HTT Breaks Ground to Make Hyperloop a Reality - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/19/hyperloop-transportation-technologies-breaks-ground-to-make-elon-musks-hyperloop-a-reality/ <comment><USER2> Not even a working prototype and already planning the routes, entertainment system with AR and wifi; it tells a lot about their future success.

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if you're saying it's good or bad.

To me it shows a product-first thought process which is a good sign for me, assuming they have the technical talent to back it up.

<comment><USER4> No, it's a distraction from the problem at hand. They really shouldn't waste any effort on add-on items.

<comment><USER5> It's a distraction depending on the size of their team. The people building entertainment and ticketing systems aren't the same people as those building propulsion and safety systems. As long as they have enough manpower to implement the actual technology, fleshing out the business case and the revenue model is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Laser focus is required, and every distraction has a cost. I've seen teams scale up aggressively when their core was still weak, and it just makes bad worse.

<comment><USER3> I've seen what happens when a good product has bad business management/practices -- it goes no where. So if you've got leadership forging relationships, finding cool ways to rope people in that you have a great vision and will be the next big thing, then you have a recipe for success down the road. I wouldn't assume from those few statements that the majority of efforts aren't actually making things work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thoughts on this map:

* There's a route from Miami to Orlando and a route from Jacksonville to Atlanta, but nothing connecting Orlando to Jacksonville?

* Connecting Phoenix to Albuquerque and Denver to Salt Lake City is going to be really goddamn hard (mountains) for how small those cities are (but no SLC - SF?)

* Spokane-Boise, but not Reno or SLC or Seattle?

* Boston? Baltimore? Tampa? Charlotte? Cleveland?

* Why is (tiny) Concord, CA even there?

But most importantly, it's huge! Doesn't it make more sense to start with a single route (IMO, Boston - NY - Philly - Buffalo - Toronto - Detroit - Chicago)?

<comment><USER7> > Denver to Salt Lake City is going to be really goddamn hard (mountains)

There's already a traditional railway that connects the two cities. The mountains have a bunch of passes through them.

The reason everyone flies is because it takes 15 hours and costs $81 one way per Amtrak on the California Zephyr.

Relative to a one way plane ticket with Delta which costs $157 and takes 1.5 hours. And while a $76 saving is pretty nice, is a whole day of extra travel worth $76 for you?

If you worked federal minimum wage (7.25/hour) you'd pay off the difference in only 10 hours leaving you 3.5 hours to spare... So it really doesn't make cost effective sense to take the train, only if you enjoy trains/scenery.

<comment><USER8> > The mountains have a bunch of passes through them.

True, but the passes consist of winding switchbacks (impossible for Hyperloop) and tunnels (much more expensive than elevated tubes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't looked into this concept as much as some, I have some questions...

What happens if the hyperloop train gets stuck, or otherwise stops between stations? If I understand the concept correctly the tube is low pressure, so even if an escape hatch could be opened, it would be unlikely that people could breath.

Additionally what happens if the tunnel joint or a train leaks, and a train travelling extremely fast suddenly hits a wall of air? Would the change in volocity be potentially dangerous?

I will admit that the hyperloop is no more dangerous (on paper) than air travel. But air travel has been made safe through countless human lives, will we have to repeat that with a hyperloop?

Last question, not about safety, what is the relative energy usage of a hyperloop Vs. aircraft and or traditional (slower) trains?

<comment><USER9> Not just those passengers, the whole system has to stop if there is only one tube because nothing else can pass.

Meanwhile airplanes can just pass each other and route elsewhere.

This almost looks like a half-way solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER10> Air travel is responsible for a very significant percentage of our pollution into the atmosphere, greenhouse gasses that are causing huge amounts of global climate change and will cost a fortune to adapt or fix. Any solution to rapid, high speed travel that significantly lowers greenhouse gas output is a very valuable thing, and certainly not a solution looking for a problem. The problem that hyperloop solves is high speed travel without gross pollution, something that no other solution has offered yet.

<comment><USER7> > The problem that hyperloop solves is high speed travel without gross > pollution, something that no other solution has offered yet.

Do you have figures or estimates on that?

How much energy does hyperloop use to decompress the entire tunnel, run the air locks, and move the trains? And are we assuming a perfect seal on every joint or are micro-leaks estimated in (e.g. due to weathering and wear)?

On a related note how does one maintain hyperloop? For example segment joint restoration, do you take the entire tunnel offline?

<comment><USER5> >How much energy does hyperloop use to decompress the entire tunnel, run the air locks, and move the trains?

whether it is more or less energy than it takes to keep an airliner aloft is kind of moot. Transport systems attached to the ground can be connected to the power grid, which is legally required to be at least 33% renewable energy by 2020. Jet engines can really only be powered by jet fuel, and exhausted directly into the stratosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a Carolinian I can't help feeling left out when I look at their proposed map. Even if this is just fiction at this point, I would be interested in hearing their reason for completely bypassing both Carolinas.

<comment><USER12> Well, it looks like they left off Boston?!? Given their graph, they are certainly making some routes pretty foolish.

Being in North Dakota, I'm not very amused either.

I do believe someone who expects to build a tube with no stops across a whole state is going to learn a bit about politics.

<comment><USER13> > someone who expects to build a tube with no stops across a whole state is > going to learn a bit about politics.

The entire thing is a pipe dream

<comment><USER14> This is the thing not accounted for in Hyperloop cost projection. It's comparing the whole cost of HSR with the system cost of Hyperloop. The bunch of HSR's cost is right-of-way and land acquisition, that requires a long and costly process that isn't going to disappear because of new technology. These costs should be accounted for in any Hyperloop cost estimate. Hyperloop isn't going to magically terminate any right-of-way and land problem. Especially in dense, urban environments. DTX, the rail tunnel access to Transbay terminal has an estimate cost of $2.5 billion for 1.3 miles. Getting to downtown SF via tunnel is gonna be super expensive for Hyperloop as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting at the first place I worked we did experiments on pipeline transport and we had a small test track in Milton Keyenes.

Sometimes when the pigs (the cars transporting the goods) got stuck the research assistants had to crawl into the tunnel to unstick them :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought the dream was SF / LA to NYC, how does that work with that map?

<comment><USER16> No. At least in the original plan[0] presented by Elon Musk, he indicated that anything longer than about 900 miles would be better served by supersonic air travel, which wouldn't require a whole new infrastructure. But for closer city pairs, you'd spend so much time not at cruising altitude/speed that the hyperloop wins.

[0] - [https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop](https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop)

<comment><USER12> "supersonic air travel" is really not going to happen unless NASA's sonic boom mitigation actually works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like their proposal to close off the ports of San Francisco, Oakland, Stockton, Richmond, and Redwood City so they can run their pipe across the Golden Gate just above sea level.[1]

The tube size seems to be increasing, with proposals now up to narrow-body airliner dimensions. That's probably necessary, but it makes it harder to put tubes in freeway medians.

Nobody seems to have a good solution to emergency escape. There's an assumption that vehicles can be pushed or driven to the next station. That's probably not good enough. Experience with subways and Eurotunnel indicates the need for escape systems. Emergency exits at the ends of cars, escape stations from the tubes, and emergency repressurization systems for the tubes will probably be necessary. Airlock doors across the tube will be needed so you can repressurize a section rapidly, without waiting to repressurize hundreds of miles of tube. That's all possible, but it adds cost. Remember, the whole point of this is that it's supposed to be much cheaper than maglev, because the tube is cheap and dumb.

This is a classic problem with monorails, too. Look at pictures of fictional monorails[2] vs pictures of real ones.[3] The real ones have bigger and heavier track. Single track sections usually have walkways, while double track sections can use a rescue train on a parallel track. Here's a list of monorail fires and evacuations.[4] Remember that Hyperloop cars are powered by lithium batteries.

At least HTT is trying to build a closed loop. Musk's prototype is just a straight run. Straight is easy for this; it's turns that are hard. Turn radius is the big constraint on high speed anything - route planning and land acquisition are very tough for large turn radii. That's why the Northeast Corridor rail system runs so slowly.

Maybe people will be more tolerant of high-G turns if roller coaster videos are played inside.

The Hyperloop system is probably buildable. It's the low-cost claim that may not hold up.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/19/hyperloop-transportation- te...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/19/hyperloop-transportation-technologies- breaks-ground-to-make-elon-musks-hyperloop-a-reality/#.zgu9sf0:8WRN) [2] [http://www.transfuture.net/transart/albums/userpics/10002/ci...](http://www.transfuture.net/transart/albums/userpics/10002/cityhall.png) [3] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Tokyo_Mo...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Tokyo_Monorail_Tennozu_Canal_1.jpg) [4] [http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/KimEd3.html](http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/KimEd3.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> surely some crafty 3d modeller has already made the plans for a hyperloop model set so 3d-printer people can play at home :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure Americans are going to give up driving their 15mpg SUVs and F150s when gas is dropping to $1.50/gallon

Maybe millennials or their children will finally think differently though.

ps. I really hope it was a marketing idiot and not an engineer that came up with the concept photo of the tube sitting lower than the bridge so ships cannot pass.

<comment><USER19> That looks like an artist's rendering to me. They appear to have done it to keep the bridge in the picture instead of blocking it, sacrificing realism for aesthetics.

Also, I don't think this is meant to replace cars per se. It looks more like it could replace shorter flights to me. For example, people could take trips to Las Vegas on one instead of going by plane.</comment></comment>


A woman wouldn't walk half-naked on the street, but she would on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.hotforsecurity.com/blog/4-things-every-woman-should-do-on-facebook-4753.html

<comment><USER2> amazing article. who wrote it?

<comment><USER3> According to the "About The Author", it was you. According to me, it's a low- content, highly SEO'd page. Flagged.</comment></comment>


Did 1995 Change Everything? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/thinking-sideways <comment><USER2> Some people might think "we need the Clintons back in the White House to get back to the go-go times in the 90's." This article is very subtly dispelling that idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> This book review didn't interest me in the book in the least. Most of the issues considered pivotal are best forgotten, and the reviewer offers little praise.

Tangentially, the author of the review, Louis Menand, is certainly qualified to review history. I highly recommend his book The Metaphysical Club about the origins of American Pragmatism.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's not the New Yorker's article title.

<comment><USER5> It's their HTML doc title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Needlessly snide:

> Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over" was the > headline in the Onion the month George W. Bush took office, January, 2001. > His Administration took care of that in a hurry.

One might remember that it was Al Qaeda, not Bush's administration, which attacked the United States, and that Osama bin Laden declared war on the U.S. back during the Clinton years, in 1996.

<comment><USER7> * restrains self from engaging in futile debate with perceived crazy right winger _</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to delete Facebook with a guarantee of the GDPR wipe? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to know how you can delete FB with the assurance they will do so under the GDPR regulations that require they wipe all data about you (I'm in Europe). When I go to the delete options, there is nothing in there about this compliance and I have no reason to think it is any different than how a resident outside Europe would delete their account without these protections. <comment><USER2> my uneducated guess would be, there is still no way to do so.</comment>


Get all your friends & web 2.0 services in one place - <AUTHOR> http://www.intuuch.com <comment><USER2> Great Tool!

</comment><comment><USER3> :></comment>


Thumbtack want's to be this Generations Yellowbook - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/05/thumbtack-wants-to-be-this-generations-yellowbook/

<comment><USER2> You should link their site. I wanted to go to it, but there was no link so I gave up.</comment>


The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.stereogum.com/2049762/the-first-sony-walkman-was-released-40-years-ago-today/ <comment><USER2> The UX of cassettes was very useful for sharing and swapping music or speech, and for resuming where one left off. Because of the linear tape, the cassette's "playback cursor" was stateful and independent from whether the medium was read-only or not. Playback resumed at (nearly) the same spot as it was last stopped, even if moved to a different player. Successor formats didn't have this property.

Interestingly, Sony emulated the auto-resume feature in some Discman CD players, and later it became common in car CD players, but there was no way to maintain playback position after swapping players. Later, MP3 players maintained their own playback state, but getting tracks on or off the device's built-in or removable storage was with file-based interfaces that connected to computers.

This stateful cursor functionality is only returning these days with URLs to media-hosting sites that accept timecode parameters.

<comment><USER3> I enjoyed reading your comment, and couldn't help but thinking how I miss this time. The joy of bringing something physical to somebody - a cassette, a vinyl - for their listening pleasure. The feedback loop from the act of giving and receiving. This whole idea of physical sharing made the music more personal and magical.

Nowadays I have shared playlist for family and friends, and it lacks magic.

<comment><USER4> I missed it too. So I went ahead and got an old, refurbished harman/kardon cassette deck after months of research about different cassette and deck varieties. Learnt about type 1 (ferric), type 2 (chromium dioxide) and type 4 (metal) cassettes.

And now when I get back from work in the evening, I put on a cassette whilst making dinner. Or when I have friends over. And I let them pick the cassettes, which is always rather exciting.

I listen to a lot of metal and classical music, so finding original cassettes (even the really nice metal ones) isn't that hard at all. Plus they're cheap! (Waaay cheaper than vinyl).

And if all that weren't enough, there are bands still putting out cassettes: synthwave artists (Taurus 1984), indie bands (Tvivler), and even pop (Sigrid)! And if I don't find artists I like, I can always make my own ;)

tldr: If you miss it, you can still go out get yourself a cassette deck and enjoy it!

<comment><USER5> > a lot of metal and classical music

I find this part of your comment interesting because I have noticed such an overlap among a number of people versed in music. I wonder if there is a good way to explain this.

<comment><USER4> It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with:

\- complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4)

\- variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts)

\- storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom, suffering, literature)

\- intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar)

\- mastery of musical instruments (particularly true in progressive metal, but metal drummers, guitarists/bassists and keyboard players tend to play at a very high technical level)

\- song length (like Seventh Wonder's "The Great Escape" at about 30 mins)

None of these individually are unique to either genre, but taken together, we can start seeing quite a bit of an overlap.

<comment><USER6> A surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of metal bands, and song writers have borrowed heavily from classical. No end of interviews with rock guitarists where they talk of listening to some violin piece and wanting to honour or duplicate in on the guitar. No end of albums with a rock cover of some classical piece, from The Agonist's a capella of Swan Lake through several Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc.

Not forgetting a good few borrowing from the folk canon, and I don't just mean late era Rainbow after Ritchie got his new girlfriend. :)

<comment><USER7> When I listen to Swedish death metal in particular, the tremolo picking and riffs, combined with the distortion (almost always a dimed Boss HM-2) almost sounds like a furious string section, somewhere around a cello-type sound. So many songs could just as well have been pieces of classical music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fond memories of Sony and the Walkman era. I worked part time for Sony from the mid to late 1980s while I was a student, paying tuition bills. It was a dream job for a consumer electronics nerd and budding AV enthusiast, getting to demo and play with everything. Sony was still king of CRTs with XBR line of Trinitrons consistently on top. (Back breakers to move across a room, BTW.) Their ES family of audio amps and reference CD players were generally well respected. Meh for speakers.

But back to Walkmans ... it was really eye-opening how multiple times per year they would release new variations in size and materials and features or just colours, and people would line up or pre-pay to get their hands on them. People who already had Walkmans, often. The brand loyalty was mostly deserved IMO, because Sony was really doing some original R&D.

Personal faves ... compact models in the drop & waterproof Sports line, especially when issued in non-yellow. The solar model was weird, and not super effective, but damn Sony was trying.[1] The metal, and great-sounding Boodo Khan with supplied headphones was also pretty slick.[2] But from a materials and engineering POV there were some gorgeous delicate little metal-body units and at least one was actually the same size as a plastic cassette case itself.[3] (It would expand slightly when you inserted your media.)

Long after I left Sony I tried to keep the brand faith with MiniDiscs for years. But the MD's time has also come and gone...

[1] [http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f107](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f107)

[2] [http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/dd-100](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/dd-100)

[3] [http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing this stuff.

It's hard to resist thinking of iPhones when you talk about people lining up to buy the latest model, even when they already have a Walkman. It makes me daydream about Apple looking like Sony (a bit bloated, a bit of a faded giant) in 30 years.

<comment><USER10> I'd say that Apple are already pretty much at that point, tbh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Although The Walkman was released 40 years ago, Sony had actually made something that will look familiar another 10 years earlier and was used on Apollo moon missions: [https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia- gallery/5254hjpg](https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-gallery/5254hjpg) [https://www.sony.net/Fun/design/history/product/1960/tc-50.h...](https://www.sony.net/Fun/design/history/product/1960/tc-50.html)

Incidentally, I only discovered this recently after hearing the Apollo 11 astronauts use one to play a prank on mission control while on the way back to earth. You can hear this at the amazing [https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/](https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/) (definitely works best on desktop not mobile)

</comment><comment><USER12> The Walkman is a classic case of how an entrenched competitor with deep pockets couldn't really stand in the way of an innovative product. I point this out because, whenever you come across an idea for a startup, you'd inadvertently find one or more businesses already built around the idea, sometimes with ginormous funding or income. Remember how iPod beat Walkman, Firefox gazumped IE, Zoom sped past WebX, stripe pocketed payments: Find the key pain points and try to solve them. Don't turn a blind eye [0] no matter how difficult they might be to solve, you wouldn't know it until you try.

To quote mittermayr from a recent thread [1]:

> _Don 't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. People > completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a runner-up, or > even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the products > I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the years > compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least ten > companies I can name at an instant that do almost exactly the same, yet I > still make money doing the very same thing._

> _Appreciate the invaluable advantage a market-proven idea brings and focus > on whatever its target audience lacks or loves most about the most-popular > offering. It doesn 't mean you have to copy something (where's the fun in > that), but consider this if you start working on something and then come > across someone who's done the exact same thing with good success. Don't give > up, use it._

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164873)

<comment><USER13> > Remember how iPod beat Walkman

No. No I don't. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

<comment><USER14> While the portable CD players from Sony were branded "Discman", they later used the "Walkman" brand for a range of featurephones (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i)) explicitly designed as music players. So you could actually say that the _iPhone_ ultimately beat the Walkman...

<comment><USER15> How I loved these feature phones. Did everything I needed, playing music later even e-mail also it was nowhere near as nice as Gmail. Youtube wasn't an option, but the sound quality was at least on par with my Pixel 2. Also phones were small enough to fit in every pocket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A mid-80s Walkman is central to one of my earliest vivid memories.

Among the gifts I received for my 9th birthday in 1986 were (1) An AM/FM radio Walkman (replete with the classic orange-padded on-ear headphones), and (2) a plastic kite with an eagle on it.

The following day, I walked over to the park nearest our house, stood in the middle of an open sports field, tuned my Walkman to the relatively new Australian rock music station EON-FM, and launched my eagle kite.

Fairly soon, as I stood there proudly flying my kite on what was a solidly windy day, the radio playlist transitioned into the intro to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.

To this day, I can still feel the visceral sensation of the buildup of that intro and the sound explosion of that opening guitar riff, and in that moment I knew what rock'n'roll music was all about.

I sometimes think back to that just-turned-9-years-old kid in the middle of that field, flying that kite and having his mind blown by rock'n'roll blasted through his brand new Walkman, and think "you're doin OK kid."

</comment><comment><USER17> The complete genius of the Walkman was that it featured two headphone jacks. Such a simple design decision, with such large ramifications. In total, the Walkman is a classic example of a disruptive industry: creating new industries and killing (or at least mortally wounding) old ones. I remember how terminally moribund the industry-controlled pop charts had become before mix tapes became a thing.

<comment><USER18> And like the white iPod ear buds that came twenty years later, those orange foam headphones were a status symbol. Simply walking around with them hanging around your neck made you cool e.g.; Marty McFly at the beginning of _Back To The Future_

I find it amusing that we went from relatively small Walkman headphones, to tiny little Apple earbuds, to giant Beats headphones as the status symbol.

<comment><USER19> Remember the old ridiculously huge cans from the 1970s with a quarter-inch jack? They're back!

<comment><USER18> That was my exact thought the first time I saw Beats headphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One super useful feature was "Auto Reverse", allowing you to listen to both sides of a tape without having to take the cassette out and flipping it. It came out 3 years later, eg in the Sony WM-7.

One thing I learned while looking into this now is that Music Cassettes (MC) have the magnetic recording tape, and then at both ends a "leader", which is much stronger than the thin magnetic tape, so it doesn't break when the end is reached. Furthermore, the leader is transparent, unlike the magnetic tape, and so auto reverse could be triggered by an optical sensor (this website claims that the WM 7 had an optical sensor - I thought Walkmen (Walkmans?) triggered auto reverse from the mechanical pull when the tape reached the end.)

[http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-7](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-7)

EDIT to add: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Tape_leaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Tape_leaders)

<comment><USER21> My Walkman senses when the supply spool stops rotating, and then reverses.

<comment><USER20> That's what I thought would happen. I really wonder whether the WM-7 actually has an optical sensor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool Don't forget the MiniDisc format that Sony also released years later under the "Walkman" brand - for a while there it was an audio storage format and playback hardware that briefly seemed ahead of its time. Sony, if nothing else, were technical innovators during their best days. You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.

<comment><USER22> > You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.

Hmmm.... Only later when they were marketing TV's?

Hated Sony for selling essentially the same TV with the same guts but leaving out one chip (for example) so that "Picture in Picture" required you spend an extra $500 on the high end model.

I always suspected it went something like this:

• Engineers describe the feature set they can deliver for a new TV.

• Bean counters determine it can be manufactured for $500.

• Marketing decide there will be three models: the F, the FX, and the FX+. Determine pricing will be: $800, $1200, $1800.

• Marketing aligns the FX+ model with the engineers feature set — cross off features to arrive at the FX — cross off even more to arrive at the F.

• Profit.

I shouldn't beat up on Sony though — all consumer electronics have been doing something like this since ... when ... the 1950's or so?

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

<comment><USER22> Thanks, yeah, that's been our Brave New World. :(

<comment><USER13> The bean counters don't set the price.. the market does. The bean counters are there to predict how the market will respond and plan accordingly.

If they weren't selling an adequate number of FX TVs at the higher price... they would lower it. I guess they didn't have to.

This has nothing to do with price discrimination either, which is when the _same_ good or service is offered at different prices in different markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Remember the cool kid having a Dual Deck stereo to make mixtapes. Having a rats nest of tape when one failed.

Then that evolving into whoever had good internet and a CD Burner. Eventually almost 'renting' music by returning a CD-RW with a new request list. Just how much Discmans would skip with Burnt CD's versus Legitimate ones.

To spending $500 on a 128mb MP3 player. Compressing Mp3's into tiny WMA's.

<comment><USER25> For an entity that's waged a multi-decade billion-dollar bloody and bitter war against music piracy, Sony certainly have been instrumental in its proliferation.

<comment><USER26> That's because the device group is a different entity than the media group. Unfortunately the media group made enough money to start dictating things to the device group which didn't single handedly ruin it, but definitely opened the door to the Korean rivals that weren't bending over backwards to stop consumers from using their devices.

<comment><USER27> It did ruin the minidisc, when Sony decided you couldn't get digital data from the disc.

<comment><USER28> there's an alternate universe where MiniDisc replaced floppies in the early 90s and became the main storage format.

<comment><USER29> Sony actually relased a slightly different MiniDisc for data storage with computers.

[https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/10304629860270653...](https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/1030462986027065345)

<comment><USER28> ohhh 1993.. I had no idea. I remember late 90s MD-data

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My first walkman was a WM-22, not that much smaller than the first model. My last was a WM-150, which was just a few mm larger than the actual tape in each direction. It felt amazingly elegant.

(Took me a while to find out the model numbers by looking at image searches... Sony always had the worst product "names".)

<comment><USER31> I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but several years ago I read that the original was a little bigger than pocket sized, so Sony had shirts with slightly bigger pockets made to demo it.

<comment><USER19> It was the 1980s. Everyone had huge hair, huge shoulder pads and huge pockets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Walking with music has completely changed my life. Can't imagine the amount of ideas I've had and steps I've taken listening to music. With music I can cross the entire city on foot and more.

footnote: do you remember when your batteries were running low and the cassette would start slowing down the music? ;)

<comment><USER33> >>With music I can cross the entire city on foot and more.

I'll play Devil's Advocate here and say that the Walkman marked the beginning of the end for people having spatial awareness and social skills in public places.

You've only got to look at all the people meandering through our city streets today; ears plugged with headphones, faces glued to screens –often walking along with other people but yet completely detached from them, barely conscious of the world around them– to see what the Walkman's legacy is.

Personally I prefer to listen to my music on headphones when I'm alone and at a fixed location, rather than bimbling around, getting in other people's way and with my safety compromised by having my senses plugged up. I've actually seen cyclists riding in traffic with cycling helmets on [y'know, for the safety!] but also wearing headphones. Makes me cringe every time I pass one, knowing they've purposely cutting out the sounds of the traffic around them.

<comment><USER34> Marillion presciently commented on that with these lyrics:

"Sheathed within the Walkman wearing the halo of distortion

Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation"

<comment><USER35> > Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation"

Now _that_ is a lyric, goddamn.

<comment><USER34> And there's more where that came from...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The article links to a very funny video of today's kids trying to figure out a Walkman:

[https://www.stereogum.com/1675629/watch-kids-try-to-use-a- wa...](https://www.stereogum.com/1675629/watch-kids-try-to-use-a-walkman-for- the-first-time/video/)

It's surprising to see how challenging the Walkman UI is to a complete novice.

<comment><USER37> Not many UIs are intuitive.

I once tried to use a clickwheel iPod whilst my collleague was in a shop. I had to give up and revert to the car stereo for music.

The majority of UX enlightenment comes from demonstration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I remember after they came out with portable CD players, at first lacking any sort of skip protection it was pretty much unusable for any action sports.

At the time I enjoyed snowboarding at a local ski hill and I used my Walkman well into the life cycle of CDs making remixes of all my favorites tracks off CD's onto one cassette to listen to for the snowboarding session.

Best part, no skipping! (This was around 1997)

Some of the later Anti-Skip that was like 45-60 seconds would be doable, unless you are going over some moguls but for cruising without much hopping/tricks I'm sure some Anti-Skip in the 30s range would have sufficed.

</comment><comment><USER39> >It's weird to think that, in the years before the Walkman, there was no way to listen to music privately while out in public. There were ways to bring music with you — on transistor radios, on boom boxes, on car stereos — but they forced you to subject everyone around you to that music, as well.

No, the mono earpiece was a common thing with many transistor radios from the 60's. They didn't have stereo, no, so they didn't accomodate 2-ear pods or headphones.

</comment><comment><USER40> This will probably get buried but does anyone remember having to flip the tape over and the experience associated with the album in doing that? For example, on Metallica's Black Album, it ends on the first side Don't tread on me and then starts on the second side wtih Through the Never. If you dont know about the tape flip, you dont appreciate the beggining of "through the never" IMHO.

<comment><USER41> The vinyl flip required for Dark Side of the Moon really highlights the fact that the album is kind of split in half. Tracks on the first half smoothly transition to each other, but then have a hard stop before Money on side B. It's a really interesting case of music being composed for the medium.

I found a similar example in digital media only once so far, Pretty Lights Glowing in the Darkest Night. The first half of the EP sounds very distinct from the second, almost as if there is an invisible vinyl flip in the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> What is the current state of the art for music?

DVD-Audio was barely a thing ten or so years ago. After buying a B&W Zeppelin Air I was signed me up for their Society of Sound with very high quality 5Gb audio files for an album. My Zeppelin has since died. Is audio quality still improving binaural tracks?

The only time I've been really aware of audio quality was playing a Blu-Ray of an episode of Madmen.

<comment><USER43> Everything since CD audio has been either the same quality or worse. Increasing the sampling rate does nothing but encode ultrasonics which are at best inaudible and at worst introduce additional harmonic distortion into the audible frequencies. 16 bit samples with dithering are well beyond the dynamic range limits of human hearing.

<comment><USER44> SACD and DVD-A have more than two channels (or 4 if you could get a hold of a quad CD)

<comment><USER43> Well yes, but the person I replied to was specifically asking about 2 channel audio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Also this is how we saved batteries: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So)

<comment><USER46> In high school I worked for Kodak in photo lab doing the processing for all the overnight photos in Oregon and Washington. The nice thing is all disposable cameras had AA batteries in them and we filled up a few 50 gallon garbage cans of disposable cameras a night.

On my breaks I would just sit there ripping the batteries out of the cameras for Walkman batteries for my friends and I. I accidentally touched the capacitor for the flash once when taking out the batteries. Only made that mistake once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Retrospectively, I'm very impressed by the mechanical quality. I remember the compartment latch failing on some (non-Sony devices), but never the actual core drive, an this is with thousands of hours of usage.

<comment> King-Aaron The engineering inside a cassette player (both audio cassettes and video) always intrigued me. There's so much design and manufacturing involved for something that eventually scaled to meet a $50 price point. When I was younger I couldn't fathom how companies could afford to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Man the early Walkman was a magical device. I got a latter one and mine was barely larger than an audio cassette case.

The only access to music I had was from a friend whose older brother copied a seemingly random collection for us to have. Vangelis, The Violent Femmes, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Warren Zevon. I think I listened to the same eight cassettes for most of the following year.

</comment><comment><USER49> When I was in a record store a couple of months ago, three things occurred to me.

The resurrection of vinyl and the health of that market makes sense to me.

The death spiral of the CD worries me (my preferred format).

The fact that people are still buying cassettes mystifies me. Poor sound quality, low res art, serial access only, and quick degradation?

<comment><USER7> The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits. The format also has a lot of drawbacks. The records are large and fragile, turntables are relatively large and the whole setup is not very portable. Records are also very much read-only.

The compact cassette is small and rugged, tape players can be small enough that they are barely larger than a cassette tape, and most importantly it's trivially easy to record your own tapes, either as a mix tape from other sources, as a recording from radio or even with your friends in your small- time garage band. There is a damn good reason why the humble cassette tape stuck around in punk/DIY underground circles. For decades, recording to cassette tape and having them duplicated was the absolute cheapest way to get your music out to the world.

My own appreciation for cassette tape comes from growing up in the late 80s/early 90s. I didn't have a CD player of my own, but I had a cheap boombox with a tape deck, and a whole bunch of tapes from my parents. Classics like Deep Purple and the Beatles, but also a whole bunch of stuff they'd recorded from the radio, and various other random things, I had a whole bunch of children's books on tape, as well. My parents eventually gave me a tape deck with a built-in microphone and a bunch of blank tapes, and let my friends and me play around with it.

To me, the cassette tape (and the 3.5" floppy disk) was a cornerstone of my formative years, and I will always appreciate the versatility and possibilities the format has.

Vinyl is/was mostly a format for people with disposable income, it's the Big Serious format. In contrast, cassette tape was _the_ format for the common people, you can play around with it and experiment.

As for the CD, it's just an obsolete physical format for digital audio, which is much easier to distribute online now, rather than stamping and shipping shiny plastic discs. There are quite a few distributers that offer CD-quality downloads.

<comment><USER49> > The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology > that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits.

I think that was the start of it, but at this point it's spread well beyond hipsters. One of my kids bought a turntable and they do the same thing I did when I listened to records 30 years ago - lie on the floor and examine the sleeve and liner.

Aside from the large format artwork, I wouldn't underestimate the appeal of building and having a collection. People collect vinyl toys to sit on a shelf. Is collecting records all that different?

> There are quite a few distributers that offer CD-quality downloads.

Not really and the ones that exist are expensive and have poor selection.

<comment><USER50> > Not really and the ones that exist are expensive and have poor selection.

\- Bandcamp

\- Boomkat

\- Qobuz

\- 7Digital

\- Bleep

\- Juno Download

I buy everything I like (and it's a lot) in a lossless, digital format and the only time I can't find a legal lossless purchase option is when it's actually a physical-only release.

<comment><USER49> I just looked on those services for a few CD's I recently bought and Qobuz is the only one that had them. The price for a download from them is more than the price to get Amazon to deliver the physical discs to my door. For now, that doesn't make any sense to me especially since I actually want the physical media. It's what I listen to as I work. If I only wanted the files, then I would be on board.

<comment><USER50> Ok, I understand. For me it's different - if I have to get the CD (for example if it's a rare, old release - Japan has lots of rare stuff from the 80s on CDs) I only rip it and put it back on the shelf forever. I have no interest in the physical medium.

Admittedly, and somewhat ironically, it's only the most popular mainstream music that seems to be lacking digital lossless purchasing options. Even mainstream music like the stuff that gets featured on Pitchfork seems to be widely available these days.

However when you mention CD prices, you're talking about new/mint offers from Amazon, right? Comparing second-hand prices wouldn't be fair. Since I was surprised about your discovery I just took a recent rather popular, mainstream and widely available album like Cate Le Bon's "Reward" to compare prices. CD was the worst offer at € 16,40:

\- Amazon (CD): EUR 16,40

\- Qobuz: EUR 15,99

\- Boomkat: GBP 7,99

\- Bandcamp: USD 9,99

Also, never buy the premium quality at Qobuz. Their standard quality already is lossless 16 Bit / 44,1 KHz (CD quality).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Though I remember its introduction well, what struck me was _how much copy_ there was in that ad.

I think of textful ads as having faded out in the 60s (just look at the long essays that were ads from the 40s or 20s!) but really: would you read an ad in a magazine with that wall of text?

</comment><comment><USER52> I feel it's time for boomboxes to come back. Not purple medicine-pill bluetooth players, but big ol' boxes you can put on your shoulder and Fight the Power with 8" speakers. There was a whole movement around playing music _out_ , now we just inject it into our ear canals.

Nostalgia... or genius?

<comment><USER53> Personally I'm happy for it to remain as nostalgia.

I was at a campsite recently and the people in the tent next door had a playlist that was execrable. They weren't actually too loud and they adhered to the site's night-time noise cut-off rule, but their choice of music - massively different from mine - really degraded the pleasure of the camping experience that evening.

YMMV.

[Edit] Also, I am perhaps biased here because I am moderately deaf, and thus sensitized to noise pollution. Music makes it very hard to follow conversations, even with my hearing aids. This wasn't actually a problem at the campsite, but is a total conversation killer in enclosed spaces with hard surfaces (like many restaurants).

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Now I feel old, remembering when they came into the scene.

Never got to own one though, just clones.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have a D6C Walkman Pro -- bought in, I think, 1990 -- that still works (or did last I tried it, anyway, maybe a couple of years ago). Great little deck; with metal tape and Dolby C, did a fine job recording CDs.

<comment><USER56> I have one too, and I agree it's an amazing device, but a while ago I discovered it had seized up and stopped working - the fast-forward and rewind had been dodgy for a while, but both of them had finally given up, and playback had also failed.

I replaced the belts, which got playback working again (see picture here [https://twitter.com/chris_cannam/status/1043961675114840070](https://twitter.com/chris_cannam/status/1043961675114840070)) but ffwd/rwd appeared to be victims of a seized pivot which I couldn't get moving. So it plays beautifully once more, but still can't wind.

Might be worth checking that yours is still going ok, in case lack of use is a factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The problem with pioneers is that , they rarely move to next level, may be due to the thinking that "whatever" they have today just rocks and will "probably" rock tomorrow.

Few Examples :

Nokia missing the Android boat - thinking Symbian was great Windows missing the Mobile operating system boat - thinking Windows Phone OS was great Sony missing the iPod boat - thinking , hey we got Walkman , what else you need.

And the list goes on. A truly remarkable product always sees the end , if the visionaries are not ready to foresee whats next.

<comment><USER58> Apple with the end of the Mac and iPhone is next? ;)

(What's ahead is not quite predictable. It might be VR, BCI or something entirely different from either.)

<comment><USER57> If they keep ignoring that usability trumps over thinness , then yeah, they could be next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I recall my brother coming back from a trip to Japan with a top end Walkman in the early 90's. It was seemed to be all metal and so small. Was a mechanical work of art.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sony always seemed to be the premium or status brand when it came to consumer electronics, everything from portable music players to televisions and VCR's.

They always had competition from brands like Sharp, Pioneer, RCA, Magnavox, but I think the big hit came when the really cheap brands started to flood the market. Sony had the Discman come down to $99 for $349, but buyers were still going for the $39 units from Craig, Koss, Sanyo and such.

</comment><comment><USER60> The amount of innovation that has happened in the space in 40 years is just amazing to me.

From having to carry around boxes of cassette tapes that now fit in a small 2mm chip, to the wireless headphones with individual Bluetooth pairing that can recognize speech, to the live streaming of not just songs but music videos while on a moving train, makes me wonder how far we've progressed in such little time.

</comment><comment><USER61> > There were ways to bring music with you — on transistor radios, on boom > boxes, on car stereos — but they forced you to subject everyone around you > to that music, as well.

...and thanks to the Bluetooth speaker that era is back. Can't tell you how often I'm hiking or running in the mountains and some group's dreadful taste in music precedes them by a half mile.

</comment><comment><USER62> And I still have one that works. Big fat latching switches that you can activate blindly in the pocket of your jacket, a output that can actually drive headphones properly, ...

Sometimes I have the feeling we didn't really move forwards in terms of interface design.

</comment><comment><USER63> There're many songs I still listen to, that I listened on my walkman-clone. In most of them I can still "hear" the moment where the cassette stopped and I had to turn it around for the remainder of the song.

</comment><comment><USER14> disclaimer: listening to music using headphones while bike riding, roller- skating or skiing is now strongly discouraged (still acceptable while taking a walk or unglamorously using public transportation however).

<comment><USER64> By who, for what reason?

<comment><USER14> By the authorities, for the reason of your own physical well-being. In some places, it's even illegal: [https://www.quora.com/In-California-is-it-illegal- to-ride-a-...](https://www.quora.com/In-California-is-it-illegal-to-ride-a- bike-with-headphones-on)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I loved the RadioShack tape recorder. I used it as a little portable boombox that could play in my backpack and create a little sound bubble that would accompany me and my friends.

</comment><comment><USER66> Wow. That is really a major milestone. It change the scene. And also our view on Japanese hardware innovate culture (seems not software sadly). I love mini- disc more though.

</comment><comment><USER67> My first cassette for my first Walkman was "License to Ill". That remained my favorite tape of all time. The Walkman was flawless, too.

</comment><comment><USER68> Any idea what the hotline feature was like?

<comment><USER69> I was wondering this too - google found this

> a "hotline" button which activated a small built-in microphone, partially > overriding the sound from the cassette, and allowing one user to talk to the > other over the music.

and as the other poster remarks

> When the follow-up model, "Walkman II" came out, the "hotline" button was > phased out.

Was there ever an _actual_ use case for this, or is it pure gimmick?

<comment><USER70> Pure gimmick. My Bose QC-20s have this feature and every time I've tried to use it, it's been useless.

<comment><USER71> The Sony WH-1000XM series (possibly the next segment down as well?) still has this feature and I've found it good enough to be useful.

On planes it's simpler than pausing/removing the headphones to order a drink and the same in the office when you just need a quick yes/no from someone next to you.

There's also a passive mode I use when I'm actually outside with the headphones on. You don't hear engine noise or planes overhead but you can still hear tire noise of nearby cars so you don't get run over. If it's quiet you even hear footsteps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> My colleague has one TPS-L2 on his desk... I have an Atari 2600 game cartridge on mine :)</comment>


Gmail for Web is getting a major redesign, here's what it looks like - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/gmail-for-web-redesign-screenshots <comment><USER2> Dear lord why. Can't they just let it be? Why risk changing things when you have such a massive user base? It's not like there's a slew of users lamenting gmail's bad design or a major competitor threatening their market share.

</comment><comment><USER3> Remember this article, [https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my- email-be...](https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email- because-it-has-all-of-yours)</comment>


Blogging platform: Wordpress or Webby? - <AUTHOR>

I'm relaunching my blog and I'm considering two platforms, Wordpress and Webby/Webgen/staticfiles. I plan to use disqus comments for both, and my requirements include easy embedding of media and syntax-colored code.
Wordpress:
* Simple to set up
* Can write in HTML or use WYSIWYTYG editor. Can post from external clients that support Atom Publishing Protocol or Wordpress's XML-RPC. Can easily post from anywhere.
* Disqus plugin incorporates comment text into the actual page without javascript, so Google can index comments at my site
* Plugins provide relatively painless media embedding
* No good source embedding, but gist.github's secret .pibb format (http://gist.github.com/15914.pibb) provides a stop-gap solution, and I'm sure I could get someone to write a plugin to automate that.
* It's written in PHP and MySQL, and I hate PHP and MySQL.
* Since of course I will immediately become famous and widely read, Wordpress's dynamic page generation could be a performance issue.
Webby:
* More complex to set up -- I have to write posts, run the generator on them, and then upload them to the site. This can be automated, but it's still a higher level of effort.
* Can write in HTML, Markdown, whatever. Can write in my favorite editor easily. However, if there's infrastructure for the blog on my personal machine, I can't easily post from other machines.
* Disqus integration would happen via javascript; Google would index comments at the disqus page.
* Media embedding is more difficult, though a few custom template tags can make this easier.
* Excellent and very customizable source embedding.
* Not written in PHP and MySQL.
* Static files scale very well.
On the whole, I'm leaning towards using Wordpress, due to a lower amount of up-front effort needed, but I thought I'd get your comments, if you have any to offer. <comment><USER2> I vote for wordpress. I don't know about the source embedding, but Wordpress performance can be significantly improved through WP-Super Cache (which basically generates static HTML files, IIRC). I use WP-Cache, and that has worked fine for me through a couple spikes (5K visitors one day when I hit Hacker News, was also Stumbled, etc).

I think the main concern comes down to how important embedding source code is, and whether there are any good wordpress plugins that do that. I don't know the answer to that.

Also, Wordpress is relatively painless to backup, move between hosts, upgrade, etc. I cannot speak for Webby, it may also be solid.

<comment><USER3> Or, better, WP-Super-Cache. It makes static files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I might get flamed for saying this, but I really enjoy using blogger. I have my blog at a standard domain name, www.charlesju.com, and I have that domain name go straight to my blogger account. I think Blogger really provides everything you need for a good blog:

1\. Analytics through Google Analytics 2\. Some extra $$$ through AdSense 3\. Auto-saving editing for blog posts

I just go tired of having to constantly worry about upgrading my Wordpress plug-in or making sure I pay for hosting and all that jazz, I'd rather just let Google take care of that stuff for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd pick WordPress.

Sure, static files might scale better, but _handling_ traffic is not usually the problem for most people. _Getting_ traffic is.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd vote for Wordpress, just use a cache plugin which will generate static pages.

Unless you're going to do a _lot_ of hacking on it. Because if you don't like to work with PHP/MySQL and you're planning on hacking the internals a lot, you should pick a platform implemented in your language of choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> Webby is sort of cool for static sites, but it didn't make a good blog at all, for me at least.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wordpress - There are a lot of awesome free and premium themes to choose from.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wordpress all the way. Just use WP-Super-Cache. Scales very well.</comment>


9m.no – Short URLs for the Unicode Age - <AUTHOR> http://9m.no/ <comment><USER2> All the usual HN nitpicking and obscure edge case discussion should probably be done in the light of ehamberg's own comment: "This is a horrible idea in many ways and was a quick hack for fun." [0]

[0] [https://github.com/ehamberg/9m](https://github.com/ehamberg/9m)

<comment><USER3> All these people had to do was click "about" at the bottom and find this nugget from the author:

"Made slightly – but not completely – tounge-in-cheek by @ehamberg."

<comment><USER4> > tounge-in-cheek

"tounge", typo or some play-on-word I don't understand?

<comment><AUTHOR> That was indeed a typo. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://tinyarrows.com/](http://tinyarrows.com/) has existed for years and is actually shorter, i.e. [http://➡.ws/鷇](http://➡.ws/鷇)

<comment><USER6> Except you need to pick your own UTF-8 character to make it shorter, which is a pain because a lot of them are already taken.

<comment><USER5> no you don't, it's just a weird interface. Random UTF8 characters like the above example are generated automatically if you enter a url.

You _can_ input your own to have something like [http://✩.ws/awesometastic](http://✩.ws/awesometastic)

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call it a weird interface.

I would call it the one of the most confusing and idiotic interfaces I've used in a while. Or perhaps I'm stupid? That's how the website made me feel.

<comment><USER8> Seconded. Am stupid. Website made me remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While this is pretty neat, is there still a market for URL shorteners? It's been mentioned in this discussion already that Twitter does it automatically already - iirc, that was the main use case for shortened URLs. The other use case is gathering statistics (how many people clicked on my link), but the URL doesn't need to be short for that, a simpler redirect service would work just fine for that.

The final one is simple printable URLs which people can enter easily. That's also a valid use case I think, but mainly if you can create your own URL, i.e. shorturl.com/hackernews; a random collection of numbers and letters is hard to type in on a cell phone and easy to mistype.

<comment><USER10> Printable URLs are a good use case, but printed material has the annoying characteristic of lasting longer than your average web service, including URL shorteners. For printed stuff QR codes are still the most practical option IMHO.

<comment><USER11> The click through rate on QR codes is terrible. The two biggest mobile OSes don't have a qr reader installed, ordinary people don't know to download the reader and decode them, and even people with QR readers don't bother to open the app when they can just type the address.

Besides, most QR codes just point to a bit.ly URL anyway (It's a cheap way to track QR usage separately from direct traffic).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Short URL's have two purposes for me:

\- They are easier to spell on the phone (This is not.) \- I like to track the clicks (Which I can't do with this.)

But, as a proof of concept, this is nice.

OT: Oh, I'm turning into a real HNer with this comment.

<comment><USER13> Your comment is justified. When you think about why you use short URLs that is pretty much it. It used to good for twitter but now they shorten any URL themselves, you don't get any difference in remaining chars whether it's a 4 char domain or 40.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think risking url rendered as unicode boxes justifies the reduction of the url by 2 or 3 characters.

Nice proof of concept though.

<comment><USER15> Not only that, but since it will be encoded in utf-8 and then percent-encoded the number of bytes transmitted will actually increase:

something as simple as 邗諾

becomes %E9%82%97%E8%AB%BE , 18 characters!

Still, as other mentioned it's a neat idea that if widespread would make all kinds of encoding mistakes pop up :)

<comment><USER16> But twitter will only count it as two characters. (I guess.)

<comment><USER17> Twitter doesn't pay attention to URL length any more. They will force all URLs through t.co even if that makes them longer.

<comment><USER18> I've found that it doesn't like to shorten certain things, though I haven't quite nailed down what "certain things" are. I tried linking a recent blog post I'd done, which is at least 30 characters (along the lines of [http://website/really-neat-post-title](http://website/really-neat-post- title)), and when I pasted or typed it into the tweet, it wouldn't autoshorten and would consume those characters.

I find myself using goo.gl a distressing amount of time on Twitter.

<comment><USER19> The interesting thing about that is that twitter will still generally redirect it.

As an experiment some time ago I grabbed a random sampling of URLs from twitter's limited firehose - and found that on average they spread the user's trail across no fewer than 4 redirects before the final destination was reached. Some as many as 7 or 8.

I've stopped posting URLs to twitter, out of respect for my followers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the source code README <[https://github.com/ehamberg/9m>](https://github.com/ehamberg/9m>):

 _9m Unicode URL Shortener. Generates a shortcut from[http://9m.no](http://9m.no) using two unicode characters, e.g. [http://9m.no/പ湛](http://9m.no/പ湛).

The server will choose two characters at random from the all the printable characters and then cross its finger and hope you use a great font.

(This is a horrible idea in many ways and was a quick hack for fun.)_

</comment><comment> martin-adams I'll be screwed if I ever have to retype the short URL. So no good for printing on packaging.

<comment><USER21> Why would you rely on any free third-party shortener for print to begin with?

<comment> martin-adams Sounds like both you and I agree that it's no good for printing on packaging. I'm unsure why I'm suddenly defending its use.

<comment><USER22> As I read it, you both agree that it is no good for printing on packaging, for two different reasons. Your original statement, however, gave the unspoken implication that other URL shorteners were good for printing on packaging. It was that unspoken implication that he was talking about, rather than the directly spoken statement.

<comment> martin-adams >> Your original statement, however, gave the unspoken implication that other URL shorteners were good for printing on packaging

That's a very good point. Interestingly, I think this has caught me out in situations previously. My observation was typing non-English characters would be too challenging on the keyboard I use, and as such provided an example where that may be evident.

Having glossed over the other (more important) problem as whether to use a URL shortener was excluded from my assessment (but interpreted as acceptance). Contrary to that, I could decide to use this technique to shorten URLs on my own domain, where the issues I observed would still be valid.

However, I'll throw a counter argument to support using URL shorteners just for the fun of it. I may decide to use it when:

1\. There is a service-level-agreement that the service is to be operational for a set period of time (usually tied to a paid-for service). 2\. It is akin to me using a phone number redirection service (I pay a top up for the redirection), and as such, have printed this number on business cards. 3\. It is akin to putting a Twitter, Facebook or Linked In URL - all services that are free, and as such, have risk associated. 4\. It is akin to providing a URL with a domain maintained by a third party country - for example, Libya controlling the .ly domain[1] 5\. It may allow me to change the target URL at any time, keeping the content up to date. 6\. It may allow me to monitor click through analytics.

But, assuming you only wanted to use it only for online purposes, then you have the following considerations:

1\. Users don't know the target of the URL and may reduce trust. I know I've not clicked on shortened URLs of things I am unsure of the target page. 2\. What benefit does shortening actually provide? If it's visual real-estate, the link can still be long with a shortened label.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/08/bitly- liby...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/08/bitly-libya)

<comment><USER23>
        all services that are free, and as such, have risk associated

Pay-for services also have associated risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, I think this is awesome. If widely adopted it might to help ferret out all the software which still can't properly handle unicode urls (which is probably why it _won 't_ be widely adopted). :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Back when Gruber tried to do something like that in his @daringfireball Twitter feed, it was so incredibly annoying to have the links fail on all my mobile devices that I set up a Python script to convert the links and re-post them under a @darlingfireball account...

He recently posted about that not making sense anymore due to Twitter's URL shortener, but I don't have the link handy offhand.

</comment><comment><USER26> You should combine this with the trick Tinyarrows is doing since 2008: the domain name is a single Unicode character; I guess Punycode FTW :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I got [http://9m.no/𑂜൭](http://9m.no/𑂜൭) for my daughter's website, but I'm wondering whether this helps shrink character count when used for services like twitter. It's not at all readable, but since it's two (I think) 4-byte unicode characters, will that URL be counted as 13 characters or 21 characters?

<comment><USER12> Twitter "shrinks" URL's no matter what. My website link is is 11 characters[0], I don't know how shorter it can get.

[0] [http://bt.hn](http://bt.hn)

<comment><USER28> When is a URL shortener not a URL shortener?

[http://qntm.org/twit](http://qntm.org/twit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [http://9m.no/؞雅](http://9m.no/؞雅) ⇩ [http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com)

Kind of disappointed I got a two character code. Has he used up all the one character ones yet? Time to start a new domain!

</comment><comment><USER30> Added to Ohloh: [https://www.ohloh.net/p/nine_m](https://www.ohloh.net/p/nine_m), or to stay stylistically consistent: [http://9m.no/ꋅ곁](http://9m.no/ꋅ곁)

</comment><comment><USER31> I tried shortening a vanity domain of mine, and the asian characters can roughly be translated as "produce fire from the rays of the sun and break wind". I don't think I'll market that shortcut.

</comment><comment><USER32> What was your experience like using Scotty /Acid-State for this project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had briefly used Scotty before, but never acid-state. All of this is just the result of a discussion at work where my position was "oh, come on! it's not _that_ stupid!", so I just chose something I though would let me get a test site up and running really quickly.

I would probably polish it a bit more if I knew it would get this much attention, but hey! – it works, and uses almost no resources on the cheapest Digital Ocean account.

I recently saw some discussion about acid-state on Reddit, and it seems that the Hackage developers have had some troubles with it: [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/26405r/storing_data...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/26405r/storing_data_in_haskell/chnfl27)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Probably should block the same domain from shortening.else you'll get something like [http://9m.no/婀蒾](http://9m.no/婀蒾) (multiple redirects)

<comment><USER34> I created a simple url shortener[0] a while back and though I thought of this I hadn't considered people could add a '.' to the domain to get around that (so [http://yl.io/1](http://yl.io/1) becomes [http://yl.io./1](http://yl.io./1)), which somebody was nice enough to figure out for me ;)

[0] [http://yl.io](http://yl.io)

<comment><USER35> Care to share the source? I like its simplicity!

<comment><USER34> HN really needs to let me know when I get replied to :)

The source is available[0], can't remember if it's any good though. :)

[0] [https://github.com/buttscicles/yl.io](https://github.com/buttscicles/yl.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So, what would happen if I put in a url, then took the generated url and generated a shortened url on that and then did it again for about 1000 times?

<comment><AUTHOR> To give you a clue: This was a really quick for-fun project and I did not expect it to get this much attention. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> URL shorteners without privacy policy make me feel uncomfortable, but I guess it's understandable in case of a new and tiny project.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a great way of finding all sorts of bugs in your support of Internationalized Domain Names.

</comment><comment><USER39> Haskell <3

</comment><comment><USER40> [http://縮.jp](http://縮.jp)

</comment><comment><USER41> Didn't work in a tweet.

</comment><comment><USER42> why would anyone in the unicode age have to shorten the urls? (:

</comment><comment><USER43> krl.io son son

</comment><comment><USER44> 9m.no/鼞ϧ

<comment><USER45> [http://9m.no/끣⟲](http://9m.no/끣⟲) !</comment></comment>


Write CSS inside your JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/04/finally-css-javascript-meet-cssx/ <comment><USER2> This is basically jQuery for CSS. You need to manually update the stylesheet in response to events, instead of changing the state and having the virtual DOM do the work for you.

I'm really surprised the author went through all the trouble of making this, considering that you can handle dynamic styling via inline styles in React.

        class MyComponent {
          render() {
            return (
              <div style={{color: this.state.color}}>
                My Text
              </div>
            );
          }
        }

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really interesting stuff</comment>


Verbal-Exprejon: Regexes without any regex - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GuillaumeBadi/Verbal-Exprejon <comment><USER2> The Common Lisp regex library cl-ppcre has had this as a feature for a long time. The library uses a sexp-based format for regexes, but you can also use plain regex if you want. When you pass a plain regex to it, it will always parse it into the sexp form first. This gives you the benefit of both the compact standard regex form as well as the more readable sexp forms at the same time. For example:

        (cl-ppcre:parse-string "(?<!\\w)([*_])(.+?)\\1(?!\\w)")

Gives the following:

        (:SEQUENCE
          (:NEGATIVE-LOOKBEHIND :WORD-CHAR-CLASS)
          (:REGISTER (:CHAR-CLASS #\* #\_))
          (:REGISTER (:NON-GREEDY-REPETITION 1 NIL :EVERYTHING))
          (:BACK-REFERENCE 1)
          (:NEGATIVE-LOOKAHEAD :WORD-CHAR-CLASS))

This may look complicated, but it has to be in order to be able to fully cover all features of standard regex. I would like to see how complex regexes like this is represented using Verbal library.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's mine in Scala: [https://github.com/pathikrit/ScalaVerbalExpressions](https://github.com/pathikrit/ScalaVerbalExpressions)</comment>


Apple shuts down Hymn anti-DRM service - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/25/itunes-legal-silences-hymn

<comment><USER2> I've always wanted to be an Apple customer, since their products have such a nice fit and finish. The problems I have, though, are always with their excessive lock-in - and the FairPlay DRM is the least of it. As a person who likes to customize my technology, the lock-in really chafes.

Example: I [stupidly] bought an iPod without realizing how it would interface with my Windows machine. I assumed that it would work just like the cheapo $20 MP3 player I had bought for my 10 year old niece. But no, dragging files to a mounted drive is much too plebeian for Apple. Apple requires iTunes, since it's better at "organizing" my music, even though I have never bought anything from the iTunes Music Store. I tolerated iTunes as long as I could, but I eventually _needed_ my own podcatcher software and iTunes was getting in the way of dumping files onto the MP3 player. One of the most satisfying days in my life was when I installed Rockbox on my iPod and was then able to remove iTunes from my system.

I'd like to try an iPhone as well, but I don't think that I could stand the constraints on that either.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what anybody expected to have happen here. There's no truly legitimate use for Hymn: if you don't want to use DRM-encumbered tracks from Apple's proprietary iTunes store, don't buy tracks from iTunes. I don't understand why people believe they have the right to force Apple to sell things on terms other than Apple's.

This is nothing at all like attempts to shut down BitTorrent. Legitimate use is a fig leaf with BitTorrent as well, but it's a real fig leaf: you can download a Linux kernel with it. You can't "rescue" any legitimate content with Hymn; you promised Apple you'd abide by their license when you downloaded the tracks.

<comment><USER2> You do get into an odd legal area, though, when that license allows you to burn the music to a CD. Once the music is on a CD, can the license extend to say that you can't then rip the tracks, which is otherwise covered under fair- use? (Remember the controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" slogan that Apple itself used to sell iMac's?)

I know that the legal system doesn't operate under mathematic principals, but if I can legally transform from A to B and from B to C, why should it be illegal to directly transform from A to C?

<comment><USER3> Apple's terms are that you can burn limited copies to CD for personal use. Their imperfect ability to enforce those terms with technology is irrelevant to the iTunes Terms of Service and the Usage Rules.

If you don't want to deal with encumbered media, don't buy it. The original Hymn was a cool technical hack, and I salute it on those grounds. The "modern" Hymn tools are less cool. In neither case were they a "good idea"; it's hard to lament their passing.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My Google Analytics widget is now available for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://ryanbrink.ca/ga-today/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=link&utm_term=osx&utm_campaign=osxlaunch

<comment><USER2> Just bought this! Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a million! Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions on how I can make it more useful!

...and if you don't mind leaving a review I'd be really grateful! :)</comment></comment>


Diablo II Save File Format (Work in Progress) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/krisives/d2s-format <comment><USER2> Ok, but why?

<comment><USER3> The practice of reverse engineering something teaches you to be methodical and pay attention to detail.

It would be a great task to set a student.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to look for in a cryptocurrency? - <AUTHOR> Because the potential for price speculation, what would make a cryptocurrency robust? How would you choose where to spend your time (and GPU time) on right now? What are good criteria? <comment><USER2> Monero is ASIC-resistant. In addition to mining it with your GPU, you can CPU mine it as well.

I think a project that isn't run by a company or DAO, but instead by a group of developers donating their time and effort for a project they believe in instead of for a paycheck is a good criteria.

The developers for Monero discovered a flaw in CryptoNote which is what Monero is based on, and instead of exploiting it and secretly creating coins, they patched it and told developers of other coins affected by it to give them the opportunity to patch their coins before publicly disclosing it. I think that shows they're in it to make a great currency that everyone can benefit from rather than just trying to make a quick buck.

Monero is fairly mined: No premine or instamine to pay for investors of any company.

</comment><comment><USER3> High quality cryptocurrency have strong fundamentals.

Those that have interesting methods of creating demand tend to do well. Those that simply combine existing features and don't provide compelling use cases have difficulty sustaining desirable long-term market conditions.

A combination of small, medium, and large market caps may help provide a properly balanced risk and reward.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why we insist on tokens if we have blockchains. A blockchain renders tokens, whether virtual or physical, obsolete by replacing them with a simple scalar associated with an account.

</comment><comment><USER5> What I look for in a coin is

1\. significant development activity

2\. near-term upcoming catalysts

3\. relatively high "whale distribution" \-- in other words, there are holders that are wealthy and heavily invested at prices not too much lower than market price.

Unfortunately in the short term, I am bearish Bitcoin, so I am out of all altcoins and short Bitcoin.

However, if you find any interesting coins that meet those criteria, please let me know!</comment>


Show HN: WSL-Hello-sudo, sudo by face recognition of Windows Hello on WSL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nullpo-head/WSL-Hello-sudo <comment><USER2> thats very cool... just tried it out, works well...</comment>


Redis Geo - <AUTHOR> https://matt.sh/redis-geo <comment><USER2> Hello, I'm currently integrating, refactoring and fixing the original code, in the context of this branch: [https://github.com/antirez/redis/commits/geo](https://github.com/antirez/redis/commits/geo)

So far the code was simplified and polished, fixed (it did not returned the right set of elements in all the cases), GEORADIUS speed was improved.

On the other side I removed all the JSON things and the Pub/Sub (IMHO is interesting to subscribe to _areas_ to see objects entering/exiting them, not much to position updates since it's the same of doing PUBLISH+GEOADD from the client side).

Added: GEOHASH to return a Geohash standard string from of a given element, mainly for interoperability. I'm also adding GEODIST (to calculate distances) and GEOPOS (to retrieve latitude/longitude of objects without the need to query for radius).

The work will be available in the context of Redis 3.2, unless I get mad and merge back into 3.0, which is unlikely but not impossible.

EDIT: before of three days ago I was not aware of Geohashing at all, so if you have five mins to check the code, I'll be glad :-) Thanks. I'm pretty confident that it's ok now after I added a fuzzy test that replicates the feature (by brute forcing distance computation) in Tcl that checks against the Redis output, but still...

EDIT2: wanted to add that I'm very glad Matt efforts are not going to be wasted and we are finally merging this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Redis is damn cool. As an effort to better understand it and after reading through the Twitter in Redis example, I decided to see how much of a graph database I could create using it and Python ([https://github.com/emehrkay/rgp](https://github.com/emehrkay/rgp))

Dynamic Redis seems like a decent project and would make hacking core functionality fun and simple.

<comment><USER4> Loading plugins into Redis, a-la Dynamic Redis approach or otherwise, has long been discussed in the Redis community. Presently, antirez prefers not to destablize Redis (and thus damage its solid stability reputation) by allowing external code be run in it.

So, despite the obvious perks that we'll enjoy by side-loading our own junk, antirez's "Quality or DEATH" approach on this matter leaves no open questions about the possible inclusion of this functionality. There is, however, another way to get code running in Redis... it is called a GitHub Pull Request :) If you've thunk up something really amazing/useful and coded it, drop by the redis-dev mailing list to discuss it, maybe do an RCP and submit your code. No one promises that your PR will be accepted, but even if it won't make its way into the core, anyone will be able to use it nonetheless.

Another point worth mentioning in this context is that in order to even contemplate such a mechanism, Redis' core will need heavy refactoring of the internal API. This is by all accounts a huge effort that, if taken by the developer, is likely to postpone a lot of other important work.

<comment><USER5> As someone outside to redis development, I'd like to know: is Dynamic Redis _that_ more performant than good ol' lua scripts that it's worth introducing potential incompatibilities between redis instances deployments ? I stumbled upon the old discussion about adding a scripting language to redis, and the number 1 requirement was that additional code should be "migratable" very easily from instance to instance.

A related question: is there some kind of repo for "useful lua scripts that everybody could use but didn't make it in core redis (yet)" ?

<comment><USER2> Depends a lot on the kind of task at hand. For many things Lua is very fast, but not for implementing something like geocoding. On the other hand Dynamic Redis does not offer a proper API to Redis (I would be against plugins even if it was better in this regard, btw), so the assumption is that modules manipulate Redis internals in order to do anything remotely advanced, and you can't change a Redis internal without breaking modules, a constraint that we currently don't have at all: if the exported API is the same, we can improve Redis internals anytime without backward compatibility issues. This was crucial in the history of Redis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is unrelated, but I've been hearing great things about the readability and teaching ability of the Redis code for people interested in learning good C practices.

I knew/know C but have been doing high level programming for years. Would anyone suggest if I wanted to visit this source tree, I check out an earlier version (like 1.x) or just jump straight to latest stable or master?

<comment><USER7> The latest stable branch is an amazing show of readability. It's very simple to follow, and very easy to hack at if you want to try and manipulate structures to how you're wanting them.

10/10 would read through again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome. I've been using Redis -- naively, with hashes -- as a lat/lon cache for some path analysis on my website. Didn't even know this was out there, and can't wait to switch over!

</comment><comment><USER4> Indeed - and as we speak antirez is busily refactoring, merging, testing and extending it in Redis... happy-meter is off the scales here.

<comment><USER9> Follow along at home: [https://github.com/antirez/redis/commits/geo](https://github.com/antirez/redis/commits/geo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would love to know how this performs compared with analogous PostGIS operations on a similar sized set of geos.

<comment><USER11> It is a little bit apples and oranges. This is a simple point-in-plane index, PostGIS is a full-blown geospatial data modeling capability. PostGIS is going to be much slower but it is also doing _much_ more as part of the process so that it is useful for sophisticated spatial applications. PostGIS is not fast relative to comparable systems but this particular comparison is not fair because PostGIS is expected to do so much more.

That said, I have also implemented large-scale point-in-plane indexing systems, though not in a while. Per CPU core, you can encode and index around 20M geo-points per second if the implementation is good.

<comment><USER12> We're using Redis Geo to track customers who are "online" so that we can easily retrieve a list of users who are online and in the area. The user's permanent location is stored in a SQL database for permanent storage.

<comment><USER13> How do you deal with locations close to boundaries? Isn't that still a problem with comparing geohashes for proximity?

<comment><USER2> This is handled by the Redis implementation (and most others AFAIK). So it returns the right items regardless of the query position or the items position. Redis has tests in place for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i can only ask that this extension requires longitude and latitude in the correct order: x,y.

<comment><USER2> Somebody opened an issue about this too. While in the GIS world apparently this is the standard, outside the GIS world everybody talks in terms of latitude,longitude (y,x). So I'm not sure what to do. I suspect the majority of the users were not exposed to GIS systems, and that the GIS exposed users will check the parameters better, so I'm inclining in taking y,x in favor of the average person that like me thinks latitude,longitude is normal.

<comment><USER14> the issue is that you are now entering a different sector of technology, where there are already standards in place, and those standards are x, y, z ordering:

* mongodb geospatial extensions - [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/geospatial-indexes/](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/geospatial-indexes/)

* postgresql geospatial extensions - [http://postgis.net/docs/manual-2.1/](http://postgis.net/docs/manual-2.1/)

* geocouch - [https://github.com/couchbase/geocouch/wiki/Spatial-Views-API](https://github.com/couchbase/geocouch/wiki/Spatial-Views-API)

so, it isn't just GIS users who are doing this, it is also the convention across databases that support geo functionality.

i hope that you reconsider this, and don't go against what is both standard by committee and standard by implementation.

<comment><USER2> Oh if it's a standard among _implementations of databases_ consider this done. It will not be funny for people migrating from the module to the Redis implementation, but I can't be backward compatible with API that never entered Redis official code base after all... Thanks for pushing me into the right direction with your arguments.

<comment><USER14> thanks! i know that it is going to be harder for those migrating, but as they move into a more location-driven world, they'll ultimately be happier i think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dynamic Redis (which is a Redis Fork that lets you add modules to it) is a great find! Especially with the Geo module added.

I needed a limit parameter for the Georadius method because i wanted a result set sorted by distance in a large radius, but not have thousands of results send from the redis server to my webservers. Anyone interested in such a parameter can use my little fork for the Geo module:

[https://github.com/wouter33/krmt](https://github.com/wouter33/krmt)

<comment><USER2> Good idea, I'll add LIMIT. Makes sense to say I want N nearest elements with max distance of Y.

<comment><USER15> Great Salvatore! Could you make the max distance parameter optional? Sometimes i just want the nearest items, even though they could be on the other side of the world.

<comment><USER16> I feel like that is a fairly unusual usecase; plus you could just set the max distance parameter to the diameter of the Earth.

<comment><USER15> One of our applications has user generated content with a geolocation attached to each of the items. For several selections we want to show the top 10 nearest items. If they are only a few, the radius has to be very large to have some items in the result set.

Currently the Geo module only supports a range up to 20.000 km. So your idea does not work at the moment. I agree that those items are not really "nearby", but to be consistent through out the application it would be nice to be able to select without a max distance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've got a Docker image for Dynamic Redis that includes all of the standard modules, including geo.so: [https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/urlgrey/dynamic- redis/](https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/urlgrey/dynamic-redis/)

Github repo: [https://github.com/urlgrey/docker-dynamic- redis](https://github.com/urlgrey/docker-dynamic-redis)

</comment><comment><USER18> We've been using this since day 1 at our startup (well, at this point it's more like early-stage free-time group project). Very happy to see support from<USER2>
</comment><comment><USER19> I never knew that redis can be extended for geo. This is really cool.

I researched geodb a while back and I only found PostGIS but I recently found out that elastic search also supports geo features.

Shameless plug - This is the simple API I built on top of PostGIS [https://github.com/moo-mou/GeoGo](https://github.com/moo-mou/GeoGo)

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting. We could have used this ourselves, but ended up writing a way (circa 2010) for Postgres to be queried by MGRS (Military Grid Reference System: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system))

</comment><comment><USER21> I wrote an introductory article to the new Geo API. Comments are welcome :) [http://cristian.regolo.cc/2015/07/07/introducing-the-geo- api...](http://cristian.regolo.cc/2015/07/07/introducing-the-geo-api-in- redis.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a question that I haven't seen address in the article. Does the code always assume the "sphere" is Earth or can you provide geometric information for other geometries?

<comment><USER2> It assumes the Earth is a sphere, also the code is not designed to work well towards the poles, at latitudes less or more than -/\+ 85.

<comment><USER23> I work on a system that uses GPS data to figure out some metrics about roads. At that scale, the spherical model was not a useful approximation. It's been useful for drawing on top of Google Maps, but that's obviously because Google Maps chose it to keep straight lines rectilinear. The spherical model is a visually convenient model, but I don't think you can really do any serious calculations with it.

<comment><USER2> Redis Geo commands are mainly intended to solve the specific problem of indexing points into the earth and querying by radius. In this setup, the error we have currently is around 0.5% because Earth is not actually a sphere, but the good news is that fixing it should be just a very simple matter of using a more accurate distance formula: [http://www.movable- type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html](http://www.movable- type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html)

Since anyway the bounding boxes we calculate and the resulting areas we scan are larger than needed, so all the actual precision is in the filtering function that removes points outside the radius.

TLDR: It will be trivial to fix that later in a backward compatible way. Btw adding an item in my TODO in order to check if I can do it right now without compromising performances.

<comment><USER23> Having done both Spherical Mercator and Universal Transverse Mercator in my own code, UTM is something like 25 times as many arithmetic operations as Spherical. That's not to say I have the most ideal implementation, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hell yeah ! I've been waiting for this to be integrated into Redis.

</comment><comment><USER25> Some can ELI5 redis for me? And also this extension?

<comment><USER26> Redis is an in-memory "data structure server", in that besides simple key- value (think memcached) storage you can also have sets, lists, sorted sets, hashes and more. See redis.io.

This extension adds geo-specific commands and storage to the list of operations supported.

<comment><USER25> Interesting! Thank you for your answer. I have previously heard that people use that to do cache server for websites. How does that use case is covered by reddis? Also, what are other common use cases for reddis? Thank you.

<comment><USER27> What reading have you done of [http://redis.io/](http://redis.io/) ? What search terms have you used on your favourite search engine?

People here are generous with their time, skills, and knowledge, but your initial question and your followup makes it sound like you've not even tried to educate yourself.

<comment><USER28> Steve, you're probably talking to a bot, designed to collect some karma points, to be used for upvoting/downvoting some important article or comment in the future.

<comment><USER25> Ahaha lol whut?! Seriously, I'm asking questions because all I see are features but no real use cases that I could say that Reddis is useful. I think you may be a litle too defensive.

<comment><USER14> even though your account is only 5 hours old, and has only posted on this thread, i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

some uses for redis, as we use it:

* pubsub (publish/subscribe) - push information through to other servers on channels

* job queuing - redis supports lists, which can easily become job queues

* statistics - redis supports incrementing and decrementing keys very quickly and easily, allowing for real-time statistics gathering and reporting

hope that helps.

<comment><USER25> > hope that helps

Yeah thank you. That looks like a message bus, but with many more features than just a bus.

My account is only 5 hours old because I created it to ask my question. I am relatively here and I was just lurking before.

<comment><USER14> that's not including the very fast caching - so much much much more than just a bus :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Your Airbnb Host Is Feeling the Pain of the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/technology/airbnb-hosts-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> I bet this will have a huge downside effect on the economy (along with everything else). My and four other families are scheduled to go on vacation in May. Well, obviously, it's not happening. But pertinent to your article, all of our lodgings were through Airbnb, which we canceled!

<comment><USER3> Yes but now think of all that discretionary income you now have for something else. All that money that would have been spent on sports, concerts, etc.

Overall bad for economy yes, but some people may gain providing other outlets for that money.

Plus higher discretionary income renters will have if rents dip.</comment></comment>


China Claims More Patents Than Any Country. Most Are Worthless - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-28/china-claims-more-patents-than-any-country-most-are-worthless <comment><USER2> All patents should be worthless, the fact that trolls can come after anyone for uploading an app to google play store for fees and win because of some obscure patent is ridiculous. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4)</comment>