SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/11/soundcloud-financial-report-44m-losses/ <comment><USER2> Soundcloud is absolutely ubiquitous in the electronic music community. I was talking about this with a friend recently who is a programmer and a (relatively) well known composer, and she made the point that soundcloud actually represents a very important cultural document; there is tons of music that has been created in the past 5+ years that exists exclusively there, and it would be a tremendous cultural loss if it were to disappear. This is something I haven't heard a great deal about, and it's something that concerns me about other media platforms like Medium.

<comment><USER3> when people argue that "digital distribution is essentially free," then ask why Soundcloud is losing money, since distributing music is literally their only real cost of doing business.

we will continue to endure substantial cultural losses for so long as people continue to believe that content can & should be distributed and consumed for free.

ultimately some sort of micropayments + blockchain-like-cloudserving might replace Spotify, Soundcloud, and all other streaming services with a decentralized system in which listeners compensate artists directly.

until then the promise of disintermediation is just a fantasy. gatekeepers on the Internet control access to most content, particularly music.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I don't think the solution even requires that much creativity or innovation.

Just in the past 3 or 4 months I've found half a dozen or more artists on Soundcloud, then headed over to Bandcamp or Amazon to buy and download their music. It would be awesome if I could buy it right there on Soundcloud. Every song could have a "Buy MP3" and "Buy Album" button right there by the Like, Share and other buttons.

Maybe it wouldn't solve all of their problems, but it's better than what they have now.

<comment><USER5> A lot of the music posted is a single here, a single there - often before official release. Sometimes it isn't weeks until that single (or larger album) is available for purchase.

Plus, for the electronic/DJ side of things, many of the tracks posted are remixes which aren't ever for sale (it seems). But from a scale standpoint, you would think that there might be _some_ sort of revenue opportunity there.

<comment><USER4> I don't see how that changes anything.

Post the single with a "Available to buy on <some date>" notice. When it's officially released, take down the notice and put up "Buy now" buttons. And there's no reason they have to make every song available for sale or every song that's for sale available for streaming.

<comment><USER6> Even better, either 'Let me know when it's available' or 'Auto-buy and add to my collection when it's out'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been a daily soundcloud user for almost 6 years. At some point they gave up on trying to change or improve the user experience. Soundcloud has done nothing to facilitate the growth of users who focus on reposting/finding/sharing/curating content, vs. content creators who upload their own music. There is no way to gain a following or reputation as someone who reposts content on soundcloud -- and even if you have that following, there's no way to communicate to your audience.

In three years, it seems they've just made the UI elements bigger, and added background images for songs and profiles. I was really hoping to see the ability to post text messages into people's timelines. Something to communicate to your followers.

<comment><USER8> Reposts? They are currently my #1 annoyance on soundcloud. I'm following 300+ artists and they increased my stream's size by at least 4x.

It's not about "finding, sharing and curating" but to spam your stream with duplicate tracks.

Imagine an artist reposting his own tracks. Then his network does. As does his label. And his friend. And then all of them repost a playlist with this track on it. Yay!

Please give us an option to hide them...

<comment><USER9> Agreed, and the solution is painfully obvious: Show the item once in the feed and just let me know that "DJ Joe Doe, Awesome Records, [guy who is in my network] and 27 other people reposted this."

Come to think about it, isn't that how most other social feeds handle this problem?

<comment><USER10> Facebook has been doing this for years and it works great. The duplicated content is shown once, and then the separate comment feeds from the different reposts (if there are any) are put below it. Soundcloud wouldn't even have to innovate here; they just need to copy what's already working elsewhere.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps they found the duplication better for revenue?

<comment><USER10> Not having duplication is better for revenue because having duplicate content fill up your feed because lots of your friends re-shared something is bad UI. I'm not really that much more likely to click on something after the first time I'm shown something, and I start to get actively pissed off at it after a few unnecessary repetitions (this was a big complaint about the spam coming from Facebook games in the early days). Spamming up the feed with duplicate content means that for the same time spent browsing, someone sees fewer pieces of _original_ content, meaning their average click rate is less, and yes, that costs revenue.

But fundamentally duplication costs revenue because it's a bad UI and bad UIs piss off users, leading them to use your product less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Article is bs.

they lost 44m in _2014_. Raised 77m last year. They may need to raise more in 2016.

Nothing else. No other facts. No info on their balance sheet, etc. Doesn't even know if they're growing, what their revenue or losses for 2015 were.

And based on that, Fact thinks that's enough to say they "may be forced to close".

<comment><USER13> The auditor has clearly stated that it has doubts about the company as a 'going concern'. This is a technical term in auditing that implies the auditor has doubts that the company will survive (i.e, will have to liquidate) another twelve months. It's not a willy nilly "growing company is losing money" type statement, it means there is a fundamental problem in how the company is financed and operated.

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

<comment><USER14> Auditors are required to issue such statements when there is no line of sight to the company being solvent (and no one can guarantee that the company can close a financing round.) I'd venture a guess that almost every startup at a similar stage to SoundCloud would have the same issue if they are audited.

<comment><USER15> Soundcloud is almost 10 years old. At what point a company stops being a startup? At what point it stops being feasible for a company to operate at a loss?

<comment><USER14> Are these meant to be rhetorical? You decide when you're going to stop calling it a startup. They are venture-backed and founded within the past decade. I'm going to call them a startup.

As for question number two, I'll let you count how many publicly-traded companies aren't profitable that have been around for decades.

I didn't register an opinion on whether SoundCloud should or shouldn't be profitable, I merely said what GAAS[0] requires an auditor to do.

[0] [http://pcaobus.org/Standards/Auditing/Pages/AU341.aspx](http://pcaobus.org/Standards/Auditing/Pages/AU341.aspx)

<comment><USER16> There is operating at a loss because you are reinvesting (see: Amazon) and there is operating at a loss because your business isn't viable. Soundcloud is somewhere in between those two extremes.

<comment><USER14> Very true--Amazon would never have a going concern statement issued in its audit, because it voluntarily reinvests what would otherwise be operating profit. I was thinking more along the lines of a company like Sprint, where they are only solvent through issuance of debt and outside investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope this is just an alarmist headline. SoundCloud is pretty essential in its space, it's one of the few services that lets you natively get audio on to Twitter, the main place musicians share snapshots of their work and remixes, and a key part of numerous podcasts and ways to embed easily shared audio on the Web. This is one startup I absolutely don't want to see go down the pan.

<comment><USER18> have you ever paid a cent to soundcloud?

<comment><USER19> I'm a voice actor, and soundcloud has been vital to me. I've been a paying customer for years.

<comment><USER20> One reason businesses fail is the lack of the business to be able to cope with a service disruption. I hope you have other avenues!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Am I missing something? This report is from 2014. Despite the fact that " _SoundCloud was heavily reliant on further capital investment to continue operating in 2015._ "....it did indeed raise money, made it through 2015, and is still operating in 2016.

It seems that this "report" is coming out now because stories about startup implosions get more clicks these days. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they are and have been losing money. That's why these companies raise such large rounds.

</comment><comment><USER22> All my production buddies hate it. They pay full price, your the world and yet Soundcloud take down the tracks that they OWN. With no recourse or apology. Their system has been broken for 5 years at least for the power users in the community.

<comment><USER23> Another anecdote: I have played with their JavaScript API about 2 or 3 years ago and it was constantly broken, with no way to report those bugs.

Their support page states "ask on StackOverflow" as it stated back then, which is a terrible way to report bugs. [https://developers.soundcloud.com/support](https://developers.soundcloud.com/support)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They raised $77M USD last year. The auditor's statement is just standard boilerplate for a company that's losing money.

Given the involvement of big investors, it seems extremely unlikely that SoundCloud would shut down rather than raise another round or get acquired.

<comment><USER25> The sensationalized title tricked me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not being able to save tracks for offline use on mobile has been bothering me for a while. Maybe I'm an edge case, but I do a lot of listening while commuting, which means no Internet on the subway here in NYC. That means SoundCloud isn't even an option for me unless I'm at my desk.

Also, I can't save a collection of favorite tracks in any meaningful way. I can favorite them, but they quickly get lost in the mobile UI if I do too much of that. I end up relying on global search every time I want to revisit a song or artist.

Overall it seems like UX hasn't been a top priority for them.

<comment><USER27> I'd love to pay Soundcloud actual money for the ability to cache songs for offline listening in the mobile app! This would be a killer feature for a listener-focused subscription tier.

<comment><USER28> I'd love to have offline copies of just -my own stuff-, never mind anyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What do 200 people do in such a company? (serious question, I just wonder how the workforce is usually distributed for a single online product of that size)

<comment><USER30> The way a startup can become a bloated corporation-like structure here in Europe is a surprisingly fast process.

<comment><USER31> Aren't startups usually corporations _ab initio_?

<comment><USER30> Well, they shouldn't gain the bloated-ness of a 40yo bureaucratic corporation that fast, though? At least, that's what all the theories about the way startups should operate are about...

<comment><USER32> Perhaps it's a variation on Parkinson's Law [1]? "The amount of bloat/bureacracy expands so as to fill the budget available to the company?"

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Obligatory link to HN story from 16 days ago about SoundCloud being worth more than Spotify:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10965558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10965558)

</comment><comment><USER34> Having run a music site for 7 years or so I am not surprised. We started before Soundcloud and created a very engaged community for musicians that many paid for.

However I never understood how Soundcloud could justify raising so much money given the revenue potential (from producers) in the space. By the way, the site I ran was [http://www.muziboo.com](http://www.muziboo.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> Considering techcrunch article was published less than a month ago it is safe to ignore the article.

[http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/24/why-soundcloud-will-be- wort...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/24/why-soundcloud-will-be-worth-more- than-spotify/)

</comment><comment><USER36> "Forced to close" is a really, really big stretch here.

They have a huge community, play an important role in online music, and have a seemingly excellent engineering team. I'm sure they would be acquired by a major media player long before they ever closed, but I don't see that happening any time more. I bet they'll just double-down and raise more money while trying to develop more subscription revenue offerings to music consumers.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this article based on anything substantial?

They lost $44m in 2014 but raised $77m in 2015.

The article refers to a report saying SoundCloud is heavily reliant on "further capital investment" to continue operating. Isn't that just another way of saying they're currently not turning a profit? Wouldn't that have been true of YouTube prior to acquisition?

I'm not familiar with FACT. Looks like it may be a legitimate music industry publication. Looking at the other SoundCloud articles, it seems about 50% of them are in some way negative. That suggests to me that they might have an agenda they're pushing.

[http://www.factmag.com/tag/soundcloud/](http://www.factmag.com/tag/soundcloud/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Soundcloud has not done 'peak mySpace' yet:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=soundcloud&geo=US](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=soundcloud&geo=US)

All seems on the up in terms of interest from people using the search engine. Very enviable curve.

<comment><USER39> It seems it has reached a peak, or at least has not been really growing in 2015, if you check worldwide

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#geo&q=soundcloud](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#geo&q=soundcloud)

<comment><USER38> Weird how Pakistan seems to be Soundcloud central! I suspect that the advertising sales team at Soundcloud only care about the Western markets, hence I posted the US 'trend'.

<comment><USER40> Soundcloud may have good reasons for that...

Anecdotally I see 10x conversion rates in western countries, despite having higher active user counts outside of there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > While SoundCloud brought in €17.35m ($15.37m) in 2014, it lost a total of > €39.14m ($44.19m). Employee wages during that period also increased 42.5% to > €17.9m, meaning that the average wage per employee for that year totalled > €79,980.

Wow, that is ridiculously high, especially so for Berlin.

<comment><USER42> How is that 'ridiculously high'? That's say e4000/month after taxes (if total tax pressure is 40%). These costs also include e.g. the director's salaries, which I presume are more than 80k/year for a 10 year old company with 200 employees.

<comment><USER43> For developer positions in Berlin 4000 € after taxes would be a considerably high salary.

<comment><USER42> Glassdoor says 50-65k before tax for run of the mill 'software dev' in Berlin, with soundcloud being on the upper end of that range; and it seems I underestimated tax pressure with 40%. Considering that 80k is the average (including directors, mgmt, legal, ...), I wouldn't say that those salaries are 'outrageous'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I use Soundcloud for hours every day, and would GLADLY pay a Spotify type premium for it. As others have noted, it has an incredible amount of music that exists nowhere else (including a lot of non-EDM), but it is a great listening platform for many other reasons. The biggest, for me, is that SoundCloud has far and away the best discovery mechanisms. The 'play related tracks' feature is the most effective radio I've found (better than Pandora, light years better than Spotify) and my feed is always full of new songs that I enjoy.

But SoundCloud has one big problem holding it back, in my opinion:

Getting a great SoundCloud experience requires a lot of upfront work. To have a good feed, you need to find and follow a bunch of artists and/or 'like' a bunch of tracks (from when I first started: the default feed, or low-data feed, gets stale quickly, and had many songs that did not align with my preferences). This sounds simple, but it's not, as SoundCloud is designed for discovery rather than building/organizing your music library. For example, there is no library-like simple list view, and you can't filter/sort your 'likes' as you can in Spotify/iTunes. Also, the radio-like features are not immediately apparent, making it hard to bootstrap your SoundCloud preferences by passively listening/liking tracks as you go.

Looking to the alluded future monetization: The ads are infrequent, and not at all annoying. Unless they ramp up the ads, it will not be a big incentive to pay for premium.

There is really nothing like SoundCloud if you like EDM or EDM-influenced indie music (think Miike Snow).

<comment><USER45> you can pay a spotify-type premium for it, if you want to support them just upload to a pro account (even if you don't upload any music). I am going to do that myself as I just realized pretty much 90+% of the listening I do at work while coding is on soundcloud (I also have a subscription to google music, but don't use it as much for EDM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> They lost me as a paying customer when they decided to allow Universal Music Group to remove content directly. Overnight I just stopped caring about Soundcloud. They might have done more such things to piss off users since then, but I wouldn't know. I, at least, decided it would not be worth investing my time in the site after that.

Apart from that; yeah, it is the Flickr of music -- promising at first, but then a whole lot of non-evolution of the site.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a badly written article. Impossible to tell if the headline is accurate or if the writer made an alarmist guess.

<comment><USER48> When the first sentence has "but the its" in it, I gave up on even trying to read the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I thought it was supposed to be worth more than Spotify a few weeks ago? [1]

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10965558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10965558)

</comment><comment><USER50> This is why archive.org with your own netlabel is a better choice, theyre not for profit so the bar is lower fir their survival. The more we donate to them the better they get too!

<comment><USER51> Thanks for sharing - first time I've heard of their Netlabels (weird name imo):

[https://archive.org/details/netlabels](https://archive.org/details/netlabels)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Soundcloud seems like the only service that allows other sites to use the music data. By that I mean the ability to use actually use the track's sample data for creative coding audio reactive projects like [http://vertexshaderart.com](http://vertexshaderart.com)

On the negative side, as others have pointed out, they haven't done much to make the site better for various definitions of better. I've found searching fairly lacking. I'd love something that tried to find tracks I'd like (is that something deep learning could figure out?).

Also when searching for music I type in some keyword and then start listening to tracks. The browser gets more and more bogged down the more tracks I listen to. Something about their design is adding more parallel work with each new track clicked on. Maybe that's a browser bug? Eventually I have to refresh the page and then scroll back down to the last track I played and continue the process of listening to tracks.

<comment><USER53> TIL about vertexshaderart.com. Amazing and right up my alley and making me feel like I was under a rock!

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a music consumer I personally want to pay for soundcloud instead of getting ads, which could bring more revenue than ads and be more flexible in prizing, but when I asked soundcloud support for the option they said they had no immediate plans for one. In the end money is king and I don't understand why they haven't explored more revenue options.

Edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER55> I really hope this isn't true. I've hosted my own music there for years (and am a paying customers), and almost all of the interesting new music I find is from there.

One thing that might help them is to charge non-creators for some services. Right now there just doesn't appear to be any reason to if you're just a listener.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't say this about many start ups, but sound cloud has created an amazing experience and interface for publishing sound. I don't know how defendable it is, but they are one of those start ups that definitely needs more capital before they build out their revenue streams. And I think they are going to get it.

</comment><comment><USER57> Unfortunately, none of this is surprising. Soundcloud has no real revenue model due to a seemingly inability to court rights-holders, and the product is mediocre at best. Soundcloud provided an outlet for the indie and electronic music communities to share and consume music early on, and that has more or less remained their bread and butter to this day. Even if they were charging end-users for access, the viability of it is as a competitor to Spotify and Apple music, at the prevailing market price-point ($10 / month) is slim. Ultimately Soundcloud is a niche product competing against broad market products with no real path to revenue other than somehow bringing mainstream music onboard. And it seems pretty clear that mainstream music isn't interested in collaborating with Soundcloud.

</comment><comment><USER58> Terrible article and sensational headline - the problem with all the YC guys being asleep right now.

</comment><comment><USER59> Reminds me of the danish site MyMusic.dk that was founded in 1998, and became the go-to site of danish underground artists. In 2010 it just disappeared from the web, and 12 years of music from 16.000 danish artists were just _gone_.

It reappeared as Bandbase.dk for a while, but then went bankrupt again.

That said, I think Soundcloud has missed a huge opportunity by being market leaders. They could have taken the best from Bandcamp, and earned royalties from each sale. It would make it so easy for indie artists to earn a little money from what they love, and also make Soundcloud money. Instead, artists are putting up 30 second previews on Soundcloud with a link to Bandcamp to buy/download for free.

</comment><comment><USER60> I seriously don't understand how this is possible. I was the multimedia editor of a college newspaper in about 2008 and we needed a place to host podcasts. We were looking around for a solution that could serve as infrastructure for audio files, and soundcloud was the only game in town.

It still is, and now, eight years later, podcasts as a business are booming. How are they not making enough money selling their product as infrastructure? Their API is _so unbelievably good_ that even a cash-strapped community college was prepared to pay for their service. Are they really not earning enough revenue to keep it going?

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I think it would be a shame if SoundCloud disappeared considering how many of my music discoveries come from there. If it wasn't for SoundCloud I wouldn't have known Pilotpriest, Dance with the dead, Droid Bishop, and other synthwave artists even existed. Bandcamp is okay but I find it hard to find new synthwave and related genre artists on their search. If SoundCloud dies someone over at Bandcamp needs to beef up the search and tagging system over there (I buy much of my music now through BandCamp).

</comment><comment><USER61> How many of these services will have to shut down before it's user's will start supporting them? Please give me the option of paying money, and making sure you will be in business for the next few years.

<comment><USER62> BandCamp seems to have figured out a good model for this

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I used to produce tech/progressive trance back in the day as a hobby (you can checkout snippets from some of my tracks from SC link below) and remember when SoundCloud first came into the picture. It was a great platform to connect with others who dabble in music production and share tips. It has since become the breeding ground for up and coming EDM producers. A really cool place on the web and it'd be a shame if they closed down shop.

[https://soundcloud.com/sergei-a](https://soundcloud.com/sergei-a)

</comment><comment><USER64> I would be happy to pay something to Soundcloud as long as it's not per-song. It's a good service. Really easy to use as a musician and great for finding new music as a consumer.

Hm, maybe they should be selling some "audiophile" subscriptions with ability to tag and hierarchically categorize songs you liked? I would buy that if the price is not astronomical.

But I also think it's really important that the basic usage stays free for people who randomly wonder in from other websites.

</comment><comment><USER65> Article at Financial Times, _SoundCloud to seek more funding in 2016_ :

[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fcb06850-c66e-11e5-808f-8231c...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fcb06850-c66e-11e5-808f-8231cd71622e.html#axzz3zsBbAXyy)

This appears to be the basis for the report. Startups tend to post losses. Amazon did for many years. That's because all the money that comes in gets spent to grow.

</comment><comment><USER66> Youtube is not making any profit either, I suppose streaming based websites are very difficult to make profitable. Must be the constant growing expenses for servers.

<comment><USER67> All the sites that have predicted youtube as unprofitable assume google is paying standard bandwidth rates, with the peering arrangements they have with ISPs of virtually any size, they pay next to nothing to reach 95% of end users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> While I understand the appeal for Soundcloud as a platform for people to get their music "out there" (especially with EDM), I personally don't like the UX at all. The big gripe I have is that the categories are often jacked up. I'm a big metal fan and almost half of the songs in the "Metal" category do not remotely meet that description.....as in, dubstep remixes of Taylor Swift songs and crap like that.

</comment><comment><USER69> I remember few years ago there was something like forum (or groups) on Soundcloud. It was really nice way to collaborate with other musicians, but they decided to kill it. I lost interest in SoundCloud since... I still have an account, but I am not using it that often. Also how they present tracks is very annoying, so I stopped sharing soundcloud stuff with friends. It actually got me into creating my own service.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's difficult to discover new music on SC outside of what's currently popular. Maybe it's there somewhere but I find the UI frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER71> SoundCloud is a grassroots thing really necessary for creativity coming out of no where exposing music on an even playing field compared with other services. I love them.

They should not only charge for music uploading but have a premium plan for listeners like myself similar to Spotify. No ads the ability to archive songs outside of normal release windows, something like that.

</comment><comment><USER72> Losing soundcloud would be terrible. Half of my music discovery is through soundcloud; Though I find myself listening 80% of the time on Spotify instead, moving over once I find an artist through soundcloud.

Soundcloud's mobile app is terrible though, randomly freezing and crashing. Wonder if poor engagement through the app contributed to the this loss posting.

</comment><comment><USER73> A few days early this news already circulated on multiple sites - and I had to blog about how the media was covering these "news": [http://meshedsociety.com/how-the-media-reports-about- soundcl...](http://meshedsociety.com/how-the-media-reports-about-soundclouds- financials/)

</comment><comment><USER74> Don't think FACT interpret the funcials of this Startup very well. A FT article responinding to the same release seems more to the point: [https://next.ft.com/content/fcb06850-c66e-11e5-808f-8231cd71...](https://next.ft.com/content/fcb06850-c66e-11e5-808f-8231cd71622e)

</comment><comment><USER75> 80k average salary is crazy for a Berlin based company. They have a reputation of poaching engineers and granting them crazy salary increases. They then also let them do kind of whatever they feel like with whatever tech stack which may work if you have a money printing service but is questionable for the stage they are in.

</comment><comment><USER76> _The report makes it clear that while the company had "adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the forseeable future," SoundCloud was heavily reliant on "further capital investment" to continue operating in 2015._

What's the difference between "operational existence" and "continue operating" here?

</comment><comment><USER77> That looks like sloppy reporting or at least a misleading headline. Although I guess anything "could" happen.

</comment><comment><USER78> Just add "could be" to your headline and you can write anything.

There is absolutely no evidence that SoundCloud is forced to shut down and the $44m loss for 2014 is was reported before.

So a VC backup company is still losing money and is still dependent on new financing rounds or loans? Not something totally unheard of.

</comment><comment><USER79> _While SoundCloud brought in €17.35m ($15.37m) in 2014, it lost a total of €39.14m ($44.19m). Employee wages during that period also increased 42.5% to €17.9m, meaning that the average wage per employee for that year totalled €79,980_

Seems like a pretty generous wage increase for a company in the red.

<comment><USER30> Especially given that good talent here in Berlin is much much cheaper. 80k/year scores you some superstar devs, while that's probably the peanuts some out-of-school pre-puberal intern would earn at a Valley startup.

What's really expensive here is management people and the way German hire the mid-level management is broken most of the time. I don't know if it's a German thing or a global corporate thing, but I've personally witnessed some pretty interesting hiring horror stories.

<comment><USER80> 80k/year probably includes the 28-ish% "Lohnnebenkosten" (incidental wage costs)

So the actual paycheck would be around 60k. I think that's pretty ok for Berlin?

Having worked in both, Germany and Silicon Valley, I'd say that the middle management hiring is certainly a bigger problem in Germany than I've seen on either the east or west coast in the US.

<comment><USER81> No, it is around 70k/year pre-tax. Note that social sec payments are capped and Arbeitgeberanteil is smaller.

[http://www.brutto-netto- rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-a...](http://www.brutto-netto- rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-arbeitgeber.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I didn't expected that, Soundcloud is such a nice plateforme. I thought that they were still growing, there is so much potential, with artists promotion and so on. I also wonder why they never became a selling platform. Is there any company that would buy the service ?

</comment><comment><USER83> My obligatory show HN link: [https://octave.is](https://octave.is) is the Vimeo to Soundcloud's Youtube. No crap comments, no ads, no garbage on your artist page.

<comment><USER84> It looks nice. Good luck with it. As with all audio hosting services, after a moderate amount of success you will surely find yourself on the radar of the anti-piracy agencies. I hope you are well prepared and can overcome this challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I do not upload any music on to sound cloud, but never the less, it is one of my primary ways of discovery. I would happily pay $2-4 a month to so called get rid of "ADs" and support them.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is unfortunate news... I remember seeing this video ( years ago) introducing SoundCloud: [https://vimeo.com/1857085](https://vimeo.com/1857085)

Nostalgic, now.

</comment><comment><USER87> Anyone know how big it is in terms of available files and total file size?

</comment><comment><USER88> KPMG's statement is pretty standard in any GAAP financial statement. If your company is losing money, it pretty much has to be included. Not many startups wouldn't have it.

</comment><comment><USER89> I will be very sad if they go, as I have my music (from another life) on that service. However, I doubt that will happen. At worst they will scale down their operations and cut costs.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen How much data does soundcloud host?

I can't deal with another mp3.com :( My CD backups of MP3.com in 2001 were damaged and I had lost songs for ever. It was tragic.

</comment><comment><USER90> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083954)

</comment><comment><USER91> Does anybody remember the name of the indie music website that was very popular around 2000 or so? For the life of me I can't remember it.

<comment><USER92> Insound?

<comment><USER91> Another blast from the past, but no, that wasn't it either :(

grrr. Now I really have to figure this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Can we have some more data?

How many visits do they have per day? How much data do they stream per day? What is the total amount of data that they serve?

</comment><comment><USER94> Maybe Google or other bigco could buy out of bankruptcy? Is there too much tail liability from some copyright infringement??

</comment><comment><USER95> I have a strong belief in heartis.at as the new soundcloud and baboom.com as the real marketplace (which disrupts the industry).

<comment><USER96> I love hearthis.at, it's like soundcloud properly done. never heard of baboom, is it essentially bandcamp? bandcamp seems to do everything right imo

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> There is a great cultural and emotional content that these services contains. Shutting these services will cause a big damage to this heritage.

We are trying to solve some of the biggest problems of music industry with PindropMusic

[https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/pindropmusic/id1042553162?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/pindropmusic/id1042553162?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER98> Loss of 44m dollars is nothing in internet industry. As long as that loss contributes to growth!

</comment><comment><USER99> soundcloud charges musicians around $150 for an annual pro subscription and then sends the consumers to bandcamp to buy the music and merch.

doesn't sound like the right monetization approach

</comment><comment><USER100> it's a great service, they just need to monetise properly.

</comment><comment><USER101> That is a bummer. I love SoundCloud and use it frequently.

</comment><comment><USER102> What we need is something that isn't centralized. The problem that needs to be solved is how to pay for the things that you care about but, keep enough in a common pot to not only share the service but, to make systems for discovery.

Soundcloud is awesome. It's needed, it's culturally important but, it doesn't make money. We should stop thinking of things like Soundcloud like business but, more like museums with infinite square footage.

We can pay the artists as patrons directly, we can pay tour guides who show us interesting and amazing things. We have decent micropayments. What's left is the thing that hackers aren't great at, the cultural work of changing public perception.

Most artists just want to eat, pay rent and live well enough to create more art. I love that Soundcloud allowed people to experiment, get good enough to book gigs and then I could see them live.

What we need is a system that does that efficiently. We need a better managerial structure than VCs + Founders. Soundcloud is a pretty solved problem, both technology wise and UI wise. What isn't solved is funding and management.

There are so many services that would be wonderful to have but, will never be $1bn+ exits for anyone.

Twitter should be. IMHO I think it will be eventually.

Every social network gets abandoned once people put up ads. It's pretty crazy that we live in a world where conversation, speech both personal and public are strip-mined for profit.

People will eventually realize that freedom costs something. Thankfully, technology should make that cost in dollars very cheap.

A Facebook scale social network could charge $1/yr and pull in $1.5bn/yr. A decentralized FB-scale network isn't trivial both technically and socially but, it's something that we as hackers should figure out.

A decentralized social network would be a huge win for freedom of speech, thought and information. Facebook already filters everything that people see. It's a centralized, easily subpoena-able entity.

The larger, much harder problem is how do you convince teenage girls to join a service. They are both the heavy users and set the communication norms for the next generation.

The next problem is how do you build something that is wanted by society but, don't do it by setting up a relationship with a VC looking to exit for 100X what they put in.

Once we solve those two issues, social and funding then the world will very quickly become a place where we can build things that are self-sustaining, less link rot, less invasion of privacy, less filtering of thought and speech by centralized powers.

</comment><comment><USER103> I'll purchase a subscription service immediately.

</comment><comment><USER104> What would you consider to be a viable alternative?

<comment><USER105> bandcamp and mixcloud

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> The worst part: we all knew this day was coming from many years back. Because we all know but don't want to accept that advertising is the only viable business model on the web.

</comment><comment><USER107> GO BACK TO BUZZFEED YOU FEARMONGER

</comment><comment><USER108> factmag talking financials is like Trump talking politics

</comment><comment><USER109> This blows my mind! SoundCloud is ubiquitous</comment>


Ask HN: What is a good book on operating systems? - <AUTHOR> I just finished reading this book (based on recs found here): https://dataintensive.net/buy.html. And thought it was excellent. Can some recommend a book with similar level content + explanations on OSs. I'm and EE undergrad, but am looking for something higher level if possible. <comment><USER2> Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau. It is free here [http://ostep.org/](http://ostep.org/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. This is the first time I have come across this recommendation. It looks interesting.</comment></comment>


A CS degree is a waste of money? I disagree - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/12/16/warning-college-may-be-a-waste-of-your-time-and-money/

<comment><USER2> There are really two issues: the knowledge acquisition and the money. I have made a good living in software for nearly a decade, without having a computer science degree. Being self-taught was not a problem. My only problem is that I never invested in learning some of the core material - writing my own operating system, writing a compiler, learning 30 common algorithms, etc. For most jobs, this knowledge is not required. But if I wanted to work for Google or Facebook, lack of this knowledge might be a problem. When you work at their scale, often operating system patches or crazy algorithms are needed, and the base knowledge comes in handy.

That said, there is no reason for the base knowledge acquisition to cost $100k. It merely requires an investment of time. There is no equipment needed, professors are not that helpful. You just need to the work of reading through the material and coding the implementations.

So waste of money, yes. Waste of time, no.

</comment><comment><USER3> A CS degree won't teach you how to program computers. I realized that early in my career, when I observed that I - with a physics degree - was better than most young coders with CS degrees.

There are other kinds of degrees that are useful to programming. My Physics, EE, linguistics for AI, say.

</comment><comment><USER4> A theoretical CS degree is definitely not a waste of money.</comment>


The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest - <AUTHOR> https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ <comment><USER2> Commentary on the 2019 contest from last week, 140+ points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21591206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21591206)</comment>


MH370 disappearance: Goodfellow's theory about fire and Langkawi is wrong. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/18/mh370_disappearance_chris_goodfellow_s_theory_about_a_fire_and_langkawi.html <comment><USER2> The theory was obviously wrong even when it was on the front page of HN two days ago:

1\. It does not account for course changes made after the initial diversion from the flight path.

2\. It does not account for the final known location of the aircraft along the infamous "arc" off of Australia and Kazakhstan.

The popularity of the theory was and remains puzzling.

<comment><USER3> Dunno. 1 and 2 could be experimental error. Here's his rebuttal cut and pasted:

GOODFELLOW REBUTTAL...Interesting analysis of my analysis.

New information surfaced today of several people in the Maldives seeing a large white airliner with three red stripes flying overhead at 6:15am the following morning. This coincides nicely with the 2000 nautical mile distance from the original turn made 5 hours before approx. 400 knots/hr. The Maldives lie on an extended line from the initial heading the plane took.

The writer says MH370 made several course changes at various waypoints. This is based on Malaysian radar data which may well have been tracking the other aircraft which is mentioned in the piggy back scenario while MH370 continued on in a southwesterly direction.

This morning I posted a new piece that calls for Rolls Royce to come clean with its data. I think they have the keys to the puzzle so to speak. After all it took two days for the information to filter out they had been collecting the databursts for a further six hours. (this was after I penned my original piece). The key to whether this was a "ghost plane" for 6 hours or a hijack is in their data. Again simple. If the data shows the engine parameters did not change - constant rpm - and normal cruise settings throughout the six hours then the aircraft for all intents and purposes was a ghost flight with no human input. If on the other hand as this writer asserts the plane maneuvered and changed direction and particularly if we were led to believe it performed a the piggy back operation to avoid radar as it moved up the Bay of Bengal there would be many power setting changes in the data. Rolls Royce needs to clarify this asap.

I would dearly love to be proved wrong and for this aircraft to have been hijacked and landed somewhere and the passengers although being held were at least alive. However, I cannot come to that conclusion on my interpretation of the scant facts. I still believe the craft flew on until fuel exhaustion somewhere west of the Maldives. The sighting, if correct, in the Maldives ties together the timeline and heading. The 777 when trimmed is a very stable plane and theoretically could just fly on if a heading was entered.

The New York Times has written that the initial turn south west was initiated by an entry into the Flight Management System and the plane was not manually turned. I don't know how they can determine this but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I too have GPS in my car and in two keystrokes I can hit go home and the route is plotted. Guess what? All the airports in the region of operations of this aircraft are already loaded in the FMS. All the pilot had to do was enter the identifier for Langwaki and they craft turned and headed for the initial approach waypoint. He may well have had time to do this before events overwhelmed him. In any event the plane took up a heading for Langwaki which appears incontrovertible at this point.. Many people wrote me about airports on the north coast of Malaysia. KBR in particular but this is a 6,000 foot strip with an approach over land and hills. Few pilots would opt to try and stuff an obviously damaged craft of this type at this point into a 6,000 strip at night. I still believe the turn was to initiate an approach to Langwaki where he had a long clear obstruction free approach over water. His craft was likely above max landing weight and he knew it. He couldn't dump fuel if he had fire. The best scenario is a very long runway.

Unfortunately I still think they were overcome by events.

I am an optimist and I believe we are going to have a resolution within the next couple of days because at least now I feel they are searching in the right place....namely at the place I said in the first post on an extension of the heading they had set up for Langwaki. I said it would be either at a point where the plane crashed becausefire destroyed the flight surfaces OR at the end of fuel exhaustion. We now know it motored on six hours. We now know there was a sighting in the Maldives. I hope and pray they find it west of the Maldives very soon.

Today I received calls from all major networks CNN FOX ABC NBC MSNBC AL JAZ CBS. I declined all interviews. I am not interested in 15 minutes of media fame or more speculation. I am interested in seeing this aircraft found and now feel they are looking in the right place. If found west/southwest of the Maldives I shall travel to New York for a press conference at my own expense and the media can have a go at me at that time. Until then all I'm interested in is the fate of 239 souls and the families concerned and with the enormous interest in this story it seems the whole world is too.

Thank you for your interest and time in this story.

<comment><USER4> The ping data did not come from Rolls Royce, it came from the SATCOM provider. Rolls Royce did not receive data after the aircraft reached cruise altitude, despite early false reports that they did.

The early maneuvering was seen on military radar and is confirmed (Malaysia flew another 777 along the same route and monitored it on radar and the signature matched). The positional arc that has been frequently shown is from the final SATCOM ping the aircraft responded to, roughly 7 hours after takeoff.

<comment><USER5> >Rolls Royce did not receive data after the aircraft reached cruise altitude, despite early false reports that they did.

It casts much doubt on Goodfellow's ability to analyse this case if he didn't know basic facts about it, such as this.

He also referred to the supposed sighting in the Maldives, which appears to be wrong, as it was nowhere near any of the final positions indicated by the SATCOM pings, and occurred about an hour after the plane should have run out of fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's something that particularly bothers me about Goodfellow's article. He condescends about crazy theories while making ridiculous assumption after ridiculous assumption while acting very authoritative about each one. Just because his theory is less "sexy" (it doesn't involve hijacking or terrorists or suicide) doesn't make it any more valid. I'm appreciative of commentary that urges a more prudent approach, not a condescending and equally implausible theory that happens to be boring.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any onboard fire fast and strong enough to suddenly disable the crew would almost certainly also bring the plane down in short order, rather than letting it fly on for hours (as the supposed satellite data shows).

See Swissair Flight 111 and ValuJet Flight 592 as past examples.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592)

<comment><USER8> It might be possible to find a Goldilocks explanation. Maybe a smaller fire, located in the cockpit, which the crew eventually extinguish only to find that the cockpit instrumentation is destroyed? Or maybe which they successfully extinguish, but only after both pilots are unconscious from smoke inhalation, and no-one else knows how to fly or use the radios? Sounds a bit contrived, but this is an unusual situtation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Half of the article is an ad hominem style attack against Goodfellow. It would be nice if it was 50% shorter, with only real content. Wise up Jeff.

</comment><comment><USER10> I absolutely think a fire theory would be valid, after all the plane was carrying a large load of lithium batteries.

However, that's precisely the factor that calls Goodfellow's fire theory into question (for me). If a fire broke out that was strong enough to disable comms and/or knock out pilots, then it was strong enough to set off those batteries.

No way the plane flew seven more hours in that scenario. Even if the fire was contained to the cabin and there wasn't a pilot left to fly the plane, someone at some point in those seven hours would've found a cell signal to call for help.

Unless, of course, there was no 7 hours and that satellite ping was for another plane. In that case, I'm thinking is the plane would've gone down soon after the transponder went off and the wreckage would've been found by now.

Personally, I have no clue what happened to this plane.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can somebody explain to me how "pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs"?

If a ping is picked up, shouldn't it be somewhat definitive of where it came from?

<comment><USER4> There's only one satellite, so they only have (as far as we know) the delay time between sending out the ping and hearing a response to determine distance from satellite to aircraft, with no ability to triangulate the position as something like GPS (which uses many satellites) would do. So they can figure out a large curve around the satellite's position, and the aircraft could have been at any point (within the limits of its fuel capacity) when it sent out that final ping.

<comment><USER12> Distance alone should give you a full circle, but remember you also have processing time which is significant.

If they have two possible arcs, this suggests that the same ping was heard by two satellites (and no more), and that these are the places where the difference in time that the satellites heard the pings would work for both satellites.

You have basically three intersecting spheres (one is the earth and the other is based on the satellites' light cones). They all meet in two locations. If you had a third satellite, you should be able to determine which of the two locations was right.

<comment><USER13> You're misunderstanding. There is a single circle, which people are calling two arc. That is because they know the airplane can't fly more than a certain distance from its last known position (this reduces the circle to an arc) and because they know where the airplane _isn 't_ from radar data (that breaks the one arc into two pieces, which happen to be roughly the same size).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My problem with Goodfellow's theory, and what really makes this disappearance so intriguing, is that they never found any wreckage anywhere. I would figure with the plane crashing in the ocean somewhere(which would be the most likely scenario in Goodfellow's theory) I would figure they would find SOMETHING by now considering how many resources are being poured into this search.

<comment><USER3> In Goodfellow's hypothesis the wreckage will be found west of the Maldives shortly. It wouldn't have been found up to now because they have been searching in the wrong places. I have not been blown away by the Malaysians efficiency in doing the search and analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sure he's an experienced pilot, but he doesn't seem to have access to any better information than the rest of us. There are plenty of other aviation experts and informed amateurs doing equally interesting analysis and speculation.

So what did Goodfellow do so right to get everyone buzzing about "his" theory?

</comment><comment><USER16> As far as the trajectory is concerned, isn't going near Maldives just about right (let's not forget about map projection and the shape of the earth).

<comment><USER2> Just about right for what?</comment></comment>


Instantly create beautiful GitHub project pages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1081-instantly-beautiful-project-pages <comment><USER2> As awesome as these look, am I the only one who thinks that the word "beautiful" (along with "rich") has gotten overused in web design? It's become a buzzword, I think, to the point that perfectly good synonyms or even more descriptive phrases simply don't get used.

That's not to knock the substance of the post, much less the work, but perhaps it's just a bit of a pet peeve. Carry on. :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, the involuntary irony of saying "beautiful" is overused while calling these designs "awesome". The word you're looking for is "good". You're not awestruck by these designs, you just think they're good.

<comment><USER2> Fair point, and well-taken!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprised the default content of the page isn't set to the readme, if one exists.

<comment><USER5> Same here. While I was browsing themes I figured it WOULD put the README there, but I had to go back and edit everything after I published.

<comment><USER6> Heh, seems like you beat me to the punch by 2min both here and there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really great.

But it's kinda frustrating that you have to go back and forth between edit/layout... I'm sure they'll improve it soon though - It's just 1.0!

I'm liking GitHub more every day (specially since I began using NodeJS and found the plethora of NodeJS modules on GH). I'm happy they are around.

</comment><comment><USER8> Prediction: Premium GitHub readme templates for $1 coming soon. Possible new category on ThemeForest.

<comment><USER9> I would be ok with that. I would say I'd be willing to pay up to $20. Larger projects may even have of more of a need, but then again they may or may not have the design talent who can contribute.

I believe a well designed presence goes a long way in aiding the adoption of a project.

<comment><USER10> _I would say I'd be willing to pay up to $20_

Indeed, I read on TheVerge.com (I think?) some time ago about a guy who's completely self-sufficient and made upwards of $20k just selling themes on ThemeForrest for $10/download

<comment><USER11> There's actually a couple of people who have sold over $1 million of templates on Themeforest.

<comment><USER10> Really? That's fantastic for them and ThemeForrest

<comment><USER12> Look up Orman Clark from PremiumPixels.com. He's sold well over a million dollars on ThemeForest. Unfortunately, the marketplace is now filled with a lot of get rich quick schemers. I know they're (Envato) trying to work on cleaning up the community, but it's going to be a challenge as the market grows. If you want to be successful on ThemeForest in the long-term, I suggest building your own brand to co-exist with the marketplace. Orman serves as a good example of creating a brand differentiated from others. His sense of design is incredible and his success is well deserved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice to see them offer this by default.

DocumentUp is something similar, which pulls the readme and automatically makes a beautiful wiki-type document for any git repo.

<http://documentup.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Are the themes used in the pages open source? They're really awesome designs.

</comment><comment><USER15> My stumbling block with ghpages is the workflow. I have not found a good way to work with the project in the master branch and then my docs/web-content in the ghpages branch. A lot of time all I really need to do is take something from my master/working branch and transmogrify it and dump the output to ghpages. Maybe its something about my git-fu? Or maybe most people's ghpages is less dependent/tied-to what is in their master branch.

Am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER15> Does anyone know what would happen if inside my main repo I had a submodule that was just a checkout of my ghpages branch?

       ./project  <- Main repo
       ./project/project-ghpages <- same repo but gh-pages branch

<comment><USER16> That's how I do it, it works great that way. I didn't actually set up the gh- pages as a proper submodule, I just cloned the branch to a folder. Then I added the gh-pages folder to the top level .gitignore.

<comment><USER15> That's probably better than my ill-conceived submodule idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can tell I'm going to get tired of "Merlot" very quickly.

Looks nice 'till 1000 sites use the same heavy theme.

</comment><comment><USER18> This looks very nice, but unfortunately I cannot use it because each gh-page corresponds to a specific repo, whereas my project is comprised of several repos and I want one website to document all of these repos at once.

Would anybody have any other suggestions for getting a simple homepage for a software project up and running reasonably quickly, without having to fiddle with CSS or JavaScript too much? Something like what GH Pages is trying to do, but maybe a little more flexible. Is something like WP the way to go?

<comment><USER17> Create an organization for your project, make pages for that organization. Or just create another repo.

<comment><USER18> Of course! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Jesus, that is really special. Using this for next project!

</comment><comment><USER20> Would be really great if these pages were automatically generated from a project's README. It would also encourage devs to write better README's.

<comment><USER21> It's probably for the best to keep these as separate concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had a kind of similar idea a few months ago: <http://nhoss2.github.com/gapp/>

</comment><comment><USER23> What's wrong with the old README.md files. Github should be ALL about the code, not sure I really like these pages

<comment><USER24> Don't worry, this doesn't replace READMEs! It's an extra feature for people who want a customized page for their project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems the link to tarball is not correctly parsed if you don't have master branch (this is rare ...).

</comment><comment><USER26> You can crash it by having a page with empty content.</comment>


Words can make the Ugliest man the greatest lover - <AUTHOR> http://scrivle.com/2010/07/29/words/

<comment><USER2> "I'm a millionaire." ?</comment>


The strange world of the Silicon Valley intern - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/e31dfd2a-6c18-11e7-bfeb-33fe0c5b7eaa?mhq5j <comment><USER2> TFW a paywall completely shuts down compelling stories...</comment>


A Mac developer asked people to guess how much money he made from it - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-do-app-developers-make-2015-5?utm_source=mobilesrepublic&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=mobilesrepublic

<comment><USER2> It is interesting how he can be so highly ranked with so few downloads. How is that?

<comment><USER3> The Mac App Store is a complete failure for both users and developers.

I've had several apps there, and it's been mostly a loss. The process of "sandboxing" an app for the Store can be time-consuming. Because of the limited APIs, users often have to put up with functional deficiencies compared to a regular Mac app distributed outside the Store. (Of course Apple's own apps on the Mac App Store don't suffer these limitations.)

Then there are the other fundamental issues like lack of paid upgrades. I can't recommend the Mac App Store to anyone.

<comment><USER4> I've got to agree. I've bought a few apps from the Mac App Store but only because they didn't offer direct sales. I've seen a number of apps leave the MAS because of sandboxing issues and other limitations. Also the MAS is littered with shit, pure shit. Let's take a look at the developer section and it's top 5 paid apps

Picture: [https://s.joshstrange.com/WsjR.png](https://s.joshstrange.com/WsjR.png)

1\. Asset Catalog Creator - One of a billion image resizing apps in the MAS

2\. PaintCode 2 - I've heard good things about this but at $100 I'm going to need a demo/trial which, of course, is only available on their website (and behind an email-wall)

3\. FlashFTP - Looks half-way decent but if I'm looking for free FTP/SFTP I'm going to use Filezilla and if I'm going paid I'm using Transmit by Panic

4\. Paw (HTTP & Rest Client) - I've heard good things about this app but have been using Postman (Chrome bundled app) just fine and that's free and cross platform of which Paw is neither

5\. JSON Editor - I'm not even going to start on this one. Tons of online tools to do this but at $2 it's not too bad I guess

So of the top 5, 3 of them have free online alternatives, one more or less requires a demo (Who throws away $100 without trying first), and the last is one in a sea of apps that do the same thing. That last point is the most damning IMHO, there are hundreds of apps that all do the same "FTP/SFTP", "JSON/XML/ect Editor", "Asset Management", "HTTP Request GUI", "Shitty tunnelling GUI", and the list goes on.

It's also worth mentioning that the OS X apps I use DAILY are NOT on the MAS:

* SequelPro

* Bartender^^

* Hyperdock^^

* PHP/WebStorm

* Alfred

* Caffeine^^

* Stay^^

Programs with "^^" after them cannot be on the MAS due to sandboxing and limitations yet they've saved me a ton of time and made my Mac even more pleasant to use every day. Note this is only a small list of what I use all the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Sorting data in parallel CPU vs GPU - In which we show more graphics - <AUTHOR> http://solarianprogrammer.com/2013/02/07/sorting-data-in-parallel-cpu-gpu-2/

<comment><USER2> Good to see you following up on this and tweaking it some more.

Having done this kind of thing a few times in the past I have to ask, which line in your test harness actually checks that the end result vector is actually sorted?

If thee is a small error in splitting and merging it might only throw an out of sequence element on a rare occasion - in such circumstances it might be wise to log the seed value used for the "random" sequence so it can be retraced and debugged.

If you're after further challenges have a shot at cranking out the largest number of uniformly distributed random points in a 3D unit sphere (or generalise to a unit N-sphere) and look at testing both the speed and whether they are in fact uniformly distributed at all scales.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I be a parallel entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR>

I'm one of those guys, who gets new ideas frequently and gets excited about it. I have many ideas in my spreadsheet. Now, I've narrowed it down to two ideas. I want to use both of those products myself.
I hope most of you agree, the best way to know what works, is to launch it (if its possible), Both of my ideas are simple and powerful.
So, Can I build and launch both my products, to see what works? or, should I need to narrow down to one, and focus on it? <comment><USER2> Make sure you have not only an idea, but an idea of how to execute those ideas. I believe you should focus on one of them although this is based on my preference for sequential-like implementation [0].

If you're still pressing ahead of parallel;

1) keep excellent documentation that even a hired programmer can follow.

2) ensure you don't forget to eat, drink, exercise, etc. Fixed habits help tremendously.

3) have a plan to cope with information overload. eg, HN is full of links that help your project and your project ideas. My plan is that unless the links are very very good, you're already implementing it. You could bookmark it as "Research later" (tip: ensure the bookmarks are descriptive. eg Nginx security guide [1])

4) Adopt a 'write down and forget', eg logbook. A calendar is great for events.

There's more tips but I need to get back on my project.

[0] I've attempted parallel implementation, the burnout and confusion comes much faster for me despite all my tips above.

[1] <https://calomel.org/nginx.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed comment. The first idea is a task management tool. The tool I'm building is to solve a. info overload, b. task management, c. solid reminder system etc. Current tools doesn't work for my needs. So, I'm building it, so that I can maintain my sanity in future.

I have mockups done, also finished a small prototype, using that felt good. So, I'm going on with it.

Second Idea is very big, but not tough to implement. So, I'm going to try this too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I say when you're starting, do as much as you would like to do. If you feel yourself gravitating towards one project more. Then focus on that more (meaning, be able to drop a project that doesn't interest you any more. Don't feel obligated to follow through with it.)

At the beginning I feel it's more important to figure out what you like and what's working more for you. (Kinda like dating.)

However once you figure that out. It's time to buckle down and go for the win. It's much harder to execute than to talk about. But I'm sure you can do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words, I think both of these products are very meaningful. Thats why I can't narrow it down to one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say go where your motivation takes you. Let's say you are burning to do idea 1 - so do it! Then you may get burnt out for the weekend and not want to do idea 1, so start idea 2.

Mainly keep it very focused, don't over-engineer, use the customer-development framework and keep refining to the very simple core of the product.

I think these things take time so you will be glad that you flowed with your momentum. In a couple months I'm sure you will gain the experience to answer this question unequivocally.

</comment><comment><USER5> You won't get far with a mediocre product, so you have to be able to do at least one of them very well. That said, a second project can be a break from the first one. Don't let doing both distract you from doing either one well enough to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Read Steven Blank's 4 steps to the epiphany. Then rethink.</comment>


Nebula mesh: a peer-to-peer VPN by Slack - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/how-to-set-up-your-own-nebula-mesh-vpn-step-by-step/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was previously linked (e.g. [0]), but it didn't get any attention, so I reposted it with a 'more interesting' title.

Hope that's acceptable, because I'm interested in learning more about this network architecture. Is a vpn mesh — if embedded in the client — a possible backbone of a truly server-less and decentraized/distributed social network?

[0] : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21839345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21839345)</comment>


Microsoft's open-source toolkit for building gadgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/net-gadgeteer-microsoft-toolkit/19437/ <comment><USER2> According to the following, it's not really open-source (and more of a "gimmick"):

[http://hackaday.com/2011/08/03/microsofts-attempt-at-an- ardu...](http://hackaday.com/2011/08/03/microsofts-attempt-at-an-arduino- killer-feels-like-a-gimmick/)</comment>


We know where you've been: Ars acquires 4.6M license plate scans - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/we-know-where-youve-been-ars-acquires-4-6m-license-plate-scans-from-the-cops/ <comment><USER3> 1\. Alice installs app on smartphone. Alice puts smartphone in cradle on dashboard. Smartphone captures license plates Alice drives by on way to work. Alice drives by Bob.

2\. Carol goes to website. Carol enters Bob's license plate number. Website says, "25 hits found. Enter credit card number to see times and locations". Carol enters credit card. Carol finds Bob.

3\. Alice gets some of Carol's money, since she took the photos.

Why is that not a thing yet? License plate reading, unlike, say, tapping undersea fiber, is not something you need either a government's resources or a government's ability to skirt the law to do. This is easy stuff.

<comment><USER4> The value proposition for the user is very weak - too weak to get people to spy on each other.

What are the odds that I'm going to get a payout? That someone out there is interested and willing to pay for one of the license plates I've seen? Probably very low. Do I really want to waste my smartphone battery doing this? I'd rather have maps and music on.

<comment><USER5> Tie it in to law enforcement, get paid for detecting someone driving a vehicle with a warrant against their number plates.

<comment><USER6> Insurance companies too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Been flying a drone over landfills for a year now. I'm taking high resolution photographs of all the address labels I can find. Wrote a script to do OCR on the photographs and then export that into an Access Database. Been mailing out flyers to positives asking folks to do better recycling.

<comment><USER8> Do you check for your own flyers in landfills?

<comment><USER9> Ooh, and he can send another one that says "second notice" (or third, etc) without actually needing to store data on each recipient. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me that we need the legal system to recognize computer-processed 'big data' as what it is, which is a totally new kind of information that doesn't fit neatly into our existing privacy framework. I think it's good that this technology exists (especially if my car were to be stolen), but I don't see how it would be harmful to the public interest to require police to get a warrant before looking me up.

Of course there are edge cases, where it's hard to draw the line between automated and semi-automated data collection, but that's why we have judges. However, it is troubling that this new technology is hitting its stride during a time which is not great for privacy rights in general.

<comment><USER11> > I think it's good that this technology exists (especially if my car were to > be stolen), but I don't see how it would be harmful to the public interest > to require police to get a warrant before looking me up.

The most justified uses for this seem to be those where your car is stolen, or suspected to be involved in a crime, or otherwise of interest for an ongoing investigation. Since there's no reason to store this data indefinitely for any of those uses, it seems like erasing non-matches within 24 hours or so would be a good way to address many of the privacy concerns. On the other hand, if the goal is now to collect as much data as possible about everyone just in case it turns out to be useful later, then things seem to be going according to plan.

<comment><USER12> Some crimes aren't even discovered for weeks or months afterwards. For example, a dumped body. There's definitely a trade-off, 24 hours seems too low to me, multiple months too long. 15 to 30 days sounds about right.

<comment><USER13> The utility for solving crime is, I think, the wrong metric for deciding what technology police should be allowed to use.

Murders would be a lot easier to solve if every person was forced to wear a tracker that reported their location to the police at all times--but we would not stand for such a thing. Why should we accept a lower standard of privacy just because we're driving?

<comment><USER12> Because like everything there's a trade-off and it deserves to be carefully examined. I value my privacy, but that doesn't mean it's beyond reproach. If, and I under no illusions as to it being likely, we could reduce certain types of crime by storing this data and making it accessible with a warrant for a specific time frame until it's removed (which is the context this is under, a warrant was specifically mentioned up-thread), then it's worth having that _discussion_.

<comment><USER13> If it's a trade off, the question is, what are we trading?

This thread so far has been entirely about what's the "right amount" of crime to prevent. But if you ask the police how much crime they should prevent and solve, the answer will be "all of it." That's their mission, after all.

The police understand how this technology can help them do that. You say 30 days will help solve more crime than 24 hours. Well, they'll say "forever" will solve even more crime than 30 days. End of discussion?

If the subject is "preventing crime," the privacy argument is already lost. So what is the counterbalance?

There has to be a reason we would make it harder for police to do their jobs. What is that reason? To me, that's the hard question, but a lot of people here on HN seem to take it for granted that there is an answer.

<comment><USER12> > If it's a trade off, the question is, what are we trading?

Privacy. That's what this comment thread was about. The privacy implications of storing this data (csmith). Then, when it would be justified to access it if it IS stored for some reason, for what crimes, and how long it would last to address privacy concerns (iak8god). Then I chimed in with some reasoning as to why a somewhat longer retention period might be warranted, and _why_. Is it unclear there somewhere exactly what we're discussing?

> The police understand how this technology can help them do that. You say 30 > days will help solve more crime than 24 hours. Well, they'll say "forever" > will solve even more crime than 30 days. End of discussion?

Since when is a discussion about one side saying what they want and then it's over? In an effort to solve more crimes, the police would undoubtedly want a lot of access to data that is kept for a long time. But the other side, the public whose information this is gets a say as well. I, for my part, would argue that _if this information is even allowed to be gathered_ , that if police want access to it there should be strict controls and conditions.

> There has to be a reason we would make it harder for police to do their > jobs. What is that reason? To me, that's the hard question, but a lot of > people here on HN seem to take it for granted that there is an answer.

There _is_ an answer, or more accurately, _many answers_. Civil liberties, preventing corruption, privacy, etc. There's a reason police can't detain you indefinitely without charges, why they can't enter your home without cause, why they can't seize your property without cause (and of course, there are exceptions to these which people take offense to, often rightly). Those all make the job of the police harder, but we've tried to strike a balance. It shifts back and forth over time.

> If the subject is "preventing crime," the privacy argument is already lost. > So what is the counterbalance?

What, so we don't talk about it? It's not okay to have the conversation because you think the other argument isn't obvious enough? I'm not really sure your point, because to my eyes, this thread is _all about_ balance. It feels like you're just trying to stifle discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only good thing to come out of this story is that Ars was able to do a public records request and get access to the data. Having the data available to anyone who wants it opens up enough privacy concerns and potential abuse outside of the 'good guys' that hopefully someone in the city realises it should stop spying on it's citizens.

Unfortunately the fix will likely be to continue the surveillance and to bar public access to the data.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oakland PD ALPR data interactive map [https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1dEEIyx...](https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1dEEIyxvxaN4upYLz835XnfO- fC1ZVy86AY3wz7zd#map:id=3)

raw data [https://www.eff.org/files/2015/01/20/oakland_pd_alpr.csv](https://www.eff.org/files/2015/01/20/oakland_pd_alpr.csv)

found here [http://beforeitsnews.com/libertarian/2015/01/what-you-can- le...](http://beforeitsnews.com/libertarian/2015/01/what-you-can-learn-from- oaklands-raw-alpr-data-2594762.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is great that the Oakland PD acquiesced to the request...it appears old Excel spreadsheets is a common way for the camera-tech contractors to store and disseminate the information. A couple years ago, MuckRock made a request for Boston PD's records, and received one spreadsheet (in error) that had 65,536 records: [https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/dec/15/boston- po...](https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/dec/15/boston-police-close- alpr-program/)

</comment><comment><USER17> _"If anyone can get this information, that's getting into Big Brother," he told Ars. "If I was trying to look at what my spouse is doing, [I could]. To me, that is something that is kind of scary. Why do they allow people to release this without a law enforcement reason? Searching it or accessing the information should require a warrant."_

The state collecting this info in the first place is a parallel with Big Brother. The state handing out the data to anyone that asks is not.

<comment><USER18> Agree. Data is going to be collected anyway. If it's going to help anyone, perhaps it should help everyone. To level the playing field.

I am all for more transparency when it comes to altercations with cops for instance. Body camera footage!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am all for privacy, but...it is not a reasonable expectation of privacy that your car and/or license plate will not be photographed while on the road (at least according to US law).

There is an entire body of law regarding _reasonable expectation of privacy_ vis-a-vis 4th Amendment search and seizure. If nothing else, even if one does not personally agree with the jurisprudence, then they might find it informative to know what the police may or may not search/seize without a warrant, probable cause and/or reasonable suspicion.

<comment><USER20> It's a different thing entirely when the government has data, particularly when that data traces your life.

The guy standing on the corner waving a "We buy gold" sign seeing my car/plate is unlikely to be able to do anything with that data. But the government recording my whereabouts can draw me into any sort of investigation they like, based on correlated but not necessarily cause-related data. It's very different.

At the least, the government is our servant, not our adversary, and we're supposed to be able to limit and direct what they do. Just because the _can_ do something does not automatically give them the right, particularly if we've told them they can't.

Unfortunately they _do_ see themselves as our adversary, and so the question of whether we actually have given them the right to do something is often arguable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And this, my friends, is where our liberty died:

"Doesn't bother me personally," said Jon Kaufman, an Oakland resident. _"I have nothing to hide."_

</comment><comment><USER22> People should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in society and this seems to go directly against the grain of that belief.

<comment><USER23> Since cars do not have rights, nor do the plates, the reasoning is they are not violating your personal privacy. Courts and Police have so twisted the law as to deprive our rights by stripping our association with our property. Sadly they can simply initiate forfeiture against property still protected by the law.

There hasn't been sufficient push back to stop this erosion. Worse there isn't sufficient push back against government agencies holding back information which they are bound by law to surrender.

<comment><USER24> > Since cars do not have rights, nor do the plates, the reasoning is they are > not violating your personal privacy.

Is that really the justification, though? The only justification I've heard is that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when driving down a public road. It has nothing to do with you v. your property or the fact that your license plate does not have constitutional rights.

The courts have agreed that you can't mindlessly swap out a police officer for a computer, save all the data and keep going as you were, but that doesn't change the fact that you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy _in public_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> An ideal tool for stalkers.

I am sympathetic that this data could be useful for law enforcement - <USER2> this data must not be released wholesale to the public and there should be limits to how long it is stored.

<comment><USER26> This was /exactly/ the situation that I was going to write a thought about, though I replaced stalkers with abusive ex-relationship partners for a more visible display of concern (and admittedly an appeal to more extreme possibility)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did the article ever mention if Ars is making this data public? I couldn't find a reference to it.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're curious, like I was- this is what the License Plate Readers look like: [http://police-praetorian.netdna-ssl.com/VigilantVid-PR- Feb.j...](http://police-praetorian.netdna-ssl.com/VigilantVid-PR-Feb.jpg)

I have seem them before but I originally thought these devices were some sort of radar speedometer or something.

</comment><comment><USER29> Collecting this data on the general public should not be legal. If you are a suspect in an active investigation it is completely different, but you must be actively identified, you shouldn't be able to do what LA did and simply say "everyone is a suspect".

I think you have to take these technologies to their logical conclusion, because Moore's law will ultimately take it there. A camera recording every plate, everywhere it goes, stored for all time. That's not a database any people should allow their government to keep, warrant or not.

I'm glad they quoted the 2012 USA v Jones GPS tracking case, because this is exactly the same thing with an even lower cost per vehicle tracked. Ultimately I want Congress to pass a law putting limits on the data retention, but obviously that's not going to happen any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER30> Simply stated:

Plate != Person

To get to "Person" you need to have a permissible purpose that is already protected under the DPPA (a federal law)

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act)]

</comment><comment><USER31> It's bad enough the state collects and retains this data.

It's even worse that this kind of data can legally be obtained by FOIA. I'm all for transparency, but not where it touches the privacy of individuals.

btw, I have no particular problem with plate scanners as long as no-hits are not stored for longer than 7 days and any searches on the data heap are authorized by a judge (e.g. to gather data in a murder case).

<comment><USER29> I think the best part of the story is that they could do the FOIA. The data is not somehow magically safe from misuse because the press can't see it. In fact, quite the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > "you should support restrictions on how long law enforcement agents can > store this data, and who can access it, and under what circumstances."

Or better yet, start opposing its collection... if you're under the speed limit no authority has a good reason to keep track of where you're going and when.

</comment><comment><USER15> instruction manual for Pagis/Boss [https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/delaware/alprpra_n...](https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/delaware/alprpra_ncc_newcastlecountyde.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it illegal to put infrared LEDs around your license plate to obscure it to these cameras?

<comment><USER34> Yes. It can be considered tampering with evidence in an "ongoing" operation. I too have thought of this for radar guns and laser speed guns. But most of these sensors know when they are being jammed and can actually result in the FCC finding you and fining you.

<comment><USER35> Radar guns are regulated by the FCC because they are RF sources. They aren't going to come after you for mounting extra lightbulbs on your car.

Infrared bulbs are more similar to polarized plastic covers that obscure the plate when viewed from certain directions. Not sure if they are illegal or not but they are definitely outside the purview of the FCC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169)

</comment><comment><USER36> \- people vote for cops to track license plates "for security", "for the children", "don't complain if you have nothing to hide"

\- libertarians complain "you don't know who will be in power tomorrow and (mis)use this data or allow for its misuse"

\- some company comes along and buys the data off the cops because those in power let them. Maybe those in power when the law for collecting this data passed promised that this data wouldn't ever be shared, but now it's someone else or they changed their mind because fuck the people.

<comment><USER37> We'll never get clear statistics on this, but at some point it will be possible to start making judgements on whether keeping this data (and making it available to the public) is a net negative or positive.

My gut tells me that it's a negative, but my head tells me there is, or will be, no real way to stop it being collected, even if it's not public bodies doing the collection.

<comment><USER38> > even if it's not public bodies doing the collection

There already are private companies that drive around scanning license plates and selling access to the data. One of their "use cases" is selling the data to "repo men."

<comment><USER39> Are there dedicated vehicles doing it? I had the idea that tow trucks were using the scanners and sharing data, I hadn't heard about anything dedicated to plate scanning.

Edit: This article mentions "purpose-built camera cars":

[http://www.caranddriver.com/features/screen-plate-club- how-l...](http://www.caranddriver.com/features/screen-plate-club-how-license- plate-scanning-compromises-your-privacy-feature)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android Wear is getting killed, and it's all Qualcomm's fault - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/android-wear-is-getting-killed-and-its-all-qualcomms-fault/ <comment><USER2> As a lover of Android, this is very depressing. Google actually started with a lead in smart watches and now they are way behind. Smart watches are here to stay. It's a great example of how Apple stays behind a product and Google is completely fickle.</comment>


Using Perl, Mojolicious and Redis in a real world asynchronous application - <AUTHOR> http://showmetheco.de/articles/2011/1/using-perl-mojolicious-and-redis-in-a-real-world-asynchronous-application.html

<comment><USER2> Perl! It's so nice that so useful site is written in Perl. By the way, I like Mojolicious (since 1.0 version) too.

<comment><USER3> Why since 1.0? I don't see any signification changes since 1.0...

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't it more stable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love it. I've used Catalyst for some project, but I've now been looking at Mojo and I like the look of it. Haven't used it much yes so I can't comment on details, but it looks solid

<comment><USER3> Catalyst applications are very heavy, but i didn't found any problems in running catalyst application that i wrote year ago on latest Catalyst version. Mojolicious is lightweight and easier to install, but its design is still under development, so API changes sometimes. Expect there will be not so much changes in new stable versions.

<comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, I think Catalyst is great. But I liked the look of Mojo (and Mojo::Lite) -- as I said I haven't used it much but I'll try to use it in a project soon -- I also think it's good for Perl as a whole that there's an easy to install / easy to use modern framework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Афтар! Пеши еще!

btw, advices are really good</comment>


Show HN: Term.app, a terminal + shell replacement for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://mehdi.is/making/a/terminal/

<comment><USER2> Quite a simple yet innovative idea. Now if it has some essential features like tabs for quick switching between different current directories, command history, and a beautiful interface, it could actually replace my default terminal app. Great start though!

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you explain how this is really different from iTerm2 + multiple tabs open? I guess the current folder listing....

<comment><AUTHOR> from the technical point of view, it's largely different as Term uses its own shell whereas iTerm2 would use your shell (probably bash or zsh).

from interface: with Term each output is put into its own scrollable textbox. That way if you run a command that spits out a lot of output (e.g. grep or make), it won't obscure your previous commands.

There's also the command textbox which solves some problems I've ran into. For example, if you want to modify a long command, it can be kind of difficult if you haven't set up vim bindings with your shell or if you aren't quite adept at navigating the command-line. But since this is a normal textbox, you can use your mouse to click to where you want to edit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any advantages over someone who's used to zsh?

<comment><AUTHOR> definitely. While zsh has great default tab-completion, it still kind of sucks when there are multiple results for a completion but zsh doesn't inform you unless you hit TAB multiple times.

Term's grouping of output is pretty amazing, I think, and blows away almost any shell + terminal combo.</comment></comment>