Top all-time · #3285
Roy van Rijn
Personal blog · royvanrijn.com/blogprogrammingmath
Roy van Rijn writes royvanrijn, a personal blog at royvanrijn.com about programming and math. Since 2015, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 44 times, most often “OpenJ9: A JVM shootout”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-04, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Roy van Rijn's posts on building a Shazam-style audio fingerprinting clone in Java, and his 2010 post about a patent-infringement letter he received from Shazam's lawyers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Java, algorithms, math, science and more!
Most-linked posts?
- /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-02-02
- /blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-part-2/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-26
- OpenJ9: A JVM shootout2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-05-16
- /blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-09-30
- Part 1: Java to native using GraalVM2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-20
- Patent infringement claim re: “Creating Shazam in Java” blogpost (2010)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-23
What Hacker News says?
I believe Shazam is very much an acquisition for its patent and algorithm sauce. The technology behind it is relatively simple based on audio fingerprinting http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/ It was either Google Music, Spotify or Apple Music that would have acquired it. I’m a 100% sure this will end up as a deep integration with Siri and the existing Apple Music app. Apple has always done w…
Comment linking /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
on “Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam”Submitted I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code as a story · 376 points
HN discussionAnd here's a Java project with similar functionality (although I'm not sure it will have near the same accuracy). [0] He also got some legal threats just for publishing code he created himself. [0] http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
Comment linking /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
on “Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam”Submitted Paper sizes as a story · 320 points
HN discussion> still blows my mind in it's capabilities. Just to jog people's memory, patent threats were sent to others doing similar things [0]. Not sure if that represents Shazam or not, but if so, they'll fit in perfectly with Apple. 0 - http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/
on “Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam”Submitted Creating Shazam in Java (2010) as a story · 213 points
HN discussionThe detailed diagrams, code samples, and demos are greatly appreciated. I think it shows that you put a lot of work into this. Thanks! However, Shazam corporate doesn't seem very nice: http://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/ With such a nice write-up, you probably already know this. :/
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/
on “How Shazam works”Submitted I received a patent infringement email for my weekend project (2010) as a story · 77 points
HN discussionCheck out this article that was on HN before: http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
Comment linking /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
on “Apple is close to acquiring Shazam, sources say”Submitted Deprecating: java.util.Optional.get()? as a story · 53 points
HN discussionI remember this patent threat http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement and lost any respect I had for them.
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/patent-infringement
on “Apple is close to acquiring Shazam, sources say”Submitted Patent infringement claim re: “Creating Shazam in Java” blogpost (2010) as a story · 51 points
HN discussionA more interesting story is behind the blog post linked in the article to someone else's implementation (which I also think contains a bit more detail than this one): [0] https://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-j... [1] https://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/music-matching-part-... Turns out he was contacted and threatened by some patent lawyers from Shazam for writing the above blog posts: [2] h…
Comment linking /blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-part-2/
on “Creating Shazam in Java (2010)”Submitted Part 1: OpenJ9 versus HotSpot as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYes. Shazam has a bunch of patents and has sued people before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(service)#Patent_infrin... The core algorithm is well known and fun to implement: https://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf A blog had a simple implementation of it and were contacted by Shazam's lawyers: http://royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/
Comment linking /blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/
on “Audio Fingerprinting with Python and Numpy (2013)”Submitted Java and Docker, the limitations as a story · 4 points
HN discussionPart 2: https://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-p... TL;DR: > I’m sorry, but I can’t comply. > Good luck. The follow up around 2016: https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/788436253532426241 > Nothing happened, never heard from them again... I couldn't find the code anywhere on his Github profile, so not sure if he actually took the step to publish the code.
Comment linking /blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-part-2/
on “I received a patent infringement email for my weekend project (2010)”Submitted Vikipedia: A YouTube bot (in Java) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSee "An Industrial-Strength Audio Search Algorithm"[1], a 2010 paper written by one of the Shazam developers. The analysis itself doesn't seem complicated[2] but having a large enough database to compare against is probably the hard part. [1]: http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf [2]: http://www.royvanrijn.com/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-ja...
Comment linking /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
on “The Shazam Effect (2014)”Submitted The collapse of Java EE? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf you want to get tricky, you could build a mobile app that can tell what netflix show you're watching based on audio data ala Shazam. Maybe you could talk to these guys who have done exactly that for figuring out viewership numbers (maybe they'll want to share the tech): http://www.wired.com/2016/01/meet-symphony-the-company-that-... Or maybe see if you can use http://echoprint.me/ or build your own http://royvanr…
Comment linking /blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/
on “Feerless: Crowd-sourced, preemptive notifications for Netflix watchers with PTSD”Submitted The Anatomy of an LLM as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Math Behind Paper Sizes (2015) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fuck You, World in Java as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The World of Biased Algorithms as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Introduction to Sat: Peaceable Queens as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Part 1: Java to native using GraalVM as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Part 1: Java to native using GraalVM as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted OpenJ9: A JVM shootout as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Excuse me, sorry to interrupt as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
