Redesigning Apple Music after Being Rejected - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jasonyuan/i-got-rejected-by-apple-music-so-i-redesigned-it-b7e2e4dc64bf <comment><USER3> Apple Music is by far the least polished Apple product I use on a regular basis (I'm on a family plan). There are so my UX problems with it I don't know where to start.

Biggest issues:

\- Discoverability is awful. Playlists are ok, but heavily recommending entire albums is bizarre. Its like trying new foods by going to Costco. It would make more sense to select top picks from an artist.

\- Extremely ungraceful handling of spotty cell coverage. Playback will abruptly stop to buffer, but the UI gives absolutely no feedback. The play/pause button just behaves as if _I_ told it to stop, and is unresponsive to my input. This is especially terrible while driving, where playback can stop for other reasons (Like a bluetooth disconnect).

\- Radio stations inexplicably play at lower volumes than the rest of the service. The radio tab is pretty much a giant banner for whatever Apple wants to push, instead of basing it around the user.

\- _Really_ buggy. It will arbitrarily skip to the next song in the middle of playback. Sometimes it will refuse to play a song in my library, and will move on to the next. No error, no feedback, nothing.

I could go on and on.

I really wish this was its own app on the App Store, so we could have some semblance of feedback. As well as regular bug fixes without waiting for the next iOS release.

<comment><USER4> The polish issue I see is mainly the visible seams between Apple Music, iTunes Store and your library. It's ugly that the search makes you choose a context. There should just be one simple profile for an artist. Show your favorited/"added" albums up top and everything else from them down below. Whether it's full tracks or just previews should just depend on whether you and/or they participate in Apple Music.

I also feel the UI could be simplified further by burying the concept of "downloading" somewhat akin to how iCloud Photo Library does it. It should just aim to handle 95% of cases via intelligent caching, like cache all your latest stuff and anything you recently put into a playlist. I know we on HN tend to be advanced users who love manual control but we could still do it via playlists. Get those download buttons out of the way for most folks.

I find discovery to be pretty good! The "My New Music Mix" is surprisingly decent for me. That is entirely track-based and it's probably my main way of discovering completely new music. I _used_ to hate For You because it felt like browsing the 99 cent rental section of Blockbuster.. lots of old stuff that was maybe good, but I'm mainly interested in new music. But the New Music mix has changed my feeling.

<comment><USER5> I think you're missing an important point that GP made: Apple lately absolutely refuses to give you any kind of error or even status informations in its cloud products (Music, Photos, Notes, ...).

It's meant to just work like 'magic' \- as if all wireless connections as well as the server and client software are nowadays so perfect that you'd never encounter error states anymore, and it's all so fast that you don't need progress information on anything. Right.

<comment><USER6> And in the one place they _do_ give you status (iCloud Photo Library), it regularly shows completely bizarre numbers (I often see stuff like "Uploading 15 photos (369MB / 125MB)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Music discovery is the primary reason that I've moved away from Apple Music. It's become difficult to explore their music catalog, almost as if it's by design. I've made the move to Spotify and it's been wonderful.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. I've been thinking about switching to Apple Music to have a bit more control over my music. Spotify puts out some amazing curated playlists that are constantly being updated, but then after a few weeks those playlists suddenly turn to shit.

My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the list.

<comment><USER9> You will appreciate Every Noise at Once[0] maybe. It's all AI, but uses data from a massive set of users. It maps all chartable Spotify genres, and groups them into 3 playlists each. So for the genre, say "classic french pop"[1], you'd click in and see all the associated bands within that genre and see Spotify playlist links – they are:

 _The Sound of Classic French Pop_ – A sampling of music that defines the genre

 _The Pulse of Classic French Pop_ – Music that is often played by people who listen to lots of Classic French Pop

 _The Edge of Classic French Pop_ – New or obscure music recommended for people who like Classic French Pop

It's an incredibly deep web of playlists and music recommendations that has completely changed the way I experience Spotify. Highly highly recommend.

__

0\. [http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html](http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html)

1\. [http://everynoise.com/engenremap- classicfrenchpop.html](http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html)

<comment><USER10> Hmm. This is pretty damned cool. I'd subscribe to Spotify if this were a real interface to its catalog.

<comment><USER11> I agree - Very cool! Under playlists you can launch in Spotify a playlist of every genre. Is that what you were missing?

Thanks parent!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "headshots" idea seems to be optimised for the listening habits of the author of this post. Not every artist (and almost none in my library) is a singular person. For that matter, I don't really care what the artist looks like. I'm more likely to recognise a logo when available, or an album cover failing that.

<comment><USER13> I can't recognize a single artist from his screenshots besides Lady Gaga.

MusicBee has some kind of band shot next to each band name. It is nice - <USER2> in my list most of the bands are 3 to 5 dudes, so you can't really recognize the bands with the headshot.

But I am definitely the hoarder type from his characterization - so his music player is most definitely not the one for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apple Music is a horrid UI/UX! So confusing and way behind Spotify yet I use it everyday.

I'd love to shuffle all my songs and also have Apple Music play similar tracks to my huge song playlist. Discovering music is a chore in Apple Music. I actually have to hunt and peck through a bloated UI.

From a frustrated customer!!!

<comment><USER15> The Apple Music UI is hands down one of the ugliest, worst designs interfaces I've had the displeasure of using. I have no idea what's going on in Apple, but along with iTunes, it feels like every new version gets worse in some way.

Why is the font _so big_ and so bold? Why is there so much empty space? It goes far beyond whitespace: there's just large unused chunks. Why do I have to go all the way back to the first screen to swap between albums and artists? The now playing section at the bottom of the screen has pause and skip buttons that are inexplicably enormous. I can't put my finger on it for sure (because I don't have an iPhone atm) but why is it that the font (typeface and weight) in Apple Music is different _to the rest of the OS_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I want Apple Music to just play my fucking music. When I'm driving in my car, trying to manipulate the buttons, etc, is almost impossible and in a rage I turn it off. There is so much fucking swiping and hitting small buttons it's tremendously frustrating.

I usually listen to music in my car, as opposed to in the office, so I want big buttons and easy navigation. Does no one have an app that is designed specifically for car use?

<comment><USER17> I suspect Apple would like you to be using CarPlay rather than using an interface specifically not meant to be used while driving.

<comment><USER18> That's a great idea. However, CarPlay is only available if you have a late- model car, or if you replace your car stereo with a new one. Neither of these is cheap options, and replacing the car stereo may not even be possible if your car is too old to host one of these new units with the huge screen.

Further, having an interface that is problematic for driving is not problematic ONLY for driving. I use music services while exercising, either outside or on an indoor machine. I'm bouncing around, I don't want to stop, and it's hard to hit these tiny little UI elements while I'm moving. The UI for listening to music while exercising (or driving) is actually far inferior for most touch screens when compared to an old iPod with click wheel or even an old Sony Walkman cassette player.

Add in the fact that CarPlay on my late model car is incredibly glitchy. The situation is so bad that I wonder if I would be better off putting music on USB flash drives and plugging those into my car.

<comment><USER19> This stuff could definitely use some work, I agree. One tip I thought I'd share: the Music app has a widget that you can access on the lock screen which lets you play the most recent albums (or playlists, presumably, though I don't use them) with one tap. I find it quite handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is an incredible redesign, utilizing widely known gestures (swipes, double taps, etc). Apple should embrace these further, IMO, and a casual-use app like Music makes the most sense. I'm a longtime Spotify Premium user and I tried v1 of Music but it was jus too painful. This would have made me stay. Great job.

<comment><USER21> I think the swipe gestures for add/next should probably be left/right to match tinder... not that it's really much better than up/down, it is somewhat more natural to swipe from side to side in terms of holding the device casually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not in the Tinder generation so I don't want my music to work that way. Software should work well for everyone.

<comment><USER20> The gestures demonstrated are easily discoverable and are so widely used now, I'd argue the majority of iOS/Android users are familiar. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, etc. all follow these similar UI/UX features. Software should work well for everyone, but it's evolving and users adapt.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure which features of Tinder are part of my daily UX. I know it has a different notion of "swipe left/swipe right" than most things I use - in the apps I use that means "go back a page/go forward a page". In Tinder I'm vaguely aware that one direction means "I want to have sex with you", but I am not aware which direction that is.

<comment><USER23> There are hints, so swiping doesn't seem unintuitive. Btw, I've used tinder- like gestures for my music discovery app based on Apple Music API ( [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885) ). I think this pattern works perfectly for binary decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple Music has freaked me out because I have a lot of my own recordings - rehearsals, etc. After turning on iCloud sharing, it uploaded _most_ of them, but it says others aren't available, and some of them got matched incorrectly. They say when that happens, to delete them from your source library and then re-add to let Apple match it again, since it apparently gets more accurate over time. I haven't tried that yet since it's a huge project to back up my recordings in a separate location and then re-add (even though I have the library itself backed up). The other thing I can do is cancel my iCloud sharing / match account, but then I'm not sure what happens to my recordings - even though it's my source account, I've heard horror stories about iTunes deleting some recordings on account cancellation if they've been categorized incorrectly. So I've just felt sort of stuck until I find time to do some major surgery.

<comment><USER25> You're overthinking it. If you turn off iCloud Music Library, any music you already had on your computer is fine. This means your pre-existing music library will be fine (assuming you didn't delete the music files off of your computer). Yes, there was a bug at one point that could cause it to delete some of your existing music, but it was relatively rare and was fixed shortly after it was discovered.

As for matching, are you adding it from your iPhone, or from your computer? Music matching is a lot more exact if you're adding it from your computer.

<comment><USER24> That bug must be what I remembered - I missed that it got fixed, all I heard was that Apple was working on it. Thanks for letting me know, I think I might nervously shut it off and revert to manually controlling what songs are on my phone. Do you remember any sources on what it was and when/how it got fixed?

I added them from my laptop - I find the matching pretty lousy, though. Bjork recordings are replaced by acoustic remixes, live-radio performances of songs are replaced by studio recordings, etc. And then of course some of my own songs are replaced by weird recordings I've never heard before. It seems that any time I'm out and about and listen to a playlist for 30-45 minutes, at least 1-2 songs are wrong.

All of these recordings are of course still fine on my laptop itself - I know not to delete those.

<comment><USER25> I don't really know the details on how it was fixed, but I feel like it was fixed within a week of it being first reported.

As for the matching, I'm not sure what to tell you. To the best of my knowledge, all of the music I have was matched correctly (or uploaded if there was no match). That said, I was originally an iTunes Match subscriber, and it's certainly possible that maybe iTunes Match used stricter matching, though I don't know why that would be because that sounds weird.

<comment><USER26> In the past Match used stricter matching than Apple Music for no real good reason. They are the same now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great job on the redesign!

My biggest UX gripe with Apple Music is that the app doesn't open into the same state it was in last time I used it.

I'm not sure if this is an intentional decision meant to generate algorithmic feed impressions (or some other reason), or an oversight.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd say remove that first quote you have on there. No one was thinking that, but as soon as you said it, I couldn't help but have it in my mind the whole time reading the article.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think the hoarder vs nomad analogy is excellent. Apple Music has come a long way since the hoarder heavy model, but still a long way to go before catching up to Spotify's discovery.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Wouldn't it be awesome if, immediately after checking into a café on > Facebook, Apple Music updates this Mood section to Focus/Study playlists?

This strikes me as being extremely, invasively creepy -- although I can appreciate that some people might find this cool.

<comment><USER31> FWIW, Google Play Music already does something similar. It knows I'm at the location I have my work set to, and one of the playlist categories it's showing in my home feed is "Working to a Beat - Looks like you're at work".

<comment><USER32> more info: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music- serv...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-service- knows-how-you-feel-and-will-play-songs-to-suit-your-mood/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I love Apple Music and he perfectly captures my frustrations with it. Beats 1 and Curated playlists are my favorite thing yet there are so many simple things I can't do. Reminders for shows. Easy navigation to shows I always listen to. Being able to add something to my library which won't work because some Curated playlist I have already have it added. I hope iOS 11 deals with many of these problems. To know that someone else shares my frustrations gives me hope that Apple does too.

</comment><comment><USER34> I never went back to Apple Music after they wiped my playlists.

I used the 3 months trial and spent countless hours finding and adding all my music back. Little did I know that if your subscription is interrupted, Apple Music will wipe all your stuff immediately. I wanted to wait for the iOS10 version but as soon as i re-subscribed I just found all my stuff missing.

Other services like google music and Spotify keep your stuff in place and don't actually delete anything.

I thought this might have been a bug, but no - my girlfriend just last month switched to Spotify because of the same issue. She had to take a month break from the service and when she re-subscribed her beloved playlists have been wiped.

</comment><comment><USER35> I switched to Apple Music after Google Play, and Groove (Microsoft Music), and it's most frictionless library I used so far :-) I just don't give a damn about polishing my playlists into oblivion, I just want some selection of music, put it on my phone, shuffle. Curated playlists from Apple are the best I've seen lately.

</comment><comment><USER36> Good for him. I cancelled my subscription with the launch of 2.0. Just awful and buggy as hell.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone else experiencing this page crashing and force reloading every 1-2 minutes in Safari on iOS?

<comment><USER38> Yes, but I thought it was the HN app[1] I was using

[1] [http://hn.premii.com/about/](http://hn.premii.com/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Should have hired you...

<comment><USER40> I've never worked at a large company, but how is it that a single designer is able to cook up something that looks and feels better than what a team of talented designers at a $500B company came up with - for a clearly important product?

<comment><USER41> Because it takes hardly any of the real world constraints into consideration. If you're designing for the 15 artists / albums in his mockup, then yeah , this is fine. But that's not the real world case.

<comment><USER42> Also things like qualitative user testing, a/b testing would go into every single pixel of his design. I am not particularly sure if the most important separation of the music listening population is into hoarders vs nomads. You'd evaluate that, make a decision. Things might get muddled there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free G+ invites for Hackers - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys i have a g+ account so i thought to invite some hacker news ppl on !! please write your email ids and i will send u invite asap. thanks !
Imran.<p>https://plus.google.com/105034561940982168515/ <comment><USER2> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER6> firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Why I'm Not Going To Stop Posting Go Links - <AUTHOR> http://timkellogg.me/blog/2014/01/19/I-get-excited-about-go/

<comment><USER2> This is why I like langs like Clojure and F#. "Functional" enough to get the good parts, pragmatic enough so that you can actually get work done.</comment>


iShopr - Part 1 - Screenshots of the real thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ishopr.com/blog/2007/03/01/ishopr-part-1/ <comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys think?</comment>


Show HN: Super Smart - a modern take take on quiz/trivia genre (iOS) - <AUTHOR> http://iamsupersmart.com

<comment><USER2> I've been beta testing Super Smart and loving the sense of humor in the questions and answers. Nice to see a quiz game that doesn't take itself too seriously/feel like taking the SATs. Good luck!</comment>


Show HN: A serverless comment engine, alternative comment service to Disqus - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/metrue/YoYo <comment><USER2> Interesting. What are the main features / benefits? That it's serverless, is one, are there other things too?

What's your motivation, what's the reason you're building this :- )

Feedback: Privacy problem, I posted a comment, and this then appeared as my name and comment:

        myemail - NaN-NaN-NaN NaN:NaN

        Test of https://github.com/metrue/YoYo

having specified `email@example.com` as email address.

That means YoYo in practice gives away peoples email addresses, when YoYo uses `myemail` as the username — most people use well known providers like `@gmail`.</comment>


The Wikidata revolution is here: enabling structured data on Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/04/25/the-wikidata-revolution/

<comment> UVB-76 Yes. This is the future.</comment>


Ask HN: How much is sweat equity worth? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on my start up by myself for nearly 2 years and there's been some interest from a handful of potential advertisers to finally start bringing me some revenue.  I'm at the point where I can't do it all myself and need to bring on some partners.  I've got well over 4,000 hours into this and over $25,000 personally invested but I still own 100% of nothing at this point.  Can I even put a valuation on the company yet?  How do I determine how much % to give to new partners?
My question is, if I bring on some partners how do I measure the amount of work required by them and for how long?  Say I give a programmer 5% in return for 25 hours a week minimum to start with.  How many weeks does he have to work to earn that 5%?  And what happens when that time is up?  He owns 5% but doesn't have to do anything more?  I'm assuming if someone is invested in a business that much, they will work beyond the minimum...is that common?  Perhaps a sliding scale would work in this case.
I plan on bringing in a couple people to take this to the next level and just want to know what I'm in for.  I know this subject can go on for ages, but I'm hoping to get some insight from seasoned people.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you really need technical people you're going to have to pay them unless you've got something amazing built so far. Or you're going to have to bring in cofounders and give them a more even split. That will be hard if you've got all of the time in it. In my situation I have put a lot of time and effort into my project and I will need to bring someone on board soon but it irks me to think I will have to give up more that 20% to someone who hasn't put the time and risk in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think most programmers only work for money. Now if there's a combination of equity, and some pay, that's something that warrants discussion.

You might consider trying to get one of your friends to help out for equity. I'm working on a project (unpaid, but ownership of part of it) with some friends at the moment. But we are all ok if it doesn't end up making money.

</comment><comment><USER2> As a programmer I don't get involved unless there's money to pay me. I like the idea of getting paid up front for my work and keeping the 5% share and the "owner" of the project recouping my up front pay when the money starts rolling in. There's not a project you could show me that would convince me to work for equity only. Just my opinion

</comment><comment><USER2> Another thing. If you're the technical guy then you should only hire sales people. Make money then hire programmers. I doubt the project has grown so large you can't maintain it. If you haven't made any money then your 4000 hour/25000 dollar project is just code. No one cares until it makes money.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if I wasn't clear, but there's hardware and software involved. I can't possibly program, build, manage, sell, market by myself anymore. I'm a jack of all trades, not necessarily a programmer or server admin, so that's where I need help along with sales.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah this whole startup business stuff is a serious maze. Seems almost paradoxical. I've got a working product that people really like, just don't have enough sales.</comment>


The Myth That Americans Are Busier Than Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-myth-that-americans-are-busier-than-ever/371350/?_ga=1.154308414.742779469.1395405048 <comment><USER2> I have a feeling that "being busy" is just a gentle form of crowd control. I could see it in Japan, people being terribly busy at work, yet producing very little, spending most of the time during the day at job, unable to do anything in their spare time. I guess that's how Asian society makes sure there is no unexpected creativity leading to "interesting times". It could also help individual people to cope with social anxieties by being "busy".

I wouldn't be surprised if the same were happening in the States. I don't believe people can be super-productive more than 5 hours a day unless they work on something they are passionate about or are on drugs.

From my experience, just walking away from a difficult problem, taking time to walk in the forest, relax on the beach, playing sports with friends, doing completely unrelated relaxing things with total focus often leads to sudden inspirations on how to tackle difficult problems. It's like life is telling me to relax and rewards me with great ideas that can be immediately executed, for being just well balanced.

I remember flying with one US businessman between Hawaiian islands, and he curiously asked me how many vacation days do I have - when I told him it's 6 weeks, he went on to complain about how crazy is it in the States, with average of 8.5 day or so of vacation per year.

People, please live your lives!

<comment><USER3> Question on those 6 weeks. I've heard before that some countries include national holidays in there 5-6 week count. Is that the case here? Generally when Americans are listing their vacation days they are not including what they view as mandatory holidays (Memorial day, july 4th, thanksgiving, christmas, new years, etc).

FWIW, I'm in the US and we have ~5-6 weeks vacation.

<comment><USER2> I am currently in Germany, 6 weeks is basically a standard excluding holidays (which is up to 13 extra days depending on the state and weekend overlay as there are no bank holidays). So in the end you can end up with ~8 weeks. Minimum vacation days as specified by the law is 4 weeks.

Most of my friends in the US start with 2 weeks, after a few years they get 3 weeks, then these are reset if they change the job, and if they take a vacation, they are either frowned upon or they have to be available to work on a moments notice. I find this utterly crazy.

<comment><USER4> I have not, nor have I ever met anyone who has, been expected to work or even be available on a vacation. I've also never taken or been offered a job with less than 3 weeks vacation to start. Current job (been here for 2 months) is 25 paid days off plus ten or so holidays. This seems to be a common criticism of the US but I've been in the professional workforce for just about a decade and have never come across this. I've worked remotely, for small companies with ten employees and Fortune 500 companies. I just don't believe there are people taking jobs where they get 10 days off a year and are expected to answer a phone call from their boss on vacation, unless they are 1) interns; 2) non-professional jobs, service industry, etc; 3) at the very beginning of their career (I could see this happening with more predatory employers with the huge number of unemployed recent grads looking for works).

<comment><USER5> I think it depends on different factors. My wife has the same experience as you - never had less than 3 weeks of vacation time. She's a policy analyst in the non-profit sector. I've been in IT as a software developer for 20+ years and have been with 8 different employers across different industrial sectors and ranging from startup to Fortune 500. Most employer changes set me back to 2 weeks.

I know people who feel pressure to work on vacation. The pressure is very real and isn't always related to ambition on the part of those people. Usually they're being exploited by an ambitious manager who has a "hold" of some kind, e.g. exploited person has a child with 2 years left of college and can't afford to lose his/her job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not really sure what this "work-hours" data is capturing.

My parents were teachers and I remember them marking after school and some weekends. My wife is now a teacher and she has after school meetings at least once a week, spends hours marking every night and weekends, plus a lot of her holiday preparing new lessons and admin. Contractually she has the exact same hours and holidays my parents had but her life is nothing like theirs.

For myself I'm a scientist and people have worked long hours since I was a student - but it used to tail off as people got into their 30s and became more secure, maybe got a stable position, teaching, and students of their own. Now this seems to have been pushed back to an ever receding horizon and people work long long hours competing to get the next grant or next placement, to keep their heads above water right up till retirement. Of course academics all contractually work a 40 hour week.

I guess its anecdotal but I see the same sort of things amongst my friends in tech and pharma. Their laptops and mobiles have enslaved them.

Maybe I was blind to it when young but I don't remember my parents generation - their friends, my relatives working like that.

<comment><USER7> The data looks like it comes from the American Time Use Survey.

[http://www.bls.gov/tus/](http://www.bls.gov/tus/)

It's collected via time diaries, not contractual hours worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a European I am always amazed how much the US-citizen work. Very little vacation, very little security and a atmosphere of a very (very very, haha) competetive nature.

<comment><USER9> As an American I am always laughing each time I read this. There are people on both sides who choose to work a long number of hours. I would not be surprised to read the numbers are not to dissimilar.

Far too much of this workaholic issue only occurs because people want lifestyles they otherwise could not afford. Two cars, the big house or exclusive location, the island vacations, and such, are not necessary for a happy life. Yet there are many who think so and adapt to make it happen. I don't begrudge them for a minute

<comment><USER10> I will disagree with your first point. As a European who has lived in the US now for over a decade, I can say the OP is correct. Yes, there are people in Europe who do put in long hours, but the overall atmosphere/attitude (for lack of better terms) of work is remarkably different. In the US, you can work without abandon, all day, every day, take no vacation or personal time, neglect your time at home and be hailed as an exemplary for your work ethic. In Europe, the pervasive attitude towards a lifestyle like this is quite contrary to being exemplary. Failing to take vacation time is frowned upon to say the least and often is forbidden depending on your location. Even something a small as working on Sundays will bring disdain from your neighbours. Again, this is not to say that you cannot find the US "work lifestyle" in Europe, it's just that it is not as glorified as it is in the US.

<comment><USER11> > In Europe, the pervasive attitude towards a lifestyle like this is quite > contrary to being exemplary. Failing to take vacation time is frowned upon > to say the least and often is forbidden depending on your location. Even > something a small as working on Sundays will bring disdain from your > neighbours.

Make sure you're not the tallest poppy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article defines leisure as "time spent not working" and then observes that the underemployed segment of our society gets to enjoy an abundance of (presumably, in large measure, involuntary) "leisure."

</comment><comment><USER13> If you include all Americans, not just working Americans, the amount of time spent not working has spiked dramatically. Kids are staying in school longer; the labour force participation rate is dropping as blue collar jobs disappear; people are retiring earlier and living longer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is a blog post by a psychiatrist on work/life balance. Basically: _One of our time 's great sociological questions is why we filled downtime back up with work, and the reason is it's better than alcoholism._

Try to look past the writing style you probably won't like at first: [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> _" High pay is highly rewarding," Kolbert writes, and in a winner-take-all economy, we're motivated to put in extra-long hours to, well, win._

We trade time for money. If you enjoy your work, and someone is willing to give you a large sum of money for your time, then working long hours makes sense... but only if you couldn't be doing something that you'd like even more than money with that time. For example, a reasonably high level executive position might pay you $250k/year for 20 years - so $5m - but it'd take you away from your family doing business travelling for 2 weeks out of every month. Would you trade a total of 10 years away from your family for $5m? Some people would. I wouldn't.

<comment><USER16> A lot of the time it's not particularly a fair trade, either.

Salaried employees can typically be forced to work upwards of the 40 hours they are officially bartering with for money. The money doesn't scale with time or effort put in, which is one of the contributing causes to burnout and do-nothing-but-still-so-"busy"-ism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recently posted, related article (New Yorker) and discussion (144 comments)

Article: [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/05/26/14052...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/05/26/140526crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all)

Comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769610)

</comment><comment><USER18> The stats for the Netherlands are partially skewed by the fact that although there is technically a high participation of women in the workforce, but many if not most of them only work part-time. That significantly brings down the average.

</comment><comment><USER19> This article only focuses on one aspect of "busy" \-- working.

The real problem is "time inflation." This is the name given to the fact that there is more to DO than ever because life is generally becoming more complicated, and because companies and government entities have decided to make you responsible for large portions of their business processes as a cost saving measure. Government is always the worst since the relationship is not voluntary.

Some real examples from my own life: * IRS sends me a letter saying I didn't pay taxes from a stock transaction in 2011, tells me I have 60 days to prove otherwise or I automatically owe the money.

* When I was a kid, grocery stores removed the items from your basket and rang them up. Then conveyor belts became more common and you were expected to place your groceries on the belts. Now, some stores don't even have checkers, you scan and bag your own groceries (fresh and easy for instance).

* Target has a security breach and _I_ need to sign up for credit card monitoring and do due diligence, read my statements etc-- the banking industry has created a massively vulnerable payment system which requires my constant vigilance.

* I ordered an electric weed whacker from woot. It arrived broken (I'm already being used as product testing-- they should have tested it not me). Woot won't take it back, they suggest calling the manufacturer. The manufacturer actually asks me if I have a multimeter and screwdriver so I can test various components so they can send me a new part. Buying a weed whacker has now cost me 5 hours of my weekend, as I have become product tester and repair staff.

* Get pulled over for a missing tail light, police officer writes a "fix-it" ticket for "incorrect instrumentation" or some such nonsense. What was weird about this was, the CHP officer who inspected my car said he had _NEVER_ seen a ticket for this before.

* The city I live in apparently goes through your tax returns, and saw that I had $400 of 1099 income. The city defines _ANY_ 1099 income as operating a business and requires me to get a business license and pay taxes on the income, I have to spend a whole day at the city hall getting a business license (I in no way operate a business) under threat of going to jail.

* Apple recalls my phone, I have to make two pilgrimages to the Apple store, each time backing up my phone completely and restoring it. Total cost, 4 hours.

* Anything relating to medical care is a CLUSTER, I could write a novel on just this.

Some more mundane annoyances are simply plays for my attention:

* Despite being very diligent about unsubscribing I get 40 or so emails a day from random companies I have done business with sometime in the last 10 years.

* The USPS brings me junk mail every day that I never, ever look at. It goes straight to the trash. Still about 30 seconds/day goes to this.

MASSIVE time sinks in my life:

* Inadequate transportation infrastructure in my county means I spend needless hours on the road.

* Purposefully poorly designed store ques. In the US most store ques are about 30% less efficient than optimal and all is required is a slight redesign of the area. The correct type of store que is where there is one line that feeds all registers-- in that way nobody can get stuck behind a customer whose taking a long time. (Think Fry's vs. Costco). I shop as much as I can online but cannot purchase groceries online obviously.

While none of these examples is particularly egregious the net effect of this and hundreds of other of annoyances is that I always have something to worry about. All of these companies / government entities waste my time on to infinity because it costs them nothing to do so and I am powerless to stop them.

<comment><USER20> >* Purposefully poorly designed store ques. In the US most store ques are about 30% less efficient than optimal and all is required is a slight redesign of the area. The correct type of store que is where there is one line that feeds all registers-- in that way nobody can get stuck behind a customer whose taking a long time. (Think Fry's vs. Costco). I shop as much as I can online but cannot purchase groceries online obviously.

Just to let you know, Whole Foods does this in its New York stores. Oh, and you can order groceries online here, Google will deliver stuff from Target, Costco, etc in the same day, public transportation is good and fast. Next time, tell the weed whacker manufacturer to screw themselves and honor their warranty or you'll file a Deceptive Trade Practices Act suit; you're not their diagnostician.

Add to your list: reading social link aggregation sites and writing long comments on them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Work _hours_ have been steady to slightly declining, especially factoring in higher unemployment, longer between-jobs periods, and (one good change) the increase of remote work, as people just get sick of spending 8 hours in an white-painted anxiety-box that, in many cases, has nothing to do with getting work done.

Work-related _anxiety_ has gone way up. People work slightly shorter days (8-9 hours for white-collar workers instead of 9-10) but are a lot more drained at the end of them. In software, this is due to tightly-packed open-plan offices, increasingly unreasonable expectations regarding availability and timeframe, and declining autonomy due to the abuse of technology and processes (like "Agile", which started with great intentions).

The real work has gotten easier (in some cases, so much easier as to be an anxiety-causing factor in its own right, due to boredom) and hours have gone down slightly (but with more variance) but the full-time impression management job has become more competitive, much more mean-spirited, and far more draining.

Watch _Mad Men_. It explains so much more about white-collar culture than I could ever get into here. At the time, that was _the_ most stressful, painful, and socially demanding white-collar job in the country-- which is why people doing it, by the standards of the time, were paid extremely well. Now, that's the mainstream corporate culture.</comment>


Flying cars - <AUTHOR> https://spmx.ca/flyingcars <comment><USER2> Most people are lucky to drive a year without a costly mistake. Put them in the air, and their mistake (or a self-driving mistake) means death.

And even if we can make personal air travel safe, how ever are we going to coordinate it?

I appreciate the advances we gain from the _crazy /idealistic_ people who invest time or money on flying car ideas, but it is just never going to happen. The earth will burn and humans will die before that becomes a thing.

Some HN readers are working for auto driving companies, and they know how hard it is to be safe on the ground. Now add the whole of vertical space, plus aerodynamics, to the equation. These people might as well put their energy into teleportation (not really a pun intended, but it's kind of there).

s/trans/tele

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, software that manages traffic in the air automatically might be much more simple. No kids suddenly crossing the street, no traffic deviations due to construction, no obsolete system of signalling that can be manually overriden by any construction worker, etc.

<comment><USER4> No unpredictible flying things like birds, no invisible wind gusts, no air currents, clear trajectories, etc

<comment><USER5> Birds already do most of the work to avoid collisions, and automated control of low-flying "cars" can work if there's a good system of coordination (ADS-B++) and "lanes". Yes, we can have lanes, which I imagine will exist in layers above freeways. Of course there will be times where weather shuts down the air traffic, but with computer control of the aircraft's navigation they could be usefully integrated into the national highways and airspaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> True flying cars exist. I watched one go from car mode to plane mode, fly around, land, and drive off the runway in car mode again at EAA in 2013. They work and they meet all the expectations we had when we were kids. Except one: They cost over a quarter million dollars. Everybody said we'd have flying cars, but nobody told us only rich people would be able to afford them.

<comment><USER7> Even so, rich people don't seem to be "driving" them. They can afford overpriced Rolls Royces or Bentleys but don't see them buying flying cars. Wondering why, given that the technology has been around for a while.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure there are no quarter million dollar flying cars which are not obvious death traps.

The original flying car was the light helicopter, particularly the designs by Robinson Helicopter in the 1970s. The idea was that upper middle class professionals (doctors, lawyers, maybe computer programmers, etc) would prefer to learn the helicopter and commute into the city from the countryside than drive to work. This idea didn't pan out, because many/most professionals prefer city life (once the race riots stopped in the 70s), and flying light helicopters is both difficult/stressful, extremely expensive ($200/hr) and fairly dangerous (motorcycle tier or worse). Those who do it, do it as a hobby. [https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/helicopters](https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/helicopters)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We have flying cars today, they're called helicopters" \- Neil deGrasse Tyson

<comment><USER10> "We have self-driving vehicles today, the are called buses and trains" \- lots of people

<comment><USER11> "We have level-5 autonomous vehicles today. They're called horses." \- me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember the Moller Sky Car ads that were in every Popular Science magazine of my youth 35-40 years ago. That beautiful, deep red, futuristic machine with the rotating engine pods was something little me was sure I'd be flying around in some day. Life disappoints.

<comment><USER13> I know how you feel. I used to live in the same town as them, and dropped by their location once to check it out. But still no SkyCar in my garage. Surprisingly, it appears they still exist.

[https://moller.com/](https://moller.com/)

<comment><USER12> Yeah I read some article years ago saying they were embroiled in lawsuits. I am surprised they are still claiming the M400 is "in development" after this long. Sadly seems more of a long term money siphon than any real project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the commentary guys, it's been fascinating churning over all this even more. Thoughts:

\- Safety is the same issue as always, only it's being ironed out faster than before. Controlled vertical landings, 3D space, and redundancy help a lot. I don't foresee many flying high enough to get really hurt. Maybe things like undercarriage cushions or redirected waterways underneath major traffic flows could help even more.

\- Noise cancellation tech is already out there, as well as near-silent aircraft without moving parts: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=boB6qu5dcCw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=boB6qu5dcCw)

\- Main arteries will be less condensed, but much more, much smaller traffic will appear and that's going to be a new problem. The death knell for intracity public transport?

\- Well-made points about "actual" flying cars not actually being used. Maybe it would have been the same for cars if someone made motorized horses instead of the automobile?

Thank you for all the resources. I really liked the random touchdown point, underlining how exact our tech already is. I've polished the post quite a bit, adding a lot of these extra things to it. If anyone can clarify the paper bag problem @brownbat mentioned and what @blunte meant by "s/trans/tele" I'd really appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER14> In our small town Nitra/Slovakia/EU, there is one very motivated and intelligent inventor, who created a Car (that can actually drive on public roads)... Also the car can transform into plane... and fly 700km.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzYb68qXpD0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzYb68qXpD0)

Actually now, He struggler's after investors took all the IP and removed the him self from the company. Very interesting story! Part of there sorry is "He" crash-landed the plane and survived! That's something you can't test on real person :) in fact very interesting story about a person who dedicated his life to a vision of flying car.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroMobil_s.r.o._AeroMobil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroMobil_s.r.o._AeroMobil)

[https://www.aeromobil.com/](https://www.aeromobil.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you want your neighbors to own flying car?

<comment><USER16> Good point, theres a small airfield near us and the occasional plane does a circuit overhead, which is different. 1000s every hour? Not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For people who are into this, also check out the goflyprize.com

It was pretty fun to see what designs people came up with. I think some of these companies even had YouTube videos with prototypes already working.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what a typical sky would look like in any semi populated area if flying cars take over. Seems like open blue sky would become another luxury of rural living.

</comment><comment><USER19> (...) the American imagination has frozen up solid around the unworkable fantasy of the flying car.

Listen to most discussions of flying cars on the privileged end of the geekoisie and you can count on hearing a very familiar sort of rhetoric endlessly rehashed. Flying cars first appeared in science fiction—everyone agrees with that—and now that we have really advanced technology, we ought to be able to make flying cars. QED!

The thing that's left out of most of these bursts of gizmocentric cheerleading is that we've had flying cars for more than a century now, we know exactly how well they work, and—ahem—that's the reason nobody drives flying cars.

Let's glance back at a little history, always the best response to this kind of futuristic cluelessness. The first actual flying car anyone seems to have built was the Curtiss Autoplane, which was designed and built by aviation pioneer Glen Curtiss and debuted at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition in 1917. It was cutting-edge technology for the time, with plastic windows and a cabin heater. It never went into production, since the resources it would have used got commandeered when the US entered the First World War a few months later, and by the time the war was over Curtiss apparently had second thoughts about his invention and put his considerable talents to other uses.

There were plenty of other inventors ready to step into the gap, though, and a steady stream of flying cars took to the roads and the skies in the years thereafter. The following are just a few of the examples. The Waterman Arrowbile on the left, invented by the delightfully named Waldo Waterman, took wing in 1937; it was a converted Studebaker car—a powerhouse back in the days when a 100-hp engine was a big deal. Five of them were built.

During the postwar technology boom in the US, Consolidated Vultee, one of the big aerospace firms of that time, built and tested the ConVairCar model 118 on the right in 1947, with an eye to the upper end of the consumer market; the inventor was Theodore Hall. There was only one experimental model built, and it flew precisely once.

The Aero-Car on the left had its first test flights in 1966. Designed by inventor Moulton Taylor, it was the most successful of the flying cars, and is apparently the only one of the older models that still exists in flyable condition. It was designed so that the wings and tail could be detached by one not particularly muscular person, and turned into a trailer that could be hauled behind the body for on-road use. Six were built.

Most recently, the Terrafugia on the right managed a test flight all of eight minutes long in 2009; the firm is still trying to make their creation meet FAA regulations, but the latest press releases insist stoutly that deliveries will begin in two years. If you're interested, you can order one now for a mere US$196,000.00, cash up front, for delivery at some as yet undetermined point in the future.

When people insist that we'll have flying cars sometime very soon, in other words, they're more than a century behind the times. We've had flying cars since 1917. The reason that everybody isn't zooming around on flying cars today isn't that they don't exist. The reason that everybody isn't zooming around on flying cars today is that flying cars are a really dumb idea, for the same reason that it's a really dumb idea to try to run a marathon and have hot sex at the same time.

Any automotive engineer can tell you that there are certain things that make for good car design. Any aeronautical engineer can tell you that there are certain things that make for good aircraft design. It so happens that by and large, as a result of those pesky little annoyances called the laws of physics, the things that make a good car make a bad plane, and vice versa. To cite only one of many examples, a car engine needs torque to handle hills and provide traction at slow speeds, an airplane engine needs high speed to maximize propeller efficiency, and torque and speed are opposites: you can design your engine to have a lot of one and a little of the other or vice versa, or you can end up in the middle with inadequate torque for your wheels and inadequate speed for your propeller. There are dozens of such tradeoffs, and a flying car inevitably ends up stuck in the unsatisfactory middle.

Thus what you get with a flying car is a lousy car that's also a lousy airplane, for a price so high that you could use the same money to buy a good car, a good airplane, and a really nice sailboat or two into the bargain. That's why we don't have flying cars. It's not that nobody's built one; it's that people have been building them for more than a century and learning, or rather not learning, the obvious lesson taught by them. What's more, as the meme above hints, the problems with flying cars won't be fixed by one more round of technological advancement, or a hundred more rounds, because those problems are hardwired into the physical realities with which flying cars have to contend. One of the great unlearned lessons of our time is that a bad idea doesn't become a good idea just because someone comes up with some new bit of technology to enable it.

JMG

<comment><USER20> Wow, I thought that writing sounded familiar; fancy encountering you here, Mr Greer! Huge fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most people cant handle driving on the road, let alone in the sky. Especially if there are more people in the air. Wait until the cars start falling out of the sky killing people.</comment>


FBI investigates 'odd' computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/fbi-investigation-continues-into-odd-computer-link-between-russian-bank-and-trump-organization/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I only post this because the details are interesting. Lots of DNS requests for an email server from a computer that doesn't correspond to any actual email or known traffic, which the how and why is inherently a technical question and might be of interest to people here.</comment>


... so THIS is where Apple tests our Apps - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cburgdorfer/status/317652392726376448 Looks like a space ship... <comment><USER2> So this is a location sharing app, and a founder/developer posts privately shared locations on Twitter? Seems like a good reason to avoid using it.

<comment> mkr-hn I wonder if the app has a privacy policy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still working on the privacy policy, but until then please check <http://www.whereareyou-app.com>

I don't track where the app itself is being used. But I have to store the locations of the reactions to share back to the requester. I happened to find out apple's location simply because they were the only ones to use the app (apart from my tests).

But I don't keep any personal data (the app doesn't require mail/registration/identification etc.) hence it is impossible to connect any coordinates in the database with an existing individual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the surface, interesting. Under the surface, it makes me want to be sure to avoid your apps in case I show up somewhere "interesting" enough for you to post on Twitter. :-(</comment>


Birthde – Never miss a birthday - <AUTHOR> https://www.birthde.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Please leave me know your comments here or at [http://birthde.userecho.com/](http://birthde.userecho.com/)</comment>


Ycomb Wins Top Social Bookmarking Site!  - <AUTHOR> http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/social-bookmark.html This is great news! <comment><USER2> I don't think being rated third on a random blog counts as winning "top social bookmarking site".

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think YC News _IS_ a social bookmarking site. But congrats, YC! :-)</comment>


Introducing Word Lens, for Android - <AUTHOR> http://blog.questvisual.com/post/26612327582/quest-visual-is-pleased-to-make-several <comment><USER2> Conversation here on whether this would be a good acquisition for Google just got me thinking about Google's motivation behind Glass (a bit off-topic):

1) Google can (easily) make the argument that it needs to sample the image stream from every headset along with GPS/gyro to recognize "what you are looking at." These samples would be stored (of course).

2) Each sample can be OCR'd to recognize signage and contextual strings for searching that particular frame (e.g. thinking of every frame as a "web page").

3) Google can then "index the real world" with the image and contextual data.

Forget sending cars around taking photos. With enough users wearing headsets, Gooogle can build a searchable, virtual representation of the physical world.

And to get back on-topic: I'm surprised that the Word Lens guys didn't think of this (not the image mapping, but the signage/contextual mapping). Or maybe they have...

<comment><USER3> I have no doubt that at some point Google will start building some sort of integration between Glass and Street View. They're already starting to do what you're talking about with street view data - they're using ReCAPTCHA to OCR street signs and house numbers to try to get more accurate address information for maps.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit WHOA! How freakin' cool would this be on Google Glasses when traveling abroad! Everywhere you look... the text is just translated for you.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, and it already seemed like this was definitely on their to-do list from the Glass keynote. I don't know how you could build a product like Glass and /not/ do that (other than it perhaps being an extremely difficult problem ;P).

More than that, microphone + reasonable speech recognition = everybody you talk to is instantly subtitled. Also an extremely difficult problem, but one I'll bet will be commonplace in 15 years.

<comment><USER5> I take it that you are not familiar with the way the German language order words?

Because there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English, other than knowing what he is going to say before he say it.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _there is no way you could accurately subtitle German in English_

At one time I am sure there were people that said, "Mr. Wright, there is no way you can get that thing to fly."

<comment><USER5> A piece of unsolicited advice:

Learn the difference between what cannot be done and what is impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who travels a lot, I've been hoping to get more out of this app, but it's been almost 2 years now, and I can only choose Spanish or French. (according to this page Italian is also available, but I don't have that option on my phone yet)

Since they're only translating each individual word (and not phrases or sentences), I wonder why it takes them so long to put out new languages.

<comment><USER7> Hi s_henry_paulson, check the app store for an update, we released 1.2 last night, which should include Italian.

We've been short-staffed until very recently, stay tuned for more languages!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does this work right for anyone?

For me the words don't stay put. It flickers constantly, making it near impossible to read.

<comment><USER9> Does the same for me, but you can press the pause button to get a snapshot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hasn't google goggles been doing this for a couple years now? [http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/translate-real- worl...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/translate-real-world-with- google.html)

<comment><USER11> This isn't quite as slick as how word lens does it. Google's translation is likely better, but Word Lens superimposes the translated text back into place on the original image.

Anyone tried to install it on a stock 2.3.3 Nexus One and been told it's incompatible?

<comment><USER7> Yep, we were sad about that one. The hardware is up to spec but there's something about the GPU driver that's causing the N1 to perform poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there's definitely a gap in the market for something a bit simpler: there have been a good number of times when I've been stumped by a word or two in a sentence (in Polish) written on something in the street, and have resorted to taking a cameraphone photo and translating later when at home.

Sadly, as I'd love to have a play, the app store says that it's incompatible with my cheapo ZTE blade.

<comment><USER13> It isn't compatible with my Droid X either, which surprised me. Play doesn't tell me why, which is inconvenient.

<comment><USER7> We haven't blacklisted the Droid X. Can you let us know what kind of problems you're seeing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have been waiting for this to come to Android for awhile now but sadly it doesn't seem to want to install on my Nexus One. Says it only requires Android 2.3.3+ and I have 2.3.6. Oh well, add another reason on the pile to replace this phone despite still loving it over the new Nexus models.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, we wanted to support the Nexus One, and the hardware meets the minimum requirements but we encountered weird performance issues likely related to the graphics driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand how this isn't compatible with my device (google play won't even let me install). I have an HTC EVO. It can't be a hardware power thing, if the iTouch runs it fine.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes the hardware meets the minimum specs but other issues like buggy drivers lead us to have to blacklist a device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the idea but the translations to Spanish are terrible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any chance of getting a version that recognizes a url, email, twitter handle, etc. and makes them clickable? Goodbye QR codes!

</comment><comment><USER18> Word Lens + Auto Captions = Instant Subtitles in EVERY language. OMGBBQ.

</comment><comment><USER8> Unrelated rant: Dear Google, can you please add QR-Codes to the web play- store.

<comment><USER19> Why? You can just press "Install" and it instantly starts downloading on your phone?

<comment><USER8> Only if I login and thereby allow google to connect my mobile profile with my browsing profile. Which I decidedly don't want.

<comment><USER19> ... what?

You're already logged into a Google account on your phone. Or do you really have different account for your phone, thereby foregoing the biggest advantage of having an Android phone (sync with all of the Google services)?

<comment><USER8> I don't use any Google services other than Search. I have no interest in giving them more information than absolutely needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Two years is an awful long time to go from iOS to Android.

<comment><USER21> Why did it take so long? Small team, SDK limitations, funding? I can't imagine that porting an Obj-C code base to Java would take as long as it did. (Doesn't matter how long original code base took; that was development, whereas porting code is more "manufacturing") Not trolling, just curious.

<comment><USER22> I'm sure what took so long is a combination of a) ridiculously poor/inconsistent camera API's b) less than satisfactory SIMD support. When I ported some camera stuff from IOS to Android it took me 3X as long due to the need to work around bugs in the SDK. I'm sure they had to do all sorts of nasty things with the JNI to get it performant as well, and I'm not even sure the JNI supports things like the C++ STL yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> nice!

</comment><comment><USER24> sweet!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is incredible. We're living in the future!</comment>


Paul Oakenfold crowdsources a beat on beatlab - <AUTHOR> http://www.beatlab.com/ComeTogether

<comment><USER2> Before crowdsourcing this was just called a remix competition.

EDIT: I see that beatlab call it that as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone out there is interested on working on beatlab with me, send me a note. firstname.lastname@example.com.

Currently, beatlab.com is just me, but it is an incredibly fun project to work on. I'm based out of San Francisco.

Of course, It's fun to get to do projects with people like Paul Oakenfold. But it's also incredibly rewarding to interact with young kids on the site that have no preconceived notions of how music should be created, and to watch them progress on beatlab.

<comment><USER3> Hey Jon. Kudos for diving into this on your own and getting it off the ground like that. I suggest you focus on a mobile/tablet app next, it seems like a good fit for the product.

But one thing that precludes my own participation is, that beatlab is essentially a walled garden :-S. While this may be a fun app that brings kids closer to music, it's just impossible to attract serious musicians to a web- based step sequencer with no download options whatsoever. The Facebook login doesn't help either.

I've intentionally ripped the Come Together vocals and am going to use them in a way that even YouTube infringement algorithms aren't able to fingerprint. Just for the sake of truly creating something new out of the samples \o/.

I hope you understand that this is nothing personal, it's just the true everything-is-a-remix mentality that's prevalent among music makers on forums, SoundCloud and the like. If that's the crowd you'd eventually like to attract, that's the mindset you'll have to get accustomed to and support with beatlab's features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free. Every mixed down track on the site comes with a download button, but that may not be clear. I still don't provide a way to download individual samples, but that's not because I'm philosophically opposed to it. Lot's of people just "right click, inspect element" and that's fine.

I agree regarding facebook. I plan on offering soundcloud and google logins as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing how much work has gone into this site. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic job on the track editing UI! The thing I missed from the Explore & Community pages is a progress bar for the currently playing track. I really wanted to see how long the track was, how far through I am, and maybe skip forward to see how the middle & end sounds (a waveform would be nice to let me see where the peaks are, but not essential) without listening to the entire track. I liked that starting a new track stops the currently playing one so you don't get music hell - so many sites get that wrong! :-)

Oh, and congrats on getting Paul Okenfold on board, some coup!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks sc00ter! I like the progress bar idea. I might also add a way to comment on a track right from the play button. People love getting comments and feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its nice, but I didn't like how "save" means "share". When I logged in with facebook, it told me it wouldn't post to my wall or access my data, so I wasn't expecting it to share my tune under my real name (I wouldn't have clicked save if I'd have known).

<comment><AUTHOR> When you save a track, there is a little "lock" icon below where you type in the track name. You can use this to mark a track as private. Sorry, that should be more clear.

<comment><USER6> Ok, I see it now. I suggest a tooltip-style balloon popup that tells users that they can change visibility by clicking the lock. Now that I know about it, though, I'm pretty happy :)

One other suggestion tough, once a track has been saved, there doesn't seem to be a way to change the privacy settings (eg, to make my track private, I basically edited it, deleted the original and resaved - if there is a simpler way, it isn't clear what it is).

Other than that, I like it. I think its still a little simplistic, but its an excellent start and you did say that you have a ton more planned - great work! I'll be looking forward to seeing this progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spent about an hour toying around with mediocre sounds and a really too simple drum matrix. Then tried to save only to realize my work will be lost, since i don't have a facebook acount (and don't want it). Yikes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry wilz. I'm planning to offer soundcloud and google logins as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would love to interview you about this on whiteraverrafting.com. We're an edm blog and our audience will jump on this!

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER9> I haven't seen such a broken site (for me) in a few years.

a) I visit the page

b) I get redirected to <http://www.beatlab.com/flash_blocked.html>

c) I click on the blocked flash to unblock it, like on every other site.

d) I get a "Flash has been unblocked! You may continue to beatlab."

e) I click the link and end up at a)

:(

<comment><USER10> Sooo you come to a site requiring flash with a add on flash blocker and complain it doesn't support you well... Maybe you're doing it wrong. If you can't get your own custom modules to work either don't use them or figure out how to use them better, don't get mad at someone else for not supporting your custom setup better.

I could turn off javascript and spend all day criticizing websites, I don't think any one would give too much care.

<comment><USER11> The only thing that's "broken" here is that the site redirects you before you have any chance to enable plugins for the page.

Your Javascript comparison is inaccurate, no one is demanding the site should work without Flash. If a site redirected you before you could click on noscript (or whatever Javascript blocker) to load all scripts, I bet you there would be a lot of complaints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just can't say for certain that "Come Together" really needed to be remixed.

<comment><USER13> No remix could possibly save that tune, but at least now I know about BeatLab! :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice job guys! Good to see Beatlab is alive and well.

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Jon B! ^^</comment>


Thanks for the help, Hacker News. Enjoy the TwitterBowl - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitterbowl2009.com/?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> much better UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We are grateful for the power of the Google Web Toolkit.</comment></comment>


NASA's Mars Rover Might Be Stuck For Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/news/090914-spirit-stuck.html

<comment><USER2> Howard Wolowitz unavailable for comment.</comment>