The New York Times Releases Its Dataset of U.S. Confirmed Coronavirus Cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytco.com/press/the-new-york-times-releases-its-dataset-of-u-s-confirmed-coronavirus-cases/ <comment><USER2> Github repo:

[https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data](https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data)

<comment><USER3> Noob Question: Anyone know an easy way to convert FIPS data (that this nytimes dataset uses) to Postal code?

<comment> jake-low I don't think it's generally possible. The FIPS code just identifies the county (the first two digits are the state, e.g. 06 for California) and the final three identify a county in that state. So technically that column is redundant with the "county" and "state" columns; I suspect they've included it to make joining this dataset to other data that might use different name- formatting of counties/states easier.

ZIP/postal codes are generally smaller (in the county I live in there are almost a hundred ZIP codes). I'm not sure they're even guaranteed to be entirely within one county either. We tend to think of ZIP codes as boundaries but they're actually delivery routes (which if you squint can be converted into boundaries by joining the properties that those routes serve together).

You might be interested in this article: [https://carto.com/blog/zip-codes- spatial-analysis/](https://carto.com/blog/zip-codes-spatial-analysis/)

<comment><USER3> Right, so a simple mapping I'd want is given a Zip Code, what is the corresponding FIPS Code.

<comment><USER4> Pick a lat/long, and you can map between. Or find the centroid of the zip code and map accordingly. Or you might consider unions between the geometry objects. Qgis3 has a lot of great packages for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh boy, I can hear the the bootcamp data scientists firing up their medium blogs from here.

<comment><USER6> Let's try to not put people down for self learning. Knowledge can be found anywhere. Those that mock people like this will soon find themselves left behind with ancient university based education. Unless you plan to re-enroll every 10 years the world will pass you by if you are not self learning.

<comment><USER7> Self learning would imply that the person is teaching themselves, not that the person is attending a coding boot camp.

People that claim to be data scientists after attending a coding boot camp must be clowns. I've never come across such a person. All the data scientists I know are smart self taught people, not people who went to a boot camp.

<comment><USER8> It's possible that all the data scientists you know are not a representative sample.

I've met smart data scientists and engineers who've gone to a bootcamp. People who are good and bad at their jobs come from a huge variety of backgrounds, and it's not helpful to look down on folks whose background is different than your own.

<comment><USER9> The issue with is the word "scientist".

In academia, science is the pursuit of postulating a falsifiable theory, then gathering facts to verify that theory, and then going through a process of intensive peer review that either confirms, dispels or amends those findings.

The formality of the academic process is a necessity. The value of scientific findings entirely depends on the trustworthiness of the research. That is, how were the results obtained, which line of thinking was followed, did the research exclude crucial biases, etc.?

The importance here is that academic research is used as a pillar to produce products and services we all use in daily life. For instance, if you need a hip replacement, you want to be sure that prosthetic was designed based on rigorous scientific findings and studies that can vouch for safety and comfort.

The difference then with "data scientist" is that they often they don't apply the same rigorous research practices. It's easy to pick a dataset and bang off visualizations; it's a different story to actually come up with relevant questions, assert the quality of the data at hand and publish your findings towards a community of domain experts who are actually able to review your findings.

One needs in-depth domain knowledge to do that. Good data scientists will understand this limitation. They often work in a specific domain in a supporting capacity: bringing technical skills and capabilities to domain experts that don't have those skills.

Then there are those who purport to practice data science while grokking datasets, creating visualisations and cobbling a blogpost together at the end of the day. That's when you need to be really wary of what they publish, even if the bigger picture contains truthiness.

Hence why I have extremely mixed feelings about what [https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo) is doing.

To be sure, the core points of what he's telling are in line with what domain experts are telling us. But the extreme number juggling is quite mind bending. Moreover, the man is not a domain expert. He's an entrepreneur who happens to know how to write viral blogposts such as "how to deliver your funny speech" and "How to become the best in the world at something". What he does is anything but scientific. And so, even though he's making a heartfelt plea heard by many, one should be careful to not take the precise details in his pieces at face value.

At the moment, we all are victims of our own confirmation bias. Each day yields another data point, and given our desperate state, we want to see trends that confirm improvement, a probability that one will survive this, low mortality and so on. The reality is that we only have so few datapoints and it's still far too soon to make conclusive assertions about how this will pan out for the world at large and you in particular.

<comment><USER10> Well as a statistician, I hate to break it to you, but there is a massive reproduction crisis in science because heretofore the "rigourous research practices" has often times been more a veneer of rigor rather than actual science. The amount of published research (often in esteemed journals) that has been found to be unreproducible and based on faulty methods is aburdly high. The modern scientific method has arguably been as or more effective at building a tower that shields scientists and academics from criticism from work of questionable validity.

I'm not saying random data science blogs aren't often wrong. But you've probably been burned just as often by publish science and simply haven't realized it. And at least the data science blogs aren't behind expensive paywalls, aren't couched in meaningless vernacular, and present the code/data for reproducing their results, none of which can be said for a lot of science these days.

<comment><USER9> Well, being professionally active in academia, I'm well aware of this issue and that particular debate. And you're right.

Open science and open access are important movements as to the relationship between publishers and academic research.

However, that debate doesn't negate my point as to citizen or data science.

For all the discussion about paywalls and the use of vernacular, the same timeless critical considerations need applying: who wrote the article? what is their background? are they a domain expert? where they did get their sources? how did they come to conclusions? is their method sound? are they asking relevant questions? etc. etc.

And I don't always see that happening online. On the contrary. The fluidity and the speed at which information flows online seems to be a justification to give in and accept what's being said at face value. The past few years should have made it clear that such indulgence can lead to dire consequences.

With powerful tools comes responsibility. Sure, it's great to see people apply free and open source tools to come to a new understanding of observations. But that's only half of the story: you still have to apply critical thinking to those conclusions. That's not something throwing more code or technical skills can achieve.

Having a proper, critical debate takes time and experience.

<comment><USER10> > who wrote the article?

This seems to be an improvement over academia imo. The person writing the article should be immaterial. The same paper written by an unheard of researcher should be treated no differently than the same paper written by a well-known, tenured researcher at a prestigious institution. Unfortunately in academia, who you are and who you know is often as big a deal as what you do and what you know.

> What is their background? are they a domain expert?

Again, the methodology should stand alone. Being a "domain expert" or having a particular background is only relevant if the readers of the article are incapable of judging the results on their own merits, and have to instead rely appeals to authority. But appeals to authority introduce their own problems, including a moat that protects the status quo and the ingroup from potentially important new ideas and newcomers. And its hardly scientific.

> where they did get their sources? how did they come to conclusions? is their > method sound? are they asking relevant questions? etc. etc.

These need not be restricted to academic work. If a blog fails to properly cite sources, you can move on. Plenty of academic papers are built on flimsy premises, poor methodology, asking incorrect questions, etc. etc. There is nothing differentiating the ability to assess the quality of something written in a blog vs something written in an academic journal here.

> And I don't always see that happening online. On the contrary. The fluidity > and the speed at which information flows online seems to be a justification > to give in and accept what's being said at face value. The past few years > should have made it clear that such indulgence can lead to dire > consequences.

And yet, as noted, the more conservative approach of academia has resulted in a huge amount of unreproducible "science". And now, in a time of crisis, the stringent model is being set aside in favor of openly available preprints shared online, without peer review, via social media. How can the traditional model be considered useful when, in times without urgency, the validity of its results are highly questionable, and in times of urgency, its thrown aside for the sake of actual progress? It seems to me the modern academic method is largely a facade, something closer to an ornate religious ritual that has been divorced of its actual intentions.

> But that's only half of the story: you still have to apply critical thinking > to those conclusions. That's not something throwing more code or technical > skills can achieve.

This assumes that those coding or utilizing technical skills are doing so without critical thinking. Perhaps this is true some of the time, but I don't see the situation being any different in academia.

> Having a proper, critical debate takes time and experience.

What constitutes a "proper, critical debate" is subjective. And from my position, it would appear that the advent of the internet and freedom of information is making the current academic model unsustainable and obsolete. And so academia has an entrenched interest in defining "proper, critical debate" in a way that protects their livelihood.

I'm not saying there isn't plenty of poorly written science and analysis being done on blogs out there. I'm simply saying I don't think traditional academia and science is much different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a quickie animated bubble map, pulling in this new NYT data from GitHub: [https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/united-states- coronaviru...](https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/united-states-coronavirus- daily-cases-map-covid-19)

... might be a useful starting point if you want to fork off your own visualizations and analyses.

<comment><USER12> At first I thought your animation wasn't working. Then it got to the last few days.

Wow.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. Wow indeed. The dataset actually goes all the way back to the end of January, but I'm trimming it to start at the beginning of March, because the early days are pretty much invisible at the current scale.

You can change the value of `startDate` in that notebook if you'd like to look back further in time.

<comment><USER13> You could make the animation slow down exponentially, to make the growth look linear. Basically turn it into a log plot. Misleading if you don't know what you're looking at though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Data: [https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data](https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data)

</comment><comment><USER15> Anybody know about data indicating age? It's always "confirmed", "dead", "recovered" but no info about age of patients.

<comment><USER16> My state publishes its statistics hourly. I looked at it just this morning, and was surprised to see that in the age breakdowns that there are more confirmed cases in people 20-40 than in 60-80.

<comment><USER17> Is that still true when you adjust for the relative size of those groups? 20-40 is a larger group of people than 60-80.

<comment><USER16> It's hard to say, because I don't have the time to do the math right now. But my state is generally considered to be retirement-friendly.

<comment><USER18> Florida?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This website appears to have more fine-grained statistics for the New York City area (ironically): [https://accelerator.weather.com/bi/?perspective=dashboard&pa...](https://accelerator.weather.com/bi/?perspective=dashboard&pathRef=.public_folders%2FCOVID19%2FDashboards%2FDS%2FCOVID-19%2B%2528Coronavirus%2529%2BGlobal%2BStatistics)

<comment><USER20> I don't understand why these lists make it so hard to find the USA. Every country is written out including the United Kingdom - but the USA is "US." Sometimes we're first because of ethnocentrism, sometimes last, but PLEASE BE CONSISTENT!

Also, thanks for this link - rant aside, it's the best dataset I've seen.

</comment></comment><comment> jake-low This is phenomenal. I've been scraping the data from primary sources for just Washington state for the past week [0], in order to make this chart which I hacked together last weekend [1].

[0]: [https://github.com/jake-low/covid-19-wa-data](https://github.com/jake- low/covid-19-wa-data)

[1]: [https://observablehq.com/@jake-low/covid-19-in-washington- st...](https://observablehq.com/@jake-low/covid-19-in-washington-state)

Doing this for just one state was a pretty substantial effort. I imagine there are multiple people at the Times who are spending several hours a day reviewing and cleaning scraped data (seems every couple of days some formatting change breaks your scripts, or a source publishes data that later needs to be retracted).

The Times dataset appears to contain per-county case and death observations in a time series, going all the way back to the first confirmed U.S. case in January in Snohomish County, WA. This makes it by far the most comprehensive time series dataset of U.S. COVID-19 cases publicly available.

Some people in this thread linked to the Johns Hopkins CSSE dataset; I've looked at this data but it doesn't go back very far in time for the U.S., and the tables are published as daily summaries with differing table schemas which makes them hard to use out of the box. For some days earlier in March, "sublocations" aren't even structured (for example the same column contains, "Boston, MA" and "Los Angeles County", making it very hard to use). No disrespect to the team behind the JHU dataset; it attempts to cover the whole world since the outbreak began which is an incredible and difficult goal. But for mapping and studying the outbreak in the U.S., the Times dataset will likely be the best choice right now.

Huge kudos to the New York Times team for making this data freely available.

</comment><comment><USER21> So before I duplicate any effort, has anyone found a tracker that takes this dataset's death counts and updates a Pueyo/Khan Academy-style graph [1], at different granular levels (world, nation, province/state)? Pueyo's analysis technique uses deaths each day to impute a back-looking inferred actual infected count instead of relying upon reported testing numbers, and that in turn can be used to infer a two-week forward-looking infected and death count based upon currently-known stats on average time to hospitalization and mortality. After two weeks, it gets increasingly more speculative, but by the time you have number of known deaths today, you almost have a baked-in outcome two weeks from now.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk)

<comment><USER22> Not this data, but I like Johns Hopkins rendering of their data:

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> god damn it NYT, "New York City" is not a county. Why can't I get borough by borough breakdowns? (each borough is its own county)

edit: someone else posted this, which DOES give county-by-county breakdowns: [https://accelerator.weather.com/bi/?perspective=dashboard&pa...](https://accelerator.weather.com/bi/?perspective=dashboard&pathRef=.public_folders%2FCOVID19%2FDashboards%2FDS%2FCOVID-19%2B%2528Coronavirus%2529%2BGlobal%2BStatistics&id=iC2B38B09B142481EB83935F6419CA837&objRef=iC2B38B09B142481EB83935F6419CA837&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BcanvasExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.canvasExtension&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BfeatureExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.core- features&options%5Bcollections%5D%5Bbuttons%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.buttons&options%5Bcollections%5D%5Bwidget%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.widgets&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BcontentFeatureExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.content- features&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BboardModel%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.boardModelExtension&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BsaveServices%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.saveServices&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BserviceExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.serviceExtension&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BlayoutExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.layoutExtension&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BvisualizationExtension%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.visualizationExtensionCA&options%5Bcollections%5D%5BcolorSetExtensions%5D%5Bid%5D=com.ibm.bi.dashboard.colorSetExtensions&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BsmartTitle%5D=false&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BeditPropertiesLabel%5D=true&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BnavigationGroupAction%5D=true&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BenableDataQuality%5D=false&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BmemberCalculation%5D=false&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BassetTags%5D%5B%5D=dashboard&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BfilterDock%5D=true&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BshowMembers%5D=true&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BassetType%5D=exploration&options%5Bconfig%5D%5BgeoService%5D=CA&isAuthoringMode=false&boardId=iC2B38B09B142481EB83935F6419CA837)

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there anywhere (global) data about total number of tests made? The plain number of positive cases is quite difficult to make sense of.

<comment><USER25> [https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source- data](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source-data)

The key metric is tests/confirmed case.

When I've looked, this is very predictive of confirmed cases (2 weeks ago) per death.

<comment><USER24> That was the best I had also found, but it is not of decent quality to me. sources seem to be quite out of date and often based on news articles, not actual daily data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > In light of the current public health emergency, The New York Times Company > is providing this database under the following free-of-cost, perpetual, non- > exclusive license. Anyone may copy, distribute, and display the database, or > any part thereof, and make derivative works based on it, provided (a) any > such use is for non-commercial purposes only and (b) credit is given to The > New York Times in any public display of the database, in any publication > derived in part or in full from the database, and in any other public use of > the data contained in or derived from the database.

How is this form of license valid for what's essentially just numbers from publicly available data? Do I get to take numbers from various sources and then require credit and that nobody can use them for commercial purposes?

<comment><USER27> "Just numbers" well not quite. They are data which can be interpreted as information. This is like saying books are just a collection of letters.

This link may be informative and provide a US context. Sorry I don't have a more content specific reference.

[https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public- da...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public-dataset- without-license-what-is-allowed)

<comment><USER28> Phone books are actually legally just a collection of numbers and are not considered a creative work, because there is nothing creative about the mere act of collating them. Thus, they cannot be copyrighted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co).

If NYT provides a "value add" here beyond mere aggregation and deduplication they are probably copyrightable. Otherwise they probably don't hold a copyright here (although they may attempt to claim it, just like RTS did).

<comment><USER27> Interesting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My pet peeve with nearly all maps showing this data is that they are on geographical maps. A virus spread is only a weakly geographical phenomenon - most infections happen through human-to-human contact so it makes more sense to show on a population-weighted cartogram. Has anyone made a map like that? A great example is the 538 hexagonal-tile electoral college map: [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)

or one of these population-weighted projections of different areas:

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8284655.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8284655.stm)

</comment><comment><USER30> Kudos to NYT, but I think the COVID Tracking Project data is probably better because it attempts to measures total testing as well (positives and negatives). I've been using it to report state-level testing statistics and new case/death curves:

[https://www.deptofnumbers.com/covid19/](https://www.deptofnumbers.com/covid19/)

From the data I've learned that Washington state appears to be getting their arms around this thing:

[https://www.deptofnumbers.com/covid19/washington/](https://www.deptofnumbers.com/covid19/washington/)

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

<comment><USER32> [https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19)

The NYT spent more effort patting themselves on the back than they did compiling the data.

<comment><USER33> Their data is of higher quality than upstream sources like the Johns Hopkins CSSE set. Notably, it's in long-form (one record per day per area) instead of wide-form and the schema is consistent.

This takes some know-how and a bunch of ETL effort. There is significant value in their transformation of upstream data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those interested in data, the COVID Tracking Project ([http://covidtracking.com/](http://covidtracking.com/)) doesn't have county data, but it _does_ have test data (both total, positive, and negative). Very helpful given how relatively useless all of these case counts are without knowing how many tests were conducted.

<comment><USER35> I quickly hacked a website together this weekend based on the COVID Tracking Project data because I wanted to see how much testing was being done and where.

I think that it's pretty interesting to sort by the columns and browse the data.

The site's not great on mobile, but I'm working on that this weekend...

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> GitHub link in case NYT is blocked at your... home-office?

[https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data](https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data)

</comment><comment><USER37> Their data set shows only 1 case in san mateo county. That aint right

</comment><comment><USER38> And places it behind a login page, requiring people to sign up to see it.

<comment><USER39> [https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data](https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Here's what I don't understand... If viruses and bacteria are all over your body and do some useful things, how can some be bad? What separates 'bad' virus from a good virus?

<comment><USER17> Some berries taste great but some berries poison you. Real puzzling isn't it.

<comment><USER41> It is interesting though. Why would a plant evolve to kill animals when the purpose of a berry is to spread seed through consumption?

<comment><USER42> Holly berries taste delicious to birds, but are slightly toxic to mammals. (enough to cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, but not to kill you) Birds don't have receptors for capsaicin, the chemical that makes chilies spicy, which makes most mammals (but not humans) not eat them. Deadly nightshade isn't toxic to birds.

Birds tend to travel farther during any given time period than (typically terrestrial) mammals do, making them better at spreading seeds over a wide area. So it's evolutionarily advantageous for plants to optimize their fruits to be eaten by birds instead of mammals.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Affordable units expand the tax base, more people support themselves without aid - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/StrongTowns/status/986756547211653122?s=20 <comment><USER2> Did I miss what conditions must exist for naturally occurring mixed income neighborhoods?

<comment><USER3> The way it is phrased I would suspect the poster would be inclined to claim that condition was lower taxes.

The argument that "naturally cheap" housing (also known as shitholes) is better than subsidized mixed income housing overlookes the entire point and contex of the concept in favor of focusing purely on economics.</comment></comment>


Rich Hickey Q&A (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/RichHickeyQandA.md <comment><AUTHOR> This is the restored/better version of the original 2011 version. The original version is now lost and there was a previous discussion on this on HN here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2638806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2638806)

Right now, I guess this is the only copy floating around of this interview ...</comment>


Feeling Reel - <AUTHOR> Beta site for the GroupMinded project I'm involved with - what do you think? Feedback welcome :) http://www.feelingreel.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback? :)</comment>


Congrats Heroku: 100,001 deployed apps - <AUTHOR>

I just started using Heroku a week ago and I'm in love. (I kinda wish I was the 100,000th deployed.) <comment><USER2> Heroku is the main reason why we moved from PHP to Ruby/RoR. My first encounter with RoR made me feel managing a Ruby server was a pain and resources never enough, but Heroku made me fall in love again. Now we have at least 10 apps with them.

</comment><comment><USER3> 100k sounds crazy high.

How many of these apps have seen a page-hit during the last month?

<comment><USER4> Interesting, I totally thought they would have hit this a while ago. For some reason I assumed they might have hit a magnitude higher. But I guess I totally misunderstood their popularity. Whoo echo chamber.

<comment><USER3> Well, just to ensure we're on the same page; this claims 100k _concurrent_ , running apps.

If a significant portion of these apps were active then that would translate to a 6 figure hosting bill from amazon (per month!).

So either heroku is much larger than I thought, or most of these apps are not actually doing much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Including mine. Love the service. It's sort of what I imagined hosting could be like but didn't think was possible. Anybody ever notice how cool the site design looks when you're working in the dark, late at night?</comment>


Show HN: Minimal puppeteer pool - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/galvez/0b4f0bc752b1e6cf4d4b15343dee1...
I couldn't find any example of this so I thought I would share one I put together. It's a mind dump of code used in production, although this particular bit is untested, it shows the idea. I used it for a PDF generation pool (Launching new chromium instances on every request was making the server run out of memory) <comment><USER2> Pretty good</comment>


Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/firefox-overtakes-microsoft-internet-explorer-edge-browsers-first-time-statcounter/ <comment><USER2> Wow. I remember watching these stats, waiting for Firefox to edge past IE in the 2000s. Chrome really took the ball and ran with it. They had the advantage of seeing things that FF did that really worked (tabs, extensions, find-as- you-type) and the intelligence to iterate on that (multi-process support, a world-class debugger) and a really solid foundation in WebKit (née KHTML).

In a way Chrome was in the right place at the right time, with the right bunch of people. If they hadn't launched, Firefox would likely be sitting where Chrome is now, though likely without a bunch of drive to improve things as much as they currently have.

Of course, in an alternate universe where Firefox was #1 and IE #2, we might have had royalty-free video codecs mandated by standards and no W3C-endorsed DRM...

<comment><USER3> > Chrome really took the ball and ran with it

I'm still kind of bitter with the way they did that. A lot of windows installers, which usually installed you toolbars if you forgot to uncheck a box, started installing chrome as your default browser if you forgot to uncheck a box.

I've seen a lot of non-technical people using chrome who have no idea what chrome is or remembering giving consent to installing chrome.

<comment><USER4> Chrome also had the advantage of being advertised on Google.com.

<comment><USER5> anywhere i go without an adblocker begs me to install chrome and stop using whatever horrible outdated browser im using (according to the google ad), and how youtube, etc work best with chrome anyway

thats quite a lot of powerful advertisement, on the sites people browse every day. its not too different than being part of the default install IMO ;-)

and of course - chrome is a pretty good browser (though edge is actually quite good and firefox is pretty much ok as well despite not yet doing sandboxing)

<comment><USER4> And the thing is it's sadly not a lie. YouTube and such _do_ work best with Chrome. Google's effective web vertical integration means they control every stage of the pipeline. They control the sites and the browser. They can deploy experimental tech in Chrome which nobody knows about and which only Google sites use.

It's terrifying.

<comment><USER6> One example of "google only APIs" that I ran into recently is the chrome extension browserAction.openPopup API. This API is whitelisted (in stable) for use by the Google Cast extension. Extensions authored outside of Google cannot use it. This is creates an uneven playing field.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=436489](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=436489)

<comment><USER7> It seems it's not necessarily malicious. From [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399859](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399859):

"The popup is anchored to the extension icon, which might be in overflow or not even exist, in which case it is anchored to the Wrench menu. That kind of anchoring would make the message in the popup to appear to be from the Chrome browser (since it points to the chrome UI) and would present a vector for tricking users into thinking the message is from a trusted source.

Since this is not safe to allow all extensions to do we'd need a lot better reasoning than "I'd like to use this in my extension" before allowing widespread use of this API."

<comment><USER6> I agree that the API limitation is most likely not malicious and I did not intend to imply otherwise. Still, lack of malice does not change the fact that the Google Cast extension has a competitive advantage over other non-Google extensions (which can't use all of the same APIs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mozilla: We are a non-profit and we protect your privacy; we won't use your data to make money.

Most users: Nah, man. We'll go with the search engine and ad network company.

<comment><USER9> Every time I try to switch to Firefox, it just doesn't work as well, and I switch back. I'd rather Firefox over Chrome for philosophical reasons, but I feel like Firefox just isn't there technologically. It's getting better, but they really let it stagnate back in the day.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate on this? I've tried Chromium once and again, but always fall back to Firefox as it feels better to me. Direct reasons are the address bar functionality and better privacy support out of the box, but also some generic feel is somehow just more familiar to me.

Firefox does have global freezes on particularly heavy pages due to the single process model. It's rare enough not to bother me much though.

As a tip, the Firefox Android version allows add-ons -- uBlock most critically. It's just great.

<comment><USER8> Multi-process is being tested in Firefox Beta right now, according to [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule).

<comment><USER11> While some progress is being made, it worries me that it's taking so long to get this functionality into the release versions. I'm not suggesting it should be rushed out, of course. But the Electrolysis efforts date back to 2009, if not earlier. That's a long time to make users wait!

<comment><USER12> Why does this concern you? Mozilla, isn't as cavalier as Google as far as releases are. I remember a time in chrome's beginning it was horribly unstable but patched often. It was the lure of constant quick updates that kept a lot of people eager for the "fixes".

<comment><USER13> Grandgrandparent: firefox is shit because it doesn't have feature X which causes it to crash if a single tab becomes unresponsive

grandparent: firefox is building it

parent: it tooks them 7 years and it is still not done?

you: why do you care, who cares if mozilla updates slow?

me: ???

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Recently I experienced a high profile site throwing some errors in Firefox, and their support rep suggesting me to use Chrome (of course I didn't). This brought the memories of "best viewed in IE" times...

<comment><USER15> Chrome is the new IE. Its actually got a lot of bugs that have existed for years and years ([https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=180722](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=180722)) and the developers refuse to fix them. Yet, I still find web developers that only run chrome and give blank looks over their mac/linux machines when asked if they tested the code in IE.

But that isn't the primary problem. The primary problem is that its simply too hard for most web developers to install/run a HTML validator in their web browser and fix the errors it finds.

Try it out, run html validator, for a few months while browsing the public web, its almost a surprise when a major web site actually has syntactically correct code. As a "systems" programmer spending about 30% of my time doing web development, simply having my code syntax checked (yah I run php and javascript validators in my deployment package too) before it makes to the the browser increases my productivity significantly. In the year or so after I started running validators/JSlint/etc (1) a lot of things started making sense in HTML/CSS and I went from a crappy web hack, to being the guy in the office helping the full time web guys when they get stuck...

Now if I could just find a good way to ask "experienced" web developers if they run a validator without leading them to the "right" answer I might have a good interview question.

(1) Part of this was I completely customized our "build" environment so that there was a debug vs release package/deploy process too. Things like JS minificantion/php obfuscation only happen during release deployment. JQuery/etc are actually checked into the version control in their unminified version. Plus, it usually only takes one or two calls from a web developer who can't figure out why their code won't deploy before they start checking the build logs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious how this graph would look if you compared only Linux users (obviously IE and Edge would drop off). It didn't strike me how important Firefox is to the FOSS world until I started experimenting with Linux distros and found that it was consistently pre-installed on flavors of Ubuntu/Debian/Mint/Fedora/FreeBSD. It becomes even more valuable on distros that refuse to pre-load any proprietary software.

<comment><USER17> I tryied chrome on Ubuntu. It is so slow it is almost unusable, so I switched to firefox (that I feel less user friendly). That may be the reason why it is preinstalled on linux distos.

<comment><USER18> I've had a lot of problems like that due to bugs in 3d acceleration and AMD GPU drivers. The latest kernel 4.5 updates practically fixed all Chrome issues. It's fast and doesn't break while rendering any more. I can also open other apps that use 3d acceleration and everything works fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This isn't entirely surprising to me.

For one, Edge only runs on Windows. Windows is losing market share to Mac OS, iOS and Android (Firefox is on all three as well as Windows).

For two, I personally use Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Chrome Canary on my box, each for their own purpose, but I have yet to find a need for Edge. There is no site that I go to that works best in Edge.

<comment><USER20> I won't care about Edge until they've open-sourced it and made it cross platform.

<comment><USER21> Does that same logic apply to Safari?

<comment><USER20> Yes.

Though Safari at least has their rendering engine open sourced. But really that just makes me care about Webkit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> About a month ago I saw a news story that said Chrome finally passed IE, based on some other browser usage tracker. Each website that tracks this can have some huge bias, so making a general claim about a browser passing another doesn't really mean much.

</comment><comment><USER23> More significant is that Firefox' marketshare dropped from 16.1% to 15.6% in three months, and all lost to Chrome, it appears. Yikes!

What is Chrome doing right now to advance so quickly? Or has that been the rate of increase for a long time?

</comment><comment><USER24> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox.

I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped in the past 12 months. Lots more crashes than I have ever seen and some new CSS curiosities. And that's with me rarely running Chrome - Firefox is my primary browser.

Maybe Mac is a much tougher platform to target and isn't the priority for Goog, or perhaps the transition to Blink has been rough. Whatever the reason, Chrome seems to be getting creaky in its old age.

<comment><USER25> > This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team.

Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.

<comment><USER24> Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow.

I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.)

I remember when Chrome shipped with V8 as being a big turning point for the way Firefox was run. Management went from complacent to reactionary. The bug reports regarding JavaScript performance in the Firefox bug tracker at that time were really fascinating to watch - Mozilla was a very disturbed hornets' nest! Then came rapid release and all the arewe*yet.com websites, etc.

Mozilla has been punching above their weight class ever since Chrome came to market, but I perceive that recently Mozilla management has been transitioning from reactionary to offensive. Their moves on Rust and sunsetting XUL and XPCOM are geared towards security AND performance, which are painful and necessary shifts. Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do.

That's why I'm going to stick with my assertion. Every day that Mozilla/Firefox doesn't shrivel up and die has to be a concern to the Chrome team!

<comment><USER26> Does the Chrome team really care?

Ads in Firefox provide the same revenue as ads in Chrome. What does Google gain by monopolizing?

I think they care more about internet explorer, they don't want it dead specifically, but if it sticks around they want it reliable. Using ie used to be a giant pain and nothing worked right, people would use it to accomplish their goal and be done. Now using any of the three is fairly pleasant and people on any browser could reasonably view many ads.

<comment><USER27> > What does Google gain by monopolizing?

I would guess control. Owning the dominant web browser allows them to:

* Softly guide front end web tech in a direction of their choosing

* Ensure the supremacy of Google the search engine.

Also if things ever really come to head between ad-blockers and ad-providers owning the dominant platform the former runs on would be very beneficial to the latter.

<comment><USER28> _> I would guess control._

Most big companies want to control their own technology stack and optimize for their own products.

So Google wants people using Android phones and Chromebooks (ideally, fed by Google Fiber), with Google Chrome browsers feeding traffic to Google Search, Google Docs (with all your files in Gdrive), Gmail, YouTube etc.

This provides the maximum surveillance capacity for maximum tracking and thus the most efficient delivery of advertising. At least to the people who don't use ad-blockers and anti-tracking systems ;-)

"The result is a world where our most intimate personal details are collected and stored. I used to say that Google has a more intimate picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But that's not far enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it remembers all of that forever." [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_as_1.html)

<comment><USER29> I hate to defend them, as I choose not to use their products, but all that is stated in plain language in the first two paragraphs of their EULA. Nobody reads them, but if they did, they would know at least Goog is clear, unlike pretty much all the rest of the EULAs in the wild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Didn't Firefox use to have almost 30% ? Or was that only in select markets?

<comment><USER31> It did. It dropped off a cliff when Google made Chrome default on Android, though.

<comment><USER32> BTW I'm using FF on Android too (and it's way better than Chrome, with a true adblocker which is even more important than on the desktop), but since the upgrade to Android 6 applications revert to the stock Android browser without any option to select FF instead, grrrr...

<comment><USER5> IMO..

FF on android is a great browser. Much better than anything else - yet has like 1% marketshare. Go figure.

FF on the desktop is an average browser. Chrome and Edge are slightly better.

<comment><USER16> I use it (mainly for the adblocker), but FF on Android inexplicably fails to run well on certain pages, even after I disabled uBlock Origin and requested the the Desktop versions of the site. humblebundle.com was the last site I recall where I actually had to open it in Chrome Android to get the site to render properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Firefox is really bad at rendering Chinese fonts. It chooses different font than other browsers, sometimes using a Japanese font to render Chinese text, and the pixelization is just palpable. I know most people here couldn't care less, but the poor internalization may be one of the reasons for a _global_ disadvantage compared to Chrome. Internationalization is really something open source products have been lacking traditionally, as it is neither fun nor sexy.

<comment><USER34> Sounds like there aren't enough Chinese open source contributors. As the saying goes, works for me - patches welcome, they'd be in a better position to do so anyway.

<comment><USER33> Yes, that is true. But at the same time, they should not lament about the global dominance of other browsers that do not have this attitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I prefer Firefox to Chrome, Edge is still unstable but I do like some of the direction they are going in. The lack of extensions I think killed it out of the gate. It's also odd to me that Edge doesn't update through the Windows Store, and instead is updated through Windows Update...doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being a UWA?

I actually find what Opera is doing a lot nicer than any other others are the moment though, find myself using it more and more.

<comment><USER28> _> The lack of extensions I think killed it out of the gate._

True, but the extensions are coming.

 _> I actually find what Opera is doing a lot nicer than any other others are the moment though, find myself using it more and more._

I use Firefox and Opera, mainly, but I'm increasingly using Vivaldi. It's Chromium based and from the guy who originally founded Opera, but didn't like the way it was going.

It's extremely configurable. If you have any nostalgic feelings for Opera 12, it's worth a go....

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> As some had pointed out on Installing Chrome by other software etc, but normally these are real bad software. Most users who had no idea what Chrome was at the time was presently surprised by how fast Chrome was, and they stick with it.

In ther early 2010s I forced switch the whole company about 200s to Firefox, but few years down the road everyone quietly installed Chrome and was using it. It was fast, and they dont care about anything else. Forcing them back on Firefox were met with opposition, saying using somthing inferior was insane.

Complaining to Mozilla has been served with deaf ears. It was mostly an management issues from top to bottom, they were so full of themsevles, so righoutous, that they fail to relaize the marketing is changing. By the time they realize they have shrink below 20% market share already and were continuing downwads.

Somewhere along the line, Mozilla changed their tone, it wasn't about market shares. It is about Open Web, and always has been. How do you force the Web to be Open if had no influence on it what so ever? They wasted resources on Firefox OS, which is a dismal failure. They think JS is king, and evrything, including the OS should be someday written in JS.

Firefox is dying, and i am glad. Becasue as a users from Netscape era everytime Mozilla / FIrebird / Firefox reborn things has become better.

Firefox is very noble. But the world has never been about one way or the other.

Luckiy in the past year something happen within Mozilla. I have no idea what it is because i am not following their post anymore. ( e10s is STILL not shipped ) But things are getting better. User experience matters, less Janks, memory usage kept low and most importanly Chrome has been getting worst with every release. ( Strange indeed ) This mean more people are swithing back to Firefox.

And for users with specific workflow and 100s of Tab, Firefox is still the only option on the market.

</comment><comment><USER37> I always wonder how big influence on these statistics have all kind of adblockers. Like a lot of you said, there are a LOT of "forced" installs of Chrome on computers of not-so-power users. Most of them don't even know what the browser is so I bet they don't have any adblocker (unless someone installed it for them). On the side, we have power users that have adblockers and (AFAIK) they are not visible for scripts from StatCounter and similar companies. So results of browsers like Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave may be understated, am I right?

</comment><comment><USER38> The numbers just show Firefox losing market share more slowly than IE/Edge, not that Firefox is gaining. Chrome is still climbing. I wonder when Chrome's market share will peak and level out.

</comment><comment><USER39> It must be really hard for the Microsoft CEO. He's doing what he can to fix the problems that Steve Ballmer left, but it's extremely hard for him.

<comment><USER40> The decision to put Edge under the Windows org and make it Windows-only was a decision made under Ballmer. I'm guessing if Satya had to do it today, he'd try to make Edge cross-platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Chrome's share is a Firefox's reward for making their browser indistinguishable from Chrome in every way except for the fact that their entire UI freezes every time it hits some bad javascript. Great choice, to go from being a great Firefox to a crappy Chrome clone.

</comment><comment><USER42> What I like about Firefox and Chrome is that they democratized Linux as a desktop OS. Till IE was mainstream all sites assumed you are Windows box. Now it's rare that there is site I can't use except few Silverlight based dinosaurs.

</comment><comment><USER43> What an awful way to present that data...

</comment><comment><USER44> If Servo ever lands in Firefox I wonder what sort of impact that'd have on market share.

<comment><USER45> I don't think Servo will "land in Firefox" (it's possible, but it's a lot of extra work). However, components written in Rust (taken from Servo or written in scratch) may indeed land in Firefox -- there are a couple in Firefox today! (Except on Windows).

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation)

(There are a bunch of alternative paths forward other than sharing components with Gecko that don't involve dropping it into Firefox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Didn't that happen, like, 10 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER47> Firefox also sends enormous amounts of metadata about your browsing to the cloud and it's very difficult for non-savvy users to turn this off. They call it telemetry and 'safe browsing', but users overlook that every URL is checked against a database of URLs already in Google's 'safe browsing' repository. Firefox is not actually private and their business model can't allow for privacy, because they're in bed with Google.

Use something like Palemoon and configure about:config a bit more and you should be fine. But be very skeptical of Mozilla claiming FF is some privacy enhancing tool. Their plugins ecosystem is also a security nightmare...

<comment><USER48> If a user is too non-savvy to click a couple of check boxes in Options > Security to turn off Safe Browsing, they probably _need_ that protection. Users this non-savvy are probably already being tracked left, right, and center and an easy target for malware served by advertising networks, and Safe Browsing is the least of their worries.

It's similarly easy to turn Health Report and Telemetry off from Options > Advanced > Data Choices.

<comment><USER49> Ignore the user you are responding to. Their expectations of Firefox are unrealistic and misinformed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> For me, it's all about the details, and I just can't come back to Firefox for silly reasons, even if I appreciate their stance on privacy.

The tabs shape is repulsing me, I know that's a strong feeling and I can't explain it. The disymetrical back and forward buttons bothers me as well. I can't find how to whitelist domains accepting cookies in Firefox. Switching profiles is much easier with chrome. I'm used to chrome developper tools.

I don't like neither safari neither MS edge.

If it wasn't for the missing onenote extension, maybe I'd be using opera. Again, all about the details.

<comment><USER51> Isn't this something that could be fixed with an extension?

A quick google (heh) brought me to the FXChrome add-on [0]. 100k+ users.

[0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fxchrome/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fxchrome/)</comment></comment>


Empathy and Inclusion in People Operations - <AUTHOR> https://www.range.co/blog/empathy-and-inclusion-in-people-operations <comment><USER2> Is "People Operations" the new "Human Resources" term?

Smells like forced corporate rebranding strategy - nothing changes underneath but you no longer have an instant negative reaction... For now, at least.

I'd suggest an honest renaming: "Internal Corporate Protectors" or something along those lines but more pithy.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are actually some slight differences, but that depends on how a particular company chooses to define the function/department.

If you're interested in learning more, Google has plenty of helpful articles.

<comment><USER2> Very helpful, haven't heard of this Google thing before. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


College Is Broken: How I Learned Basic CS in Three Days - <AUTHOR> http://log.markthom.as/college-is-broken/

<comment><USER2> "One of my least favorite aspects of learning computer science in college was how distanced the theory was from real-world applications."

It sounds like you want to want a vocational school. CS isn't there for you to learn how to make an app. It's about theory, which takes more time to master.

I still use the theory I learned in CS (10 years ago) to develop software today.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm upvoting this because the article is interesting, but the title is a bit off.

The given title (which is the title of the blog post) is somewhat misleading. The person knew basic CS and had had two semesters in college of it, but felt they learned at a faster pace in Hack Reactor.

Nor does this necessarily show that college is "broken" (a subject certainly worthy of consideration and debate) though it does make it clear that the blogger seems to feel this works better for them, and suggest some interesting ways of teaching. Giving people a problem before giving them the classic solution, and having them work out the naive approach themselves has much to suggest itself. In interviews and work, you don't necessarily know the best solution, or even what the program is. This may give people a better sense of the problem space for programming.</comment>


Ask HN: What home automation platform should I get started with? - <AUTHOR> What systems have people had good experiences with?
I'd like to control lights and thermostat at a minimum but also would be good to have some help in the kitchen and with media.
Thanks <comment><USER2> I work for a successful IoT company and my advice is: don't. State of the art in home automation is: impossibly insecure & rarely helpful. The so-called "smart" home is anything but smart; it takes lots of manual configuration to make it perform as intelligently as you'd wish (and if you have a knack for coding, you'll end up reimplementing your vendor's hideously expensive "smart home hub" that was supposed to do the work for you). The industry is simply too young and immature.

Speaking of security: You have no bloody idea how easy it is for anyone with some crypto/security background to break into an IoT appliance or its vendor's cloud services. In the era where an average web development Joe knows a lot about SSL certs, CSRF, XSS and all that stuff, the average embedded developer's idea of encryption is AES in ECB mode (but not too many bits - "our MCU won't handle that!").

</comment><comment><USER3> The market is in an odd phase right now. People recognize the insecurity but continually pump out insecure products that early adopters keep installing so we wind up with these crazy hacks that take out huge swaths of IoT devices.

The reality is the market is not mature so whatever you choose will likely change and you are likely responsible for implementing proper security controls at the Router to prevent stupid mistakes from being internet accessible.

This will resolve itself and as a tech home automation will become secure, but right now it is still relatively early in the cycle, so be prepared to make it secure on your own. Also be aware that likely there will be many things you have to integrate at some level, as there doesn't seem to be a real standard yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> I once worked with some automation stuff back during the dot-com boom, before "smart home" was a thing. At the time the only players in the industry were "Lutron Homeworks", AMX, & Crestron control systems. A guy in our office used a language called "SIMPL" to create the touchscreen interfaces' UI.

...And, yes they were insecure. I remember the Chinese would take over 1 particular media distribution system regularly, at a local community college. They'd plaster anti-western political messages on every TV in every classroom. Took a week or so tinkering with hyperterminal to fix it. Lol

</comment><comment><USER5> System: HomeKit + ATV4

Lights: Lutron Caseta, uses normal wall switches + Lutron Smartbridge Pro for HomeKit

Thermostat: ecobee3 for HomeKit + remote sensors

Door lock: Schlage Sense for HomeKit

Security cam: upcoming Canary [https://blog.canary.is/homekit/](https://blog.canary.is/homekit/)

A/V: Logitech Harmony

Bridge to non HomeKit devices like the Harmony: homebridge

Apple first party Home app

Optional: Third party Home app for detailed HomeKit DB edits

Siri and Echo can both control all the above, simultaneously

1\. Homebridge: [https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge](https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge) \+ [https://github.com/KraigM/homebridge- harmonyhub](https://github.com/KraigM/homebridge-harmonyhub)

2\. HomeKit accessories: [http://selfcoded.com/home/buying- guide/](http://selfcoded.com/home/buying-guide/), [http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all- accessories/homeki...](http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all- accessories/homekit)

3\. Third party HomeKit DB app: [http://selfcoded.com/home/](http://selfcoded.com/home/)

</comment><comment><USER6> An example of why you don't want to do this: [https://twitter.com/ow/status/789515155877027840](https://twitter.com/ow/status/789515155877027840)

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't use any. It's insanely insecure (free DDoS for everyone! not to mention strangers on Internet controlling your house) and a bit of a waste of money. Think of all the exercise you get walking to the light switch and back ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a reason this is such a hard problem? Decent home automation that doesn't have you locked into one company that might disappear in a few years has been pipedream for decades now.

</comment><comment><USER8> SmartThings has been great. I've tried all the hub's.</comment>


Low-level Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://curiosity-driven.org/low-level-bitcoin <comment><USER2> A little note about the "make a privkey" section of the signature example; it can sometimes* make invalid privkeys that are off the end of the EC curve. Only integers between 0x1 and 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEBAAEDCE6AF48A03BBFD25E8CD0364141 are valid in our particular case. Super unlikely to ever get a sha256 hash that matches the invalid portion, but it's worthwhile to point out.

* probably never, but worth mentioning

<comment><USER3> This curve order limit actually introduces a small bias. You can choose a number greater than a curve order, but then it'll be taken modulo the order, so some incredibly small amount of numbers will be biased closer to zero. In practice the probability to hit such numbers is less than 2^-128, so you may easily skip all checks and take the number as is. Of course, nitpickers will nitpick and that's why in all standards that describe key and nonce generation (BIP32, RFC 6979 etc), you'll see boilerplate code that checks for such numbers and does some extra cumbersome computations just to avoid these from happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Possible bug:

The instructions BOOLAND and BOOLOR don't interpret the stack values the same way IF, VERIFY etc do. They decode the top stack values as integers and compare against zero, thus they have to fail when the top stack item size is greater than 4 bytes.

Edit: littleEndian.decode also doesn't seem to respect the size limits

Edit2: .. or signed integers for that matter. So while this is a very cool basic concept, it's not a complete implementation.

The reference client provides test suites

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/test/data...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/test/data/script_valid.json)

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/test/data...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/test/data/script_invalid.json)

<comment><USER5> Yes, you're right, numbers treatment is not exactly the same as in Bitcoin Core. The script interpreter supports only basics and it was implemented to show how Bitcoin Script works in general for another article [0].

But it was not clear from this text whether it's a complete implementation or not so it looks like a bug. I've added the annotation [1] and will update the interpreter in the future.

Of course if one wanted to use Bitcoin in real projects I'd rather recommend Bitcoin.js [2] but that's another topic.

Thanks for comment!

[0]: [https://curiosity-driven.org/bitcoin-contracts](https://curiosity- driven.org/bitcoin-contracts)

[1]: [https://curiosity-driven.org/low-level- bitcoin#operators](https://curiosity-driven.org/low-level-bitcoin#operators)

[2]: [http://bitcoinjs.org/](http://bitcoinjs.org/)

<comment><USER4> No problem - I wasn't sure if this is something you're currently working on or just a demonstration. The script interpreter is a tricky beast that looks easy but has a lot of edge cases. If one client behaves slightly different, a blockchain fork could happen: [https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain- fork](https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork)

<comment><USER5> Yes, exactly. And there are a lot of tricky corner cases like SIGHASH_SINGLE when number of inputs != number of outputs with hash 0x01 [0]. Actually the entire implementation (Bitcoin Core) is the specification :) It's interesting from the software design point of view - an extreme case of backwards compatibility. It's hard even within Bitcoin Core as some changes already caused forks [1].

The article is just a demonstration but it won't hurt if it was as accurate as possible (while still being readable) :)

[0] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_CHECKSIG#Procedure_for_Hashtyp...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_CHECKSIG#Procedure_for_Hashtype_SIGHASH_SINGLE)

[1] [http://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by- bl...](http://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain- fork/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article had me wondering what will happen when people start storing copyrighted data (or worse, pedopornographic images) inside the blockchain.

<comment><USER5> They already do that: [http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks- photo...](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks- photographs.html)

Also related: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number)

<comment><USER7> So what happens if someone puts CP into the block chain and publishes the instructions to retrieve after two months?

<comment><USER8> Nothing. The way arbitrary data is stored in the blockchain is encoding it in the financial transactional data.

For example, you could use a similar method to "store" data using Paypal: use the amount of cents in each transaction to encode a byte of data (e.g. $1.17 means 0x75 etc.) and make transfers to random people until enough bytes have been transferred. That's it, your copyrighted data or CP is now forever "stored" on Paypal servers.

I don't think this accusation will hold up in any reasonable court. Taking into account the cost of storing data (20 bytes in a single output of minimum 5400 satoshi + fees) your hypothetical instructions and code to retrieve the images would be of comparable size to any images you can reasonably store.

<comment><USER9> There is no minimum output size. Outputs can be zero-valued.

<comment><USER8> The standard client and by extension most miners will reject outputs smaller than a certain value ("dust")

You are correct that the protocol itself doesn't have a minimum output size, so if you mine a block yourself you can include dust reliably.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get better at naming things? - <AUTHOR> Naming is considered one of the hardest part of programming. In one survey, programmers mentioned naming as the most time consuming part of their work. Yet I don't see any resources on getting better at naming things in software.<p>Are there any books and resources that can help you get better at naming? <comment><USER2> Not being able to name something could also mean there is a lack of understanding the problem at hand.

Lately I've found myself naming things very poorly on purpose just to continue past the name struggle. I then go back and rename once there is a better picture of the structure. Use context/scope/namepacing to your advantage.</comment>


Ask HN: How much time do you spend on "new"? - <AUTHOR> Do you visit "new" on a regular basis and check what new posts are interesting and try to get them on the frontpage or do you spend most of the time on the frontpage? <comment><USER2> I find myself on "new" when I've exhausted everything on the front page. I don't really visit "new" with the intent to promote things to the front page.</comment>


Show HN: Social value orientation - like the Cathedral and the Bazaar - <AUTHOR> I'm learning about software team management, including group dynamics, and found a useful concept called "social value orientation".
A friend of mine wrote a paper on it, and my
my crib notes may help other software teams. It's especially relevant if you're familiar with "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by ESR.
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_value_orientat...
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
Constructive feedback welcome. <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_value_orientat...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_value_orientation)

Link: [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/)</comment>


Ask HN: How is the IT job market in Germany? - <AUTHOR>

My girlfriend is about to finish med school and she's thinking about moving to Germany after that. I tried finding out more about the market there but without any luck. Any of you guys know how things go there ? Is it necessary to be a fluent german speaker to get hired ?
I have 5 years in experience, my main expertise is AS3 / Flex (that's what I like the most), but I've worked in C++ / C#, PHP. And I can get my way around JavaScript, HTML, CSS. Thanks <comment><USER2> English will be fine for a developer job. To check out the job market I'd suggest to look at the online job boards like monster.de .</comment>


Raccoons Pass Aesop's Fable Test By Upending It - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/animals-intelligence-raccoons-birds-aesops/ <comment><USER2> > _She climbed onto the cylinder and rocked it until it tipped over, giving > her access to the sweet treat._

> _"That was something we hadn't predicted," and indeed, had designed against, > says study leader Lauren Stanton, a Ph.D. student at the University of > Wyoming._

They should have consulted me for this experiment. Growing up in the suburbs, I have extensive experience in observing the little bastards topple or otherwise gain access to all manner of receptacle—no matter how seemingly impregnable—on inumerable occasions. Their cunning knows no bounds.

<comment><USER3> Raccoons, black bears, and skunks are all smarter than many people seem to think. They can find their way into most anything in common use. There have been cars broken into by bears, for example.

<comment><USER4> Finding their way out seems more challenging for them based on my anecdotal evidence of finding a very pissed raccoon stuck in my trashcan after the lid closed on him.

<comment><USER3> So very, very true. This is not the right forum for telling my story of the garbage purloining skunk who got his head stuck in a peanut butter jar.

You know the adage about how a skunk won't spray in an enclosed area, so that you can throw a blanket over a skunk and not worry about being sprayed? It's a lie. Mr. Skunk does not care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that the test involves showing the animals how to use the rocks to raise the marshmallow. Not to insult any particular species, but that seems more like a test of the instinct to mimic behavior with some desirable outcome. I assumed the Aesop's Fable test was testing for an apparent understand of water displacement and floating.

<comment><USER6> > Not to insult any particular species, but that seems more like a test of the > instinct to mimic behavior with some desirable outcome. I assumed the > Aesop's Fable test was testing for an apparent understand of water > displacement and floating.

How is that not understanding? They associate the outcome with a cause, and so realize how to trigger that cause themselves to achieve the outcome. What more is there to understanding?

<comment><USER5> As a simple example, take the water out of the tube. Do the animals continue dumping rocks on top of the marshmallow, since that process used to work, or do they appear to understand that it was the water in the tube that made the rock-dropping process work?

<comment><USER6> > As a simple example, take the water out of the tube. Do the animals continue > dumping rocks on top of the marshmallow, since that process used to work, or > do they appear to understand that it was the water in the tube that made the > rock-dropping process work?

All you're doing is adding more variables which makes the causal relationship more complicated, it doesn't diminish the understanding of the original causal relationship.

<comment><USER7> These variables were there from the beginning; the question is whether the raccoon's model of the world was taking them all into account, a question which probably requires more experiments to answer.

Understanding is not a binary thing, as demonstrated by Clifford Stoll's 'Why is the sky blue?' question.

<comment><USER6> > These variables were there from the beginning

But not observable given the experiment's configuration. I don't see how bringing these into the discussion clarifies anything. The question the experiment addresses is whether there is _any_ understanding, 0 or not 0. The degree of understanding is out of scope.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it is. If you show a raccoon that putting rocks into a took yields a marshmallow, you cannot include anything about the raccoon's understanding of water displacement. If you show a raccoon that pressing a button yields a marshmallow, you can't conclude anything about the raccoon's understanding of electronics.

<comment><USER6> "Understanding water displacement" is not the goal of the test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of this guy who tried to build a cat-proof automatic feeder: [http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=3023](http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=3023)

<comment><USER9> Yep, discussed here (just in case):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230904)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can I stop autoplaying video? What I want is to:

\- mute the sound \- prevent autoplaying \- prevent video download consume my internet quota.

<comment><USER11> For Firefox: About:Config setting media.autoplay.enabled to false.

For Chrome: Chrome://flags set autoplay policy to "Document user activation is required".

I know that this breaks animated .gifs in Firefox, though you can get them to animate by viewing the image info (right-click menu). That's rarely a big loss anyway.

<comment><USER12> The Chrome trick may work for some sites but not others, most notably CNN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, NatGeo's site is terrible right now. Full screen unskippable autoplaying video that starts off unmuted. It then had at least one of the same type that was unmuted on the actual page, so upon page load it just sounded like a total cacophony of videos. Totally unusable site.

<comment><USER14> I got none of that with uBlock Origin. You should try it.

<comment><USER13> I run uMatrix with a small amount of allowable filters. I have no problem with ads generally, so if I must I will open FireFox where I don't run such things, but also don't log into anything personal.</comment></comment></comment>


Why indecision is worse than a bad decision - <AUTHOR> http://blog.angrymonkeys.com.au/why-indecision-is-worse-than-a-bad-decision <comment><USER2> "when you have an unknown outcome it's always better to act than it is to not act."

B.S. Unthoughtful reactionary leadership can be some of the worst.

<comment><AUTHOR> Acting without thought is always going to be bad. But not acting (also without thought) will still be worse.

If you're stuck with an unthoughtful reactionary leader, the best thing to do is find a new job.</comment></comment>


What Alzheimer's Feels Like from the Inside - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/what-alzheimers-feels-like-from-the-inside <comment><USER2> This is a great, but very short, account of what some people with dementia illnesses go through.

There are some things that didn't get mentioned: stuff like how to you talk to your family about DNR and other advanced directives? When do you stop driving? When do you hand over control of your money to someone else? A lot of advanced directives will say something like "no heroic measures". Doctors hate that, because it doesn't give them nearly enough information to make a decision about care. Giving more detail is important. They may not be able to obey your instructions, but they need to consider them and have a good reason for ignoring them.

It's a really good idea to have those conversations now and get some kind of plan in place because at the time it's going to be tough enough for everyone anyway.

Here's a description of some advice from an English perspective: [http://www.gloucestershireccg.nhs.uk/gloucestershires- dement...](http://www.gloucestershireccg.nhs.uk/gloucestershires-dementia- handbook-inspires-australia/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A close family member of mine was diagnosed with Alzheimer's last year. He's still doing well, he remembers who everyone is, but it's hard discussing even simple strings of logic with him. He just gets lost and we have to double-back to review the thing we discussed 30 seconds ago. My mom related a story about having lunch with him, where he had both a bun and a brat on his plate, but just sat staring at them trying to figure out what the proper thing to do with them was. I'm afraid to see what happens as it advances.

Articles like these are nice to read. I don't find it a comfortable subject to talk about with my relatives, and especially with him. But hearing it from the perspective of a sufferer helps me understand what's happening and how to act around him.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of my core fears.

I know now that it is very likely I will live well into my 80s, perhaps even 90s. My genetic background strongly indicate a long life span, and I have been taking pretty good care of my body for a long time.

So there is an excellent chance that my body will outlast my mind.

And that just sucks. In my remaining decades, I hope that science and technology will address this. There seems like a good chance of real progress in that timeline.

<comment><USER5> If that worries you so much, you could treat your body more riskily to even the odds.

<comment><USER6> I'd be worried about general rough-lifestyle stuff affecting your brain's health as well. It is ultimately also a physical organ. Also, being unhealthy is not pleasant in general for many people.

Another approach might be to just slowly increase enjoyable risky behavior that's more or less all or nothing in its bad effects: driving fast, base jumping, motorcycle riding, helicopter piloting...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Probably one of the worst disease for family and closest ones. You see someone you know and love be more and more a stranger to you and a stranger to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd strongly recommend the novel "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova. A very sad but accurate portrait of Alzheimer's:

[http://www.amazon.com/Still-Alice-Lisa- Genova/dp/1501106422/...](http://www.amazon.com/Still-Alice-Lisa- Genova/dp/1501106422/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451402793&sr=1-1&keywords=still+alice)

<comment><USER9> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/) (2014) 7.5/10

[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/still_alice/](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/still_alice/) 88%

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone I know died from Alzheimer after suffering like 4.5 years. To me, this is one of the most horrific diseases to die from. It gives a great deal of suffering to people around you as well. I remember recently reading about a link between Alzheimer disease and fungal infection in brain but I guess it was just another false hope.

<comment><USER11> My grandfather passed from Alzheimers this summer. It is awful to say, but his passing was a relief to many, as he effectively died a couple years prior.

This disease is proof positive that there are medical fates far, far worse than death.

<comment><USER3> As someone about to go through this with a close relative, and with a chronic illness myself (type 1 diabetes), I often think of euthanasia. I haven't come to any conclusions yet.

<comment><USER5> Active euthanasia (stuff beyond DNR) for mental conditions is a non-starter because it is impossible to get a valid statement of the patient's preferences.

You can't write a valid living will that says "kill me if I forget who my wife is twice a day for a week".

<comment><USER3> It's a difficult problem, to be sure. I feel like what sokoloff went through is maybe not the optimal solution. I don't know.

<comment><USER11> What I went through was vanishingly small compared to my grandmother and father. It cemented in my dad a resolve to self-euthanize at the first sign of a progressive mental degradation. Of course, the first sign is "too early" to be optimal as well, but no one wants to wait until it's too late. In a strange twist of fate, he experienced this fall a temporary but rapid decline in function due to a treatable (and subsequently treated) physical condition that manifested itself over a 10 day period. Now recovered, I'm sure he's glad he didn't off himself.

I don't have any easy answer, even having had these experiences. There's little question my grandfather would not have wanted to live as he did the last 18 months of his life, but still epsilon chance he prefered whatever his life was to nothingness and even if not, was 17 or 19 a "more right" answer? How do you distinguish "routine" "what did I come downstairs for again?!" from more serious progressive degenerative diseases? Who knows...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vive-la-liberte Title is probably a reference to [http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_insid...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_inside/) (unless it in turn is a play on another title).

</comment><comment><USER12> The spider-like hallucinations are classic alcohol-withdrawl symptoms not directly associated with dementia or alzheimer's.

This story is on a number of sites, so it comes up in google searches, as the same report from the same guy.

<comment><USER2> Hallucinations are a part of dementia for some people. Tactile hallucinations can be present in Alzheimer's.

[https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.ph...](https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=1408)

> People with dementia are often thought to be hallucinating when in fact they > are making a mistake about what they have seen (see 'Visuoperceptual > mistakes' above). There are some specific forms of dementia, however, where > hallucinations are more common. These include dementia with Lewy bodies and > Parkinson's disease dementia. Hallucinations can also occur in Alzheimer's > disease.

> Hallucinations in people with dementia with Lewy bodies usually take the > form of brightly coloured people or animals. They often last for several > minutes and can occur on a daily basis. Around one in 10 people with > dementia with Lewy bodies also experience smells that are not really there > (known as olfactory hallucinations). People with dementia may also > experience auditory hallucinations (hearing sounds or voices) and tactile > hallucinations (sensing things that aren't there).

This was the first Google result for [dementia hallucinations], although I guess my filter bubble has been heavily trained.

<comment><USER12> Hallucinations are a common symptom of dementia, but not the type he described. The type he described are particularly common for another condition.

<comment><USER2> This is what you said:

> The spider-like hallucinations are classic alcohol-withdrawl symptoms not > directly associated with dementia or alzheimer's.

You said "not directly associated with alzheimer's".

That's incorrect. Some, but not most, people with alzheimer's experience tactile hallucinations.

Here's another cite:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105559/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105559/)

> Alzheimer's disease

> The prevalence rates of hallucinations in Alzheimer's disease (AD) range > from 12 to 53%. Hallucinations in AD most often are visual, although > auditory, tactile and olfactory hallucinations have also been observed. > Hallucinations are most prevalent in the moderate to severe stages of the > illness and do not seem to occur at the end stage of the disorder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've heard there is a variety of emotional responses by the patient.

Some are frustrated by former simple things becoming too hard to do.

Some are angry at themselves for failing. Or angry at others who think others are playing tricks on them.

Some of the excess emotion may come from the degeneration progressing at different rates in different parts of the brain. Especially if the frontal lobes lose their inhibitory powers.

Some report a sense of peace. Life is simpler and more basic.

</comment><comment><USER14> This story reminds me of a heartbreaking NPR piece I heard about a decade ago.

A man learned he had inoperable brain cancer/tumor (I think), so he began taking daily audio journals. His widow released some of the recordings to be played in the piece, and they illustrated his mental decline over time.

It was a very touching and sad story, and I've had a fear of a similar fate ever since.

</comment><comment><USER15> As someone put it. I never knew, you die one piece at a time.

This disease scares me. Dying, head first like that. Its common enough that it will probably happen to you or a loved one. Its easier not to think about.</comment>


To cater to major labels, eMusic changes its pricing scheme - <AUTHOR> http://shortformblog.com/music/emusic-pricing-scheme-changes/

<comment><AUTHOR> A little more context, over here:

[http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2010-10-...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2010-10-12-emusic12_ST_N.htm)

eMusic's change page is blocked off for members only, but here's what it says. Both the above article and the blurb for subscribers are written with lots of PR-ese.

\--

Coming soon! eMusic's largest catalog addition ever along with a new way to price music

eMusic's mission has always been to provide our members with a deep and broad selection of music at the best possible value. So we're thrilled to announce that this November we will be adding more than 250,000 tracks to eMusic!

The additions include classic hip-hop albums on the Def Jam label; groundbreaking, forward-thinking rock music on Geffen and Interscope; giants of jazz on the Verve and ECM labels; a wealth of classical music from the standard bearers Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Records; hard-hitting alt- country on Lost Highway; timeless R&B from the Motown label, and much, much more! It will be the single largest catalog addition to eMusic by far, and it comes thanks to a recent agreement with Universal Music Group.

In order to continue to grow our catalog and to insure a sustainable business in the long term, we need more flexible pricing. So we are changing from today's credit-per-track system to currency pricing. Your membership will continue just as it is today and your monthly payments will not change. But starting in November, you'll see tracks and albums priced in dollars and cents instead of credits.

New pricing in a nutshell

Under the new currency pricing system, eMusic members will enjoy savings of 20%-50% compared to iTunes a la carte prices. The majority of albums on eMusic will be priced from $5.19 - $8.99. Single track pricing for members will vary as follows: $0.49 for most tracks currently in our catalog $0.69 - $0.79 for more popular content $0.89 for tracks that generally sell for $1.29 at iTunes We won't know where specific titles (or exactly how many) will fall in the categories above until November. But we think you'll find that eMusic still offers the best deal out there on a consistent basis. For more on pricing, read The new pricing in detail.

Your monthly loyalty bonus

To thank you for being an eMusic member, a special loyalty bonus will be added to your account each month. The bonus level depends on the plan you are in. For more details regarding your new membership plan see the Your Plan info on the right.

eMusic today, eMusic tomorrow

We want to assure you that the heart of eMusic is not changing. As we grow our catalog, we'll continue to profile records we find interesting or important, regardless of whether they've sold 4 or 4 million copies.

By growing our catalog our aim is to also grow our member base, which in turn will help fund improvements to the service. See A look at the future of eMusic for details on some of the good things to come.

Read on to get more details about the new catalog, the new pricing and how this affects your account. We want to hear your thoughts about the changes, please take a few minutes to share your feedback on a MEMBER SURVEY.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm a relatively happy eMusic subscriber -- with a few minor complaints, but nothing serious. I almost see this as a sign of their current business model being unsustainable. eMusic started it's life as a cheap retailer —- subscription or no -- but has had to repeatedly rejig their pricing in order to retain label catalogues. I don't think this should be interpreted purely as an attempt to get major labels involved, this has had an effect on smaller labels as well. An anecdotal example; Relapse had pulled it's catalogue purely because it wasn't making enough money from it. Planet-mu had done the same. Subsequent to the last pricing changes, lots of hold out labels have put their catalogues on eMusic -- for me, notably Warp and Kompakt.

So my general feeling is that if these moves help eMusic sustain itself, then I can get behind it. However, these pricing schemes no longer look anything like a subscription; eMusic will not be the simple service that it was previously.

I get a sense that a subscription now only locks you into paying a set amount each month to a retailer and removes your ability to shop around with that money.

Still, the music is generally cheaper and for someone like me -- given I purchase a lot -- it's still a good deal.

I watch with interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> company has been heading downhill ever since former ceo (and current venrock VC), david pakman, took off.

it's a shame that emusic has not been able to make the long tail business model work. i think there is a significant opportunity in the tail, but maybe they just got too greedy?

-adam</comment>


Yammer moving back to Java from Scala - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1406238

<comment><USER2> That was an interesting read, and something that I largely agree with.

Although I don't write much Scala, I love developing in JRuby (and Ruby in general) and Clojure, but in a lot of situations Plain Old Java (POJ) really makes the most sense. The issues are speed of experimental programming in alternative JVM languages vs. overhead to lack of tooling and deployment issues.

I think that the future "most used language of the JVM" will likely not be Java but I don't know what that language will be (and it has maybe not been created yet).

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Simply wow.

I say this as someone who's coding experience is essentially all web stack, and wouldn't consider myself a computer scientist, but that was one of the best reads this year. Gives me so much insight in why choosing a popular platform _cough_ LAMP _cough_ can be a good idea even when it feels so broken.

</comment><comment><USER4> The performance rules they had to adopt are just painful:

 _Don't ever use a for-loop._

 _Don't ever use scala.collection.mutable._

 _Don't ever use scala.collection.immutable._

 _Always use private[this]._

 _Avoid closures._

Sounds like they ended up in a situation where they were almost writing Java in Scala already.</comment>


Co founder wanted for YCS12 - <AUTHOR>

Preferably hacker but designer/business guy would be just as suited if not more with an education background.
I'm not funded but financed off my own back, semi-talented hacker, Robot enthusiast (NAO Developer) and believer in better education.
Beyond your talent we basically need to work well together and be able to get through the good and hard times.
Building a new way of learning beyond the next frontier of "digital text books". I was always told not to learn purely form a text book, so why is digital any better.
Engagement and feedback is what is needed. Solution may be herewithin.
Email me at email@example.com if you think we cold possibly match and get a cool demo polished by the deadline.
N.B UK citizen but soon to arrive in the US. Visa not an issue. <comment><USER2> Any additional details on how you want to approach the learning/engagement/feedback problem?</comment>


Ask HN: How to verify customer change of address for a defunct email address? - <AUTHOR> Anyone have any good ideas for verifying a customer who asks to change their old email address to a new email address, where the old email address no longer works.
I'm worried that it would be an easy way for someone to gain access to someone elses customer account/records. <comment><USER2> Start by sending an email (without any sensitive info) to the old account and see what happens.

Compare the IP address from when the account was created / last accessed with the one for the password reset request. IP addresses are easy to spoof though so even if the IP addresses match you should be very cautious.

If you have the user's physical address, you could send a letter with an authentication code.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I worked on HN I did this for a few users. I required that the account they wanted to update positively identify them (via comments they'd made, items in their profile, etc), and that they be able to prove they were the same person.

Definitely something we handled on a case by case basis and declined to do if we weren't comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need information about him and cross check with what's available to you. If you only have name and email, sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, seems about the only way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it's a serious concern, then process the issue manually and figure out what is going on rather than trying to automate it. Handle it on a case by case basis.

Alternatively, there are many situations where a new email address could simply mean the site requires creating a new account.</comment>


What Amazon, iTunes, and Uber Teach Us about Apple Pay - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/09/what-amazon-itunes-and-uber-teach-us-about-apple-pay.html

<comment><USER2> this misses the point that iPhones now focuses on lower economic classes and other countries that do not enjoy the almost-start ups mentioned.

apple won't disrupt those. they will reign supreme in Brazil or the emirates.

the time of apple innovating is gone. they are now just scraping to monetize ask they can. while they can. and so far they're doing a five job.</comment>


Meet Everlyne, Our Newest Team Member Via Watsi - <AUTHOR> https://trovebox.com/post/meet-everylyne,-our-newest-team-member-via-watsi

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Posting this to encourage other companies and startups to hook up with Watsi and fund medical treatments for people in need.

Ping Chase or Grace @ Watsi - I'm sure they'll be super excited.

<comment><USER2> You're awesome, Jaisen. We're excited to partner with Trovebox!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am sure you could have taken a better picture! but it has to look like this so as to read not so far from the stereotype.

<comment><AUTHOR> The photo was taken by someone in Kenya.

I don't actually understand how it could be better or how it's stereotypical.</comment></comment>


An App Store trend that needs to stop: Single-serving apps - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/12/an-app-store-trend-that-needs-to-stop-single-serving-apps/

<comment><USER2> The other thing to consider is when will all of our home screens get overly bloated? If developers continue to make apps that are single-serving, we'll have hundreds upon hundreds of these apps that we want on our devices. I don't want it to get to the point where Apple has to add the ability to have even more home screens, where it would then take a couple minutes to find an app!

<comment><USER3> Does the computer you are using have a hierarchical file system?

<comment><USER2> Of course, but would you really want to use a more advanced menu just to find a single-serving app on a mobile device?

<comment><USER3> I'd just let the market decide. With so many identical-looking screens of apps, most iPhones already are getting cluttered. I expect that we'll soon see a better (hierarchical) Springboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about those book publishers who attempt to milk their printing presses by publishing multiple titles? Or bloggers who attempt to milk their blogging software by publishing multiple articles?</comment>