Ask HN: How to deal with increasing "brain farts" and small silly mistakes? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone else suffer from this? To give a recent example, I was doing a fairly simple math problem, while I had to do a small side calculation (16 + 8), which for some reason my brain replied with "22". It took me a second attempt at the whole problem to fix the error.
This is happening more and more often in many different ways. I'm still young (early twenties), in overall great health, good nutrition and exercise (with some room for improvement), I'm not "stupid" I would like to think, I'm a half-decent programmer, and do fairly well in many academic topics, and generally get along in life as a normal person.
I'm wondering if this is a problem related to mental stress and overworking my brain (taking 5 courses as a CS undergrad, along with part-time programming job)? I believe CS and math tax the brain and short term memory more than other professions, so has anyone here noticed this problem, and taken successful steps to reducing it? <comment><USER2> Could be a bunch of things, but there's one that almost everyone deprives themselves of, to one degree or another: sleep.

Poor sleep is a major offender when it comes to spotty cognition, whether it's learning, planning, or working memory. Caffeine after 3pm, alcohol after 6-7pm, getting to bed too late, waking too early, inconsistent bed/wake times, exposure to bright, blue- and white-light led screens after the sun sets; all these will ruin your sleep quality in isolation and can really mess things up in aggregate over extended periods of time.

Being extremely disciplined about your sleep is the best way to crush low energy/motivation, mental fog, and even some mood trouble. It's tough to do in this 24 hour era, especially as a young adult in the tech industry, but it's well worth the effort. Don't mind if the first week or so don't feel very different; it takes a month of good sleep to "make up" one hour of lost sleep.

Getting serious about sleep isn't a fast payoff, but the eventual mental sharpness and emotional fortitude is unparalleled.

<comment><USER3> I was going to say exactly this. When I catch myself having "brain farts", it's usually after several nights of not enough sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it's not sleep, it could well be stress. I notice I make silly mistakes more often when I've been in a stressful situation for a while.

Meditation's very good for stress. So is therapy, in (almost) any of its varying forms, if you can afford it.

It's also possible that you're not making silly mistakes as often as you think you are. Are you an overachiever, prone to anxiety, or otherwise worried about your performance? All of those could be contributing to making these mistakes prey on your mind.

Finally, if these mistakes are seriously concerning you, have you tried tracking them via a medium that isn't your brain? For any sporadic problem like this, tracking it on paper or a spreadsheet, ideally with other relevant data (sleep, exercise, nutrition, stressors, off the top of my head) can often be extremely useful in pinning down what's going on. The only issue there is that sometimes tracking it can cause you to get more anxious about it - try to do so without judgement and with the expectation that you'll be able to solve the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think of that! I'm definitely going to try pinning this down by recording values in a spreadsheet. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd say I'm probably in a similar boat. Though not specifically with maths, but sometimes I look at the code I am writing and think "that variable will work half the time, but it isn't the right one to use there", or "of course that user input needs to be lowercased, why didn't I think of that when I wrote it".

I think much of it (for me) has to do with being completely present and engaged in the action, not half thinking of something else.

Anybody else feel the same way? If so, how have you improved?

Note, I'm not young, in my 40s.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm old and from experience, I'd say it's most probably a string of short nights that are starting to catch up with you. That's when I start getting "mental vapour lock."

Regularity is _very_ a good thing when it's diet, sleep, and bowel movements.

5 classes is more than full-time, yes? And adding in that part-time job and life, you aren't leaving much down time.

If you keep trying to use every hour of the day without first allotting your sleep/downtime, your situation will only get worse.

Robert Heinlein has a quote, "Always budget the luxuries first." Paraphrasing makes this apply to you: "Always budget the downtime first." What you have left after that 9-10 hours (yeah, take the time. You need to shower and eat in peace, too) is what you can use for everything else.

Don't think that because you're pursuing a four year degree that you must complete it in four calendar years. Consider what's better for your future, a degree finished according to the calendar with okay marks, or an extra year to finish with pretty good marks?

You're young and you really do have the time.

<comment><USER7> Side point, but usually 5 classes (@ 3 credit hrs each / 15 hr total) is a standard college work load, even if 12 is the legal minimum. Most degrees are impossible to complete in even 12 hours x 5 years (assuming 128 credit hour program).

<comment><USER6> Good info. Thanks.

IMHO, if money isn't the concern, then the slow completion is a user issue. I don't have the word for "doing whatever it takes to reach the goal on time."

Sometimes you just need to give up your life outside the the basic requirements (fuel/sleep/work/goal) to accomplish something. It isn't a pleasant existence, but you can reach your goal.

Remembering all the time that it is temporary and will reward you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Try to get more sleep. This happened to me when I was sleeping less than 5 hrs a day for months on end. It's probably a combination of sleep and stress. When I decided I would sleep more, that day I left work at 2pm, and slept for 13 hrs straight, and that's when I knew i was sleep deprived.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is something that definitely increases with age. I'm just past 25 and I have way more brain fart moments than I did in my late teens and early twenties.

</comment><comment><USER10> Consistent sleep is a wonder drug.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes I've noticed this. Some days I find mental arithmetic to be very difficult indeed. But not only that - it also corresponds with a reduced ability to plan tasks, difficulties in finding the correct words when writing or speaking, and social blundering in that conversations don't flow as well as normal.

I'm not really sure what it's all about but it seems to come and go. This is also on a background of a constant headache that I've had for almost twenty years; it increases in severity when I'm stressed, and I get stressed when I can't think properly (or perhaps, vice versa), so maybe that's related too.

I hope you can figure out your problem. I'll be reading other replies to this question with interest.</comment>


My Students Don't Know How to Have a Conversation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/my-students-dont-know-how-to-have-a-conversation/360993/ "Students' reliance on screens for communication is detracting—and distracting—from their engagement in real-time talk." <comment><USER2> So the author takes a group of 19-20 year olds and tasks them with a project which: a) asks them to converse in forced manner with someone they do not know, and then b) explicitly record themselves doing so. I don't know very many people, of any age, that could pull off a natural conversation in these conditions.

Then, instead of recognizing the flawed experiment, he decides to blame the results on "newfangled technology" and the like.

This whole article just wreaks of a "kids these days" post with no substance.</comment>


Request HN: Designers – Shellshock vulnerability needs a logo - <AUTHOR>

I'm not a designer, but as others have pointed out, The Shellshock vulnerability will be communicated better and taken more seriously with a good logo, as Heartbleed had.
If anyone with design skills can put one together, and get word out, I think it would be helpful for everyone, let me suggest an octothorpe (#) made of arcing electricity (lightning or similar), but take it where you like, it just needs to be simple and catchy.
I recommend explicitly placing it in the public domain, or CC licensing it for resuse, so no one thinks twice about using it in their news stories.
I'm not familiar with the logo buying/selling sites, but if someone put up a page that allowed donations for a good logo, I'd put in a little, and I suspect others would too, given a permissive license or public domain of course. <comment><USER2> Not a designer, but playing around with the concept.

[http://i.imgur.com/6ydqkKf.png](http://i.imgur.com/6ydqkKf.png) [http://i.imgur.com/QSY18i0.png](http://i.imgur.com/QSY18i0.png)

Use if wanted, willing to refine or provide other file formats if requested.

<comment><USER2> And one more just for fun. [http://i.imgur.com/pTyqODg.png](http://i.imgur.com/pTyqODg.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have created a public domain logo with svg and png rendering for the shellshock bash bug.

[http://www.tannerbrockwell.com/shellshock/](http://www.tannerbrockwell.com/shellshock/)

for the image and link to zip of files with license.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is an SVG of the earlier black-and-white computer-hit-by-shell logo: [http://bit.ly/1rorkXl](http://bit.ly/1rorkXl).

Feel free to use as desired.

<comment><USER4> Link broken. Fixed: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/783vvc712w2v932/5E0pYwP.svg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/783vvc712w2v932/5E0pYwP.svg?dl=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm no designer, but I doodled a thing that could be a logo: [http://m.imgur.com/OQFFavW](http://m.imgur.com/OQFFavW). Criticism/use welcome!

<comment><USER5> Awesome! Someone should create a SVG.

<comment><USER4> Here is an SVG of it, in a less-goofy orientation (doesn't look like a creature anymore): [http://bit.ly/1rorkXl](http://bit.ly/1rorkXl).

EDIT: Here are the other iterations: [http://imgur.com/a/kVDox#0](http://imgur.com/a/kVDox#0)

Anyone may use them as they wish.

<comment><USER4> Whoop, broken link. Fixed: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/783vvc712w2v932/5E0pYwP.svg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/783vvc712w2v932/5E0pYwP.svg?dl=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's something: [http://i.imgur.com/NCrA3TK.png](http://i.imgur.com/NCrA3TK.png)

Use away, not claiming any rights on this.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the one on [https://shellshocker.net/](https://shellshocker.net/) but I'm unsure of it's license.

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely not a designer but here is something. [http://i.imgur.com/zxFPZJ2.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/zxFPZJ2.jpg)</comment>


Firefox Picture-in-Picture - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/firefox-picture-in-picture-mode/ <comment><USER2> PiP is such a great feature. I have no idea how easy/hard it was to implement but it feels nice to use. It does exactly what you'd expect it to do and nothing more.

I use it while watching overwatch league games in the browser because it allows me to resize the popped-out video arbitrarily, instead of the site's embedded youtube player options of either tiny-window-in-browser or full- screen sizes (there is no theater mode in the embedded player for some reason).

<comment><USER3> It is a little clunky and could use a good deal of polish. For example, you can only PiP one video, and controls remain in the tab with the video frame. PiP only gives you play/pause, no scrubbing or anything from the embedded player. The always on top is a feature for some, but can be a hindrance, too. That behavior should be a toggle for the user so they can use their tools how they like.

<comment><USER4> These are a few of the reasons I've continued to use the "Open With" extension with mpv. _([right-click]- >Open With->mpv)_ This provides full playback control, lets me toggle stay-on-top, etc. Firefox's PiP is a nice thought but just isn't right for me as currently implemented.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, which extension is this? The only one I was able to find named "Open With" is pretty clearly not what you were referring to.

<comment><USER6> MPV is a player. [https://mpv.io/](https://mpv.io/)

<comment><USER5> Oh, I know all about MPV. Invoking it cleanly from within Firefox is the part I was asking about (and which has been answered :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone else annoyed that Mozilla chose to spam them with an ad for this new feature via the email address they received when creating the Firefox sync account? Is this really such an important thing that warrants sending an unsolicited message to every Firefox user's inbox?

Yes, the footer says "You're receiving this email because .. is subscribed to Firefox Account Tips." and indeed I can now see that setting in my Firefox account. I'm sure that checkbox popped up sometime after I created the account and was conveniently set to "true" by default.

<comment><USER8> > I'm sure that checkbox popped up sometime after I created the account and > was conveniently set to "true" by default.

Someone got paid to sell you out and cashed their check on your privacy. I wonder if they have a gdpr contact and what it would look like if you forwarded this and told them you did not consent to it.

<comment><USER9> GDPR doesn't handle sending marketing mails and even in the EU it is entirely fine to send those by default as long as they directly related to your product ("assumed consent of consumer" is the key word here). Firefox does offer a complete opt-out last I checked that works entirely fine (never received a mail after unsubscribing to marketing mails)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love PiP and it's def great in WFH situation where I can just have YouTube videos playing on the side.

If anyone from Mozilla is reading this, one thing I wish Firefox did was to allow us to make it sticky to the corner like Safari does on MacOS.

I think just throwing the PiP window to a corner and expecting it to be there is subtle difference but makes the overall experience much simpler. I don't having to decide where exactly to position the video and keep moving it little by little. Also, if I push the Safari PiP video against the edge of the screen, it simply collapses. That's helpful when the video is blocking something I care about and I need to quickly hide it. Again, simpler experience than allowing free form movement for my workflow.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, sadly Firefox doesn't use the native PiP implementation :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really surprised to see how many people appreciate this feature. I've tried to use it many times but I've found that when I'm watching a video I either want to give it my full(screen) attention (movie, entertainment) or have it in the background entirely (music, news, podcast.) I've personally not found a use for it and end up closing it after about 5-10 minutes.

<comment><USER13> I like more than thought I would. I can keep going through tabs without losing the video.

The problem for me is it doesn't have controls past pause and play. If I want to back the video up or skip it forward I need to go figure out which tab it's coming from, and I can't remember if I have to unpop to get controls. Windows 10, ymmv.

<comment><USER14> This also annoys me. Even just allowing arrow keys to seek back and forth would be enough for now.

<comment><USER15> That can be enabled with _media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.keyboard- controls.enabled_ toggle in about:config.

<comment><USER14> Woah that's perfect, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mozilla Tech Blog from January on implementing it: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/01/how-we-built-picture-in- pi...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/01/how-we-built-picture-in-picture-in- firefox-desktop/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283386))

</comment><comment><USER17> Wait this is not new is it ? Ive beenm using it for the past 6 months at least...

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I've been able to use it for months (FF on Mac)... Was it rolled out to certain computers for testing before?

<comment><USER19> Same here. FF on Mac. I've been using it since lockdown began in the UK in March. It's been really handy to keep BBC News in the corner of the screen when the Government was doing daily briefings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> PiP is a cool feature but I've recently found another way to "stream" video from the web which is now pretty much my default: For a lot of sites you can either curl or youtube-dl the video to a file and thanks to the way encodings and container formats work you can just play the file back using your favorite media player while the download is still in progress. You can't seek past the download head unfortunately but the playback you get is much more pleasant (and for some reason also faster?) than say, on YouTube.

<comment><USER21> I use it directly from VLC when I need to boost up the sound a few db beyond the original threshold

<comment><USER20> Wait, VLC has a youtube-dl integration?

<comment><USER22> mpv does, if that's what you're looking for.

<comment><USER20> Oh that's nice! I was actually already using mpv for playback but I never noticed this feature. The only disadvantage this has over my stitched together setup is that I don't get to keep the video afterwards but it fixes a lot of pain points.

<comment><USER22> I mean, if you want to keep the video afterwards, you can just download it and then play it.

Which also has the advantage that playback will always be smooth. That's almost always true of playing directly from a youtube URL, but I have had occasional issues. Most notably that leaving a straight-from-youtube video paused long enough will get it into a state you can't resume from.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's one of my biggest peeves with the YT player as well.

I often watch talks or similar kinds of (long) videos in the bg some of which I might wish to keep that's why I like being able to download and view at the same time. But downloading a second time during quite hours is probably also fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are a couple of sites that auto-started video and when you scrolled down, automatically did picture-in-picture. In fact I think Facebook even experimented with it for a while. The problem with those implementations was that the user had no control over which videos, nor the ability to prevent them from displaying. It took a heavy amount of NoScript isolation to prevent it from happening. I always thought it would be useful if someone would write something that put the user back in control.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish it worked by using the regular web fullscreen API to pop out. Instead of going fullscreen it would just spawn a chromeless window that I can position anywhere I want and control using my regular window manager controls. As an advantage this would give sites full control over the content including having the full video (or other content) controls instead of just play which is what Firefox PiP gives you.

<comment><USER25> I completely agree - I use i3 and was interested to see that this just pops up a floating window over all of my others.

When reading the feature my thought was that it would be a floating window _within_ the browser window - which I think I would have preferred.

<comment><USER24> I disagree with that. The browser already does too much "window management" already. I like that it pops out a separate window that I can do with what I please rather than being limited to whatever window management functionality they decide to add to their internal "window".

<comment><USER25> Possibly - but in my case the windows was just floating on top of all of my other windows, and whilst I could move and resize it, I could not move it like other windows.

So popping out a new firefox window that operates like a normal window would be great, but the current solution seems like the worst of both worlds.

Also on an unrelated note, seeing your username we used to work together - hope all is going well :)

<comment><USER24> Ah, that is weird. The window behaved fairly normally for me. (I'm on Linux Wayland)

<comment><USER26> Do you happen to use sway? (Or maybe just Wayland in general does it..)

I'm using a tiled window manager on X and was rather confused by other comments here, before realizing my window manager must be giving me unintended control over the video popup. I just get a floating window that's fully draggable and resizable identically to other windows.

<comment><USER24> I'm using Gnome actually. I have found that Wayland tends to keep some apps in check so maybe the less options that Wayland provides to clients is helping me here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been using this a lot lately for YouTube videos so I can watch a video and keep web surfing. Works great, though the PiP doesn't have all the controls (e.g. volume and seek).

<comment><USER28> The amount of video/audio player clients in general that don't have a seek function is, quite frankly, astonishing to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This seems like a massive feature that I can't believe hasn't been baked into Chrome yet. I know Safari has an implementation but it always feels limited and of course cannot be used on Windows or Linux.

I need to put this through its paces, but it may vault Firefox back into the role of my default browser.

<comment><USER30> Chrome has it for about two years now, since ver. 70. On a Youtube video right-click twice and click "Picture in picture".

<comment><USER31> I don't seem to have a "Picture in picture" option in the context menu on an arbitrary YouTube video on Chrome 84 beta on macOS.

But there is a PiP button in the "hamburger with musical note" menu in the toolbar.

It seems Google has an optional PiP Chrome extension as well. It looks like it just makes the button more visible.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in- picture...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in-picture- extens/hkgfoiooedgoejojocmhlaklaeopbecg)

<comment><USER32> First, right-click on a YouTube video. You'll see _their_ custom menu appear first. Now, right click _next to_ their menu (while still somewhere on the video frame.)

You should then see the browser contextual menu with 'Picture-in-picture' in the list of options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using this since it was launched and I constantly forget that I need to keep the browser tab open for PIP to work. Doh. Would be cool if the PiP window was another instance of the native window with its zero-decor.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is normally a window manager feature, why put it in browser where it's limited to browser tabs?

<comment><USER35> The PIP video is independent of the browser window that contained the video -- it can be moved around the desktop and resized with no window decorations and also stays on top of all other windows in the desktop env.

<comment><USER36> If you don't like window decorations (and I don't blame you) just run a wm with no window decorations (like cwm.)

<comment><USER37> there's a lot of firefox users that don't want to switch to a new window manager (or operating system) just for the sake of being able to pop a video out of the window it came from.

<comment><USER34> This makes sense on one hand, but could also be used to justify all kinds of of non browser features that would make both WMs and FF worse off in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've tried it, it's awesome. The things I'm missing in that new window are progress bar and volume control. Or at least I haven't seen a way to make them visible.

</comment><comment><USER39> Opera has had this feature for years and features more playback controls than FF. It seems many features start on Opera then get "invented" in other browsers afterwards.

<comment><USER30> You're right that it has been in Opera for years. Specifically it was introduced back in 2016. But Maxthon had it first, introducing it in 2010. Snaps or webpage screenshoting as well (2010), which was later put in Opera (2017) and recently on Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's new here? I've been under the impression this existed for a while. Does it finally provide the standard video controls?

</comment><comment><USER41> Have other hardcore anti-autoplay users noticed some autoplay getting through as of the last update? I've had it at the highest possible settings for a long time and nothing ever got through, now something is different. It not all the time, but often enough that it bugs me.

</comment><comment> tushar-r This is brilliant! I've been looking for a replacement for Helium on Windows and this seems to be it!

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been using it with their Dev Edition and it works very nicely for me. On a Mac, it blends in with the design language, and works on just about any video, even video that's been DRM'd to hell and back (Netflix, Hulu, etc).

</comment><comment><USER43> While I really like this functionality, I can't seem to find any way to change the area the picture shows up. I do not want it in the bottom right, because I get OS messages there (maybe that's how they implemented it and why it's there?), and I suspect either they will be covered up or cover up the picture (a problem I often have with some apps in that location when I get messages). Just being able to change which corner it was in (like many PIP televisions allow) would be amazingly useful.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've been using this in Chrome for Mac in YouTube for a while. It is in Safari too. Just have to double right click a YouTube video to get the browser menu instead of the YouTube one.

</comment><comment><USER45> «Toddler duty» is a fantastic marketing approach to the feature! (While I usually deprecate using videos to entertain toddlers and kids, using it to have them close to you looks… good I guess)

</comment><comment><USER46> Doesn't Chrome do this too? If you click the music button in the toolbar, you can pop out a video to an always-on-top window that you can watch overtop of other apps.

</comment><comment><USER47> I like having a floating YouTube video on my desktop while I work so much that I knocked up this simple solution a few years ago:

[http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/youtube/](http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/youtube/)

(Select 'View (New Window)')

It suits me, and gets used lots. I've never bothered to look, but I reckon there's probably a Chrome extension that also does the same.

</comment><comment><USER48> PiP is such a useful feature. Even though I use a window manager, I like the fact that I can just take whatever video is playing out from my current tab and move it over to my programming workspace and follow a tutorial or something. No need to create a new window. When I'm done, I can put it right back to the original tab on the original workspace with a single click. Especially useful with floating mode enabled.

</comment><comment><USER49> I really love this feature and I hope that it receives more love and polish in the future. It's unfortunately unusable with foreign language videos as the subtitles don't pop out with the video. Not sure if this is due to the lack of such an API, or if the major video providers (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) simply haven't implemented it.

My other wishlist feature is to have rewind/forward controls natively in the PIP window.

<comment><USER50> Unless the captions are burned in, currently you cannot have the captions show up in the PiP video due to the API restrictions. It's mentioned in the proposal doc here: [https://www.w3.org/TR/picture-in-picture/#security- considera...](https://www.w3.org/TR/picture-in-picture/#security- considerations)

<comment><USER49> Thank you. I was trying to find information on this, but all I found was this bugzilla post: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1551058](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1551058)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is a great feature and I love Firefox and what Mozilla stands for, but I have recently switched to Edge because of how hard my CPU is hit when I watch YouTube videos in Firefox. I understand that this is not entirely within the control of Mozilla and the Firefox team, but it became such an issue on my current machine, which is admittedly quite old, that I felt forced to make the switch.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm sure this works great but I've been using MPV/youtube-dl for a while now and I don't think this will cause me to switch.

</comment><comment><USER53> I use this feature on a daily basis, in fact it's running right now. I have a few UI issues with it, the resize border is much too hard to hit, it would be nice to be able to click the video to pause, and I would like to see a progress bar and mute buttons. That said it has already been a "game changer" for how I view video every day.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've been enjoying this for a while on the beta channel, however subs/captions are very noticeably absent. Unsure if it's all <tracks> or just those not using the built-in api for display. Needless to say custom caption implementations are extremely common due to the discrepancies in display between browsers.

</comment><comment><USER55> For Chromium-based browsers (I used it in Brave but it should work with all of them), create a new bookmark and set this as the URL:

javascript:document.querySelector('video').requestPictureInPicture()

It works on YouTube, Twitch, HBO Now, Netflix, probably others too. I keep it in my Bookmarks Bar for quick access, I hope others here will find it useful!

</comment><comment><USER56> This is great. Will it work with Netflix videos in the browser? The always on top is a nice feature for this kind of thing

<comment><USER57> It does work with Netflix. Unfortunately you won't get any subtitles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Opera has been doing this for years...

</comment><comment><USER59> I want a "fullscreen to second screen" option for it (also without allways on top than)

<comment><USER38> I use double-click for fullscreen, but yeah, it will go on top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> It may be a nice feature, but for me Firefox's implementation seems to be a bit too intrusive, because as a developer I can't disable it and it is always visible as a browser-styled overlay.

Not all video elements are for stand-alone consumption. For example, there are "hero" videos in landing pages, enterprise solutions requiring smart overlays, or imagine a component in an online video editor.

Firefox also have no plans to support the Picutre-in-picture web API: [https://www.w3.org/TR/picture-in-picture/](https://www.w3.org/TR/picture-in- picture/).

See, for example, this bugzilla issue: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1611831](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1611831)

</comment><comment><USER61> I love PiP but I wish it worked for multiple videos simultaneously on desktop.

<comment><USER31> That sounds potentially interesting. Do you have a specific use case in mind?

<comment><USER61> yeh! I like watching rocket launches from multiple camera angles!

And i watch a lot of simracing with multiple streamers streaming the same race.

<comment><USER62> VLC

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The only thing is its easy to forget which tab it came from.

I put it on top and then on all desktops and change desktops with it.

Sometimes I come back and close some tab and it happens to be the parent of the video I'm watching.

</comment><comment><USER64> FYI, General purpose "PiP" tool for windows.

[https://github.com/LorenzCK/OnTopReplica](https://github.com/LorenzCK/OnTopReplica)

</comment><comment><USER65> This should be more of a desktop feature. I'd like to play video wallpaper on gnome/wayland for example. I think this is as much on the desktop devs as the browser devs, if not moreso.

</comment><comment><USER66> PiP is so functional and I've been using it for sometime now.

</comment><comment><USER67> This would be great for PiPing a general webpage rather than just a video. Instead of tearing-off a tab, resizing its window and pinning it always-on-top to use as a reference.

</comment><comment><USER68> YouTube charges for this "feature". How will that go over?

<comment><USER69> They do? As in, paying will expose a control on their player to enter PiP in supported platforms?

Note: other than FF, you can also trigger PiP (edit: on Safari) on a YouTube video by double-right-clicking on the video element OR long pressing on the speaker icon on the tab/address bar.

<comment><USER70> > other than FF, you can also trigger PiP on a YouTube video by double-right- > clicking on the video element OR long pressing on the speaker icon on the > tab/address bar.

Neither of these worked for me. Chrome 83 on Win 10.

<comment><USER69> Oops - sorry! I forgot to include the important bit about Safari on macOS. Updated my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Must admit I've noticed the blue Picture-in-Picture but never thought to click on it. Didn't at all occur to me what it did.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's too bad that YouTube subtitles still show up in the main YT page and is not present in the PiP modal.

<comment><USER50> This is a technical restriction with PIP not allowing for elements to be drawn in the PiP modal (or more specifically; HTMLVideoElement is the only thing that can be PiPed currently)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> FF is getting better, and it seems Chrome has started to frequently lock up in some of my devices...

</comment><comment><USER74> If we are going to destroy our brains we might as do it well!

</comment><comment><USER75> I am glad it can be disabled globally easily. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER76> PiP made Firefox complete!

</comment><comment><USER77> This is a nice feature.

> play alongside while you go about your business on

> other tabs or do things outside of Firefox.

Do we need to watch video while we go about our business? You better finish your business or the video. Which leaves me thinking: this is kind of bloat.

<comment><USER11> > Do we need to watch video while we go about our business? You better finish > your business or the video.

Yes, and don't tell me how to do my work.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Do I need full credit card processing ready by launch? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of developing a website that will target small to midsize restaurants.  Is it worth the expense to setup credit card processing from the outset for monthly recurring billing or is it better to just get things running faster with annual invoicing via Freshbooks and accept checks via mail and credit cards via PayPal? <comment><USER2> Offer both (monthly billing and annual invoicing) and see which one works better for you. Neither are hard or expensive to setup.

Until you have a proven and reliable service that adds value to business owners, I expect most people will opt for monthly billing. It helps with their cash flow and allows them to cancel at an earlier stage.

Hence, it is in your interest to try and achieve yearly lockdown whenever possible, even if this means a hefty discount (on the bright side, this also means less admin for you and long-term payment upfront). Once people start using your product, and if it services thier needs, they will be less inclined to leave, especially if they have invested time and energy in setting things ups and creating their workflow around the product.

</comment><comment><USER3> The decision is up to you, but it's pretty straightforward to set up credit card processing these days if you have time. Plus, you can even use PayPal for merchant services.

Think about who your customers are. If they are restaurant owners, are they more comfortable with paying through PayPal, giving you their credit card number directly (in person or telephone), or sending you a check?

Let me know if you have any other questions.

<comment><USER2> PayPal are convenient to start with but are too expensive compared to a merchant account or other card processors (protex et al).

Also, PayPal offer little or no protection to chargebacks (even blatantly false ones) so I would be wary of using them for higher value items or non- physical services (e.g. subscriptions) that are exempt from its seller protection plan. I am not sure if using FreshBooks (which is an excellent product) will buffer/protect you.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the great feedback. I'm going to opt for an annual billing plan implemented via the Freshbooks API for now. Since I won't have a merchant account, I will not be able to offer a recurring monthly option.

I was researching merchant accounts and processors and planning to implement an automated system via authorize.net ARB. However, I found that this would actually give me less flexibility with pricing vs. a more manual solution. If the volume gets too high, I'll worry about it at that time (a good problem to have). Since this a B2B venture, checks via mail is probably a preferred option over credit cards (at least I hope so). With Freshbooks, I can probably implement monthly billing later on via Authorize.net without many changes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd say get started as fast as possible with the fastest way possible to develop. We've gone for nearly 3 years "on the cusp" of adding credit cards. Next week...

</comment><comment><USER5> My product is based on a monthly subscription, and to give me some time at the start I offered my first customers a discount for paying in advance, the minimum advance I got was 3 months. Gives the initial cash flow a healthy boost, saves the customers a bit of money, and lets me worry about credit card processing after all the fuss of the initial launch.</comment>


Show HN: Fiuti.com – A tool to create Google Ads campaigns 20X faster - <AUTHOR> https://fiuti.com/app/campaign-builder <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) is on of the best way to structure your search campaigns, however it's very hard to create. Fiuti.com automates the whole creation part and outputs a CSV file which can then be uploaded to Google Ads (So we don't require access to your account). If you have questions please ask!

<comment><USER2> What happens when you hit the maximum number of ad groups that Google allows per campaign. Isn't it something like 50 or 100?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually 20,000 ad groups per campaign. So yes, you probably don't want to add more than 20K keywords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google has been restricting the mass creation of adgroups because it's bad practice, based on adspend.

In other words if you aren't spending reasonable amounts on ad spend, this is not a good campaign structure if you want to use thoudands of lines from these CSV.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest SKAGs are very popular and I haven't heard that Google would restrict them. Hundreds of Agencies use SKAGs on a daily basis. This said I don't recommend to SKAG 1000 keywords, I usually suggest to create SKAGs for the top 10 converting keywords and group the rest in small topic related ad groups (you can do that with Fiuti using the topics tab)

<comment><USER3> I am aware of their popularity, but just because something is popular, doesn't make it correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wrote even visually very similar tool for myself last year. Also with vue/vuetify :) On the final step, where you have 'save', I have several buttons: "copy campaigns, adwords editor", "copy campaigns, bing editor", "copy ad groups, adwords editor", etc. That was really quick and intuitive way of transfering generated data to bing/adwords editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vue is the best! Vuetify is actually more a pain than anything else. Eventually I'll re-write the css. I've been thinking to integrate the Bing editor but the demand has been really low for it so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still don't see how this is 20x faster, the UI is a little better than traditional Google Ads creator, but isn't downloading and editing an already put together campaign much faster than this?

Maybe I'm failing to see the magic here, but it doesn't look significantly different from what's already out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi it really depends on your setup. To create something like this is nearly impossible with the Google ads interface. The tool for example cross-negates all the keywords and sets them as negatives all the other ad groups, plus you would need to create the same ad for each ad group. If you have 3 maybe it's ok but with 10+ it gets really complicated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've built a couple of systems similar to this over the years, they've definitely saved me and colleagues countless hours during of account creation.

I never got round to making a UI quite as nice as this - always wanted too but it did the job as it was. Good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'm happy you like the UI, I put a lot of effort on having many features while keeping it clean!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I added a keyword "content research" and was expected a list of related keywords/synonyms to create ads for. As well as negative word to ignore.

But it expects me to come up with them myself? Having a hard time seeing how this helps automates things for me...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, you should add that keyword in the keyword planner at [https://fiuti.com/app/keyword-planner](https://fiuti.com/app/keyword-planner) and click on the keywords you want, look at this quick video I just recorded for you: [https://cl.ly/c731c0](https://cl.ly/c731c0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess with such a name OP's site won't find customers in Poland... :^)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I've recently learned that! Imagine that my previous name was SKAG.io I was hoping that the rebranding would be a good move!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just need to write this ... "Fiuti" in Polish sounds almost like "Dicks"</comment>


Ask HN: 10 Years In, Was He Right? "Value of Downvoting; How HN Gets It Wrong" - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/03/09/the-value-of-downvoting-or-how-hacker-news-gets-it-wrong/ <comment><USER2> I would argue he's wrong (the article, not PG) but it's a conversation. Reddit has invaded HN and I suggest any more recent decline has more to do with a shift in community behaviour than innate problems of no downvoting.

And anyway, Dang does a fine job of jumping on noise. So yea: nah.</comment>


Oracle retains open source dictatorship - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/oracle_controls_hudson/

<comment> brown9-2 _Over the past year, Oracle's strategy for running open-source projects created by Sun has become clear. It's determined to retain control of names and roadmaps. And in an effort to justify this stance, it inevitably cites the wellbeing of Oracle customers and Oracle shareholders._

I'm not sure if this is truly Oracle's strategy or not, but if it is, it certainly seems to be a poor one. Whatever control they retain will come at the cost of alienating a huge majority of the developers to the project core and plugins whose paychecks are not signed by Oracle.

The only development like to continue in their version of "Hudson" will be that which Oracle or it's partners directly sponsor.

Retain the name but lose the people that actually make the project seems like a poor strategy.</comment>


Ycombinator, the inside scoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/socialmoth/405517122/in/set-72157594561460322/ <comment><USER2> So, where's the scoop? This doesn't tell us any juicy secrets...

<comment><USER3> We know that they congregate in nicely lit rooms with a damn impressive table.

<comment><USER4> Is there something I missed about the table?

<comment><USER5> No, but the benches are deadly.

<comment><AUTHOR> they are, like a seesaw

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that table in sections? If its all one piece then transporting it between coasts must be a pain.

<comment><USER7> It can't cost that much. Just buy two tables, one for each coast.

<comment><USER5> What? Do you think they're made of money? Paul, Trevor and Robert only got 50 million out of Yahoo. A table costs...literally hundreds of dollars! (Of course, Paul does cook the dinners himself...but there's been a disturbing trend towards pizza at events and even one of the dinners.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> nice. so who's who? I'm an outsider, I only recognize pg and some others...

<comment><USER5> The really good looking one is me.</comment></comment>


Former federal CIO asks: Why so much custom code in government? - <AUTHOR> https://fcw.com/articles/2017/11/27/comment-tony-scott-gov-custom-code.aspx <comment><USER2> I've seen so much of this as a government contracting programmer for the last 10 years. There was only one time I was able to convince a group in a department to go with an existing tool. It was SSIS, and it made sense over creating some giant unmaintainable XML data interchange format between state and federal agencies.

The most common reasons are:

1) they are unaware of existing products or how to use them effectively. I remember one client who wanted me to implement a complicated feature to remember their position, sorting, and filtering options in a data table. The need was eliminated when I showed them how to middle click and open the record in a new window.

2) they won't, or can't adapt/slightly modify their internal procedures to fit an existing product.

3) they don't understand what they actually do. So they can't evaluate a COTS solution. (part of your job as a consultant is to figure out how things work and design a solution around it)

4) they have too much money. Rare but I've seen it, gotta drain the budget so nothing is left over.

5) they are doing something genuinely different.

6) policies dictate the technologies they are allowed to use

7) legacy databases and reports must persist into a more modern updated interface

</comment><comment><USER3> >In short, it has to do with the cost of maintaining and supporting code that is unique, often in a language for which it becomes difficult to find programmers and support skills, and the accelerating pace of business change (which often causes major re-writes of custom code).

How is this possible? What ever happened to standardization?

Why is it that the taxpayer always gets f __*Ed.?

</comment><comment><USER4> In government? It's my impression that there is an awful lot of custom code everywhere. Is there anyone who is running SAP/PeopleSoft/Dynamics without a lot of tweaking?

</comment><comment><USER5> As a federal IT contractor my take on why this is the case; careerism run amok at the expense of elegant solutions.</comment>


Examples and best practices for building recommendation systems - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders <comment><USER2> this really should've been named "recommendations for building recommendation systems"

<comment><USER3> hey one of the authors here. We are planning to create some notebooks on recommendation about recommendation algos :-)

<comment><USER4> LOL brilliant idea! just don't hesitate to create an issue and follow that with a PR!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're the author, I'm not sure that the definition of recall@k is correct.

>Recall@k is a metric evaluate how many items, in the recommendation list, are relevant (hit) in the ground-truth data.

<comment><USER3> thanks for the comment, would this definition be clearer: "Recall at k is the proportion of relevant items found in the top-k recommendations"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My collection of usefull links about recommender systems (dirty) [https://gist.github.com/tandav/a2f87e91cb5c441c57657cceb788c...](https://gist.github.com/tandav/a2f87e91cb5c441c57657cceb788c86c)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sadly but evaluation metrics are only implemented in pyspark.mllib (RDD API) but not in pyspark.ml (Dataframe API)

Also worth mention about implicit feedback

<comment><USER4> It is also my sadness - AFAIK pyspark.ml does not support ranking metrics (does it?). So we wrapped the RDD and expose data frame as interfaces in our own implementations (the `reco_utils`). Implicit feedback is mentioned in a notebook under `staging` branch ([https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders/blob/staging/noteb...](https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders/blob/staging/notebooks/01_prepare_data/data_transform.ipynb)). Will be there soon in the next release (1st of Feb)!</comment></comment>


Busting 4 Modern Hardware Myths - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/6/13/busting-4-modern-hardware-myths-are-memory-hdds-and-ssds-rea.html <comment><USER2> > Clock speed isn't everything. Example, word split the text > of Alice and > Wonderland. Intel Core 2 Duo, 2008, 2.40GHz, > 1434 operations per second. > Intel Core, 2011, 2.20GHz, 2674 > operations per second. Clock speed is down > but operations > per second have nearly doubled. Trend is continuing.

Errr, 2008 -> 2011 = 3 years. And a doubling of "performance" \- thus a halving of Moores law. This is real evidence of a massive slowdown in hardware growth.

<comment><USER3> And it's much worse since then, because Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge was only ~5% and Ivy Bridge -> Haswell is only another ~5%.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kit, a project manager for C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dasmithii/Kit

<comment><AUTHOR> [author here]

I'm hoping to lessen the pain in dealing with tools like gcc and make/cmake/etc. More importantly, C libraries are scattered inaccessibly throughout the web, and Kit provides a central index of modularized units. What's most important going forward is to gather useful libraries, modify them to meet kit standards, and link them in this central registry. Any help there would be appreciated (i.e. send me your libraries!).

Please let me know if you find bugs, have questions, or anything like that.

<comment><USER2> Curious as to the use of this past something like ccan? Also does it generate pkg-config files?

[http://ccodearchive.net/](http://ccodearchive.net/)

Also I'll admit I vastly prefer the autotools warts and all to cmake. But I'll poke about at it later.

For my own stuff I have a template git repo setup that I can use that sets up autotools/pkg-config/gcc/clang flags as needed that serves me rather well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't come across ccan before your post, so my thoughts on it are fairly superficial. [warn me if I'm off track]

From what I can tell, it's been around for a while, has countless modules, and probably is a better choice than Kit at this point, given the early stage of this project.

There are two main differences: (1) Kit is a project manager, while CCAN is a code archive, and (2) Kit modules are compiled libraries, while CCAN distributes source code only.

So, I suppose one would decide in favor of Kit because of its whole-scope approach. If not that, because CCAN looks quite hackish at first glance. From its homepage: _" just hack whatever parts you want so it compiles in your project"_.

<comment><USER3> > Kit modules are compiled libraries, while CCAN distributes source code only.

Could you expand on this? I assume pulling the source, compiling locally, and then adding the headers and libs to a project local include or link path. Is it individual directories for each dependency or do they get mixed together?

How are you handling macros? Do you have some preset defines you're passing in for different platforms?

I think it's an interesting idea and definitely has more polish than ccan. I don't know if I'd ever give up fine grained control in production but for small personal projects this would be ideal.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. When fetched, modules are given their own directory and compiled locally (one directory per module/dependency). New projects are then scanned for dependencies, linked against pre-compiled libraries, and necessary headers are added to the search path.

In terms of presets, I have some [basic] defaults included myself, but more can be added in an optional config file, along with arbitrary compiler flags.

Kit is optimized for simple projects, where crazy build scripts aren't needed. So, yeah, for fine-grained control, I'd stick to existing tools. However, this may be more pleasant than alternatives for personal projects, as you mention.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Fail at SVN - <AUTHOR> http://podcats.in/training/svn-fail.html

<comment><USER2> 4/5 are problems unrelated to SVN. Heck, Git can burn you on all of those.

1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories.

I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the sophisticated and helpful response. I'll obviously implement many of the suggestions you made to improve my article writing.

<comment><USER3> > It's neither reliable nor safe, nor can you easily administrate it.

While you're at it, the word you wanted was 'administer'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing that you've never had to use svn+ssh:// with a group of developers. The file permissions hell you get into using that with multiple users is very frustrating.

I much prefer the <http://> access method, and have never had a locking problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> > By default in SVN, everyone is committing to the same - and indeed the > master, de-facto, controlling, always perfect - branch. Trunk.

It's worse than that; svn asks you to maintain the trunk/tags/branches directory structure yourself, rather than including them as core concepts in the VCS itself(1). So, someone can commit an update to something under tags/ and svn won't even give out a warning, since it has _no idea_ that tags/* are supposed to be write-once.

1) Looks like they added `svn branch`, sometime after the 1.4.x version I'm actually using.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pffft. Complaining about TortoiseSVN? Use SmartSVN - it works in all 3 OSes, too. I know, I've had to use it in all 3 and it's nice to have that consistancy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every time I read something about SVN I just thank god I don't have to use it anymore. Just the thought of a merge-heavy workflow in svn gives me the willies.</comment>


Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

<comment><USER2> Previous:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2940763></comment>


Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music - <AUTHOR> http://music.ishkur.com/ <comment><USER2> Oh my gosh, I clicked expecting to see the classic old version... this is an updated one!! It looks like this one even shows the progression of the sound of a genre or subgenre over time, not just the other genres that came from it.

Forgive my excitement but damn, the original guide was an absolute treasure of the early (at least for me) internet, and as a teenager getting into electronic music but with no real local scene or context for any of this stuff to say it was eye-opening is an understatement. Find a song or genre you liked (for me it was early French Touch/filter house) and you could see similar genres, plus what inspired it and what it inspired. And back then if you weren't familiar with this stuff everything with electronic drums or synths was lumped into "techno" (remember Eminem's infamous line about that) so it was great to figure out the actual names of the genres and subgenres I was into so I could dig deeper. Shout out to Ishkur, I'm obviously thrilled to see this today.

<comment><USER3> BTW v2.5 of the guide can still be found here (requires flash):

[http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic- music-guide/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of these genre descriptions are _awesome!_ - th9s is from the LiquidFunk subgenre of Drum n Bass:

"Just before the turn of the millenium is when a sufficient number of white people were attending Jungle parties to the point where music writers and magazines stopped calling it Jungle and rebranded it Drum n Bass, although the partykids retained the label "junglists" and they're still called that today (probably because "drumnbassists" isn't as catchy).

Not coincidentally this is also the point where the two-step drum kick takes over everything, ushering in an age of mediocrity for a scene that was once specifically noted for its unique and inventive drum programming. You might as well call this Disco n Bass.

As if things couldn't get any worse for Disco n Bass, the lucrative opportunity of mad festival money in the 2010s compelled it to whore itself into a subgenre depository of shitty pop remixes heretofore known as Dancefloor. If you hear a Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift or even Adele remix with a powerful Pendulum two-step drum kick, it's technically Dancefloor: The end game of pop music trendwhore oblivion. "

<comment><USER5> "The word Garage doesn't mean anything pertinent other than its name comes from the legendary Paradise Garage nightclub in New York City where DJ Larry Levan would play anything he damn well pleased."

"Today what most people think is House music is actually Garage. And what most people think is Garage is some dodgy nonsense the British sharted into their trousers. Someone should really try and set the record straight about that. Like make a guide or something."

I love a bit of UK Garage but laughed out loud when I read that line about trousers. This Ishkur guy is a beast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, finally! Ishkur's original guide and Listology's Darktremor's top 400 trance list and Dazzamack's top 1000 EDM lists are what really got me into electronic music!

I'm kinda bummed out right now that listology.com doesn't exist anymore :(

EDIT: For anyone interested, at the time, I downloaded both Darktremor's and Dazzamack's lists. You can find them here:

[https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/48450ec07254f82c7a9b5d77...](https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/48450ec07254f82c7a9b5d77ee2bebf5)

[https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/fff467f6fc7574864358f997...](https://gist.github.com/dukeofharen/fff467f6fc7574864358f9974d61ab0c)

I've downloaded a few other lists from Listology as well (progressive trance, classic trance, best albums etc.). If anyone is interested, I could add these to Github Gist as well.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, please upload them!

<comment><USER6> See my reply on the original comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. 20 years in the making.

Be sure to check out his 15-hour, 3.5 decade-spanning mix [https://mobile.twitter.com/Ishkur23/status/11632947429494456...](https://mobile.twitter.com/Ishkur23/status/1163294742949445632)

<comment><USER9> A 2GB mp3 - woah!

Actual link for easier save-as: [http://ishkur.com/mixes/Ishkur_- _The_Longplay.mp3](http://ishkur.com/mixes/Ishkur_-_The_Longplay.mp3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the comments I was expecting a really cool site with a lot of knowledge, but so far all I've seen is genre bashing. Since this is supposedly a general guide on all electronic music, it's really unfortunate they need to convey their negative opinions on everything that isn't their genre of choice. Either Ishkur is getting old and resentful or we live on completely opposite sites of music taste.

<comment><USER11> The "path of Ishkur" for most people is to arrive at the site, marvel at the artistic layout and amount of info presented, then immediately drill down to one's favorite genre to find... that Ishkur roasts it like an old episode of SNL, mildly offending the casual visitor who feels their taste has been somehow called out.

Later on one discovers that Ishkur roasts _all_ of the genres in similar fashion and that this is part of the appeal. It is in the trashing of each style that Ishkur reveals what makes that type of music unique.

<comment><USER12> He likes some of them. He _really likes_ acid house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is missing all of the post-2011 dubstep subgenre stuff.

If you search "melodic dubstep" or "chillstep" there's lots of relatively popular post-2011 stuff that's way more tasteful for a mass audience than skrillex.

But that's just one branch. The other major branch is called "freeform bass" or sometimes "spacebass". Certain bass music (post-2016?) no longer has a clear genre definition, so we've literally adopted the term "freeform bass". A lot of it is pretty good. But some of it overlaps with brostep/riddim.

<comment><USER14> I'd love to see something about tearout

Here's an example I found

[https://soundcloud.com/iamthedreameater/the- cleansing](https://soundcloud.com/iamthedreameater/the-cleansing)

<comment><USER13> > #Goat-Noises

Oh god. Not the soundcloud tag you want to be in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whoa version 3?!?!?!?!?!?

Secretary; Cancel all my calls for today.

I have been waiting for this since what, 2003? He said it would cost him an arm and a leg, by the time elapsed since that statement, I guess it did! I assumed he had lost interest in this project, but no. Thanks Ishkur!!!

<comment><USER16> Here is a screenshot of the classic Flash version: [https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/ishkurs-guide- elect...](https://www.electronicbeats.net/the-feed/ishkurs-guide-electronic- music-will-updated-2017/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone have a donation link?

It'd be nice to chip something in for the work + streaming to the entire internet right now.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does the author actually like any music? So far every description I've read tells me that the music is either pretentious or a sell-out. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Although this looks like a lot of work, a more positive guide would be vastly more useful. Help me find the best of a genre, rather than telling me it all devolved in trash. My metric so far is that if it's labelled pretentious I'll probably like it.

<comment><USER19> All music genres burn out, they all devolve into trash or repetition, so inevitably every almost genre description is going to bookended with when/why/how that happened else it wouldn't really be an accurate history. There's no need for the hyperbolic "Does the author actually like any music?" when about half the descriptions are him talking about great music

> The peak period for any popular genre is 3-5 years, and then everyone wants > to move on to the big thing

<comment><USER18> I agree, but read, say, the entry for Drill'n'Bass. This happens to be a genre I like (Girl/Boy Song by Aphex Twin and and u-ziq's Lunatic Harness being some favourites of mine). However, according to Ishkur "the result [is] not complex ... it [is] just busy and schizophrenic". So there we go. No redeeming features here.

<comment><USER19> But it _is_, as a rule, both busy and schizophrenic. It's neither complex nor danceable; I like Aphex Twin a lot, but his contributions there, with exceptions, tend to veer toward the "quite possibly just taking the piss" part of his back catalogue -- notably none of the artists he mentions really produced anything like their best work under that banner

<comment><USER18> The point is not whether the music is busy etc. Yeah it is. The point is that the author of the guide is excessively negative about many generes. According to the guide drill n bass is all trash. He doesn't mention any redeeming qualities in the review. Same for UK garage and glitch. The author seems to only like old school USA dance music (not that I have read every entry).

[Hard Normal Daddy is generally considered one of Squarepusher's best albums and it's drill n bass.]

<comment><USER19> Yes, but you're doing exactly the same thing. Why should it have any redeeming features, bar it being a breeding ground for a few acts that went off and did better things, (this is mentioned in passing), and being the punchline for a good joke on Father Ted?

A balanced music review that's good to read is rare. You have things you think are good, and you have things you think are bad, and the meh ones in-between: who cares? Not you. Validation that what you like/dislike - good. Putting into words what you thought all along - good. Part of the reason the site is so loved is because of the kickings doled out to genres (which a vague enough containers disowned by those put in them at the best of times) vs. the things he clearly loves, and, shit, that's what you want from reviewers, not an anodyne history lesson. Music is deeply, deeply tribal, it isn't neutral

Like Squarepusher. "My Red Hot Cock" is really good. But bar that, he's good at playing that stupid six-string bass and making generally-undanceable dance music that people like to stroke their chins to. Saying Hard Normal Daddy is considered one of his best albums -- well that's a pretty shallow pool! Considered by whom? Not by me. Hard Plastic is miles better by dint of the fact it has actual tunes. And the music I like is the best music, and the music I dislike is crap. Weirdly enough the music you like is also the best music and the music you dislike is the worst but anyway, Squarepusher is like one of the jazz acts on The Fast Show, or something John Peel would put on when he was having a mild breakdown. (nb I do actually really like Squarepusher, I'm just arguing against his music because it is frankly unlistenable to most people)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Cybergoths: What happens when you take the stock Rivethead look and add > Steampunk, mecha anime, and The Predator.

Love it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Pretty neat, but it's missing some important genres. eg, lounge music is quite possibly the first popular electronic music genre from the 40s and 50s, yet it's not mentioned.

Also, I'm surprised by the lack of newer genres.

<comment><USER22> Missing Future Funk aswell

<comment><USER23> Read the FAQ or the UAQ for explanations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This Electro Tech Tree is greatly welcomed only 5 days after I lamented the lack of electronic music on the Psytrance Guide[^1] :).

Where is progressive melodic techno, though? E.g. Atlas (Adriatique Remix) by Romboy & Bodzin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4NSDcbmsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4NSDcbmsI)

I wish the text was searchable using my in-browser search.

\- [^1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20695334)

</comment><comment><USER25> The Brostep entry alone is worth visiting the site to read.

<comment><USER26> Some of the writing is funny, some is distracting from its purpose. The Dubstep entry for instance spends most of its time bashing brostep and skrillex which is a shame as it glosses over the first few years of interesting music before it devolved.

<comment><USER27> It never devolved; the mainstream split off from the genre, which remains underground and still has a couple dozen labels actively producing music, as it has for the last decade.

The genre is actually evolving constantly and there's a fair amount of interesting material and new artists. But it's back to being a niche much like jungle is nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I remember using this in the very early 2000. I made electronic music myself, and it functioned as a sort of mashup between Wikipedia and the recommendations at Spotify. I remember browsing the genres, getting some recommendation and searching for the files on Soulseek. When I found the files I could browse all the files of the user that shared them and often find similar acts. Lovely times. Still have the files, btw. :-)

<comment><USER29> I think you should click the link. This is not what you were using in the early 2000s :)

<comment><USER28> I saw that. Not that far from it though. Remember the selection of genres and some of the samples provided. Much is still the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Definitely worth checking out the chiptune entry, goes into a fair bit of detail on making music using early sound generation chips used in NES etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, just when I thought this wouldn't release, because of The Longplay. This guide is amazingly detailed, Ishkur outdid himself

</comment><comment><USER12> Why so little after 2000? Too close to see what's going to matter? Or has musical creativity stalled?

</comment><comment> marble-drink Wow... I've been waiting for this for over 10 years now. The previous version was an example of a loss when Flash started to die. Since I don't install Flash any more I've been unable to use it. So glad to see it back.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fucking modern web dev piece of shit where you can't even ctrl+F among the big list to find what you were seeking. Guess at least it covers a decent breadth of styles.

</comment><comment><USER33> I first discovered this in 2009 when it still needed Flash (for obvious reasons). A fantastic resource, and really pleased to see it updated for the modern web. Great work (again!), Ishkur!

</comment><comment><USER34> I really don't like the way the expanded info alters my scrolling behavior.

</comment><comment><USER35> Whoa, _great_ upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am interested in producing music but is there any book which can you teach you from scratch.

<comment><USER37> Audible Genius ([http://www.audiblegenius.com](http://www.audiblegenius.com)) -> This is really a good resource. The subscription will be online tomorrow, 14,99$/m. I'm using it for some months now and it's really helpful, it develop your ear enormously. It's from the same guy who created Syntorial ([http://www.syntorial.com](http://www.syntorial.com)).

Dance Music Manual ([http://www.dancemusicproduction.com](http://www.dancemusicproduction.com)) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.

Melodics ([http://www.melodics.com](http://www.melodics.com)) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.

Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)

It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!</comment></comment>


Issues with Co-working spaces: The example of Portland, OR - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/07/23/how-coworking-is-working-in-portland/ <comment><USER2> I'm not quite sure I'd sum this up as "issues with co-working spaces", more a variety of strategies.</comment>


Ask HN: Rapid fire style questions for startup beginner - <AUTHOR>

So basically I 've built a service for people who do lots of drafting/model making. I did a lot of interviews and face to face meetings in NY and SF. People in the segment I'm targeting like the idea. They're willing to pay.
So what I have now is a beta, a bunch of subscribers to my non-existent newsletter, and 0 marketing efforts. Bull, I actually started a blog. I have a bunch of posts queued up.
1) I hear I should use Facebook to find my audience. Do I use FB ads or do I "promote my page"? What's the difference.
2) I hear I should use AdWords to direct people to my site. Worth it? Is there a guide on how to do this without wasting my hard earned? Seems tricky.
3) What about Twitter? Ads? What would I even tweet?
4) Actually, what's my goal right now? To see if people will pay (use the service), or to get as many "likes" on FB as possible, get traffic from AdWords, and use analytics to figure out who is who?
5) Should my pricing page be on my website if I'm just doing marketing? (aka, if I'm only marketing, what should my website look like? A description and a sign up form?) At what point do I link to a pricing form?
Thanks <comment><USER3> I'd set up a page with some A/B testing scenarios if I were you and a bunch of analytics (Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Google analytics, you name it) behind it. Each page tests a different sales message and requires a user action to proceed (a click to another page, or to add an item to a sales cart, etc).

If you have different potential users (graphic designers, architects, etc) set up a bunch of those pages on the same site custom made for each market. This forms your initial sales funnel. Your users will vary depending on what the product is and nobody can tell you where to find the customer who would use your product better than some real testing.

Once you have your funnel testing pages, you can start directing traffic from every source you know via custom urls. Tell your followers, spend $25 in ads on any platform you think fits: google ads, facebook, another channel, twitter, etc. and use the analytics to see how many people come back from each channel, and how many of them click through to your action step.

Validate the channels that work best for you via the referal links and search keywords. Validate the sales pitch that works best via some the A/B page scenarios for each.

Refine, polish, rinse, repeat. This is a standard process for anyone from lean startup methodology followers to Google execs.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're missing a lot of critical details before anybody can provide actionable answers to those questions.

Who are you selling to (or hoping/intending to sell to)? What's their buying process/pipeline? Where will they be seeking solutions to the problem you solve for them?

FB "likes" is a completely irrelevant goal for enterprise sales. Leaving pricing off your website will kill your conversion rate on a consumer-oriented low-cost SaaS site. Facebook and Twitter might be _great_ sources of traffic and signups, but they also might be the _last_ place your customers are seeking your product.

Who are you selling to? What are they looking for? How can you make sure you're there when they look? That might be Facebook or Twitter, it might be Adwords or Adsense, it might be a heavily SEO-ed website, it might involve days/weeks trawling LinkedIn for the right purchasing person at a big company to email/call - without considering the "people in the segment I'm targeting", you can't say any of them is the most effective strategy.

How did you grow your mailing list? Is that scaleable?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Selling to freelancers and small to mid companies. Buying process? I'm trying to break into a really traditional marketplace. They haven't used new "stuff" in years. They also won't be seeking solutions to the problem I solve. Every last person I interviewed reacted in a "shit, I do waste time doing this. But what option do I have?"

2) I'm selling to designers. They're looking to spend less time on a boring but needed task in their workflow. How can I be seen by them? You mean to say, in an online sense?

3) I grew my mailing list with paid questionnaires (real life- put an ad in an online magazine) , cold calls, referalls, friends.

<comment><USER4> ' They also won't be seeking solutions to the problem I solve. Every last person I interviewed reacted in a "shit, I do waste time doing this. But what option do I have?"'

To me, that implies SEO is less likely to be a big payoff compared to paid advertising on subject-matter-relevant sites or publications. You need to work out where these designers "hang out", and how to get ads in front of them proposing your solution to them in an eye and mind-catching enough way. Maybe try advertising somewhere like SmashingMagazine – but carefully measure your costs and conversions, it's _very_ easy to spend way more pre conversion than your customer LTV if you aren't measuring things.

Another thing to consider, can you think of a bunch of keywords you could pay for (for example in Adwords/Adsense) or perhaps Facebook demographics you could target - which might let you get ads in front of designers while they're searching for information related to the existing solutions? I suspect finding keywords/demographics that convert at profitable rates is likely to be hard...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First of all, i don't know enough about your service and target market, so take this with a grain(actually, plenty) of salt.

Since you have a beta ready, first get a handful of customers pay and get value from your service. This is to iron out any issues that you might not have thought about. Most importantly, it will also validate if your target customers will really pay. Think of this as a dry run. Zero marketing.

Next up, is to take this from handful of customers to say, a bucketful of customers. I am guessing you can do this again, without much trouble, given you know about your target audience. This might be a good time to put up a website and include pricing details.

As to how you should market your service, you don't have to necessarily spend it on ads. You can try to reverse engineer marketing (aka growth hacking). I blogged about it here:[http://goo.gl/zVw0Hd](http://goo.gl/zVw0Hd)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you saying I let them use it for free, iron stuff out, and then ask them to pay to continue using the service?

I expect issues. The service has a pretty long, horizontal and vertical series of steps to complete. I don't know if I can make them pay what I expect and have them experience something awful.

<comment><USER5> Nope, actually do everything to get the first few to pay. Once you do that, you can at least be certain that there are people willing to pay for your service/product. You can focus on growing your customer base after your paying customers give you great feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like a bold move. I feel like if I tried doing that, I'd get requests for refunds and a lot of bad press. But I guess your point is that at least I'd have to learn why, and then fix that for my next trial.

<comment><USER5> Why do you think it is a bold move? Since you have a handful of customers in the beginning, things can never get out of control. Even if your customers don't like the service/product, you can still do something about it - <USER2> cannot do it if there are hundreds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Same situation here (only in another country), so interested in potential answers. (HN should have a "save" feature just as reddit).</comment>


Spain's Geeksphone exits the smartphone business - <AUTHOR> http://tech.eu/news/geeksphone-exits-smartphone-business/

<comment><USER2> Anyway, the're doing great great things with Blackphone a security based phone.

Looking forward for their future and what products they develop!

-Sent using Boreal, the final HackerNews client: getboreal.com</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best smartphone for privacy conscious consumers in 2018? - <AUTHOR> It seems for a normal consumer in the present day it is extremely difficult to evaluate phones on the privacy criteria. A lot of people suggest to simply buy from Apple. Having seen the recent posts on HN about OnePlus sending a lot of data home, there are a lot of reason to be skeptical. Which phones would you recommend to a privacy conscious audience and why? <comment><USER2> Do you want privacy conscious or "off the grid"?

For the former, Apple is the way to go; so far they haven't done anything privacy-hostile and I personally trust them.

However, they do still have a lot of "cloud" services (including some that send data back unexpectedly, like all your email senders & call history even though there is no explicit toggle for it in the settings) so if you're more for the latter then maybe an Android phone with good support from alternative operating systems (LineageOS with OpenGApps?) is a better option.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple if you want a out of the box, hassle free experience. Or if you are willing to be adventurous, grab a pixel and put lineageOS on it.</comment>


Capture your leap second - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/orsenthil/9bcc844b68fb300916c3

<comment><USER2> It would be sufficient to just check the seconds field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, updated it.</comment></comment>


A neural link between affective understanding and interpersonal attraction [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/E2248.full.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Conclusion.

In sum, we have shown that subjective understanding during social interaction can modulate interpersonal attraction. Interestingly, the findings of the current study suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying individual adjustments of interpersonal attraction during social encounters might act through internal reward signals that are partly independent of external feedback, which makes them perhaps less prone to cheating by potential cooperation partners. To investigate the interaction between intrinsic confidence signals and other — honest or manipulative — signals sent back and forth between communication partners and to examine the neural determinants of the dynamics of human social relations in larger groups ("social connectomes") remain challenging tasks for future studies. The current study suggests that mutual understanding is an important factor in interpersonal attraction, and that further research into the role of a common neural vocabulary in interpersonal attraction will lead to a better understanding of the neurobiological factors that define human social relations.

<comment><USER2> Would you mind unpacking this? This language is harder to follow than it should be.

Here's my attempt, please revise:

1\. Our own attraction of our partners is modulated by our internal reward machinery.

2\. This reward machinery doesn't depend on external signals very much. That means it's hard for our partners to manipulate.

3\. Future work: Investigating how our intrinsic confidence signals are shaped by our partner's messages

4\. More future work: Investigating these effects in larger groups

5\. Takeaway: Mutual understanding is an important factor in interpersonal interaction

6\. Takeaway: We should research a vocabulary to describe neural states; this will help researchers express interpersonal factors more precisely

<comment><USER3> The paragraph summarizing the experiment is clarifying:

> Significance.

> Humans interacting with other humans must be able to understand their > interaction partner's affect and motivations, often without words. We > examined whether people are attracted to others whose affective behavior > they can easily understand. For this, we asked participants to watch > different persons experiencing different emotions. We found the better a > participant thought they could understand another person's emotion the more > they felt attracted toward that person. Importantly, these individual > changes in interpersonal attraction were predicted by activity in the > participant's reward circuit, which in turn signaled how well the > participant's "neural vocabulary" was suited to decode the other's behavior. > This research elucidates neurobiological processes that might play an > important role in the formation and success of human social relations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes sense. One of the most attractive things about my girlfriend initially was that she and I related some some things that a lot of other people don't seem to get.

<comment><USER5> I didn't get that much things in common in the beginning, except that we would understand and laugh from the same jokes. It took a while to refine many other things, like understanding things without needing to say and so on.

You have to have things in common to be a resting place, so that you have peace of mind while doing those things together.

You also have to have things that you're good at and that makes the other person proud (kind of envy) of you, things that they'll contemplate while you're doing.

And, finally, things that you suck at but they are good, so that you'll also stare while they are doing and will keep you enchanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great read. Makes me reflect on my own taste, though. I seem to be attracted to people I can't quite understand, people who take some work for me to figure out. Maybe there's a solid relational foundation between us, but we're always quite different people and I'm kept guessing a lot of the time. I find it interesting, fun, stimulating. I'm sure there are plenty like me in that respect. Any armchair hypotheses for that?

<comment><USER7> I'll make one in a slightly comical sense:

You are most likely a lover of problems and puzzles. Relationships where you don't understand the other person, is the Ultimate Problem Puzzle, but in the emotional field zone, where you can experience and interact with the problem in so much more ways than just computer code.

The same dopamine high of breaking through in solving a problem in the messy legacy code base, refactoring down those 1000s of lines into 100s, increasing the webserver's performance etc.. those same circuits are firing when trying to 'fix' or 'solve' the indecipherable person you are dating.

however, sometimes after a beginner hacker starts, maybe 3,4,5 years, and after their philosophizing-abstractionist hacker phase, they become the 'wise hacker', where writing ---no code at all--- is the best code to try and solve, or bypass problems. Maybe this is what people feel when they meet a S.O. who share mutual intrinsic emotional understanding.

I don't personally subscribe to this philosophy but I could see some other pattern-based thinkers branching off it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is stuff like this still news, given the "epistemological crisis" in psychology research? Did they pre-register their analysis or arrange some kind of independent replication?

</comment><comment><USER9> A lot of my ex-partners complained that we "didn't have anything in common," to the extent that I started telling new love interests, "Look, I already know we don't have anything in common. Don't bring it up later as a reason to leave."

After reading this I wonder if it was actually that my ex-partners were incapable of understanding how someone unlike them would react to different situations. I was usually able to predict their reactions, but maybe it was only a one way street.

<comment><USER10> _I was usually able to predict their reactions, but maybe it was only a one way street._

You trying to predict what your partner is going to do might not have been such a positive contribution to the relationship. People don't like it when someone tries to predict their reaction to something. If you're right then it makes the other person look predictable, and if you're wrong then you look like you don't know them very well. Either way it's bad.

<comment><USER11> > People don't like it when someone tries to predict their reaction to > something.

What? How exactly do you expect to pleasantly surprise your significant other if you can't predict what they'll like? How could you possibly buy them gifts? I'm pretty sure that predicting what I like is something that pretty much everyone is perfectly ok with.

<comment><USER10> You'd think so, but research suggests that isn't the case. There was an interesting psychological study recently that showed the best gift (in terms of how happy the receiver is) reflects the personality of the giver rather than the recipient[1]. You might not mind, but other people do. And obviously it depends hugely on the situation, people involved, relationship, etc.

[1] [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/07/31/what-weve-been- getting-...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/07/31/what-weve-been-getting- wrong-about-choosing-gifts/)

<comment><USER11> > There was an interesting psychological study recently that showed the best > gift (in terms of how happy the receiver is) reflects the personality of the > giver rather than the recipient

That's great, but you claimed that your partner _wouldn 't like it_ if you try to predict what they would like. The link you provided actually says the opposite: that people _say_ they prefer gifts tailored to their preferences, which means they _wouldn 't_ mind you predicting what they'd like, contrary to your original claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know if the authors are trying to avoid it, but what they are describing hints at a similar conclusion for the opposites of attraction: hate + racism

<comment><USER13> not really. It's saying if you can't understand the emotional state then you dont get the reward so its more neutral than hate

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about intellectual understanding?

<comment><USER15> They said emotions, motivations and intentions. So probably intellectual ideas that are not impersonal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Welcome to Hacker News Dear Abby thread!

<comment><USER17> Another step in the transition to HN becoming Reddit :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's the TLDR?

<comment><USER15> The more certain you are of how someone feels, the more you are attracted to them. Not only how they feel, but also how they are motivated. They conclude this from looking at patterns of neural activity.

<comment><USER19> But most importantly, the "attraction" is an intrinsic reward signal generated by your own brain from judging that it understands another person well. The other person can't actually alter that intrinsic reward except by making their actions easier to understand.

<comment><USER20> It explains why being anxious or having low self-esteem is unattractive.

<comment><USER21> Well, it sorta depends on how the anxiety or low self esteem manifests itself. If the person is aware of their anxiety and doesn't try to cover it with over- compensation in the other direction (excessive self assurance or arrogance), then it can be rather charming.

<comment><USER20> Maybe just for the woman</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What If We Had Perfect Robot Referees? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-had-perfect-robot-referees <comment><USER2> > Watching at home, the Hawk-Eye appears to be a precise, schematic account of > what just happened in a tennis match, tracking the ball in flight and then > zooming down to the service line or the base line to show whether the shot > has landed in or out. But what Hawk-Eye actually does is anticipate where a > ball should land, triangulating the most likely outcome based on visual > tracking of its trajectory. Despite the appearance of microscopic accuracy, > the system at the time still assumed a margin of error of about 3.6 > millimetres.

That's exactly what"tracking the ball in flight" means. And 3.6 mm is pretty much the thickness of the fuzz on the ball. No human can measure or control the ball to that level of accuracy!

And tennis, and this system, is exactly the kind of sport which should use this tech. You need to answer the question of whether the ball was in or out frequently, accurately, and quickly, and the tech does that. Same with strike zone baseball cameras.

I agree that it's unfair to referees of basketball or football (especially American football) to compare their instant judgement of a highly dynamic game to minutes of footage from all angles, at high resolution, and at high frame rates. There is more to analyze than where the ball is. Tech would basically need a team of dozens of analysts watching each player from each angle to catch everything in real time that the talking heads can pick apart for the next week.</comment>


Use Coq in Your Browser: The Js Coq Theorem Prover Online - <AUTHOR> https://jscoq.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I've not used Coq for some time but previously toyed around with ProofWeb [0] which is a web interface to server side Coq. This seems like a much better approach and highly active.

[0]: [http://proofweb.cs.ru.nl/](http://proofweb.cs.ru.nl/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Coq 8.11 is going to be interesting - they merged ltac2 into the main tree and working hard on better integration. Coq 8.10 will finally come with CoqIDE GTK 3 port.

<comment><USER4> As well as a new sort, SProp!

[https://coq.github.io/doc/v8.10/refman/changes.html#version-...](https://coq.github.io/doc/v8.10/refman/changes.html#version-8-10)

<comment><USER5> I am familiar with the basics of coq. What does the new SProp sort do? I couldn't understand the docs.

<comment><USER6> Were you able to find this doc [0]? As best I understand it, a Prop P has as many inhabitants as there are proofs of P, whereas an SProp S has at most one inhabitant, according to whether it is true or not. All proofs of S are declared to be "the same". (Convertible is the word they use.)

[0] [https://coq.github.io/doc/v8.10/refman/addendum/sprop.html](https://coq.github.io/doc/v8.10/refman/addendum/sprop.html)

<comment><USER4> Right; indeed they have _definitionally_ at most one inhabitant. Swiping the following spec from the page you link:

      Definition irrelevance (A:SProp) (P:A -> Prop) (x:A) (v:P x) (y:A) : P y := v.

the point is that `irrelevance` consumes an inhabitant `v` of the Prop `P x` and is supposed to "return" an inhabitant of the Prop `P y`. A priori `P x` and `P y` are different types but since `x` and `y` are both inhabitants of a type whose sort is `SProp`, they are definitionally equal and so `v` is definitionally a valid inhabitant of `P y`. This justifies the implementation of `irrelevance` as `v`.

I can imagine some other illustrative examples but I think I'll wait till I've played with SProp to confirm I'm not barking up the wrong end of the stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great! It's not going to replace proof general + (evil mode) emacs for me, but this would be a great way to introduce people to Coq without worrying about installation.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the purpose of automated theorem provers? Seems to take the fun out of proofs

<comment><USER9> Ensuring the proof is actually one

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-computers-we- trust-2013022...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-computers-we- trust-20130222/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I'd imagine an extremely small number of proofs could be verified this way

<comment><USER9> There are archives of formal proofs that are quite big, e.g. [https://www.isa- afp.org/](https://www.isa-afp.org/) for Isabelle, [https://github.com/UniMath](https://github.com/UniMath) for Coq

<comment><USER8> Thanks! This is really fascinating for me, i had never heard of this way of doing proofs and I studied math in college

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i've always wondered how web and functional programming interact. there's, for example TypeScript and Elm. These are not designed for mathematical proofs.

[https://www.typescriptlang.org/](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) [https://elm-lang.org/](https://elm-lang.org/)

<comment><USER11> You'd probably do it in the theorem prover extracting it to a language with a web framework or use a language with a web framework that are both easier to prove. Here's a few places to explore:

[http://www.impredicative.com/ur/](http://www.impredicative.com/ur/)

[https://wiki.haskell.org/Web/Frameworks](https://wiki.haskell.org/Web/Frameworks)

Note: You'd pick the purest of them probably.

Most work I've seen on web applications with formal focus used model checkers, though.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.397....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.397.742)

[https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~sahraouh/papers/Forte2004.pdf](https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~sahraouh/papers/Forte2004.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd love to see an explanation of the runtime state/evaluation process of a Coq proof.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it supposed to take so long to load coq base (~ 5min)?

All I did was Require Import List Omega. and I am now stuck in package loading.

EDIT: From Coq Require Import List Omega. works. Database for hints not loaded? Can't seem to get eauto to work

<comment><USER14> It all seems very fast for me. I also see no problems with hint databases... maybe check the JS console for errors?

<comment><USER13> Side effect of living in Australia when every neighbour is netflixing. I discovered my network was dropping out very frequently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this mean we can have a TypeScript binding to Coq?

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry to be the 15 year old, but could they have not chosen a better name?

Preemptively yes ive read the history of the name, but i doubt they didn't know the homophone.

The puns write themselves: More. Coq in Your Browser

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised to have seen this flagged and dead when it's generally one of the top comments on anything to do with CockroachDB (which I think is a very normal name in comparison).

I'd feel weird about suggesting a tool at work called "vaj" or "tits" too. Feels a little much like encouraging a "boy's club" clique-y kind of atmosphere.

<comment><USER18> Coq is not pronounced like the English word "cock". It also has no sexual or vulgar connotation whatsoever, and is just the standard French word for "rooster".

<comment><USER17> >Coq is not pronounced like the English word "cock".

Maybe they should mimic Facebook's name pronunciation bio line design feature and mention that obviously because that's news to me and people I've known that used the tool.</comment></comment></comment></comment>