What is a music player? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/albertz/music-player/blob/master/WhatIsAMusicPlayer.md <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: VLC main developer here.

I would love to tell you that VLC (or mplayer or xine or whatever-video- engine) is great to play music, but it is not. And yet, a lot of person use VLC to play music, to our own astonishment.

Therefore, we are working to make the audio part getting better, and we are working hard on that part (next hackdays topic, in December, is only the audio core).

However, except gapless and a correct media library (which we have but is not activated), all the things listed from this article are done in VLC, including resampling, equalizer, loudness, fingerprinting, software amplification... VLC has also a compressor, a parametric equalizer, a spatializer, pitch correction, scaletempo and many downmixers / headphones enhancers. We have also Karaoke support...

Moreover, libswresample is far from being the best quality ever.

So, why don't we have gapless in VLC? Well, because to get correct gapless (not the 50ms you can have with VLC) or cross-fading, you need to have 2 inputs at the same time. And this needs quite a bit of work, notably to be sure to detect correctly EOF.

<comment><USER3> Hey, the dev of this project here,

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I didn't knew that VLC has advanced so much in such functionality like loudness normalization and dynamic range compression. How does it analyze the loudness? Does it also use the ReplayGain spec? What about album-loudness?

It sounds like besides gapless playback and a database, VLC already has everything what a music player needs to have - or what you need that VLC becomes great to play music.

Or is anything missing on the list?

For me, the intelligent automatic queue is, besides the audio quality, a very important element (because it is the way I listen to my music).

<comment><USER4> Sorry for derailing the discussion, but what do you think of foobar3000? Ideally, VLC guys would answer to this question too. :)

<comment><USER3> Foobar2000 is proprietary and Windows-only (thus I cannot even try it).

<comment><USER5> Wow, how is it even monetized? And if not, why bother with proprietary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting emphasis on intelligent DJ mode. I have been using Groove Basin[1] as my music player for about a year now and have loved the crap out of its DJ mode ("Dynamic Mode").

The way we made it work is that every song goes into a list sorted by date last queued, and then we use a parabolic curve which means that any song could theoretically be queued next, but songs that have not been queued the longest have the greatest chance of being queued next.

This is something that is hard to test without trying it out for a long period of time, but I think after one year it is safe to say that it's a pretty damn good algorithm.

The added benefit of using "last queued date" instead of "last played date" is that if Dynamic Mode queues a song, and you skip it because you don't want to hear it, it still moves to the end of the list and becomes less likely to be queued again.

[1]: <https://github.com/superjoe30/groovebasin>

</comment><comment><USER7> Talking about the screenshots found in <https://github.com/albertz/music- player>

* A music player should show the current song info like title or artist. There is no way to know which is the current song. * A music player should have a clear interface. * Where is the volume? * What is fillUpTo and why it doesn't have spaces? * What is addSome and why it doesn't have spaces? * Why a clear button? * Why the format, time, and more things is being show in the interface. I am a user. Don't worry about that details. * Why input boxes to show the time and current song. Can I change that? * ...

Sorry for not testing but since more than 3 years I was using spotify so I just remove all my files.

<comment><USER3> Oh, it seems that many things aren't that obvious as I thought they would be... Maybe they become a bit more obvious when you use the player, though.

To answer some of the questions: The current song is always the blue entry. All the grey entries above it are the recently played songs. Everything below is what comes next. In addition, the artist and title of the current song is displayed at the head. Those aren't input boxes (although they might look as such). The clear button clears the queue. The volume is the slider on the right.

But I agree: The GUI needs much improvement...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My answer to that question is simply 'mplayer'. I organize my music in folders. I use cd, find and others to navigate. I have never been happy with players with databases - it somehow always gets in the way. I don't like last.fm recommendations, due to the simple fact that I like as diverse music as possible. I discover new music via radio. Mostly wfmu. For me, interesting bit is information about resampling. Thank you for it.

<comment><USER9> If you already have a diverse taste in music the last.fm recommendations will be diverse too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I, personally, am very much in love with DeaDBeeF[1] on openSUSE. When I was still using windows, I was using foobar and continued to do so in wine on Linux. However, I _did_ want an open-source alternative that would integrate better with my DE, so I had a look at deadbeef, which is foobar-ish. Highly recommended, as it is by far the best of the lot for my needs, even considering some of the bigger players out there, like Banshee, Amarok etc.

It ticks most of the boxes and supports plugins and DSPs, Bauer stereophonic- to-binaural DSP[2] amongst others, and can be extended to suit pretty much every need. :)

[1]: <http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/>

[2]: <http://bs2b.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I still use Winamp. I particularly dislike using the same player for audio and video as I would often pause one to play the other and don't like losing my music playlist.

One thing I always wanted is for a playlist which have ended to start over if I hit play instead of playing the last song again. Like a cd player would. Never found a solution to that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Killer features for me in a music player are global keyboard hotkeys that I can use from inside other programs (or games), and a playlist queue that will continue playing randomly inside the same playlist after it finished playing the songs I've queued.

Foobar2000 is the player on Windows that I'm still in love with. You can run Foobar on MacOS using Wine, and there's plugins that will use the foobar's http control service to add global hotkeys on Mac.

<comment><USER13> Global hotkeys are easy if you have a decent command line client.

For instance, I can use xbindkeys to bind "mpc toggle" to my play/pause key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing often missed is the default sorting order of the library. The library should be sorted on date by default to show the new songs and albums right on top (or atleast provide an option for it). Currently most of the players sort the library in alphabetical order.

"Intelligent automatic queue" sounds great along with other features.

<comment><USER15> I always assumed that because no music players seem to support this right out of the box, that I must be the only person in the world who listens to my new music before listening to my old stuff...

<comment><USER16> I guess there now are two of you. I doubt there are many more.

Seriously: A completely different behaviour than normal which would lead to no one finding the music they want to listen to (but finding newly added music easily) should only be the default if you have enough usertests to confirm that they want that. At least if your aim is that many people use your software and not only you plus the two exceptions who like that too.

<comment><USER15> Isn't it intuitive to you that music you have just been shared or have just bought is the music you are both (a) unfamiliar with and (b) most likely to want to listen to in the near future. My experience has been that being unfamiliar with music will make it difficult to search for, and that after being shared or buying something I go through a patch of listening to this music more frequently.

Either way, I don't think I am one of two people, and I think the tone of your last comment was very poor. As a rule: think first, then post.

<comment><USER16> No, it is not intuitive. Or it is: Of course it can be helpful to have such a view available. But having that as default order for a music-library(!) is not intuitive at all. Especially not for people who don't even remember the last time they added music to their collection.

I'm sorry if one could interpret my writing as poor tone. I indeed think that only a very small minority of people would like that, but that is totally ok and it was not meant as an attack. The point was that you have to determine such things, find out wether your potential customers would like that, if you are targeting people at all. If not, it doesn't matter.

>As a rule: think first, then post.

Spare me the bullshit. To say I didn't think before writing is a totally unnecessary attack - I clearly made a legitimate point.

<comment><USER15> >> I'm sorry if one could interpret my writing as poor tone.

Yeah, well, just because it's the internet and you can't see people's reactions, it doesn't mean that it suddenly becomes acceptable to imply that people are selfishly only thinking about their own user experience...

>> I indeed think that only a very small minority of people would like that [...] The point was that you have to determine such things, find out wether your potential customers would like that, if you are targeting people at all. If not, it doesn't matter.

Right, well the problem here is that you haven't heeded your own advice. You're sitting here telling me about "very small minorities" with no evidence to back up your claims. And I tend to think: absence of evidence, intuition should trounce mere opinion. (That said, I agree that if somebody hasn't added music to their collection for a long time, a time-ordered view would make less and less sense. I think that's intuitive, too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's one I would like. Shuffle, but with an awareness of sets of songs that should be played together. For example, if shuffle ever hits on "Brain Damage" from Dark Side Of The Moon, it should always proceed to "Eclipse" before resuming any other song. This could be achieved with an online database like MusicBrainz - there was a Reddit thread recently which suggested another few songs which are often played together.

Alternatively, a manual approach would be that if I hear a song I know should segue into another, I'd like to be able to suspend shuffle and have it instead pick up from the song that would generally follow that song in the track order of the source album.

<comment><USER3> In the intelligent queue algorithm, you could easily add such functionality. Maybe I'll add that as an option later.

Code is here: <https://github.com/albertz/music-player/blob/master/queue.py>

Look at `MainQueue.calcScore` and others.

For the manual approach, maybe some button next to a song like "add follow-up songs to this song below" would do (not sure how I would insert that into the GUI, though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> XMMS (for those using Windows: Winamp) is still the best music player out there. Not XMMS2 or the slow Audacious though, and the newer Winamp versions or skins also aren't that great anymore.

<comment><USER19> I've never seen a GUI age so well as the Winamp classic skin. Even old Apple OSes can look hideous today, but with Winamp I still find myself switching back to the classic mode.

<comment><USER20> Or you can use the Winamp Lite[1] which I think is almost identical to Winamp 2.x.

1\. <http://www.winamp.com/media-player/all> (on the bottom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the bit where iTunes is a "professional music player". xD

Good post, interesting read. :)

<comment><USER3> I would say iTunes is. They certainly have invested a lot into the core playback engine of iTunes and its quality.

For example they have their own loudness analyzing specification called Sound Check. A music player having its own loudness specification and analyzing algorithm is very rare! Most players don't have support for analyzing at all and if they do, they usually use the original mp3gain algorithm to calculate the ReplayGain value (but as that one is GPL, this is only for GPL players).

The overall audio playback quality is quite good.

Also they have a lot of other advanced features.

E.g. the iTunes DJ mode is actually not so bad. The algorithm behind it works quite good.

They also have a remote interface where users could vote for different songs and the song with the highest votes will get played next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What about MPD? Most of the describe features/requirements are already there.

<comment><USER3> See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4772713>

Or directly here for a previous discussion: [http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1224ux/experimen...](http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1224ux/experimental_partyshufflebased_music_player/c6shx4c?context=3)

Actually it lacks many of the most important features.

<comment><USER22> just read the reddit discussion. I'd say that MPD is more UNIX-y than your approach for a music player; still I appreciate your effort to build well defined requirements for your project

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> P.S. albertzeyer is on Gittip:

<https://www.gittip.com/albertz/>

and Flattr:

[http://flattr.com/thing/49143/Projects-artworks-writings- of-...](http://flattr.com/thing/49143/Projects-artworks-writings-of-Albert- Zeyer)

Consider supporting him financially, if you like his work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Honestly I don't know why the author didn't go with the client/server model. Running a music player as a daemon and having a client that connects is awesome, and allows things like remote control (android apps, etc) to happen much more easily.

In fact, why they didn't just use MPD escapes me.

<comment><USER3> I had this discussion a while ago, in particular here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1224ux/experimen...](http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1224ux/experimental_partyshufflebased_music_player/c6shx4c?context=3)

MusicPlayer is already highly modular. Adding a server interface listening on some TCP port is trivial at this point. Full control via an IPython shell or just the console is already possible. (In the beginning, while it didn't had any GUI, the IPython shell interface was how I used it.) There is nothing really complicated in developing some remote control.

The way MusicPlayer manages the queue, i.e. the intelligent automatic main queue is not trivial/straight-forward to emulate in MPD and it would be hacky - that is the first and main reason I didn't used MPD. Then, using MPD wouldn't really have made it simpler, only more complicated. Forking MPD itself and extending/changing it in the way I intended would maybe have been a solution but I thought it would be simpler to just code the player engine from scratch. Despite that, MPD does not support many of the current features of MusicPlayer, like the builtin loudness analyzing algorithm, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Increasingly for me the music player is the browser. I don't know which library is used when a browser plays audio, but where once I was protective of my music collection, now I find the web playback through pandora and grooveshark to be far more frequently used. For the next generation, my daughter only knows youtube as a music player; the separation of music from video seems to be a concept only readily grokked by those currently over the age of 12.

</comment><comment><USER25> I love his in depth passion for the quality of his music, though the application UI is suffering from some "programmeritus". Nitpicking: tt should have the song name as its title, "addSome" button should be removed and replaced with drag and drop, you probably don't really need the wave form and the time field looks like and input field. I'm a big fan of foobar for the reason its interface is simple and clean.

<comment><USER26> > "addSome" button should be removed and replaced with drag and drop

Please, no. Some of us don't use desktops and don't want drag-n-drop dependencies. (I know this is currently built for Cocoa, but the project's goal is cross-platform.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very interesting explanation, I knew playing media files wasn't a trivial task but didn't imagine there was so much going on behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice article. I like these kinds of explanations that go into all of the difficulties of a task that aren't obvious from the outside.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can't get it to work on OS X. The provided app bundle does start, open the Last.fm website, then does nothing. No window, no dock dropping, no (meaningful) menu bar.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just delegating to ffmpeg fails with many TTA files, so I'll be sticking with VLC for now.</comment>


Show HN: Eggler – a decentralized Instacart - <AUTHOR> I've made a grocery delivery app that lets customers hire drivers directly. Drivers post their time slots in advance and then customers choose a time slot/driver.
Drivers choose when and where they will deliver, and their delivery price. It's more like Airbnb's business model than Uber or Instacart.
https://www.goeggler.com <comment><USER2> Seems great. I would like something like that here in Brazil.

My big question for which I can't get an answer, no matter how many times I ask (in the context of Instacard and similar): How does payment works? People pay through credit card on the app, the money is capped, then capped again, then goes to the drivers after a month? How do the drivers pay for the groceries?

<comment><USER3> Users of Eggler pay twice

1 - they pay eggler (who in turn pays the driver) for the delivery

2 - they pay Walmart for the groceries which the Eggler driver will deliver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How many drivers/customers do you have signed up?

How do you deal with bootstrapping, that is getting customers without drivers or drivers without customers?

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't tell if this is a side project or a business. How are you planning on spreading your message?

<comment><AUTHOR> Providing drivers with tools they can use to advertise their time slots on social media.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good resources for base (non-tidyverse) R? - <AUTHOR> Hey, my new lab uses R a lot, but most of their packages (some of which I'll be contributing to) don't use tidyverse. However, most of the recommended R books use it---those that I saw recommended here on HN, at least.<p>Are there any good learning materials which don't rely on the tidyverse set of packages? I have experience with Python, Haskell, and other languages, but am completely new to R. <comment><USER2> Prepare for some frustration while you get used to the language. Resources:

Advanced R - [http://adv-r.had.co.nz/](http://adv-r.had.co.nz/)

R Packages - [http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/intro.html](http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/intro.html)

I also write and contribute to R packages at work and these two books have been really useful. That being said, Advanced R isn't the best read because a lot of it is just listing exceptions and strange behaviour of the language but it's useful info, especially the chapters on non-standard evaluation and the OO systems. Similarly, figuring out how the package system works can take a bit of experimenting - just stick with it, try things out and pay attention to how things are done in the existing codebase.

Also, your colleagues are right - tidyverse isn't suitable for heavy use in packages, it's for interactive use and EDA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I heard about advanced R, but as the author is also the author of the tidyverse packages, I feared he might be inclined to use them in the examples etc. I'm glad to hear it's more generally oriented book.

<comment><USER3> I can also recommend reading R Inferno:

[https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/](https://www.burns- stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/)

It lists a lot exceptions and gotchas but it motivates them and it definitely made me a better R programmer. It's a quick read too!</comment></comment></comment>


Deep sea 'mushroom' may be new branch of life - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29054889 <comment><USER2> To put this in perspective, there are very few animals that are not bilateral. Look at the outline on the right side here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal)

This new species would be in the odd subkingdoms at the top or a new subkingdom there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad the preservation killed the possibility of genetic sequencing; phylogenetics seems a lot more useful and accurate to me than morphological taxonomy. But in 1986 I guess genetic sequencing wasn't much of a thing (though the history of phylogentics goes back surprisingly far.)

<comment><USER4> Formaldehyde and alcohol are still the best way to preserve samples for physical examination when no genetic work is expected. It's a trade-off.

If these had been stored in a genetically-safe way (say frozen, or dried), they may not have been noticed at all, as it tends to collapse structure, especially with gelatinous animals.

<comment><USER3> Better that they did what they could, certainly. I expect a modern study would take into account DNA, molecular, and even RNA analysis where possible, which were not concerns at the time.

(Modern sample preservation techniques have to consider about half a dozen different types of analysis. Drying, freezing, alcohol, formalin, bleach, are all used for different things. The best all-purpose preservative is high- percentage ethanol, which is okay for DNA for 5-10 years and also preserves structure reasonably well. A NOAA publication on corals suggests you procure some Everclear in an emergency.)

<comment><USER4> Heh, I've done vodka once!

For modern shipboard collections, time is still the enemy ($20K/day to run a ship exhausts a scientific budget quickly, not to mention weather, etc). Surveys have multiple studies going on, so deck operations may be negotiated by scientists down to the minute. Many of the various molecular techniques require careful cleaning of surfaces and tools for each sample, so it's prohibitive to do "general molecular sampling".

For unusual things - in spite of us being scientists, and loving unusual things - the rule is still "Tag it, bag it, look at it later". The "bag it" is usually formalin. If it looks interesting back in the lab, conduct a special study next year to collect some genetics. Of course, we're not expecting to find new phyla very often!

So I'm absolutely sure that 20 years from now, someone could be going through my old bottles, find something truly weird that I missed, and wish that I'd thought to get some $!@#$$(## DNA!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm reminded of Dawkins talking about essentialism a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8250473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8250473)

</comment><comment><USER6> Would be really cool if we discovered an Ediacaeran branch of live.

But ~30years to publish such a find? Seriously? Something is really wrong in the way they work.

<comment><USER7> It's not uncommon. It's easier to collect than it is to classify. Eg, here's a news report from 1988 about how "[a] 70-foot dinosaur known as Happy stood prominently on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for nearly 25 years before researchers discovered it was a new species." [http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-25/local/me-3747_1_natur...](http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-25/local/me-3747_1_natural- history)

It points out that "Museum storerooms have become rich hunting grounds for new species because a lack of money and staff has delayed the identification of bones excavated up to 60 years ago" and that "75% of the museum's collection has not been examined closely."

Nor is it a recent issue. The HMS Challenger expedition of 1872–76, which was the first real oceanographic expedition, took another 19 years to publish everything. (See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition#Findings_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition#Findings_and_legacy) ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The new organisms are multicellular but mostly non-symmetrical"

So it's not really a new branch of life if it's multicellular but just non- symmetrical ...

Maybe a new sub-division in the multicellular kingdom but not a whole new branch at the same level as bacteria, archaea and multicellulars...

edit : bacteria, archae and EUKARYOTE not multicellular

<comment><USER9> What's fascinating is that finding new animal phyla is apparently something that has happened a few times in the last century, and they aren't able to place this creature into a phyla yet - it's close to a jellyfish and comb jellies, but not close enough to be included in the Cnidaria or Ctenophora phylum.

<comment><USER8> I don't deny the importance of the finding. Bilateria and non-bilateria are huge groups in the animal kingdom and if this animal doesn't fit in one of them is really something.

But (for now, without ADN analysis) it's just a new structure plan. I just find the title about "a new branch of life" a little sensationalist :)

<comment><USER10> I think the article was using "branch" colloquially, rather than in some technical sense. And it's saying "may be" rather than "is".

<comment><USER11> The problem is that it's an exaggeration like: "New article title may be a new branch of linkbait art"

A better title is "Deep sea 'mushroom' may be new branch of animals" or "Deep sea 'mushroom' may be new branch of animal kingdom".

I'm still not 100% happy with the proposed title, but it's more realistic. One of the problems is that it's not a mushroom nor mushroom related. It's only a weird animal with a strange shape that looks like a mushroom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Finding examples of Edicarian fauna would be exciting news.

<comment><USER12> The statements saying that this may be a sample of Edicarian fauna are pretty speculative. From the original paper:

> We are aware that the similarities to some of the Ediacaran forms may be > independent responses to the same environmental necessities, rather than > being evidence of homology.

They found similarities between this and some Ediacaran fossils, but that does not mean that they are related. There are other extant animals with similarities to some Ediacaran specimens with no relation between them.

The speculation can be falsified by analyzing this creatures' DNA and find at which point it diverged from other known life. I hope that is possible!

<comment><USER13> _The speculation can be falsified by analyzing this creatures ' DNA and find at which point it diverged from other known life. I hope that is possible!_

According to the article, due to the way they were preserved that's sadly not an option with the current samples. They would have to catch new specimen first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this reminds me of an article I read a long time ago. paraphrasing a quote from it for this case:

that deep sea `mushroom' is a new branch of life is not a fact of nature, but an artifact of the way we classify nature.

[http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interests/aaa/marksaaa99.htm](http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interests/aaa/marksaaa99.htm)

<comment><USER15> I think you're taking that article somewhat out of context. Saying that this "mushroom" is a new branch on the tree of life has a factual, falsifiable meaning.

There is a real thing that we can't really reconstruct in its entirety: the family tree for all life on Earth. Saying it's a new branch means that it diverged so long ago we can't find anything that looks like a common ancestor.

<comment><USER14> from the bbc article:

"The researchers did find some similarities to other animal groupings, such as the Cnidaria - the phylum that comprises corals and jellyfish - and the Ctenophora, which includes the marine organisms known as comb jellies. But the new organisms did not fulfil all the criteria required for inclusion in either of those categories."

and

"One way to resolve the question surrounding Dendrogramma's affinities would be to examine its DNA, but new specimens will need to be found. "

made me think this announcement was more about how to place it in our existing taxonomy, and that it reminds to be scene if it really has no common ancestor that we're aware of, as we're still waiting a DNA examination.

<comment><USER16> > it reminds to be scene if it really has no common ancestor that we're aware > of

Evidence for a second tree of life would be incredible. But without further evidence it would be jumping to conclusions to entertain the idea too seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is anyone surprised by any means to find that, when a new, strange, and unclassifiable animal is discovered, it is in Australia?

The next news will probably mention that someone tried to taste it and that person died in an horrible (and completely novel) way.</comment>


Not Applicable: What Your Job Post Is Really Saying - <AUTHOR> https://where.coraline.codes/blog/not_applicable/ <comment> python-guy-vt I hate job post jargon.

"Fast paced environment" == we give you more work than can be handled in an 8 hour day.

OK thanks, now I know not to apply.

</comment><comment><USER2> > Finally, I suggested that if we reached the final round of hiring without > any viable women or minorities in the selection pool, we should take this as > an indication that we had not done a good job at outreach. We would start > the recruiting process over, and try harder to attract diverse candidates.

Isn't that inviting a lawsuit?

Doing as she suggests would be pretty much admitting that they did not hire any of the candidates who made it to the final round because they were all male and white.

<comment><USER3> Coraline Ehmke is an ideologue.

>I had expressed dismay before at our hiring practices. It seemed that whenever we had our monthly engineering all-hands meeting, the new hire announcements featured three more young white guys. I felt that we could do better.

> We had over three hundred applications, almost 75% of them from > underrepresented minorities in tech. In the end, we filled all three of our > positions with engineers from marginalized communities.

I'm quite curious what the job posting actually said.

What is hilarious about this, is this is the kind of thing that James Damore actually suggested in his memo.

>We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration

Of course he wasn't really specifically referring to the recruitment side of things, but the actual job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is where mentorship is paramount to junior/entry level engineers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not exactly on topic, but what a cool domain name!

</comment><comment><USER6> "I had expressed dismay before at our hiring practices. It seemed that whenever we had our monthly engineering all-hands meeting, the new hire announcements featured three more young white guys. I felt that we could do better."

So, because they are young, white males, you immediately dismissed them?

<comment><USER7> In the next paragraph the author specifies that they were trying to attract a wider cross-section of candidates. The hires wouldn't have been on-boarded if they weren't the best candidates _who applied_ , but there's no way to know if they were the best candidates _available_ when the signals sent by the job postings disincentivize applicants along axes that do correlate to race or gender but not to job performance. That's literally the entire point of the article, as far as I understand it.

<comment><USER8> It's best to ask yourself, does someone who reads a single line of an article and sees that as the basis of the whole article a troll?

Please don't feed the trolls, they'll just move the goalposts and you'll be arguing about something completely unrelated in a bit

<comment><USER6> A troll? The author is a hypocrite and I'm calling her out. The words above came directly from her article. And yes, I did read the entire thing.

If you don't see anything wrong with what she said/did, I feel sorry for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


6 steps to validating your start up idea - <AUTHOR> http://simonbarker.tumblr.com/post/30647733589/6-steps-to-validating-your-start-up-idea

<comment><USER2> Actually, there are only two steps:

1\. Build it. 2\. Launch it.

Everything else is a distraction.</comment>


How the Idea of a 'Normal' Person Got Invented - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-invention-of-the-normal-person/463365/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Aristotle (384-322 BC) already advises us to be cautious when applying pure mathematical averages to human daily life:

 _By the mean of a thing I denote a point equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this is not one and the same for everybody. For example, let 10 be many and 2 few; then one takes the mean with respect to the thing if one takes 6; since 10-6 = 6-2, and this is the mean according to arithmetical proportion [progression]. But we cannot arrive by this method at the mean relative to us. Suppose that 10 lb. of food is a large ration for anybody and 2 lb. a small one: it does not follow that a trainer will prescribe 6 lb., for perhaps even this will be a large portion, or a small one, for the particular athlete who is to receive it; it is a small portion for Milo, but a large one for a man just beginning to go in for athletics._

Aristotle, _Nichomachean Ethics_ , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

<comment><USER3> Did Aristotle really use the unit lb? And was it the same as we today recognize it?

<comment><USER4> "The libra (Latin for 'scales / balance') is an ancient Roman unit of mass that was equivalent to approximately 328.9 grams. It was divided into 12 unciae (singular: uncia), or ounces. The libra is the origin of the abbreviation for pound, 'lb'."

<comment><USER5> The actual unit Aristotle used was the "mna". A mna was 100x as heavy as a drachma. According to Wikipedia (which is always right except when it's wrong) the most commonly used standard in ancient Greece made a drachma weigh about 4.3g, in which case a mna would be about 430g, compared with 454g for a pound weight. So "pound" or "lb" is a pretty good translation for "mna".

(The "mna" has rough equivalents in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. There's at least one "mina" in the New Testament, and in the famous "writing on the wall" at Belshazzar's feast -- MENE MENE TEKEL PHARSIN -- "mene" is basically the same word as "mna".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For example, Quetelet showed that the average rate of suicide was relatively > stable from year to year. While this would hardly be startling news these > days, in the 1830s suicide was seen as a highly irrational private decision > that could not possibly conform to any deeper pattern. Instead, Quetelet > showed that suicides occurred with reliable and consistent regularity. And > not only that: He claimed that the stability of the occurrences indicated > that everyone possesses an average propensity toward suicide.

I must admit this is really interesting. If all people are individuals, it's not obvious that the suicide rates should be stable.

<comment><USER7> I can't really imagine it being not obvious, though that's probably a factor of current education.

<comment><USER8> Why was this downvoted? The parent comment clearly shows a lack of familiarity with statistics.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't downvote it but I know why it's downvoted.

The downvotee could clearly imagine this being unintuitive if he were inclined to be so creative. The entire comment evals to "I inherently grasped statistical thinking from birth, what's wrong with you that you didn't?"

To borrow from a Hacker School post a long time ago: it's feigning surprise[0] at the ignorance of others. If you're on HN you probably work in an environment where learning is a non-optional part of your every day. Getting to the point where not knowing things isn't a blow to your self-esteem can be a pretty big professional hurdle for people.

Unless the downvotee was born with an inherently sound understanding of statistical thinking and also has some trouble empathizing with other humans then his comment was just going out of his way to tell a fellow human that their moment of learning and realization was remedial.

[0] [https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social- rules](https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules)

Edit: After explaining it and rereading the downvotee I decided to downvote as well. The clincher was following up with the implication that the original poster was not only remedial but poorly educated.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to completely break the etiquette of the link you provided and go "Well, actually... it's 'borne'".

Other than that, great comment, and thank you for that link.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> Unless the downvotee was born with an inherently sound understanding

This part? I meant "was born" as made the jump from being a fetus to being a baby, not "borne" in the sense of being carried, although I guess that works in a bit more poetic sense.

(Also thanks for the comment either way, always happy for feedback and corrections)

<comment><USER9> Whoops, did you edit that? I could swear I read "the _downvote_ " rather than "downvotee", but then it doesn't make sense in context anyway. Brain fart, I guess, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this article is less about "normal" and more about "average" person. The history of normality and curing/fixing abnormality has been dissected by Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" and "The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception".

</comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that Quetelet Index aka BMI is arguably 'wrong' as it's comparing volume of something with one dimension ^2 instead of one dimension ^3. There are reasons it's valuable in human health as square cube law scaling has negative consequences. Still, it's interesting just how 'old' that measurement is.

<comment><USER12> The BMI is more right than wrong. The strength of a physical object varies with cross-area, so the strength of your heart varies as height squared. The amount of work it has to do varies as mass, which does tend to scale as height cubed.

The result is that height and heart disease are correlated. See [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25051127](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25051127) for a random verification.

<comment><USER11> IMO it's a mixed bag. I agree it works for heart disease, obesity, etc. But, it's also used for anorexia where it seems like a poor fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Quetelet's invention of the Average Man marked the moment when the average > became normal, the individual became error, and stereotypes were validated > with the imprint of science

I wonder what would have happened had he used a statistical mode instead of the mean. He was coming at the problem from the experience of correcting error in astronomical measurement, but it seems like there were some mental gymnastics required to equate individual measures of humans as errors.

<comment><USER14> This was likely more a result of the European tradition of a Platonic ideal of man, and the Christian doctrine that man ought to be virtuous. The two intertwine, and you have a Platonic ideal of a man who is both naturally and spiritually virtuous. Many scholars spent their careers showing that spiritual impurity effects natural deformity and vice versa. Not only bodily defects were understood to be errors, they were thought to be either a natural result of the person's viciousness, a deserved supernatural punishment, or a Jobian trial. Either way: ideal = good, deviant = not good.

So it makes sense that there is an ideal physical form of a man, which is definite (quantifiable) and unchanging (i.e. no evolution). I have never heard of Quetelet, but I doubt he did anything more than put a series of numbers to this preëxisting notion.

<comment><USER15> >Many scholars spent their careers showing that spiritual impurity effects natural deformity and vice versa. Not only bodily defects were understood to be errors, they were thought to be either a natural result of the person's viciousness, a deserved supernatural punishment, or a Jobian trial. //

You implicitly suggest this comes from Christian doctrine (?) which is strange as it's recorded in the New Testament ([https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+9&version=...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+9&version=NIV;NASB;MSG)) that Jesus was asked who had sinned in order that a blind person had become blind and he responded that no-one had, that it wasn't the result of sin.

Now, scholars who wanted to control the people's behaviour might find it beneficial to promulgate a position that sin caused deformity but it seems quite at odds with this NT account of the position of Jesus on the matter. Moreover the greater message from Jesus is to bring succour to those who are weaker, and that we are all sinners deserving of God's wrath.

I don't doubt that your suggestion matches the position of some Christians, but that does not make it a Christian position - it seems more derived from societal superstition than from Christian theology.

<comment><USER14> Good starting point: [http://disabilitiesswrk1006.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/physical-...](http://disabilitiesswrk1006.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/physical- deformity-related-to-impurity.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a great read. I'm especially surprised about what it means to be an "Average Person".

"Average" or an "Average Person" now (at least amongst my social circle) is actually a bad thing, something that people will put effort into _not_ being. Describing something as "average" (or just "av" in conversation) is a way to describe something as disappointing.

So strange how the meaning has pretty much completely flipped on its head.

<comment><USER14> These are two different effects of the same quality.

"Average" means undistinguished, interchangeable; depending on the distribution and context it may mean, with examples:

* normal distribution (IQ): "worse than half of the others"

* distribution with a long positive tail (wealth): "way worse than the best"

* distribution with a compressed left tail (IQ in college-educated adults): "amongst of the worst"

* 20/80 cut-off (female mating strategy): "swipe left"

"Average" also means safe, solid, ideal, normal. This happens when avoiding risk:

* probabilistic estimate of future risk (there is evidence that averaging multiple faces renders a face more beautiful than the rest): average mate => higher probability of average (viable) offspring

* 80/20 cut-off (male mating strategy): "gentlemen prefer blondes — but marry brunettes"

* [too tired to think of other meanings]

Often the same product is both average-good and average-bad, and this is why we have Internet flame wars!

<comment><USER17> > 80/20 cut-off (male mating strategy)

Where do you get that number? All the statistics I've seen from dating sites indicate that while women have an 80% cut off men have a 50% cut off (i.e. truly average).

In other words, while women consider any men below the 80th percentile "below average", men's opinions reflect the actual average (i.e. considering any women below the 50th percentile "below average" and above it "above average") rather than (as you seem to say) considering any woman above the 20th percentile "above average".

<comment><USER14> This applies to all sexually-reproducing species, not just humans. The male _strategy_ is optimized for low cost, so males _prefer_ to mate with a fit female, but will settle for "anything with a pulse". In humans, this is evidenced by virtually all women having babies.

I don't know what the actual ratio is, and it will probably be different depending on the fitness of the male and how near the bar's closing time. The salient aspects are that the division is asymmetric, the strategy complements the female strategy, and that there is a hard cutoff (some of the females are so unfit they will never be considered).

<comment><USER17> Sure, but the interesting part is that we like to think such animalistic traits are beneath us. We're not rational creatures, we're just ordinary creatures that happen to be capable of _ratio_ sometimes.

A lot of the social discussions we are currently having in tech likes to portray humans as entirely rational and intentional when in fact the problems we're trying to solve are engrained in our biology, not part of our culture. Doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) work around them but it means you need to do more than just pin all the problems on the majority and assume that once the power dynamics shift the problems will go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Statistics are descriptive, not prescriptive. People forget that often.

</comment><comment><USER19> For further reading that spans more broadly with the underlying idea here, I recommend: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/objectivity](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/objectivity)

I'm not done with it but so far it's been an epistemological history lesson that has me thinking a lot about how the current era of Big Data / rising ubiquity of mechanical objectivity (esp photography — from WWI photojournalism to google earth) has been altering humanity on all fronts, from the sciences to the arts to the justice system... particularly how seeking truth is seemingly no longer a burden when everything is recorded by computers, yet at the same time there is still the very real burden of communication (presentation/interpretation) when said data is given an audience.

<comment> q-base Thanks. That seems really interesting! Added to my amazon wishlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Having read the article from start to finish - I can't help but wonder 'so what?'

I mean, this is akin to finding out the diameter of the moon in isolation, are we going to do something with it?

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting article! I'm a little skeptic to the final paragraph, though, specifically the notion that this research prompted the birth of stereotypes.

Stereotypes might not have existed in their modern form previously, but they're akin to the notion that people have an essence, assigned to them by nature. Platon's ideas about comparing an individual's essence to a metal is a good example (bronze people are good at this, iron people good at that). And I definitely think we'd fool ourselves thinking that the individual held a stronger position in society prior to the early 19th century...

<comment><USER22> I think they're really talking about scientific stereotypes.

It's this kind of thinking that starts to give rise to so-called scientific explanations of why certain races are "inferior". The average man concept lets you compare races and genders and all sorts in a way that can appear scientific - in method at least - whilst ignoring the fact that there are so many variables to account for in the human condition, that any result must be taken with a lot of skepticism.

But people in general, particularly around the time, were astounded by the leaps and bounds that science had been making. So anything "proven" in a scientific enough manner, must be true. No skepticism to be found.

<comment><USER21> That's a really good answer, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As products and services became increasingly standardized, conformed, and repeatable in the industrial age, so did the users. This dynamic is changing in the electric age where products and services are becoming increasingly customizable to the individual needs and desires of the specific user.

</comment><comment><USER24> I always say to people "Name me one normal person." (They usually can't.) And if they do name one that could qualify: "It's not normal to be normal."

<comment><USER25> Average person has half a penis.

It doesn't mean stats are useless. It means you have to know how to interprete them.

<comment><USER26> Depends on the time and region you select your sample from. In some provinces of China at different times, the average person might have six tenths of a penis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "What about you reader are you normal?"[1]

Which they then go on to explain the hilarious abnormality of being normal.

[1][https://youtu.be/_Oc9tKkH7WE?t=7m6s](https://youtu.be/_Oc9tKkH7WE?t=7m6s) (1 minute watching time)

</comment><comment><USER28> Because before recently, the world was divided up into "royalty" and "people who mostly didn't matter." Maybe add a caste for soldiers or for farmers or for merchants, depending on how enlightened the society was.

<comment><USER29> The article's about statistical averages, and their implications for the modern social sciences, not about historical classes and castes.

Indo-European society probably had three castes: medicine men (responsible for law and justice, good relations with the gods, and magic; "wizard-priests" would also work as a description of their role, but feels too flattering for such an early, primitive society); warriors; and commoners. India split commoners into two classes (artisans etc., and laborers); Europe and Persia grouped skilled and unskilled commoners together. Europe and India both saw intense competition between the two top estates -- roughly speaking, magi and knights -- to determine who would rule society; in Persia, the magi more or less won without a fight (and sacralized the knights), thanks to Zoroaster.

In short, it wasn't nearly as simple as royal versus non-royal, at least not in the Indo-European world -- and the high-ranking estates had obligations as well as privileges.</comment></comment>


Tabula Set for March Shutdown – EE Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325499

<comment><AUTHOR> Found out about this from an email from used-line for their auction: [http://svdisposition.com/buy- assets/auction_details/auction_...](http://svdisposition.com/buy- assets/auction_details/auction_details2.php?hl=en_US&event=Tabula&CLIENT_ID=52)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chart of FPGA startup ghosts:

[http://m.eet.com/media/1088160/1565chart_pg18.gif](http://m.eet.com/media/1088160/1565chart_pg18.gif)</comment>


Oil Is the New Data - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/nature/oil-is-the-new-data/ <comment><USER2> When I reflect back on this meeting, it was a surreal experience. Everyone present discussed the idea of building a workplace panopticon with complete normalcy. The TCO managers claimed that monitoring workers was necessary for keeping them safe, or to prevent them from stealing. But it wasn't convincing in the slightest. We knew that they simply wanted a way to discipline their low-wage Kazakhstani workforce. We knew they wanted a way to squeeze as much work as they could from each worker.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of the story Manna.

[https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)</comment>


Linux++ - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/linux-plus-plus/linux-february-2-2020-e09e6f8aa400 <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this! Would love to hear any feedback you might have.</comment>


What was your best passive income in 2015? - <AUTHOR> What is your best source of 'passive' or recurring income?<p>previous links added in the comment <comment><USER2> Improvely ([https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)) and W3Counter ([https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)) have grown to $45,000 MRR.

W3Counter is completely passive -- no new code or features in over a year, no customer support load, autoscaling frontend (EC2) and backend (Aurora). Improvely gets feature updates a few times a year and has some light e-mail support load. I continue to have no employees or contractors.

Trying to diversify more in 2016.

<comment><USER3> How do you make money with w3counter?

<comment><USER2> It's freemium. People pay monthly or annually for extra features (real-time reports, e-mail summaries, multiple websites on one account, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> $93,917 for 2015. I was lucky enough to be born with gifts that make me good at writing code. I trade that coding ability for money. I invest that money in the S&P 500 (ticker VOO). I've been doing this for decades and have invested about $1,173,971 to date. The trailing 10 year return is about 8% per year. So let's call it $93,917. $93,917 of passive income.

<comment><USER5> Well done! Would you be willing to comment on what % of your income you invest each year (on average)? Also, have you suffered a "passive loss" in some years?

<comment><USER6> If all of his investments are in VOO as he claims, then he would have suffered several yearly losses.

Some people only count only dividends as income. In this case, there would be no "passive loss", but the total income would only be ~2-3% pa instead of ~8% pa average.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. When people talk about how well their investments are doing they should utilise a ten year yearly average (or longer). I bet that $93K figure doesn't include the years where they LOSE money, but a ten year yearly average would (e.g. making it 80K or similar).

And as you said they definitely lost money during the recession if they're seeing 8% now. There's no way they're just doing that from bonds or dividends alone.

<comment><USER8> You could get 8% from dividends if you're specifically hunting for dividend stocks, buying individual stocks, and only buy when they're at that level. The Australian stock market has had lots of opportunities like that over the years, where major brands have had falls that briefly made them terrific bargains. But it would have to be your specific strategy.

<comment><USER7> I just don't run across them very often (ever?) at that level. I think 5% is extremely good for a dividend.

Do you have an example of an 8% dividend stock?

<comment><USER8> If you want 5% dividends in Australia, that's easy - Telstra (TLS.AX) is regularly at levels where you'll get a 5% dividend. Right now you'd get 5.8%. Motley Fool mentioned it a couple of months ago as well, and if you can make use of Franking Credits you'll get even more value out of it [1].

If you've got E-Trade, go into Quotes & Research -> Tools -> Basic Stock Filter and search by Yield > 8%. Today there's 66 results. Of course, you need to do your research: Dick Smith Electronics is supposedly offering 33.5% yield, but they've just gone bankrupt. Slater And Gordon at 13.95% yield have been hugely impacted by UK Regulatory changes in recent months.

You might look closer at BHP Billiton: (BHP.AX, 9.95%). One of the world's biggest mining operations, and the shares have tanked post-mining-boom. Surely they'll have to cut their dividend, but even if it was halved, it would still hit your 5% extremely-good-dividend level.

Other names I recognize are Seven West Media (SWM.AX, 10.44%) who own newspapers & television stations, but also have part-ownership of Netflix competitor Presto that is preloaded on Samsung televisions. Beyond International (BYI.AX, 9.09%) produce television shows like Mythbusters, and have had steadily increasing dividends over the years.

Anyway, that's the approach I've taken: it's usually about buying into well known companies that pay dividends that steadily grow over the years, at times when the share price has been hit so hard that the dividend yields become huge.

[1] [http://www.fool.com.au/2015/12/04/todays-telstra-share- price...](http://www.fool.com.au/2015/12/04/todays-telstra-share-price-is- offering-a-5-8-fully-franked-yield/?source=aptyholnk3030003#)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My total from [http://www.watermark-image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com) last year has been around 35.000€ and it takes 5-10 minutes of support a day and 30-60 minutes once or twice a month doing bug features or new features.

My new project [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) that are funded by that income and that I do not write any code for has generated app. 2000€ in recurring revenue last year although it is not passive yet it is MRR :)

<comment><USER10> After going through your timeblock app, I still don't know what exactly it is for, or why people would pay for that. I get that it is a sort of calendar with time tracking features. What makes it different from the thousands of other similar apps?

<comment><USER9> Most og all it is an agile method, improving communication and time in flow - the app is "just" a helper app that makes it easier to run the weekly meeting and get an overview of resource allocation and project eta's.

Besides the RR we also help new users with their weekly meeting by facilitating a good communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://rebrickable.com](https://rebrickable.com) \- A LEGO database that shows you which sets you can build from your existing collection, also includes thousands of fan-submitted designs.

I guess it would only loosely be called "passive" as I spend a lot of time on it. But, I can take vacations and it continues to earn... for a while :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen it some time ago and this site is great! it really brings value to users, so I am not surprised it's growing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://convertcsv.com](http://convertcsv.com) \- In 2015, I averaged $650/month by using google ads.The site converts delimited (CSV,TSV,...) data to and from different formats (JSON,SQL,HTML,..). It was written in HTML/Javascript and I average about 4 hours a month supporting it.

<comment><USER7> What type of support requests do you handle for a site like that? Seems like much of it would be automated.

<comment><USER12> Most comments on the site are thanking me for the site or asking for specific enhancements. So support time consists of reading comments/emails and adding enhancements and/or an occasional bug fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It turns out that I had more income from a single rental property than my tech entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822151](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822151)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8201392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8201392)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395801)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a game related site i created for myself that now made $1700 (adsense) in december, and will reach about $1600 in januar, otherwise it was always just growing. Its so passive i did exactly nothing in december except restarting the box once.

I also work on a full recreation of the website, because now i only make a small part of my target audience happy, the rest only clicks a few times and comes again after a few weeks.

I am afraid shipping the new site will change my income tho :/

<comment><USER15> Release it to a few users, and monitor their usage and feedback to gauge if it's better or not.

<comment><USER14> Its a totally different site in the end, that could lead to awkward situations. I thought about putting it on a subdomain (noindex?) and announce it in my blog, like a "feedback beta before release", but i am not sure if that would tell anything at all from the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Written digital content about nuclear energy at [http://www.nuclearresearch.net](http://www.nuclearresearch.net) . Not much, really, but passive. New e-book coming later this week.

<comment><USER17> How are you counting writing passive? Sounds like it is the opposite.

<comment><USER6> You do something once and it earns income for a long time. It's no different than writing a program or building a website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://dns-api.com](https://dns-api.com) \- A system which wraps Amazon's route53 with git, allowing simple updates to DNS with complete revision history.

</comment><comment><USER17> Maintaining some let's just call them apps. Updating for new OS versions and so on.

</comment><comment><USER19> Shopify Apps, the most trivial of which displays a snow effect using JavaScript.

<comment><USER20> What's been your experience working with the Shopify platform?</comment></comment>


Raspberry pi Zero and USB 3G internet and XMPP = awesome IoT device - <AUTHOR> http://albert-david.blogspot.com/2016/09/rbox-raspberry-pi-zero-usb-3g-internet.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone have any suggestions for cheap 3g and up modules? For 2g I can get a module off aliexpress that has 2g, GPS, and Bluetooth with a uart based interface for less than 15 bucks not including the antennas. For 3g, sadly I couldn't find anything anywhere near that price range and instead what I found was usually in the 40$ and up area.

In the USA, tmobile will be shutting down 2g in I think 2020, which is not that far off. Hence me wanting to get on 3g ASAP, but all solutions seem ridiculously expensive.

I haven't looked as 3g USB do goes in the past, they seem to be sub twenty dollars, but there is no way I am having my little micro with 8kb of ram run an entire host USB stack with enough resources left over for my code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here in Germany(or in India), its easy to find Huawei-E173 in the price range of 15 to 20 dollars, most of the time i just collect all those used usb-3g-sticks from ebay for a throwaway price of 4-8 dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you seen [http://Starterkit.att.com](http://Starterkit.att.com) ?

Would it be of value if the cellular shield was sold on its own separately ?

<comment><AUTHOR> not sure what is the monthly pricing of this developer sim card. Here in Germany, i use fonic/congstar prepaid sim cards from the super market for 10euro's which comes with 10euro balance. These prepaid sim card's have a data plan of 100MB/30days for just 2Euros. In my xmpp based raspi-IoT solution 100MB per month is sufficient - hence my running cost of this IoT setup is around 2Euros/month.</comment></comment>


Lotteries: America's $70B Shame - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteries-americas-70-billion-shame/392870/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> My mother used to bring me to a United Church every Sunday when I was growing up. The United Church does not accept proceeds from gambling. As this obviously contradicted my parents buying lottery tickets and the famous Catholic Church bingo events, I asked our minister why. He said, "It is because those who gamble the most can afford it the least." I've never found gambling interesting or exciting, but over 2 decades later and I am certain it is true.

<comment><USER3> A small anecdote that shines a light on the core of lotteries.

Very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few thoughts:

1\. Even if it were illegal, many people would still play the lotteries: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game) , only the profit would go to criminals.

2\. The "Sin Tax" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_tax) ) on lotteries, like all sin taxes (i.e. cigarettes, alcohol), is highly regressive and hostile to the poor.

<comment><USER5> So maybe a hybrid approach would be to keep them legal and monopolized by the state but simultaneously run PSA and adverts as well as emblazon labels on the tickets about the ills they visit upon the buyers.

And so a successful lottery organization would be one which eventually drove itself out of business.

<comment><USER6> Or just take a smaller cut and spread the winnings thinner so that the expected value is closer to the actual spending. Change it so that they have to be scratched to win (instead of buying and scanning), or institute other limiting factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been purchasing a lotto ticket every week for a decade at least. At some point I realized I wasn't playing to win a much as I was playing for the entertainment value (Actually I discovered this when I realized I had a years worth of unchecked tickets in my drawer and needed to check them before they expired.)

Really... If buying a ticket lets you take a break and day dream 'what if' scenarios then it's not only a de-stressor it also gets you to think outside- the-box and discover ideas that do help you in practical ways. I'd say my un- won tickets turned out to be a better investment than many other comparable expenditures, like for example drinking fucking pop.

<comment><USER8> This. Lotteries are "The Tax that's Fun to Pay."

I would love to see the Federal Government get into this game. Specifically, everyone who files a tax return gets a ticket to the national lottery. File early? Get two! Low income household? Get 3!

Income re-distribution and increased tax revenue in one shot.

<comment><USER9> Not a tax return, but in Brasil and Portugal, you get a lottery ticket for submitting receipts of purchases (all businesses are required to submit them, the lottery is a way to catch infringers). The Portuguese IRS is giving out a luxury car every week: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30834f5a-919f-11e3-8fb3-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30834f5a-919f-11e3-8fb3-00144feab7de.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't play the lottery for expected value, I play it for variance. No other "investment" comes even close. So, spending $1 of investment on that buys a lot of potential upside.

<comment><USER11> With you on that. Have never understood the incredulous stance some people take on the very concept of buying a lottery ticket ("tax on stupid" etc).

Addiction and/or spending-money-one-doesn't-have are separate matters from the legitimacy of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The reasoning behind why lotteries can be damaging to the socioeconomically disadvantaged is similar to that of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. It offers an escape and "hope", as some have put it for the lottery, but there is almost an infinitesimally small chance that something good will come out of it.

The problem with this is not people playing the lottery in general (even if it is objectively throwing away money). I've even bought into the office pool a few times more as "social insurance" than anything else. The problem IS that the lottery takes advantage of those who need that marginal dollar the most under the pretense of funding state education, which, according to John Oliver, doesn't even seem to be true[1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK- netuhHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA)

<comment><USER13> For hundreds of years, one of the primary motivations of social policy seems to have been depriving the poor and politically-weak of their small pleasures. There are other motivations too, but nearly everything that has been done to and for the disenfranchised can be summarized thus, so it seems a parsimonious explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be interesting to see the actual distributions instead of just averages.

Demographics would also be interesting (although I doubt they have this data); is the spending really dominated by a wide poor base, or is it dominated by a few middle class "whales"? Especially in the smaller states, where the per capita average is much higher, I suspect that there are some middle class outliers.

<comment><USER15> Overall the demographic is similar to slot machines and cigarettes. Older people play 3/4 draw numbers, younger folks do scratch off games.

Lotteries don't scale up well to "scratch" the gambling itch that rich people have. You have to buy at retail, and the quantities are setup for casual play or hard cases only.

A guy in a suit dropping $500 on tickets at the gas station is going to draw negative attention. Dropping $500 on the craps table makes you feel like a big shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What the article doesn't address is what a lottery ticket might give people: hope. And that's what you might need to get up the next day when you are poor. That said, targeting poor neighborhoods to extract more money from them does seem shameful.

<comment><USER17> Hope is an optimistic word for this. I think it would be more accurate to say idle thrill. Passive daydreaming about going from nothing to millions overnight (due to external factors you can't even influence except by buying a ticket) doesn't really count as 'hope' in my view. It's a bit like saying drinking helps people to avoid problems. I mean, technically it does...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Since the market economy is supposed to search for Pareto optimality (local optima) why not view the lottery as a way to find a better global optima by randomly kicking the system out of its local optima. Similar to how annealing [1] uses random jumps.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> ...but sports book regulation is noxious government interference.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe it's just me, but I never got the attitude a lot of people have here. I mean, is playing the lottery a foolish decision? Sure, but for the most part it's pretty cheap, and offers the smallest amount of hope for something better. More than you can say about a lot of other alternatives...

People know they're (most likely) not going to win. It's just a bit of fun, and slightly less awkward than having to got to a casino.

<comment><USER20> And I never understood the "fun" part. It's "fun" for the 10 seconds it takes to check the numbers, maybe. You'd get a lot more entertainment taking 10 singles and tossing them over a railing at the mall and watching the resulting show.

<comment><USER21> This made my night. That is exactly how I feel. I just spit out my drink reading this comment. Id rather just go give random people a dollar sand see their reaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Lotteries, and these distributions of lotto spending, aren't a problem. They're a symptom of a larger problem in the cultural divide between socioeconomic and racial classes from which a significant amount of this country's problems can be tracked back to.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is ironic, people think they're being selfish but in actuality they're being servile.

</comment><comment><USER24> I always considered the lottery a tax on irrationality.

<comment><USER25> It's a tax on people who are bad at statistics.</comment></comment>


Improving Malware Detection in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2014/07/23/improving-malware-detection-in-firefox/

<comment><AUTHOR> The metadata Firefox is sending to Google about the unsigned binaries or binaries signed by an unstrusted party include [1]:

\- The target URL from which the file was downloaded, its referrer URL and any URLs in the redirect chain.

\- The SHA-256 hash of the contents of the file.

Because of privacy concerns I would rather this feature not be opt-out.

[1] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features/Application_Reput...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Features/Application_Reputation_Design_Doc)</comment>


Game Theory Is Really Counterintuitive - <AUTHOR> https://williamspaniel.com/2014/05/25/game-theory-is-really-counterintuitive/ <comment><USER2> Much of probability is also counterintuitive and challenging to all human minds: for example, here is the classic Newton-Pepys Problem [http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/february12014/](http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/february12014/)

and

here is further discussion about the logical error Newton made in his solution: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0701089.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0701089.pdf)

("In 1693, Isaac Newton answered a query from Samuel Pepys about a problem involving dice. Newton's analysis is discussed and attention is drawn to an error he made.")</comment>


Facts About 'The Voyage of the Mimi' - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/59121/30-fun-facts-about-voyage-mimi <comment><USER2> Damn fascinating -- this finally solves a mystery I've grappled with since elementary school. My 4th grade year (in the mid-early 2000s) was themed heavily around... whales. We watched the first season of "The Voyage of the Mimi" over the course of the year and learned all other sorts of whale facts. This was in a public school outside of Philadelphia; I had just transferred from a private Quaker school and was thoroughly confused. Somewhat by the whole public school experience, but mostly by the focus on whales. By the time we were watching it the curriculum had lost all focus on math, science, or computers; the original software materials were probably totally out of date at that point, so it makes sense.

Thanks for posting this @curtis; I had no idea that it was funded by the Department of Education.

<comment><USER3> If you had said your sixth grade year I would have sworn we went to the same district. I grew up not far from Quakertown, pa and we had a rather rambling unit on whales where we would watch the Voyage of the Mimi. I say rambling, because our regular teacher was in and out that year with an illness. The long term sub would have us watch Voyage of the Mimi at what felt like irregular intervals.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's Mental Floss, but I still found this write-up pretty interesting, even though I never saw The Voyage of the Mimi myself.

 _Thirty years ago this month, The Voyage of the Mimi debuted on PBS. The groundbreaking educational science series, part of the curriculum of many elementary and high school students (including this writer!), captivated kids throughout the '80s and '90s, spawned a sequel, and kicked off Ben Affleck's career. Here are 30 things you might not have known about the show._

<comment><USER4> I did see _The Voyage of the Mimi_ , and enjoyed it very much as a kid. I watched some of the clips now, and it is still very good.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I particularly liked the story (#13) about the "difficult" scene where they needed to film a scientist tagging a whale with a transmitter. The weather was good and the whales showed up right on time, and the _real_ scientist (standing in for the fake scientist played by an actor) made a great shot with a crossbow to tag one of the whales. The whole scene only took a couple of hours to shoot.

</comment><comment><USER5> My buddy's granddad was Pete Marston sr. We always joke that means Ben Alleck got his start pretending to be him.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great, now I'm going to have the theme music stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heh, yeah, Ben Affleck as a kid on an adventure.</comment>