The Dizzying Grandeur of 21st Century Agriculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/big-food-photo-essay.html <comment><USER2> A more interesting and enlightening article on the state of 21st Century Agriculture is plugged after this article.

Michael Pollan is a wonderful writer. This article shouldn't surprise anyone who spends time thinking about the food they put into their body and where it that food is sourced.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama- administration-big-food-policy.html)

<comment><USER3> .. and also much more enlightening than this puff piece for capital agriculture, is this one, also promoted on the article: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/meat-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/meat- industry-transparency-fight.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully technology (robotics + machine learning) will improve this a lot in the future. Rather than needing to keep dairy cows in a shed they could graze, and some robotic contraption could roam the field milking them, etc.

It's also worth mentioning that these are probably the better food operations out there (most wouldn't allow cameras).

Agriculture is ugly, and always will be.

<comment><USER5> > most wouldn't allow cameras

Because farmers are concerned that reporters are out to portray their operations as more inhumane or less safe than they really are. For example, nursing sows are kept in very small cages so they can't roll over and kill their piglets, but farmers know that most journalists would only see (and thus talk about) the claustrophobic quarters.

> Agriculture is ugly, and always will be.

I grew up on a farm; while there's certainly room for improvement, most farming operations are very humane. I can't speak to the extreme "big ag" end of the spectrum, but family farms--even large ones--tend to treat their animals well.

<comment><USER6> > so they can't roll over and kill their piglets

If you'll excuse an ignorant question, how did pigs ever survive before this practice? And is it necessarily "humane" just because it reduces one kind of risk?

<comment><USER7> Same as with any other animal - they have multiple offspring, so even if some of them die it's no big deal in nature. On a farm, you don't want even a single piglet to die that way, so you keep the sow in such position that it can't kill the piglets accidentally.

<comment><USER6> If it's not a big deal in nature, then it happens infrequently, yes? So the sows are kept in tiny pens (or pinned on their sides as in the photos in the article) to make reproduction a bit more efficient on the farm than in nature?

This was given as an example of something that looks more inhumane in pictures than it really is. The reason it looks inhumane is because one imagines the sow would prefer freedom of movement, as other living things do. The reason why it is done is certainly relevant, as is how long they are kept in that position, whether they ever appear to be in distress trying to move about, etc.

None of this is visible in a photo, and needs to be explained. However, I don't buy the argument that people have no right to see where their food comes from because they just wouldn't understand what they're seeing. A system where living things are raised for our benefit seems like a place where more transparency is called for, not less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Semi-related: I wonder why the Times is publishing the magazine during the week now. I suspect it has to do with when and how people read these days - many fewer people getting the hard copy, and probably fewer people reading online over the weekend.

I feel like we're at peak long-form journalism, podcasts, and binge-worthy tv. I could (I do not) devote 2+hrs a day to the good stuff and still be way behind.

<comment><USER9> Funny you should say that, I just subscribed to the Times a little over a month ago, the digital version that is. Its the first newspaper I've subscribed to in over 4 years. I like their articles and generally find myself actually reading through them the whole way. Its the only paper I've found worth my time/money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Be very glad you can't smell that cattle feed lot through the screen.

</comment><comment><USER11> >Our industrialized food system nourishes more people, at lower cost, than any comparable system in history...

It does puzzle me though why in Spain, among most other food, bread is 1/5 and Tomatoes 1/10 the price. Particularly odd is that US boxed cereal and California wine are also cheaper.

But that is off topic I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER12> The first picture is just depressing. All those calves living their lives in a cramped space without exposure to nature or to one another, constantly fed to achieve maturity in a fraction of the time it would normally take. This is so fucked-up. And of course their meat tastes nothing like beef.

<comment><USER13> "Newborn females arrive from local dairies and spend their first 180 days at Calf Source — first in one of 4,896 hutches, like the ones seen here, and then in larger group pens. Trucks pass down each of 72 rows, dispensing water and milk. After a transfer to Heifer Source, another facility owned by the Milk Source company, the cows are inseminated and then returned — seven months pregnant, and just under 2 years old — to the dairies they came from."

They only spend a small part of their life there. And they're cows, so they're not used for meat.

<comment><USER14> > They only spend a small part of their life there. And they're cows, so > they're not used for meat.

Yeah right, being separated from your mom at birth, enslaved from your first day, raped and made pregnant once a year is not such a bad deal. At least you're not dead...

<comment><USER15> Given that cows cannot give consent, you can hardly call it rape any more than natural insemination from a bull is rape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is it that in the Taylor Farms photo of vegetable processing, all the workers are wearing dusk masks or respirators? What is dangerous in that environment?

<comment><USER17> I'd imagine it's their sneezes and coughs.

The problem isn't what's going into the workers, it's what's coming out of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing.

People can complain about conditions and what not of mass produced food but it's a big demand. I think it's ingenious the designs of these various mass- production facilities.

Sure, treat the animals with respect. Does suck to think you're born for food.

That line of cows being inseminated and sent back to where they came from. Shit. Sounds dirty haha. Poke. I don't know how they do it though so just speculating.

Great post

</comment><comment><USER19> Weird: I have JavaScript enabled, but the article is an unreadable grey-on- white.

<comment><USER20> I had the same problem but it cleared on a page refresh.</comment></comment>


Teen Promoter Raking in Cash w/Drug and Alcohol-Free Parties - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/biz_kid_ny_party_smarty_DqlMEl96qtlbwbDZhSP5zI

<comment><USER2> A little irrelevant, but the top four comments on that article show a frightening lack of reading comprehension and racism.

<comment><USER3> That's most of the NY Post readership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love what he said - "My goal was to monopolize the teen party business in New York City". The guy didn't want to just have a little hobby business, he wanted to completely dominate it. Brilliant

<comment><USER5> I love when I hear statements like this. Because I don't want the guy who wants to do well. I want the guy who wants to win. I want the guy who wants to monopolize. That old, horrible, cliché about reaching for the stars and landing among them? Totally fits into play. This kid will, no doubt, have a bunch of competition in the next year. And he may never dominate the scene (well, more than he is right now), but I'd place my bets on the guy who is trying to dominate over the guy who wants to eek out a tiny slice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sent him an email about doing a Mixergy interview. Sounds like an enterprising guy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to be the naysayer, but big deal.

We were pulling 30-40K a weekend throwing raves back in the 90's. Ostensibly, they were drug and alcohol-free. _cough_

I am curious how he is getting liability insurance for these events though at his age. I remember it being a bitch to get when I was 20. And what of security? We had to hire off-duty cops until it was found out that it was against the rules for the cops to do that.

<comment><USER7> Do ppl still make that kind of money today?

<comment><USER3> Maybe, I mean that whole culture sort of died out and moved onto parties at clubs which has a very real profit ceiling.

The biggest party I threw drew close to ~6K people at $30 a head. After expenses we cleared about 75K. All in cash, mind you. There are probably still parties that big in Europe and/or Asia, but in the states, it's all in clubs these days. That particular party was in the basement of a civic center and was relatively legit.

<comment><USER8> That must have been one huge basement, dude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This kid has gumption.

It's nice when stories focus on the positives and not the negatives of everyday life.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is fantastic that a high school student is enterprising enough to start a successful business. That being said, the feel good overtone of creating a drug / alcohol free environment ignores the freewill of party attendees.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very nice. Good for him (really). With the setup he has, and the target demographic, he'll actually have parents making their kids go to these.

But the next question (especially for the parents) is how many of the kids are going pre-drinking somewhere, and what's going on in the after-parties. Highschool wasn't that long ago, and I remember those grade 9/10 after- parties... (I have nothing against teen drinking. That would make me the biggest hypocrite).

<comment><USER12> If he has professional bouncers, and zero-tolerance against drunks, pre- drinking isn't going to be that big an issue and as for after parties, that would be the parents problem (shouldn't they be picking up their kid?).

<comment><USER5> "Shouldn't they be picking up their kid?" -- this statement, while probably spot on -- is anathema to raising children in NYC. The kids that go to these events? Are a-okay to walk home close to midnight. I would bet no parents show up at the end of the party to be picked up like at a school dance in the suburbs. (Ha. Oh childhood.)

The kids who have parents that _would_ pick up their kids? From my experience with my brothers and experience working with NYC kids -- they wouldn't be going to the party anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Training for college, I see.

</comment><comment><USER14> Smart Kid with great parents.</comment>


Thanks to budget cuts, we may never know for sure why the universe is expanding - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/23/thanks-to-budget-cuts-we-may-never-know-for-sure-why-the-universe-is-expanding/ <comment><USER2> In theory, the universe will still be expanding in future years when funding might return. What a lame title.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quote: "The funding that supports such advanced particle physics research is drying up, threatening America's leadership role in international science."

Based on this statement, I guess researchers from other countries will find out the answer first. Clearly, it does not mean "we may never know for sure why the universe is expanding."

Also, if the money is saved, they could be used for other useful stuff. I have nothing to complain, since it is not my own money. I cannot ask other people to spend money to fill my curiosity.</comment>


Show HN: DOM-free, GPU-based (webrender) UI in react - <AUTHOR> http://tomsik.cz/node-webrender <comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, this is still very early version and it's not ready for production in any way, yet I'd love to hear some feedback. If you like it at all, what would you like it to support, what application you'd love to do with it, etc. Code-quality is rather poor and there are no tests, because I don't actually care at this point.

I've started this mostly because I wanted to try rust and because I was always wondering if we could just skip the DOM and even native components and somehow just draw UI directly on GPU. Webrender is really close to this idea so it was natural choice.

It's not tightly bound to react but my intention (at this point) is to get closer to react-native api and then do trello/slack example apps and maybe few others. Vue3 is on the roadmap but it's probably never going to have any framework-agnostic object model (retained components).

It might be useful as a replacement for __some __of electron applications but it 's not going to be any soon, to be honest. A lot of basic stuff is still missing (text input, scrolling, different fonts)</comment>


How can I meet and work with distributors? - <AUTHOR>

My partner and I wrote a really great network appliance that is a great value-add and upsell to SAN solutions.
I would like to get it distributed through companies like CDW, trend-micro, etc.
What is the best way to meet with, or get in with distributors like these?  All of them have forms and an address to send product demonstrations-- but it can't be that easy, can it? <comment><USER2> No it can't. Best advice I can offer you is publish a referral/affiliate reward program: choose a few good sales people, give them base prices and tell them they can add their commission on top (assuming you can't hire them directly)</comment>


Home for the holidays, and for a 20-year-old issue of PC Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2014/12/26/7451295/home-for-the-holidays-and-for-a-20-year-old-issue-of-pc-magazine <comment><USER3> Fond memories. I was the editor in charge of that cover story and wrote several sections.

I still remember personally inspecting the innards of the 165 machines that the team exhaustively tested in the lab. The effort we all put in to produce more than 60 data-heavy print pages for a single story was brutal, but seeing the physical magazine that got delivered to more than a million subscribers was tremendously satisfying.

It was an amazing time for the industry. Processors kept improving by leaps and bounds, decent graphics and "multimedia" (which we take entirely for granted today) were rapidly becoming a reality, and software was getting more interesting by the day. To put the timing in context, it was about a year before the Netscape IPO and emergence of widespread visibility of the World Wide Web.

PCs were still a costly investment. The Dell machine that was one of our Editors' Choices cost over $3,000. For that -- about $5,000 in today's dollars -- you'd get a 90-MHz Pentium processor, 16MB of RAM, a 1GB IDE drive, and a 15-inch CRT monitor driven by a graphics card with 2MB of RAM. Compare that with, say, the phone you carry in your pocket every day...

<comment><USER4> I started off with 1k, then 16k. 16meg was a Big Deal(tm). And now... 16gig isn't really enough. All this over... 30 years.

I think now I've got icons bigger than 16meg. The size/speed/space of computing continues to slightly amaze/boggle me, but only because I saw it 30 years ago. I don't think most people looking at it today can grasp the magnitude of the changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > And now, today, I'm a founding editor of a publication that I consider > something of a spiritual successor to those classic mags.

 _The Verge_ might have started out as a "spiritual successor" to PC Magazine et al., but it certainly can't be considered one these days. Many of the founding members have left and the site has lost touch with its technical/gadget roots and has instead turned into a far-let "cultural" publication. For me, Chris Plante's completely unwarranted attack on one of the Rosetta scientists[0] was the last straw. Nowadays, I avoid _The Verge_ as much as possible.

0: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7213819/your-bowling- shir...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7213819/your-bowling-shirt-is- holding-back-progress)

<comment><USER6> It's a ridiculous assertion that a site founded three years ago has wandered from its roots. As for that guy's shirt, it's hardly takes a Marxist to think it's in poor taste.

<comment><USER7> Worth noting that the shirt was made for him by a female friend of his.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PC Magazine didn't have anything on Computer Shopper when you wanted to figure out the best price on a PC. Imagine over a thousand pages of newsprint, with about 850 of them being 100% ads.

It's hard to grep a dead tree, of course.

The best thing was that Computer Shopper could afford to print decent articles -- Steven J Vaughan-Nichols on the first PC UNIXen, cool things to do by writing PostScript to your printer -- after PC Magazine started thinking that those things were too geeky for their business-focused audience. (Six word- processors under $1495 compared!)

<comment><USER9> I regret throwing out my old Computer Shopper magazines. Their form factor was sub-optimal for long term storage, but they would be a ton of fun to look through today.

Edit:

Looks like there are a few issues (from the 2000-2002 timeframe) at the Internet Archive: [https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper](https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper)

I'd love to see some early to mid-90's issues.

<comment><USER10> I found one! Computer Shopper, December 1997: "Holiday Hit! $2,499 - <USER2> loaded 300 MHz Pentium II"

Also two J&R catalogs, winter 1998 and the orher's undated. And an OS/2 Warp Demonstration Disk 3 1/2" floppy, and various other floppies, 5 1/4" included.

Edit: ah, I _was_ going to take the CS to the Internet Archive to scan, but the size might be a problem for their scanners. Thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These days we consider John C. Dvorak to be a safely ignorable douchebag, like Glenn Beck. But back when PC Mag was a thing, a 200+-page tome that came in the mail each and every month, his wry and humorous industry commentary was something of a respite from the dry, business-focused news we expected from much of the PC journalism industry.

<comment><USER12> I remember reading the writing about parts of what I now call the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, particularly the "Microsoft Munchkins" part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've adopted a similar tradition and I think I have that same issue of PC Magazine in my old room at my parent's house. The majority of old magazines I have are old video game magazines, specifically CGW.

This practice has prompted me to go back to issues of CGW that pre-dated me (the earliest CGW I have is from 93) in the archives ([http://www.cgwmuseum.org/](http://www.cgwmuseum.org/)). It's cool to see the juxtaposition of classic, influential hits with games that had good ideas or themes (often themes that have yet to be revisited) but poor implementations along with forgotten clones that don't really stand out.

The game developer magazine archives ([http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag](http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag)) are equally good for getting an overview of this history of game development. Early issues are hardcore technical issues about low level things we now take for granted. Later issues focus largely on diversity, political and community issues in the game industry with the occasional high level technical article.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a complete set of PC Mag going back to the late 80's. I was thinking about scanning them in, but Google beat me to it.

I do have a lot of other computer mags scanned in. I should probably see about getting permission to make them available online. I have a soft spot for Creative Computing from the mid 1970's. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's really interesting to explore the past like this. We often forget where we have been and who we were. It's easy to remember the time when 1024x768 and 256 colors was "workstation grade graphics" and 8 megabytes of RAM were only found on expensive RISC machines, but it's not so easy to remember how we did things and how we accomplished our goals with that kind of tool.

I remember my joy when I discovered my college had (in the mid-80's) a fairly complete collection of IEEE's Computer, Software, Communications of the ACM and BYTE. I spent countless hours diving into the past, understanding how we got where we were. That knowledge, not only of what is, but of why and how, is incredibly valuable.

</comment><comment><USER16> Back in 1999 I finally decided to toss my pile of PC Magazine and Computer Shopper issues. It felt like I was throwing away part of my soul. To this day I still have some regret over that decision.

</comment><comment><USER17> PC magazine was instrumental to my career in tech. I loved when a new one arrived and would read every page. It taught me so much about IT at the age of 12 that I never would have learned if I just played with computers. I even got something printed in Abort, Retry, Fail once and wore the t-shirt I got in return with pride for many years. This post does a good job of capturing the optimism that was embedded in a every issue (except Dvorak's columns). I miss that feeling.

</comment><comment><USER18> Young whippersnappers! My first PC didn't have a hard disk, and my second was an IBM XT with 10 megs, only 4 of which were usable.

I learned to program on punch cards, standing in line to feed them into a system that occupied a large room and was probably fairly state-of-the-art for 1973.

And when I say that I exclude the one Basic program I wrote even earlier on paper tape.

At least this machine was at UCLA, so I won't say that to get to the computer I had to walk barefoot in the snow, uphill in both directions ...

<comment><USER19> And I actually wrote a machine code which I entered bit by bit with the switches over the front panel:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_panel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_panel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For me it is Compute!'s Gazette from 1986 to 1990 that brings out the computer nostalgia. Taught me how to code in BASIC and 6502 Assembly on my Commodore 64. Still go back and read it in PDF format every now and then.

<comment><USER21> I remember typing programs from Compute! into our C64 while my dad waited semi-patiently for me to finish and demo the results, so he could get back to watching TV (never owned a monitor so had to use the family TV, was years before I got a disk drive.) I fondly recall these times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm as nostalgic as anyone about that era and greatly enjoyed the article, but the thing that really stood out to me was the mystery of why his mom doesn't just tell him, "you want to keep all this stuff that's taking up space in my house? Great, take it home with you and I won't throw it away!" This might make me a bad person, but in this case I'm totally OK with that designation.

</comment><comment><USER23> I remember getting a 486 DX4/100 right around then! It was a crazy upgrade from my previous Intel box (a 386SX-16).

I installed Slackware on it.. This was right around 1.0 kernel, I think.

</comment><comment><USER24> You can browse a lot of these old issues with Google Books</comment>


Adobe to Launch Full Version of Photoshop for iPad, Expected in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/13/adobe-photoshop-ipad-2019-report/ <comment><USER2> > a $9.99 per month Creative Cloud subscription will likely be required to > access the full feature set

Computing was so much nicer before the advent of SaaS and subscription models.

<comment><USER3> Yes. About three time in the past couple of years the cloud caused us to lose access to our Adobe apps. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Active discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522287)</comment>


Facebook's Petabyte Scale Data Warehouse using Hive and Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Facebook-Hive-Hadoop <comment><USER2> I don't have time to watch the whole thing right now, but I don't buy 12TB/day for a second. Facebook has what, on the order of 1e8 users, doing a handful of updates per day which are text snippets of a dozen bytes each. Not even close.

Maybe they're including things like posted image data? That's schemaless and static, and not really a "data warehouse" problem as such. Someone enlighten me, because this doesn't add up.

<comment><USER3> Depending on the resolution of your log files, I could buy it.

I recently set BCC to log AJAX requests individually to try to reproduce an issue in production, and forgot to turn that off after I was done. "Whoops." Thank God for logrotate -- I was chewing through 300 MB a day, or roughly the same on a per user basis as you just calculated, from a site which has two pages which are heavily AJAXed.

If you're capturing context for actions for later analysis, that is going to chew through space like craaaaaaazy. (For example, Facebook obviously doesn't want people leaving the service. They'll show you photos of 10 friends to make you stay. I suggest that if the leaving customer is male then the more ladies you have in that lineup, to a point, the less likely he is to leave. If we thought ahead when designing that feature, to capture the friend IDs of the photos we show, we can have some analyst quickly knock out whether prior data suggests that to be true prior to having engineering run an A/B test on it. So that is an extra 10 numbers to keep track of for every access of that action. Multiply that sort of contextual information times all the actions FB is interested in and allow them to snapshot the state of your social graph so that they're using the proper context for you back then, and they really do have some hefty, hefty needs.

<comment><USER4> Woah, not 300MB per day! At that rate, it'll only take 9 years to fill up a 1TB drive! Oh noes!

<comment><USER3> Or under three months to fill up my VPS' 20 GB allocation for disk storage and cause further attempts by customers to create bingo cards to throw write errors, bringing my business to a crunching halt.

Like I said, yay for logrotate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I heard WoW has 1.3PB online.</comment>


Why we have banned default exports in JavaScript and you should do the same - <AUTHOR> https://blog.neufund.org/why-we-have-banned-default-exports-and-you-should-do-the-same-d51fdc2cf2ad <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm a dumb idiot but I'm definitely guilty of using this so-called anti- pattern, and I don't really see the big deal.

In a lot of places I define module.exports as a function that takes some inputs, eg. db params, and returns a promise that results in an object containing the methods I wish to expose externally, _after_ any initialization, eg. connecting to the db.

That's a convenient way to guarantee a module is ready to use to the bigger app. Naming each export as a constant would break this.

So what's the benefit? You want to use some fancy IDE with Auto complete? Well la-di-da some of us old farts are still on text editors. So unless I'm missing something I don't see why I should change my habits to cater to someone else's convenience.

If someone can provide a better case against default exports, I'm all ears.</comment>


Deconstructing Crunchbase: Understanding Public Self-Reported Data - <AUTHOR> http://jdmaturen.github.io/2013/deconstructing-crunchbase.html

<comment><USER2> Crunchbase is a great data source, but there are considerable issues with it not covered by the OP. It's not just self-reported bias, but problems with mistakes in the data (including typos), mistakes of categorization, and inherently limited structure.

The following below reads like waay too harsh of a criticism on Crunchbase maintainers...none of its problems are out of the fault of TC, but of trying to make a service that encompasses such a massive universe. This is not a "Oh, what terrible data designers TC has" but, "Hey, CB is a great service, but you must know of these limitations before making an analysis"

(Last I scoured the data, it was in October, so I apologize if I bring up anything that has already been fixed).

One of the overarching problems is that Crunchbase is especially targeted for startups, with a focus on investment rounds, and yet there's a considerable number of entries for well-established companies, for which there is no relevant data. I suppose it's easy enough to filter the complete database on an inner join (return all companies for which there's at least one investment round)

Related to that: Without the itemized valuation rounds, the company valuation field (which is a column in the companies listing) is not very helpful...because it depends on users actively updating that field with each financial quarterly report or what have you. That's clearly not going to happen, so perhaps that valuation field should be moved to an events table where users can list the valuation for the company on a per quarter/year basis.

And so on the topic of inflexible structure...the category field is woefully limited...small single-focus companies aren't consistently categorized and then when you get to the big multifaceted companies...Google and Microsoft...how do you categorize them with a single word? "Internet"? "Software"? "Enterprise"? Tags would be of best use here.

So the above problems are difficult to solve on both an internal level and for your submitters...but here's an example that made me give up (for now) on doing a thorough analysis of CB data:

Color: [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/color- labs](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/color-labs)

Color is listed as "closing". Yet, AFAIK, it was "acquired"...even TechCrunch's own reporting says so:

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/sources-apple- paid-7-millio...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/sources-apple- paid-7-million-for-color-labs/)

So I'm not arguing whether Color's acquisition is a "fail" on the same level as shutting down, the point is that there is a difference in the startup world, and CB needs to formalize that definition, because such distinctions are among the most important datapoints that a startup DB can provide. The ambiguity/error in Color's listing is worth pointing out because it was a highly watched company, highly mocked, and highly discussed...that its CB status wasn't noticed or fixed is a sort of bellwether for what the case may be for many of the other companies in the DB.

For a fun data-digging project, do a query for recently started companies with large investment rounds but by firms that seem to be one-offs...they are either very interesting companies (i.e. fly under the radar companies that have attracted large sums of money)...or, it's just made-up data.

OK, so what's great about CB data, besides its ambition and its generous terms of service? Doing analysis based on investment rounds. I think it's safe to say that startups have it in their best interest to tell the world how much big firms have so far invested into them. And the structure of the investments table forces the inputter to provide useful data, at least compared to the other tables.

To reiterate, not a criticism of CB's efforts...but pointing out natural limitations that exist so far. Would love to do a hackathon...or rather, a "cleanathon" to make the data more uniform.</comment>


The software community has rejected the best research in compilers/languages - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/5/24633-logic-of-lemmings-in-compiler-innovation/fulltext

<comment><USER2> This is not terribly surprising. The concepts behind the static type system of ML - from back the late 70s - are still "groundbreaking" for industry programmers. Virtual machine-based languages and automated memory management were done several times over, but they were only taken seriously after being massively marketed through Java.

I know a certain Unix junkie. She has chosen to stick to the old standbys of C and Perl. She doesn't want to even look at revision control yet - "too complicated" she says. Fortunately, this is just a hobby right now and she isn't going out and doing commercial work in such a state, but if someone who ostensibly is enjoying themselves programming isn't willing to go out and play with languages and tools, I doubt the situation is much better for a commercially-driven developer.

As long as our development environments are perpetually being replaced by new ones, I think it will be an uphill battle to get the research tech to the mainstream. New environments are almost always crude and barebones. By the time they're mature, people are already starting to move on to the next one. We can only hope for some stability in the future; at that point, the dynamics of programming may take a major turn for the better.

</comment><comment><USER3> As in mathematics, some of the best software research can be very hard for practitioners to recognize, appreciate, learn and apply.

Part of the reason is developers rarely get the opportunity to try out research ideas until enough success stories about them become mainstream. I remember looking into Erlang years ago around the time some folks I knew at Sendmail were looking into it but unfortunately nobody at my company would use it. It was too weird at the time. But if I were working on the same thing today I could easily reassure people by pointing to things like Amazon SimpleDB.

These days I'd like to see more mainstream publications about checking and reasoning tools like SPIN[1] and Coq[2] and techniques like Proof Carrying Code[3] so that I can convince my management and peers to try them out.

1- <http://spinroot.com/spin/whatispin.html>

2- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq>

3- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-carrying_code>

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, one of the best research in compilers and languages, IMHO is applying static analysis and constraint solvers to practical systems (e.g. C) find bugs and/or automatically generate tests to find bugs:

<http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/>

Coverity is a startup from such research. The new Klee paper is a good read as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Another way to predict the future is to realize that it takes a very long time--about 10 to 20 years--to get a technology out of the research lab and into everyday life. It's very difficult to get brand new ideas out in less than a decade; in the case of the transistor, it took almost 25 years. No matter what you do, it may take several companies, several different groups of people, several different areas of venture capital funding and more before you get something back._ <http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm>

Java took a bunch of academically proven ideas, and put them together in a way that was workable for industry (and yes you're quite right, also marketed as an web applet-language, which is remarkable for Java's failure at it).

Haskell (for example) first appeared in 1990. 1990+25 = 2015.

Possibly, what we are seeing is just the historical rate of technology transfer.

</comment><comment><USER6> That just shows that "the best research in compilers/languages" doesn't address the important problems as perceived by the software community.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe that the author is ignoring the importance of libraries for commercial work when bemoaning the slow uptake of lessons learned in language research. Learning a new language does not take a long time in comparison to the amount of time required to learn the APIs necessary to be really productive.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps the people who do the "best research" in compilers/languages simply suck at marketing.

Also, and I know this might be a heretical thing to say... maybe the ideas just aren't that good.</comment>


Elizabeth Warren Praised for Plan to Break Up Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/08/elizabeth-warren-praised-plan-break-tech-giants <comment><USER2> Planet Money's recent antitrust series is worth checking out to build up a basic footing for these discussions.

Standard Oil: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/15/695131832/antitrust-1-standard- oil)

The Paradox: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/20/696342011/antitrust-2-the- paradox)

Big Tech: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/anti...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big- tech)</comment>


Drchrono Launches API, Provides Developers Healthcare Industry Entry - <AUTHOR> http://blog.programmableweb.com/2013/12/10/drchrono-launches-api-provides-developers-healthcare-industry-entry/

<comment><USER2> Finally.

^^ meant in the best way possible (thanks drchrono)

EDIT: it appears the form tooltips are also getting cut off: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2067384/Screenshots/e25ls_bz8d0j.png](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2067384/Screenshots/e25ls_bz8d0j.png) (viewing in Chrome on 11" MBA)</comment>


Who would win if consumers decided the Oscars - <AUTHOR> https://www.civisanalytics.com/blog/consumers-really-think-win-best-picture-oscars-data-science-answer/ <comment><USER2> This misses an important point: Consumers had to spend money to see the movies they saw. They formed an opinion, whether the author considers it informed or not, on where to spend their money. So, if 1,000 paid to see movie A, and only 100 paid to see movie B, there is no reason to assume that if those who _chose_ to spend their money on A were made to watch B as well, they would change their votes in large numbers ... regardless of the fun the author had with discrete choice models and data mining.</comment>


Minotaur: A pythonic, asynchronous, inotify interface - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/giannitedesco/minotaur <comment><USER2> This is really cool! I still remember the last time I wanted to use inotify in Python: I ended up switching to TypeScript/Node.js in the end because it was so much simpler to get it working. Next time I'll try out your library!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Drop me a line when the day comes and let me know how it went :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is cool! I'd love one for fanotify.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, no plans for that right now, but it does look like it would be an interesting project so who knows :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for this. Pretty sure I can find a few good uses for it. :)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I change my career trajectory as a PM? - <AUTHOR> Using a throwaway account here because my normal HN account uses my real name.
TL;DR: I want to upgrade my career trajectory as a product person from the ho-hum conservative company to a faster pace organization with smart people. How can I demonstrate my ambition as a job seeker?
I have about 6 years of experience in product roles, 4 years as a product owner and 2 as a product manager. My roles have been in companies that use technology extensively but don't identify as "tech companies." For instance, my first three years as a PO were at a major financial firm working on banking integrations and my most recent 3 years have been at a publishing company working on SaaS products that deliver the publisher's content.
At the same time, I've launched a side project and made a couple of real B2B sales, which has been very rewarding, too. I am a self-taught programmer. I want to keep growing this side business.
I consider myself a top contributor and leader and I want to move into a more challenging product management role at a tech company because I'm frustrated by colleagues and executives that aren't very ambitious or technically skilled.
But I don't know how to switch into a PM role at a more aspirational company. The job applications are all about "how to do product" in the VC/SV sense of the discipline, which we distinctly don't do at my current company.
How can I demonstrate to potential employers that I'm the "right caliber" of PM to make this jump and get my career onto a higher trajectory?
I live in the Raleigh, NC area and cannot relocate.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> A couple things jump out here:

1\. You have an excellent track record in your career of Product

2\. Your side projects sound very compelling. Certainly something employers will take notice of.

3\. You are self-motivated. People love that.

4\. You have a wide range of skills within Product which means you are a versatile product person.

So, knowing all of that the only things I can think of (and apologies if this comes off as harsh) is that you are limiting your scope within Raleigh, being complacent about searching for a job, or there is something else that is missing in this equation.

If you are only willing to work in Raleigh, then you are going to have limted opportunities due to geographical restriction. This is not to say that there aren't ambitious and awesome companies and positions in the area, just that there are areas outside of Raleigh that might have exactly what you are looking for.

Lastly, with your wonderful experience and awesome side projects, you have to ask yourself if you are presenting it to employers correctly. Is your CV showing off your skills? Do you have a portfolio that highlights the extent of your work? Are you networking enough and sharing your skills with other product people? If you are, then it is just a matter of being patient and persistent because it looks like you have the chops to be a great PM anywhere.</comment>


Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/12/11/why-spotify-can-never-be-profitable-the-secret-demands-of-record-labels/ <comment><USER3> Even though Spotify is a "piracy killer" (at least in Sweden, if not elsewhere), I think the labels will be more than happy to bleed it dry and leave its lifeless corpse on the side of the road as they search for the next Big Thing to strangle, bleed dry and leave behind.

Two reasons:

1\. The major labels, like most of the big content producers, are extremely interested in short term gains, even if it means losses down the road. As long as something is still "down the road," it won't affect this year s/quarter's/month's profitability.

Take a look at Hulu. It's a shadow of its former self. It used to be a solid site with great content, but those controlling the content have decided it's not making enough money fast enough. The fix? Remove content. Move it around. Chop it up. Stagger releases randomly. Put X season on Hulu but have Y season exist only as a selection of clips or have it go missing entirely.

See also: Netflix. Because the major studios are unwilling to trade DVD dollars for digital dimes, they've gone about pricing themselves out of the market. Netflix is also a "piracy killer," but the studios are too concerned with getting the money up front to pay attention to how much content is being leaked out the back.

The studios also seem to think that people will follow them to their own sites or digital offerings, but the content they offer is generally crippled by DRM or requires the installation of proprietary software or another set of logins and passwords and people in general just do not have an interest in setting up yet another account just to watch a couple of Lost episodes.

2\. Even though everything mentioned is a "piracy killer," the simple fact is that, for many people, the service (Spotify, Netflix, etc.) becomes the end product. The services don't lead towards more sales of other physical or digital goods. This doesn't fit into the major labels'/studios' plans at all. They want to sell more of their stuff, not necessarily collect royalties from someone else's service.

So, if they manage to drain Spotify completely or at least force it to give up its US operations, it won't hurt them much. By that point, another service will come along and they can pile on and bleed it dry as well. The plan, I suppose, is to keep riding these little income spikes until it's 1994 again, or something.

They must still harbor the belief that, once the other options dry up, people will head back to the brick-and-mortar and purchase content in physical forms that carry much higher profit margins.

<comment><USER4> > I think the labels will be more than happy to bleed it dry and leave its > lifeless corpse on the side of the road as they search for the next Big > Thing to strangle, bleed dry and leave behind.

Absolutely correct.

The intermediaries in the music distribution network (i.e. "the labels") already know that they have lost in the long term.

They know that their best move now is to extract what revenue they can from the current examples of the types of service that will eventually replace them.

Maybe this is "evil" or maybe the execs think of it as their job to try to earn as much as possible, perhaps for their shareholders' sake.

Ironically, those services which seek to replace the labels in a way compatible with the law (i.e. startups rather than torrent sites) are the ones who will end up paying (perhaps too much) for it, and will risk going bust as a result.

Meanwhile, sharing via torrents etc. is gradually killing off the labels. It may be in the interest of everyone to just let this occur without starting up a business which tries to find a middle ground.

But there will always be companies springing up to take a gamble on being the first to exploit a new opportunity. If Spotify (or whoever) fails, perhaps the next music streaming service will be the one to meet a much weakened music distribution industry in the courts.

Once the labels are gone, services which offer subscription models for music will thrive without the threat of legal action. And the quality and variety of music available to the masses will thrive.

This is a waiting game, and I think we all know exactly how this will eventually play out. Meanwhile we're still in the wild west, waiting for the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

<comment><USER5> The lack of critical thinking about music copyright never ceases to boggle my mind. In this discussion Spotify is the intermediary. The labels and the artists do the heavy lifting here. Do you guys believe in the concept of intellectual property or what? It is vital for our whole economy (including FOSS).

The labels put up the money for the projects, and the risk is terrible. If you are a label almost every one of your products loses a lot of money. In fact all of the money you invest! You hope to make it back on a handful of hit acts. In some sense acts that fail commercially come out on the long end of the stick, in that they burn throughs hundreds of thousands in cash and are not on the hook to pay it back. This is why the classic case of hit acts not making any money exists, the deal is structured way in the labels favor. Without this the labels can't make money.

How you all feel about a company that agregated other companies software products and started giving them away for free? Any objections to that? Would you look down on efforts of developers to get as much as they can for their products?

A vital music culture cant exist without some kind of viable business model. Many attempts have been made to build a business on indie bands (my space , mp3.com) it can't work because indie artists don't have near the resources to create a true modern music product. Not to mention most indie music is not that good, and nobody wants to hear it.

<comment><USER6> "Vital music cultures" have existed for millennia without "viable business models", in the way we understand that term today. People like to make music, even if the reward is only attention. There might be less money in it, less commerce in it, in the future without "viable business models", but I think you're somewhat brainwashed if you think that means there won't be a "vital music culture". If anything, the music culture may be even more vital in the absence of extrinsic motivation.

<comment><USER7> "If anything, the music culture may be even more vital in the absence of extrinsic motivation."

It's interesting how everyone seems to want to make choices for artists..without even asking them.

Without a way to make money, we will see less music. Why? Because artists will be forced to get day jobs. As it is, there is a small chance you will make a full living as an artist.

If anything, it will kill the indy scene because the only companies that will be able to even come close to a profit are the the ones with deep pockets (IE: the huge record labels or something like it).

Like software piracy, Adobe and Microsoft can handle it. Small companies go out of business if piracy us unchecked. I've seen it happen.

<comment><USER8> >Without a way to make money, we will see less music. Why? Because artists will be forced to get day jobs. As it is, there is a small chance you will make a full living as an artist.

So? This is how it has been for centuries. Call it the invisible hand meets the art world. They can get jobs being music teachers. They can record using vintage equipment, like Blake Schwarzenbach did (used 4-track and 8-track recordings while he wrote for GamePro).

>If anything, it will kill the indy scene because the only companies that will be able to even come close to a profit are the the ones with deep pockets

Something tells me you don't understand the definition of "Independent Music".

The fact is, the labels function as a market for pump and dump stocks, where the stock is a band or album. Independent music doesn't (or in my opinion, shouldn't) work that way. It can take 5 years for your album to blow up. (See: Mumford and Sons). You might have a bigger following only after you're dead and buried (See: Elliot Smith and Bright Eyes). You might have every single one of your fans wanting you to quit your main gig for a side project they've done (See: Death Cab For Cutie/The Postal Service).

Disclaimer: I am a founder of a failed start-up company that would work with artists in a way that was designed to supplant the labels and exploit long- tail effect, etc.

The sad, sad thing is that indie bands are getting picked off quicker and quicker by labels and pumped up for the first-album success. It's actually a huge issue (read up on MGMT) when the artists then try a new direction for a second album and the label is hesitant to financially support an album unless fans move the product in the first two weeks. This becomes at catch-22. How do you enjoy the success of radio play when nobody's paying to play you on the radio? This leads the labels to relegate these bands (by the second or third album) to a "we don't help you" status, forcing the band to break up or just be a small indie band forever on tour.

If anything, major labels playing in the indie scene is akin to making the indie bands "build on a flood plain".

TL;DR: NOPE. Artists make very little money from albums. It is known.

<comment><USER7> "So? This is how it has been for centuries. Call it the invisible hand meets the art world. They can get jobs being music teachers. They can record using vintage equipment, like Blake Schwarzenbach did (used 4-track and 8-track recordings while he wrote for GamePro)."

Again, you are making choices for them. You don't see anything wrong with this? Nobody is guaranteed a living. However, you should be given a chance. You are taking away that chance completely.

"when the artists then try a new direction for a second album and the label is hesitant to financially support an album unless fans move the product in the first two weeks."

This is the consequence of going with a label. The label wants to make their money back in the short-term and you, as an artists, give away your creative control. It's almost the same as getting VC for your startup.

Over time, people with your attitude have pushed many artists to go with big labels. They have little to no chance making any kind of living on their own (because people just share their music and don't pay for it). So, the label offers them money and some sort of living.

" I am a founder of a failed start-up company that would work with artists in a way that was designed to supplant the labels and exploit long-tail effect, etc."

I hope you weren't charging any money, because you sure don't seem any better than a regular label.

<comment><USER8> >Again, you are making choices for them. You don't see anything wrong with this? Nobody is guaranteed a living. However, you should be given a chance. You are taking away that chance completely.

I don't even see where this is coming from. I think you jump over a few points in your logic here, or you just know nothing about an industry which you're trying to debate about.

>Over time, people with your attitude have pushed many artists to go with big labels.

NOPE. Where are you getting your talking points? The RIAA's "downloads = lost sales" page?

If people didn't broaden the market and fanbase for independent music and independent labels, it wouldn't exist, and you'd only have major label music.

They have little to no chance making any kind of living on their own (because people just share their music and don't pay for it). So, the label offers them money and some sort of living.

The labels offer an incredibly bad deal. And all the artists who, you know, actually make a living without belonging to a major label might want to have a word with you about your data.

>I hope you weren't charging any money, because you sure don't seem any better than a regular label.

Actually, we were tons better. We basically set up our store to be the reverse of the apple store: They get 70% we get 30% (agency model). So selling your album for $5 bucks nets you 3. The same album on iTunes, would you net you about $1.50.

Except, as an independent, you'd have to go through a service which functions as a 'label' that takes 50%. So an album that nets you $.75 on iTunes would make you $3 off our site.

Oh, and one of our founders actually owned an independent record label. The problem is, all of the small indies have no internet strategy, and everyone in the business knows that's the name of the game. Fortunately, sites like SoundCloud and Bandcamp are actually there for independent musicians these days.

I'd love to go on, but to me it seems like you have no clue as to what you're talking about and I've got better things to do than re-hash the research we used in our pitch. Good day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Forget the labels, Spotify is dead. The corpse just hasn't hit the ground yet:

"I am paid $0.00029 per stream of a song on Spotify, and even this amount depends on whether the song is being streamed by a paid user or someone using the service for free. This means it will take upwards of 3,500 streams of a single song on Spotify to earn $1.00 versus that same revenue for one iTunes song purchase...I'll go even further to say that I actually prefer illegal downloading over Spotify because when you get music illegally it's at least implicit in the transaction that what you're doing is potentially harmful to the artist. But with Spotify, your conscience is clear because you're either enduring ads or paying to use the service and access the music. But from the blue-collar artist's perspective...there's little discernible difference between $0.00029 and $0.00...which is why I will withhold any new releases from Spotify in the future."

[http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it- away-...](http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-how- free-music-makes-more-than-sense)

Read the whole blog, it jam packed with more than enough insight to make it worth multiple readings.

Even absent the labels, Spotify is a lousy deal for individual music makers.

The search for a viable, sustainable online business model for music is still underway, but unlimited streaming for a low monthly fee is not it.

<comment><USER10> > Forget the labels, Spotify is dead.

Let me guess, Netcraft confirms it? I'll believe it when I see it.

Spotify (and similar services) is transforming the way we can listen to music, and, at least for me, I vastly prefer the Spotify experience over anything else I've tried. Also, with Spotify, I'm spending more money on music than I ever did before, and I'm not even considering bothering with piracy. I'm living the promise that if only accessing music legally is easy enough, the pirate will stop being pirates.

So small artists are getting screwed over. Is that in Spotifys interests to sustain that? I would not think so, because the value proposition falls apart if the available collection isn't comprehensive. But right now, they're preoccupied in a land grab, for which they need to focus on the big labels, as the land grab will be possible without small indies, but not without Rihannas full back catalogue.

If you're an artist and you don't think Spotify is a good deal, feel free to withdraw your music - that will push them to think about how to adjust their business model to better accommodate indies.

Spotify is nowhere near having finalised their business model. Declaring the whole thing dead on the back of a few blog posts is just a little bit premature.

<comment><USER9> OK, to be less glib and more constructive. A sustainable music distribution model needs to work for:

\- the distributor (iTunes or Spotify, for example) or it is not sustainable \- the users, or they won't use it \- the makers of music, or they won't put their music on it \- the owners of music, or they won't put their music on it

If it works for all four, then things are aligned for a sustainable business model. If any one is missing, then the thing can't stay together.

iTunes, check, check, check, check. Four fingers fold in, thumbs up.

Spotify. Works for users, at its existing price point. Doesn't work for makers of music, unless the price point changes, at which point it won't work for the users - unless we are all missing that Spotify can charge significantly more and users would still be happy. Can work for large music owners, but as the original article points out the large owners can achieve this for themselves in a way that no longer works for Spotify.

Spotify is a valiant attempt at a new business model. If anyone can make it work, they are the ones and I salute them for trying. I just don't see how they can succeed.

<comment><USER10> iTunes doesn't work for me for discovery. The killer feature for me in Spotify is that I can give anything a listen with no effort and no marginal cost. I subscribe to various third party play lists, so I get suggestions pushed to me. If I like something, then there's a tangent for me to go off and explore. Also, although a much smaller concern, is multi-device asset management. Having to copy stuff around is annoying, which means I don't do it, which means the collections on my work and private computers and my mobile are constantly out of sync.

But where I think you're mistaken is in that the business model conceptually doesn't work for makers of music. If I'm anything to go by (and anecdotally I am), Spotify facilitates a lot of new revenue to enter the system. The concrete distribution of that revenue currently doesn't favour indies, but there's nothing inherent about the business model that says that couldn't change.

Perhaps tier the payment per stream: Random access gets low (radio-like) payment, repeated access get higher and higher payment until $1 (iTunes price) is hit, then little to nothing after that. My listening patterns would certainly make such a model sustainable.

<comment><USER11> _I subscribe to various third party play lists, so I get suggestions pushed to me._

I strongly suspect that you are not the typical user. last.fm has been around for years, but still barely anyone uses it. It seems the majority of people use iTunes and Spotify in the same way- to look up and listen to their favourite artists.

<comment><USER12> As somebody who has tried last.fm, I found the experience lacking. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the model is flawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More generally, this is why no one who owns neither content nor un- disintermediatable distribution will ever be seriously profitable. Netflix is figuring this out right now: pipe owners (e.g. Comcast] make money and people- who-fund-and-front-for-content make money [e.g. NBC]. People who sit in the middle of the pipe and the distributor get squeezed. Even friends of the distributors [see: Hulu] can have a hard time.

And by "un-disintermediatable distribution", I mean: distribution without viable substitutes. If Spotify were so awesome that I'd never switch, then they'd be in the money. But I also use GrooveShark and Pandora, so Spotify is in for pain.

Sure, you can make nice money for a short time [again, see: Netflix], but the folks that own the content will raise prices as the market becomes attractive.

<comment><USER14> I'm really curious what netflix is gonna do when each of the big 6 studios start demanding $5-$10 per subscriber for content access.

<comment><USER13> Amen, sister!

I pay $14/month for cable (so that I can get cable modem access). How in the hell can Netflix offer the full range of content for $8/month when that would cost me an additional $80/month if I bought it directly from Comcast?

Comcast negotiates directly with HBO to carry HBO's content. Is Netflix going to do better as they negotiate to carry HBO's content over _Comcast's lines_? Net neutrality helps, but the logical conclusion of that is to have the distributors representing themselves on the Net, not to have Netflix represent the distributors on the Net.

<comment><USER15> Projected usage, is my guess. I am probably missing key information, but it seems to me that the only way for netflix to work is if nine out of ten netflix subscribers watch one or two movies a month (or less).

Comcast is TV. I want to say the average American watches something like 3 hours of TV a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A brilliant comment from the article, posted by KenG:

I'm guessing a lot of hot dogs would get stolen, and then the hot dog supplier would lobby the government to hire guards for hot dogs. If a guard saw a person eating anything that looked like it might be a hot dog, the guard could confiscate all of that person's food, without any kind of evidence.

Also, since backpacks were often used to hide stolen hot dogs, the government would be asked to charge an annual fee to everyone who used a backpack, so that the money could be given to the hot dog supplier to cover the cost of stolen hot dogs. Even vegetarians, who never eat hot dogs, would have to pay the annual fee.

</comment><comment><USER17> Making money in music today's music industry is absurd. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if major record labels vanished in the next 100 years.

You'd imagine a band that's put out a record on a successful label and toured the world multiple times would be covered in wealth. That's not the case at all. In fact, most touring bands don't even make enough money to be in the black. At the end of the day, past the flights, cost of gas, and cheap meals lies an elastic state of negative to mediocre profit.

Why then do small acts still tour? Well, it's fun and it's probably been a dream of theirs for some time now. I for one am extremely thankful that bands continue to put out amazing music with only enough money to barely support themselves.

Here's the thing: bands don't need major labels anymore. That's because it's basically level playing field now: you can make an amazing album on your laptop in a barn in rural Massachusetts and still have the ability to compete with the major labels. No longer are people sucked into the radio aggregate of the 90's when all you could discover were boy bands. Now we have these amazing things like Bandcamp and Spotify that allow you to stream virtually anything! That's pretty amazing, but what's the use if everyone is listening to the demands of a major label?

So with that being the case, couldn't this problem be solved? All it will take is a push for bands to stay away from huge labels and for listeners to find that music. That's where Spotify should come in.

What's interesting about this entire thing is that a long tail company like Spotify is potentially able to shift the power from the shit that most major labels produce to better and more meaningful music. If Spotify can find a way to direct people's tastes away from most major label garbage, they might be able to solve this issue.

Maybe Spotify will push for more independent artists and incorporate musicians on Bandcamp into their catalog.

Although I'm pretty sure that musicians who put their music directly on Spotify only receive a pretty small cut, Spotify should be able to overcome their major label woes by putting a focus on smaller more niche based music.

It is my hope that musicians stay away from large labels. And no, I am not some indie purist, I just think that major labels are diluting the quality and diversity of music and that we have the power to change that.

<comment><USER18> "So with that being the case, couldn't this problem be solved? All it will take is a push for bands to stay away from huge labels and for listeners to find that music. That's where Spotify should come in. What's interesting about this entire thing is that a long tail company like Spotify is potentially able to shift the power from the shit that most major labels produce to better and more meaningful music. If Spotify can find a way to direct people's tastes away from most major label garbage, they might be able to solve this issue."

In response to this there was an older article posted here about some of the numbers behind Spotify: [http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology- some-stats...](http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats- and-how-spotify-works/) One quote in particular speaks to your point, interestingly in a section called "The Short Tail?":

"During a week-long analysis of all music played via Spotify: 88% of track accesses were for the most popular 12% of all tracks on Spotify. 79% of server requests were for the most popular 21% of all tracks on Spotify."

While it might be a nice idea that Spotify could somehow shift user taste towards more independent artists, the numbers here seem to say that people go to Spotify for mainly popular, culturally relevant tracks. I think a company attempting more of what you're saying is the YC company Earbits with their model focusing on discovery of smaller artists. Personally I'd rather listen to popular music I know on Spotify, and I think most people feel the same way. I just wish there was a viable business model there. Music is a very tough vertical.

<comment><USER10> > "During a week-long analysis of all music played via Spotify: 88% of track > accesses were for the most popular 12% of all tracks on Spotify. 79% of > server requests were for the most popular 21% of all tracks on Spotify."

It also says that only 60% was ever played: 79% of plays are for 35% of the played catalogue. There are some numbers missing, but I would expect those 35% to represent a far greater selection of music than what was available in even the largest record shops in the 90s - and totally eclipsing the combined play lists on the radio at any one place at any one time.

Also, Spotify is available anywhere, not just to those living in big cities with many radio stations and big record shops. Oh, and then there's the 21% of plays for the other 65% of the catalogue.

Sounds a lot like the long tail to me.

<comment><USER11> _Also, Spotify is available anywhere, not just to those living in big cities with many radio stations and big record shops. Oh, and then there's the 21% of plays for the other 65% of the catalogue._

I think you overestimate the reach of broadband internet. There is certainly a lot more rural radio access than there is high speed internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yesterday HN rallied a post on Louis C.K. to the front page - a post which celebrated his deference to the inevitable reproduction of his work, a post which celebrated Louis as a hero for his ignoring this reproduction, for nobly enduring it like the good little artist he is and merely asking for a donation for his work.

I now see why it is popular here on HN for artists to give away their work when we as 'entrepreneurs' would never dream of giving away ours: the artist is labor, and we want to minimize that cost.

<comment><USER20> Not quite. Louis CK wasn't asking for a donation, he said that it cost $5 to watch his special.

But the point was that he made it available for everyone at a small price. You didn't need HBO for $10/month (typically where a comedian of his calibre would air their new special) and Comcast at $60/month on top of that. You didn't even need to pay Netflix $12/month or whatever. You didn't even need a PayPal account. Just pay for what you get in a DRM-free format.

I don't think this was even a sacrifice on his part. Sure he could sell DVDs through Amazon but how much of that does he actually profit? His costs for this experiment were the actual production of the performance (he smartly paid for it himself so he owns it, comedians are doing this more often now) and whatever server costs he has. His advertising costs are $0 through Twitter, positive press and retweets he's getting for this.

It's a win for everyone and I think bands would be wise to do the same.

It's not about lowering the cost for labor, it's about getting rid of the artificial, unnecessary middlemen.

<comment><USER21> I believe he actually stated that after the traditional sales channel gets their cut he ends up with about $5. So he is selling it for the same profit he would of seen and just cutting out all the middle men as he did not believe they where actually adding any value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I know the Internet has seriously damaged the music label's revenue stream but why hasn't it done even more damage? It is 2011,the labels should not still have this much power, should they?

<comment><USER23> I fully agree, everyone talks about how disgusted they are by record labels, myself included, but we have been in this game a while now, artists have had the ability to sell directly the consumers, media services have been in the position to promote independent artists.

I remember some Steve Jobs quite about the scary truth about news organisations producing washed down trite because that is what people are asking for, is the same true of the music industry?

<comment><USER24> Record companies are still relevant because they provide what is probably _the_ most important element of a band/musician's success: marketing.

This is not something music fans are likely to admit, but their tastes are determined more by shrewd marketing than by some "objective" measure of talent or quality.

It reminds me of an article I read recently - a world-renowned violinist played in the DC Metro for a day. Not a single person recognized him, and very few people recognized the quality of his performances. Most just passed him by and some dropped quarters as if he's just a run of the mill subway performer.

IMO, people do not have the discerning taste they seem to attribute to themselves. This goes for movie buffs, music fans, video game connoisseurs. Everyone.

So, in an environment where people's perceptions of art and media is more determined by preconceptions and biases than any pseudo-objective measure of quality, the difference between winners and losers is who can shape their image the best. This takes a shitload of money, spent in a shrewd way - <USER2> labels are still very, very good at this.

<comment><USER25> Logically, in order for Spotify to survive, it must develop a platform for artists to market themselves therefore bypassing the labels. During the height of MySpace there were countless stories of new artists being discovered on there. The iTunes music store also has that potential, but Apple doesn't seem interested in going down that road.

Spotify has a long way to go before that happens though. Its music discovery features are almost worthless. The What's New section lists nothing I care to listen to. It would also be nice to see tour dates and real social features.

<comment><USER26> The dirty little secret about "music discovery" is that most people don't spend time discovering music. Sure I do because I really like music a lot. I regularly read Pitchfork and Stereogum and listen to a lot of music. But I'm in the minority on this. 90% of society (America, for me) listen to the radio to learn about new music or occasionally get exposed to new stuff through their friend - but they're certainly not spending hours of their day playing song samples on Stereogum.

I think this is why Pandora is so popular. People can pick something they know, turn the station on and just treat it like the radio. The sad thing is that if they hear something they like on Pandora, all you can do is thumbs up it, which then can be retrieved later by finding a link buried deep in your profile...a place most Pandora users never go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I believe it is immoral to in anyway pay money for anything that even indirectly benefits the members of the RIAA or MPAA. These companies have been subverting our democracy and undermining our civil liberties for decades. They are evil, do not give them money.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand why copyright exists.

Are there studies showing that copyright brought an increase in creativity or art excellence?

<comment><USER29> Imagine you are Stephen King, and you write a book.

Without copyright I can just copy your book, claim it as my own, sell thousands of copies and you don't see a cent.

<comment><USER30> Or imagine that you're not Stephen King, but an owner or founder of a large software company. A disgruntled employee on your team downloads the source code for your entire software product (which you spent millions of dollars along with years of development work and market research creating) and sells it himself, undercutting your prices and taking all your profits. Copyright is essential for any field that involves intellectual property.

<comment><USER31> If I did that, I would be out of job and liable for loss related to loss of company secrets.

You don't need copyright law for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> While the major labels are setting restrictive terms on Spotify, Spotify itself is turning around and treating independent labels like chumps: <http://www.projekt.com/newsarticles/projekt-spotify.asp>

From the article: "For a stream on Spotfy, on average $0.0013 is paid to Projekt's Digital Distributor." That means an artist would have to get one million airplays to make $1300.

I'm finding it hard to sympathize with Spotify if that's the terms they set when they have the position of power.

<comment><USER33> As the article points out (and assuming it applies to Spotify):

7\. Most favored nation. This is a deal term demanded by every major label that ensures the best terms provided to another label are available to it as well

... means that Spotify cannot offer small labels better deals else it would put them out of business because they would have to match the deal for every label.

<comment><USER34> That would only apply if Spotify is already paying indies the same as majors, but it sounds like they're paying much less.

<comment><USER35> For what it's worth, the majors are also making fractional pennies. The gap is not as large as the fractional penny amount would make you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think as the distribution channels of music become more prominent through services like Spotify, it will give them a significantly more bargaining power. I think consumer behavior and notable popular services will change the music industries archaic practices. If they want to stay competitive, they'll have to change.

I also see this as a boon for indie musicians. They have access to a much more accessible means of distribution through services like Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, etc. and the ability to compete with the big labels.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't believe this one second.

Item: If record labels state that they invest a ton of money in musicians and nearly all of them do not make money, this means that the foremost goal of any musician must be to become one of the few acts who actually do make money. Hence, they don't really need to sell a lot of records at first, they need people discovering them. Spotify is like radio: it does not make much money, but it advertises musicians. I have discovered more new music on Spotify in a month than on iTunes in half a year.

Item: I really really like Spotify. All the friends who have seen it like it. I have given Spotify the same money I have given iTunes before. And Amazon before that. If streaming services will attract a big number of people, they will get better deals.

Item: Any time an 'industry veteran' says that 'something can not be profitable' I sense fear. What he is really saying is that he does not _want_ it to be profitable the same way record labels did not want iTunes or Amazon to be profitable.

At the end of the day, its people who drive the market. If people want to listen to streamed music, they will. Maybe some companies can dry up some sources, but they never succeed in the long run against their customers.

<comment><USER38> > _If record labels state that they invest a ton of money in musicians and > nearly all of them do not make money..._

It means that record companies fraudulently inflate their "expenses" in order to bleed off all profit from the industry.

For a record band to make money, they have to avoid record companies at all costs. Unfortunately, even with the internet disintemediating the record companies, it is still very difficult to get around the blood suckers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How can non-disclosure of terms be legally binding? How can the label sue without disclosing the licensing terms?

<comment><USER40> That's besides the point. They can break the contract, and then you don't have the content. They've already won at that point, if they want to pile one, there's no reason not to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The hot dog stand will be motivated to keep the store open (i.e., allowing it to make its bills, and generate zero economic profit) to keep the profitable rent behavior viable though. So we can expect Spotify to make just enough to be satisfied continuing along as a viable business, no?

<comment><USER13> This is called the "normal profit" and, yes, there will be a set of businesses that earn the normal profit. What people are discovering is that the "normal profit" for a music business is not "oh-mi-god-Facebook-is-a-natural- monopoly!"-sized, but rather "oh-mi-god-the-content-owners-have-all-of-the- negotiating-power"-sized.

Ironically, this gets re-discovered about every 5 years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When do they start a service where instead of doing unlimited, they let the user pay "by the stream"?

One of the reasons why Spotify cannot make money is because they don't tell the user how much they pay for each song. And I bet prices vary wildly among different labels/albums. Letting the user pay the correct price is the only way.

At least if people think it's too expensive, they can only blame that this specific song/artist is too expensive, others aren't.

I think it's a fun idea to pay by the stream, you could make it very easy to use, with some capped monthly budget or something. And then after so many listens of one song, it makes you "own" the song (when you reach the iTunes price for example). That would be transparent, less risky and understandable for customers.

</comment><comment><USER43> The only way Spotify can avoid this problem is by becoming too big to ignore, a la iTunes for digital distribution or Walmart for physical goods. At that point the labels have a hard time saying "we're going to pull our inventory unless we get a better pay rate" because though it may dent Spotify's customer experience, it will also mean a substantial hit to the bottom line of any given label who walks.

If you can't get to the point where you're the 800 pound gorilla, however, you are very much still at the mercy of the content owner.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wonder if there will be an anti-trust investigation over this cartel.

<comment><USER45> "there's more than one label"

<comment><USER44> But the merger mentioned in this article reduces the number of major labels to three.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> To simplify - Spotify can never be profitable because they do not create or own the product they are selling. Also, the product they are selling is not a commodity so they cannot source alternate suppliers.

Why is this a surprise?

</comment><comment><USER47> are digital music companies compelled to keep secret the amount of plays/downloads that a specific song gets? why not report these play counts directly to the artists and let them calculate the difference between the average asking price and what they are making in revenue?

once they see how much is being skimmed off the top, they can easily not renew contracts with major labels and go to straight online distribution directly, bypassing the labels.

</comment><comment><USER8> All of these reasons could apply to iTunes and Amazon's music store?

So why are they posting profits?

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone else notice all the about:blank links in the article?

</comment><comment><USER49> am I the only one that noticed who the author of the article is?

<comment><USER50> no you're not

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> What do you mean? This I'd the reason they can be profitable.

There's tons of good bands doing original stuff. Screw the big names, I'm tired of listening to the same dozen on Pandora anyways.

The problem is not the keepers of the status quo. It's the people that can't see past it.

</comment><comment><USER52> amazon may end up solving this problem for us by becoming a good distribution outlet for music

<comment><USER40> the problem I see with Amazon is nobody uses their consumer facing media services. They need to get people to use them to have an impact.

<comment><USER53> They are making an impact (with authors) by starting their own book publishing service. I could see Apple as the party with the market position to do something similar with music.</comment></comment></comment>


Technology to circumvent online copyright enforcement - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2010/01/technology-to-circumvent-online-copyright-enforcement.html

<comment><USER2> Classic geek-misunderstanding-that-mathematical-ambiguity-is-not-legally- interesting post.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are an infinite set of mathematical tricks available here, some of them so obfuscated that enforcement would probably need a few years to catch up. Not to forget that printing a hard copy of the bytes of an MP3 may even warrant you free speech protection (remember the reaction to the DeCSS legal issues, like printing it in T-shirts).

<comment><USER4> Encryption and obfuscation barely slows down enforcement at all.

1\. Install the P2P software du jour.

2\. Download some infringing content.

3\. Notice what IP addresses the software talks to. (e.g. using Wireshark)

4\. Send "pre-settlement" extortion letters to the people behind those IP addresses.

5\. Profit. (Seriously.)

<comment><AUTHOR> This doesn't work because some of the bits the software downloads couple be "innocent" bits. E.g. the firefox installer or some random looking piece of data. Any bits can be brought into involvement by the system, hence the denial of service.

<comment><USER4> Note that due process doesn't apply to extortion. Mike Freedman gets a ton of inaccurate nastygrams from copyright enforcers, but they don't care. They keep sending them. This situation may be evil, but it exists today and it generates significant revenue. (It doesn't seem to deter much infringement, though; I guess people think it won't happen to them.) [http://www.freedom-to- tinker.com/blog/mfreed/inaccurate-copy...](http://www.freedom-to- tinker.com/blog/mfreed/inaccurate-copyright-enforcement-questionable-best- practices-and-bittorrent-specificatio)

Also, any P2P system that downloads a significant amount of extra data won't become popular anyway, since it will be slower than non-deniable P2P. Freenet suffered from this, since all the pirates switched to the more efficient BitTorrent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not new, Jason Rohrer even wrote a proof-of-concept implementation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_%28computer_program%29>

<comment><USER6> There is a really good rebuttal to said implementation entitled "What Colour are your Bits?" at <http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php> (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506986>).

<comment><USER7> Quoted from the article:

> Under the lawyer's rules, Colour is not a mathematical function of the bits > that you can determine by examining the bits. It matters where the bits came > from.

Unless one end of the bits source is from blackbox countries, like China. If you finally get some international cooperation done perhaps the work is already unpopular and no one really cares. Enforcement takes time, and technically in today's unpefect world copyright can be dragged to an unworthy degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of mis-thinking here.

> it'd be strange for Firefox to be found guilty in any way

How could they be? They are completely uninvolved. Take another example: if you film [maliciously] someone being, say, raped using a Sony camcorder are Sony party to the offence? (the metaphor isn't quite right but I cant think of a better one off hand, it serves)

The other mistake, I think, is in believing the data in it's particular form is what means he is breaking the law. Because I'm sure every sane person agree's it is impossible to impose laws on a specific string of bits - if you happened to randomly "type" the bits that, when parsed as an MP3, sounded exactly like the Lady GaGa song would you call that a violation?

However the intent to provide the copyrighted material to someone _whatever_ the form you hand it out in is what's important. right?

(I make no comment on whether such law is right/wrong etc.)

</comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of when Richard Stallman cracked down on CLISP (before it went open-source) for being distributed with, and linking to, a GPL-protected library of some sort. The legal argument of the distributor was that he was providing the library, and it was the user that was linking it. Stallman checked with a lawyer, and apparently the law treats that as a "subterfuge" and that you're "really" distributing only one program, which has only been "disguised" as two (quotes from [1]). IANAL, but I would assume that judges would follow similar lines of reasoning in this implementation, that for practical effects you are "really" distributing a copyrighted file, even if the distribution process at one point happens to involve only a pair of statistically random data[2]. In the limiting case, they can just say that the two files comibined constitute a distribution method, and you'd be hard- pressed to argue that.

[1] [http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/...](http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/Why- CLISP-is-under-GPL)

[2] Note that while either file on its own is technically random in a statistical sense, they are not independently random. Even if you XOR in Firefox, the data is only pairwise-independently random, not completely- independently random. So the random argument actually falls on its face.

[N] It also made me think of this, even if it's not directly related: <http://xkcd.com/538/>

<comment><USER10> Stallman was on shaky ground with CLISP. The reason CLISP became GPL is because the author eventually decided he liked the FSF's philosophy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since the OP is talking about XOR, why not use Information Dispersal Algorithms ?

I asked a similar question on #askreddit the other day, what if I put the odd bits of a movie on a server in Ukraine and the even bits on a server in Sweden, a special kind of media player live steam the content, reassemble small chunks in memory on the fly and playback it on a monitor directly? Technically I am not pirating the movie unless I was caught watching it right now.

The #askreddit people suggested me consulting a lawyer :)

<comment><USER4> This is just a more obfuscated version of the incorrect "BitTorrent isn't infringing" argument.

Distributing half of a copyrighted work is probably still infringement, so whoever is operating those servers would be in trouble.

<comment><USER7> > Distributing half of a copyrighted work is probably still infringement, so > whoever is operating those servers would be in trouble.

Which leads to a natural but important question: to what degree of information means copying? Does 1's and 0's also means part of copyrighted work so nobody can use binary?

Also, mathematically, can we build something like probability of copyright?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Music is hex-data which is complicated to discuss, let's talk about copyrighted code.

here's the scenario: What if some _deductive_ programs (like prolog) _happens_ to compile another piece of code to your code?

First you can't sue a system like prolog (assume the system itself is copyright free)

Secondly you can't sue some deductive code since it's totally different thing, which went through some process and happens to be the exact same as your code.

A perfect example to make myself clear: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911331>

This applies to music as well. Let's talk about .midi files first. I have a sequence of notes which is still playable music, went through a magical convert formula, and produce the exact same midi as copyrighted ones, which step is liable?

In one word, copyright just a label, for a certain static combination of information. And this static state can be generated by infinite alternative legal means, which is why copyright system is ridiculous. The only thing copyrighted in this universe is time. You can't reverse time (at least for now).

So copyright is really a moral issue. People are doing you a favor for your copyrighted works' publicity.

</comment><comment><USER11> This also allows some good plausible deniability. If someone knows you're using this sytem and forces you to decode your collection of random bit files, you can arrange 9 out of 10 of them to get a harmless plausible result (a bunch of harmless pictures / private tax files etc). Only by adding the last bit file does it turn into what you're trying to hide.

If you only show part of the solution, it looks like you've unlocked it and the result is harmless.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a brilliant point!

I added your idea to an edit I made on the Monolith wikipedia page, which now describes three variations of the Monolith protocol: Pseudorandom Basis Files, Lawsuit Denial of Service, and Plausible Deniability.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_(computer_program)>

Thanks!

<comment><USER11> Thanks - the incredibly strange thing is that I was thinking about exactly this idea this morning, just a few hours before reading your post. I just couldn't believe the coincidence! Love Xobni btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, you're _way_ overthinking this. If you are responsible for getting a copy of some copyrighted material into the hands of people who don't deserve it, then you are almost certainly liable. It doesn't matter how obfuscated the process or where the bits live.

If you have a copy of Copyright File A and through some actions cause another copy of it to be simultaneously possessed by someone else, then you distributed it.

<comment><USER10> What about fair use?

It is theoretically legal for me to write an article about a song, and include a ten second clip of that song. It is also legal for another person to do the same thing, but with a different part of the song.

At some point, the entire song becomes downloadable, but without any party distributing it outside of their fair use rights.

Now what?

<comment><USER13> Now all of you are liable for infringement since what you did was clearly a convoluted yet deliberate scheme to distribute the song.

<comment><USER10> No, this all happened without organization. For any moderately popular song, this is likely to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a P2P system that uses a similar idea: <http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds a lot like what Freenet has always been trying to do.

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

If I recall correctly, files are split up, passed around and encrypted so you don't know what your serving up

</comment><comment><USER16> This is brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it will be easier to just host a bunch of MP3s in a country that's unfriendly to the US.</comment>