Jeremy Corbyn: Imagine an Uber run co-operatively by their drivers - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/919161491668029440 <comment><USER2> I used a local minicab company once to get to the airport to catch an early morning flight from Stansted. Found their website using Google, booked and paid online. Called the office the day before travel just to confirm the booking and they said it's all good.

The next morning I get a call from a rather rude operator - just minutes before they were scheduled to pick me up - telling me that I haven't paid the full amount for the ride. I told them that I booked using their website and paid online with PayPal. He replied that he doesn't know why the website didn't show the correct amount but if I don't pay an additional £30 to the driver they won't give me a ride. I agreed because I just wanted to get to the airport asap and not deal with finding another company.

The lesson I learned here was: I don't trust minicab companies to be able to deal with the tech behind something like Uber. Of course, this was just one bad experience with a single company but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, minicab drivers had all the time in the world to band together and invent something like Uber, and they never did.

Capitalism has plenty of problems, but let's not pretend it doesn't have advantages too.

<comment><USER4> That's a bit of spin right there. Taxi companies could never "invent something like Uber." Meter and fare regulations precluded the use of smart phones instead of approved meters, and surge pricing (which allows Uber to offer cheaper rides most of the time and make up for it during periods of high demand). Huge amounts of VC money and ignoring taxi regulations allowed Uber to "invent something like Uber."

<comment><USER5> _Taxi companies could never "invent something like Uber."_

Of course they could. All the regulations you mentioned are only there because the Taxi companies lobbied hard for them. Had they lobbied half as hard to have the regulations loosened they could have gotten any regulations they wanted. The taxi companies bet big on using regulation to entrench their position and avoid competition rather than on improving their product. History will tell if it was a good bet or not, but so far it isn't looking too good.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source for your elaborate narrative history of taxicab regulation?

In reality, modern taxi regulations date back to the 1930s, when the prevailing view was that consumer protection was best served by a combination of limiting competition and government price regulation. This was all happening at around the same time as the government rate-regulated other transportation industries: busses, freight trucking, and airlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the issue is that there aren't any profits, just billions in losses.

I think where a co-op would fail is that it would have to charge higher prices as the drivers wouldn't want to sustain (and pay for) losses for many years. If the co-op owned company charged 20-80% more than Uber, but offered drivers ownership and/or other benefits, would it bleed enough drivers from Uber or would enough drivers stick with Uber that it would be a viable and cheaper alternative for riders?

This isn't a new idea. Juno planned to have drivers own 50% of equity ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_\(company\))) and someone tried to create a driver-owned Uber named Swift ([https://www.dailydot.com/debug/swift-uber-lyft-driver- app/](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/swift-uber-lyft-driver-app/)). However, given the costs associated with effectively competing are high - especially as Uber subsidizes rides.

In the long run, there won't be drivers and Uber has mentioned a bleak future for its company if it doesn't get to driver-less cars sooner rather than later. A solution with drivers won't compete against a driver-less solution regardless of ownership.

Even in the medium term where Uber will be using drivers, they have a large pile of money to use as a weapon against alternatives - and there are more driver-focused alternatives. Fasten has launched in two cities and takes $1 per ride rather than 20-30% of the fare. But Uber has a lot of money to encourage riders to use Uber and encourage drivers they might worry about switching.

Corbyn is taking the attitude that a company like Uber is making all the money while the workers aren't getting their fair share. But Uber isn't profitable and it's unclear how much of that is expansion into new markets and how much of that is the marketing and subsidies needed to keep the business rolling in current markets. Would ridership decline significantly with 20% higher fares? Would you be able to retain enough drivers without the constant marketing to get new drivers? Uber launched in 2009 during the peak in unemployment. Today, unemployment is near all-time lows which makes recruiting and retaining drivers much more challenging.

Ultimately, a driver-owned co-op sounds great, but where would the money come from? Would drivers be willing to take home less for share of the company? Would riders be willing to pay more knowing that it was a "good" company?

<comment><USER7> At least from my reading of the tweet, he appears to be saying that a cooperatively owned version _could exist_ , not making a prediction that it will, and will win the cab wars because of innate properties of cooperatives.

I understand your questions are probably rhetorical, but

> _Ultimately, a driver-owned co-op sounds great, but where would the money > come from?_

I could imagine banks and governments being interested in funding a good proposal.

> _Would drivers be willing to take home less for share of the company?_

I'm not sure if they would need to take home less. But, being a driver is a more enterprising job than you might imagine. Most drivers work for themselves, and commonly minicab companies in London are put together by (ex) drivers clubbing together. Even drivers who have only worked for Uber have to think relatively in a relatively entrepreneurial fashion to make it work for them.

> _Would riders be willing to pay more knowing that it was a "good" company?_

If the rest of the consumer-facing economy is anything to go by, the answer is quite possibly yes.

Organic food, fair trade, paying a premium for domestic manufacture etc. are all doing rather well (though of course, cheap stuff made by monopolies will do better).

I think a large part of the reason Lyft exist (also VC funded and subsidized!) is that they're less toxic than Uber, and pay drivers slightly more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who would bear the risk? Who would bear the losses?

Also, what would happen to bad drivers on the system, would they get fired like Uber fires them? What if a ride is in a spot they don't want to go to, what happens if they don't go? What happens when a driver takes a bad route for extra fare? What happens if they get told their car smells bad or is unsafe or they're driving aggressively or are using the phone to talk to some random person during the trip?

The first time I got in an Uber the driver gave me candy and a bottle of water, charged my phone. Will the taxi co op do that?

Uber is so much more than just an app to order a taxi. It created a new economy with new incentives around ride sharing. It's not just better because it's an app, and it's not just better because it's private. It also forces drivers to do things taxis don't want to when it's netter for the customer.

Does anyone seriously think a co-operative Uber would be able to compete with Uber without making Uber illegal?

<comment><USER4> Is it better? It occurs to me that one of the reasons that cab drivers are relatively rude is because they're insulated from grinding feedback. Uber drivers, in contrast, are terrified of reprisal from Uber. They're paid like independent contractors, but under the microscope and can be "fired" like employees.

Is that really the desired end game? Everyone being micro-optimied under threats of losing their jobs, like Wal-Mart and Amazon employees?

<comment><USER9> Why shouldn't consistently rude drivers be sacked? Putting employment above customer service is putting the cart before the horse and is a lousy business model. Businesses that go bust don't employ anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a little too early for something like that to happen. The reason being that a lot of technology that goes into optimizing routes, predicting user locations, developing ML models, etc., requires significant amount of expertise. Uber invested a lot of money and effort into this and that gives them an edge over other competitors. Few years down the line, many of these technologies will be readily available off the shelf as either commercial products or open source software. Even then, for drivers to unite and run a business is hard but at least they will have fewer challenges to deal with.

All said, I do believe that ride sharing transportation should be treated like a utility with some regulations to ensure fairness; but this is not the time. This is the growth phase of the industry. Any regulations at this time will just slow them down and hurt society at large.

<comment><USER11> I strongly disagree that any of that technology is needed to run a ride share co-op. It all sounds nice and helps justify silicon valley's relevance in these industries. But really, you just need some basic business infrastructure, a request ride app, and drivers with a growing wisdom about the needs of their region.

<comment><USER10> To run a ride share co-op? Sure, you can run it without any of that technology. To run an _efficient_ ride sharing service? That's where all of this technology matters. Think of competition between companies that are efficient vs inefficient. The one that is efficient will eat the other for breakfast.

<comment><USER11> I'm picturing a single employee per shift whose job is to keep a simple GIS updated with a generalized map of demand density. Add markers for relevant info like major events that will affect demand. This individual could also be one of the CSR's jobs.

I'm picturing this service being unique per region, so the co-opers are all locals who grok their region.

Give the drivers these data and they will naturally find balance. They're intelligent people who are motivated by efficiency. You just need an organizational core to supply the right data and infrastructure.

I feel frustrated by this idea that we need to replace the best source of wisdom we have: our drivers, with expensive technologies. It makes a simple problem complex. Feels like silicon valley is putting my juice in a bag to squeeze.

<comment><USER10> Well, your entire business will depend upon that single employee doing his job while remaining sharp to take care of all edge cases. Given that you need one like that in every city, your chances of finding such person to provide consistent service across the board are slim. Software is just automating decision making process of such an ideal individual without any human downsides. It is infinitely scalable and consistent across the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Imagine an Uber run co-operatively by their drivers, collectively controlling their futures, with profits shared or re-invested... subsidizing rides from their own pockets

</comment><comment><USER13> I bet if you asked Corbyn to pump up the cash for Uber's losses over the past few years he'll put his tail between his legs and head for a hasty retreat.

Taxi drivers had years to do what uber did. They didn't, they were often horrible - all manner of dirty tricks to keep prices artificially high whilst sneering at customers who didn't go on a long enough journey. You'd book a Minicab and be told they're '2 minutes away' and still find yourself waiting after 30 minutes.

Co-operatives can be trusted to look after their own interests - to an extent that might even pass the definition of racketeering. They can't be relied upon to make a compelling proposition to customers.

Not saying private companies like uber are the answer either, but it's hard to judge which is worse.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check out ATX-Coop. [http://www.atxcooptaxi.net/](http://www.atxcooptaxi.net/)

Owned by the drivers. Has about 1/2 the traditional taxi drivers in Austin after launching which Uber/Lyft left.

They were trying to get an app built but without the deep pockets of the VCs they appear to have abandoned it. You call them and they dispatch. I miss the payment side more than the ordering side but I only use them to go to the airport of it isn't really the core case where Uber/Lyft excels.

There is a sense of pride and ownership among the drivers. Feels better than both Uber/Lyft and other taxi companies. Doesn't have that desperate feel about it.

Co-Ops do work. They have a different set of owners and thus a different set of incentives.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious if the riders would also be able to be owners.

I co-own a cooperative grocery store with about 17,000 others; we do about $50MM in revenue annually. We are all owners / workers / shoppers.

</comment><comment><USER16> A responsible politician should say why he thinks cooperatives have not been successful in the past, why driver owned cab aggregators are rate, and how he thinks those problems can be corrected. Just asking people to imagine stuff is lazy.

<comment><USER17> A responsible successful politician pushes discussions and arguments and people's imagination is the best tool available other than manipulation and dictatorship (directly or indirectly via media and technology).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They would not be able to subsidize rides nor run loses that long.

That being said, there is zero guarantee collective ownership would lead to better behaved company. Collective ownership can be quite ugly.

</comment><comment><USER19> The collectivist dream: outsource innovation to a system that rewards owners with profits, then pretend like someone would invent the next Uber even if there's no incentive.

<comment><USER20> I think you're thinking narrowly about the term "incentive." Incentives can be non-monetary as well. Consider the opportunity to work with increased autonomy, or a chance to move your industry -- and perhaps society at large -- away from hierarchical power structures that disadvantage and disenfranchise workers. Focusing solely on the monetary side of this disregards the many other ways in which people find meaning in their lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Imagine an Amazon run co-operatively by small shop owners.

</comment><comment><USER22> So TaxiLdn or GettTaxi?

Imagine a Black Cab driver willing to drive further than an imaginary 1.5 mile radius around Paddington*

*Airports and Cannary Wharf excluded.

<comment><USER23> You are downvoted but that is a big issue. And Uber drivers try it too by calling you to ask where you want to go. Which they are not supposed to and I never answer. It is hard to get rides off the beaten path sometimes.

<comment><USER22> I never had much problem getting an Uber for even 30-45min drives I don't like Uber that much mostly because in the center I've pretty strange experiences with them but gettng a ride to Watford or even St Albans wasn't a problem sure it costs 30-40£ but it's still much cheaper than prebooked not to mention black cabs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Imagine if we nationalised Uber.

<comment><USER25> Not every 'socialist' proposal has to mean 'big, bad government', as some political circles like to portray it. Look at the success of free/open-source software. It didn't involve any nationalisation, government protection etc. No, it beat the competition in the free market, many times even in a market that wasn't really 'free' because of vendor lock-in, lobbying etc. I don't see why this could not work elsewhere as well.

<comment><USER26> Free software does not extend from socialist thought.

Stallman's initial realisation was a reaction to crony capitalism: he could not modify the printer due to IP rules. Essentially, a deal is done between government and big business (the manufacturer and possibly the university), at the expense of hackers (individuals).

The justifications for copyright are rooted in common-good arguments. The state limits individual freedom, claiming that it should because of (undemonstrated) common-good advantages. Hayek explores this, and takes a position against IP in _The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism_.

A better political analogy for free software is a conflict from early US history: between landowner and state rights advocates (Jefferson) vs big- business visions (Hamilton).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm imagining it wouldn't be so popular sans the VC subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER28> I always felt Uber takes a cut thats way too large. They don't own the car or drive.

<comment><USER27> They just reported a second quarter 2017 loss of $645 million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> ... sounds expensive</comment>


Ask HN: Need some start-up career advice. - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently running a solo start-up right now after about 4 iterations through 3 years (the product line changed, and my partners went their separate ways).
The newest product line being launched is a menu service where restaurants can easily host their menus online, and use a raspberry pi to create a digital menu billboard in the restaurant so when they update their menu, their signage in the store is updated instead of having permanent price menu facades.  The goal is to charge a subscription fee.
The menu service has free nutrition formulation in it, so restaurants can help develop healthy healthy menus and eventually choose to display calories if they want.
To make ends meet, I have been doing some part time rails consulting on the side of about 10 hours a week.  Recently, I got the opportunity to do a 3 month full time rails opportunity.
After running the start-up for so long, and not having a successful product so far, I sometimes have doubts on whether it will succeed or not, and if I should hedge my bets to make some more money on the side.
I have been struggling whether I should just go ahead and do the 3 month gig, or still stick with the 10 hour a week deal and really really try to get the new start-up idea off the ground.
The only thing which is so painful, is after working on a prototype concept for about 2 months, I go out to the businesses, and see that what I made isn't something they wanted.
I know I am rambling, but any two cents on this situation would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Take the 3 month job, canvass your existing customers on Saturdays and to get ideas for your rev 2 product. Financial anxiety is a major creative drain; I think having a day job with a short time horizon will help you sleep a bit better at night and also give you some useful perspective on your restaurant product, plus it's on a short enough time horizon that you won't get too comfy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback !</comment></comment>


Physicists Describe New Class of Dyson Sphere (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536171/physicists-describe-new-class-of-dyson-sphere/ <comment><USER2> A decent Dyson shell concept; the best part of it is the better gravity on the outside. On the other hand, the stress analysis shows that no real material could be used to build it in the 1m thick design envisioned.

One of these days I have to get around to writing a paper about building Dyson shells onto the surface of red dwarf stars. The gas pressure of the star would support a thin shell, and a number of red dwarf stars have surface temperatures lower than refractory materials like carbon and tungsten. The surface gravity would be too high for human life, but it would make a heck of power plant.

Too many papers to write, too little time...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just something I was wondering about this morning.

\-- [https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04376](https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04376) : Dyson Spheres around White Dwarfs</comment>


Exploring DNA with Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/exploring-dna-with-deep-learning/ <comment><USER3> no examples of "unreasonable effectiveness" or even "effectiveness" are given; just a semi-plausible technique and some questions that might be worth answering. I hope the term doesn't get diluted with more examples like this.

also not clear why a 2D local representation is being used for 1D data. there is no meaning to the ordering of the rows (different individuals who represent the samples in the genome), so it doesn't make much sense to encode that into the image. I would presume that not much meaning comes from neighboring mutations that are separated by a long string of no mutations, so the in-row locality should be broken into chunks. Neither of these basic considerations is motivated in the text either.

I would guess there is no effectiveness of CNN at all on this data set and a different statistical technique should be used on this data set...

<comment><USER4> This is the paper with the title: [https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/36/2/220/5229930](https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/36/2/220/5229930)

Almost every article I've seen that uses that naming trope fundamentally misunderstands Wigner's point in the original ([https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm...](https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html)). What Wigner was hinting at (he never really comes out and says it) is that he thinks math and science are two totally different domains and it's surprising to think that mathematical models of physical systems would be able to make generalized out-of-scope predictions. Ultimately, the best thing any theory can do is predict something we didn't expect from the previous models, and then have an experimentalist go and show the new theory's prediction is more consistent with natural observations. Both relativity and QM have done that repeatedly, although Wigner was surprised at that, as he believed that math was an independent domain untethered to physics (many today assume that the universe is effectively a physical embedding of a mathematical structure, and our mathematical theories are simiplified approximations of that structure, so it not's super surprising that a good math model would make good physical predictions), and I think this article was him basically hinting at that new idea without coming out and saying it.

As for why CNNs are useful here... in the generalized genotype-to-phenotype problem, where you are trying to take a list of a person's mutations and predict their physical attributes, there are some phenotypes/traits which are absolutely and totally explained by a single mutation in one gene. In those cases you could train classifiers using simple binary features ("has_mutation_TtoAatPosition37OfChromosome1") and make pretty good predictions.

But most traits are only predictable by making complex non-linear models that take more locations, and the interactions between locations. In some cases, it's 1-2 mutations in a single gene near each other, in other cases, it's 100 different mutations spread throughout the genome, and in other cases, many thousands (the variance of height in humans is a good example where a large number of effects combine non-linearly). CNNs are great for dealing with non- linear data with non-local interactions.

Sequence models also work well (always fine this funny because you're doing ML sequence models on DNA sequences) because so much of the signal can be found in the neighboring bases. For example, in transcription factors, where a protein recognizes a short chunk of DNA, a short window (10-20 base pairs) is recognized and it has significant internal predictability.

<comment><USER5> Interesting point about Wigner, but about the article...

This study does not examine phenotypes, but may be applied to them somehow. Instead:

>we use simulation to show that CNNs can leverage images of aligned sequences to accurately uncover regions experiencing gene flow between related populations/species, estimate recombination rates, detect selective sweeps, and make demographic inferences

I believe this works well because the sorting of the data (Fig. 2) introduces phylogenetic information into the image to be analyzed. This reminds me of neighbor joining [0], but has some differences. Without this ordering, their method does not work as well.

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

<comment><USER6> > sorting of the data

Perhaps the main advantage is that it can filter out non-adaptive, non- functional (noisy) mutations this way by simply averaging similar genomes? In that case, the rows of the learned M x N kernels should be nearly identical and one could have simply averaged M data rows at a time and fed it to the 1D CNN.

What other phylogenetic information could possibly be inferred?

Edit: It could also be thought as data augmentation as it effectively creates novel inputs each time. IIRC there was also a technique for hardening against adversarial examples which simply fed the network averaged datapoints along with the original data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real problem with this technique is, of course, normalizing and labeling data.

I have worked on a project which has harmonized and labelled all public RNA samples: [https://www.refine.bio](https://www.refine.bio)

</comment><comment><USER8> TL;DR: a very entry-level article about the field of popgen ("what is a genome?") and how the "breakthrough" is representing multiple sequence alignments as compact binary matrices. There's very little explanation or actual examples beyond that, so unless you're a complete layman the article probably won't satiate you.

Applying deep learning to genomic data is something of a fad these days - <USER2> bioinformatics world has caught up with the DL hype of the early 2010s and is trying to use DL on nearly anything that moves for easy papers.

The main issue with DL frameworks in the context of genomics is the format of input data. You pretty much want all your data to be a matrix of fixed size (if you want to use CNNs at least, and that's what everyone is interested in anyway), but that's just not how genomics data works. Sequences vary in length (I see the problems of nucleotide gaps, let alone short indels is left unanswered), alignments are not absolute (they are very much aligner dependent and secondary alignments are a thing), the alignments themselves may stem from different data sources (long reads cover more stretches of DNA but are less reliable than short ones), there is no mention of how ploidy is handled (especially in plants!) and somehow you're supposed to transform all of that into a neat 48x48 array to feed to Keras. Wait, thousands of them. Did I mention the human or plant genomes are often billions of basepairs long? Waiting for bwa to be done mapping on your cluster is the xkcd equivalent of "can't do work, compiling!"

So yeah, sorry to put a damper on this but I'm waiting for something within the reach of practical workability (and believe me the standards of bioinformaticians for workable stuff are _low_ ) before getting hyped.

</comment><comment><USER6> > throwing away all the non-mutated locations in the genome because they carry > no meaningful information

How can they claim this with certainty? Maybe the context of any given mutation contains useful information similar to how a word embedding vector contains useful information such as relatedness to other words etc.

<comment><USER9> The non-differing parts are worthless as you are looking for _differences_. For example, take a group of five people with highly sensitive hearing and a hundred people with normal hearing. You don't care what the sensitives have together with the normals, you care about if you can find a mutation present in all sensitives but in none of the normals. Therefore it makes sense to only look at the differences and throw away the equal parts, you just waste computational resources.

<comment><USER6> But isn't genetic code transcribed sequentially and in the context of previously decoded structures? So it is similar to reading a text that references parts elsewhere in the text. If you only keep the changes between multiple subtly mutated texts, then it becomes an enigma what these changes actually mean and, what's worse, the changes are now in context of nearby changes which may make create completely different meanings.</comment></comment></comment>


Coding a Deep Neural Network to Steer a Car: Step by Step - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/udacity/coding-a-deep-neural-network-to-steer-a-car-step-by-step-c075a12108e2?source=linkShare-fd8bc37755d8-1482381437 <comment><USER2> Interesting, but I don't understand why you would use anything other than optimal control algorithms for this kind of problem (and determine the feasible directions/positions with neural nets).</comment>


Privacy study shows Google's eyes are everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/06/01/daily22.html <comment><USER2> One of the interesting things you can discover by using Google Analytics: if you publish a privacy policy and put links to it in the standard places, _nobody will read it_.

Of my last 100,000 visitors, 19 of them read the privacy policy. That number is low enough that it could be caused totally by misclicks.

Real people do not care about privacy in this sense.</comment>


Ten Predictions for 2030 - <AUTHOR> https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2020/01/27/ten-predictions-for-2030/ <comment><USER2> What a pessimist!

Here are my ten optimistic positions:

1\. Computing and tech: Manycore systems become standard, even cellphones have hundreds of cores. Many fundamental algorithms have been developed to make use of these cores. Of course this makes these CPUs much faster then their 10yrs old counterparts. Of course, the single core performance remains the same as 20yrs ago.

2\. Autonomous vehicles: It is done already today, and it will be done even more in 10yrs. We won't have the general AI and thus the problem of autonomous driving remains formally unsolved but practically solved for 99.99% of the time (that's not very good for any standards, but people don't care). Of course, this has enormous effects on "drivers" loosing their jobs or doing supervision/operating of a whole fleet from remote instead.

3\. AI apocalypse: There will be a whole industry doing profitable ML and "AI".

4\. Data science: don't underestimate public-money funded science. Universities won't decline at all. And progress is slow, but coming (Google for "big science, little science" if you wonder about these systematic concerns)

5\. Privacy: Well, yes, we all know where this ends. There will be much more totalitarian states in 10yrs. No hope for optimism.

6\. Quantum Computing: Major breakthroughs will happen. We can do 54 Qubits now, we will be able to do 1000 Qubits then, definitely. Don't underestimate the power of exp(t). :-)

7\. Transportation/Energy: electric cars will be common all over the world. Atomic energy will still be a thing, thought.

8\. Engineering: we will see at least one revolution similarly to 3d printing nowadays.

9\. Agriculture: Veganism will much more become a thing and mass culture of animals will decline. I believe in the good things...

10\. Science: Gravitational waves will allow us a much deeper understanding of the universe. Computing power boosts predictions in theoretical life sciences even more. Cancer will probably be cured. Amazing medicine will be developed. Many more people will have a degree, having studied will become as common as being able to read is nowadays.</comment>


GitLab Security Release: 10.3.4, 10.2.6, and 10.1.6 - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2018/01/16/gitlab-10-dot-3-dot-4-released/ <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: several vulnerabilities, including a remote code execution which affects all GitLab versions since 8.9.0. Patches are available for 10.3, 10.2 and 10.1. There's also an alternative workaround which consists of disabling the "GitLab export" importer from the admin settings. Vulnerability details will be published on their blog approximately 30 days from now.

<comment><USER2> It's really bad when you need a tl:dr on a security vulnerabilities release, it was a lot more bugs than I expected, I wonder if GitHub enterprises is just as bad?</comment></comment>


What I've been up to for the past year - <AUTHOR> http://pud.com/post/63525426229/what-ive-been-up-to-for-the-past-year <comment><USER3> Well now he's got the founder of CD Baby on board, too. ☺

This is amazing. This is exactly what I would have created if I didn't sign a non-compete agreement when I sold CD Baby.

I just created an unlimited account on DistroKid and I'm uploading all of my own music in the background as I type.

I'll be sending everyone I know to DistroKid now.

Congrats, Pud! You rule.

<comment><USER4> Great... also to see the distribution channel evolution and the implied step in maturity: from CDs to generic distribution, from Baby to Kid. Smart naming.

<comment><AUTHOR> The baby->kid thing was unintentional, but I like it! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The simplicity of the distrokid landing page makes me weirdly happy:

* Clear headline right under the logo that explains the service.

* Dead ass simple call to action where you'd expect it.

* Clear benefits listed next to form.

* Complete explanation of the service & FAQ on the page.

* Social proof from solid brands.

The style isn't "gorgeous" and it doesn't follow best practices necessarily - maybe too much info, not enough contrast, not enough focus on the call to action, etc but for some reason it's jumping out at me.

Just feels honest and straightforward which is easy to over think / over- design.

<comment><USER6> That was my impression as well. I've actually signed up and found the main interface beautifully simple, too.

By trying to post this on Reddit, though, I've discovered a surprisingly negative comment that also seems to have a point: [http://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/1o1abq/...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/1o1abq/heres_why_i_made_a_site_where_you_can_upload/cco3vyv)

<comment><USER7> That negative reddit comment had a point that doesn't fairly apply. Read the responses, they address all of its concerns.

<comment><USER6> I am following the discussion, most of my doubts were resolved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the kind of disruption the music industry needed. You've eliminated one of the only two reasons a band should sign to a record label with this site. A feature (even if it cost a few dollars more per month) that allowed music to be submitted for consideration to radio stations that accept solicited material would be fantastic. The only reason really left to sign to a label is their generous press and album advance cash, but even those two conditions are easily bypassed going with a bedroom producer who is able to come close to a studio quality recording for a couple cartons of beer with a PC, mixing desk and copy of Protools.

I can't applaud you enough Pud. I am envious of what you've been able to achieve, especially the agreements in place and easy no BS interface that allows you to easily upload music with any gimmicks. I'll be keeping my eye on this, I have no doubt it's going to be huge.

<comment><USER9> I do believe there is one more thing that a record label can bring to an artist: marketing.

There's a gigantic amount of music produced every day, and only a limited time for listening, so filtering is a real issue, and labels do help there.

Record labels are labels, and in some genres of music, labels are a really good way to filter the signal from the noise for listeners. I do not believe this entitles them to keep a big part of the money generated by the sales of music, but it is clear that even if your music is on iTunes, Google Play, or any other service, if no one hears _about_ it, it will just sleep there.

Therefore, to me, the next step in the elimination of the need of record labels would be an efficient music discovery service, where you could be sure that if your tunes are good, no matter the lack of promotion, they'll fall in the relevant ears. There is Pandora and the likes, but I don't think we're quite there yet (hype will probably always be a very strong thing). I have good hopes though.

<comment><USER10> I believe the GP covered that function under "generous press" \-- but even still, this isn't really a reason to make yourself beholden to a label; marketing is a service you can pay for like anything else, where the marketing agency is beholden to you.

Stripping off distribution and press, "labels" are really just left as VC firms and/or incubators for music-production "start-ups" (in est, bands.) Which sounds about right.

<comment><USER8> Yep, that's what I meant by press in my comment, I should have probably worded it as "marketing budget" or something more obvious as I can see how it could get confused with press as in pressing a copy of a record.

You are right about labels one day just being startup incubators and venture capitalists for bands. I guess when you factor in all of the benefits the Internet brings to a band, there aren't many left a label provides other than cash. For a true decent recording you need cash for studio time, a producer and then more money to get it mixed and mastered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting technical question (disclaimer: I have no financial interest in these things). How is stuff like _" Then stuff to automatically convert audio & image files to the right formats."_ usually done ?

Does the webapp push stuff in a queue and call a commandline tool like mencoder or something is there an industry standard tool ? How do you deal with concurrency (some kind of Actor model ) ? And most importantly, do you have to tune the linux kernel to achieve performance on this (just saw the LinkedIn NUMA post as well, so thinking about that)?

I am sure Youtube and all do it using the enviable Google infrastructure, but how does someone else do it

<comment><AUTHOR> All the stores have different requirements. One store requires 2500x2500 artwork, another requires FLAC audio, etc. So when users upload audio or video to DistroKid, everything gets converted to appease all the different stores.

Right now there's a cron that runs every few seconds, finds the next unprocessed file, and processes it via command line. If/when volume gets really high, I'll probably have to do this somewhat differently to make sure it scales.

DistroKid uses MediaInfo to figure out what the user uploaded:

[http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo](http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo)

Then uses SOX for audio conversions:

[http://sox.sourceforge.net/](http://sox.sourceforge.net/)

And native Railo (the backend programming language I use) functions for image processing/resizing.

[http://getrailo.com](http://getrailo.com)

<comment><USER11> thanks ! very interesting - I have never heard of any of the things that you mentioned .

could you talk about why you chose Railo, which looks to be a fairly esoteric stack. Is it something you chose specifically for its media capabilities ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I love Railo. And I love the CFML language, which is what it uses. Railo is free (as opposed to Adobe ColdFusion - the other CFML platform), open source, has a great community, and does everything I need. I'm a speed demon in it. And the pages load super fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are you likely to do the same for movies?

If you think the music industry's distribution model is broken, check out the movie industry. Currently it'll cost me over $1,000 to use the easiest route to getting a feature into iTunes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. I'm not a movie maker so I don't know much about the business, but I'll investigate.

<comment><USER12> I am a movie-maker (obviously), and I know a lot of other experienced movie types too - happy to help with research.

Good starting points would be the current leaders in getting movies onto iTunes and Netflix: KinoNation and [http://www.distribber.com/](http://www.distribber.com/) .

The situation for filmmakers is so bad that the latter's offer to take 3+ months to get a single movie into iTunes for the low, low price of $1295 was - rightly - considered to be a massive leap forward for filmmakers worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent product and targeting, actually almost muttered 'ooooh' after reading your post. I'd also add in some other promotional channels on next iteration like Soundcloud uploads. Promotional and general 'radio' like stations, I find lots of new music at Soundcloud, get started [http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs](http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs)

</comment><comment><USER14> What are you going to do to protect the store from the spam? Especially with the "upload for free" feature? Looks like the potential for trouble and the inconvenience of all the users of the store.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I gave details on this, it would aid the spammers. So I can't really give details. I wish I could.

<comment><USER15> Security through obscurity usually isn't a good idea.

<comment><USER16> Spam isn't a security problem, it's an abuse problem. All spam protection systems I know of rely at least somewhat on secret special sauce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> First off, this looks excellent.

This undoubtedly trumps the likes of CD Baby in many ways, but one reason I could see people sticking with them is that, even though to upload an album at CD Baby is more expensive up front, it's a one-off payment. You pay the $40 or whatever it costs, then that's it, the music stays up there at no further cost. From the DistroKid FAQ, if you stop paying your yearly fee then the music can be removed.

Clearly though such users aren't your target audience, you're going after the musicians that want to upload songs all the time, as opposed to albums.

Good luck to you though, this is the type of innovation this industry desperately needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> CD Baby takes a percentage of your royalties forever. DistroKid doesn't.

TuneCore charges a (much larger) annual fee.

<comment><USER18> You should probably mention this in the FAQ or something, for the next person to wonder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congrats and good luck! Gonna say that you should charge more though, $20 a year unlimited is incredibly low.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few other people have also suggested I raise the price.

If "too many customers" becomes a problem (increase in customer service expenses, etc) I'd consider it. But right now that's not an issue and I love that it's cheap.

<comment><USER20> The problem would be better named "too many customers, too much hassle and not enough income to support it". It might be wise to come up with a premium service for users who can/want to pay more. In general you don't want to compete on price, but on quality and convenience.

Congratulations btw! :)

<comment><USER21> > In general you don't want to compete on price

When selling to independent musicians, you want to compete on price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So at first I was skeptical of __"...a service where musicians can just upload songs whenever they want..." __* -- where I was thinking "How is this different than SoundCloud" \-- but with reading about how to submit to the various providers -- that is awesome!

Pud should provide an API for these other music hosts to channel user content to these providers.

What I am interested in though, more than the ability to submit, is to FIND -- If this service were able to allow me to find micro-artists in certain genres on the major players - that would be fantastic... or to create channels/playlists of them.

I ___LOVE_ __electroswing -- and it is dominated by the wonderful Parov Stelar -- but I have every track by him... so I 'd like to branch out. If I could track a genre of "ElectroSwing" and have it look for artists across all the major vendors, and keep a purchasable playlist of these guys... that would be farking amazing.

Also, been a fan of Pud's for years... don't wind up on some fucked list ;-)

<comment><USER23> Concerning ElectroSwing: Do you know 'Proleter'? Found him a few days, it's sort of ElectroSwing meets Triphop - amazing stuff. I assume you also know Caravan Palace? I love those two, not a big fan of Parov Stelar however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is music still sold like this?

Why isn't everything digital sold like apps?

What's the point of these middlemen?

iTunes provides the store and artist provides the product. In 2013 why does capitalism and technology allow this to occur

<comment><USER25> When I was reading this, I was asking myself the same questions. Unbelievable that a musician can't just upload a song to iTunes. I thought that was one of the huge driving factors of digital music distribution, breaking down the old barriers? I don't use iTunes, but apparently I missed something - sounds like the music industry hasn't changed much after going digital.

<comment><USER26> I think Apple was/is scared of "unprofessional" music. Apple doesn't want to be the YouTube of music. Not allowing shitty (or pirated!) music is a hard problem to solve. A bunch of suits and contracts does a decent job because not many people are going to take the time if they just want to troll.

<comment><USER25> So, how does Distrokid factor in to this? After reading, I had the impression that anybody with $20 could upload their music via Distrokid... is the idea that the annual fee is supposed to be a filter to prevent shitty music? Pirated music is one thing, but 'shitty music' seems a bit tougher to police.

<comment><USER27> pud said in an earlier post that there's a propietary spam filtering system in there that he's understandably reluctant to share details on.

<comment><USER28> A spam filter is different than an "amateur" or "unprofessional" filter though. I don't see how it could protect against that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> "We'll put your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and Amazon"

Are these the only services the music will be on? I can't even list the services I get on with CDBaby it's that long but you are missing some important ones:

Rdio Deezer Last.fm

I just looked through my sales reports on CDBaby and those are some of the most used services. I would love to use this but Rdio and Deezer in particular are too important for me.

<comment><USER29> and for many BeatPort is essential. though many of us DJs hate BeatPort

<comment> k-mcgrady Afaik it's not possible to get your music on BeatPort through any of these services (I've looked around before). I think they are pretty strict about curation and it requires a label with prior connections to Beatport to get on it. If I'm wrong about this I'd love to know!

<comment><USER29> yes, all my friends are saying this distrokid looks great, but its missing dance stores.

OTOH we all hate BeatPort, and iTunes really is not important. I only care that I get on boomkat, but I care about music more than I care about sales :) I've been on frontpage beatport, juno and boomkat. nice to take a screenshot of, but it doesn't translate into much money.

Beatport is kind of like iTunes, its been getting less and less strict about the curation. usually if you have a distributor agreement then you can get in that way. but honestly I haven't checked recently. maybe you can just apply.

they have huge problems with people buying tracks from other people (so they didn't even produce them) and buying soundcloud views to pump up their stats. and the music is just dull. but they still get in to beatport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is an impressive accomplishment, I would say almost more because of the deal-making and logistics of dealing with the online music stores than the coding but together these accomplishments show you really have your heart in the game!

I will immediately share this with the people I know who would be interested.

Also let me know if you need/want marketing help, I would love to help spread the message of Distrokid!

<comment><USER31> Agree. It would be interesting a post where you explain how you made all the agreements with Apple, Google & co. and how do you handle association for copyright protection (like RIAA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Exposure: [http://distrokid.com/api/passwordResetEmail/](http://distrokid.com/api/passwordResetEmail/)

Glad to try out CFML again - trying out Railo.

</comment><comment><USER33> Awesome stuff, Pud! As a cfml dev its awesome to see startups drooling over Railo (Which is open source coldfusion, shhhh don't tell anyone ;). I give it 6-12 months before Railo is the "new" hotness.

Looking forward to reading more about the technology you used. Maybe a separate post? ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> I used it for one song some time ago, and I was impressed. Everything went super smooth.

The only reason I didn't pay to upload my whole EP was that if I understand well, you have to keep paying every year if you want them to stay in the stores; it's not really practical for me since I only have 4 songs that I want to put in the stores and I don't even think I'm going to sell enough of them to cover the price, and I don't know if I'm ever going to record anything else that's good enough for the stores.

But it probably just means that I'm not in the target market, so don't take my story for what it's not. I think this is an awesome service, and go try for yourself if you don't believe me!

<comment><USER35> If you aren't willing to "lose" 20 bucks a year then I doubt you are really serious about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks like you've found a cool sweet spot in the market place! I'll definitely put in a good word with my musically inclined friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hope so.

Just really wanted something where as a musician, I can just upload my music to stores without really giving it much thought. Kinda like how anyone can upload to YouTube easy cheesy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very nice on the market place approach. I wish discovery services were of sufficient quality to allow us to find new and unknown/small musicians. Word of mouth and algorithms only go so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder/OP here.

Totally agree. Funny how things change: Old technology for music discovery was FM radio. Today it's YouTube's related videos and stuff people are tweeting.

I encourage all musicians to make videos for their music if possible, for YouTube discovery... (related business opportunity: make this easier)

But if/when they're ready to buy, I think they go to iTunes/Spotify/Google Play/Amazon.

<comment><USER38> _Funny how things change: Old technology for music discovery was FM radio._

Interestingly Radio Helsinki is a radio station that doesn't have playlists. Therefore they play every day 99,5% different songs than yesterday. I listen to that station when commuting and I tend to end up finding 1-2 new artists or albums on daily basis. At least for me Spotify manages just to suggest annoying and mediocre crap, if I try their random radio or what ever it is called. That's the difference between qualified and experienced DJ and some algorithm randomizing songs.

<comment><USER39> I ran a community radio show (3 hours, one night a week) in Brisbane for a few years. That's what I did: I'd rock up in studio with my music collection and play whatever I felt like at the time.

Now, it was a small station, but I had thousands of listeners in the country who tuned in online (was broadcast on DAB+, AM and online) and the main reason they gave was because of the bands I played that never got airtime anywhere else.

It also made me happy that other people got to hear my favourite local post- rock bands, and really helped with getting interviews ;) Was a lot of fun. I miss it to be honest, and am sad that it's going the way of the floppy disk...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can you explain more about how the music store APIs work? Do their terms allow you to represent unlimited artists?

How do artists authenticate themselves? How do you know I'm not Kanye?

Are you or the stores handling payments?

</comment><comment><USER41> This is great. On one hand I'm happy that record labels and middle men are cut off from the process, on the other, being an old-fashioned music listener, I will never stop considering music as part of an album, and I will never buy a "song". I will always buy full length albums. I like real bands, not Internet phenomena. Not saying that one excludes the other, though. But the concept is absolutely brilliant and the same is true for the execution.

</comment><comment><USER42> I love the fact that pud makes great stuff and just keeps building and shipping good ideas. It's a simple thing, but he does it quite well.

</comment><comment><USER43> Small quibble: Those press quotes pretty much each say the same thing - recounting the four point list that is directly above them.

</comment><comment><USER44> Bandcamp is going to _hate_ this.

<comment><USER45> Bandcamp allows musicians to sell their music directly to listeners.

From DistroKid.com: "We'll put your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and Amazon."

Different model, no?

DistroKid helps musicians get their music in the mainstream stores. Bandcamp is its own store.

I think they're serving different ends.

<comment><USER46> Doesn't that sorta directly compete? Why bother buying on Bandcamp when you can support the artist right from Google Play/iTunes/Amazon MP3, which you're already using?

<comment><USER47> Better audio quality, cheaper price, better shopping experience, can buy physical products eg vinyl and tshirts, shopping page is customized by artist and has links to their online presence, bigger cut goes to artist, some tunes given away free, traffic is driven by music review blogs, the list goes on and on.

Did I mention that I love bandcamp?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is an enormous achievement, as is the fact that an uploaded song is available in all countries worldwide, wherever each store is supported. The payout method being via PayPal email address is also a good move for users outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER49> How do you keep out/manage the musical equivalent of spam since this also lowers the barrier to entry? I could see some sub par artist use the right keywords and get their sons to come up on lots of search results.

</comment><comment><USER50> Serious question; What happens when you stop paying? That's why I use CDBaby for my stuff. I don't have to keep paying out for tracks that MIGHT sell 1 or 2 copies over the course of a year.

<comment><USER40> I assume the content stay in the store but you can't upload new content.

<comment><USER50> I hope so, I'm planning on releasing about a dozen e.p.s over the course of a year, which i don't expect to ever sell more than 5 copies each, tops. it's a personal project to help myself improve as a song writer, and spending 45$ apiece is not worth it.

<comment><USER51> Do you specifically want it for sale if you don't expect it to sell many copies, or are you just looking to have your music out there? There are sites you can put music out there for free on. Shameless plug for my own site: [http://www.audiomack.com](http://www.audiomack.com). It is predominantly used for hip hop so that's what comes up in the top music charts, but there's nothing keeping anyone using it for any genre they like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> congrats. as a musician and a coder this is super intriguing. also, the technology you used (railo ?) is interesting and the cron stuff is just great.

well done.

i can't wait to put my stuff up.

(i've shared this on my vast social networks.)

</comment><comment><USER53> pud - been a fan since "death metal office drumming".

i've been looking to putting some of my music on iTunes recently, so really excited about this service. any chance of supporting Pandora?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually free for anyone to submit to Pandora: [http://submitmusic.pandora.com/](http://submitmusic.pandora.com/)

I may figure out a way to automatically submit there from DistroKid (so there's one less thing the artist needs to do), but in the meanwhile, Pandora makes it easy.

\m/

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a pretty well learned guitarist cutting his teeth in bedroom producing, this is fantastic. One of the things that stifles creativity sometimes is the fact that there are so many options out there that just don't work well or don't reach enough people or are out of reach for people like me who are doing this on the side.

I wish this was around when I was in college. Thanks for all the hard work! I will definitely be giving your service a workout this winter! Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER55> @pud - Do you do Xbox Music as well? My brother just published an album through some distribution service and I was very surprised to find it on Xbox Music.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think it was a year well spent! Nicely done. This is an important step in the right direction for independent musicians that don't have the benefit of large distribution.

Quick question: How do the various services handle categorizing the uploaded music? My concern as a musician is my music might not be as easily discovered via Spotify Radio or on related artists pages.

</comment><comment><USER57> Brilliant! Independent musicians need as much help as possible, can be really tough making any sort of dough these days. Quick question- As a label releasing a compilation album, what would be the best way to use your service? The compilation is 15 tracks from 15 different artists, so would be quite expensive if I were to sign up via the label option!

</comment><comment><USER58> Looks awesome! A minor typo on your main page:

> Or you can pay $19.99/yr and upload unlimited songs for a year!

s/for a year//

</comment><comment><USER59> Cool, I just uploaded a track to see what would happen. All seems very painless so far.

I'm interested in the question somebody else asked - doesn't this mean there's now basically no quality control on itunes etc? I feel like it shouldn't be quite this easy to look like a proper musician...

</comment><comment><USER60> This is fantastic. Small gripe: if you pay via Paypal, why don't you accept payments from Paypal?

</comment><comment><USER61> I just know this is going to be one of those famous archived Hacker News posts one day. This is the kind of thing that changes the game - amazing that you pursued separate deals with these four music services. Record industry - <USER2> was a good run, but your era is over.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady If artists get 100% of the royalties how do you make money? I want to be sure that a service I use for something as important is this will still be around in 12 months.

Also, do you collect and pay out money to artists like CDBaby does or do they have to collect it themselves?

<comment><AUTHOR> DistroKid makes money from the $19.99/year.

DistroKid collects royalties & pays out monthly. I also founded AdBrite which paid out several million dollars per month, if that adds to DistroKid's credibility.

And the good thing is that even if your distributor disappears, your music is still in the stores. It's decoupled from the distributor. Tho I'm not sure how you'd manage your music if your distributor went away, but I'm sure there's a way. Also, the stores vetted DistroKid somewhat. Likely so they can avoid having to figure this out.

<comment> k-mcgrady Thanks. I'm definitely going to try DistroKid out with my next release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Very cool!!

Is it possible to upload but say you don't want your stuff to go to Spotify? I'm interested in doing digital downloads but not streaming, since I believe they rob sales to a greater degree than they create new sales through discovery.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. You can specify which stores you want to be on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Great job dude, this is awesome. I'm sharing this with everyone I know who makes music, and not just because I want the referral. I'll probably upgrade as soon as I release another track, regardless.

</comment><comment><USER64> Still using Railo I see :-)

</comment><comment><USER65> What are the royalties each of those companies pay to the musician? Also, do they filter music our uploads? I can imagine users uploading popular music to earn on top of succeeding musicians.

</comment><comment><USER66> How is it different from [https://www.recordunion.com/](https://www.recordunion.com/)? Because you get rid of the concept of "albums"?

</comment><comment><USER67> Interesting. So every amateur can make an account and upload their stuff to Amazon? No filtering? Also, wont this attract people who upload Motorhead songs as their own?

</comment><comment><USER68> How does a user know that you will continue to pay them royalties for their songs in 10 years time? Are you still going to be manually PayPal'ing payments...

</comment><comment><USER69> very cool! but do you worry that making it easier/cheaper to submit to iTunes might cause iTunes to be flooded with "bad" music, thus prompting iTunes to crack down in some way? it seems like the current financial barriers in place might be JUST enough to prevent people from submitting who aren't serious about it, and you could be opening the flood gates

<comment><USER70> Having money to publish or produce doesn't immediately make you a good artist.

<comment><USER69> of course not, but _in general_ i think that a monetary barrier prevents lots of people from publishing on a whim or prematurely

<comment><USER70> That's fair. Sorry, upon re-reading my comment it was a bit flippant.

I just feel that there is a lot of shitty commercially-backed music out there already, and we're in the Internet age of "share everything" already, so even if this does open the door to poorly produced crap ending up in online stores, we have enough mechanisms (both technological and cognitive) to filter the good stuff to the top I think..

And if doing it this way lets good stuff get discovered more easily, and helps independent artists get paid more easily, I'm all for it.

Plus I think artists who take their craft seriously (and therefore may end up being floated to the top in my previous example) will be very conscious of the quality of the product they want to put out there..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Looks awesome. I would make a big push into electronic. So many producers out there.

Send me a release and we'll post email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER72> thx so much for creating this! I just uploaded my new track "Miles Away": [https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/miles- away](https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/miles-away)

Some time ago I thought that a tool like this should have been created but I didn't focus on this project. So glad to have this!

<comment><USER73> Sounds great - eagerly awaiting it to show up in spotify!

<comment><USER72> Thx a lot! I'm glad you like it :) Common Spotify get it online! :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Congrats on the release.

I think the simplicity would be the biggest selling point to Distrokid.

I'll pass this to some of my friends who are musicians :)

All the best!

</comment><comment><USER75> I love the idea behind this, hope it's successful and will be making sure my musician friends are aware of it.

</comment><comment><USER76> Was there a reason for not doing MVP? You could have made it easy to publish and scrap everything else.

</comment><comment><USER77> Please consider supporting 7digital.com It powers the samsung, blackberry, hmv music stores.

</comment><comment><USER78> What is your technology stack?

</comment><comment><USER79> Congrats, Pud! I hope you will share some growth stats in the months to come. :)

</comment><comment><USER80> Congrats Pud and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER81> This is immensely useful and i'm going to sign up!

</comment><comment><USER82> How is Apple not taking/getting a cut?

<comment><USER48> They still do ... the 100% royalty refers to the portion paid out by the store, which is possibly something like 70% of the purchase price for iTunes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If you are smart you will sell a $5 a month atccount for unlimited streaming/downloading. And distribute the funds to the artists based on viewership.

</comment><comment><USER84> "What I've been up to for the past year" another one of those hn typical "I'm not telling you anything until you click me"-links.</comment>


Facebook account disabled because I wasn't confirmed by my high school within 60 days - <AUTHOR> http://jawshy.jaiku.com/presence/5209971 Should a startup bind to these kind of policies?Is this policy required by state laws? <comment><USER2> That's part of the reason I disabled my account, their absolute insistence that you identify exactly who you are is a huge privacy problem.

It is because of this that facebook users experience bigger privacy problems than other sites, regardless of what their publicity tells you.

</comment><comment><USER3> So do we say the Terms of Service suck if they can remove you from your social network based on what they "believe"?

Or perhaps the people who depend too much on any service (instead of an open platform) should bear the risk?

<comment><USER4> Finding fault is less important than the user experience. A walled garden that gets annoying to use is bound to fail.</comment></comment>


ManyLands: The random island generator for the Rogue Sea - <AUTHOR> http://nuclearhorsestudios.com/#/blog/page/283343eb0b4499b47341eb2fd30183ea

<comment><USER2> This is my code. If anyone has questions I'd be happy to answer them.</comment>


Successful Solo Founders - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@haftrm/successful-solo-founders-5c7f60ef6a0e <comment><USER2> Instead of looking at "% of successful exits that had _n_ founders", it seems more relevant to look at "% of startups with _n_ founders that had a successful exit".

Without knowing the distribution of startups with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5+ etc founders, it's hard to tell how much more/less likely each group is to succeed.

<comment><USER3> Not sure this even matters that much. What matter is YOU.

Who cares if 12% of solo founders make a successful exit, vs 14% of two founder companies. If you are a lone wolf and want to work alone, you are going to fail if not alone. If you are a social thinker and hate working alone, you would be silly to form a solo startup.

<comment><USER4> What if you're a lone wolf, and you discover 20% of duos successfully exit and 0.1% of solos successfully exit. Perhaps that is your come-to-jesus moment.

<comment><USER5> but what if you cant find anyone, or you too introverted to find anyone to work with, I'm very technical, but find it extremely difficult to speak with them, often im asked by others to just make something for them and thats it.

<comment><USER6> Having a hard time convincing someone else to work with you/on your idea, being excessively introverted, etc might be some of the underlying factors that might lead to a 200x difference in success likelihood in the posited, hypothetical case.

<comment><USER3> There have been some amazing projects by lone wolfs. Not all projects need a team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know, I'd venture to say the vast majority of businesses are started by one core person. One person has the idea and convinces others to follow. That's the most important metric to look for, can they create a team, can they convince others, etc.

Personally, I've started projects alone and with others, but by far all my most successful businesses/projects (one of which I'm applying to YC with) have been initialized by myself, and then I brought in others as needed.

Unfortunately, that creates some issues. For example, my most recent partner had to step back for personal reasons. Now, the question is - does that look bad? Now, I'm in an even weaker position because it looks like I failed to convince them the project was worth it, or we had a falling out. Neither of which was the case, we're still good friends, we just had different priorities and risk / reward levels.

Now I'm again a solo founder, searching for another partner. I know I could use one, which is why I'm doing it. There's a lot of work, and I'd move faster with help. I feel that's the only time I'd search for a co-founder going forward.

I kind of doubt people can bring people in just to increase fundability. They still have to be convinced and provide value.

<comment><USER4> _I 'd venture to say the vast majority of businesses are started by one core person_

On the other hand, we as humans have a well known desire for one person to pin everything on. A 'hero fallacy' if you will (I'm sure there's a better term). Thousands of invested engineers didn't make the iPhone, Steve Jobs made the iPhone. Millions of troops and five countries didn't win WWII, General Patton did. A series of brilliant collaborating scientists building on the shoulders of giants didn't invent nuclear fission, Albert Einstein did. Turing cracked Enigma, nevermind the Polish cryptographers whose work he built on. Can you even name half of The Traitorous Eight?

The list of examples where we pick one name to worship from a large enterprise of many deeply involved individuals is very, very long.

So, maybe it's good to discount a perspective that identifies one single person as the complete nexus of success for any particular enterprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always feel that when I read these articles that the author is referring to a "single founder" as a hacker banging away at their Uber for Skateboards node or Rails app, as then applying the success of someone like Bezos, as if he built Amazon in a glorious one-person hackathon.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is this joke: how many partners should a company have? The best is to have an odd number of partners, and 3 is too much.

</comment><comment><USER10> These types of article often list Jeff Bezos or Frederick Smith (Fedex) as examples. These guys were already millionaires when they started their company, I don't think they should be counted. There are enough solo startup founders who started from scratch in their kitchen/bedroom/garage, if look for them. No need to list less relevant cases IMO.

<comment><USER11> For what I know Bezos was a wall street worker, probably wealthy but no near millionaire. He borrowed 30k from his dad to start amazon.

<comment><USER12> He was a VP and from what I recall reading was making in the high six figures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see a lot of people questioning who is a solo founder or not.

To me, a cofounder is someone who has enough equity to veto your decisions if they don't like them. Everyone else is an employee, whether compensated in cash, equity, or thank yous.

Most of the objections I see here are, "well, they had a support group of X and Y".

No one does it alone. The issue is whether you have ultimate authority (and therefore responsibility) for the success or failure of the company.

I'd say everyone on the list of solo founders was personally responsible for the success of their company.

</comment><comment><USER14> An anecdote to support this: not every business I've started myself was successful, but all the successful businesses I've started were without partners. On the other hand, every business I've started with one or more partners has failed.

<comment><USER15> Why do you think that is?

<comment><USER14> Stubborn partners with a lack of ideas

<comment><USER16> But you're the one that chose the partners: maybe that's your weakness. Regardless, your personal anecdote is not a good metric to evaluate solo foundership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dropbox has 2 founders [1]

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/about](https://www.dropbox.com/about)

<comment><USER18> Drew applied to YC (and was accepted) as a solo founder. Not sure when the co- founder came aboard.

<comment><USER19> Well that's the problem with this kind of analysis. While there was officially just one founder, Drew had his friend with him, Jeff Bezos his wife. Not exactly sure if this analysis makes any sense. No one can build something like Amazon by himself, so at one point people are hired and of course they have an influence on decision making, so the solo part vanishes real quick.

<comment><USER20> Yes, they stop being pure-solo quick, if successful, when they're already a "started-up". Very early stage funding is at an earlier phase.

I'm curious about how successful a start-up can be, before adding anyone. [problem: founders who _want_ to grow will do so ASAP; founders who don't, won't publicise their niche and we won't know about it]

Does Minecraft count as a "start-up"? With a billion+ dollar exit, it should be a "unicorn". I think Notch was solo for a very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Buffett added Charlie Munger as a cofounder and credits Munger for a large portion of the success.

</comment><comment><USER22> As others have noted, the solo founder list is filled full of people that had immense help from other people, typically from day one.

For example: Henry Ford

He had half a dozen people building his first vehicle for him, most of them contributing their time to help at no cost, while he directed the implementation/vision/ideas. This is the first version of his quadricycle vehicle [1] he built in his little shed. Ford did some early experimentation work on his own, it wasn't very long however before he invited some extremely talented specialists to join in helping him, just to basically see if they could all pull it off. Ford had a high talent for gathering skilled specialists to follow him (messianic leader, he managed to do it throughout his career), all of which were better at specific tasks than he was (whether blue print drafters, or metal workers). Solo founder? Ford Motor wouldn't exist without Ford and it wouldn't have existed without the critical day-one contributions of those particularly talented people (some of which stayed with him for many years). When Ford built the Model T, he pulled together a very small team of hyper talented people just like with the quadricycle, and they did the actual work / implementation, while he played general (to take nothing away from that role, it's at least as critical as the other roles).

Ford as a solo founder is a big stretch.

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

</comment><comment><USER23> How hard is it to get into YC as a single founder? I'm pretty sure I could easily find a cofounder, but I'm not sure if I actually want to. I'm also not sure if I want to join an incubator, since bootstrapping and going at my own pace sounds nice.

</comment><comment><USER24> The post mentions startups running afoul of minimum wage and overtime laws. The linked PDF mentions that anyone who owns at least 20% of the business can be considered an exempt executive. How exactly do startups wind up running afoul of these laws? The minimum pay is under $25k/year, surely if the startup is covering each founder's living expenses, then it shouldn't be too hard to meet that especially with vesting stock.

</comment><comment><USER25> If your plan to grow your company by begging for money then you need have a co-founder: you need to convince somebody to work for free. That is first step toward convincing VCs to give you money.

If your plan to grow your company is thru business (actually making something) then having co-founder is not required: you can hire senior people since you are solving real problem.

</comment><comment><USER26> Jeff bezos had 2 engineers working with him from the beginning. Maybe not the same as co-founders, but having a team and support structure can help.

Aaron Patzer, on the other, was truly on his own.

</comment><comment><USER27> Regardless, it's so much more rewarding to share an experience like running a company, just like with most things.

In the end I would guess that the experience matters much more than the exact probability of success for most people.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google for example could probably work with one person, but what would happen is that Sergey and Larry would have ended up inventing their own search engine companies and competed strongly with one another.

It wouldn't end up even half the size if it wasn't two equally intelligent cofounders working together. That's a huge advantage of the co-founder system: you absorb your competitor instead of fighting them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> rehashes a bit of this: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders- optional/](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/co-founders-optional/)

</comment><comment><USER29> The myth of the solo founder. I would venture that every founder has a support system that tangibly enables a business venture, whether it be family or peers or mentors.

<comment><USER30> No, there's plenty of solo founders that have nothing of the sort.

<comment><USER29> plenty of solo founders with no family, no peer group, no mastermind group, and no support system?

Could you name one for me please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh, shit! Time to update all the advice I've been spewing every time someone asks me "hey, what's a sign that my startup will fail?".

Switching from "if you don't have cofounders" to "if you have cofounders".

Done. 180 degree about face. Commence frenzy!

</comment><comment><USER18> In my opinion, VCs prefer their investments to have more than one founder because teams are generally easier to manipulate / more willing to compromise. Solo founders, almost by definition, are going to be much more gregarious and stubborn. That doesn't equate into investor board control, which can cause issues down the road (see Uber)

<comment><USER32> > _Solo founders, almost by definition, are going to be much more gregarious > and stubborn._

Stubborn, perhaps. Gregarious though? I think there would be many solo founders who are not people-persons.

<comment><USER18> You know, I've been using that word wrong, thanks. I meant cantankerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Then, there's the silicon valley religion of idol-worship. Whatever Paul Graham, Elon Musk ... say must be true, and hence canon.

Ironic for all the AI, machine learning, data-science toting startups to go in the exact opposite direction when it comes to canonizing obvious non-science.

</comment><comment><USER34> The Universe had one founder (one none depending on who you ask).</comment>


Firefox Delivers 3D Gaming, Video Calls and File Sharing (Firefox 22 Released) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/06/25/firefox-delivers-3d-gaming-video-calls-and-file-sharing-to-the-web/

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox 22 Release Notes: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/22.0/releasenotes/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/22.0/releasenotes/)</comment>


Understanding Bloom Filters with Pharo - <AUTHOR> https://osoco.es/thoughts/2019/05/understanding-bloom-filters-with-pharo-smalltalk/ <comment><USER2> I put all the 'Have I been Pwned' SHA1 hashes into a bloom filter: [https://github.com/w8rbt/bp](https://github.com/w8rbt/bp)

<comment><USER3> I pulled them into a Golomb Compressed Set: [https://github.com/Freaky/gcstool](https://github.com/Freaky/gcstool)

<comment><USER2> Neat. Thanks for sharing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this gets pretty lost in the weeds for a pretty simple explanation. I like this one: [https://llimllib.github.io/bloomfilter- tutorial/](https://llimllib.github.io/bloomfilter-tutorial/)

<comment><USER5> I think the primary goal there was to demo Pharo Smalltalk and/or PharoPDS library. Note how there were many examples of the code which show how to use PharoPDS, but do not explain how bloom filters work.

Here is an actual source for the filter: [0], and here is a GUI code which draws the grid: [1]

I am pleasantly surprised -- some Smalltalks used to be incomprehensible in github; but looks like Pharo gets this right and produces human-readable files.

[0] [https://github.com/osoco/PharoPDS/blob/master/src/PDS- Core/P...](https://github.com/osoco/PharoPDS/blob/master/src/PDS- Core/PDSBloomFilter.class.st)

[1] [https://github.com/osoco/PharoPDS/blob/master/src/PDS- Playgr...](https://github.com/osoco/PharoPDS/blob/master/src/PDS- Playground/PDSBloomFilterPlaygroundContent.class.st)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That was an excellent explanation - regardless of your experience with Pharo (in my case it was none). Real world use cases and visual examples coupled with pretty clear language.

I had heard of bloom filters before but hadn't studies them in any detail.

</comment><comment><USER7> I also implemented once in python [0].

[0]: [https://github.com/m00dy/BloomFilter](https://github.com/m00dy/BloomFilter)</comment>


Mobile marke in India - <AUTHOR>

Seeing Xiomi and Motorola boom in market of India, can we predict samsung extinction? <comment><USER2> No, Samsung is not going anywhere anytime soon. There are other local players like Micromax, Spice and Karbonn. With AndroidOne initiative, these players will be able to produce less expensive but powerful Android phones pretty soon. The Indian smartphone market is wide and open with a lot of potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> As i am seeing Samsung, most of there devices are same in looks, so its losing brand value as far as i see. Also samsung is not reinventing anything new in there devices. Definitely Micromax, Spice and Karbonn will get some market once AndroidOne come in the mareket, but they are not still brands. you are correct Indian smartphone is wide market and lot of potential will be there.</comment></comment>


Reeder for Mac Released - <AUTHOR> http://madeatgloria.com/brewery/silvio/reeder

<comment><USER2> Two very important things you should fix:

1.) Stop that animation! It gives headache while reading your app summary.

2.) Screenshots should be there. EDIT: Specially because after download, all I see is a login box. So even after downloading the app, I have no clue what I'm getting at.

EDIT: The animation also gives my Mac a stroke.

EDIT: After trying to use your app. Where do I register? I tried putting random stuff and it says "Google Reader login failed". So is this about Google Reader by any chance?

<comment><USER3> I agree. I'm not downloading a random app that doesn't give me any sense of what it does, or is for.

It's easy and respectful to your prospective users to at least include a screenshot and maybe a paragraph describing an app.

<comment><USER4> This looks like some kind of beta release. Presumably the people who are interested in it are those who already use Reeder on the iPhone or iPad (Reeder is generally considered the best RSS client on those platforms) so I wouldn't be too harsh on the author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nicer if the download page has some screenshots of the features listed.

EDIT: I also had to download to realise that it wouldn't work on my 32-bit OSX 10.5.8. Could you please add more info to the site? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm assuming a feed reader here, but someone really needs to work on their copy and not assume I have any idea what your product is.

</comment><comment><USER7> It should be noted that this is still a relatively early beta, and not fully the "Reeder for Mac" that people may be expecting.

</comment><comment><USER8> The app is really nice, the only thing that bothers me is the sidebar when you have many grouped feeds and most of them don't have an icon. I wish it had something more similar to the iPad version (that I really really love)

<comment><USER9> You can drag the leftmost column wider to get a more traditional list.

<comment><USER10> THANK YOU for mentioning this. I didn't realize it and the Tweetie style block list was one of the only things bugging me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow - that site rapes my CPU. What is it with sites doing this? Do people not realise that it's really annoying/

<comment><USER12> "Do people not realise that it's really annoying"

Annoying like the decision to use "rape" for your issue.

<comment><USER13> Yes, please think about what that word actually means before you chuck it into a sentence.

I'm not saying by any means that it cannot be used outside of its dictionary- defined context, but sub-optimal CPU utilization probably does not warrant a sexual violence metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's quite nice, aesthetically. A few things:

1\. Using it a bit, it seems I just keep typing "j v space space space j v space j v..." If there was some sort of flow where it would _automatically open the web link in the preview pane_ instead of showing you the RSS feed item (and if you could advance to the next one by spacing to the end of it), I could just press "space space space space..." to read my whole RSS list, top- to-bottom, even when some of them just say something like "new page up! click to go there." That would be amazing, and totally worth ditching Google Reader.

2\. It currently doesn't have a Menu Extra (a system tray item). I'm used to using Reader Notifier Reloaded, which has a nice workflow if there are some items you want to immediately act on when they appear: you get a Growl notification on each newly-synched item, which you can click on to open its permalink + mark it as read automatically. If you miss the notification, you can click on the Menu Extra to see a list of the 25 most recent unread items, to do the same from there. I imagine this would piss someone off who has thousands of feeds, but if it could be filtered to only apply to certain feeds, or feeds with a certain tag applied in Google Reader—and if it could do something clever with them, like automatically opening them in Safari without giving it focus—that would be exceptional.

<comment><USER15> For point 1., Shift-J and Shift-K will go between the next item and load the page, so your flow would be:

      ⇧J ␠ ␠ ␠ ⇧J ␠

You could contact him about a preference to change the spacebar behavior between using "j" and "J", though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This site style always struck me as "what's wrong" with a lot of design heavy or "trendy design" heavy websites.

This approach to copy/design is OK when your business is primarily achieved through networking and you just need to establish a rudimentary web presence. When it involves selling a product, the minimal copy and lack of context is highly ineffective.

Regarding the App, I've never used Reeder for any app, I like what I see. I think I'm too used to Google Reader's web interface though.

</comment><comment><USER17> The app is really nice. It has already dethroned NNW in my dock. It'd be useful to have an indicator of what's happening when fetching feeds — like the one on the iPhone. There's a lag between creating the note, and having it listed in the notes pane. Are notes synchronized to a server or stored locally?

Reeder is my favorite iPhone app and I can't wait to buy reeder for Mac. Great job.

edit: notes are synced with Google reader.

</comment><comment><USER18> If anyone's still wondering what a Mac App Store app might look like, I'd say this is a pretty good candidate.

</comment><comment><USER19> It would be really nice if the website said or showed what it is you're actually looking at.

And the initial login screen? If it wasn't for HN comments, I wouldn't even know you're supposed to put in your Google credentials.

Good times.

</comment><comment><USER20> Needs some kind of feedback when it's talking to the google servers. The way it is now, you don't even know if you just didn't have any new items or if it failed to connect.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just wish it didn't sync with Google.

<comment><USER22> Except that that is the main point of the app.

<comment><USER21> Well, the main point is the beautiful interface that makes reading RSS fields hugely pleasurable. That Reeder syncs with Google is because the author doesn't want to maintain an RSS aggregation/syncing service himself (and who can blame him?) I just don't like using Google's services, so I am bemoaning the fact not that the author isn't HOPPING TO MY PERSONAL DEMANDS but rather that I don't get to use Reeder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It looks good, but I have no idea what it does.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does it support oAuth? It doesn't seem to.

</comment><comment><USER25> So beautiful.</comment>


You will randomly bomb technical interviews. Everyone does. Here's the data - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/you-will-randomly-bomb-technical-interviews-everyone-does-heres-the-data-44475806e32/ <comment><USER2> Trying to boil down years of experience into a few hours is never going to work. Interviewing, in its current form, will always be imperfect.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it important to know each and every feature of a package? - <AUTHOR> Is it important to know each and every feature of a package or can I get away with knowing just the basic uses of it and then google for stuff that I don't know about? <comment><USER2> It _is_ an enormous waste of time to know the majority of features of _most_ packages. Some packages that are "the standard", you will know more than others, but still far from memorizing most of the functionality.

It's just not worth the time. You should focus on the underlying languages since they transcend packages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Skim the docs. Come away knowing what it _can_ do even if you wouldn't be able to say off the top of your head exactly how to make it do that. Then go back to the docs or google when you actually need to do those things.</comment>


Social Autopsy: Fight Cyberbullying With… More Cyberbullying - <AUTHOR> http://exolymph.com/2016/04/14/social-autopsy-fight-cyberbullying-with-more-cyberbullying/ <comment><USER2> "Funny" thing is, what the author fears already happened with the website "Racists Getting Fired": [http://www.dailydot.com/technology/tumblr-racists- getting-fi...](http://www.dailydot.com/technology/tumblr-racists-getting- fired-fake-screenshot/)

 _The Tumblr-account-turned-agent-of-social change doxes people who post racist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted remarks to their social media accounts. RGF then shares their personal information so that followers can contact said bigots ' employers and get them fired..._

 _In fact, that's the exact tragedy that befell Brianna Rivera after her ex submitted a fabricated screenshot of her Facebook page peppered with racist remarks about Ferguson..._

So yes, this Kickstarter is/was a spectacularly bad idea.</comment>


The Farewell Suit - <AUTHOR> https://www.globalgradshow.com/projects/the-farewell-suit/ <comment><AUTHOR> _The Farewell Suit proposes a new type of hazard suit, fully compliant with hospitals' sanitary norms, to allow family members of dying patients to say goodbye, in the most humane way possible._

Global Grad Show COVID-19 initiative: Finding solutions to collateral issues of the pandemic - [https://www.globalgradshow.com/covid-19-projects/](https://www.globalgradshow.com/covid-19-projects/)</comment>


The future of MPC-HC - <AUTHOR> https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=174738 <comment><USER2> I would be fine if MPC just received standard updates to its 3rd party components such as the LAV codecs/splitter and such, because so far MPC-HC is the most stable, fast, and 'proper' video player available. A lot of people talk about VLC, but VLC doesn't even do proper color reproduction most of the time, while MPC just always 'does it right'. You can even load in your own splitters and codec components, like DirectVobSub. With MPC-HC, second you click a video, you're watching it, and its the standard of what to run for home entertainment already. Perhaps I can forsee issues with future codec compatability, such as h265, but I'm unsure if thats all handled in LAV, or requires some custom code to get it to display in the program right.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't MPC-HC just be uploaded to GitHub where it can be collectively administered. This way the process of forming a steering body will be transparent and open and, if hell ensues, people can still fork. Way better than letting it gather dust in the closet.

<comment><USER4> MPC-HC is on GitHub:

main repo: [https://github.com/mpc-hc/mpc-hc](https://github.com/mpc-hc/mpc- hc)

group: [https://github.com/mpc-hc](https://github.com/mpc-hc)

<comment><USER3> thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MPC-BE has several active devs with years of regular work being committed and looks a lot nicer which is reason enough for people to prefer it. Over the past year the activity of users has shifted from mpc-hc to mpc-be it seems, at least on the doom9 forums.

What I would love to see is someone make a nice Windows GUI player based on mpv but depending on your hardware mpv can be a real PITA to get working smoothly without experimenting with various backends so you don't have dropped frames or really fucked up output (my igpu notebook when using my desktops config just produced a green and LSD-trip style static image).

<comment><USER6> For me it works perfectly (on OSX) and what's more - it's the least resource intensive player among the ones I've tested, by quite a big margin. Which means you can play more video while on a battery (good for watching movies on a plane :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember Media Player Classic, back when it came as part of the K-Lite Codec Pack. It was the only way to watch anime circa 2004, with all of their wild codecs and subtitle files.

It was incredibly useful, and if memory serves I believe I got better performance out of it than VLC on lower-end PC's.

I eventually transitioned over to just VLC, however. The fact that I could just download it and play everything out-of-the-box without having to then download a bunch of codecs was very attractive. It had a portable version, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> when my htpc ran windows, this was the only player I would ever consider. years ahead of anything else, even vlc.

but the problem is, nobody who is a suitable contributor run windows nowadays.

every open source project must support Linux now.

<comment><USER9> Plus macOS, Android and iOS.

I think the reason VLC it's the moster it's right now it's their approach to multi platform and "out of the box" experience, with the user not having to worry about codecs and things like that.

<comment><USER10> Well this isn't true for codecs anymore. _mpv_ and many other players support many codecs out of the box. The reason VLC has become slow it they keep on adding features.

The whole application can pass off as professional video playing software. So many ways to play and so many places to play from that it surprises me everytime I open it (which is very rarely).

<comment><USER11> I would argue that mpv has pretty much a similar feature set like vlc. I use mpv to watch youtube videos. And expanded it with a lua script to be able to zoom in. Its pretty crazy what is possible with mpv nowadays.

<comment><USER12> VLC was designed (and, well, still is) as streaming media server. This actually causes some problems with regard to normal playback but also makes it really good as... well, streaming media server, something mpv can't really do well (and doesn't intend to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really hope MPC and madvr move to Media foundation. That is the future or anybody else who makes their equivalent or better media foundation alternative gets my money.

<comment><USER14> Seeing as they're free they probably won't make too much off of you.</comment></comment>