Top 10 One-person Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.onlineclock.net/top-10-one-person-startups/ <comment><USER2> Seems pretty misleading to call these one-person startups. Maybe PlentyOfFish should qualify because it was run by one person for years with significant revenues and profits, and there may be a good case for DuckDuckGo.

I can't say with absolute certainty about all the rest but many were solo founders who quickly attracted a team.

<comment><USER3> I'm fairly certain Marco's Instapaper was a one man project until he sold it. [0]

I can't really comment on the rest.

[0] [http://www.marco.org/about](http://www.marco.org/about) Past Projects

<comment><USER2> Appreciate the detail, that is one of the companies I didn't know well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shel Kaphan, Amazon's first employee, should arguably be seen as a cofounder of sorts:

 _Although he 's not officially considered a co-founder, he and Bezos were discussing the company even before it was incorporated, and Bezos once referred to him as "the most important person ever in the history of Amazon.com."_

Source : [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-earliest- employees-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-earliest- employees-2014-4)

</comment><comment><USER5> This should be titled one-founder startups. Spoiler: #1 is Amazon.

<comment><USER6> I understand the article's criteria for "one person" but I think it's worth it to add some nuance to that list...

Amazon was "one person" as in boundaries defined by legal ownership of a business entity, but it was really kicked off by hiring Shel Kaphan to engineer their first web store. If Jeff Bezos was more inclusive, and/or Shel Kaphan was more business-savvy, he arguably might have been a co-founder instead of a forgotten employee (albeit a wealthy ex-employee.)

If we rule out situations like amazon, and listed only companies that were truly "built" by one person until it reached critical mass, that would be a much more interesting list.

<comment><USER7> I'd be really curious to see that too, especially if it remained one person until revenue hit some kind of critical mass. One person builds, ships, markets, ...

It's certainly possible but obviously very hard for many reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The top 2 (Amazon & Ebay) where founded in almost a different internet age. It makes wonder if a solo founder could create such a large company today.

<comment><USER9> I think it's possible. How many founders does a typical start-up have? I guess I don't see a huge difference from one to two founders. I never was a venture capital guy until recently, but I think it's pretty important to success. Having some marketing money as well as the money to hire a few guys to help out early makes a huge difference.

My night project, PaperBox (gopaperbox.com), started with just two guys doing it a combined 20 hours per week or so. Over the course of 6 months or so, we have released several updates and grown substantially. I do wonder what we could be if we could commit to it full time and have any sort of a marketing budget.

<comment><USER8> Im not a founder so my knowledge is somewhat limited, but from what I see around me most of the known or more 'successful' startups tend to have at least 2 founders. There must be some reason/correlation behind that right ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They missed one of my favorite examples: Mojang, makers of Minecraft (with single founder Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch).

</comment><comment><USER11> How about a single-founder startup list?

I wish I had one so I could show it to the VCs who we're closing a round with. They insist I get a co-founder for the business side (I'm a techie), with lot's of contacts. I said I prefer to hire a biz person instead, but they say we can't afford, at this stage, to spend our money on a top-level exec. So it we'll be better if we just find one that's willing to become a co-founder. I replied to them a "co-founder" is much more than an exec with lots of equity and a below-market wage. Years ago it would have been great to have a business co-founder so I could focus more on product. But not after 4 years, with a team of 11 and a profitable enterprise software business. But I don't know if that's common or not. Is it? I feel hiring a co-founder (sic) is not a formula for success.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sort of in the market for a co-founder, someone with a strong marketing, sales, and biz-dev background most likely.

I'm the nerd looking for the suit, not the other way around, though I do have some business experience myself. I at least know which way is up in the biz domain. :)

But if I don't find such a person who really looks like a great fit (both skills and personality/vision compatibility), I will go it alone. I consider the sole founder path superior to a bad or hasty fit for a co-founder. I do have a partnership and some advisor relationships in the works, so I'm not totally alone. If I raise I'll also have investors to threaten to demote me if the goals aren't m^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H I mean contribute valuable insight.

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't imgur deserve to be here?

</comment><comment><USER13> Techmeme only has 10,000 recurring readers? I don't believe that for a second. I loaded the "source" for this info - [http://www.businessinsider.com/techmeme- growth-2014-3](http://www.businessinsider.com/techmeme-growth-2014-3) \- and the only place 10,000 recurring readers is mentioned is in a _hypothetical_ example of how stats can be inflated by content sites, not actual stats for Techmeme.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know of the top one-person start-ups as in a single person is still running them?

I suspect it is in the area of affiliate marketing.

<comment><USER2> I second your industry suspicions. There are probably also some niche subscription businesses out there like CandyJapan ([http://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan- crosses-10000-mrr](http://www.candyjapan.com/candy-japan-crosses-10000-mrr)) but at larger scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Chatroulette founder would be a suggestion for non-US founders. I heard his site makes 100k per month from ad revenues.

</comment><comment><USER16> Didn't know todoist is a single-founder company. I'm a big fan; only todo list that's stuck.

</comment><comment><USER17> Almost all of them US based!

</comment><comment><USER18> oh no. is this site down??? I was stoked on checking this out.

</comment><comment><USER19> Couldn't even think of one woman to put in there?

<comment><USER20> Why should the author try to fulfill some sort of gender-quota? The purpose of the article is clearly to collate the top 10 single-founder startups, rather than the top 5 male and top 5 female single-founder startups, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Disappointed there's no women on the list. Even more disappointed that fully 7 of the top 10 have no indication of revenue.

Remember: if there's no revenue, it's not a business. It's a hobby.

EDIT: To clarify, (I noted someone else pointing out it's very US-centric, which is ANOTHER problem) I have serious doubts it's really the top 10 in the world. More likely the top 10 this author has heard of.

<comment><USER22> >Disappointed there's no women on the list

Maybe they should try harder then.</comment></comment>


Apple Watch survives 1200m swim, 10m dive, and 40m water chamber tests [video] - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/11/apple-watch-waterproof/

<comment><USER2> That's pretty solid. I feel much more relieved knowing I dont have to take extra precautions.</comment>


NFC and a world without plastic cards - <AUTHOR> https://simplenfc.com/blog/2011/08/13/nfc-and-a-world-without-plastic-cards/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to see NFC become more widespread for all the benefits outlined in the article. However, my wife commented that if one of NFC's main benefits as a digital wallet is to "allow me to have my 30+ cards all stored in my NFC phone", wouldn't it be easier for card companies to band together to enable a combined plastic card?

I had to admit that I didn't have a good response for her. My initial reaction was to cite the flexibility of NFC, despite how nascent it is compared to the proliferation of loyalty & credit cards, but she demolished me by stating that she would much rather prefer to carry one plastic card vs. buying a new phone.

Unless NFC becomes as dead simple as swiping plastic cards (notwithstanding the incumbency of ingrained swipe'n'sign habits), widespread adoption may be more of a challenge than optimists such as the author and me would like to believe.</comment>


Solr as an Analytics Platform - <AUTHOR> http://bits.shutterstock.com/2013/08/07/solr-as-an-analytics-platform/

<comment><USER2> Also worth noting that Elasticsearch can be swapped for Solr for this just as easily. Some projects like Kibana do what's described here under the hood. Kibana has a fairly narrow focus though -- in that it deals mostly with web server logs -- whereas solr/elasticsearch can be used as the foundation of a variety of big data analytics tasks beyond that.</comment>


"Is that a real program or is that something somebody wrote?" - <AUTHOR> http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2007-March/000849.html

<comment><USER2> A memory walk. Recognizable in many ways. Some lessons are applicable to more than one stage in career and life in general ("I didn't need teachers to teach me things; I needed teachers to force me to get out of my comfort zone, and partners to get me unstuck"). A good read.

<comment><USER3> I agree, that particular line struck me as the most interesting lesson in the whole thing.

<comment><USER2> I think what people do is help with inspiration (in the broad sense). Other than that, we can read books, play with source code etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow! Thanks for that!

Not only was that a great read that I can empathize with, but I got a ton of great book suggestions out of it.

I'm assuming that was written by the same kragen that frequents here... Kragen, if you read this, well done!

<comment><USER5> Yes. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really great read. I started programming BASIC and Logo at a young age as well, but I don't recall the details nearly so clearly as the author, and my path was quite different taking a massive detour through HyperCard (and HyperTalk!) then web design and finally back into programming by way of a CS degree, PHP, Ruby, and the desire to actually write decent Javascript.

Although I think working through an MIT-based CS curriculum allowed me to short-circuit a lot of the early challenges he mentioned, the "learning to read" part might be my next step. Pair programming with a team of better programmers sounds like the perfect career development move.

</comment><comment><USER7> A fine, honest article. The best part was "learning to read", and that happened recently in the author's cronology. One of my friends tells me that "if you can read, you can cook" to which I retort "then, if you can read, you can program". The answer to that is "no, not so". And I know that is not exactly what the article meant. But good reading habits are important.

<comment><USER5> In the sense I meant, I think that if you can read, then you can debug. Cooking is more like executing a program than like writing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never read "Algorithms in C" before. I'm trying to track it down in Amazon, but it seems like there is a paperback called "Algorithms in C" by Sedgewick, as well as a 5-piece bundle also called "Algorithms in C, parts 1 - 5" by Sedgewick. Does anyone know if the former is just part 1 of the latter?

<comment><USER9> Algorithms in C is a classic, Algorithms in Foo is, sadly, not. Sedgewick's text, much like Appel's compiler text, is a one-language book with a bad gettext translation for other programming languages.

Read Sedgewick in C and Appel in ML. Skip the C++, Java, and C# versions of both books, they usually pop up in bookstores at the end of summer.

<comment><USER5> The bit I've skimmed of Algorithms in C++ seemed like it did a pretty reasonable job of using C++ templates effectively; I don't think it was a bad gettext translation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An excellent read, especially for people considering going into software engineering. It gives a good overview of the life cycle of a "typical" software engineer.

<comment><USER5> I hope my life cycle didn't end in 2007!

<comment><USER10> Heh, ok, life cycle up to maturity perhaps?

<comment><USER5> I don't think I was mature before I had written <http://canonical.org/~kragen/urscheme/>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can for see a future when this question will actually be competent, perhaps when AI can write programs (sort of) in a commercial setting.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, kragen is on here too: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kragen>

I wonder if he's seen this yet, and what he's done since this post in '07.

<comment><USER5> Just saw it. The last couple of years have been pretty busy; some of the product is on kragen-tol and kragen-hacks and on github, but by no means all of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the next phase? What else does he have to learn?

<comment><USER9> Embedded systems. Distributed computing. Real-time systems programming. Software reverse engineering. Compiler construction. Digital signal processing. Machine learning. Natural language processing. Operations research. Numeric computing.

Give each a decade and you will be in hacking bliss for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER5> I can't claim to be an expert in any of these, but I have dabbled in many:

Embedded systems: <http://canonical.org/~kragen/light_sensing/>

Software reverse engineering: <http://canonical.org/~kragen/demo/klappquadrat.html>

Compiler construction: <http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/urscheme/> <http://github.com/kragen/peg-bootstrap> <http://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth>

Machine learning: <http://angstro.com/> (this isn't solely my project; I'm only doing a minority of the work)

Numerical algorithms, digital signal processing: a bit at ERIM

I can't say I've done anything very interesting with distributed computing, real-time systems programming, natural language processing, or operations research.

<comment><USER9> OT:

kragen, Opera de-hearts your website: says you destribute malice :-(

<http://i27.tinypic.com/2s6svap.png>

wtf?

<comment><USER5> I heard about that a few weeks ago. I think I need to talk to Opera about it. Just in case, I grepped for the obvious things, without any success.

<comment><USER5> Uh, I mean I searched to see if there were any obvious browser exploits being propagated from the pages. I can't rule out the possibility of something subtle but I didn't notice anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robin Labs launches Less.Mail – an ai-powered email voice assistant - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/27/robin-labs-launches-less-mail-an-a-i-based-assistant-that-responds-to-emails-for-you/

<comment><USER2> Here is the original HN post : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8514168)</comment>


The Secret Of Google's Book Scanning Machine Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/library/2009/04/the_granting_of_patent_7508978.html?sc=fb&cc=fp

<comment><USER3> i actually worked in the special collection division of michigan state universitys library in the spring and summer of 1997. they were using a commercial device, whose name escapes me, that allowed the book to lay flat and be imaged from above. the software accounted for the curvature of the page for ocr purposes. judging from the posted pictures in the article, the google device seems more elaborate with stereo cameras in the infrared spectrum.

bottom line, though, is that people have been digitizing books for a long time before google came along. sure, google is doing it on a larger scale with more resources at their disposal but it is not new to the dozens and hundreds of academic libraries around the world.

a simple search for overhead book scanners returns a ton of links, including this one to wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_scanning>.

<comment><USER4> In fact, there's an instructable for making a V-shaped book scanner: [http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book- Scanner-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from- Trash-and-Cheap-C/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just because they wrote a patent application to scan books this way does not mean they actually do it this way.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a machine like this in the library at the place where I work. They are commercially available (at a somewhat steep price) and are old hat.

</comment><comment><USER7> This confirms the ridiculousness of _Rainbows End_ \- I'm a huge fan of Vernor Vinge's previous work. He went bad (according to me) after he quit lecturing comp sci to write full-time, in 2000. Larry Niven has said that quitting your job is a mistake for writers, because it dries up your source of raw material (nb: a general observation, not in reference to Vernor Vinge).

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but...what?

The book-scanning process in Rainbows End was an obvious parable, not an attempt at plausible futurism. Even in the book, alternatives to the destructive scanning process existed, and the choice of digitization technique was a business decision, not a technical one.

Furthermore, many of my favorite authors (Stephenson, Pynchon, Murakami) work full-time as writers, and seem pretty capable of doing so without starving for source material.

<comment><USER7> It's been a while since I read the book, but what's the obvious parable? Maybe for me, it's a victim of an uncanny valley: it's neither stylized nor plausible.

I may not have given it a fair reading, because (personal preference) I really didn't like the book; the cyber stuff seemed more like unoriginal shiny tech than a way to provide insightful commentary on what it is to be human - <USER2> Tine pack minds, for example.

I haven't done a survey of fulltime writers; and I'm sure exceptions exist as you've noted. Larry Niven knows many more writers than I do, and so I think his observation probably has some merit. But really, I'm just expressing my frustration with Vinge's output, and noting that it coincides precisely with his retirement. I miss his old stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


SwiftKey's new Android Keyboard built using Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://swiftkey.com/en/blog/what-makes-clarity-keyboard-tick-clojure/

<comment><USER2> There's no mention of performance other than the load times. I love clojure, but not if it slows down _anything_ in the input pipeline. Written with NDK would make me happier.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm Adam Clements co-author of the article and tech lead on the Clarity project.

The awesome thing is, I genuinely think Clojure has made this much faster than it would have been if it were written in Java. Persistent datastructures and immutability make threading _much_ easier to deal with, and so this has been asynchronous from the start using the fantastic core.async to coordinate everything. This means that in terms of raw responsiveness, it's really really good.

Once it's compiled down and optimised (especially given that we're using Skummet to bypass Var indirection in the production build) there really is very little difference from Java in raw speed. Sure there are some pitfalls and you need to know to avoid proxy, reflection, too many lazy-seqs etc. but you need to know your language and work around bottlenecks whatever you're using.

Add to this the obvious increase in development velocity, and the extra stability you get from the reduction in side effects/race conditions/nil punning from all this nice functional code, and I really think we're on to a winner.

One nice example I think is how PersistentVectors allow us to send the entire touch history around the system with every touch event, without incurring a massive memory cost or having to build a whole new list every time. Compared with normal Android MotionEvent handling code where everything that uses it has to keep state, and make copies because the MotionEvent might get re-used from under you etc. this has been an absolute dream to use for no performance penalty.

<comment><USER2> I do appreciate all the developer-side advantages. None of which matter if the final performance isn't as good or better. The article didn't give any indication that this was the case and it good to know that you believe it to be the case.

Haven't used Skummet and wasn't aware how efficient it can be made to be. How is it on memory with the additional runtime?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why not PHP? - <AUTHOR>

Forgive me for the naive question, but: why is PHP considered so inferior to Ruby/Python?<p>And, as a beginner, do you recommend going with PHP to start with, or straight into Ruby/Python? <comment><USER2> _why is PHP considered so inferior to Ruby/Python?_

When I studied English in college, I discovered that the English language is a very poor choice for writing poetry because it is a very rhyme-poor language. For that, look to French or Italian. English is such a mess of a language, with irregular forms and inconsistent pronunciation. But if you're not writing poetry, English is your best bet, because more people speak it than any other language. You're going to find more books written in English and people who read them, and more people who speak your language.

PHP is the English of the programming world. Python and Ruby have cleaner syntax and consistent programming conventions, but more people speak PHP. There are lots of resources for PHP and lots more developers who know PHP.

If you find yourself in a remote fishing village in China, you're more likely to find one person there who speaks English and knows PHP than one who speaks Italian and knows Ruby.

<comment><USER3> Only vastly different programming language paradigms are comparable to different languages. PHP, Ruby and Python are all relatively the same the only real issue is being part of the 'community' of each language, if you are you understand what to use, where things are going and what not to use otherwise time is spent researching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must be a lunatic because despite all its warts, I love PHP. There are a fair number of gotchas with PHP, but I think the docs are generally great, mostly thorough and usually easy to find what you are looking for, everything is in one central place and user comments/examples can be incredibly helpful. I'm able to write fast, efficient code in PHP quickly. It's not going to win a race against C any time soon, but for what it is it's pretty quick, and of course there are a large number of extensions available for it that are written in C. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone, but the amount of time it takes me to write code in PHP is significantly less than any other language I've messed with.

Note: While the vast majority of my work these days is done in PHP, previously I worked almost entirely in C++. I've also used/dabbled in Perl, COBOL, BASIC, VBA, Java, Javascript, Python, AS3, Lisp. I've also looked at some Ruby code, maybe changed 3 lines of it in my entire life. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> The standard gripes about PHP:

\- PHP's syntax is very random. There are over 5000 builtins and no consistency among them.

\- PHP lacks (or lacked until relatively recently) many programming niceties such as objects, types, closures, lambdas, and namespaces. To do anything interesting, PHP developers rely on globals or dubious innovations such as using a string as a function name.

\- PHP relies on a web-serving model where the program invocation is done in milliseconds. Even if you can (with difficulty) use PHP libraries in command line programs, it's very inefficient for anything like a long-running daemon process.

\- Although it is almost always built into a web server, PHP doesn't make it easy for you to do anything useful with web requests -- such as custom authentication in a separate phase from content generation.

\- Since it's a web templating language at heart, PHP practically begs you to do the wrong thing and mix presentation and data. To solve this, many shops use a templating language on top of PHP, which does feel kind of silly.

\- Due to its ubiquity, PHP is the choice of script kiddies who can't program. The comments on the PHP.net documentation site are mind-numbingly naive sometimes. So even experienced programmers feel dirty using PHP.

That said:

\- Among comparable languages, and for typical web serving tasks, PHP is fast. Really fast.

\- It's probably already installed on your platform of choice.

\- Within the web-serving paradigm, it has almost everything you would ever want.

\- Its model of programming is really brain-dead, but it also can keep you out of trouble since you're forced to do everything in a REST-compatible manner.

\- It's also the choice of websites like Yahoo, Flickr, Facebook, and Wikipedia, so you know it is battle-tested.

<comment><USER6> _"until relatively recently"_

if by recently you mean 6 years. almost everything else you said is also wrong.

op - use what you are most comfortable with and don't force yourself into whatever is cool or latest groupthink

(Edit: ok you got me.:

* _PHP's syntax is very random_

you are confusing syntax with the standard lib, which was inherited from C func for func (which if you come from an OO stdlib can seem 'random' - but it makes elegant sense in the old unix world where CamelCase object names didn't exist)

* _PHP lacks (or lacked until relatively recently) many programming niceties such as objects, types, closures, lambdas, and namespaces_

see php5 - 2004.

* _Even if you can (with difficulty) use PHP libraries in command line programs_

tons of daemon scripts run php - you are talking about a php3/4 problem (set_script_timeout etc.) see mailchimp post

* _Although it is almost always built into a web server, PHP doesn't make it easy for you to do anything useful with web requests_

this is what PHP _excels_ at. want a function to retrieve the hostname from a URL? done. want to send a HTTP header? done. want to parse basic auth? done.

php.net/parse_url

$_SERVER

php.net/header

PHP was probably the first http/web aware language, you picked its strength as a weakness.

* _Since it's a web templating language at heart, PHP practically begs you to do the wrong thing and mix presentation and data._

you can say that of any language, implementation-dependent. python and ruby also print to stdout which is just the web process as well. you think this because you have seen more php scripts that mix presentation and logic.

* _Due to its ubiquity, PHP is the choice of script kiddies who can't program._

 _sigh_

<comment><USER7> As far as I'm concerned, php5 was still broken until 5.3. [http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.late-static- bindings....](http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.late-static-bindings.php)

<comment><USER4> We just got bit on the ass by this one yesterday. (still deployed on 5.2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> here is a quick outline of some issues in php through the years:

<http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/#security> early and naive implementations of xml parsers in php used eval, and as such were terribly insecure and hacked en masse

<http://php.net/manual/en/security.magicquotes.php> \-- man, if only we wrapped string on a ini file setting, it wouldn't prevent injection attacks at all, really all it means is that the standard library isn't portable any more as the semantics and return values can change on a site basis.

<http://php.net/manual/en/security.globals.php> 'you know what would be good if we could trash variables from the browser' 'we've turned it off now, good thing that people won't turn it back on for older scripts, and it will affect every script'

[http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.late-static- bindings....](http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.late-static-bindings.php) \- a dynamic language with an early bound oo implementation? sure we'll fix it, we'll just make the keyword for dynamic dispatch 'static'

<http://php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.php> \- the namespace character is the string escape character. I mean that will never backfire if people don't use 'variable functions', or using a string to lookup a function <http://us.php.net/manual/en/functions.variable-functions.php> lets hope we never have to put old code that uses this into a namespace.

<http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.goto.php> man, should we implement a subset of goto or, should we do named breaks. nah goto is far more awesome.

<http://use.perl.org/~Aristotle/journal/33448> \- how do we fix a security vulnerability? why checking to see if an int is bigger than INT_MAX

www.trl.ibm.com/people/mich/pub/200901_popl2009phpsem.pdf - the implementation and semantics of php don't match up. it doesn't do what it says on the tin.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP_accelerator> \- php by default doesn't cache bytecode, unlike, nearly everything ever, for commercial reasons, as zend sell one as a product.

[http://www.phpcompiler.org/doc/phc-0.2.0.3/representingphp.h...](http://www.phpcompiler.org/doc/phc-0.2.0.3/representingphp.html#CONCRETETREE) \- the grammar is terribly broken, so much so it is nearly impossible to do obvious and useful things like foo(1,2,3)[0]

[http://blog.php-security.org/archives/61-Retired-from- securi...](http://blog.php-security.org/archives/61-Retired-from- securityphp.net.html) the development team is toxic and reluctant to provide actual solutions for security

there are many php builtins which have vague return values which change indeterminately between releases and arguments, which forces you to use == over === for some comparisons unless you want your code to break unexpectedly.

the moral is: for everything they've fixed, they've often fixed by duct taping over the original errant feature. the standard library needs to be wrapped to be consistent. security or performance isn't a priority for the open source versions.

this won't bite most web applications as many of them are simple templates around a database.

with larger applications or frameworks, php struggles

</comment><comment><USER9> This thread about Mailchimp using PHP might be interesting to read: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1818954>

</comment><comment><USER10> I heard at a seminar once that PHP is easy to write horrible code and get away with it. I think that's true.

Having said that, I think you're more likely to see bad code coming from really, really bad programmers who started out with PHP 4. This, and the fact that my first PHP codebase came from a setup where register_globals was enabled which allowed for strange variables to pop out of thin air, made my experience with PHP one I am happy to leave behind.

I would be surprised if the code quality of recent PHP projects is as bad as the older ones. From memory, I can advise you to stay clear of Joomla and phpBB - although circumstances may have changed.

Learn OO in PHP first, then pick a framework over a CMS to cut your teeth on, and you should have a good start.

EDIT: And please, oh please, whatever you do, don't mix your business logic with print/echo instructions.

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, the question is harder to answer when put naively. How is a beginner supposed to evaluate what somebody says about closures, lambdas, type checking?

I would recommend learning Python. Python for Windows is a very handy environment; you can fool around with Google App Engine if you care to, or run Django or whatever locally.

I would recommend rephrasing your questions along these lines: I am a beginner interested in starting with web applications. What languages and frameworks do you think most promising to learn on, and where can I find good examples to illustrate the principles?

</comment><comment><USER12> You will receive as many different answers to this question as there are people. Focus on patterns of software development, techniques, and less on the specific language. It will get you further.

</comment><comment><USER13> Security: depending on the framework PHP makes it easier to do the wrong thing. Your web development language and framework should make it much _harder_ to be insecure than to be secure. For netsec the other day I was writing a deliberately insecure page so my students could practice session stealing and I actually caught myself almost creating a SQL injection vulnerability.

No one is perfect but some are better than others.

</comment><comment><USER14> Think of a simple problem to solve... and then solve it in a few different languages. This way, you figure out what you like, because everyone is different.

You might even be more focused in your learning and select specific frameworks for each language - great exposure for you.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the best way for you to answer that is to try them all :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Python may be the best language to learn if you've _never_ done any coding before. Clean syntax, straight to the point, etc.

However, I'd say Ruby fills the RAD a bit better than Python, and Python is is _not_ a language that scales, so aside from little scripts it's not exactly a language that's conquered a niche.

Go with Ruby or Java if you plan on making something useful right away.

<comment><USER17> Python is used by Google, Youtube, NASA, and Reddit. It scales, it's faster,uses less RAM, and is much saner than PHP.

<comment><USER16> Woah. Do you know _what_ Google, youtube, and Nasa use it for? Not for powering their applications. You might as well say Google and youtube use _bash_ scripting, it'd be just as accurate.

And Reddit is having a _ton_ of scaling problems. The thing can't even support multicore . I'ts 2010 and you're telling me a langauge that can't handle multicore properly scales?

Oh. and don't mistake my python smack talk for defending PHP. PHP is the devil. I'm just not a fan of python.

<comment><USER17> "Python is fast enough for our site and allows us to produce maintainable features in record times, with a minimum of developers," said Cuong Do, Software Architect, YouTube.com.

"Python enabled us to create EVE Online, a massive multiplayer game, in record time. The EVE Online server cluster runs over 50,000 simultaneous players in a shared space simulation, most of which is created in Python. The flexibilities of Python have enabled us to quickly improve the game experience based on player feedback" said Hilmar Veigar Petursson of CCP Games.

So, yeah, you're completely wrong on all counts. And if you think multicore is the only way to do multiprocessing, you should probably go back to Operating Systems 101, or study the actual reasons why Python is or is not good for multiprocessing. The correct answer would have been the GIL and multiprocessing limited only to blocking IO calls.

At any rate, if you had actually used this for a real scaling problem, you would have realized that you spend 95% of your time waiting for IO on most web processes, so the choice of language is almost irrelevant so long as RAM usage doesn't get exceedingly high.

<comment><USER16> Wow, you're talking about Stackless, something a lot different.

>he correct answer would have been the GIL and multiprocessing limited only to blocking IO calls.

I'm familiar with the GIL, however I don't think you are.

> you would have realized that you spend 95% of your time waiting for IO on > most web processes

hahahaha. This is funny, because I know why you think this. See, because Python _doesn't_ do multi threading, you spawn up a seperate process for every web hit. Then of course you have to hit your cache servers or DB, hence waiting on IO.

See, when you graduate to big kid programming you'll realize that 1997 called and they want their architecture back, and instead it's much better to have a mature platform that handle multiple concurrent web requests from one VM, hence they can share a cache, so no, I don't work on apps that spend 95% of the time in IO because if that is the case you're _doing it wrong_.

<comment><USER17> Evidently you haven't read or used WSGI, Tornado, or Twisted in any significant form. So Python sucks at multithreading, which doesn't mean that there aren't some very good workarounds, and that multiprocessing works as good as any other place.

Btw, if you HAD tried to use Python on any significant way, you would have known that WSGI on Apache recycles the VM for multiple requests, which is the reason why it's suggested to do static file serving outside of Apache within the same server.

And, oh yeah, I have yet to hear from anyone except people doing CPU-intensive processing have the programming language be the bottleneck. Congratulations if your system is CPU or network-limited, in which case I'd hope that you're writing something in a lower-level language to handle the situation, but in 99% of large site installations, even if you cache all your IO, it's still going to be the big bottleneck of your system. Seriously, opening a remote socket and sending shit through it is almost always a bigger issue than pushing HTML.

Finally, it still doesn't change the fact that some of the biggest web sites are running Python in the back end and they couldn't be happier.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is HostGator storing my password in plaintext? - <AUTHOR> https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/206186/is-hostgator-storing-my-password-in-plaintext <comment><USER2> Sadly still done by many companies. [http://plaintextoffenders.com/](http://plaintextoffenders.com/) grew to 400 pages.</comment>


TSMC Thinks IT Can Uphold Moore's Law for Decades - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2019/09/13/tsmc-thinks-it-can-uphold-moores-law-for-decades/ <comment><USER2> Can't help but think the way that Wong is talking is just a bastardisation of Moore's law. I know everytime it comes up we have a bit of a kerfuffle around what Moore's law really states, but the technologies being described here essentially say the transistors are going to stay the same but we'll scale down all the peripherals. This may be a functionally good future for the industry but it's really not Moore's law.

<comment><USER3> I feel like at this point the term "Moore's law" has degraded so much as to mean "things will get better at a pretty fast rate"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you consider other factors, there is a reasonable case that Moore's law isn't as directly correlated with end user experience as it used to be.

Single thread performance is flattening out: [https://semiengineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/Rambu...](https://semiengineering.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/Rambus-AI-memory-systems-fig1.jpg)

And, there's also the "good enough" angle. At least for desktops, laptops, and phones, people are upgrading less often. What they have is good enough for a longer time period. Lower demand, I assume, would eventually affect the pace of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article describes mostly new materials and manufacturing techniques. I don't think I.T. should be capitalized.</comment>


Amazon Appstore disables Android security - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/03/29/amazon-appstore-disables-android-security/ <comment><USER2> False. Surely a story written by someone that doesn't understand. To install an app from the Market, one has to press Install and approve a list of permissions. Outside of the Market, a user has to download an APK manually, open it with the Package Manager, choose to install and again with a separate button, agree to grant all of the requested permission.

It still requires two levels of agreement from the user. There's no security risk here. Call us if the Package Manager is somehow exploited, not really sure how that would even work anyhow.</comment>


How Scared Should You Be of Genetic Testing? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/your-dna-is-nothing-special <comment><USER2> Absolutely none at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Webdesign micromanagers - <AUTHOR>

I have no design freedom at all. Anyone else have a micro managing boss? and how do you deal with it? and is web designing like this at most companies. <comment><USER2> Quit.

There's sometimes very little you can do to change someones perspective on this (especially if they are a boss), and instead of trying to push and lose (because I'm not at their level), I ended up doing work on my own or contracting for companies who have an appreciation for it.

The best work comes from doing what you love and working with people who understand it. When I look at my body of work, my favorite designs and executions come from working with open-minded creative leaders. They don't need you to tell them how to deal better. They just know and the arguments you have are based on bigger issues. The micromanaging bosses resulted in staid work that I wouldn't show or link to anyone.

The longer you wait, the more time you are not with an ideal boss. And unless the work you produce is actually amazing, then I don't see the point in sticking around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its easy to quit but finding work after is the big question. Do you have any suggestions on where to start? I'm great at HTML/CSS,I can design pretty good UI and I started learning some python now. Should I look for work online?

<comment><USER2> Definitely look for work now. Seriously.

Look at Krop, Craigslist (believe it or not, there are some really good jobs on the Craigslist board, you just have to filter), HackerNews... which area are you in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm probably in the worst area for any of the jobs I'm looking for. I'm living in Miami, FL. Here we have warehouses and out of touch web designers. Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that's tough.

One thing that might help is looking for a brand based in Miami. They might have a cool web design department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I believe this is not uncommon. But look at it from the manager's perspective: unless they are really using design to move the needle, individual bouts of creativity are frequently counter-productive.</comment>


The Very First List of HTML Tags - <AUTHOR> http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html <comment><AUTHOR> And this is the very first page of the Internet --

[http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html](http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

<comment><USER2> Loads pretty fast.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: ClickTheVote.com – What do I do with it? - <AUTHOR> I've owned this domain for a while.  I am now looking to do something with it.  As an experiment I thought I'd put it out to HN and see what surfaces.
Due to HN submission length restrictions I am going to break this up into multiple posts with six ideas.  Reply where appropriate.
Basic ideas:

    [1] Political discussion forum aimed at a younger audience
    [2] Political blog, again aimed at younger audience
    [3] Build something that Democrats or Republicans can use
    [4] A platform for voting and survey taking online
    [5] Sell the domain
    [6] Hold on to it
 I think that's it.  There are certainly combinations and permutations of the above that could be worth pursuing.  One could start a site useful to political parties for upcoming elections while, in the background, so to speak, one is really building a voting-as-a-service platform of sorts.
If you want to comment about one of the above six options I ask that you do so under the relevant comment where I expand details for that particular approach.
I am eager to read your comments.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> [2] Political blog, again aimed at younger audience

        - Also easy to setup: Wordpress
        - Seeding with posts happens more organically than forum
          because one or two people write
        - Probably takes just as long as [1] to build an audience
        - No need to depend on members for content, which can be
          a big advantage
        - Possibly better SEO ranking due to issues with user generated
          content sites and how search engines treat them
        - The easiest ways to gain traction are the extremes:
          - Be the voice of reason: analytical, research and fact based
          - Be an asshole at one or another extreme of any issue
            (Howard Stern "shock jock")
        - Far more people will levitate towards extreme views than
          sit there and read through well reasoned arguments backed
          with facts, calculations, models, etc.
        - Have to be comfortable with this reality and be able to
          consistently be that persona under a pseudonym
        - Still competing with biggies
        - Monetization: AdSense, affiliate, etc.
        - Maybe even crazy ebooks
        - Not an appealing idea intellectually speaking but have to
          recognize that in today's political climate the extremes
          probably convert better than a reasoned middle ground
        - Not sure about liquidation.  Could be a flipper site.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [3] Build something that Democrats or Republicans can use

        - Make it a useful get-out-the-vote tool for young people
        - Aim squarely at providing it as a service to one of the parties
        - Perhaps even look at selling the site to on of them
        - It still requires articles and becoming an educator of sorts
        - Lightweight content that is easy to digest by a younger audience
        - Not much effort in terms of immediate monetization
        - Focus should be on content and tools that bring that younger
          audience to the table
        - Not an easy task
        - Two major election events coming up in 2014 and 2016.  These
          will be highly contested and are potential opportunities for
          a brand like "ClickTheVote" to rise to the surface.
        - People getting more of their news and info online.  With elections
          taking place constantly a brand like "ClickTheVote" could be
          positioned to be the party-independent go-to resource for
          relevant information
        - Probably easier to liquidate than [1] and [2] but just as hard to
          build and position

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [4] A platform for voting and survey taking online

        - Not necessarily limited to politics
        - Site provides the tools to organize voting for whatever purpose
        - Embeddable voting forms
        - Possibly self-hosted solutions
        - Free and a couple, or more, paid tiers
        - Mobil integration
        - Aimed at C2B, clubs and any instance of needing to get people
          to vote or opine on something
        - Provide analytics, etc.
        - Not a new idea; many competitors
        - The engineer in me likes this far more than any of the above
        - Monetization is based on actually selling a product
        - Could also have ad-based revenue in the free tier
        - If approach is unique, intelligent and hits a nerve the service
          could be an attractive acquisition target

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [1] Political discussion forum aimed at a younger audience

        - Relatively easy to setup.  vBulletin or phpBB would do.
        - Needs seeding with lots of posts in order to even begin to pull
          real people in.
        - Fighting spam posts is a daily reality.
        - Site depends on converting enough eyeballs into posters
          (not just lurkers) in order to gain position and value
        - Monetization through AdSense
        - If it gets real traffic you can sell advertising space directly
        - Some affiliate potential
        - Liquidation is far more likely to take the form of selling
          through a site flipping service

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [5] Sell the domain

        - Less work
        - Far less money than a successful site could generate
        - Currently working on other products, including:
              - Redoing an existing mobile app to start monetizing
              - Planning another mobile app with a partner
              - Chipping away at two web projects
        - Only the right person or organization is going to put the right
          number on the table not to make me feel like a moron after
          selling it.  My guess is that this is somewhat unlikely to
          happen but you never know.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [6] Hold on to it

        - Do nothing right now
        - Elections and voting will never go away
        - Keep thinking and look for other opportunities to build a
          product or brand around the domain

</comment><comment><USER2> [5] or [6]

If you have four build possibilities that you're putting up for a vote, then I'd argue most likely you shouldn't be doing any of them. It probably means you're not on to something particularly interesting, you don't have a particular interest in any specific one of them, and I'd consequentially argue your time is too value to treat that way.

Better to spend a little more time and find something you really, really, really want to do; or something that you've thought of that serves a pent-up need that isn't being well serviced (or similar angle).

Don't do something with this domain just to do it. That's a good way to lose six months, or years, of your life you'll never get back.

I don't say this to imply that you shouldn't do anything, but rather, that being selective about serious time investments is important.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't really argue with your logic here. Yes, ideally you want to do something you are passionate about.

Now, to be fair, that isn't always the case. I have a small business running almost in auto-pilot that is generating probably $10K a year. Not a ton of money. At the same time, it requires almost no attention. I am not passionate about it. It isn't a scalable business. With a lot of effort it might generate $20K, tops.

That said, yes, if something is going to scale and grow beyond a hobby business you really have to want to be in it because business is hard work. For me it is easy to become passionate about something if it starts making money. It might not be the love of my life, but I enjoy making money. I hope that's not a bad word on HN.</comment></comment>


Starbucks' music is driving employees nuts - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-25-2019-1.5032165/starbucks-music-is-driving-employees-nuts-a-writer-says-it-s-a-workers-rights-issue-1.5028163 <comment><USER2> They modernized the gas pumps at our local Speedway by adding video players. Instead of news like I've seen in California they play endless commercials and the volume is loud.

I remember stopping one time when it was twenty below zero this winter, no one was at the pumps and the same commercial was playing and not a single pump's sound was in sync with another. I felt like I was in a movie about a dystopian future.

<comment><USER3> You don't see these in Canada but I am always flabberghasted by them while in the US. I noticed that holding my finger over the tiny speaker hole greatly reduced the volume, and I resolved to carry a roll of duct tape with me so I could do some public service next time I had to deal with them.

<comment><USER4> Don't. Otherwise you'll end up with a visit from law enforcement for tampering with the equipment.

<comment><USER5> Except he didn't tamper with anything

<comment><USER4> Uhm, I know? But he did state the intent to do so, and I just said it would be a bad idea as they will likely call the cops on him.

At least in my country you'll get into trouble if you tear down billboards, alter advertisement panels/electronics and alike.

<comment><USER6> Heaven forbid one to employ civil disobedience, or even to take non- destructive steps, in order to tamp down offensive, irritating aspects of daily life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I experienced this working in retail during the holiday season back when I was in college. The little bell intro to Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You", will forever haunt my dreams. I rarely listen to Christmas music anymore because of that experience.

Nowadays, I get irritated when I've burned through a 2 hour playlist twice at work and need to find something else to listen to, but I totally take the ability to change my music for granted.

<comment><USER8> I moved from the UK to Canada 20 years ago this September. Back in High School and University, I worked retail for about 5 years or so. By the time I left, I haaaaaated Christmas music. Couldn't stand it.

Now after 20 years in Canada, I really miss it. Nothing here is the same as it is in the UK when it comes to Christmas traditions. There's no carolers, the smells aren't the same, the shops aren't the same. Everything that made Christmas Christmas to me is missing. For everything I love about living in Canada, that's been the hardest thing about living here instead of where I grew up.

I actually have a Christmas playlist made up entirely of Christmas songs from when I was a kid to try and kick start my Christmas mood when the season rolls around :D

<comment><USER9> >There's no carolers, the smells aren't the same, the shops aren't the same

Growing up in Canada, I thought carolers and olde-timey Christmas themes only happened in movies these days. Are these traditions still alive in the UK?

<comment><USER10> Carolling largely follows a bimodal distribution based on social class. It's still reasonably common among lower-working-class kids looking for a bit of extra pocket money before Christmas; for similar reasons, they're the last stalwarts of the penny-for-the-guy tradition. It's very common for those at the upper reaches of the middle class, who have a real penchant for old- fashioned community activities like choirs, fetes and street parties. It's all but dead for the majority in the middle.

Speaking more broadly, there has been an effort in many rural areas to maintain and revive particular local cultural traditions. Perhaps the most spectacular such tradition is the tar barrels in Ottery St Mary[1], but I'm also rather fond of the Royal Ashborne Shrovetide Football game[2] and the multitude of mumming and wassailing traditions[3].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8-0wQmPeMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8-0wQmPeMg)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uV1zrZFzZo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uV1zrZFzZo)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEDaRQO5Utk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEDaRQO5Utk)

<comment><USER8> How on earth did the Tar Barrels become a tradition?! :o

and the Shrovetide Football with only 1 rule?! :'D That's insane!

Only in England! I miss you guys :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In general I don't understand why people think that it's ok to pollute every bit of space with noise of their choice (aka music). I view it as a big nuisance.

<comment><USER12> As with many things, it's profit-driven. As a related example, bars intentionally turn the music up loud enough that conversations are difficult because this causes patrons to buy more drinks.

<comment><USER11> " loud enough that conversations are difficult because this causes patrons to buy more drinks"

I know that I am weird but this makes me just want to run away,.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't make you weird, that makes you sane. You couldn't pay me to drink in bars like that.

<comment><USER14> I'm the same, but I guess we're not the target market then.

They want mindless binge drinkers, not talkers.

It's weird because I feel I'd drink more when I'm comfortable, with music audible but not loud enough to drown out conversation or be too offensive.

<comment><USER15> >They want mindless binge drinkers, not talkers.

I'm friends with a lot of bar owners, and have had a few bars in the family in the past.

Owners don't want someone getting plastered. We want the high functioning alcoholic who orders 3 pints to his partner's 1 and draws his friends to come to the pub with him every night or two.

<comment><USER16> Seeing that you have experience in this sector, what is the purpose of a bar exactly? I never have gone to a bar, but always have had the assumption that bars are pretty much for getting plastered.

<comment><USER15> If you want to get plastered, you can buy absurd amounts of alcohol by volume by purchasing cheap vodka and making it palatable by running it through a water filter to remove the bitter contaminants, then soak fruit in it to give it some flavour.

For 30$, you can make yourself enough very nice booze, flavoured to your tastes, as you would be able to get for $300 or so at a bar.

As for the direct question: different bars have different purposes, which is why there are so many different types.

Bars in the financial district are often vehicles to waste money as a social display. Bars in the artistic sector are often vehicles to meet likeminded poor, but cool, artists and misfits. Bars in residential areas are normally places to relax and have a few pints. Bars in the nightlife areas are normally places to meet people. Some bars have good food. Some bars have cheap drinks. Some bars have great music. Some bars have familiar staff.

There's a bar near where I used to live that offers manicures, male model servers and foot rubs. A few streets down is a sports bar which seems to employ exceptionally chesty waitresses. As you might imagine, the target demographic for each is different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I went into a Starbucks the other day early in the morning that didn't have music playing yet, it was really weird. It was actually kind of disconcerting. I think that's the only time i've ever been in one with no music. Everybody's voices echoed really loudly. You could hear every conversation going on and people ordering from the other side of the store.

As much as I dislike their music choices usually, I kind of understand why they have it going. Though a redesign of their interiors could probably do a lot to help the empty echoey feeling without constant music.

<comment><USER18> I experienced this in a Target last year sometime. No music over the intercom, and the energy in the place just felt more... nervous, restless. I don't know whether that's an effect inherent to silence in large spaces or whether it was an effect created by the absence of something we took for granted.

<comment><USER19> Wait, target plays music? I've literally never noticed and I was just in one last night. Only thing I've heard is their movies section playing teasers pretty loudly.

<comment><USER18> After that one experience, I'm pretty sure that if I walked into a supermarket or department store and they _weren 't_ playing music, I would _immediately_ notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I once sat in a Starbucks for a few hours and I noticed that the music shifted with the customer base. So oldies and jazz got played around the time senior citizens would come in and the vibe would change depending on the demographic at that time. I thought it was interesting.. Maybe coincidence.. maybe not.

<comment><USER21> I think some Starbucks have a little more agency. The one near my apartment in NYC is always playing a mid-00s hiphop/R&B throwbacks playlist. Definitely not the mainstream suburban mom stuff, but, ya never know, maybe they have separate "urban environment" playlists.

<comment> crooked-v I've heard "Dare to Be Stupid" in one and I really doubt that would be a corporate-approved item, so there's got to be some kind of local variation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously "cafe has music" is going to be a popular comments section on HN where we all relate our horror stories of working at places with nonstop music.

But this is a surprisingly terrible article. Guantanamo bay, really? Quoting a no-name Adam Johnson with a head shot, unrelated to the source, to weigh in on music? Focusing on Starbucks as linkbait when this is ubiquitous?

<comment><USER23> Sure, comparisons to Gitmo might be unwarranted, but this article is not about cafes merely playing music nonstop (which is indeed ubiquitous), but about Starbucks playing the same few songs over the speakers repeatedly while denying employees the ability to control the playlist (and therefore the environment around them). FTA:

> Earlier this year, irritated Starbucks employees took to Reddit to rage > about how they had to listen to the same songs from the Broadway hit musical > Hamilton on repeat while on the job. One user wrote that if they heard a > Hamilton song one more time, "I'm getting a ladder and ripping out all of > our speakers from the ceiling."

At a smaller cafe, I'd imagine employees would get much more control over what music to play (often I've noticed it's just some employee's phone plugged into the speakers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I experienced this on another level while working retail at a musical instrument store for a few years. People would pick up any instrument and play whatever they wanted for however long they wanted-- at whatever volume they wanted. Although some people are quite talented, most are not. One lady would sit at the piano for hours, playing the musical equivalent of nonsense.

Around that same time, I had my own home recording studio and sometimes wound up recording musicians that were on the scale of bad to downright terrible. If I reacted negatively to the sound they made, that would only make them want to re-record it, which meant I'd have to hear it again. I quickly learned how to keep a straight face and mentally treat the music like background noise or focus intently on the parts of it that weren't too bad.

<comment><USER25> I was just wondering if music instrument store employees would be affected by everyone playing. I'm learning guitar and my housemate says it's disconcerting to hear me playing parts of a song he recognizes without the full instrumentation/song structure. I can't imagine if 5 people were doing that all at once for an 8-hour shift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> When I was 16, I spent 3 months working at a Hollister store in the nearby mall.

They had the same 6 songs playing on repeat all damn day, every single day. It was tortuous.

That was the second worst thing about that place. The first being the hourly spray of chemical fumes everywhere for their signature smell.

<comment><USER27> I wonder if any Hollister workers have had adverse physical effects from working in an environment chronically saturated with their fragrance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I was in high school I worked in a Pizza restaurant that had a CD player in the closet. There were two CDs--The Carpenters Greatest Hits, which was used January to November and The Carpenters Christmas album, which they used in December. I must have listened to the Greatest Hits hundreds of times.

<comment><USER29> That sounds like my childhood. We had an 8 track with Mamas and the Papas California Dreaming and Random MARCHING MUSIC. The radio was broken.

It was Russian Roulette with the revolver loaded when mom ask what music you want to listen to. You want audio arsenic or audio cyanide?

<comment><USER30> Similar experience. It's why I can't stand to listen to Led Zeppelin and absolutely despise showtunes...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I work at Starbucks and I completely disagree with this article (as it pertains to Starbucks). Starbucks has a partnership with Spotify, all employees get a free Spotify account. Every Starbucks has an iPhone used to handle inventory & play the store music. This iPhone has the Spotify app installed and a fairly large collection of Starbucks playlists which accrue over time. Each playlist varies in size but some are quite large, e.g. the "Chill" playlist is likely over 50 songs. Moreover, I consider myself a _hipster_ when it comes to music and can tell that each of these playlists has been curated in the same manner as Apple playlists, by using people "in the know". What that means is that many songs are extremely new and underground. A good example of this are songs like "High 5" by Sigrid, or "Lucky Girl" by Fazerdaze listed when they're released. So, any employee (at least at my store and those in the surrounding area) can simply change the playlist at any time. Don't like the Hamilton playlist?, go change it to the "Dinner Party" playlist. Not only can we change the playlist, we can simply use our own iPhone and play are own playlists with our free Spotify account (as long as it doesn't contain profanity). The one gripe I have is that some songs on the Starbucks playlists are completely inappropriate such as "Get Out" by CHVRCHES. If you haven't heard this song, go listen to it on Youtube and figure out why this is an awkward song to play around customers. So, imo Starbucks likely has the most lenient music policy of similar shops as well as the best music selection.

</comment><comment><USER32> I worked at a movie theater and we were supposed to get a new CD every month from corporate to play in theaters before the movie started, but in the year or so I worked there it never changed. I don't remember all of them, but the ones I do remember are a cover of Convoy by Mannheim Steamroller, which is a godawful treacly piece of shit to begin with, and a cover of Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon by Urge Overkill, which I utterly loathe to this day.

This makes me think of Groundhog Day, and how brilliantly the film used the repetition of I've Got You Babe to show how the protagonist was going crazy.

<comment><USER33>
      cover of Convoy by Mannheim Steamroller

Did MS actually do a cover of Convoy? The original "C.W. McCall" Convoy stems from the same people, but I didn't know they redid Convoy in the MS style.

The 1980s McCall-branded reunion album ("Comin' Back for More"?) is good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems petty in comparison to what many store clerks in Japan have to put up with. Bic/Kojima Camera (perhaps comparable to Best Buy) normally has the same 10 second long jingle playing on auto-repeat all day everyday. That is the definition of real torture.

</comment><comment><USER35> An elementary school I attended from first to fourth grade would play Beethovan's Moonlight Sonata in the lunchroom as the song that signaled "quiet time," when we'd have to eat our food without talking. Occasionally we would get another song, something by Chopin I think, but in my memory 90% of the time it was Moonlight Sonata. Whenever I hear that song now, ten years later, I get teleported back to fourth grade quiet time where all I could do was stare into my carton of sometimes half-frozen strawberry milk or prod miserably at my collard greens (invariably quiet time came near the end of lunch when I had already eaten everything not terrible). I have an almost physical revulsion when I hear it.

<comment><USER36> The first movement is overplayed. The second and third are really awesome actually.

<comment><USER37> The third movement is a banger. Should sound familiar to anyone who played Earthworm Jim. I believe it also made an appearance in Looney Tunes in one form or another.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zucBfXpCA6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zucBfXpCA6s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I attended university in the very early days of MP3s. In a microcontroller lab, the TAs hooked one of the lab computers to a pair of speakers and set up their collection of MP3s to loop indefinitely. I still remember the whole playlist:

* _White Wedding_ by Billy Idol

* _I Am The Walrus_ by the Beatles

I may have the order reversed.

<comment><USER25> You'd appreciate this John Mulaney bit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkrL42R7gk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkrL42R7gk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Some guitar shops have a list of songs which you are absolutely forbidden to sing if trying on their guitars:

[https://i.imgur.com/Pzd3lIk.png](https://i.imgur.com/Pzd3lIk.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/qXkEUZl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qXkEUZl.jpg)

<comment><USER40> I'm also sick of Sweet Child O' Mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I worked at Chick-fil-A in high school and experienced this but with Christian contemporary music. If I never hear "Jesus Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood again it will be too soon. I feel the same way about steel drums after a summer working at Bahama Breeze, a Caribbean themed Olive Garden.

<comment><USER42> I always feel so bad for people that work at Hobby Lobby, it's just nothing but the WORST elevator music versions of Christian shit. I give thanks everyday for the Michael's we got a few years ago, so much better in every single way. Every time I'm forced to go to Hobby Lobby when Michael's doesn't have what I need, I can't get out of there fast enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This isn't really a whole article, is it? It's an anecdote.

I don't doubt that this is a problem, but this isn't a good look at it.

<comment><USER43> Yes. Any premise can be created if all that is needed is the argument of "...one writer and podcaster...".

</comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 I don't know about Starbucks but have you ever been to a Family Mart convenience store in Japan? I'm wondering how the music didn't drive the employees mad.

The Family Mart welcome song is probably the most recognizable but the same goes for stores like Bic Camera and many others.

<comment><USER44> The Japanese take this to another level. Imagine listening to these all day, every day:

 _Don don don, donki, don quijote..._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyYrrDKYZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyYrrDKYZE) (Don Quijote)

 _Kamera wa yodobashi kamera!_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4QSu1ZHunw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4QSu1ZHunw) (Yodobashi Camera)

<comment><USER45> Dear god. Listening to that first link all the way through was a poor decision. It won't go away!

How do marketers come up with such reliably earwormy stuff? Are there papers I can go read about this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The local Target used to be music free, and was the only big chain shopping experience I've ever enjoyed. I'd go out of my way to go there over competitors. Then they renovated, and now they blast the same terrible noise that every other retailer does. It sucks. I haven't been back since.

</comment><comment><USER47> I worked at a department store for a year in the gifts department (think Hummel figures, Precious Moments figures, candles, lava lamps, crystal dishes, various crap like that). There was a CD player that had a single CD in it that played on repeat. It was a CD of showtunes, like Oklahoma, etc. The only song on there I could tolerate was "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof, all the rest drove me nuts. I could escape it though, by going to a different corner of the department, so it wasn't too bad.

There was another time I worked in a factory job for a year, and the forewoman would blast the local Top 40 station throughout the whole factory all day every day. I would hear the same songs 3 or 4 times a day every day I worked there that entire year. To this day I get flashbacks whenever I hear Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out of My Head" (specifically the "la la la, la la, la la la" chorus. Drove me nuts hearing that all the time).

</comment><comment><USER48> Probably just a sidenote and maybe not that relevant, but I think 80s Japan had the right idea of environmental music which was considered as a meaningful part of a location, building or space - regardless of if it served artistic purposes or corporate interests. The reason this comes to my mind is this [1] recently released, utterly fantastic compilation that focuses on this very topic: Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990

Roughly explained in this excerpt:

> "Corporate big bucks and avant-garde music aren't the most obvious > bedfellows — but throw user experience into the mix, and you've got a viable > cultural phenomenon: kankyō ongaku. In 1980s Japan, as the country continued > to enjoy an unprecedented post-war boom, it became the world's second- > largest economy; companies like Sanyo and Muji pumped cash into the arts to > enhance the experiences for its consumers."

For anyone interested I highly recommend the physical editions of the release as they include twice as many tracks (digital rights for japanese music are very complicated), some of them very rare and released for the first time outside Japan. In addition they come with a hardcover book featuring extensive liner notes and an essay explaining the circumstances and setting. However there are digital versions with a limited track selection: [2][3]

[1] [https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4088-kankyo-ongaku- japa...](https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4088-kankyo-ongaku-japanese- ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990)

[2] [https://daily.bandcamp.com/2019/02/15/kankyo-ongaku- japanese...](https://daily.bandcamp.com/2019/02/15/kankyo-ongaku-japanese- ambient-environmental-new-age-music-1980-1990-review/)

[3] [https://open.spotify.com/album/0rrRvu7ObcLgxbuGGkx3Rn?si=V5Y...](https://open.spotify.com/album/0rrRvu7ObcLgxbuGGkx3Rn?si=V5Y6xKvRR66rFbovYml_jw)

<comment><USER49> Not sure if it is interely relevant for the thread. But I really enjoyed the music and also learning more about the genre so thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wouldn't be surprised if the real goal was to make customers spend less time sitting around.

In the last year or two, I've noticed Panera has been playing godawful music that makes it nearly impossible to sit down, relax, and work on something.

It works of course, but now I just don't go at all.

<comment><USER51> Almost _every_ Panera I've been in was poorly run. Poor service and bad, old coffee more often than not.

SF at 4th and King was the lone exception.

<comment><USER50> Perhaps. I don't drink coffee, I liked their fruit smoothies, and bagels are bagels. The music used to be generic enough (probably something quiet and instrumental but I honestly cannot recall) that it was not something I registered, but more recently they've played loud country/pop (observed in both Massachusetts and Maryland) that I now avoid them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I am never in a Starbucks for long enough to really notice the music. There usually isn't any place to sit, as the place seems to turn into an office or study space, with Macbooks (rarely something else) taking up nearly every seat.

<comment><USER53> That's the whole idea of Starbucks - it's the third place.

<comment><USER52> I have never been the kind to want to work from a cafe, but I know plenty who do it. Fair enough. I'm more of the kind who wants to meet friends to have a conversation at a cafe, which we really can't do when the seats are gobbled up by people who are camped out there all day long. There are cafes where this doesn't happen, and they seem to be the ones without free wifi. I guess there's a market for each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> In the specific case of Starbucks (at least in the US), the employees _do_ have a bit of control over the music. They're able to curate a playlist of store "favorites" and are usually able to change the playlist from whatever's playing to the "favorites" playlist. The problem is not very many employees know about it, and it requires using a specific piece of hardware (an in-store iPod also used for inventory). They playlist will also switch roughly every 30 minutes or so, so they have to keep switching it back.

</comment><comment><USER55> I spend about 2 hours in Starbucks every morning before taking kids to school. Usually the playlist is tolerable, but every once in a while it's absolutely horrendous, particularly for 5AM. A couple years ago they had a 70s Soul Train playlist including Love Train which drove me nuts. I can only imagine being an employee on an 8 hour shift and not able to put on noise cancelling headphones.

</comment><comment><USER56> Of course CBC would report this, they're in Big Tim Horton's pockets

<comment> frosted-flakes Incidentally, most Tim Hortons I've been to don't play any music at all. I love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Let us spare a moment of silence for the poor souls who had to work the floor and register at Japanese we-sell-everything store Donkihote, who had to listen to this piece of art on repeat, day or night.

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

</comment><comment><USER58> Reminds me of Yellocabs in NYC. The screen can be muted but you're still staring at a lit blue screen while riding in the back of a cab and it's very unpleasant at night. Try relaxing if you can. I don't take yellow cabs anymore but last time I experienced this I was thinking of taping a a cloth as a curtain.

</comment><comment><USER59> worked at a music store for a couple of years - part time, but the company- provided playlists did grate after a while. upside was it was fairly chart- driven, so you'd generally not get the same things for more than a few weeks in a row. it was mostly just very... popularity driven (of course, they're trying to push new stuff). We did generally have some down time each day which was 'staff choice', but even then they still wanted it to be from their approved list. We _mostly_ followed that rule. It was a big corporate chain store thing, not a hip indie place.

At some point they moved in to promoting video in store, which got worse. The CDs they'd send were samplers, but the "now play this VHS tape"... the Garth Brooks concert VHS... ugh - however much you like him, having to listen to it 2x/day for weeks... (at least it seemed like weeks)

<comment><USER51> That's one thing I miss about record stores like Tower. The music was chosen by workers on shift, a full album side at a time. I discovered some great music that way, including "popular" artists _before_ they were popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I worked for Toys R Us. The crappy music they played was synced to the hold music of the store. It was really weird.

</comment><comment><USER61> I owned a Domino's and put up a LCD in the customer waiting area. I bought a BluRay player and a copy of Finding Nemo.

It took two shifts for me to fill a disc with <cough> backups <cough> of dozens of Disney/Pixar/etc movies. Once I broke 50 hours of video, I stopped being able to recite it at will.

<comment><USER62> We can hem and haw about piracy for personal use. But piracy and public playback of pirated media at a business you owned seems like a totally different beast to me.

<comment><USER61> I owned the blurays/dvd for everything I showed. I got the backups from the "usual places" because it was easier than ripping them myself. I had every single disc in the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I experienced this in college when I worked as a cashier at a grocery store. One particular "song" comprised entirely of whale noises. I probably heard it 15 times a day and it was always the target of employee aggression. For some reason the manager just refused to put on something else.

</comment><comment><USER64> Try finding any public space in the USA where there is not blaring background music. Good luck. I always felt the reason Starbucks plays deafening music is to discourage people from lingering. It certainly has the effect on me, and I pity the poor employees.

</comment><comment><USER65> I worked at a coffee shop that played a fixed set of songs which included the Sarah McLachlan song from her SPCA commercials. Every time it came on somebody would run into the back to change it, because we all grew to hate the "sad puppy song"

</comment><comment><USER66> I had similar feelings in an open office. When it got loud, the suggestion was to put on headphones. But, in effect, that was just using more noise to drown out other noise. All I really wanted was some peace and quiet!

<comment><USER67> The new generation of noise-canceling headphones can block sound without playing other audio. It's not perfect, but it's much better than the "noise canceling" headphones from a decade ago.

<comment><USER68> The newest cans from Sony and Bose ARE pretty good, but the pressure always bothers my ears after a while, especially when I'm not playing music. There's no real substitute for a quiet office, other than maybe working remotely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> One weekday morning I decided to take my wife and daughters (I was working from home, and we homeschool) out for breakfast at a new breakfast joint. The sun had just risen, they weather was perfect and they had a patio. We were seated outside and blasted by classic rock, really great songs actually, but not loud and at 8am. I asked the waitress what the deal was, she said it wasn't them, the property management company had them installed (it was in a strip with 4 other businesses). What benefit would it be to the property management company? I'll never know.

</comment><comment><USER70> When I was in Japan, most of the bigger stores played one song, their 30ish second long theme, on repeat. It's been 15 years and I can still remember Bic Camera's, Yodobashi Camera's, and Geo's.

</comment><comment><USER71> The Starbucks I frequent often (a kiosk at Glasgow (Scotland) Central Train Station) seem to have their own music on their phones or something. Always hear something different.

I suppose it depends on the type of Starbucks.

<comment><USER72> > The Starbucks I frequent often (a kiosk at Glasgow (Scotland) Central Train > Station) seem to have their own music on their phones or something.

In the United States, a venue can be fined for playing music without a license. An acquaintance of mine has a restaurant and was sued for playing music that was unlicensed.

<comment><USER71> In the UK there's two main licensing companies called PRS/PRL. Businesses primarily have licenses with them that covers 99.9% of bases when it comes to licensing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I certainly have sympathy - I used to work with a woman who watched Gone With The Wind three times a day, every day. That's twelve hours a day, eighty-four hours a week, every week. Best part of quittin' time was not having to see or hear Gone With The Wind until the next day - weekends were never more appreciated.

I quit listening to radio when a local recruiting agency bought every ad slot, day and night, for six weeks. I'm not going to say their name because I don't want them to ever know anyone listened to their ads or remembers them.

<comment><USER16> Let me guess, the US Marine Core?

<comment><USER74> FYI, that's the correct pronunciation, but it's spelled "Corps" \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps)

<comment><USER16> Ah thank you, that always bugged me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Oh god. This. I work out of starbucks(prefer the white noise than my office) and the music is becoming so irritating now. The same small number of tracks on repeat the whole day.. everyday.

<comment><USER76> While I have nothing against coffee shop working (done it myself plenty) I respectfully submit that irritating worker-sitters is the actual reason for the repetition and irritation. They'd rather free up our seats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I remember going to a mall once and being in an altered state of mind... [Mainstream] music felt like something used to get people in an almost hypnotic state of ignorance, an acoustic bubble to encourage shopping, mingling... I don't know how to quite put a finger on it. It wasn't anything particularly negative, but it was the thought of it being some sort of mood manipulator, setting a scene for those who were well off enough to be a part of it.

</comment><comment><USER78> I've noticed that the music a coffee shop plays has a big effect on whether or not I want to come back regularly. It doesn't have to all be stuff I'd have in my own playlists, but it needs to have _variety_. It's even fine if _sometimes_ it's something I actively dislike.

Working in a place that plays the same corporate-approved playlist forever is hellish, though. Having it be your actual job to be there is even worse.

</comment><comment><USER79> The Starbucks I visit doesn't even seem to play music. It's been a while since I've been to a store that did and when they did it was just coffeehouse playlist with Spotify integration so it was kind of cool what they had set up.

I imagine working in an environment where you hear the same music regardless would cause some pain if you focus on that aspect of your work environment.

Just imagine being alive in the 80s with muzak and really crappy jingles play

<comment><USER80> > Just imagine being alive in the 80s with muzak and really crappy jingles > play

I worked in a chain supermarket in the 80s and to this day I know the words and melodies of all the hits of that decade, but not the names of the songs or the artists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Reminds me of my (second) stint working there in the mid-00s, deciphering the format of their PlayNetwork discs.

[https://club.myce.com/t/starbucks-playnetwork-playdisc- aud-f...](https://club.myce.com/t/starbucks-playnetwork-playdisc-aud- format/63734/67)

Unfortunately, within a year they happened to transition to satellite feeds.

(Kudos to myce, formerly CDFreaks, for keeping this content online all this time.)

</comment><comment><USER82> I used to work in the back room of a Target and the stereo was always tuned to the same radio station. They just played 12 songs, in a loop, 24/7\. I always knew which song would come on next before it did. I think most radio stations are like that- they just have a loop of about an hour of music that they play, and most people aren't in the car long enough to figure out it's just the same songs over and over.

<comment><USER33>
      They just played 12 songs, in a loop

Sounds like Muzak, not regular radio.

<comment><USER82> Hm, no I don't remember the frequency but they would do the standard thing where the announcer would come on and say "This is WSUK 99.7 playing the biggest hits!" and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> This is really a no-brainer. The music annoys me as a regular customer. The choice of music can also be peculiar - country and western in London...?

</comment><comment><USER84> The music is also a factor of what the manager feels like playing. I know that sometimes they can change to a different station and change the volume, though they'll always claim they can't.

I've had to leave Starbucks on several occasions because the speakers were blaring. Other times the musical selection is the opposite of "easy listening", like you're working in a club or something.

</comment><comment><USER85> This seems like a problem that could be solved by noise cancelling earbuds that could allow people to filter in things like people talking to them, but filter out background noise.

I've experienced a similar problem at work actually, but with people with loud voices. I've wished for an earbud set that could let me dial the volume down or run certain voices through a vocoder.

</comment><comment><USER86> Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starbucks/comments/ah2m1d/if_i_have...](https://www.reddit.com/r/starbucks/comments/ah2m1d/if_i_have_to_hear_hamilton_one_more_time_im/) (I couldn't find any other one than the one linked in the article).

</comment><comment><USER87> I read an article recently that telling children what to eat doesn't work well, neither does letting them pick everything. But - if you give them a choice of 'A or B' \- it seems to work better.

Perhaps stores ought to a) provide some variety and b) let the staff have at least some influence.

'Here's a massive list of music - you make the playlists from this'

</comment><comment><USER88> During my early Apple days, I worked in a lab with around 30 Macs engaged in automated restart testing. BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG

</comment><comment><USER89> Stayed at Disney this summer. Visited a gift shop /store for some milk and the Disney employee asked me if I noticed the music. Confused I was like "uhhh sure", she excitedly told me they just updated the music and it was clearly making her day.

</comment><comment><USER90> I spent years working retail in a CVS. Hamilton's got nothing on off-brand Christmas music.

<comment><USER91> Worked at Walgreens during high school. I'll take waterboarding over having to hear 'Train - Drops of Jupiter' ever again.

<comment><USER92> That's a bad one, but I got one better... Pompei by that terrible singer I'll never listen to voluntarily. That song is worse than Kars for Kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> noise pollution is a real problem at my work place as well. The whole open concept and crappy ventilation system has caused me many headaches. I dont even listen to the radio on my way back home because how exhausted the whole day at the office has made me

</comment><comment><USER94> I totally agree with this. As a high school kid I used to work at Toys R Us, we'd broadcast a mix tape that would be changed maybe once every two months? This meant hearing Margaritaville 3-4 times a day every day I worked. It could drive you mad.

</comment><comment><USER95> I've noticed this same thing when I go to restaurants or some cafes to work, especially chains. I find myself so annoyed by the music in just a few hours, I have to leave. But maybe that is the point? I feel sorry for the employees, though.

</comment><comment><USER96> I still have a reaction to the Proclaimers 500 Miles, because my boss at my bookstore job played that virtually every shift. Or Garth Brooks. I go to the bathroom or excuse myself from the room when either comes on.

<comment><USER97> I really hope you've seen the How I Met Your Mother scene with that song.

[https://youtu.be/QYpSniiZhpg](https://youtu.be/QYpSniiZhpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> The worst job in the world if you hate repetitive music would be working in a shopping mall. For 3 solid months before Christmas they play every Christmas song you've ever heard over and over again.

</comment><comment><USER99> This does not surprise me at all, I sometimes work from a local pub during the day maybe once every 14 days, and even I can memorize the playlist and it drives me nuts if I'm there without headphones.

</comment><comment><USER100> Customers, too.

</comment><comment><USER101> This is a normal part of working retail. I'll forever have Smooth by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas etched into my memory from my time working at Blockbuster Video in the early 2000s

</comment><comment><USER102> I once quit a job in part because the building manager insisted on playing one playlist of 90's soft-rock. He said it was part of the "brand".

Same songs...every day.

</comment><comment><USER103> it's only a matter of time before we all have bone-conducting headphones and can wirelessly receive/send sounds to each other (and choose our own music at work)

<comment><USER14> We have headphones now and people still rudely insist on broadcasting their music to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Relevant comedy skit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkrL42R7gk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkrL42R7gk)

</comment><comment><USER105> "Paid for by Tim Hortons"

</comment><comment><USER106> I sympathize with these employees, but isn't this somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things? It's not like Starbucks is trying to brain-wash their employees via the Hamilton soundtrack.

<comment><USER107> Isn't eveything somewhat unimportant in the grand scheme of things?

<comment><USER106> No. There are real abuses in this world that need our attention much more than this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> There's nothing worse than quirky alternative music.

</comment><comment><USER109> I'm going to teach you all a hack.

You can ask the employees at Starbucks (and most semi-reasonable coffeeshops) to turn the music down.

Yes, I know, it's amazing what you can get by using your words.

<comment><USER110> Do you recommend a condescending attitude at all times or just this time?

<comment><USER109> Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the music at your local Starbucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> If you don't like it, don't work there.

<comment><USER29> I am guessing you also have an issue with people being on unemployment?</comment></comment>


"This is my favorite "Hello World" how-to of all time" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/546540497724907520 <comment><USER2> I'm no fan of Java EE, but a "hello, world" Rails app would have a similarly complicated walkthrough if "rails new" made you choose which subsystems to include, and the tutorial described what each choice meant. (And if it also covered setting up and configuring the author's editor of choice.)

Just about any software development environmment (including JS in a web browser) is ferociously complex by the standards of, say, the 1980s. The messiness of a "getting started" guide for an app framework has more to do with the quality of the packaging than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember a couple of years back, when I was between jobs, I decided learning Java EE might improve my chances in the job market. I found a PDF book called "The Java EE Tutorial" (originally published by Addison-Wesley, don't remember the author(s)) on Sun's web site and fetched it.

I first was kind of shocked that a book with the word "Tutorial" in the title had about 1100 pages. What really made me walk away, though, was the freaking _flow chart_ that accompanied the book's table of contents, showing how the reader should work his or her way through the book depending on prior knowledge.

There are probably situations where Java EE is the way to go, but those are probably the kind of situations where your application is going to be so huge and complex that the bloat and complexity of Java EE is not going to make much of a difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> J2EE is a monstrosity, but this also highlights the point that we should stop using Hello World as an example for everything.

Enterprise software is inherently about "big" systems - for some definition of big. Using Hello world as an exemplar only sets up a strawman ripe for ridicule.

That said, the J2EE community does have a somewhat larger commonly known sample app - the Petstore - which ended up being a way to beat up J2EE more or less.

<comment><USER5> J2EE has a lot of moving parts, for better or worse. I totally agree that calling a framework tutorial Hello World sets the wrong expectation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...we hope that now you have an impression of how to develop Java EE applications in IntelliJ IDEA."

We sure do now!

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the tooling in this case is about as good as it gets - independent of the tools used, writing Java EE "by the spec" has traditionally been painful independent of the IDE used.</comment></comment>


Chilean Earthquake shifts earth's axis; shortens day by few milliseconds. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-01/chilean-quake-likely-shifted-earth-s-axis-nasa-scientist-says.html

<comment><USER2> I think heading is somewhat mistaken. Day is shorter by 1.26 MICRO-seconds. It's the axis that has moved by 2.7 milliARCseconds. See quote below.

"The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)," Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches)."</comment>