Megabox was going to compete with the music labels - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2011/111221airvinyl

<comment><USER2> This is dated December 21, 2011... before FBI shut down Megaupload. Of course www.megabox.com is down...</comment>


Ask HN: What will medicine look like in 10 years? - <AUTHOR> I recently decided to become a doctor and there seems to be a lot of pessimism surrounding the field with the recent government interventions and what-not. But I'm more optimistic and can see technology playing a powerful role in disrupting old systems and creating a new paradigm of personalized-to-the-DNA treatments, tri-quarter-ish diagnosis tools, re-growth of organs and damaged tissues, and integrative medicine (whole-body treat-the-cause instead of the symptom). These things may not come in 10 years, but perhaps some will.<p>Am I naive and too optimistic? What does HN think about the future of medicine? <comment><USER2> The current trend, as I understand it, is to reduce the independence of doctors. This is happening on 2 fronts:

1.) The FDA is imposing stricter limits on how doctors prescribe.

2.) The insurance companies are imposing limits on what doctors can do.

The trend has been developing for several decades, but it only came into clear focus during the 1990s, when the HMOs first gained prominence. Doctors have lost a great deal of independence compared to what they had 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago.

#1 has at least 2 parts:

a.) The War On Drugs: this has lead to limits on how aggressively doctors can manage pain. Too aggressive and the doctor comes under scrutiny.

b.) The widening powers of the FDA. Over the last 50 years the FDA has become a general clearing house for all new technologies that effect health. Whereas its focus was once on drugs, it now has substantial say over every kind of medial procedure, including such things as pacemakers.

A simple model of the contending forces might include these main actors:

1.) patients

2.) doctors

3.) government

4.) hospitals

5.) patient insurance companies

6.) doctor liability insurance companies

A simple model would simply assert that each of these is trying to lower their risk, partly by moving the risk onto one of the other players. (A more complicated model would have trial lawyers as their own element, but here the trial lawyers are assumed to be part of #1). In a simple model, you could assert:

risk = the power to make decisions

The more each group tries to get rid of its own risk, the more it also loses the power to make its own decisions. This is a simple model, but it clearly has some truth.

What we've also seen in the last few decades is that when risk in the system goes beyond what private sector actors can manage, then the risk, and the decision making, gets taken over by the government. This was a long term trend, but the trend was made very explicit and visible during the crisis of 2008/2009, when lots of private sector actors failed (Lehman, General Motors, etc) and were taken over by the government.

I keep looking for some sign that this trend might abate, but for now, it seems likely to continue, if in modified form.

Conclusions?

You can become a doctor. You will be respected. You will be well paid. You will lack the independence that has been traditionally associated with the role. But despite that, you may enjoy the work.

<comment><USER3> Evidence-based medicine is another factor pushing in that direction. There's been a move away from the idea of doctors as professionals exercising case-by- case judgment, and more towards scientifically validated treatment methods.

I'm not entirely sure what I think about that. On the one hand, it seems bad, that instead of having the freedom to exercise situation-specific judgment, doctors are increasingly being pressured to follow predefined flow charts and rubrics, turning it into a sort of cookie-cutter medicine. On the other hand, the statistical evidence in some cases is actually pretty good: for at least a few kinds of things that have been tested, doctors who mindlessly follow a validated process have, on average, better outcomes than the more traditional approach. One explanation that's been advanced for that is that humans are not very good at conditional probabilities, so doctors often make intuitive decisions that, if you run the numbers, aren't statistically the best choice, based on available data. If so, they're better off strictly following a data- derived procedure rather than trying to improvise.

<comment><USER4> Checklists ([http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)) are another area where control has been taken away from doctors (medical staff apparently are allowed to physically restrain doctors who don't follow them), but with drastically improved results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you'll be seeing a lot more processes being 'forced' onto the profession. I know process and system engineers like looking at the medical field in general and then pull their hair out at just how many places you can let human error slip in. And I know a lot of people want to go change that.

So that'll mean you'll probably start seeing more checklists, set procedures, expert systems, etc etc. And it will reduce your independence. But it'll also (if we do it right) be better for your patients.

If you want an example of stuff engineers get brain boggled at, look at the labels on drugs used in hospital. The vials are typically sized for one dosage and so are fairly small, so you have small label to begin with (nothing -wrong- with that). And then half the label is taken up by a company label (at best). And then the full drug name is written out in tiny print.

</comment><comment><USER6> _integrative medicine (whole-body treat-the-cause instead of the symptom)_

"Integrative medicine" is just another term invented for "alternative medicine". A few respectable universities have centers/institutes for this, but it is almost always the result of a specific effort on the part of big money donors.

I think, as many others have mentioned, that more data is becoming available, largely due to the shift to electronic medical records. As a physician, especially if you're involved in research, being able to make sense of that data will be very valuable.

I would suggest checking out <http://forums.studentdoctor.net> if you don't already read that forum.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Never mistake a clear view for a short distance." Paul Saffo

Look back 20 years to see what's changed to get an idea of what may happen in the next ten. Look for more innovation to take place in cosmetic surgery, veterinary medicine, and other practices where the patient (broadly defined) pays.

Insurance, while necessary for catastrophic events, has crept into almost every transaction. It distorts incentives and is less concerned with improving outcomes than minimizing and shifting costs. The financial incentives and economic models for medicine have to change before you will substantially alter the pace of innovation.

<comment><USER8> There's a very good reason for medical insurance beyond catastrophic events. Preventative medicine is much, much cheaper. Insurance makes routine checkups cheap/free, which means they're more likely to be taken advantage of.

Medicare has a much larger say in what sorts of procedures will be used (the ever widening--yet still not wide enough--umbrella of PET imaging is a great example).

<comment><USER9> "Preventative medicine is much, much cheaper"

I question that assertion. Source?

Note that it is _not_ sufficient to merely say "if you have condition X, it's better to have caught it early", because that ignores (a) the cost of testing all the people who _don't_ have condition X for that condition and (b) the cost when widespread testing leads to false positives which cause one to _think_ the patient has condition X leading to treatment which produces needless expense, disability and/or death.

Every time you take your car in for an inspection the mechanic is likely to find things that are wrong and need fixing; ditto for taking your body in for a check-up. But on the margin, medicine is just about as likely to make you less healthy as more healthy, so being prescribed more of it is not a clear win. (see the Rand study, MRFIT, and so on)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Medicine faces a dystopian future.

Doctors are being paid less and less while patients expect more and more (and they expect it to be free).

B/c of HIPAA, most of the obvious IT innovations will be stymied by bureaucracy and stagnation. The recent backlash against personalized DNA testing shows that regulators are looking forward to squashing that as well.

Waits are long now and will be longer in the future. Doctors are harried now and will be more harried in the future.

Most speciality medical care (other than plastic surgery and other borderline areas that people willingly pay out of pocket for) is a financial racket akin to the banking fiasco. The AMA keeps supply of specialists low to keep salaries high, and battles are fought over regulations that lead to more billable procedures, gaming of the medicare system, etc.

Many commonly used procedures and drugs have very little effect and drain money from society. If you think critically and read the studies you will realize this. Then consider the Billions being paid the respected specialists who do these mostly useless procedures. Consider the influence they have in hospital policy and government policy.

Medicine in the US is a phenomenon of the American psyche. We have too much faith in the latest buzzword or technology to solve our problems, and we want to cheat death. Meanwhile, medical diagnoses are the only validation provided to so many desperate souls whose miserable lives are spent in constant complaint and agony, defined by their illness.

So many doctors traffic in the misery of these people, and the institution of medicine legitimizes it (for profit).

There are some niche areas where science is actually making amazing progress (some kinds of cancer research, mostly) but overall the medical class (those enriched by the status quo) are exploiters of human vulnerability, hope, and malaise.

Yes there are some amazing doctors and most I've met are incredibly hard working, caring people. But there are so many lies so deeply ingrained into our system that it will be hard ever to change it.

If you're a 60 year old man with significant arterial blockage, it's considered normal. You'll be sent home on an expensive pharmaceutical and told to switch from steak to chicken. The population of aging adults (55+) are the human batteries that power the medical matrix.

<comment><USER11> I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis at a surface level, but it's a first-order analysis. The forces you cite do not exist in a vacuum; people will be reacting to them. The situation you describe can not go on forever, and therefore must cease at some point. If nothing else, then if the government leans on people too heavily a black market will form through sheer, rather bog-standard economic forces. I am not saying it absolutely will come to that, I'm simply saying that places a bound on how far the forces you describe can progress.

I am not sure exactly what will happen in response to the forces you outline, nor am I sure when it will happen. I can only say with confidence that something will. It is absolutely impossible that we will in 2050 be in a world that is simply a straight-line projection from the one we live in today.

<comment><USER10> Very true... It will be fascinating to see what happens. A few additional thoughts:

\- Life expectancy is an s-curve, and recently we've seen the middle get nudged to the right, creating the impression of tremendous progress. The low hanging fruit have been picked, so the trend will likely not continue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since you're so interested in technology and science you might consider earning a PhD in biomedical research/biomedical engineering, genetics, genomics, or something else that interests you. The amount of actual science involved in the day to day practice of most doctors is negligible.

With your interests I'd suggest looking into MD/PhD programs - granted, that's a long time to spend in school (7+ years for both doctorates, then residency or postdoc or whatever), but if your interest is really in medical science, it can be a great opportunity. Also, these programs generally pay your tuition plus a stipend the whole time you're in school, so you can live comfortably instead of acquiring hundreds of thousands in debt.

Good luck!

<comment><USER13> This is exactly what I am doing. I am getting my undergrad degree in Molecular/Cellular Biology with a Computer Science minor; and am lining up going on to a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. After that, I plan on starting my own bio-tech company just about anywhere but the United States with a focus on prion and autoimmune diseases.

I would start the company now if not for the issue of funding. As I do not possess the correct shibboleths (i.e., formal education, published papers, etc.), the odds of funding are literally zero (you can stow the replies claiming otherwise, I've checked). And the no funding trend continues despite being able to show time and again that my ideas are congruent with, and sometimes predict, the latest medical research in the above specified fields.

Also, if anyone else is wanting to do a similar track, the key to having your degree be an advantage to getting out of the United States is ensuring your university (and specifically your degree) is accredited by a signatory to the Washington Accord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.zocdoc.com/> is doing some disruptive work in the area, but the high amount of regulation is really a huge limiting factor in the industry.

It's a field where people are inherently afraid of change due to the lives at stake. I think it really takes some doctors who aren't afraid to step out of the system and do awesome things. One of the few I've found is Jay Parkinson (<http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/>).

Jay noted that the healthcare system in the US is one of the best at acute care, but one of the worst at preventative medicine, which is why everyone is dying of chronic illnesses these days.

As a Biomedical Engineering Major originally going the pre-med route, I got really discouraged by the amount of work/studying/brainwashing required to work in such a highly regulated system where saving lives is secondary to your fear of getting sued.

And then you have the healthcare and pharmaceutical giants pulling many of the strings in the background amidst all the crazy regulation from the FDA, it's just sort of depressing at the moment.

But on the bright side, I do think it's all on the brink of some sort of revolution. I don't see the current model being very sustainable in the long term. It's quite possible that by the time you're done with your residency (and subsequent fellowship?) things could look a lot different.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a Medicine student, Technology can make doctors pointless. What a doctor do? He inspect the patient and prescribe medicines. That's all and its' inspection, while depend on his experience, can never be 100% accurate.

That is, if a new technological evolution, can make it possible to diagnose the human body with a simple and small device, no one will probably need a doctor and the device can prescribe you the treatment with even more accuracy.

You can also take daily inspection with the device and it'll follow your health and gives you suggestions based on that.

You may think I'm too optimistic, but who thought that one day we can see the interior of the human body without surgery?

<comment><USER16> Rather than rendering doctors pointless, perhaps the technological advances are changing the role of doctors. The same thing is happening in the education field.

Doctors perhaps need to start specializing more in areas where it is harder for technology to reach. Maybe they need to think more holistically (something difficult for computers to do). Perhaps they need to actually learn about people in intricate detail - about their diet, habits, health history, etc. prior to diagnosing. Perhaps they need to become strictly health advisors, or partners of health. Maybe they should perform weekly/monthly/yearly meetings with individuals, learning about them over time through spending time with them. Decisions would be truly informed and they would develop true care for the person (and quality as a result).

In addition, it's important that doctors stop being viewed as creatures with omnipotent and infallible knowledge and decision making powers (I know there are exceptions to this but I believe it's true for a lot of people).

<comment><USER15> _learn about people in intricate detail - about their diet, habits, health history, etc. prior to diagnosing_

It takes lot of time, and the patient won't remember anything. However, the device can know all that and with precision. The patient doesn't need to tell the device that he smokes, but it'll discover alone and with high accuracy. It can uses for example, a combination of radiographic images of the lungs, some proteins concentration in the blood....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because of the extreme consequences of failure, medicine is slow to innovate. The medicine we see 10 years from now will appear very similar to today's medicine, with survival rates from serious illness continuing to creep up.

Hopefully, I'm wrong. The medical research community needs to focus on analysis of the huge datasets that will be becoming available over the next 10 years. Coaxing trends and patterns out of medical data could result in big breakthroughs, but it is going to need a radical change in how medical information is shared.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think we'll begin to see an acceleration of drug research. Pharmaceutical trials typically take over a decade to complete, so the drugs available for general use now were devised back in the 1990s. Back then, clinical trials were largely paper-based, and needed to have a relatively large number of subjects to be proven safe.

Nowadays clinical trials are usually managed by web applications, which give a real-time view of how the trial is progressing. We're also beginning to see drug trials targeted at specific generic groups. The idea is that you need a smaller sample size to prove a drug works for a certain genetic subset of the population, so less initial investment is required. If the drug is successful, further trials can expand the number of people that can use it.

</comment><comment><USER19> A lot of people in this thread are too naive and optimistic, but not for the reasons you might think. We are in the twilight of a long era of peace and prosperity and are moving toward a time of great disorder. The West seems bent on abdicating its dominance of world politics, and no one knows what is going to take its place. Against that backdrop, trying to predict tiny details like the role of insurance in 10 year's time is pretty ridiculous, because there's a good chance that the changes won't be incremental.

Becoming a doctor sounds like a great idea, though. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER20> In 10 years:

There will be cures for a few more things than now, but the average person won't be able to afford it (if you live in the USA).

A ride in an ambulance will cost $50k instead of $10k today (if you live in the USA).

An aspirin in a hospital will cost you $500 instead of $100 today (if you live in the USA).

Somehow the masses will be convinced to still fight against single-payer and defend massively profitable insurance companies and hospitals (if you live in the USA).

But if you want to be a doctor to help people and can maintain that attitude for a decade, then I applaud you, for what it's worth, you are truly a noble human being.

</comment><comment><USER21> Since I don't have insurance it'll look the same, perhaps worse.

</comment><comment><USER22> I believe the thing about innovation in the field of medicine is that it has a lot at stake when trying new things. From theory to wide practice there are a lot of barriers, impeding the development of the things you mention.

But there is something certain, technology will play a enormous role in medicine. You shouldn't be worried about whether or not we will see such things in a 10 year lapse.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do you want to be a doctor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because (a) I've always been interested in science, (b) I am obsessed with learning about new developments in medicine, (c) I would love to help a person feel better who was suffering from a chronic disease, (d) I think I have the potential to be a very good doctor because of how interested I am in the field and how much time I'm willing to invest both during and after my formal education, (e) it's enough money to comfortably raise a family with, and (f) it provides tremendous opportunity to conduct research on new treatments, something I would like to be a part of.

<comment><USER23> Well I wish you good luck. Be sure to weigh the pros/cons of each career path that can get you to similar goals - MD vs PhD vs NP/PA. Is there a particular field of medicine that interests you the most?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think chronic disease is really interesting, and I have a particular interest in using vitamin D as a potential treatment for certain chronic illnesses. Much of the vitamin D research has been observational research, and while it shows tremendous promise in preventing heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes, more needs to be done to establish whether these diseases are caused by a deficiency, if so to what extent, and whether correcting this deficiency has a treatment effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am a medical student, so inevitably my perspective will be biased. I am a first year, so perhaps my perspective is naïve, but I want to share my two cents.

The broad view: First, life is precious. Our time here on earth is extremely limited, and despite our best efforts, we have only begun to improve and increase our time here. Every time I hear about stories like Ebenezer Scrooge or rich philanthropists donating their money for secure a legacy, I am reminded of our inherent mortality and life is one of the few things that you cannot buy. Any society where the basic needs of food, shelter, and entertainment are largely met, an increasing amount of money is spent on healthcare. I think it is no coincidence that the proportion of GDP spent on healthcare correlates extremely well with the GDP proper. This is in part due to extremely poor diminishing returns – hypothetically $10m spent on running water can increase the life expectancy of 10,000+ people by more than 20 years, but $10m can fund at most 100 open heart surgeries (which here the 5 year mortality benefit is only marginal). But with increases in the standard of living, expectations of health increase. Barring catastrophic changes, our emphasis on health will not diminish. _If you want to work in a field of high importance, where effort will be rewarded, there are many challenges, and technology is constantly changing and improving, medicine is a good choice._

A ground level perspective: Second, medicine is difficult. Undoubtedly there are many challenges in the path to become and the practice of a physician. There are many problems in the structure of healthcare, there is decreasing independence, and the training path is only lengthening as medicine becomes more and more specialized, but there are many benefits and joys unique to the medical profession. You are privy to the breadth of human experience, from life to death, and are gifted with a perspective unparalleled in beauty and complexity. When you work with a cadaver for the first time, I hope you are overwhelmed by how inherently private and precious the gift is before you. I am convinced that are few experiences more acutely beautiful or overwhelming than helping someone overcome an illness or witnessing a birth or death. Biological science is an incredibly diverse, complicated, and fascinating field - as a physician, you can help facilitate the next big breakthrough or be part of its implementation. Technology will only facilitate and augment the physician's ability to diagnose and treat disease – there will always be need for someone who understands and appreciates the mechanisms of the human body.

As a physician, you will be respected and will be compensated by your ability to help others. I am certain that medicine will be vastly different in ten and twenty years, but I think the things I mentioned above are constant. If you are passionate about science, appreciate the ability to help others, and willing to work hard, medicine can be a good choice. You don't have to worry about it disappearing.

<comment><USER25> No offense, but your comment sounds like a glossy press release or a sappy existential introduction to a documentary. It contains little to no concrete information or positive claims, of the empirical or speculative variety. It has a communicative magnitude of nearly zero to someone reading the comments because they are interested in substantive answers to the OP's question.

For that reason, I downvoted.

<comment><USER24> The substantive arguments I am trying to make are:

1\. Despite diminishing returns, medicine/health is a social/individual priority and significant resources are dedicated to this field.

2\. Health is a core necessity similar to food and shelter - I find it difficult to imagine a future of substantially decreased health resources.

3\. Current aims are to improve efficiency, and slow the growth of healthcare as a proportion of GDP, but it would be difficult to actually decrease its proportion of GDP, particularly if expectations for standard of living and health continue to increase.

4\. Biological science is really interesting and medicine allows you to help others.

5\. You get to see some really cool things that most people can't see.

6\. The above reasons are things that won't be changing in the foreseeable future.

For any career, there are intangible and unquantifiable reasons and benefits. I am not, and not seeking to, make a completely objective, metric based argument for medicine. To be successful, I think you need to have a passion for your career, and I am simply trying to identify the aspects of medicine that one can find passion for. For that matter, if the decision to choose medicine is purely quantitative and pragmatic, I would advise you against medicine. We don't need physicians like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On one hand, the healthcare law is a source of tremendous uncertainty for physicians. As so-called 'medico-legal' liability standards continue to become more stringent, and physicians are increasingly burdened with administrative costs, the profession is itself in rapid flux.

From my perspective, there are probably three important things occurring at a fundamental level which may be likely to dramatically change medicine in the relatively short-term.

1\. Electronic medical records and more accountability in medicine through the (eventual) re-alignment of incentives for hospitals and physician practices.

EMR makes it fundamentally easier to track where a physician practice's money is flowing, and to collect data on the effectiveness of treatments for different classes of patients. Right now, physician practices are not incentivized to focus on metrics from a business standpoint because its often not (a) viable from a cost standpoint or (b) able to be easily actionable for the physicians. As EMR technology continues to improve (see Practice Fusion for an example of a great technology which is incidentally _free_ ) and as the policy environment slowly adapts to incentivize doing what's best for the patient, I think outcomes will improve. This is, IMO, the messiest problem confronting medicine today.

2\. Genetics and genetics research

I work for a diagnostic genetics startup. DNA sequencing technology is finally getting to the point where doing business in this field is able to be viable from a cost standpoint. As sequencing technology becomes 'democratized' to the extent that individual research labs are able to purchase essentially desktop sequencers to conduct research, the quality and breadth of genetics research will probably be significantly greater.

3\. Bio-engineering

MIT recently added a bio-engineering major. Much of the early-stage research occurring at MIT, Rice, and other colleges with dedicated bio-engineering departments is extremely interesting. I hope that more colleges and the government will put money into translational research programs aimed at bringing discoveries in the lab into the clinic. Though I'm not qualified to write about this in depth, I considered attending graduate school in bio- engineering and found much of the research in tissue engineering and the like to be very, very interesting. It's just so early that it's hard to tell. However, I've found bioengineering departments to have this sort of inspiring zeitgeist pervading them that I imagine is similar to how physics felt at the dawn of the 20th-century. They aren't exactly sure what they're doing, they simply can't be at this early stage, but they know it has the potential to be very important.

I think that medicine will remain viable. Things will change, that's for sure, but I think it can be a net win.

</comment><comment><USER27> I was literally working on the cure for ALL disease, but stopped because I got frustrated with all the crap regulations and rules the government forces you to follow. If someones dieing and only has a few months to live they don't have the right to try an experimental treatment. Due to my area I needed people, animal substitutes don't work.

So instead I went into creating consumer products and am now moving on to the internet space because of new government regulations making the other space to expensive. As you can figure, I hate the government, you have bureaucrats making rules on subjects in which they have zero understanding. You have the lobbyists from the large companies using regulations to great huge barriers to entry to protect their fiefdoms. Unless the ridiculous health care law is repealed, the advances and success the USA enjoy will disappear. Before people quote survival stats, make sure you compare apples to apples, for example infant mortality is calculated completely different around the world (the definition of live birth).

My hope is that the US embraces a true free market health care system. The problem is that we have removed the pricing effect that creates efficient markets from the health care industry. What we should have is true insurance where it pays 50% over say $2,000/yr, 80% over $5,000, and so on. Your company places a set amount of say $3k per year on to a credit card (that roles over yr to yr) and you can use the card to buy any health related service or product. This eliminates all the paper cost in the system and brings back the pricing effect since people will now shop for better deals (ie why does a procedure cost $7k at one place and $2k at another across town?).

<comment><USER27> That was a bit of a rant, but the point I was trying to make was that innovations such as those I was working on will disappear unless the system is corrected. What doctor wants to be told you can't save a life because there isn't a code for it or it violates some regulation.</comment></comment>


How to Build a Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/irbook.html This is a textbook on information retrieval co-authored by the head of Yahoo Research and the authors of 'Foundations of Statistical NLP' (another great textbook).<p>Kind of like a more up to data edition of 'Managing Gigabytes', and it's just as good if not better. <comment><USER2> [http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=show...](http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=143)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks! Some ([http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/near- duplic...](http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/near-duplicates- and-shingling-1.html)) looks useful for a project I'm on. And, no, we're not trying to index the Internet or do a Google Desktop search.

</comment><comment><USER2> Jurafsky and Martin, Speech and language processing

[http://books.google.com/books?id=fZmj5UNK8AQC&pg=PR24...](http://books.google.com/books?id=fZmj5UNK8AQC&pg=PR24&lpg=PP1&ots=LqRc00EIJJ&vq=44&dq=jurafsky+martin+%22speech+and+language+processing%22)</comment>


The Perfect Programming Language [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1401061/pplslides.pdf <comment><USER2> There's no perfect programming languages. This is why you need a language that you can morph yourself at will depending on the project and task at hand, without waiting for standard comitees or benevolent dictators, and then waiting for implementers, hoping that they'll get the new features right and compatible between them.

Hence you want Common Lisp! A modern homoiconic and metalinguistic programming language that you can (if you need to) change as needed to more easily solve your current programming tasks.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for an API-first CRM, any ideas? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's not API-first and cloud/SaaS but [https://frontapp.com/](https://frontapp.com/) has an API [https://dev.frontapp.com/](https://dev.frontapp.com/) to manage all contacts.</comment>


OBS Studio: Open-source software for video recording and live streaming - open-source-ux https://obsproject.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I randomly learned OBS a while ago for doing some twitch streams in the evenings. I'm so glad I did.

I run a 6,000 people company during the day and have OBS setup to push into Google Meet. I've done townhall with live on-screen Q/A voting, hosted podcast discussions, done PIP product reviews. I use its video record feature to react to figma prototypes and post the MP4s in the respective channel for discussion.

OBS is an amazing tool and its worth learning. Even simple things like adding a compressor to an audio stream can make a huge difference to the quality. As one of our coaches recently said "Video quality is the new presence in 1:1s".

On windows its reasonably easy to output OBS to a virtual camera for video conferencing software through a plugin. I've posted a bounty of $10k recently to make this a native feature and it's getting lots of traction.

[https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1242641154576965634](https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1242641154576965634) [https://github.com/obsproject/obs- studio/issues/2568](https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/issues/2568) [https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15)

<comment><USER2> Are there any existing plug-ins for virtual microphone?

I want to use OBS'S realtime noise suppression and noise gating in another app (mainly online lecture platform Echo360). I got it working using VoiceMeeter in what seems like a hacky way, but only with high latency so far.

<comment><USER3> Use Equalizer APO with a noise-reduction VST. This is _by far_ the best option on Windows if you are concerned about latency×compatibility×underruns as a figure of merit. It is far superior to using "virtual audio cables" and a VST host (like Lighthost or SAVI) or voicemeeter.

It's not well known, but it really works spectacularly well compared to those other options. For me it never has had any audible buffer underruns (unlike Lighthost), no noticeable latency (unlike SAVI and Voicemeeter, even with small buffer sizes), no problems regarding exclusive mode (unlike voicemeeter) and it works with _every single_ application.

The UI is not terribly clear about this, but it can drive multiple devices independently, simply by adding several "Device" blocks to the configuration.

<comment><USER4> What VSTs would you recommend for improving audio quality of video calls?

<comment><USER3> ReaFIR works quite well and has very low latency. It's a bit fiddly to auto- generate a noise profile due to the architecture of Equalizer APO (the entire audio processing runs inside the Windows audio stack, so the VST panels in the configuration editor don't have a signal). Basically you use another VST host (e.g. Lighthost or OBS), generate your noise profile there and then copy/paste the chunk data into the APO config file.

Some general EQ'ing on the mic also works wonders for how well it sounds, but that's very specific to your voice and mic.

\--

Another use case of Equalizer APO where it is much better than everything else is compressing game audio. Some games simply have audio that was designed without regard for hearing safety (CS:GO is a strong contender for #1 here), and this helps immensely with it.

<comment><USER5> ReaFir is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm one of the core contributors for OBS. Our website traffic has more than doubled over the last couple of weeks due to the COVID-19 situation - when we released the v25 update we accidentally killed our site due to a cache stampede after purging the CDN (oops).

We're seeing all kinds of new uses, especially users who are integrating the OBS Virtualcam plugin to do presentations and other content sharing with apps that only support webcam input.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for maintaining OBS! Any timelines for OBS Virtualcam to be available on macOS? It seems like several software like Snap Camera are integrating with users in this mode, OBS could be really helpful this way in webinars that don't happen over Twitch/YouTube.

<comment><USER6> We're hoping sooner than later thanks to Tobi's bounty on this. You can follow the design spec at [https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15) if you're interested.

<comment><USER8> It is really awesome and fast development. I am hoping it ends up cross platform (Linux) and not only OSX specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OBS is amazing. Half our faculty just went all-out and spent thousands of dollars on some commercial screen recording software.

Meanwhile I'm doing my online courses with OBS, and it works beautifully. I have multiple scenes set up in OBS that grab different parts of my screens, and I switch between them with simple key strokes, while narrating on my actions as I do them.

It's a very simple, and very effective setup, and my students love it.

To me, it is immensely powerful to be able to switch scenes and narrate live, instead of doing these things in post. This saves a ton of time, that I can instead spend on refining my content.

<comment><USER10> By chance, do you know what software your faculty purchased?

<comment><USER11> Probably any of the education-specific tools that are maintained similar to enterprise software platforms, where they add 'online video tutoring' capabilities to check off a feature/table-stakes box, but it has a painful UI that makes OBS look like a dream to use, and adds an extra few thousand dollars to the school's bill every year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use OBS Studio with OBS-VirtualCam [0] to attend virtual lectures & hold meetings for my team. I've found it to be incredibly convenient because you can control nearly everything with scenes and the audio controls.

Before meetings start, I can broadcast music and display announcements, and then without having to hit a jarring "End Screenshare" can switch to my webcam and start a meeting. Live demos and presentations are another scene with the desktop/window/browser and webcam. 100% would recommend.

[0] [https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-virtual- cam](https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-virtual-cam)

<comment><USER13> how are you getting desktop audio (music or whatever) to get sent to your meetings? I didn't see how to expose the audio output from obs as a "microphone" or whatever to video conferencing software. I ended up hacking my setup together with voicemeeter but it's pretty sloppy and error prone.

<comment><USER10> Loopback? [https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/](https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/)

<comment><USER14> Pipewire [0] (the successor to PulseAudio) attempts to streamline this process for Linux. I've been messing with wf-recorder [1] for my screen+audio recordings, and might try to get it to spoof a camera input so I can get any program attempting to connect to the webcam to instead turn into a screen- casting tool.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire)

[1]: [https://github.com/ammen99/wf-recorder](https://github.com/ammen99/wf- recorder)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> OBS is commonly used for video game streaming, but it's a great tool for any scenario where you need to take live audio and video from different sources and display them at the same time or transition between them.

I've been using it to make a corny music interview show with my local musician friends during the coronavirus shelter in place. Whereas a lot of my fellow musicians are streaming from their phone, I'm able to connect a mixer to my computer and stream the show with really good audio quality.

<comment><USER16> The B in OBS hints at streaming, but it's also fantastic for purely recording. It's honestly surprising how lacking that space was before OBS. I remember using FRAPS/Taksi a bit, and stuff like Camtasia, but there were all pretty awful to be honesty and definitely not free or open source.

<comment><USER15> I really like using the recording feature to do sound checks. We go through all of our checks, then I watch the video locally in VLC. That way I'm certain when it goes live it'll sound the way it's supposed to.

<comment><USER16> I wish more people would do this. Or maybe OBS should have some (opt-out) warnings for when your audio is either unbalanced, too low or too loud. I seen way too videos or streams with bad audio levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using OBS for a couple months for live streams on YouTube (see [https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/ansible-101-jeff- geer...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/ansible-101-jeff-geerling- youtube-streaming-series)), and I have had rock-solid reliability, using an external mic interface, an external camera (displayed PIP), and sharing one of two displays during some instructional sessions.

One thing to keep in mind, though—unless you have a dedicated video card, and it's supported by OBS (the list of supported cards on macOS is very thin), your CPU has to do all the compositing and compression, meaning you need a lot of CPU to be able to manage the streaming.

On my 2016 MacBook Pro 13", it barely has the horsepower to do a stream and also run processes that I'm explaining (e.g. manage some VMs, run some database operations, etc.). I had to turn down the compression method to 'ultrafast', which is lowest quality (but still pretty good with 1080p output), and I also use SwitchResX to set my shared display at 1080p 1x resolution (instead of 4K/2x resolution).

<comment><USER17> OBS core team member here, just a quick clarification on this post. OBS will not run without a supported GPU for compositing; that is always handled by the GPU running on OpenGL (for macOS and Linux, we use Direct3D on Windows). The available encoders, however, might change based on the available hardware. Hardware encoders are, generally, much faster and lower impact on system resources, but may have lower quality per bitrate as a trade-off.

<comment><USER11> Ah, thank you for the clarification, TIL!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're running a modern Linux desktop you're probably running Wayland, and screencasts on that have long since been a complete pain in the neck with per- compositor "solutions" that mostly don't work quite right. Fortunately someone who works on Gnome wrote the obs-xdg-portal plugin that should fix this, at least for Gnome and hopefully soon for wlroots and KDE once they fully support the underlying portal API. Until then, the easiest way to get screencasting working is just to run in X11.

(Ask me about ffmpeg raw GPU buffer capture one day; running a bunch of codec code as root is always exciting.)

OBS Plugin: [https://gitlab.gnome.org/feaneron/obs-xdg- portal/](https://gitlab.gnome.org/feaneron/obs-xdg-portal/)

For GTK: [https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal- gtk](https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk)

For KDE: [https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal- kde](https://github.com/KDE/xdg-desktop-portal-kde)

For wlr: [https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal- wlr](https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr)

<comment><USER19> Does Wayland do anything better than Xorg? Every time I see it mentioned, it is about how it does not support this or that core feature of Xorg (e.g multiple displays with custom pixel densities/scaling, screen sharing apps being broken, etc...). What is Wayland's reason for existing?

<comment><USER20> I'm kinda new to Linux as a desktop, and thus went straight to Wayland, so these kinds of comments from ol'-timers are super interesting to me.

I run a Wayland desktop, and I start it by typing it's executable from the TTY after I log in. No fuss, no muss.

Everything works great, except there was this one game I wanted to try out that's a Windows .exe and needs to run in Wine and I couldn't quite get it to run in Wayland. So I installed xorg-server and an X window manager. Tried to just run it from TTY and it complained that there was no X server running. Okay, turns out I need another program to start X, then start my window manager, as a kind of desktop chaperone. Finally get that worked out, try running my game, and the screen tearing is a nightmare. So now I have to run a compositor in there as well to be an intermediary in the already extremely complicated X protocol. And since X needs to run as root (I think?), half the time I try to start it, I get odd permissions errors, or it tries to use the wrong TTY. As someone going the _other_ direction, I can't fathom how anyone puts up with X.

The good news, is that after it did it's initial setup and install in X, the game now seems to run fine in Wayland. :D

<comment><USER21> The screen tearing isn't caused by X. It's a faulty video driver.

<comment><USER22> You had decades to fix the faulty video drivers for X11.... Meanwhile they work on Wayland since day one.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > Meanwhile they work on Wayland since day one.

So how's that Nvidia support coming along?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are looking for a more robust solution Streamlabs OBS[1] is more popular in the livestreaming community, it's OBS on steroids. It is also open source, and just released a beta on Mac like this week.

[1]: [https://streamlabs.com/](https://streamlabs.com/)

<comment><USER24> Is this a fork of OBS or another project.

If it's a fork, why not work on the OBS project to implement these enhancements there? Is there backlash to that sort of thing from the OBS maintainers?

<comment><USER25> I think one of the reasons why is because Streamlabs sells premium add-ons [https://streamlabs.com/goprime](https://streamlabs.com/goprime)

<comment><USER16> That aside, I think it specializes OBS in a way that is too specific for OBS, which tries to be more generic. I think they both have their place, but personally I use OBS for recording videos and SLOBS adds no value for me.

<comment><USER26> I didn't know about slobs, but the idea of a "theme store" maybe would be something worth to explore on obs, It actually could be a revenue stream, just like wordpress, where the core is open source but you have several theme stores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Love it. I've been using it on Linux with v4l2loopback to get it into things like Skype, zoom, jitsi, and teams. Really slick.

For quarantine levity, this combined with live audio effects possible with JACK rack like voice changers and echos is hilarious. Maybe today's a good day to try that out on the engineering managers meeting.

<comment><USER28> That sounds like a great setup. I use OBS for recording and PulseEffects for some features like a noise gate. However, the latter doesn't work well for me.

Do you have some docs you could share on the setup you describe above, please?

In any case, thanks for sharing your setup so far!

<comment><USER27> I have a video about the JACK Rack setup at least from a while back but haven't written anything about the OBS/v4l2loopback stuff. It's probably a good time to write something like that up, eh?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igca1qT8Sjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igca1qT8Sjs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I started using OBS when our church moved our services to live streaming due to the pandemic. Our mostly non-technical volunteer media team has had zero issues using it to stream to Facebook or a self-hosted Restreamer instance. Easy to use, straightforward interface. I'm sure we'll keep using it for streaming even after the pandemic is over.

<comment><USER30> What's your setup if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER11> I know I've been getting a number of questions around livestreaming for churches lately (since I used to do that a lot more in the past), and I've been gathering my thoughts in a blog post here: [https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-livestream- masses...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/how-livestream-masses-or- other-liturgies-on-youtube)

It depends mainly on the budget, but with Easter coming up (probably _the_ major day in many (if not most) Christian churches), it seems many groups are scrambling to find a way to get a decent quality stream set up in time.

Many groups on the lower end of the budget scale are using an iPhone on a tripod (but the audio is terrible). Medium range you have one or two cameras plugged into a laptop with OBS, and you can get audio from the church's sound system. High end many places already have PTZ camera systems installed, and they just need someone to control the video system during the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've found OBS Studio to be brilliant. I needed to capture and livestream the screen of a small embedded Windows box. I purchased an HDMI-in/USB-out HD capture device. Plugged the HDMI side into the little Windows box, and the USB side into my linux box. OBS Studio recognized the new "HD Capture" virtual device, and captured the live video off the other system. I could save to a file, livestream, etc. No driver issues or problems. Just amazing.

</comment><comment><USER32> My team loves OBS! We've been using it to live stream "learn to code" sessions for kids 4-5x daily after the world went into lockdown.

Shameless self plug: [https://makecode.com/online- learning](https://makecode.com/online-learning)

</comment><comment><USER33> We just ran the entire foss-north conference virtually using OBS. Not a glitch during 4 days. I started documenting the setup here: [https://github.com/e8johan/virtual-conf- resources](https://github.com/e8johan/virtual-conf-resources) .

</comment><comment><USER34> If you are looking for self-hosted desktop streaming with OBS via nginx and RTMP, you might find some insights in my recent blog post: [https://bitkeks.eu/blog/2020/03/desktop-video-streaming- serv...](https://bitkeks.eu/blog/2020/03/desktop-video-streaming-server-obs- studio-nginx-rtmp-hls-videojs.html) The nginx module also supports DASH encoding, which can be delivered by dash.js - I have it in production, but not yet updated the article. Next I'll try setting up SRT.

<comment><USER35> Also check out [https://github.com/alfg/docker-nginx- rtmp](https://github.com/alfg/docker-nginx-rtmp) for a Docker setup with a template to output HLS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been trying to find a way to easily use my green screen outside Zoom.

Have been tinkering with OBS: [https://www.rightpoint.com/thought/2017/12/19/improving- your...](https://www.rightpoint.com/thought/2017/12/19/improving-your-video- meetings-on-skype-with-green-screens), [https://streamshark.io/blog/chroma- key-software-live-streami...](https://streamshark.io/blog/chroma-key-software- live-streaming)

I'm looking for an actively-developed macOS virtual webcam tool, as CamTwist's website is showing a PHP error, and their Mac software doesn't seem to be notarized: [http://camtwiststudio.com](http://camtwiststudio.com).

<comment><USER37> Last week, HN's front-page featured "Proposed bounty for adding virtual camera" [0] that ended up generating an RFC. [1]

You might find some encouraging and helpful information there, if you haven't seen those links already.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22682022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22682022)

[1] [https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15](https://github.com/obsproject/rfcs/pull/15)

<comment><USER36> Thank you!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been using it to create videos of an infrastructure provisioning product. One of the most useful things so far is being able to record a process that may take 15 minutes to fail but only has an error for a few seconds before clearing the screen, rebooting, hanging, etc. Much easier to rewind and grab the failure from a stream than to hang poised over a keyboard waiting to bang print screen at the precise moment needed.

<comment><USER39> ...shouldnt you just log errors as you go and check the log?

<comment><USER38> Absolutely. However this isn't my code and it can fail in strange ways with an ephemeral error message. If I can't change the code, this is my workaround.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> OBS is a very nice example of developping & distributing a Qt app to Mac / Windows / Linux with rad performance.

<comment><USER41> Telegram is the best Qt cross-platform app i used

<comment><USER42> Although Telegram is QML, not Widgets - I think they should be compared as different categories.

<comment><USER40> Nope, Telegram is widgets ([https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/search?q=qwidget...](https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/search?q=qwidget&unscoped_q=qwidget))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> College professor here. This software has been a big help in the current situation. Applause for the developers!

(Anyone know how to fix that it changes red to blue and blue to red, when grabbing Firefox? I'm using Ubuntu MATE, Bionic Beaver.)

<comment><USER44> Give this a shot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnLtc63XJQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnLtc63XJQ&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER43> Well, I'll be damned. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> OBS is great! Huge thanks to everyone who's maintained it over the years.

As a side note, I'm trying to figure out how to do live streaming with less intense CPU requirements. My use case is effectively trying to use a Macbook Air to stream high quality video (720p, 30fps). Is there any way I could stream the video raw and encode it on a VPS somewhere? Or is there just a very real hurdle of needing a beefy CPU for any live streaming?

I've looked at WebRTC a bit, but can't seem to find much in terms of how to broadcast it in a 1 to many (like Twitch, Vimeo, etc) when using WebRTC. Mux.com at least allows you to do that if you have an RTMP source stream, but I can only find web based libraries that require Flash to stream.

Is there some HTML5 camera broadcasting solution that I'm missing? Some kind of VPS software for turning WebRTC into RTMP? I'd appreciate any direction I can get on this!

Thanks

<comment><USER46> I'm actually working on a blog post on the state of streaming live from a browser! WebRTC is...a bit of a monster, especially if you want to broadcast one-to-many.

I've been hacking around with using the MediaRecorder API and piping that through WebSockets to a server that publishes via RTMP. It's definitely rough, and browsers de-prioritizing requestAnimationFrame callbacks when the tab isn't in focus kills things, but it's promising. It runs shockingly well on a Glitch instance for what that's worth.

You need a Mux ([https://mux.com](https://mux.com)) stream key for the demo, but you could quickly edit it to use any RTMP URL: [https://mmcc-next- streamr.glitch.me/](https://mmcc-next-streamr.glitch.me/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is there some news with OBS or just sharing this wonderful piece of software?

</comment><comment><USER48> OBS is really great, but beware the latest version has some serious crash issues on Catalina. Seems related to password managers and HTML forms with password inputs. Had my stream crash over and over until I stopped using my browser during the session.

<comment><USER6> This is triggered by secure input causing issues with the hotkey code. We're aware of the issue and should have a hotfix out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Big fan of OBS!

I've been using OBS to stream to Youtube and record locally at the same time.

It's been over 400 videos now ever since Google Hangouts killed Youtube integration last August.

Why did Google kill integration between their properties, who knows? ([https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/google-is-killing- yo...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/google-is-killing-youtubes- hangouts-on-air-this-year/))

With OBS streaming is dead simple just enter your Youtube API key and off you go.

If you are on a laptop with integrated AND discrete video cards there can be some issues with OBS recognizing the correct GPU.

</comment><comment><USER50> I use OBS to record training videos for our engineers. I used QuickTime for a while, but jumped ship when QuickTime crashed and ate an hour-long session, with no recoverable backup.

</comment><comment><USER51> There's one feature of OBS that's missing for me, and that's recording sources to separate files. I believe this is called "multicording", and it something I've only found in paid software, like screen flow.

Here is the multi year discussion in the OBS forums: [https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/recording-sources-to- se...](https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/recording-sources-to-separate- video-files.61173/)

<comment><USER52> The main big one for me is similar - not recording but being able to stream to multiple servers.

We can do things like run nginx with nginx-rtmp-module as a proxy, but then you have to put stunnel or something in front of it for Facebook because nginx-rtmp-module doesn't support rtmps (and development seems completely stalled).

<comment><USER53> I've been looking into building a containerized FFMPEG stream routing solution but haven't been able to think of a good use-case. What is your alternative destination after Facebook RTMPS?

<comment><USER52> We're just trying to stream to YouTube and Facebook at the same time.

Actually, ffmpeg is the other solution I was looking at playing with on the weekend.

<comment><USER53> FFMPEG is a great tool for any IP video streaming workflow. You can easily define multiple outputs. Check out the live streaming guide: [https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/StreamingGuide)

I just haven't yet found a good way to export active stream status from the CLI out to other interfaces for the tool I'm working on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> One thing I wish you could do is have two different copies of an input - in my case, I wanted a video stream input (webcam) where I apply one set of filters to it for one scene, and a different set of filters to another scene. Seems like filters are globally applied to the instance, and you can't have two different scene elements with the same video input device.

<comment><USER17> You can use groups to accomplish this currently, but it's not the most obvious thing. Just create two groups, and add the shared source to each group, then apply your filter to the group itself. Scene-specific filters and other scene- specific features is something that is on our to-do list, but very tricky at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Is there anyway I can make it pretend to be a webcam so I can use the output as a "camera" source for skype, teams, etc?

<comment><USER56> Yes there's OBS Virtual Camera and there's NDI tools

See the setup section here: [https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebca...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebcamVideoCallsToTheNextLevelWithOBSNDIToolsAndElgatoStreamDeck.aspx)

<comment><USER57> Zoom on Windows 10 does not seem to recognize the obs-cam virtual camera. Unfortunately.

If anyone has a solution for this, I'd love to get a hint.

<comment><USER6> Their latest Windows version has some weird DLL blacklist which blocks the ffmpeg DLLs used by the virtual camera. I made an inert version of the DLL[1] but this will break screen sharing due to a set of digital signature checks Zoom does before screen sharing.

[https://twitter.com/R1CH_TL/status/1243734261628383232](https://twitter.com/R1CH_TL/status/1243734261628383232)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Your icon is very close to the BDSM icon! example: [https://i.pinimg.com/236x/20/5e/5f/205e5fa719e6063ed5c3cfba8...](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/20/5e/5f/205e5fa719e6063ed5c3cfba881988bd --dom-pride-flag.jpg)

<comment><USER59> Wait, a sexual fetish has its own icon?

<comment><USER3> Got a flag as well

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#Symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM#Symbols)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Can't manage to record my desktop, only get a black screen instead. Can't manage to find a fix, even 3 years latter while not being the only one...

I know it's free... Still, to me, after couple years of sponsorship it should have fixed itself... (specially with hardware as common as mine.)

<comment><USER6> This is a common problem with laptops due to the multi-GPU power saving setup most laptops have, we have a thread at [https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen- whe...](https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen-when- capturing-read-here-first.5965/) which explains how to fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Did anyone report that bizarre OBS bug that Jon Blow ran into while streaming a week ago? It was pretty entertaining...

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/575151695?t=00h00m25s](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/575151695?t=00h00m25s)

<comment><USER62> I wish they would have explored what some of the commenters noted: does it happen when you position OBS such that it has to recursively capture itself? (The feed contains a picture of the feed which contains a picture of the feed which …)

It seemed like some positions, it would handle 2-4 recursions okay, but the positions where it had to do infinite recursions were the ones that the frame- rate plummeted.

<comment><USER63> Recursion would have nothing to do with it. Recursive capture does not add any load, it just looks weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It may be just me, but I don't find the project's main page clear and intuitive; the first screen capture looks scary and there is nothing in that page that suggests (shows) the software is easy to use. Maybe it is easy to use, it's just not showing it.

<comment><USER65> I don't think many people would describe OBS as 'easy to use'. I think that typically comes with the territory of very powerful software like OBS though. Steep learning curve and all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Using OBS to record and stream interactive tutorials for customers, teaching machine learning for audio. Works super to use v4l2sink plugin for Linux to emulate a webcam and put it into any standard videochatting software. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER67> Used it with windows for years.

I use it to record my screen for training my outsourcers.

Works great and is simple.

</comment><comment><USER68> I absolutely love OBS, and use it consistently three times a week for streaming my church's worship services. It's an amazing tool, and I'm really thankful for it. That said, if you want to stream on macOS, be ready for some friction. I believe they are working on some issues with updating to metal, which should help quite a bit. Right now, studio mode will drop your FPS by half because OBS doesn't disable v-sync properly, and window capture is really buggy. If you are wanting to commit to streaming, you may have better luck on a pc right now.

</comment><comment><USER69> Even though OBS was initially aimed at streamers, it's also what I use to record all the YouTube videos I make for [https://alchemist.camp](https://alchemist.camp)

It's surprisingly flexible and there are plugins for almost everything. If you want to display keypresses, you can. If you want to add a layer and have both your video camera and screen incorporated, you can. If you want a layer to show keypresses, like I did when recording a video on VIM, you can do that, too.

<comment><USER70> By the way, if you want to pre-record keystrokes for demos/presentations/etc and still make it look like you're live-typing, I made a thing:

[https://gitlab.com/stavros/itsalive](https://gitlab.com/stavros/itsalive)

<comment><USER69> Thanks, but I like to just type and talk as I go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I love OBS, just started using it a couple weeks ago. I am using the v4l2loopback plugin on Linux to output the video to Zoom. Is there a way for it to output the sound similarly to be used as an input in Zoom for Linux? I'm using a blackmagic decklink mini recorder as input, and Zoom won't accept it as a mic, but OBS does. I've tried a bunch of hacks with pavucontrol, but nothing will let me accept the OBS output as an input into Zoom. Does anyone have any ideas?

<comment><USER71> Nevermind, this fixes it from elsewhere in the thread. Thanks! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22754216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22754216)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> OBS is amazing. I've used it to record canned demos and presentations for a year or so now, and it just works great on Linux. I even use it to record demos of a wip or partially working feature that I'm working on and attach the video to issues in our gitlab instance to request feedback from stakeholders.

Its feature list is really impressive, but it's great for this kind of simple use case too. Be sure to give it a try and many thanks to the maintainers!

</comment><comment><USER73> I try to love OBS but even the simplest thing (sharing a portion of your screen) requires tons of fiddling to get it work (you need to get the right area with sliders instead of just drawing it on the screen).

I guess it's once again the same old story. In theory, it is a wonderful piece of open source software, but because of the lack of competent designers in the OSS-scene, the UX is awful for casual and first-time users. For pro-users, however, it is perfect.

<comment><USER17> You can hold alt+drag the red bounding box to crop easily. Screen-region select is on our to-do list, but hasn't been a high priority as it's technically already possible to get the same end result, just not as simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Related: The NDI HX camera app for iOS is currently free (instead of 22€) - with the OBS NDI plugin you can use your iPhone or iPad as a low-latency webcam for OBS. [https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ndi-hx- camera/id1477266080](https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ndi-hx-camera/id1477266080)

</comment><comment><USER75> Some of my teammates at GitLab are coordinating the Cloud Native Summit online event. They intend to use OBS + Zoom (and possibly Restream). If there are any resources you recommend for setting up OBS + Zoom + Restream for (mostly) Mac users, I'd love to share with the team. For context, the event will feature a mix of keynote and panel-style conversations.

</comment><comment><USER76> If anyone is wondering how they can use this with something like zoom, I found this really handy blog post about it:

[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebca...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TakeRemoteWorkerEducatorWebcamVideoCallsToTheNextLevelWithOBSNDIToolsAndElgatoStreamDeck.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER77> Just started using it last week, and we'll be using it for our first virtual meetup next Thursday!

It's a great project, but the area that would make it absolutely amazing would be a better layout UX. It requires lots of clicking around to get things lined up and sized properly. Some UX practices from existing layout systems like inkscape would go a long way.

</comment><comment><USER78> Love OBS.

I have a Sony A6000 going into it via a Elgato HD60 S. A Rode NT-USB microphone and a green screen my brother made me (big, solid, wooden... it's awesome.)

OBS has enabled me to create super high quality training videos and also provide excellent remote working video conferencing capabilities. I can basically do remote pair programming with this thing... it's amazing.

</comment><comment><USER79> I started using it about 2 months ago, and I've got to say it's quite amazing.

It was much easier to start than I expected. Like copy and paste a code, then one button to start streaming on twitch.

Creating multiple views, and adding cameras was also very easy and intuitive.

It's one of the best pieces of software I've used in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER80> I have interacted with the guy that started OBS a few times because he's a member of a community I am in. He's an extremely intelligent person and definitely deserves some positive attention. If you use OBS and find value in it you should definitely consider donating, I know it goes a long way.

</comment><comment><USER81> I use OBS to record live streams of conferences so I can go back and watch them later. It's pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER82> OBS is awesome and it's helped with my company to grow. We build plugins and overlays for OBS to make it super easy for streamers to reward their audience. Shameless plug check out get.incent.com/Ingage and get free reward overlays.

I think the community effort to grow OBS has been awesome.

</comment><comment><USER83> I had to move my classes online, so I've been using OBS for recording videos (mainly me talking while I go over the slides ~ 15-20 minutes).

The only thing I would like to see fixed on macOS would be that my students could see the mouse pointer. Beside that, I think it works quite well.

</comment><comment><USER84> No joke, i was working with colleagues just yesterday on real time closed captioning, and started googling for a few ideas for Google's cloud speech recognition API. OBS was the first few hits, so i started learning all about this amazing tool just yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER85> I don't use it for streaming but for recording screencasts and it does an excellent job there. I'm sure if I dig in a little, I'd find more features that would my videos better but even the default settings (on mac and Linux) work very well.

</comment><comment><USER86> I must say, I had a rather mixed experience with OBS. I've used it before to do some streaming too, but it definitely has some issues with instability.

The example (anecdote, if you will) I remember right now: There is apparently a way to mess up your settings, so that OBS crashes. No error or anything in the UI visible. But then your config is messed up, so when you restart it, it immediately crashes again. You cannot fix it, unless you delete the settings files or reinstall the application.

It should not be possible to ever reach a situation, where you can make an application crash, by only accessing the settings it provides. It should warn about invalid settings or disable settings, which cannot be used, because of settings or reset the settings to something valid or ... But in OBS it's possible to basically mess up the whole application using its own settings UI.

</comment><comment><USER87> Is this a brand new service or did they release recently because of COVID?

Never heard of them before.

I have been searching for open source projects to help bring my local yoga studio online for the past few weeks and this looks promising!

<comment><USER88> OBS has dominated the livestreaming working for a while now (e.g Twitch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I'm curious how large the development team is. There is an impressive community around OBS but seems to be many more requests for help rather than helpers.

<comment><USER63> There's one full-time developer, about 5-10 regular free-time developers, and about 5-10 free-time support helpers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Just found this a few days ago for doing a screen recording. Works really well but the UI could maybe use a little cleanup to make it easier to use.

<comment><USER91> As a seasoned user, I love the UI. But also I'm a seasoned user.

It is a highly complicated software, but it's extremely flexible and surprisingly reliable for all things streaming and screen recording. A dead- simple mode might suffice but if you do anything with streaming or recording it's worth it to learn the deeper idiosyncrasies of OBS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I'd (seriously) like to see how it stacks up against Camtasia, which I've just discovered in my new job that I have no budget for.

</comment><comment><USER93> I have a topic adjacent question.

If OBS is a good mixer, what's a good open source video editor? Or can OBS do edit prerecorded files as well?

<comment><USER94> I use Blender's, but requires knowledge of how things work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I tried this a while ago and didn't find the option, is midi supported to trigger scene changes, fadings, etc...?

</comment><comment><USER96> Love OBS. Does anyone know if there is a way to use the hardware encoder with a Radeon GPU on Mac?

</comment><comment><USER97> Any tips on how to integrate OBS with Zoom Presentations and make use of OBS features?

</comment><comment><USER98> Only thing I've liked more is vMix but that costs quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER99> We use it to stream product demo's to Workplace (Facebook product).

Works great!

</comment><comment><USER100> How does this encode the video?

</comment><comment><USER101> This is a great app.

</comment><comment><USER102> Is there anything like this that works with WinXP?

</comment><comment><USER103> This is old software, old news. Why is it here?

</comment><comment><USER104> OBS is simple enough that my 6 year old can record minecraft videos with it and work out any little quirks.</comment>


Presto Web rendering engine (Opera 12.15) on GitHub.com - <AUTHOR> https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/13434/opera-presto-code-in-github <comment><USER2> It's already been DMCA'd by Opera. From reading the DMCA notice, it looks like it was a real leak. [0]

[0] [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-P...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-01-12-Presto.md)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.change.org/p/opera-software-open-sources-of- pres...](https://www.change.org/p/opera-software-open-sources-of-presto- engine)

Please sign this to push Opera open sources for real

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://geektimes.ru/post/284588/](https://geektimes.ru/post/284588/) \- some discussion in russian

<comment><USER3> There is already a patch for VP9 in there :o

"Patch to support VP9: [https://paste.fedoraproject.org/528850/14846609](https://paste.fedoraproject.org/528850/14846609) First, you need to update the firmware to 1.3.0 libvpx"

This is freaking amazing. Opera was the fastest most optimized browser I ever used. Started with 6, finally broke down and switched to Vivaldi after 1/4 of the web stopped working on 12.16 due to ECDHE :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DMCA. It's down.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a shame they aren't releasing it. Same for carakan - they had a marvelous JIT at the time, which would surely make a great study.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mirror: [https://arges.hawkcdn.com/presto.zip](https://arges.hawkcdn.com/presto.zip)

</comment><comment><USER7> Now the more interesting question is, How was it leaked, were Opera Hacked?

I really wish Presto could be open sourced, it is small and nimble, and should fit well for those using Web Technologies as Desktop Apps. And if it Presto refocus on that, they can finally throw away all the IE quirks mode.

</comment><comment><USER8> Darn, got my hopes up that it might be a legitimate release and I might be able to use Opera again one day.

</comment><comment><USER9> You can still find it, I just successfully built it for Linux this morning. People already have it running on Raspberry Pis, a platform Opera never supported.

</comment><comment><USER10> That was fast...</comment>


Forbes on why we need to shut Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies down - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/03/10/we-need-to-shut-bitcoin-and-all-other-cryptocurrencies-down-heres-why/ <comment><USER2> The title is a little misleading. It makes it sound like this is some kind of official Forbes position piece or even the opinion of Steve Forbes himself, but it's just a Forbes contributor. There are many of those and they're really just glorified bloggers. The disclaimer is there for a reason: "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer."

It's odd to even include that in the title. Stories from e.g. the New York Times do not usually have a title starting "The New York Times on..."

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, really bad choice of words on my part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So the argument comes down to "if we can't stop criminals from using it, it should be illegal"?

That seems pretty weak...

<comment><USER4> It's simple really.

Make everything illegal.

<comment><USER5> Crypto. Encryption! Guns. Social media!

If terrorism has taught us anything, it's that security is more important than freedom.

<comment><USER6> I'd hardly say that's the lesson terrorism has taught us. It taught us the people make laws that value security over freedom. I very much disagree that it's the correct response or 'more important'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "We must make all cryptocurrency as we know it today illegal." A feature of crypto is its resistance to regulation. Go ahead and try to make it illegal. It may reduce the price but the technology won't go away. That cat is already out of the bag.

And unless I'm misunderstanding this article, what he says applies to all malware. If I'm not mistaken malware scanners now look for malware mining software.

The author is just demonstrating that he doesn't understand crypto.

<comment><USER8> Bitcoin's value these days is tightly coupled with its exchange value. Crypto is resistant to regulation and decentralized; exchanges are not. (yes there are decentralized exchanges with close to no volume, and LocalBitcoin, but the lion's share goes through exchanges that rely on the traditional banking system)

All you need to do is make ACH transactions for virtual currency illegal and you'd rip the reasons for the mainstream to use it out of their hands. It would still exist; the technology is the same at $20 as $20,000. It could still be used for a barter/digital economy, but you'd kill speculation.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't speaking about its value though. Just saying that it can't be made completely illegal. There will always be crypto around in some form.

It was one of the best ways to get one's wealth off the island of Cyprus in 2013 during their banking crisis. There was a freeze on transferring wealth to other nations from the island, so islanders bought BTC instead.

"Life, uh, finds a way." ~Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

<comment><USER8> I agree that Bitcoin couldn't be made illegal. I suspect if there's a drive to contain Bitcoin, it would at the banking level; driving down the price would presumably have the desired effect (making coinware untenable)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The whole point of Bitcoin is to avoid petty self-important fascist central- control freaks like the author (apparently a Mr Bloomberg writing on Forbes just to confuse people).

Blockchain is probably the best system for establishing distributed trust in Byzantine conditions since the Freemason's secret handshake. It will take more than a whining blog post to make it go away.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. The author does not acknowledge the existence of non-POW crypto assets.

2\. Illicit mining is easy to detect and mitigate.

3\. If you can't stop it, make it illegal? Sounds hardly like a compelling argument.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd much rather have an illicit miner on my system than any other kind of malware/rootkit. At least the miner has an incentive to _not_ do bad things to my system and data, and leave the network mostly unused to avoid detection.

On the other hand, mining still takes a lot of energy and drives up GPU costs ...

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://archive.is/KA3Cq](http://archive.is/KA3Cq) \- Mirror that you can see.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like the author missed out on the initial crypto euphoria, and now wants up take it out on those who did</comment>


Show HN: SocialAmnesia-An open source tool that auto-erases old Reddits/tweets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Nick-Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia <comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to release with downloadables: [https://github.com/Nick- Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia/releases/...](https://github.com/Nick- Gottschlich/Social-Amnesia/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

What is this?

I'm excited to release 1.0.0 of my side project, Social Amnesia! This completely free and open source software allows you to wipe out old reddit and twitter posts, comments, tweets, and favorites, automatically and on a schedule. It also allows you to configure certain items to be saved based on configuration options like number of upvotes, favorites, or retweets, whether an item has been gilded, how old an item is, or by specifically whitelisting items you would like to have saved.

Who is this for?

I assume most of you are wary of what you post on reddit, twitter, facebook (if you even have one), etc. However, I can also imagine many of your friends and family are not. At the end of the day, the safest you can possibly be is to not use any social media. But I think the war on drugs and abstinence-based sex-ed proves everything we need to know about telling people to "just say no". What I believe we should be doing is working towards solutions that help reduce the damage that destructive activities can cause. This is why I've built Social Amnesia, which lets you keep your social media history clean with just a few button clicks, and set it up to automatically clean proactively (instead of reactively, after something bad happens to you).

Most of the tools out that allow you to manage reddit and twitter history are either very user unfriendly (require you to operate command lines and work with scary configuration text files) or cost money. I wanted to develop one that had a convenient user interface and was built to be completely open source so it could be checked to be sure it had no nefarious purposes. I believe the free aspect also helps get people to actually try and use it.

Why would you need this?

If you've been following the news recently you've probably seen cases of celebrities losing out on big career opportunities because of tweets or other internet posts from their past coming back to haunt them. Kevin Hart and The Oscars and James Gunn and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 are two of the more high profile examples of this recently. Make no mistake, this could happen to anyone, not just high profile individuals. If you are going to tweet, cleaning up your old tweets is one of the best ways to keep a nightmare like this from ruining a potential job opportunity or relationship. Since twitter is mainly focused on current events, and as far as I can tell it's rare for people to look far back in someone's twitter history, this shouldn't effect your day to day interaction with twitter.

On the reddit side of things, many people maintain pseudonymous accounts to post in places like /r/sex, /r/politics or /r/trees. The more reddit history you have, the higher chance you have of being doxxed by someone who might comb through your posts to try and scrape together details to de-cloak you and reveal your real identity. Keeping your reddit history clean is a good deterrent from being doxxed.

Concerns

I've received concerns about this software when I've posted it before. I'll try my best to detail some of my arguments here, but please leave a comment if you have anything to share and I'll do my best to respond to you. One of the main concerns I've heard is from people who've gone back to an old reddit post and there have been deleted comments that might have been useful for them (semi-relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)). I hear you, and to try and combat this I've added some features to this software. The first is a whitelist window, which as far as I know is the only of it's kind in free management software for reddit. Opening this window shows you all of your comments or posts and let's you pick ones to save from deletion. Additionally, when you do go to delete anything, the software will show you every item that will be deleted and ask you to confirm your decision. This software doesn't do anything that isn't possible for a user to do by simply going back through their comments and deleting them.

I realize this isn't a complete solution, so I'd recommend using this software only if you use your reddit or twitter accounts for more current events or sensitive topics. If you provide helpful advice online and want to make sure it's preserved, be careful using this.

The second concern I've heard is related to backups, archives and having a false sense of privacy around using this software. Obviously I can't delete anything from reddit or twitter's internal servers, and I can't remove something if it's archived somewhere else. And I'm also limited by their APIs (which I've detailed here: [https://github.com/Nick-Gottschlich/Social- Amnesia#limitatio...](https://github.com/Nick-Gottschlich/Social- Amnesia#limitations)). However I've done some research, and backups of reddit and twitter are sparse, incomplete, and often hard to find and access. For a while the library of congress was archiving every tweet out there, but they gave up when that became too difficult a task due to the sheer size of twitter. Unless someone is actively archiving your posts, there is a good chance that deleting a tweet or reddit item will actually remove them from the internet.</comment>