Why waste time? - <AUTHOR> I'm frustrated and I feel like I'm in a position that other, more experienced and talented, developers have probably gone through. I'm hoping that someone has a "magic bullet" answer for me, though I'm starting to think that there isn't one.
Right now, when I have an idea for a tool or library - something that would make my job easier, or just be generally useful - I almost instantly find someone that has done it. Most times more than one person, and most times more than one person who has done it better than I feel like I could. After going through this cycle a few times I'm getting a little disheartened.
Why waste time building something that someone has already done better? <comment><USER2> If you learn from doing it and enjoy the experience, it's not a waste of time. And if you work at your craft long enough, eventually you'll be the person who can do it better than other people can. But that doesn't come quickly or easily.

For inspiration, read Peter Norvig's article, "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years":

[https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html](https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html)

In particular, see the paragraph that begins with: "The best kind of learning is learning by doing."

(Norvig has had a long career in computer science, and is currently a research director at Google.)

Also, if you build a tool for yourself that makes your job easier, it will be a lot easier to customize it to your needs than a tool built by other people, who have different priorities.

<comment><AUTHOR> I loved that article. Thanks for your response - I did like the bit about customization a lot. It makes special sense in a work environment in which you might not want to introduce a third party dependency I guess

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing's perfect.

> Why waste time building something that someone has already done better?

That's merely your opinion. Why did you discount your potential users/customers opinions?

I guess the "perfect" way to build something better is to build it for ourselves first (scratching our own itches, so they said) & the rest will be history. Yes, easier to be said than done.

<comment><AUTHOR> The post was pretty self-deprecating for sure. I didn't even think about the opinions of other people, or customers, in building a tool. A hiccup in a tool or library that I can live with or understand, might not be acceptable to another party. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't. Use the existing library to build the thing that you thought it would be useful for in the first place. Stand on the shoulders of giants and appreciate the time you saved by not having to cut down a tree and whittle a ladder yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. I was talking about this to a friend of mine - he has a coworker who calls this type of thing "developer traps". Talked about using the tool and moving on, eventually finding something that someone hasn't done or that you do feel you can do better</comment></comment>


Google: if you support Amazon Echo, you're cut off from Google Home and Chromecast - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2016/10/02/google-if-you-support-amazon.html <comment><USER2> "Of course, having a live, networked, corporate-controlled mic in your bedroom, living room and toilet is an idea that is so unbelievably terrible on its face that you could use it as the introduction to a term paper in 2040 explaining how human civilization nearly collapsed in the early 21st century."

This was the highlight of the article for me.

<comment><USER3> What about one in your pocket?

<comment><USER4> They are both bad in different ways. The first one is meant to listen all the time.

<comment><USER5> that's why mine is next to a tv that sits on broadcast tv all day -- confuse em

<comment><USER6> It would be funny to let it listen to a Numbers Station[1] all day long. If they are actually listening and processing, it might make for a fun feedback loop particularly of any theories about those stations are true.

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

<comment><USER7> or setup your own number station from a russian VPS and waste millions of tax dollars as intelligence agencies around the globe try to crack your garbage data

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where are the DoJ antitrust people when you need them? This is called an "exclusive dealing arrangement". That's legally questionable but some forms are legal.[1] The FTC has defined a "safety zone" \- it's OK to do this if you have less than 20% market share or there are at least four competing technologies on the market. Google probably has too much market share for that.

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/competit...](https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/competition- policy-guidance/0558.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Actually, I think the problem for Google is that the market is already pretty fragmented, depending on how you slice it, and shows no signs of vendor consolidation. In this particular case, Google's pushing hard on the flat side of the boulder; they are trying to strongarm audio technology companies (who, unlike software and media companies, don't have any preëxisting entanglements with most software and service platforms) over a set of Google services that don't hold a particularly commanding position in the market _vis a vis_ Amazon. I just don't get why they think they're in a strong negotiating position here, except that they must assume that the Google brand is powerful enough to create its own Kool-Aid-based distortion field.

<comment><USER10> >> the Google brand is powerful enough to create its own Kool-Aid-based distortion field.

Google is slowly building their brand position as 'invasion of privacy' despite their Kool-Aid colored logo.

Huge market opportunities for companies that can sell privacy by positioning themselves as the opposite of Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ok, so the source for that is this article: [http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/google-home-amazon- echo...](http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/google-home-amazon-echo- chromecast-1201874125/)

And their source is "multiple sources":

        Google's own negotiations with consumer electronics manufacturers could be
        hampered by what multiple sources have described as overly aggressive
        muscle-flexing. At the meeting in June, Google is said to have told home audio
        vendors that they won't be allowed to add any other digital assistants than
        Google's own to their hardware if they want to continue to use Google Cast.
        Another source told Variety of similarly far-reaching demands made in
        negotiations with another big consumer electronics manufacturer — demands that
        ultimately led to talks breaking down.

<comment><USER12> I'm having issues with Variety's website being awful.

I previously read another take on that source on AndroidPolice[1] where it was framed more as "If you include Google Home you cannot include another Digital Assistant (e.g. Alexa)" which makes a lot more sense (obviously you can't have two assistants running at once) - though allowing it to be switchable would be nice.

It'll be interesting to see what the truth of the matter is.

<comment><USER11> I guess if somebody has Siri, Google Now, Google Home, Amazon Echo, etc. and then they ask to change the music it would be a pretty fun mess.

<comment><USER13> "Echo, change the music."

"Hey Siri, change the music."

The last service requested should be able to take over the device.

Google's problem is that if tries to bully the audio makers, the audio makers will ignore Google Cast.

This is actually rather a stupid thing to do when Google is a minor player in a much bigger market. It's also going to make builders in other markets wonder if Google is good company to support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw a separate article that had this limited to Cast devices (also like beaner points out, it was light on details). Is that true? If so, does the fact that amazon refuses to sell Chromecast have anything to do with this? (And other Cast-related restrictions from Amazon)

Disclaimer: work for Google, but so very far away from any of this stuff

<comment><USER15> It's impossible for us to know why Google decided to do this. But both issues could both be considered antitrust issues. Amazon's staggering market share in shopping puts them at risk by them not selling a competitor's products in another market segment. And Google's attempts to strongarm manufacturers into blocking out a competitor is obviously problematic.

The argument could be made (and I think Amazon technically claimed it) that Amazon blocked Chromecast from their store for incompatibility with their products, because Google won't allow forks of Android to have Google apps on them. Which is also anticompetitive.

So, if we want to suggest both companies are petty as all get out, it's plausible Google was anticompetitive, Amazon was anticompetitive in response, and then Google was anticompetitive again in reaction to that. What's next? Maybe Amazon will remove Chromebooks?

<comment><USER16> > What's next? Maybe Amazon will remove Chromebooks?

And as a result, Google will refuse to list amazon in search, their DNS servers won't resolve it, and Chrome will refuse to open it, and their malware filters will mark it as fraudulent page.

<comment><USER17> Heh. "Which Internet would you like to connect to today? Facebook, Google or Amazon?"

It is funny but sad. I think we'll look back at the golden age of open Internet with fondness and nostalgia at some point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Of course, having a live, networked, corporate-controlled mic in your > bedroom, living room and toilet ...

Well, we already have that, it's in your cellphone.

<comment><USER19> Except that someone would have noticed if all sound was sent to NSA HQ (or whomever). With these mics, that's by design.

<comment><USER20> It's fairly easy to tell that these devices do not send data until woken up by their keywords.

<comment><USER19> That's different from what I previously heard. Mobile devices perhaps (because limited bandwidth and battery), but about these mics (and the "smart" TVs) I heard they upload everything and detect the trigger word online as well.

More processing power, everything centralized, I get it from a software engineering standpoint, but it's a privacy nightmare.

Next time I read someone claiming this I'll look or ask for a source. Do you have one that says they don't start sending until after the keyword?

<comment><USER21> [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230)

> 1\. How do Amazon Echo and Echo Dot recognize the wake word?

Amazon Echo and Echo Dot use on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When these devices detect the wake word, they stream audio to the Cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word.

Maybe the others are different, but Amazon has claimed that they detect the watch word locally and then start sending, but with a buffer that sends starting just before you said the watch word.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I typically love Google but if true this is the kind of thing that makes me hope they lose.

The article is a little light on evidence however, so I'm a little skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER23> Google is the Microsoft that wants to cripple competitors and stamp over its users to make a quick buck. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER10> I'm off nearly all Google products, including search and Android. I've recently moved both my parents onto Windows phones.

History always repeats itself for all these huge enterprises. Microsoft did all the same types of things, and their anti-competitive behavior was a significant part of the reason why Linux got that toehold that turned into a handhold... that turned into a...

The same thing is going to happen to Google in lots of other markets. They can only force people to use, I mean line extend, their brand to a certain point before they paint themselves into a corner.

<comment><USER24> You moved your parents from one anti-competitive company to an even more anti- competitive company?

<comment><USER10> Better to have multiple, competitive companies vacuuming up the information than 1 company.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. I use Google for search but nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lack of interoperability between devices is the biggest PITA for home entertainment right now. I currently have two Apple TVs (last gen has no audio out), a Chromecast Audio[1], a PS4, a NAS and a reasonably-smart TV all linked together and _still can 't stream fucking bluetooth audio_ to my sound system.

[1] which I only use for the (proprietary) Spotify Connect

<comment><USER27> Considering none of those devices have Bluetooth (well, the PS4 does for the controller) , why would you be able to? That's like buying a scooter, a sports car, and a diesel Volkswagen, and complaining you can't haul a 700lb snowmobile in the non-existent bed. It makes no sense.

Buy a simple $8 3.5mm -> BT transmitter and plug it in. Done.

<comment><USER26> The chromecast I bought is the dongle. That's exactly the issue. A more apt analogy would be to buy a scooter, a sports car and a VW all with powerful onboard computers and audio systems and not being able to play music from your phone because there is no Bluetooth!

Actually cars are pretty far ahead in that sense, in any modern car BT "just works".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From a skim of the variety article, it seems that google is blocking access to their assistant at a vendor level - i.e. if you have a product that includes the alexa assistant, you can't also have a product that includes the google assistant. This seems fairly stupid if true.

I'm hoping that either i'm reading it wrong, or variety has misinterpreted the sources, and google is actually attempting to block multiple voice assistants on a per-device level. Because to me, that makes perfect sense - products like amazon's echo or google home would get very confusing if they included multiple different voice-triggered assistants.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems fair. Amazon no longer lets me Chromecast Prime videos.

<comment><USER30> Seems stupid to me. Amazon wants to cripple their product so Google needs to show that they can out-cripple Amazon?

<comment><USER31> Digital crip wars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Taken a little too far. Nest products (owned by Alphabet) support Amazon Echo. (Or is Alexa now?)

</comment><comment><USER33> Elon's new project can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER34> So you can live in a company town on Mars where your very survival depends on the company?</comment></comment>


XMarks is shutting down on May 1, 2018 - <AUTHOR> Just got this in my e-mail:
On May 1, 2018, we will be shutting down Xmarks. Your account will remain active until then, including the syncing of your bookmarks. After that date, your bookmarks should remain in any previously accessed browser, but they will no longer sync and your account will be deactivated.
At LastPass, we've staked our claim in password management, and providing our community with a high level of password security. After careful consideration and evaluation, we have decided to discontinue the Xmarks service so that we can continue to focus on offering the best possible password vaulting to our community.
On behalf of the entire LastPass and Xmarks team, we wanted to thank you for your support over the years. <comment><USER2> Dupe of:

* Support for Xmarks is ending on May 1, 2018 | Hacker News || [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16718543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16718543)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why even bother wtih bookmark syncing? Sites like [https://start.me](https://start.me) enable you to access your bookmarks from any device/location/browser without the need to sync bookmarks.</comment>


Facebook Source Code from August 2007 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406 <comment><USER2>
      // Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you've ever seen?!
      ubersearch($_GET, $embedded = false, $template = true);

Yup, that tracks</comment>


Startups that launched at Y Combinator's W19 Demo Day 1 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/here-are-the-85-startups-that-launched-today-at-y-combinators-w19-demo-day-1/ <comment><USER9> Really impressed with this batch! These companies seem to be targeting a lot of really cool hard tech problems which is great to see.

In particular, a lot of super cool next-gen transportation: electric planes (Heart Aerospace), jetpacks/bikes (Jetpack Aviation), hydrofoil cargo ships (Boundary Layer Technologies). Also seems to be a big focus on India, China and Africa, and a big increase in the proportion of bio/med-tech companies. There are even two (2) companies turning CO2 into cool stuff (Prometheus turning it into gasoline and Saratoga Energy converting it into nanotubes).

Feeling very optimistic about the future and looking forward to reading what Day 2 has in store.

Bonus: seems to be a handful of Harry Potter themed company names (not counting Centaur of course).

<comment><USER10> I want to put a plug in for Boundary Layer Technologies. Their crazy Demo Day goal was to build a freaking hydrofoil ship during YC.

The founders I know who worked with them before said "They may actually be able to pull this off."

And there it was, right out front on Demo Day.

<comment><USER11> Would it actually foil? Or was it just a representation of what one would look like?

<comment><USER12> Yes, it worked!

<comment><USER11> That's amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> First, congrats to everyone launching.

Second, existential crisis time.

I clicked the link and saw "Here are the 85+ startups that launched at YC's W19 Demo Day 1" and closed the tab.

These used to be some of my favorite articles every six months, kind of a view into what's coming next. But they felt digestible, with a few dozen startups featured each time.

Now it feels like a fire hose.

I'm not convinced there's going to be a YC circa 2007-2012 ever again, but I miss that. Probably not how the ecosystem works anymore.

As a disclaimer, I do take full responsibility for my turning 30 a few years ago and going through a darker, cynical period of burnout that has likely permanently affected my outlook on startups.

<comment><USER14> What are you saying? YC should fund fewer companies so that the TechCrunch summary of demo day is shorter?

<comment><USER15> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "VanGo: An on-demand ride service for getting your kids and teens around. The founders say that, because "moms trust other moms," 85 percent of drivers on their service are moms and all of them are women."

Is that legal?

<comment><USER17> It appears so, because I remember thinking the same thing when [https://www.gosafr.com/](https://www.gosafr.com/) launched (uber for women).

I recognize there are different safety concerns for men and women, but I do have a problem with companies like these. At least with safr, their advertised safety benefits for women come down to:

1) App/Tech features that would be beneficial for either gender (like extra monitoring by safr through the phone app, and "thorough" vetting/background checks of drivers).

2) Marketing relies heavily on "It's safer because your driver is a woman." which seems to be part of van go's pitch as well, and as a man i find particularly offensive that i'm being deemed unsafe around children/women simply because i'm a man.

That being said, I'm obviously not the target audience. And I believe it's legal because they don't discriminate against men who apply to be drivers/riders, they simply only target women in their marketing, so the people end up being almost entirely women. I would guess this is what vango will end up doing/saying about the gender split as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't share the cynicism in this thread. Some personal favorites:

        - <USER2>
        - <USER3>
        - <USER4>
        - <USER5>
        - <USER6>
        - Loonify Space
        - <USER7>
        - <USER8>

Some of these are absolutely amazing, good luck to all the founders!

</comment><comment><USER19> Is anybody from Prometheus here? Very curious about the tech and the unit economics. Is $3 a goal, or the price today?

<comment><USER20> This seemed like the most interesting startup in the batch to me. For those who didn't want to comb through 85 startup descriptions, Prometheus claims that they can "remove CO2 from the air and turn it into gasoline" for about $3.00/gallon. If that's a number they can eventually get closer to the current cost of manufacturing gasoline, well then this is gonna be a $500 billion company.

<comment><USER21> "If that's a number they can eventually get closer to the current cost of manufacturing gasoline, well then this is gonna be a $500 billion company."

It's a $5 Trillion dollar company.

This, and the 'male contraceptive with no side-effects' are 'magic claims' style companies, where if their claims are true, they immediately massive companies.

Usually, the devil is in the details. A few little things here and there contextualize the claims.

Think of how many smart people we have working on big problems and how few real breakthroughs we have.

These things will mostly be evolutionary. Like 'male contraceptive' but it actually does have the side effect of long-term problems. Or takes a year to wear off. Or is $20 a pop and last for 1 hour. Or is only 95% effective. Etc. etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Basement: A social network for your close friends

Seems like this would impose some serious limits on ad revenue generation (assuming that's how they plan to monetize). With only close friends the volume of friend-generated content would presumably be much lower than that of Facebook or Instagram (even if those individuals are generating more content), meaning you have a much lower threshold beyond which you start pissing off users with ads due to relative volume.

<comment><USER23> But also, possibly, you'd have a lot more and a lot deeper interaction. This could be the kind of app Facebook was originally, where you added your friend and shared basically anything random without a focus on getting likes. Dumb inside jokes, unfiltered photos, etc.

Kinda like the texting groups friends often have these days. That's market that could potentially use some optimizaiton as texting isn't a great format to communicate with ~5-10 people.

<comment><USER24> Fernando here from Basement. This is pretty spot on. The greater level of intimacy leads to far more interaction since you're pretty free to be yourself and post content that is meant for your actual friends to see instead of random people viewing your perfect life. The intuition is naturally that fewer friends would limit usage, but in fact, it's responsible for the high levels of interaction.

As for the revenue – there are certainly cool opportunities to run relevant ads when you have high levels of attention from someone and their close friends (think group experiences, people buying things at the same time that their friends, etc). That said, we don't like what ads have done to current social platforms. They misalign incentives where the more money the product makes, the worse the product tends to get for users. Snapchat was pretty fun until it went from only seeing friends to seeing celebrity gossip and repetitive ads. Because of that, we're planning on doing a subscription model down the road, similar to what WhatsApp tried out before it got acquired (first year free, then a small fee.) Certainly a new model for a social app, but we think it's the best direction for us long-term.

<comment><USER22> Completely agree with your perspective on existing social platforms and think it's awesome that you guys are trying to break from ad-generated revenue. Any chance you'd go with a freemium model vs. free trial?

<comment><USER25> Jeremy from Basement here. We're considering a freemium model, maybe turning the font of people who don't pay to comic sans :)

<comment><USER22> Cruel but brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > VanGo: ... "moms trust other moms," ... all of them are women.

Straight sexism. Cause a Dad driving his kids to school has gotta be a creep or terrible driver or something?

>Bento Club:

Cheaper than what is already there? Food is a losing business and these guys are going to race harder to the bottom.

> Slapdash:

Is just [https://www.appdirect.com/products/appwise/features](https://www.appdirect.com/products/appwise/features)

<comment><USER27> VanGo will succeed DUE to the sexism involved. Think about the moms weighing up their options when sending their kids to school:

1) Uber - random dude (most likely)

2) Another mom or at least a pre-screened woman

Not many moms will choose the uber for fear of appearing sexist.

<comment><USER28> In addition to your presented options:

3) Bus

4) Kid Walks/cycles themself

5) Mom drives them herself

With these already being available options, I don't understand why anyone would be trying to solve what appears to me to be a solved problem, getting kids to school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The most exciting company here to me is Prometheus, who is mentioned in several threads here.

It bugs me though, that the TC blurb, and the comments here, and the Prometheus website, all say the company is turning CO2 into gasoline. That strikes me as alchemy. I think the company is more likely using CO2 in a separation process that is an alternative to the traditional distillation tower used in oil refineries.

There's a difference between "turning CO2 into gasoline" and "using CO2 to refine gasoline from crude oil".

</comment><comment><USER30> > Bento Club: Customers pre-order food from a select set of restaurants, and > Bento picks it up and brings all orders to a shared pickup spot within one > block of the customer's office.

Unless it's 10x cheaper, I don't see how this is any better than Uber eats, Doordash etc (that actually bring food to your door).

<comment><USER31> I thought we'd been through this?

[https://sf.eater.com/2017/1/10/14231188/bento-closed-san- fra...](https://sf.eater.com/2017/1/10/14231188/bento-closed-san-francisco)

<comment><USER32> Weren't they on the Gimlet Startup podcast too? [1] Looks to be a different company/founder though.

The other bento started out trying to make the meals themselves but couldnt make them cheap enough. They were losing money on every one sold. Eventually, if I remember right, they tried to pivot to a service like this that got meals from restaurants, but didnt fair much better. They were doing last mile delivery though if I recall.

[1] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/kitchen-confidential- sea...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/kitchen-confidential- season-3-episode-6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Unicorn: Scooter companies that rent by the minute lose 2 percent of their fleet per day to damage and theft, and that means customers don't have a safe scooter available when they want one.

Is this really offering an attractive alternative to Bird, Lime, etc. from a customer perspective? It seems like they're solving more of a scooter company problem than a customer problem. As a customer I can't imagine a case where I'd prefer to rent for weeks at a time vs. single-use or buying my own scooter.

<comment><USER33> The only use case I can think of is if I'm traveling and staying some time in the same city.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, that settles the Unicorn vs. buy comparison but is Unicorn better than Bird/Lime in that case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://instapathbio.com/](https://instapathbio.com/) Hopefully this isn't a repeat Theranos

</comment><comment><USER35> Had the same idea as Keynua. I quickly (foolishly?) dismissed it because of Deep Fake. How would they ensure trust in the video?

<comment><USER36> There are a couple methods to detect "liveness" including depth perception of stereo-capable cameras, measuring reflection of IR emitter, eyeball movement, etc.

Source: work at an FR startup

<comment><USER35> Does it require specialized equipment? If yes, what's the value of video vs fingerprint reader that's more ubiquitous?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> JetPack Aviation making a real-life speeder from Star Wars is one of the more audacious companies I've seen from YC in a while. Simultaneously impressed and terrified if this ever goes anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, these are really creative and fun. Damn, impressed. Makes me jealous of future generations that will have access to so many more cool things than I grew up with.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there an algorithm that would predict which of these startups would result in a very generous earn-out?

</comment><comment><USER40> Cong!

Just too many...

We need a top 10 list...</comment>


Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49305387,00.htm

<comment><USER2> No Mountain Dew at CERN's vending machines. But they _do_ sell Perrier in cans the same size and shape as coke (33cl). After all, CERN is half over France too...

And in general, the most popular vending machines are coffee ones, much a more popular beverage than sodas. On the other hand, Restaurant 1 is open from 6am until 11pm for all your caffeinated needs, with freshly grinded coffee -the machine grinds in a JIT-fashion ;)-

EDIT: you can even check the menu of Restaurant 2 online (<http://resto2.web.cern.ch/resto2/cgi-bin/dsr?menu>). They used to have hilarious Engrish translations of the French names, such as "eat man" for "croque monsieur" -a kind of sandwich-.

<comment><USER3> No Mountain Dew because he took it all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the best april fools joke I've seen so far. The most believable one, that is.

The best one would have to be reddit's admin free for all

<comment><USER5> Damn. I keep falling for it.

<comment><USER6> I felt for it until I did a google search to see: one single news item.

Maybe that kind of reflex will be useful when some botnet makes an attack on the nytimes or the wsj.

(who knows, to mess with the stock exchanges or something, just throwing ideas here)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To quote the traveler: "The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

It's an odd dystopia the future is preparing for us.

<comment><USER8> I giggled at that quote for ten minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The internet is nearly useless every April 1st. It'd be annoying if it wasn't so damn entertaining.

<comment><USER10> So true. April 1 should be a national "stay off the internet and go outdoors" day.

<comment><USER11> That would be a nice sort of holiday. Discussion sites could auto-reply to any comments made on that day with their choice of "go outside" reminders, "get a life" insults, or helpful links to local outdoor or otherwise just non- internet activities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am so disappointed that this isn't real.

</comment><comment><USER13> Doctor Who, HG Wells' The Time Machine, Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys.

Did I miss any references?

<comment><USER14> I think I need to hand my geek card in - I only caught the Doctor Who one.

<comment><USER15> Hey that's better than me. I didn't get any of them.

<comment><USER16> Would you concede your geek card to me, please?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That man is clearly not from the future.

I, on the other hand, _am_ from the future. And in that future, I am the only man. Since it was not me that was arrested at the LHC, it follows logically that he was not from the future. I, however, will soon be taking a long and much needed vacation back to the future, and when I return from vacation, back to the present time, I will make it a point to appear back at the LHC, a few seconds before that other man appears, and I will trip that man as he walks by.

And then I will take his wallet.

</comment><comment><USER18> In other news.. Canada buys half of Hawaii [http://finance.sympatico.ca/news/ContentPosting?newsitemid=b...](http://finance.sympatico.ca/news/ContentPosting?newsitemid=bfb638d2-3b51-4806-9fca-d74f1723dcf3&feedname=foolish&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=False)

<comment> a-priori This is a joke, obviously, but there have been a couple occasions where Canada has seriously looked into making the Turks and Caicos islands a province. So, it's not far off.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_and_Caicos_Islands#Propos...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_and_Caicos_Islands#Proposed_union_with_Canada)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> FTA:"...the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone"

Break me off a piece of that future history!

</comment><comment><USER20> In other news.. [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of- com...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company- name.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Did he have an IBM 5100 with him?

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone else who immediately thought "John Titor!"? :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I really wanted this to be true. Just for a second.

<comment><USER16> Reading a comment like this one for the second time in this very thread, it too much reminds me about those folks who really wanted Pandora to be real.

So, hmm. Maybe scientists should start heading for some technology that converts really really hard wishes to reality.</comment></comment>


Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Fabric Switches ACI Mode Default SSH Key Vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20190501-nexus9k-sshkey <comment><USER2> While it's overly flippant, I somehow enjoyed the register's take on it:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabiliti...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/02/cisco_vulnerabilities/)

</comment><comment> java-man I don't understand how this could happen in 2019. There were multiple people involved who coded, reviewed, tested the code, signed off on the release.

The other possible explanation is that it's intentional.

<comment><USER3> Are we sure Cisco does any of that stuff?

I picture their code coming in as .zip email attachments from whatever outsourcing company, and landing on an NFS share somewhere. I'd be impressed if they had version control, let alone code review.

<comment> java-man good point.</comment></comment></comment>


Neovim Newsletter – Issue #1 – A New Hope - <AUTHOR> http://neovim.org/news/2014/june/

<comment><USER2> There are a few things that impress me with the neovim project

1\. The speed in the refactoring.

2\. The (apparent) ability to come to a consensus quickly.

3\. The quality and depth of the communication of the progress and ideas.

I wish them all the success.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incredible, how fast they move. And it feels very professional & friendly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tangential but I've been searching for vim plugin that can do intellisense/autocomplete like Eclipse or IntelliJ, does something like this exist?

<comment><USER5> Have you given YouCompleteMe a shot? [http://valloric.github.io/YouCompleteMe/](http://valloric.github.io/YouCompleteMe/)

<comment><USER6> YouComplete does not currently work with neovim as neovim does not ship with python bindings yet.

<comment><USER7> It's worth noting they appear to be working closely [1] with Valloric to ensure that vim plugins will easily work with NeoVim.

[1] [https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/582](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/582)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would it not have been better to start from scratch?

<comment><USER9> Probably yes. I wondered this myself when I heard about this reengineering project which I agree needs to be done after delving into the vim source before.

However the time to market before it was even slightly usable would be rather large I imagine. I wrote a very basic clone of "ed" in Z80 assembly back in the 90s and it took me nearly 6 months before I trusted it with a file that wasn't disposable.

Perhaps there should be two projects starting at each end of the problem and see which one wins.

<comment><USER10> I really don't want to see more unnecessary fragmentation in the open source world.

I know, free time is contributed to wherever the programmer pleases, but it's sad to see tons of project not to walk the last mile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope this project merges with vim at some point.

<comment><USER12> By merge you mean replace, right? Because at this point the trees have diverged enough to make a merge a nightmare.

<comment><USER6> Though they are backporting vim patches all the time. Some of those patches must be hard to backport into neovim given the divergence.

<comment><USER13> The code is just being refactored so a lot of the code that needs to be patched still exists. The patches are all quite small as well; it just exists in different places.

Take a look at some of the patches to see:

\- [https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/24c22daf94f8f38f83...](https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/24c22daf94f8f38f83973c8c01a10d74c08feffe)

\- [https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/80c6f97da6e5c49f35...](https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/80c6f97da6e5c49f35680e3988a6fcef67caa1ff)

\- [https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/b069ad535cfce8f1aa...](https://github.com/oni- link/neovim/commit/b069ad535cfce8f1aa0665cfcd5da21346d2aa51)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why young people today don't know how to date offline - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/09/how-date-without-dating-apps/597439/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is such a HUGE problem. My brother and his wife, require their 16 year old to ask a girl out face-to-face as opposed to in a text, if he's wanting to actually go out. Honestly, it was a struggle for him. Once he tried it though, it boosted his confidence. Kids nowadays have no idea how to actually have a real conversation to get to know one another.</comment>


Key Differences Between Respirators and Masks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/956213O/differences-between-respirators-and-masks.pdf <comment><USER2> Good overview. The 'comfort masks' were pretty useless and 3M discontinued them. It's almost impossible to find any N95 masks now because people are hoarding them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do comfort masks protect others from the droplets if you are sick?</comment>


The Fishing Industry is the Greatest Threat to Our Oceans - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/seas-stop-eating-fish-fishing-industry-government <comment><USER2> No it isn't.

The greatest threat to our oceans is the acidification and temperature rise that result from excess atmospheric CO2. The fishing industry is also a huge and growing threat. The magnitude of the former can be estimated by noting how it is strictly worse than the very bad latter.

<comment><USER3> Agree. I also think there is a weak argument that standard economics would prevent certain people from buying seafood if supply went down.</comment></comment>


Rstat.us - Distributed Twitter with Ruby and ostatus - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/4062775436/rstat-us-distributed-twitter-with-ruby-and-ostatus

<comment><USER2> Pretty awesome! I've been working on a couchdb ostatus app for a few months. You guys can use the frontend if you want: <http://github.com/maxogden/couchappspora>

</comment><comment><USER3> My first thought: why not use (and contribute to) StatusNet? My second thought: who wants to contribute to a PHP project (StatusNet)?

<comment><USER4> StatusNet uses ostatus. So does rstat.us.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. And the point of standards like OStatus (and it's component specs) is that we don't all have to be using (or contributing to) the same software... instead we can build a myriad of apps that work together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do people keep coming up with new open source applications to compete with Twitter (and a lesser extent Facebook)? The way to disrupt these isn't with an application -- it's with a protocol.

<comment><USER7> They all use the same protocol: ostatus

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Checkout the unhosted.org project for a group that is taking on this project large scaple.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a way to run it (maybe not now, but in the future) _not_ in Heroku?

<comment><USER10> I don't see why not. It looks like a standard Rack application so you could follow any guide to deploying rack applications, for example using Passenger (<http://www.modrails.com/documentation.html>) or Unicorn and nginx ([http://blog.tomkersten.com/2010/11/14/nginx-unicorn-rvm- serv...](http://blog.tomkersten.com/2010/11/14/nginx-unicorn-rvm-server- setup.html)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to have choice, but I'm wondering when people will be able to install those applications themselves. Services are so web 2.0 :-p

<comment><USER12> Status.net uses OStatus and is open source: <http://status.net/open-source></comment></comment>


The Ten Minute Build - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/09/ten-minute-build.html

<comment><USER2> This article is breaking my heart. For me full build (C++) + unit tests takes about an hour on a good day, but I've seen times as long as 5hrs when the build server is acting up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn, poor java people. 10 minutes just to build! I thought that more than 3 minutes to run the full test suite was so long it killed productivity.

No wonder java developers like 2 week or 1 month scrum cycles and infrequent releases. They work in slow motion.

</comment><comment><USER4> I drop a brick if the build takes more than 30 seconds.

10 minutes is one hell of a compile-pray-cycle.

At the moment I'm suffering a 60 second build on a project and it's very frustrating.

<comment><USER5> It usually takes me about a tenth of a second to hit Control+C, Control+K in emacs, but the file is compiled and loaded into the running Lisp image much quicker than that.

Sometimes, I have to recompile several files due to a modified macro definition, and it can take several seconds. I am quite frustrated when this happens.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Unfortunately those of us who have to use PHB mandated software (usually C# these days) will probably not be using LISP however much we beg, whinge, pray and even threaten.

LISP would make the world a better place, if it wasn't for the business-folk wanking over the fake promises of the larger vendors.

<comment><USER6> Even in PHB land, it's possible to have the kind of living eenvironment that lisp gives you. If you need an example, look at Notch's making of Prelude of the Chambered (his Ludum Dare entry) where he has live code reloading in Java.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lightweight Vue 3 without Webpack with router, lazy-loading components - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arijs/vue-next-example <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the Vue PR with the changes necessary: [https://github.com/vuejs/vue- next/pull/1483](https://github.com/vuejs/vue-next/pull/1483)</comment>


Ask HN: What Happened to the Cuil Crawl Data? - <AUTHOR> I was trying to look through the Cuil crawl data on archive.org but nothing comes up from the collection tab under any search query. I also can't seem to find anything that suggests that the Cuil crawl data was removed from archive.org. Any idea what happened here? Has anyone been able to access it recently? Maybe it's just temporarily down without any notice?<p>https://archive.org/details/cuilcrawl <comment><USER2> The items from the Cuil collection were "made dark" (i.e. you can not directly view/download them). I do not know the specifics, but as far as I know most web crawl data on the Internet Archive is not directly downloadable, but you can use the Wayback machine if you are looking for a copy of a specific website.

Depending on what you need the data for, Common Crawl[1] might be an alternative.

1: [http://commoncrawl.org/](http://commoncrawl.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you don't get an answer here, try asking Jason Scott @textfiles on Twitter. He's kind of the "face" of the Internet Archive and he's pretty good at directing queries like this to the right people.</comment>


Easy Web Scraping with Scrapy - <AUTHOR> https://www.scrapingbee.com/blog/web-scraping-with-scrapy/ <comment><USER2> Agenty is a quick option, plus it's done in browser, same for Octoparse

</comment><comment><USER3> isn't it easier to use something like proxy crawl?</comment>


5 jQuery tips for intermediates - <AUTHOR> http://ozkatz.github.com/5-jquery-tips-for-intermediates.html

<comment><USER2> this shows that gems can be found not only in HN front page, and that HN search really works...</comment>


Ask HN: Should I let clients delete their data? - <AUTHOR> For a SAAS product i'm building I was wondering how to handle data deletion.  When a user clicks to delete a record, should I actually remove that record from the database, or should I flag it for deletion, so that the record no longer shows, but it is retained.
The reason I thought of doing this is in case a support request coming through along the lines of "i deleted this by mistake, please help".  In this case, changing a field in the table would be much easier than restoring a backup and then writing a script to put the data back into the live database.
Is this a good approach?  An alternative to having a delete flag would be moving records to a deletion table, but that seems more work.  Obviously, if a client doesn't request a deleted record to be restored after a certain period of time, the record can actually be deleted (via an automated process). <comment><USER2> I think it is important to allow users to delete data in case they are 1. wrong or 2. at the end of their lifecycle.

But it is also important to treat deletion carefully. Depending on the data, there might be a need for an audit trail for deleting data (which mostly would mean that you only mark it as deleted, so you can later see who deleted it and what was deleted).

You might also allow normal maintainers to mark things as deleted, and then only allow specific access levels at the individual customer to see the deleted data. Everything should be accessible by the customer.

I suggest that you think carefully before requiring yourself or anyone in your support to be responsible for data maintenance. This opens up for a lot of extra work, and confusion about who has access to the data as part of their daily work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the problem domain, but flagging the records when user deletes them, and notifying the user that the action is reversible for x days, and allowing them to delete the record permanently if they want is a sensible approach.

</comment><comment><USER4> Suppose the button is labeled "delete in thirty days". Then the dashboard could show data scheduled for deletion.

Hmm...even better might be allowing the user to establish their own deletion policy. And establishing policies for the SAAS company regarding recovery and recovery, if it is available, is another service that the SAAS company could charge money for...though I am probably assuming a B2B model.

Anyway, my primary recommendations are:

1\. Be clear what the company is actually doing.

2\. If the user has control of the data policy, then let them tune the policy.

Good luck.

<comment><USER5> 3\. Pick a default that is safe for users in the 75th percentile of carelessness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typically you and your users are rarely going to say "I wish this data had been deleted" you will run in to situations where you and your users will say "I wish that wasn't deleted" I rarely design an app to delete anything.

Soft Deletes are pretty standard in development and I would recommend going that route unless sensitive data is involved and there is a reason to worry about data being retained as a bad thing.

For Rails: [https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia](https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia)

For Laravel: [https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/eloquent#soft- deleting](https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/eloquent#soft-deleting)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, soft deletes, so there's an accepted term for this approach. Does anyone know what sort of books run through these sorts of development issues? I feel like I should plug a few gaps in my knowledge around this area

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a popular Ruby gem which addresses this sort of concern: [https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia](https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia)

Essentially it doesn't delete but gives the impression to the user that it deletes. I like this idea because it really does guard against mistakes.

I'm not sure if you have an ethical/moral concern with retaining data that a user thinks is deleted but that's another thing altogether (Personally, I don't.)

</comment><comment><USER8> It potentially depends on the data and volume of deletions (and maybe other factors). How hard is it for users to recreate? If you select 30 days what happens on day 31 when a user "just gets back from vacation" (or similar)? Maybe deletion should be hard enough (e.g. Trash Can + Dialogs) that requesting a restore isn't something you'd have to do (except, maybe, in extreme cases)?

</comment><comment><USER9> It is fairly standard practice to mark for deletion and communicate on the UI to the user that their data will be deleted in X days. Also doesn't hurt to spell that out in terms of service and privacy policy.</comment>


Why You Should Fire Your Clients And Launch A Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/article/fire-clients-launch-product

<comment><USER2> From what I have seen...

Client business:

* Often end up with 100 projects doing 1 unit of work.

* Often repetitive (new client, but same old ecommerce/CMS site).

* Often low progression in adopting new tech as most clients usually go for safe bets and don't like risk (even today, many still do not understand incorporating social networks and user generated content into their site models).

Product business:

* Often focus on 1 product with 100 units of work. Hence better quality result, more crafted and focused.

* Often of greater value to the market (when it is something people want).

* Each iteration actively _builds_ upon past learning more so than in most client models.

</comment><comment><USER3> The assumption that your choice is a binary one is silly. Its never either/or. Its always both.

The first product you build are in a client driven business structure where they are telling you what and how to build it. Then if you do that well enough, you can transform yourself into a product business.

<comment><USER4> I agree, the best of both worlds is still an option.

Get to a level when you can afford to not be working for a client all the time, and then plan your time to spend, say, a fortnight a month doing client work, then the subsequent fortnight working on your own flux capacitor.

That way, you might even avoid needing to source funding, too.</comment></comment>


What's Behind the Great Podcast Renaissance? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind-the-great-podcast-renaissance.html <comment><USER9> What was not mentioned in this article is how awful talk radio is these days. Especially morning-zoo radio [1] where they have the exact same 3 person radio show in every city: 1) the old school radio guy, 2) the young "edgy" dude who goes too far, and 3) the girl who never contributes anything, except to tell the guys they are being too "crazy and wild".

The shows use something called 'prep burger' which is prerecorded or prewritten comedy bits that multiple stations reuse, such as fake prank calls (real ones are illegal now). They buy access to a database of them and shameless reuse comedy bits with zero originality.

It's like mainstream pop music, the corporations have focus-grouped all the creativity out of the shows and keep everything within the safe confines of control and management. And I won't even get into their obsession for political correctness.

The days of Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony style talk shows are gone. Even XM Satelite radio talk shows have all been neutered.

This is why podcasts are new and interesting. The personailities are free to do and say whatever they want. They dont have management or producers telling them what audiences want to hear. So they create authentic and original content.

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

<comment><USER10> was the world of radio so different 8 years ago?

Everything you mentioned is a negative for traditional radio.

Podcasting became "a thing" many years ago, but it's experiencing a 'Renaissance' in 2014, which means that it's "coming back" to put it simply.

What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?

\---

I personally believe it's the success of internet connected mobile devices. Your phone is a true functional replacement for your car radio. Today, you can TRIVIALLY listen to live or prerecorded podcasts.

In 2006 you would have to pre-download everything you wanted to listen to, using a PC or a Laptop. If you wanted to listen to something on a whim, your only choice was radio.

Today, you can see a tweet from someone you follow, tap a link, and listen without any technical knowledge.

<comment><USER9> > What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?

Podcasting is no longer the domain of amateurs and the tech savvy. Talk radio is a professional business and the talent from that industry are beginning to start their own podcasts, and sometimes totally leaving FM/AM/satelitte radio behind.

In addition to pro radio hosts, nearly every comedian is also starting their own podcasts. Bill Burr runs one of the best. Hollywood is also adopting podcasts. Kevin Pollack runs a super popular show and is getting big interviews guests such as celebrities like Tom Hanks.

Podcasting is merging with the traditional entertainment industry and branching out from purely simple niche topics. Advertising is paying a lot of attention to podcasting. I heard one radio host gets paid $2 million/yr and he's not even the top podcast on iTunes.

So the difference is it's becoming a general, mainstream entertainment platform.

<comment><USER11> But WHY? You're just describing what happens when a medium takes off.

Why are all of these pros suddenly starting their own? Why is it becoming mainstream now instead of in 2004? Certainly there are some trailblazers in there that through luck or foresight were doing it early, but a lot are doing it because they've seen that the audience is there and it won't be a waste of time.

I agree with the article because it fits my personal experience. I bought a car a year ago with a Bluetooth enabled sound system and almost immediately starting devouring podcasts because of how easy it was.

<comment><USER12> Podcasting is more accessible, and the fact that it is far better than the mundane competition (traditional radio) means people are happy to jump to the alternative of choosing their own programming.

Sure, the iPod made it easier, but beyond connected cars, which the article suggests, capable software and Wi-Fi (or 3G/4G) on every device means it costs almost no effort. When I first got into podcasting, I had to plug in my iPod to a computer every night to let iTunes handle the transfer, and sometimes even then it didn't work and I would be stuck the whole day without my programming. Now, you can just pick a podcast aggregator and download the latest five episodes of any podcast in a matter of minutes. The fact that it has become so easy is what drives people to switch from listening to their local talk shows to listening what they actually want to hear.

I believe a parallel can be drawn to the threat felt by cable TV now that HBO is offering content to subscribers independent of their cable subscriptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm personally experiencing a renaissance of podcast myself, although part of why I stopped listening to podcasts several years ago was because I had moved from CA to NY, sharply limiting the time I was sitting in a car for hours (in a subway, you can play Angry Birds).

The Serial podcast is fantastic...I've forgotten the workflow of how to subscribe to podcasts and have them show up in my iPod, so I just go to the homepage ([http://serialpodcast.org/](http://serialpodcast.org/)) and listen to them individually. This American Life has an excellent iOS app that's worth the $2.99 fee.

The power of the podcast, or of radio in general, is to me, just another example of the captive power of basic, non-interactive narrative forms, something that is too easily lost in the rush to cram doodads into web publishing...I'm not saying non-interactive narrative is always the most _ideal_ way to communicate, but it certainly isn't a weak or lesser way. I think the success of Kindles and of simple publishing sites like Medium also attest to the power of text. Given that narrative power, and the hugely reduced complexity in producing single-media content, it never hurts to go simple if you have a compelling idea or story.

edit: A commenter beat me to this, I was just about to post that the serialpodcast subreddit ([http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/](http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/)) is the best place on the Internet to discuss Serial, with at least a few of the people involved/related to the events going on to discuss things. It has a respectable size of 3,580 readers...which is not much compared to the biggest reddits, but the number of threads and comments is pretty amazing...and hell, r/journalism is less than 7,000 users.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that reddit, like HN, is a highly- successful discussion forum because of its commitment to a simplified medium (virtually all plaintext)

<comment><USER14> Check out the Serial subreddit for an astonishing amount of high-quality commentary on the show: [http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/](http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been into podcasts for about 6 or 8 years now and, as stupid as this sounds, it has really changed my life. Not in some huge way, but still, those are strong words. There are just so many mundane, crappy things you need to do throughout the day. Especially since I've now got two kids. I have no idea how many hours I spend a week preparing meals, cleaning the kitchen, picking up toys, vacuuming, etc. Radiolab, TAL, Serial, Startup, et all turn that time from boring drudgery into something I _enjoy_. The quality of some of the content is amazing. I feel like I've sat down to watch a documentary, but instead I just cleaned the whole house or went for a run.

<comment><USER16> I discovered that I could listen to This American Life while playing Borderlands (and its sequels). The game doesn't have characters that talk to you nonstop (especially when you are playing side missions) and something about the shoot-y gameplay meshes extremely well with talk radio.

The weird part is that the two mediums got completely and inseparably tangled together in my memory. When I think of a specific This American Life episode I can instantly recall the 3d layout of the level that I happened to be exploring while listening to the episode. And when backtracking later in the game I see the terrain features and the ideas and important parts of the show flood back into my mind.

I find it very strange, and very interesting, too.

<comment> sir-pinecone That's really cool! I experience the exact same thing. I used to listen to Stern everyday for years. When I hear old shows with memorable parts, I can remember the exact location, time of year, lighting, and weather of the moment when I first heard it. And when I think about various locations, times of my life or things that I did, I start to remember moments from the radio show.

It's really fascinating how our brains form strong memories through these auditory and visual associations. It seems like the more interesting the the sources are, the more likely you'll remember it for many years to come.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Personally, I've gotten into podcasting when it became easy enough to do so. About ten years ago, you could download Podcasts with iTunes, then sync them as a playlist, then... too complicated.

A few years ago this changed. I now have an app on my phone that auto- downloads the newest episodes of my favourite podcasts in the background. Whenever I want to listen to a podcast, the app will have one available. Additionally, these apps allow me to speed up playback, read through show notes, and skip forward over ad reads or boring sections.

This is very convenient, and only began to exist in the last few years, hence the "new" popularity of podcasts in the last few years. I don't think we need to invoke in-car internet access to explain podcast popularity.

<comment><USER18> I don't get the auto-downloading. Why aren't podcsts simply streamed like spotify and Netflix/hulu? I actually think that's what might be continuing to hold podcasting back. I don't want to subscribe, I just want to listen.

<comment><USER19> Most of the other answers have been technical, along the lines of the storage space and bandwidth are minimal. Once you can download 20 times faster than you can listen, and you've got at least one show in the backlog of things to listen to, it doesn't matter. However, I'll give a content oriented response against streaming.

Selecting a stream at a random time midprogram would work very well for content that has no past and no future and no logic or information, like a morning zoo show or a news show or sports coverage. I guess that stuff is called infotainment now.

That wouldn't work very well at all for maybe 90% of current podcast content. If the content were aggressively dumbed down, it might be possible to join in the middle, but then no one would listen to the dumbed down stream given an option of non-dumbed down podcasts.

Maybe another way of phrasing it is its like the difference between tuning into a random webcam at a random comedy sports, vs watching this weeks sitcom episode. The former is likely to be pretty funny but no idea what you'll get, and the latter has at least has an 18 minute long story, if not a longer series based story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing worries me that is not about podcasts themselves but about the podcast delivery ecosystem: a huge share of podcasters use Google's FeedBurner to deliver the podcast RSS feed and get statistics on listeners and subscribers.

Unfortunately, after Google acquired FeedBurner, they basically left it in the state it was in when they bought it, except that they disabled FeedBurner's API a couple of years ago. With Google's history of closing down projects that aren't part of their main focus (including other RSS-related projects like Google Reader), many are worried that Google will soon close down FeedBurner and leave thousands of podcasters in the dark.

That wouldn't be a problem if there were an easy way to migrate from FeedBurner to another platform. Unfortunately, there is not. If FeedBurner closes down, you will have to change to another RSS url, which means losing all your subscribers. Also, there is no practical way of changing the URL to your podcast's RSS in iTunes, the biggest podcast listening platform.[1]

It is possible to be in control of the RSS URL and still use FeedBurner by redirecting an URL on a domain you own to FeedBurner's RSS feed, but I suspect relatively few people have done that, and doing it after the fact means, again, losing all your subscribers.

[1]: According to Apple, you can report the podcast and get them to change the URL. In my experience, they simply never respond to such requests.

<comment><USER21> If FeedBurner closes down, you'll have months to tell your subscribers to switch URLs. Google doesn't shut down something like this overnight; Reader users had 3.5 months to switch.

W.r.t. iTunes, Libsyn[1] and others say you just have to add a <itunes:new- feed-url> tag to your current feed to make the change. Is this information outdated?

[1] [http://support.libsyn.com/faqs/changing-your-feed-url-in- itu...](http://support.libsyn.com/faqs/changing-your-feed-url-in-itunes/)

<comment><USER22> A lot of people subscribe to podcasts through directories spread out though tons of different apps, and you need to get the URL updated in each app. The No Agenda Podcast (with Adam Curry and John C Dvorak) went though this pain a few months back when their old meevio feed was shut down. Despite migrating their main feed years ago lots of directories had the old feed, and dedicated listeners had to find out it was broken in their particular app and report it.

Owning your own domain and routing all your stuff (ESPECIALLY email but also anything else associated with your identity) to is so important these days it's hard to understate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article only anecdotally makes the claim that there was a downturn in podcast quality and listenership. I doubt that this actually happened. Instead podcasting has slowly been bubbling away and has now really broken through to be a more mainstream activity since it is a lot easier. I certainly never stopped listening to podcasts. We used to have to sync podcasts manually over USB to our iPods. Now we can download or stream them on the go with our smartphones and send them to the cars sound system via Bluetooth. Technology has gotten incrementally better until we reached now, where podcasting has become really easy.

<comment><USER24> This. Most of my current favorite show aren't new, some goes back to pre-2006 era. For me the game changer is the Podcast Addict[1] app, but it mostly just allows me to have a bunch of "listen sometimes" shows. For the good ones, I won't care if I have to download to PC and sync with my phone, like I didn't complain much when I have to go to a physical store to buy CD back when it's still a thing.

[1]:[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.podcastaddict&hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Off topic:

What a horrible and evil website! It hijacks the horizontal arrow keys to change articles. Please, web designers, stop hijacking my keys and doing other horrible stuff with JavaScript. The web is for documents, and documents shouldn't change how my browser works.

<comment><USER10> are you frustrated because it did that, OR because it did that with no indication or hint that it was going to do that?

To me, this seems similar to accidentally swiping left or right causing you to change articles in google's blogger site.

<comment><USER26> I personally am frustrated by sites that do this. The blogger example is particularly good as to why. I keep triggering it when I'm simply trying to scroll down an article or pan over an image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think another big factor in podcasts getting more popular these days is that the content and quality of podcasts are getting better. Today you don't need equipment and staff only radio stations can afford to produce high quality good sounding content. A computer with an USB mic and Audacity together with a tool like Auphonic [1] are enough to get good sound. The internet makes it easier to research stuff and prepare content collaboratively without being in the same room.

Because we strongly believe that there is a bright future for podcasting a friend and I started Podigee [2]. Our aim is to make publishing a podcast easier and faster so beginners can get an easy start and more experienced podcasters can focus on producing high quality content without worrying about publishing software and infrastructure.

Additionally we support a movement that was started here in Germany called Podlove [3]. They provide open source software like a Wordpress plugin for publishing podcasts and a web player which is currently completely revised (and will be pretty awesome after that). Besides that they also try to establish new standards and promote old ones that are not widely used (like paged feeds). Currently we (I do most of the coding) are working on a new kind of subscribe button [4] which will make subscribing a podcast a lot easier for listeners. We have a lot of podcast client developers on board to support subscribing through the button and we have high hopes that this will push podcasting even further. The button will see an official release in the coming weeks.

[1] [https://www.auphonic.com](https://www.auphonic.com)

[2] [https://www.podigee.com](https://www.podigee.com)

[3] [http://www.podlove.org](http://www.podlove.org)

[4] [http://www.podlove.org/podlove-subscribe- button/](http://www.podlove.org/podlove-subscribe-button/)

<comment><USER28> There's already such thing as "pcast://" links, which are recognized by most podcasting clients. It also doesn't get any easier than just offering the naked RSS feed. Any kind of obfuscation around that just makes things more painful for users.

<comment><USER27> First, it's actually not that simple :) We tried out like a whole lot of podcast clients (30+ I think) and 'are recognized by most podcasting clients' is certainly not true. That's why we recommend the following to client developers: If your OS allows it subscribe to the OS default (which is often pcast://) but also define your own schema (like mypodcastclient://). This allows us to have a 'Open device default app' link that on Android shows all installed clients that subscribe to pcast://, but also to specifically start a client with its schema.

Second, 'It also doesn't get any easier than just offering the naked RSS feed.' is also not true. We talked to a lot of people and subscribing to a podcast is a nightmare for people that don't get (and don't want to get) the concept of what an RSS feed is. And copying and pasting links from a webpage to an application is already an obfuscation (and a real pain in the ass on a mobile device) for the 'normal' user, so why not add a more user friendly obfuscation :)

However, the button is an experiment and we'll see if and how people will use it. Until now the feedback from podcasters and listeners is nothing but positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems strange to me they would go on so long about podcasts and really only talk about public radio-ish podcasts. I've been listening to podcasts since the time when it was best described as an on-demand public radio feed. Public Radio has been riding the peaks and troughs of podcasting, but I wouldn't say they are leading any renaissance, real or imagined.

If there is a renaissance, it's being created by comedy podcasts. Let's mention:

Jordan Jesse Go!

WTF with Marc Maron

Comedy Bang Bang

You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes

The Nerdist

Doug Loves Movies

Harmontown

And I'm not a huge fan but you have to mention Adam Carolla and Kevin Smith here too.

These are the people who made podcasting more than just convenient radio.

<comment><USER30> WTF and Harmontown are great. I think I'll be checking out some others in this list of yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think it's just the Hype Cycle and we are now well on our way, up the Slope of Enlightenment: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

Podcasts are growing up. Access to them is easier than ever before. With mobile phones it's nearly as easy to listen to podcasts you like as it is to turn on the radio – with the added benefit of being able to better pick and chose and, consequently, get a higher average quality (in respect to your own preferences). Plus, if you don't happen to drive but are on the go you probably don't have a radio with you, so podcasts (next to music) are just obvious to listen to.

All that infrastructure that makes access real easy wasn't there throughout most of the 2000s. It was a kludgy process and you had to be quite active to make it work. (Manual syncing!)

So it's easier to get podcasts and it's also quite obvious that spoken audio content is attractive in many situation and with our devices we can make that content actually accessible to us in those situations – so of course podcasts are alive and well. We just expected too much too fast from them.

I still expect a bumpy road ahead, but just like blogs podcasts are here to stay and that's that. Maybe they will even turn invisible after a while, you know, just another thing to do online (kind of like blogs did?), as normal as can be.

</comment><comment><USER32> I smell Blumberg. I know he's mentioned _in_ this piece, but I suspect he was also _behind_ it. Guy knows the game.

<comment><USER33> Exactly my first thought too.

<comment><USER34> Seems like some journalistic backscratching. This American Life is trying to push Serial, and the Startup guy recently had a piece on This American Life, and if I remember correctly, is somewhat affiliated (could be wrong about that). Anyway, whatever. Serial is excellent and should be promoting itself however it can, and This American Life's quality goes without saying.

<comment><USER35> Well, This American Life and Serial are done by the same people, so that's not surprising. The "StartUp guy" was a producer for TAL for many years so that's where that connection comes from.

<comment><USER33> Also Blumberg's input on Planet Money quickly descended into the worst kind of sycophancy. naked capitalism did a very good job of calling him out on it. It's a shame because some of the early shows (eg giant pool of money) were very good.

<comment><USER32> I'm interested. Could you point me to a link to where naked capitalism calls out Blumberg? I hadn't actually heard of that site (show?) before and an initial Google isn't bringing me anything. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Between an hour long daily commute, the gym, and a life toiling away in a lab, I consume 4-6 hours worth of podcasts a day. I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention Stitcher Radio. Stitcher is by far the easiest way to consume podcasts, and is easily my most-used app.

As mentioned earlier, I think the increased prevalence of 4G/LTE wireless speeds have led to this renaissance. Also, it is now much easier to produce and distribute a podcast. The fact that advertisers are willing to shell out $5k for a 30 second ad spot certainly helps encourage the production of quality podcasts. Podcasts also provide an avenue for content delivery to those who are terrible writers, but incredible speakers.

For the HN crowd, I suggest checking out the Startup Podcast by Alex Blumberg of Planet Money fame ([http://hearstartup.com](http://hearstartup.com)). It's a brutally honest, often painful portrayal of a completely inexperienced guy ditching his comfortable life in order to start a podcasting company. Listening to him pitch Chris Sacca will cause you to scream out "WTF!" in sheer frustration. But good for Alex -- he's taking a risk that most only dream about.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've recently gotten into podcasts, using Stitcher as my app of choice (which is ok, but not great -- any suggestions for Android alternatives?)

Other have already nailed the main points driving adoption: simplified workflow and the desire to fill dead time (driving is mentioned in the article; for me it is cleaning the house.)

I don't think enough is made of the fantastic marketing channel that podcasting is. If you put out a high quality podcast you can get into the ear of your target market every week, and they are even going to seek you out. It's really hard to match this with another channel, IMHO. Blog posts are of course super competitive. There is just a deluge of content and playing the sharing game is hard work, and visitors bounce. Email newsletters perform well but there is no doubt that processing email is a chore for most. Video requires too much active engagement, and is too expensive to produce. Podcasts aren't so popular yet that the market is crowded, listeners hang around for a long time, and they seek out podcasts for fill time in their day, rather than your content having to compete with other tasks that demand more active attention.

<comment><USER38> I'm curious to hear what you specifically like about Stitcher. I have tried, and own, almost all of the major podcast apps and it was my least favorite experience so far. Their whole business model seems to be to scrape other people's content, download it, compress it, serve it up from their own servers and slap additional ads on it.

Some things that turned me off of Stitcher:

* Includes it's own advertisements on top of the ads already in the podcasts themselves.

* Increasingly difficult to skip past the Stitcher ads and if you want to remove ads you have to pay a monthly fee.

* Can't browse the episodes of a podcast without actively listening to a podcast?

The UI just wasn't that intuitive for me. Part of the problem might have been that I was looking for a "podcast app" and this was more a "radio app" built out of my podcasts. Using something like PocketCasts or OverCast has been a much better experience to me:

* No additional ads.

* No extra monthly fees.

* Easier browsing/control of your podcast episodes.

What am I missing about Stitcher? I could see it being useful for podcast discovery, or for when someone is new to podcasts. I just struggle to understand it's insane popularity over other podcast apps.

<comment><USER37> I have no love for Stitcher. Back when I did the iTunes / sync dance a few podcasts I listened to mentioned it, so I tried it out. It's what got me back into podcasts, by making the process so much more convenient, but I don't really like how it works.

<comment><USER38> PocketCasts is far and away my favorite podcast app. You should check it out. They have both an Android, iOS and web client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I too love listening to podcasts every day. But I think this article has completely missed the mark on its main point. Most of the podcasts I listen to don't have ads (or just have a 5-10 second "sponsored by" spot), which is why I prefer them by far to commercial radio. On those that do have ads I fast- forward through them.

Edited to add: I often donate to support the podcasts I listen to in the hopes of keeping them ad-free.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wish "podcasts" weren't a thing.

What I mean is, a podcast is nothing but a regular file served from a web page. That's it.

And yet, by maintaining this false category, the end user is funneled through all manner of ridiculous and frustrating extra steps and wasted time just to ... wait for it ... download a regular file.

Every major media creator that has made their audio content available as a "podcast" makes it near impossible to simply grab the file. This has created a huge amount of confusion among non-tech folks who think some kind of special thing is happening when they click whatever weirdo pseudo-streaming "let's cycle through 8 different 250-character URLs before we feed the data to your browser raw" button ... "what app should I use to listen to this podcast ?" "how do I get this podcast onto my iDevice", etc.

I should be able to fetch/wget any podcast without doing major surgery on a webpage, downloading an intermediate XML file and then wading through it until I see a link.

<comment><USER41> What's the difference between that and any other type of media on the internet? Take YouTube videos for example. An MP4 video file is also "nothing but a regular file served from a web page," yet YouTube doesn't include a "download" link for any videos on their site.

<comment><USER42> Right. So one has to install additional software to automate jumping through their hoops and download the MP4 file. In other words: no difference – I wish they would just give us the file in both cases.

I already have a video player that works the way I want it to work. Same thing with e-books and audio. (Having an app to manage the library of media is convenient once the collection gets larger, but I'll choose the app myself.)

<comment><USER31> Which podcast doesn't just let you download the file?

I just checked all I'm subscribed to and they all just let me download the file, no problem. Subscribing just makes it much more practical and persistent.

There is no need for extra apps, they just make it more convenient.

<comment><USER42> This was in the context of

      "Take YouTube videos for example. An MP4 video file is also ..."

But there was a podcast recently that took me quite a while to get the real URL for because they only linked to iTunes. They seem to have fixed it now though (with a libsyn.com RSS link).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I totally missed podcasts when they were first a thing. But I've rediscovered them as part of my love of all things retrocomputing. There's some really fabulous ones out there, more than I can ever possibly listen to, but they keep me reasonably entertained while I'm washing dishes or doing house work or commuting.

It helps that the app I use kind of makes the entire thing pretty painless.

What worries me though is that several of the podcasts I subscribe to, but haven't gotten around to listening to yet are dead and thus the feeds are dead, _and_ some of the feeds only show the most recent n podcasts, so I'm missing out on lots of the earlier shows.

Podcasts and old radio shows now keep me entertained when I can't watch. I think of them basically like on-demand tv. There's more available than I could possibly ever listen to.

For the topic area I'm interested in, it honestly doesn't matter at all if the show is old.

<comment><USER44> Could you please share some of the 'retrocomputing' podcasts you listen to as well as the app to manage your subscriptions?

Sounds fantastic and something I would love to check out.

<comment><USER43> Yeah sure, I use Podcast addict. It let's you search and subscribe and either stream or download for offline playback. It also works with your chromecast.

Here's my list (warning it's long and some may no longer be alive):

       - active time babble
       - retronauts (there's a run of the show from 1up.com that's dead, and a new run that's in progress)
       - 2 dudes and a nes
       - all gen games
       - ANTIC - the atari 8-bit podcast
       - arcade and retro.com
       - arcade hunters
       - arcade impossible
       - arcade outsiders
       - arcade repair tips
       - arcade tired
       - armchair arcade radio
       - brokentoken classic arcade
       - cactus jacks arcade podcast
       - catridge freaks
       - chicken lips radio
       - completely unnecessary podcast
       - factory sealed
       - famicom flashbacks
       - floppydays vintage computing
       - game boy crammer
       - gameroom junkies arcade
       - <USER2>
       - genesis gems
       - guys games and beer
       - hardcore gaming 101
       - how I started my own arcade
       - insert coin
       - jmac's arcade
       - knights of the arcade
       - last coin at the arcade
       - lazy game reviews
       - matt chat
       - nes podcast
       - <USER3>
       - no quarter
       - one man & his mic
       - player one podcast
       - radio free nintendo
       - retro asylum podcast
       - retro computing roundtable
       - retro gaming roundup
       - retro junkies minies
       - retro junkies network
       - retro obscura
       - retro rejects
       - retro rundown's podcast
       - retrobits podcast
       - retrocollect fm
       - <USER4>
       - retrogaming with racketboy
       - <USER5>
       - <USER6>
       - sprite castle
       - super arcade theater
       - super gamer arcade
       - <USER7>
       - ten pence arcade
       - the arcade (there's 2 of them)
       - the atari 2600 game
       - the c64 take-away podcast
       - the colecovisions podcast
       - the intellivisionaries podcast
       - the mustache arcade
       - the nes club presents
       - pinball blahcade
       - retro junkies super show
       - the retro league
       - retro tech addict's podcast
       - retrobits podcast
       - tone control
       - <USER8>
       - watch out for firewalls

<comment><USER45> Looking at that list, I think you might like Arcade and Retro, a podcast from Ireland which is still a going concern. I know the makers but have no stake in it, pretty good show. - [http://arcadeandretro.com/](http://arcadeandretro.com/)

Edit: Scratch that - they're already on the list, missed it the first time

<comment><USER43> Thanks for the recommendation. I actually just started listening to it yesterday and am enjoying it quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Allow me to take this opportunity to mention that Roman Mars, of 99% Invisible ([http://99percentinvisible.org/](http://99percentinvisible.org/)) fame, is holding another kickstarter to fund the collective of Radiotopia -- the idea that podcast producers can make a living wage to produce great content.

This kickstarter, like many of them, has a funding match going on where if they get more than 20,000 backers at any level, one of their corporate sponsors will chip in $25,000.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/radiotopia-a...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/radiotopia- a-storytelling-revolution)

Even if you don't contribute, I think you'll enjoy 99% Invisible.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's too bad the article didn't mention the explosion of history podcasts, thanks largely to Lars Brownworth (12 Byzantine Rulers) and then Mike Ducan (The History of Rome).

Since then there have been several dozen podcasts to get started, with a pretty diverse range of topics. Most of the ones I have checked out start out with "I was inspired to start this series after listening to Lars Brownworth/Mike Ducan...."

[http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/](http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/) (He is dire need of webdev)

<comment><USER48> Would you mind listing some more? I'm particularly interested in history podcasts myself.

<comment><USER49> Hardcore History is fantastic. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics -- another good choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Anecdotally, it's a lot easier now with 3g/wifi/4g than it was for the average person even a few years ago.

Also, you could argue that radio has become even less interesting as a medium in the last decade. Last, a lot of niche celebrities are doing podcasts now, so when you combine those things together, it seems like the makings of an interesting inflection point.

<comment><USER51> Actually having the ability to download podcasts over WiFi to an iDevice instead of downloading on a home PC via iTunes and syncing helps immensely by removing the ritual of the whole thing, and made regular listening easy because new episodes appeared when they were available.

I forget which version of iOS Apple offered a dedicated Podcast app and separated it from their regular music app, but it improved things greatly.

I heard that the team working on the podcasts app was one or two people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If it can help to promote Rss and Atom feed I'm all up for it. We don't give enough credits to these technologies.

</comment><comment><USER14> Some more contributors:

In addition to the higher potential revenues from ads, from the standpoint of the listener, the DVR-like ability to easily skip ads has been built in from the beginning. Similarly, most podcasts have the ads entirely at the beginning or end, making them even easier to ignore (I doubt it will stay this way, though).

I also like the fact that I can download many, many podcasts ahead of time and have a huge library to choose from depending on my mood. The storage costs on modern hardware is negligible.

Lowering costs of high quality audio and editing equipment and software has to be a huge factor.

And let's not forget that a great many (close to all?) podcasts are free!

<comment><USER53> I do most of my listening in the car so skipping out on ads isn't exactly high priority. And I'll also say that the quality of ads is extremely high on most of the podcasts I listen to. Gruber's podcast and the Accidental Tech Podcast aren't just listing off a random pitch from some random company. They have discussions about the products, they've used the products themselves, most placements include discount codes, and advertisers have to love it. I actually don't mind the ads because they feel engrained into the show, it's a great model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Stitcher app is my #1 used app. Highly recommended for podcasts. Also, a fantastic podcast not mentioned in this article is "Hardcore History" by Dan Carlin.

<comment><USER55> "Common Sense" by Dan Carlin, too!

<comment><USER54> Common Sense is awesome as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I just got an iPhone and the built in Podcast app is pretty good. I have subscribed to a couple of the most popular podcasts and have been quite impressed by the quality these days. Last time I listened to podcasts was probably around 2007 or 2008 and the quality was poor and that put me off. Only a few people such as Adam Curry had decent equipment. Now it seems most people can afford decent kit and do a reasonable job at editing.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've listened to podcasts since before the term existed. In fact I seem to remember "Gillmor Gang" episode in which they are discussing that there is a new term going around for this thing they've been doing for a while.

Same with IT Conversations, it started as MP3s in directories and then rode it all the way to a dedicated company (Conversations Network) and SpokenWord.org super aggregator. All gone now.

</comment><comment><USER58> Do not forget to thank Dave Winer and Adam Curry for their pioneering efforts in giving birth to podcasting.

</comment><comment><USER59> I really love listening to podcasts at the moment, one of my favourites is the NPR TED Radio Hour.

I've recently built a simple RoR app to display the iTunes Podcast Charts.. [http://www.podcastchart.com](http://www.podcastchart.com)

<comment><USER60> Is that hotlinking? Is the podcast community fine with that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've just recently started listening to more podcasts. I've listened to "Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" for years, but I think my favorite podcast currently is Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History."

</comment><comment><USER62> For someone who likes old radio dramas ( _Suspense_ , _Quiet Please_ , _Night Beat_ ), are there any good podcasts for modern audio drama? _Serial_ sounds interesting, and is something I hadn't heard about before.

<comment><USER33> We're Alive ([http://www.zombiepodcast.com/](http://www.zombiepodcast.com/)) is the only decent podcast audio drama I've heard. Other than that you'll have to stick with BBC adaptations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm not sure what it is either. But I did just start really consuming podcasts this year, so I am a member of the consumption side of this Renaissance, even if I have no insight to the systemic patterns that caused it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Any podcast recommendations for the HN crowd? I personally listen to Hello Internet (CGP Grey and Brady Haran) and Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project (Adam Savage and friends).

</comment><comment><USER65> What is behind the podcast renaissance is on demand downloading via smartphones, and cars having smartphone interfaces via Bluetooth or USB built in.

</comment><comment><USER66> How come nobody mentioned Umano? While driving (or doing something else), you can listen to stories you'd otherwise read.

</comment><comment><USER67> For me, it's because all of my vehicles now have either an aux port or Bluetooth audio support.</comment>


Bill Gates Takes on Climate Change with Nudges and a Powerful Rolodex - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/energy-environment/bill-gates-takes-on-climate-change-with-nudges-and-a-powerful-rolodex.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10700092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10700092)</comment>


Needleman-Wunsch Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needleman–Wunsch_algorithm

<comment><AUTHOR> This algorithm is typically used in Bioinformatics for gene alignment. I have used it successfully to align text translations. It's 45 years old and still very useful.

<comment><USER2> This is a de-facto project I give new bioinformatics students. It is simple enough for them to do with minimal programming experience (most of them have biology degrees), they have often already learned how to do it by hand in previous biology classes, and it is actually useful in research.</comment></comment>


All India News: clean, uncluttered Indian news aggregating website - <AUTHOR> http://www.allindia-news.com

<comment><USER2> that's actually pretty unappealing visually. uncluttered doesn't just mean "don't add extraneous ui elements", it also means that you don't try to cram too much visually undistinguished information into too small a space. i'm trying not to be overly negative, because this is a hard problem and no one has really solved it well, but the current page does not make me feel like reading it.

another obvious problem is that you organise by source. this is doubtless the easiest thing to do, but as a consumer of news who has come to an aggregator site, i care about the story first, and who ran it second. some sort of ai classifier that could group by story type rather than by source newspaper would be a big help in deciding what i want to click on.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point about ui and it's proving to be a tough problem to solve as half the crowd likes to go with the story and they care less about the source while the other half's first requirement is which newspaper or source.

Maybe there's a middle of the road approach or possibly offer both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I created a website in 2006 called saafnews.com for this very purpose. Nobody visited. I shut it down. Looked similar to this one. It may be still visible on archive.org

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow thanks, been looking for something like this. I hate visiting the indian news sites because of all the pop-ups</comment>


Heroku Status - <AUTHOR> https://status.heroku.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The status page says build and api errors, but I have multiple apps in the free tier (EU) which are completely offline.

It seems to be caused by an AWS outage in US East [http://status.aws.amazon.com/](http://status.aws.amazon.com/)

<comment><USER2> In the last 5 minutes my paid dynos have just gone completely offline. Heroku's status page is doing a very poor job of reflecting that.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. My paid app is offline too but the status page still only mentions build&api errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> AWS is up now. Why are they still down? My production DYNO's are completely down still and the dashboard fails to load (this makes sense because it says the API's are down, but the API's are NOT the only thing down. The DYNO's are in fact down as well)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just now I was able to restart the applications manually, after which functionality was restored. Apps did not resume automatically.</comment>