No, you can't do that with H.264 - <AUTHOR> http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-with-h264/

<comment><AUTHOR> T.F.A. site getting hammered, copy/past

==No, you can't do that with H.264==

A lot of commercial software comes with H.264 encoders and decoders, and some computers arrive with this software preinstalled. This leads a lot of people to believe that they can legally view and create H.264 videos for whatever purpose they like. Unfortunately for them, it ain't so.

Maybe the best example comes from the Final Cut Pro license:

        To the extent that the Apple Software contains AVC encoding and/or >decoding functionality, commercial use of H.264/AVC requires additional >licensing and the following provision applies: THE AVC FUNCTIONALITY IN >THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED HEREIN ONLY FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON->COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE >WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO >THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON->COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR AVC VIDEO THAT WAS OBTAINED FROM A >VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. INFORMATION >REGARDING OTHER USES AND LICENSES MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA >L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM.

The text could hardly be clearer: you do not have a license for commercial use of H.264. Call it "Final Cut Pro Hobbyist". Do you post videos on your website that has Google Adwords? Do you edit video on a consulting basis? Do you want to include a video in a package sent to your customers? Do your clients send you video clips as part of your business? Then you're using the encoder or decoder for commercial purposes, in violation of the license.

Now, you might think "but I'm sticking with MPEG-4, or MPEG-2, so it's not a problem for me". No. It's just as bad. Here's the relevant section of the license:

           1. MPEG-2 Notice. To the extent that the Apple Software contains MPEG-2 >functionality, the following provision applies: ANY USE OF THIS PRODUCT >OTHER THAN CONSUMER PERSONAL USE IN ANY MANNER THAT COMPLIES >WITH THE MPEG-2 STANDARD FOR ENCODING VIDEO INFORMATION FOR >PACKAGED MEDIA IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED WITHOUT A LICENSE UNDER >APPLICABLE PATENTS IN THE MPEG-2 PATENT PORTFOLIO, WHICH LICENSE >IS AVAILABLE FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C., 250 STEELE STREET, SUITE 300, >DENVER, COLORADO 80206.
           2. MPEG-4 Notice. This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 Systems >Patent Portfolio License for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 >Systems Standard, except that an additional license and payment of >royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with (i) data stored or >replicated in physical media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or >(ii) data which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an >end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may >be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional >details. This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio >License for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) >encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 Visual Standard ("MPEG-4 >Video") and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a >consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was >obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 >video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. Additional >information including that relating to promotional, internal and commercial >uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC.

Noticing a pattern? You have a license to use their software, provided you don't make any money, your friends are also all correctly licensed, and you only produce content that complies with the MPEG standard. Using video for a commercial purpose? Producing video that isn't within MPEG's parameters? Have friends who use unlicensed encoders like x264, ffmpeg, or xvid? Too bad.

This last thing is actually a particularly interesting point. If you encode a video using one of these (open-source) unlicensed encoders, you're practicing patents without a license, and you can be sued. But hey, maybe you're just a scofflaw. After all, it's not like you're making trouble for anyone else, right? Wrong. If you send a video to a friend who uses a licensed decoder, and they watch it, you've caused them to violate their own software license, so they can be sued too.

Oh, and in case you thought this was specific to Apple, here's the matching piece from the Windows 7 Ultimate License:

           1. NOTICE ABOUT THE H.264/AVC VISUAL STANDARD, THE VC-1 VIDEO >STANDARD, THE MPEG-4 VISUAL STANDARD AND THE MPEG-2 VIDEO >STANDARD. This software includes H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG-4 Part 2, and >MPEG-2 visual compression technology. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this >notice: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC, THE VC-1, THE MPEG-4 PART >2 VISUAL, AND THE MPEG-2 VIDEO PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSES FOR THE >PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE >VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE ABOVE STANDARDS ("VIDEO >STANDARDS") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC, VC-1, MPEG-4 PART 2 AND MPEG-2 >VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND >NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER >LICENSED TO PROVIDE SUCH VIDEO. NONE OF THE LICENSES EXTEND TO >ANY OTHER PRODUCT REGARDLESS OF WHETHER SUCH PRODUCT IS >INCLUDED WITH THIS PRODUCT IN A SINGLE ARTICLE. NO LICENSE IS >GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL >INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE >WWW.MPEGLA.COM.

Doesn't seem so Ultimate to me.

My advice: use a codec that doesn't need a license:

        Q. What is the license for Theora? Theora (and all associated technologies released by the Xiph.org >Foundation) is released to the public via a BSD-style license. It is >completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that >commercial developers may independently write Theora software which is >compatible with the specification for no charge and without restrictions of >any kind.

<comment><USER4> Why is this being downvoted? The site was down and the parent was just trying to be helpful. I admit the formatting is a bit bad but does that deserve punishment?

edit: parent was at -1 when I posted that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit the formatting is a bit bad. I was a little lazy and didn't want to seek out formatting rules. I would improve it now, but it seems I can't edit it any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with these write-ups about how bad H.264 is (or will be in 2011) is that it will not reach the right people in time; the masses. The people who clicked through to an article with H.264 in the title already know about the ins and outs.

The companies that implement and support H.264 also know all about the license, and they have most likely gotten some pretty sweet deals for getting this thing as widely deployed as possible.

What needs to be done is to get the message through so that the masses realize that MPEG LA will come after _you_ with their pitchforks and torches in less than a year from now. Worse yet, we do not even know how the license will look.

But maybe scaring people is not the key here. The question remains then: How do we get that message through to the big masses? Make alternatives look "cool"? Next generation video?

I know, I know. I'm not saying anything new...

A (6 month old) interesting link: [http://streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties-w...](http://streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties- what-you-need-to-know.html)

<comment><USER6> There are obvious problems with H.264, but I don't believe MPEG LA's _plan_ is to sue regular people for not complying with the license agreement when they did that video that one time.

Not because I think they're not evil enough to do it, but because that kind of money-making scheme just doesn't scale.

Also, whenever they've sued one or two people, people's eyes will open and they'll just use an other codec. No big deal.

As a means to make money, that strategy simply sucks. A more likely turn of events is that licensing H.264 becomes quite a bit less good of a deal when H.264 has truly established itself. But even then they're not going to sue millions of people, because that doesn't scale, they're going to sue big vendors and service providers.

Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought we were "hackers" here with potential to create startups, possibly related to video or just using it as a support system?

If you have the need to pay for the sake of it you can relocate to my country, we have one of the highest taxes in the world :)

<comment><USER6> What does high taxes have to do with anything? I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds.

<comment><USER7> > I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue > consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds.

Some of us make products that may want to use h.264 and would be liable to have to pay to do so. Not as consumers, but as businesses.

> Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after > "_you_".

Not if you're just a consumer, but we are not all just consumers on HN. So they might come after us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So in summary: be careful some software and technologies you use have licences that you should read.

If you are using any technology for commercial use you should probably be reading all licensing agreements and have your lawyers deal with anything that arises.

<comment><USER9> Or, just drop these technologies and use their free competitors (e.g. Theora) that don't require you to engage your lawyers just to compress some videos.

<comment><USER10> That sounds nice, but as long as Flash, Silverlight, iPhones, don't support Theora but do support h264, it's not that practical..

<comment><USER11> But there are no barriers to adopting Theora practically overnight, once the market expresses an interest. Vorbis seems to be well supported after an initial wait-and-see period.

<comment><USER12> And what if you have around 8 petabytes of video ([http://beerpla.net/2008/08/14/how-to-find-out-the-number- of-...](http://beerpla.net/2008/08/14/how-to-find-out-the-number-of-videos-on- youtube/)) in H.264? What would you do, double your storage? How long would that take to re-encode anyways. The reason why Youtube is using H.264 instead of Theora is because they already have the videos in that format.

<comment><USER13> I would buy a company that makes video codecs that don't infringe on the MPEG patents for 133 million dollars. Coincidentally, so did Google:

[http://www.on2.com/blog/2009/08/google-and-on2-to-improve- vi...](http://www.on2.com/blog/2009/08/google-and-on2-to-improve-video- quality-on-the-web/)

<comment><USER14> Here's hoping for the dream scenario: Google release VP8 as a open and free format with a patent indemnity clause, then migrate YouTube over to it. They also release open specifications for a VP8 hardware decoding part, an OpenCL codec, and help Adobe bundle support into Flash for Microsoft and Apple browsers.

Happy days!

<comment><USER15> I think Flash is on the way out now. If anything, Google would just release their own plugin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, so how much does the licensing actually cost? On their website MPEG LA mentions there are certain thresholds to "minimize the impact on lower volume users" (<http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx>). If you're running an consulting business using this format is it so weird to pay a little (or maybe nothing?) to use it?

I'm pretty sure you can find outrageous (and oftentimes unlawful) things in most licenses (that's more or less the point), but come on, do you really think MPEG LA will ever sue your friend that watched your x264 encoded clip of your cat on his iPhone? (Which they found out about... how?)

<comment><USER17> From wikipedia (but it actually happened!):

 _In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs._

Edit:

I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - <USER3> does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible.

If the working groups had plumped for Theora then optimisations and hardware would follow in pretty short shrift. It ain't going to happen and the reasons are commercial - this makes me sad for the future of the web, I see this is a big turning point. Kinda like if the developers of HTML4 had said "we know about the LZW patent but we're going to write in GIF as the standard requirement".

(Incidentally I gather that no image formats were written into the standards before?!).

So do you link to h264 videos from your intranet - want to buy a license for $10k? No? Switch to Theora as the best free alternative. OK, now none of the browsers support your video format natively. Congratulations you've been screwed again by MegaCorp.

<comment><USER15> _I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - <USER3> does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible._

You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the "standards". Their goal is use HTML5 to make money, not to make the web "more free" or something.

Our only hope is that Google takes a stand.

<comment><USER17> > _You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the > "standards"._

Nope I thought it was the WHAT-WG and the HTML WG at the W3C. Yes major corporations have direct influence on these groups but so to do the OSS friendly browser corps and to some extent web designers and users.

Google are already using h264 in HTML5 on YouTube for capable browsers aren't they? Are they sending Theora/Vorbis streams at all? Seems clear where they are going then.

<comment><USER13> Google are currently using H.264 for everyone on Youtube. That's what they send to iPhone, most of the higher quality Flash videos and the new HTML5 trial.

However, they support Theora in both Chrome and Chromium. In the Chromium OS demos they demonstrated playing Theora files from an SD card. They also purchased a company that creates codecs that don't infringe on MPEG patents and which was the original source of Theora.

I don't think it's clear at all which "side" Google is taking on this because as a large they'll get some benefit whether the web adopts royalty free codecs or not (e.g. if small, community specific Youtube competitors pay more per video than giant sites like Youtube that's good, but more video on the web generally probably helps Google too).

<comment><USER17> Thanks for your wider view and info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. Is there precedent showing that these clauses are enforceable? After all, I can write whatever I want in a contract, but that doesn't mean it'll hold up in court.

<comment><USER9> Even if these clauses weren't enforceable, their sole existence causes a rather shady impression. What are the business practices behind such licences?

It's usually a good idea to restrain from cooperating with such companies. Unless, of course, the market forces you to do that - which is the only reason they get away with such excessive licence conditions for a nowadays state-of- the-art technology.

<comment><USER19> Shady? Don't the involved parties want to protect their own interests as much as they can?

The way I read the MS and Apple licenses is that they are just covering their asses, there is a greater than zero percent chance that there could be new MPEG fees that would make it unpalatable for them to continue to support it. I suspect that neither MPEG nor Apple or MS or Adobe or really anyone wants that to happen. At the same time the MPEG folks don't want to just take a one time fee and potentially leave money on the table. It's somewhat open ended, that's unsettling but how do you price that stuff? You could do it per use but everybody seems to find that unacceptable, you could charge a percentage of profits but not many companies would go for that, you could have a one time flat fee but that will usually be too large, so you kind of have periodic re- evaluation. For most users, it seems like it's simply an issue between them and their vendor, not MPEG.

Look at MP3, it is patented. Thomson has gone after companies and collected money on the patents. Nobody seems to care at all and it appears to be much more nebulous, they may or may not try to get you to pay them, it's not clear to me who is sued and why. That's shady...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm making a service for indie filmmakers to self distribute films and this has been a big pickle.

I was making an encoder for them to download using ffmpeg but then realized I may have wasted my time because of the licensing of h264.

So the problem became: do I take the cost and encode their video or do I let them send the video prencoded for me. I had assumed that if they had encoding software that they have already paid for a license. Anyways, i've added support for ogg to the service (with warnings about it's usability).

Does anyone know if sorenson squeeze has this licensing issue?

<comment><USER21> You can license H.264, for the purpose of encoding video, for free or cheap, if your volume is modest. [1]

Whoever handles the video distribution (you or your customers) also needs to license the codec. This too is free or cheap. It could all change in the future, but who knows if that will happen.

Personally, I'd be more worried about other parts of the encoding chain. What format are you using? MP4 requires a license. What audio codec? Both AAC and MP3 require a license, and they're more expensive out of the gate. And what about decoding inputs? You need to license decoders for whatever input you accept.

[1] [http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsS...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf)

<comment><USER20> It is cheap, but the scary thing is building the app dependent on H.264, and letting them control things.

I'm actually trying to figure out whether or not to have the user encode everything, and absolve me of any of the encoding details, or licensing everything myself and doing it for them.

Right now I'm planning to have the filmmakers encode and send me final deliverable product, but to ensure a standard of quality, I'm also requiring videos to use H.264/AAC or dolby digital, or Vorbis/Theora. Still ironing out the details, but obviously part of my service can be absolving them of licensing issues so I'm still not sure which way to go.

Also it's a pay-to-download service for films, so all videos will probably be longer than 12 minutes. Pretty sure I can't get it for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience. I've seen the articles that claim that the two are basically the same, but it just isn't true - you can cherry-pick cases that look close, but those cases are a minority.

 _That said_ , the world needs an open-source video codec, and I'm glad that Mozilla is taking a stand here. MPEG-LA is much more likely to offer favorable licensing terms if it doesn't have a monopoly on web video.

<comment><USER15> _H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience._

Would it hurt user experience as much as not having ads or never being able to charge for accounts? Because that's what using the free version of h.264 implies.

<comment><USER21> I don't disagree, and I'd love a free open-source video codec that compared favorably with H.264. I wouldn't be surprised if we have one soon. But we don't yet.

<comment><USER15> I would be surprised, actually. With vague software patents covering nearly everything related to video encoding ("Method for the computation of the sum of two integers"), it's a legal minefield. If people could freely implement their own ideas, then we would definitely have something better. But thanks to software patents, this is not possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To hell with it; I'm just going to be a criminal. Scoff if you like, but I have a feeling that this is going to be the typical reaction if patent-holders start going for blood in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER23> So if I release an iPhone game (commercial) with video in it encoded in one of the formats mentioned... Them I'm violating? I guess so!

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily, you just need to pay the licensing fees for a commercial-use encoder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> not this again, and at the top of the front page too... i've heard it often enough. please stop.</comment>


How we earned two long-term partners for our $10,000 mistake - <AUTHOR> http://24waystostart.com/2010/how-we-earned-two-long-term-partners-for-our-10000-mistake/

<comment><USER2> Where's the part about turning them around into long term customers?

<comment><USER3> I guess from the headline that it's just implied. They gave them all the money, so the customers stayed with Noah for the long term.

<comment><USER4> The partners are working with us again on <http://rewardlevel.com> :)</comment></comment></comment>


Slack Bot Token Leakage Exposing Business Critical Information - <AUTHOR> https://labs.detectify.com/2016/04/28/slack-bot-token-leakage-exposing-business-critical-information/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much money total they made just by scraping Slack tokens and reporting them to individual bounty programs?</comment>


US computer science grads outperforming those in other key nations - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1479225 <comment><USER2> This is something I never considered. I always assumed that the main reason US software engineers are better paid is there is a (perceived? real?) benefit to being close to businesspeople / close to the customers / close to the culture / some other benefit that depends solely on geography. I did not think that the quality of education could be a significant driver. This paper opens that possibility.

The elite schools are especially striking. I would have never guessed that CS students from Stanford/MIT would be so substantially better than students from Tsingua/Bombay. These schools draw from vastly larger talent pools (1.4 billion and 1.2 billion) than US undergrad programs. According to the study, the results do not materially change when only native English speakers are considered.

It's worth investigating if the exams are biased in some way but if this holds up to scrutiny, it will change my views on American Universities significantly.

<comment><USER3> It seems pretty obvious, if everyone's trying to send their kids to get higher-educated here in the US, and they're pretty smart, maybe it's for a good reason?

I mean not everything is as reductionist as vanity or brain drain. That seems to be the totally uninspired analysis from other commenters. It may be that there are equally smart students everywhere, but actually you get the best education here, and why?

One answer is that less conformity, greater social and political freedoms, and greater economic resources all let students reach their potential better.

A nuanced view would look at what it means, really, to feel stifled at a university where you're guaranteed to have been at the top of your class but still not know important near-history or enjoy free speech. Maybe conformity crops up in the quality of professors more so than the students. It's really complex but I know maybe only a few Tsinghua grads and all of them continued their educations here.

So my perspective is limited by the fact that I've never interacted with very many people who are strictly foreign educated in 2019 born after 1990.

<comment><USER4> I think the combination of best in the field being in academia, enough but not too much drive for results and a bit of nonconformity is the key. Also good funding not driving the best out of education system.

For instance, in Poland (and Russia too), education is grossly underfunded so the volume and drive are low, while South Korea has a bit too much conformity in their system, producing great engineers but not as great basic research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19430880)</comment>


A Photographer Who Tinkers with Time (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/a-photographer-who-tinkers-with-time <comment><USER2> I wonder if there's compositing at work here? In Alexanderplatz there's a woman blinking in the foreground from 0:37 to 0:41 but her friend's hand moves a couple inches. Then at 0:57 there's a woman who starts blinking and doesn't finish before her eyes pass out of the frame at 1:08, but the kid running behind her almost makes a complete step.

A blink takes 100-150ms. For the 100m dash, Usain Bolt takes 41 steps in 9.58s, so 231ms per step. Either that kid is really hauling ass or the blinks are people completely shutting their eyes at the disturbance of the train's arrival, which is plausible. I don't spot anybody blinking in the background, unfortunately. I guess the easiest way to get timing would be to measure the distance between the pillars. Odd appearance made for fun little puzzle to play with for a minute.

</comment><comment><USER3> While the slow motion work is very cool, somehow what got me even more fascinated is his earlier "Urban Flow" work with "scan camera panoramas".

This article briefly mentions it at the end, but I didn't understand it until I saw one of his videos explaining it:

[https://youtu.be/N0A263UDtqM?t=776](https://youtu.be/N0A263UDtqM?t=776)

I'm guessing this would be fairly trivial reproduce with a regular digital camera by taking a normal video, and convert it into a "scan photograph" with an ffmpeg plugin or something like that.

I wonder if something like this already exists?</comment>


ScriptRock - We are (on) the Robots - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scriptrock.com/we-are-on-the-robots

<comment><USER2> You should put a link to your main site from your blog! I had to manually remove the "blog" part from the url. It was traumatic.

<comment><USER3> Here's the link and intro I copied from their FAQ:

<https://scriptrock.com/>

> We help you automate the testing that is usually performed manually by > technology staff when making changes to desktops and servers. The result is > an automated test suite that runs 100's of tests per minute against your > applications, systems and infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any other cool non-enterprisy areas that you're looking to expand into?

Mission critical stuff like aircraft and SCADA systems could surely benefit from an automated testing process.

<comment><USER5> Hi there, Thanks for the comment! SCADA is a rarer use case but one that we are working towards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool.

So you can check that the robot's brain is set correctly before turning it on?

</comment><comment><USER7> Thats sweet. Not just a tool for enterprise

</comment><comment><USER8> I want to buy a script rock.

</comment><comment><USER5> Asimov would be proud!

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER10> nice...</comment>


Be with your thoughts more often - <AUTHOR> http://martinrue.com/posts/14/be-with-your-thoughts-more-often

<comment><USER2> I couldn't agree more with this.

I'm lucky enough to live in an area that has sub-optimal cell reception, there is no 3g in a ~200 meter radius from my place, only 2g. It used to annoy me but then I got used to it and when I leave home I just let my mind wander and by the time I get 3g coverage again I'm too deep in my stream of thought to feel the need to check my phone.

That 20 minutes walk to the office each morning with myself is amazing, I can focus on the blockers I found the day before at work and more often than not, find solutions or at least work arounds, since it's essentially a distraction- free environment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get my best ideas when I'm unplugged from the usual daily distractions. Anyone with kids nowadays has to make sure to unplug the whole family and truly engage too. We make some of the best memories that way.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's pleasing to me that writers like OP shed light on the folly of the personal productivity and efficiency arms race. Reminds me of the adage: "Don't just do something, sit there!"

</comment><comment><USER5> I think too much, and do too little, and don't even own a cellphone.</comment>


Facebook, Google deny they gave feds direct access to their servers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/06/facebook-google-prism-denial/

<comment><USER2> Maybe they are legally prohibited from acknowledging the existence of this program?</comment>


Show HN: React Nice Dates - <AUTHOR> https://reactnicedates.hernansartorio.com/ <comment><USER2> > Import the desired components [...] and the CSS

This is where you lost me. If I import a component i would like very much their styles to be self contained.

It can handle customization using css-in-js or passing class-names, but having it leak to my components is just such a turn-off.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome, I use Semantic UI a lot and it's annoying how there's no date and/or time picker component. I'll probably use this for dates but as others have mentioned please please consider building a time picker as well :):)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will do :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the range picker, you should consider adding time into the date picker. Many times developers have both date and time requirements. Most of what I do in my domain, requires precise time down to the second due to legal requirements.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree, if this had time options we would use this in production in a heart beat. Trying to get off ant design but their date/time picker is pretty clean.

I will say, this is SUPER clean. Great work Hernán!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I might need time-picking it soon so I might add it.

<comment><USER3> Please add time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good naming method for your library after all the obvious react date names are taken

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, altough I'm not sure now since someone mentioned that they first thought that it was a dating site for React devs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice saw it on he ReactJS subreddit and now here. Looks quite nice to use.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of the most important features of a calendar to me is to be able to traverse years quickly. Is that possible with your calendar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not from the calendar (for now at least), but you can change the year with the input or from a custom UI (if you pass a `month` prop to make it controlled).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks great but sadly not production ready until it has a11y support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Coming soon!</comment></comment>


Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://nathan.torkington.com/blog/2011/11/23/libraries-where-it-all-went-wrong/ <comment><USER2> I always thought the purpose of library was to provide a study space, where study materials are easily accessible, as well as plenty of equipment.

In fact, that's the definition of my local library. Lots of tables, chairs and computers. Students go there to have group study sessions. People with no access to internet (tourists, elderly, the poor) go to library to use the internet. Now that house prices are growing (as it is here in Australia), living spaces per person will begin to decline, and people may begin to rely more on public spaces. (my thinking)

After reading the article, one could argue this is what a traditional CEO would do with a library if it was a company - reduce the number of declining businesses, increase the number of growing businesses. Books & collections are no longer as needed - only keep the ones not easily accessible on the internet (e.g. historical local newspapers dating back a hundred years). Free up space for others to come and study.

I guess that's not really the way to go, but since my local library was recently rebuilt in a brand new building, in the middle of a brand new public square, it has absolutely nothing to worry about[1].

[1] Neither do frogs placed into a pot of water, placed onto a stove a mere second ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fascinating read, but I'm not sure what the answer is to "why libraries now" as opposed to "how can we make sure libraries are still relevant?" I don't quite know the answer, and I admit to being queasy about letting them go. After all, libraries were such a democratizing power, even if their quality did rapidly fall off as one went from big city to small city to town. A great deal of attention was paid to making sure libraries aren't a footnote in history, but I think it's worth asking why we don't want that.

(As an aside, I almost didn't follow the link because I assumed it was about undocumented Java libraries or some such thing)

<comment><USER4> It seems to me that the libraries of the world should be at the front lines of the public internet. A mix of Wikipedia, the EFF and Project Gutenberg. Ensuring human information is correct, well referenced, publicly accessible and protected in the interest of the public. Basically, what they've always been, but in digitized form.

The libraries - as a tax-supported public servant - should be internet savvy enough to be top advisor to government on how to move forward in the best interest of the public in regards to the Internet and the media held therein.

The largely one-sided tug-of-war that is copyright and the internet shows that the public needs a larger and louder representative when it comes to our media. "The library" should be front and center of these discussions making sure the decisions hold the public needs in high regard.

With all these things in place, not only would libraries remain relevant, but they would thrive, remaining the important part in human history they've always been.

<comment><USER5> > A mix of Wikipedia, the EFF and Project Gutenberg.

Don't forget <http://archive.org>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Uh, isn't the core function of "ordinary" (as opposed to research, and university on-campus libraries) libraries to loan out books? So that people don't have to buy a book just to be able to read it? As long as literature isn't free, it seems libraries have a role to fulfill.

But then again, I think even that usage of libraries is declining, perhaps because time previously spent reading books is now spent on other pleasures (surfing the Internet, for instance). I don't have data to back up this hunch, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Providing research tools & a study place is one of the two functions of libraries.

The other is archiving and referencing, and it is this that is the larger part of the librarian's professional skill. This function helps ensure that published knowledge survives in a usable form in the long term.

The move of such knowledge to the information greatly increases the risk of destruction of such information.

On the plus side, it is easier to censor libraries than the internet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Phillip Torrone of MAKE has a radical suggestion for libraries' "next big thing" -- provide resources for building things.

[http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/03/is-it-time-to- rebui...](http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/03/is-it-time-to-rebuild- retool-public-libraries-and-make-techshops.html)</comment>


EMC's "very massive" storage cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/02/emcs_massive_st.php <comment><USER2> After 20 years of Microsoft and today's Amazon outage, I'd gladly welcome a little competition. Monopolies aren't good for anyone except the monopolist.

<comment><USER3> Being the best available option hardly makes Amazon a monopoly. You don't even have minimum purchases - you pay as you go!</comment></comment>


DAOs, Hacks, and the Law - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Swarm/daos-hacks-and-the-law-eb6a33808e3e <comment><USER2> No. Soft or hard forking the currency is not breaking the smart contracts' terms, and anyway the people doing that aren't necessarily the same as those who agreed to the contract.</comment>


California Bar reports lowest passing percentage since 1980s - <AUTHOR> http://calbarjournal.com/December2015/TopHeadlines/TH1.aspx <comment><USER2> This should not be too surprising: law school now adversely selects for intelligence, for reasons discussed in Paul Campos's _Don 't Go to Law School (Unless)_ ([http://jakeseliger.com/2012/11/11/dont-go-to-law-school- unle...](http://jakeseliger.com/2012/11/11/dont-go-to-law-school-unless-paul- campos/)) and elsewhere. Jobs that require law degrees are scarce outside of the top 30 or so schools. Even those who get legal jobs often then must contend with having to be actual lawyers.

I went to law school for a year, for the usual bad reasons. Quitting is among the smarter things I've done.</comment>


Beat Detection Algorithms, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://mziccard.me/2015/06/12/beats-detection-algorithms-2/

<comment><USER2> He's extracting BPM info, but not phase. You need phase info to sync two tracks for mixing.

There are some "automatic DJ" programs around, such as Virtual DJ and Softonic, but automatic mixing hasn't yet become a common feature in music players. It should be.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a time back in the late 90's when I wanted to write my own music/DJ apps, but I had no idea how to do things like graph audio or do bpm detection for example... or even where to look for such info.

Nowadays, the info comes to me. Too bad I can't send these links back to my younger self.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wonder how this algo compares to Scheirer's approach. ( [http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/coursework/MUMT_614/sche...](http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/coursework/MUMT_614/scheirer/614_scheirer_presentation.pdf) )

</comment><comment><USER5> And what if there is not a constant tempo?

If you know the score, you can more easily find beats and tempo (and do score following). For instance: [http://repmus.ircam.fr/antescofo](http://repmus.ircam.fr/antescofo)

<comment><USER6> You could probably split the song into frames, detect the BPM of each frame, and plot the changes in BPM over time. This sort of thing would be pretty for pre-rendering metadata about the tempo, which could be useful in DJ software, or big music databases, stuff like that.

The IRCAM research you link to looks really interesting, and I think it would be useful for other purposes, like real-time performance with automatic accompaniment.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but you have always a duality problem between tempo and beat, i.e. are they two eight notes at that tempo, or two quarter notes at twice quicker tempo...

You can assume that the most prevalent duration is a quarter note, but it is not always what would be on the score.

But it's more a problem related to transcription than to DJing (where the representation of the beat as a whole note, a quarter note, or anything else is eventually not important, I think).</comment></comment></comment>


Search for Flight 370 Enters Daunting New Phase - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579441812954932236

<comment><USER2> After 9/11 we learned of "chatter".

I have wondered what the NSA etc. can say about chatter in recent weeks. What the NSA might know.

And if the NSA doesn't know, what that says about NSA efficacy.

<comment><USER3> They knew next to nothing pre 9/11 (1), odds are they know next to nothing now.

Why?

Bureaucracies are not agile enough to effect real-time and reactive signals intelligence gathering. They breed internal cultures and petty fiefdoms which by their very nature are loath to cooperate. For the relative cost of intelligence agencies, their victories are few and far between and often only accomplished in tandem with established means of spy craft. Advocates will of course claim this is due to the secretive nature of the work, however declassified documents of times gone by rarely prove that the case.

Any villain that hasn't been living under a rock is aware of the technological capabilities of these agencies, rendering them virtually ineffective. The NSA didn't catch Osama, old fashioned spy craft, detective work and torture did (2).

[1] [http://consortiumnews.com/2014/01/07/nsa-insiders-reveal- wha...](http://consortiumnews.com/2014/01/07/nsa-insiders-reveal-what-went- wrong/)

[2] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death- and-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bin-ladens-death-and-the- debate-over-torture/2011/05/11/AFd1mdsG_story.html)

<comment><USER4> "They knew next to nothing pre 9/11 (1), odds are they know next to nothing now."

But I suspect what __Pthrow was suggesting was that the agencies could look back at the chatter they gathered, and put the pieces together from what they heard. Though, in order to do this, they'd still need to have some idea of what they are looking for.</comment></comment></comment>


Maximizing Throughput on Multicore Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/erlang-multicore <comment><USER2> i wish infoq would make transcripts available, i find slides, mp3s and videos tiresome. i can read transcripts a lot faster.</comment>


A tiny startup is winning the race to power the smart home - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6832901/wink-relay-smart-home

<comment><USER2> Tiny?

"Quirky, Wink's parent company..." has received over $175MM[0] in funding, I wouldn't call that tiny.

[0] [http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quirky](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quirky)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "SmartThings, released a similar statistic, noting ... users opening the app > four times a day and receiving fifteen notifications per day."

This sounds like hell. I don't need my house sending me notifications throughout the day.

When I first bought a home, I was excited about adding automation to the various fixtures and devices. I quickly came the conclusion that the simple light switch is a pretty intuitive UI that doesn't need to be made more complicated. I'm going to bet that's the real reason home automation hasn't taken off.

<comment><USER4> For me it isn't about replacing the ultra simple UI of something like a light switch, or getting a bunch of notifications. All of my automated light switches act exactly like regular light switches when you use them that way. But when I come home late at night to a dark house and hit the light switch just inside the door, not only does the laundry room light come on, but so do the lights on the path between the laundry and the kitchen. And when I'm watching a movie in the dark and hit pause, the lights between the movie room and the bathroom come up about 1/3 of the way (enough to find your way but not to blind you). It's completely unobtrusive, and generally does obvious stuff. It's a luxury for sure, but also very helpful. I agree I don't ever want to be getting 15 notifications a day from my house. I only want a notification if something exceptional happens and needs attention (e.g. I got one the other day reminding me to replace the furnace filter -- that's helpful and makes my life easier!).

<comment><USER5> Can you go into detail about your setup? Sounds awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reads like a PR piece.

<comment><USER7> "Journalism is printing something someone else doesnt want printed. Everything else is public relations." \- George Orwell</comment></comment>


Boston Marathon bombs were placed in 6-litre pressure cookers - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/16/boston-marathon-bombs-were-placed-in-6-litre-pressure-cookers-used-nails-and-bbs-to-maim/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just found it ironic -- and possibly suspect? -- that 1 week after this XKCD What If? article (<http://what-if.xkcd.com/40/>), something like this happened. Could the XKCD article possibly have inspired the method of execution?

<comment><USER2> No, i think that a) this was planned weeks or months ahead and b) the idea that explosive force is increased by putting your chemicals inside a high- pressure container is explosives 101, so to speak.</comment></comment>


Review my Chrome extension : FlashPlus - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/emaamodndfmmmcjepfigalbjjjemadom I like playing flash games and watching videos in full screen, but Flash Full screen does not let me multi-task. So I wrote an extension that lets me resize flash on web pages <comment><AUTHOR> I like playing flash games and watching videos in full screen, but Flash Full screen does not let me multi-task. So I wrote an extension that lets me resize flash on web pages</comment>


35 new WebOS job openings posted by Palm in the last 3 days - <AUTHOR> http://jobsearch.monster.com/search/palm_6?q=webos&tm=3&where=sunnyvale__2C-ca&rad=20&sort=rv.di.dt

<comment><AUTHOR> Palm has created many new job postings on monster.com since HP announced they where getting out of the tablet and phone business. Product managers, product engineers, software engineers, etc. Why?

</comment><comment><USER2> The message HP is passing is _very_ confusing.

<comment><USER3> I don't know what is so confusing. They want to shut down hardware production but still keep WebOS as a platform. Now what hardware will it run on? I don't know. I'm going to assume they want to license it.

<comment><USER2> It's just a bit pointless to write software for non-existent hardware. Until they announce a licensee who will manufacture something for the software to run on, no new WebOS device is being made and your market is the 1 million current users of tablets plus the couple million phone users.

Not very bad, but not very attractive from a financial point-of-view either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps they are pivoting their business model? Get out of hardware and into selling OS and software like Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER5> Geez, I hope this isn't due to some crazy mass resignations.</comment>


Ask YC: Whitelabel social news aggregate? - <AUTHOR>

Does a utility exist that allows anyone to easily have their own news aggregator on their webpage?
If you want your own wiki there are several sources like mediawiki, what about for social news?<p>Custom reddits exist now but I think some people would prefer to foster their own community rather than leech off reddit's.  I know I would use such a utility if it existed. <comment><USER2> <http://www.pligg.com/> might be what you're looking for - sort of an open source Digg.</comment>


The fallacy of mood affiliation (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/the-fallacy-of-mood-affiliation.html <comment><USER2> Simply providing a counter-argument to an argument, whether it's 'pessimistic' or not, does not constitute a fallacy of any kind. The author's chief complaint seems to be that people have the temerity to counter his arguments. You can't call an argument a fallacy based solely on your perception of the motivation of its proponents; a true fallacy can be proved simply by examining the argument itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of how Peter Thiel said extreme pessimism and extreme optimism are both problems because they both lead to inaction. Why do anything if you believe the world is getting really good or really bad?

<comment><USER4> The Thiel quote you're referencing is from an interview with the author of this blog post, Tyler Cowen. Thiel was answering an audience member's question about the desirability of life extension[1]:

> We accept that we're all going to die, and so we don't do anything, and we > think we're not going to die anytime soon, so we don't really need to worry > about it. We have this sort of schizophrenic combination of acceptance and > denial, like extreme pessimism and extreme optimism. It converges to doing > nothing, and I'd like us to just fight it a little bit more for its own > sake.

1\. [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel- on-t...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel-on-the- future-of-innovation-77628a43c0dd#1f66)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Politics isn't something to be studied "objectively", where views are right or wrong on their own merits (or worse, some pseudo-"empirical" measure). There is no "null theory" for politics; all political engagement starts from some political theory or method of analysis.

So this so-called "mood affiliation" isn't a fallacy at all, it's the identification of a speaker's political theory. Pretending that you don't have such a theory (or that yours is "objective" or "neutral") won't make it so!

<comment><USER6> My political theory includes as a major idea that people dying when they don't have to is typically bad.

Based on this, I judge certain environmental problems to be significant. Someone else, motivated by the belief that environmental problems are overblown, denies that they are. Mind you, this person doesn't deny that we should try to save lives. They just deny the facts about what's happening. [1]

There are (contentious!) philosophical theories on which neither one of us is being objective, but, C'MON, whatever philosophical points you might make, you have to acknowledge a very real sense in which one of us is just reasoning badly.

[1] And to forestall any knee-jerk reactions, yes, it is sometimes the case that people assume a potential environmental problem is a disaster because of the opposite sort of mood affiliation. Which is more common isn't even the point.

<comment><USER4> If you're against involuntary death, shouldn't your top priority be curing aging? The vast majority of deaths on this planet are due to age-related illnesses. Not accidents, not violence, and certainly not environmental catastrophes.

<comment><USER6> Possibly! We'd both have to spell out a lot of details to have that argument. I'm not the one to have it either, because I don't know how plausible it is that we can really solve aging anytime soon.

But I'd say it's not super-relevant to the argument at hand, since the person who we're discussing doesn't say "these environmental problems are less important than aging" but just denies the specific harms are happening on the scale they are.

Edit: crap, left out a not. "It's _not_ super-relevant."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CURL From The Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://onlinecurl.com/

<comment><USER2> This awesome for testing. Easier than fumbling around with cURL in my terminal.</comment>


When Did I Do Something Hard - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/when_did_i_do_something_hard

<comment><USER2> I believe industry is full of people solving really hard problems with little financial reward or internal recognition and zero public recognition. I've worked with such people and I've been one myself.

It is definitely frustrating to read about the SV "rockstar" programmer mindset and realize that all of the companies complaining about so called lack of talent are restricting their hiring interests to a very specific mold which seems to focus on age, educational pedigree, geography and some ill-defined social sense that allows certain individuals to be considered "rockstars" or geniuses for accomplishments which in many other environments would be considered average.</comment>


How to learn AI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/emilwallner/How-to-learn-AI <comment><AUTHOR> Yo! I'm starting to learn machine learning, and I'd love feedback on my learning roadmap. Also, do you know any fun beginner challenges like Kaggle and OpenAI request for research? Thanks</comment>


AI is going to make your job even harder - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/artificial-intelligence-will-make-your-job-even-harder/597625/ <comment><USER2> "Your Job" probably doesn't apply to most people here. I mean, the fact that "content moderation" is even a job is kind of saying something. In the 80s and 90s this was mostly volunteer work.

There is some argument to be made that as the volume and difficulty of the work goes up, that pay would also increase, so it's not necessarily fair to say that when AI gets super good and handles all the easy cases, that the workers would _still_ be only paid minimum wage.

If you are literally only asking humans in morally or ethically dubious situations, then that sounds like a specialized skill. I.e. one you'd pay a premium to hire someone with a college education and background in psychology or ethics who is used to thinking about things like that.

Right now, people are paid minimum wage because, hey, I'd guess that 99% of the time, someone uploads a porn video and it's trivial to tell in 0.1 seconds flat that it's against the rules. I don't want to suggest the job is easy (watching the worst of humanity 8 hours a day will certainly drain you) but I just wanted to point out that this is an entire _industry_ of jobs that simply didn't exist 20-30 years ago. It's not necessarily correct to assume that it will remain unchanged 20-30 years from now.</comment>


Beta users wanted for new social network platform - <AUTHOR>

Trestup (www.trestup.com) needs 500 beta users to try out its social network platform. Sign up and share on Twitter @trestup. <comment><USER2> It's good to see a social network come out of Canada. Privacy-conscious folks should be comforted that Trestup needs to comply with CASL[1] and PIPEDA[2] which sets a higher bar than US regulations with regards to gaining consent from users for marketing purposes and provides greater control for the user over their own data.

[1] [http://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/annualstatutes/2010_23/Fu...](http://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/annualstatutes/2010_23/FullText.html)

[2] [http://www.priv.gc.ca/leg_c/leg_c_p_e.asp](http://www.priv.gc.ca/leg_c/leg_c_p_e.asp)

</comment><comment><USER3> You guys don't rank on google. Had to hardcode the link. Your site says very little about what it actually does, connect users with similar interests is the premise of basically every social and dating website on the net. I am on mobile, the confirm email says "this message has no text" on ios. This means google wont download it to the server. Can't confirm, can't use the site. You have to make this easier.

<comment><USER4> site looks indexed to me -

site:trestup.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm actually beginning a project to launch a vertical social network. Please kindly include me if your product can be leveraged by private networks. I'm looking at both hosted platforms and managed software.

I am at tom [a] thegrif [dot] net. Also @thegrif. Thanks again! :-)

<comment><USER6> By "private network", do you mean inside a corporate firewall or a public vertical network that is using white-labelled technology? If the latter, do you want a service hosted and managed by someone else (like WordPress) or licensed software that you would install on your own cloud servers?

<comment><USER5> The ideal situation would be a PaaS that achieves the advantages of a hosted solution without compromising on the customer's ability to extend the platform into either their own environment or adjacent cloud providers.

Many companies have built successful revenue models around open sourcing the core platform and then monetizing the PaaS/SaaS offering.

Either way, happy to help anyway I can - thanks for following up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can I chat with other users? Can I share the pictures with other users? Can I "friend" other users?

Yay! I'm in!

</comment><comment><USER8> it could use some UX work (just simple things like where you position fields or how you indicate things are required)

also, when I filled out my profile and submitted, I got JSON representation of my profile back</comment>


A LEGO replica of the CMS particles detector at CERN - <AUTHOR> http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/hep/LegoCMS/

<comment><USER2> I was just thinking, "No love for ATLAS?" but here it is :) <http://atlas- model.mehlhase.info/>

</comment><comment><USER3> A friend worked on the CMS construction; he had some rather interesting stories -- always was a good story-teller.

I'll have to remember to bring this up.

As an aside, I wish Lego would introduce some kits like this (although maybe a bit smaller in scale/price; $2300 is a bit beyond the holiday budget). I want my kids dreaming of ray guns they may actually construct, one day.</comment>


Do You Think Steve Wozniak Owns a Hackintosh? - <AUTHOR> I'm wondering based on his natural tendency to tweak with hardware/software <comment><USER2> Yes of course Steve Wozniak has a hackintosh, just like Mel Gibson's secret bar mitzvah

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but it is running off an FPGA</comment>


China Organ Harvest Research Center - <AUTHOR> https://www.chinaorganharvest.org/ <comment><USER2> Sure, but their GDP has gone up and they invest a lot and the Shenzhen tech scene is cool so nobody cares.

Saudi Arabia is another such nation that gets the red carpet treatment in the West for the large amount of investment capital it tosses around while running a brutal dictatorship at home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well to be fair, it's a link to the whole is kinda generic, what discussion could it offer other than "isn't it terrible", right? I very much agree that it is, and I wish HN was less squeamish about the upstream provider of freedom to talk about intellectually interesting things, namely politics (as if animosity about that would spill over into technical discussions). But I didn't expect this to be discussed much, I just saw a documetary by them, thought "China Organ Harvest Research Center" sounded fake, turned out it's not and that their site wasn't posted here before. At least now it can be found in searches.

<comment><USER2> This site isn't the only source for this information. I've been hearing about China's grey market organ trade and the government's refusal to do anything about it (or possible complicity) for at least a decade. It's clearly real to some extent and you can add it to a long list of human rights abuses perpetuated or permitted by the PRC: racist concentration camps, forced abortions, overt confiscation of successful businesses, real as-in-you-get- arrested censorship, etc.

As far as politics being almost banned on HN: I think it's overall saved the site from being dragged into the alt-right / histrionic-left troll-fest that has eaten massive amounts of the Internet in the last decade. Politics can be interesting if the discussion participants are sane, but political discourse on the Internet seems to have been taken over by absolute raving lunacy (of both "right" and "left" forms) in recent years. A lot of it is driven by 'chan culture and the rest by for-profit professional trolls who have learned you can make money in podcasting and on YouTube by spewing divisive bullshit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to say that site is the only source of information about this, just that "China Organ Harvest Research Center" sounded a bit too "on the nose", so I was surprised it's real.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China#Organs_sourced_from_prisoners_sentenced_to_death)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Four Out of Five Toddlers Use the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/14/children-internet-stats/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> The article refers to children under the age of 5. Not toddlers. Pre-school is probably a more accurate description.

<comment><USER3> "iPad" and "iPhone" were both some of my kid's first ~20 words. She watches a lot of YouTube :)

This is fascinating on two levels, 1) the power of the internet and 2) the power of branding.

<comment><USER2> My kid's an Android geek ;-) Seriously though, he does know his way around a touch interface scarily well (he's 4) and he is fascinated with trying all the different options available on the laptop (my work VPN username mysteriously transformed into his name after I left it alone a while back).

<comment><USER4> Should set him up an account. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My boy has been playing with touch devices literally his entire life. It started as a baby when we let him hold our iPhones. He learned to unlock them very early - I can't remember how old he was. Maybe around age 1 or so. Not long after, he learned how to adjust the volume, mute, and sleep/wake it intentionally. Then we got an iPad 1 around the time he was 15 months old. He immediately translated what he already knew from the iPhone to the iPad and only had trouble with the slide-to-unlock which, on iPad, doesn't stretch edge-to-edge and so he had to learn to be more accurate.

A few months after getting the iPad 1, he had pretty much fully figured out the iOS interface and was getting into everything including apps like Mail and Twitterrific and deleting and modifying things he shouldn't have been. So in the interest of not losing data but still allowing him access to the iPad, my wife and I basically stopped using the iPad for anything but casual games we didn't care much about and removed our accounts from all the apps. Then we loaded a bunch of toddler-focused apps and let him claim the device as his own. (Within reason.)

Since then he's become a pro at the iPad. When the 4.2 update enabled multitasking, I was pretty sure he'd be confused by it. He had come to learn that he could just push the home button when he got lost in an app and then restart it (since the app would relaunch fresh). Within a few days he learned instead to attempt to work his way out of confusing parts of apps without relaunching them. (Sometimes asking for help.) After a few more days, he accidentally discovered the double-tap on the home button and started using that to switch between apps!

The iPad has taken a serious physical beating in this time. We have wood floors and it was not uncommon for him to drop the iPad off the couch or push it off a table just to see what happens. He has also attempted surfing on it. The metal is riddled with little dents and huge scratches. It was a bit painful to see such a beautiful device abused, but it was also fascinating to see just how rugged the thing is. Eventually, though, he managed to drop it on some concrete and cracked the top corner of the screen. The crack is outside the touch area, though, so we taped it up and got a case that wraps around the corners a bit to try to avoid it getting worse. The screen is almost perpetually a little sticky and a little dirty (like his face) but it doesn't deter him.

He's remarkably adept with it now and he's only 27 months old. He navigates Netflix to find things he wants to watch by their cover art (he obviously cannot read yet), he can count to 20 thanks to a math app, knows maybe 1/3rd of the alphabet and can kind of draw some letters thanks to an alphabet app, can do 10+ piece puzzles thanks to a couple puzzle apps, and more. His daycare teachers are frequently amazed at his abilities at physical puzzles, counting things, and controlling any sort of gadget he might get his hands on (like their CD players or two-way radios) relative to his peers.

The iPad is now integrated directly into our nightly routine. During "quiet time" we enable airplane mode and let him play any non-internet apps (read: anything but Netflix) for about 30 minutes before we put the iPad away and read a story from an actual book, sing some songs, and finally go to sleep.

I'm not sure if there's ever been such a great single educational tool for toddlers as an iPad and I'm thankful that Apple manufactures such well- designed (and surprisingly tough) products.</comment>


Jazz Jackrabbit 2′s Level Editor ported to HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5gamedevs.com/2012/01/13/jazz-jackrabbit-2s-level-editor-ported-html5/ <comment><USER2> This is the first 'x written in HTML5' project that I have been actually amazed by. I spent countless hours in JCS modifying the shipped levels to add all sorts of 'secret bases' taking advantage of bugs and glitches.

I remember the online multiplayer community was kind of fizzling out about 5 or 6 years ago... wonder how it is now.</comment>


Growth of the Scientific Boundary - cole-maclean http://cole-maclean.github.io/ <comment> cole-maclean Hi all,

I created this as part of Udacity's Data Science nanodegree. It uses metadata provided by Arxiv's API to build a categorization model for the scientific disciplines, using each papers title to build a "bag of words" vectorized model and then allocates each paper to a category based on the contents in its summary abstract. Each category grows out of a "parent category", sorted by a simple difference in words of the categorical labels.

Part of the project is to publish the visualization to gain feedback from users, so if you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know! It's certainly not perfect by any means, but being my first data visualization and first exposure to programming with a javascript framework(d3.js), I'm quite proud of it.

I plan on writing up a blog post about the development of this, mostly for myself to reflect on the personal growth (and sometimes frustrating!) experience, that hopefully others find interesting or informative. For now, I need to focus on finish up the nanodegree (A/B testing next!)

-Cole</comment>