varunsrin

if you didn't like the term smart contracts in the header image, you probably won't like it in the body either :)

i don't believe they are the same thing

here's an example that might help -- you can allow key A to own your identity and key B to move your identity to another key. But key B can only move the identity after a time delay if key A does not cancel it. So key B is not your "real key" -- as long as key A is around it is an inferiorly permissioned key. But if Key A is missing then key B becomes the real key.

the key insight is that smart contracts can be used to transmute keys from single points of ownership into a distributed set of permissions.

you can compose a whole set of recovery systems with this primitive - key B could be your ledger or it could be a friend or it could be a third party service that offers "recovery as a service" where you have to call them and prove your identity before they will recover it back to you.

not a dumb question.

if you squint, the protocol i've described is really a fancy version of RSS. In fact, the original brainstorm doc for this idea was titled RSS+ :)

a simple mechanism is using a smart contract to map your key (0x123) to an identity (@alice). the contract can allow you to transfer that identity to a different key (important for key rotation) and also to set up a recovery key that is also authorized to transfer the key if the primary key is lost.

our recovery system for Farcaster has a few more bells and whistles, and you can read about it here: https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol#33-recovery

author here.

what distributed database would let you own your identity without any third party party being able to take it away from you?

that's a necessary condition for sufficient decentralization, and the only distributed databases capable of achieving such guarantees are L1 blockchains.

what is the best reading you've found that explains polycentricity well?

author here - happy to answer questions folks have.

we've also been building a sufficiently decentralized protocol called Farcaster, and you can check it out here: https://github.com/farcasterxyz/protocol

we've also built the first clients for this protocol, which are still in beta. if you have an ENS name and are interested in trying them out, DM me on twitter https://twitter.com/varunsrin

account recovery is very possible with smart contracts and public-key crypto

author here - you're right that the average user doesn't care about decentralization as a first order benefit. people typically use social networks to be entertained / informed or to increase their status. we've been building a new, decentralized social network and we've learned this first hand.

but if you've figured out a new social network, building it in a decentralized manner today might give you very strong second order benefits. and its now possible to do this in a way that doesn't compromise the user experience.

if im not mistaken, whatsapp already monetizes their users, charging $1 / year after the first year.

with 700m active users, they potentially could be generating ~ 3.6% of their sale price in annual revenue.

Not a pedantic distinction at all - on a second read, I completely see the confusion, and I'm going to reword the article to separate the concepts of dynamic range (which is just a dB value) and dynamic ranges across a frequency spectrum more clearly.

hey anigbrowl, OP here.

You raise some great points - it is indeed impossible to use an MBC to bring sounds back into a user's range of hearing if they have lost all sensibility at that particular frequency. However, the loss of hearing at a particular frequency is not binary - it tends to start with a reduction in dynamic range at that frequency, as the cilia start to get worn out / destroyed.

So if you have loss @ 3 KHz, you don't often completely lose all hearing, but your dynamic range which normally is 0dB -> 100 dB (over-simplification here) might now be 30 dB -> 100 dB.

What an MBC will do here is compress the range at that frequency band, so your 100dB of range is now 70dB of range.

OP here. Some argue that in-ear earbuds send more high frequency energy directly into the ear than headphones, so the balance of sound is always tilted towards the highs, which over time can cause more high-frequency loss (low frequency loss is fairly uncommon). The difference between headphones and earbuds is likely minor - the volume you set your music to probably has a much greater impact. Get a pair with good isolation or cancellation, so you can keep the music volume lower.

One thing that works really well for preserving your hearing is taking breaks - this is especially true of loud concerts (step out for a bathroom break once an hour), but also holds true if you're going to listen to headphones at high volumes for many hours straight.

Hey anigbrowl - thanks for the detailed reply and the tip on the Yamaha NS-10's, I'll have to pick up a pair soon.

To my earlier point - you're correct, what I meant is that its mastered in ideal studio conditions, but to a specific taste. The sound engineer usually has to make this call - do I want this to sound good on the radio and when streamed at 128 Kbps over Spotify to someones car? Or do I optimize for the discerning listener who is using his Hi Fi system at home?

And studio engineers definitely take people's listening abilities into account, but again are force to make some hard choices - most are aware that their hearing is usually better trained than the average consumer, and will shy away from including details that are very subtle in for pop music (i'm using this term broadly) for example.

We really believe that as portable sound systems start becoming cognizant of their environment and their users' habits, they'll be able to deliver audio that delights people - a lot of our initial testers have really liked the dynamic changes we provide in DSP. Even if they have the know-how to tweak their own music, changing settings on a mobile device every time their headphones, song or environment changes is a challenging affair and limited to simple EQ changes for the most part.

If you're interested in playing with an early version of our DSP and giving us some feedback, I would love to get your thoughts - shoot me an email (in my HN profile).

Stoev, thanks for the feedback we'll keep that in mind, we've had a couple requests for a DAC only version so far. If you shoot me an email (in my HN profile) I can reach out to you with updates.

And yes, Amp will ship with a setup app that calibrates to you and your headphones, but after the setup process, you can use any music player you like (the case will do all the processing). And the case will be able to detect different headphones as well, so you can assign specific audio profiles to each set of cans.

Hey stoev - Amp founder here. Great comments, tailoring to your hearing pattern and headphones is a big part of what we focus on in addition to your environment, and I'm glad you're excited by it.

Music, and audio in general, has traditionally been mastered for 'ideal' studio conditions, which are perfect listening environments. In the real world, a lot of people are listening to their iPod earbuds while walking down a busy streets and have less than perfect hearing, which completely negates a lot of the hard work that the studio engineers put into the mastering process.

Look at any live event where audio plays a big role - you almost always have a sound engineer leveling and remixing sound, so that the little details shine through as the environment changes constantly. We're automating that process , and bringing it to your phone, so you can enjoy great sound no matter where you are.

Speaking to the speakers specifically, we've done a lot of work with our DSP engine and acoustics to really reinforce the sound in the low 200 - 300 Hz range, which is where a lot of the warmth perception comes from. There are a lot of really cool acoustical tricks you can play with resonances and backflow volumes - its not just the speaker driver itself, but what you do with the enclosure and the volume behind the speaker that makes a huge difference.

We used Flurry last summer, but ended up switching to Localytics who we've been very happy with. The main reason was real-time data (which was really important to us since Flurry was lagging by several days). The nicer UX and faster customer support are big pluses as well.

There are many objective reasons why the world is becoming a better place if you take a macro viewpoint (i.e. at the decade or century level).

Violence for example is one, and Steven Pinker makes a great argument for it in this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...

Its hard to see these patterns if you just rely on news/anecdotal evidence as your barometer for whether the world is becoming a better place, because the news reports whatever will get views, and nothing gets views like bad news.

"But what I’ve lost isn’t just a set of structured sounds, but the world those sounds create, a world you can live inside: Bach on a snowy afternoon, hard blues on a long night’s drive, the background mood in a restaurant or at a party (or, increasingly, any public space not yet colonized by ESPN on flatscreen TVs). Music is color. When you’re young you’re the hero of a movie, and the Heifetz you play in your car or the Velvet Underground you first try out sex to isn’t just background, it’s location and weather. You feel it on your skin."

This was one of the most heart-wrenching things I've read, and makes me really thankful for what I have, and if I'm honest, fearful for what I will eventually lose.

Music is woven into the happiest and saddest moments of my life, and my most important memories have sounds attached to them - from dancing barefoot on a remote beach in Goa with people I've since come to think of as family, watching the sun rise to the growls of a Roland TB-303, to coping with the loss of someone dear by listening to Radiohead's 'Everything in its Right Place' on repeat for hours on end, curled up on my bedroom floor.

I keep a diary - not of places I've visited or things I've eaten, but of moments like these where I've had a powerful connection with people and music. It's an incredibly emotional experience to go back and read through it all - I'm glad I have it, because otherwise I'd start losing bits and pieces of these memories, and with it, my past.

I'm incredibly fortunate in that I've been given the opportunity to work on solving this problem, a problem that I'll undoubtedly face as my tinnitus gets worse and a problem that my co-founder has faced for almost two decades. The next time we're having a shitty day at work, we'll only have to read this to keep on going.

SoundFocus - San Francisco, CA

Roles: iOS Engineer, Product Marketer, Community Manager

Full-time in SF (VISA ok, will relocate)

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TL:DR; We're a YC-backed startup building audio hardware to help people hear better using their mobile phones when making phone calls, listening to music or watching movies. If you're an iOS dev, marketer or community manager that's passionate about audio hardware or music, email me varun@soundfocus.com.

http://soundfocus.com/jobs.html

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iOS Engineer

We're looking for an experienced mobile engineer to take ownership of our user-facing software stack, including our iOS and Android applications. Our ideal candidate is passionate about developing beautiful user interfaces, and has an eye for design and detail. As an early employee at SoundFocus you'll get a chance to develop products that will have a positive impact on the lives of millions who face hearing-related challenges.

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Product Marketer

SoundFocus is looking for a product marketing manager to drive the launch for our first hardware product. You’ll be instrumental in crafting our go-to-market strategy and will need to know our customers inside out. In addition to spearheading our marketing efforts, you’ll also be tasked with building strong connections with cultural icons and industry leaders. As the first hire on the marketing team, we’re looking for someone who’s creative, scrappy, and resourceful, with a successful track record of strategic business development and cultivating meaningful relationships.

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Community Manager

SoundFocus is looking for a community manager who will play a critical role by building a strong and vibrant community of both current and potential customers. Your overarching goal will be to ensure that each and every individual has an interaction with the product and the team that is as positive and rewarding as possible.

You should be energetic and enthusiastic, with an innate ability to build and maintain great relationships with people at all levels, from the janitor to our world famous customers. You will be first in line to help people understand the product and engage with it.

Stack ranking at Microsoft has a min populaton size (x) - you generally walk up the org chart until the number of employees >= x, and then apply stack ranking to that group.

This would be received very poorly by most of the sub-continent, and apart from being just controversial would be impossible to actually enforce.

Those familiar with the political tensions in the South (especially Tamil Nadu) between Dravidian Languages & Indo-Aryan, would point out that you'd have better luck getting them to switch to English than Hindi at this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitation_of_1937%E2...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil_...

loceng, we try to avoid that - a simple equalizer will create an amplification of frequency bands without gain control, so you get a sound of higher amplitude/magnitude, which can have a negative impact as you pointed out.

We use some techniques to rebalance your music - by making sounds that are softer in the mix louder, while keeping the very loud sounds at the same level. We also try to change the relative volume of the frequency bands you do not hear well, while preserving the overall volume.

Since psychoacoustics vary a bit from person to person, it may be perceived as mildly louder or softer than the original, but overall it will be at a similar volume level.

Alex (my co-founder) had this exact problem except in both ears, and he uses our app every day for the same reason - hearing aids just don't play well with earbuds or headphones.

Thanks for signing up whbk, it's always great to get more beta testers to validate the changes to the sound processing as we keep improving it.

keiferski, SoundFocus doesn't do this today. But stay tuned, we are working to help people who have single ear hearing loss as well.

I'm actually interested in learning more about your particular use case, I'll drop you a line on the email address in your HN profile.

Co-founder here - thanks for the great feedback Osmium. You're quite right in that the number of people who have unilateral hearing loss is pretty high (it's close to 40% from some recent studies).

We're working on developing a test that works well for people with single ear hearing loss for a future app update - would you be interested in trying out our beta? Please drop me an email if you are: varun [at] soundfocus [dot] com.

Thanks Muraiki - we'd love to hear what your friend thinks of the app.

Co-founder here - thanks for the well wishes, 6thSigma. We've seen people significantly improve their quality of life once they find a solution for hearing loss, but most people are reluctant to go out and find one, because they're expensive, time consuming to get, and stigmatized. We're really hoping to solve these issues with our app and upcoming hardware product.

The Azure Dashboard is here, for anyone looking for updates on this: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/service-dashboard...