tutorials enough, to echo another here they really cover everything you need to get started

</comment><comment><USER10> After quickly skimming the terms of service[0]. Do I understand correctly that in the free version, all your content has to be public?

I'm not against that model (actually like it), but it isn't at all clear to me from the blog post or the main page.

[0]: [https://about.modeanalytics.com/tos/](https://about.modeanalytics.com/tos/) under "4\. Financial Terms"

"The public function is available free of charge for public use and allows you only to view information other Mode users disclose using the public function. When you use the public function, you may disclose or upload Your Content using only the public function. "

<comment><USER11> That's a really interesting approach. Give away the platform to get everyone's data for free. Like GitHub for data.

<comment><USER12> Nobody at Mode will ever look at data in your database without express written permission. Period.

<comment><USER11> Maybe I misunderstand, if you are a free user the data has to be public right? And any user can use the public data?

<comment><USER12> Regardless of whether you are on a free or paid account, you have two options:

-Public: Upload data or use data that is already in a database that Mode hosts. All data and analysis done here is visible to anyone. This is most commonly used with the SQL tutorials that others have posted about here.

-Private: Connect your database to Mode and do analysis on your own data. This is only visible to people you add to your Mode Organization. In fact, making your private data accessible to people outside your Organization is a paid feature and comes with more granular permission controls.

We have tried to make this as clear as possible in the product and ToS, but looks like we missed on the latter. We will revise to make it clearer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't tell from the landing page whether this is a desktop app, or whether it runs in a browser. Could be interesting if it is a desktop app.

<comment><USER14> It runs in your browser which is key to allowing people across the organization easy access to data. Its great! I was one of their early customers and I still use it most days.

<comment> cup-of-tea Yeah because people haven't been able to share data before browser based editors...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I adore Mode - i find it the best SQL editor and dashboard by a huge margin. I mostly just use it as a SQL editor and then there's an amazing ability to turn that SQL into exceptionally useful dashboards.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can see the use case of this being similar to having Excel connected to an SQL server and creating some pivot charts off of the connection. Then rather than emailing the Excel file (which might be quite large depending on how much data is pulled into Excel), emailing a URL which is much cleaner.

Am I correct in thinking that Mode is not really a reporting platform (e.g., QlikView, Power BI) and more of an investigative, analytics-sharing tool?

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's more exploratory and lower-level. It can do the usual "dashboard" style reports but its closer to Juypter notebooks and allows you to run python + sql (+ R now) and even edit the HTML to make your own visualizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Similar to [https://exploratory.io/](https://exploratory.io/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This look amazing, and the WYSIWYG editor mode is what R Markdown notebooks (in RStudio) are missing right now.

However, there seems to be no way of uploading a private .csv? I need to make it public OR allow access to my company database (, which is simply not going to happen unless you have an on-premises solution)?

</comment><comment><USER20> I have to sign up to see this in action? No video demo or anything? I don't even know if this is a software where you download or if it's a web service cloud thing.

I think this is such a bad way to announce a product. Or lazy way.

I'll stick to Rstudio and Rodeo.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been trying my hand at something similar. It's not nearly as finished as mode is though.

[https://github.com/Jungle-Works/AllSpark](https://github.com/Jungle- Works/AllSpark)

</comment><comment><USER22> Mode is a great tool for running a query and executing some code afterwards and even distributing that report to others. However, its important to keep in mind that it doesn't have any real organizational tools which limit its use case. There are no tools for versioning and sharing notebooks (there is actually a shared query feature that is available at extra cost) and code (and you can only run the versions of code they have installed), or modeling your data and report parameterization is very difficult. Also, (perhaps due to being solely browser based) there can be issues working with larger data sets.

</comment><comment><USER16> Where is the data housed? Mode servers?

<comment><USER23> Mode doesn't do any private data warehousing, it just connects to your own hosted data</comment></comment>


Want To Raise A Million Bucks? Here's What You'll Need - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/want-to-raise-a-million-bucks-heres-what-youll-need/

<comment><USER2>
      There's one more thing that obviates the need for traction:
      social proof. If Marc Andreessen is investing in your
      round, the round will get done, it doesn't matter what your
      product, traction, team or technology look like.

      To raise money, you really only need to be exceptional in
      one of these categories (product, team, traction, social
      proof).

      Since everyone thinks they're exceptional, here is some
      calibration by way of analogy: it is the equivalent of
      getting into Harvard or getting 1600 on your SATs. That's
      the bar to get funded. The bar for success is 1000x higher.

One of the comments buried in the comments section from Nivi(cofounder of AngelList) is actually pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER3> A key stat is steady week-on-week growth. This is typically more impressive than single milestones. Acc to pg:

 _A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you're doing exceptionally well._

[<http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html>]

If you haven't read this article already, go read it now!

<comment><USER4> Is that for both B2C and B2B companies? PG's article doesn't say, and I have a difficult time envisioning how most seed-stage enterprise software companies could generate a 5-10% w-o-w revenue growth rate. It tends to be much lumpier than that.

<comment><USER5> use a trailing six week|month average

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While idea viability may be validated by traction (read: user acquisition), product viability is best validated by DAU / MAU and low churn metrics.

That being said, we closed $750K in my last startup after crossing 125K users, so perhaps traction is good enough at least for the first round.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting metrics though I think the ballpark figures are missing ballpark examples.

On one hand 100K signups/download seems to be easier to achieve than $50K rev/mon but on the other hand if my e-comm product sells for $5000 each that seems easier too.

Nevertheless interesting metrics!

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a nice dose of realism in this article. If you want to attract investors, you had better demonstrate some traction.</comment>


Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/10-most-overpaid-jobs-us/story.aspx?guid=954AA053-F953-43F3-BBC8-63D351A3BF2A

<comment><USER2> Airline pilots?

This guy doesn't have a clue. Most airline pilots put in serious hours in butt-fuck nowhere until they reach at least 30, after which, if they're lucky, they get picked up by an airline to get paid something like $40K for the first 5 years until they get seniority.

Just because the cream of the crop get paid well, doesn't mean the entire industry is overpaid.

<comment><USER3> And his point is that the longest serving for the majors are obscenely over paid. That's why Southwest makes money and Delta loses it (not just pilots, but that's a good place to start).

<comment><USER4> The reason airline pilots aren't overpaid is that the feeders to them are underpaid. An airline pilot has to spend at least 20 years before he gets to the 200k+ salary. A pilot usually has to pay for his own training up to Commercial Instrument/Flight Instructor, which costs about 70k.

Then he has to instruct for several years to build up flight time. Flight instructing usually pays about $15k a year. From there, he has to somehow get multiengine or turbine time, maybe flying small freight, probably at night, laying over in nowheresville, for virtually no money, maybe 15-20k. These jobs are also very hard to get.

From there, he might be able to get a job at a marginal regional airline, paying $20-30k as he moves up as a first officer. Hopefully after several years at the regional, he can move up to captain on the regional, now earning about 50k.

If the majors are hiring at that point in the economic cycle, he can now be a FO at a major airline, making 40-60k for the first few years. After maybe 8 years of that, he may make captain, and perhaps earn 100k a year, increasing as his seniority increases. Getting from 0 to captain at a major takes about 25-30 years.

On top of all of this, if at any time he his not able to meet the FAA's very stringent medical requirements, basically if he has to take almost any medication, or has any illness, he loses his medical and his career is over. Furthermore, if he makes any significant mistake in all of those late nights in bad weather, his career may be over or he will be unable to advance to the next rung. Furthermore, he's moving around every time he moves up a rung, and he can't have a normal family life when he's in some strange city half the time.

Anyone who decides to take this path does it because they love to fly, not because it is an easy buck. What's worse is that now the brass ring at the end is being eroded, and so after all of that hard work to get there, he might only end up making $100-150k at the end.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting - I always assumed that most pilots were ex-Air Force and got their training that way. If you can fly an AWACS you can fly a 747, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wedding photographers? Huh? Most people I know paid about $2K for their wedding photographer. Let's say a really good photographer can book both days of the weekend for 40 weekends a year. So he or she brings in $160,000 -- before paying for all the film and processing fees?

Not sure how making somewhere in the low-to-mid $100Ks for having to work on most weekends gets you on the same list as mutual fund managers and bad CEOs. Sounds like the author had a recent bad experience booking a photographer if you ask me.

<comment><USER7> His point seemed to be that bad wedding photographers were grossly overpaid. I agree not on the same level as mutual fund managers and bad CEOs, but probably on the same level as the West Coasters he mentions.

<comment><USER8> I am a photographer myself. I don't do it professionally -- I don't try to do it professionaly -- because I enjoy it as a hobby, and don't like the pressure of doing photographic work for others. I did photograph a wedding for a friend because they asked me to, and it was very very stressful and complicated. Wedding photography is not easy.

Good wedding photography is even harder. I am getting married this fall, and was shocked at the mediocrity of most local wedding photographers. I could hardly believe some of them claimed to run a wedding photography business. Not necessarily "bad" photos, but, photos lacking character and interest to the degree that they might as well have been taken by random people at the wedding than by a "professional" photographer.

But this is also true in other fields. There are mediocre software engineers who hide in the bureaucracy of large companies and get the same salary, plus or minus 5%, as really good software engineers at the company.

<comment><USER9> Hmmm - perhaps the best advice to anyone getting married might be: buy a dozen digital camers and give them to friends and family to use at the wedding and have a good chance of getting more good photos than the median wedding photographer.

<comment><USER10> We did just this. It worked out _wonderfully_. 200 disposable cameras (hey, it was 1999), 27 pictures each. This is a @#$%load of photos folks. 90% of them were total crap. 7% of them were way-cool novelties, 3% of them were pure gold that no wedding photographer could have captured. We had a traditional wedding potog take the usual pictures that no one looks at as well.

Pictures were taken at the wedding, the reception, and the after-party. At the end of it all, we mailed out cd-roms of the best pictures to everyone who attended. (These cd's had, incidentally, also been the invitations. Bring your invitation along, get photos of the event!)

I highly recommend it to one and all. Crowd-sourced photos rock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to try to tease out what factors might contribute to these jobs being overpaid:

1\. Fear: Wedding photographers, pilots, longshoremen & orthodontists

2\. Creaming a little from a lot: Skycaps, real estate agents, mutual-fund managers

3\. Scarcity: lecture circuit

4\. Legacy: longshoremen, old CEOs & athletes

<comment><USER12> Quote from George Foreman about longshoremen:

Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. "If you're confident, you're wealthy," he says. "I've seen guys who work on a ship channel and they get to a certain point and they're confident. You can look in their faces, they're longshoremen, and they have this confidence about them...I've seen a lot of guys with millions and they don't have any confidence," he says. "So they're not wealthy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somewhere there must be a top 10 list of most overused internet memes, which unsurprisingly would include top 10 lists.

<comment><USER14> Meanwhile, I am working on my top 10 list of top 10 lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Um, this article is from 2003. WTH?

I work with wedding photographers (providing web solutions). They are not overpaid because they are self-employed and paid directly by their customers. If brides are willing to pay their going rate, how is that being "overpaid"?

This article is either baloney or outdated. Or both.

<comment><USER16> _I work with wedding photographers (providing web solutions). They are not overpaid because they are self-employed and paid directly by their customers. If brides are willing to pay their going rate, how is that being "overpaid"?_

I think the point was that a saner price would be lower. He's not saying that they should be regulated, just that you'd be stupid to buy from them.

<comment><USER17> As a photographer who's done a couple of weddings, you have no freaking idea how much time goes into it. The sales cycle takes time. Dealing with Bride- zilla and Mom-zilla is always lots of fun. Then usually you do engagement photos, often outdoors somewhere. Figure an hour of driving, a couple hours of shooting. Maybe 8 hours of post-processing the 500 pictures:) Maybe less if you're conservative.

Then the wedding itself. Wake up before dawn, pack up your gear. Drive to wherever the event is happening. Get a lay of the land, figure out where people will standing, how the light will be at X o'clock, etc... Then you run around all day with a heavy pack and a heavy camera shooting the bride and her bridesmaids hanging out in her big hotel room. The makeup artist working on each of the girls. The hair stylist doing each girl. Mom lacing up the corset. Etc... This is 3-4 hours, maybe more. Then over to the grooms room, repeat, only much quicker. Then slam in new batteries, new CF cards, and jog a mile to the church. Shoot people walking in, sitting down, etc.. The whole ceremony, which can take hours and hours. Then take the bride and groom off for their own photos. Then reception photos. Then dinner photos. Then dancing photos. Wrap up around 2 AM after a 20 hour day on your feet with a 20 lb bag on your back and a 8 lb lump that you're holding up to your eye all day. Drive home.

Spend 2-3 days post-processing. Spend another day laying out books. Realize the check they gave you isn't signed, and they're on honeymoon for three more weeks.

Etc...

It's physically taxing, and at the end of the day your hourly rate is hilariously low. And you only work a few weekends in the summer. It's a very hard way to make a buck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a free market, the idea of a particular profession being "overpaid" is just silly. People are paid exactly as much as they are worth to their employer... If there was someone better who would do the job for less, they would be replaced.

<comment><USER19> >People are paid exactly as much as they are worth to their employer.

Or is it as much as they can "charge" their employer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most of these are overpaid because of a labor cartel that limits supply, like in the case of orthodontists and longshoremen. They're worthy of an anti-trust case.

</comment><comment><USER21> God forbid that anyone should be in a union, or organize to demand decent pay and benefits. Why, they might go on strike!

What a load of right-wing garbage.

<comment><USER22> heaven forbid anyone get paid the fair market value of their labor. instead lets have a bunch of thugs threaten to go on strike and prevent anyone else from working to artificially drive up their wages.

<comment><USER19> (excuse my ignorance but..) did heavy unionisation happen in the US motor industry?

<comment><USER2> um, yes.

<comment><USER19> So it worked out just super !

<comment><USER2> An anecdote is not a trend.

<comment><USER19> I was being sarcastic ;)

<comment><USER2> Thank God, I was getting worried! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Half Life: Alyx Announcement Trailer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2W0N3uKXmo <comment><USER2> For me it's a huge disappointment. I was a huge fan of the main game and if they dropped it on PC/consoles I'd love to play it. But VR? I'll never buy it for one game.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd easily drop $1000 for a system if they announce L4D VR!</comment>


AMD Zen 2 Improvements for LLVM Have Been Held Up for Months by Code Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-znver2-Scheduler-LLVM-Pend <comment><USER2> > Held up for months

Held up by AMD, not by LLVM's reviewers. They added some comments right away and AMD sent an updated patch 2 months later.</comment>


Writing a Simple Password Generator in Racket - <AUTHOR> https://alex-hhh.github.io/2019/03/password-generator.html <comment><USER2> I was expecting something that would focus on the rules that so many sites impose. Length is easy, but many have silly rules where certain characters are not allowed.

Then there is the side of making a password that is easy to type on a phone. Ideally, I want a hard password that doesn't require me to change input mode on my phone too many times.

Well, ideally, I'd rather I could just use my security token everywhere... But that is a separate problem.

<comment><USER3> I have been thinking about that. How would one do that with a minimal impact on password security? Character sets are easy, but one could set some arbitrary limits on character frequency. I would probably generate a shitload of passwords and filter them based on the rules since that would mean not having to have complicated logic for password generation and thus not accidentally generating passwords that are less secure than the rule limitations.

<comment><USER4> I still think that the best approach to password requirements was the one used at Nortel. They ran a password hash cracking algorithm continuously on the PW database, and when they cracked yours you had to change it. Other than that there were no complexity requirements or mandatory change intervals. If you had a good complex password you got to keep it for a long time, and if you set '12345', 1 minute later you'd have to change it.

<comment><USER5> That is super cool. Is there any reading material on this somewhere?

<comment><USER4> I heard this anecdotally from a long time colleague of mine who worked there. I don't know of any more solid reference to give, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even if one can just use `pwgen` on most linux plateforms, it's a fun exercice, and one that is always welcome in classrooms.

You need to parse the cmd, make sure you use the proper random generator, and accumulate different source of characters.

Options such as --allow-unicode, --exclude-similar-chars or --group-chars all provide small additional challenges in different areas.

It's something all students should code at least once, if not for pleasure, at least for practice.

But honestly I find it fun enough that I just wrote one again after reading the article. I'm pretty sure a timeline of all the attempts is telling of ones progression in style :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wrote a passphrase generator once that I've been using ever since. It's available on my GitHub page under a very permissive license. The README explains all there is to know about it but feel free to ask any questions anyone might have about it.

[https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen](https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen)

<comment><USER8> Lovely! Here's a Clojure version of the same that I write: [https://git.calmabiding.me/scstarkey/dicegen](https://git.calmabiding.me/scstarkey/dicegen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This one-line shell script is a bit simpler:

        base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 16

(Vary the number of characters according to the desired entropy: you get 6 bits of entropy for each character of output, so 16*6 = 96 bits in the example. Use /dev/random or /dev/arandom if you prefer those random sources.)

For passphrases, use GNU shuf (from the coreutils package):

        shuf -n 4 --random-source=/dev/urandom /usr/share/dict/words

<comment><USER10> Also `openssl rand -hex 16` works pretty well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I appreciate the follow through of showing how the package is set up. That's something a lot of articles or blog posts on racket seem to miss.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's my biggest pet peeve when using password generators: passwords containing special symbols like (but not limited to) "-\/({^$:%" will just break in some random service and you'll stay a long time trying to escape them in the correct way until they work

Keep your sanity and avoid special characters.

<comment><USER13> I only run into banks hating those, and obscure websites I am pretty sure I don't bother going back to. I don't understand why they're such an issue, but now I have less keys for a hacker to guess.

<comment><USER12> Try setting it on an URL, on an environment variable or in a config file.

<comment><USER13> Why would you ever put a password on a URL though? That's really bad security. I understand what you mean, but passwords should be stored in some hashed / encrypted form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wrote in bash for myself: [https://github.com/rekcufniarb/pswrd](https://github.com/rekcufniarb/pswrd)

(it also outputs a random password if called with -r arg)

</comment><comment><USER15> I use a Bash Script copied from Stack Overflow:

      #!/bin/bash
      choose() { echo ${1:RANDOM%${#1}:1} $RANDOM; }

      {
          choose '!@#$%^\&'
          choose '0123456789'
          choose 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
          choose 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
          for i in $( seq 1 $(( 4 + RANDOM % 8 )) )
          do
              choose '0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
          done

      } | sort -R | awk '{printf "%s",$1}'
      echo ""

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26665389/random- password...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26665389/random-password- generator-bash/26665585#26665585)

<comment><USER16> Generating passwords with $RANDOM seems like an incredibly bad idea. In bash, it's a Lehmer RNG seeded with the current microsecond and PID – and the seed is 32 bits. sort -R kind of saves it because it uses /dev/urandom + ISAAC, but it's really not comfortable – 1/8 of passwords it generates are breakable in at most ~2^29 × 40320 attempts, for example (and the expected number could be much lower than that, I haven't done the math).

<comment><USER17> as opposed to a manually designed password?

<comment><USER16> Depends on what your strategy for manually designing passwords is (yes, it's that bad). But anyone who can figure out how to use _this_ bash script can figure out how to use one of the `< /dev/urandom tr` scripts, pwgen, or a password manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is that nested-define common racket style? I know it's been legal, at least since R4RS, but I've never seen it actually done.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you can see the style guide here. [https://docs.racket- lang.org/style/Choosing_the_Right_Constr...](https://docs.racket- lang.org/style/Choosing_the_Right_Construct.html#%28part._.Definitions%29)

The reasoning is that `define` doesn't increate horisontal indentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> here's my lazy PW script, written in node. :)

       require('uuid').v4().split('-').join('')

<comment><USER21> A funny little flaw in this is that 13th character of those passwords is always "4", right?

<comment><USER22> And the character that was after the 3rd hyphen is always one of [89ab].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
      for i in ["".join(random.choice(wordlist) for x in range(5)) for y in range(20)]:
        print (i)

<comment><USER16> Use secrets.choice instead of random.choice, since only the former is backed by a CSPRNG.

<comment><USER24> Or random.SytemRandom().choice if the secrets module is not available.

<comment><USER12> You can always open /dev/random and read bytes from there as well</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bernini: He Had the Touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/04/bernini-he-had-touch/

<comment><USER2> In practical terms, you owe it to yourself to go see some of Bernini's best works at the Borghese Gallery in Rome: [http://www.galleriaborghese.it](http://www.galleriaborghese.it) . Reservations can be made in advance on their web site.</comment>