Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The number of monarch butterflies turning up at California's overwintering sites has dropped by about 86 percent compared to only a year ago, according to the Xerces Society, which organizes a yearly count of the iconic creatures. That's bad news for a species whose numbers have already declined an estimated 97 percent since the 1980s. Each year, monarchs in the western United States migrate from inland areas to California's coastline to spend the winter, usually between September and February. Results from the count so far show that the number of monarchs at 97 California overwintering sites has dropped from around 148,000 in 2017 to just over 20,400 this year. Counts for dozens of other sites are still being tabulated, but the outlook is troubling.

What's causing the dramatic drop-off is somewhat of a mystery. Experts believe the decline is spurred by a confluence of unfortunate factors, including late rainy-season storms across California last March, the effects of the state's yearslong drought and the seemingly relentless onslaught of wildfires that have burned acres upon acres of habitat and at times choked the air with toxic smoke. The Thomas Fire last year burned almost 300,000 acres, including areas important for monarch breeding and migration. More recently, the Woolsey Fire damaged at least four monarch butterfly overwintering sites in the Malibu area, according to Lara Drizd, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura.

Apple appears to have ambitious plans to attract people's interest in its streaming device Apple TV, according to a new report. An anonymous reader shares a report: The company, which is widely expected to refresh the Apple TV next month to bring support for videos in 4K, is in talks with Hollywood studios to bring Ultra HD content at lower prices, WSJ reported on Tuesday. Apple is widely expected to unveil new iPhone models - including one called the iPhone 8 - next month. The publication reports that the iPhone-maker is pushing Hollywood studios to agree to sell Ultra HD editions of movies at $19.99, the usual price the company charges for full-HD of new movies. But Hollywood studios, which have seen a significant portion of their business go to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, are pushing for higher prices. Hollywood studios, according to the report, are asking Apple to increase the asking price from proposed $19.99 per movie by $5 to $10.

Favicon -- or its lack thereof, to be precise -- has remained one of the longest running issues Safari users have complained about. For those of you who don't use Safari, just have a look at this mess I had earlier today when I was using Safari on a MacBook. There's no way I can just have a look at the tabs and make any sense of them. John Gruber, writing for DaringFireball: The gist of it is two-fold: (1) there are some people who strongly prefer to see favicons in tabs even when they don't have a ton of tabs open, simply because they prefer identifying tabs graphically rather than by the text of the page title; and (2) for people who do have a ton of tabs open, favicons are the only way to identify tabs. With many tabs open, there's really nothing subjective about it: Chrome's tabs are more usable because they show favicons. [...] Once Safari gets to a dozen or so tabs in a window, the left-most tabs are literally unidentifiable because they don't even show a single character of the tab title. They're just blank. I, as a decade-plus-long dedicated Safari user, am jealous of the usability and visual clarity of Chrome with a dozen or more tabs open. And I can see why dedicated Chrome users would consider Safari's tab design a non-starter to switching. I don't know what the argument is against showing favicons in Safari's tabs, but I can only presume that it's because some contingent within Apple thinks it would spoil the monochromatic aesthetic of Safari's toolbar area. [...] And it's highly debatable whether Safari's existing no-favicon tabs actually do look better. The feedback I've heard from Chrome users who won't even try Safari because it doesn't show favicons isn't just from developers -- it's from designers too. To me, the argument that Safari's tab bar should remain text-only is like arguing that MacOS should change its Command-Tab switcher and Dock from showing icons to showing only the names of applications. The Mac has been famous ever since 1984 for placing more visual significance on icons than on names. The Mac attracts visual thinkers and its design encourages visual thinking. So I think Safari's text-only tab bar isn't just wrong in general, it's particularly wrong on the Mac.

An anonymous reader writes: Several Internet service providers in India have blocked access to Internet Archive -- a non-profit organisation that runs Wayback Machine, a massive archive of webpages dating back to over a decade -- Indian outlet NDTV reported Tuesday. Some subscribers of Airtel, Aircel, and Act Internet, among other carriers, are seeing a DoT notification when they attempt to access Internet Archive. The notification reads, 'Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India.' Popularly known as time-warping tool, Internet Archive's Way Back Machine has made copies of over three billion pages over the years. In the age of ephemeral media, Way Back Machine has become a cultural phenomenon, serving as a permanent registrar of popular websites and other webpages.

Jonathan Johnston reports via Quartz: Around one in five people in Western countries could be putting their health at risk simply by going to work. This is because working shifts outside of the rest of the population's normal hours has been linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even declines in brain function. Scientists think this is because our bodies are programmed to run on cycles known as circadian rhythms, and changes in our routine caused by shift work or traveling long distances disrupts those rhythms. But our new research suggests that the effects of shift work or jet lag on our body clocks could be reduced simply by changing the times at which people eat. The key to this theory is the idea that each person doesn't just have a single body clock but rather a complex network of billions of cellular clocks found throughout the body. In humans and other mammals, there is a master clock within a region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) and many peripheral clocks found elsewhere. For our research, we wanted to see how one aspect of this approach -- changing meal times -- affected circadian rhythms. We found that delaying meals by a certain amount caused a similar shift in some peripheral clocks, without changing the master clock. This is important because research in animals suggests peripheral clocks take longer to adjust to a new routine.

Reader joshtops writes: Amazon plans to have another go at selling its own branded smartphones, according to a new report. The ecommerce giant, which killed off its Fire Phone in 2015, is working on a new lineup of smartphones branded as 'Ice', the report said, citing unnamed sources. Unlike the Fire Phone -- for which Amazon focused largely on the US and a couple of other western markets -- the company is eyeing emerging regions like India for selling its new phones. Amazon's upcoming smartphones run the latest version of Google's Android operating system with Google Mobile Services (GMS) such as Gmail and Google Play, the people said. Incorporating Google Mobile Services in its devices is a major change in strategy for Amazon, which currently offers a range of Android tablets without Google apps on them. The smartphones are being referred to as 'Ice' internally, in what could be a move to distance itself from the disastrous Fire Phone brand, though it's not clear if Amazon will eventually bring the devices under the Ice name. A source cited in the story said the phones will ship with Alexa, Amazon's AI assistant.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, I put together a little tool that scans executable files for PNG images containing useless Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) metadata. I ran it against a vanilla Windows 10 image and was surprised that Windows contains a lot of this stuff. Adobe XMP, generally speaking, is an Adobe technology that serializes metadata like titles, internal identifiers, GPS coordinates, and color information into XML and jams it into things, like images. This data can be extremely valuable in some cases but Windows doesn't need or use this stuff. It just eats up disk space and CPU cycles. Thanks to horrible Adobe Photoshop defaults, it's very easy to unknowingly include this metadata in your final image assets. So easy, almost all the images on this site are chock full of it. But you can appreciate my surprise when a bunch of important Windows binaries showed up in my tool.

Users of Webroot's endpoint security product, consumers and businesses alike, had a nasty surprise Monday when the program started flagging Windows files as malicious. From a report: The reports quickly popped up on Twitter and continued on the Webroot community forum -- 14 pages and counting. The company came up with a manual fix to address the issue, but many users still had problems recovering their affected systems. The problem is what's known in the antivirus industry as a "false positive" -- a case where a clean file is flagged as malicious and is blocked or deleted. False positive incidents can range in impact from merely annoying -- for example, when a program cannot run anymore -- to crippling, where the OS itself is affected and no longer boots. The Webroot incident falls somewhere in the middle because it affected legitimate Windows files and sent them to quarantine. This is somewhat unusual because antivirus firms typically build whitelists of OS files specifically to prevent false positive detections.

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is testing a new mobile messaging service. They say one of the defining new features of the service is the inclusion of AI-driven chatbots, which can answer questions asked of them in a conversational manner. Google veteran Nick Fox is reportedly running the team building the messaging service. It's not clear what will become of Messenger or Hangouts, or when the product will launch. "Google would steer users to specific chatbots, much as its search engine directs users to relevant websites. The move is strategic, because messaging apps and chatbots threaten Google's role as the Internet's premier discovery engine."

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from Yahoo Autos says Google and Ford plan to announce a partnership to build self-driving cars. "By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California. Google has 53 test vehicles on the road in California and Texas, with 1.3 million miles logged in autonomous driving. By pairing with Ford, the search-engine giant avoids spending billions of dollars and several years that building its own automotive manufacturing expertise would require. Earlier this year, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the company was looking for manufacturing partners that would use the company's self-driving system, which it believes could someday eliminate the roughly 33,000 annual deaths on U.S. roads." Automotive News reported on the same plans independently, saying, "It isn't clear whether Ford would design a purpose-built vehicle for Google or supply a standard production car fitted with the sensors and computers that the car needs to guide itself down the road."

An anonymous reader writes: A new ruling from the European Court of Human Rights found it perfectly acceptable to hold websites responsible for comments left by users. Experts are worried the ruling will encourage websites to censor content posted by users out of concern that they're opening themselves up to legal liability. The judgment also seems to support the claim that "proactive monitoring" can be required of website owners. Peter Micek of digital rights group "Access" said, "This ruling is a serious blow to users' rights online. Dissenting voices will have fewer outlets in which to seek and impart opinions anonymously. Instead, users at risk will be dragged down by a precedent that will keep them from accessing the open ocean of ideas and information."

An anonymous reader writes BitTorrent today launched Project Maelstrom, the company's distributed browser, in beta. The company also released new tools on GitHub that let developers and publishers build content for the browser. Announced in December, Project Maelstrom, then just an invite-only alpha, was described as "the first torrent-based browser." The launch today is an open beta, meaning anyone can now try an early version of Maelstrom. You do, however, need a Windows computer. Windows users can download the beta now from here. Since the alpha, BitTorrent says it has improved stability, integrated support for automatic updates, and added DHT visualization for users when loading torrents.

An anonymous reader writes Buried toward the end of the must-watch keynote by Oculus VR's Chief Scientist, Michael Abrash, was the announcement of a new research division within Oculus which Abrash says is the "first complete, well funded VR research team in close to 20 years." He says that their mission is to advance VR and that the research division will publish its findings and also work with university researchers. The company is now hiring "first-rate programmers, hardware engineers, and researchers of many sorts, including optics, displays, computer vision and tracking, user experience, audio, haptics, and perceptual psychology," to be part of Oculus Research.

Nate the greatest writes: Amazon is in a bitter contract fight with Hachette in the U.S. and Bonnier in Germany, and now it seems the retail giant is also in conflict with publishers in Japan. Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees), leading to complaints that Amazon is using its market power to blackmail publishers. Where have we heard that complaint before?

The retailer is also being boycotted by a handful of Japanese publishers who disagree with Amazon offering a rewards program to students. The retailer gives students 10% of a book's price as points, which can be used to buy more books. This skirts Japanese fixed-price book laws, so several smaller publishers pulled their books from Amazon in protest. Businesses are out to make money and not friends, but Amazon sure is a lightning rod for conflicts, isn't it?

An anonymous reader writes "Whether he's debating creationists, taking selfies with President Obama, or 'Dancing with the Stars,' Bill Nye the Science Guy is no stranger to the spotlight. But what about the man behind the public persona? How did Bill Nye become the Science Guy?(video) Bill Nye has made his debut on the PBS series, The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers, to reveal the story of how he rose from being a young comedian from Seattle to becoming a science icon. In his profile, Bill Nye talks about his early days impersonating Steve Martin, why bow-ties are important in the lab (and with the ladies), and how Carl Sagan's advice helped to shape his hit television show."

An anonymous reader writes "In a Q&A session on Reddit last night with Valve's Gabe Newell, the founder confirmed that the company is in the process of getting the highly anticipated Source 2 game engine 'working well with VR.' Valve's Alex Vlachos, Senior Graphics Programmer, is apparently leading the charge. Still no word on when the engine may ship. Valve, who is openly collaborating with Oculus VR, demonstrated a VR headset prototype in January at Steam Dev Days. The company also launched a beta version of SteamVR which offers Steam's 'Big Picture' mode in a format compatible with the Oculus Rift VR headset. A developer who got to experiment with Valve's VR prototype says it's very impressive, even more so than the original Oculus VR dev kit."

oDDmON oUT writes "Pursuant to a FOIA request, Bloomberg has acquired numbers from the Fed on loans made to banks and businesses during the financial crisis between 2007 and 2009. They also posted a direct link to the spreadsheets in zipped format and updated their data visualization of the lending."

First time accepted submitter joost.bijl writes "Yesterday the Dutch government took a step to further improve the adoption of Open Source in its ranks. It has officialy approved a modified version of the open source VPN software OpenVPN for use on the governmental level 'Departementaal Vertrouwelijk' (Restricted). The release is called OpenVPN-NL and is fully open-source and available for use. The software has undergone a security evaluation by the Dutch government's national communications security agency (NLNCSA). The major change is the removal of OpenSSL as the cryptographic core of OpenVPN-NL. Instead, the Dutch government opted to include the smaller, better readable and documented open source library PolarSSL to provide the cryptographic and SSL/TLS functionality. The Dutch IT Security company Fox-IT worked together with both OpenVPN and PolarSSL communities and modified the stock software to support the government evaluation process. In total 8000 lines of code and 4000 lines of documentation were checked in to the OpenVPN trunk."

Last week you asked some questions of musician and programmer Jonathan Coulton. He's answered your inquiries about the music industry, video games, and being an ex-code monkey. Read below to see what he had to say. Have You Been Approached by a Label?
eldavojohn (898314)

Some current stars have made a career out of much less than what you have simply by signing a record deal with a label. Your song "Still Alive" from the Portal Soundtrack could easily have some filler phoned in around it for a 10 track album. Have you ever been approached by a major record label with a multi-million dollar signing? If not, what would be your response to such a proposal? Since you've already experienced success, would you admit to a point in your career when you would have been vulnerable to such an offer? Have you considered throwing your lot in with an independent record label? There are hundreds in Brooklyn, what stops you from joining one or forming your own to foster more artists like yourself?"

Jonathan: I've had a couple of conversations with label people over the years. There are a couple of things that have kept it from working out. To get a label deal, you sort of need to prove that you can make money - nobody's going to give an artist a multiple-million dollar advance unless they're pretty certain that artist is going to make much more than that. My issue is always, I have proven that I can make money, BY MAKING MONEY. So now what? Admittedly, there are some things that a label can do that I can't. I don't dispute that the right artist on the right label can, even these days, still be taken to a higher level, get more exposure, make more money. But one of the first things everybody wants is a large chunk of my digital, and most of my income is digital, and that is the very last thing I need help with. If they want 50% of my digital, to make that worth my while, they'd have to more than double that part of the business. And maybe they can, but it's a big gamble for me, especially since I'm pretty comfortable where I am.

I'm not anti-label, I think there are great people working in labels, and there are plenty of really useful things they can still do for artists under the right circumstances. Just haven't found the right situation for me yet. And maybe someday I'll form one, or some other kind of company that helps artists do stuff, but at the moment I'd rather be a professional rock star.


Creative Commons
SarekOfVulcan (133772)

You've released some (all?) of your music under the CC-BY-NC license. What are some of the coolest things you've seen done by other people with your songs?

Jonathan: My favorite of the moment is the kinetic typography video that Jared Heather made:. It's just an incredible piece of work. The theater department at Boston College created and staged a musical called Code Monkey made up of a lot of my songs, that was kind of awe inspiring to watch. A guy named Spiff makes great World of Warcraft music videos for my songs (and other people's songs). And recently I was listening again to a remix of Code Monkey done by Kristen Shirts. She won a remix contest with a version that I liked so much, it changed the way I play the song live . It also led to her playing ukulele at shows with me a few times. There are a lot of others I'm forgetting now I'm sure.


Fan Videos
YouTube is full of fan-made videos. Your fans seem to make an extraordinary amount of them. How do you feel about them and do you have favorites, or are they like your children? You love them all equally.

Jonathan: See above. I absolutely have favorites, but I'm moved by even the crappiest ones - there's something very stirring about knowing that someone spent an enormous amount of time making these things. Anytime something I made inspires someone to make something else, it feels like a huge victory for us humans. That's what art is all about for me, that's what creativity is - a huge, complex inspiration cycle that elevates us above our short, dumb lives here on Earth.


Any advice to us current code monkeys?
While the contents of "Code Monkey" probably shouldn't be taken as a sort of moral compass or serious life guidance, I can guarantee you there are people reading this on Slashdot who feel like "boring manager Rob" is their boss. Any advice for a current code monkey, who maybe doesn't have any other skills or internet-sensation status to fall back on? How does one deal with the pressures?

Jonathan: It's been several years since I was seriously in the software game, but I'd say even if you don't have any skills other than coding, there are still things you can do to take charge of your relationship with work. Make your own software for goodness sake, ever hear of the App Store? The thing about Code Monkey's story that I think resonates the most for people is how beaten down he is. He's trapped, but tragically, only by his own self doubt and inaction. I don't want to be the guy who just tells everyone how great their lives would be if they quit their jobs, but for many people there's less justification than ever before for staying in a work situation that isn't rewarding for you. If you want to do stuff, go and do stuff. Who is stopping you?


The State of Geek Culture
UberOogie (464002)

Joco, As some one whose career has pretty closely paralleled the "popularization" of geek culture (and perhaps benefited from it), how do you feel on the subject?There seems to be a strong divide amongst nerds about public acceptance of larger swaths of what are traditionally "outcast" culture, and not a little bit of backlash against it (a'la Patton Oswalt). As a nerd who can't help but benefit from the continuing popularization (and, perhaps bastardization) of nerd culture, what are your insights?

Jonathan: I think railing against cultural phenomena is kind of a waste of time. Dear Editor, the printing press is great but WHAT ABOUT SCRIBES AND THE DEATH OF SCRIBE CULTURE? If a cultural shift is big enough for everyone to be talking about it, then chances are it's already happened, and it makes no difference if you think it's good or bad. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about these things, it's certainly interesting to watch how things change, but once you start arguing about what "nerd culture" "is", or whether all the new nerds are as good as the old nerds, you've maybe lost your way a little. You can say that nerd culture is different now in such and such a way, but saying that it's not cool anymore, or it's not outsider enough for you anymore is really just you talking about you. Nerd culture is what it is, and being a nerd means different things to different people. Let's not turn the things we love into exclusive clubs where you have to do and say and think the right things to belong. I mean, what are we, the cool kids?

I do agree with Patton Oswalt on at least one point though: referencing something old is not the same as making something new, and too often the former is used as a substitute for the latter. Go ahead and make references and mash stuff up, but please do it in a way that is interesting and meaningful. Better yet, think of something totally new. If the primary joke of your Brady Bunch reboot is "Ha! Remember Brady Bunch?" then you've failed.


Do you still write code sometimes?
TheSunborn (68004)

You used to work as a code monkey. Now that you don't have that job anymore, do you ever write code in your free time, or are you happy never to use a compiler again? ps: Are there any plans for rock band 3 pro mode guitar for some of your existing songs (Please :}

Jonathan: Every now and then I get to write code, and I still enjoy it. Right now I'm doing a little bit of work with PHP and MySQL to help build some pages that will let people book passage on JoCo Cruise Crazy II in 2012. It feels great to use those skills, and it engages my brain in a way that I don't experience with any other mental activity.

Rock Band 3: yes, on my list. Currently swamped finishing up this new album though, hopefully I'll have time to work on stuff like that this Fall.


Code Monkey
j33pn (1049772)

Code monkey, Did you ever hook-up with that receptionist?

Jonathan: That song was loosely autobiographical - my manager was not named Rob, he was actually a great boss, and I never had a crush on any of the receptionists in our office (sorry Mark, not even you). Actually, when I was first hired the receptionist was ME. I learned Access 95 in between answering phone calls.


Where Do You Do Your Recoding?
eldavojohn (898314)

You've released a number of studio albums, where are they recorded? Your own place? Do you have sound engineers or is it all DIY? If you have sound engineers, how do you reimburse them? How did you fund your setup if you use it yourself?Are things like an expensive mac hardware, isolation booths and Pro Tools a requirement to get decent sound quality or do you just wing it with whatever and some Sure microphones?

Jonathan: Up till this new album I've recorded everything at my home studio, really just a room in my apartment. The gear has evolved over the years, but it's mostly been a Digi 002 and Pro Tools LE on a Mac (mini, now iMac). You really don't need to much to get started. I never had an isolation booth for any of the music I've released so far. you can hear my cat, traffic, fans, and playgrounds in my source tracks. When I bought a bass guitar I literally asked them to point out the cheapest bass in the store. I've had a few microphones but never spent more than $3-400 on one. Like most people, I'd imagine, my ears and skills are a bigger problem than the weaknesses of whatever gear I'm using - if you don't know how to mix (guilty!) then the fidelity of your monitor speakers is the least of your worries.

This new album is a completely different experience - there's a producer (John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants) and an engineer (Pat Dillett) and I'm paying for studio time and hiring professional players to play on it. I'm doing this because I'm tired of my imagination being beyond what I'm able to make happen, and I'm in the fortunate position of being able to pay for it myself. Obviously it's going to mean a smaller profit for me at the end of the day, but it feels great to be collaborating, and making things in a way where I don't have to compromise because I'm not personally good at something. I wanted to see what that was like (it's great).


Revenue Percentages
It's my understanding that if I buy music (in a store or online) that the musician only gets less than 10 cents out of every dollar. As a do it yourself act, what are your costs like in proportion to your revenues? I don't want to know how much you're making, I want to know the costs/revenues ratio. Say hello to Scarface for me.

Jonathan: CDs cost about a buck each. iTunes takes something like 30% and CDBaby takes another 9% out of every digital sale. Sales through my own digital store only cost me the standard Paypal rate (I use a micro payments account when it applies). Add to this various shipping costs for the physical things, some hosting and bandwidth. So it depends on the year and what proportion these things are of my income, but that should give you some sense how much better it is than 10 cents on the dollar. If you want to talk about the whole picture it gets complicated, there are a lot of other revenue streams and expenses, but overall I'm able to do things very cheaply compared to a label.


Best Video Game Song Ever?
N0Man74 (1620447)

Still Alive is considered by many to possibly be, "the best video game song ever." Were you surprised by the acclaim that it has received, and did that put any additional pressure on you while creating a song for Portal 2?

Jonathan: Yes to both. I don't think it's anywhere near my best song, so I was surprised when people went so nuts for it. We all were I think. There was a lot of pressure for the second one, but early on I made peace with the idea that it could never be as good as the first one. Even if it were a better song (whatever that means), the first one owed it's success to the game, the writers who made GLaDOS, Ellen McClain who voiced her, and most of all the element of surprise and wonder that made you feel like you were having a unique and moving experience at the end of that game. That part of it had nothing to do with me, so I knew there was nothing I could do to make it happen again.


My Question
imadoofus (233751) Where you promised cake for completing "Still Alive?" Did they deliver?

Jonathan:Yes and no.


Thing a Week Progress
greg1104

Your year of "Thing a Week" resulted in many great songs. With classics like "RE: Your Brains" on week 26 and "Code Money" on #29, from the outside and in retrospect it seems obvious you'd already reached serious momentum halfway through. Was this apparent to yourself, and did you ever consider ending the experiment early based on that progress? I think it's interesting to consider schedule vs. goal oriented development as something applicable to a self-improvement context.

Jonathan: Well, I had said a year, and bailing out would have felt like a failure. Right now is the 5-year anniversary of Thing a Week and I've been reblogging it in real time, writing about how it all felt at the time, how those songs sound to me now. It's very interesting to remind myself of the incredible ups and downs of that year - it took me until around week 25 to feel anything other than fear, self doubt, and despair. Looking back, it's obvious to me that I didn't actually get through to myself and really start writing until the halfway point, and in my opinion it's only the very last stretch of it when I started firing on all cylinders. I think the last dozen or so were the most consistently high quality songwriting I had ever done up to that point, which is interesting because that's when it was hurting the most to do it. For that reason alone I'm glad I kept going till the end.


Backstage Rider
There are many famous backstage riders out there, Van Halen demanding no brown M&Ms for example. Do you have any special backstage requirements, or are you content with Fritos, Tab, and Mountain Dew?

Jonathan: I used to have only one thing on my rider - a large bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. Felt like I needed to put something on there. I had to change it though, because inevitably I'd end the tour with half eaten bags of Doritos in the car, in my suitcase, left in hotel rooms. Days would pass when I would eat nothing but Doritos, which sounds like a great idea until you do it. Now it's pretty standard: champagne, foie gras, white asparagus salad. And one bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos.

Last week you asked some questions of musician and programmer Jonathan Coulton. He's answered your inquiries about the music industry, video games, and being an ex-code monkey. Read below to see what he had to say. Have You Been Approached by a Label?
eldavojohn (898314)

Some current stars have made a career out of much less than what you have simply by signing a record deal with a label. Your song "Still Alive" from the Portal Soundtrack could easily have some filler phoned in around it for a 10 track album. Have you ever been approached by a major record label with a multi-million dollar signing? If not, what would be your response to such a proposal? Since you've already experienced success, would you admit to a point in your career when you would have been vulnerable to such an offer? Have you considered throwing your lot in with an independent record label? There are hundreds in Brooklyn, what stops you from joining one or forming your own to foster more artists like yourself?"

Jonathan: I've had a couple of conversations with label people over the years. There are a couple of things that have kept it from working out. To get a label deal, you sort of need to prove that you can make money - nobody's going to give an artist a multiple-million dollar advance unless they're pretty certain that artist is going to make much more than that. My issue is always, I have proven that I can make money, BY MAKING MONEY. So now what? Admittedly, there are some things that a label can do that I can't. I don't dispute that the right artist on the right label can, even these days, still be taken to a higher level, get more exposure, make more money. But one of the first things everybody wants is a large chunk of my digital, and most of my income is digital, and that is the very last thing I need help with. If they want 50% of my digital, to make that worth my while, they'd have to more than double that part of the business. And maybe they can, but it's a big gamble for me, especially since I'm pretty comfortable where I am.

I'm not anti-label, I think there are great people working in labels, and there are plenty of really useful things they can still do for artists under the right circumstances. Just haven't found the right situation for me yet. And maybe someday I'll form one, or some other kind of company that helps artists do stuff, but at the moment I'd rather be a professional rock star.


Creative Commons
SarekOfVulcan (133772)

You've released some (all?) of your music under the CC-BY-NC license. What are some of the coolest things you've seen done by other people with your songs?

Jonathan: My favorite of the moment is the kinetic typography video that Jared Heather made:. It's just an incredible piece of work. The theater department at Boston College created and staged a musical called Code Monkey made up of a lot of my songs, that was kind of awe inspiring to watch. A guy named Spiff makes great World of Warcraft music videos for my songs (and other people's songs). And recently I was listening again to a remix of Code Monkey done by Kristen Shirts. She won a remix contest with a version that I liked so much, it changed the way I play the song live . It also led to her playing ukulele at shows with me a few times. There are a lot of others I'm forgetting now I'm sure.


Fan Videos
YouTube is full of fan-made videos. Your fans seem to make an extraordinary amount of them. How do you feel about them and do you have favorites, or are they like your children? You love them all equally.

Jonathan: See above. I absolutely have favorites, but I'm moved by even the crappiest ones - there's something very stirring about knowing that someone spent an enormous amount of time making these things. Anytime something I made inspires someone to make something else, it feels like a huge victory for us humans. That's what art is all about for me, that's what creativity is - a huge, complex inspiration cycle that elevates us above our short, dumb lives here on Earth.


Any advice to us current code monkeys?
While the contents of "Code Monkey" probably shouldn't be taken as a sort of moral compass or serious life guidance, I can guarantee you there are people reading this on Slashdot who feel like "boring manager Rob" is their boss. Any advice for a current code monkey, who maybe doesn't have any other skills or internet-sensation status to fall back on? How does one deal with the pressures?

Jonathan: It's been several years since I was seriously in the software game, but I'd say even if you don't have any skills other than coding, there are still things you can do to take charge of your relationship with work. Make your own software for goodness sake, ever hear of the App Store? The thing about Code Monkey's story that I think resonates the most for people is how beaten down he is. He's trapped, but tragically, only by his own self doubt and inaction. I don't want to be the guy who just tells everyone how great their lives would be if they quit their jobs, but for many people there's less justification than ever before for staying in a work situation that isn't rewarding for you. If you want to do stuff, go and do stuff. Who is stopping you?


The State of Geek Culture
UberOogie (464002)

Joco, As some one whose career has pretty closely paralleled the "popularization" of geek culture (and perhaps benefited from it), how do you feel on the subject?There seems to be a strong divide amongst nerds about public acceptance of larger swaths of what are traditionally "outcast" culture, and not a little bit of backlash against it (a'la Patton Oswalt). As a nerd who can't help but benefit from the continuing popularization (and, perhaps bastardization) of nerd culture, what are your insights?

Jonathan: I think railing against cultural phenomena is kind of a waste of time. Dear Editor, the printing press is great but WHAT ABOUT SCRIBES AND THE DEATH OF SCRIBE CULTURE? If a cultural shift is big enough for everyone to be talking about it, then chances are it's already happened, and it makes no difference if you think it's good or bad. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about these things, it's certainly interesting to watch how things change, but once you start arguing about what "nerd culture" "is", or whether all the new nerds are as good as the old nerds, you've maybe lost your way a little. You can say that nerd culture is different now in such and such a way, but saying that it's not cool anymore, or it's not outsider enough for you anymore is really just you talking about you. Nerd culture is what it is, and being a nerd means different things to different people. Let's not turn the things we love into exclusive clubs where you have to do and say and think the right things to belong. I mean, what are we, the cool kids?

I do agree with Patton Oswalt on at least one point though: referencing something old is not the same as making something new, and too often the former is used as a substitute for the latter. Go ahead and make references and mash stuff up, but please do it in a way that is interesting and meaningful. Better yet, think of something totally new. If the primary joke of your Brady Bunch reboot is "Ha! Remember Brady Bunch?" then you've failed.


Do you still write code sometimes?
TheSunborn (68004)

You used to work as a code monkey. Now that you don't have that job anymore, do you ever write code in your free time, or are you happy never to use a compiler again? ps: Are there any plans for rock band 3 pro mode guitar for some of your existing songs (Please :}

Jonathan: Every now and then I get to write code, and I still enjoy it. Right now I'm doing a little bit of work with PHP and MySQL to help build some pages that will let people book passage on JoCo Cruise Crazy II in 2012. It feels great to use those skills, and it engages my brain in a way that I don't experience with any other mental activity.

Rock Band 3: yes, on my list. Currently swamped finishing up this new album though, hopefully I'll have time to work on stuff like that this Fall.


Code Monkey
j33pn (1049772)

Code monkey, Did you ever hook-up with that receptionist?

Jonathan: That song was loosely autobiographical - my manager was not named Rob, he was actually a great boss, and I never had a crush on any of the receptionists in our office (sorry Mark, not even you). Actually, when I was first hired the receptionist was ME. I learned Access 95 in between answering phone calls.


Where Do You Do Your Recoding?
eldavojohn (898314)

You've released a number of studio albums, where are they recorded? Your own place? Do you have sound engineers or is it all DIY? If you have sound engineers, how do you reimburse them? How did you fund your setup if you use it yourself?Are things like an expensive mac hardware, isolation booths and Pro Tools a requirement to get decent sound quality or do you just wing it with whatever and some Sure microphones?

Jonathan: Up till this new album I've recorded everything at my home studio, really just a room in my apartment. The gear has evolved over the years, but it's mostly been a Digi 002 and Pro Tools LE on a Mac (mini, now iMac). You really don't need to much to get started. I never had an isolation booth for any of the music I've released so far. you can hear my cat, traffic, fans, and playgrounds in my source tracks. When I bought a bass guitar I literally asked them to point out the cheapest bass in the store. I've had a few microphones but never spent more than $3-400 on one. Like most people, I'd imagine, my ears and skills are a bigger problem than the weaknesses of whatever gear I'm using - if you don't know how to mix (guilty!) then the fidelity of your monitor speakers is the least of your worries.

This new album is a completely different experience - there's a producer (John Flansburgh from They Might Be Giants) and an engineer (Pat Dillett) and I'm paying for studio time and hiring professional players to play on it. I'm doing this because I'm tired of my imagination being beyond what I'm able to make happen, and I'm in the fortunate position of being able to pay for it myself. Obviously it's going to mean a smaller profit for me at the end of the day, but it feels great to be collaborating, and making things in a way where I don't have to compromise because I'm not personally good at something. I wanted to see what that was like (it's great).


Revenue Percentages
It's my understanding that if I buy music (in a store or online) that the musician only gets less than 10 cents out of every dollar. As a do it yourself act, what are your costs like in proportion to your revenues? I don't want to know how much you're making, I want to know the costs/revenues ratio. Say hello to Scarface for me.

Jonathan: CDs cost about a buck each. iTunes takes something like 30% and CDBaby takes another 9% out of every digital sale. Sales through my own digital store only cost me the standard Paypal rate (I use a micro payments account when it applies). Add to this various shipping costs for the physical things, some hosting and bandwidth. So it depends on the year and what proportion these things are of my income, but that should give you some sense how much better it is than 10 cents on the dollar. If you want to talk about the whole picture it gets complicated, there are a lot of other revenue streams and expenses, but overall I'm able to do things very cheaply compared to a label.


Best Video Game Song Ever?
N0Man74 (1620447)

Still Alive is considered by many to possibly be, "the best video game song ever." Were you surprised by the acclaim that it has received, and did that put any additional pressure on you while creating a song for Portal 2?

Jonathan: Yes to both. I don't think it's anywhere near my best song, so I was surprised when people went so nuts for it. We all were I think. There was a lot of pressure for the second one, but early on I made peace with the idea that it could never be as good as the first one. Even if it were a better song (whatever that means), the first one owed it's success to the game, the writers who made GLaDOS, Ellen McClain who voiced her, and most of all the element of surprise and wonder that made you feel like you were having a unique and moving experience at the end of that game. That part of it had nothing to do with me, so I knew there was nothing I could do to make it happen again.


My Question
imadoofus (233751) Where you promised cake for completing "Still Alive?" Did they deliver?

Jonathan:Yes and no.


Thing a Week Progress
greg1104

Your year of "Thing a Week" resulted in many great songs. With classics like "RE: Your Brains" on week 26 and "Code Money" on #29, from the outside and in retrospect it seems obvious you'd already reached serious momentum halfway through. Was this apparent to yourself, and did you ever consider ending the experiment early based on that progress? I think it's interesting to consider schedule vs. goal oriented development as something applicable to a self-improvement context.

Jonathan: Well, I had said a year, and bailing out would have felt like a failure. Right now is the 5-year anniversary of Thing a Week and I've been reblogging it in real time, writing about how it all felt at the time, how those songs sound to me now. It's very interesting to remind myself of the incredible ups and downs of that year - it took me until around week 25 to feel anything other than fear, self doubt, and despair. Looking back, it's obvious to me that I didn't actually get through to myself and really start writing until the halfway point, and in my opinion it's only the very last stretch of it when I started firing on all cylinders. I think the last dozen or so were the most consistently high quality songwriting I had ever done up to that point, which is interesting because that's when it was hurting the most to do it. For that reason alone I'm glad I kept going till the end.


Backstage Rider
There are many famous backstage riders out there, Van Halen demanding no brown M&Ms for example. Do you have any special backstage requirements, or are you content with Fritos, Tab, and Mountain Dew?

Jonathan: I used to have only one thing on my rider - a large bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. Felt like I needed to put something on there. I had to change it though, because inevitably I'd end the tour with half eaten bags of Doritos in the car, in my suitcase, left in hotel rooms. Days would pass when I would eat nothing but Doritos, which sounds like a great idea until you do it. Now it's pretty standard: champagne, foie gras, white asparagus salad. And one bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos.

Anonymusing writes "Just what the world needs, another URL shortener, right? Google seems to think so, and it's making its own widely available to anyone — complete with tracking and statistics — for free. As noted on its blog: 'There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you're protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products.' Is bit.ly shaking in its boots?"

An anonymous reader writes "Will pico-projectors become standard equipment on mobile phones, the same way that digital cameras have become? The jury is still out on user acceptance — after all, only four mobile phones use pico-projectors today — but if they get small and cheap enough, mobile phone makers are going to install them. There are four vendors today — Microvision, National Semiconductor, 3M and Texas Instruments — but only TI has design wins in cell phones already on the market. And at the recent Mobile World Congress, TI showed a smaller digital light processor (DLP) chip that fits inside even the slimmest mobile phones, and which it claims is cheap enough to become standard equipment. A lot of us never use the camera in our phones now — would you use a pico-projector if it was built into your phone?"

An anonymous reader writes "Will pico-projectors become standard equipment on mobile phones, the same way that digital cameras have become? The jury is still out on user acceptance — after all, only four mobile phones use pico-projectors today — but if they get small and cheap enough, mobile phone makers are going to install them. There are four vendors today — Microvision, National Semiconductor, 3M and Texas Instruments — but only TI has design wins in cell phones already on the market. And at the recent Mobile World Congress, TI showed a smaller digital light processor (DLP) chip that fits inside even the slimmest mobile phones, and which it claims is cheap enough to become standard equipment. A lot of us never use the camera in our phones now — would you use a pico-projector if it was built into your phone?"

An anonymous reader writes "Will pico-projectors become standard equipment on mobile phones, the same way that digital cameras have become? The jury is still out on user acceptance — after all, only four mobile phones use pico-projectors today — but if they get small and cheap enough, mobile phone makers are going to install them. There are four vendors today — Microvision, National Semiconductor, 3M and Texas Instruments — but only TI has design wins in cell phones already on the market. And at the recent Mobile World Congress, TI showed a smaller digital light processor (DLP) chip that fits inside even the slimmest mobile phones, and which it claims is cheap enough to become standard equipment. A lot of us never use the camera in our phones now — would you use a pico-projector if it was built into your phone?"

An anonymous reader writes "Restoring hearing with cochlea implants that replace the inner ear with an electronic version has become standard procedure for many types of deafness. Now it looks like the same thing might happen for many types of blindness. With five national labs funded by the Department of Energy, this third-generation artificial retina promises to enable the blind to see again soon. Already it has been successful in over a dozen test patients, but at resolutions too low for doing much more than proving the concept. However, if the DoE can perfect this larger version of an artificial retina, then the company Second Sight promises to commercialize the implant, aiming for VGA resolution within the decade."

An anonymous reader writes "Restoring hearing with cochlea implants that replace the inner ear with an electronic version has become standard procedure for many types of deafness. Now it looks like the same thing might happen for many types of blindness. With five national labs funded by the Department of Energy, this third-generation artificial retina promises to enable the blind to see again soon. Already it has been successful in over a dozen test patients, but at resolutions too low for doing much more than proving the concept. However, if the DoE can perfect this larger version of an artificial retina, then the company Second Sight promises to commercialize the implant, aiming for VGA resolution within the decade."

An anonymous reader writes "A member of the band OK Go wrote an interesting open letter giving an artist's perspective on the current state of the music business and how labels finance producing, distributing, and marketing music and music videos. A very insightful perspective of 'both sides': the argument that music and music videos are meant to be heard and, in the case of the latter, seen by a wide audience; and the argument that the money needs to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, the letter doesn't address the perspective outsiders have of outlandish salaries in the music labels, but it is interesting nonetheless." Their new video is not bad either.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla execs John Lilly and Mitchell Baker were interviewed at the WSJ's All Things Digital conference last week. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discussed the history of Firefox, proprietary versus Open Source development and the debut of Chrome and Mozilla's changing relationship with Google. A great interview. Well worth reading. There's video as well."