Is Vine Instagram for Video? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fredstevenssmith.com/2013/01/28/is-vine-instagram-for-video/

<comment><USER2> Vine is the video equivalent of the carefully cropped Facebook photo.

The narcissistic services like Twitter and Facebook haven't really had a video equivalent. By limiting the videos to 6 seconds people will be able to post little videos without requiring the talent or effort to make something longer that people will be willing to watch.

Just as the reddit front page has become dominated by meme images that require little brain power to consume, Vine will ideal for LOL videos posted by people. I suspect it will be very successful.

Also, the OP says "Instagram makes everyone 'creative'." Seriously?

<comment><USER3> You're right. The ease of content creation is the initial appeal for the masses. Then those who are or want to be more creative can rise above others, and create consumable content that's clever, entertaining, beautiful, fun, etc..

<comment><USER2> Yes. People who are creative will use the medium (in this case 6 second videos) in interesting ways. Of course, Vine will highlight those videos as examples of how great the service is.

There's really no difference between this and giving everyone a box of Crayolas: most people will produce crap, a few will be Picasso. The ease of sharing your creation is the key element.

<comment><USER3> I was never good at crayons. I can definitely hit 'Record' on my phone though and point it at things I find interesting or beautiful, that surely some others will find interest in as well.

<comment><USER4> If you can do it well, that's quite a talent!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw Vine I instantly thought of Cinegram [1]. Basically it's like Vine but it allows you to selectively animate portions of the video. This leads to lots of hilarious gif-like clips which IMO are much more shareable (and addictive) than Vine.

[1] <http://cinemagr.am/>

<comment><USER6> yeah, every day since vine launched I keep thinking, why not GIFs. With the maximum mainsteam acceptance/resurgence of GIFs these days, it seems like cinegram and GIFboom are already doing this. GIFs also embed/shareable etc. Same 6-second capture/edit/post process too. Hmmmm

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like the insights and mostly agree.

I think you missed an interesting point, though:

Can Twitter (or Facebook, or anyone else for that matter) still build the next big thing internally? Are these companies still as 'startup' as they think they are, or are they now too slow and bureaucratic to come up with products unrelated to their own core functionality?

A follow question: should they even come up with the new cool thing, or should they focus on their core offerings and simply buy break out successes when they are apparent?

In my opinion, both FB and Twitter are overestimating their chances here, like any incumbent always does (see Christensen). The questions "what if Google does this" is dismissed by every founder, because obviously Google is too focused on its core mission to make the success of a new social app the forefront of its development efforts.

Both companies are focusing more and more on being platforms for others, rather than building and testing all new paradigms themselves. This is what being the incumbent allows you to do, taking much larger risks, with larger payoffs. Launching a lot of small apps with cool ideas certainly shouldn't be their core business when they need to figure out how to deal with their growing developer ecosystem (again, something both companies are struggling with).

Acting on fear, which both companies did with their recent apps, certainly isn't the right strategy. But maybe I'm wrong and Twitter and Facebook are the only companies that can escape the innovator's dilemma?

BTW - Google is doing fine on that front with self driving cars and rockets, despite their not so apparent track record in social.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they can, no. But twitter didn't build vine, they acquired it. Can twitter and Facebook acquire the next big thing? Sure :)

<comment><USER7> Before it's the next big thing? That would mean acquiring all good small startups that are active in _some_ space they are interested in, without waiting for the decision on who's the best. Again, fear does not make good decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Vine is about forcing creativity and curation of the visual world around us. 6 seconds really limits the amount of content you include in order to tell a simple story. The 140 character limit on Twitter, whether purposeful or not initially, also forces this creativity and simplifying a message to give as much meaning possible in as little space possible.

Imagine if Twitter had / was able to acquire Instagram. That, plus Vine, and I'd say Twitter would be on their way to helping rapidly kill Facebook; Now Facebook's death with just be a bit slower, and they may own some more assets that might be worth something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. I'm surprised that Twitter didn't. I wonder what the story behind that is

<comment><USER8> Twitter actually were willing to offer more than Facebook, but something made Kevin go with Facebook's offer in the end.

I think it was Systrom who made carved out that path for Instagram, and not any reluctance on Twitter's part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have anything to back this up? Articles etc? I heard lack of liquidity was the issue

<comment><USER8> I didn't post the link at first, because I couldn't find it in my bookmarks, but I got lucky with my Google search:

        The people familiar with the negotiations said Twitter
        executives were shocked that they had not been given an
        opportunity[1] to present a counteroffer. They said
        Twitter was prepared to make higher offers [than $525M].

~ [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/technology/instagram- found...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/technology/instagram-founders- were-helped-by-bay-area-connections.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER3> Facebook's $1 billion offer being valid must have been contingent on not seeking a counter-offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 When people say things like "I thought it would be interesting to unpack Vine's success so far", what is "success" based on?

Is Vine a "success"/popular? How is this quantified?

<comment><USER8> It's popular the same way Quora is:

1\. People like Techcrunch are talking about it.

2\. (...)

3\. Success!

<comment><USER9> Step 1.5: Trendy SV/SF people starting tweeting and blogging about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why no mention of Keek in any of these Vine discussions? It's the closest competitor in functionality and has some serious traction in the microvideo space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. dmor wrote about this yesterday [http://refer.ly/is_twitter_s_vine_launch_a_response_to_popul...](http://refer.ly/is_twitter_s_vine_launch_a_response_to_popular_social_video_service_keek_/c/51bd750a68c511e2bfbf22000a1db8fa)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One point I didn't explicitly make in the post: Vine is not about gifs, it's about video.

<comment><USER11> Though I wouldn't be against it if it were gifs really... I kind of like the videos without sound more.

<comment><USER12> I didn't realize there was audio in Vine until this morning. I always have my phone on mute and didn't think to try the app out with mute off. I prefer it with mute on, specifically because the sound takes away from the experience because it's clips of sound stitched together, which does not sound very nice.

<comment><USER13> That was my reaction. When vinepeek.com was posted over the weekend I thought it was fantastic.

It was only later when showing it to my family I realized there was sound, since my laptop is always muted if I'm not actively listening to something on it.

Withou the sound, it was sort of like amazing slice-of-life home movies from all over the world in a neat little mash up of humanity.

With the sound... it was a bunch of videos. Often neat, but somehow less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it is an interesting choice. I may be wrong, but when I saw the first Vines shared by Kevin Rose on twitter they were without sound. I think it was a conscious effort to differentiate themselves from gifs, and all the internet baggage that come with them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hasn't Apple banned it yet? And if not, why not? I find the double standard appalling.

<comment><USER3> Politics? Apple might be trying to buy Twitter.

<comment><USER15> It seems as though a lot of App Store features can be quite political. Everything is oriented around US front page position -- it can bring in ~10K downloads a day in the US without much marketing.

In order to endorse content like that however, Apple wants to know that the app can handle the traffic and the server costs. If they know you are a big company, or even a funded startup, it plays a role in the selection process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wrote the same thing yesterday. It will be very interesting to see how this battle for video pans out.

<http://lukethomas.com/vine-is-for-storytelling/>

<comment><USER15> Hey Luke,

I make a storytelling app, so I've thought a lot about story telling apps in the past. I understand how you see it as a storytelling medium, but do you really think it's an efficient one? A great one? Could you really make a powerful story using Vine? I'm still unsure, but I think they are going to have a pretty hard time conveying a powerful narrative with it.

Here's a couple examples made with our app, would love to hear your thoughts: <http://backspac.es/r/sKu44BhXgn>, <http://backspac.es/r/klfmvMdWD1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it another monument to narcissism? Yeah, seems to be.

</comment><comment><USER18> One question: Was Vine completely cultivated at Twitter? Or was it something they snapped up in very early stages from someone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> AFAIK no, it was in a fairly late (pre-launch) beta stage before being acquired, and raised a seed round from GV among others (hence Kevin Rose posting Vines when it was still in private beta).

<comment><USER18> Right - I noticed Rose's Vines go back as far as 130 days. Figured he (and GV) was involved as an investor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a possibility the whole Vine adult content hiccup was just a publicity stunt?

<comment><USER20> I believe so. For them an instant thing they could do is just ban certain tags such as #porn and others that still work. I believe it is a calculated thing they are doing. However it does put them at risk of being banned from the App Store like 500px so perhaps not. Perhaps they do not have the resources to deal with the problem.

<comment><USER21> Banning tags doesn't solve anything. It simply encourages dishonesty and makes it harder to keep track of the unwanted posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> P.S. You're wrong about Google's social efforts bombing. They are filling in a need.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to see some data that supports what you're saying

<comment><USER21> [http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/google-becomes-the-worlds- secon...](http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/google-becomes-the-worlds-second-most- popular-social-network-28-01-2013/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Excellent!

</comment><comment><USER23> Vine is a Privacy nightmare</comment>


Google Engineer bails out student in jail - <AUTHOR> http://neil.fraser.name/news/2010/12/23/ <comment><USER2> 25% of the world population in jail is American. 737 out of 100.000 Americans are in jail, that's almost one out of a hundred. As a comparison Denmark has 59 out of 100.000 people in jail. And the number of Americans in jail has been rising steadily for the last 20 years.

This is a pretty serious problem.

<comment><USER3> And yet, somehow, over the last 20 years the crime rate in the US has dropped tremendously. Every single one of those prisoners was convicted of some crime or another by a comparatively just court system.

The underlying problem--criminality in some American cultures--is difficult and rather unique to the United States. Other rich countries are more culturally homogenous and hence suffer less criminality, though that's changing if you look, for instance, at Scandinavia, where the rate of rapes has risen dramatically as more and more Muslims immigrate there.

<comment><USER4> Many of those crimes are drug crimes, which are only a crime because we've chosen to make them so. It's not all that hard to change a law to make a certain group of people whose habits you dislike criminals.

<comment><USER3> There are definitely elements of this involved; I just challenge the idea that this is the whole story. If you're comparing the US to a country where drugs are legal, of course the US crime and incarceration rates are going to be higher on account of that fact. That's not the comparison being offered, though.

<comment><USER5> Drugs are not legal in Denmark.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that was roughly my point. If drugs were legal in Denmark, we'd be able to say "of course the US crime and imprisonment rates are higher than Denmark's because the US considers drug use to be a crime and Denmark doesn't". But, since drugs _are_ illegal in Denmark, Danish drug dealers contribute to the Danish crime rate (and imprisonment rate, when caught) just as American drug dealers contribute to the American crime rate (and imprisonment rate, when caught).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case you're (like me) wondering what "attempted lynching" means in the context of the article, consider yourself enlightened by the California Penal Code:

      405a.  The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful
      custody of any peace officer is a lynching.

      405b.  Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable
      by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.

I can't imagine this is what the law was written to be used for, given the usual connotation of lynching.

<comment><USER7> The part about "attempted lynching" results from an accusation that the student yelled "Kick her (the police officer's) ass!" during the confrontation. At least that makes the charge make sense, though of course who knows if it's true or not.

Details were linked off the linked page-

[http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks- attempt...](http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks-attempted- lynching-case/)

<comment><USER8> New goal in life: if I ever have children, don't send them to LAUSD schools. Schools with armed police at the door are undesirable -- borderline tolerable if they're there to protect from outsiders, but if they're needed to control the students, something is seriously wrong.

<comment><USER9> You're lucky that you have the choice to send your kids to a different school (as do I, and most HN readers). The people who don't have this choice, also disproportionately have children who need to be controlled by police (leaving the families without a choice, but with non-feral children, as unfortunately bystanders).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [From: [http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks- attempt...](http://www.laweekly.com/2010-12-09/news/jeremy-marks-attempted- lynching-case/)]

The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his "attempted lynching" of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles.

The second is that Marks' weapon was the camera in his cell phone.

The third is that Officer Robles' own actions helped turn an exceedingly minor wrongdoing — a student smoking at a bus stop — into a state prison case.

\---

Edit to add: Jeremy wasn't smoking, just recording the cop (which is legal in his state)(wo)man-handling the smoker.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't live in the US but when I read that kind of story or how Bradley Manning is treated (regardless of whether he's guilty or not), it really looks like the US is acting like the worst kind of police state or despotism (where the despot would be a mixture of corporations and corrupt media/politicians).

<comment><USER12> Keep in mind that the US is a very distributed system. You can have a local District Attorney who decides to pursue cases like this, but in the next jurisdiction over, you could very well have a DA who is an entirely reasonable person and would never allow something like this to happen.

Eventually these things usually get sorted out in some higher court, but that can take years and can really mess up a person's life in the meantime. Especially if that person is poor, unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> Well, as long as some people aren't being abused, the system is fine and in no need of repair.

<comment><USER14> Not the point he was trying to make.

There are plenty of flaws, but there are different avenues available other than what the GP mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While people sometimes knock the Reddit community on here this is an impressive example of Redditors really helping people. Great job to the founders and everyone who put Reddit together, for all the sarcasm and jokes about it it's really cool to see stories like this.

Most importantly, good luck to this kid!

</comment><comment><USER16> There are just so many WTF moments in this story.

1) Why are police involved with a kid smoking at school? Kids caught smoking when I was in HS got after school detention.

2) There seems to be zero respect for the police officer. At what point did kids quit respecting police and did the police lose that respect?

3) The DA actually bringing charges against someone who just looks to have been idly filming the event. Where are charges against the more rowdy people?

4) The judge letting this case go forward.

<comment><USER17> People in the US lost respect for police officers when they became bullies. Either they're giving law-abiding citizens tickets or they are killing and injuring suspects in their custody. Yes, I know, it's not all cops. But, there are too many of these stories in the news. Young people, especially those that hang out on reddit, will definitely have the sense that cops are just bad.

I live in Oakland, CA. Lots of crime here, but the beat cops spend most of their time generating revenue and hassling people unlikely to be dangerous (to them). It is pretty pathetic.

EDIT: an example (from the 80's)

I was in a bad part of Oakland one day, driving down a one-way street (2 lanes). A couple of blocks in front of me was a cop waving everyone on the street over to the side. Each one of us (20+ people) got a ticket. Mine was for "straddling the lanes", even though I protested that I was changing lanes because I saw him standing in my lane. I realized that he was just making something up.

I contested the ticket and he didn't show up. He knew he had no leg to stand on.

How many of the people in that poor neighborhood did that? How many just ignored the ticket and were later arrested on a bench warrant? Really pathetic. That's the day I lost respect for them. (And, this happened in the early 80's.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love this quote, why he did this: "One of the things I learned was that bad things can only happen if good people do nothing. I consider myself to be a good person, so I had no choice but to act when I saw something like this happening."

</comment><comment><USER19> When I've heard mention of Neil Fraser in the past I've thought of his awesome MobWrite project. But now I'll think of what he did for this kid and his family.

Makes one think about what one wants to be known for.

<comment><USER20> I know of him because of <http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/> which is best in its class by a longshot. And it's a very awesome class of a library: a powerful text diff tool with implementations in multiple languages. Haven't read TFA yet but I'm expecting I'll be even more impressed by him when I get done reading it.

Edit: read the article. What an amazing contribution to justice! I'm especially glad to hear of Google matching some legal funds. By the way, he's likely to get the bail money back.

<comment><USER21> The bail and nicely commented code. now you can't not like the guy!

<comment><USER20> If you don't like heroes, you could not like the guy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, I think we're going to need a constitutional right to videotape on- duty cops or something one of these days.

That, and more people who refuse to convict anyone for "resisting arrest", especially when that's the _only_ charge and none of the cops are injured. Doubly so if only the suspect is injured.

I realize they charged them with "attempted lynching" here, but "resisting arrest" is by far the more common charge. Mind you, I'm not saying that one can't resist arrest or that it shouldn't be a crime, only that I wish more people were wise to the abuse of that charge and that they knew to look for warning signs that it's being used abusively. Specifically, I would consider it to be a warning sign if: no cops are injured, there's heavily injured suspect especially when they're disproportionately injured compared to the hypothetical threat they might pose to an officer (two large cops shouldn't be very threatened by a small, unarmed kid), no weapons are found or alleged to have been seen, officer say-so is the only evidence of the crime, suspect is charged with no crime except resisting, contradictory or non-existent testimony about what they were arresting for to begin with and any other contradictions in the evidence.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's probably worthwhile to have some familiarity with how the arrest/jail/lawyer process works beforehand. While for most people it is a low-frequency event, it's not good to learn about the process for the first time while in jail!

The key is: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912#...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912#docid=-4097602514885833865) <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6014022229458915912#>

<comment><USER23> Disclaimer: I Am Not A Laywer

It's also good to familiarize yourself with the distinctions between detention and arrest.

In the United States, "detention" is whenever police temporarily restrict someone's rights based on an "articulable" suspicion that a crime has occurred. Police can detain anyone at any time if they have an articulable suspicion, but only for a short period of time, and they cannot search the belongings or vehicles of people in detention without consent (many cops will try to obtain consent by saying things like "let me see what's in your bag," but you are well within your rights to verbally deny consent). A good way to establish if you're being detained is to ask the officer if you're free to go. If not, you should then ask why you're being detained, and memorize the response. This is the "articulable suspicion" that the officer is supposed to have before detaining you.

"Arrest" occurs when "any reasonable person" would feel that they are not free to leave. The distinction between detainment and arrest is subtle, but if you're being handcuffed or put into a police vehicle, your belongings or vehicle are being searched after you have denied consent, or you are detained for an extended period of time, then you're under arrest. Crucially, police are not required to make any formal declaration of your arrest, nor are they required to read you your Miranda rights (though they are required to read them if they wish to question you). If you feel that you're under arrest, your best course of action is to state that you refuse to speak and wish to see an attorney. You can repeat this as often as is necessary. They're not allowed to question you after you say this, but only if don't say anything else. If you do, then you've waived your right to silence. The only exception is that you are allowed to give your name and address in order to be released with a promise to appear in court. If you do give that information, immediately follow it by repeating that you will remain silent until an attorney is present.

Again, I Am Not A Lawyer, although all of this information does come from lawyers who give talks about civil liberties. None of these talks are online, but most of the above is explained in more detail on an actual lawyer's website[1].

[1]: <http://www.williamweinberg.com/lawyer-attorney-1127658.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You can talk about the privatization of the penal system as yielding degenerate incentives but ultimately it's up to the police on the streets to get them into the system.

If there's no dead body, damaged/missing property or even an aggrieved person (as in this case) what problem are the police trying to solve by capriciously jailing people?

What's the incentive here?

<comment><USER25> Since the _real_ crime he committed was obviously "contempt of cop", the incentive for the cop is to encourage people to kowtow properly, by showing them what happens when you don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is why you use a livestream tool like Ustream or JustinTV so your video evidence can't be destroyed.

</comment><comment><USER27> Mike Konczal has posted an interesting chart suggesting a link between economic freedom and prison:

[http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the- conservative-w...](http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the-conservative- world-view-and-prison-populations-war-on-drugs/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I liked the statement he made, "Bad things can only happen if good people do nothing".

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd already noted Neil Fraser as an open source star <http://www.pixelbeat.org/misc/google_stars.html> but now see he's an all around great guy

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how the situation will evolve as cameras that can stream to the cloud are introduced into the marketplace. I imagine it cant be more then 10 years away.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone knows what was the bail out amount?

<comment><USER32> $155,000, according to the linked story. Fraser paid $50,000, which he'll get back when the kid makes his court dates. The alternative was paying 10% and not getting it back, which I didn't know was standard policy. (Most of what I know about bail bonds comes from Jackie Brown.)

<comment><USER33> It's the policy of the bondsman, not the court. You basically pay the bondsman 10% of the bond in exchange for them posting the rest of it.

Some people skip the hearing, and then the bondsman is out the money, so they keep the 10% to cover their risk.

I don't know how the $50,000 number works - it seems the bond company is paying the rest of it, but I don't know what they get in return.

<comment><USER34> >>so they keep the 10% to cover their risk.

The bondsman doesn't simply absorb the 90% loss if you skip, that's where Boba Fett comes in. I believe if the bondsman's bounty hunters catch up to you before the police do, he gets back the money that was put up.

<comment><USER33> Actually I believe the bondsman gets the money either way (cops or bounty hunter) - but the bondsman has to pay the bounty hunter, and the 10% helps cover that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> or this guy's lawyer was benign or the system is really screwed up.

I would really like to read the analysis of the judge to justify that one.

</comment><comment><USER35> We need tiny spy camera attachments which work on bluetooth with your cellphone. These should be cheap to make (a couple of bucks) and everyone should have one with their phones. This way we can record without police knowing.

</comment><comment><USER36> lol at the US! Sounds like the police in a third world state.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, I've never heard of charges being maliciously fabricated against a perceived enemy of the local authoritarians anywhere else. Not even in Sweden.</comment></comment>


Siggraph2019 Geometric Algebra (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX4H_ctggYo <comment><USER2> Here are some direct links to some of the PGA (Projective Geometric Algebra) resources mentioned in the talk:

1\. The 2D and 3D cheat sheets are here: [https://bivector.net/doc.html](https://bivector.net/doc.html)

2\. The talk is also available in "paper form" on the arXiv: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.05873](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.05873)

3\. Ganja.js repo [https://github.com/enkimute/ganja.js](https://github.com/enkimute/ganja.js) and the associated demos in the Ganja coffee shop [https://enkimute.github.io/ganja.js/examples/coffeeshop.html](https://enkimute.github.io/ganja.js/examples/coffeeshop.html)

____

For more background about the concepts like quaternions, projective geometry, and exterior algebra, etc. that are all united in PGA, you can check this nice book by Jean Gallier and Jocelyn Quaintance: [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/gbooks/geomath.html](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/gbooks/geomath.html) direct link [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/math- deep.pdf](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/math-deep.pdf) I haven't read, but sampled it on several topics and found the explanations to be very good.

(edit) first-added links specific to PGA, and typo fix s/external/exterior/

<comment><USER3> As the author of the arxiv preprint referred to above, I would like to point out a newer, expanded version written for the Siggraph 2019 course. It's available here: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334397782_Course_no...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334397782_Course_notes_Geometric_Algebra_for_Computer_Graphics_SIGGRAPH_2019)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, "Geometric Algebra for Electrical and Electronic Engineers" is short and sweet: [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6876131?arnumber=687613...](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6876131?arnumber=6876131)

> This tutorial paper provides a short introduction to geometric algebra, > starting with its history and then presenting its benefits and exploring its > applications.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is an informative critique of this video along with an improved application of geometric algebra to computer geometry:

[http://terathon.com/blog/projective-geometric-algebra- done-r...](http://terathon.com/blog/projective-geometric-algebra-done-right/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this blog post and the cheat sheet [http://terathon.com/pga_lengyel.pdf](http://terathon.com/pga_lengyel.pdf)

I agree the representation chosen in the SIGGRAPH lecture and the associated docs seems somewhat unnatural and counter-intuitive (why are points being represented as trivectors?).

Have you reached out to C. Gunn or S. De Keninck to ask what they think about the representation you propose in that blog post and the geometric product ⟑ and antiproduct ⟇ ? If the representations are equivalent and one is closer to concepts people already understand (e.g. points being (x,y,z,w), with w=1), then maybe adopting the simpler representation would lead to wider adoption of the ideas.

Alternatively, maybe they will point out some other reasons why points-as- trivectors representation is preferable.

<comment><USER6> Your welcome, ivah_ah.

I approached the SIGGRAPH presenters immediately after their talk last year to try to explain that the whole thing could be done without swapping the geometrical meanings of vectors and trivectors. They were very dismissive at the time, but I think they have now accepted the formulation I've introduced leads to exactly the same mathematics with the only differences being in naming and numbering.

I don't see the math as one algebra with the geometric product and a "dual" algebra with the geometric antiproduct. I see it as a single algebra with two products existing simultaneously. It's important to understand that there are lots of symmetries in geometric algebra, and for each one, both sides of the symmetry are equally significant, and the universe doesn't prefer one over the other. The most fundamental symmetry is that each basis element can _simultaneously_ be viewed as containing some "full" dimensions and some "empty" dimensions. In 4D space, you can think of this as a 4-bit quantity where 1 means full and 0 means empty. (These are what the black and white bars represent on my poster.) Four bits means 16 different basis elements can be formed by selecting which dimensions are full. Scalars have no full dimensions, vector basis elements have one full dimension, bivector basis elements have two full dimensions, trivector basis elements have three full dimensions, and antiscalars (which are 4D volume elements or quadrivectors) have all four full dimensions. At the same time, you can view these from the opposite perspective and say that scalars have all four empty dimensions, vectors have three empty dimensions, bivectors have two empty dimensions, trivectors have one empty dimension, and antiscalars have no empty dimensions. The important thing to understand about the relationship between the geometric product and the geometric antiproduct is that the first one performs operations on full dimensions, and the other one performs exactly the same operations on empty dimensions. With regard to the degenerate metric, anything containing a full w-dimension (corresponding to e4 in my work) squares to zero under the geometric product, and anything containing an empty w-dimension squares to zero under the geometric antiproduct.

Since the two approaches (the SIGGRAPH approach and my approach) are both valid and produce the same mathematics, I prefer to stick with the approach that keeps points = 4D vectors, lines = 4D bivectors, and planes = 4D trivectors because we're simply adding one projective dimension to everything. This is an extension of the concept of homogeneous coordinates that has long been established in computer graphics. Here, the dimensionality of a projective geometric object corresponds directly to the grade of the associated element in the algebra, which counts the number of _full_ dimensions. In the SIGGRAPH approach, the dimensionality of a projective geometric object corresponds to the grade subtracted from four, which counts the number of _empty_ dimensions. It's a mirror image. Like I said earlier, the universe doesn't care which approach you use, and to claim that one is a more natural choice than the other is erroneous. The only thing we can do is choose one to be the agreed-upon convention and stick to it in the same sense that everybody agrees to use the right-hand rule for cross products instead of an equally valid left-hand rule.

I'll be giving a talk about all of this at the GDC 2020 Math Summit on March 17.

<comment><USER7> Does your GDC talk have a name yet? I'd like to keep an eye out for it.

<comment><USER6> It's called "Projective Geometric Algebra and Dual Quaternions", and it's on Tuesday, March 17 at 1:20 pm.

[https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/math-in-game- development...](https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/math-in-game-development- summit-projective-geometric-algebra-and-dual-quaternions-/874154)

<comment><USER7> Given GDC is postponed are you planning to wait out and see if it's successfully rescheduled or otherwise? I've been on a bit of a GA binge recently and am especially curious what arguments might be presented for adoption in the context of game development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those interested - In a few weeks, 26-27-28 February, there is a (free) workshop featuring talks and workshops from Leo Dorst, Anthony Lasenby, Charles Gunn, Steven De Keninck (the lecturer from this vid - disclaimer - thats me), Vincent Nozick, Dietmar Hldenbrand, Hugo Hadfield and Eric Wieser.

They'll be talking about their research on applications of GA in robotics, AI, CS, physics, graphics.

more info : [https://bivector.net/game2020.html](https://bivector.net/game2020.html)

Everyone welcome !

<comment><USER9> Near the end of your Siggraph 2019 talk (excellent, thanks), an audience member mentions an IEEE Spectrum article "Geometric Algebra for Electrical and Electronic Engineers". What is the author's surname that you mention?

Peter Yolks? Jolts? Holt? Oates?

For me, multiple searches have yielded no results for a similar author name so far.

Specifically, there does not appear to be any such article on IEEE Spectrum [1], but there is one on Proceedings of the IEEE [2] whose listed authors do not include anyone named Peter.

Curious because you go on to state that his work is readily available. That caught my attention, so I became interesting in finding out more.

[1] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/searchContent?query=Geometric+Alge...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/searchContent?query=Geometric+Algebra&max=10&page=0&types=Article&q=Geometric+Algebra)

[2] [https://proceedingsoftheieee.ieee.org/most- downloaded/geomet...](https://proceedingsoftheieee.ieee.org/most- downloaded/geometric-algebra-for-electrical-and-electronic-engineers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This video is the best thing I watched in the past few years. Last time I loved something that much was Geoffrey Hintons course about deep learning back in 2015.

It is eye opening, just like in the beginning of mainstream deep learning, it made me wonder "why didn't we discover this before?" It elegantly solves so many annoyances about geometry, maths and physics.

I've been evangelizing Geometric Algebra like crazy since I found this video, including in hacker news comments.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Besides Geometric Algebra, dual numbers also play a huge role in automatic differentiation -- the core building block of modern machine learning frameworks.

I really like the analogy in this talk about how Al-Khwarizmi's six quadratic equations simplify to just one, once we learn about negative numbers and zero.

In a lot of ways, geometric algebra (and dual numbers) are our discovery of "negative numbers and zero", but for the 21st century.

<comment><USER12> >also play a huge role in automatic differentiation

Could you extend more on how GA plays a role in this? I wish to learn more but don't know where to start. Any leads would be appreciated greatly.

<comment><USER13> In the video they present it as an algebraic framework where you can "add" to a number system elements x such that x^2 = -1, x^2 = 0, or x^2 = 1. Adding the element x^2 = -1 to the real numbers gives you the complex numbers, with x = i. Adding the element x^2 = 0 to the real numbers gives you the dual numbers with x = epsilon, which is what can be used for automatic differentiation. The case of x^2 = 1 is more complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article from the same presenter here: [https://www.groundai.com/project/projective-geometric- algebr...](https://www.groundai.com/project/projective-geometric-algebra-a- new-framework-for-doing-euclidean-geometry/1)

And for those who know conformal GA, see [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290437718_Geometric...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290437718_Geometric_Algebras_for_Euclidean_Geometry)

</comment><comment><USER15> Check out my geometric algebra software

[https://grassmann.crucialflow.com](https://grassmann.crucialflow.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> If this interests you, you should check out the bivector community [https://bivector.net/](https://bivector.net/) which is ran by the presenter of this lecture.

Join the discord [https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk](https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk).

Check out a demo [https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated- orbits](https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated-orbits)

</comment><comment><USER17> Highly recommended. Absolutely eye opening talk and set of resources.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does this solve the problem of consistency in computational geometry? I.e. point lies inside a polygon, but due to rounding errors, the point seems to lie outside the polygon, which might trigger e.g. a program crash.

<comment><USER19> No, but there are other ways of solving that. Setting rounding modes and bias values appropriately would prevent what you describe.

<comment><USER20> You mean dynamically setting rounding modes depending on what operation you're doing? How do you do this performantly while staring down the barrel of context switching, third party dependencies, programmers who are at least as dumb as I am...?

My general rule of thumb is that if your code might fail if someone swaps out IEEE 754 floating point semantics for some other representation that's at most as goofy as IEEE 754, your code is probably wrong.

<comment><USER19> Context switching preserves fpu modes. You set these inside inner loops where you aren't calling out to third party dependencies. Good libraries make this easy to work with.

This is exactly how IEEE 754 was designed to work, and is what all the major numerical libraries do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A good introduction:

[https://www.av8n.com/physics/clifford- intro.htm](https://www.av8n.com/physics/clifford-intro.htm)

Previous discussion on this topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200260)

</comment><comment><USER22> A recent discussion on HN related to GA in the context of removing quaternions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200260)</comment>


Ask HN: Release personal HN activity logs? - <AUTHOR>

HN is a site you fall back on when you don't feel like working, and measuring how often that happens could yield interesting insights. The trouble is, it's a hard thing to consciously measure because you get self-conscious. Would it be possible for dang and the others to release data, if it was ever collected, about individual users' history of activity? <comment><USER2> but such data would demonstrate that I myself am a total slacker.</comment>


Fight for Control of the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fab58818-e63a-11e1-ac5f-00144feab49a.html#axzz24qHJNDSz

<comment><USER2> Sadly thats behind a paywall. Good thing is, that the devs were either incompetent or didn't give a shit. Use this link:

>www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/fab58818-e63a-11e1-ac5f-00144feab49a,Authorised=true.html</comment>


I liked Microsoft better when they were assholes - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1251-i-liked-microsoft-better-when-they-were-assholes

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand how anyone can believe that Seinfeld only being in the first 2 was not their plan all along. It's not as if MS makes decisions one day, and then the ads are on TV the next.

They plan the ads, shoot them, and buy the slots months in advance. They're not pulling them like recalled toys from Wal-Mart shelves. If they had wanted more of them, they would have filmed them and purchased the ad slots months ago, and we'd be watching them next week no matter what the critical reaction to the first two.

TV studios don't just say "sure we'll refund your commercial payments because people didn't like your previous ads."

<comment><USER3> > They plan the ads, shoot them, and buy the slots months in advance. They're > not pulling them like recalled toys from Wal-Mart shelves. If they had > wanted more of them, they would have filmed them and purchased the ad slots > months ago, and we'd be watching them next week no matter what the critical > reaction to the first two.

In my previous life as a marketing manager I have seen ad campaigns get pulled. They could have shot different ads as a plan B. The ads we are seeing now might have been intended to follow a longer series of Seinfeld ads but got moved up. Or they might have been intended for smaller markets and were promoted.

It may be the case that Microsoft planned doing just two ads with Jerry all along, but I wouldn't say that not running a third Seinfeld ad is proof of this.

<comment><USER3> [http://valleywag.com/5051860/microsoft-ad-agency-confirms- ne...](http://valleywag.com/5051860/microsoft-ad-agency-confirms-new-seinfeld- ad-produced-yet-not-running)

I tried submitting this, but it was marked "Dead" immediately. Nice, it looks like HN knows when enough is enough!

<comment><USER4> valleywag links are automatically killed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, this article has basically no content whatsoever. It's 37signals, yeah. It's DHH, yeah. But should that really be enough to get any post to the HN frontpage?

<comment><USER6> However, I think the basic article premise (stated in the title), is something interesting and that nobody is saying. MS was cooler, even when it was cruel and dark. Now it's not even the dark lord, it's like a new IBM, and that's not going to attract a lot of attention.

<comment><USER2> Seems more the opposite to me. IBM doesn't do anything different than anyone else in their advertising. They just come out and say "IBM products are good." Also, IBM doesn't sell much to consumers, so they don't need or want to sound cool.

Microsoft is doing something different. And while all different is not cool, all cool is different. It's at least half way there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And who is David to say this? MS is one of the biggest companies in the world, makes billions in revenue, used by all major coorporations, and 37signals are just some tiny tiny fraction of that, and stopped innovating years ago and just live off marketing and PR.

So why should I pay attention to this tiny tiny company instead of the big successful one?

<comment><USER8> I bet you said that when Microsoft came along and took on IBM.

<comment><USER7> 37signals is really not an innovative company. They are a marketing company. They have one product that is not particular ground breaking, and they have several derivatives of that product. They have not invested their income in expanding or in any way becoming more significant than their blog.

Look at google. They started roughly like 37signals (well, not as much self- horn-tooting), but they kept expanding and innovating, and now they are huge. 37signals? They are about the same as when they started!

If they would spend less time talking and more time coming up with new innovative products, then I would start paying attention to them.

It feels to me almost as if it took them 3-4 months to add comments to their todo lists.

Microsoft was fast, agile and they innovated their way to the top. They came up with new products, they copied people and made things better, they released APIs, the offered SDKs. 37signals just writes on their blog.

If the loopt people told me stuff, I'd much rather listen to them than 37signals. 37signals is a slow slow company, they are not a product company, they are all about conferences, talks, books and blogging right now. And as an engineer, I'm sorry, but I don't respect such people, no matter how much money they make.

I want to see products. I want them to hit me with something that makes me say 'wow'. But what do they bring out? Campfire? What the hell is that? It's already there in outlook. There is nothing innovative about painting outlook pretty.

Even twitter is way more innovative than anything 37signals has ever put out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I believe Microsoft has the personality of Gates and when Gates just simply found out in life he didn't want to be an asshole anymore this caused Microsoft to lose direction.

The same thing happened to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. One day he just decided he was tired of being the asshole and said "spend it". He created a foundation to spend his money, there is a funny part in his biography where he was making money so fast his foundation could keep up spending it, causing Rockefeller consternation.

</comment><comment><USER10> _I pity the marketers working the Microsoft account. There's no way to win. If they go vague, they get people_ready. If they go edgy, they get panic and push back. Talk about a set of golden handcuffs._

Pity indeed. They're in a tough spot because MS has too many irons in their brand fire. The same company that sells Halo and Zunes sells BizTalk server.

They could probably fix this by breaking the corporate branding into several virtual companies; they could be sliced over 9000 different ways but at least getting the consumer entertainment and devices out into an "edgy" brand would alleviate the pain substantially.

I suspect that this is kind of what they're trying to do with the prefix naming they've done so much of over the last 3-5 years. I think "Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail" is an attempt to put a marque around them without making them look like they are separate companies for antitrust purposes.

<comment><USER2> I don't pity anyone making that money. Also, it's great publicity for them. If it works, they're on the gravy train for decades (though CP+B was already doing just fine).

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm sure CP+B is real upset with their 300MM account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pot meet kettle. (sorry to any 37s fans)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hubris, hubris...</comment>


Visual/Graphical programming is a failure. - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/augmented-programming/loeIjwWuCCA

<comment><USER2> Consider how having stuff behind a login requirement limits your readership. Maybe you don't care about the people who just click away, but be aware that some do.

Do you know how many? An interesting question.

Not only that, but less that 1/3 of the screen is actually showing the text. Completely unusable.</comment>


The coolness of Medium explained from a JSON - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tech-talk/89bc0d679c1a

<comment><USER2> There is an animated/blinking bar at the top of the page for about a minute. Quite annoying.</comment>


Tech writer suggests '10 Year Challenge' may be collecting data for algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/tech-writer-suggests-10-year-challenge-may-be-collecting-data-for-facial-recognition-algorithm-1.4259579 <comment><USER2> Related concept: I've long suspected that an ulterior motive behind bitcoin is to generate data needed to crack the SHA256 algorithm.

<comment><USER3> SHA256 hashes can be computed faster than line speed.

<comment><USER4> But bitcoin gives an incentive I don't believe that this is true even remotely but I can see how you can make some sort of a conjecture off this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original Wired article is here:

[https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-10-year-meme- challenge/](https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-10-year-meme-challenge/)

That was submitted here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18952882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18952882)

<comment><USER6> Alright, we've moved the comments there.</comment></comment>


NoAuth – Easy Authentication with Privacy - <AUTHOR> I have a question that I am unable to answer to my self the last days.
Any help and thoughts would help for sure. I am curious why nobody provides an authentication service that would work with OAuth 2.0/OpenID with privacy on it's centre. Let me explain my self further.
It would be lovely if there was a service where I could make an account, verify that I am a real human and then I could use them to login to various apps or platforms.
I would love to see a substitute of Facebook/Google login with data privacy in the centre. And for data to be safe and not distributed for advertising reasons, this service would need money to survive. So I would pay for that kind of a service.
Have anyone thought or worked on anything like this? Why it is not feasible so far? Any thoughts?
ProtonMail someone would say can be a way of implementing this, if we sign in with our ProtonMail email. So then, why they do not create an OAuth 2.0/OpenID services to let their users signup anywhere they want with ease? <comment><USER2> I thought about throwing something like this online, as I have my own openID provider that could sort of do this. Napkin thoughts:

Privacy isn't actually an easy one on this one. This provider would need to provide a way to "remember" you well enough to allow you to recover parts of your account (any of the credentials, basically). To do this, you do need to store a modicum of data about the user. Ideally: \- Email address or other form of contact \- Challenge-response (to prove you didn't just magically gain access to the email address) This alone provides huge problems if your goal is privacy, at least when managing the relationship between users of your service and you. You _will_ need to store some of that data, and you need to guarantee that it is safe.

On the link between you and the third-party applications, things get both easier and more complicated at the same time. The OpenID spec specifies that an id_token needs to contain the following, based on scope: \- email: email, email_verified \- profile: name, family_name, given_name, middle_name, nickname, preferred_username, profile, picture, website, gender, birthdate, zoneinfo, locale, updated_at In order to provide the privacy you're describing, there needs to be a way for a user, when going through the authentication flow, to allow, deny or spoof the data. Most websites requesting openID will not let you through the gates if you deny one of their scopes, for instance, so the service needs to be able to handle the spoofing part.

The data also needs to be impossible to cross-reference if a parameter is spoofed. Quick thoughts on that: \- The email spoofing must be unique per application ID \- The field spoofing must be unpredictable enough \- All fields of the id_token that can uniquely identify the user must be unique per app, to prevent cross-referencing. The token<->profile lookup must be able to understand this

On the whole, with careful thought about the scope of this, it might actually be pretty straightforward.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The OpenID spec specifies that an id_token needs to contain the following, > based on scope: - email: email, email_verified - profile: name, family_name, > given_name, middle_name, nickname, preferred_username, profile, picture, > website, gender, birthdate, zoneinfo, locale, updated_at

I understand the need of an email and other data, and that they can work as PKs in the Web/Mob apps' databases. But also those data are a medium to communicate with the actual user.

So again I am curious about why ProtonMail doesn't provide a mechanism like this. They have all the data, the brand and the credibility to run a service with the following business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I believe this can quite easily be done. The only issue I can see is adoption.

Websites are not gonna spend time and money on adding authentication by an other third party if this authentication system/service is not accessible by a huge amount of users. Like you said, most of the time what you can see is auth with Facebook and/or Google. That is because a huge amount of internet users have an account on one or both of those platforms and that makes it worth the money to add them to some website's auth system.

On the user's side, some users will agree to pay for a privacy focused auth system but that will still be very few users. This can be an attractive solution for a subset of the internet users who are more privacy aware. But, some users will want services to use the auth solution before they create an account.

It's a bit like an egg and chicken dilemma.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I believe this can quite easily be done. The only issue I can see is > adoption.

I believe the adoption will be from tech-oriented platform let's say for example Codepen, Brave and other if you can demonstrate the value proposition to the devs which are developing currently concerns about privacy. Privacy Invasion is real.

> But, some users will want services to use the auth solution before they > create an account.

This is true and in order to kickstart this, an OSS community could help a lot.</comment></comment>


Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-14/german-union-ig-metall-is-backing-youtubers-fighting-google <comment><USER2> YouTube does not employ creators; creators are utilizing YouTube's free service in order to broadcast their own content. Google demonetizes videos in order to be more appealing to _advertisers_ , ultimately the problem these creators have is that _advertisers_ are not willing to pay for their content. YouTube only makes money when the content creator does, so naturally they'd be happy to monetize anything they could.

<comment><USER3> The decision to demonetize is Google's.

Wouldn't a free market allow everyone to be in the mix, but advertisers would make the choice?

<comment><USER2> > _The decision to demonetize is Google 's._

Yes, but the decision is based on feedback from advertisers. In YouTube's ideal world, every single video on the site would be monetized, but this isn't possible because advertisers do not want their brand associated with controversial topics, especially those that concern very heated political debates.

> _Wouldn 't a free market allow everyone to be in the mix, but advertisers > would make the choice?_

The creators and advertisers have no obligation to work through YouTube. In fact, all of the big creators work directly with advertisers that are friendly to their content by editing sponsored content directly into the video.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe there is enough evidence available to state what Google is making its decisions based on. I think its somewhat safe to assume the first major round of demonitization (the original adpocolypse) was likely based on advertiser feedback, since the major complaints being made involved extremely inappropriate ad placement/tone for the videos they were being played on.

The more recent demonitizations have appeared more and more "proactive" in protecting Google, but due to the comments being made by the CEO of youtube, and by the patterns in the demonitizations its not unreasonable to suspect there maybe other factors outside of keeping advertisers happy.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but as I already noted, every popular video that is demonetized costs YouTube a lot of money because they stream the video to millions of viewers but get no revenue to offset the costs of hosting and streaming. We all know the most important thing to every corporation, including YouTube, is to make as much money as possible, so barring some strong evidence to suggest otherwise, we need no other explanation than the obvious one: advertisers don't want to pay for ads in controversial videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out Joerg Sprave's video [1] on this with him and the IG Metall lawyers. Joerg is the slingshot channel YouTuber who is helping lead the charge on this. In the video, they give a good breakdown on their demands and their strategy.

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZ5Kouj_hQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZ5Kouj_hQ)

<comment> dfeojm-zlib Definitely. I also came across that video via a shout-out from Forgotten Weapons:

[https://youtu.be/EUxxLZz_2NU](https://youtu.be/EUxxLZz_2NU)

I hope Dr. Richard Wolff interviews Youtube Union and IG Metall, because it's in his wheelhouse of workers organizing, co-ops and economics.

[https://youtube.com/democracyatwrk](https://youtube.com/democracyatwrk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see how this would work. Creators are from all across the world and many of them have to deal with wildly different issues due to a differing legal system. Furthermore, being a youtuber isn't something that's clearly defined either, because there are many that create content for a bit and then never create content again.

<comment><USER7> This is a solved problem, many unions are international. The AFL-CIO is the largest federation of unions in the US and is international.

<comment><USER8> unions have a history of internationalism aswell, considering their close ties to ideologies which have internationalism as a core tenant. (social democracy, socialism, communism etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did anyone ever thought of creating an external index of youtube videos so the recommendations are open source and aren't controlled by Youtube? Basically a table with links and other metadata

<comment><USER10> Doesn't seem like it would be easy without a firehose of metadata and I doubt Google would be amenable to providing that for a competing service.

At this point to enable that kind of competition would have to have legislative protection (e.g. a law similar to the UK one mandating banks/gas/electric companies have to provide APIs).

<comment><USER11> Selenium, click a video, store the suggested, verify what has been and hasn't been watched, move to the next, do the same etc... etc... Seems pretty easy to build a bot to do such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system.

Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges.

Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is providing them is looked at with great aversion (net neutrality), tech platforms have done a good job so far distancing what they do to other times of platforms but I believe we are all awakening to the power that these obtuse algorithms have on us.

<comment><USER13> It is pretty obvious that things like search results are manipulated to fit an agenda. Search Google Images for "white american family" and "black american family" and compare the results. You can replace "black american family" with indian or any other group and the results are similar.

There are many interracial couples under "white american family" and none under "black american family". The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective.

I don't think there is anything wrong with interracial families but I do think it is concerning that our search results are being subtly manipulated like this without most people knowing.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiousity I did just that. And aside from skin tone, I got identical sets of people in khakis and button-downs hugging in front of houses, white picket fences, and couches. And found interracial families under black, but not white.

Something something anecdote not data.

<comment><USER13> compare these I just did it again

[http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg](http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg) [http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg](http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg) [http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg](http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this kind of good for youtube? They've been struggling with better organization and would probably like to deal with one collective than many small youtubers. It would probably help with things like better overall quality, better understanding of legal issues like parodies, better communication, etc.

In a worst case scenario, how much can a union even hurt youtube? If they decided to go on strike, the barrier to entry is so low that people would easily fill up the void until the issue got resolved. Not to mention a lot of videos are things from tv shows and music videos that probably wouldn't be part of this union.

<comment><USER7> Power structures see other power structures as a threat. Google would like to be able to do what they want, whenever they want, without having to negotiate with another entity, or even worse, getting sued by another entity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else.

As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powerful. Businesses there are now devolving into repackaging jobs.

Now Youtube is doing the same. They used focus on being a search and distribution mechanism. Now they produce content, allow sponsorships, have more ads per minute of viewing then television, ... jobs there are again, repackaging jobs. Repackage scenes from movies, previews, upload documentaries, sports clips...

They both grew through the expansion of the long tail. The reality is: where are people in the long tail going to go to sell their repackaged stuff?

Nowhere. There's no other amazon. Ebay? The flea market of the internet? That's where people who wanted to sell to wal-mart go.

The only place for them to go would be to create their own online store, or their own website where people can watch their movies. Then you have to be found through...

... that's right, Google. Nope. That won't work either, because only AdWords sponsored content appears in Google searches anymore. Google wants you adding data snippets to google.com so people won't even visit your website.

The internet has turned to garbage. You're better off going to the library like the old days.

The internet has been ruined by the mainstream and the money grubbers.

It's just gross. So sad.

<comment><USER17> > Ebay? The flea market of the internet?

You disregard ebay but ebay actually has economic alignment with its sellers. The buyer experience isn't as good as Amazon's, but the seller experience is better in that you can control your destiny more.

But this apparently makes it a flea market?

There's going to be a tradeoff between curation and producer freedom. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER18> Apparently you took the flea market comparison as disparaging and it was intended that way. Why? What's wrong with flea markets? I shop there regularly and have sold there many times. I usually get great deals there on either side of the transaction. I can say the same about Ebay. For Ebay to be a kind of vast internet flea market seems like a good thing.

<comment><USER19> > Why? What's wrong with flea markets?

Low-quality goods and the increased possibility of scams.

<comment><USER18> I get plenty of low quality goods at Walmart and Amazon too, and plenty of scams as well. Sometimes it's the cheap goods I'm there for, and I don't expect high quality for that. Caveat emptor applies everywhere.

The problem comes when you don't realize you're digging through crap looking for pearls and imagine that it's all pearls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder why the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) hasn't weighed in on this whole sector at all. The exploitation of entertainers is not exactly a new issue, and it has been tackled by existing unions before.

<comment><USER7> SAG-AFTRA has weighed in on this issue, both to the press[1] and on their website[2].

From their site:

> _Do you create your own content on YouTube or other social media platforms?_

> _If a brand reaches out to promote their product (paid or product trade) on > your platform, that is a commercial and SAG-AFTRA can have your back._

> _SAG-AFTRA covers advertisements on all platforms. Get fair compensation, > access to health insurance and a team of experts making sure you are PAID!_

[1] [https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/08/15/sag-aftra-content- crea...](https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/08/15/sag-aftra-content-creator- protections/)

[2] [https://www.sagaftra.org/get-involved/ads-go- union/creators-...](https://www.sagaftra.org/get-involved/ads-go- union/creators-only)

<comment><USER16> So what you're saying is there already _is_ a union for content creators, they just need to _join_ it.

That seems like a way better approach. All content creators on the internet should join the _same_ union -- preferably one that already exists -- rather than recreate a wheel that will water down their message.

<comment><USER7> Competition is a good thing, perhaps other unions can meet the needs of content creators better than this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> La-ang Can youtubers go on strike and take the content down for a limited time? If such an option is available and they do it, it would be a relevant strike. But since those who are joining the Union are the one demonetized provides that Youtube isn't making as much profit from their presence as those who are still running ads. In such case, the former ones will need a way to engage those who make profit align with their doctrine, so the strike can be a blow to youtube. Bottom line to me; Not Gonna Happen (NGH).

<comment><USER21> > Can youtubers go on strike and take the content down for a limited time?

In order for that to be effective, a strike needs to remove enough capability from the other party to materially affect them. In this case, with so many videos online, I'd bet creators would need to get perhaps 95%-99% of recent videos taken down. They won't get anywhere close.

Right out of the gate, news and music won't join in the strike. Also the rewards to defect get higher, the more other creators join the strike.

<comment><USER22> I feel like a very strong effect could be had if popular creators move their content to other providers. While they might not be able to take down a huge percentage of all recent videos on YouTube, they could redirect the attention of enough users to have a very strong impact on YouTube's ad revenue.

Say someone is a die-hard fan of Pewdiepie--he's the reason that user opens YouTube on a daily basis. This user watches his daily video, but might also watch some news and music from their recommendations after the video ends. If Pewdiepie moves his content somewhere else, that user might not end up viewing that related content on YouTube anymore.

I'm really interested to see how these shared groups of fans cooperate with union efforts. Given how close of a connection many popular creators have with their fans, a call for a boycott could impact a lot more than just those creators.

<comment><USER21> > I feel like a very strong effect could be had if popular creators move their > content to other providers.

That could work. There's no exclusivity clauses for video hosts, though, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't already be on those other platforms unless it isn't worth the work. I'm forced to conclude that youtube's competitors have few enough viewers and/or pay so poorly that it would require a truly organized and massive move to make that work.

All I can say is: good luck. I won't be holding my breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Youtube is like a free Gallery, where anyone can display there artwork. The content which can be supported by advertisement (for benefit of the artist and the gallery management), surely is to be decided by the gallery management, ie, Youtube, as they're not 'employing' content creators - they're just allowing free posting of content and allowing revenue generation through ad as an extra cream.

Content creators 'use' Youtube, they don't 'work for' Youtube... This is what people are confusing these days. (For eg. They can use affiliate marketing with a video, without any intervention from Google, and sharing the video on youtube)

Should Instagram pay for most viral posts? No right? - the user posted it for sharing. If, Instagram paid, as a 'Thank you and win-win' strategy to such posts - people would've lost it if some posts were demonetized.

Also, if anyone wants to showcase in a gallery where they are paid for it, Youtube provides the 'Youtube Premium' option.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how this plays out.

Youtubers are very competitive, and the high profile YouTuber crowd very much asks for special benefits for themselves ... not for the collective.

<comment><USER7> We can take a look at SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, to see how it will play out.

Turns out that every movie star alive today is a union member, and they have no problem asking for special benefits and receiving them.

<comment><USER24> It will be interesting to see if that is in fact how it plays out.

A lot of the unions that are tied to trying to make progress in tech related fields are not at all like the screen actors guild. They often operate in a way where benefits are tied to simple things like seniority or prescribed certifications and etc.

<comment><USER7> Which unions in particular?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The headline is misleading - nobody is unionizing.

A German union is _maybe_ going to sue Google, on behalf of some youtubers, based on European laws, that's all.

<comment><USER2> Quote from the article:

> _The German union is inviting YouTubers to become members and is running a > campaign called FairTube to press for better terms_

<comment><USER25> Did we read the same article?

 _> A strike in the traditional sense would achieve little. Even in the extreme unlikelihood that every YouTuber in Germany boycotts the platform and stops uploading videos, it would have a limited impact on the site's profitability. While a localized strike by Uber drivers can cripple the ridehailing service for its duration, YouTube has unparalleled cross-border scale – 450 hours of video are uploaded every minute – and an almost bottomless library of existing content.

> So what exactly can IG Metall do? A lawsuit is the most likely next step. > The union claims that decisions made to de-monetize a video with no > explanation contravene the European Union's General Data Protection > Regulation._

They clearly admit the traditional power-move of a union to strike would fail and that their only recourse, would be to file a lawsuit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this means that amateurs who casually make videos are going to be considered Scabs?

</comment><comment><USER27> Tweeters are next. Mark my words

</comment><comment><USER28> Good. It's about time.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is mostly just people like Jörg Sprave and Taofledermaus types, that are angry their videos of making improvised weapons and improvised ammunition, getting demonetized or removed. This started early last year when Jörg got fed up with losing money and getting strikes against videos on his channel.

For context he was most famous for his fantastically powerful homemade slingshots, he then started doing stuff like trying to defeat riot shields, stab resistant armor, etc by launching spears/metal rods/knives/swords/metal 'missile' projectiles etc out of homemade weapons that look like something Leonardo would have made if he went on a psychotic break after everyone he loved was killed in an alley to become Renaissance-Vigilanteman. He started posting rant after rant to his channel and ultimately started a union.

He, and channels like Taofledermaus started claiming they were being censored, their videos were unjustly being demonetized, yadda yadda and outright ignoring the fact that YouTube is a FREE platform and that YouTube primarily exists as an advertising company, not as a video hosting company. If you pointed this out in their video comment sections you would have rabid fans telling you "freedom of speech is a right!" "this is censorship!" "this is unconstitutional!" and ignoring the fact that serving tens of millions of video views costs money and that the content creators never paid a single cent in hosting fees to Google.

Most advertisers don't want to touch a guy showing how to defeat riot shields with homemade crossbows or a channel that packs shotgun shells with random crap from their junk drawer and shoots it at barbie dolls claiming they're shooting at Taylor Swift (seriously, Taylor Swift is mentioned in a TON of Taofledermaus videos while they shoot nails, ball bearings, legos, marbles, exotic commercial ammunition etc at dolls and other random Goodwill finds).

YouTube has nothing to fear and Content Creators need to wake up. If a content creator that gets 100,000 views per video on average in the first month had to pay for hosting on one 10 minute video they are looking at something like 25 gigabytes of data transfer at 1080p or something like 130 gigabytes of data at 4k, at a video a week you're looking at the better part of 7 terabytes of data transfer and assuming 10 minute videos with 4k upload quality and at least 800 gigabytes of storage.

Now consider some of those videos easily hit millions of views, especially if they go viral, and that many YouTubers that are actually doing this for a significant portion of their income have hundreds of videos, benefit wildly from the recommendation algorithms and trending feature of YouTube and what that sort of exposure would cost them to achieve on their own domain and...

I mean, imagine if PSY had to host Gangnam Style, it currently has 3.4 billion views... at YouTube HD (1080p) toolstud.io' video file size calculator puts it at 219 MB... that's 744,600 petabytes of data transfer... I can't imagine PSY could afford that bill.

They're making out like bandits and whining that YouTube isn't giving them enough of the ad revenue. Yet there are tons of creators on YouTube making a living purely off of Patreon subscriptions, YouTube has a competing supporting method and you can always sell merch and/or do sponsored videos occasionally.

<comment><USER30> > ost advertisers don't want to touch a guy showing how to defeat riot shields > with homemade crossbows

I 'm not sure anymore if "advertisers" dont want to advertise on non- mainstream or adult sites, or if it's just google imposing arbitrary standards on both their advertisers AND publishers. In the old times of TV there were brands that catered to specific, non-family friendly audiences (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol). With google's current policies, and monopoly on advertising, that section of advertisers and publishers is completely excluded.

I also don't get the point that "youtube is advertising, not video hosting" \- they depend on both very much. By that reasoning TV should stop paying its anchors too.

> what that sort of exposure would cost them to achieve on their own domain > and

They don't need to pay for hosting. There are already distributed platforms like bitchute. Each of them just needs to add one node to the system and the collective benefit would be huge.

<comment><USER31> Go check out the ads on some non-mainstream or adult sites. They're the epitome of _This is why we use ad blockers._

<comment><USER30> Exactly. There is no way for these sites to reach mainstream advertisers who _might_ be interested. Google has the keys to all of them

Similar with payment processors. Nudity or even porn is increasingly accepted today, yet paypal won't touch it, so these sites have to deal with subpar and expensive payment providers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> what is it about collective action that triggers contempt so quickly and automatically for those attempting to organize? many comments in this thread show contempt for the organizers in a way that is readily visible.

<comment><USER6> Because the resuls of collective action isn't always fair for society. Many countries have an HDD/CD/DVD tax, because of (basically) collective action by artists. I don't see this as being fair. Why do I have to pay more when buying a HDD so that artists I'm never ever going to listen to can get more money?

I understand that collective action is often beneficial, but these bad examples are enough to make me annoyed at it.

<comment><USER33> Then unionize against this tax with other fellow HDD buyers?

The difference between you and the artists are that they organized. You came on HN to complain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If that's the case, 99% will be booted off the platform and they will have to meet certain numbers of visitors and engagement every month, or lose their job..which is what unionizing means.

If I were google, I would also get control of their users (they would now be the companys) and youtubers will no longer be able move to any other platform while working for Google.

You can't expect the freedom of running your own business with none of the restrictions of a job.

I never understood the need to take away the ability for someone to truly run their own business and have freedoms and restrict it down to a corporate job, by law.

<comment><USER35> If you run a business and your solvency depends on the existence of another, larger business, you're not as independent as the title of 'business owner' alludes.

How many HN posts have we seen over the years of businesses based on Amazon, Twitter, Apple getting blown the fuck up because the mothership restricted an API, copied their project or changed a ToS?

I'm not putting in an opinion on anything else in your post except the supposed 'freedom' of youtubers et al. Okay maybe one more thing. I like seeing alternative viewpoints, and yours is a rare one on HN. I like to champion alternative viewpoints whenever I see them, especially when they're voted white for no reason. It's hard to go to bat for you on this though, since you're for retaliation against a bunch of people who dare try and organize around their shared pain points. I just can't do it this time!

Unionizing is like a mini revolution. I was always confused about anti unionism when I was in school, because unions seem as american as it gets (in the 7th grade social studies definition of 'America).

Democracy in the workplace? Hell yeah! Fighting against a power that exploits you without representation? That's boston-tea-party as shit. Shame there's no way to talk about things like this with someone who disagrees without it devolving into 'modern discourse'.

<comment><USER34> "If you run a business and your solvency depends on the existence of another, larger business, you're not as independent as the title of 'business owner' alludes."

My point is that Youtubers can start their own sites and go elsewhere if they get tired of a large company controlling their content.

Unionization usually means they will now need to be paid a 'fair wage' and benefits..and your relationship changes to more of an employee..with more restrictions on what you can do.

Youtube also won't pay everyone as an employee and less people will be able to actually make money on the platform due to these restrictions.

"I like seeing alternative viewpoints"

This is is kind of crazy when you think about it: Independent business is now considered an 'alternative viewpoint' here on HN..a site dedicated to hackers, startups, and the tech business.

My guess is that the majority here work for large companies and really don't care about (or have even tried) running a business/startup.

"Since you're for retaliation against a bunch of people who dare try and organize around their shared pain points. I just can't do it this time!"

I'm not for retaliation, I'm just pointing out the unintended consequences.

"Fighting against a power that exploits you without representation? That's boston-tea-party as shit"

Everything isn't deserving of a 'revolution'. If so, I would have started a revolution against HN years ago. I can't even have intellectual discussions, without scared users down voting my comments..because someone might be convinced of a different view point.

<comment><USER35> Hey thank you for your reply.

"My point is that Youtubers can start their own sites and go elsewhere if they get tired of a large company controlling their content."

I don't fault people who try that, nor do I fault anyone who tries to stay and fight. In many ways, Google "owns the well". It makes sense to me that the economics of the situation for some makes staying and organizing the easier course of action. Taking on Youtube as a competitor.. building a website, attracting advertisers, etc. Especially doing all this while making cat videos, now for no money, seems like a tough play.

You'd have to have some systemic luxuries, and lots of grit to take on the risk of such a feat. I wish anyone who tries the best of luck.

"Unionization usually means they will now need to be paid a 'fair wage' and benefits..and your relationship changes to more of an employee..with more restrictions on what you can do."

You're already restricted to whatever rules of the road Google sets, by fiat. 99.999% of Content creators who work with google have ZERO negotiating power right now. They can, and do change the rules at anytime. Companies can submit fraudulent DMCA takedowns depriving these small business owners their revenue during its most important period. You can appeal, but it doesn't undo the damage to your revenue even if you win.

These are dirty tricks! Those affected should maximize their voice to do something about it, in my opinion.

"This is is kind of crazy when you think about it: Independent business is now considered an 'alternative viewpoint' here on HN..a site dedicated to hackers, startups, and the tech business."

It's alternative to put 'independent business' contingent on employees never organizing. Businesses can make partnerships, why not employees?

"My guess is that the majority here work for large companies and really don't care about (or have even tried) running a business/startup."

I've worked for a few startups. We weren't aggrieved anywhere close enough to consider Unionization. We were all well paid, treated well, and close enough to management that they listened to concerns as we brought them up.

I wish I had some stats on how many startups are brought low by unions, I bet it's a vanishingly small number. If you consider unions to be a response to be corrective feedback from aggrieved employees, some of these hypothetical blown up startups probably should have gone under.

Honestly, I've only ever associated unions as responses against sufficiently- large-to-be-dehumanizing companies. Maybe it is a problem? I'm open to the possibility even though I would be surprised.

"Everything isn't deserving of a 'revolution'."

Those rebels decide what deserves rebellion, power dynamics decide if they succeed, I bet most don't. Treat your people better to make it harder for them to justify the risks of unionizing, imo.

Thanks for the chat!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cheney's staff was reading all the White House NSC emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902?currentPage=11

<comment><AUTHOR> This is like 13 pages in to the best political article of 2009. Last paragraph. Cullen Murphy, William Langewiesche, and Michael Lewis are all contributing editors at VF now? Crap, I'm going to have to subscribe to Vanity Fair, and chuck The Atlantic.

</comment><comment><USER2> The referenced item is at the bottom of page 11.</comment>


RetroArch 1.8.2 – Accessibility features for blind gamers - <AUTHOR> https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-coming-soon-accessibility-features-for-blind-people/ <comment><USER2> Why post this twice? It's already on the front page.

<comment><USER3> Likely in an attempt to update the link as suggested [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21881716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21881716)</comment></comment>


One-stop-shop for Azure news - <AUTHOR> http://azureweekly.info/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a great idea. I currently have Google News Alerts to get information about Microsoft Azure. I have always wondered if there is a site where I can get all the information on Azure I need.. I will browse through this in detail..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> nahamed - what did you think?</comment>


Think Long Term, Act Now! - <AUTHOR> http://okdork.com/2007/06/25/think-long-term-act-now/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think I wait too long to do things. What are the best ways everyone has found to prioritize coding, building, etc....

</comment><comment><USER2> Meditate. Seriously.</comment>


Sports Hack Day is coming Superbowl Weekend - <AUTHOR> http://sportshackday.com/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002974>

seems like a nice starting point for thinking about projects

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5005707> you could see if Bill Walsh actually knew what he was talking about

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't attend but here's a free idea for you all.

Can someone make a weird sports rule dictionary/feed that looks for those strange rules. So when i go to whattheheckjusthappenedsports.com It takes a look at all the games happening in realtime and explains to me like a 6 year old what a balk is, and what its outcome is on the game.

"If you're watching the Cardinals/Jays game securingsincity that was a balk which is X, and that has Y impact on the game."

Would work well for those strange replay rules in the NFL and now MLB. Hell even Michael Vick could have used it a few years ago when he didn't know games could end in a tie.

</comment><comment><USER2> while you got me brainstorming, could of years ago I tried to see if having a higher pass/run ratio led to a higher yards per play,

found that it didn't

part of that seems to be that good offenses get leads and then run the ball, dragging back down the pass/run ratio (inverse goes as well, crappy offenses spend the 4th quarter chucking it)

you could try rerun the experiment just using 1st quarter stats, see if that changes it

or just stats when the score was within 7 points

</comment><comment><USER4> Wait ... a hack day where the devs have to buy tickets? On top of the event having 3 big name sponsors? What gives?

</comment><comment><USER2> you could look into play sequencing

is a pass more successful if the prior play was a run? last 2, 3, 4, ...n plays were runs? if x of the last y plays were runs

same thing situationally, pass on 3rd & 3, if the last n 3rd and 3 were runs, etc

</comment><comment><USER5> Really looking forward to this!</comment>