Sony plans to make vinyl records again - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/30/vinyl-records-are-so-popular-that-sony-plans-to-make-them-again/ <comment><USER2> As someone who started collecting vinyl about 3 years ago, it's about the difference between passive and active involvement in music. So much of our music consumption these days is a largely passive activity. We have music in our headphones while we work. We have music on in our cars while we drive. We have music on in the background of social events. While modern digital formats have given us true ubiquity of music (seriously, thanks to Spotify and Apple Music and LTE connections, even the old "1000 songs in your pocket" claim from the first iPod could be regarded as "quaint") they've driven the trend further and further away from active involvement in music.

Contrast that with vinyl. The act of putting on a record indicates a desire to do more than put on music in the background. Walking across the room, thumbing through your collection, pulling the record from its sleeve, etc.--the ritual of it all changes one's frame of mind in approaching the music: it's by definition a more active involvement.

When I want to have music on, I reach for my iPhone and Apple Music. When I want to _listen to music_ I grab a record.

<comment><USER3> I dunno.. digital music just sounds better, is more consistent, portable, and all around easier to play than vinyl.

Why stop there? Do you also churn your own butter, milk your own cows, shave with a straight razor?

Personally, I think it's just silly hipster bias.

<comment><USER4> Due to physical limitations of the medium, mastering the vinyl release of an album is often (usually?) a separate process than mastering the digital version.

One of the consequences is less compression/clipping, better dynamic range, etc. for the vinyl version. This can have a huge positive impact on sound quality.

You don't have to be a nutbar audiophile to appreciate it, either - you can even hear the difference between old rock albums and their heavily compressed re-releases.

[http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-does- masterin...](http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-does-mastering- differ-vinyl-and-digital-releases)

[http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness- war](http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war)

<comment><USER5> Maybe decades ago, but I find it hard to imagine any recording studio still having an analogue recording process. Sure the different mediums may call for different mastering, but the loudness war wasn't a result of limitations of tapes/CDs.

<comment><USER6> You're right in that the loudness war wasn't the result of the limitations of the CD format, it was the result of the newfound capability inherent in the format. The "loudness war" was a continual ratcheting up of dynamic range compression, something easily achieved with a digital representation of the intended soundwave.

The manner in which the album is recorded (analog vs. digital) doesn't matter, it's the limitations of the format for which the master is intended. The physical limitation of a needle tracking a groove measured in microns places a hard limit on the amount of compression which can be applied to the dynamic range. You can't make a needle follow the kind of narrow, jagged, shallow groove that would be the result of using a "loudness wars" era master meant for the CD format.

That said, the number of "got to have it" albums which were caught up in the loudness war isn't enormous. The biggest victims were re-releases of classic rock albums during the 90's but the original records with the true mastering are widely available in the used market. While there are some classic albums begging for a vinyl focused remaster, there aren't too many people clamoring for Limp Bizkit's catalogue to be rereleased without all the trickery employed on the CD master. There are also a ton of garbage "vinyl remasters" out there cashing in on the trend. For example vinyl rerelease of the early Modest Mouse catalogue is just garbage. I seriously think they lied about finding the original masters and just took the CD master and added "crackle and pop" on top to mask the obvious half-assing. That or they used the worst pressing supplier on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I confess, I am part of this trend. And I just got into it, so I get no "before it was cool"-claim to fame. Not sure where that leaves me on the hipster-scale.

Buying CD's used to be a weekly ritual for me and I missed it for years. Putting on a new album on a Saturday afternoon with a beer or glass of wine while I start cooking is a very enjoyable moment for me. Now, obviously this was for the most part because I would have access to new music. That experience has not come back as I can put on anything on my laptop. However, there is a nice sense to putting on an album and being "forced" to play it from one end to the other. With streaming, I have a tolerance of 10-20 seconds of jarring music before I lose my patience and skip the track. Which is good but also means that I miss out on some of the tracks that take more effort and are in the "acquired taste" category. And in my experience, those tend to stay pleasant whereas the hits suddenly reach a threshold after which I can't stand listening to them any more.

<comment><USER8> But why buy vinyl instead of buying CDs?

I understand your point about listening to a whole album being preferable to singles, I feel the same way but I'd still much rather listen to a CD than an LP.

<comment> k-mcgrady The problems I have with CD's that I don't with Vinyl:

\- CD's scratch and then skip easily

\- CD's come in horrible plastic covers that break if you look at them wrong.

\- Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's.

\- The benefits vinyl provides (large artwork and liner notes/ lyrics, posters etc.) don't all apply to CD's and at that point there's not much/any benefit CD's have over digital.

<comment><USER9> > \- Skipping to a certain part of a song is much more difficult with CD's.

Are you serious?

<comment> k-mcgrady Completely. Well, ok, not really :) I debated including it because it's not something I do very often. I do think it's true though. On a CD you hold the skip button and have to guess where you are (pretty sure none of my CD players showed a timecode when skipping but it's been a while). With vinyl you can see a physical representation of the length of the track and estimate much better (i.e. the solo is half way through so I put the needle in between these two lines and I should be close).

NB: I'm thinking about actual CD players here, not your CD through iTunes or something where you can click to skip on a progress bar.

<comment><USER10> The first CD player I used, which my parents bought in about 1988, showed the current time when you held down the "Fast Forward" button. I don't think I've ever owned one that didn't do this.

Nowadays, a good professional CD player (or DJ equipment) will have something like an infinite-turn knob, which you can use to seek.

<comment> k-mcgrady Hmmm maybe I'm just remembering wrong then. It's been a long time since I had a dedicated CD player.

<comment><USER11> >maybe I'm just remembering wrong then.

Nope; many CD players, like the first one I got in 1986, had only a two-digit led display for the track number -- there was no time display at all.

EDIT: It was a Fisher Studio Standard that looked like this, so I guess it did show an "index number" while scanning through a track.

[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J08NITOv2FA/hqdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J08NITOv2FA/hqdefault.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Frank Zappa on vinyl, BAM (Bay Area Music magazine) [1987]:

[http://www.afka.net/Articles/1987-01_BAM.htm](http://www.afka.net/Articles/1987-01_BAM.htm)

BAM: Working with a computerized synthesizer, do you find that vinyl is no longer the most desirable way to present your music? Will you be releasing CD- only recordings?

FZ: Well, vinyl never really was all that terrific a medium anyway. Some people cling to the belief that vinyl sounds better. I don't know. Not to my ear. I like it on digital tape myself.

BAM: There's supposed to be a warmth to vinyl.

FZ: Well, let's analyze what the word warmth is. Does warmth mean a lack of top end, or an extra bunch of frequency bulge at 300 cycles. What the fuck is warmth? How do you quantify that in audio terms?

BAM: Critics don't have to quantify in audio terms. We use words like warmth.

FZ: Yeah, well, you know, you can demonstrate pseudo-warmth in a technical way in the studio by using a broad-band equalizer and boosting things around 300 cycles, you know. It just gets pudgier. And you roll off the top end a little bit, and things start to sound, you know, warm! – if that's the kind of sound that you like. I don't particularly care for that sound.

\--

Mix Magazine [1983]:

[http://www.afka.net/Articles/1983-06_Mix.htm](http://www.afka.net/Articles/1983-06_Mix.htm)

Mix: The complaint has been that the digital tape sounds great, but when you transfer it to an analog medium you get a whole different sound.

FZ: You do get different stuff, and the reason you do is that the dynamic range of the digital tape is 90 dB and the dynamic range of a record is about 45 to 50 dB. So you can't let all the peaks go where they would normally go – you have to compress it. But if you're going to plan for the future, I think ultimately records are going to be released on compact discs, little laser discs, and they've got 90 dB. There's a way to do it. I'll compensate to get it on a piece of vinyl and still have the right thing digitally.

<comment><USER13> Frank Zappa also was releasing recordings in the age prior to the Loudness War.

Digital is a superior format. But I still buy vinyl because a good half of vinyl recordings out there aren't completely fucked by applying a compressor that destroys the dynamic range.

<comment><USER12> Vinyl recordings are _absolutely_ degraded by a compressor; it's necessary to reduce the dynamics so that the record can be cut, and so the needle doesn't skip out on playback. Something has to make the material fit into the limited dynamic range.

There is also pre and post equalization applied:

Wikipedia info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization)

The bass has the shit rolled down out of it, and is boosted back on playback.

If you image search for "RIAA circuit", you get lots of hits for phonograph cartridge pre-amp circuits that implement the playback EQ.

By the way, another Zappa article, on this topic, about record cutting!

[http://www.afka.net/Articles/1980-01_Musicians_Only.htm](http://www.afka.net/Articles/1980-01_Musicians_Only.htm)

> _The album was cut at half speed, a lengthier process, obviously, but > resulting in far better definition and dynamics. At normal speed, deep > flanging like that used on JOE 'S GARAGE can play havoc with the record > cutting head. When the two sides of the stereo are out of phase, the groove > almost vanishes and your stylus will leap clear and scythe a path across the > rest of the vinyl. One of the advances he's looking forward to is the > improvement in cutting techniques so the head's relationship to the disc can > be updated many more times during a cut, boosting the fidelity._

Good grief ... the vinyl issues! Flanging was used and the head skips due to the channels being out of phase, gotta cut at half speed.

<comment><USER13> Degraded, yes. But as you mentioned, the RIAA curve gets applied back by your phono preamp, which takes care of a lot of the issue.

Modern digital recordings are often ran through a compressor to the point where there's zero headroom left. Hell, there are albums where things outright clip even on the lossless version on the CD. Plenty of others have so little wiggle room that you'll see clipping on any compressed format.

Certainly, there are plenty of albums out there that use the same shitty masters as the CD. But plenty of others don't.

One of my favorite albums from the past few years, The Flesh Prevails by Fallujah, for example, has a completely different master for the vinyl. The dynamic range is great. The CD master, to me, has several songs that are nearly un-listenable due to the mastering on the CD.

I'd love if I could just pay for the good master in a digital format. But as someone who is primarily a metalhead, masters are shitty far too often.

So I have to wait to find out if the vinyl releases are better, and then buy and then rip them if so. Then spend 5 or 6 hours per side manually removing crackles and pops and other noises...

I don't like it. But it is what it is!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you think this direction is bizarre, consider the 'cutting edge'.

In the 21st century my 'CD player' (Spotify) is tracking everything I listen to so they can sell the data to a company who will build a comprehensive psychological profile about me and try to influence where I spend my money (or worse, which way I vote).

This tweet specifically was bare-faced about it and appeared to be saying "our users are fine with this".

[https://twitter.com/SpotifyBrands/status/875795928438931456](https://twitter.com/SpotifyBrands/status/875795928438931456)

I can't blame people for wanting to go back to analogue, where the appliance you got to do a job did only that job.

<comment><USER15> Theres a middle-ground though that doesn't require you to go back to analogue listening from decades past. Use something like iTunes or whatever other equivalent application with your own music. If you're not comfortable with possible tracking from digital downloads, you can still rip CDs to it. Seems more convenient than going back to LPs and all of the physical management that that entails.

<comment><USER16> And you think that Apple can't detect which CDs you ripped?

<comment><USER10> Then use an open source media player. There are plenty, personally I use Amarok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It always makes me cringe when people say that records "sound better".

Here's my unsolicited theory on why vinyl was preferred (by some) to CDs in the 90s and 00s. It wasn't the form factor, it was the dynamic range of the masters. I don't know if it was caused by the advent of digital recording, but the loudness war [1] certainly got going around the time that CDs were becoming popular. So comparing a classic vinyl record did sound better than a newly mastered CD, but not because of the digital recording, simply because the dynamic range of the music was better.

Now that doesn't explain the recent renaissance of vinyl, which appears to have more to do with the ease of spinning, and the presentation of a coherent larger work of art (as opposed to singles on Spotify).

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

<comment><USER18> Also, since most everything is recorded digitally these days, there are almost no "true analog" mixdowns, which means you're pressing a stair-stepped digital frequency onto vinyl.

With the exception of wealthy purists (read: just Radiohead), that vinyl you're listening to is actually the digital recording pressed onto vinyl, not an analog recording pressed to vinyl.

<comment><USER19> There is no "stair-stepping" in digital recordings.

The sample-rate of a CD exceeds the effective resolution of even the best vinyl pressing. Furthermore, the Nyquist limit guarantees that it is impossible to perceive the sample rate of a CD, and even with a bit-depth of 16, you have 50% more dynamic range than vinyl is capable of.

Add to that the fact that a master is generally 96Khz, 24-bit.

<comment><USER20> This is theoric considerations, not practical.

For frequencies from about 2Khz to the limit, the dynamic range of the LP is over 100dB. The quoted 60-66dB dynamic range is only because takes into account low frequency rumble.

CDs are mastered with 44KHz sampling rate which is now generally accepted as too low for high quality audio. Yes according to Nyquist, you could capture up to 22KHz with no problem with such sampling rate, but in real life you run into all sorts of problems related to filtering on both the ADC and the DAC. It is too low for implementing a good DAC and ADC.

As for the LP record, they can extend beyond 20KHz easily, in fact i have records with info up to 50KHz which can be then played back correctly -- CD4 quadraphonic records.

CD- quality audio, in real life use, introduces non linear, non-musical distortions that detract from the sound, while vinyl records mostly have the typical 2nd harmonic distortion and in controlled levels.

Furthermore, LP record distortion diminishes with program level (softer sounds are less distorted), while PCM DACs, by nature, do the opposite. This isn't nice to the ear.

<comment><USER19> > This is theoric considerations, not practical.

With all due respect, there is nothing remotely practical about the theoretical ability of any medium to record frequencies above 22Khz. Do you play your CD4 quadrophonic records to your pets? On what? Ribbon tweeters?

Furthermore, the ability to perceive dynamic range attenuates with frequency. So once again, you are back at the limits of human hearing, even if I accept what you say about the theoretical DR of vinyl. And what if what you say is true? Can you show me any recording with a dynamic range exceeding, say, 70dB?

It is also relevant that the dynamic range of vinyl is a function of the circumference of a track, and decreases as the record plays. It also decreases every time you play a record.

And what you say about DACs has not been true for many years. These days, even run-of-the-mill DACs employ oversampling.

<comment><USER20> > And what you say about DACs has not been true for many years. These days, > even run-of-the-mill DACs employ oversampling.

Oversampling does not solve the issue i have commented, which is that 44KHz is too low. Read about filtering at the ADC and DAC stages. Read about the pros/cons of using FIR-digital, IIR-digital, brickwall-analog filters at them. Oversampling with a FIR filter was already used on the second CD player on the market, the Marantz CD63 aka Philips CD-100 of 1980. All through the eighties _all_ kinds of DAC+filter combinations have been used and now in 2017, despite any combination you use, higher-resolution (say, 96Khz sampling rate) audio sounds better. 44KHz isn't enough.

You see, what happens is as you approach the 22KHz limit, all sorts of nasty stuff will happen with the audio. No matter what filter you use, the upper octave (say 10-20KHz) will have any of the following ills:

\- ringing \- rippled frequency response \- wild phase shifts. \- pre-echo or post-echo

So, again, let me repeat: 44KHz isn't high enough. Using a higher sampling rate like 96KHz or more, allows to move such problems away from the audible range.

> With all due respect, there is nothing remotely practical about the > theoretical ability of any medium to record frequencies above 22Khz. Do you > play your CD4 quadrophonic records to your pets? On what? Ribbon tweeters?

Yes there is. What this means is that a system that can resolve up to 50KHz will have clearer reproduction of the 10-20KHz range, which is so important to add definition to the sound. "Clearer" as in "less artifacts and distortions."

> It is also relevant that the dynamic range of vinyl is a function of the > circumference of a track, and decreases as the record plays. It also > decreases every time you play a record.

What decreases on the inner grooves is the ability to record higher levels _for the high frequency ranges_ (>14Khz). And even this is a limitation that is self-imposed by record cutting engineers to make the record easily playable on the cheapest kind of stylus, the 0.7mil spherical stylus.

Advanced stylus shapes (line-contact, shibata, hyperelliptical, Fritz Gyger FG70, JICO SAS) wouldn't have any problem with this.

<comment><USER19> Uh huh. And if you reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, all these problems go away.

Seriously, you're just spouting audiophile mumbo-jumbo and confusing issues encountered during mastering with limitations of the final recorded media.

I'm done here. Arguing with audiophiles is pointless.

<comment><USER20> This is not audiophile stuff, this is audio engineering stuff, that you would find on AES papers for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I started collecting vinyl back in 2006, when my uncle passed and left me a turntable and a small collection. I grew up with Napster, CD-Rs, iTunes, and iPods.

I've always seen my generations attraction to vinyl as a response to the ephemeral nature of digital music. Vinyl is orders of magnitude less convenient, but it is concrete. When I spend my $5-30 dollars, I own a physical good that I can manipulate. I think this also answers the question "Why vinyl?" \- it is the most physical of all music mediums.

I think that is a strong psychological component for humans. This has only grown with subscription services, where I spend $10 every month, and don't even have a library to browse.

I've never really cared about vinyl's sound, and actually listen mostly to digital records. But as far as giving a sense of ownership and intimacy, vinyl wins.

<comment><USER22> < But as far as giving a sense of ownership and intimacy, vinyl wins

This. I've been a record collector for 20 years, mostly focused on rare Brazilian music - [https://www.novedos.com](https://www.novedos.com).

I don't DJ anymore so it's primarily a collector thing for me. Aside from the master tapes, an original vinyl copy is as close as you can get to the original recording, which is special. I'm far from an audiophile, so it's not about the sound, it's about the feels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I collect my favorite artist albums on vinyl for a few reasons:

* Big artwork and liner notes. I have shelves on my wall to display my current favorite albums and change them out over time.

* Conversation piece. Friends can actually browse a collection and talk about common interests. It's fun to hang out and listen to records with people.

* Vinyl requires some heavier duty stereo equipment. Regardless of how you think the vinyl itself sounds, it's a great way to get into building an actual hifi system, and that will make any format sound better. The stereo equipment becomes a hobby and collection in itself.

To me it's not a competition. Different formats can happily coexist. I own many albums on several formats (Vinyl for the living room, CD for the car, etc.) I use streaming too, especially for discovery and portable use.

And then there's the whole debate between lossy and lossless compression :)

P.S. For those who are interested in vinyl but annoyed by the prospect flipping records every few songs check out an auto loading turntable. These can stack several records and automatically play them one after another.

<comment><USER24> I love that you call it a "hi-fi" which is what it would have been called the generation before mine. We always called it a "stereo". I've always been amazed by how rare it is for a person to be interested in a system that makes the music sound better. The difference between an iPhone with the default earbuds and a $5000 stereo rig with speakers is astounding but only a tiny fraction of the listening public cares

<comment><USER25> At least in my experience, it's one of those things that you don't know what you are missing until you have it.

I remember when I bought my first pair of IEMs. They were pretty cheap, but still better than whatever earbuds came with my iPod at the time. After listening to the new IEMs for a while I was unable to go back to the Apple ones because they sounded so much worse. If you asked me a few days prior, I would have told you the earbuds sounded fine.

Then I got a real pair of headphones...

<comment><USER24> yup, that's the downside of the hobby. I spent years chasing improvements which only satisfied me for a week. Took me years to stop and enjoy "good enough". Recently played something on my system for a musician friend and he was unimpressed...then I was crestfallen

<comment><USER25> You eventually get to a Pareto optimal front where the changes you make to your system aren't necessarily better, just different (i.e. more bass at the loss of some other part of the spectrum, which you may or may not prefer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you're into house/techno/disco all the best records get released (or rereleased) on vinyl first, before eventually getting out as a digital download.

Also for artists, the profit margins are higher selling an LP (or even better a cassette) then releasing it to a small fanbase on Spotify. It's a better way to connect with a band you like than just streaming a track on your iPhone. You get the artwork to look at, and it's fun to read the production notes.

I can't remember the last time I bought an album on iTunes or even beatport. If I really want the digital copy I'll look for it on bandcamp.

<comment> torrent-of-ions Really? Last time I was into listening to new trance (pre ~2006) there were only a small handful of labels that still pressed vinyl. I haven't seen turntables in the wild for years, alas. Maybe it's different with more "underground" house and techno and disco, though.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure about trance but "cool" techno/house is all being pressed on limited run distributions ( > 5000) before hitting digital downloads.

I might be in a bubble living in Brooklyn, but I'm seeing more record bags than thumb drives these days.

Sites like themixtapeshop.com and turntablelab.com are putting out great stuff every week so it's easy to build a set. You don't need to go digging through dusty bins to get records these days.

<comment><USER27> If you get all your records from the same place as everyone then your sets are going to sound the same as everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What I love about Vinyl, compared to everything else, is that it's amazingly low-tech. You can build a playback device out of a sheet of paper and a needle. It won't sound great, but it will work.

On the flip side, in order to build a play back device for MP3 or CD from scratch you'll need electricity, massive amounts of highly specialised knowledge and realistically a chip fab.

This has no real practical relevance in the modern world, unless you're stranded on an island with nothing but a bunch of Vinyl, but I still like the thought.

<comment><USER29> > out of a sheet of paper and a needle

Don't do this with any vinyl you care about. It will destroy it pretty good. Microgroove records since the 50s were made for a fine tipped stylus, not a needle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I feel like this is what happens when you reach the enlightenment stage with technology. I have a phone with eight 64-bit CPU cores built with 10nm lithography, and I cook on cast iron. "New" or "old" doesn't matter. We have things that do things. Pick one.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I definitely prefer the opposite. I cook my food with a WiFi enabled microwave and route all my phone calls through a cast-iron IBM 1401.

(What does "enlightenment stage" mean?)

<comment><USER30> I meant a stage at which shiny and new doesn't mean anything. A truly post- technological civilization would just have tools and would pick the right tool for whatever it wanted to achieve. Sometimes that's something exotic and new and sometimes it's a candle.

<comment><USER31> Supposing I want to show off my wealth and status, isn't a brand new gold iPhone a relatively effective way of doing that? Does that make me post- technological?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think there's something to the analog hiss, even the scratches.

Tangentially, someone on Hacker News mentioned Cathode ([http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)), a terminal program that emulates old analog monitors. Screen glow, burn-in, noise, even occasional sync hiccups, can all be tuned to the nth degree, which I have, and now I'm hooked. I think it's also the sounds that can be added, but that's another psychological topic.

I don't own a record player and usually aim for consolidation, digitization, and the annihilation of clutter. But you can only go so far before it gets too cold. Even Google's Material Design and similar UI fashion is too sterile. There is evidence that the constantly circulating, subtle film grain in movies used to pleasantly tickle the retina, and I think vinyl background noise is similar.

<comment><USER33> Nice, although the front part of CRT where image actually forms is frankly an anode ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I must saw I am mystified by this - I grew up with LPs, singles and cassettes in the 70s and 80s and I can't say I miss them.

<comment><USER35> Giant-sized artwork, liner notes, inserts, etc.

I grew up with CD's. The vinyl primarily just feels like a collectible to me-- something I can look at, turn over, read the liner notes while listening to the music, etc. I don't even really listen to the vinyl's I have, I use the digital rips instead.

<comment><USER36> I agree. I don't think most people are actually listening to these. I'm guessing most people don't even own a player (or even a home audio system to hook it to). Has there been large increase in player sales as well? I'm sure there has been an increase but I doubt it had any way to go but up.

If it comes with a free download then vinyl is pretty much the perfect box to sell downloads at a brick and mortor. Thin but wide so you can't steal it easy. Lots of room for pretty artwork and extras. And nostalgia, something the cd/cassette anti-theft box didn't have. Well, The extra large cd boxes did at first but then they quit making those.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> I don't think most people are actually listening to these.

Given the high price of most brand new vinyl I'd be highly surprised if this was true. I do think you're on to something though. I will listen to the digital/streaming version of a record I have much, much more often than the vinyl copy. Usually if it's a new release I'll buy the vinyl, sit down and enjoy it start to finish, and then the only time I'll play it after that is the odd evening/weekend when I want to sit down and do nothing but listen to some music. It's kind of something you'll put aside time for (like watching a movie) but at the same time you'll still be streaming in the background all day at work.

<comment><USER36> I will admit to not actually looking at the prices of vinyl but is it much higher then just a download or much higher then cd/tapes were historically?

<comment><USER25> A new vinyl album is typically $20 a disk. That's more expensive than a digital album, but a lot of times new vinyls come with download codes for MP3s these days as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >Philips invented the cassette tape in 1962, first introducing it to music fans a year later. Thanks to its compactness, portability and sound quality, it quickly began to surpass the vinyl record in popularity.

This seems suspect...

According to this figure (going back to 1973 only) vinyl still far outpaced cassette sales until the mid-80s.

[http://blog.thecurrent.org/wp- content/blogs.dir/9/files/2014...](http://blog.thecurrent.org/wp- content/blogs.dir/9/files/2014/02/units-vs-dollars-riaa.jpg)

<comment><USER38> Man, these two charts side by side really show the total financial abuse/great move (depending on POV) that was the music CD and selling an entire album at once to people who only wanted a few songs.

It was not the norm before nor after, just an outlier, but one that brought billions of dollars in. No wonder they fought so hard against downloading (both legal and illegal).

<comment><USER37> This is also interesting: [https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing- music-agai...](https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing-music-again)

Curiously, during cassette tape dominance in the early 90s album length was 12.5 tracks. This increased to 15.8 in 2003, as CDs dominated. It has declined again to 14.2 tracks.

They state,

"With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the "long tail" of the industry."

// totally unrelated complaint: searching Google for the above chart was super frustrating, giving almost exclusively "what sounds best" results when I was trying to find sales figures. Searching for the HBR article I linked above (which I had read previously but forgotten details of) was equally fruitless on Google "average album length" and variations kept returning "what's the best length for an album" results. Had to switch to DDG to find the HBR article, and with the same search term it was the third result. WTF google?! I keep noticing less helpful results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if they'll be manufactured differently if they're going for a wider audience. You can sell a 180-gram colored disc to a superfan for $40 but if you're aiming for 18% of the market, maybe they'll be more lightweight, brittle, even dingy-looking.

<comment> k-mcgrady 180g + color isn't the standard though, it's the premium version. At the moment it seems like most new stuff is released at that weight but older stuff is much thinner. Hopefully they'll start producing more of that again because £20-25 (which seems to be the standard price here) is pretty pricey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I like vinyl for the same reason I make americanos with my work's espresso machine which makes both espresso and coffee. It's a process. I enjoy the ritual of heating water and pouring it into espresso, even though the machine does the same thing I am doing.

</comment><comment><USER41> The large format of vinyl makes a great placeholder for art, notes, lyrics, etc. Fans respond when you give them something physical to connect with. Especially if you combine the physical object with a digital download, it seems like a net win.

</comment><comment><USER42> Oh, for goodness sake, Sony, would you please just master CDs decently? I know, that would mean that you release your intellectual property to the world in uncompressed¹ quality, in a world where people frivolously commit abominable criminal acts such as copying and sharing their media.

But pretty please? I don't want to resort to an archaic medium with 10 bit effective dynamic range if I can have 16 bit on a CD. I don't want your petty streaming services. I don't want to download music amateurishly encoded in a lossy format (almost) older than me.²

I know. I'm probably the weirdest of all, longing for this sterile, lossless sound of digital awesomeness. But can I please, for once in ages, buy a CD that has been decently mastered, that I can copy onto my computer and listen to with my headphones and enjoy?

I think I'm now going to put on "Dark Side of the Moon" from 1973 and cry myself to sleep, weeping, because something so old can sound so good, whereas decades of modern music, decades of culture and art have been sacrificed to the capitalist gods of the loudness war.

¹ Both in the dynamic range and audio codec sense. ² MPEG-1 Audio Layer III.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember, folks. An audiophile is someone who listens to equipment, not music.

He can hear the difference between 0.1% THD and 1% THD, but can't tell Mozart from Beethoven, or Kenny G from Coltrane.

When people claim about how they are emotionally moved by certain speakers, but not others, chances are the _music_ is shit.

When the music is good, I'm still moved by a 64 kb/s encoding using 8 bit uLaw, played through laptop speakers.

<comment><USER43> > When the music is good, I'm still moved by a 64 kb/s encoding using 8 bit > uLaw, played through laptop speakers.

I'm not an audiophile, but I disagree with your assertion. I did love going to concerts in the 90's and early 00's. In February of 1993, I saw Stone Temple Pilots opening for Megadeth at the Fargo Civic Memorial Auditorium (not the Fargo Dome, think bigger high school gym). I liked their album, but was pretty much there to see Megadeth.

When I heard STP in concert (an frankly its not the best venue particularly in ND in Feb) including the megaphone in Crackerman, it blew me away. You can feel the range, and I loved their music ever since. I will say that the CD and mp4 are loved because of a memory more than how they sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot of music that isn't even available anymore in any formats other than digital.

It would be cool if there was a service where one can "burn" (or press) a vinyl record from a bunch of mp3/wav files, and print a nice sleeve.

<comment><USER44> _Pressing_ a one-off record isn't worth the cost because of the requirement of creating a pressing mother. (Mastering, creating a lacquer, a mother, a stamper, then finally pressing.) However, for one-offs your options are basically an acetate (which'll wear quickly with play) or a lathe-cut dubplate (which can be a bit lo-fi depending on process).

There's a bunch of lathe services available: [http://carverycuts.com/home/dubplates- order.html](http://carverycuts.com/home/dubplates-order.html) [http://www.audiogeography.com/records/](http://www.audiogeography.com/records/) [http://vinylcarvers.com/](http://vinylcarvers.com/) [https://www.cutadub.com/](https://www.cutadub.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm 1/2 surprised the headline wasn't "Millennials are killing the music streaming industry" seems like headline writers love the "Millennials are killing" things lately.

<comment><USER46> We are a metaphorically murderous bunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Finally being able to get rid of all my physical media was super satisfying. Cassettes, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays. All sold to one of those buy-back places for pennies on the dollar. All the clutter--gone. All the heavy boxes to pack up and unpack every time I moved--gone. I couldn't imagine going back to collecting physical music doodads again, especially doodads as space- inefficient as vinyl. My huge bookshelf is next. I have PDF version of the most useful ones anyway...

</comment><comment><USER48> When I heard Bosendorfer Grand piano on vinyl, I was shocked and deeply into the low bass richness that I could never hear in high definition audio.

</comment><comment><USER49> In my early 20s I used to spin dance music (melodic and tech trance) and have accumulated a pretty large vinyl collection before Technics mk2s went largely extinct and I moved on to CDJs. But I could have sworn that vinyl sounded some much richer and warmer than digitized formats. A part of me is happy vinyl is making a comeback.

</comment><comment><USER50> Unless we get more pressing plants all around the world, big labels doubling down on vinyl will only mean the inevitable crash.

The ones that have kept records alive to this day (that is independent labels) are already suffering under the load major labels are pushing releases in, especially on record store days. Want your record pressed? Fine, but just after we press 20k copies of this Saturday Night Live OST LP, that's previously only been available in every flea market, record store and garbage can in the world.

When you cater for the crowd that flocked in during the trend are already switching to the next hip thing, soon all we are left with is tons of useless releases filling the bins.

</comment><comment><USER51> Then people play vinyl records through a turntable that outputs via an A/D as a USB device.

Some DJ use vinyl records which contain nothing but a time code track. This feeds a system which plays out the proper audio segment from downloaded data.[1]

[1] [http://djtechtools.com/2014/03/20/building-a-dvs-timecode- dj...](http://djtechtools.com/2014/03/20/building-a-dvs-timecode-dj-setup- for-20/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Part of me wonders if the stickiness of this more has to do with the fact that both cassettes and CD's are not successful mediums right now. It quickly becomes a least common denominator- vinyl still works the same. I feel I get similar feelings about technologies that I drift to whatever tech seems the most stable for long term usage. Why invest in this if it is going away in 2 years? I feel like the IoT stuff often falls into this category.

</comment><comment><USER53> Somebody should try if you can print records on laser printer. If you print circular lines, the needle should stay between the walls of ink. Transparency might be better than paper, because it is smoother. I do not have record player anymore, so I cannot test this theory. On 78 speed record those squiggles are huge, and well with capabilities of laser printer.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why not instead focusing on reinventing the LP?

One side disc, large format, laser pickup, analog recording.

Bring together the good parts from both LP and CD / DVD.

<comment><USER29> Lol.. other than the one side part (turtle anyone?) what you're proposing is a laserdisc. Ie an actual thing. They're not coming back either because they died. Vinyl never died it just declined. Simplicity of playback equipment is a big reason why. Also nothing stops anyone from putting a CD in a 12 inch jewel case or sleeve of some sort.

<comment><USER55> Laser disc never died either; just ask my 8th grade science teacher and his collection of documentaries. Still (!) evidence of use today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This crowd would probably enjoy "The Revenge of Analog", by David Sax. The entire first chapter is "The Revenge of Vinyl" and goes deep into the rise, fall, and rebirth of physical records – including interesting bits on the handful of places left that are capable of printing records, on scarce presses from a bygone era.

</comment><comment><USER57> Article says the cassette tape was released to music fans in 1963, but really the cassettes and players at that time were mostly used for dictation and voice recordings only because the quality was not high enough for music. Cassettes did not start to be used for music until much later. Dubious reporting from WaPo.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've spent a significant fraction of the last 20+ years staring into screens. Analogue tickles my brain the same way computers and anything electronic or digital did when I was a kid. I have no illusions that my preference for vinyl in purchased media is anything other than emotional.

</comment><comment><USER59> Vinyl records are a great market segmentation these days. Very few collectors are struggling to get by.

</comment><comment><USER60> I had a habit of collecting white labels and test pressings of house and dance tracks, I have no idea what most of them are called or who they are by, but I can think of one and remember where it is in the crates.

If I had a load of Track 1's in iTunes, I wouldn't have a clue!

</comment><comment><USER61> As long as nobody is claiming they sound better, and it's just for fun and nostalgia, I'm all for it. It really bugs me when vinyl buffs try to argue their rig sounds better or warmer or whatever than the same rig with a digital (or non-vinyl analog) source.

<comment><USER26> From a technical point of view I get why the argument is stupid, but playing a well pressed/mixed record has a visceral pleasure that is hard to explain. It's kind of like driving a manual car. Sure, it's dated and we've invented safer, easier ways to change the gearing while driving, but people who like experiences like that all know it's something more than a "hipster" indulgence. It's simply adding a level of complexity to something you love.

I could even argue it's something akin to the reason people use Vim or Emacs over JetBrains or Atom ha

<comment> torrent-of-ions Except JetBrains and Atom are disastrously slow which is the only real reason for preferring one text editor over another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Another record comeback? The last big record shop in Buffalo, that's been around since 1976, just had it's going-out-of-business sale a few weeks ago. Maybe they could have stayed afloat if they had waited just a little longer.

</comment><comment><USER63> I love this discussion. And will add, the each play is unique. That's the thing I like about vinyl, it's a moment one time you're there and it'll never happen exactly the same way again.

</comment><comment><USER64> This can be good if they can make vinyl records, for one reason, being the simplicity of the technology. Quality is not the issue, and neither is convenience.

This does not mean that CDs are worthless, however.

</comment><comment><USER65> To me the motivation is obvious. It's the difference between collecting trading cards vs virtual trading cards. There is something to be said about having a physical collection.

</comment><comment><USER66> Maybe they could make something that I could carry around with me that I could use to play recordings of my favorite songs from those vinyl records.

</comment><comment><USER67> I wonder how they're going to wedge DRM into them. /s

(Perhaps you have to be of a certain age to get this...)

</comment><comment><USER68> had a friend who was really into vinyl and I agreed to help him move. that was a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER69> Hopefully some video high "dpi" vynils too :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Turntable nerd here (over 5000 posts on a forum dedicated to turntables).

Let me give you my take on this, as unbiased as possible:

Records do not automatically _sound better_ than CDs. However, there are many, many cases in which the LP sounds better than the same CD.

First let me dispel some myths of vinyl playing:

\- "Records wear": Assuming your turntable is a good one (no cheap Crosley record players), and your stylus is not worn, and your stylus pressure is below 3.0 grams (as it would be the case in ANY half-good tonearm and pickup), and your record is clean, and the pickup is correctly aligned, then record wear is a non-issue. Under those conditions records were found to last 1000 plays with no significant sound degradation on an AES (Audio Engineering Society) paper. And this with 1965-67 pickup technology. Modern pickups and styli are still gentler.

Of course, if any of the above conditions is not met, the record will wear!

\- "Records sound with pops and crackles": This does not happen with a good turntable and well cared records. Record reproduction is mostly free from such noises. Note that lower quality turntables do emphasize noises caused by dirt, as well.

\- "Any turntable gives you high quality sound, better than a CD": This is a favorite one of the hipsters. There are many turntables out there that are bad, poor, or mediocre. You need a good turntable to enjoy the sound. Fortunately due to the big used-TT market, you can get turntables that were pretty expensive when new, for little money.

Now, WHY should one play/buy records instead of CDs (or MP3/etc)?

As a music lover, it is very important to be able to play LPs. The main reasons are:

1\. There is a huge amount of music that isn't available on CD nor MP3. For example records from record labels that went bankrupt. Or music that simply is not popular/mainstream. Sometimes you can find MP3 transcriptions of such records on the internet, but often those are done with poor care giving really bad audio, compared to having the record played by you on a good system.

2\. There are cases in which the LP record is much, much better mastered than the comparable CD or MP3. Example: Frank Zappa's You are What you is. The CD was done using really exaggerated, wrong compression which truly destroys the sound, and you don't need to have any kind of high-end system or "golden ears" to notice the difference. It is that striking.

Another example? AC-DC's "back in black". The modern (2000s) remaster has heavy, dynamics-destroying compression compared to the original (1981) release. Which you can enjoy buying the LP record.

3\. There are cases in which the LP record gives you the truly original release of the album. That is, before the producer (or artist) subsequently decided to alter the mix, do overdubs on it, etc. Example: Frank Zappa "Hot Rats" record; the 1969 original release is radically different from the CD release due to all sorts of edits and remixes done.

4\. Music done on the LP era (1948-late 80s) was _intended_ to be released on LP, so there is a convention that albums follow:

\- Sides: A versus B. Sometimes the album will have a different concept in side A versus B, for example A dedicated to more danceable music, B dedicated to ballads, etc.

\- Hit tracks are expected to be located at the beginning on each side. You see the track that is a beginning of each side and you can bet this was an important track for the artist.

\- The last track of the side is usually a softer, mellower track.

These conventions are interesting and are preserved when you buy the LP.

5\. Artwork. The difference in picture area between a CD and the LP is striking. Gatefold records (there are many of them) give you about 64x32cm (25x13") picture area, which is a lot. If the gatefold is triple (like in Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique"), this is an area of 96x32cm (38x13"), which is huge.

6\. Printed lyrics & Bonus material: Since the sleeves are so big, many kinds of different 'extras' can be included with each record, and sometimes they do add a lot of value to the experience. For example:

\- "Captain Fantastic" (Elton John) includes a whole comic book inside.

\- Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions" (1976) includes a nice booklet with all the printed lyrics in lavish style.

\- Many records came with stickers or posters.

\- Devo's "Duty now for the future" cover art can be pried apart for framing.

\- etc.

Basically, the LP record adds much more to the "experience" of listening to the album. At least for a music lover.

</comment><comment><USER70> my vinyl weighs a ton</comment>


What Opera's Switch to WebKit Means for Web Professionals - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/what-operas-switch-to-webkit-means-for-web-professionals

<comment><USER2> For most web professionals it doesn't mean anything, which is why Opera switched.</comment>


Why Millennials Have a Tough Time Landing Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101531415?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par=yahoo&doc=101531415%7CHere%27s%20the%20real%20reason%20mi

<comment><USER2> Focus here is on a very small number of graduates. No one I know and I know 100s of millenials commit these bone headed mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a condescending bunch of horseshit. These kinds of stories are always awful but this one is particularly galling. Why millennials have a tough time landings jobs? Maybe because they came onto the job market in the midst of the greatest economic slump since the great depression? Maybe because systemic, unrelenting unemployment has recently become a basic feature of the economy? Through no fault of their own, "millenials" (I _hate_ these terms) have come onto the job market at the worst time that anyone younger than 100 can remember.

Note that I am not a millennial and I've been lucky enough to skate past this business relatively unscathed. But I find it pretty disgusting to spectate upon the misfortunes of others and then write Shadenfreude puff pieces like this, attributing these misfortunes to the moral failures of the victims.

<comment><USER4> Bravo sir!

This reads more like libertarian dogma: blaming individuals for macroeconomic trends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ever notice how every decade or so there are tons of news stories featuring 40-50 year old reporters and experts talking about the horrific flaws in the younger generation?

It always seems to be the generation, rather than the fact that twenty somethings have always acted like twenty somethings.

A better reason why millennials have a tough time:

Baby boomers who lost a big chunk of retirement savings in 401 k(s) (or more likely property investments) and have yet to rebuild their retirement nest egg are hanging onto their jobs longer, leaving less vacant seats for new hires.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it difficult to believe that there is a problem with an ENTIRE generation rather than a problem with hiring practices at the kind of companies that complain about these things.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every generation says the generation immediately after theirs is the worst generation ever!</comment>


Sisense Acquires Periscope Data - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/14/sisense-acquires-periscope-data-to-build-integrated-data-science-and-analytics-solution/ <comment><USER2> Periscope feels a lot like Looker. What are the differences?

<comment><USER3> The last time I studied it closely was over a year ago, but at that point:

1\. Periscope emphasizes directly writing SQL.

2\. Looker hides the SQL behind "developer mode" and emphasizes clicking dimensions and measures.

3\. Periscope supports R and Python somehow, though I haven't used it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we wound up using both because it's easy for analysts to use Looker but data devs prefer Periscope for whipping up a graph.

Although... after setting up redash I realized we can get 90% of what periscope offers for free by hosting it ourselves albeit admittedly much less polished. We keep using periscope only because of embeds in our product which redash handles poorly.

<comment><USER5> We are putting effort in improving our embeds for the next release, and will be happy to learn what you were missing in embeds.

Happy to discuss this further via email (arik at redash.io).

Thanks!

(I'm the creator of Redash, now CEO of Redash the company)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Woot woot Harry, Tom and Team!

</comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats Harry and Tom!</comment>


Dear Regulators: Never Trust Someone Who Doesn't Use Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/dear-regulators-never-trust-someone-who-doesnt-use-email-2009-9

<comment><USER2> Sad to see a site like Business Insider using those super spammy contextual Kontera ads.

</comment><comment><USER3> And _never_ trust Donald Knuth!</comment>


What happened to Quicken Online, post-acquisition of Mint - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/19/quicken-online-users-saw-the-bait-took-the-switch-to-mint-com-and-are-left-with-nothing/ <comment><USER2> This is the fundamental risk of building your life or business even in part on SaaS. People can and do still use ancient client-side software for their own reasons; much to MS' and other's frustration. With SaaS you are trusting the operators of your key service to respect their users. No surprise that some users are disappointed.

SaaS works but I think it works best as a cooperative rather than an corporation with interests separate from that of it's users.

</comment><comment><USER3> Stories like these deter people from trusting the "cloud." I use QuickBooks for my Biz and no way would I do it online (especially after this). It's just too important to trust to some cheeseball marketing exec.

<comment><USER4> So you are assuming that they are not going to do something like that to Quickbooks? They are not going to drastically increase the price, and then hold you ransom for all your financial history, knowing that you have to upgrade to be able to work with your accountant but he can't read your old files?

Just saying - desktop software isn't any safer unless you have an open migration path available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds like a great opportunity for Mint clones. Implement automatic import from Quicken and get quite a few customers.

<comment><USER6> This makes me wonder how fragile parts of Mint's technology are. They couldn't find some way to transfer the data from Quicken?

Also, Mint's new Goals feature requires you to have separate accounts. You can't have two goals, save for car and house, both using the same account.

Both of these reek of a technology base that is fragile.

<comment><USER7> I can't speak to how fragile Mint's technology is internally -- although I think the duplicate transactions showing up in my account for weeks speaks to that -- but it's worth pointing out that acquiring the transactions for a consumer is fragile and fraught with peril.

Mint uses a 3rd party called Yodlee for their transactional feeds. Some (most?) of the time, Yodlee acquires their transactions using screen-scraping of Home Banking websites. In theory, OFX could be used as well -- but -- there is no good way to auto-discover a FIs OFX feed via a well-known URI, or otherwise.

Quicken uses a proprietary db to link a request for a FI to a URL. This is their secret sauce.

I died a little inside when Mint is was purchased by Intuit. By leveraging their Quicken users, Intuit forces banks to purchase a branding identifier (BID), otherwise Quicken won't download or parse OFX transactions. There is no good technical reason for this. It's a classic embrace and extend: Create format (OFX) with industry players. Modify format (QFX) and leverage existing marketshare to force adoption. Make money at both ends.

So, yes, one could probably get the data from Quicken. But it makes very little sense to invest time in such a squirrelly method that /still/ depends on Intuit. (Remember the Palm/iTunes fiasco?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every time I read an article written by Michael Arrington, there is a 3rd grade-level spelling error in it.

> Otherwise you've just waisted all that time your users put into the product.

It seriously drives me nuts.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if legacy saas products could switch to a user owned/funded model.</comment>


Anyone Using Fearless Salary Negotiation? - <AUTHOR> https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/get-started/#purchase <comment><AUTHOR> few different prices points and curious about experience with any of them

my touchstone on this topic is Patrick McKenzie's article on salary negotiation ([http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/))</comment>


If the Supreme Court Lets the Electoral College Vote at Will, Will Chaos Ensue? - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-the-supreme-court-lets-the-electoral-college-vote-however-it-wants-will-chaos-ensue/ <comment><USER2> Depends:

Were you previously relying on being able to leverage organizational and institutional force in order to cram through the will of a mob through a hole designed by the Framer's to be filled with quiet contemplation and good sense decision making by sensible people accountable to no one?

If so. Yes.

We're you hoping that the country would embrace a fundamental check built into the system to negate the ills of voting blocs and rationalism that has been the downfall of other republics/democracies?

Then no. Not really.

Psychopaths being called out by reasonable people and faithless electing is a feature; not a bug.

Though I"m willing to bet that the process of selecting electors is going to get _very_ interesting.</comment>


Why Is This Cargo Container Emitting So Much Radiation? (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/all/

<comment><USER2> IANAP but I'm surprised there's no device which can focus gamma radiation (using some sort of EM field?) onto a detector grid, to give an image of exactly from where radiation is emanating.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting story to which I can't find any follow-up.

<comment><USER3> I remember reading this when it was published. I think whomever dumped it either had no idea what it contained or made sure it would never be traced. I am a bit curious to find out if they ever found out where it came from.

Since I have not heard anything I'm going to assume they never did, which is not surprising.</comment></comment>


Mozilla's JM crosses Apple's Nitro threshold - <AUTHOR> http://arewefastyet.com/#

<comment><USER2> A good browser benchmark would also measure:

1\. Browser boot time.

2\. Browser shutdown time (on clicking Close).

3\. Tab boot time.

4\. Tab shutdown time.

5\. LocalStorage boot time (on first call to LocalStorage API, some browsers load LocalStorage into memory at this point, blocking the UI).

6\. IO performance of LocalStorage, WebSQLDatabase, IndexedDB for massive get/set operations (bandwidth) and many get/set operations (latency).

7\. ApplicationCache update time (and update time after an interrupted update cycle).

8\. Smoothness of moving a DOM element across the screen by adjusting absolute position (some browsers are choppy with this).

9\. Javascript parse time.

10\. Minimum setTimeout frequency (is it 1ms or 5ms?).

11\. Hash change event propagation time.

12\. Stack size limit.

13\. Speed of Array.shift on massive arrays.

14\. Vertical height of browser chrome at top of the window in pixels (less is better).

15\. Vertical height of browser chrome at bottom of the window in pixels (less is better).

16\. Number of colors used in browser chrome, including favicons in location and bookmark bars etc. (less is better).

17\. Fullscreen support and switch to fullscreen time.

18\. Developer Console boot and shutdown time.

19\. Number of words, tabs, nested interfaces used across all Preferences pages (less is better).

20\. Number of user actions (clicks, keypresses, mouse movement distances) required to clear LocalStorage, History, WebSQLDatabase, IndexedDB, Cache, ApplicationCache (less is better).

21\. Default storage limits for LocalStorage etc. (higher is better).

22\. Data-URI size limits (higher is better).

<comment><USER3> Agreed that most of these would be good components of an overall browser benchmark, but the linked benchmarks are JavaScript benchmarks only, so things like browser start-up time and chrome dimensions wouldn't apply.

<comment><USER2> When users think "fast", they think "fast" as in "fast", not "JM fast" or "TM fast". It would be better for "arewefastyet.com" to address "fast" from the point of view of the user rather than from the point of view of the Javascript engine developer.

<comment><USER3> As I understand it, arewefastyet.com was created as more of an internal/community dashboard specifically for the JIT team at Mozilla rather than to reflect on the browser as a whole to the userbase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One possible takeaway from these graphs is the urgent need for better JavaScript benchmarks. Both SunSpider and the V8 benchmarks are sets of microbenchmarks and the difference between them is enormous: JM+TM is significantly faster than plain JM on V8 but is a little slower on SunSpider. The fact that the conclusions can vary so greatly among these two (both deeply flawed) benchmark suites suggests that the true "real-world" performance of the engines is all but entirely unmeasured. Which loads Gmail fastest? That would be a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER5> Here's an alternative: <http://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.com/kraken-1.0/driver.html>

I have to agree, that things like machine translated scheme and OS scheduling are not representative of real world applications. (Part of the V8 suite: <http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v6/run.html> \- specifically Richards, and EarleyBoyer)

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind that V8 is not only running in the browser, but has completely different usecases as well (see node.js).

That it's a javascript benchmark only means that.. it's used by google to finetune their code.. not created to compare javascript in browsers among several different browsers.

<comment><USER5> And yet that's what people seem to like using it for.

I still don't see why machine translated scheme is a good benchmark for fine tuning code. Javascript is a fine language to work in - especially if you are wanting to use it for things other than a browser (then you must really like it!).

<comment><USER6> I haven't seen the code but based on the description it's a benchmark that was originally in scheme and ported to javascript.. sounds fine to me. And "kernel simulation benchmark" may have a usecase too, just because you can't think of it, doesn't mean it isn't there ;) I can think of tests for scheduling, threading, asynchronous code, I/O when i think of "kernel simulation".

Again, people like to use V8benchmarks, when it's not made for browser comparisons. The fact that it's often used only shows that there is a lack of a real cross browser benchmar suite.

<comment><USER5> "...Florian Loitsch's Scheme2Js compiler"

No, Florian Loitsch isn't a human translator for hire - he wrote a compiler.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the benchmark is not "how fast does V8 translate scheme to JS", it's "how fast does V8 run benchmarks in javascript that where translated from scheme some time ago". Atleast that's how i understand it.

<comment><USER7> That's true, but machine-generated code can be pretty nutty, depending on what exactly the Scheme2JS compiler does. It's legitimate JS code, but it might not be representative of what JS-written-in-JS looks like.

<comment><USER6> True, but i see that this is a valid testcase. For example GWT generates JS out of Java, so it might be useful to also benchmark machinegenerated JS.

<comment><USER8> I think it'd be useful to benchmark _GWT_ -generated JS (and also Objective-J), but not Scheme2Js, which is rarely if ever used in practice. Compilers for different languages will emit code with completely different performance characteristics and feature usage patterns. (For instance, Objective-J particularly stresses the call site caching mechanisms in modern JavaScript engines with its "objc_msgSend" equivalent, since the indirect call in that function branches to so many different call sites.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This appears to be what got them there: <http://andreasgal.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/compartments/>

Also worth noting, there is no longer a gigantic "NO" down at the bottom of the page. :)

<comment><USER10> I miss that "NO".

I expected to see "YES!", or maybe "MAYBE" in its place, but there's nothing there.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I was hoping for MAYBE, and then if it ever gets quicker than chrome a YES!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What actually surprises me about this is just how much faster V8 was (and really, still is) compared to all of the others. It also looks like they're starting to hit a point of diminishing returns. Here's hoping they're not!

</comment><comment><USER13> Only x86, though. x64 isn't there yet. <http://arewefastyet.com/?machine=4>

</comment><comment><USER14> I am always puzzled by the attention paid to JavaScript execution speed. Obviously, it's important (and should be) to the people who are intimately involved with the maintenance and development of the JavaScript engines, but apart from that, why do so many people in the web business care about it so much?

What sites and/or web apps are so JavaScript-heavy that they are bottlenecked by slow JavaScript execution?

In most cases, aren't the speed of a user's network connection and the responsiveness of the web server itself far more important to the user experience of a web app than the browser's JavaScript speed? Is GMail on Chrome really a radically different experience from GMail on IE8?

<comment><USER15> People are looking ahead to html 5, when real apps can be implemented entirely in a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have heard from the V8 developers that Mozilla do some optimizations just to score better on benchmarks - i.e. they score really good on things that are specifically benchmarked. I have not verified their claim, but generally for me as an user Chrome and Safari feel a lot faster than Firefox.

<comment><USER17> Two quick points (I work at Mozilla, but not on the browser - I'm also the creator of the Dromaeo performance benchmark): _All_ browsers implement things to get faster at these benchmarks. They implement caching in bizarre places just to make an, otherwise, useless loop faster. They optimize methods that are rarely used in modern JavaScript applications. This frustrates me immensely. Most modern browser performance benchmarks focus exclusively on JavaScript and completely ignore the DOM, rendering, painting, or any of the other operations that are critical to the performance of a web site.

As to the faster claim - I've been using Firefox 3.6, Chrome, Safari 5, and Firefox 4 interchangeably and I've noticed a _dramatic_ improvement in quality from Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 - they've really done a great job with the upcoming release.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I'm just using development builds (and lately the official beta), but Firefox 4 is leaps and bounds better than Firefox 3.6 (which was already pretty good!)

<comment><USER19> Have you had problems where Firefox 4 just fails miserably to render a page, but if you refresh it renders fine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bet slow JM has cost FireFox a pretty significant number of users over the last couple of years. Even the much smaller gap between nitro & v8 is noticeable at times.

<comment><USER21> You have no idea what you're talking about. If you recognize it as speculation, please don't do it when actual verification is such a simple process.

Pre-emptive note to readers: Sure "You have no idea what you're talking about" _sounds_ harsh, but is it wrong? Please consider that before acting upon any knee-jerk reactions to my comment.</comment></comment>


Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action. - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/

<comment><USER2> The problem of publicly-funded-but-privately-owned scientific research is a pet peeve of mine, but this guerilla action is not the answer. Scientific research is a slow process of careful accumulation, sifting, and construction of links. What we need to build are permanent, publicly accessible webs built of reliable links, webs that are built up over years -- probably over the course of entire careers, and one's _successors's_ careers. Not a pile of PDF files smuggled out of the academy and distributed via thumb drive and anonymous Bittorrent.

If I cannot simultaneously post my name, a pertinent comment, _and_ a bunch of reliable direct links to the scientific literature on a public blog without risking legal repercussions, the discourse is still screwed. We're still trapped in the last century, when I could write a letter to my colleagues commenting on recent publications but nobody could properly understand and critique the letter without independently looking up those publications.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like your describing WikiPedia...

<comment><USER4> Not really. This is about being able to access the specific papers written; it is not about being able to read an aggregate of the research without necessarily being able to look at the original source (which is what Wikipedia is).

(EDIT: grammar)

<comment><USER2> Indeed, Wikipedia's particular style won't work for science.

The shame of modern science is that what _might_ work is so simple to build, because it is already built. Research papers already form a web: They all have references to prior research papers, which in turn have references of their own. Moreover, the community of researchers and their students would quickly and happily turn all those links into clickable ones -- if only paywalls didn't prevent them. [1]

It's no coincidence that even the simplest of web pages is already perfectly suited for scientific research: Tim Berners-Lee _built HTML and HTTP for that purpose_. But now science lags behind, say, LOLcats or the _Twilight_ books when it comes to online discussion, and I assert that it's not merely because science is esoteric [2]: It's because scientific publishing is suffocated by rent-seekers.

\---

[1] Actually, my understanding is that cross-journal hyperlinks are slowly evolving _within_ academia: Once you're inside the university library's firewall you can make actual working hyperlinks that are only, say, 65% less efficient than the average Wikipedia link. This is great for those who are currently inside the ivory tower. Not so great for me and the other 99.9% of humanity.

[2] What I wonder is the extent to which science remains esoteric _because_ it has always required so much training and money to read the literature that the literature has never needed to evolve actual readability. Why bother learning to explain your work to a popular audience when your writing will only ever appear in journals that are only visible to your colleagues?

Historically, we've relied on great science journalism to make up the difference. (Gods bless you, Isaac Asimov.) But great science journalism, like all journalism, is rare and getting rarer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without justifying any of this, since the Schwartz incident JSTOR has made all of the out-of-copyright content freely available: [http://about.jstor.org/participate- jstor/individuals/early-j...](http://about.jstor.org/participate- jstor/individuals/early-journal-content)

<comment><USER6> Would JSTOR have released these had the Schwartz action not occured? I suggest not. Does this then justify his actions? I don't know, but his actions have certainly proven advantageous to scientific study and breaking of the anti- science monopoly.

<comment><USER7> There are bigger crimes than breaching a paywall. It's not hard to see an argument for downloading as civil disobedience in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Academic lectures are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action: <http://lectureleaks.com>

<comment> St-Clock I am STRONGLY against this kind of service and I hope you will consider removing any recording that was not approved by the lecturer.

Otherwise, I want a recording of everything you have said while working. Actually, I want a recording of everything everybody said while they were working so my BigBrother TM audio processing technology can highlight anything that was out of line, incorrect, inappropriate, whatever.

I hope you understand that most lecturers/profs/researchers/people aren't concerned about their copyrights. They are concerned about their reputation and about what ill intentioned school administrators, students or politicians could do with these recordings. You just need one bad case of misuse of these recordings before some universities or unions sue the hell out of you.

I share your goal: education is good and the more people learn, the better the world will become. But if you start recording everything I say in my lectures, I promise you that they will be way more boring.

<comment><USER9> Are there any known instances of a lecture recording being used against an instructor unfairly?

I doubt doing things that could be construed as "out of line, incorrect, inappropriate, whatever" really improve your lectures in a significant and sustainable way. In any case, there are better ways to be interesting and entertaining [1].

I think everyone understand that instructors aren't concerned about copyrights. They're concerned about having to improve the quality of their lectures, or have a permanent record of lectures they're not really proud of.

[1] Richard Buckland, UNSW: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bLCjMA0YlE>

<comment> St-Clock "I think everyone understand that instructors aren't concerned about copyrights."

Well if you click on the "about" link on lectureleaks.com, you'll see that they only talk about copyrights. They do not seem to care about anything else... Incidentally, they have quite a lengthy copyright and license notice themselves... Maybe I should write one for my course.

"Are there any known instances of a lecture recording being used against an instructor unfairly?"

If you asked me whether instructors were sometimes treated unfairly by students, administrators or politicians, I would say yes. Having access to recorded lectures just adds a new angle of attack.

"I doubt doing things that could be construed as "out of line, incorrect, inappropriate, whatever" really improve your lectures in a significant and sustainable way."

I was actually referring to some ill intentioned people who would turn a joke, a simple mistake you made, or a controversial topic you taught against you. For example, teaching evolution is a risky business in some US states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the tremendous values of being in a masters program is having access to JSTOR and all the other journal sources.

Before I would email the professor and request a copy, usually they would oblige.

<comment><USER11> Or you can go visit your local library, which has access typically to most journals in digital form.

<comment><USER12> Depends which country you are in - UK libraries don't usually have access to academic journals.

<comment><USER13> How about local university libraries then?

<comment><USER12> They are generally not open to the public, and when they are you are rarely allowed to access electronic journals because of the licence agreement which the university has signed with the publisher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 90% of the 8 billion dollar world-wide market for academic research is paid for by library subscriptions. There is a serious problem here, indeed. Some excellent facts and recommendations were posted in this report. It was written by the Association of American Universities (61 leading research universities) in January, 2010 and it was initiated by the U.S. House's Science and Technology Committee in conjunction with the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP): <http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=10044>

</comment><comment><USER15> Sigh. I really wish the media would start covering things like this. Imagine the nation panicking over caged science - no publisher would be able to withstand the onslaught. Instead, we're stuck with reality show politics.

</comment><comment><USER16> Atleast they should reduce the time after which a journal/research paper becomes out-of-copyright. As is with the patents. And then they can searched freely.

</comment><comment><USER17> Obviously full-on, unthrottled downloads are going to get blocked. Why can't activists ever be sneaky?

</comment><comment><USER18> you can also do direct action by signing a petition at <http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/16041>

</comment><comment><USER19> "Direct action" to find "hidden" papers? Visit a university library. Done.

<comment><USER20> Only works if you're a student there, they are no usually open to the public.

<comment><USER21> In the US and Canada, at least, they usually are open to the public.

<comment><USER22> I don't know about that. Thinking about the four universities I've got experience with, the only one that didn't have someone checking IDs at the door of the library was the small one that probably couldn't afford it.

<comment><USER21> In my experience, in Boston, nobody will bat an eye if you go into most libraries at MIT (so long as you don't go breaking into wiring closets) or BU. Harvard is very restrictive because it'd probably be overrun with tourists otherwise. I think libraries in big cities (NYC) tend to be more exclusive, to keep out the riff-raff and homeless people, but such cities usually have good public research libraries.

In Toronto, the the UofT libraries are accessible to anybody. However, I did once get kicked out of the Law Society of Upper Canada library when I mixed up Osgoode Hall with the Osgoode Hall law school when I was doing research for a high school class, and I'm still bitter about that.

<comment><USER22> So maybe the overall answer is that whether a school has people checking IDs depends less on rational decisions and more on their history—have they had trouble, have they had paranoid management, that sort of thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ESPN suspends publication of Grantland - <AUTHOR> http://espnmediazone.com/us/espn-statement-regarding-grantland/ <comment><USER2> For those asking why HN should care about a "sportsball blog", here are some pretty great Grantland articles that made a splash on HN:

The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds: [http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy- the-board-game-of-th...](http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board- game-of-the-alpha-nerds/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183)

The greatest juggler alive quit to open a construction business: [http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling- cirque-...](http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-cirque-du- soleil-jason-fagone/?2) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214)

The Coach Who Never Punts: [http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9970245/grantland- channe...](http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9970245/grantland-channel- coach-never-punts) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6728821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6728821)

The Gracie jiu-jitsu story: [http://grantland.com/one-hundred-years-arm-bars- gracie-jiu-j...](http://grantland.com/one-hundred-years-arm-bars-gracie-jiu- jitsu-mma/?ex_cid=GrantlandTW) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6728821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6728821)

\---

More here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=grantland.com&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=grantland.com&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll never understand what they were thinking getting rid of Simmons. Ego's calling the shots is never a good thing.

Can't wait for him to start up something new, Grantland was really great.

<comment><USER4> ESPN has a history of making sure the talent don't get too big for their britches. Simmons, Keith Olbermann (twice), Dan Patrick, are three guys who had great personal brands and didn't hesitate to criticize The Worldwide Leader when they felt ESPN management acted without integrity.

BTW, I worked for ESPN.com for 2.5y.

<comment><USER5> Lefsetz wrote a pretty good one when this happened: [http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/07/22/b...](http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/07/22/bill- simmons/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is disappointing news, as I felt like Grantland was a good one stop shop for things to read during lunch, but it was clear that it was already on its way out. Some of my favorite contributors had already left. Wesley Morris, Chris Ryan, and Juliet Litman to name a few. Ill be waiting to see where they end up (yes I know Morris is going to the New York Times).

</comment><comment><USER7> That's a shame. They did some really good work. So good that I've broken down and bought their dead-tree Grantland Quarterly in the past.

There was a story earlier this year about the guys in Boston that started the Yankees Suck t-shirts, and another article about bare-knuckle prize fighting in the 1800s that was some of the best writing I've seen.

Best website since Saving Private Ryan...

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a shame. IMO, Zach Lowe's the best basketball writer out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Grantland distinguished itself with quality writing, smart ideas, original > thinking and fun._

Unfortunately, this bodes poorly for FiveThirtyEight, also owned by ESPN, and also prides itself on long form content.

<comment><USER10> Although it seems like ESPN is extremely desperate to eliminate its costs, I doubt they bail on FiveThirtyEight heading into a US presidential election. Past that, I'd be surprised to see it last. Nate Silver is still a pretty good brand and he'll regain his spotlight over the next 12 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow that's decently big news considering how big it was, and how broad the topics it covered were. Shows that it's the writers/personalities/analysts that readers want to hear from, not necessarily content on from specific publication.

<comment><USER12> I was a fan of Simmons's writing but there were still plenty of good writers left (Zach Lowe & Bill Barnwell being two).

Hopefully Bill can just bring everyone over to his new thing and continue producing the same kind of content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perfect opportunity for Simmons to start a Grantland like site...

<comment><USER10> I don't think he'll try and do a site as big as Grantland again. I would expect him to so something on a smaller scale, however.

A lot of the non-sports people he brought in have also left or will be leaving. I don't see why ESPN would now have any use for pop culture writers. I've enjoyed Zach Lowe's NBA writing and hope he either keeps his voice with ESPN or moves on somewhere else, though I'd guess they'll try and keep the Grantland sports folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On one hand this makes complete sense. ESPN wants to appeal to the largest possible audience, which means lowest common denominator coverage (basically shallow analysis and gossip, IMO).

On the other hand, ESPN is large enough that if they gave a crap about providing anything a bit "smarter" for snobs like me they could easily keep Grantland afloat.

Very disappointing and not the least bit surprising.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pretty dissapointing.

After growing up on sportscenter, this was one of the only ESPN created products which was still watchable/readable.

</comment><comment><USER16> No reason to go to espn anymore. No zach lowe with the NBA season just starting? His tweets are funny at least.

<comment><USER17> Pardon the Interruption. Best show in television.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland."

... however, I just went to grantland.com and it works just fine and has new content as of today ...

</comment><comment><USER18> I guess they really want Vice Sports to do well...

</comment><comment><USER19> Why is this even being upvoted on HN?

<comment><USER7> They did cover more than just "sports-ball."

In some sense, they were the PARC-Xerox or Bell Labs of ESPN. Except with extended Boogie Nights metaphors...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting because I'm familiar with the site but why is this here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Besides Grantland stories popping up frequently on HN, ESPN is an interesting and significant company...not just because of its pure size and near monopoly over sports entertainment, but because of its willingness to invest money in non-profitable media ventures, like Grantland...Grantland was a great example of what happens when you hire the best writers and give them room to work.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure I see the hacker news connection myself. It's a news site about sports. They weren't really doing anything particularly innovative besides the popular editor and good writers.

<comment><USER21> "They weren't really doing anything particularly innovative"

Well, better get back to posting about the next "unicorn" with no business plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I blame cordcutters slashing ESPN's profits. Content ain't free.

<comment><USER23> So...you're saying if we want great sports reporting from a web publication like Grantland then we should pay Comcast for cable?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that doesn't make sense. I dont know how Grantland was doing financially, but its unrelated to cable. In fact, things like Grantland could be viewed as diversifying away from reliance on cable viewers.

<comment><USER24> ESPN just did a round a big layoffs last week and dropping TV revenue was a big reason for that. Grantland was never really expected to turn a big profit and was always the concept car of ESPN's journalism enterprise. It was about branding, prestige, and "doing good work" and was never about money. But when it comes time to lay people off and cut costs, it is hard to justify keeping a project that will continue losing money for the foreseeable future.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ants help create diversity:- Ants 'sow the seeds' of the Cape - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19262994

<comment><AUTHOR> This raises many point and given the area's looked at are easier to observe as apposed to very dense area's and that ants are global then it does make you think. What strikes me is the issues with testing GM crops in open area's, nature has many ways of spreading seeds and this does raise many issues upon that front that may not of been factored in fully.</comment>


Used That Viral Age-Guesser This Week? You Gave Microsoft Free Photos to Use - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2015/05/01/played-with-that-viral-age-guesser-this-week-you-just-gave-microsoft-a-bunch-of-free-photos-to-use/

<comment><USER2> Not really. For internal use as algorithm fodder, they've got millions of photos to harvest from Bing. And for external use, they can't confirm that the submitter actually had the rights to the image in the first place, so they aren't safe using them.</comment>