How Beats by Dre played you like a fool - <AUTHOR> http://pulseradio.net/articles/2015/03/how-beats-by-dre-played-you-like-a-fool <comment><USER2> Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many people love their sound).

hellbanTHIS comments that he lost a lot of respect for Apple when they bought Beats. Initially, I did too, but having learnt more about the company, I think it's a perfect fit. A lot of people say that you shouldn't buy a Mac because you can buy a Windows machine with the same spec. Often, they're right. But they're also missing the point completely - you don't buy a Mac for the memory, the CPU, the SSD - you buy it for the experience, the "it just works", and for how nice the hardware is. Beats is the exact same thing. People aren't buying the headphones for the sound quality, they're buying it for everything else.

Again, I'm no fan of Beats. But somewhere like Hacker News, we ought to admire their ingenuity in taking over a market where the existing players had completely ignored (and frankly, seemed oblivious to the presence of) a large untapped audience.

<comment><USER3> > certain types of music - music listened to by young people

Can I feel old now? Where's my lawn?

> People aren't buying the headphones for the sound quality, they're buying it > for everything else.

I find this worrying, really. Are we so desperate to consume that we're willing to buy shit just for sake of buying?

<comment><USER4> Why is buying headphones based on their audio quality superior to buying headphones based on their aesthetics?

<comment><USER5> Because their main job is to reproduce sound in an acceptably accurate manner? Owning a pair of Beats is like owning a Ferrari or a Porsche powered by a 75BHP 1L engine with suspension made of play-doh. Nice to look but drives like crap.

<comment><USER6>
      > Because their main job is to reproduce sound in
      > an acceptably accurate manner?

Check the frequency response graph of almost any speaker or headphone in the sub-$1,000 range (and quite a few over that price as well). Peaks and valleys all over the place. They're not trying to sound "accurate," they're trying to sound pleasing.

And this isn't even a bad thing. Just understand that sound quality isn't objective, unless you're judging things by how flat their frequency response curve is -- and the headphones/speakers trying to achieve that are generally aimed at audio engineers.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but the GBP169(!) Solo's (not tried the full sized Beats) really don't sound good (I used a pair for an afternoon and was hugely disappointed by them), they are truly the epitome of a high performance car body wrapped around a lawn mower engine. I mentioned this in another comment, my 15 quid Sennheiser CX300 buds sounded way better than these overpriced fashion statements.

I agree that sound quality isn't objective when it comes to hearing what passes through one's ear holes, but the sound reproduction that passed into my ears from these Solos was noticeably and objectively bad. I don't need a fancy graphs to tell me that.

I should add that I did actually like the construction and build of the Solos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sennheiser HD 280 Pros - best headphones for under US$100. Balanced sound, good isolation, responsive and clean, comfortable for long sessions.

[http://en-us.sennheiser.com/professional-dj-headphones-noise...](http://en- us.sennheiser.com/professional-dj-headphones-noise-cancelling-hd-280-pro)

[http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro- Headphones/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro- Headphones/dp/B000065BPB)

I just don't understand purchasing headphones as a fashion statement. I read it as "I want you to know I like popular brands over high quality and my own listening experience".

<comment><USER8> You don't buy beats for the sound, you buy beats to signal your tribal membership. People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership signal. It's _almost_ instinctual and done without a lot of thinking and good marketers know how to leverage this.

It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.

<comment><USER9> > People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership > signal...

> It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their > identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.

Cough. Written on Hacker News, but not Reddit or Digg or Facebook. Cough.

C'mon, we're sitting right in the middle of a tribe. Even writing that Sennheisers sound better is sending a tribal signal. That's why people write it instead of just buying a pair and listening to them in private.

<comment><USER8> I'm not saying _I 'm_ not dumb at times.

FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in.

But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with things that signal that they're part of this group. The trope is "yet another photo sharing app" right?

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's dumb at all. Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. Just try doing a startup in Somalia.

<comment><USER8> > Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe.

That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.

<comment><USER9> Where? Alaska in an old bus? Even there, humans benefit to a small degree from law enforcement that strongly discourages the next hunter from shooting them and taking their possessions.

There are some survivalists who may or may not be able to operate for a while on this basis, but even if they aren't "joining" a tribe, they are protected by tribes. get rid of all the tribes, and new ones would spring up and we'd be back to this.

<comment><USER8> You clearly don't understand the distinction between a tribe and a society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I consider myself a bit of a an audiophile, and always argued that beats headphones are inferior. Their balance is abysmal, way too bass heavy, and shit plastic design. They however mastered marketing, which as it turns out wins the "game". My choice of headphones are Sol Republic ([http://solrepublic.com/tracks-hd-on-ear-headphones- with-v10-...](http://solrepublic.com/tracks-hd-on-ear-headphones- with-v10-sound-engine-speakers.html)) or a nice German Sennheiser.

<comment><USER11> Not bad but check out these, they're super comfortable and I love the wood panelling! They might even sound good too...

[http://www.thehouseofmarley.com/legend- anc.html](http://www.thehouseofmarley.com/legend-anc.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find the Beats-bashing to be very suspect.

It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd.

Why aren't we angry about every other thing that's endorsed by celebrities? Why this one in particular? I don't think the folks behind Activia yogurt "played everybody for a fool" or "had us over a barrel from the beginning" because they hired Jamie Lee Curtie as a spokesperson. They certainly didn't spend their budget on inventing a better tasting yogurt or one with different cultures in it, that's for sure.

"Sound quality" is not a great reason to pick on Beats. Most headphones and speakers (under $1000 or so) aren't even trying to sound neutral; they're intentionally boosting certain frequencies and suppressing others. Beats headphones are obviously _massively_ boosting the bass, but this isn't any less "accurate" than, say, your average Grado headphones and many enthusiasts (myself included) really enjoy those things.

Marco Arment had the perfect analogy, I think.

      "Beats did to headphones what Starbucks did to coffee:
      while they're not the best, they're a huge upgrade from
      what most people were using before, and they've
      dramatically increased the market and mainstream
      acceptability of spending $200–400 on full-sized
      headphones and wearing them in public."

While the changes brought by Beats and Starbucks haven't been entirely positive, even if you don't like them, they've definitely expanded the market. The net effect of Beats is that there are TONS of great headphones on the market now, more than there were ten years ago. For a guy like me who's a fan of that stuff that's good news even though I'm not a Beats customer.

<comment><USER12> >It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd.

Isn't peddling overpriced shit to underprivileged (and underinformed) population the actual problem here? You have there a white guy, Jimmy Iovine, selling shit product to poor urban youth, and it's audiophiles who are at fault for exposing this fact?

<comment><USER6> Nearly all headphones and speakers intentionally boost some frequencies and suppress others. Some genres like hip-hop and electronic music sound really good with comically exaggerated bass like that offered by the Beats. Clearly that company is giving some music fans what they want.

They're not exactly producing a product _I_ want, but I'm pretty okay with that. I don't feel the need to "expose" them or claim that they "have everybody over a barrel." I just... don't buy them.

      > You have there a white guy, Jimmy Iovine, selling
      > shit product to poor urban youth, and it's
      > audiophiles who are at fault for exposing this fact?

Well, I'm not going to look inside your head and tell you what you're thinking. So maybe this doesn't apply to you but in general the negative feelings towards Beats seem to be best summarized as: "oh, we hate this product whose sound and looks are tailored to urban tastes."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It just shows the power of good marketing really.

Audiophiles will rant and rave about the poor quality of the headphones, and rightly so. I've not used Beats but it's pretty obvious from the reviews I've read that Beats headphones are overpriced crap.

However, I don't believe Dre played anybody like a fool. He and his co-founder simply understood that there was a gap in the market for "fashionable" headphones, and so he used his name and connections to make that happen.

It's an incredibly basic approach to launching a new product in an established market and I'm sure many other companies have sold overpriced crap in other industries to a wide consumer base for lots of $$$'s using the same technique.

Edit: Fixed typo

<comment><USER14> Not really marketing alone. Geeks always seems to miss the form part of form and function. Look at the year of the linux desktop for years on end. Geeks see how much function linux has and think everyone should use it regardless of the form. See the original iPod or the iPhone not having removable batteries.

Beats headphones sound okay and often deliver the music the way many of their users want with heavier bass. Beats also makes headphones that have a much nicer form than any others I have seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't finely distinguish sound and when I researched headphones I decided on a Bose one that was rated as having worse sound quality than others in its price segment. It's an active noisecancelling one that had great ratings in that regard. One of the best items I ever bought, I commute by train (45-50m each way) and it's fantastic for reading uninterrupted.

Recently tried a Sennheiser in the same price segment that had excellent sound ratings and couldn't tell a difference. Wouldn't be shocked if I couldn't tell apart Beats from better sound quality ones either (and I'd guess it's the same for many people). Makes sense to base your decision on other factors then (style, noise cancelling capabilities).

Pretty sure the real audiophiles self select out of buying Beats and most people who do think the sound quality is sufficient.

<comment><USER5> Speaking as a wee bit of an audiophile, though not a brand snob....

Some folks can't tell, don't care or may even have a personal preference to the type of sound they like that "real audiophile" types would consider inferior. Personally I'm fine with this, it's your money you're free to spend it how you like, and if you enjoy what you bought and they make you happy then that's all that matters.

However...my friend's daughter was given a pair of Beats Solo's as a present and I tried them for an afternoon keeping an open mind and ignoring the celeb brand nonsense. Now whilst being well made and quite sturdy, they don't sound any better than the Sennheiser CX300 buds I picked up for GBP15.00 a few months earlier. In fact I thought the sound was inferior, and these Solo's retail for a whopping GBP160!

I think the point I'm trying to make is that these Beats things are definitely style over substance and the Beats project is basically a massive marketing scam. I think _you_ could definitely tell the difference between Beats and similarly priced non-celeb unfancy workhorse cans.

Personally I own a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro 80's, they're damned ugly things but by god they're comfy and have nice sound reproduction. I tried other makes in the same price range (AKG, Koss etc) but settled on the Beyers. I will admit I was slightly biased towards the Beyers because I used Beyer DT100 cans when I did radio broadcasting (they're pretty much industry standard, sturdy and neutral sounding) a few years back and I probably associate them with being "professional tools".

For walkabout MP3 listening I have a pair of Tesco own make in-ear buds. They cost me a fiver in-store and they sound just fine (I applied the principle of "ShitTronics" when I made that purchase decision :) Discussed here previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9173017))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "#4. They looked at what consumers wanted, then made it"

How is this a bad thing?

And in any case - I like my Beats, I had even more expensive Sennheiser headphones and I prefer the muddy, dirty, over-amplified bass of the Beats, because it works well with the music I listen to while programming. Yeah I know the Sennheiser headphones are probably "better" but I prefer something else. I just wish people didn't care as much, it's just headphones in the end.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article's title is "How they played you like a fool" but in the article I feel like all I see are marketing gimmicks for the brand over and over.

Each item is basically a small marketing paragraph why beats did it in spite of the nerds telling them they had inferior quality and were overpriced, and then a big picture of a celebrity trying to look cool wearing beats.

#1. They found the golden niche

#2. They Ignored the critics and naysayers

#3. They pulled on the biggest celeb names they could find

#4. They looked at what consumers wanted, then made it

#5. They trusted their gut and risked it all

#6. They moved fast

#7. They had BIG brand help

#8. Don't get cocky, never think you are done

This list reads like they are writing for the what used to be the underdog (Apple) but instead selling garbage to people who dont know any better.

Why should I laud this company?

<comment><USER18> I think the "you" here is both the customer, and the reasonable person who thinks you should make money buy selling the best product for the best price possible.

Beats has more money than you (probably) and me (definitely), and for some people, that's what's important. Not the "how" or "why" or "should", but "can".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this just same old same old?

We have a fantastic independent coffee shop at the end of our road. When a major coffee chain opened a few doors down, I asked him if he was worried. His reply: "No. The kind of people that drink coffee in Starbucks don't pay for coffee in independent coffee shops.".

It's the same here. Beats' target market is not people that love good quality headphones, but people that want fashionable headphones.

You can see the same argument over cars, phones, clothes, luggage, etc. It's hardly new.

<comment><USER19> Interestingly, both Starbucks and Beats have prices similar to nice, higher- end products in their respective markets.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. They both focus on design and marketing, on giving users more conspicuousness in their 'conspicuous consumption'. If you want people to know that you pay a lot for coffee, then coffee in a generic white cup is missing a key feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I lost a lot of respect for Apple when they bought them. Beats are what a lot of Apple haters used to accuse them of being, overpriced junk that caters to gullible fashion victims.

I won't be switching to their new music service.

<comment><USER21> I still wouldn't by them, since I dislike looking like a tool, and in every category there is a better option, but take a look at these measurements for the Studios: [http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear- headph...](http://www.head-fi.org/products/beats-studio-over-ear-headphone- black-new/reviews/9743#comments-title)

It was once fashionable to wear them, now its fashionable to hate them. Truth is, they have gotten better - a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _it costs Beats a mere $14 to make according to some experts_

I'm reasonably sure that Beats does not actually design nor make these headphones - they chose a design already produced by one of the many Chinese manufacturers, using existing parts, and asked for their brand to be put on it. This is common among many brands and is known as "OEM". Look at these, for example:

[http://www.ovleng.com/index.php?m=index&a=productList&id=34](http://www.ovleng.com/index.php?m=index&a=productList&id=34)

The extreme bass was also not something Beats invented - these generic/OEM manufacturers were producing headphones with the same type of sound before Beats, because of the general impression among most people that more bass means stronger, more powerful sound and therefore is more desirable. Beats just took this "generic cheap high-bass headphone" sound and used marketing to turn it into a fashion statement.

<comment><USER23> While for many products you would be right, for Beats you are wrong. They really did spend quite a while getting the design right. The design was also very controversial, while low end headphones had bass forward designs, they had build costs far lower than $14, and had lots of sound quality issues. (Beats is colored, but relatively cleanly so)

Anyways the design actually was fairly novel, you can read more here:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-19/designer-o...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-19/designer- of-beats-headphones-prototype-discovers-there-s-no-free-lunch)

<comment><USER22> They chose their words very carefully in that article. Saying that they're "working on" a design doesn't mean they're the only ones doing it locally. It's very common to choose a design from and then work with the manufacturer to customise it - which does count as "designing".

The OEM doesn't get credited, since it's all part of the contract and their reason for existing. After all, why would Beats "break the illusion" they created?

<comment><USER23> I'm sure they worked with an OEM (they pretty much had to, to work within their manufacturing processes), but your implication that they grabbed a part off the shelf is just not accurate.

Keep in mind that doing an original design is not a terribly high bar, but yes beats were a custom designed part. They worked with an OEM the same way Apple worked with an OEM. That doesn't mean it is good, just custom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://puu.sh/gYMIa/799fe60b8e.png](http://puu.sh/gYMIa/799fe60b8e.png) hmm

</comment><comment><USER25> It isn't hard for most technically savvy people to see that these headphones are over-priced and over-rated. But it should make us think about all the marketing we _do_ fall for.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what effect Beats will have on a generation of listeners already experiencing noise-induced-hearing-loss (NIHL). With the amplified bass, aren't users exposing themselves to low-end rumble all of the time?

I'm pretty sure we'll be confronted with a generation of deaf people pretty soon, given the extreme bass and the personal music players that can output high volumes, and the incessant barrage of noise (radio?) wherever you go.

Additionally, when mastering and mixing, does anyone take into account what their record would sound like on these things? Everyone buys excellent quality reference monitors with as close-to flat response as possible for revealing midrange, non-fatiguing high-end and punchy/deep (non-flabby) bass so they can produce the best sounding record. Some might even listen to it weighted for FM radio broadcasts and have a range of different speakers like those famous Yamaha NS10s (yuck!) to get a feel of how good/bad it sounds on normal home- users equipment. But does anyone mix/master for these? Those records will sound as thin as a pancake on other speakers if they did; where's the balance?

Furthermore, since bass is mainly felt with the skin, is increased bass in these headphones really as effective as listening to a real speaker?

</comment><comment><USER27> Guys, taste needs time to develop. That's why kids are a target for scumbags. Its not the kids fault. They buy what they understand. If they really love their music, they'll too buy Sennheisers in 20 years.

Its the fault of Dr.Dre. He uses the inexperience of kids to get the cash of their parents into his pockets. Nothing to admire. Kids have become business targets for the reckless. Dre belongs to these.

</comment><comment><USER28> Imho beats headphones don't sound good. The bass is ridiculously overpowered and distorts nearly constantly.

Now, tastes are different, and you might want exactly this experience with that distorted bass.

If you create both the music and the speaker, like Dre does, and you wanted that experience, the right approach would have been to add such a distorted bass to your track during mixing/mastering, and then create headphones that faithfully output this signal.

This would ensure that you could enjoy Dre's tracks with that distorted bass on all your music equipment, like with your home hifi system, and if you used the beats headphones with other music, it would also output that other music truthfully.

So it becomes a bit of a standards issue. It's as if a very popular computer displays brand made displays where pixels that are 100% white will flicker wildly, but the displays brand was created by a guy known for his lowpoly wireframe art style, and this particular style looks great on those displays. So that combination might be fine, but you cannot use the displays to faithfully assess other images, really.

<comment><USER29> Why is a mix of the songs (with extra bass) less "truthful" than the mix made by the record company employee? Both are valid interpretations of the music. If you prefer the former, why shouldn't you listen to it?

<comment><USER28> Oh you can listen to anything you like. Any mix is fine, and any headphones are fine.

When I say truthfulness, I refer to playback equipment. Truthful means that it outputs something that is close to the input.

My argument is that if a headphone doesn't add deliberate distortions, it can be used for all kinds of music, enhancing its utility. And at the same time, with such a more useful headphone, you can still have the same experience as before, if those distortions are added at an earlier time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Indeed, (and I am only mentioning this because Plantronics is also on the chart) I bought a pair of Plantronics GameCom 367 and they were absolutely abysmal. They were hooked to a Yamaha RX-V373 audio receiver which in turn was optically connected to a PC so it couldn't have been a question about the configuration. Anyway, the sound was completely flat, almost no bass - certainly no punch whatsoever, the highs were absurdly cut and the middles painfully mediocre to say the least. The entire range was so bad that I was really frustrated I couldn't return them due to a hideous store policy at that time in RO. Not to mention that when you would pass the 75% volume mark the sound was completely distorted. What a complete disgrace. :(

The big takeaway: always test the product before you buy it never fall for the hype.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had a support ticked open with Apple for long enough that they gave me a store credit to buy something. The amount was just enough to get a Beats Pill XL Bluetooth speaker, so I got one.

Wow, the thing changed my relationship with my music library. There are so many more occasions that I can listen to music just because of the convenience of being able to place the speaker wherever I am. Good build quality, great battery life, and I am happy with the sound quality.

I tried the free trial of the music streaming service, and it is a cut above the others. I decided to wait for what it becomes post-acquisition, though.

I had no prejudices about Beats prior to this. I don't understand the hate.

</comment><comment><USER32> My laptop has a Beats by Dre logo for some reason, I have no idea why because the sound quality is no better than any other laptop I have used with bog- standard speakers.

<comment><USER33> "Beats capable", probably. Means about as much as "Vista ready".

<comment><USER34> I really hope not, it's a pair of headphones. It's not like you're plugging in a new type of RAM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yes, my first reaction is "oh, what a bunch of idiots"

But then again nobody is listening to the 5th symphony on Beats headphones (and, tbh, they probably sound better than Apple's, just because of size)

It's a fashion accessory. Like sunglasses, which sure, you'll protect your eyes, but that's not all there is to it.

It's easy to complain about marketing and dumb people, the lesson that needs to be taken is, what I may be missing in creating or marketing a product.

</comment><comment><USER36> Essentilly, instead of spending money on R&D to create better headphones, they spent it on marketing and celeb endorsements because people are sheep.

</comment><comment><USER37> I receive a pair of these headphones this christmas, when I had no idea what Beats was. I listend to some classical music for a couple minutes: it was terrible and I can't really stand for the hiss always on in the background. The next week I sold them and bought a mechanical keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER38> _sigh_ $14 in components for a $100 product seems like a really tight margin and not exploitation to me. The tooling chain for these things (injection molding, etc.) is really expensive.

Not that these are a great product, but I don't see them outright ripping anyone off.

<comment><USER39> The quote from the article is actually "...it costs Beats a mere $14 to make according to some experts." I'm assuming they factored the tooling costs into the cost of making these.

At the scales Beats is operating the tooling chain costs, while initially high, get distributed over millions of units.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Both sound and production quality of the "beats" (down to the very plastic) are crappy. But the marketing hype is done by artists. Even Apple fell for it.

<comment><USER41> Apple didn't "fall for" the marketing, they bought the company because the brand actually has a lot of value due to the marketing. And the value of the Beats Music streaming service, especially the deals that it had with labels already to allow streaming.

I think they overpaid, but they can afford to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Marketing and politics, they work the same.

<comment><USER43> They _are_ the same.

Politics is just marketing with taxes and nuclear weapons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> And now we know that pulseaudio.net uses CakePHP as their web framework. [http://i.imgur.com/BbR63sK.png](http://i.imgur.com/BbR63sK.png)

They should turn debug off.

<comment><USER45> First, it's "pulseradio.net", not "pulseaudio".

Second, what framework anyone uses is hardly a secret – anyone can see that, either by looking at the source code, or by simply installing the Wappalyzer browser extension.</comment></comment>


Google Buys Songza - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+GooglePlay/posts/9FotaTDAw34 is not available <comment><USER2> The correct URL: [https://plus.google.com/+GooglePlay/posts/9FotaTDAw34](https://plus.google.com/+GooglePlay/posts/9FotaTDAw34)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, thanks, I've resubmitted with the correct url: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7999289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7999289)

I can't delete or edit this submission now.</comment></comment>


Most of Slicehost is Down - <AUTHOR> http://status.slicehost.com/2009/11/3/dfw-interruption-2

<comment><USER2> If you're wondering "Thats funny, I'm on Slicehost and yet the Ride of the Valkyries is not playing on my cell phone, how odd": Both of their St. Louis data centers, where many of their older customers are, were unaffected.

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

I'm at St Louis, but yet I have new slices too (couple of months old) and they appear unaffected as well.

Are slices allocated in the same data center as existing customer slices? If so, that's neat (and helpful as I'm routing traffic between them).

<comment><USER4> By default, yes, all slices you get are kept at the same data center. That way, if you have traffic between slices, they're on the same LAN and they don't have to charge you for that bandwidth. As has been mentioned, you can request a slice at a different data center, but it does have to be requested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The service I'm getting from Slicehost has really went to hell ever since Rackspace took over. I had something like a year solid of uptime with them when I was actively writing in my blog and getting traffic from the front pages of HN and proggit.

Now my server freezes up all the time despite little traffic.. I haven't written in my blog since May and yet I've had my server require a hard reboot three times in the last three months. I get so little traffic that I don't really care, but my mail forwarder for my personal domain is sitting on the same server and now I'm really having to consider moving my mail forwarding off to some other service.

<comment><USER6> As a counterpoint, I've noticed no difference in support or stability since the Rackspace merger - if anything I'd say there's been less downtime for my slices since then.

(EDIT: My slices are located in STL2, in case that's relevant.)

<comment><USER7> Rackspace's datacenter is DFW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah the rackspace outage freaked us out a little. Seems like it would be nice if they could notify the customers before the customers discovered the downtime themselves. If Rackspace emailed their customers at the first sign of downtime, customers would probably be more patient.

<comment><USER9> I work for a web host (not this one). From my experience, this is generally what is going on during downtime (note: times are BEST CASE scenario):

T0: Servers go down T5-15: Someone realizes something is broken. T15-45: Initial someone calls another someone to tell them it's broken because the night guy probably can't fix it all by himself. T60-70: All the engineers are woken up and know OF the problem. T90: Engineers figure out WHAT the problem is. T120: Engineers fix problems. T150: More problems arise. T180: All problems are solved, no more customers are mad.

Moral of the Story: As you can see, it already is a very involved process to get servers running again. Now, as a customer, you want an email to notify you that services are down. First, the admin needs to find out exactly which customers are affected and then write up a nice happy email to you letting you know we're working on it. Do you want a happy email or do you want your servers fixed? Your call. Downtime is chaos. Do not ask to be notified of chaos.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, I don't need well-drafted prose or a happy email to alert me of a server outage. I could care less. They should have a pre-drafted document that let's them fill in blanks based on the problem at hand. I was one of these affected customers and can say that not being notified of the servers being down cost me a few hours of uptime. I would say that customer communication during chaos is nearly as important as fixing the problem itself. Just my two cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did anybody get a notification from Slicehost about this?

</comment><comment><USER12> Kind of interesting with the lack of communication when you look at comments like this <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=906820> (left parent for context)

</comment><comment><USER13> Yay my site is back up. If only people actually go there so it matters...

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it is back up. at least my server on hived.in is up.</comment>


Digital Evolution in Python: PyPond - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/biology/pypond-a-digital-life-simulator-in-python.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who are not aware of digital evolution, I am writing a quick short summary. Digital evolution means evolution of computer programs who compete for limited resources such as CPU and memory. In short, it goes something like this:

\- You define a universe, which is virtual memory (space) and CPU (time)

\- You create energy (CPU cycles)

\- You define an extremely limited instruction set for Virtual Machine (Physics). Instruction set being limited is important because you want to mimic physics, not chemistry or biology

\- You seed randomly generated programs of varying length

\- You start parallel execution the random programs

\- Each instruction eats up energy and at random times you feed energy into universe

\- At random times mis-execute program instructions

\- Run it for a long time and Voila! finally self replication gets evolved from very simple instructions

\- Then arms race gets started between programs and things get interesting

Some people argue that digital evolution is not merely an emulation of real thing but is indeed a real manifestation of evolution and I tend to believe the same.

PS: I will admit that I haven't run it for long so if you find interesting results, do let me know

<comment><USER2> I ran PyPond_with_graphics.py and got a list of 1000 numbers spit out. Any hints on how to run it properly?

<comment><USER3> The bottom line of ...withGraphics creates a Pond but gives the parameter visual=False.

That should be visual=True. I still get the numbers dump after that, though I also get the visualization.

<comment><USER2> should have seen that. thanks. It seems to work now- is it normal for the organisms to spell out "Free Us" in the little graphics window?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would probably be eligble for Nobel Prize if organisms spell that out! But, again, you never know -- it is evolution.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which popular programming languages are you NOT interested in and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Currently I am not interested learning modern front-end stack and js- framework-of-week. Life is short. This stack is changing so fast. I will wait few more years. Hopefully then it will be stable to learn.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty much all of them. I started with C and never liked OO programming. Even when kind of optional in the language, for your own code, you still have to deal with an OO library ecosystem because everyone writes the libraries that way when the language supports it.

It kind of depends on what you mean by popular. I don't have much interest in Rust. It has a lot of hype right now. It doesn't seem like a bad language, just too low level for what everyone wants to use it for (due to hype and most people not writing OSes).

<comment><AUTHOR> Do tell more, what high level stuff do people want to use Rust for?

<comment><USER4> Depends on what you define as "high level stuff", really. We're seeing an increasing amount of people who are writing network services and web back-ends in Rust; that's sometimes perceived as "high-level", depending on where you sit in the stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Javascript. There is not much to learn if you come from c. And 'the javascript way' is just a tangled mess. Python, because 'the python way' is just a bunch of weird idioms for apparently no reason other than making it odd to read for beginners. You have to use both, of course

<comment><USER6> > Javascript. There is not much to learn if you come from c.

Ah, yes, C, well known for having rich data structures, object orientation, higher-order functions, etc. Even if you weren't conflating rather different languages, JavaScript is inherently interesting for being the only language supported by web browsers and thus being one click away from billions of people.

> Python, because 'the python way' is just a bunch of weird idioms for > apparently no reason other than making it odd to read for beginners.

That's a pretty flame-y way to say you didn't choose to learn the reasoning behind something. Python has a lot of history developing language features in public – note that [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/) starts in 2000 — so it's not like this is hard.

<comment><USER5> Like i said i use both. But I didn't find it interesting to learn either.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough, but just be honest about saying rather than trashing other people's work: JavaScript has a ton to learn which a C programmer will not know, and Python has a history of reasoned decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't really think of a current language I wouldn't be interested in learning or learning better.

But there are languages that I am just not sure I am sold yet on, like Haskell. I am not saying it is bad as I just don't know, and functional programming isn't bad, but I am just not sure why Haskell over other options. Would love to hear reasons it might be a better choice and in what circumstances it is advantageous.

<comment> a-saleh Depends what you want and what you value.

Do you really need types? I did work in Clojure and I think having good support for immutable data-structures got me 80% of the benefits of functional programming.

Similarily, maybe you are sold on actors and message-passing and Erlang/Elixir is proven there :)

Or you would like types, but are not sure about the whole separation of IO from pure functions in type system, you could try Ocaml (or its Javscript- looking reskin Reasonml). Like, you don't get type-classes, but polymorphic variants are nice and there is this interesting module system.

Or, if you really want to encode your domain in types and then maybe even use the type-system to solve your programming for you, maybe try Idris? Like I have been meaning to go through 'Type-Driven Development with Idris' one day :)

But maybe Ocaml is too little and Idris is too much and Haskell sits in the nice middle ground you like :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the more general pitch for learning a functional language in the first place?

<comment> a-saleh I don't think there is a general one anymore.

The original "wouldn't it be better if we just passed data around through simple composable functions" kinda won, you have first-class anonymous functions with support for closures in most languages today in use :-)

I think the next pitch is along the lines of "We can solve the evil of mutable state making your app hard to debug/test" and i.m.o. that took over a bit as well, i.e. with frontend we usually have state in one tree sitting somewhere and what we display is just a function from state to our html.

And I have seen the state being represented as a fold/reduce over events in the application.

So the pitch i.m.o. is along the lines "Hey, we converged on the idea that functional programming is good, why not use language that has good support for it" :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Python and Ruby. I don't see how you could not want static typing. Not least because of it's documenting qualities. Otherwise what are we relying on variable and method names to tell us what type something is?! Ha ha.

Lisp OTOH I could forgive the non static typing for the learning opportunity but not sure I'd use lisp for production code for the same reason unless there is a type checker utility.

I'll put up with JS because of the Web and I can use TS but for server side I won't use Ruby and Python as I can slot in C# or Java or Haskell and have much better time.

Finally Elm: definitely worth learning but hit its limitations pretty quick. The problem is you have to route everything in your app through their mandated UI pattern (imagine a web app where every piece of state including the currently viewed month of a date picker 20 levels deep HAS to be a React prop on the root object updatable only in in one root place with no abstractions like interfaces or type classes or even hell monkey patching dynamic language stuff to tame this problem).

</comment><comment><USER9> Rust and the other new zero cost abstraction languages. Reason being that I think performance is a solved problem. The future is in safety and readability. Not squeezing the last few percent of fps out of your hardware. Go is in the same category. People are inventing better versions of C++ when I want them to invent better versions of Python. :)

<comment> open-source-ux _" I think performance is a solved problem"_

I disagree. In fact, I wish performance was taken more seriously by the programming profession. Some of the most popular languages in wide use today are also the most resource intensive.

When performance is an issue in running programs, a common response is: hardware is cheap, just add another energy-guzzling server or use a more powerful computer.

This attitude is embarrassing when you consider that in every other industry there is a push for reduced resource usage and lower energy consumption. The programming field is the exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Basically anything on the JVM or .NET. I used to use Java and C#, had to use C++.NET for a job, and now I'm just done. I much prefer compiled languages and scripting languages, and I don't see much of a need for something in between. I also don't like working with Windows or Android, so there's not much reason for me to care.

For actual preferences, I use and like Go, I'm playing with Rust quite a bit, and I use Python, Lua, and JavaScript for simpler tasks. I'm also somewhat interested in Nim and Swift, but the latter just doesn't seem interested in being truly cross platform and I don't have any Apple devices, so it's in hold for now.

</comment><comment><USER11> C++. I know it, I use it, I don't usually like it. A lot of the language just feels like a hack. I usually much prefer to write performance critical code in C but sometimes the utility of C++ or of certain C++ libraries outweighs that desire.

Also while I don't really see C++ going anywhere anytime soon, I don't really see it expanding too much either.

Both of these facts make me a lot less interested in really diving into advanced features or low level details of the language.

</comment><comment><USER12> C/C++ is what I started and built my first career on, back when performance mattered for just about every program.

Most .Net languages with the exception of F# which I'm quite curious about.

Haskell, not a popular language in general but in this circle. I still haven't bought into the value of building abstractions and abstractions upon that, and abstractions that let those abstractions play nice together. Ultimate yak shaving with a practical twist if you can pull it off. Seems too far removed for most problems I'm interesting in solving. Less higher-kinded functional langs (Clean, Elm), bring 'em.

Any ORM DSL. SQL is just fine.

Any version of ES20xx that's incompatible with TypeScript.

Scala. Tried it, abused it, went back and couldn't even read my own writing. I think it could be good in the right hands, those being someone who can design good languages for humans to use for each purpose. I haven't met many of them, mostly folks who just want to make a DSL using any/every feature available to do so.

</comment><comment><USER13> Go. I don't feel the need for yet another language without conditional expressions.

(More generally: I'm pretty firmly in the camp of "terse code tends to be easier to read and reason about", and don't want language designers nudging me to break expressions up and name intermediates).

</comment><comment><USER14> Python. I've seen too much of what happens to code files on multi-person teams to ever want to have to deal with syntactically relevant white space.

I know, large teams make it work. It still is a source of potential headaches that I don't need.

<comment><USER15> It's barely a hurdle, if you can't manage to configure your setup to meet your teams setup then it probably means you are not qualified.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for your charitable interpretation of my qualifications.

But, you know, stuff happens. Somebody's machine loses the hard drive; in the process of building the new hard drive, they miss restoring the configuration for their editor. Somebody else installs a new editor, and forgets that configuration matters. A new employee gets hired, and _doesn 't_ know either how or why to configure properly. And behold, bugs get introduced invisibly.

That won't happen often. It will happen more than zero, though. And when it does, it's a headache I don't need.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, I don't mean to even suppose about your qualifications. Most scans will detect mixed tabs/spaces and they don't even make it into the repo. And if it is a continual problem with a particular team member then that has been in my experience a sign that this person doesn't know what the hell they are doing. Again I make no suppositions about your particular qualifications, I apologize.

<comment><USER14> No big deal. It just rubbed me the wrong way - perhaps more than it should have.

But yes, if you have a team member that repeatedly does this, then there's clearly a problem. If you run a scan that won't let people do this, that's clearly a solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't like python, because most of the languages I have used and learned are influenced by the c language. They use similar syntax with parentheses. I like parentheses, because they define narrow logic scopes that help me focus. Python is also not as flexible as javascript, if I need for a dynamically typed language.

I also don't like go, because go forces to put curved bracket on the same line, whereas I use the Allman style everywhere.

With Allman, I can vertically align a pair of brackets, This helps me to see the scope they define.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any front-end stuff, I just have no interest in them.

Related to this, I am sad to see Swift (seemingly) taking over from Obj-C. I really liked it years ago and it has a special place in my heart.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not interested in any language with _ambient authority_ , where every function may decide to read a file and phone home without declaring that in its signature.

</comment><comment><USER19> Go and Rust for being unimpressive for something so modern and being corporate-driven. javascript for... everything.

</comment><comment><USER20> C#, because it only seems to be useful for Windows and the language does not seem to offer enough merit on its own to try to use it on a Unix-based system.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am playing around with Clojure/ring for the backend. I am not happy about using node/ror/php on the backend.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ruby. I just think it's ugly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't it also kind of dying out in terms of popularity? (I really don't know)

<comment><USER23> It's slowly being replaced by Python. The only reason to use Ruby nowadays is for Rails.

<comment><USER20> Ruby is still the language I turn to when I need to write a script and the shell does not suffice. I turn to it before Python because it's more terse while still being very readable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pioneer travel platform connecting members with a chic atlas of global hideaways - <AUTHOR> https://hipexplore.com <comment><AUTHOR> HipExplore represents and markets a curated selection of unforgettable experiences across six continents. They connect sophisticated travelers on a social platform enabling them to plan, share & interact with one another while enabling access to a unique portfolio of destinations on a shared platform.

Time is valuable and trips away are precious. They seek out the little gems that offer genuine, one-of-a-kind experiences - it could be lashings of luxury at a palatial mansion or barefoot bliss on a desert island. They DON'T FOLLOW THE TRENDS, They MAKE THEM The mission is to become the leading Social Travel Platform & to disrupt the outdated Etravel sector that focuses on revenue & bookings instead of sharing authentic experience and content with passion.

Their algorithm secures the members crème de la crème, one-of-a-kind experiences that make travel what it should be - exciting and rewarding. Next, their goal is to scale. Check out their site and follow their amazing journey while conquering marketShare. Just launched their Primary seedRound and has commitment from leading VC's.

Their success is defined by the caliber of community and when future targets are achieved they plan to integrate features such as _Travel savings account,_ Subscription Travel plans</comment>


Freakonomics: Why California's Tuition Hike Might Be a Good Thing - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/why-californias-tuition-hike-might-be-a-good-thing/

<comment><USER2> I read this article w/ very mixed reactions.

Part of me was all for the price discrimination to help "level the playing field."

Another part of me just cringed. By making price discrimination like this the norm, the incentive to work hard for your children is greatly diminished. I know my grandparents scratched and clawed their way for every penny they could earn/save to pay for my parent's/aunt's/uncle's educations. They in term did the same for myself, my siblings, and my cousins. I am doing the same for my future children (My friends often tell me to live a little and comment about my dumpy apartment, my used furniture, etc while my savings and investments grow. No, I never skip out on the bill, not chip in for drinks, group gifts, etc)

If there is going to be price discrimination as described in the linked article why should I live so frugally for my future childrens' education? My future kids rich peers' parents will cover the extra expenses while I live lavishly now! Why should I save now and be the sucker?

How can the system help those who are disadvantaged while not indirectly encouraging people to be financially irresponsible? My gut reaction is to make educational "cheaper" for the rich while still accessible to those who really want it. Yes, I know this thought is antithesis to the linked article.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand if your grandparents and parents hadn't had to save so much to send their kids to college, what else could they have done with the money? Sure they might have "wasted" it on lavish living, but they might also have invested in something (like starting a company) which could have grown and given their children an even better future.

I don't buy that "forcing" people to work hard and live frugally if they want to their kids to go to college is in any way a good thing.

<comment><USER2> Who said they didn't start their own companies? My grandparents did as did several of my aunts and uncles, as did I.

And those who didn't start their own companies didn't simply throw money under a mattress. The money was indeed invested w/ thw childrens' future as the primary reason.

<comment><USER3> I think you missed my point. I'm all for investing for your kids future and think it would be a lot easier and more efficient to do so if you didn't have to save up to pay their exorbitant college fees as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's true that UC provides financial aid for anyone coming from a household with a total income of under $70,000, but on the other hand that single figure takes no account of family size or the highly variable cost of living in California. That cutoff might seem generous in, say, Eureka, whereas in San Francisco a $70k household income is nothing to write home about.

Not that I think such financial aid programs are a bad thing, but there is no getting away from the fact that UC fees have been vastly outpacing inflation for a while, not just since the financial crisis struck. If you entered the UC system in 2003, for example, by the time you graduated your annual tuition would have almost doubled - not exactly helpful to financial planning.

      1999-2000  $3,429
      2000-2001  $3,429
      2001-2002  $3,429
      2002-2003  $3,384
      2003-2004  $4,984
      2004-2005  $5,684
      2005-2006  $6,141
      2006-2007  $6,636
      2007-2008  $7,126
      2008-2009  $7,788
      2009-2010  $8,958
      2010-2011 $10,302

<comment><USER5> The common definition of inflation as used by most people is not correct, inflation just means an increase in the money supply. It's actual effects on prices are another due to many different factors. For instance, due to the massive advances in computers and manufacturing we've seen prices drop or stay level as the growth in the money supply has grown at a fast pace.

I agree that the actual cost of tuition has grown at an alarming pace, but we need why. Where is the money being spent, in a lot of cases you'll see that money is being spent on luxuries that are not needed in a university.

<comment><USER6> _For instance, due to the massive advances in computers and manufacturing we've seen prices drop or stay level as the growth in the money supply has grown at a fast pace._

While I agree that this is a significant part of the explanation for why the money supply has been vastly expanded without much corresponding inflation, it's really hard to show in a simple manner, and it's worryingly close to a just-so story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The Problem for Poor Students Is Low Financial Aid, Not High Tuition

Doing the sums after the fact discards the influences on the person making the decision at the time. If you're able to take up the place and eligible for financial aid, you need to be very sure that the level of aid won't decrease (or associated costs increase) over that period.

The level of confidence a student with an income of $10k can have that ($101k - $100k) dollars is affordable to them (and will remain so over 3 years) is lower than whether ($11k - $10k) is affordable. Basically, they've got less slack to pick things up if there is an error or alteration.

Prediction: I think a price hike (with a financial aid hike) would result in a decrease in the likelihood of someone reliant on the aid taking up the place.

</comment><comment><USER8> Financial aid (and other demand-side subsidies, such as scholarships and low- interest loans) is how the costs grew to their present heights in the first place.

If, say, Bill Gates routinely handed out $10K to every person who has just bought a car, what do you think this would do to the prices of cars?

<comment><USER9> You in no way respond to the point in the article, which is that price discrimination (as enabled by high tuitions and generous financial aid) allows you to extract more money from those able to pay more money (allowing generous financial aid).

<comment><USER10> 1\. Why is it a good thing to extract money from those "able" to pay more. Because the money you are extract is necessarily paid by reducing the payer's expenses elsewhere. Such a dysfunctional system already exists for healthcare. Do you want to read about college-induced bankruptcies?

2\. Define "able". Are you really advocating for a situation in which middle- class family routinely scrounge to save for college, or in which parents sell their houses to pay for college?(Btw, some countries (e.g., India) have a dowry system which requires parents of girls to save from the day the child is born and obviously it sucks to be those parents).

3\. The original article seems to using the poor as a "human shield" to effect an arbitrary hike in fees. The reason the universities are not supported well is that govts are wasting money. I hope that resisting tuition fee increases will also pressure govt to reduce waste.

<comment><USER9> Your argument seems poorly aimed, as I merely pointed out how poorly aimed the original comment was. I'll treat you as a top level post as a courtesy.

As you rightly acknowledge, "able" can hide a lot. I'm able to live several days without food, but it's hardly a thing to aim for. The article explicitly mentions "rich", and you should feel comfortable assuming that "rich" does not mean "middle-class". Failing that definition, consider "able" to be taken from "luxuries", rather than "necessities". You don't need to bring India into it. Sufficient?

You'll have to explain further how the poor are being used as a human shield here. Additionally, I'm not convinced that any protests based on increased tuitions will have an effect on government waste. It seems like effort better spent campaigning for reduced government waste (which is admittedly very likely a waste as well).

<comment><USER10> The poor are used a human shield because if the article had said something like:

      education is a good with almost-inelastic demand, hence
      we can raise prices arbitrarily and in addition
      eliminate government support for it :)

then they would not have been taken seriously.

Wrt "rich", other posts indicate that $70K/yr household income as the upper limit for financial aid in CA. That's hardly "rich".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem with this analysis is that most of this financial aid is based off of FAFSA. If you happen to fall into a common circumstance, it probably works for you, but there are many exceptions where FAFSA doesn't work out.

How does one define "rich." Sure, if your parents own a jet airplane, you are probably rich, but there is much room between having a banker father and a janitor father.

In my opinion, FAFSA doesn't adequately take into account household debt or siblings' tuition costs.

<comment><USER9> This sounds more like sour grapes and less like analysis. The article doesn't even mention the FAFSA, but it does say that at UCB, "as tuitions have risen this past year, those from the poorest families saw their financial aid packages rise almost dollar for dollar". Do you have any _data_ on how the FAFSA actually accounts for household debt or sibling tuition costs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article: "while Berkeley charges $5,858 (per year in tuition and fees)."

Where did he get that from? The Education Fee for the current fall semester alone is $3,444. Berkeley, like the other UCs, comes out to about $10k per year for state residents. (reference - <http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Registration/feesched.html>).

<comment><USER13> The author is quoting from an article he wrote in 2003.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is something fundamentally flawed when we discuss a system where budget cuts must be made because of gross misspending in other areas of the state budget. The solution should be to attack the source and clean up California's budget, not raise tuition fees and scare off potential students. With California's (and the U.S') budget in such a deep hole, is it fair to rely on the HOPE that a raise in tuition will be consistently matched with an equivalent raise in financial aid? Poor decisions lead to more poor decisions....

</comment><comment><USER13> The article only talks about how tuition hikes affect the very poor and the very rich. But what about the middle class?

If the distribution of parental household income is normal, then wouldn't hikes significantly hurt a large portion of college students; i.e. the ones who aren't receiving aid and whose parents aren't rich?</comment>


How did humans die in the 20th century? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/mar/18/information-beautiful-how-we-die

<comment><USER2> You should submit this as a link.</comment>


An Engineering Mistake That Made Wind Turbines Inefficient [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og2H7ZxkiMA <comment><USER2> Title is of course sensationalized, this being youtube. There have been many "mistakes" in wind turbines that really count more as experiments we've learned from: Vertical Axis Wind Turbines, high RPM/small diameter, and generator-on-the-ground, to name three. This video is about leading edge erosion, which is a problem actively being researched:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032119305908)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's why there is such a thing as 'leading edge tape', 'prop tape' and more. This is not a mistake but a simple fact of life for anything that rapidly slices through the air, the point of first contact is where any contamination in the air will hit your prop/wing/blade.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kind of a tangent...

Here in San Francisco they recent built a large condos-and-University-campus neighborhood at the Eastern edge of the city. The thing is, the whole area is subject to nearly constant high winds (blowing from the West, where you find the Pacific Ocean.) All the trees that were planted for it are now bent over, and there are some areas where it's hard to walk.

It blows my mind that the whole thing was planned out and built without regard to this basic condition of the site.

In general, we have to start thinking out all the loops and side-effects of our designs, or we wind up living in a constructed hell.

<comment><USER5> Mission Bay really, really should not have had a linear street grid. Huge mistake! Some days it's difficult to even stand on the street corners.

<comment><USER4> Yes! Mission Bay, cheers!

What if they had built three-story buildings along the western edge to create a standing wave in the wind large enough to "skip" the rest of the development? Also, they could have shaped the whole place to guide and concentrate the wind to banks of wind generators and defrayed some of their energy costs, maybe.

We're so smart but we just don't pay enough attention and think deeply enough, IMO. The folks that made Mission Bay are not dumb, the problem must be something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Leading Edge Errosion..</comment>


Show HN: Chrome to Phone via SMS - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-to-phone-via-sms/mlekffpoccoknpehkmbpleonlakchnib <comment><USER2> How come it's free?

<comment><AUTHOR> Costs are really low by matching best provider to dispatch an SMS based on receiver's number. Plan is to keep it free until cannot afford it. If it gets out of control, will implement nominal pricing for very high usage audience.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get the most out of a structureless internship? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I've been working at a company for about 5 weeks out of a 6 month internship, and I feel a little lost. Normally, internship programs have a bit of structure behind them, designed to introduce you to core technologies. The company I'm working for just started it's first undergrad internship program, and I've been lucky to work for them in their QA department. My question is this: How do I make the most out of my internship so that when I'm finished I get a sense of satisfaction and my boss feels like I have contributed to the company? Thanks. <comment><USER2> So for context/to call out my own bias: I had a... suboptimal internship experience early on in my career, so my advice is largely through the lens of not repeating my mistakes.

1\. Build a network. And I don't mean artificially; find people who share your interest, who you chemistry well with, who you can help, who are eager to help you. Make friends! (Even/especially if you normally might not do so). I failed at doing this effectively, but even so, my SLIGHT bit of network continued to pay dividends for many years in opening doors + providing friends I cherish to this day.

2\. Figure out how you can be helpful to your boss/team/company. Whatever the hell that is (but hopefully in line with what they expect out of your role :) ). Find out what their pain is, where they could most use an extra set of hands with your skill set (or a skill set you can take on and learn!) and apply yourself to making the situation as improved as you possibly can; audit and communicate your success as you go. (Make sure from your mentors/team/higher-ups you're in a good path, you're helping, and are visible; this requires building a good rapport, see part 1)

3\. Learn how "the game" is played. Companies, especially larger companies as typically offer internships, are worlds onto themselves. You will learn massive amounts about people, politics, society, incentives, and "economics" (in a very loose sense) if you keep an open ear over the course of a career. An internship is your first chance to do so. Questions like: What is REALLY driving everyone in the team/where does power really lie? How do individuals find success, and how can you replicate this? What do various levels of the company value, and how does this pan out to strategy and reality.

In fewer words/to summarize: Improve yourself, socially and technically, while making a positive impression as a professional asset to the company, and gaining a better understanding of how you'll need to continue to do this over your career.

I hope this was even slightly useful, don't hesitate to ask for clarity or detail if needed.

<comment><USER3> #2 is a spectacular career skill.

For more career skills, take the information you glean and set yourself some specific goals and milestones along the way. Check in with people and keep them updated about your progress.</comment></comment>


Balaji Srinivasan: Software Is Reorganizing the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/software-is-reorganizing-the-world-and-cloud-formations-could-lead-to-physical-nations/

<comment><AUTHOR> Truly the next chapter of Andreessen's "Why Software Is Eating the World"!</comment>


Why Android still can't beat the iPhone: One developer's view - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/09/30/iphone-trumps-android

<comment><USER2> Android will effectively force Apple to maintain a competitive and robust development environment and hopefully pressure them to open up the platform a bit and provide some more clarity to iphone developers in the future.</comment>


Actual Pinocchio Tale in the Making? - Interview with a robot (NYTimes) - <AUTHOR> http://clementco.com/blog/index.php/2010/07/pinocchio/ <comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's what came up to my mind at first. But it feels a little different. When you talk to Eliza, you know it's fake, but based on the video, the more you talk to this robot, the more you start to feel like you are talking to a human..... with a very low intelligence. And it's kinda creepy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The robot's algorithm is based on a real live human being.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can anyone say "Eliza" ??</comment>


German Federal Constitutional Court: Posteo must be able to monitor customers - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fnetzwelt%2Fnetzpolitik%2Fbundesverfassungsgericht-posteo-muss-kunden-ueberwachen-koennen-a-1250524.html <comment><AUTHOR> The German Federal Constitutional Court has decided today that German email providers must be able to log IP addresses.

Link to their English-language press release: [https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit...](https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2019/bvg19-007.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> are they allowed to serve customers through onion routing?

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't they be? This only says that, when approached by law enforcement with a valid warrant, they need to be able to log the IP that accessed a certain account. If that IP is a TOR exit node, so be it.</comment></comment>


RSS Is Dead, But Reader For Mac Makes It A Beautiful Corpse - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/14/reeder-for-mac/

<comment><USER2> The "RSS is dead" thing is getting a bit worn. Twitter and Facebook can fill in a few gaps (I use Twitter to follow TC as they post too much stuff to keep up with one-by-one) but are useless for following sources where you want to guarantee you see _every_ story (e.g. personal blogs, slower moving authoritative news sources, work stuff).

Some people have been finding a combination of Twitter and social link sites (like HN or Reddit) are "enough" for their needs and have dropped their use of RSS, but for people with a serious need for managing a wide array of news sources, RSS is far from cold in the ground.

<comment><USER3> Dear god did I seriously just spend 45 minutes typing the same thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On an aside, this whole RSS is dead meme is extremely annoying. A universally- adopted dead-simple file format that is the plumbing for all manner of random data around the web can not be "killed" by social stream platforms.

This is just a horrible example of echo-chamber thinking run amok. Just because RSS Readers are no longer a hot space to be in does not suddenly mean that the closed platform dujour is somehow superceding RSS. Does anyone have any idea of how many of Twitter's "100 million" actually log on regularly? Or what the engagement value of a Twitter follower is vs an RSS subscriber?

Humans are social, so a social service is always going to get more users than a serious tool (well, as long as it's "cool"). But does anyone think the need for finding and filtering quality information is going away any time soon? RSS sure offers a lot more hope than Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's actually spelled Reeder

</comment><comment><USER5> TechCrunch is dead, but it still pops up on HackerNews.

<comment><USER6> I find it quite sad that those link bait / sensationalist articles get up voted on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually saw this article in my RSS reader Feedly <http://www.feedly.com/>, which does a lot of the same stuff in, I think a prettier fashion, with a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why didn't anybody tell me that RSS is dead? I have been using it all this time.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Everything_ is dead!

[http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of- prac...](http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of-practically- everything/)

</comment><comment><USER6> HN killed RSS.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone gained traction on HN *without* any of their friends upvoting? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone submitted their project on HN, and without any friends' help, reached front page?

My hope is at least on HN, if your project is cool, it will get traction without asking friends to upvote your entry (which happens a lot most of the times). Am I too idealistic?

Please share your story if you used to be a nobody and just posted your project/startup on hacker news, and it got significant traction just because people thought the project was cool, without any social factors involved. I think a lot of people on HN wonder about this too, and it needs to be demystified. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I don't know anyone in here. I'm usually not submitting links, but among the very few I did submit, there was front page traction more often than not (if I remember correctly). So, yes, it's absolutely possible to "make front page" if that's your goal.

It's different when you're talking about your own project - I only submitted general news stuff. I understand that it can really sting if your project doesn't get picked up. There could be many reasons for it and, unless you're one of the top-ten superstars around here, I don't believe HN familiarity plays a big role in a story's success.

The main thing about the /newest section is that it is _very_ low quality. It's dominated by spam and trash, so it's easy to overlook interesting stuff in there. Due to the high rate of new submissions a new entry doesn't last very long. Even good links vanish in record time if nobody sees them in the first few minutes.

In my opinion the main reason why good links do not get picked up is purely technical. Ideally, only accounts with good karma would be allowed to submit links to the queue and there should be harder limits on the number of things you can submit in a certain timeframe. That being said, HN's success rate is still pretty high regardless. Personally, when I see a "Show HN:" article I make it a point to vote it up (if the project isn't totally lame).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The real question I think is how often do people visit the 'new' section and upvote stories they like (perhaps we should have a poll on that).

Before Hacker News I used to be big in the digg community where to get to the front page it was "easy", but you needed to build a huge network of friends to do that and upvote each other. I hated that. When I came to hacker news a year ago I vowed to never do that and hoped this community was pure... which.. well I think is what you're questioning here.

Anyway according to my stats it looks like I've submitted 46 links.. 5 or 6 of them (I think) hit the front page (they have more then 10 points). Other then one or two (not the ones that hit) I don't share the links around.

At the end of the day again I think we should have the poll. As members of the community we need to make sure we're going over the 'new' section.. I try do it at least a couple of times a week myself.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hit #1 on my first submission without knowing anyone.

No conspiracy. Just an original article.

Here it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3328619>

</comment><comment><USER5> I made all of my front-pages without having any of my friends upvoting.

<comment><USER6> So you make most of your posts at some particular time?

<comment><USER7> Doesn't matter. It has to be interesting enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a natural problem with this question: people are much more likely to come out and say they got on the front page without help than the opposite. I think you would have been better off framing this as a poll rather than an Ask HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have never asked anyone to upvote my posts. Most of my friends don't do hacker news.

I don't submit often, but my bit successes were 3 blog posts for 21, 23, and 69 points.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, but my experience is that it's much less likely than it used to be, because /newest churns really fast and gets only a small proportion of total pageviews. So it greatly helps to get the first few upvotes form elsewhere to jumpstart things. My guess is a substantial proportion of frontpage stories got their first few upvotes from somewhere other than people scanning /newest. Not necessarily friends, but perhaps a link on Twitter or an IRC channel.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've had one blog post of mine and one link to another's post make the front page so far. I was surprised how few upvotes (if they are in a short period of time) it takes to make the front page though, and I don't doubt some people do this (or dummy accounts).

I think it is a bit of a crap shoot whether or not a good story on the /new page will get traction though. It requires a bit of luck and timing for the right people to be reading /new at that time and take interest and read it

On the other hand I see a lot of things making the FP that seem to be mostly title bait. I wonder if some people simply upvote some things just to save it for late basically voting on the title only.

I wonder how an experiment with randomly displaying an item from the /new page at the top of the front page would work. Reddit does this and while I'm certainly not advocating becoming more like reddit, I can see the value of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience. Just to confirm, you just posted your post here and didn't tell your friends to come read it, right?

Also, would be nice if you could share around how many upvotes there were, and how quickly it happened. Thanks :)

<comment><USER11> Well if I'm being totally honest, my wife kindly upvotes my blog post. It's shameful I know, but that's about all I get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find getting to the front page is hit or miss when I submit something from my blog. I only submit stories I think will be interesting to the community but it is really surprising to me which ones make it past the "new" page.

I submitted a story the other day which was dead on-topic for this community and timely and I thought would certainly make it to the homepage here but it got one vote and disappeared. Yet someone submitted a story from my blog some months ago that shocked me anyone cared at all. Finally yesterday I made an "offer" post. I was giving advice away for free and it didn't receive one single vote.

The bottom line is that large groups are fickle and trying to predict the "what" and "why" about the homepage is difficult and largely unproductive.

</comment><comment><USER13> I rarely go to new section. There's already too much news to read as it is. I may be speaking for 95% of HN community here. Only time I go to new section is after I post something. Which at that point, I won't even upvote anyone else in the fear of them out voting my posts (I know it's a bit un-ethical but can you really blame me for this? The whole point of posting on HN is so your post can be seen by the masses). So as you can see, there really is a bit of a problem here. I think the one way to go about it is by showing the new articles on the main page in a smaller sidebar but I fear that may also present a whole bag of problems with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> One feature I'd like to see on HN is to have a separate menu for any posts starting with "Show HN". I love coming in here and seeing what other hackers have worked on, it's post like these that make HN so unique to me.

<comment><USER14> You can combine the Ask link at the top of HN, which shows posts without URLs (many of which start with Ask HN), with a search for "Show HN":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/ask>

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Show+HN](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Show+HN)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I submitted an article I wrote 14 days ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3497512>). As far as I know, none of my friends voted it and it got the the front page with 21 points. I'm not sure how long it stayed there but I received around 5000 visits during the first 2 days and I keep getting 30 or 40 per day to that specific article. I got almost a hundred new RSS followers from this and a dozen or so Twitter followers so I think this was more than enough "traction".

</comment><comment><USER16> Sorry buddy, no conspiracies here. If your project is interesting (or generates some form of controversy) then you can certainly gain some traction. If not, then prepare to get ignored.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not implying that there's any conspiracy. Some facts I do know: 1\. I know for a fact many people do this and it ends up being successful. 2\. I have tried this in the past and it worked. 3\. I have been observing /new and several really interesting projects just go ignored because of bad timing, or lack of promotion, or whatever.

So it's not just the question of whether it's interesting or controversial. It requires more than that, and that's what I'm trying to learn.

Anyway, what I am curious about is not whether this type of thing happens or not (because it does happen, quite often, unlike you think).

What I am curious about is: are there any couter-examples? Has anyone just put their stuff on HN without telling their friends to upvote and it got traction? I am specifically asking this question to those who _have_ made the front page. My projects have made the front page in the past a couple of times, but I still don't know the answer because most of the times I tweeted or emailed my friends to check it out after posting on HN.

I'm wondering if a completely isolated person can come along and make it on HN.

<comment><USER16> I guess I'm just not understanding where you're going with this question.

It seems like you're trying to figure out all the variables that go into a high profile post. Quite frankly, I don't see the point in that.

Is it possible for an unknown to get on the first page and get exposure? Of course it is. Does that mean he's "made it on HN"? I don't even know what that means.

In the end, my point is simply this; stop spending so much time worrying about how people make the front page of HN and focus on your project.

This is a forum for discussion, not Valhalla.

<comment><USER11> I think he's trying to open some discussion around the mechanisms that govern the front page. Something I'm more than willing to discuss as I think there is some room for improvement there.

<comment><USER16> That's fine, I can understand that. Sometimes I just get a bit perturbed by questions along the lines of "what's the best way to get on the front page of site x?"

I get upset because, from a marketing standpoint, it isn't even that important or advantageous. You're far better off targeting sites directly in your vertical than aiming for exposure on more general sites like HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've had one of my articles from my site submitted and it hit the front page. I wasn't even aware of Hacker News until this happened. I've been a regular follower ever since.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm relatively new here and don't have any friends on Hacker News (unfortunately). Of the 4 articles I've submitted, 3 have made the front page (albeit one only very briefly). In my experience I was able to make the front page after receiving only a couple of votes. I'd say it is definitely possible to get traction by submitting relevant/quality content without gaming the system.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think the key to get upvotes is to be part of the RSS feed of HN. Not evey article shows up in my Google Reader. But once an article shows up in the RSS feed it will get upvotes from anyone. The key is to get over the hump and show up in the rss feed. And that may require a little help from friends. :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Just happened to me yst</comment>


Bed Bug Infestation Is Scaring Millions Of Americans - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/147848

<comment><USER2> Getting bedbugs seems like a horrible, sometimes life altering, experience. For people who are moving and are worried if their new home was ever infested, check out <http://bedbugregistry.com>.

That being said, this article has a weird conservative vibe and ends with a pro-DDT message, not anything education people how to prevent bedbugs. Whenever you quote a url like " <http://stoptheinvasionoforegon.wordpress.com> " you lose credibility in my book.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't sure if they quoted that blog seriously, or as an example of bedbug infestations inciting xenophobia. (The xenophobia undoubtedly existed beforehand, but that, as they say, is neither here nor there.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Make friends with spiders and house centipedes. They are the natural enemies of most every house pest, including bedbugs, and mostly harmless to people. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

</comment><comment><USER5> We once escaped an infestation by storing all of our worldly possessions in a POD outside in the middle of the summer in Arizona for three days. Then we moved to Chicago.

We kept our mattress sealed up in plastic for over a year because they can live without food for that long (seriously).

Edit: business idea -- bedbug insurance for apartment building owners.

</comment><comment><USER6> what isn't scaring millions of Americans? But having said that, I know a couple of folks who've fought through infestations in the last few years in Washington, DC.</comment>


Show HN: Async/await alternative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ujc/wait-for-stuff <comment><USER2> Node 7 is out with async/await behind the flag.

</comment><comment><USER3>
        // the stream has now been fully read, async in the background

What if the file is gigabytes in size?

<comment><AUTHOR> Then you simply do not use this module :-)

Unless you have Time and RAM to waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice trick but it's unsafe in general. JavaScript libraries usually assume single-threaded event handling. If you start up another event loop from a callback (while some other library's code is already on the stack), you'll probably break it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well I hope NodeJS ultimately settles on such a syntax to preempt and resume automatically. I love Golang in this regard since it abstracts out everything using channels, and go-routines (not to compare multiple thread support).

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the simplicity. Wish it was powered by RxJS [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS](https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS)

</comment><comment><USER7> Looked at the deasync that this is based on, and it looks like they are trying to reinvent threads? Seems ironic to me.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think they are trying to reinvent threads? Looks to me like it is a basic nested event loop.

<comment><USER7> It pauses execution of a stack when it is blocked allowing other stacks to execute.</comment></comment></comment>


[Ask HN] How to use clojure functions in core.logic? - piotr-yuxuan I have defined a plain Clojure function which has a specific logic inside. It outputs a mutated state given an initial state and some other arguments. Basically, we could say it is like: (defn modifier [basic x y value] (assoc-in basic [x y] value))
I want core.logic to deal with it in order to find the correct parameters for this function to output the result I want. Do I have to rewrite it as defne or defnc? methinks it would be a burden >< so I'd like to find another way.
I have a gist with minimal working code sample here: https://gist.github.com/piotr-yuxuan/fa0cfdc63a26b667c3f3
Will appreciate any help I would be given! :-) Thanks a lot in advance! <comment><AUTHOR> I've found that Codereview on StackExchange is a good place to get feedback on this sort of question: [http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)

<comment> piotr-yuxuan Thanks a lot for your link :-)

</comment></comment><comment> piotr-yuxuan Well, sorry for double-post, it suffices to project the variable ;-)</comment>


Show HN: Clean Code Katas – Learn How to Write Clean and Maintainable Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.cleancodekata.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Last week I posted about an Idea I had across different sites. I got a lot of positive response so I decided to work on it. The idea is simple, weekly programming challenges aimed towards learning how to write clean and maintainable code. Each challenge is short, between 30-60 minutes. You can then submit the challenge to get feedback from others and also help others. There will also be a leaderboard of some of the best submissions and top users. I appreciate any feedback and please share it with people you might think would be interested. Please sign up if you are interested.

<comment><USER2> what happened to your site with the text extraction tool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is your solution considered clean and maintainable based on voting? The site has no examples, so I find it confusing.</comment>


If you think breaches are huge now, just wait another year - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43389964/ns/technology_and_science-the_new_york_times/

<comment><USER2> "..leapfrogged between the accounts ... by inserting various account numbers into a string of text located in the browser's address bar ... wondered how the hackers could have known to breach security by focusing on the vulnerability in the browser."

...so they put forgeable account numbers/cookies in the URL, and then acted surprised when someone changed them for profit?

</comment><comment><USER3> "The method is seemingly simple, but the fact that the thieves knew to focus on this particular vulnerability marks the Citigroup attack as especially ingenious, security experts said."

Experts? Really? They weren't hacking experts, I guess, because this is a really easy thing to think of. Any good coder specifically prevents it, in fact.</comment>