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I have a question: WTF is this doing on Hacker News?

• mynameishere 17y ago
  It was a real-life hack. Philip Roth observed that it turned Christmas into a holiday about snow.
• mechanical_fish 17y ago
  The article isn't really about Bing Crosby, but the guy is on the short list of history's most important technology VCs. From his Wikipedia page: Crosby exerted an important influence on the development of the postwar recording industry. In 1947, he invested $50,000 in the Ampex company, which developed North America's first commercial reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Crosby became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 200 recorders to his friend, musician Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of multitrack recording. Along with Frank Sinatra, he was one of the principal backers behind the famous United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles. Through the aegis of recording, Crosby developed the techniques of constructing his broadcast radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) that occurred in a theatrical motion picture production. This feat directly led the way to the use of the same techniques in the creation of all radio broadcast programming as well as later television programming.