Show HN: A simple app to cryptographically time-lock files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thread314/chrono-locker <comment><USER2> The subject is discussed at length (and referenced by the repo) here [https://www.gwern.net/Self-decrypting-files](https://www.gwern.net/Self- decrypting-files) for those interested in more. Gwern has mentioned it at least once on HN previously as well [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16295313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16295313)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with this is that time is fungible against money.

So if you set your file to take 3650 days for a single computer to decrypt, you can get it way ahead of time by using 365 computers for 10 days.

Obviously cloud computing makes the short-term rental of a few hundred computers relatively cheap and easy to arrange.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find the concept interesting and I can see real applications for something like this (delaying someone's access to a file). For example, one could use that to disseminate press releases ahead of time without actually revealing the contents.

That said, it seems the current implementation is impractical because you will "on average" decypher after a certain time, but that time can vary greatly. Are there plans or methods to explore in order to make this more deterministic?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very good question, one I've been thinking about a lot. The current implementation, has even distribution. Even changing it to normal distribution would greatly improve this. Not certain yet how to achieve this, however.</comment></comment>


Monero – a cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy, decentralization, scalability - <AUTHOR> https://getmonero.org/home <comment><USER2> What advantages does Monero offer that are not provided by other cryptocurrencies?

[http://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what- advantag...](http://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-advantages- does-monero-offer-that-are-not-provided-by-other-cryptocurrencie)

_______________

Wikipedia provides a better over view of the project:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_(cryptocurrency)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_\(cryptocurrency\))

Current market cap is here: [http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#charts](http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#charts) ____________

Past HN mentions: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Monero&sort=byDate&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Monero&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/)

Stack Exchange: [http://monero.stackexchange.com/questions](http://monero.stackexchange.com/questions)

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing that always strikes me as unethical with cryptocurrencies is how whoever comes up with a cryptocoin seems to allocate themselves a very generous percentage of the currency mined before going public. Bitcoin's founder apparently did this (I think it was by mining the easier blocks first), and unless I simply don't fully grasp how any of this works, they would end up being the richest person on Earth by virtue of holding the most Bitcoin if Bitcoin became as popular as the Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen, or Yuan.

Is Monero any different?

<comment><USER4> What is the reward for putting in the effort to create a crypto currency? Is it only ethical to make a cryptocurrency if you don't earn a penny in compensation? If it's OK to make some profit, what is the limit? $100k? $10mil?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a merchant would it be possible to accept normal credit cards and have the money converted to monero?

<comment><USER6> That likely isn't ever going to be possible as a single atomic transaction. After you're paid actual money you can do many things with actual money, including sending it to a counterparty who might give you cryptocurrency, but it is unlikely a credit card processor will provide you with cryptocurrency directly.

One reason, among many: while many people who accept money on the Internet consider chargebacks a drawback, credit card companies see them as a core value proposition. "You, the customer, will never get screwed if you use your PlastiCard!" The way that credit card processors (n.b. not usually the same entity as PlastiCard!) are able to make this work is by having agreements with all their merchants which allow them to recoup costs in the event of a chargeback. If your cryptocurrency is designed to be private, non-reversible, and outside the reach of the legal process... this does not signal wonderful things to a credit card processor about your likelihood of actually paying what you owe them in the event your customers charge back purchases.

(Disclaimer: personal opinion.)

<comment><USER7> >cryptocurrency is designed to be private, non-reversible, and outside the reach of the legal process

In a well-established B2B relationship, where payment terms are already established (i.e. net-60, 5%-net-20), I think these crypto-currencies make more sense. These long-term business relationships drive the majority of GDP, and they normally use EFTs or even paper checks (both of which are pretty cheap, but not free). In a cross-border deal especially, I think Bitcoin (the only seemingly viable choice at this point) makes a lot of sense.

One-off transactions have more risks and are less stable AFAICT.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think it make more sense?

It seems to me when a business switches to cryptocurrency they pay more and risk more but don't much back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how they chose the name. "Monero" means cartoonist in Spanish.

<comment><USER10> I guess it was influenced by Esperanto:

[http://monero.stackexchange.com/a/252](http://monero.stackexchange.com/a/252)

"monero = mono (money) + ero (bit) = coin (esperanto language)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Logo seems familiar, Wowza?</comment>


Launch of Bitcoin futures trading crashes CBOE site - <AUTHOR> https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/12/10/2315254/launch-of-bitcoin-futures-trading-crashes-cboe-site <comment> shit-show All your resources needed for today:

CBOE Chart Updates: [http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced- charts?ticker=XBT%...](http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced- charts?ticker=XBT%2fF8)

CBOE XBT - Bitcoin (USD) Futures Table: [http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures- quotes](http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures-quotes)

Cryptonaire live forecast updates: [https://cryptonaire.com](https://cryptonaire.com)

Bloomberg Live Coverage: [https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us](https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us)

CMC for BTC indexing including non-US pairs: [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets)

WCI for BTC indexing only US pairs: [https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin](https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin)

</comment><comment><USER2> Can someone explain how the bid/ask and data for futures can be interpreted? Sorry futures noob here.

<comment><USER3> First:

A future is a contract to buy or sell something at a set price.

So for example a Crude Oil Jan 1st buy future requires that you buy Crude Oil at a set price on January 1st.

Now, if you want to own crude oil on January 1st, you buy a future locking in a price.

This means the cost of your crude oil is predictable ahead of time.

It also means if crude oil is more expensive then you save money. But if it's cheaper you've lost out.

Businesses benefit a lot from predictable pricing - for example if you're a farmer you can sell grain futures at a set price. Then you know that your grain will get you an amount of money - guaranteeing incoming.

This is the mainstay of what CBOE and CME does.

Bitcoin is a cash-settled future. So instead of actually owning a bitcoin, the way it's settled is based on the market price of bitcoin at the time.

So I put a bid in for a 1 week Bitcoin future at $20,000. I'm matched with a seller for a 1 week Bitcoin future asking for $20,000.

After a week the price for Bitcoin is checked. It's actually $21,000. The seller has to pay me $1,000.

In reality no-one is going to be doing 1 week BTC initially - BTC is just too volatile.

The exchange rules on CME are apparently if BTC rises/falls more than 7% trading stops. (So on the volatile days last week it would have stopped multiple times in the same day!). 7% is really high for a normal financial instrument - but BTC is very very volatile.</comment></comment>


Fundamentalists vs. The New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://quillette.com/2018/02/17/fundamentalists-vs-new-york-times/ <comment><USER2> The extremists of both left and right join forces at the "other side of the planet". They care less about the people than about them being the leader of their pact. It is easy to condemn and judge. That is the trait shared by all extremists.</comment>


Bangalore Used to Be Cool - <AUTHOR> I'd like to put this out there. Bengaluru  used to be cool, literally, I've heard. Areas near Agara village and Agara lake used to be a cool place. Like 10 years back you couldn't even walk out in summer afternoon without wearing a jacket. It was that cool. Okay maybe not that cool but still. Now let's just not wander off making claims. Sure I've been here only for one and a half years but this is something I've heard multiple people saying. I'd like to conduct a research on climate change and its effects on different areas of Bengaluru. Whats your opinion about this? How much time do you think we have until climate change becomes irreversible?<p>https://basithkunimal.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/bangalore-used-to-be-cool/ <comment><USER2> Urbanization probably had a major impact on the immediate environment around Bangalore. Bangalore has grown like crazy lately so those effects would be coming on strong. Also climate change started going into high gear in the 1990s after we stopped burning high sulfur coal that had a temporary cooling effect. Put those effects together and you'd expect a big change.

Is there a uni or government office that has temperature readings going back that far? Maybe an airport?

It is hard to tell what the real temperature change is with thermometers over long periods of time because measurement methods and locations change. It turns out the timing of when plants bloom is a more sensitive statistical test for climate change than looking directly at delta T. You might be able to get this kind of plant phenology information and use that.</comment>


Open-Source Deep Packet Inspection - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/deep-packet-inspection-engine-goes-open-source.ars

<comment><USER2> A surprising miscue from Ars Technica; this "technology" has been available in GPL open source from Snort since forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I wasn't aware that Snort had that capability.

However, at the very least the open-sourcing of some subset of a commercial DPI product is interesting in that it provides more information than any other company (that I'm aware of, anyway) has revealed on the subject thus far.

edit: Not to say that it alleviates many of the concerns about packet monitoring, but some information is better than no information.

<comment><USER2> It's really not rocket science. If you understand what Snort is doing, you know pretty much everything Sandvine does. Generally speaking, the commercial high-speed products do less than Snort, because they have hardware constraints.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, its not rocket science as to how it works. But, at least one of these companies is making a good-faith show of openness.

As the article mentioned, the scary part of this technology isn't the technology itself - it is the potential applications of the technology. Any openness coming from a company with an application like this is a positive market pressure.

I'm perfectly fine (and I think most people would be) with certain applications being throttled (to a reasonable extent) as long as I am told up front about it in my ToS, and as long as I _know_ that my data is not being stored anywhere.

A first step to that kind of trustworthiness is more openness as to the filtering software being used.

<comment><USER3> One of those potential scary applications of this technology is censorship. During the protests following the contested Iranian election last June, the government worked to prevent people from being able to use the internet to communicate information (especially photographs and video) of the repression to the outside world.

The state censorship policy in Iran is mainly implemented with transparent web proxies that identify prohibited URLs and redirect to a warning page. Internet users in Iran have become quite adept at bypassing the filters by either using specific circumvention tools or by tunneling their traffic out over VPNs or protocols such as SSL or SSH.

During the protests, the Iranian authorities began to restrict access to specific protocols by throttling them down to a trickle of bytes so that business users could still access some SSL services or foreign VPNs with enough patience, but the channels were no longer usable for mass tunneling to restricted websites.

The traffic throttling is implemented with the same techniques that ISPs use to restrict P2P file trading traffic. It's the exact same DPI vendor hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is ok, but it's really not much of an improvement on Linux's layer7 modules for netfilter. It is still not very useful for identifying encrypted traffic. Much cooler are statistical approaches, because they can frequently get around encryption for protocol identification purposes. E.G. spid (don't know if it gets around the encryption thing...) <http://sourceforge.net/projects/spid/></comment>


Why iOS 7 is making some users sick - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/27/ios-7-motion-sickness-nausea <comment><USER3> I'm honestly curious about this, not trolling or something;

How can a person survive the daily life if a couple of animations on a screen makes them sick? What I mean is, if the zoom effect makes someone dizzy I'd expect them to be dizzy around moving cars, approaching trains or watching sports, playing games etc..

But it seems that this is common enough. Is it the bright small screen itself causing such an issue? You know like some people getting nauseous when they read in a car. Or is it just that 3D effects?

<comment><USER4> I used to get car sick as a kid. I haven't felt queasy from motion in over a decade. IOS 7 was the first thing that brought that feeling back. I think the problem isn't so much with motion as it is with the unnatural motions. You move the tablet, and the background only shifts a moment later. You rotate the tablet, and the rotation of the screen isn't smooth but jerky. IOS is very tactile. In IOS 6, I felt like I was moving things around. In IOS 7, the lag and jerkiness make it feel somehow wrong.

Either way, I suspect Apple will either want to release an update which gets rid of the lagginess and jerkiness, allow the user to disable animations, or face an ADA class-action lawsuit.

If they do plan to fix this, I wish they'd go against convention, and pre- announce it. I need to know whether I should replace the iPad with a Nexus 10 (something I've been considering regardless; I have a Nexus 4, which is wonderful; but hasn't been worth the $$$).

Somehow, the Surface, which has much the same feel as the IOS 7 in terms of being a little bit slow, laggy, and occasionally stalling out, doesn't suffer this fate.

(I have an iPad 3; and iPad 4 is twice as fast, so perhaps it doesn't suffer from this problem).

<comment><USER5> Something's wrong with your setup I think. I have an iPad mini with much less power than an iPad 3 and there is never any lag to speak of with the ios7 animations. Parallax works exactly as it would in real physics to my eyes. Maybe take it in to the apple store and say it's performing slower than it should?

<comment><USER6> The iPad 3 is pushing 4x the number of pixels as the iPad mini as it's retina. I'm not surprised by this at all.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense! Didn't think of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find all of these visual effects to be disorienting... And superfluous at best. I was closing my eyes when switching apps for the first few days also. I'm disappointed Apple provided no way to disable the zoom animation - <USER2> like I would on a desktop OS, the first thing I tried to do was disable that option. The parallax scrolling of the icons over the background when the phone is titled on the home screen is bizarre. I'm not sure what Apple intends there.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I felt a bit ill during the first day but I have since got used to it. However, I think it's mainly because I've subconsciously learnt to not pay attention during the animations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't have that problem myself, but just watching the videos of iOS7 made me think I'd be very frustrated to see all those 1 second animations long everytime I do something. I don't think I could handle seeing those animations hundreds of times every day, and for a couple of years of owning the device.

I want my phone to do stuff fast, especially if it has a benchmark-breaking chip inside. What's the point of having such a fast chip, if you can't _feel_ it's fast in everyday use?

Whoever is in charge of the design of iOS7 clearly had no coherent vision about what iOS should do, like Scott Forestall (and Steve Jobs) did. The UI is all over the place, and it seems filled with random design gimmicks of the 2005-era (translucency, parallax, zooming in and out, very bright colors, etc) to make it "feel cool" or whatever. Reminds me of Vista and all of those crazy Linux environments.

I want my OS to help me do stuff fast, and productively, not show me a circus on the screen, with everything I do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Settings.app > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion

Doesn't remove all the whsihy in and out of Springboard.app ones though, so you'll have to wait for a jailbreak to be completely animation-free.

<comment><USER11> Can't find the setting on iphone 4 running 7.0.2

<comment><USER12> How do you find overall ios7 performance on the iPhone 4? I have a 4 but am reluctant to upgrade to ios7, fearing it may be too slow on the hardware.

<comment><USER13> My two cents: don't do it. Sickly slow.

<comment><USER14> Is this iOS 4 on the 3G all over? My wife refuses to ever update iOS because she saw what happened to my 3G (it became so slow it was barely usable)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Normally I am usually very susceptible to motion sickness from FPS games, reading in cars/trains and theme park rides which can all easily make me feel like throwing up, but I've not had effects of any degree from using iOS 7 since the very first betas.

<comment><USER16> I often have trouble watching many FPS games much less playing them. Been using iOS7 since the early betas and I never even considered any of this an issue, nor did any of my coworkers many of whom upgraded early as well. The parallax view is a pretty pointless trick. I wonder how much of this is real and how much is suggested by all the articles? It's hard to imagine that a real problem wouldn't have been seen by people at Apple and all the developers who like me have used it for months. It's strange to think a small device's virtual motion could cause that much reaction.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps these people are looking at it wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The primary culprit is the app zooming effect, which can be rather disconcerting for users. Hopefully Apple will supply an update allowing one to toggle that particular animation off.

I remember getting severe motion sickness the first time I ever saw Doom being played, and again with Quake, although those passed with time. It's very unpleasant!

<comment><USER19> Stay as far away from the Oculus Rift as you can, then...

<comment><USER18> Oh yeah, I got over that nausea very quickly. I do wanna check out the Oculus!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel some of the symptoms myself! Not as strong as some descriptions in the article, but definitely I do.

I have an older iPhone with iOS 7, so I don't see the parallax, but as I wanted to talk about the parallax effect with somebody, I've searched for video with the parallax effect on YouTube -- and just watching _the video_ made me feel slightly sick. Maybe holding the phone in the hand and seeing the parallax as the response of my own motions wouldn't produce the same effect but that video did. "OK it moves, now more under it should be visible, ah it's not" \-- it hit some kind of an "uncanny" by me.

Second, I have big problems with automatic sliding of the lower tabbar and upper urlbar in and out in Safari. For example I keep the finger on the text, wanting to scroll, but I read the top part of the page -- now the movement that should enable me to see more of what I'm looking at effectively causes the sliding in the opposite direction exactly obscuring what I want to see. So this effect where I do something in order to see more but the "automatic sliding" kicks in and "helpfully" obscures exactly what I'm trying to see also produces a strange feeling. I can't call it dizziness but certainly a conflicting one.

Safari in iOS 6 never had such effects -- "obscuring" _against_ the actions of the user never happened.

Otherwise I don't have problems with iOS 7 animations, except that general impression that they take "too long," after using iOS 6. But maybe it's only on the older phones so.

</comment><comment><USER21> I find it rather bizarre, that for all the talk of flat design, simplifying, getting the interface out of the way, etc. in iOS 7 -- they _upped_ both the "in-your-face"-ness and the duration of the animations. The effects don't make me sick or anything, but the zooming in and out of apps and folders seems just as superfluous and distracting as leather stitching ever was.

</comment><comment><USER22> The parallax and blur effects can be turned off in the preferences (enabling high contrast disables the blur effect for example). If memory serves correctly both settings can be found in the accessibility tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Article says:

"The lack of a solution is the bigger problem. Apple provides a "Reduce Motion" option within the iOS 7 Settings app, but it is poorly labelled; it merely disables the parallax effect, but doesn't stop zooming or sliding. Apple did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Which for now, leaves affected people on their own."

(I haven't got iOS7 so can't check)

<comment><USER10> That's right, just the parallax effects are gone. The main annoying ones that take a full second or so are the ones in the unlock screen, and they can't be disabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just get the feeling that someone at Apple probably should have spoken up but didn't. Who's going to tell Jony Ive that his UX might be causing motion sickness.

<comment><USER24> I think that if nobody had spoken up, the "Reduce Motion" option wouldn't even exist (or bold text, for that matter).

<comment><USER25> I can't wait for presbyopia to hit Jony Ive. The clock on the lock screen was nearly unreadable without my glasses until I found the bold text setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've already toggled "Reduce Motion" on, not because the movement was making me ill, but just because I thought the effect looked somehow bad. The parallax effect on the homescreen is nice enough, but far too subtle to justify having to also look at the dumb wiggling modals that it produces. I'd be interested in hearing if other people find the effect genuinely pleasant to look at.

</comment><comment><USER27> > ...with icons apparently floating above subtly animating wallpaper

Now I'm wondering if I have a vision problem I didn't previously know about. I've been unimpressed with the upgrade myself, and one of my biggest complaints is that everything looks so flat that I have a hard time telling text and icons from the background.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wish I could see it live, on videos I find it cool and unsickening. It reminds me of holograms (probably mathematically similar), or the eye focus over interference patterns trick in physics book which let you see depth on a flat surface, again very similar to iOS7 parallax.

</comment><comment><USER29> These people are going to have a really hard time with Oculus Rift. Sucks to be them.

</comment><comment><USER30> I, for one, do not believe these complaints at all. But, I cannot speak for others. I just don't feel that the field is large enough, and the exposure is long enough, to actually disorientate or to confuse one's equilibrium.</comment>


My 13 yo son was the leading contributor to Rust this week - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pulse <comment><USER2> Fantastic! Do you have any tips for getting children into programming? Or did he pick it up by himself?

<comment><USER3> I second this question, I assume many of us are interested in the story!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> wow.. is amazing</comment>


Apple Retina Display: Under the microscope comparisons with 1G and 3G  - <AUTHOR> http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple-retina-display/ <comment><USER2> Having queued for 7 hours yesterday to get my iPhone 4, I can confirm that the display actually exceeded my expectations.

All natively rendered text in controls, etc., looks like it was printed in a magazine.

This display is going to be _huge_ news once it hits the iPad and MacBook Pros.

<comment><USER3> > This display is going to be huge news once it hits the iPad and MacBook > Pros.

Which is probably never. Those don't even reach the pixel density of the 2G/3G/3GS. 326ppi? That's already going to be pretty tall order on a 10" screen (the iPad currently stands at 132 ppi, assuming the form factor doesn't change we're talking about increasing the resolution by a factor of 2.5, pumping the resolution to an insane 2560x1920. We're talking about a resolution usually found on 30" computer screens here, and those things are still pretty much all between $1000 and $2000...).

The 13.3" macbook pro would have a 3712x2320 screen, the 15.4" would move up to 4200x2625 and the 17" would be sporting a 4000x3000 screen.

<comment><USER4> 30 years ago, you were lucky if you had a 300 bps acoustic modem. 20 years ago 9600 bps was considered state of the art. I am writing this while sitting in Peets in Los Altos where I have a 54,000,000 bps _wireless_ connection, not to some local BBS, but to this much larger, almost unimaginably (at least it would have been to me in 1980!) complex structure, the internet.

In 1995, the little point and shoot camera I owned could fit 36 pictures on a roll of film. My new little Sony point and shoot has an 8gb memory card. It can fit 1,500 pictures on a "roll of film," and the memory card is so small I could balance it on the tip of a finger. It also takes better quality pictures than any 35mm camera I have ever owned, has an internal GPS, and an an impressive amount of computing power, at least when it comes to image processing.

We are living in truly amazing times. Never say never :)

<comment><USER5> Meanwhile, the xerox lisa had a DPI of 90, while a regular macbook has a DPI of 110.

<http://www.mprove.de/diplom/text/3.1.8_lisa.html> <http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html>

<comment><USER6> Desktop monitor resolution is still at ~100dpi because no desktop OS has solved the scalable UI problem satisfactorily. The OSes have some attempts at support for UI scaling, but none works well enough to run all of the popular software decently at 200dpi.

Contrast that with iOS. I only have a handful of non-built-in apps, but they all work perfectly on my iPhone 4, none look worse, and all but the graphics- intensive games look better. I haven't seen any reports yet of software that doesn't scale properly on the iPhone 4.

Apple's tight control of the iOS software marketplace may be a key factor in this success. They may have privately checked a large amount of the software submitted to the app store, and rejected apps which failed to scale properly.

<comment><USER7> _Desktop monitor resolution is still at ~100dpi because no desktop OS has solved the scalable UI problem satisfactorily._

I'm under the impression this isn't a problem. Scaling is a problem when you have bitmap images and try to scale from - say - an iPhone to an iPad. But on desktops, monitors aren't growing in size by a factor of ~2.77.

If you leave the screen size the same but increase the DPI, bitmaps will look exactly the same. They might seem visually out-of-place next to crisper UI elements. Is that what you mean?

<comment><USER6> I mean that things just don't look or act right. Try firing up Quartz Debug (if you have a Mac), setting the UI Resolution scale factor to 2, and restarting some apps. Every app I checked has problems.

For example, every app that used a standard Mac toolbar draws it incorrectly. Address Book's split views do not resize correctly. iCal's colored checkboxes are incorrect, and the popout from double-clicking a calendar item is very broken. In Safari, the busy icon on tabs isn't drawn correctly, the Top Sites search box is clipped, and the Bookmarks bottom toolbar is drawn incorrectly. The Dock puts right-click menus in the wrong place and draws them wrong, and handles drag and drop incorrectly. Finder doesn't scale the desktop icons. Preview's notion of "Actual Size" doesn't honor the UI Resolution scale factor.

Outside of Apple apps, I find that Photoshop ignores clicks on the menu bar entirely. OmniGraffle's toolbar is extra-broken, the disclosure triangles in its palettes don't work, and it draws the contents of documents incorrectly.

World of Warcraft scales up more than 2x. I can't even get to the username/password boxes. (This could be a feature.) Sketchup draws my document in the lower-left quarter of the window and random junk from the WoW login screen on the other three quarters.

Contrast this to the iPhone 4 experience. Every app I've tried looks at least as good on iPhone 4 as on iPhone 3GS, and none has had any drawing or behavior defects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I looked at a iPhone 4G at the apple store yesterday and was curious to compare the display to the HTC Evo 4G's display.

The verdict: slightly better crispness, comparable brightness, comparable color.

The industrial design of the iPhone 4G is superb compared to any other phone (or electronic device) I've seen. It's more comparable to what you'd expect to find in a watch.

<comment><USER9> Using this article's threshold of 287ppi@12" for "retinal", and the EVO screen specs on wikipedia which give it about 217ppi, it would be retinal at a distance of 15.9".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me that the black gaps are bigger. I just did a back of the envelope calculation, using the photos he posted and it looks as though black gaps take up about 30 percent of the space on the first and second iPhone while they take up about 40 percent on the new iPhone 4.

I wonder what the effects of that are. It probably just makes the display a bit dimmer (if one were to use the same backlight).

<comment><USER11> Though I'm not discounting that it may in fact be dimmer:

Larger gaps _alone_ implies dimmer, but this can be accounted for by having the pixels put out more light. _Having_ larger gaps on a display doesn't mean it's dimmer, as the pixels have likely changed characteristics in the process of shrinking them.

<comment><USER10> (It's, by the way, not that the gaps got necessarily bigger, maybe a little, it's just that they didn't shrink either and, with more pixels, there are also more gaps.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are the pixels on the iPhone vertically oriented like pixels on desktop monitors usually are?

<comment><USER10> In portrait orientation they have the same orientation as pixels on desktop monitors, i.e. the subpixels of individual pixels are next to each other, not on top of each other. (I looked at my third generation iPod touch. Well, I took a macro photo with my trusty Ricoh GR Digital II [1]. The only tool I have with which I can make subpixels – barely – visible. Hm, water drops might work, too, but that seems a bit risky.)

[1] <http://www.dpreview.com/news/0710/07103001ricohgrd2.asp>

<comment><USER12> How does rotating the screen affect text antialiasing?

<comment><USER10> I just checked Safari, they don't actually do any subpixel antialiasing. Just "normal" antialiasing. I would guess that if it's not used in Safari it's used nowhere, so no problems with that :)

(Subpixel antialiasing seems unnecessary with resolutions like that. Heck, even any other kind of antialiasing is beginning to become unnecessary with resolutions like that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super AMOLED > IPS [http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/22/samsung-galaxy-s- super-...](http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/22/samsung-galaxy-s-super-amoled- screen-has-180-degree-viewing-angle/)

<comment><USER14> Wow, that link was absolutely useless. No information, no comparisons, nothing. It read more like a hit piece for samsung

<comment><USER13> How about '180 degree viewing angle', 'Quadrupling the resolution on the screen would only increase the clarity at most only three to five percent' and 'the Retina Display is too power-hungry, which drains the battery up to 30% faster than you'd find on their Super AMOLED screens'

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=0jE&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&&sa=X&ei=DfwkTMGMEY72OarKgPwG&ved=0CBYQvwUoAQ&q=samsung+super+amoled+vs+apple+retina&spell=1)

<comment><USER11> Yes, lets all take a competitor's word at face value. And that clarity quote is complete bull, just _look_ at a 3G and a 4G side by side. I like AMOLED screens, but the article is worthless.

How _would_ one calculate clarity? It seems it would be a subjective measurement... maybe they're looking at the phones from 10 feet away?

<comment><USER15> I've not read that particular link but Samsung have made that only 5% better claim comparing the Retina screen to their slighly lower DPI Super-AMOLED screens. While it seems common to compare it only to the previous iPhone screens, they were no longer state of the art even before the new iPhone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to pair socks from a pile efficiently? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14415881/how-to-pair-socks-from-a-pile-efficiently <comment><USER3> I own ten identical pairs of black socks. Any sock can be paired with any other. I use a rotation system so they all wear out (approximately) evenly. Every 18 months or so I throw them all out and buy a new set. This reduces the amount of thinking required during laundry and getting ready each morning, which makes me happy.

<comment><USER4> The 10 identical pairs of black socks doesn't really work for business casual and up unless all your dress pants happen to be black as well.

<comment><USER5> I think you're fine if you're wearing black shoes, no?

I'd agree khaki pants with brown shoes would be weird with black socks

<comment><USER6> Traditional fashion wisdom is that socks should match pants. If you match your pants to your shoes, it makes it look like you're wearing high-tops. It draws attention away from your shoes when you want to be drawing attention toward your shoes.

If you don't care about fashion, it doesn't matter, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a similar problem at a previous job. I was given bundles of orders that needed to be sorted and filed. Being the old days, these orders were sheets of paper with numbers on them, and "filed" meant in filing cabinets.

I fairly quickly moved to an algorithm that I would later learn was MSB radix- sort. Basically, I made one iteration and divided them into buckets with the same value in the "hundreds" column, and then recurse into each pile and repeat for the "tens" column, then a quick sort for the final 10 orders.

As a concrete example, lets say I had 150 orders with order numbers between 7200 and 7499. Organize into piles containing the 7200s, the 7300s and the 7400s. Then take the 7200s, and split it into piles for 7200s, 7210s, 7220s, etc.

In sorting algorithms, it common to use insertion sort for the final step (actually, people often use any O(N^2) sort, but really should only ever use insertion sort because its the most efficient O(N^2) sort in terms of instruction count, cache locality, and branch mispredictions).

<comment><USER8> I've been thinking about this algorithm. If you had millions of items, then wouldn't the process of dividing into buckets, and then sorting these buckets which are massive take a long time? Unless of course you recursively sort each bucket into sub-buckets...

<comment><USER9> It's typical to recurse until you're down to small enough sets to easily sort using some other algorithm (usually insertion sort on groups < 10 elements.)

<comment><USER7> With radixsort, you don't even need to. By the time you get to the deepest bucket, all the entries have an identical prefix and unique suffix. So they can all be sorted in O(N).

You could construct situations where it would be faster to switch to insertion sort (maybe radix of 2, stop 3 recursions from the end), but in practice you'd pick a radix better (with a radix of 8, you could do the entire thing in 4 recursions and the final recursion over 64 items is faster than insertion sort of 64 items, probably).

Note that you'd generally use LSB radixsort over MSB radixsort, so you'd have a set number of passes over the array, and no recursion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just a few thoughts on the solution...

If you find a way to not jumble the socks as you fish around, you will be able to remember their locations. (up to a certain number)

The human brain is very parallel in it's image recognition, if your socks look different enough just placing your gaze in the general vicinity will lead to a match.

As you find pairs, the stack size gets smaller. (making the above two effects increase their strength)

Some socks will have multiple valid 'buddy' socks. (think a pack of identical socks... each sock will match any other)

So, version one: \- Spread your socks out all over the floor/table \- Pick up a sock that appears to be the most common. (you can optimize this later by memorizing the 5 or so types of socks you have the most of) \- Find a matching sock, return to step two.

Hopefully, this will allow the decreasing pile size to counteract the depletion of easily-matched socks, keeping the whole thing under your brain's limits for parallel sock matching.

(I'm posting this here because I'd like some peer review before I make my answer final.)

<comment><USER11> This is what I do: lay them out and pair them as the layout continues. O(n) to pair n socks, but that's cheating a bit because you can see them all at a glance. Particularly works well with my daughter's socks, the little ones are really hard to keep track of.

I have an O(1) solution that is fairly reliable for matching a single pair. Pick out a sock from the drawer. Then go find your kids; they ran off with the matching one when you weren't looking (requires that you live with at least one young child).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My answer is not fully algorithmic yet "efficient" when I do it :

step 1) discard all your existing socks

step 2) go to walmart and buy them by packets of 10 - n packet of white and m packets of black. No need for other colors in everyday's life.

Yet times to times I have to do this again (lost socks, damaged socks etc.) and I hate to discard perfectly good socks too often (and I wished they kept selling the same socks reference!) so I recently took a different approach.

Consider than if you draw only 1 sock for the 2n stack of socks, your odds of finding the matching sock in a naive search is quite low.

Pick up 5 of them at random (usually humans are good are remembering between 4 and 7 different elements in the working memory - a bit like the human equivalent of a RPN stack - 5 is a safe default) and memorize their shape or their length.

Pick up one from the stack of 2n-5.

Now look for a match (visual pattern matching - humans are good at that with a small stack) inside the 5 you drew, if you don't find one, then add that to your 5 and keep randomly picking socks from the stack and compare to your 5+1 socks for a match (it will reduce your performances but raise your odds)

Much faster. Feel free to write down the formula (it's late, I'm getting sleepy) to calculate how much samples you have to draw for a 50% odds of a match. IIRC it's an hypergeometric law.

I do that every morning and rarely need more than 3 draws. Now you can estimate the size of my stack of stocks :-)

BTW I found that the transaction costs of sorting all the socks every time I needed a pair were far less than doing it once and binding the socks - <USER2> then you don't have to bind the socks, and there's also a diminishing marginal return (ie you keep looking for that 2 or 3 socks that when somewhere in the laundry and that you need to finish matching your socks and you lose time on that)

</comment><comment><USER13> I "hash" them into "buckets" of like socks and then pair from each bucket. Remaining unpaired socks either went through the wash absent their mate, or witnessed its gory demise at the hands of the washing machine monster.

<comment><USER4> This to me makes the most sense as there are a couple of characteristics to "hash" a sock on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I solve the problem by keeping the socks paired using sock holders while they are washed. Also by using different colors for each family member, you solve the distribution problem.

<http://www.sockpro.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> It's bit silly (obviously) to talk about this in terms of sorting algorithms, because the scan operation is so lightweight. I sort my socks by pulling one out of the pile and visually scanning all the single socks i have laid out separately on the floor. If there's a match, i pair them and put the pair in the drawer. If there is no match, I lay the sock on the floor by itself. In computational terms, this is incredibly inefficient, but in practical terms the visual scan where i iterate over all the single socks laid out on the floor is quicker than the pick-a-sock-from-the-pile operation, so typical algorithm analysis is really quite useless.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, people are using sequential algorithms when vision is parallel processing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When you get the socks, attach a pair identifier to each sock in the pair. The ids start at 0 and increment by one for each new pair.

When a sock is lost, discard it's peer. When the pair is replaced, reuse the id. This keeps the ids dense.

After doing the laundry, you can place each sock based on its id, and match up everything in O(n).

Washing them paired up (one rolled inside the other) is even better, O(n), where n is the number of pairs, not the number of socks. But I don't think the socks get really clean.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, the socks are paird when you take them off, so it makes sense to keep entropy at bay rather than fighting the same dreary battles over and over. Use these <http://deseng.ryerson.ca/xiki/Learning/Main:Sock_clips> or some equivalent, I'm sure there are plenty of options :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Outsource it - the maid / laundry does that stuff.

RFID tags and, uh, a robot thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Avoid the problem by not having to pair them at all.

This can be done two ways:

Either have only one color.

The other option is to make it your thing to have odd pairs. Works better the more different from each other they are.

</comment><comment><USER21> Buy only Plus+ socks.

[http://www.blacksocks.com/en- us/smartersocks_simplyexplained...](http://www.blacksocks.com/en- us/smartersocks_simplyexplained_us.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> Best answer was:

      I use those practical laundry sock clips. Sock pairing:
      O(1). Problem avoided. ;-) – Tomalak 12 hours ago

<comment><USER22> that's an example of solving the problem without solving the problem ;)

<comment><USER8> Like switching to wearing sandals?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1>Throw them out.

2>Buy identical socks.

3>Stop worrying about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Tesla Motors? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a job at Tesla Motors, but have had no luck with multiple resume submissions. I've submitted resumes (i.e. applied for jobs with detailed cover letters) several times in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Last month, I noticed a very interesting (and relevant) position on their website, so I decided to use a different approach this time. I connected with 4 (yes, four) Tesla recruiters via LinkedIn and emailed them one at a time, 3-4 days apart. Yet again, no response to my emails from a single recruiter. Nothing.
What would you do in such a situation?
Has anyone else had success in getting across a resume? <comment><USER2> Consider showing up at their office with your best CV and try to catch their HR. Respect their time but quickly explain why hiring you would be the best decision they ever made. This works in some cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, not easy. I tried that. I asked the front desk to call for an HR manager or recruiter. After 20 minutes of calling around, I had to leave. Cold calling does not work well for job searches.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spotify for Independent Music - <AUTHOR> http://musicfellas.com/hot

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, we are Musicfellas, an independent music discovery platform. In one line, we are spotify + iTunes for independent music. You can not only discover new music everyday but also support the artists you like by buying their music. Very soon, we have an iPhone app and some premium features coming out. Looking forward to your feedback.

PS: Music startups are hard. We are looking for mentors/advisors/investors/music-enthusiasts who can guide us through. Please feel free to email us [hello AT musicfellas.com]. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like the design. Your logo is especially nice. There are a lot of buttons, but the interface seems to be well organized.

I got a good selection of music just from the front page. Would you consider adding a radio option that's based on a song or an artist, like Pandora and Spotify do?

Have you considered doing a variable pricing model like Amie Street did back in the day? The more popular a track or album is, the more expensive it gets. I think this is a really good model for selling independent music because it rewards all the right people in the right way. If you get an album for an inexpensive price that means you helped 'discover' that artist and you helped them gain popularity (i.e. their price goes up a little). And if you buy an album for the going market price ($9.99 or whatever) that means a lot of other people have already validated that it's good and you know you're getting a good deal. Just a thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the nice feedback :)

Radio based on artist is already under the works, we should have that out soon.

Variable pricing does seem like a good option. We'll have to explore this further & see how that goes well with the artists. Because they and they alone control the pricing for now. We however do a have a "pay what you want" feature right now, something people have used more often than not.

Again, thanks for the great feedback. I have your email, would like to send you free invite to preemium features once we have them out.

<comment><USER2> That'd be awesome. Feel free to keep me in the loop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two points of feedback;

1\. No one I know wants to browse "independent music" as an amorphous blob of everything lumped together. On the initial "Hot Songs" page, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to get by clicking on the Play button for each song. I went from a weird electronica song to an "alternative" song to an acoustic guitar song.

2\. Also, there seems to be quite a lot of stuff on there. As a new user, I don't want to listen to lots of rubbish to find good songs. Give me a clue about what other people have listened to a lot, favourited, and so on. If I find some things I like I'll probably explore the site a bit further. If I don't find anything within the first few plays, I'll leave and I won't come back. (The data could be fake - just things you like - but regardless, give me some sort of opinion to work from.)

<comment><USER4> >> No one I know wants to browse "independent music" as an amorphous blob of everything lumped together

I do agree, can you help me understand what distinguishes independent music from regular music? It isn't hard to be added to Spotify, so why would you have any music Spotify doesn't? Or is it simply that the compensation model is different.

<comment><USER5> I think one thing that's nice about this is a much smaller inventory to sort through that gives some front page exposure specifically to indie artists.

I played around with this for a bit and found 3-4 aritsts I liked just by hitting play on a dozen or so songs, and then exploring further.

Big fan of this.

<comment><USER6> Wow, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting to me that you see yourself as spotify + itunes, as the comparison that immediately struck me is Bandcamp + recommendations and the ability to queue up tracks. It certainly seems like the value you bring to artists is very similar to bandcamp - I suppose your differentiator here is discovery? Are you planning to allow sales of physical items as well? I'm a big fan of buying the vinyl release + immediate download - and anecdotally it seems like the independent music crowd would be more interested in this than perhaps other music demographics.

I'm keen not to make any comments about recommendations or the breadth of music available, as I'm aware that the latter is a chicken-and-egg situation, and the former is hard to judge without giving the site a chance to learn my tastes. I'm going to give it a try for sure.

And now for some classic hn nitpicks:

* Please stop your site links from opening pages in new tabs. Whilst looking about for more information, I ended up with 7 tabs open. Please no.

* I clicked on the feedback tab on the right side and was presented not with a feedback form, but a login form. If I can listen to music without signing up/in, surely I can leave feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> Physical items is not in the plan for now. If more people show interest in that, something we can consider. Our differentiator is certainly discovery.

About the nitpicks: 1\. This was to avoid user accidentally clicking and losing the music queue. Now that we've added a js check, we should certainly remove it. 2\. We had to shut it down because of the spam. I know we could do captcha, but then we realized most of the feedback anyway came from signed up users.

<comment><USER8> Could you not do a captcha for non signed in users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice work.

FYI the flash blocker in chrome doesn't register that there's flash content on the site. I had to click around quite a bit in order to get an option to enable flash.

Better yet, you should use the Web Audio API and fallback to flash for unsupported browsers :)

[http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webaudio/intro/](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webaudio/intro/)

<comment><USER6> We do have a html5 fallback, I'll get that looked into.

Edit: Are you on firefox by any chance? Apparently mp3 is not supported there. If not, which browser are you using?

<comment><USER10> For Mozilla platforms, MP3 is supported on Firefox OS, some Android devices and Desktop on Windows Vista and up. Support for Windows XP is coming in Firefox 26. It is available on Linux with custom builds and should be in by default soon. For a list of supported audio and video formats in Firefox see [http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/21/html-media-support-in- fi...](http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/21/html-media-support-in- firefox.html).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome.

One important improvement: If you're going to use a "metal hand" as the icon for your Like button, you really need to add a :hover{margin-top:-2px;} to it so that pumps up and down as expected when you mouse over it.

Like the example here:

[http://www.blogabond.com/Photos/PhotoView.aspx?imageID=21691](http://www.blogabond.com/Photos/PhotoView.aspx?imageID=21691)

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant idea. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's great that musicfellas is supporting the pay-what-you-want model. It's not so great that they pretty much lifted the slider from the album pages on [http://www.loudr.fm](http://www.loudr.fm)

(according to their blog post 3 days ago at [http://blog.musicfellas.com/post/59478848137/generosity](http://blog.musicfellas.com/post/59478848137/generosity), musicfellas implemented PWYW "a few weeks back" \- Loudr has had its current slider design since we launched in February of this year).

Although on the plus side, it means that our slider is cool enough to copy! (Ours even allows artists to bundle multiple albums together, to reward their fans for paying more).

<comment><USER6> Your slider is definitely cool :) We did take the design inspiration for that from you.

I'd love to have a chat with you guys. Feel free to write to us. Cheers!

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but it's not exactly "inspiration" if you copy the design exactly. You guys have a good thing going - design features in your own way and it'll help the consistency of your whole site!

We're available at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to get in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> AFAIK, there is independent music on Spotify. I've seen a lot of small artists on it and the platform has a lot of visibility so most of these artists will try to go there. So I was wondering how you can manage to get your "contracts". It seems also there are only english songs. The problem is that we often look for the artists of our country when we are looking for indies. Is it something which will change or do you aim mostly for US and UK market for now? Otherwise, nice website !

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly, they do have independent music, but mostly procured through "independent" labels. We are truly indie and all our music is directly uploaded by the artists here [http://musicfellas.com/artist](http://musicfellas.com/artist)

In addition to this, we make discovery super simple and you can also support the artists by buying their music.

We do have non-english music, unfortunately there is no easy way to search by language right now. We should have that up soon.

<comment><USER14> Does this mean you have chosen not to work with labels (indie or otherwise) or just that the majority of takeup has been from unsigned artists?

<comment><USER6> We have only chosen not to work with _non-indie_ labels. We are all about independent music only. We've approached and been approached by indie labels too, however most of them demand a minimum upfront payment, which isn't the best thing to do for us. So as of now 90% of the music has been procured directly from the artists (not necessarily unsigned but signed with non- exclusive deal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the design, it's much cleaner than Spotify or Rdio. A few things though:

\- I have an error icon next to my name in the sidebar, that says I need to complete my profile. I really don't think not having a bio should warrant a this kind of warning. (Maybe a notification instead?)

\- I logged in with Facebook, and my country and profile url weren't auto filled out. That's a little weird.

\- No last.fm (or libre.fm) support. For me this is a deal breaker. If it doesn't scrobble, I don't listen to it. I'm sure there are other people out there who feel the same.

What formats are the downloads available in?

<comment><USER6> _it 's much cleaner than Spotify or Rdio_ I can't tell you how happy that makes us :)

1,2. Fair enough. 3\. That is definitely on our to-do list. Should be out soon.

Downloads by default are in 320kbps mp3 for now. For any other format, you can make a purchase & shoot us an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Curation is key on a project like this. Don't just dump a bunch of random bands on the screen. Give us a reason to want to explore them.

</comment><comment><USER17> I cannot seem to figure out how an Indian startup has mostly foreign artists. I am asking because couple of years back, I tried to do the same thing and licensing was the biggest issue. Have you got funding in India?

Moreover, most of the artists and songs I see up there are just at bandcamp.com and no where else. Are you just scrapping Bandcamp and reselling their music. E.g. googling for the album "Creatures" on homepage ([https://www.google.com/search?q=creatures+new+campaigns&oq=c...](https://www.google.com/search?q=creatures+new+campaigns&oq=creatures+new+camp&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l2j69i62l3.3007j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)) loads up only from Bancamp and other albums too.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't scrape anything from any of the sites. All the music that comes in, comes directly only from the artist through musicfellas.com/artist

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 8tracks.com boiled down to single tag?

Feedback: the player panel, instead having tabs for Now Playing / Queue, why not move the tabs below the player buttons, and have Comments / Queue tabs.

<comment><USER6> That's how we had started initially. Both the tabs were below the player, however for most people browsing on laptops, they could hardly see a song or two in the queue. So we moved it to a separate tab on the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing. I just signed up my music project, and while I'm really glad to see you've made the path for artists to get on the service easy, I'm curious what sort of gatekeeping / curation will help maintain the signal-to-noise ratio. Ideally, you have something somewhere in between the hard-to-crack-unless- you're–with-a-major label of Pandora and the total free-for-all of some past services like Amie Street, but that's a notoriously difficult line to walk.

<comment><USER6> We do have manual curation in place. We are not very strict with the filtering but we ensure nothing bad comes in. After the great, good and average comes in, we let the algorithms take over and decide based on user activity, what kind of music to let surface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Loving it! Keep doing what you're doing. One thing I just noticed-- I clicked the Like button which then prompted me to sign up. After doing that I was returned to the same page, but had to click the like button. It's a small thing but applying the action that prompted the signup automatically instead of having to redo it would be a bit of a usability enhancement. Also, an edit button on an already submitted review would be good instead of having to delete and retype.

<comment><USER6> Nice catch, noted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see my song was approved today, but for some reason it's showing a broken image in the listings. It's the first listing in electronic ([http://musicfellas.com/aband_nthecar](http://musicfellas.com/aband_nthecar)). I've uploaded a photo for both my profile and the album, but I can't seem to re-upload an album image to check if that's the issue.

Thanks, and good luck on the site! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, should be fine now :)

<comment><USER21> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hm, I get no music and no indication why.

Any chance that you would add free music aka music by people who want their art listened without anyone having to pay?

<comment><USER21> Looks like you can just set your price to 0 and it becomes free.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, I meant music under free licenses like creative commons. Free means at least free to share to me, not free to download for personal use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Honest question: Would you consider reaching out to foreign artists? I ask because it's damned difficult as anyone not in Japan to compensate those of the Doujin music scene in Japan- their music is traditionally sold at conventions(and then, in limited quantities), but not online, so you really only have access via piracy.

Giving their fans a way to compensate would be amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://musicfellas.com/ryoutasato](http://musicfellas.com/ryoutasato) and [http://musicfellas.com/nicotone](http://musicfellas.com/nicotone)

We do :) I know of at least these 2 artists from Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Shameless plug: A friend of mine down here in Charlottesville, VA is doing a related project ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302124) ). It's Pandora-like internet radio for local bands and bands coming to town for upcoming gigs. Thought it might be of interest.

</comment><comment><USER25> The little thumbnail image next to someone's name ("Somebody liked this track") is huge: [http://s3-ap- southeast-1.amazonaws.com/musicfellas.entertain...](http://s3-ap- southeast-1.amazonaws.com/musicfellas.entertainment/images/user/250/IMG_7021_copy.jpg?1356030513)

Make that smaller.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dude! This is awesome. Outside of the idea. I love how simple and amazing your UI is. Its light and brilliantly intuitive. I have been using everything from grooveshark, new myspace and spotify , rdio but i seriously like your UI the best. It has almost all the features and its so very well thought out. Good on you sir!

<comment><USER6> You sir, have made our day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see on the tab it gives the timer for currently playing song. Nice attention to detail there and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER28> Really like this. Now a few songs in from the hot recommendations on your homepage and already hooked. I have a small side venture that could be a nice integration point for your artists (free as well). If interested, email is in my profile.

<comment><USER6> mailed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I understand that if I disable plugins in my browser some pages are going to break, but a friendly warning to whitelist your site would be better than silence and _Object # <error> has no method 'play'_ in the console :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that :) We'll get this done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very clean design and the UI is really nice to use - great site and great music :) I would suggest however to show genre on the "What's Hot" list or add filtering by genre like on the "Explore" list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) Genre on what's hot seems to be a popular demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just wanted to chime in and say this is awesome. I'm already finding some great new music.

One question - are artists paid for streams or just track / album purchases? I'd likely pay a monthly sub if so!

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

Currently they are paid only for music purchases since we don't make any money off streaming. Eventually if and when we make money off streaming, artists would definitely be compensated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The design looks good, and I've been playing the music for half an hour (/hot/) and it seems to be excellent so far. Good job.

I hope there's an API or a mobile app plan in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have an iPhone app coming out soon. However we plan to release that as a premium feature. If you had to pay 99 cents per week for the premium version, would you still be interested? Of course there will be more premium features included.

<comment><USER32> 1\. Is it 99c/wk for ad-free listening? (sounds reasonable) 2\. Does that also provide API access so I can mess with it for personal use? (would be good)

<comment><USER6> Yes, 99 c/wk for :

1\. ad-free listening 2\. iPhone app (to start with) 3\. weekly curated playlists 4\. higher quality streaming

API not right now, but maybe later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ha, I think I remember you guys from TLabs. Good going!

Love the design, btw. Although I feel there should be a "list view" to go along with the Album-cover-thumbnail view.

</comment><comment><USER21> How long do artist song approvals take? I submitted a second one about an hour ago, but the first took until the next day. Just curious :)

<comment><AUTHOR> They usually take a day. To maintain quality, we curate all the music that comes in, being that we are not just a store but a discovery platform and user experience is very important to us. We just have too much music coming in and we are way behind on curation.

<comment><USER21> Cool cool, good to know! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> nice design. been looking for something like this for a while - always end up listening to the same tracks on spotify even though they have some decent discovery apps. seems like a good idea to completely separate out indie music, eliminating the chance of users like myself always going back to their starred spotify playlists.

<comment><USER6> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks cool! Is there or will there be an API at some point so I could potentially build native clients?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have a public api yet, but we do have a messy one that we use internally. Shoot us a mail, maybe we can work something out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Good work so far. I just uploaded my band's album and hoping for the best :)

</comment><comment><USER37> cool design! the images load quite slow tho, inspecting them shows that they are fullsize images even when used as mini-icons. quite noticable on all pages...

</comment><comment><USER38> Good job, buy why Spotify rather than just a music player?

</comment><comment><USER39> thumbnail those images! you'll drastically cut page speed. other than that, site looks good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. Although there is a bit of hn effect too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> very nice. I am working on something similar for independent movies. Good UI

</comment><comment><USER41> I like like this, and I want to support independent artists, but consider grouping similar songs together like Songza does. My .02.

Congrats on the great site and what seems like a successful launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Grouping songs like Songza seems like a great idea.</comment></comment>


Offline wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.okawix.com/

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for something mobile, I'd suggest the WikiReader.

<http://www.thewikireader.com/>

Mine has been perfect on every out-of-cell-reception adventure.</comment>


Where meritocracy fails - <AUTHOR> http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fails/ <comment><USER2> Is 'merit' necessarily unrelated to 'privilege'?

Much of our talent and ability is not something we are born with; a meritocracy based on _innate_ ability would be a mess- it would practically boil down to ranking everyone based on their IQ. Instead, a meritocracy is typically going to be based on _current_ ability, and isn't 'privilege' deeply entwined with your ability?

It's not pretty or P-C, but it's not exactly confusing to me that someone with more opportunities for schooling performs better in an environment labeled 'meritocratic'. It's not "Nature", it's "Nature AND Nurture".

<comment><USER3> Privilege isn't just about money – it's about a collection of gifts individuals receive from society, regardless of merit.

Those gifts include but aren't restricted to freedom, time and indulgence. And to say that a person can _only_ contribute to an open source project if they have equivalent freedom, time and indulgence from society as our very most privileged members, is to exclude a great number of people – I'd say 99% of people – who are capable and would be wonderful additions to our community.

So to address your question about privilege being entwined with ability: it is dangerous to assume a relationship between the two. I choose to question my assumptions about ability (because I know that I have biases!), because the truth is that I have no idea about other people until they actually do something. And even then, my understanding of someone else's abilities is often limited to only what I directly observe.

Keeping that in mind opens up opportunities between people. And I prefer that mindset to one that assumes a link between privilege with ability.

<comment><USER4> Could you be specific about what that "collection of gifts" is and how Postgres/OSS needlessly excludes people based on these gifts?

<comment><USER3> I listed a few: freedom, time and indulgence. More specifically, the freedom to pursue passion in life is often enabled by one's parents having enough money and stability. Time is mostly about leisure time. Having a job that supports work on open source is still not that common, so one is left with figuring out how to do this on your own time - and that depends on you actually having free time because you don't have kids, you only have one job, and you have the background knowledge (socially, tools-wise and background reading) necessary to participate.

So, that's how the whole world works, right? I am not saying that Postgres is _unique_ here. I think we actually do a really great job. We have about _300_ contributors every year, and only about 20 committers. That's impressive and shows how the contributors feel about our project. It is prestigious, interesting and fun enough for them to send us their code even though we don't give out commit access, and we subject everyone to a pretty difficult code review.

That just goes to show that if you ask a lot from people, they like it and come back for more. Or at least the people I want to be in a community with like it. :)

I am bringing up _to my community_ that we could do a little better inside of Postgres. We could take a closer look at how we operate, and find ways of inviting people in that don't already fit our mold.

There isn't an easy solution to addressing privilege inside a community, at all. But I was at a conference last week, and a couple people asked me to write my thoughts down about meritocracy. It was not an easy thing for me to do.. I already see a few de-railing comments about gender.

But I continue to get support for thinking and writing about this issue, and ultimately finding more ways of getting more contributors. This is why I continue to contribute, and why I took a moment to make a gentle criticism of a community that I enjoy very much.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused. From your original post: _And to say that a person can only contribute to an open source project if they have equivalent freedom, time and indulgence from society as our very most privileged members, is to exclude a great number of people – I'd say 99% of people – who are capable and would be wonderful additions to our community._

This seems to postulate that OSS excludes 99% of people who are capable of contributing good code. However:

 _...freedom, time and indulgence...the freedom to pursue passion in life is often enabled by one's parents having enough money and stability. Time is mostly about leisure time. Having a job that supports work on open source is still not that common, so one is left with figuring out how to do this on your own time - and that depends on you actually having free time because you don't have kids, you only have one job, and you have the background knowledge (socially, tools-wise and background reading) necessary to participate._

Now you are discussing people who don't have the free time or knowledge to contribute good code. How would such people be a wonderful addition to a community devoted to writing good code?

<comment><USER3> You've created a circular argument - if someone doesn't currently have free time or knowledge, how could they ever write good code?

re: free time - I didn't suggest any particular solutions, because the point of this exercise isn't for me to give everyone easy solutions to problems. But I'll offer you one:

More companies could offer time to their employees to work on open source projects. That's something the project itself can help lobby for, and can keep in mind when soliciting help.

That's not a new idea. Many others have said it, and many companies implement it.

<comment><USER4> I made no argument at all. I merely asked a question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a logical error to look at the outcome of a process and draw conclusions about it with no other supporting data. This error would be innocuous if it wasn't the underlying cause of every inhuman prejudice we've spent the last few centuries trying to rid ourselves of.

If I were to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to open-source projects, it's obvious that women aren't capable of producing much valuable code," the hacker news server would melt from the angry response.

But apparently it's ok to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy." Logically, however, these statements are equally erroneous.

You can use this sort of pseudo-statistical handwaving to justify ANYTHING that sounds remotely plausible. That's ignorant, and that sort of ignorance should be opposed no matter the form.

<comment><USER6> There are exactly zero occurrences of the words "women" or "female" in the article. The only reference to gender at all is a brief and completely inconsequential mention of the fact that your typical Postgres hacker is, among other things, male.

Yet somehow you end up debating the veracity of, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy", a statement neither made verbatim nor in any way implied by the actual article.

Isn't it just a little crazy? Can a writer mention a simple fact without it becoming _all_ about battle of the sexes?

<comment><USER7> I don't believe that drblast was trying to make this about a battle of the sexes but was just using gender as an easily identifiable example.

The article states that Postgres isn't a meritocracy because the hackers aren't from diverse backgrounds. drblast was attempting to show how this is a logical fallacy - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse.

<comment><USER6> I think it's rather impractical to attempt to guess a stranger's intent. Drblast responded to the article by quoting a hypothetical statement of his own ("if I were to say X") and then quoting a supposed statement from the article ("but apparently it's ok to say Y"). You can interpret that 10 different ways but why? Isn't it simpler to point out that the article never made statement Y in the first place?

Incidentally, I find the point _you_ make - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse - worthy of debate. However I don't believe it's the same point as the parent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is an interesting article by the man who created the term "meritocracy" as part of satirical work:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment>

An interesting quote, which I'm sure I've heard a few times in relation to the recent banking crisis:

"If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get"

[Edit: As far as I can this concern really applies to organizations like those in the UK public sector where huge salaries are often justified based on rather dubious "merit" - not because of any measure of the value delivered or risks taken]

<comment><USER9> You'd think anyone with merit would see the flaw in the logic: p implies q, q, therefore p. Maybe the don't have as much as they think.

<comment><USER10> I think they see the logic as:

p iff q. q. therefore p.

which is a valid inference.

<comment><USER9> No. They are trained to expect a reward for effort; they get rewards; and then they think it's because of effort.

(Frankly, I think your misreading is a symptom of the same problem.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I spend time on the Technical Panel of a security standards body called TigerScheme[1] which is very much a project to which people contribute free time in a similar way to many open source projects (although TigerScheme isn't an open source project, as it doesn't release code). I recently used the phrase 'do-ocracy' to describe it. If you have the time, want to do it, run it past the other people and if there are no objections within a reasonable time frame, do it. Previously Tigerscheme suffered as volunteers wouldn't be available in decision making. I believe this 'do-ocracy' approach has actually enabled Tigerscheme to make decisions quicker and take better ownership of actions.

[1] - <http://www.tigerscheme.org/>

<comment><USER12> I'm not very good at many things, but I'm comforted often by the fact that the things I could do, and did, work better (by definition) than the things that the better people could've done, and didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surely the ability to write great code is closely linked to the ability to earn an income in the top 1% of the world - which according to 'Global Rich List' (lord knows if it's accurate) is around $50,000.

In a field where merit is translatable to wealth, a large proportion of wealthy people in a subgroup points to more meritocracy, not less.

</comment><comment><USER14> The definition of "meritocracy" that the article provides isn't the dictionary definition of the word; it's the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the topic where the opening paragraphs are talking about the historical origination of the concept. The dictionary definition reads, "government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability". The Wikipedia article lists intelligence, credentials, and education as examples of potential measures of merit but the particular measures of merit used in a given meritocracy aren't inherent to the words definition.

Whether or not advancement in a meritocracy is correlated to privilege is a function of what measures of merit are used not some innate property of meritocracies in general. In the context of an open source project one would hope it is a meritocracy of ideas where the merits being judged are something like the quality of the algorithms and code.

Selena's wish to be more open to contributors that have less time to contribute isn't a question of meritocracy it is one of organizational culture; unless the merit on which they are judging people is the amount of raw time they spend on the project vs. the quality of their contributed work.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's a really good point. I am talking about organizational culture. More specifically - structure around participation.

But, at the same time, it seems people often conflate governance and power with organizational culture. Is there a good reference for differentiating the two?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I don't believe [meritocracy is] our strongest value, or quality as a community. And, it's not something that I think embodies what is awesome about Postgres.

Our strongest quality is our ability to create great code."

Let's see... -great code -> merit -transparency -> code improvements (best idea wins)

And frankly, the "privileged" people he's talking about contributing to Postgres make the money and lead the lives they do precisely due to their merits as programmers.

Sounds an awful lot like an organization that promotes the best ideas and gives power based on the merit of the people in it to me.

<comment><USER3> I'm a she, and you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a programmer. Which largely had nothing to do with merit.

The point of the article isn't to discount the work involved in becoming excellent, but to point out that the opportunity to do that work at all is a privilege.

I don't particularly care if any one person changes their thinking about this. My post was meant for my community, which is taking the issue of involvement and its relation to privilege seriously.

<comment><USER4> _...you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a programmer. Which largely had nothing to do with merit._

Is your objection to the idea of "merit" merely reductionism?

I.e., merit (as defined by ability and willingness to code) is comprised of a combination of innate factors (genetic/environmental contributions to intelligence and demeanor) and social privileges (access to education, etc)? This is true. So what?

Ultimately, merit is merely a particular arrangement of atoms. It's hard to see how this reduction is useful.

<comment><USER16> Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit.

Being born affluent, white, and male are the three factors which for the last couple of decades have made you statistically most likely to have owned your own computer prior to college. Because most people don't consider males to have more merit than females, or white people to be more meritorious than minority groups, declaring programming a meritocracy ignores and conceals these important factors in the makeup of the "programmers" social group.

<comment><USER4> _Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit._

No one is doing this. I am defining "merit" to be the ability/willingness to write good code.

If the universe has decided to allocate merit (defined as above) to white/asian males, so be it. That doesn't mean that my definition of merit is flawed. It merely means that the universe has not behaved in the manner you wish it did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The crux of what people mean when they refer to meritocratic systems or organizations has nothing to do with the people in the organization or is related only tangentially to people. What they really mean is that the best _ideas_ win, that the people in the system operate in accordance with a set of values that place the excellence of the end product above the egos of the people, especially the popular or powerful people. Do we have a suitable word to use in place of "meritocracy" and friends?

</comment><comment><USER18> for those thinking about shaping communities, this is a key takeaway: "What we have to do is create structures that invite people to give what they can, when they can give it." good advice for all of us!</comment>


The rise of American authoritarianism - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism <comment><USER2> My impression of Trump is that he thinks he never made a mistaken decision, and has never felt guilty about anything he has done or failed to do. That's pretty frightening.

<comment> norea-armozel Sadly, that's a symptom of an authoritarian mindset (IMO). It's something that probably makes me the odd one out among certain conservative values. For example, I support the legal right to polygamous/polyandrous marriages since social norms, expectations, and the like I think are wholly separate from the job of the government. Meaning, I don't personally support polygamy/polyandry but I can see that the state shouldn't bar it's existence at all. The same goes for drug use, sex outside of marriage, atheism, and so forth. It shouldn't be the job of the state to dictate social norms. It scares me that anyone would think otherwise, especially on very personal matters like marriage. Yet, that seems to be the growing trend among people of my age and demographic (white, mid-30s, lower middle class) to want the state to dictate the lives of others beyond protecting life, liberty, and property.</comment></comment>