How to stop people from checking you into places on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/?p=3262

<comment><USER2> This is one of several reasons why I got rid of my facebook account. These type of things need to be opt-in, not opt-out.</comment>


Sourcegraph Server 2.4: free, powerful search for private code - <AUTHOR> https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-sourcegraph-server-2-4/ <comment><USER2> For people interested in searching code using an open source solution, you might be interested in Zoekt too, github.com/google/zoekt.

There is a demo site where you can search 30G of source code (including the Linux kernel, Android and Chrome) supporting regular expressions, and file name search:

[https://cs.bazel.build/?q=%20](https://cs.bazel.build/?q=%20)

For example, [https://cs.bazel.build/search?q=+r%3Atorvalds+craz%5Byi%5D&n...](https://cs.bazel.build/search?q=+r%3Atorvalds+craz%5Byi%5D&num=50) looks for craz[iy] across the Linux kernel.

<comment><USER3> Zoekt looks very interesting. We'll consider adding it to GitLab in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/41925](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/41925) and [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/41450](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/41450) Please comment in those issues if you have thoughts about if we can use it.

BTW I know you're in Munich now but I wanted to say hi from your hometown Utrecht.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for commenting in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/41450#note_54...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/41450#note_54181315)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sourcegraph CEO here. Thanks for this post. We packed a lot of stuff into 2.4: faster, more powerful code search, Google Alerts-style search monitoring, diff searches, and more.

It's now free on a single server for any number of users and repositories.

Happy to answer questions here.

<comment><USER5> Do you accept REMOTE jobs?

<comment><USER4> Yes, we have some fantastic international and non-SF-based teammates at Sourcegraph, and we'd love to have more.

<comment><USER5> non US?

<comment><USER6> Yes. I was wrong in my previous answer - after sqs's response, I looked them up on linkedin, they have at least a german developer in Berlin.

(FWIW - and I'm only saying this in case you were in a similar situation: I applied to them for a job not because I was looking for one, but because I accidentally saw it on HN and the match between my skills and their apparent need was simply "too good to be true" territory. I wasn't necessarily expecting an offer, but I expected to talk to someone - was curious to learn more about what they're doing. However, I got rejected straight away - so I just assumed that they said "REMOTE" for the heck of it... I know it sounds arrogant, but I have a hell of a hard time believing their other applications outclass me so obviously that it was not even worth talking to me, so I assumed it must be something else)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this differ from OpenGrok [https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/](https://oracle.github.io/opengrok/) ?

<comment><USER8> Opengrok supports C/C++.

<comment><USER9> Code search on Sourcegraph Server is actually language agnostic.

Here's an example of a C++ search query: [https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=repo:google/leveldb+FilterB...](https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=repo:google/leveldb+FilterBlockBuilder)

<comment><USER8> Opengrok implements hyperlinking for C/C++ code which is the primary productivity multiplier since it allows you to easily jump around callgraphs. That functionality is sorely missing here (unless i am missing this feature somehow).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't help but notice some interesting items get cloned in the onboarding GIF (which was 16MB, yikes)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph- classic](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-classic)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-archive- private-2...](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-archive- private-20160601)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/infrastructure](https://github.com/sourcegraph/infrastructure)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/definfo- prototype](https://github.com/sourcegraph/definfo-prototype)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph- desktop](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-desktop)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-emacs- beta](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph-emacs-beta)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/splunk-promethus- alerts](https://github.com/sourcegraph/splunk-promethus-alerts)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/ZARCHIVED- corporate](https://github.com/sourcegraph/ZARCHIVED-corporate)

\- [https://github.com/sourcegraph/css- langserver](https://github.com/sourcegraph/css-langserver)

Listed as they showed up in the GIF. That was fun!

</comment><comment><USER11> Very cool, will give it a try later for our gitlab repos. Is gitlab supported?

Also, I cannot find the code for sourcegraph on github. It used to be available under a fair source license. Anyone have a link to the code?

<comment><USER4> Yes, Sourcegraph supports GitLab repositories! Check out [https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/server/config/repositorie...](https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/server/config/repositories#sync- repositories-from-any-code-host) and the section right below for auth. You'll need to add and authenticate them one-by-one in the config. Soon we'll be add direct GitLab integration like we have for GitHub and GitHub Enterprise, which will sync all (or selected) repositories using the GitLab API.

The source code is not public for this version. I think that source-available but non-open-source licenses are an idea ahead of their time when applied to user-facing software like Sourcegraph. I hope that changes, and we'd love to make Sourcegraph source-available again, but it actually introduced (rather than eliminated) questions in the process of companies adopting Sourcegraph. I'll probably blog about this soon because it's something I care about a lot.

<comment><USER11> > I'll probably blog about this soon because it's something I care about a > lot.

Yes, please! I have seen your videos and read a lot about your thoughts on this subject.

Another question, if you don't mind: does sourcegraph have a forum or irc/slack? A quick search for sourcegraph+slack ends up finding many hits.. for your name, lol.

<comment><USER4> Cool! We don't have a public Slack/IRC yet, but it seems like something we might do in the future. In the meantime, we're all pretty responsive on Twitter and on email.

And yeah, my last name being Slack does create some confusing moments sometimes. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> does it support gitea? gitea has become my sole self-hosted git repository portal, lightweight comparing to gitlab and get the job done super well.

<comment><USER13> it does: [https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/server/config/repositorie...](https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/server/config/repositories#sync- repositories-from-any-code-host) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you have any plans to add more languages to code intelligence? (Particularly C and C++)

</comment><comment><USER15> Why should we use this instead of the github search (for our private repos) ?

<comment><USER4> Our users prefer Sourcegraph over GitHub for code search for multiple reasons:

\- Regular expression searches

\- Exact searches (no ignoring punctuation, for example)

\- Searches on any commit or branch, not just recently indexed master

\- Diff searches (see [https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing- sourcegraph-s...](https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/introducing-sourcegraph- server-2-4#diff-search))

\- Overall faster, more powerful searches and filtering capabilities

\- Code intelligence (go-to-definition, find-references, hovers, etc.)

Not everyone needs these things. But users who do need them say that they save a lot of time and make them more productive.

At Google, for example, they have a similarly advanced internal code search system that developers love (see [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/43835.pdf) and [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LQxLk4E3lrb3fIsVKlANu_pU...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LQxLk4E3lrb3fIsVKlANu_pUjnILteoWMMNiJQmqNVU/edit#heading=h.xxziwxixfqq3) for research/numbers).

If your needs are met by GitHub's search, then I would still suggest using the Sourcegraph Chrome extension (also available for Firefox), which adds code intelligence to code you view on GitHub: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sourcegraph-for- gi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sourcegraph-for- github/dgjhfomjieaadpoljlnidmbgkdffpack?hl=en).

<comment><USER16> Did you get permission from SourceGraph to post this comment to HN?

> You may not release the results of any performance or functional evaluation > of any of the Software to any third party without prior written approval of > Sourcegraph for each such release.

\-- [https://about.sourcegraph.com/terms/](https://about.sourcegraph.com/terms/)

<comment><USER4> We just removed that clause (also replied to your other comment about it). Didn't intend for it to be in there; I agree it's silly. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is the License for the free install ? MIT/BSD/Apache ?

<comment><USER16> Here are the terms: [https://about.sourcegraph.com/terms/](https://about.sourcegraph.com/terms/)

I note with some distaste that it includes an Oracle-esque prohibition on benchmarking.

> You may not release the results of any performance or functional evaluation > of any of the Software to any third party without prior written approval of > Sourcegraph for each such release.

<comment><USER4> Sourcegraph CEO here. That shouldn't be in there, I agree—we meant to remove that section. It will be removed in a couple of minutes. Please try it, use it, and post lots of evaluations about our product. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Which version control systems are supported?</comment>


The Art of Quitting - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-art-of-quitting <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to make of this blog post. The author writes:

 _> By resigning from Reddit, _

Behind the scenes, Ellen Pao could have been forced out (also known as being "fired") but presented publicly as a resignation. I thought we don't really know what happened? Therefore, it seems biased to frame a thematic essay about "quitting" around Ellen's circumstances. If she didn't voluntarily separate, it's not "quitting" \-- it's getting fired. Does the author Ernie Smith know the inside details of Ellen Pao's situation that we don't?

 _> Ellen Pao is choosing to focus her attention on the other things that interest her._

The underlying Washington Post article that this sentence links to is ~900 words written by Ellen Pao. She makes no mention of " _other things that interest her._ "

Overall, a blog post of dubious quality.

<comment><USER3> Agree.

I think it is actually a good post, and I agree with it conceptually. But I don't think it has anything to do with Pao's resignation.

<comment><USER4> > But I don't think it has anything to do with Pao's resignation.

I agree. When I read the post, the mentions of Pao seemed very out of place, with respect to the flow. The meat of the post was interesting, but the attempt to connect it to Pao's departure felt like a big (and unnecessary) stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel this.

I spent 20 years building a successful career as an enterprise software engineer, bouncing around between configuration management, development, and ops. It's a secure, good paying, stable career. And I grew to resent and sometimes hate it.

Then I started building something for myself, discovered the idea of creating my own startup to solve problems I experienced doing enterprise software projects in a general way, and I _love_ that. It makes me feel like I'm doing something that actually matters.

Right now, I'm back in the enterprise to make ends meet and building on the side, which sucks and drives me crazy - but at least I see the exit and can keep moving toward it. And I figure I can get five or ten years out of building a company before I'm done with that as well.

Once you hit a certain age and a certain level of success, the things you realize you'll never do weigh on you more than the things you haven't done yet. And the things you do look more like impediments than accomplishments. That's when you need to change.

<comment><USER6> Good luck. Tell us more about your startup someday.

<comment><USER5> I'll be back with a "Show HN" once I get the beta running. I took several months last year to work on it full-time and got an alpha version working, which taught me a ton of things I didn't know I didn't know about the problem I'm tackling. Now, I'm working on a beta based on lessons learned from the alpha.

The product is a way to answer the simple yet awful question, "What changed?" Configuration change is the primary cause of failure in complex software systems. But the part that breaks isn't necessarily the part that changes. For example, a database schema change can break apps that rely on the database. But in large organizations, where the database is administrated by an entirely different team from app development and developers may not even be allowed to look at the production environment, it's a huge pain point.

Detecting configuration change and finding the relationships and impact is a really difficult and challenging problem. The biggest takeaway from the alpha for me was that "noise shaping" is a hard problem. For example, Wordpress alters the schema of its MySQL database several times a day. It's a tiny thing (an autoincrement value on a single column), but it makes sorting important changes like upgrades that only happen weekly or monthly or yearly from unimportant changes that happen daily.

The trick now is to get a product out of it good enough to make money, so I can afford to quit dayjobbing and live off my own creation, rather than sitting at someone else's desk and counting the number of times a day I wish I had my own product here to help solve the problems I deal with over and over, every damned day.

<comment><USER7> As someone who has worked on larger enterprise stuff this would be incredibly (like a salary a year incredibly) useful tool.

It would do in software what a really good reliability engineer with years of knowledge can do "Foo has broken" "Nah foo is fine, someone changed Bar again without reading the wiki" stuff.

<comment><USER5> It's funny, the reactions I get. A lot of startup programmers who have never worked on large systems don't understand why it's so valuable. But those who have done big enterprise use phrases like "holy grail".

But _this is a HARD problem_. Man, abstracting change in an actionable, readable, efficient way has been difficult. Not to mention the security issues and other headaches.

<comment><USER7> I'll bet, it's a truly monumental task to take on (so kudos for giving it a try), stuff I work on these days doesn't need that level of monitoring (We have 4 servers and a bunch of desktops laptops, it's pretty much vanilla small business stuff) but I know a few people who would love that kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although in this case, Pao isn't resigning from anything she put blood, sweat and tears into. Rather she showed up to a fully functioning project, kicked a hornets nest she had no right to kick based on a personal worldview of how people should be nice and more notably, _profitable for her shareholders_ on the internet, then she got stung and ran away crying. I'm all for the type of quitting that this article talked about, but I doubt that "routine career failures recast as 'damsel in distress harassment', stemming from rather dubious claims" is what we should aim for. Pao is no role model for me.

Separately, this is just bad writing. If a college student turned this in to me I would write 'good start, delete all the irrelevant stuff about Pao and either use an example that supports the main thesis or don't use an example at all'. The threads linking this paper together are very weak.

I'm guessing 'Pao' and 'reddit' are to drive traffic. Ugh.

<comment><USER9> Wow. After all the truth that's come out which makes everyone else look like a turd (especially Reddit's own users), you still can't find no love for Pao? Ask your doctor if reality is right for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are 2 sides to this.

1\. Quit: I spent a summer in investment banking, at a prestigious bank after 2 years of hustling at a state school (way easier to get this type of job at an ivy league). I left after a summer despite loving the people and perks -- it wasn't for me.

2\. Persevere: While learning computer programming, it was rough to start from scratch. Seeing how slow I was compared to others was discouraging, but I pushed through and now love what I do/the skills I have. I recall taking a graduate level computer systems course, while working full-time, which was fairly challenging for me at the time (this course required writing and debugging assembly, writing programs like malloc from scratch, etc. with no other formal CS background). It was 100% worth it!

Perhaps the lesson here is that learning at the early stages is tedious, and one should push through. Or that you should have a motivator that isn't financial in taking on something tough.

<comment><USER11> It seems like a recurring theme in these types of posts is that people leave high-paying jobs and that we should applaud them for "giving up" their salaries to do what makes them happy.

Not that this is a bad thing (I applaud anyone who does something difficult in the pursuit of long-term happiness), but the fact that many people enter into unfulfilling job situations because they're drawn to the high profile and/or salary probably plays a large part in why they feel unfulfilled after working there for a while.

<comment><USER10> High pay is definitely a positive outcome. But it is one of several things that matter, not the only one. The fallacy I think lots of people fall for is to over-weigh its role in contentment - but it definitely does have a role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why the assumption that Ellen Pao was not fired? It felt like one of these cases when an employee has a lengthy talk with her supervisors, after which she is given an option to quit, as a way to save her face.

An evidence for that would be how fast was a new interim CEO found after the previous one "quit".

<comment><USER13> The example of Ellen Pao was merely a way to start the conversation. That specific example does not diminish the message of the piece which I find very insightful.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, though I found the example to be distracting and forced. The author would have done better to leave it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Art of Blogspam:

1\. Put sort-of related recent news item in first paragraph to seem timely

2\. Rehash old content

3\. Close with sort-of related recent news item in last paragraph

4\. Add clickbait headline

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be really nice to talk about leaving a job, seeing your goals and expectations change, or finding yourself in a position that previously seemed like a "dream job" only to find yourself not as fulfilled as you expected. Rather than fixating on the specific example of Ellen Pao. The piece is about an experience that many people face not about Ellen Pao.

</comment><comment><USER16> I feel another rant about terrible marketing practices coming on after a minute on that site. No, I don't want to sign up for yet another email list for a site that I've read zero content on so far. No, I don't want to like you on FaceTwitInstaLinked yet. Let me read a few things in peace, and maybe if they're good, I'll like your stuff then. You're already starting off in a bad hole asking me for that stuff in a way that interrupts what I'm trying to do before I've read one word of your content.

<comment><USER17> sites would function that way if people actually did what you said you'd do if they waited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _People born between the years of 1957 and 1965 had an average of 11.3 jobs between 1978 and 2010_

Lightweights! I've had 88 jobs since 1972.

Once a recruiter told me that everything on my resume was excellent except how often I switched jobs. How could that be?

I told her that was because as soon as anyone gave me undue shit, I quit.

No regrets. On many of them, I probably exercised _too much_ patience and should have left a lot sooner.

(You get one life to live. If it's not the life you want because of your job, do something about it. Time flies.)

<comment><USER8> You're resume would only be a problem if the company was looking for good little worker bees who don't ask questions and who will take shit all day long and ask for more. It's almost the perfect filtering mechanism for crap companies hahah.

<comment><USER9> What's problematic is that the more jumping you do to avoid dumb workplaces, the greater the possibility that only dumb workplaces will be desperate to hire you.

It's a no-win situation. Unless, of course, you can do a better job of evaluating a job before you take it. But people need to pay rent, and heck yeah, companies straight-up lie about the jobs they offer.

Perhaps it's time for hiring companies to consider that even though employees are discouraged from saying negative things about a former employer, that sometimes yeah, that former employer was a jerk royale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands The examples in the article are really poor examples for a number of reasons.

First of all, Jordan didn't "quit" to go play baseball. He had already won three championships and had already done pretty much anybody at that level could do. He wasn't "begging for a new direction" either. He always wanted to play baseball and wanted to fulfill a childhood dream is all. After doing so (no matter how bad he was) he went back to basketball and achieved even more when he came back. No exactly someone who quit and stayed away.

If you actually read the Jordan Price article, it talks about the boss he had and the psychological abuse he was taking. Sure he was at his "dream job" but the jokes and insults from his negative boss drove him to quit. It wasn't really his choice to quit, it was more he was driven out by an his boss who was a douchebag.

And the Ellen Poe situation? Quitting is completely different than being set up to fail. Again, using her as an example of "goal disengagement" completely misunderstands her whole situation. She was set up to fail, then driven into submission by the inmates who are running the asylum at Reddit.

If you want to use a better example, try Robert Smith, the running back for the Vikings who abruptly quit after a career year in the NFL. He was about to get a huge contract extension, but he gave up the money so he could pursue a career in medicine. He also wanted to get out of the NFL without any lingering physical issues. He still appears on some NFL and college football shows, but for the most part lives a pretty private life post NFL career.

</comment><comment><USER19> "It's not giving up, it's disengagement."

If you set out to do something and stop doing it before you've succeeded, even though you could carry on with at least some possibility of further and future success, calling it anything other than "giving up" is just sugar-coating it.

I'm sure it's sensible and wise to give up in many circumstances, but giving it a fancy name really shouldn't be part of the process of justifying that decision.

<comment><USER20> The quoted sentence is the summation of an article trying to distinguish between quitting because you can't do it, and quitting because you no longer care. Focusing on the renaming aspect is taking it too literally; that's just a rhetorical device.

<comment><USER21> Wholeheartedly agree. It may just seem like it's sugarcoating it, but there is definitely a difference in changing focus and just giving up. Saying something other than, "I just gave up on it," (which is what quit generally implies) gives more a story behind why.

Side projects come to mind when I think of quitting. Sometimes the project becomes much bigger than what you expected. You and your buddy don't have the time nor resources to dedicate towards seeing it through or scaling it up. It really all depends on the situation.</comment></comment></comment>


HackMIT 2017 Puzzle Guide - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hackmit-stories/time-traveling-in-the-puzzlelorean-the-hackmit-2017-puzzle-guide-40ee4fe797f1 <comment><AUTHOR> HackMIT organizer here. A few weeks ago we posted our admissions puzzle as a Show HN. Now that we have all the solves we need for admissions, here's the writeup! Puzzles are still up and can be visited directly without signing into GitHub. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER2> Original Show HN post is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14685631)</comment>


How to extend your life by a decade or two - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14020064&source=features_box_main

<comment><USER2> The big question about calorie restriction in humans is what effects it may have on mental functioning. I don't know about you, but I have trouble concentrating when I am hungry; and there is the further risk of poor mental development with calorie restriction in children.

<comment><USER3> That is the position I take as well. I for one, cannot function well mentally without a decent calorie intake throughout the day.

<comment><USER4> An interesting question would be whether stimulants, like caffeine, can be used to increase brain function without calories. I wouldn't suspect this to be a healthy option though...

<comment><USER3> Personal experience indicates that they can. In fact, I find that is one of the main problems I have with stimulants - they tend to suppress my appetite, but since I am still able to function well on them I don't notice how hungry I am until they wear off and I crash becasue I haven't eaten in 3 hours.

<comment><USER5> Don't you notice the depletion of neurotransmitters? It's been a awhile since I played with nootropics, but my understanding of how many cognitive enhancers work is that they stimulate the production of underlying neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, for example).

If you are not providing the body with sufficient raw material (feeding your head, as it were), these transmitters get depleted and no amount of stimulants will help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the old joke about giving up rich food, drink, smoke and women -- you won't live any longer but it will feel a decade or two longer?

<comment><USER7> _rich food, drink, smoke and women_

One of them is unlike the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but read these articles.

Really. One after another.

Unfortunately, I never get anything out of it.

<comment><USER9> Stop reading them and you'll get hours of your life back with certainty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the record, the present consensus amongst aging researchers is that there are strong evolutionary arguments for CR to have an effect of only a few years on human maximum lifespan.

<http://fightaging.org/archives/2005/08/aubrey-de-grey-11.php> [http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id...](http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id=1892)

While of course the human studies (go Google "CALERIE", the study name) show that it has a massive positive effect on health and resistance to age-related disease.

<http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/calorie_restriction.cfm>

Exercise appears to plausibly shift your life expectancy by a decade, so it's also good to do.

[http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id...](http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id=3633)

</comment><comment><USER11> More information on calorie restriction:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRON-diet>

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the obsession with trying to add a few years to human lifespans. I'd personally rather live a shorter enjoyable life than a long one full of depravation just so I can eek out a few more years at the tail end.

I guess that's easy to say since I'm barely reaching middle age.

</comment><comment><USER13> exercise.

<comment><USER14> Exercise won't necessarily prolong your life, but it will prolong your quality of life. There are 60-year-olds who are helpless and 80-year-olds who are independent and active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Five Tibetan Rites are one of the best form of ancient Yoga for longitivity and healthy physical and mental fitness!!

<http://www.mkprojects.com/pf_TibetanRites.htm></comment>


The Last Messiah (1933) - <AUTHOR> https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah <comment><USER2> An interesting proposed solution. It seems unlikely to work for all.

Somehow reminds me of this: [https://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php](https://principiadiscordia.com/book/45.php)

<comment><USER3> I am a Pope. are you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://ebookoflove.com](http://ebookoflove.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> An excellent article.</comment>


Microsoft's Desperate Attempt to Discredit Chromebooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-netbook.com/microsoft-discredits-chromebooks/ <comment><USER2> Would liked to have seen the actual video, but seeing as how it's set to private, my guess is it wasn't terribly well-received.

Microsoft is clearly unhappy that they're losing their market of people paying too much for what they really need (i.e. the elderly couple who pays $800 for a new desktop when a $200 e-machine would solve their basic needs of watching Youtube, checking email, etc). The netbooks provided low-cost, portable laptops for students and the like, but their performance was incredibly sluggish. The Chromebooks run in a similarly limited capacity, but since it's running an OS that has been optimized for gimped specs, the performance I got out of a Chromebook for everyday tasks was miles ahead of what I ever got out of a netbook. That has Microsoft very worried.</comment>


Could Technology Tame the Internet Meme? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27824/?p1=blogs <comment><USER2> "he said, both to express their intention not to be made into a meme, or, from the meme-creator's perspective, whether to propagate or not propagate"

I don't think he knows how the internet works...</comment>


Texgen.js – Lightweight Procedural Texture Generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mrdoob/texgen.js <comment><USER2> Those are very beautiful. I played around, but could not create anything interesting. Adding the source for each sample, not only the first, could be a great addition. I have absolutely no idea how to achieve the effect of #7 or #8, for example.

And I never understood the copyright status of this stuff. If I use texgen to create a texture, is it mine or mrdoob's?

<comment><USER3> If you read the License file you'll see its the standard MIT license. It's very permissive and allows you to use the cide, modify it and many things without asking for special permission. Read up on the MIT license for a better understanding.

<comment><USER2> Correct. But my doubts are over the _output_ of the software.

On one hand, the output depends on your artistic instructions, so you are entitled to it. On the other hand, the tool greatly restricts the solution space, so the tool itself (and consequently its author) has artistic merit over the result.

<comment><USER4> I think a simple way to explain the MIT license is that you can do whatever you want with it as long as you don't say that you created the library yourself.

Textures that you create are as yours are images you create in Photoshop. Probably even more yours than that ;)

<comment><USER2> Oh, hello mrdoob.

My doubt is about _authorship_. If I make a texture with texgen, can I claim to be the author? Probably yes, but where do we draw the line? If I create a Minecraft world by selecting a single seed, and take a slice of the world as a 2D image, can I claim authorship? What if I didn't even change the seed, just pressed "create"?

I think it depends on the country, but thinking about authorship over procedural generators is weird.

<comment><USER4> I think this is a different issue...

I couldn't claim authorship of a machine generated work. I would feel better about claiming authorship of something I've spent a while working on and finding combinations until I get something I like.

Do you claim authorship of Photoshop's cloud filter?

<comment><USER5> It's a slightly worrying grey area. If a generator only has 2 possible combinations of all its various settings, claiming authorship of the output is clearly absurd. If it has 16 trillion possible combinations, maybe less so.

Where do you draw the line? If people can copyright a bunch of settings, does that prevent people from using the generator with randomized parameters in case they accidentally hit a lawsuit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth mentioning that Mr.doob (author of this code) is also an author of three.js graphics library and many astonishing demos. Check out his Github and home page ([http://mrdoob.com](http://mrdoob.com)) for (many) more interesting things!

Example: [http://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/examples/webgl_terrain_dyna...](http://mrdoob.github.io/three.js/examples/webgl_terrain_dynamic.html)

<comment><USER4> Hehe! Thanks for that. But, to be fair, that last example was done by [http://alteredqualia.com/](http://alteredqualia.com/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Around 2002, I made something similar using WinAPI, in Pascal (FPC). Sadly, the sources are gone, but the executable survives: [http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~dj189395/nhp/czynic/programy/w...](http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~dj189395/nhp/czynic/programy/wintexgen/wintexgen-0.02alpha.exe) [22 KiB, no external dependencies].

Screenshot: [http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~dj189395/nhp/czynic/programy/w...](http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~dj189395/nhp/czynic/programy/wintexgen/wintexgen1.png)

Use at your peril, preferably in a VM, Wine, or similarly sandboxed environment.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, what a strange and wonderful little program. I think it's neat how @mrdoob put together a little standard library of functions that can be chained together in a totally understandable abstraction "pass". It's a good project, too, for people who, like me, want to have a good template for doing general pixel-wise manipulation with canvas.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/mrdoob/texgen.js/blob/564c6efb5b5647ad44d...](https://github.com/mrdoob/texgen.js/blob/564c6efb5b5647ad44d98205c93bf59dc513a85c/src/texgen.js#L29-L38)

I'll admit to being a bit concerned about programming practices like this. I'm mostly inept at Javascript, but surely the language has better mechanisms for accomplishing the goal here.

<comment><USER4> I did it like this because I wanted to create the drawing loop as efficient as possible, without switches or conditionals. That method gets executed per pixel so the less logic the better.

If someone knows a better way I'm all ears!

<comment><USER10> I fail to see the logic behind optimizing around conditionals when you are running in an interpreted language.

<comment><USER4> I instrumented the code and using conditionals resulted in 2x the generation time per loop. These loops are executed only once so the VM doesn't have a chance to optimise them.

<comment><USER11> I've done similar in the past and can concur that it does have large performance benefits, at least in Chrome where I tested it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Factor VM ported to C++ - <AUTHOR> http://factor-language.blogspot.com/2009/05/factor-vm-ported-to-c.html

<comment><USER2> About 18 months ago, I ported a project I was working on from C to C++. I, too, wanted a few C++ features to simplify life, mainly to use the STL, but also for inheritance in a handful of places. I got what I wanted, but I have since concluded that switch to C++ was, on the whole, a mistake.

First, don't discount the longer compilation times. After learning Lisp, I became rather addicted to the rapid turn-around time of compiling code at the level of individual functions. I can tolerate C because, with a relatively clean build setup, it compiles quickly. g++ on my project is between 10 and 20 times slower than gcc. This means that, as I make minor changes, I'm more likely to have to wait a while for a build to finish. This means I'm more likely to slack off in between builds. This kills (my) productivity horribly.

Second, auxiliary tool support on Unix leaves a lot to be desired. I sprinkle my code with templates in places where they promote readability, and I use STL containers. gdb, at least the version I'm using, does not support displaying data in STL containers. This means that when I have to track down a problem with data in a map, gdb can't help me. I have run into nasty problems for which I had to write custom print-this-templated-structure-to-log code. In addition, g++ error messages which involve templates absolutely suck. Luckily, I can quickly figure out what I need to change just by looking at the affected line.

After thinking through these issues, I concluded that C++ wasted more of my time than it saved. YMMV, of course.

<comment><USER3> If minor changes trigger long compilation, there is something wrong with your code organization. I found that if you count linking time the total build time difference between c and c++ for significant project is not that big at least not at 10-20x.

There are plenty of gdb macros that support stl containers even 18 months ago.

LLVM is also written in C++ for good reasons.

<comment><USER4> _If minor changes trigger long compilation, there is something wrong with your code organization_

A lot of larger C++ projects use "pimpl" for this reason (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_pointer>). Also in professional projects with large code bases that I've worked on in the past we've always had a distributed compilation environment (distcc, icecream, etc.)

<comment><USER3> In a lot of cases, just use forward declarations to avoid unnecessary includes in the header files goes a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So Factor is not at all what I thought it was. I thought it was roughly a modern Forth for the JVM...and I thought the point of it was at least partially the JVM. Not dependence, but the ability to _use_ Java libraries. The realization that this is not at all the case makes Factor seem more interesting but less useful, to me.

<comment><USER6> Factor has not been related to JVM in any way for many years now. The core of the VM has been in C since 2004 and now it has been ported to C++.

<comment><USER5> Yes, which is why I said it is not at all what I thought it was. I was wrong before, and now I know. How wrong my existing knowledge of Factor was surprised me enough that I commented on it.</comment></comment></comment>


John Carmack demos Rage on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5611523/id-unleashes-rage-on-the-iphone

<comment><USER4> Recommended reading: [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Culture/dp/0812972155/)

Also check out John Romero's interview on Matt Chat (#51-55): <http://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8>

<comment><USER5> That was the book that convinced me to start a startup with Steve. He'd let me borrow his copy of it, which is on his shelf to this day (I'm crashing at his place this week and just saw it). Can't recommend it enough. It's not brilliantly written, but it's written well enough - and the story, well...

<comment><USER6> I have to second this. Reading Masters of Doom right after it came out during my freshman year of high school really shaped my interests and world views for the rest of my life. The two lead characters of Romero and Carmack were so realistic and yet larger-than-life that I just knew I had to be a part of something big and relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The current TV console generation has lasted longer than most, by the design and general consent of all the console makers, and the interesting question there has been what will convince them to do the next generation of hardware for the Wii, XBox 360, or the PS3? And now I have my guess: A portable gaming system that can hook up to a TV and push 720p that is effectively indistinguishable from the current generation of console.

By "portable gaming system", I mean either a dedicated gaming console, or a cell phone. The interesting thing about the cell phone option is that while dedicated gaming systems come out rarely, cell phones are increasingly on the PC-style plan of coming out as rapidly as possible with as much hardware stuffed in them as possible. So while guessing when the dedicated portable gaming systems will pass the XBox 360 requires reading minds, guessing when cell phones will actually pass the XBox 360 is not so hard.

Using this logic, I think we can expect the PS4 and XBox 720 by 2013 at the latest, not because the cell phones will be _quite_ there by then, but because the cell phones on the horizon in late 2012 to 2013 will be able to exceed them. And especially for the PS and Xbox line, that's an embarrassment I don't think they can put up with and still maintain their image, no matter how unhelpful the next generation of graphics will be to their market or how expensive it makes the games. Unless they just throw in the towel, which, honestly, isn't necessarily a bad bet for the PS5 or Xbox 1080, but I think we're going to have one more conventional generation of consoles whether or not it's a good idea, after which we may discover they don't have a niche anymore.

<comment><USER8> No offense, but you're not making any sense. The current generation has not lasted longer than previous generations, and pretty much anyone in pre-algebra could plot you a graph that would show "we can expect the PS4 and XBox 720 by 2013 at the latest."

PS1 - 1994 PS2 - 2000 PS3 - <USER2>

The average works out roughly the same for Nintendo, and since Microsoft only has two data points it's not really worth including them.

<comment><USER9> Also note that the PS2 is _still in production_.

<comment><USER10> Yep, and the PS1 was discontinued March 23, 2006. So we might expect a new PS4 in 2012, and the PS2 to be discontinued that same year.

PS: The XBox was discontinued early due to licensing issues. Microsoft was unable to drop the production costs as far as they would like so they decided to release the XBox 360 early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> saint-loup Man, thoses textures.

The liveblog of the keynote, with interesting bits like "At their heart and core Apple is not really a game-friendly company" (a thing we already knew but, well..) : [http://kotaku.com/5611429/quakecon-2010-keynote-liveblog- aka...](http://kotaku.com/5611429/quakecon-2010-keynote-liveblog-aka-man-i- hope-they-mention-doom-4)

</comment><comment><USER11> To get your daily fill, it seems John is now on twitter: <http://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack>

<comment><USER12> That's great! His .plan files were great reading back in the day.

<comment><USER13> Some awesome person has collected most of his writings on scribd.

interviews - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/479479/John-Carmack-Archive- Interv...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/479479/John-Carmack-Archive-Interviews)

slashdot posts - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/470798/John-Carmack-Archive- slashd...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/470798/John-Carmack-Archive-slashdot- posts)

.plan 1998 - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John-Carmack-Archive- plan-19...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John-Carmack-Archive-plan-1998)

there is a plan file for each year, just search for John Carmack on scribd.

<comment><USER14> Those scribd pages with ads are really annoying. This is much better - <http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/plan.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is the same guy that also builds rockets in his spare time <http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home>

<comment><USER16> Yep and the other major figure, along with Elon Musk, who first made his fortune in software, and then later leveraged that to get into making innovative rocket ships. Imagine Carmack and Musk getting together on some project, maybe throw in Dean Kamen, and tremble.

<comment><USER17> Dean Kamen....? Really?

<comment><USER18> Look at you. Now look at him (<http://infosecurity.us/images/Dean_Kamen_IBot.jpg>). Now back to you. Now him again. Sadly, you aren't him.

<comment><USER17> I just don't see Dean Kamen's fit with Elon Musk and Carmack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They also published the sources for Return to Castle Wolfenstein / Enemy Territory at ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/

<comment><USER20> Holy crap thanks for the link! I completely missed the release amongst all the other news.

I can't even begin to calculate how many hours of college I wasted playing RtCW

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> ID games have always been technically astounding, but let down by art direction and inconsistent gameplay. From everything I have seen of Rage so far, it looks like they've been working on these shortcomings - I'm quite excited about playing it.

<comment><USER22> I'm excited to see it up close, but I think the controlls will ultimately leave me unfulfilled. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, someone has a Stephen Wolfram-sized ego going on there.

<comment><USER24> Carmack is the 3D engine GOD. There is no-one like him.

Seeing that, on an iPhone, holy crap. I'd love to see what it's like on an iPad (as he nicely describes for us).

<comment><USER25> no one?

There are quite a few developers like him. Sure, he's one of the first and most famous, but having worked in the game development space for a while, I can safely say that there are people quietly writing equally, if not more impressive graphics engines.

<comment><USER15> Carmack is the original. He's been writing class leading graphics engines since the days of distributing software via discs in plastic bags.

He wrote the first side-scrolling engine for PCs (long before they were called that) back when it was considered impossible.

He made people sit up and take notice of Shareware

He wrote the engines for Commander Keen (2d platformer) Wolfenstein (3d) , Doom (3d with variable height floors/walls), Quake (full 3d), Quake II (coloured lighting etc) etc etc

He's one of a very small number of people who were writing groundbreaking code right at the beginning, and are _still_ writing groundbreaking stuff.

He's constantly made his code public, as much as possible

He loves fast cars; how does a 1000hp twin turbo w/24psi of boost Testarossa sound? (that was 11 years ago)

He founded a company that builds and flys some serious rockets. real ones.

Seriously, if that doesn't make you a coding god, what does?

<comment><USER26> Not only that, while he's not the only talented graphics developer out there, he is one that has consistently brought something revolutionary and new to the table.

id Tech 5 is going to introduce the entire _concept_ of megatexturing - <USER3> grand unifying theory of geometry, just as Doom 3 was the first major engine to implement a unified lighting model. This is going to have major implications for both content production and rendering, and is exciting as fuck.

Carmack's impressiveness is not only in his ability to write kickass looking engines, but also his ability to lead the pack in completely rethinking the sort of things most devs take for granted.

<comment><USER27> Nitpick: As the name implies, megatexturing solves the problem of texture memory management and rendering, allowing essentially unlimited texture detail on any object. The problem of unlimited geometry detail is still unsolved. Carmack has hinted that id Tech 6 may tackle the geometry problem using voxels instead of polygons, and id actually demoed a voxel rendering system at SIGGRAPH 2008: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI>

<comment><USER28> Are there any good whitepapers on megatexturing out there? I've been trying to learn about it, but the powerpoints aren't cutting it.

<comment><USER27> This is the best explanation of the technique I've found (if you need enough detail to implement it): <http://silverspaceship.com/src/svt/>

He uses the name "Sparse Virtual Textures" instead of megatextures so it's not very googleable. Also it's a video, not a paper, but the code is included.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shapecatcher: Draw the Unicode character you want - <AUTHOR> http://shapecatcher.com/ <comment><USER2> Couldn't get it to find the unicode snowman[1]: <http://i.imgur.com/gaIY9Gd.png> (my drawing skills are awesome, no?)

But that aside, this looks like a neat idea. Not something I have any immediate use for myself, but could certainly be useful in some situations.

[1] <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/index.htm>

<comment><USER3> I can't get it to recognize 'Pile of Poo' (U+1F4A9)

Major bug.

<comment><USER4> worked for me: <http://i.imgur.com/4EJhUpK.png>

<comment><USER5> And indeed, a MiniDisc is a pile of poo (and Sony end of lifed them today!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Along these same lines, for LaTeX fans there is <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> For the curious, this explains a lot of the science in a hands-on, approachable way: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10168686/algorithm- improv...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10168686/algorithm-improvement- for-coca-cola-can-shape-recognition)

EDIT: As this is a deep topic, there are also books if that's more your style: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123725380/?tag=stackoverfl08-20>

or maybe you like Wikipedia (Ol' Trusty): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_detection_(computer_vis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_detection_\(computer_vision\))

<comment><USER8> and for the very curious, my bachelor thesis is on shapecatcher, [http://shapecatcher.com/B_Milde%20-%20On%20The%20Security%20...](http://shapecatcher.com/B_Milde%20-%20On%20The%20Security%20Of%20reCAPTCHA%20-%20Bachelor%20Thesis.pdf)

There is a whole chapter on shape contexts in it, which I use with shapecatcher, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Damn that looks good, it worked for me for ② and u with umlauts.

Get the Japanese support in there and it will be amazing. What about using MS Mincho or MS Gothic for that? (It is free as in beer, but is the licensing off?)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you like this, see DeTeXify <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> My simple, clean ampersand (&) became a paperclip (0x1f4ce), a "fried shrimp" (0x1f364), several species of geometric triangle, and dozens of other silly, silly glyphs.

<http://i.imgur.com/NLkl75J.png>

the unicode block containing "fried shrimp" 0x1f364 -- why does this exist???

<http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf>

Latest _Abstruse Goose_ comic sums up my emotional response:

<http://abstrusegoose.com/496>

<comment><USER12> Who doesn't love 🍤?

There's lot of other strange Unicode too. There's things like '' (U2062 INVISIBLE TIMES), ⓞⓓⓓ ©ⓗⓐⓡⓐ©ⓣⓔⓡ ⓢⓔⓣⓢ and sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ uʍop ǝpısdn.

All of which can be used to bypass filters and generally cause browser- crashing havoc. For example, this address looks like Google, but it really links to hacker news.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/?/moc.elgoog//:ptth>

<comment><USER11> _Who doesn't love 🍤?_

I just discovered the OS X terminal renders the friend shrimp glyph in _color!_

edit: and it's now my $PS1.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I tested pasting "🍤" to my OSX, and was surprised by a color rendering of a friend shrimp.

(yes, you can copy the character between "" and paste in your OSX terminal)

<comment><USER14> Shame this doesn't work in zsh.

<comment><USER11> Why wouldn't it work on zsh? The font face is a property of the terminal emulator (e.g. xterm, Terminal.app), not the shell.

<http://i.imgur.com/RKTOBKe.png>

edit: It appears (?) stock linux fonts don't include emoji.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very nice and amazingly accurate. But am I using your website the right way? When I look through the characters in the search results, if I see one that isn't rendering on my computer and just has a block instead of the symbol. I've been clicking on "bad" for "rate this suggestion". Thinking that it tallies up the total good/bad for a character to mean "how likely people are to have this character installed and working on their computers".

However, I now have a feeling that's not what that feature is for.

<comment><USER16> My guess was that the Good/Bad rating is to help with some sort of Machine Learning going on the background. E.g. the way I draw my Ampersand might be slightly different than yours, so if either or both of us see the result we were hoping for (&), that should get our Good rating. If it returns an (8), it may or may not deserve a Bad. If something way off appears as a top result (^), that would be pretty Bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It recognized my drawing of a cactus! <http://i.imgur.com/pDgIOPk.png>

<comment><USER13> I know this is supposed to be funny, but I had to flag it.

I mean, I did found it funny, but I did not enjoyed seeing that in my work (specially because I work with kids stuff)

<comment><USER17> Are cacti considered dangerous for children in your country?

<comment><USER18> Cacti are dangerous to children and adults wherever they appear. Those thorns are sharp! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Found a "secret" <http://shapecatcher.com/engine/>

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the excellent Detexify, which serves a similar purpose but for LaTeX symbols: <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> Tried to draw an alpha but it didn't get it.

So far I haven't tried Shapecatcher a lot but I think that <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html> works much better. Detexify is of course only for LaTeX symbols and doesn't do unicode.

To be useful Shapecatcher needs to become better at recognition.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice job done. Here are what I got: ᗧ ᗣ ᗤ ᗢ

could be awesome for a character-based PacMan impl.

</comment><comment><USER22> _"If you can't find Chinese, Japanese or Korean glyphs, it is because I have yet to find a good free CJK font to use."_

Are there not some CJK (or otherwise) fonts from, for example, Linux distributions that could have been used?

Or perhaps the emphasis could be on clarifying what is meant by "good" that deserves excluding such a large and useful character space for this type of application?

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds cool but sadly hasn't worked for the letters I often need but haven't easy access to (czech characters like: ř, ď and š). Perhaps because the element that makes them distinct from the latin (the "haček") is so tiny.

Edit, I just drew the ř larger and it recognised it correctly. Cool :)

</comment><comment><USER24> (surprisingly noone said this) Too bad it doesn't generate links to drawing results.

<comment><USER18> Hosting uploaded images exposes sites to a great deal of annoyance.

<comment><USER8> I think there is away to not host images - I could just record strokes and play that back with js.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Trying to draw U+1F4A9 (Pile of Poo). After several attempts, no luck.

I have learnt that Unicode contains even more weirdness than I thought before though, including 'Alchemical symbol for borax-3' (U+1f744), and 'doughnut' (U+1f369).

<comment><USER26> I tried to draw the elusive snowman: <http://i.imgur.com/dr5VKTh.png>

Clearly it's not impressed by my drawing skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice idea, too bad that I tried to draw several variations of PI, and it showed me several interesting characters, but never a PI.

Seriously, it even showed some very PI-like things, but not PI itself. This is a downer.

</comment><comment><USER27> Idea: instead of matching the shape of what the user has drawn raster-wise, let the user draw an svg-like path, and try to identify the letter by the trace.

<comment><USER7> Agreed that a pen tool or some type of editor would be kind of nice, but for what he's going for (proving out an idea), this is still pretty fun. I know a little of the science behind it, but it'd be great to read through some well- commented source code. He did link in the thesis on this, however: [http://shapecatcher.com/B_Milde%20-%20On%20The%20Security%20...](http://shapecatcher.com/B_Milde%20-%20On%20The%20Security%20Of%20reCAPTCHA%20-%20Bachelor%20Thesis.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Related:

A version of this for kanji that is very accurate

<http://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw-canvas.html>

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know if the mirror image of this character: " (U+201C) exists? I'm looking for a character that is the mirror image of the left double quotation mark, where the base is on the bottom and the character tapers from bottom right to top left. I don't know if any languages use that character.

<comment><USER30> " (U+201F) possibly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting thing, it recognized white queen correctly with diamonds on crown, but as black queen without diamonds and failed with only one diamond:

<http://i45.tinypic.com/3535j4x.png> — screenshot of variant with three diamonds.

</comment><comment><USER32> Pretty neat, but I'm not sure what else it wants me to draw here <http://i.imgur.com/rfU10rj.png>

Also it seems to fail on badly-drawn birds <http://i.imgur.com/IZgrRkq.png>

<comment><USER8> 1) it does count edge pixels - recognition is based on the shape of what you draw, so for the algorithm, a black picture is like a white one (but I admire your endurance to paint it all black) 2) server is under heavy load atm, it might drop some requests - just retry

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sadly it didn't recognize my clumsy attempt to draw the Look of Disapproval: <http://i.imgur.com/0lvPFaJ.png>

On the upside, I learned that there is a Panda Face unicode character.

<comment><USER34> The look of disapproval is not a single character; it comprises of three characters: [1] _ [1]

[1] <http://shapecatcher.com/unicode/info/3232>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Really cool stuff. Luckily, I draw my lowercase 'a's in double-story form, but if you attempt to draw an a (or an accented a) with just a circle and a line, it's recognized as an 'o'.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice. It's not very good at finding faces though. The right face is there, but way down.

<http://i.imgur.com/PD1DkV6.png>

</comment><comment><USER37> Really cool. The drawing tool would be even better if it drew as soon as you clicked (i.e., would draw a single dot if you click and don't drag the mouse).

</comment><comment><USER38> It didn't recognize the capital letter A, only variations on the letter A and other unknown characters. I'm sure that the letter A is an unicode character!

<comment><USER39> Worked for me, it's called: Latin capital letter a: A (0x41)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't seem to include the drawing stroke order or anything, just the ultimate image. I guess if you know the strokes, you know the letter already, hm.

<comment><USER41> Are strokes order available for Unicode codepoints? I know that for many languages they're not important (for example people are free to write 't' from top-to-bottom but from bottom-to-top too) while in others stroke order is very important, like in Japanese.

However how would stroke order work for a Unicode codepoint? If it exists, there has to be a _lot_ of info in addition to the codepoint of, say, a kanji.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It claims Chinese/Japanese/Korean is unsupported, but works fine for me:

<http://i.imgur.com/AQBybDT.png>

<comment><USER43> Is that the only character you tried? Try writing "論" and see what happens..

<comment><USER42> I tried 四 and it didn't work. I guess Hiragana and Katakana work, but not Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja.

<comment><USER8> Right. Hiragana and Katakana ist trivial (just a couple of characters), but no support for Kanjis currently

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Awesome idea, but all it ever gives me is a loading bar. shapecatcher.com/engine/recognize eventually returns "504 Gateway Time-out"

</comment><comment><USER45> It did pretty well with the first five Hebrew letters. Pretty well as in all but one was found in the top 10 of results.

</comment><comment><USER46> Worked really well for me, found a smiley face and a few accented characters. Awesome idea and implementation.

</comment><comment><USER47> Couldn't get it to recognize my drawing of a castle/rook in chess, but it did find my bishop. Great site.

</comment><comment><USER48> They need to prioritise the glyphs based on frequency of occurrence to prevent ridiculous matches.

<comment><USER49> You can rate the recognition results ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It got the ⌘-sign on the first try (Place of interest sign: 0x2318, aka the Command Key).

</comment><comment><USER51> I clicked the link reading "Draw the Unicorn character you want" =(

</comment><comment><USER52> Worked fantastically on my iPad. Excellent idea and execution.

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, it didn't recognize pi.

</comment><comment><USER40> Amazing. Try a happy face!

</comment><comment><USER54> 2 previous discussions.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Sha...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Shapecatcher&start=0)

Maybe the author can write a post detector next.</comment>


Milestones that will mark the true arrival of the cryptoeconomy - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/27/when-should-you-start-taking-the-crypto-economy-seriously-3-milestones-to-watch-for/ <comment><USER2> I'll concede that _if_ any of these happen, then I might just turn into a believer, but I think it very unlikely.

On 1. I have yet to see an example of where decentralization through block- chain solves a problem more efficiently than an existing centralized service. Also, a lot of projects seem to be issuing tokens where they really aren't necessary, or are solutions in search of problems.

2\. Can't see that happening either. There is a reason for central banking's existence and crypto currencies are just reinventing them (I'm saying that in the end crypto currencies are just going to become centralized and regulated).

3\. I'm not familiar with how things are done in the valley, but this seems like a terrible gamble from the employee's perspective.

It seems like a lot of crypto enthusiasts like crypto because the nerds like crypto and the nerds would be smart with their financial planning, wouldn't they? Yet reading comments on HN suggests that crypto doesn't universally appeal to nerds.

(to clarify, I'm a nerd for who crypto doesn't hold appeal)

<comment><USER3> 1\. except the web, the internet, domain names, email, tor onion, generally any communication protocol etc.

Also, any company that scales needs multiple databases in multiple data- centers. They cache content all over the world. backup and recovery is usually done in different geo regions.

in fact generally you need some kind of redundancy to manage single point of failure problems.

would you use the internet if it was managed by one company?

Blockchain has a single purpose a way to bootstrap a distributed platform/protocol.</comment></comment>


On Time-Lapse Rocket Ride to Trade Center's Top, Glimpse of Doomed Tower - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/nyregion/on-time-lapse-rocket-ride-to-trade-centers-top-ghostly-glimpse-of-doomed-tower.html <comment><USER2> I'd like high quality renditions of some of those years. They fly by too fast for me to enjoy all the details.

The mid 1800s were pretty fascinating. I guess I intellectually knew that urbanization existed then but I didn't ever see it so wonderfully depicted.

For instance, look at the elevated railcar that goes up in the bottom left around 1840 - then you get the paving of the streets around 1900 - and you can quite clearly see how it was the same street that was there in 1750.

That's why early stage planning is so crucial!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This video is an extraordinary work of art and history. I love the juxtaposition of moving buildings getting taller as your elevator car goes higher and you move forward in time.

And, the emergence and disappearance of the original trade center tower is heartbreaking.

I have tickets for June 6th, but I wish they offered an extra pass that let you ride the elevator up and down a few times.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this a really cool concept, in general, but the sight of the doomed WTC tower would give me the creeps. All I can think of when I see it in the promo video is 9/11 and the jumpers. Maybe it's my fault for watching too many 9/11 videos but it would definitely affect my psyche en route to the 102nd floor.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that was my thought too: the last thing I'd want when riding to the top of the new WTC is a reminder of what happened to the old WTC.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that's going to be in the back of any visitor's mind who was alive and cognizant at the time of the attacks, ESPECIALLY New Yorkers.

I much prefer this over some sugar-coated version where we just kind of pretend it didn't happen.</comment></comment></comment>


A GPS Tracker for Kids Had a Bug That Would Let Hackers Stalk Them - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-gps-tracker-for-kids-had-a-bug-that-would-let-hackers-stalk-them <comment><USER2> Wow. They had _one job_ , which was to let parents (and only parents) know where their kids were.</comment>


Scientists use adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/scientists-grow-transplantable-hearts-with-stem-cells <comment><USER2> The article goes on to contradict its own headline. They are repairing hearts unfit for transplant using skin cells. They have not grown a full-sized heart.

<comment><USER3> Your objection is that they're not also growing the matrix from scratch? Personally, I don't find that to be an interesting distinction. All I care about is that we're getting closer to viable custom replacement organs. I expect the same is true of the people who did the work and those who wrote the headline.

<comment><USER4> And to add to this, if you can take a cadaver heart, strip it to the scaffolding, and then using a plurpotent stem cell line from your own cells to convert that structure into a functional heart, which can then be transplanted into you without risk of rejection, well that would be pretty much a game changer for all those people dying from congestive heart failure.

Tissue engineering has come a long way. The possibility of building a replacement organ this way is pretty interesting to contemplate in terms of changing peoples lives.

<comment><USER5> On a Nova Science Now episode they were also talking about using animal organs for their scaffolding.

There is lots of developments like this that looked pretty amazing, 5 years go when i first saw it, why isn't there an easy way to keep track of things like this?

<comment><USER6> You can use Google alerts and follow the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two months ago, my dad died of a heart attack. One thing I've been wondering, and I'm hoping one of you can tell me, is why they couldn't have put him on some sort of machine until a replacement was found. This seems like as good a place as any to ask.

They said he was still alive when he got to the hospital, just barely, but the heart had too much damage to recover. My suspicions have been that either he died before he got there, and they didn't want to tell us that, or that they chose not to save him for some reason relating to insurance not being good enough. Neither is a rosey picture.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry for your loss. My dad had one recently, a real slap in the face to change his habits, and he recovered well enough to keep speaking and remaining cane mobile. Gosh now that I think about it that was last September.

I've thought about the same thing though. I think it has to do with brain damage, broken ribs from CPR and other related issues to keep someone alive.

When I saw this pulseless heart a few years back I imagined we'd be seeing them more and more to the point of, as you alluded too, being able to hook someone up to a "heart."

[http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137029208/heart-with-no- beat-o...](http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137029208/heart-with-no-beat-offers- hope-of-new-lease-on-life)

I can't give you any opinion on the "why" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Third repost within 3 days. HN does seem to have a herding mentality with upvotes.

There's an abstract [http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/118/1/56](http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/118/1/56) from this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315967)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312325)

<comment><USER10> I check HN multiple times per day every day, and I hadn't seen it yet.

<comment><USER11> Likewise. I think (just from experience; can't back it up at all) that interesting but 'non-core' posts - as in not directly CS-related or startup-y - tend to fall off quicker. But then, because they are interesting, garner a good number of upvotes again on subsequent reposts even just days later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonder if they could use human stem cells on a matrix from a pig heart or something.

<comment><USER13> You don't want to do that. Pig hearts are notoriously less durable (soft tissue tends to fail quickly, like in a fraction of a decade), so there's not a lot of data on the longevity of the circulatory stability of porcine hearts. I wouldn't ever get a porcine or cadaverous tissue transplant - as someone who pays close attention and has been living with an artificial valve for decades. (Human-) Cadaverous scaffolding, sounds ok on the surface. Let's see how much of it and specifically what parts are left intact after the growth process.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, but if organ replacement becomes something we can routinely do to extend lifespans, then eventually you run out of cadavers.

That's probably a bit far-flung in terms of thinking though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Read that as "full-sized human beards", was a little confused.

<comment><USER15> Well considering that beard transplants are a real thing[0,1] I'm pretty sure that they are working on that too....

[0][https://www.birchbox.com/guide/article/10-things-you- should-...](https://www.birchbox.com/guide/article/10-things-you-should-know- if-youre-considering-a-beard-transplant)

[1][http://www.theprivateclinic.co.uk/treatments/hair- transplant...](http://www.theprivateclinic.co.uk/treatments/hair- transplant/beard-hair-transplant)

/Hipster level 9000.</comment></comment>


The Doghouse: Crown Sterling - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/09/the_doghouse_cr_1.html <comment><USER2> This article is hilarious, Bruce is hot on it.</comment>


Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) - <AUTHOR> http://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-intelligence <comment><USER2> _(...) if future warfighters are to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage an emerging generation of artificially intelligent machine partners._

There's something eerie about the sound of that.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agree. Eerie particularly because of the lack of mention of ethical considerations in the same breath.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, they weren't _necessarily_ talking about robo-soldiers there. AI parters could just as easily be benign things like a logistics management system, or the control software for the squad's BigDog, or the pervasive data- mining surveillance program sucking up every private detail of an enemy or friendly populace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems relevant: [https://www.oreilly.com/learning/introduction-to-local- inter...](https://www.oreilly.com/learning/introduction-to-local- interpretable-model-agnostic-explanations-lime?twitter=@bigdata)

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be closely related to the current development in mathematics / computer science regarding automatic proof systems:

It is no longer sufficient that the resulting formula or statement is correct. It is also important that the derivation of the result is returned as well, so that correctness can be checked through other means, e.g. humans or different/simpler programs.</comment>


Ask HN: Overwhelmed by Java and Design Patterns - <AUTHOR> I have an internship coming up in a month. I am required to code in java then. I had absolutely no idea about how to program in Java. I read the Oracle tutorials and found them pretty helpful.
Other than plain Java, I also need to learn about a bunch of other technologies like servlets, spring, JPA, etc. The tutorials, blog posts, etc I found related to these technologies use a lot of design pattern-y and Language full of abstraction. I'm not able to grasp how I should go about learning these things.
I started with spring yesterday, but the blog posts delve directly into vague topics and design patterns that I cannot wrap my head on. How should I proceed in learning these things? <comment><USER2> Deep breaths, all is well :)

Modern Java is a pretty decent language. Servlets, spring, JPA; and the rest of the enterprise mumbo-jumbo is mostly over-engineered crap. Same goes for design patterns, they don't even come close to pulling their own weight. I suggest focusing on learning core Java 8, and leaving the enterprise crap to the enterprise. You will learn whatever you have to learn once you're there, filling your brain with bullshit and buzzwords ahead of time isn't going to help. At least that's my take home from 32 years in software, including several years of Java consulting.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> First learning the basics and then creating some projects for fun might help get you the confidence you are looking for. Good luck! And kudos for getting an internship that will open a whole lot of doors. I'm a bit jealous.

Re: Java 8, it's awesome!

SomeCollection.stream().filter(lambda ...).map(lambda... etc is just so cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> An intern is not expected to perform like a person with years of experience. An intern is at the start of their career and is expected to learn.

The list of Java topics is long enough that even someone with many years of experience may have only passing familiarity with some of them.

Finally, if a company has unrealistic expectations there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, realistic expectations regarding your own knowledge might be possible; [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

Good luck.</comment>


These Lyrics Do Not Exist - <AUTHOR> https://theselyricsdonotexist.com <comment><USER2> I jokingly provided "yiff" (a furry term) and the lyrics are surprisingly on point

        Verse 1
        Solid as the sky, as the ground
        True as the light, in the dark
        If you wanna yiff tough, gotta do right
        No part of the plot

        Pre-Chorus
        He was my brother, he was my friends
        He had my beating heart even though

        Chorus
        We can howl a great big yiff back
        More beautiful than ever before
        And oh how we went reeling
        Knowing all along the way you were bringing

        Verse 2
        He had me up against the wall
        He had me up against the wall
        I did not always yiff the way he would
        Oooh, he had me good even though he

        Pre-Chorus
        I feel the wood underneath my feet
        The whisper of the springs

        Chorus
        We can howl a great big yiff back
        More beautiful than ever before
        And oh how we went reeling
        Knowing all along the way you were bringing

        Bridge
        In a place you never been
        And hear the dogs yiff

        Chorus
        We can howl a great big yiff back
        More beautiful than ever before
        And oh how we went reeling
        Knowing all along the way you were bringing

</comment><comment><USER3> Random word + rock + neutral gives you Smashing Pumpkins lyrics

      Verse 1
      I want the cantaloupe black of my life
      I want the cantaloupe black of my birth
      I want the cantaloupe black of my tomb
      I heard that when you were young

      Pre-Chorus
      I wish I was the cantaloupe of the sunshine
      To fall into the melt snow

      Chorus
      Red is the cantaloupe of love
      Blood red is the cantaloupe of lust
      The cantaloupe of the rose
      The cantaloupe of the rose

      Verse 2
      Wanna throw my kite high above the rain
      In the cantaloupe of the roses
      I saw the sunrise on the wall
      I saw your eyes were my cantaloupe

      Pre-Chorus
      Said your eyes were the cantaloupe of the sky
      And your eyes saw everything

      Chorus
      Red is the cantaloupe of love
      Blood red is the cantaloupe of lust
      The cantaloupe of the rose
      The cantaloupe of the rose

      Bridge
      The social scenes in ash st
      So cantaloupe me a different coloured

      Chorus
      Red is the cantaloupe of love
      Blood red is the cantaloupe of lust
      The cantaloupe of the rose
      The cantaloupe of the rose

</comment><comment><USER4> Happy EDM about death:

      Verse 1
      Love is stronger than death, love is stronger
      Than death has given you. Boy
      I flew away from the love I found in your eyes
      In love I discovered death

      Pre-Chorus
      Lust, hate, death
      Lust, hate, death

      Chorus
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes

      Verse 2
      There is no life without it
      And there is no death without it
      And there is no way without it
      Love will be the death of you

      Pre-Chorus
      The shadows haunting you
      Watch them following you

      Chorus
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes

      Bridge
      I can be strong I can live through your death
      Love can kick your life to pieces

      Chorus
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes
      A death, sometimes, sometimes

<comment><USER5> Damn "Love can kick your life to pieces" is a great line and as far as Google is concerned totally original.

<comment><USER6> Untill now. We have been indexed!

<comment><USER7> I've often wondered if major search engines score searches on "uniqueness" and flag high-scoring queries to review their possible value.

For example, if I have a shower thought for a killer product or service, I'll search to see if it already exists. It would seem trivial for Google to tag my query for further review, and possibly R&D. What evidence would I have of the original though? Personal browser logs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Input: love

Output:

      Verse 1
      With love and hope inside our eyes from the world we grew
      And the love the love our family make
      I'd been here once before
      He seemed to ask to ride beside me

      Pre-Chorus
      I need love oh love
      It's about be in love

      Chorus
      A little bit of rain there will always be love
      And I knew you were in love with me.
      For the way that our love's become a game
      To show you I'm in love

      Verse 2
      You make a fool of yourself my love
      You take what you've been denied
      To think you've been looking in my eyes
      I don't want a broken love

      Pre-Chorus
      And I've got love all over me
      When I'll let you in and we'll see what this love can do

      Chorus
      A little bit of rain there will always be love
      And I knew you were in love with me.
      For the way that our love's become a game
      To show you I'm in love

      Bridge
      And heaven opened up high
      I'm in love with you and I always will love you

      Chorus
      A little bit of rain there will always be love
      And I knew you were in love with me.
      For the way that our love's become a game
      To show you I'm in love

<comment><USER8> i can hear a new ed sheeran hit there

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A very happy pop song about flagellation

Verse 1

My heart is Flagellation from my fingertips My heart is Flagellation from my fingertips You, you got my pulse Flagellation Or just a part of me

Pre-Chorus

I feel a new heart Flagellation inside of me Another place I can go

Chorus

And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation Your heart will keep on Flagellation

Verse 2

We were so perfect for each other We were so perfect for each other Hearts are Flagellation, we need time Never knowing where you are

Pre-Chorus

I want more than another chance Tonight my heart is Flagellation faster

Chorus

And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation Your heart will keep on Flagellation

Bridge

Good memories while we sailing on With that beat, that beat, that beat

Chorus

And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation And your heart will keep on Flagellation Your heart will keep on Flagellation

ETA: well after finally getting it to work again I couldn't resist, a very happy edm song about herpes

Verse 1

Cursed is my Herpes Cursed is my Herpes Lost and twisted since I found you Cursed is my Herpes

Pre-Chorus

Keep us away from Herpes We will bring a case of peace

Chorus

A heavenly Herpes A universal Herpes A universal Herpes Oh, did you know chronic lung Herpes

Verse 2

Came into the Herpes Lies made the heart grow A.i. Get it back slowly This mental Herpes

Pre-Chorus

And the sweet whisky Herpes Flew down slowly into the floor

Chorus

A heavenly Herpes A universal Herpes A universal Herpes Oh, did you know chronic lung Herpes

Bridge

We have an Herpes And we need release

Chorus

A heavenly Herpes A universal Herpes A universal Herpes Oh, did you know chronic lung Herpes

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems to lean reeeeeallly hard on the exact seed word provided. Someone buy this bot a thesaurus...

<comment><USER11> haha. It also doesn't appear to lean on the word at all thematically, just pastes it in to standard musical cliches (and mashup pop cliches) for the appropriate genre/tone. Which as we can see is great when your seed word is 'love', and a bit weird in a not particularly clever way when your seed word is 'herpes' or 'flagellation'[1]. The results look fun and sometimes inadvertently brilliant, but not much that a toy script couldn't produce.

It'd be more fun with an AI generated chord pattern to go with it, but that'd struggle to compete with the i IV V vi pattern in a suitable key for the genre/mood to being a convincing musical accompaniment to sing along to too :D

[1]unfortunately it's down so I can't see how it can handle _moderately complex to interpret but very likely to be the subject of a song_ stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This website doesn't exist ... Or at least is down now

<comment><USER13> They just got a takedown request that doesn't exist from a lawyer that doesn't exist on behalf of an artist that doesn't exist for a copyright violation that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER14> ... coming this Spring on Netflix Originals

<comment><USER15> New Black Mirror Season

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A very sad country song about a dog:

 _Verse 1_

And there on the hog

A hound dog ran away

Hey dumb robot, what do you know about this speed

A dumb dumb dumb dog a dumb dumb dumb dog

 _Pre-Chorus_

B---hes call me dog

Because I do all the n---a talking

 _Chorus_

Dog, my personal dog

This song was supposed to go this week but anyway

I bought a dog just to

Check off my shoes

 _Verse 2_

Hung like a dog

Better off dead than

The same to my lady

Steal your father and give him to the dog

 _Pre-Chorus_

He looked a funny dog

Aside from that he was boring

 _Chorus_

Dog, my personal dog

This song was supposed to go this week but anyway

I bought a dog just to

Check off my shoes

 _Bridge_

Well, if I had a dog in my town

I ought to make a never never end

 _Chorus_

Dog, my personal dog

This song was supposed to go this week but anyway

I bought a dog just to

Check off my shoes

<comment><USER11> This is my favourite. Glorious singalong nonsense, and I love the way the sad country band brought on a rapper for one of the pre-chorus bits

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lots of fun.

Feature request: permalinks for results to make it easier to share them. My results showed "Created by TheseLyricsDoNotExist.com generation number #NNNNNN" at the bottom, and it would have been nice if that came with a URL to go back to them.

</comment><comment><USER18> An open source analogue (no inputs though, purely random): [https://billionsongs.azurewebsites.net/](https://billionsongs.azurewebsites.net/)

Write-up with links to source: [https://habr.com/post/453232/](https://habr.com/post/453232/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I made a similar Show HN for Valentine's day, to use existing Diane Warren, Boyzone, Chinese, or Rock lyrics to help me find phrases to compose a love letter. These are using real lyrics, but taking the data and randomising it could made similar AI-generated songs.

[https://github.com/peterburk/peterburk.github.io/blob/master...](https://github.com/peterburk/peterburk.github.io/blob/master/programs/nanoLyrics/NanoLyrics%20ReadMe.md)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is too easy. What this needs to do is be able to generate songs that are already written within some amount of error %. Then extend the application (a method or conclusion) to an unknown situation by assuming that existing trends will continue or similar methods will be applicable. (extrapolate)

<comment><USER21> > What this needs to do is be able to generate songs that are already written > within some amount of error %

That is really easy. You just switch out some words using a dictionary, maybe make sure you are using a rhyming dictionary for words at the end of a line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried something challenging and the results are pretty good.

Song Type: Love

Genre: Metal

Lyric Mood: Very Sad

Verse 1

No one lead you astray

If there is no love all I can pray for is sin

There is no one to love me

There is no one to adore me

Pre-Chorus

They called themselves love

They all wanted to be

Chorus

I hate you, I love you too

Want this too, and you want it too

No chance for love

Just war in the streets

Verse 2

This is sad but truth

My lips they would love to kiss

I have seen men with no heart

I have seen young kids with no love

Pre-Chorus

So then we can rebuild the love

So we can reach you

Chorus

I hate you, I love you too

Want this too, and you want it too

No chance for love

Just war in the streets

Bridge

A life without your arms would be so empty

A life without your love would be so incomplete

Chorus

I hate you, I love you too

Want this too, and you want it too

No chance for love

Just war in the streets

<comment><USER23> I managed to confuse it though. I think the meter's thrown off kilter too by this one.

Topic: Defenestration Genre: Pop Lyric Mood: Happy

Verse 1

Lock him up or defenestration the key away

Those shackles are holding me

Defenestration away the keys to my heart

Defenestration away the keys to my heart

Pre-Chorus

I can feel you run up inside, did I defenestration your heart right over the edge?

I erase all of my faults, I think of only you

Chorus

Defenestration my check on your ground

Baby, walk on me

Defenestration your hands up if you get what you come for

Defenestration your hands up if you the number one guy

Verse 2

Defenestration a glitter umbrella in the ring

Flick a fly and a shake a hand

Who am I to defenestration that away?

Should be able to stand your ground

Pre-Chorus

Defenestration it up and show you I still got some

I see you, I roll another one

Chorus

Defenestration my check on your ground

Baby, walk on me

Defenestration your hands up if you get what you come for

Defenestration your hands up if you the number one guy

Bridge

Defenestration us a line and pull the plug

Bring your silence loud and hold it down

Chorus

Defenestration my check on your ground

Baby, walk on me

Defenestration your hands up if you get what you come for

Defenestration your hands up if you the number one guy

<comment><USER24> I think both the meter and the soundness/grammatical-correctness would benefit from replacing the Noun defenestration with the verb defenestrate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I thought it was about this classic song:

Gopher Tuna! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwrgAnx6Q8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwrgAnx6Q8)

</comment><comment><USER26> Trurl would have been proud.

[https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jbuhler/cyberiad.html](https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jbuhler/cyberiad.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> More ...doesnotexist.com sites:

\- [https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/)

\- [https://thisstartupdoesnotexist.com/](https://thisstartupdoesnotexist.com/)

\- [https://thiscatdoesnotexist.com/](https://thiscatdoesnotexist.com/)

\- [https://thisrentaldoesnotexist.com/](https://thisrentaldoesnotexist.com/)

\- [https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/](https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/)

\- [http://thisquestiondoesnotexist.com/](http://thisquestiondoesnotexist.com/)

<comment><USER28> Q: Anyone knows if there are any service that is equivalent of 'This Voice Does Not Exists'?

Google Text-to-Speech has good Wavnet based voices[0], but the focus seems to be generating human like voice intonation, accents but not generating infinite (or large) set of different voice characters.

Then there are services like Lyrebird[1] where focus is on cloning a real person's voice (ex. your own).

But there doesn't seem to be any which creates fictitious voice characters which is totally new every time (synthesizing pitch, tone, accents, intonations); same as perhaps what GAN does when generating 'deepfake faces'.

[0] [https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech](https://cloud.google.com/text- to-speech)

[1] [https://www.descript.com/lyrebird-ai](https://www.descript.com/lyrebird- ai)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Someone should connect this with This Melody Does Not Exist (which I think does not yet) and This Voice Does Not Exist (same). Point site A at an output of site B, which had been pointed to an output of Site C.

Also, if I took these lyrics, set them to music, sang them and sold them, where's the copyright?

<comment><USER30> AWS DeepComposer [https://aws.amazon.com/deepcomposer/](https://aws.amazon.com/deepcomposer/) and AWS Polly [https://aws.amazon.com/polly/](https://aws.amazon.com/polly/) with some autotune?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hm, I want to say that this lyrics pretty much exists. Photo of person can be faked, but faked song or text is still (but maybe arbitary bad and non- original) as real and true as "real" song or text If i remember correctly, this idea was in G.E.B. (sorry for bad english)

</comment><comment><USER32> Down as of this comment. (Backend engine)

<comment><USER33> Took several minutes even for the frontend to load for me. Then yeah, the backend eventually returned an error. I guess we'll never know what lyrics don't exist. :)

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again I see a copyright troll opportunity. So, generate lots of lyrics. Search for new songs with lyrics. Find one that used a lyric from the site. Sue them for breach of copyright.

I would have added a legal phrase that said that I will not do this.

</comment><comment><USER34> A dead mans name is bork

I cannot be the martyr denied by grace

See, I am a man words has found

Is designed to bork

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, they do now.

</comment><comment><USER36> They do now.

</comment><comment><USER37> vegan mayonnaise</comment>