Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/blue-apron-stock-price-tumbles-below-1-first-time-2018-12-1027818501 <comment><USER2> Always seemed a strange business model. Appealing to people who "want to cook", but doing so by turning yourself into a production-line assembler. Like saying your want to learn carpentry, by buying some Ikea flat-pack.

What confused me (and makes me think I've overlooked something) is why nothing more interesting has come along from the supermarkets. In the UK at least, they're all online and deliver - but they all seem to stick to "buy your ingredients and we'll deliver them". I'd quite enjoy one that let you browse recipes and would stick all the ingredients in your basket - but then added some intelligence. e.g. You add the "roast chicken weekend meal" to your cart, and it asks "are you going to eat all that chicken?" For £5 extra would you like to add some bacon, creme-fraiche, tarragon, frozen-pastry & peas to enable you to make a lovely pie on Monday? Or asks "what's in your fridge" \- here are some recipes and prices for things to use it up? Could even add some intelligence - I don't like mushrooms, so when recommending a chicken pie and providing a recipe, switches something else into my basket & recipe (leeks are lovely). Or would further adjust the recipe - you said you needed to feed 8 at the weekend, so I picked the larger lump of meat, and have adjusted the cooking time in the recipe. Or "Do you own a pressure cooker, a freezer and have 2 hours free this weekend to batch cook some chilli" Or... basically Blue Apron and the rest seem to be trying to solve a real problem, completely the wrong way.

<comment><USER3> I think the biggest problem for me as a single person is the way most stuff sold in supermarkets is designed for family meals. Which is fair, families probably represent a significant portion of their customer base.

But it becomes problematic for me because I either have to eat the same meal 4 days in a row (or freeze it) or only use half of the ingredients and shove the rest in the cupboard, or throw it away because its perishable

I wouldn't mind a service that works out a set of meals you can make for the week that makes the best use of ingredients (minimises waste) and brings some variety.

I suspect the economics don't work out on it though

<comment><USER4> Some perishables like fruits and vegetables are terrible to buy. Cilantro comes in a massive bunch from which I take three sprigs, and its rotten in a couple days. Bananas are unedible until day 2, then I have maybe a 3-day window to eat all the bananas before they are flabby, brown, and mushy. Even if I throw a handful of arugula in every single one of my meals, its massive tub is barely half empty by the time it starts rotting in my fridge a week after purchase.

Even if I plot and plan to use all my cilantro in 3 days, all my arugula in 1 week, power through 3 bananas a day during my bunch's window of opportunity, I can still end up going out for dinner which throws everything out of schedule. Or maybe I forgot to pull out the chicken out of the freezer and into the marinade this morning, so there is now no point in cooking if I need to wait 2+ hours after I get home for my bird to thaw and flavor.

<comment><USER5> As someone who often cooks for myself, bananas are a pretty terrible example because you can literally buy one banana if you want. Perhaps I've been violating a taboo all my life, but I have never had a problem breaking up a bunch of bananas in the store.

Fresh herbs I agree. It's one reason I tend to grow them. [ADDED: There are also a lot of frozen and freeze dried options these days that I often take advantage of.]

There are lots of meats you can pull out of the freezer and put in some water for 30 minutes or so.

I'm actually sympathetic to your basic point but it's just not something I find to be a huge problem.

<comment><USER6> > _I have never had a problem breaking up a bunch of bananas in the store._

Ah, so you're one of _those_ people. Don't you realize you're condemning those poor banana bunches to an ignominous death in the dumpster? Nobody's going to buy a bunch with an uneven number on bananas. :(

Being serious though, I don't think you're violating any major taboo. I see people do the same thing all the time. You're actually performing a public service for all those people who _want_ fewer bananas but are afraid to split the bunches themselves.

<comment><USER5> TIL this was a thing :-) But then I've never been very good about rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After 10 years of marriage, my wife thought it would be helpful for me to start cooking, as she was getting stressed out with our 2 years old.

We used Blue Apron as the starting point.

I can't tell you how much time we save in planning meals and trips to the store. My wife doesn't have nag me about what I what I want for the week's dinner. The quality of the food and the time saved is well worth the price. I know there are some disadvantages about Blue Apron such as waste, carbon food print etc...

Cooking with Blue Apron is now extremely relaxing for me as I cook and just tune into NPR or teach my son to cook. Out of 100 meals I would say that we only had maybe one that was mediocre.

I suspect Blue Apron will survive as it will probably be taken over or bought out. It's kinda the leader of the pack and the market will eventually consolidate. It also helps that I might have helped I bought about $1000 discounted gift cards at Costco.

<comment><USER8> >I suspect Blue Apron will survive as it will probably be taken over or bought out. It's kinda the leader of the pack and the market will eventually consolidate. It also helps that I might have helped I bought about $1000 discounted gift cards at Costco.

I'm not so sure. Even most people I know who have tried Blue Apron tend to either regress back to not cooking or they "graduate" to buying their own ingredients and planning their own meals. It's not like grocery delivery is that different or hard to do.

I actually think it is pretty great as a way to build the habit of cooking at home and to get comfortable enough in your kitchen. But it only takes about a month to do that. Afterwards it's so much cheaper and easier to just handle the recipes and cooking yourself. Once you get a feel for proportions and learn some staple recipes Blue Apron adds very little extra value and a lot of extra headache (no flexibility in the menus, fixed proportions, etc.) So there isn't much point in doing it.

Also, their vegetarian options too often tend to either be carbs + cheese or bland vegetables. I'd much rather just make Indian food at home.

<comment><USER9> As long as you have low customer acquisition costs you can still have a large stable business like this. Look at huggies diapers, some kids spend a lot longer in diapers than others but generally it's a short but profitable window.

<comment><USER8> >As long as you have low customer acquisition costs

Blue Apron doesn't though. And it doesn't seem like they have much luck lowering their customer acquisition costs. There are a lot more options for feeding yourself at or below $10 per meal than there are for containing poop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Securities traded on a national stock exchange, regardless of price, are exempt from regulatory designation as a penny stock"[1]

Blue Apron is on the NYSE

[1]"SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION 17 CFR Part 240" [https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-51983.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/34-51983.pdf)

<comment><USER11> NYSE has minimum share price/market cap requirements, so Blue Apron will get delisted if this continues for more than 29 consecutive trading days.

i.e. It could easily become one.

<comment><USER12> What happens when/if a company gets de-listed? Search engine gave me below[0]:

"... company basically has two options. It can choose to trade on the Over- the-Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) or the pink sheets system...".

Some more [light] detail in linked 'article'[0].

[0] [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/delistingofshare...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/delistingofsharesowned.asp)

<comment><USER11> It's a bit more difficult to trade shares, and brokerages will often have restrictions on trading OTC stocks for retail investors.

It's also just generally a milestone that the company is really not doing well, so investors tend to sell and recover what they can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like grocery stores could easily compete with blue apron for much lower costs. Just ration the food they already have in stock in little packages. Charge a little more than you would otherwise for the employees time picking recipes and combining them into the packages. I would happily use this service at local grocery stores. But compared to grocery stores and cooking from scratch blue apron is too expensive for me.

edit: Blue apron is currently $7.50 - $9.99 per serving. I cook delicious food for myself regularly for less than $4 per serving if I make enough to have leftovers for a day or two. It really seems to me that grocery stores could eat blue apron alive with their lowered costs to provide this same service.

<comment><USER14> Some already do this [0] and it's 10000x better than Blue Apron/Plated/Hello Fresh. Also they don't have the same perverse incentives that BA/P/HF have. Kroger might make a profit off their meal kits but they aren't 100% reliant on that revenue, in fact I'd bet they don't really care that much if you but the meal kit or all the parts of the meal kit because you are still buying it in their stores.

[0] [https://www.kroger.com/b/preppared](https://www.kroger.com/b/preppared)

<comment><USER13> That's really good to hear. I don't have Kroger near me now unfortunately. I might contact some local grocers and suggest this as I really think this model of cooking could improve my quality of life significantly.

<comment><USER14> My partner and I have used it a few times and if we like a meal I record the recipe in Paprika (amazing recipe app, really love this app) and we just buy the ingredients "raw". It means we can adjust portion sizes, plan for leftovers, and alter the flavor as desired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recently subscribed to a different box service, which does all the food prep work for you (chopping/dicing/slicing, making sauces). It generally takes us 20-30 minutes less to prep, cook and clean over Blue Apron. IMO this is the main value prop Blue Apron is missing.

For me, Blue Apron is really only solving for time spent looking up a recipe. In most cases, I'm already going to the grocery store each week. So, where's the value in spending $80/week? If you can shave off the time I spend in the kitchen, that's what I want to pay for. I suspect most people subscribe, love the new recipes they would typically pass over from the internet. And then a month in realize "I'm not saving any time by doing this... I don't want to spend an hour or more in the kitchen tonight... Let's just get take out.".

Aside from that, Blue Apron's fulfillment execution is very wonky. Missing/Bad/Broken ingredients, late boxes (which spoil if not delivered timely), and excessive packing.

<comment><USER16> Name of service please?

<comment><USER15> Gobble

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks to inflation, penny stocks are now stocks that trade under $5.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pennystock.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pennystock.asp)

Also, penny stocks tend to be fairly illiquid with very marginal market cap and tend to trade on OTC/pink sheets and not on major stock exchanges.

So blue apron is penny stockish, but not quite there yet. We'll have to see if NYSE gives Blue Apron the boot.

<comment><USER11> The SEC actually has a pretty concrete definition of what a "Penny Stock" is:

[https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=f4effbf9fb932f767e...](https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text- idx?SID=f4effbf9fb932f767e3e6e2da08418f3&mc=true&node=se17.4.240_13a51_61&rgn=div8)

That being said, there's also the common usage of the term which blue apron arguably falls under.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Blue Apron is a perfect example of a company that has no moat. Anyone could compete with them -- other delivery startups, Amazon, grocery stores, etc.

There is also no obstacle to Blue Apron customers jumping ship to a competitor. That contributes to making a moat impossible, but it also means Blue Apron and services like it are probably going to be commoditized and forced into a race to the bottom on prices, so I wouldn't expect their future profit margins to be very good.

The only way Blue Apron can differentiate itself is by offering better recipes and better customer service than its competitors. But their competitors can easily become equally good at those things.

Overall it's not a good investment because even if the business manages to survive, it won't be able to make very much money for its shareholders. I guess you could buy the shares cheap and hope Blue Apron will be acquired.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe we're seeing now that burning up hundreds of millions in VC cash to try to acquire users with free meals isn't really a viable business model? After being annoyed hearing them on every podcast I ever listened to for awhile, I signed up for the sole purpose of getting free meals, nothing else. I have a grocery store a mile from my house, I don't need a startup sending me food to cook. I did enjoy the free meals, though! Thank you VCs!

<comment><USER20> The VCs don't mind, they got a great exit at the IPO. It's the employees and investors in the public markets that eventually paid for your free meals.

<comment><USER19> Thanks employees and investors in the public market!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat OT but do any of these services let you opt into deliveries rather than opt out? As someone who _might_ consider trying out a few meals now and then on a week when I'm not traveling/busy, the menus look appealing, etc. I'd be potentially interested. But I don't want to have to be constantly opting out and/or canceling my subscription (which I'm sure would get messed up sooner or later). It really is a dark pattern that makes me even less likely to use any of these services than I otherwise would.

<comment><USER21> I haven't used Blue Apron in a couple years but it used to be an opt-out dark pattern which was supremely frustrating.

<comment><USER22> Same with Sun Basket the last time I used them. I would order more if I knew I had the ability to start/stop/cancel my subscription online

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who's very un-knowledgeable about the stock market - is there something special about the $1 mark? Isn't it arbitrary how the total market value of the company is divided into individual shares?

<comment><USER11> You'll get delisted from the NYSE if you fall below $1/share or below a certain market cap for more than 30 consecutive trading days.

Being delisted is generally a very bad sign, and it becomes much harder for shares to get traded.

<comment><USER24> This is correct. To add to this, you will sometimes see companies attempt to avoid delisting by reverse stock splits (e.g., 10 old shares become 1 new share).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I once worked for their biggest competitor - HelloFresh - as a door-to-door salesperson and I have to say... the way we were told to pitch to potential customers was terrible. We were told to sign up the customer and then then opt-out of delivery for a period of 5 weeks so the customer forgets that they're still subscribed. The salespeople - mostly ~20 year olds - were also heavily exploited and the wages and commissions not paid. I'm lucky I got out quick because otherwise they pressure you to stay because most of your colleagues become your friends and they then peer pressure you...

I'll assume it's quite similar to BlueApron... but I don't know for sure...

<comment><USER26> A sales job will always be one of the easiest ways to get hired in the US, and also one of the easiest ways to go unpaid and mistreated for a long time.

It's rare than anyone buys from an outbound sales person anymore, especially when it's not very complex or important.

I'm thoroughly surprised that food service companies would go door to door to beg for revenue. That is far more desperate than spam emailing,

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I thought about doing some subscription cooking service before but I recently joined the New York Times free 6 month trial and I didn't know/expect how useful their recipe section is. Takes most of the anxiety of choosing what to cook. For those who know how to cook, I highly recommend trying it out and following their weekly/daily suggestions. With this and the grocery delivery services, it doesn't make financial sense to join subscription food services. Though admittedly, I was taught how to cook at a young age so it's easier for me to follow the recipes.

<comment><USER5> The NYT has long had a great food section. I also have a couple generations of their cookbooks. I understand how some people appreciate the greater structure of BA and its ilk but, as I wrote elsewhere, it's a pretty narrow use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honestly, it's just a lame business model.

It's sort of like when you see the college kid who doesn't know how to do laundry. It's amusing, but even the most inept and lazy individual doesn't need alot of time to learn how to fold pants. In the food space, if you have the money to have pre-packaged groceries fedexed to your home to save time... why wouldn't you just get takeout?

My wife did a personal chef business with a friend when she got out of school. They would cook meals for dentists and doctors and deliver it. The most insane customers even had clean silverware and plates delivered, and one asked paid a 5x markup for them to go to Williams Sonoma and buy a fully outfitted fancy Thanksgiving dinner, with place settings and all. (ie. "Make it look like the catalog, please")

Blue Apron appeals to some middle ground of harried people, but the customer isn't rich enough to pay a wacky markup for burgers and isn't getting enough done to save a ton of time!

</comment><comment><USER29> While I enjoyed the trial, the food was great, and the freezer packs they ship with the food have found a new life keeping things in my cooler nice and cold, i can't say that i'm surprised at all. Cancelling the service required jumping through numerous hoops, ultimately requiring me to call them to cancel.

</comment><comment> cde-v I love Blue Apron but get how they are not exactly profitable. Almost every single week they leave an item out of my box and the customer support resolution is to credit my account $40... for like a $3 head of broccoli. I am not complaining obviously, but yeah, fix the missing ingredients.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hello Fresh is down ~48% since its IPO in July. In that same period, Blue Apron is down ~70%. Blue Apron is doing even worse than the competitors.

</comment><comment><USER31> How well is papa Murphy's doing? I found it really odd that I get the ingredients home and then cook again. Now Blue Apron is just making a generic company out of the papa Murphy model. I don't find it attractive. When I saw that they are going public it just felt like a way to cash out of their short term popularity.

</comment><comment><USER32> I stopped using blue apron because I can't stand having a subscription to everything. I travel with some frequency and it's just a hassle to have to plan that ahead. All I want to do is order a box for next week without thinking about when I can cancel again for the following week.

</comment><comment><USER33> When the economy goes down, the first thing we stop spending money on is luxury stuff. See it as a sign.

<comment><USER34> This is a sign, but their entire business model is pretty much dead on arrival, regardless of how well the economy is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I considered trying one of these but I realized I'm not going to get _all_ my at-home meals (or any drinks, snacks, paper towels, etc.) from them. Which means I'm still making a weekly trip to the grocery store. So where's the convenience?

</comment><comment><USER36> Blue Apron customer here, family of two, three meals a week for the past two years.

I like BA a lot, but I don't see anything about BA that is unique to them. There's probably 5 other options in my area. I stick with BA largely due to momentum.

For those curious:

Pros:

\- No food waste. Grocery shopping inevitably resulted in large amounts of food getting tossed due to expiration (or even space concerns).

\- "Forced" variety. I have had a _ton_ of meals and ingredients I would have never gotten if I wasn't doing BA. Things I've never heard of and wouldn't know to ask for. Now that I know of them, I bring them into some of my non-BA cooking too. Part of this is just just breaking habits. Before BA there were about 10 meals I was making a lot - I liked them I know how, etc., this meant I was only eating the ingredients in these meals which was probably not "complete nutrition."

\- Learning a few "tricks." While the actual BA meals are cook by numbers, the specific steps often contain general purpose info. Random example: Before BA I never cooked with garlic, just never thought of it, but most BA meals use it. Now I use more garlic when I cook non-BA meals.

\- Portion control. If I cook from a supermarket (and buy in super market portions) I inevitably make more than a meal, and inevitably _eat_ more than a meal. BA means I make and eat the suggested amount.

\- No grocery shopping. I'm not a big fan of shopping and my wife hates grocery shopping, not having to do it is a plus.

\- Less eating out. BA isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than most restaurants I'd go to. Having already paid for BA meals encourages eating them at home.

\- Fast. The food isn't easier to prepare and certainly doesn't cook faster, but having exactly the right ingredients all together means I don't have to spend time assembling (or googling alternatives when I realize I forgot something).

\- Fun. I look cooking, and I like BA cooking. Probably not for everyone, but there you have it.

Cons:

\- Not cheap.

\- Bummer when you don't like the meal. (Rare, but it happens.) Worse when you _know you're not going to like it_ but it was you're only option. Example: The texture of kale bugs me and sometimes you can't get a meal without it.

\- Doesn't scale for guests.

Note: I don't buy the argument that BA packaging is bad. It's almost all recyclable. But I live in an area that makes recycling pretty easy so that might not be generalizable.

<comment><USER37> > I don't buy the argument that BA packaging is bad. It's almost all > recyclable.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order.

People vastly overstate the value of recycling, especially for glass and plastic. Steel and aluminum are about all that's 'good' to recycle.

For plastic and glass, it's only marginally less bad than going to a landfill. The cost to collect, sort, melt, and produce an inferior product is just too much.

<comment><USER38> Food waste has to be factored in. I can't help but wonder what the math for net energy consumption breaks down as when you're forced to buy x+y quantity of food when you only want or need x, vs packing material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> APRN's Q3 filings are ominous-- although margins are decent at 33%, they've never been profitable and their customer base decreased 25% Sept. 2017 to Sept. 2018.

</comment><comment><USER40> Loved it but quality problems continued to rise. Quality consistency is core to customer retention.

</comment><comment><USER41> Just reverse split: less shares, same market cap = higher price. wow no more penny stock status

<comment><USER11> Investors aren't stupid and realize a company doing a reverse split just to maintain the minimum share price is doomed.

See also: $HMNY.

<comment><USER41> then thats what the article should be about, not an arbitrary share price metric

<comment><USER42> It's a symbolic milestone, that's it. If a company's stock keeps plunging eventually you have to decide that it's time to talk about it, having it cross the $1 threshold seems like a decent time.

It gives an excuse to make an article and recap the events that lead to this situation. As someone who didn't follow this story closely it's useful to have this bit of context.

<comment><USER11> > It's a symbolic milestone

It's actually not symbolic at all, it's a very real (negative) milestone that has ramifications for the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Plated, and all the other food prep deliver services are a hack. A disgusting, wasteful hack.

Calling someone using Blue Apron a cook is like calling someone doing a "paint by numbers" a painter. I'm not trying to be a cooking snob but I get really sick of people praising BA/Plated/etc as some amazing concept or a huge time saver. It's neither, it's for people who want food delivery (as in UberEats, Grubhub, etc) with extra steps.

<comment><USER43> >Calling someone using Blue Apron a cook is like calling someone doing a "paint by numbers" a painter

>I'm not trying to be a cooking snob

Yes, yes you are trying to be a cooking snob. If you had said "someone who uses Blue Apron is not a chef" you'd have a point, but then again no one ever said that. Someone who cooks is a cook. Someone who paints is a painter. There is a big difference between cook vs chef and painter vs artist.

Blue Apron is not McDonalds, they don't make your food for you. They give you a recipe and the raw ingredients, same as finding a recipe online and buying the raw ingredients from the store. And then you cook it. As any normal cook would do.</comment></comment>


Automatic image categorization and tagging with Imagga - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/automatic_image_categorization_and_tagging_with_imagga <comment><AUTHOR> This article explains how to automatically identify, tag and categorize user uploaded images based on their content. Code sample included for Node.js, Java, PHP, .Net, Rails and more.</comment>


There's no such thing as big data - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/08/theres-no-such-thing-as-big-da.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The title is linkbaity but the article makes a good point</comment>


Multitasking, or Marijuana? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/multitasking-or-marijuana-170fff3ccf87 <comment><USER2> This is idiotic. For one it uses marijuana as a straw-person argument for stupidity. Then it cites a bunch of crappy social science to support the idea that multitasking is bad.

I suspect the author has never been anywhere near marijuana, or has very limited experience with its effects.</comment>


CERN wants to build the biggest, baddest particle collider ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/15/18183828/cern-physics-particle-accelerator-hadron-collider <comment><USER2> Again?</comment>


Show HN: Minimal Fibers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/basic-gongfu/cixl/blob/master/devlog/minimal_fibers.md <comment><USER2> Worth noting that ucontext is quite slow (at least on linux): [https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_67_0/libs/context/doc/html/...](https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_67_0/libs/context/doc/html/context/performance.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's slower than Boost Context for sure, but still around 10x faster than (ab)using Pthreads on Linux. Until someone releases a faster standalone C library it's still the fastest portable solution for projects like Cixl that can't afford dragging C++ around.

<comment><USER3> There's already many fast, portable, standalone C libraries for this. For instance, see table 1 of [https://www.gnu.org/software/pth/rse- pmt.ps](https://www.gnu.org/software/pth/rse-pmt.ps). The assembly code for a context switch is pretty minimal (on most platforms, it's just setjmp and longjmp) if you don't try manage the signal state. I would be surprised if there was significant variance in performance (other than whether it chooses to switch the signal mask). Additionally, many language runtimes directly support it without any extra effort on your part. So if you choose to instead use one of those language, you get a fast portable solution without needing to do any extra work to pick a support library (for example, D-Lang LDC, PyPy, Go, Julia).

<comment><USER4> I implemented coroutines for C with assembly [1] (x86 32 and 64 bit). I took advantage of the calling convention to cut down on the amount of state to save (4 registers for x86 32b and six for x86 64b). Mixing this with signals is probably unwise [2]. So far I've tested the code on Linux and Mac OS-X and it works (although I might not use it for C++ either).

[1] [https://github.com/spc476/C-Coroutines](https://github.com/spc476/C-Coroutines)

[2] In my not-so humble opinion, using signals _at all_ is not wise.

<comment><USER5> The shortest contest switch sequence I could come up on x86-64 is three instructions:

      xchg  %rsp, %rdx
      leaq  1f(%rip), %rax
      jmp   *%rsi

1:

It it expect the target stack ptr/ip pair to be in rdx/rsi and saves the current stack ptr and ip in rdx/rax. It does not save any register and uses gcc asm clobbers to instruct the compiler to save any other register.

Code at [1]. The comments about hacks and ub is because I'm trying to transparently propagate exceptions across coroutines, otherwise the stack switching us fairly robust (although GCC specific).

[1] [https://github.com/gpderetta/delimited/blob/master/delimited...](https://github.com/gpderetta/delimited/blob/master/delimited.hpp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly OT, but do people know of any good small language which compiles to C? I'm not looking for big languages like C++, Nim, or Rust, but something which is essentially just C, but with some minimal modernization, such as perhaps being able to import modules, and doing away with header files.

<comment><USER7> I think you want Zig!

<comment><USER6> Zig looks amazing! Thank you! While it doesn't compile to C, you read my mind that I actually wanted a C replacement rather than compile to C.

<comment><USER7> Great! Yeah, that's what I was guessing, glad that I guessed correctly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Commercial projects versus open source? - <AUTHOR> I find potential employers pushing open source (github activity, etc) projects a lot. I feel this discourages me from working on commercial (closed source) projects.<p>How does one balance closed source work while maintaining a "public" presence in the open source world. Time is so limited and splitting focus doesn't seem like a good plan. <comment><USER2> So the answer depends. If you are working in Enterprise America, then you have to start contributing to open source projects on your own and outside of your "day" job.

If you are working at a small company or startup that is using other open source projects/products, you can contribute to those projects to help improve your company and get paid to do it.

In the end, if you are hacking on something you think is neat or interesting, put it out there. The worse thing is no one notices, the best is you now have things you can point to.

Personally, I use a combination of all the above, yet I am the first to admit, I screwed up early on in that I used a company email/GitHub account I had to do most of my contributions instead of my personal email. Had I used my personal it would have made my contributions easier to track, but either way they are provable.

Either way, the more you put yourself out there the better. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> While working on a commercial project, you typically have to write some code that isn't related directly to the core business. This code can be open sourced as a library.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should not feel discouraged. If you consider the whole "white board exercise" you might think of open source github projects like that. Bits of code you can write to learn about bloom filters, or try comparing sorts. Also you can 'fork' an open source project and submit pull requests from it on Github.

But it does pre-suppose that you like to dabble in writing code in your "free" time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't worry about potential employers. I've done a bit of open source for fun. But now I can't be bothered working for free and would rather do commercial stuff for side projects. Happy to show a PE some of the code, but it ain't going to be on Github.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for slaying Apple App Store rejections? - <AUTHOR>

Finally got my app approved by Apple after a couple rounds of rejection/modify/res-submits.  The process was quite opaque at times.
Thought it would be cool to hear other's hard won tips and tricks.  There is surprisingly little NON-GENERIC advice online to demystify the process.
One anecdotal tip I picked up (your mileage may vary)
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
If you end up receiving a call from an Apple Rep after rejection, ask them straight up if they personally used/reviewed your app or not.
If they didn't use app, it is basically just a "developer relations courtesy call" and they will only be passing on some information that may help you re-submit.  They won't offer up this fact up though on their own volition.  So take it from me, better to find out at the beginning of the call so you don't spend a ton of time and stress explaining something they can't understand or take action on anyway.
Now, in the case where they had used the app, this was a better outcome.  They started out the same basic way, "we've rejected because so and so..." then I was actually able to explain some things, probe for some insights, and then get a second review without having to re-sumbit. </comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. No one?</comment>


Ask HN: Regarding UI's, need design advice. - <AUTHOR>

what's the best way to represent a list of data in a web UI?  an example being a list of pictures, or a list of contacts?<p>the only thing i can think of is by using a table, but i'm wondering if there's a more simplistic approach without all the heavy duty sorting, paging, etc of a table? <comment><USER2> I would say it depends on what kind of data you are displaying, how much of it you need to actually have to display, and what you want the user to achieve with the data.

What is the desired call to action when displaying your lists? Is there any way to guess what data the user is looking for so that you can sort the list showing the most important data first.

For contacts: Do you need to display all available contact information all at once, or can you just display the contact name (or picture) and have more details appear when the user clicks or hovers over the contact? Can the contacts be sorted after how frequently the user communicates with a contact? Can the user choose multiple contacts and then do some action with them, and how would this work when the list is spread over multiple pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the responses everyone, so here's the real impetus behind my post, i've had this idea brewing in my head for about 7 years, the idea is really simple: a collaborative spreadsheet that's easier and sexier than a spreadsheet and structured like a database. i don't like table views in general, for some things it's ok, like tracking finances, but there's got to be something more interesting. for the record, i've developed back end solutions primarily and i just haven't spent enough time contemplating UIs, but i know what i like and what i don't like.

i was reading an article yesterday on HN about the top reasons why people don't start their own company, one of which was that people would find multiple excuses so as to put up a protective buffer so that you could never finish (paraphrased), well, i've decided that 7 years is too long and this buffer must go, i must get this idea out there, not for the sake of necessarily making money (although it will), but for the sake of me needing something like this tool.

so lists can be very generic in nature, more rigid than say a spreadsheet, but certainly more flexible than a database. i would have data types like phone numbers, ipv4/ipv6 addresses, youtube links, enumerations, etc. datatypes could be created by certain users. i would have readily available schemas that could also be user generated: grocery list, to do list, contact address book, bookmarks, medical records, dj event list, my favorite porn star image urls, defect list, top 10 list, my favorite youtube music videos, product reviews, car maintenance records, etc.

since users could submit schemas, this would mean that the variations of lists and their layout could be different. i could imagine a picture list (i.e. photo album) much similar to a thumbnailed matrix view like all the popular photo sharing sites. but perhaps for something like a bug list, i'd want to have something akin to a table view, just because it's sortable, you could limit the number of shown entries, it's easy to scan from a human eye perspective.

but i'm not an expert on ui's. here's a thought, what if i could thumbnail every list entry type, and lay things out like a photo album? would a software defect list be interesting if it's laid out this way?

i guess table could be default view and offer something like a thumbnail view if there are imageable aspects of a record like a url, the user could toggle this.

i really like iphone's interface of having an alphabetically searchable index on the right side where you could skip, perhaps having indexes based on several things like the alphabet, date time, most commented, recently updated, most viewed, etc.

damn, i can see a custom jquery widget needing to be created.

anyone looking for ui work, i don't think i can pay much, this would be self funded, so when i say i really can't pay much, it's really not going to be much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just something to consider if you're dreading implementing sorting & paging: unless you're dealing with millions upon millions of rows, this can be done client-side:

[http://www.frequency-decoder.com/2006/09/16/unobtrusive- tabl...](http://www.frequency-decoder.com/2006/09/16/unobtrusive-table-sort- script-revisited)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for sending the link, i will take a look. i was actually using a jquery plugin called datatables:

<http://www.datatables.net/>

and from a UI perspective, i believe YUI has an infinite scrolling mechanism that does away with paging, but i feel it's still a little clumsy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lists make me think of <http://workflowy.com/> See if that solves your purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> i saw this last week, but i think this is no different than having a wiki that automatically provides some sort of flow for the unstructured text that i type in. i need structure, things need to be easily indexed, almost everything. i need to be able to perform searches on data like pulling up all ip addresses that i've recorded in my lists without having to type in the actual address.

i think workflowy is good for random notes, it's an interesting use case, one that i might use myself. and if you're suggesting that i look at the ui, i'll take a closer look, i think patterns are an obvious way to figure things out, however, i still think ui's are a bit behind relative to all the other technology out there.</comment></comment>


Confirmed: Flash Coming to Android Phones in June - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363274,00.asp

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't see that one coming (sarcasm).

It will be interesting to see if Apple & Co. do a reversal on their "flash ban" if this begins to dig into sales in the future.

If they do reverse, it will become a PR fiasco well planned out and orchestrated by Apple.

Apple will look like a hero by "working with" Adobe to bring this experience to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and Adobe will do something to "open" flash and embrace the idea of free standards.

Just a little Nostradamus tech prediction for you.

</comment><comment><USER2> When can we get Flashblock? I'd rather keep my Android experience Flash free thank you very much.</comment>


Show HN: Py-spy – A new sampling profiler for Python programs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benfred/py-spy <comment><USER2> Many thanks for building and releasing this. It's ridiculously easy to install (especially in virtualenvs) and very powerful. When I push '3' or '4', I get informative, stable output.

Minor feature request: an explicit 'pause' button would make it easier to copy file paths from the output. Ctrl-S is a reasonable alternative, but it's a little hacky.

Also, it would be nice to somehow eliminate time spent in poll() from the results. I'm profiling a server process and 99.9% of the time is spent in a poll function. Perhaps there could be an option to disregard time spent in system calls rather than user code. Most of the time I'm interested in profiling only user code.

(Actually, I've been looking for a reason to play with Rust code. Maybe I'll try to add these features myself!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Both of your suggestions totally make sense. I've created an issue to track the poll() issue here [https://github.com/benfred/py- spy/issues/13](https://github.com/benfred/py-spy/issues/13) \- I think that should be an easy fix.

<comment><USER3> I think a more robust solution might be to have counters for in-Python samples, outside-Python, and in-syscall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The adaptations of HPC-type performance tools to Python and called non-Python, specifically parallel, libraries might be of interest:

TAU: [https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/tau/docs/newguide/ch03s0...](https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/tau/docs/newguide/ch03s09.html) Extrae/Paraver: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317485375_Performan...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317485375_Performance_Analysis_of_Para\\) llel_Python_Applications Score-p/Scalasca: [http://score-p.org](http://score-p.org) [https://github.com/score-p/scorep_binding_python](https://github.com/score-p/scorep_binding_python)

</comment><comment><USER5> The localhost talk for rbspy (the inspiration for this project) is awesome: [https://www.recurse.com/events/localhost-julia- evans](https://www.recurse.com/events/localhost-julia-evans)

Imagine it should also provide relevant insights into the structure of this tool

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really fantastic. I just managed to find a 3x speedup on a compute heavy job I run using Py-spy - there was an unneeded hotspot in a library I'm using that I didn't previously suspect. It would have taken a long time using kernprof to dig in through the call stack to find the issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a really great tool - the kind I didn't even know that I needed until I was given it!

One question, does anyone here know how to interpret the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) percentage display in the top-left? In my code, "Active" sticks nicely at 100%, but the GIL jumps around from 1% to 100%, changing on every sample.

edit: Now that I think about it, my code spends a lot of time in C API calls - maybe the GIL is released there?

<comment><USER3> Wow, it tracks GIL contention? Major feature for me. I use a lot of Numba, and it releases the GIL if you want — so threading is actually useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been enjoying pyflame from Uber - which the author quotes in their info

> The only other Python profiler that runs totally in a separate process is > pyflame, which profiles remote python processes by using the ptrace system > call. While pyflame is a great project, it doesn't support Python 3.7 yet > and doesn't work on OSX or Windows.') > Py-spy works by directly reading the > memory of the python program using the process_vm_readv system call on > Linux, the vm_read call on OSX or the ReadProcessMemory call on Windows.

I think ptrace is fundamentally letting you do the same thing in terms of how pyflame is using it.. and the same ptrace access permission governs whether you can use process_vm_readv

The real win for this project is a real-time "top" or "perf top" style UI instead of only generating flamegraph output. I love that feature, and will be particularly good for quick shot "what is this process doing" type info as opposed to specifically profiling some timeframe to analyse the resulting flamegraph (which is all pyflame let you do)

Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER9> "top" for python programs. Thats pretty awesome - not sure if this has existed in other traces, but the output is great.

<comment><USER10> If you're talking about the flame graphs, they're a fairly common feature of modern profilers. The oldest implementation I know of is at [https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph](https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph).

<comment><USER4> I've never understood why flame graphs are better than the normal presentation of inclusive and exclusive timings in performance tools, even if they're not "modern", but embody some decades' experience. Anyone care to explain?

<comment><USER11> I'm far from a performance expert, but my impression is:

It shows the call paths to the functions and what part each path took, that's not so obvious from the typical table. On the other hand, finding functions that are called quite a lot all over the place and add up is easier in the table, so it's not become useless.

<comment><USER12> The latter can be accomplished with inverted flame graphs (sometimes called icicle graphs) which show the call stack inverted

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh that's great - I had it up and running in 30 seconds.

</comment><comment> fake-name Does it support python multiprocessing?

Basically nothing out there does that I've found, and it's a really major pain-point for me.

<comment><USER14> yappi?

[https://bitbucket.org/sumerc/yappi/](https://bitbucket.org/sumerc/yappi/)

<comment> fake-name > If you want to profile a multi-threaded application, you must give an entry > point to these profilers and then maybe merge the outputs.

It basically boils down to (currently) doing multiprocessing profiling is a giant pain in the ass, you have to manually attach the profiler yourself if you ever launch another process, and every profiled process produces it's own output file.

It's not _impossible_ , it's just very annoying. I've been vaguely meaning to write a thing which attaches to the fork() call and automatically starts the profiler in the child-process, and handles aggregating all the results back to a single output when all children exit.

<comment><USER15> As a heads-up if you hadn't already seen it 3.7 added fork callbacks for stuff like this - [https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.register_at_for...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.register_at_fork) \- much nicer than patching-and-praying.

<comment> fake-name Yeah, saw that while looking about for atfork stuff.

Ironically, I was involved in [https://bugs.python.org/issue6721](https://bugs.python.org/issue6721) which is one of the major bugs leading to the acceptance of [https://bugs.python.org/issue16500](https://bugs.python.org/issue16500), which is the patch including atfork().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great!

I also took the liberty to add this (and setuptools_rust) to Arch Linux's AUR: [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-py- spy](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/python-py-spy)

</comment><comment><USER17> I would love something like that for Ruby :)

I am envious, well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out rbspy [https://github.com/rbspy/rbspy](https://github.com/rbspy/rbspy) (rbspy was the inspiration for this project =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wonderful. Can the data it produces be munged into something KCachegrind can show?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet - but I'm hoping to have a version that supports this next week. Will update this issue when it's done: [https://github.com/benfred/py- spy/issues/3](https://github.com/benfred/py-spy/issues/3)

<comment><USER18> Great, thanks!

And as a slightly different take than that of the person posting the issue - interfaces like kcachegrind are a pretty clunky (if powerful, in their clunky way) - the profiler coming with some built-in presentation and reporting of its own like the flamegraph and the realtime display is a big win and a serious deficiency in most python profilers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know if there is something like this for Nodejs? Of course you can enable profiling, but it would be nice to be able to look at running processes.

</comment><comment><USER20> Gave it a try, and wasn't expecting to have to execute via sudo on macOS. I almost never use sudo, so this stands out as quite unexpected for a developer tool. Is there something off with my system, or are sudo privileges always going to be required on macOS?

Edit: I pip installed it into a virtualenv, if that matters.

<comment><USER21> [https://github.com/benfred/py-spy#when-do-you-need-to-run- as...](https://github.com/benfred/py-spy#when-do-you-need-to-run-as-sudo)

tl;dr - yes, it's a limitation(?) of macOS syscalls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dangit. I was thinking of writing an AST inspector name pyspy.

</comment><comment><USER23> why the dash, py-spy vs rbspy?

<comment><USER24> Just a guess but remove the dash and read it out loud.

<comment><USER23> ?

<comment><USER25> It would rhyme with _crispy_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The best tweets from the #SXSW - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fanchimp.com/the-best-tweets-from-the-sxsw/

<comment><USER2> These are some of our favorite tweets of the event.</comment>


Predicting the Future with Google Maps APIs - <AUTHOR> http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2015/11/predicting-future-with-google-maps-apis.html <comment><USER2> Can someone please explain what this means:

> _up to now, [traffic predictions] [were] limited to Google Maps for Work > customers only.

> Today [...] we're making all traffic features in Directions API and Distance > Matrix API available under our Standard Plan, and increasing the waypoint > limit in Directions API for these developers from 8 to 23 waypoints. > (Traffic features and higher waypoint limits in the JavaScript Maps API are > available to Google Maps for Work customers for now.)_

Does it mean that the new traffic predictions, as well as the increased waypoints limits, are not accessible via the JavaScript API except for Google Maps for Work customers, but they are accessible to the general public via some other API? What is the non-JavaScript Maps API?

<comment><AUTHOR>
        Does it mean that the new traffic predictions, as well as the
        increased waypoints limits, are not accessible via the JavaScript API
        except for Google Maps for Work customers, but they are accessible to
        the general public via some other API?

It appears so, but they state "for now" so I'm guessing it will be available (hopefully) soon.

        What is the non-JavaScript Maps API?

There are Java and Python client libraries: [https://developers.google.com/maps/web-services/client- libra...](https://developers.google.com/maps/web-services/client-library)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I just thought about it this morning due I miscalculated the commute time from home to a far place I don't usually commute. Checking on traveling time last night didn't give me when factor in the morning traffic. I only wished if Google gets smarter so travel planning can be more realistic.</comment>


"Net Neutrality" vs. Internet Freedom - <AUTHOR> https://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts/net-neutrality-vs-internet-freedom?utm_content=64535715&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> The problem with Net Neutrality is when I signed up for Direct TV now and using ATT U-Verse Internet (owner of Direct TV Now). I was forced to leave ATT U-Verse because they didn't have an unlimited (bandwidth) option (at the time). So I switched to Cox Internet. If Att U-Verse was less neutral they could have allowed to stream the Direct TV Now without limit instead I had to switch providers to use AT&T's own product.

</comment><comment><USER3> "What people really mean when they say they want net neutrality is they want more broadband competition" (paraphrase).

No, no that is twisting it into the libertarian view that more freedom and less regulation means more competition which means lower prices and better service.

That transcript was painful to read.</comment>


A remote generator of password generator that can be memorized - <AUTHOR>

https://gist.github.com/jul/85fd7344a1e77975c641
So git stores commit with SHA1. Since my code has a meaning it will be difficult to temper. As a result the remote execution of
curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jul/85fd7344a1e77975c641/raw/43f839c043c767cbd5f7d987a58b6a364a38594c/gen_gen_pass.py | colour="smoke.txt" dst="genpass.py" python -i
should enable you to generate from remote source pretty securely your own password generator whose patterns are based on a text file (a song in your language in occidental alphabet is quite recommended) thus close to be memorizable while way less dangerous than the actual one. For less problem deploying the assets are including with the code.
If this is not the poor's man SaaS or PaaS, or the minimalistic SaaS I don't know how people make money :)
[to limit the dependency on archery with += _dict submit a patch or fork because it is annoying to do pip install archery] <comment><AUTHOR> Already generated 30 passwords generator, the result according to the input can be hilarious. Godsmack has an explicit lyrics songs that makes gross sounding passwords. Big texts (bible including) seems to be counter productive. Small corpus (even 10 sentences) seems to be cool. The exemple is made from deep purple lyrics (smoke on the water).

It makes nice yoghourt words with foreign languages :)

To whom does the IP of the generated data belongs to, by the way? Me or Deep Purple?</comment>


Visualization: Movies Are Getting Worse - <AUTHOR> http://moki.tv/blog/visual-evidence-movies-are-getting-worse <comment><USER2> Two things:

* I don't think polarization is a good signal for poor quality; I would rather suggest it means a more niche product, more highly focused. That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate.

* I think big-budget movies have been getting more conservative and predictable, but I would hazard a guess that it's due to financial industry turmoil and consequently less desire for risk taking.

<comment><USER3> "That the niche being served is largely adolescents is unfortunate"

Ever seen the Poochie episode of The Simpsons? The producers try to boost the ratings of Itchy and Scratchy by adding a ridiculous character designed to appeal to everyone. Near the start of the episode they hold a focus group (text from snpp.com):

 _Man_ : How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real- life problems, like the ones you face every day?

 _Kids_ : [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!

 _Man_ : And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?

 _Kids_ : [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!

 _Man_ : So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?

 _Kids_ : [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah, good.

<comment><USER4> > So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the- > wall and swarming with magic robots?

That actually sounds like the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I would have given any of several other examples, but you specified that there must be "magic robots", which narrows things down a lot.

The kids' desires aren't actually contradictory, if you've got the writing skills to pull it off.

<comment><USER5> I would say that Buffy isn't so much evidence that two opposed motifs can exist _at the same time_ in a show, so much as that they can exist in close quarters, alternating in a schizophrenic-but-enjoyable fashion. I don't recall many moments where I was thinking of any of the characters as both teenagers _and_ gothic-fantasy-world occupants (even in, say, The Body, you're just watching a well-plotted drama about a teenager; the vampires, though serving as setting elements, could be traded for mobsters or hospital patients or needy pets in that episode without affecting the theme.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I'd just been thinking about this. The last two new releases I tried watching were so bad that I couldn't finish either of them. I know this is only 2 data points, but they were both bad in the same way: they were completely predictable. That's something you commonly see in a declining medium. People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones.

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

<comment><USER7> To be fair, writers have been doing this for a long time...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_style#Similarit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_style#Similarities_to_contemporaries)

Did you watch The Social Network? Did you like it? I think we all knew how it ended, it was the writing, cinematography, etc. that account for its popularity. And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh :)

<comment><USER8> _And the fact that the writers stretched the truth so the story would be somewhat fresh_

Actually I'd argue that they changed the story to make it _less_ fresh, but more understandable/appealing to the non-tech audience. After all, who doesn't understand jilted love as a motivator? Whereas the "hacker's ethic" -- try something to see it it'll work -- is tougher to convey to a general audience.

(For the record, I thought it was still a great movie.)

<comment><USER9> Ehh, I haven't seen more geeky hacker stuff references in a movie so while it was given broad appeal at leas they retained a decent amount of the hacker feel to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article makes two huge assumptions:

1) Critical meta-ratings as THE measure of quality

2) The Top 20 popular movies per year as a representation of the entire year's quality.

The author's final result seems to be that movie studios prefer to make movies that have a built-in audience (at least for big-budget blockbuster movies).

<comment><USER11> Assuming the ratings have been made since the launch of the site, there's also a massive systematic error introduced by people being inclined to forget films they considered to be pretty rubbish a decade ago, whilst being determined to challenge popular opinion on the stuff they wished they hadn't watched last year.

Whilst people feel the need to use ranking systems to express their dismay at Avatar not being the experience they'd hoped for and correct their teenage daughter's friends' belief that the Twilight Saga is deep and insightful, it's mostly the people that actually consider themselves fans of Adam Sandler and Hugh Grant's stock characters that bother to go and rate Happy Gilmore and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although I agree with the statement in general, I have to ask: is polarization really a good measure of declining quality? With ticket prices these days, maybe a higher percentage of audiences are more likely to think it was good so they don't feel like they wasted money...

Either way, nice visualization and it's always fun to read catty reviews about bad movies.

</comment><comment><USER13> Its a really interesting article, but their methodology doesn't support their conclusion. I'm willing to accept critical rankings as a measure of quality, since I can't think of a better way of mapping the subjective notion of quality to a quantitative measure. There are still some dodgey things being done here though:

1\. Polarization as a measure of quality 2\. Choice of the top 20 movies as a selection measure.

The article should really be title: "Popular movies are becoming more polarizing". Though I concede that blogs like this are written to attract hits and "Movies are getting worse" is probably more likely to achieve that.

</comment><comment><USER14> Huge Moki.TV fan (<http://moki.tv/2481>). But also a huge movie fan. I entirely disagree.

Think about this years movies:

The Social Network

The Kings Speech

Inception

Black Swan

True Grit

Will all almost certainly become classics.

<comment><USER15> Don't you feel this might be kind of a cognitive bias? Like when people poll for the best album of all time and it's always something that was released within the last 3 years of whenever the poll was.

The social network is of it's time and will date really badly, to the point where no one will watch or mention it ever again.

True Grit is a remake so specifically cannot be included as it had to be good enough to have been remade.

Inception isn't ever going to be a classic a la The Matrix.

The Kings Speech will definitely have longevity; Black Swan I'm not convinced will float above just being another film you can pick up for £3 in HMV in a couple of months but then think "well, will I ever watch it?"

<comment><USER14> I chose these movies not necessarily because _I_ felt they were superb (although I loved them all) but because they were critically acclaimed and all received lots of oscar nominations. Almost by definition, they are the best films of the year.

If you compare it to nominated movies ten years ago, Braveheart, Apollo 13, I think they are comparably great.

Additionally, box office returns seem to be at all time highs. Black Swan and True Grit are two films that typically would be destined for "niche" audiences, but have returned hundreds of millions for reasonably small budgets.

Also, I think that Inception will be almost as influential as The Matrix, except in a smaller genre of films (eg: Matrix built upon action movies, whereas Inception was more of a psych thriller) - in my opinion.

<comment><USER16> I never found Apollo 13 to be a compelling movie. It's so true to life that you could just watch the documentaries and get the exact same experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One explanation behind increasing polarization could be the internet.

I would assume that there are more movie critics now, or at least critics are more visible. Thanks to sites like Rotten Tomatoes, even a local newspaper critic can have global reach.

Due to this visibility, it's harder for critics to stand out. The easiest way to stand out is to be extreme or contrarian which would lead to more polarization.

<comment><USER18> Your point is a very important one that I was surprised to find was not expressed by other commenters. It convinced me of something that was bouncing around my head while reading the article and the comments before yours:

If, as everyone seems to agree, movies are becoming more 'safe', more 'lowest common denominator' on average, reviews should be becoming _less_ polarized in response, not more.

That the opposite is happening suggests that reviews are progressively carrying less and less 'truth' than they once did, and this is likely the case even when they may be in general agreement on a given film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The appropriate measure is not whether bad movies are made; (or popular) it's whether _good_ films are still produced. There is some room for concern - mid- budget films for adults like, for example, 'Master and Commander' are essentially dead. The economics of film push studios to make blockbusters or low-budget films. Still, there are enough good low-budget films still being produced that I won't give in to despair just yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> > The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which > is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an > existing fanbase.

But according to the graph, Toy Story 3 was the least polarizing movie of 2010 and that seems like a prime example of a movie "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd argue that looking at polarization is a good way to detect such movies, but that not all such movies are polarizing.

<comment><USER20> OK, then what about The Blair Witch Project? One of the most polarizing movies on the graph, but not exactly what you'd call "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

<comment><USER21> > not exactly what you'd call "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase.

I'd say a film having a budget of $22k[1] is pretty safe, as far as the rest of the films on that list are concerned. While not a non-trivial amount of debt for a handful of people to take on, it's roughly in the same price range as a new car, which most people are capable of taking on.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project#Budget>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The 80s was the greatest decade for movies. Sadly I cannot prove that from this graph.

<comment><USER23> I'm inclined to think the 70s was the golden age of American cinema (Scorcese, Copolla, Cassavetes, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would extremely polarizing movies be an indicator that movies are getting worse? If anything, more polarization would seem to mean that critics are finding movies more difficult to come to consensus on, which could mean that movies are getting MORE complex and nuanced in their storytelling, which in tern could be taken to mean that movies are getting BETTER.

<comment><USER25> The reason extremely polarizing movies are an indicator that movies are getting worse is because that is what Moki's data shows.

Their graph shows that "polarizing" movies are strongly correlated with low ratings by Moki users (not just critics), and that both are increasing over time (i.e. getting worse).

Moki does not claim one causes the other, or try to psychoanalyze users based on their ratings. They simply note that it does exist.

<comment><USER24> Then I'm not understanding the definition of "polarizing". By my thinking, a polarizing movie would have distinctly good ratings to go alongside distinctly bad ratings, i.e. Twilight is not polarizing if everybody agrees it is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase._

Some people love death metal and some hate it. Some people love classical music and some hate it. Polarization is hardly a quality indicator. Indeed, it seems more like an indicator of memorability.

</comment><comment><USER27> _People recycle old ideas instead of having new ones._

IMO this is a weak argument - you could say the same thing about startups. When it comes to creative work, it's all about the execution.

Just because a story is being retold doesn't automatically make it bad. Similarly, just because a story has been told before doesn't mean you can't tell it again.

<comment><USER28> Robert Heinlein once wrote (On the Writing of Speculative Fiction) that, gimmicks aside, there were only 3 stories that were about people:

Boy meets girl.

The little tailor.

The man who learned better.

<comment><USER29> Which is Die Hard?

<comment><USER28> The man who learned better.

<comment><USER29> How so? Seems to me it's just "the man who kicked lots of ass". He certainly didn't learn better, since John McClane proceeded to find himself in similar situations 3 more times :P

<comment><USER30> Only if you are referring to John McClane. "The man who learned better" could be Alan Rickman and all the other villains whose ass he kicked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you look closely at the graph, notice that while there are more poorly rated, highly polarizing films, there is also an increase in less polarizing, very highly rated films... They're just hidden because your eyes are drawn upwards to the red. If you only pay attention to the red, it's just a chart about polarization.

</comment><comment><USER16> Polarization is a measure of the assertiveness of an artist.. the degree to which they have executed an opinionated concept for a specific audience.

A niche film should be as highly opinionated as possible, with the objective of both catering to your chosen market and excluding all others intentionally.

For example, the musical act Prodigy do not do TV performances. This is a mainstream marketing method that does not appeal to their audience. By avoiding it, they increase their appeal to their true fans, while ignoring uninterested listeners. Likewise, the singer Adele does not perform at music festivals for the same reason.

The ideal niche product would repel exactly half the critics and attract the other half. This would create a core of hardcore evangelists, a bigger group of fans, a big group of uninterested bystanders and a small group of haters. The haters and bystanders can mostly be ignored, making marketing super- efficient.

Lack of polarization is a measure of beauty and popularity. Beauty is a measure of average-ness and normality. The most beautiful person in a given society is the one that looks the most an average of all the people. The most popular movie is the one that everyone can relate to.. the most profoundly average.

Case in point.. the Shawshank Redemption. This is a movie that is consistently voted one of the best ever made, but it's highly rated because of its familiarity. It's a near flawless execution of common mythologies that everyone can relate to: fall from grace, redemption, justice, freedom and so on.

Toy Story is another example. Pixar's entire methodology is to distill the world's archetypes and mythologies down into the "perfect" movie with every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. The result is profoundly familiar, yet kept fresh with just enough plot twists and humour to keep it interesting.

Niche movies are just popular movies for specific groups instead of a general audience. Polarization is a measure of how effectively they achieved the goal.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's all relative, and trying to apply "scientific visualization" to literary criticism is not an especially useful activity. (Applying it to literary markets is another matter...)

Interestingly, I liked the Matrix sequels, the 3rd Spiderman movie, and thought the Star Wars prequels were pretty good (though not as good as _Empire_). And having been around at the time depicted in the latest Indiana Jones movie, late 50s early 60s, I enjoyed it tremendously.

I'm in my early 50s, and one of the things I've noticed over the years is that I become _less_ critical of movies and literature as I get older. That is to say I'm much more tolerant of elements in a movie or story that would drive me nuts when I was younger.

When you are very young, everything is new and wonderful, then you become an adult and suddenly you start to notice that "hey, I've seen this type of story before. And I liked it better then!" Of course most likely the story wasn't all that new when you saw it first, but it was new to _you_. There are very few truly new storie.

As you get older, though, you often start looking not at the flash and the surface of stories, but at the quality of execution, at the subtleties of exposition, and the nuance of character. You also can view the story in a larger context, both your own context, and the context of history. And, more importantly, you stop comparing the _qualities_ of works to the _feelings_ you had when you were twelve years old. I can tell you for sure, _nothing_ is ever going to be as much fun as whatever it was that was pushing your buttons when you were a kid.

As they used to say in old school science fiction fandom, "the golden age is twelve."

Sad, but true. In compensation, though, you do get a possibly deeper appreciation, and, if you let it happen, a broader range of tastes. If you had told me 30-40 years ago that one of my favorite genres would be josei anime and manga I would have laughed in your face; once you'd explained to me what that was...

Having said all that, the vast bulk of movies at any given time follows Sturgeon's Law pretty closely. Mostly shit. We remember the gems of the past and in aggregate they seem to add up to a larger sum than the current year's turkeys. I seem to go to the movies about as much as I did in my 20s and seem to be enjoying them at about the same rate.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and compelling stories.

It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the The Lord of the Rings. And the movies that are really good are ones with a great story behind them.

Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out at some point and all we'll get are sequels.

There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.

<comment><USER33> > I think its more that no one is taking the time to write great and > compelling stories.

Seriously? Pick up a book, that's so far from true it isn't even funny.

> It takes time and patience and a lot of effort to create a story like the > The Lord of the Rings.

Sure, and there's a ton of them already out there in the form of books.

> Hollywood seems to be just mining stories from the past. Its gonna run out > at some point and all we'll get are sequels.

You can't run out of mining stories from the past; more great stories have already been written than will likely ever be able to be put on film.

> There needs to be some infusion of creativity. "Contemporary" creativity. Ie > new but compelling and interesting stories. It seems to be a lost skill.

Or you're simply misdiagnosing the problem. Perhaps movies just suck more recently because exec's have gotten really good at shooting for the lowest common denominator to gain the largest audience and thus revenue.

Making money is not a guarantee of a great movie and great movies are quite often box office failures because they're too niche, by necessity.

The more the business folks pull the strings, the worse the movies will be artistically, but their goal is money, so they don't care, nor should they.

Movies will become great again, when Avatar style technology drives down the cost of making one to the point that making cheaper niche movies can be profitable.

<comment><USER34> Watching old movies like Star wars, Indiana Jones, old Bond movies, you get the sense that a lot of work was put in to creating the scenes. It must have been very expensive to make, was it because revenue was very high back then?

<comment><USER33> Movies used to be the only game in town; now there are actual games and the gaming industry surpassed Hollywood a while back. Besides, blockbusters have always been profitable, but with so many other entertainment options these days, viewers have choices they didn't in the past.

That Michael Bay movies continue to make big bucks is a travesty, but that's today's market. I'd much rather watch _Man from Earth_ than any movie he's ever made, but one can't deny his movies make execs lots of money by being dumb and going for every cheap laugh, big explosion, overdone effect he can think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Might want to mention that your chart works fine in Firefox 4 as well. The "Works best in Google Chrome" gives me eerie memories of the "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer" days.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know how they created that really nice graph with the mouseovers, filtering, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> We heavily adapted <http://moochart.coneri.se/> for the graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A bit over 25 years ago, I saw _Top Gun_ and told my girlfriend that people had forgotten how to make movies, though they did know how to make commercials and music videos. I don't think that I was wrong, but I may have implicitly given too much credit to the movie makers of years past.There were a lot of awful movies made during times that at least the film critics look back on with nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm not sure if I'm reading the visualizations correctly, but thankfully, they put Christopher Nolan on there, so I can have a reference as to whose work is best. ;-)

I do have to agree with AndrewO though, there are many movies that I consider to be of the highest quality that I would consider as eliciting heavy polar reactions. Primer is perhaps the best geek example.

</comment><comment><USER39> It probably hasn't helped that TV can now feature long-running complex shows (Lost, the Sopranos, the Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, the Office, etc) that 2 hour movies can't beat in terms of character exploration and plot depth.

</comment><comment><USER40> In other news, those damn kids have it too easy these days, had to walk 10 miles, bare foot, in 10 feet of snow, up hill...

Sensationalist title and a data visualization that's useless. Try average Rotten Tomatoes score or something, not some random stat with no formula made up on the spot. Seriously, what does "polarizing" actually stand for?

This kind of thing has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of it. Sorry, nothing to see here.

<comment><USER41> RTFA.

"We looked at how polarizing each movie is by measuring the standard deviation of the ratings for each movie."

That's pretty clear, even if it's still a bad measure. There are plenty of valid criticisms of this survey; you don't need to make stuff up based on skimming it before you post your predetermined conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The coolest thing about this is the visualizations. That's great work creating an interactive piece in HTML5.

</comment><comment><USER43> There was a great article about the decline in the quality of movies in GQ recently. [http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the- day...](http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the- movies-died-mark-harris?printable=true)

</comment><comment><USER44> As a bit of a tangent, I'd like to mention a movie ranking site I think is pretty underrated <http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/> which uses some interesting statistical methods to aggregate "best of" lists

</comment><comment><USER45> Some recent good movies:

-Animal Kingdom (Australian crime film)

-True Grit (Western)

-How to train your dragon (Pixar film)

<comment><USER46> The 3rd one is by DreamWorks <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Train_Your_Dragon_(film)>

Pixar is currently in the sequel game. Toy Story 3 last year, and Cars 2 scheduled for this year. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_films>

<comment><USER45> Yeah, you are right, I always confuse the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When were those movie rated? Now or at the time of the release?

If they were rated recently then there is obvious bias there. Yes/no?

</comment><comment><USER48> OT: that website is horrible in Firefox, 100+ assets, 25 secs to the onload event, and afterwards it locks up periodically because of the chartbeat analytics ajax call. In Chrome, it's a breeze, fast load and then completely fluid. Chrome is magic.

PS: the Firefox UI freeze on ajax calls seems to be a Mac specific problem.

<comment><USER35> In Firefox 4 or 3.6?

<comment><USER48> 3.6

Never tried 4. In benchmarks it's way faster than 3.6. Downloading it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Eh non-english speaking movies don't exist anymore?

<comment><USER50> What specifically do you think is missing? Remember, it's only the 20 most popular films in a given year.

Oldboy (Korea), City of God (Brazil), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), and Spirited Away (Japan) are all on those, and that's not an exhaustive list.

<comment><USER51> I think his point is that bollywood (for example) is bigger than hollywood by most measures (budget, gross etc.)

<comment><USER52> _citation needed_

By my research Bollywood's total annual revenues are barely a third of Hollywood revenues for theatrical releases alone (aside from dvd, broadcast, and digital distribution revenues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 1992 was a good year in movies!</comment>


When Apple figures out social networking, and they will, they'll make a killing - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/94301/when-apple-figures-out-social-networking-and-they-will-theyll-make-a-killing/

<comment><USER2> I think that the company that could make that any time soon and make a killing out of that is Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure this is true. Size != success.</comment>


When Brute Force Fails - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/bruteforce

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much detail the book goes into about those simulations. It would be interesting to be able to run them yourself, and tinker with the parameters.</comment>