One thing to keep in mind is that the selection is dependent on your local library, so the listing is a sum of the subsets but you can get a general idea of the content that's available there.
> the selection is dependent on your local library
It VERY much is. Used my community college login, and there was nothing at all, anywhere. My login for a largish state college was a little better, but not much...maybe 50 total items and all in the documentary, gender studies, and one other section.
Kanopy should probably work the UI a little for linked accounts to places that have nothing at all to offer...rather than having you create the login, verify an email, etc.
> Is there any way to know, with JustWatch, which free streaming services are available in Canada?
Yes, once you sign up there's a provider selection wizard that allows you to see a list of free services in your selected country. You can then also "batch add" all of them to your providers so they are always selected automatically.
Librarian here.
Please utilize the services your public library makes available to you for free!
Even virtual usage is enough to convince cities to not lower budgets.
We took massive hits to usage during the pandemic lockdowns, but you don't need to always come in to use your library!
Look out for Kanopy, Hoopla and Libby and more at your local library!
Kanopy's prvacy policy says they collect data on the people using their service (including GPS coordinates), and they sell/share data with other 3rd parties including allowing Google to collect data on their users. They've also failed to reasonably secure user's data which has resulted in at least one data breach (https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/kanopy-streaming-...)
I haven't looked into Hoopla and Libby's policies yet, but I'd be willing to bet they're doing the same. Librarians have traditionally been very concerned with preserving the right to access content and information of all kinds without being monitored. They fought hard (and lost) against the US government being able to collect lists of the books and media users checked out from the library. It's odd to see a librarian advocate for people to use 3rd party services which will do exactly that along with far more invasive tracking.
I'm not just calling you out on this, although some have backed away from these services for various reasons (https://billypenn.com/2021/07/20/free-library-kanopy-movies-...) libraries around the country have embraced services which can track, censor, and put library user's data, privacy, and safety at risk. They advertise and push these services onto library patrons without informing them of the risks and without any mention of what card holders will be giving up by using them. Leaving it to library users to seek out and read through corporate privacy policies full of legal language and weasel wording seems very wrong to me.
In the US, as library card holders, we can't keep our reading lists out of the hands of the state, but we can do more to keep it out of the hands of private for profit companies and data brokers. I'm not saying there's no place for these types of services in libraries (although I'd love to see similar systems developed and operated entirely by library systems instead of 3rd parties), I just wish more libraries were looking out for the privacy of their users and were willing to do more of what they do best: keeping the people informed.
While I am concerned about data brokers and tracking, it's my personal opinion that that's just the sad reality of technology and the internet today, and most people just don't care.
You and I may care about signing up for services and not being tracked across the internet for the kinds of interests we have, but the way I see it, and the way many suburban and rural libraries and librarians may also see it, our patrons were probably already going to subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime, and all their egregious privacy violations.
While most (I would hope) librarians would agree that keeping a patron's private information, including their reading and watching habits be kept secret, equal access to materials and information is far more important.
I would love if larger libraries could develop their own systems for free content that can be accessed by their patrons and perhaps even by other libraries, but that's just not the reality we live in.
Similar to how every IP holder wants to create their own subscription-based platforms for content, libraries would be like Netflix. The content people actually want will always be not on Netflix. In the end, many suburban and rural libraries are desperate for usage by their populace, no matter the cost to privacy.
> I don’t think my Mac allows GPS to be passed, but IP gives an approximation. Not sure how to get around that.
I don't know how much apple restricts access to other things that can give away your location besides IP geolocation, but things like nearby wifi networks and nearby bluetooth beacons/devices are also being used to generate maps that can give extremely accurate location data. Typically cell tower data can ID a mobile device to within a mile or so, but where 5G is available the resolution is improved to feet instead of miles. If they can link the data they get from your library or from these streaming services to the data they get from your wireless provider they could know your part of town (4G) or which house (or even which room of that house) you're standing in (5G)
> Do you know if the library gives my address, etc?
To the feds? that's difficult to answer. The government doesn't give the public details of what kind of information they're taking and when. There's a decent article about the past collection of library data by the FBI and the resurgence of the practice post-9/11 here:
When they lost the fight to keep the government from snooping around some libraries responded by changing their data collection practices to limit as much as possible what data they had on their users. You can check with your library and see if they have your address on file. If they do, I would assume that it would be up for grabs if the government came knocking and I would recommend starting from the assumption that all available data is being collected routinely on everyone, from every location.
While the official line will be that this sort of collection by the state will be targeted (even if that means targeting everyone who checked out books about certain subjects or anyone who fits a certain profile) without a whistleblower willing to risk everything to come forward how could we ever really know the extent of the data collection taking place? One of the things that drove Snowden to become a whistleblower himself was that he knew from first hand experience that the then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and the director of the NSA Keith Alexander (who is currently sitting on Amazon's board of directors) were lying to Congress while under oath about when where and how the agency was spying on Americans. There's really no reason to take these organizations at their word, or to assume that even those in the highest offices in our government would know what they were up to any better than you or I do.
Yeah, in that case it could just depend on how up to date their map of your nearby access points are. I haven't seen the “United States of Secrets” Frontline special, but I see it's on youtube so thanks for that!
My library has been really curtailing the amount I can use Hoopla… Libby is pretty good as long as I can find a less popular book (or wait in line), but Hoopla is almost always already at the daily lending limit.
What is the best way to contact libraries/librarians for API access to their library?
I want to build an app which will dump me in random pages of my checkouted books, instead of me gathering energy to do it. I have other features planned.
I am stuck with how to interface with my local library, like Libby does. Any ideas ?
Libraries are just paying for the ability to offer Libby to patrons.
Libby then taps into a login API for the ILS a library uses to check if a patron's library card and PIN are tied to an eligible account, and Libby offers its own content based on whatever each library can afford to offer.
You would need to offer your own content, ultimately, with the Libby model.
Same goes for OverDrive, Hoopla and Kanopy.
While most of the views use limited credits, Kanopy has some free titles. They are not often easy to discover, so I wanted to mention it here.
The especially interesting free set is (at least through my library), is a nearly full collection of the Greater Courses, a very high quality educational materials. You can see the official source here: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses It is also a good way to find the actual course and then plug it into Kanopy.
Finally, searching Kanopy on the mobile phone app, bookmarking and then switching to TV app to actually watch is an easier workflow than trying to type things in TV interface.
I'm a big Kanopy fan and love to at least browse what they've got.
Another digital library functionality I use is [Libby](https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby), which lets me read library books on my Kindle or Kindle App. Saves me and my wife hundreds of dollars a year on books!
Incidentally, Libby and Kanopy are owned by the same company and they are planning some further film discovery focused enhancements in the Libby app this year.
Want to second what a great app Libby is: it's like a "management" layer on top of your regular library experience, paired with integrating services seamlessly (libraries, eReaders) that makes it wonderful.
Also, some really smart UX/UI decisions in the app. And: I'm super-jaded about this stuff, but find the subtle "delighters" and microinteractions actually helpful and enhance the experience.
Another nice thing is that their UX changes actually feel like steps forward. For example if you live in an area with overlapping libraries, the app has gotten much better at unifying the catalog info.
Libby is - also - awesome. I use it with Kobo (choose on phone, then sync to reader). And they have both books and audiobooks too, so I stopped my Audible subscription for now.
Many people who could be watching kanopy via a public library probably don't know it, more marketting would be helpful, from either libraries or kanopy.
But...
> Stream thousands of films for free, thanks to the generous support of your public library or university
Kanopy isn't non-profit is it? Either way, libraries and universities are paying fees to kanopy for licensed access. This is an odd way and potentially misleading way of putting it, "generous support". Will Elsevier start telling users they are getting "free access thanks to the generous support of your university" next, as if universities pay elsevier it's enormous fees out of "generosity"?
Certainly true, though presumably Kanopy in turn has to pay license holders for the films they offer? If it turned out they were gouging libraries I'd be incensed, but I would tend to think it's at least as likely the the studios and distribution companies are charging Kanopy a lot.
I'm just saying "generous support" makes sense as a word when it's NPR talking about donors, but is a weird word to describe the payments of your customers for a commercial service. Which makes me think they're trying to sound like they're NPR or something, when they are a commercial service. Universities and libraries don't pay for kanopy out of "generosity" or to "support" it -- it's a commercial service they subscribe to!
I have no idea what profit margin Kanopy makes, which is I guess how we'd determine if it was "gouging"? I don't know from "gouging".
If you are in Ottawa, Canada, the Public Library can give you access to:
Browse > Online Resources > Watch (streaming video) > Then pick what you want to access:
* Access Video on Demand (Educational)
* Curio.ca (CBC material, and has teacher related material)
* Hoopla (Audiobooks)
* Just for Kids
* Kanopy (My favourite. Limited to 4 movies a month.
* Kanopy For Kids (unlimited)
* Medici.tv | EDU (Music e.g. Classical)
* Naxos Video Library (Music e.g Classical)
* Many newspapers and magazines, all searchable and online!
Additional info: Ancestry Online (this is now only possible on the library's computers, and not from home. Used this a lot for finding info on my past relatives, and
NYPL stopped offering Kanopy a couple of years back
> As of July 1, 2019, The New York Public Library will no longer offer cardholders free access to video streaming platform Kanopy. The Library made this decision after a careful and thorough examination of its streaming offerings and priorities. We believe the cost of Kanopy makes it unsustainable for the Library, and that our resources are better utilized purchasing more in-demand collections such as books and e-books.
At the time this was done, the Kanopy model was that when you watched a movie, if you were the first one to watch it from your library, it would trigger an expensive purchase ($80–100, as I recall) after which subsequent viewings would be free. This led to unpredictable costs to the library. I think that they’ve since moved to a pay per view model line Hoopla uses which is why movies will sometimes disappear from the service.
I like to think that my library's management knows how to do cost benefit analyses. I can assure you that my library didn't subscribe to this because of unreasonable demands from patrons, but because they felt it was a worthy option for their patrons.
Put another way, if my library dropped Kanopy, almost no one would notice. So it's hard to claim Kanopy is being "predatory" as another commenter mentioned.
For me personally, $150 seems obscenely high. Especially considering it would be far more economical to just buy the DVD. The cost is high enough that I would genuinely feel quite guilty for making my community pay that much. Ironically, I would feel no such guilt for torrenting the movie at that point.
I get that the infrastructure for streaming isn't cheap, and neither are the licensing fees, but this feels like price gouging. I know price gouging is a specific legal term but I'm speaking in the vernacular sense.
I also understand that my library has a lot more data to make the decision than my feeling of guilt. There's no need to speculate. Email your library and ask them:
"Would you prefer I stream title X from Kanopy, or check out the DVD?"
And also ask
"Would you prefer I stream title Y from Kanopy, for which you don't carry the DVD?"
Feel free to provide the context, expressing concerns that it'll potentially cost them over $150, and you're worried that they are being abused by Kanopy.
If the library's not willing to tell me to prefer the DVD, then I'm not concerned.
Be aware that very little you donate to the library ends up on the shelves. Most of the time they sell whatever you donate (e.g. "Friends of Library sales")
This differs vastly by locality. In some places, taxes fund libraries entirely or in part. In others, NGOs fund them. There is often a local non-profit that raises money to keep a library running.
Yeah, a lot of universities required librarian approval to add a new film to limit the costs. Similar to an ILL request where the library pays a small fee but typically doesn't pass that forward to the requester, as long as one lab/person doesn't use an extreme amount of requests.
> except learning it hurts the library more than expected is a downer.
Which is likely an incentive for libraries to not expose those costs on a per-request basis. As thebitstick mentioned here[1], libraries want to encourage usage. Overall usage volume has already been budgeted for, so the variances between one request and another for a typical patron won't materially impact the overall capacity of a library from serving their patrons. Inversely, if exposing the individual request costs disincentive enough conscientious patrons from making those requests, it makes it more difficult for the library to justify the service at all and could result in the loss of budget to continue covering it. Which ends up being a net loss of access for those patrons which do not have the means to access it elsewhere and were reliant on the library for it.
A few years ago, I attempted to work out what a circulation cost us calculating things like our collection budget, staff budget, etc. vs number of circs. It came out to about $2.50 or so. Keep in mind there are some serious limitations; for example, the buildings are a fixed cost and there would need to be a precipitous drop in circulation to lay off staff, but it gave a rough idea of what it costs to buy something, check it out, re-shelve it, etc.
All else being equal, it could very well be logistically cheaper.
But to publishers, increasing the volume of printed copies of a given title is absolutely not equal to a library purchasing a single copy and physically handling it in circulation until it naturally degrades to the point of being trashed. Physically printing brand new copies for patrons to keep every time a book was 'checked-out' would pose such a materially large impact on sales volume that publishers flat out wouldn't allow it.
Even a perpetual license to loan a single copy of an ebook can cost a library upwards of $100[1], due to potential revenue impact to publishers/authors from having it in circulation in perpetuity without physical deterioration naturally limiting it's lifetime/volume of loans. And the number of simultaneous loans for a given title is generally restricted to the number of individual licenses you've paid for. If that's the case even for ebooks, you can imagine what they'd require to print a title on demand and give it away to a patron forever.
It would be. Making unlimited ebooks available would be even cheaper than that. But neither of those really fits the business model of the publisher. A public library is already a compromise in the eyes on many publishers.
For the same reason they pay $80 for a single use copy of an ebook: because users expect it and don't really care about the excuse. Users see that other libraries offer a service, they see the services they want to use and no number of spreadsheets will make them happy with answer "no".
For HN readers who currently reside in California, note that you can sign up for as many local library systems in California as you like. There is no requirement that you only get a card for your local town or local county library. You can collect them all, statewide, if you want.
This is really useful when certain libraries may have different eBook platforms, streaming services, and/or database access than other systems. For example, an eBook may be checked out or unavailable in one little town’s website, but not another.
(I currently have four California cards, for Los Angeles, San Francisco, and two different Marin county libraries/systems.)
Many library systems do not provide Kanopy to their patrons (such as the New York Public Library), and some participating libraries only offer a subset of the "available" titles. So even if you have access to Kanopy with your library card, you can click "Play" on a title only to discover it's not available to you.
Been using Kanopy for a few years and the quality of the content on there is an order of magnitude better than any other streaming service. In the Seattle area you only get 5 views/month, but that's plenty for me.
I have Kanopy. They offer some good films, but not the ones that tend to have very large licensing fees, I would guess.
People who say "they should just buy the DVD" are imagining that the library can just pay $20 or whatever, and then offer it to as many users as want to watch?
I don't think it works that way for libraries. Maybe someone who knows for sure can tell us? I'm guessing that they get the right to loan out the DVD physically but not electronically.
I ran the Cinema Club at Google for 10 years, and we made our lawyers happy by always paying "public performance rights" (PPRs) for all our flicks. When you buy a DVD, you get a license for "home viewing." That does not allow you to invite members of the public in to watch. You cannot show it in your bar or restaurant or at a place of business. Maybe you, Fred Hacker, can get away with it, but a large multinational company cannot.
When I negotiated PPRs with a film distributor, they always asked these questions:
1) Is the film showing advertised outside your company?
2) Is attendance limited to employees and their guests?
3) How big is the room? (or maybe it was "what's the average attendance?")
I didn't look into what public libraries pay for their movies, but I'm pretty sure it's more than you would pay to just buy the DVD.
First sale doctrine means you can buy a disc for home use and lend it out. Typically, you do public performance with home use discs and a seperately obtained license (but it is possible to rent media with your license, etc).
> Maybe you, Fred Hacker, can get away with it, but a large multinational company cannot.
Back when Terry Semel (ex Warner Brothers CEO) was still CEO, Yahoo! would show Oscar screeners in the cafeteria of the best films nominees around that time. Answers to your questions would be 1) No, 2) yes, 3) I dunno, employee cafeteria sized... The organizers said that we were "just in Jerry and David's living room", strongly implying that no public performance rights were obtained, but I dunno. I also don't know if the official screener discs come with appropriate rights.
Well, I'm a hardball negotiator. You wouldn't think that, to look at me.
My data is at least 5 years out of date. But their list price used to be $250 per movie.
Eventually, a lawyer at Google SF got a global, unlimited license for the whole company, so I didn't have to negotiate anymore. I didn't even want to ASK the Motion Picture Licensing Corp. what that cost.
So we went through Swank for years and years. Those are the two distributors who have all the Hollywood movies. There are lots of smaller distributors, too.
One great benefit of Kanopy is that you can access pretty much entire catalog of Great Courses free with Kanopy here [0]. I love the breadth and depth of Great Courses when I want to learn various topics such as gardening, space exploration, ancient history etc.
Just add your multiple library cards and each video or set of videos would use a credit from your library for that month. Once all credits for a given library expire, you can connect Kanopy simply to a different library card with just one click.
I have to agree about the Great Courses. The ones I've watched have been very high quality, as good as the university courses that the universities will charge several thousand dollars to sit in. (Some fancy schools are hitting $8000 per course these days, at least at the list price before financial "aid" kicks in.)
Enjoy them. There's no reason to get poor to get an education.
Some describe the financial aid algorithm as, "Tell us how much money you have. Send it to us." Sure, it can be described as aid. It can also be described as a pricing algorithm designed to squeeze the maximum amount out of the customer.
Movies that are on DVD, are not among the
most popular, and/or are 20+ years old are
commonly available for sale, as DVDs,
on-line in essentially new condition used
for about $2 plus shipping, usually of
just a few dollars. If the movie is any
good, will want to see it more than once,
So, paying a few dollars for one view is a
bit too expensive!
I looked at their ad for their video
introduction to playing violin. As I
recall, they want $169 or so for their
course. Seems high!
This is generally sound advice but it's not a random side project of someone in that case. It's an official partner of the libraries so your suspicion is a bit misplaced.
It's a for profit company that sells its services to libraries.
I think suspicion of any company that asks for your password with a third party is warranted. Asking for credentials like this not only teaches bad security practices, but even if Kanopy is trustworthy today, the company could easily be sold to a less trustworthy owner and all the data from your library account siphoned and sold to data brokers.
Kanopy uses your card number and PIN to access an API for whatever ILS the library allows Kanopy to point to.
Libraries allow access when they pay for giving access to Kanopy for their patrons.
However, in theory, this could give Kanopy access to try and harvest checked out materials via our catalog with these credentials. In practice, we haven't seen them doing this. Your PIN/password should after all be different from the ones you use for every website.
Some other sites that your university library _may_ offer access to are Swank Digital Campus, Silent Film Online, World Digital Cinema, and Alexander Street Press. These are all fantastic resources, and while we all have limited time and thus limited bandwidth for consuming media, I think there's a lot to be gained from looking for entertainment in unexpected places. It's also great if you want to see, say, Shakespeare performed by the BBC's production because, say, you can't seem to win the free ticket lottery...
Kanopy recently revamped their UI and the site has turned to unresponsive garbage for me. The new player glitches frequently and hangs when buffering. The old player wasn't stellar but it wasn't this awful.
The old search interface was nice. It was easy to get a list of newly-added items, sorted by date, with thumbnails and metadata. The new UI is just thumbnails in a horizontal "carousel" and you can only see metadata by clicking the thumbnail.
I don't know how anybody thought this was a good idea.
I like Canopy but wish it wouldn't show unavailable movies in my region. I ended up uninstalling the app in frustration after, on several occasions, spending many minutes finding a movie that seemed interesting, only to learn it was region restricted when pressing play.
Although the quality of the selection on Hoopla tends to be a bit meh (or maybe I’ve already seen the movies they have that I’d want to watch). They have a lot of direct to video knockoff films, like Monster Vs Giant Ape or Shark Storm.
here I give something of some first
lessons in violin.
Part I
=== Music Theory 101 for Beginning Violinists
== Notes and Pitch
Like nearly all music, when a violin makes
a sound, that sound as a pitch which in
terms of some math, audio engineering,
etc., has a pitch, that is, a
fundamental frequency. Call that sound
a note. Of course, commonly in music,
more than one note is being played at
once; such music is polyphonic.
A standard piano has 88 keys, some are
white and some are black.
Near the middle of the keyboard is the key
middle C, a white key. Its pitch,
fundamental frequency, is 261.63 cycles
per second, that is, Hertz or Hz.
Any two notes, e.g., two notes on piano,
define an interval.
We will be especially interested in the
intervals, we will define below, of a
semi-tone, whole tone, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th,
and octave.
Thanks to Bach and equal temperment, any
two keys on a piano next to each other,
two white keys or a black key and a white
key, have their pitches separated by a
semi-tone. The key with the higher
pitch has the frequency of the lower key
multiplied by quite accrately the 12th
root of 2:
2^(1/12) = 1.05946309436
Well, two keys separated by two semi-tones
are separated by a whole-tone. So, the
ratios of frequencies should be about
1.05946309436*2 = 1.122,462,048
Two semi-tones form an interval of
a whole tone or 2nd with ratio
of frequencies
1.05946309436*2 = 1.122,462,048
Two whole tones form an interval of a
major 3rd or just a 3rd with ratio of
frequencies
1.05946309436*4 = 1.259,921,049
An interval of a 4th is 5 semi-tones so
has frequency ratio
1.05946309436*5 = 1.334,839,854,2
A 5th is 7 semi-tones with ratio
1.05946309436*7 = 1.498,307,076,9
6th, 9 semi-tones, ratio
1.05946309436*9 = 1.681,792,830,5
7th, 11 semi-tones, ratio
1.05946309436*11 = 1.887,748,625,4
An 8th, octave, 12 semi-tone for ratio
1.05946309436*12 = 2
no surprise.
=== Major Keys
Suppose we pick a key on the piano and
call that our tonic. If we go up whole
tone, whole tone, semi-tone, whole tone,
whole tone, whole tone, semi-tone, we will
have gone up 12 semi-tones, an octave, and
played the notes of the major scale on
the note we picked as our tonic.
So, the notes of a major scale are a tonic
and the notes we get going up
So, from the tonic we get intervals of a
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th or
octave.
Here is some of the importance of a major
scale: A large fraction of all of
Western music starts on some note
selected as the tonic, plays the notes of
only the major scale on that tonic, and,
to end, returns to the tonic, or nearly
so. The "nearly so" can be a source of
variety of expression.
== Notes and Intervals for Violinists
A violin has 4 strings with names, from
left to right as seen by the violinist,
from lower pitch to higher pitch, G, D, A,
E.
Middle C as on a piano is on a violin the
first C on the G string and, thus, a 4th
above the G.
The D string is a 5th above the G; the A
string is a 5th above the D; and the E
string is a 5th above the A. E.g., on a
violin, the interval between two adjacent
strings is always just a 5th. Simple
tuning.
So, the A is 9 semi-tones above middle C
and has frequency
261.63 * 1.05946309436**9 =
440.007,458,248
and we call that just 440 Hz.
So, the way we tune a violin is to get a
tuning fork that vibrates at 440 Hz and
use it to tune the A string to 440 Hz.
Above we saw that a 5th is 7 semi-tones so
has ratio
1.05946309436*7 = 1.498,307,076
Gee, that is really close to 3/2.
Thus, for any two adjacent strings on a
violin, 3 times the fundamental frequency
of the string with the lower pitch is the
same number as 2 times the fundamental
frequency of the string with the higher
pitch. That fact is a grand pillar of
violin playing.
So, let's suppose we use the violin bow to
play at the same time on adjacent strings
D and A. Suppose we have tuned the A
string to 440 Hz. Then the D string
should have frequency 2/3rds of 440
2*440 / 3 = 293.333,333,333
and two times the 440 is 880 and is the
same as three time the
2*440 / 3 = 293.333,333,333
When we bow both the D and A strings at
the same time, we will be able to hear
that 880 Hz.
Now if the D string frequency was off by a
little, say, 294 Hz, then from the D
string we will be getting
3*294 = 882 Hz
which is high by 2 Hz.
From some basic trigonometry, what we will
hear is essentially the 880 Hz sound but
with its volume comming and going ~2 times
a second. We will hear beats. As we
adjust the tuning peg on the D string and
get the D string frequency to where it
belongs at
2*440 / 3 = 293.333,333,333 Hz
the beats will go away. So, with no
beats, we can tune the D string to quite
accurately our desired
2*440 / 3 = 293.333,333,333 Hz
Then working similarly, bowing the D and G
strings together, we can get the G string
tuned quite accurately at a 5th below the
D string. Bowing the A string and the E
strings together, we can the E string
tuned quite accurately to a 5th above the
A string.
Drawing from these two lists, here is a
list of all the intervals with their usual
names, their frequency ratios, and the
best approximation from a ratio via a
ratio of small whole numbers that might be
used by a violinist to check intonation:
Number fingers on the left hand 1-4 with
the index finger 1 and the little finger
4.
Learn to play on the A string a 4th above
the A on the A string, that is, note D.
Play this D with the 3rd finger -- now are
playing with the left hand in the first
position. That D is easy to learn
because can check the pitch by playing
with the open D string and listening for
beats.
Then also on the A string, learn to play
the 3rd above the A. Do this with the
second finger. The note will be C#, and
one way to check the pitch is just to have
the 3rd finger on D and then have the 2nd
finger about as close to the 3rd finger as
you can. That is, there a semi-tone is
about a finger width. Also the C# is a
minor 3rd below the open E and can be
checked by bowing with the open E.
Then with the 1st finger, play the 2nd,
that is, B on the A string. This pitch
will be a 4th below the open E string, so
it is fairly easy to check the pitch with
beats with the E string.
For the 4th finger, on the A string play
the 5th, that is, the E, and, sure, it
will have the same pitch as the open E
string.
Now on the A string you can play A, B, C#,
D, and E, that is, the first five notes of
the A major scale. Move your left hand
over to the E string and with fingers 1-3
as you had them on the A string, keep
playing. Will be playing F#, G#, and A,
the full A major scale. Since the pitch
of the F# is a 6th above that of the open
A string, can check your pitch,
intonation, of the F# by bowing with the
open A string and listening to beats.
Take what you did with your fingers on the
A string and do the same thing with your
fingers starting on the D string and play
the D major scale, D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#,
D.
Do the same thing starting on the G string
and play the G major scale, G, A, B, C, D,
E, F#, G.
Now you have a start on playing the major
scale of any of the three keys G, D, and
A. The D is the key of the center section
of the Bach Chaconne.
== More About Fifths and Keys
If you start with the open D string and,
say, on a piano go down in pitch a 5th, 7
semi-tones, then will be at a C, the first
one below middle C. Then all the notes in
the C major scale will be C, D, E, F, G,
A, B, C, all white keys, no sharps or
flats. So, go up a 5th to G and play its
major scale, G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, and
will have played one sharp, F#. Now
starting on D and playing its major scale
will play D, E, F#, A, B, C#, D. So, we
play the F# we had with the G major scale
and play one more sharp, C#.
So, with the C major scale we played no
sharps; with the G major scale, up a 5th
from the C, we played 1 sharp; with the D
major scale, up a 5th from the G, we
played 2 sharps, the F# we had before and
one more, C#; with the A major scale, up a
5th from the D, we play 3 sharps, the F#
and C# we had before and one more, G#.
So, the pattern is, for a major scale,
move the tonic up a fifth and add one more
sharp. This pattern is a small part of
the "circle of fifths".
As above, can use beats to pick out the
notes of the A major scale and do the same
with D major and G major. But should also
learn to sing in the major scales. That
is, should learn the basics of singing.
When singing, should learn to hear the
pitch before singing it, and then should
apply that to getting pitches correct on
violin. And, right, to help getting the
pitch, and other aspects of the sound you
want, from a violin, learn to hear the
sound in your head just before playing it.
That's a much better introduction to
violin than I had!
If you want to have fun with violin, the
above is a good start.
Here I give an introduction to how to
start with violin.
Why violin? Classical solo music is
written mostly for piano or violin, and
the ensemble music is heavily dependent on
a section of violins. So, violin is very
important in music.
Now a lot of music can be generated by
software on computers, but generating all
the expressiveness of a good violin with
a good violinist would be a big challenge.
So, violins are not likely to be fully
replaced by computer generated music.
I learned to play violin, enough to make
it through parts of some of the most
important pieces, the Bach Chaconne,
etc.
Bach wrote that piece originally for solo
violin. E.g., as in:
Hilary Hahn
1,458,170 views Aug 15, 2020
Johann Sebastian Bach - Partita for
solo violin Nº 2 in D minor, BWV
1004.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjEVKxQCWs
A version arranged for piano by Busoni is:
Bach, Busoni - Chaconne in D minor
BWV 1004 - Helene Grimaud (piano)
3,785,361 views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9DlMNnpPM
After hear the piano version, that the
piece in its original form was for violin
is a bit amazing.
One version of an arrangement for
orchestra is:
Boston Symphony Orchestra - J.S.Bach
Partita in D Minor, Chaconne BWV 1004
124,435 views Apr 4, 2013
Orchestration by Hideo Saito
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WpzfAd5gXk
That here an orchestra keeps itself busy
playing a piece written just for solo
violin is even more amazing.
Another version for orchestra is:
Bach - Stokowski. Chaconne (1950)
214,972 views Jun 4, 2012
L'orchestration de la Chaconne de
J.S.Bach par Leopold Stokowski.
Enregistré en 1950.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEUYq5t-cCM
There are also solo organ performances.
For more violin music there is:
Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons - Julia
Fischer - Performance Edit (Full HD 1080p)
3,567,731 views Jan 17, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-W3lfcVvY
with just excellent, world class, nearly
uniquely good, cases of (A) what violin
can and basically should sound like, (B)
violin tone quality and intonation
accuracy, (C) musical expression, and (D)
from the soloist Julia Fischer examples of
how to hold the violin and bow and nearly
everything about the left hand, tone
quality, intonation, etc. Just excellent.
For beginners I would mention that
sometimes she has less curve in her left
thumb than is usually recommended.
For a more modern view of what can be done
with violin music there is:
Sibelius / Jascha Heifetz, 1960:
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 -
Walter Hendl, CSO - Complete
184,884 views Jun 1, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpPYat2aRB4
The CD of that music, played directly, not
through YouTube, has significantly better
sound quality and a convincing example of
some of the reasons for the fame of
Heifetz. What he does with his violin is
beyond any simple explanation. A piano
player can hit a key, maybe with a pedal,
on a good piano, and that is about all;
not at all so for a violinist with a good
violin: There are the violin itself, the
strings and rosin selected by the
violinist, the bow itself and then the
tension, adjustable, on the bow hairs, the
bow contact area on the strings, the bow
pressure and speed, and then the effect of
the fingers of the left hand on the
strings. It all can make significant
differences.
Here are some good ways to start to learn
to play violin:
(1) Listen to some famous violin music,
say, on YouTube. So from this, get some
understanding of what sounds and music a
violin is good for. Sure, concentrate on
some of the best violin music by Vivaldi,
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Sibelius played
by famous violinists, Heifetz, Hahn,
Fischer, etc. Get the sheet music, learn
the basics of how to read sheet music, and
follow along with the YouTube
performances.
(2) Look carefully at still images of
famous violinists holding their violin,
e.g., Heifetz, Hahn, especially the
Fischer perforamance of The Four Seasons
as above.
The goal here is to learn how to hold the
violin and the bow. This learning is
important, crucial, etc. Nearly all good
violinists of the last 50 years use a
special shoulder rest that clips onto
the back of the violin. The one I got was
from Sweden. An excellent view is the
Fischer video above.
(3) Get a few in-person one-on-one
beginner lessons in violin. A music
school or maybe a music shop should be
able to recommend good teachers.
Generally you can get really good lessons
from a really good professional violinist
for not much money. The early lessons are
on (a) how to hold the violin and bow, (b)
how to change strings, (c) how to tune the
violin, (d) how to use the rosin on the
bow, (e) how to play in some of the major
scales.
Below is a "Music Theory 101 for Beginning
Violinists".
After that and some lessons, the main need
is practice. Occasionally return for
lessons with a good violinist to check
that what you are practicing and learning
are correct. You might find, as I did,
that it takes 1000+ hours of practice
alone to make good use of one lesson of
one hour.
I recommend the book
Ivan Galamian, Principles of Violin
Playing & Teaching, Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, 1962.
There are already more great movies/shows than one can watch in a lifetime, and we shouldn't incentivize the business of remakes of remakes of remakes.
Public libraries could use their funding for cooler stuff like letting people borrow musical instruments.
PS: The Pirate Bay (and torrenting in general) is actually terrible for non-mainstream content. Like, look at the audiobook section... it's basically Harry Potter and a lot of "self help" psuedo-cultists.
If you are curious what kind of films they have available you can check out the listing on JustWatch: https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/kanopy
One thing to keep in mind is that the selection is dependent on your local library, so the listing is a sum of the subsets but you can get a general idea of the content that's available there.
Disclaimer: I work at JustWatch
> the selection is dependent on your local library
It VERY much is. Used my community college login, and there was nothing at all, anywhere. My login for a largish state college was a little better, but not much...maybe 50 total items and all in the documentary, gender studies, and one other section.
Kanopy should probably work the UI a little for linked accounts to places that have nothing at all to offer...rather than having you create the login, verify an email, etc.
Thanks!
JustWatch is awesome.
Is there any way to know, with JustWatch, which free streaming services are available in Canada?
> Is there any way to know, with JustWatch, which free streaming services are available in Canada?
Yes, once you sign up there's a provider selection wizard that allows you to see a list of free services in your selected country. You can then also "batch add" all of them to your providers so they are always selected automatically.
Librarian here. Please utilize the services your public library makes available to you for free! Even virtual usage is enough to convince cities to not lower budgets. We took massive hits to usage during the pandemic lockdowns, but you don't need to always come in to use your library! Look out for Kanopy, Hoopla and Libby and more at your local library!
Kanopy's prvacy policy says they collect data on the people using their service (including GPS coordinates), and they sell/share data with other 3rd parties including allowing Google to collect data on their users. They've also failed to reasonably secure user's data which has resulted in at least one data breach (https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/kanopy-streaming-...)
I haven't looked into Hoopla and Libby's policies yet, but I'd be willing to bet they're doing the same. Librarians have traditionally been very concerned with preserving the right to access content and information of all kinds without being monitored. They fought hard (and lost) against the US government being able to collect lists of the books and media users checked out from the library. It's odd to see a librarian advocate for people to use 3rd party services which will do exactly that along with far more invasive tracking.
I'm not just calling you out on this, although some have backed away from these services for various reasons (https://billypenn.com/2021/07/20/free-library-kanopy-movies-...) libraries around the country have embraced services which can track, censor, and put library user's data, privacy, and safety at risk. They advertise and push these services onto library patrons without informing them of the risks and without any mention of what card holders will be giving up by using them. Leaving it to library users to seek out and read through corporate privacy policies full of legal language and weasel wording seems very wrong to me.
In the US, as library card holders, we can't keep our reading lists out of the hands of the state, but we can do more to keep it out of the hands of private for profit companies and data brokers. I'm not saying there's no place for these types of services in libraries (although I'd love to see similar systems developed and operated entirely by library systems instead of 3rd parties), I just wish more libraries were looking out for the privacy of their users and were willing to do more of what they do best: keeping the people informed.
While I am concerned about data brokers and tracking, it's my personal opinion that that's just the sad reality of technology and the internet today, and most people just don't care.
You and I may care about signing up for services and not being tracked across the internet for the kinds of interests we have, but the way I see it, and the way many suburban and rural libraries and librarians may also see it, our patrons were probably already going to subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime, and all their egregious privacy violations.
While most (I would hope) librarians would agree that keeping a patron's private information, including their reading and watching habits be kept secret, equal access to materials and information is far more important.
I would love if larger libraries could develop their own systems for free content that can be accessed by their patrons and perhaps even by other libraries, but that's just not the reality we live in. Similar to how every IP holder wants to create their own subscription-based platforms for content, libraries would be like Netflix. The content people actually want will always be not on Netflix. In the end, many suburban and rural libraries are desperate for usage by their populace, no matter the cost to privacy.
I don’t think my Mac allows GPS to be passed, but IP gives an approximation. Not sure how to get around that.
Do you know if the library gives my address, etc?
> I don’t think my Mac allows GPS to be passed, but IP gives an approximation. Not sure how to get around that.
I don't know how much apple restricts access to other things that can give away your location besides IP geolocation, but things like nearby wifi networks and nearby bluetooth beacons/devices are also being used to generate maps that can give extremely accurate location data. Typically cell tower data can ID a mobile device to within a mile or so, but where 5G is available the resolution is improved to feet instead of miles. If they can link the data they get from your library or from these streaming services to the data they get from your wireless provider they could know your part of town (4G) or which house (or even which room of that house) you're standing in (5G)
> Do you know if the library gives my address, etc?
To the feds? that's difficult to answer. The government doesn't give the public details of what kind of information they're taking and when. There's a decent article about the past collection of library data by the FBI and the resurgence of the practice post-9/11 here:
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/FBI-checking-out-Ame...
When they lost the fight to keep the government from snooping around some libraries responded by changing their data collection practices to limit as much as possible what data they had on their users. You can check with your library and see if they have your address on file. If they do, I would assume that it would be up for grabs if the government came knocking and I would recommend starting from the assumption that all available data is being collected routinely on everyone, from every location.
While the official line will be that this sort of collection by the state will be targeted (even if that means targeting everyone who checked out books about certain subjects or anyone who fits a certain profile) without a whistleblower willing to risk everything to come forward how could we ever really know the extent of the data collection taking place? One of the things that drove Snowden to become a whistleblower himself was that he knew from first hand experience that the then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and the director of the NSA Keith Alexander (who is currently sitting on Amazon's board of directors) were lying to Congress while under oath about when where and how the agency was spying on Americans. There's really no reason to take these organizations at their word, or to assume that even those in the highest offices in our government would know what they were up to any better than you or I do.
Oh, thought we were talking about kanopy. I only use it with wifi on a Mac. I’ve seen the “United States of Secrets” Frontline special.
Yeah, in that case it could just depend on how up to date their map of your nearby access points are. I haven't seen the “United States of Secrets” Frontline special, but I see it's on youtube so thanks for that!
On PBS and Kanopy too, haha. At least it was.
My library has been really curtailing the amount I can use Hoopla… Libby is pretty good as long as I can find a less popular book (or wait in line), but Hoopla is almost always already at the daily lending limit.
What is the best way to contact libraries/librarians for API access to their library?
I want to build an app which will dump me in random pages of my checkouted books, instead of me gathering energy to do it. I have other features planned.
I am stuck with how to interface with my local library, like Libby does. Any ideas ?
Librarian here.
Libraries are just paying for the ability to offer Libby to patrons. Libby then taps into a login API for the ILS a library uses to check if a patron's library card and PIN are tied to an eligible account, and Libby offers its own content based on whatever each library can afford to offer.
You would need to offer your own content, ultimately, with the Libby model. Same goes for OverDrive, Hoopla and Kanopy.
Just call 'em up and ask around, or send an email, I suppose. There's gotta be somebody there who knows.
Granted, they're unlikely to just give you special access, but you could at least learn something.
While most of the views use limited credits, Kanopy has some free titles. They are not often easy to discover, so I wanted to mention it here.
The especially interesting free set is (at least through my library), is a nearly full collection of the Greater Courses, a very high quality educational materials. You can see the official source here: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses It is also a good way to find the actual course and then plug it into Kanopy.
Finally, searching Kanopy on the mobile phone app, bookmarking and then switching to TV app to actually watch is an easier workflow than trying to type things in TV interface.
I'm a big Kanopy fan and love to at least browse what they've got.
Another digital library functionality I use is [Libby](https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby), which lets me read library books on my Kindle or Kindle App. Saves me and my wife hundreds of dollars a year on books!
Incidentally, Libby and Kanopy are owned by the same company and they are planning some further film discovery focused enhancements in the Libby app this year.
Want to second what a great app Libby is: it's like a "management" layer on top of your regular library experience, paired with integrating services seamlessly (libraries, eReaders) that makes it wonderful.
Also, some really smart UX/UI decisions in the app. And: I'm super-jaded about this stuff, but find the subtle "delighters" and microinteractions actually helpful and enhance the experience.
Another nice thing is that their UX changes actually feel like steps forward. For example if you live in an area with overlapping libraries, the app has gotten much better at unifying the catalog info.
Libby is - also - awesome. I use it with Kobo (choose on phone, then sync to reader). And they have both books and audiobooks too, so I stopped my Audible subscription for now.
Worth nothing that Libby also does audiobooks, which I've done a lot more of in the past few years.
My son is a voracious reader and Libby is wonderful!
Many people who could be watching kanopy via a public library probably don't know it, more marketting would be helpful, from either libraries or kanopy.
But...
> Stream thousands of films for free, thanks to the generous support of your public library or university
Kanopy isn't non-profit is it? Either way, libraries and universities are paying fees to kanopy for licensed access. This is an odd way and potentially misleading way of putting it, "generous support". Will Elsevier start telling users they are getting "free access thanks to the generous support of your university" next, as if universities pay elsevier it's enormous fees out of "generosity"?
Certainly true, though presumably Kanopy in turn has to pay license holders for the films they offer? If it turned out they were gouging libraries I'd be incensed, but I would tend to think it's at least as likely the the studios and distribution companies are charging Kanopy a lot.
I'm just saying "generous support" makes sense as a word when it's NPR talking about donors, but is a weird word to describe the payments of your customers for a commercial service. Which makes me think they're trying to sound like they're NPR or something, when they are a commercial service. Universities and libraries don't pay for kanopy out of "generosity" or to "support" it -- it's a commercial service they subscribe to!
I have no idea what profit margin Kanopy makes, which is I guess how we'd determine if it was "gouging"? I don't know from "gouging".
Lib pays a fee for each show you watch. Why they limit it.
If you are in Ottawa, Canada, the Public Library can give you access to:
Browse > Online Resources > Watch (streaming video) > Then pick what you want to access:
Additional info: Ancestry Online (this is now only possible on the library's computers, and not from home. Used this a lot for finding info on my past relatives, andNYPL stopped offering Kanopy a couple of years back
> As of July 1, 2019, The New York Public Library will no longer offer cardholders free access to video streaming platform Kanopy. The Library made this decision after a careful and thorough examination of its streaming offerings and priorities. We believe the cost of Kanopy makes it unsustainable for the Library, and that our resources are better utilized purchasing more in-demand collections such as books and e-books.
https://www.nypl.org/press/press-release/june-24-2019/statem...
At the time this was done, the Kanopy model was that when you watched a movie, if you were the first one to watch it from your library, it would trigger an expensive purchase ($80–100, as I recall) after which subsequent viewings would be free. This led to unpredictable costs to the library. I think that they’ve since moved to a pay per view model line Hoopla uses which is why movies will sometimes disappear from the service.
It looks like it costs libraries $2 per view and universities $150/year after a film has been viewed once: https://filmquarterly.org/2019/05/03/kanopy-not-just-like-ne...
I generally prefer to walk over to my local library branch and browse their film collection in-person.
Tough to justify watching a movie when I know it might be costing my library $152 for choosing to watch an obscure title.
I like to think that my library's management knows how to do cost benefit analyses. I can assure you that my library didn't subscribe to this because of unreasonable demands from patrons, but because they felt it was a worthy option for their patrons.
Put another way, if my library dropped Kanopy, almost no one would notice. So it's hard to claim Kanopy is being "predatory" as another commenter mentioned.
For me personally, $150 seems obscenely high. Especially considering it would be far more economical to just buy the DVD. The cost is high enough that I would genuinely feel quite guilty for making my community pay that much. Ironically, I would feel no such guilt for torrenting the movie at that point.
I get that the infrastructure for streaming isn't cheap, and neither are the licensing fees, but this feels like price gouging. I know price gouging is a specific legal term but I'm speaking in the vernacular sense.
I understand where you're coming from.
I also understand that my library has a lot more data to make the decision than my feeling of guilt. There's no need to speculate. Email your library and ask them:
"Would you prefer I stream title X from Kanopy, or check out the DVD?"
And also ask
"Would you prefer I stream title Y from Kanopy, for which you don't carry the DVD?"
Feel free to provide the context, expressing concerns that it'll potentially cost them over $150, and you're worried that they are being abused by Kanopy.
If the library's not willing to tell me to prefer the DVD, then I'm not concerned.
$150 does seem very steep… given these numbers, I would feel a lot better simply buying films to donate to my library.
Be aware that very little you donate to the library ends up on the shelves. Most of the time they sell whatever you donate (e.g. "Friends of Library sales")
It's $2 per view for libraries, or $150/movie/year for universities. The rates are separate.
I feel better about $2, but it would still make me really think about whether I'd want to watch a movie that badly.
For context:
SFPL's annual operating budget (not including capex, and not including notional rent on buildings) is $160MM.
That's about $17/month per SF resident. Many SF residents don't use library services at all, so the $/month per MAU is likely mich higher ($50? $100?)
I’m not an expert on US law but arent the libraries funded from tax?
This differs vastly by locality. In some places, taxes fund libraries entirely or in part. In others, NGOs fund them. There is often a local non-profit that raises money to keep a library running.
Why does it matter where the library's budget comes from?
It matters a lot. Because if it comes from taxes that I pay, why would I not want to/feed bad using its resources?
Yeah, a lot of universities required librarian approval to add a new film to limit the costs. Similar to an ILL request where the library pays a small fee but typically doesn't pass that forward to the requester, as long as one lab/person doesn't use an extreme amount of requests.
It's understandable why you "hide" these costs from the user, but it would be nice to know they exist.
This offer here would be something I'd look into, except learning it hurts the library more than expected is a downer.
> except learning it hurts the library more than expected is a downer.
Which is likely an incentive for libraries to not expose those costs on a per-request basis. As thebitstick mentioned here[1], libraries want to encourage usage. Overall usage volume has already been budgeted for, so the variances between one request and another for a typical patron won't materially impact the overall capacity of a library from serving their patrons. Inversely, if exposing the individual request costs disincentive enough conscientious patrons from making those requests, it makes it more difficult for the library to justify the service at all and could result in the loss of budget to continue covering it. Which ends up being a net loss of access for those patrons which do not have the means to access it elsewhere and were reliant on the library for it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31902549
Wow, that feels absolutely predatory.
A few years ago, I attempted to work out what a circulation cost us calculating things like our collection budget, staff budget, etc. vs number of circs. It came out to about $2.50 or so. Keep in mind there are some serious limitations; for example, the buildings are a fixed cost and there would need to be a precipitous drop in circulation to lay off staff, but it gave a rough idea of what it costs to buy something, check it out, re-shelve it, etc.
That’s higher than I expected.
Sounds like it’s not that far from a point where it’d be cheaper to just print a book on demand, mail it, and tell ‘em to just keep it or pass it on.
All else being equal, it could very well be logistically cheaper.
But to publishers, increasing the volume of printed copies of a given title is absolutely not equal to a library purchasing a single copy and physically handling it in circulation until it naturally degrades to the point of being trashed. Physically printing brand new copies for patrons to keep every time a book was 'checked-out' would pose such a materially large impact on sales volume that publishers flat out wouldn't allow it.
Even a perpetual license to loan a single copy of an ebook can cost a library upwards of $100[1], due to potential revenue impact to publishers/authors from having it in circulation in perpetuity without physical deterioration naturally limiting it's lifetime/volume of loans. And the number of simultaneous loans for a given title is generally restricted to the number of individual licenses you've paid for. If that's the case even for ebooks, you can imagine what they'd require to print a title on demand and give it away to a patron forever.
[1] https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/a-new-twist-i...
It would be. Making unlimited ebooks available would be even cheaper than that. But neither of those really fits the business model of the publisher. A public library is already a compromise in the eyes on many publishers.
So why exactly do libraries use Kanopy? If they aren't partners, Kanopy can't just send the library a bill, or am I missing something in that article.
The library signs up with Kanopy. Sets restrictions on who can use the service and how often, then makes it available to their patrons.
Sure, my question is why would they sign up for Kanopy if the pricing is predatory, excessive, etc that others are implying.
Because the pricing isn't predatory, and doing it any other way would cost a thousand times more.
For the same reason they pay $80 for a single use copy of an ebook: because users expect it and don't really care about the excuse. Users see that other libraries offer a service, they see the services they want to use and no number of spreadsheets will make them happy with answer "no".
I generally prefer to walk over to my local library branch and browse their film collection in-person.
There's an app and it's nice to d/l a film to watch when I'm on the spin bike.
Books cost libraries money, too. Budgets come out of the taxes I pay.
For HN readers who currently reside in California, note that you can sign up for as many local library systems in California as you like. There is no requirement that you only get a card for your local town or local county library. You can collect them all, statewide, if you want.
This is really useful when certain libraries may have different eBook platforms, streaming services, and/or database access than other systems. For example, an eBook may be checked out or unavailable in one little town’s website, but not another.
(I currently have four California cards, for Los Angeles, San Francisco, and two different Marin county libraries/systems.)
Many library systems do not provide Kanopy to their patrons (such as the New York Public Library), and some participating libraries only offer a subset of the "available" titles. So even if you have access to Kanopy with your library card, you can click "Play" on a title only to discover it's not available to you.
For people in Sweden, there is a similar service at https://www.cineasterna.com/sv/ with a usually pretty interesting film selection.
Been using Kanopy for a few years and the quality of the content on there is an order of magnitude better than any other streaming service. In the Seattle area you only get 5 views/month, but that's plenty for me.
I have Kanopy. They offer some good films, but not the ones that tend to have very large licensing fees, I would guess.
People who say "they should just buy the DVD" are imagining that the library can just pay $20 or whatever, and then offer it to as many users as want to watch?
I don't think it works that way for libraries. Maybe someone who knows for sure can tell us? I'm guessing that they get the right to loan out the DVD physically but not electronically.
I ran the Cinema Club at Google for 10 years, and we made our lawyers happy by always paying "public performance rights" (PPRs) for all our flicks. When you buy a DVD, you get a license for "home viewing." That does not allow you to invite members of the public in to watch. You cannot show it in your bar or restaurant or at a place of business. Maybe you, Fred Hacker, can get away with it, but a large multinational company cannot.
When I negotiated PPRs with a film distributor, they always asked these questions:
1) Is the film showing advertised outside your company?
2) Is attendance limited to employees and their guests?
3) How big is the room? (or maybe it was "what's the average attendance?")
I didn't look into what public libraries pay for their movies, but I'm pretty sure it's more than you would pay to just buy the DVD.
Yes, exactly this. Purchasing a DVD is priced differently for a) home use only, b) public screening, c) lending/circulating to public
I don’t think a library would sign up to Kanopy if it wasn’t somehow more attractive to them over DVDs.
First sale doctrine means you can buy a disc for home use and lend it out. Typically, you do public performance with home use discs and a seperately obtained license (but it is possible to rent media with your license, etc).
> Maybe you, Fred Hacker, can get away with it, but a large multinational company cannot.
Back when Terry Semel (ex Warner Brothers CEO) was still CEO, Yahoo! would show Oscar screeners in the cafeteria of the best films nominees around that time. Answers to your questions would be 1) No, 2) yes, 3) I dunno, employee cafeteria sized... The organizers said that we were "just in Jerry and David's living room", strongly implying that no public performance rights were obtained, but I dunno. I also don't know if the official screener discs come with appropriate rights.
Well, good for them. Lawyers, you know.
How much did the public performing rights typically cost?
Well, I'm a hardball negotiator. You wouldn't think that, to look at me.
My data is at least 5 years out of date. But their list price used to be $250 per movie.
Eventually, a lawyer at Google SF got a global, unlimited license for the whole company, so I didn't have to negotiate anymore. I didn't even want to ASK the Motion Picture Licensing Corp. what that cost.
So we went through Swank for years and years. Those are the two distributors who have all the Hollywood movies. There are lots of smaller distributors, too.
Oh wow, interesting. That’s much less expensive than I would have guessed.
Well i'm off to get a library card now!
Grab some books while you are there! My local branch totals up the money you save each year.
One great benefit of Kanopy is that you can access pretty much entire catalog of Great Courses free with Kanopy here [0]. I love the breadth and depth of Great Courses when I want to learn various topics such as gardening, space exploration, ancient history etc.
Just add your multiple library cards and each video or set of videos would use a credit from your library for that month. Once all credits for a given library expire, you can connect Kanopy simply to a different library card with just one click.
[0] https://www.kanopy.com/en/category/915
I have to agree about the Great Courses. The ones I've watched have been very high quality, as good as the university courses that the universities will charge several thousand dollars to sit in. (Some fancy schools are hitting $8000 per course these days, at least at the list price before financial "aid" kicks in.)
Enjoy them. There's no reason to get poor to get an education.
I have no idea why you put quote marks around "aid" in financial aid.
Some describe the financial aid algorithm as, "Tell us how much money you have. Send it to us." Sure, it can be described as aid. It can also be described as a pricing algorithm designed to squeeze the maximum amount out of the customer.
Movies that are on DVD, are not among the most popular, and/or are 20+ years old are commonly available for sale, as DVDs, on-line in essentially new condition used for about $2 plus shipping, usually of just a few dollars. If the movie is any good, will want to see it more than once, So, paying a few dollars for one view is a bit too expensive!
I looked at their ad for their video introduction to playing violin. As I recall, they want $169 or so for their course. Seems high!
In
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903188
I give an introduction to playing violin.
Are you having a mental episode or is this a strange bot account that I'm replying to?
Yeah, kaboom is a complete non-starter. The first thing they do is ask you for you login credentials for the library.
"Then, we'll ask you for your public library card number and PIN/password"
That's a hard no.
Don't give your password to anyone
This is generally sound advice but it's not a random side project of someone in that case. It's an official partner of the libraries so your suspicion is a bit misplaced.
It's a for profit company that sells its services to libraries.
I think suspicion of any company that asks for your password with a third party is warranted. Asking for credentials like this not only teaches bad security practices, but even if Kanopy is trustworthy today, the company could easily be sold to a less trustworthy owner and all the data from your library account siphoned and sold to data brokers.
It would be safer to do something where the sign-in occurs on the library's website as opposed to Kanopy's. But you should be able to verify on the applicable library website that they have a legitimate partnership with Kanopy and that this is a permitted use of your login credentials, e.g.: https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/kanopy-help/ and https://www.vaughanpl.info/databases/index/alphabetical/K
Kanopy redirects you to the library's own website to do the actual sign-in. And re-validates about once-per-month.
Librarian here.
Kanopy uses your card number and PIN to access an API for whatever ILS the library allows Kanopy to point to. Libraries allow access when they pay for giving access to Kanopy for their patrons.
However, in theory, this could give Kanopy access to try and harvest checked out materials via our catalog with these credentials. In practice, we haven't seen them doing this. Your PIN/password should after all be different from the ones you use for every website.
Edit: that should have said kanopy, not kaboom.
Some other sites that your university library _may_ offer access to are Swank Digital Campus, Silent Film Online, World Digital Cinema, and Alexander Street Press. These are all fantastic resources, and while we all have limited time and thus limited bandwidth for consuming media, I think there's a lot to be gained from looking for entertainment in unexpected places. It's also great if you want to see, say, Shakespeare performed by the BBC's production because, say, you can't seem to win the free ticket lottery...
Kanopy recently revamped their UI and the site has turned to unresponsive garbage for me. The new player glitches frequently and hangs when buffering. The old player wasn't stellar but it wasn't this awful.
The old search interface was nice. It was easy to get a list of newly-added items, sorted by date, with thumbnails and metadata. The new UI is just thumbnails in a horizontal "carousel" and you can only see metadata by clicking the thumbnail.
I don't know how anybody thought this was a good idea.
This is a terrible deal for libraries.
Side note: In the mouths of marketers "thoughtful", "intentional", and "purposeful" are null words.
I've been using it for a while now, there have been quite a few movies that weren't streaming anywhere else.
I like Canopy but wish it wouldn't show unavailable movies in my region. I ended up uninstalling the app in frustration after, on several occasions, spending many minutes finding a movie that seemed interesting, only to learn it was region restricted when pressing play.
Some libraries offer movies through Hoopla (https://www.hoopladigital.com/browse/movie).
Although the quality of the selection on Hoopla tends to be a bit meh (or maybe I’ve already seen the movies they have that I’d want to watch). They have a lot of direct to video knockoff films, like Monster Vs Giant Ape or Shark Storm.
I recently started using Kanopy. They have many great movies that aren't available on other paid streaming plans.
Kanopy is awesome, I've rented a bunch of old movies that I wanted to rewatch for free
Too bad this does not work with any library in the Netherlands.
As promised in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903188
here I give something of some first lessons in violin.
Part I
=== Music Theory 101 for Beginning Violinists
== Notes and Pitch
Like nearly all music, when a violin makes a sound, that sound as a pitch which in terms of some math, audio engineering, etc., has a pitch, that is, a fundamental frequency. Call that sound a note. Of course, commonly in music, more than one note is being played at once; such music is polyphonic.
A standard piano has 88 keys, some are white and some are black.
Near the middle of the keyboard is the key middle C, a white key. Its pitch, fundamental frequency, is 261.63 cycles per second, that is, Hertz or Hz.
Any two notes, e.g., two notes on piano, define an interval.
We will be especially interested in the intervals, we will define below, of a semi-tone, whole tone, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and octave.
Thanks to Bach and equal temperment, any two keys on a piano next to each other, two white keys or a black key and a white key, have their pitches separated by a semi-tone. The key with the higher pitch has the frequency of the lower key multiplied by quite accrately the 12th root of 2:
2^(1/12) = 1.05946309436
Well, two keys separated by two semi-tones are separated by a whole-tone. So, the ratios of frequencies should be about
1.05946309436*2 = 1.122,462,048
Two semi-tones form an interval of a whole tone or 2nd with ratio of frequencies
1.05946309436*2 = 1.122,462,048
Two whole tones form an interval of a major 3rd or just a 3rd with ratio of frequencies
1.05946309436*4 = 1.259,921,049
An interval of a 4th is 5 semi-tones so has frequency ratio
1.05946309436*5 = 1.334,839,854,2
A 5th is 7 semi-tones with ratio
1.05946309436*7 = 1.498,307,076,9
6th, 9 semi-tones, ratio
1.05946309436*9 = 1.681,792,830,5
7th, 11 semi-tones, ratio
1.05946309436*11 = 1.887,748,625,4
An 8th, octave, 12 semi-tone for ratio
1.05946309436*12 = 2
no surprise.
=== Major Keys
Suppose we pick a key on the piano and call that our tonic. If we go up whole tone, whole tone, semi-tone, whole tone, whole tone, whole tone, semi-tone, we will have gone up 12 semi-tones, an octave, and played the notes of the major scale on the note we picked as our tonic.
So, the notes of a major scale are a tonic and the notes we get going up
So, from the tonic we get intervals of a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th or octave.Here is some of the importance of a major scale: A large fraction of all of Western music starts on some note selected as the tonic, plays the notes of only the major scale on that tonic, and, to end, returns to the tonic, or nearly so. The "nearly so" can be a source of variety of expression.
== Notes and Intervals for Violinists
A violin has 4 strings with names, from left to right as seen by the violinist, from lower pitch to higher pitch, G, D, A, E.
Middle C as on a piano is on a violin the first C on the G string and, thus, a 4th above the G.
The D string is a 5th above the G; the A string is a 5th above the D; and the E string is a 5th above the A. E.g., on a violin, the interval between two adjacent strings is always just a 5th. Simple tuning.
So, the A is 9 semi-tones above middle C and has frequency
and we call that just 440 Hz.So, the way we tune a violin is to get a tuning fork that vibrates at 440 Hz and use it to tune the A string to 440 Hz.
Above we saw that a 5th is 7 semi-tones so has ratio
1.05946309436*7 = 1.498,307,076
Gee, that is really close to 3/2.
Thus, for any two adjacent strings on a violin, 3 times the fundamental frequency of the string with the lower pitch is the same number as 2 times the fundamental frequency of the string with the higher pitch. That fact is a grand pillar of violin playing.
So, let's suppose we use the violin bow to play at the same time on adjacent strings D and A. Suppose we have tuned the A string to 440 Hz. Then the D string should have frequency 2/3rds of 440
and two times the 440 is 880 and is the same as three time the When we bow both the D and A strings at the same time, we will be able to hear that 880 Hz.Now if the D string frequency was off by a little, say, 294 Hz, then from the D string we will be getting
which is high by 2 Hz.From some basic trigonometry, what we will hear is essentially the 880 Hz sound but with its volume comming and going ~2 times a second. We will hear beats. As we adjust the tuning peg on the D string and get the D string frequency to where it belongs at
the beats will go away. So, with no beats, we can tune the D string to quite accurately our desired Then working similarly, bowing the D and G strings together, we can get the G string tuned quite accurately at a 5th below the D string. Bowing the A string and the E strings together, we can the E string tuned quite accurately to a 5th above the A string.Now our violin is tuned and ready to make music!
Part II
== Checking Intonation
A violinist needs to work with the intervals within an octave, that is, less than or equal to an octave.
As he learns to hear and play these intervals he can check his intonation with beats based on ratios of small whole numbers as we saw above for a 5th.
Here is a list of all the possibly relevant small whole numbers:
Here is a list of all the frequency ratios for all intervals an octive or smaller: Drawing from these two lists, here is a list of all the intervals with their usual names, their frequency ratios, and the best approximation from a ratio via a ratio of small whole numbers that might be used by a violinist to check intonation: The cases of uses of ratios of small whole numbers of most interest are just the five: == Playing a ScaleNumber fingers on the left hand 1-4 with the index finger 1 and the little finger 4.
Learn to play on the A string a 4th above the A on the A string, that is, note D. Play this D with the 3rd finger -- now are playing with the left hand in the first position. That D is easy to learn because can check the pitch by playing with the open D string and listening for beats.
Then also on the A string, learn to play the 3rd above the A. Do this with the second finger. The note will be C#, and one way to check the pitch is just to have the 3rd finger on D and then have the 2nd finger about as close to the 3rd finger as you can. That is, there a semi-tone is about a finger width. Also the C# is a minor 3rd below the open E and can be checked by bowing with the open E.
Then with the 1st finger, play the 2nd, that is, B on the A string. This pitch will be a 4th below the open E string, so it is fairly easy to check the pitch with beats with the E string.
For the 4th finger, on the A string play the 5th, that is, the E, and, sure, it will have the same pitch as the open E string.
Now on the A string you can play A, B, C#, D, and E, that is, the first five notes of the A major scale. Move your left hand over to the E string and with fingers 1-3 as you had them on the A string, keep playing. Will be playing F#, G#, and A, the full A major scale. Since the pitch of the F# is a 6th above that of the open A string, can check your pitch, intonation, of the F# by bowing with the open A string and listening to beats.
Take what you did with your fingers on the A string and do the same thing with your fingers starting on the D string and play the D major scale, D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D.
Do the same thing starting on the G string and play the G major scale, G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G.
Now you have a start on playing the major scale of any of the three keys G, D, and A. The D is the key of the center section of the Bach Chaconne.
== More About Fifths and Keys
If you start with the open D string and, say, on a piano go down in pitch a 5th, 7 semi-tones, then will be at a C, the first one below middle C. Then all the notes in the C major scale will be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, all white keys, no sharps or flats. So, go up a 5th to G and play its major scale, G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, and will have played one sharp, F#. Now starting on D and playing its major scale will play D, E, F#, A, B, C#, D. So, we play the F# we had with the G major scale and play one more sharp, C#.
So, with the C major scale we played no sharps; with the G major scale, up a 5th from the C, we played 1 sharp; with the D major scale, up a 5th from the G, we played 2 sharps, the F# we had before and one more, C#; with the A major scale, up a 5th from the D, we play 3 sharps, the F# and C# we had before and one more, G#. So, the pattern is, for a major scale, move the tonic up a fifth and add one more sharp. This pattern is a small part of the "circle of fifths".
As above, can use beats to pick out the notes of the A major scale and do the same with D major and G major. But should also learn to sing in the major scales. That is, should learn the basics of singing. When singing, should learn to hear the pitch before singing it, and then should apply that to getting pitches correct on violin. And, right, to help getting the pitch, and other aspects of the sound you want, from a violin, learn to hear the sound in your head just before playing it.
That's a much better introduction to violin than I had!
If you want to have fun with violin, the above is a good start.
Here I follow up on
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903157
post in this thread about Kanopy.
Here I give an introduction to how to start with violin.
Why violin? Classical solo music is written mostly for piano or violin, and the ensemble music is heavily dependent on a section of violins. So, violin is very important in music.
Now a lot of music can be generated by software on computers, but generating all the expressiveness of a good violin with a good violinist would be a big challenge. So, violins are not likely to be fully replaced by computer generated music.
I learned to play violin, enough to make it through parts of some of the most important pieces, the Bach Chaconne, etc.
Bach wrote that piece originally for solo violin. E.g., as in:
A version arranged for piano by Busoni is: After hear the piano version, that the piece in its original form was for violin is a bit amazing.One version of an arrangement for orchestra is:
That here an orchestra keeps itself busy playing a piece written just for solo violin is even more amazing.Another version for orchestra is:
There are also solo organ performances.For more violin music there is:
with just excellent, world class, nearly uniquely good, cases of (A) what violin can and basically should sound like, (B) violin tone quality and intonation accuracy, (C) musical expression, and (D) from the soloist Julia Fischer examples of how to hold the violin and bow and nearly everything about the left hand, tone quality, intonation, etc. Just excellent. For beginners I would mention that sometimes she has less curve in her left thumb than is usually recommended.For a more modern view of what can be done with violin music there is:
The CD of that music, played directly, not through YouTube, has significantly better sound quality and a convincing example of some of the reasons for the fame of Heifetz. What he does with his violin is beyond any simple explanation. A piano player can hit a key, maybe with a pedal, on a good piano, and that is about all; not at all so for a violinist with a good violin: There are the violin itself, the strings and rosin selected by the violinist, the bow itself and then the tension, adjustable, on the bow hairs, the bow contact area on the strings, the bow pressure and speed, and then the effect of the fingers of the left hand on the strings. It all can make significant differences.Here are some good ways to start to learn to play violin:
(1) Listen to some famous violin music, say, on YouTube. So from this, get some understanding of what sounds and music a violin is good for. Sure, concentrate on some of the best violin music by Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Sibelius played by famous violinists, Heifetz, Hahn, Fischer, etc. Get the sheet music, learn the basics of how to read sheet music, and follow along with the YouTube performances.
(2) Look carefully at still images of famous violinists holding their violin, e.g., Heifetz, Hahn, especially the Fischer perforamance of The Four Seasons as above.
The goal here is to learn how to hold the violin and the bow. This learning is important, crucial, etc. Nearly all good violinists of the last 50 years use a special shoulder rest that clips onto the back of the violin. The one I got was from Sweden. An excellent view is the Fischer video above.
(3) Get a few in-person one-on-one beginner lessons in violin. A music school or maybe a music shop should be able to recommend good teachers. Generally you can get really good lessons from a really good professional violinist for not much money. The early lessons are on (a) how to hold the violin and bow, (b) how to change strings, (c) how to tune the violin, (d) how to use the rosin on the bow, (e) how to play in some of the major scales.
Below is a "Music Theory 101 for Beginning Violinists".
After that and some lessons, the main need is practice. Occasionally return for lessons with a good violinist to check that what you are practicing and learning are correct. You might find, as I did, that it takes 1000+ hours of practice alone to make good use of one lesson of one hour.
I recommend the book
Ivan Galamian, Principles of Violin Playing & Teaching, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1962.
I give more in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31903272
Please don't. Piracy needs you.
There are already more great movies/shows than one can watch in a lifetime, and we shouldn't incentivize the business of remakes of remakes of remakes.
Public libraries could use their funding for cooler stuff like letting people borrow musical instruments.
Did you read the article? I know you didn’t, because this is a service offering exactly the kind of content you are bemoaning the lack of.
> Did you read the article?
I did not. I don't see an article, just a landing page.
> because this is a service offering exactly the kind of content you are bemoaning the lack of.
I'm sure the Pirate Bay has a much larger catalog, with much less censorship.
Ok, so you're just trolling, got it.
PS: The Pirate Bay (and torrenting in general) is actually terrible for non-mainstream content. Like, look at the audiobook section... it's basically Harry Potter and a lot of "self help" psuedo-cultists.
While I can't speak to TPB, there are many private trackers solely dedicated to maintaining obscure content.
Oh cool! Like what?
You've never met heard of her. She lives in Canada.
But, I am in Canada. Trade you for a double double. Eh?
> Ok, so you're just trolling, got it.
Not really, I really mean it.
> Like, look at the audiobook section... it's basically Harry Potter and a lot of "self help" psuedo-cultists.
I agree, piracy hasn't done well when it comes to audiobooks.