An Open Letter to Patreon - <AUTHOR> http://www.openlettertopatreon.com <comment><USER2> Does anyone else recollect the expression "no one owes you a business model"?

There's many reasons Patreon should want to avoid being a porn payments processor. Blame American Puritanism or whatever, but that's the milieu in which they operate. They don't owe it to anyone to bear excess risk just so that someone else can have a profitable hustle at their expense.

If this is such a big issue for the LGBT community Fund a goddamn KS to make a porn-friendly Patreon clone. Or just to Fund starting a porn-friendly payments processor. If the model is profitable rather than a charitable infusion by the processor, then it'll be good for everyone, wont it?

<comment><USER3> If you explicitly court particular industry (amateur/niche porn) to build out your own business model, yeah, I think you do owe those businesses a business model. Perhaps not legally, but morally.

> Fund a goddamn KS to make a porn-friendly Patreon clone

Pretty sure you can't KS an adult business (which such a clone would be considered). That's part of the problem. Nobody wants to touch that industry once they become "respectable".

<comment><USER2> I've seen no evidence that they have actively courted that niche, though. As far as I can see, they've had a policy of benign neglect - which is far from the same thing.

<comment><USER3> If you make the charitable assumption that the letter's writers are not lying, this relationship is clearly spelled out at the top of the second paragraph:

> Over the last couple years we have been courted by you, worked closely with > you on promotion, creation, and even website features, and have been assured > by you that Patreon was a home for all types of creators – including those > that make adult content.

<comment><USER2> Without accusing anyone of lying at all, the letter writer goes out of their way to make it seem like the LGBT community, adult content community, and porn community are the same thing, and they're representing all 3. I don't know which of these Patreon has courted, though, or how much. To quote,

"However, there has always been an issue with your stance on "porn" versus "adult content." This stance has never been clear and is reminiscent of the phrase "I know it when I see it", most infamously used in 1964 by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity. This is an outdated, legally unclear, and importantly, extremely problematic view of adult media."

So, to Patreon, this doesn't seem to be a distinction without a difference. I happen to agree: an artistic nude is adult content, but isn't the same adult content as a blowjob video. Even if no one is lying, I have no trouble reading that letter as "you courted and reassured us (LGBT, adult content), and now you're abandoning us (pornographers)". Which doesn't require deceit - I'm sure there's overlap and gray areas. But it doesn't require Patreon to be playing dirty either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> American puritanism is the problem. I have enough of those American companies arbitrarily deciding that a nipple is an obscene thing. But how to fight back this form of cultural imperialism?

<comment><USER5> I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot brick.

<comment><USER6> And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...

<comment><USER5> I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get higher than usual chargebacks.

This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to the nature of the content and a cherry on top in the form of money laundering as the services allows the user to receive money.

As it's a service not goods it's much more easy to chargeback. I'd imagine places that sell adult products have less of an issue, because they have proof of goods.

<comment><USER7> So charge them a slightly higher fee to account for that.

Your reasoning that that in itself would be sufficient to refuse service does not hold up.

<comment><USER5> The processors that allow "high risk" payments do charge a higher fee. I wouldn't call it "slightly higher" though, it was prohibitively expensive for the service I was trying to set up. In a sister thread on this subject on Reddit someone suggested using Bitcoin as an alternative, which I somewhat regret not considering at the time.

To clarify also it's not my reasoning. Adult content is referenced in the Terms of Service for all payment processors, whether they allow it or not. See Stripe for an example[1]

[1] [https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip- infringement-...](https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement- regulated-or-illegal-products-and-services)

<comment><USER7> I understand, I simply don't believe that this is a rational decision due to risk assessment. I believe that that is just an excuse. Or rather, that a high amount of the risk involved is not due to customer behaviour, but due to potential pressure from self appointed guardians of morality. As part of this discussion elsewhere people were linking again to an old engadget article about these practices, which in turn linked to this court opinion, which is well worth reading:

[http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp...](http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2015/D11-30/C:15-3047:J:Posner:aut:T:fnOp:N:1663542:S:0)

Here is the engadget article:

[https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big- ba...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war- on-the-sex-industry/)

I think strong regulations, something like: Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon have to service every business that is not illegal, would also help these companies against such "moral guardianship". They don't have to look like they are defending the rights of perverts to their other customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a major opportunity for competition here. A complete open source stack for what Patreon does is already available as free open source software:

[https://github.com/opencollective](https://github.com/opencollective)

A sex-positive alternative to Patreon could be up and running within a month. A lone developer could make a viable side-business for them self living off the 10% fee + having their own collection project. This would be good for the OpenCollective org as well, as this would bring more contributors to their open source ecosystem, further strengthening their platform.

The tricky part will be finding a payment gateway that doesn't prohibit adult content. Yes, cryprocurrencies would also help here, but a lot of people still just want to use their credit cards.

P.S. For the record I think Patreon is a great service, but I don't think they need nor should be the only "recurring payments platform" available.

<comment><USER9> The benefit is not in the software or service per se. It's in the network effect the existing service already has.

<comment><USER10> I agree with @erlend_sh. Patreon _does not_ have much in the way of a network. Its recommendations (if you like this, you'll like that) are typically awful. They're so bad in fact, that I suspect there's some sort of legal/liability constraint.

Right now Patreon is a remarkably dumb system with really high fees.

That there isn't a serious alternative already makes me suspect that this is isn't a really high profit site in the first place. It could be that dealing with the NSFW creators is really a bid to increase the profit of the site beyond some modest baseline.

Of course this pessimistic conclusion suggests the reason why there isn't a bitcoin-based competitor either. The legal issues and the fees are just too high to attract investment.

<comment><USER11> Patreon had a competitor, Subbable, which acquired a bunch of Youtube stars before Patreon bought them.

>bitcoin-based competitor

The problem here is that bitoin is push payment rather than pull, and reducing friction is critical to a subscription system. Bitcoin would require a user taking action every single month to pay, and on time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, > trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not > English – are literally scared for our lives. "

The writer uses "people of color" and "whose first language is not English" to build a case for the author's own desire. The author doesn't truly serve in the interests of the black community, immigrants or any of these groups they are name-dropping.

I guess, every one's doing it though. _Think of the children!_

<comment><USER13> Which writer? There are 100 initial signers to the letter.

<comment><USER12> You can have many people who mostly agree with or support you, but would never have written as you did. All 100 signers did not write the post.

<comment><USER13> Right, but you didn't just say the author wasn't a person of color or homeless; you also, and more importantly, said the author doesn't serve their interest and is just using them. And for that claim, whether the signatories includes people of the mentioned group(s) is relevant, because clearly they felt it was serving their interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The answer is we need competition. These "curated, private commons" from amazon to twitter to youtube to facebook to ebay to all of the above cannot and should not replace the free market, which they _are_ trying to do. What is happening here is exactly why we decided Trusts were a bad thing back in the day, although these are "smaller" companies, one point of failure can mean death for a host of consumers.

That or regulation. One or the other.

<comment><USER15> The irony here being that to many content creators, Patreon WAS seen as the competition to reliance on Youtube ad revenue. Facing demonetization due to politically incorrect content they switched business models to rely on Patreon subscriptions. Now Patreon is levying the PC hammer on many of the same people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much). You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not sure where the problem lies in moving off the platform. In fact, that would send a much stronger message to Patreon, at which point the financial and traffic hit would probably cause someone up the line to reconsider their position. And if not, better for both parties anyway.

At the end of the day, Patreon is a private company that owes nothing to anybody except its shareholders. And I don't blame them for implementing subjective NSFW filters, that is their prerogative, and they didn't set out to create a camshow site at the end of the day.

Adults whinging is becoming the white noise of the internet.

<comment><USER7> What are the other ways to collect payments? Paypal? Nope [1]. Stripe? Nope [2].

See the quote I posted here about someone who tried:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817)

Generally it's not rare to see websites restrict their content not because its illegal, but because it's impossible to collect payment for any of your content, if some of your content is deemed unacceptable by VISA/Mastercard, etc...

And patreon marketed itself to content producers specifically as not following the paypal/stripe example.

[1] [https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-is- paypal%E2...](https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-is- paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-transactions-that-involve-sexually-oriented-goods- and-services-faq569)

[2] [https://stripe.com/us/prohibited- businesses](https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses)

<comment><USER16> Sage? GoCardless? Coinbase? Etsy? A platform that pays out specifically for nsfw content (like pornhub)? Hatreon, as many have mentioned?

If no available alternatives suit, and there is a big demand for something different, someone passionate should go build it and get rich! And if there isn't a big demand for it, so be it! Not everyone gets to have a liveable salary from writing furry fanfic porn, c'est la vie. The entitlement in the letter really bothers me.

<comment> angus-prune The problem is taking payment. The credit card companies don't allow most of this content and have been known to pressure payment processors to drop specific clients, with the threat of shutting down the entire company.

Visa/Mastercard have a de facto monopoly on online payments, and if they block you from taking payment online then you are out of luck.

I've known multiple people who have run adult websites or even tried to launch the adult-specific KS-clone suggested and taking payment is the constant issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Doesn't make a lot of sense

1\. "Your fuzzy position on "adult content" vs. "porn" gives you the freedom to discriminate at will. And it makes content creators live in fear of that discrimination, itself leading to self censorship of important viewpoints."

2\. "[...] we also must listen to and represent those who simply make porn. Who want to be creative with their porn, yes, but most importantly want to be self directed."

So it's not about the fuzzy position of Patreon but about disallowing porn it seems.

<comment><USER18> Elsewhere in the letter it is described that Patreon employees had explicitly given approval for pornographic Patreon accounts, only to have this retracted later.

I do feel that their point gets lost in the letter, but ultimately their complaint is simple; there's a niche market and niche opportunities for their specific groups to make pornography for their target audience, and very few means for receiving payment. Patreon previously was a good work-around for the issues with many payment processors refusing to allow pornography, but by being a Patreon campaign, they could avoid this. The letter signees were under the impression that Patreon was okay with this, but now Patreon is saying they are not.

If the above is accurate, then I really get why they're confused and frustrated. I feel they're presenting things in reverse order or taking too long to get to the core point (they want to make porn as they had before without being penalized by payment processors), and Patreon was a solution that made everyone happy, though apparently something changed for Patreon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lol, so now banning pornographers from your site equals to discriminating against the lgbtquerty community.

<comment><USER6> I have nothing against erotica/porn and nothing against LBGT _, but yeah, the open letter writer seems to be using "Why won't you think of the LBGT_ community?" line as a talking point, probably because accusing a company of being anti-gay is an effective weapon nowadays... somehow, saying more of this community uses their sexuality to make money (through Patreon) makes me feel "I'm sure the LGBT* accountants and bus drivers would disagree with this..."

<comment><USER7> Hey, most porn out there is straight. In fact it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Really shows how the straight community uses their sexuality to make money, doesn't it?

If you don't fit the target audience of the porn industry, you have to look elsewhere, like Patreon. The mainstream porn business does not cater to everyone. That's fine. The queer market is much smaller. But it also means its over-represented on platforms like Patreon, and thus particularly hit by this change.

So what exactly do you take issue with?

<comment><USER20> See the comment by "nippples" above:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15548719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15548719)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the overall point of shady limitations between porn and adult content leading to discrimination, but this kind of self-victimization :

> Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, > trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not > English – are literally scared for our lives.

Hurts the whole speech.

Is it possible to have this (valid and important) debate without emotional blackmail ?

<comment><USER22> I fail to understand what's your issue with this. Are you questioning that the queer, trans, disabled, PoC are in a weaker (and often precarious) position than the cis white (male)? Or is it emotional blackmail to point out that a change (once again) hits hardest for the people that are in a weak position? Isn't it considered common decency to keep in mind the needs of the people that are weaker than us? That might just barely make a living and that don't have the time and energy to make their voice heard?

I consider that debate important preciously because it hits the marginalized people worst. I can make my living where I choose (and buy my adult content where I wish to and as a male, I'm probable considered a "proper male" if I do). Those people can't as easily as I.

<comment><USER23> Why are demographics not defined by their sexuality (disabled, PoC, english- second-language) more likely to make sexual/nudity content, and hence be more affected by this issue?

I'm big on egalitarianism, but I'm not keen on co-opting unrelated groups in order to make your case sound more important.

<comment><USER13> The letter doesn't say they are more likely to make such content, but that the negative effects are more harmful to people who are already more vulnerable.

<comment><USER23> The whole first paragraph is completely overbearing. "Quick, pull in every non-mainstream group we can think of, and then describe them all as _literally_ in fear of death from an ambiguous policy about fringe content. Oh, and of course _all_ these people rent off landlords so nasty that they won't accept a _single_ delayed rental payment and they'll end up homeless if that happens". It's completely indefensible hyperbole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > As journalist Violet Blue noted, "We are barred from Facebook, Instagram, > Paypal, MailChimp, WordPress.org, Squarespace, Square, Kickstarter, Chase, > Snapchat, AdWords.. Add that Tumblr and other sites make us unfindable."

Which is how Congress and various AG want it. There's a two pronged attack which is designed to appeal to a small, vocal, minority:

\- Banks and credit card companies get threatened with some regulation (limitation on interest rates or fees, for example). They negotiate and say "how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out group and you leave us alone?"

\- Newspapers, web sites, etc get threatened with some regulation (profits, speech, loss of section 230 protection for example). They negotiate and say "how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out group and you leave us alone?"

And while this sounds like tit-for-tat, the level of threat even a large company like Facebook faces is existential. Look at what happened to Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio (in his case it wasn't a so-called "morals" issue: he refused to allow his company to participate in a government illegal surveillance scheme and was sent to jail on trumped-up charges).

This works very well for all concerned: Congress/AG can rely on the votes and quiet of small block the so-called "moral" extremists; companies can continue to exist and a different, not quite as small block of typically underprivileged people gets screwed.

Oh yeah, not so good for that last group. This all sounds cynical, but you can see from the real world that it's not: By going after these so-called "moral" cases, we make things a lot worse:

\- those who really _are_ being exploited are hard to find (police used to use Backpage to find human trafficking -- oops, sorry no more)

\- Those who are not being exploitative are shut out by regulation, which is economically and socially destructive to providers, consumers and the rest of the community.

As with the "war on drugs", there is no effort to address actual problems; it's use of the taxpayer's dollar to secure votes.

(AG = Attornies General)

</comment><comment><USER25> What does being " _queer, trans, disabled, people of color_ [or] _those whose first language is not English_ " have to do with selling pornography for tips?

Not quite sure why this letter conflates the two.

Anyway, can't they use some service other than Patreon? For example, there are already quite a lot of 'camwhore' sites around that seem to be doing just fine.

</comment><comment><USER26> I heard a story a while ago about how marajuana-related companies in colorado formed some financial institution in order to deal with being blocked out of the wider financial ecosystem.

The piece of the puzzle I don't understand yet is why credit card processors appear to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police. They could very easily make the argument that the use of money transferred isn't their problem. That seems to have worked for the NRA. Why did they get into the business of kinda-sorta-but-not-really representing the police?

<comment><USER27> It has absolutely nothing at all to do with being _the moral police_ and everything to do with living in fear of serious, potentially business-killing consequences for failing to comply with federal laws, rules and regulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see quite a bit of signatures there. Create your own Patreon. It needs not be porn or erotica specific, but it should not be that hard to build a similar service with more ample freedoms to content creators. And given most of these people have YouTube channels and whatnot, it shouldn't be that hard to get at least a good portion of the patrons to switch over to your new service.

Companies will do all that's possible to avoid getting in trouble. It's their bread and butter after all. Also, companies come, companies go. Never depend on them, especially for your livelihood. Form an NGO and build your tool, maybe in a more progressive European country.

Also, I bet if Patreon could include adult w/o negative consequences, they would. After all it's more income. But probably they're bound by external stuff (companies whose services they use, some laws, etc.), and those are to attack. I can be 100% behind asking for a legislation to disallow excluding any sectors or groups from using your services as a company, but trying to coerce a company this way, no.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hatreon is an alternative that has no speech policing.

<comment><USER5> It's a good idea with an awful name on it. My first flash thought was a place for funding hate. It did click a moment later that it's a play on the Patreon name more "I hate Patreon" but it just feels.. wrong.

<comment><USER30> >My first flash thought was a place for funding hate.

That's unfortunately not a bad guess. Go check out some of their "featured creators". It's pretty much the bottom of the hate speech barrel.

<comment><USER5> Ah so it suffers from (or targets) the reddit->voat problem where a userbase is comprised solely of those rejected from the normal site[].

[] Please forgive the use of the word normal, I couldn't think of a better word. "Default site" or maybe "usual site" might work better

<comment><USER31> What's wrong with normal? The more popular site is the normal one when it comes to finding content creators. Hatrons or voaters aren't going to be triggered by the use of the word "normal".

<comment><USER5> Peoples' triggerings aren't my concern, my concern is not conveying what I mean accurately and getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of how I say things rather than what I'm saying

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting that there are two basic HN responses to content restrictions:

\- "companies have a right to control their platform"

\- demands for freedom of all speech everywhere

.. but this time those are both very far down the thread and instead we're having a "I don't like your tone" discussion.

<comment><USER33> To be fair the poor tone is the most notable part of the article, the rest is just a short "We don't like what a private company is doing"

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's true that the letter doesn't mention the hentai artists (erotic drawings) that are getting purged right now. The ones I know Patreon's purged over the past few days had no connection to LGBT+.

However, niche hentai artists have no power. They can't threaten a PR disaster, they probably wouldn't be getting all this sympathy from the press. If the very left-leaning Patreon staff won't show mercy to the LGBT+ adult content creators everyone else is probably screwed.

As long as the rainbow flag pushes for rules that'll also save the other adult content creators I don't mind them making this all about themselves.

I do wish they'd at least mention the hentai artists though, there's even LGBT+ ones.

</comment><comment><USER35> Spankcoin to the rescue! (maybe)

[https://ico.spankstream.com/](https://ico.spankstream.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Porntreon? No seriously, they need competitors.

Too many whales, not enough fish.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice wording:

"just knowing that they want to create and entertain and that their skills lie in a sexual area."

</comment><comment><USER37> Well, the previous 'don't ask don't tell'-equivalent era lasted about a month after their latest funding round. What a surprise!

</comment><comment><USER38> Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

While I can strongly empathize with the stress and fear of losing one's income, especially if one has gone down a precarious career route like adult entertainment, the naïvete the authors demonstrate when talking about their own industry is disturbing. Completely explaining away all the difficulties of having a non insignificant portion of your business be driven by adult content as "discrimination" shows a shocking lack of knowledge of how hard it is to actually run a business with adult content... extraordinarily expensive lawyers, exorbitant cc fees, expensive banking if you can even get it, time consuming CYA reviews of material that almost always have to be done by an expensive human, etc. etc. Not only do these content creators get all of this for free, but they're subsidized by all of the non adult content on Patreon as well! It was only a matter of time before the gravy train ended, and not foreseeing/expecting this to happen makes me think these people should not be running their own businesses, much less businesses with such a extremely high risk profile.

All that said, seems like a business opportunity to start catering to this demographic and providing all of the above. You probably won't be able to compete with Patreon's white washed image or cache, and you'll definitely be more expensive, but your content creators will be able to count on a steady income. Or at least steady when compared to the rest of the adult industry.

Then again, if you want all of this pain but with none of the social stigma they can always get into bitcoin.

<comment><USER28> > Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content > abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

Wut? I heard patreon via Crash Course, and the Greens are among the founders, AFAIK. The main guy being a musician. It's only today that I know of an adult community trying to make use of the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Patreon is a company, so the decision is financial. Disallowing adult content kicks off many people who make them commission producing adult content, but allowing them may prevent other content producers from chosing to use Patreon. I really have no idea which group is larger in terms of commissions.

<comment><USER40> Setup another domain nsfw.patreon with the same authentication and shared database, so most people won't see nsfw content there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is why we need self-hosted FOSS alternatives to Patron. There is LiberaPay/GratisPay, but they still rely on payment processing...so need a fully distributed p2p way to earn money, such as via block chain.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder how different things would be if sex work was decriminalized.

</comment><comment><USER43> An aside:

> Is it ok to specifically feature you and your Patreon in the "undersigned" > section?

Even those signatories who said, "No", seem to be listed in the embedded form responses sheet.

</comment><comment><USER44> Seems like a perfect opportunity to create a Patreon for adult only content.

<comment><USER7> It's not like that hasn't been tried:

[https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big- ba...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war- on-the-sex-industry/)

"In 2012 TED speaker Cindy Gallop launched a crowdsourced porn site based on her TED Talk, "Make Love Not Porn," which highlights unrealistic expectations about porn sex. Gallop had raised $500,000 from an undisclosed angel investor, but discovered her company "couldn't work with PayPal, couldn't work with Amazon, couldn't work with Google Checkout, couldn't work with any of the main merchant partner gateways."

Gallop said, "So, we thought, let's go back to Chase, we have a business banking account there, let's apply for a commercial account. Unfortunately, that application surfaced the nature of our business within higher levels at Chase. And it resulted in a meeting with a more senior guy, who essentially said to us, not only can we not give you a commercial account, but you now need to close your business bank account and take your business away." "

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I once though about fickstarter.com (fick being the german word for fuck)...

</comment><comment><USER27> The book _Mayflower Madame_ did a reasonably decent profile of some of the inner workings of a call girl service. One thing that allows call girl services to operate is that they do not charge for sex. They charge by the hour for the woman's company.

While most clients expect sex, not all do. A few of their clients were gay men who hired call girls to accompany them to social events, like large family weddings. In some cases, they hired the same girl every time for the appearance of a steady girlfriend. In at least one case, the family liked the girl so much that the gay man was getting pressured to marry her. They had to stage a tearful breakup.

The point of that story is that, if I were doing a sex based business, I would go reread that book and see what takeaways I could come up with for how to do this. It was such a classy business, some of her clients stopped seeing call girls at other services in other cities when they traveled because it raised their expectations for standards.

While I am sympathetic to the very real problems that the most fringe groups have (gays, trans, people of color, etc) I believe strongly that asking standards to be lowered to accommodate their personal challenges is the wrong approach. Instead of saying that _we should be allowed to make money in spite of not being cultured people who get the difference between porn and erotica_ , it would make more sense to seek to establish some means to effectively educate people who want a business in this space, but aren't sophisticated enough to readily navigate it.

There are reasons sex is a touchy subject with restrictions on it. _Free love_ climates only thrive in situations where you can largely eliminate serious consequences. The Hippie Era was born of the creation of both reliable birth control and antibiotics. It died due to AIDS.

One of the benefits of online sexual things is that no one will get either pregnant or diseased from it. That doesn't automatically eliminate all problems associated with sex.

I think we do need to get over our aversion to paying for sexual services. But, I think we need to be careful in how we approach new standards and solutions. A lot of people don't really think things through and then you learn that X practice leads to very bad things by watching those bad things unfold.

As an alternative or adjunct payment option:

This may not help some of these businesses, because Pay Pal's policies may not be anymore sex-friendly than Patreon's, but you can do a Pay Pal tip jar or Pay Pal payment system. Here are things I have written about making a tip jar:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/search?q=Tip+jar](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/search?q=Tip+jar)

That likely won't be a ton of money. There is likely room for improvement.

</comment><comment><USER46> As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides.

Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and, when sold independently, workers rights than icecream. But no one bans the sale of icecream.

Porn is better for the environment, the local economy, and workers rights than the fidget spinners which are produced in China, but no one bans the sale of fidget spinners.

Lets face it, as hetro males, the women who make our porn are providing real value to us, and we should be ashamed that so few of us pay money that actually goes their way.

<comment><USER47> There is a moral downside to porn. There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex). There's also a lot of stories out there of people being coerced and made uncomfortable to continue filming when they didn't want to. I imagine this is the minority, but there's definitely issues within the porn industry.

<comment><USER48> Patreon, where consumers have a direct relationship with individual creators, would seem like the perfect way to avoid those issues though.

<comment><USER49> What if Patreon wants to be family friendly, and allowing the selling of porn on Patreon ruins that image?

Seems like a business opportunity for another website to take that niche, a "Porntreon" if you will.

<comment><USER46> Aren't NSFW filters good enough for family friendliness in America?

There are, of course, things which are not suitable for children, frightening things, disturbing things, content related to immoral behavior.

But if you ask an American, the destruction of life is far more suitable for children than it's creation. Patreon has no qualms hosting videos fantasizing mass murder and death [1] even when those videos are obviously aimed at children [2]. Is this really family friendliness or merely some strange flaw in our psychology without moral or philosophic basis?

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/posts/dreadnought- epic-13951713](https://www.patreon.com/posts/dreadnought-epic-13951713) [2] [https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684](https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, patreon should shut [1] down, because otherwise kids might incorporate the lessons learned and just engage in space battles with their spaceships all willy-nilly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Such a weird wording, it feels like blackmailing the company to get what you want, otherwise you're a racist or bigot.

I can see it working but the letter left a very bad taste in my mouth and also repeats the stereotype that the people they list are only into sex, porn.

</comment><comment><USER51> Patreon probably uses a credit card processor that prohibits selling pornography, as many of them do.

If you're an original content creator you should not be using Patreon as your sole source of income. Patreon is a good way to get attention for your brand, but your primary goal as a creator of goods for sale should always be to funnel your fans to your own website where you control all sales and you don't have to give a portion of each sale to someone else.

<comment><USER46> How would you funnel your fans to your own website if the credit card processors won't let YOU sell porn?

<comment><USER51> Just put a link to your website in your profile. Or in the emails you send out to your patrons periodically.

<comment><USER46> You didn't understand my point. Having a website isn't enough to sell porn if the credit card companies won't let you charge money for it.

<comment><USER51> There are processors who don't care, obviously, since all porn websites accept credit card payments. As a business owner you can do the research to figure out which ones to use.

all I'm saying is patreon is a waste of money, and should only be used to expand visibility and reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're living in a free country, say "Fuck" on TV.

<comment><USER52> I don't understand your point. Fuck is said very often on UK tv.

<comment><USER32> .. after 9pm.

British TV censorship used to be much weirder: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions)

<comment><USER52> the watershed is a guideline, and you can hear fuck before 9pm.

the watershed doesn't apply to radio, and you can hear fuck any time of day on bbc radio 4, although they do try to limit it to times children won't be listening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best home office chair? - <AUTHOR> What home office chair do you use and what do you think works best?  I am trying to find a new office chair for a standard height desk.  I have an adjustable tall desk chair for my workbench (that is awesome) for electrical etc work, but need a good solid, reliable chair I can sit at for extended periods and do my work at a normal height desk.  The tall chair just makes my back suck ass after an hour or so when I am solely working on the computer writing code, documents etc. <comment><USER2> I feel your pain!!

Last fall I got a very adjustable but affordable chair from Staples; best one I've ever had. Reg. $199 and WORTH IT, but frequently on sale for $99. PLUS 30-day risk free trial, return no questions asked.

Staples Carder Mesh Office Chair, Black

[http://www.staples.com/Staples-Carder-Mesh-Task-Chair- Black/...](http://www.staples.com/Staples-Carder-Mesh-Task-Chair- Black/product_136815?cid=PS:GooglePLAs:136815&ci_src=17588969&ci_sku=136815&KPID=136815&lsft=cid:PS- _-GooglePLAs-_-136815,kpid:136815&gclid=CKfGgvGdpcsCFUgkhgodVIgNBw)

In addition to swivel, height adjustment and back height and tilt, it features a tilting seat "pan". This is crucial for changing how your spine is loaded.

Tilt it forward to shift weight from your spine to your legs/knees/calves/feet. This helps you curve your lumbar spine. Then tilt it backward cradle your lower spine to reverse the lumbar curve for a time. Then zero it out level for a time. Rinse and repeat.

The combo of the height and seat pan adjustments are the only practical way to achieve the position advocated by PTs, i.e., your hips should be above your knees; though this position should be only one of many you assume throughout the day.

Also important: place chair on wood, tile or other hard floor, not carpet, and use plastic mat to make it easier to roll to/away from your desk without straining your back.

Good luck!!

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to have a normal computer chair for 10 years and have torn beyond your imagination, I decide to switch to racing chair for comfortable feel like sofa and for programmers who sitting long hours and perfectly support my back unlike every office chairs I tried in Singapore I found the back support are either hard curve or unbalance. Get it from a local store is safer and cheaper than getting from Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a Herman Miller Aeron that has served me well for the last 15 years. I've sat in that chair at least 10-12 hours a day, 5 days per week for most of the time I've owned it. When I spent a 2 year stint working for Google in a cube farm, I really missed this chair.

What I like about the Aeron in addition to the ergonomics, is that it is mesh, so it tends to allow me to stay cooler than most chairs.</comment>


Why Robots Might Boost Industry While Killing Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://techonomy.com/2013/01/why-robots-might-boost-industry-while-killing-jobs/

<comment><USER2> OMG! Capital vs. labor, what a discovery. Someone alert the Nobel economic prize committee.</comment>


Show HN: Gmake – A thin wrapper around make that finds makefiles for you - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joshi4/gmake <comment><AUTHOR> The most common mistake I make while using make ( no pun intended ) is to invoke the command from a child directory where no Makefile is present.

I wrote gmake to solve that pain point.

Why not simply use the -C flag that is built into make ?

make provides a -C flag which accepts the path to the make file but that defeats the purpose as it is more effort/time consuming to type it out.

Using your bash history does reduce the pain of repeating the -C flag, however, that fails when you have to switch amongst different repos/makefiles quite frequently.

Infact, using gmake will make it possible to use your bash history more consistently as gmake test or gmake build are common enough and the -C flag is abstracted away</comment>


The Connoisseur of Pain - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/the-connoisseur-of-pain.html <comment><USER2> Asian giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia) don't seem to be listed in the Schmidt Pain Index yet...

I guess, presume it rates at an automatic 4 simply by the capacity for human lethality? ...or maybe just stay tuned, and wait until it earns an entry?

<comment><USER3> A full-blown gout attack is not on the list either, and that has to be near the top!

<comment><USER2> Well... I'd say gout falls outside the scope categories of pain as inflicted by hymenoptera.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amusing nonsense. Pain is indeed not the same as damage. But nor is it the same as suffering, as lovers of curry and BDSM both know.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was expecting a story about a bread expert. I am disappointment.</comment>


Show HN: Email controlled gate opener in 20 lines of shell - <AUTHOR> http://acha.ninja/email_controlled_gate.html <comment><USER2> I find the title misleading, because this first of all about a new web service the author wants to promote, and not about the elegance of a tiny shell script. (At least the article sets this straight in the first paragraph.)

The title suggests that it is all standard Unix tools plus 20 lines shell, and that all you need is a working mail server.

However, that setup requires in addition:

1) a command line tool "wsemail" for email handling, which is ~100 lines of Go code. (by the same author)

2) Cross-Compiling that tool from source for the Raspberry Pi.

And even that tool also doesn't handle email itself, instead it accesses:

3) a separate web service "websocket.email" (by the same author)

4) Requesting an API token for that web service.

If this was really about minimalism (as the title suggests), I would have expected polling a mail account via POP3, or opening a persistent IMAP connection to the mail server, all handled locally by the Raspberry Pi.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid interpretation and criticism. I was actually hoping Socat would have a websocket mode to eliminate some steps.

My take on it is that you only need to write 20 lines of code to do an email triggered action because I spent some time configuring the tedious parts. At the same time, I thought it would be fun to show people that the real world and linux shell are not so far from interacting with each other.

<comment><USER2> Why not running an IMAP client on the device? (e.g. fetchmail, or anything else that speaks IMAP)

If you spend 100 lines on a separate Go program, you could as well make it a generic IMAP client (using some Go libraries) rather than making it a HTTP/Websocket client that is highly specialiced to a single web service.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like a good solution, though I'm using the websocket aspect for throw away addresses in integrations tests where this seemed to make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The wsemail tool seems useful, but definitely not as ubiquitous as "shell". There are a few other ways you could poll for email using the shell plus some very common tools, many of which are likely packaged for or already distributed on a lot of common "micro" linux deployments for microcontrollers and the like. In the author's defense, they'd probably require a few more than 20 lines of shell in order to be in any way robust:

\- Connecting to IMAP via openssl: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27134018](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27134018)

\- Or via curl: [https://debian- administration.org/article/726/Performing_IMA...](https://debian- administration.org/article/726/Performing_IMAP_queries_via_curl)

\- Or talking POP3 via telnet: [https://www.shellhacks.com/retrieve-email- pop3-server-comman...](https://www.shellhacks.com/retrieve-email-pop3-server- command-line/)

\- Or get POP3 messages via pure Bash and a little Perl: [https://gist.github.com/xionluhnis/4712075](https://gist.github.com/xionluhnis/4712075)

That last one really is quite interesting, since it looks like you could abandon Perl for parsing entirely if your goal was "just check for the 'open sesame' string anywhere in the email blob", after which (if my reading of the gist is correct) you'd be using pure Bash and shell builtins, and it wouldn't be much longer than 20ln.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's a cool hack. Instead of a Raspberry Pi and remote, I used an ESP8266 and an RF module for mine, with a writeup here:

[https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf- devices-r...](https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices- raspberry-pi/)

I also designed a PCB for it, and have uploaded code for sending arbitrary IR/RF codes: [https://www.stavros.io/posts/building-cheap-home- sensorcontr...](https://www.stavros.io/posts/building-cheap-home- sensorcontroller/)

Yet another also, I'm working on a side project where makers can showcase their projects, and I'd love it if you considered it for this or your other writeups:

[https://www.makerfol.io/](https://www.makerfol.io/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet, now I can wait outside my gate until:

\- Internet connectivity is restored via my ISP.

\- My phone charges so I can send an email.

\- My mail relay unclogs/restarts/gets fixed.

But seriously, it is pretty neat as a proof of concept!

I just wouldn't want to spend a lot of time counting on something like this. I've bloodied my fingers trying to pull out the cotter pin on the ranch gate where I used to work plenty of times, because the RF opener wasn't working.

<comment><USER5> I know your comment is mostly tongue-in-cheek, as presumably you'd have an extra opener.

One extra idea here would be to integrate this with IFTTT or something similar where you tell it to send an e-mail automatically when you reach a certain location. (not sure how accurate this would be)

or to create some sort of macro on your phone to use a voice command to send a pre-set e-mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting this to use a genuine mail server on the target device, because that actually wouldn't be very difficult—configuring a mailbox to deliver messages to a program is standard fare for a mail server. For that matter, you could write the entire thing in a Sieve script (filter messages containing "open sesame", and then execute such-and-such a program, so long as your server includes some way of executing a program in a Sieve script, such as Dovecot's vnd.dovecot.execute extension).

Still, since we're going with the "do everything over the web!" route—

With JMAP, you'll be able to use plain old HTTP Event Source to listen for emails if you want ([http://jmap.io/spec-core.html#push](http://jmap.io/spec- core.html#push)) without the need for a third-party service, though that will just tell you "there's a new message" and you'll have to fetch it through a normal JMAP request (getMessages, that would be).

This will still probably be out of scope for pure shell scripting, but it won't require _much_ code, just a decent HTTP library. I haven't really thought about it—maybe you _could_ string something together with cURL and a bit of piping.

(I work for FastMail and we're sponsoring JMAP development. It's coming along nicely, and I believe we plan to take our JMAP implementation live fairly soon. I'm sure we'd love to hear about people making toys like this with it!)

<comment><USER2> _> configuring a mailbox to deliver messages to a program is standard fare for a mail server_

Why?! Why would you run a separate mail server of that device?

All you need is IMAP (or POP3), to connect the device to an existing mail server.

<comment><USER6> You could do it that way, but (a) it's much more satisfying to have it run the mail server itself, and (b) it'll be markedly faster because the message is going to the server rather than to a third-party server, which will then notify your device.

POP3 is a polling protocol, so you can't realistically use it for anything real-time. For IMAP, your server _probably_ supports IDLE, and you'll need to use a client that supports IDLE as well. I'm not familiar with what's available in IMAP client libraries; people put most of their email client effort into user agents.

Everything IoT should run its own mail server, just for the fun of it. Bonus marks if it causes an RCE vulnerability. (But I'd say you're pretty safe from that with Dovecot.)

But seriously, email servers aren't actually that scary. I wish more people ran their own, and more developers could comfortably work with them. _Especially_ as an endpoint for something like this, running your own email server is perfectly feasible and reasonable—it'll only accept messages to one mailbox, which will be immediately processed and discarded, so there's no storage. It's simply a C&C module.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would need some way to get through NAT, at least here.

Maybe ngrok will work with smtp too.

I find the thought using email for IOT pub sub hilarious no matter how you do it.

<comment><USER2> _> Would need some way to get through NAT, at least here._

And you need to setup DynDNS or similar.

Having a persistent IMAP connection sounds much less troublesome to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The decline of Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/the-decline-of-stack-overflow-7cb69faa575d <comment><USER2> This article doesn't even touch the worst problem with SO. Code rot.

Answers are typically out of date and no longer good practice. Some claim that the ability to edit answers fixes this, but all it does is subvert the accept/vote functions. You end up with strange "Ship of Theseus" answers where what is written has nothing to do with what was so highly voted, or what solved the original problem.

Where SO goes wrong is that they have tried to create a definitive set of answers in a field where the real answers change yearly, or even monthly.

<comment><USER3> Right, that also interacts with the game-ification, distorting people's incentives for answering questions.

If the site's goal is to have one problem solved forever with one top answer, then whoever manages to secure that top answer wins [0] a kind of dedicated reputational income stream, indefinitely.

Basically, I think it rewards fast answers over good answers, and rewards easy popular questions over hard specific ones. I wonder what would happen if there was a hard limit on how much reputation you could get from a particular question or answer.

[0] Unless another powerful user changes it into a "community wiki" answer, which may or may not be fair to do.

<comment><USER4> On the contrary, my longer, in-depth answers tend to score much higher (>10x) than my less in-depth answers; compare

        https://stackoverflow.com/users/1763356/veedrac?tab=answers&sort=votes&page=1
        https://stackoverflow.com/users/1763356/veedrac?tab=answers&sort=votes&page=16

All a reputation cap per answer would do for me is discourage writing good answers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of this article certainly don't understand social dynamics and various competing forces. On producer consumer systems, the ratio of consumers to producers is often 10X or less. This has been case everywhere from Wikipedia to Etsy to TV to movies to various blogs. The act of producing something is many magnitudes more expensive than act of consuming something. As all biological systems, humans tends to conserve their energy and that's the root cause of these symptoms.

Second, it is very important for these systems to ensure high quality content or otherwise consumers would stop consuming and then producers would stop producing leading to vicious cycle. On large scale systems like Internet, consumers are saved from quality issues by search engines and you can keep producing garbage without triggering vicious cycle. However on websites like SO this is often not the case because they rely on gamification. If you allow users to quickly accumulate scores in game effortlessly than other users who have to try much harder for same scores than overall quality would decline.

And no, SO is not in decline by any measure. In fact, SO has firmly established itself as go to website for vast majority of developers. Some even say programming is mostly reduced to searching SO these days.

</comment><comment> Const-me Not just for new users. I've been using SO since 2009, have over 7k reputation there and 375 answers, but recent changes make me want to stop using it.

The problem I encounter most often, the community tends to closevote hard questions instead of answering them.

E.g. I recently asked a question on SO, for Linux C API to monitor WiFi signal strength for the connected network.

10 minutes later it got a vote to close "migrate to superuser". I immediately updated the question explaining that I only interested in C API. An hour later it got closed as offtopic. I flagged to mod, nothing happened. It gathered a few votes to reopen but not enough to reopen. And now it's just deleted by "Community" saying "RemoveAbandonedClosed".

<comment><USER4> Sorry mate. As you might have guessed, Community is a bot. Some quick tips might help for next time:

* Never, ever, write a question without tagging it with either a language or language-agnostic, though in the latter case you're still better off using a language tag as well. This is basically the only reliable way to get views.

* Try to give people a jump-in point. If your question gets 50 views, which is far from guaranteed, only expect 10 of them have the time to write an answer. If your question isn't approachable to at least one person in your mostly-random panel of 10 people, you're going to suffer for it. Giving people a minimal piece of code massively improves engagement rates.

* State your problem clearly. Your newest revision would likely never have had these problems, but your first revision was not obviously about C APIs, and by then it was too late.

* If your question is just closed and you think you deserve reconsideration, flag it with a custom reason for an actual moderator (rather than just a user with a vote). They're the only people who really have power to reopen fast enough to matter.

* If your question stays closed for a nontrivial amount of time, it's dead unless you post it to Meta (meta.stackoverflow.com) and people reconsider. There are too many questions posted to this site to spare a second glance to closed ones.

In short: be clear, be proactive, and focus on quality from the get-go.

<comment><USER6> The fact that you need "tips" to make a question answerable is part of the problem.

<comment><USER4> If people's time was an abundant free resource, sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are we really digging up this thing again? It uses inflammatory language, cherry-picks interactions from the site, and overall shows that the author doesn't understand what it takes to create and maintain a high quality knowledge resource.

Who here has not used Stack Overflow at least a time or two for bits of information? Do a lot of newer users submit low quality questions? Yes. Do they get corrected on how to interact with the site and have their questions deleted or redirected? Yes. If no such measures were in place, Stack Overflow would become as useless as every other Programming Q&A forum out there. The highly specialized ones do well for that area, the more general ones fall apart when you're trying to get direct, accurate information.

This was a poorly written article when it came out and it still is today.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wanted to reply to some questions below, but realised I've got more touchpoints than any single one of them.

Every now and again, I go through spurts of activity where I try and contribute to SO with reviews, comments, edits and answers (rep a bit below 2k). Two things happen every time I do this:

1\. While there are lots of 'please do my homework' questions by new users, every now and again someone will post a question where they are genuinely trying to get their head around a concept as a new programmer, even though the question doesn't necessarily meet the MVP requirements, or could be seen as too broad or off-topic. I try and engage in the comments section, and quite often, it turns out to be a viable (but poorly asked) question, worthy of a good answer. The amount of aggressive downvotes, abusive comments, etc in these cases by other users (new and old) is absolutely astounding.

2\. When I post answers, I try and tailor them to the OPs level, so it might not be 'by the book' accurate, but will explain the basic concept and offer a possible solution. For some reason, especially on C/C++ based questions, any answer that is not referencing the C/C++ standard and absolutely factually correct and accurate in terms of terminology, etc, will get aggressively downvoted, or destroyed in comments. What this has done, is to effectively stop me from even attempting answers in these categories.

So, yes, there are lots of 'bad' questions and 'bad' answers, but generally the voting and moderation system works. However, I think that 'older' users are as much to blame for some of the issues on the site, as new users who come there to have their homework questions done.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Closed as not a question". "Tell us what you tried first. Nothing? Unacceptable!"

I think they should have had a little more vision. I've closed two accounts. Now I only use my current account when absolutely necessary. I think I asked over 200 questions in my first two accounts. At one point I was trying to throw down breadcrumbs while learning elisp.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello- wo...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170528/writing-hello-world-in- emacs)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a- qui...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2264286/generating-a-quiz-in- emacs-lisp)

StackOverFlow could have been the best place to learn any topic.

<comment><USER10> "that sounds like a homework question!!!"

I wish I was doing homework instead of struggling with an arcane production issue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few years ago I felt like I should contribute something back to SO (having used it plenty of times for research), but somehow I got routed into a "gotcha" UX where the site would repeatedly tell me that my previous action was against the rules. It felt like being trained via shock collar. I certainly appreciate the goal of maintaining quality in questions and answers, but I hope there are better ways of getting there than what I saw.

Note that the experience I have didn't appear to be human-initiated: I understood it as an automated "feature" of the site itself, a sort of guided initiation process. Maybe that process trained some people a bit too well?

<comment><USER12> I tried to use it about 4 years ago and submit helpful answers etc. Apparently I did something wrong and I couldn't submit anything. It was a very hostile introduction.

Over the last 4 years there have been numerous times I would have contributed a valuable answer but since I don't have a working account I cannot.

No, I'm not interested in wasting my time trying to get my account working. I don't care about SO "reputation".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The interesting dynamic I've found when I post to SO lately (which I'll admit has been rare over the last few years) is I so often get a comment about "how can somebody who has X points on SO ask a question like this", as if the accumulation of points, because I've been on the platform for a while and some of my questions or answers have gathered a lot of points does not mean I can't still struggle with what other people consider simple bits of code.

The community itself it seems has become hostile, and therefore I personally don't want to post questions just to be berated for not knowing the answer.

I also think SO is so focused on the simpler questions. This is my code, it isn't working, can you help me fix it. I once asked a question which was more of an architecture problem, no clear answer, but I thought "maybe" it could get some discussion going which would lead to the answer. Nope, SO isn't interested in getting into the larger questions which could help you learn and progress. Keep it to simple errors or maybe help find the right algorithm.

The usefulness decreases over time as we become better developers if SO can't lead us to asking larger questions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I come from the RTFM generation. S.O. never appealed to me, since I usually read the documentation of the libs/APIs/products I'm using.

Call me snob or whatever, but I'd rather rely on official (or good, comprehensive third-party) documentation. And if the product is open-source, you'd better ask the creators/maintainers and then contribute to improve the original documentation, for the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER15> I mean, yes, all the issues pointed out here are real problems that I wish they would address.

On the other hand, and, more importantly, no! Remember what the world was like before SO? It has been remarkably successful at its stated goal of putting expertsexchange and random terrible phpbb forums six feet under. And despite its flaws I don't think anyone would wish for the world that it replaced.

</comment><comment><USER16> see also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576124)

and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837442)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the alternative? It's far from perfect, but has no significant competition yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> Needs [2015].</comment>


Operating Environment: essential industry background for open software licenses - <AUTHOR> https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/06/15/Industry-Environment.html <comment><USER2> My company forked an Apache 2 licensed abandoned project, the BrowserMob proxy, a utility to watch, test, and manipulate web application network traffic often used alongside Selenium. We put it under our name as we plan on expanding it.

[https://github.com/browserup/browserup- proxy](https://github.com/browserup/browserup-proxy)

When we did it, this Apache License clause caught my eye:

> You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that > You changed the files;

So to literally comply with the license, and avoid any mishaps, we made a "change" to each file by appending a notice that we have changed the file to the file. The way this reads, we have complied. We did it to every file so as to not risk missing any. Whether the intention is something else, I can't say.

<comment><USER3> Many open source licenses have this clause (and few care about them).

The intent for that type of clause is to ensure that nobody can come back to the original author with your modified file and claim that they violated some rule (eg. copied stuff from other-licensed sources, patent law, libel, ...) that you violated in your edits.

Assuming that, your compliance step was valid: whoever comes up with that file and tries to annoy the original author in some way gets to check if the reason for that isn't in your change (probably not if it's only that notice).

When these clauses were first put in licenses, revision control wasn't really a thing, so a notice like that was rather useful. These days it's easy to figure out who touched any given version of any given file under revision control - but strictly speaking your approach is the safer one.

<comment><USER4> > The intent for that type of clause is to ensure that nobody can come back to > the original author with your modified file and claim that they violated > some rule (eg. copied stuff from other-licensed sources, patent law, libel, > ...) that you violated in your edits.

As usual, there wasn't just one reason. The gist is the "integrity" of the official version of the software. Integrity has a few uses.

Earlier licenses with these kinds of requirements were primarily motivated by reputation concerns. For the maintainer of the project, who could be "blamed" for the ill-considered patches of others. For the project as a whole, when unofficial forks failed to interoperate, or included novel bugs.

Some of those licenses, notably Artistic, required renaming so as not to compete with the official version in package or PATH namespaces, as well as giving notice of instructions to get back to that official version from the fork, if the end-user desired.

<comment><USER5> I perfectly understand anti namespace conflict clauses. Luckily this is usually already done in practice when open-source projects are forked. mplayer -> mplayer2 -> mpv, ffmpeg -> libav, openoffice -> libreoffice, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JetBlue Funded a Stanford Study That Said the Coronavirus Wasn't That Deadly - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/stanford-coronavirus-neeleman-ioannidis-whistleblower <comment><USER2> Did I miss something in this article? It says that David Neeleman of Jetblue donated $5,000. I don't know how big Ioannidis' research budget is but this is peanuts.

You would think there would be better things for reporters to look into, such as whether Ioannidis might actually have a point.

<comment><USER3> "Ioannidis added that he did not know how much the study cost, but the funding came from an anonymized pool of financial gifts given to Stanford's Office of Development: "This form of funding is the most unconflicted type of funding process to do research. It secures perfect intellectual and scientific independence of the study."

Anonymizes pool of financial gifts but he was in contact with the guy? Is that a joke?

And then suggesting funding a lab if the kit is validated:

> "David, I think you should write Taia a note and tell her you'll support her > lab if she validates this kit." Bendavid confirmed that he put Neeleman and > Wang in touch.

<comment><USER4> > Anonymizes pool of financial gifts but he was in contact with the guy? Is > that a joke?

More than a joke, it sounds like Ioannidis was out right lying. From the article:

> But according to Neeleman, the authors did know he'd given money to fund the > study. Neeleman confirmed that he made a $5,000 donation to Stanford to be > given to these researchers and that he was in communication with them while > they were conducting their research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a way to head off all the quibbling about false positive rates and methodology, etc.

Look at the all-cause mortality figures for April vs the historical average for that month. If it isn't COVID-19 killing all of those people at a multiple of the normal death rate, we have an even bigger mystery of what is causing all the extra deaths.

In fact, these numbers were apparent for NYC a month ago: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/corona...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/coronavirus- deaths-new-york-city.html)

<comment><USER6> It's not too much of a mystery. There's a very good likelihood that the fact that people aren't getting regular healthcare for other health problem has lead to higher deaths rates. Hospital utilization is significantly below normal currently which means those common heart attacks, strokes, cancer screenings, among others are still occurring but not treated and resulting in higher fatalities.

<comment><USER3> But then why would it be correspondingly higher in New York along with their infection rate? Other places were just as locked down without a spike of similar magnitude. That makes no sense.

<comment><USER6> Good point, and that could indicate those unaccounted deaths are skewed towards being covid-19 related. There's still odd patterns with the covid-19 hotspots, and I'd suspect that the underlying reasons could correlate with higher non-covid-19 death rates. As in older and/or sicker populations.

<comment><USER3> Didn't it follow the infection lag for the most part? Why would heart attacks lag lockdown infection growth stoppage by the same amount as virus deaths?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm most concerned about the new reporting from Boyd, that according to gold standard ELISA retest of positive samples, just under half came back negative, indicating a possible false positive.

Of course, the samples going through freeze thaw cycles may contribute to antibody degradation but seriously concerning.

<comment><USER8> This seems like a really big deal, so I'm going to second the request for a source on it.

<comment><USER8> Nevermind, it's mentioned in the original article which I missed the first time around:

> The following week, Boyd had results in hand. Using ELISA tests to reassess > the samples of community members who had come up positive for antibodies on > the Premier test, he had ended up getting positive results for a little over > half of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would Ioannidis risk reputation for such a small amount? I do not bite it. He did a basic research which is what he is paid to do. If his analysis has flaws

a, The paper was peer reviewed b. We can see other peer reviewed papers disprove his findings.

The flame wars feed conspiracy theories in both sides.

I am not an expert, I am not even a researcher any more, however my possibly flawed opinion is that deadliness of the virus is not a number written in stone and may have seasonal and regional variation.

<comment><USER3> That's the only documented amount. We don't know of all the other funders or LLC funders that are associated with him.

Even aside from the funding, the article unveils many more disturbing things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is turning a flawed study into a conspiracy theory and ignoring important related epidemiology. The fact is that the large number of asymptomatic cases led to initial undercounting of infections so the virus appears to be less deadly when looking at numbers that include previously missed cases. This doesn't make the pandemic any less serious.

At this point we have data from places with no lockdowns, mild lockdowns, strong lockdowns, and recently ended lockdowns. All of this verifies the long held epidemiology that points out that once a highly infectious agent is loose in the general public lockdowns have extremely limited benefit. This is not a political issue and does not relate to managing airlines or running clickbait web news sites.

<comment><USER11> "once a highly infectious agent is loose in the general public lockdowns have extremely limited benefit."

Huh? What data supports this? It looks like the top dozen or so countries in terms of new cases are almost completely different from a month or two ago. Isn't it obvious this is because the US and western Europe that had the lockdowns slowed it relative to others?

Here is a list in descending order of new cases from a day or two ago, see how the US and UK are the only remaining of the first wave. Spain and Italy aren't even there! I don't see how your comment could be more at odds with the information I'm seeing.

USA

Brazil

Russia

Peru

India

UK

Chile

Pakistan

Mexico

Iran

Saudi Arabia

Turkey

<comment><USER12> That's mostly a list of most populous countries in the world. Is that data per capita?

<comment><USER13> [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-daily-covid- cases-p...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-daily-covid-cases-per- million?tab=map)

there you go (may 9)

      df=pd.read_csv("~/Downloads/total-daily-covid-cases-per-million.csv")
      df.sort_values(['Date', 'Daily new confirmed cases per million (cases)'])[-20:][['Entity', 'Daily new confirmed cases per million (cases)']].to_string(index=False)
      Out[14]:
      Entity  Daily new confirmed cases per million (cases)
      Saudi Arabia                                    48.860
      Armenia                                         48.933
      Belgium                                         50.994
      Gabon                                           52.118
      Portugal                                        54.233
      United Arab Emirates                            55.913
      Gibraltar                                       59.363
      Sweden                                          63.569
      United Kingdom                                  68.482
      Chile                                           72.765
      Russia                                          73.314
      United States                                   81.440
      North America                                   84.775
      Sao Tome and Principe                           95.820
      Belarus                                         98.737
      Peru                                           100.722
      Singapore                                      131.274
      Bahrain                                        143.984
      Kuwait                                         150.097
      Qatar                                          455.041

<comment><USER11> That is interesting, but per capita data is not the answer to what I was interested in originally - what countries is the epidemic growing fastest in is different from in what countries is most of the epidemic's growth happening in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neeleman is no longer the CEO of JetBlue.</comment>


Ask HN: How does Sway app know where I work and crush? - <AUTHOR>

I got an email by Sway app[1] that someone from my organization has a crush on me and three of my facebook friends are using this app.
I have never signed up on any dating site, never signed up using facebook or standalone login.
I am wondering if Facebook sold my data? The reason I feel this way is because how do they know my place of work and that someone at the same place has a crush on me without me signing up for the app?
[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sway-your-new-dating-app-aka/id737328371?mt=8 <comment><USER2> I received same email: they crawled linkedin because i set a specific company (my own company!) and they told that other 3 facebook friends of mine were using it, but i never had a facebook account! I decided not to write a blog post because i don't want to make a spot for them and help them spread their name.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spam, most likely. Crawl LinkedIn and associate to public email address somehow, I got the same thing and deleted the app once I realized it was fake. Nice way to get pissed off users...

</comment><comment><USER4> For what it's worth, i recieved one of these spams this afternoon, addressed to the unique email address on my github account, and containing the organisation name listed there.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just got the email. I don't use Facebook either but they also said three of my "friends" on Facebook are using it. It's definitely spam to get more users.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could it be your friends signing up for the service and sharing your information with them. I would assume a lot of companies do this.</comment>


Discuss: The secret to making things easy: avoid hard problems - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul's original thread erupted into just 2 replies about databases and hard drives, with 30 follow-ups about the same thing.

And, not ONE comment about the point of his article in a general sense.

So, here's a thread for comments that actually relate to the point of the article.

</comment><comment><USER2> The simplest solutions are always the best.</comment>


Safer bash scripts with 'set -euxo pipefail' - <AUTHOR> https://vaneyckt.io/posts/safer_bash_scripts_with_set_euxo_pipefail/ <comment><USER2> be aware: if you set this and source other people's bash scripts, you may be surprised. A lot of things break. For example, virtualenv.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are some new startup founders so unaware? - <AUTHOR> On a platform that connects start-up founders I got many requests for a technical co-founder role in different start-ups.
By talking to the founders of the start-ups about their business model and so on, I realized that these founders are not aware of what they are doing. First, they lack the experience. Second, it's evident the impossibility to understand the challenges and the problems that can occur when developing a product and running a business.
We shouldn't be suprised by the fact that 92% of start-ups fail.
Building a start-up is insane difficult. I put 100 hours a week in my start-up and I failed after working more than 2 years like crazy. Now I am trying to get my life back, to relax, to discover the nature and to spend time with my family.
A start-up founder that is now starting his first start-up should not be such self-confident. We should make them aware of this. <comment><USER2> Most new businesses of any kind don't last very long. 80% fail rate isn't unusual in, say, the restaurant business. Starting a new business is hard, and risky, period.

<comment><USER3> Most of those failed restaurants were started by people who never worked in one. When you have only been a guest you think it is easy. If you have worked in other people's restaurants then you most likely wouldn't want to start one. If you did, at least you would have an idea of what works and what doesn't. But still no guarantee of success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The startup founders you describe have the popular vision of startups. They overlook the 20 years to become an overnight sensation aspect. For example, few people know that Steve Jobs started with Apple in 1976 and he only became rich from it in 2001.

<comment><USER4> Steve Jobs got rich from Apple in the 80's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most people vastly underestimate exactly how much work goes into a startup.</comment>


Launched site for posting remote jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.underlinejobs.com <comment><USER2> Why? What do you do that is new/special/different? Going to the link doesn't show me anything interesting.</comment>


EA Infects Battlefield Hardline with New Ghastly DRM - <AUTHOR> http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ea-infects-battlefield-hardline-with-new-ghastly-drm.html

<comment><USER2> It's going to be hard to claim this is an awful new method when Windows has been doing this since XP (circa 2001). This blogger _is_ on Windows, right?

[http://www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed- wpa.txt](http://www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed-wpa.txt)

<comment><USER3> This kind of DRM for an operating system is understandable. For a video game it is not. There are plenty of methods to implement DRM with out hardware sniffing.

<comment><USER2> Gonna disagree there. The game lets you run on _5_ different hardware configurations at once. Is this really a problem?</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Meetup near NY/PA - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a software development startup (devartis) based in Buenos Aires and we will be near NYC and Philadelphia during next week. We would like to have the oportunity to meet other software startups in the area willing to share our experiences and create partnerships. We already have worked for our previous employers in outsoucing projects in Java,.Net and Ruby working with teams in the US. If you are interested mail me to fernando (at) devartis.com <comment><USER2> Or, if you're interested in an NYC meetup, perhaps just post in this thread. FYI, the NYC 2600 meeting is tomorrow evening.</comment>


How To Use Amazon EC2 for Bittorrent - <AUTHOR> http://negatendo.net/blog/2009/01/17/howto-use-amazon-ec2-for-bittorrent/ <comment><USER2> EC2 is overkill for leeching (or even seeding) a few torrents. If you want more bandwidth just find some crappy $5 VPS server somewhere (lowendbox reviews a steady stream of cheap hosting) and install torrentflux.

<comment><USER3> I get the impression that most VPS providers ban BitTorrent and IRC.

<comment> a-priori So does Amazon...

<comment> tsetse-fly Where did you hear that?

Amazon Web Services does not ban BitTorrent or IRC. They actually support BT as an official delivery method from S3.

[http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/2006-03-01/index....](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/2006-03-01/index.html?S3Torrent.html)

<comment> a-priori I was referring to the passage in the article which reads (emphasis mine): 'Distributes, shares, or facilitates the _distribution of unauthorized data_ , malware, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, or other malicious or harmful code (collectively, "Harmful Components").'

I took that to include copyrighted data, including Battlestar Galactica episodes.

<comment> tsetse-fly Yes, but what does that have to do with prohibiting BitTorrent and IRC?

<comment><USER3> Obviously a-priori is obliquely making the point that BitTorrent is mostly used for copyright infringement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is too much work for keeping your ratio all nice and swell. Start using newsgroups. You pay a bit and get insanely fast downloads (maxes out my fiber line around 9-10MB/sec).

[http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/02/12/how-to-download-with- new...](http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/02/12/how-to-download-with-newsgroups)

<comment><USER5> Where is the best Usenet index these days? Newzbin doesn't accept new memberships and the other services I found half a year ago were terribly sketchy in their coverage. I just concluded that Usenet wasn't an option for me any longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I also pay only for what I use - which by my estimates will hopefully be > less than $30 per month (real data to follow)

Last I checked EC2 was around $70/month minimum just to have your instance running, so unless he plans on manually turning his instance off when he's not using it (which would equate to about half the time) he's going to be spending $70 + bandwidth.

I was actually hoping this would be an article about using EC2 instances as trackers and seeders for distributing your own material as opposed to some lame attempt at piracy.

<comment><USER7> There's a Webseed extension to Bittorrent that allows you to seed a torrent off a webserver: see <http://www.bittornado.com/docs/webseed-spec.txt> . It shouldn't be too hard to set up on an EC2 instance if you needed to do so.

<comment><USER6> I didn't assume that it would be technically difficult, but I thought that an article that took into consideration Amazon's architecture to make a horizontally scalable BitTorrent tracker/seed for high-volume high- availability transfers would be an interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My guess is that Amazon will put a stop to this before too long.

The potential for legal trouble is just too big.

<comment> tsetse-fly I don't think so.

Amazon is protected by DMCA Safe Harbor provisions and doesn't have to act until they've received notice of copyright infringement on their servers.

There are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent, I don't see Amazon putting an outright ban on torrent usage on their servers. It limits their usefulness as a generic hosting provider to only allow certain types of traffic.

<comment><USER8> Good point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why EC2, why not a Dreamhost account? They have tons of bandwith, after all.

<comment> tsetse-fly Dreamhost blocks BitTorrent usage on their servers.

[http://torrentfreak.com/dreamhost-back-to-blocking- bittorren...](http://torrentfreak.com/dreamhost-back-to-blocking-bittorrent/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> i've started using ec2 for rendering 3D animations. Much cheaper than investing in a renderfarm for the moment.

</comment><comment><USER11> The "cloud" fascination is reaching absurd levels

<comment> old-gregg Ha, I find this case to be an exception - to me, browser-based photo editor sitting in "the cloud" sounds more absurd than keeping your Torrent _server_ there.

I run my torrents off Slicehost. It's been awesome. This is what "cloud" is supposed to be doing.

<comment><USER11> so you pay $20/month so you can run bittorent on a dedicated computer without hogging down your own network + machine? That doesn't sound too bad. Is it a pain to transfer the files back to local computer though?</comment></comment></comment>


Building an Oscilloscope - <AUTHOR> http://blog.digital-scurf.org/posts/building-an-oscilloscope/ <comment><USER2> I built a Heathkit scope a lifetime ago, this has convinced me to do it again.

Wonder how long it took to assemble? I got the impression from the article it got built in a few hours.</comment>