Blender 2.79 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.blender.org/features/releases/2-79/ <comment><USER3> Yet again I'm amazed by blenders progress. I've been a 'hobby 3d artist' for the past decade and find it incredibly useful in my full time job (front end dev). Blender to me is a shining example of an open source project that seems to constantly improve and give the proprietary apps like 3ds max and maya a run for their money.

While the learning curve for blender can be fairly steep, once you get over that hump, it's an absolute joy to use. A lot of people struggle with the UI, but once you 'get it', it becomes an incredibly fluid and well thought out interface. It still has it's quirks, but as far as 3D packages go, the UI is actually really great.

This update adds lots of things that I have been waiting for. Shadow catchers with cycles has always been possible, but it required a fairly obtuse method to get there. The denoiser for cycles as well in an incredibly nice feature and works incredibly well. The PBR shader is also a real joy to use. Coupled with a decent set of textures, PBR shaders make shading a seriously fun activity. Although it's nothing new (in the industry) it's really nice to have it in blender.

A real asset to any designers toolkit.

<comment><USER4> I still don't "Get" it, but once someone told me it was a "modal gui" (as a vim user) it clicked a bit more for me, that helps, but I don't have an artistic bone in my body, and fail to pick up blender once a year. (that said, I have no reason to use it, save maybe toying with 3d printing meshes)

<comment><USER5> Aren't "modes" in UI a recognized bad practice? See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Mode...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_\(computer_interface\)#Mode_errors) or read Jef Raskin writings.

How can a modal interface be "better" than a modeless one?

<comment><USER6> Modal interfaces are bad practice for software that will be used by people with minimal training, in a "pick up and go" fashion, but they are not necessarily counterproductive for skilled experienced users. Douglas Engelbart was a strong proponent of modal UI's and IIRC did extensive studies showing that although disadvantageous for "newbies", such interfaces could eventually yield higher productivity. I don't know how much of this was simply due to his having such a small and biased sample. It is also important to point out that his conceptualization involved using a 5-key chording keyboard in one hand and a 3-button mouse in the other for most routine operations, so the modes helped extend the number of operations that could be encoded. Anyway, as someone who uses emacs instead of vim, on a regular old keyboard, I really can't say personally.

EDIT: I suppose many people use a program like Blender with one hand on a mouse/trackball and the other on a 3d mouse, so the point about having different modes to get more versatility out of the same few buttons is still relevant. With that approach I use the radial menus plugin for Blender which makes changing modes pretty painless IMHO.

<comment><USER7> > It is also important to point out that his conceptualization involved using > a 5-key chording keyboard in one hand and a 3-button mouse

Don't forget the foot pedals!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just started fiddling around with Blender the other day for fun. There's an official 25-video YouTube list of tutorials that really gets your feet wet nicely, and it can be done on a lazy weekend morning. I loved it and have enjoyed how far you can get with just a few hours of tutorials.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLa1F2ddGya_8V90Kd5eC5PeB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLa1F2ddGya_8V90Kd5eC5PeBjySbXWGK1&v=kes2qmijy7w)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also this: [https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/blender-beginner- tutor...](https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/blender-beginner-tutorial- series)

<comment><USER9> Is there something specialized for 3D/CAD design for creating models for 3D printing? Thanks

<comment><USER10> I like OpenSCAD for printing, since it encourages you to use precise measurements, and makes it fairly simple to create reusable components.

That said, I've mostly used it for "I need to create something that will fit these inside of it", I could imagine your priorities are different if the print is the "driving" component of whatever you're making.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, I tried Blender but had to do research to learn to use it properly or "get it". On the other hand I used OpenSCAD and being used to code it really fit my mindset, thank you! In a few hours I had what I had in mind in a STL model :) Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just a remainder, if you find Blender useful, consider donating - [https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation- payment](https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment) -

<comment><USER12> Another way to support the project is by subscribing Blender Cloud. Gives you access to tutorials, etc.

[https://cloud.blender.org/](https://cloud.blender.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's give some love to MakeHuman now that we are on this topic. I was astonished to find this gem when I was trying to model characters. It exports human 3D models to blender with rigging etc.

and of course it is open-source and free

[http://www.makehuman.org](http://www.makehuman.org)

<comment><USER14> I feel Manuel Bastoni Lab creates far more realistic models: [http://www.manuelbastioni.com/manuellab.php](http://www.manuelbastioni.com/manuellab.php)

Opensoure and directly integrates into Blender as a plug-in.

<comment><USER15> The similarity between the technologies use to build those two web sites immediately caused me to believe the two projects are very closely related. Can you share any additional details regarding the relationship between the two?

<comment><USER16> Same main author, one is integrated into Blender and the other is standalone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lesser known fact: Blender switched to Python 3 in 2008. I guess they thought the rest of the Python community would leave them behind if they wouldn't ...

<comment><USER18> What does this have to do with anything? And why shouldn't they have? Did it bring any problems?

<comment><USER19> I think the parent was just trying to say that this is neat - it was much earlier than most other projects did, considering Python 3 was only released in December 08. Kudos! Though I think Blender made the switch with version 2.5, in 2009.

<comment><USER18> Alright then, I read it as a criticism. My bad, I seem to be traumatised by seeing Python 3 being constantly bashed x)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Finally the ubershader! If anyone visually inclined wants some serious head candy I warmly recommend buying 3DCoat and using that for texturing and Blender for rendering (and modeling) Once you know how to model it's astounding how fast you can turn shit from your imagination into something photorealistic. It's almost like magic nowadays... You need a beefy GPU to thoroughly enjoy it or lots of cores, though, to tune the lighting in real time.

It's sculpting and miniature painting and photographing and it's such fun!

<comment><USER21> 3DCoat is a specialized voxel sculpting application, quite unlike Blender - it's a waste to use it for mere texturing!

Once you get the hang of it, voxel modeling (3DCoat's version) is really intuitive and provides certain results _much_ more efficiently than NURBS (non-uniform rational b-splines), SDS (subdivision surfaces) or SCG (solid constructive geometry).

I'm not putting down Blender at all - these two packages greatly complement each other!

<comment><USER20> Ah, so true. But, given an existing unwrapped Blender model the superb texturing capabilities are astounding. I don't _have_ to think about specular maps, bump maps, diffuse maps etc as distinctive assets anymore. I can just paint with friggin _stone_ , _metal_ and _dirt_ and _scratches_ with data that is transferable to several rendering packages.

Other packages do offer this but the affordable price of 3DCoat make it an exceptional option for hobbyists (IMO).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/](https://www.blender.org/foundation/history/)

Ton Roosendaal has been the utter backbone of this project since before it was a thing. I wonder if having an opinionated and mildly grumpy leader is mandatory for an Open Source project to survive and thrive as Blender clearly has?

<comment><USER23> Not that you have to be grumpy, but It's require certain personality to work on single project for years while avoiding complete burnout. I think it's true not just for open source.

Also in the beginning it's extremely important to have someone to keep project together and that is also require some dedication. Though most of projects become more self sustainable once community grow big enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The image of that camera under "PBR Shader": Is that a photo or a rendering? Caption and context imply it's a rendering, but it looks too realistic for me to believe, with all those wear marks and fine textures.

<comment><USER25> Those wear marks and fine textures probably _are_ photos, kind of. It turns out one of the ways photorealism is achieved is by mapping textures onto 3d objects, and those textures usually originate from photos.

<comment><USER26> Even the dents on the lens? Texture wouldn't be able to generate actual geometric deformities can it?

<comment><USER27> Textures can create the illusion that certain small deformities exist. This is often used for scratches and things that are not always modeled. [https://www.marmoset.co/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/lenstextu...](https://www.marmoset.co/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/lenstextures01.jpg)

Scratches like these could sometimes be painted directly onto the texture - <USER2> maybe sculpted onto a higher-resolution model and then "baked" down to the lower-resolution model. In this step lots of data from how light bounces off the high-resolution model can be imprinted to a texture and re-used in a lower-resolution model.

If you want to learn more the terms to be googling are "normal mapping" and "bump mapping"

In this article - If i was to guess; all the pictured spheres are perfectly spherical, and just textured differently. [https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering- and...](https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can- too/)

Also - heres an interactive model of the lens: [https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kl0A6](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kl0A6) The "Layers View" button in top right gives you a neat view of the model with/without certain texture layers

<comment><USER26> not talking about bump mapping.

Talking about the dents on the lens' filter silver filter ring. I doubt it was modeled.

[https://www.blender.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/camera_pb...](https://www.blender.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/camera_pbr_demo_cycles.jpg)

<comment><USER28> That can be done pretty easily with adaptive subdivision and displacement mapping. You could also just create a super high-poly mesh manually and paint in the dents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For those who are new to Blender, the absolutely coolest part of Blender is that it's fully programmable. Anything you can do through the UI, you can do with Python method calls.

You can create, modify and render scenes from the command line only, no GUI needed.

</comment><comment><USER30> Guys, please support Blender finiancially. This is most awesome open project, so polished!

<comment><USER31> You can do that here: [https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation- payment/](https://www.blender.org/foundation/donation-payment/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow, their website has improved a lot since I last visited too.

And I like how they make User Interface improvements notable additions to their change log / announcements. Such an important part of software.

</comment><comment><USER33> Blender is a staple application if you are into 3D Printers nowadays. Keep up the good work, team! :)

</comment><comment><USER17> The "Application Template" feature is an indication that the developers have caught on to the idea that Blender has become an application framework. I hope they will embrace this more, in the future.

I wrote a couple of command line "apps", which are basically blender running with a particular script, a particular Python Path and a particular blender file, then with some command line arguments.

</comment><comment><USER34> Damn, amazing that bathroom render, hard to tell it's not real (photo)

<comment><USER32> Yeah. I think I like the sRGB version of it more though...

<comment><USER35> It's not about "realism" or even style, it's more about preserving detail in extreme contrast. All pixels brighter than a certain threshold become white and since there's nothing whiter than white, they're all the same with information lost. This is basically HDR (no idea why the "Filmic Color Management" phrase is necessary), as it has been common, even in real-time rendering and digital photography for years. I suppose they implemented it in a smarter way? The basic idea is to expose at different levels and combine the parts that preserve the most detail.

<comment><USER36> I think it's called Filmic Color Management because of this:

"... imitate an effect that's unique to film: as exposure increases, colors will become more and more desaturated."

[https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/secret-ingredient- phot...](https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/secret-ingredient-photorealism)

Whereas in many HDR algorithms, there is no such thing going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The most important change - HiDPI scaling on Linux for high resolution screens. Hopefully Gimp will follow the lead.

</comment><comment><USER15> Video editing, 3D part packing -- anything other off-label uses for Blender?

[http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Stochastic-Part- Packing](http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Stochastic-Part-Packing) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187108)

> _We used Blender's physics engine to pour parts into a virtual volume, then > exploited its collision-avoidance behavior to re-sort them into a tight 3D > packing optimized for overlapping concavity._

</comment><comment> dylan-m I really admire Blender's release notes. They're detailed and informative yet also fun and easy to read (thanks to pretty pictures!), and full of real working examples if you want them. It's nice to see more projects doing them these days (GNOME's have been great as well), but Blender's are definitely the coolest. They always make me excited about the project itself :)

</comment><comment><USER38> The improved tone mapping and uber shader look awesome!

Anyone know whats up with the surface deformer? I'm curious how they are doing this warp.

The denoiser looks cool, but without temporal coherence won't be terribly useful out of the box... for a single freeze frame just let the render converge.

<comment><USER39> I've found the denoiser to be a game-changer for still renders. I can now get a decent-looking render in a fraction of the time. Remember, "just let the render converge" can take hours or days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Blenders such a great tool! Just donated and created a quick-start video for anyone interested: [https://youtu.be/q0PMNISK0KY](https://youtu.be/q0PMNISK0KY)

[Edit, somehow dropped h from [h]ttps in link)

</comment><comment><USER41> Been using blender causally for 18 years. It is my favorite free software project.

</comment><comment><USER42> No updates on distributed network rendering, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER43> Network rendering is being worked on: [https://developer.blender.org/D2808](https://developer.blender.org/D2808)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> if I am reading things right the radeon vega 56 is always faster (sometimes significantly more, like in koro) than an nvidia 1080 for rendering, that is quite surprising.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been out of the 3D scene for years now. I have never used Blender but have used 3DsMax, Lightwave.

How does Blender compare against contemporary 3D suites? Is it the whole GIMP vs Photoshop non-debate? (I can't stand GIMP BTW)

<comment><USER45> > Is it the whole GIMP vs Photoshop non-debate?

I think it is not. I would say Blender is at professional level.

It is not like GIMP or Inkscape that I can hardly call them professional.

Many Blender users coming from other 3D sofware often said that Blender UI is weird and stop them from using it further. I guess it is a matter of habit.

<comment><USER26> >Many Blender users coming from other 3D sofware often said that Blender UI is weird and stop them from using it further. I guess it is a matter of habit.

That's the same feeling I had of Blender, hence I put them into the category of GIMP.

<comment><USER46> The problem with blenders UI isn't that it's bad as such, it just does everything different to other programs.

It's worth the effort to learn though, it's a hugely productive UI once you get used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Cycles is the only significant OpenCL application in open source that I know of.

</comment><comment><USER48> Keep up the good work, team! :)</comment>


Show HN: Web Application Development – An Interactive Guide for Beginners - <AUTHOR> https://www.educative.io/collection/page/5671831268753408/30001/80001 <comment> fnkhan-61 I'm the author of this course. Happy to answer any questions.</comment>


Apple's iTunes Is Alienating Its Most Music-Obsessed Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/itunes-alternatives/ <comment><USER2> iTunes as an application is by far the worst UX present on a Mac or a PC, which is especially surprising considering how nice the vast majority of OS X apps are to use. You can go down the list of the recommendations Apple gives out to developers on how make what they consider great apps for OS X and iTunes breaks every single one almost as if it were intended as a use case for terrible UX.

The navigation and structure changes with every movement, there are occasionally two seperate back buttons present that can either do the same thing or completely different things, the "background activity" or as I like to call it, "What you need to know is happening to your iPhone" is constantly buried beneath the currently playing track, and is not readily accessible unless you click a 8pt square down arrow, on and on...

Not to mention, as an owner of multiple machines I prefer to use ownCloud to sync my various libraries. Windows and Linux this is absolutely not an issue. Because iTunes insists on owning the directory and file structure though, I can't just point it at the folder or it will literally ruin it, I have to instead keep two copies of my library on my Macbook, and occasionally use an rsync alias to move over new stuff. Thankfully I usually do all my purchasing (on Amazon MP3) on the Macbook anyway so it's of little consequence, but it's just one more irritating thing to add to the list.

I'm an Apple fan, I admit, but iTunes is a fucking train wreck.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. I love Apple's products but iTunes is an abomination. One anecdote notes that U2's Bono complained to Jobs that it was no different than a spreadsheet... well, I'd be happy if it were halfway as useful as a good spreadsheet. Instead it has zero flexibility. There seems to be a trend in some software to prefer search functionality over other basic UI techniques for presenting information. When I have a big music library, I don't always know what I'm looking for explicitly. I want to browse my music based on my own strategy, but doing this in iTunes has never really been possible. And it's not better on the iPhone's own music app. For a company that led the world in music-listening technology, their software for it sure has always been downright awful.

<comment><USER2> It's weird too, if you're looking at Playlists it looks like Excel, the only way out is to view your entire collection, but then you can't find sh!t because it gives you NO information as opposed to ALL information.

Also, on the topic of playlists, removing a song from a playlist is labeled "Delete." Are you f!cking kidding Apple? This is UI Design 101!

<comment><USER3> It blows my mind how Apple has let this atrocious product represent such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music. How did they let this happen in the first place, and more importantly, why in tarnation has it never been improved?

<comment><USER4> > such a core part of what the company has always stood for: music

Ummm, until the iPod (2001) Apple didn't stand for music. Apple's been around since 1976, 39 years; it's been a music-related company for fourteen of those years.

Indeed, Apple Computer had to assure Apple Corps (the Beatles' record label) that it wouldn't enter the music business, which was the subject of lawsuits over the years (c.f. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer)).

Years ago, before I discovered Unix and freedom, I was a huge Apple fan. I loved Macs (understandable, when one compares them to Windows and DOS machines). Apple stood for user-friendliness, for ease of use, even for happiness or pleasure. It never stood for music back then.

<comment><USER3> I should have said, what Apple 2.0 has stood for. Because music was very much the foundation for what led to the modern Apple Inc after Jobs return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> iTunes is a tire fire. But purely in terms of content, Apple Music is probably the best streaming service, and their recommendation system is getting better. Apple also has the benefit of iTunes/Apple Music being closer to a first-class citizen on things like car bluetooth audio systems.

I would be thrilled to hear that Apple is totally revamping iTunes; I swear at it at least a couple times a week. But I'm probably not going to be able to stop using it any time soon.

I'm not sure I really understand the people who use alternate music player software on OS X; huge collections of downloaded music files accessed through file player software doesn't seem like where digital music is headed. I had a gigantic collection of purchased music on my computer, and it's more an annoyance now than anything else.

Hating iTunes so much you can't use it makes sense to me. But then, why not just use Spotify?

Anyways: predicting where this thread is inevitably heading, here's a list off the top of my head of shit that drives me nuts about iTunes:

* Purchased tracks randomly grey out and become non-playable.

* I'm a "Match" customer, and iTunes/iCloud/whatever doggedly insists on retaining the file-based metadata from my old MP3s, despite me not having had those MP3s in years.

* Ridiculous incoherent "Playlists / For You / New / Radio / Connect / iTunes Store" menu. "For You"?

* Playlists that contain both Apple Music tracks and purchased tracks flake out and vanish, which means that if you have a large collection of purchased music, playlists just don't work.

* Sometimes you can link to a playlist to share it and sometimes you can't.

<comment><USER6> Most people who have large collections of music have a lot of files that aren't available on any streaming service. Not sure if the sound quality of these services is on par with 320kbps MP3 files either.

<comment><USER7> Maybe there are some ways to convert Apple music to unprotected format and then we can enjoy them on any players as we want. I just learned about Notebunrer recently launches a Apple music converter, I prepare to try this and perhaps buy a license during black friday. I am waiting for a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my dilemma with iTunes: I have about 50GB of music on my computer, an early 2007 iMac. If I want to upgrade my iPhone to iOS9, I need to update iTunes to the latest version. But the latest version doesn't run on Mac OSX 10.6... and my computer is too old to upgrade to 10.7 or higher. So if I want to have ios9 and sync music to my phone, I need to buy a new computer? Pretty upset about that.

<comment><USER9> If you are looking for an actual solution - I guess you could start Windows 10 in a VM(MS provides free images for testing purposes), install latest iTunes on it so you could upgrade your phone to iOS 9, then continue using your mac and its version of iTunes.

By the way - El Capitan supports mid-2007 iMacs: [http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan- on-o...](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2015/10/04/os-x-el-capitan-on-older- mac/)

<comment><USER10> For the love of god don't update an old computer that works perfectly fine on 10.6 on anything starting from Lion. All you'll get is bugs and confusing UXes.

<comment><USER9> Meh, I'm running my mid-2009 MacBook Pro on ElCapitan and everything works fine. I put an SSD in so it's actually quite usable,no complaints really.

<comment><USER11> "ElCapitan and everything works fine"

Finder went from broke in Yosemite to really broke in El Capitan. I'm getting sick of filing bugs (like Finder not saving place in folder when going up / down hierarchy).

El Capitan's Finder now crashes if you have a window showing a lot of files and execute a mv of some of those files in a Terminal. Its getting worse and worse. They need to pull a Snow Leopard again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is iTunes responsible for this trend I'm seeing more of where the Seek Forward/Backward (Fast-Forward/Rewind) symbol is being used in place of 'Next Track' and 'Previous Track?'

All other complaints aside, this, to me, is iTunes' worst offense. I don't know if there was some official standard ever, but it was at a very minimum an unofficial standard for DECADES. Now some asshole designer has decided to muddle and confuse everyone by redefining the symbol. This idea has infected PowerAmp on Android now, too.

I have not seen anyone discussing this before (but I haven't looked very hard). I refuse to buy into this new definition. Am I the only one bothered by this? I can't take a music application seriously if it can't get the symbols right.

<comment><USER2> I've never actually noticed this. I'm pretty sure if you hold the button it still does the scrubbing though.

<comment><USER12> You're right, it does seek if you press and hold. Thanks for that info.

I don't meant to shoot the messenger and this isn't directed at you, but this behavior makes no sense and is not intuitive to anyone who's ever listened to music on a CD (which is still A LOT of people).

I couldn't care less about scrubbing; I'd do that with the little progress bar because it's quicker and more precise than guessing how long to hold a button. I really just hate that one arrogant (or ignorant) person/group decided to change the meaning of a well-understood symbol as if they were the decider for everyone else.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. It's pretty intuitive for me, and I've listened to music on CDs. Personal opinion vs personal opinion.

<comment><USER12> The confusion/misdirecting part for me is that I would expect to hold down a 'Seek' button to seek through the track.

However, as a user, I was just trained to recognize the 'Seek' button as 'Next' or 'Previous' track.

So there are conflicting messages in their design. Why would I want to hold down the 'Next Track' button to seek ahead in the song? I would never think to do that.

<comment><USER14> While I kind of agree, it seems to be pretty common behavior for software audio players. VLC for example has the same UI and behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am writing an iTunes replacement ( the music and library management part ). Any feature requests from HN ?

Current alpha features:

* Playlist resume - if you interrupt a playlist 3278 entries in, you can resume at 3278

* Music diary - track what tunes played when & where ( occasional GPS polling optional )

* Powerful music list filters

* Keep track of recently played items and do not replay them for a while

* Works with Spotify thanks to Spotify API for premium users

* mobile app on iOS and Android

Suggestions beyond this ?

<comment><USER16> Music library spanning multiple disks.

This is my #1 desired killer feature, and no one has done it right (or even attempted it.)

I have 100s of gigs of music, but my MacBook Air can only store a portion of it. I want to connect the external drive and have the player see it all without changing the library pointer. I also want to be able to select which songs to mirror onto my laptop - a "checkout" feature.

<comment><USER17> I'll second that. Surprised it hasn't been solved by this point.

I use to use iTunes quite a bit, probably gave it a chance until 2010 or so even. But then it just became too little of a music player and too much of everything else that it was.

So I just use physical CDs, and more recently Spotify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I made the switch to iTunes on OS X after finding out that some of the international artists I was looking for actually had a decent catalog on iTunes. Nowadays it's more of a balance act between the features I like and the annoyances it throws at me.

The most recent issue, which appears to be the result of one of the last updates, is that iTunes keeps on connecting to the store in the background for some reason, even when you're just on the normal Music view and not doing anything with the store. This wouldn't really be an issue, if it wouldn't complain every 1 to 2 hours with a popup message that it's unable to fulfill the store request.

However, iTunes on OS X is still only mildly annoying for me compared to the disaster that is the redesigned Music app on iOS. It took me a while just trying to figure out how to navigate it and then its features no longer match the iTunes on OS X behaviour, making it even more difficult trying to figure out how to use it. The search feature is the one I've been fighting the most with, as it no longer allows you to play the listed results like in the desktop version, so that you have to resort to custom playlists, if you are trying to play music that is not from the same artist or from the same album.

<comment><USER19> Just FYI, if you have the Genius or Recommendation features turned on for your library, iTunes will connect to the store to grab that information. If you don't want it to do that, just sign out of the store and turn those options off (but maybe not in that order). That should stop it from trying to connect in the background.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I was hoping this might be it and just checked, but those settings are already disabled in my account. I would report it as a bug if I knew what caused it or had a way to reproduce it directly, but it's just a stock error message without any kind of additional information that occurs maybe once every 1-2hs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use itunes daily. I really like it, they made it better recently with the miniplayer up next and such. I"m able to queue up music into a list easily anytime. Maybe its my usecase, but I find it pretty sweet.

That being said, itunes match, which I pay for and is supposed to sync all of my music between machines/ iphones somehow forgot a bunch of my songs. It might be part of iCloud now. I never could figure it out, but it just worked for the longest time. I turned on iCloud match and it seems to have brought most of them back. (Come to think of it maybe it was only cloud streaming songs I bought from itunes before...)

Itunes on the iphone turned into Apple Music nagware till you dig into settings and turn it off. searhing for a song would show you the Apple Music version. It was odd and jarring when your itunes match wasn't working right, but for some money you can play the song you thought you had...

Actually mac osx reminds me to "upgrade my keynote by upgrading my os" every time I open it. I've been using macs a long time and this new sell to me is getting grating.

<comment><USER21> If iTunes would remember my last view I would be happy. I tend to wanting my playlists on the side and the songs in list format on the right. Yet each time I open iTunes its in cover format or large icons or whatnot, never rhyme or reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Match. Match activated itself I don't know how many times. Removed all music from my phone so I was streaming everything. I honestly didn't notice at first except some of my music was missing (because it wasn't available on Match), and my music would inexplicably stop playing in certain areas. It screwed up all my tag edits/album art (on ~7K songs!) and because of some duplicate problem, which I have yet to resolve, my music doesn't sync properly onto my iPhone. (Among many, many other complaints about iTunes.)

My only question is, if I switch to something like Swinsian (which looks nice), how do I get the music and playlists onto my iPhone? (I've also been thinking about switching to Android since iOS 9 and its updates have turned my very expensive iPhone 6 into a slow, buggy POS.)

</comment><comment><USER23> Them and everyone else. I suspect iTunes' major problem is that it encapsulates all (most?) of the code for communicating with iOS devices, hence XCode upgrades requiring it to be shut down and vice versa. Hence the amazing feature bloat. This plus its age probably make it a scary ball of mud.

Not sure that's enough to explain some of the UX choices - a few updates back I had to turn to google to find out they hadn't actually removed the mini player and then again to find out how to get back to the full window.

Maybe it makes sense to keep all the media management functions in one place, but then there's iPhoto/Photos, iBooks and the MAS, and then the Windows version.

It's like the app level equivalent of a god class.

</comment><comment><USER24> Its casual users too. I suppose there's no point in me explaining why, since it's such a common thing.

This morning I clicked a downloaded MP3 file expecting it to simply play, but nooooh...

</comment><comment><USER25> iTunes generally works great for me for maintaining my collection and playback, especially when combined with my home entertainment system. Where it falls apart is Apple Music, iTunes Match and iTunes Store.

\- iTunes Match is too unreliable when it comes to actually matching songs. The syncing is unreliable. I have songs in my collection now that were manipulated by iTunes Match and now have incorrect artist/title entries for some reason. I routinely have an issue where a song will be purchased in iTunes Store but never shows up on other computers without me having to go through a whole process of checking for available downloads (never works), signing in, signing out, etc. which often doesn't work until a week later when the song magically shows up or just doesn't show up at all.

\- iTunes Store is fine for buying music, if you know what you want to buy. Apple Match and iTunes are both terrible (in my opinion) for discovering new music that actually matches my own tastes.

Right now I am using both Spotify and iTunes. I use Spotify to discover new music which I then buy through the iTunes Store so that I can have it in my official iTunes-based collection. I know people who have started using Spotify as their main source of music but I have an existing collection of about 4000 songs made up of MP3's/purchased files which I wish to maintain as a single collection. Using Spotify doesn't allow me to do that. Adding songs from Apple Music to my music collection seems unpleasant because then it creates a mix of existing transportable MP3's that I can move around and Apple Music files that I have no control over.

It would be great to have a "single solution" that allowed me to discover new music, purchase it and maintain/listen to my collection but I've accepted that I will probably never find that solution.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been looking for a better alternative to iTunes for years, like Google Music. But nothing I've used has the same features like powerful smart playlists, ratings system, and the ability to change the start and stop times of songs. But iTunes is just a mess that's getting worse and worse. I might just have to suck it up and start over.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find itunes to be just fine for dealing with a decade-old library with 20k+ songs that's been transferred between a half-dozen different computers, and it's certainly better than the terrible mp3 players I tried on linux in the last 18 months or so (banshee was the least horrible but it's random album shuffle was incredibly broken).

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that I am one of a very small number of people on the planet that has literally no issues with iTunes' day to day functionality.

This despite abusing the hell out of it:

* My library is on an NFS volume,

* ..accessed with two different copies of iTunes on two different OSes

* ..with north of 20k songs

* ..and a library that's been backed up, restored, migrated, multiple times

*..all the way since ~2002 when I got the HP branded iPod and started using it to manage my music

The only conclusion I can come to, computers being deterministic machines, is that a lot of people have broken computers. Perhaps iTunes needs to be more error tolerant?

There's not a whole lot of ways to say "it works for me, and I don't know what you're on about" without being straight up dismissive but.. it Just Works, at least for me. Just another data point I suppose.

<comment><USER29> You don't use iTunes Match or Apple Music, so you aren't _really_ abusing it.

<comment><USER30> Yeah iTunes library on a network drive sucks balls in my opinion. SLOWWWWWW. And whenever my library gets horked and I try to re-match again it takes ages. It's just stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm willing to bet that iTunes (as we know it) will get phased out in OS X 10.12.

Apple has a clear pattern now where they debut big ecosystem-wide changes in iOS first, and Mac about a year later. Apple Photos, the "Flat" aesthetic, Maps, etc.

A proper Apple Music app for iOS replaced the old iPod app last summer; Apple Music support was wedged into iTunes because Apple couldn't afford to punt that feature all the way out to next year. But it seems in keeping with the pattern that an iOS-style Apple Music app for OS X, which would lack iOS syncing (works against the cloud strategy), iTunes University (deserves its own app), Podcasting (ditto, and one exists on iOS), etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> iTunes isn't designed for the type of users this article discusses. The real issue the author should have focused on is there is no ecosystem as progressive or stable which is still focused on users who need/want to listen to their specific copy of a song rather than a generic hosted one.

I have a feeling this type of user will slowly fade out, and eventually looking at a HD filled with music (on a laptop less!) will provoke a reaction similar to the anachronistic feeling one has looking at a wall of CD's or DVD's.

</comment><comment><USER33> A decade ago, I loved iTunes. I agree with other people here that it seemed to get a little less good over time, but it is still nice.

About 5 years ago I switched to Amazon Music because the songs were a little less expensive and I could also play my music on my Android phone.

Recently I started using Google's $10/month no advertisements on Youtube option. I then started using Google Play Music Premium and I find it good enough so I am making yet another switch in managing my music.

Fortunately, changing music hosting is not that time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER34> Of course iTunes is bad, each version since 6-7 years adding layer and layer of half baked functionalities and a list of new bugs on previously working features. Unfortunately all the other music software are nowhere as good! That's really the sorry state of the music playing/managing software industry, if such thing exists.

</comment><comment><USER35> Still a happy Zune 30GB user. One nice thing about using a discontinued device is that the manufacturer doesn't keep bloating up the software. (Also you can get refurbished replacement units cheap.) I guess at some point it won't run on the latest OS, but as of Windows 10, it still works fine.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's 2015, and I can only load MP3s from a single Mac/PC into the music app on my iPhone. If I load MP3s from one of my other Macs/PCs, it wipes out the prior MP3s from my iPhone. Not user-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER37> I tried iTunes back in 2004 or so and promptly killed the process and uninstalled when it started converting my MP3s to some Apple-only format. What's with that?

<comment><USER38> AAC [1] has never been an Apple format, though in 2004 it was less ubiquitous than it is now.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding)

<comment><USER37> Okay, but my point was that iTunes should have just played and organized my MP3s instead of trying to re-encode them to a different format.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am one of those alienated users, and I eagerly pressed the link to discover the alternatives. To no avail.

Are there viable alternative music players that can sync to iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER40> It always has.

</comment><comment><USER41> Using Ember.js as a front-end for their Music services as massive downer. Slow on a Macbook Pro 2014.

React or native would have been a better choice.

<comment><USER42> If it is that noticeably slow, I seriously doubt the framework for the front end is the sole issue.</comment></comment>


New Research Suggests Cancer Can't Be Eradicated - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/08/21/342012360/an-unstoppable-killer-new-research-suggests-cancer-cant-be-cured <comment><USER2> The sensationalist assertions made in this article (particularly in the headline) don't follow from the results that the article describes.

Part of the blame for this sensationalism seems to fall at the feet of the original scientist himself (Bosch). He makes an unfounded leap from the biological result that cancer seems to be an intrinsic property of genetic processes in cells (and the statements "You have to interfere with fundamental pathways", "It's a web of interactions" and "It's very difficult to do") to the assertion "will probably never be completely eradicated". Difficult is not the same as impossible.

He follows with more sensationalism: "You carry a time bomb in your body when you're born," he said. "It can explode early in life, or middle age or later."

I suppose it's understandable; he's probably just trying to get some publicity for his team's long-running research on hydra. And even he admits "that doesn't mean that, with a patient who develops cancer, there's nothing you can do."

But then the hedging of "probably" and "completely" was discarded by the article writers for a more sensationalist article and headline.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why you see these claims as sensationalist. The lifetime risk of cancer is 1 in 2 (for men), and both the rate of incidence and the mortality rate are about the same today as they were in 1975. This despite the massive increase in our understanding of the phenomenon.

The claim that cancer probably never will be eradicated seems pretty defensible. Notice how it's the people who study it who are the least sanguine in their predictions. It's perfectly possible for us to have a complete understanding of cancer and find that we still can't eliminate it.

<comment><USER4> > Notice how it's the people who study it who are the least sanguine in their > predictions.

I love this quote, and I'm totally going to steal it.

There's just something about the futurists and singularity folks that mimics the Dunning-Kruger effect. The more you learn, the more you recognize that we're still operating on Cro-Magnon brains. All of our magnificent toys are merely low-hanging fruit in deference to the problems that seem to really matter.

<comment><USER5> I don't consider the microprocessor in my smart phone with its billions of transistors, and the ever-faster global internet and wireless systems that enable nearly instant (certainly to human perception it's nearly instant) global communication to billions of people at any time, to be low hanging fruit.

I consider that extraordinary, and the exact opposite of low hanging fruit. It's hundreds of years of incremental progress across dozens of fields, resulting in reaching very high hanging fruit in the form of an iPhone and everything that goes with it.

I consider such amazing communication technology to be every bit as valuable to social beings such as humans, and to our general societal structures, as curing cancer is.

<comment><USER4> Humor me here a little here.

Search and traversal become increasingly difficult as any graph grows in size. It's not hard to generalize this to the graph of scientific and engineering knowledge. To maintain the connectedness of our ideas, we must either leave amazing literature and documentation or we must constantly seek to foster connections between those of separate, heterogenous fields and disciplines. Unless there is movement of ideas through collective human consciousness, key insights cannot percolate through to the point where they have the greatest impact. (For instance, not long ago biologists were still using Perl. :P) At some point, the time it takes for certain information to spread across the graph grows substantial enough that discoveries are simply repeated over.

Science and technology require ever-increasing levels of specialization. The network topology isn't going to get easier for the human mind to traverse. Imagine what kind of information lies just beyond your reach--the kind of insights that might truly propel you ahead, to reach your Eureka. If only you knew what you were missing out on. On the flip side, do you ever think about the places where your contributions would be the most impactful?

These problems are somewhat symptomatic of the fact that we haven't breached the complexity threshold of what our brains are capable of performing. We may have computer-aided tools to get us beyond some classes of problem--search and mathematical modeling come to mind. Still, our mastering of breadth at depth, our powers of abstraction and of reasoning, all have a hard limit. Everything we've ever done falls neatly within defined lines. Nothing being done today is substantially harder than what the previous generation did with its much more limited set of knowledge. (Have we discovered our generation's calculus or quantum mechanics? Advancements like that are special, truly rare, set apart by hundreds of years.)

Take your smartphone, for instance. You can't look at the following block diagrams and tell me they're too difficult to reason about:

* [http://eda360insider.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/samsung-exy...](http://eda360insider.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/samsung-exynos-5-dual-mobile-processor-block-diagram.gif)

* [http://www.arm.com/images/Cortex-A15-chip-diagram-LG.png](http://www.arm.com/images/Cortex-A15-chip-diagram-LG.png)

* [http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/insights/wp-co...](http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/insights/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/arma15-blockdiagram.png)

(Yes, I know the implementation details go much deeper and that these diagrams are meant for ease of conveying knowledge. You still understand them. And given time, a diligent student can learn to contribute to processor design using the pre-existing domain knowledge.)

Do you have a sense or appreciation for how complex the physical and chemical reality is by contrast? We can only partially understand minute samples taken from real systems. It's not especially owing to our primitive equipment or tooling; it's the sheer complexity that baffles us. There are things like helium atoms--we don't understand them. There's Hartree-Fock, but that's an approximation.

I find it hard to be beholden to the majesty of a phone when no one can stand up and explain a helium atom. I mean, don't you find it a little bit amusing we're still caking onto SGML, shoveling it onto handsets, and yet we don't understand the interstitial gas between us and the cell tower? The stuff we're breathing.

Anecdotes from the early days of AI research suggest that we didn't think we'd still be writing code imperatively, yet here we are writing Javascript module frameworks and the like. We have a stunningly powerful ability to underestimate how long and difficult things are. We are also often satisfied in rediscovery.

We're concerned with how to perform delivery in San Francisco, yet... can you imagine the vast number of computations the universe is performing every time a protein isomerizes? I wager it outweighs all of the computing power we have available to us through modern technology today. The modern smartphone could never compete in this arena; we would be comparing something not even at the level of a bacteria to the most omnipotent of gods. I'm not saying that one day we'll design computers out of polymers in solution. I don't even know if we'll survive as a species long enough to care. I'm just asking you to wonder.

Look to nature. Can you sense how incredibly infinitesimal and primitive we are as a species when you look up at the night sky? We've been feeding off of the cosmologically low hanging fruit, and we're still in the nursery. We spend on average 20 years learning what we need to begin making our cornerstone contributions to society. At that point, how much longer do we remain productive? It's a limited window with which we have to collapse all the reverse salients. Damn shortness of human productive lifetimes, and all of that. Oh well, there's always a new generation with which to start fresh. Rinse, repeat. Stand on a few more shoulders, see a little more of the picture.

Fill your mind with what might be possible. Let it be dissatisfied when you cannot reach a conclusion to a problem. Don't ever put a bound on the type of problems you're curious about. You'll scoff at press releases. Everything in our generation is transient, scaffolding for the next one gestating.

(Sorry for rambling. And also--I still hold that my flappy bird machine not even in the same galaxy when it comes to being as cool as science. It's a toy for which there will always be one better. How could it ever be so magnificent as the universe I get a few short years to experience firsthand?)

<comment><USER6> I created an account just to tell you how wonderful your rambling is. When I think about similar issues, my mind wonders towards evolution. If you believe that our brains evolved to solve problems we faced way back when, you must accept the unlikelihood that they are capable of understanding cosmic truths (not sure what the real phrase should be for that, but you get it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "These ancient creatures also get cancer, therefore there is no cure for cancer". What nonsense. Naked mole rats do not get cancer, what about that? This only points out that cancer has been around for a long while - which I don't think is a contentious issue anyway - not that cancer can't be eradicated.

<comment><USER8> > _" These ancient creatures also get cancer, therefore there is no cure for > cancer". What nonsense._

Yeah, because a scientific study can summarized from a couple of lines from a NPR article (and even those strawman-quoted in your comment).

> _This only points out that cancer has been around for a long while - which I > don 't think is a contentious issue anyway - not that cancer can't be > eradicated_

At a basic level, this points out that cancer can emerge even with the very barest forms of life/DNA -- so it's something more inherent than something we acquired after several degress of evolution.

<comment><USER7> >Yeah, because a scientific study can summarized from a couple of lines from a NPR article (and even those strawman-quoted in your comment).

If you couldn't tell, I don't think the article is well-written and is probably an incomplete summary of the research being done. However, I think the statement I made there is an accurate summary of what the article - if not the research - is trying to claim. I.e. it is not a strawman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two salient points:

1\. Hydra are apparently immortal. They do not appear to age. It is likely that there is some biological trade off between immortality and cancer predisposition. Therefore they are not a good model for concluding that cancer everywhere in everything is incurable

2\. Hydra don't have an adaptive immune system. This is a huge flaw in an experimental system for studying the 'roots' of cancer development.

The main point of the journal article is that maybe we should use metazoans to study cancer. The journalist here is way off the mark.

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course this whole story is a typical media beat-up. We know that cancer can be eradicated - it happens every day. Even in the absence of medical treatment seeming terminal cancers can go into complete remission and never return (as a bit of an aside if anyone has any desire to become a saint the easiest way to achieve this is to go around blessing cancer patients. As long as you bless enough you will get the required two "miracles" you need from spontaneous remissions alone).

Since cancer is the consequence of the loss of the regulation of cell division it is axiomatic that in any cellular system given enough time and mutations the regulation will be lost in at least one cell of an individual. We don't need to prevent disruption of the regulatory system, although this is good, we just need to be better able to identify and destroy those cells that are not regulated.

<comment><USER11> Do you really think spontaneous remission is a random miracle? A scientist actually looked at the data and wrote this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Remission-Surviving-Cancer- Aga...](http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Remission-Surviving-Cancer-Against- ebook/dp/B00DB3A1UC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408706096&sr=8-1&keywords=radical+remission)

Typically there is a lot of work involved in "spontaneous" remission.

But yes, it's likely we can't eliminate cells' mistakes, just prevent, detect and fix them better in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> $90 billion dollars since 1971 doesn't sound like much. The interest on the US national debt is a couple hundred billion a year, for example.

[http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/04/news/economy/budget- outlook-...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/04/news/economy/budget-outlook- interest-on-debt/)

<comment><USER13> At that scale, money isn't fungible. You couldn't double cancer research by making the total $180 billion. At least, not in the same way that you could double the number of televisions you own.

There are only so many biologists, labs, etc. You can certainly entice more into the field with money, but I expect costs increase non-linearly with the number of scientists.

(I am not saying we can't do it. I'm saying it would cost much more than we expect from a linear extrapolation, especially in the near term. Imagine trying to use money to double, say, world food production – it couldn't be done, at least not in the short term.)

<comment><USER12> I didn't say that if you doubled the money that you would double the research.

In a $15 trillion economy, you'd think it would be possible to spend 10x on research. More private funding?

<comment><USER5> Isn't it likely that the big problem is having enough highly capable leaders and researchers, and then knowing what directions to actually go in terms of spending vastly increased amounts of money (without simply wasting it foolishly)? It can take a lot of time just to find the path you should go down, and then to have the qualified people in place to go, and then to keep them in place long-term to sustain the effort. Very challenging stuff.

How many top notch leaders can you cultivate to lead big research teams. People that have a comprehensive understanding of what targets to have for the research, people able to recruit the best brains to the cause.

This seems to not be primarily a monetary bottleneck, but rather the inherently limited resource of how many really great people you can find to work on something at one time.

It strikes me that humans also can only move so quickly, and that perhaps automated / machine learning, testing and solving is the long-term solution to speed of progress. I know a lot of progress is actively being made on this, I expect it'll drastically accelerate the pace of breakthroughs in curing illness. I think of it this way in premise: the current approach is the NIH trying to sequence the human genome; the future approach is Venter'ized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cancer is not one disease. It's one symptom of multiple genetic regulatory failure modes.

<comment><USER10> Cancer is certainly not one disease, but it in not the symptom of multiple genetic regulatory failure modes - it the consequence of the failure of one regulatory system, the system that controls cell division. The complication comes about since there are multiple pathways involved in this one system.

<comment><USER4> Name the final edge in the transduction graph of a proliferation, apoptosis, or cell cycle regulation pathway.

I _suppose_ you can do this for a cell in a terminally differentiated state of your choosing. (But as you know, pre-cancerous cells are typically in fuzzy states that break our tidy little metabolic models.)

<comment><USER10> Cell division is by nature binary. Of course the process of division is probabilistic so that a regulated cell is unlikely to divide unless the conditions in the niche are favourable, while a unregulated cell is much more likely to divide even when division is not favourable.

<comment><USER4> You didn't directly answer my question, but now I'm just going to be pedantic :P

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

Even with normal binary fission, there is never an equal distribution of products between cells. Metabolite concentration, organelle distribution, etc. will vary. (If you think about it, it's kind of an interesting period of rough perturbation made to an extremely high-order dynamical system.)

At a kind of base level, though, the genome itself regularly experiences abnormal partitioning that leads to certain interesting states.

It's not _strictly_ binary...

But back to the previous topic. Epithelia and endothelia are regularly dividing cell types. (It's interesting that most cancers arise from these lineages, right?) Blood cells are another lineage that undergo pretty frequent proliferation.

(On an entirely unrelated note, I can't wait for an HN discussion pertaining to quantum effects on biological systems--it's a topic I really want to learn more about. The absorption spectra discussions in the retinal thread has awoken my curiosity. For instance: though it's kind of a controversial, maybe even a pseudo-scientific topic, the quantum effects on microtubules are fun to think about and are still actively researched.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a reason knowledgeable people don't talk about 'curing' cancer. Cancer is what happens when cells fail (specifically, when they don't self-terminate when they should), so it can't be vaccinated against in the same way as a disease (much as you can't catch it in conventional terms). It can be treated, the success rate of which is increasing all the time, but people will always be diagnosed with cancer if they are unlucky. For that reason, even if treatment becomes 99.99% successful with little to no side effects, it will never be eliminated in the same way diseases such as smallpox or plague were.

</comment><comment><USER16> The only thing more prone to error than predicting what will happen in the future is predicting what _won 't_ happen in the future.

It's hard to measure progress in something like cancer research, but in general, it hasn't been great. But the same might be said of the invention of flight. Flight had clearly been a goal across a variety of cultures for many years.

I suspect that a "cure for cancer" will not come at once, it will be more gradual (owing to the fact that cancer is actually many different diseases). Our knowledge of biology is improving at an exponential rate though, I wouldn't discount that entirely.

</comment><comment><USER17> It should be noted that "cannot be eradicated" is something different than "cannot be cured". I've read other articles that seem to point in the direction that cancer is simply an intrinsic side-effect of the way our cells work. So while it may very well be impossible to prevent cancer from developing in people at all, that doesn't mean it is impossible to cure once it develops.

</comment><comment><USER18> A chemist friend once told me:

Cancer/dna-mutations happen all the time. They're triggered by the energy from cosmic rays, free radicals etc.

A lot of those reactions involve the oxygen we inhale, so one of the reasons for cancer and death is actually that we're slowly being burned in our hazardous atmosphere.

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe cancer is incurable based on intuition alone. Same way my childhood self knew cigarettes were unhealthy; before ever hearing the research (putting smoke in your body just doesn't make sense). Cancer just seems to be a side effect of evolution, or perhaps a catalyst of evolution. I have basically no scientific proof of course, that's just what I think.

That said, there is obviously ways to prevent and treat but that's a different topic.</comment>


Parsing JSON in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://roadfiresoftware.com/parsing-json-in-swift/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author, and I'd love to hear what you think and answer any questions you have.</comment>


Yahoo Mail silent on a massive data failure on March 1st, 2013 - <AUTHOR>

It looks like Yahoo has deactivated/deleted thousands of its users' email accounts on March 1st 2013, and is ignoring all requests for clarification.
I've personally lost over a decade worth of emails even though I'm an active Plus subscriber (which means I pay to never get deactivated). I have also been ignored by their customer service department since I contacted them four days ago.
See below for links to thousands of other users complaining about the same issue:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Y-Mail/messages
http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130302142839AAiN3Qk
http://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130302094306AAK7ivU
Search on Google for "Yahoo Mail account deactivated" and you'll see a huge number of recent posts, all from March 1st 2013. <comment><AUTHOR> It's not about account access - Yahoo randomly deactivated thousands of users email accounts on one day. Everyone could login using the same password immediately.

</comment><comment><USER2> My boss had issues with his account not letting him log in. A password reset seems to have triggered something that's letting him access his account now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Will @marissamayer sort this out. If users lose confidence in Yahoo Mail its game over for the company.</comment>


FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maptia.com/fullcontact-marketing-superpower/

<comment><USER2> Wasnt this the same thing someone was blogging about a few days ago and refused to use it because of the creepy way it tracked everyone?

<comment><USER3> No. Full Contact cross-references an email address to _publicly_ available information. Full Contact basically just automates a legitimate public search on information shared with intent between a user and a site owner.

The things that caused fury (and rightly so) the other day were a handful of tracking systems that use a single cookie across multiple sites (some with contact info) to break anonymity for the any site in the network. So the user _think_ they're anonymous, but they are in fact personally identifiable to the site owner.

BIG difference.

<comment><USER4> Probably not a big difference to the large majority of people who are not aware this information is public.

A useful tool to be sure, companies should just be careful how they use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its very hit and miss, not something I would build a service around. In my circle of 4 friends, it only had data on one of us.

One big flaw is that you can't provide multiple sources of data as the basis of a search. Eg no phone AND email, only o ne at a time.

<comment><USER6> 4 people isn't exactly statistically significant. FullContact averages a 60% match rate to at least one social profile. Let me know if you find anything better.

It's an API. You could run two separate calls and then merge, or run the excel macro with two separate files and merge. We plan to have multiple queries in the future.

<comment><USER7> I tried it with several hundred. The hit rate was very low. I don't recall exactly what it was, but it was low enough that I abandoned the service.

<comment><USER8> First off, full disclosure (in case it's not obvious) - I work at FullContact.

Sorry to hear that. Out of curiosity, do you remember which response code you were getting? If it was a 202, it indicates that we've accepted your query, but are processing (i.e., going out and looking for the data). If you try again in 5 minutes, you'll normally see a lot more 200's.

(Only reason I ask is we see a lot of confusion over 202's - people often think of them as errors, instead of meaning 'ACCEPTED - PROCESSING'.)

Regardless, if you have a few thousand queries and would like to send us a sample, we're always happy to run a match test and show you what you'd get back (obviously, a larger sample size gives you a better idea of results at scale).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At first I was skeptical about fullcontact, afraid of the big-brother like effect. Then I met the CTO at a hackathon, and it turns out he's really concerned about privacy and respecting opt-outs. I highly recommend the company.

</comment><comment><USER10> This sounds a lot like RapLeaf, what are the pros and cons of each service?

<comment><USER6> Rapleaf doesn't do social. They are great at demographics. FullContact provides publicly available social profile URLs. Depends on what you are looking for.

<comment><USER11> Rapleaf was crawling and providing information crawled from social networking sites (much more than just links to profiles) back in 2007. They were providing an API to access this data in 2008 or 2009 I think. They no longer do any of this I think and have pivoted towards offline data, but don't quote me on that.</comment></comment></comment>