Google News Initiative - <AUTHOR> https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/ <comment><USER2> I used Google News for a long time. I have since blackholed it on all of my machines. By tailoring the news articles presented to be based on the interests that Google data mined from my Google profile, it became an echo chamber even worse than Facebook.

It became a very _bad_ source of news: all of the articles were self- reinforcing each other with very _very_ little actual diversity of sources.

<comment><USER3> Could not disagree more. I am generally pretty liberal but get news stories from Breitbart, Fox news, etc all the time in my feed.

I like to read all sides so love this aspect of Google news. Heck I get negative Google stories from Google. Can't ask for more neutral.

<comment><USER4> Is there some feedback feature or something you use to get a helpful range of stories?

My experience with Google News isn't so much bias or a bubble as _uselessness_. Source quality, comprehensiveness, and coverage depth seem totally irrelevant, like I'm just getting a feed of every news site a bunch of people clicked on recently. It's the same stuff as Facebook's trending bar, at about the same level of shallow and unfocused.

And occasionally, it seems like a major story is incompatible with my profile, or has a keyword collision with other topics, or _something_ , and so disappears almost completely.

I tried Google News and Google Now with real eagerness, but my experience with both of them was just shockingly low quality.

<comment><USER5> You can weigh your news sources. I intentionally give a little more weight to sources I don't always agree with but aren't obviously biased. Things like fake news spreaders, conspiracy theorist, government propaganda machines, or fair topical sites that simply don't interest me (mostly Celebrity News and Gossip) get black holed.

You can find those sliders in your settings. Also they ask you periodically on the desktop homepage.

Pro tip: if you hate the mobile or new UI as much as I do, set your user agent to iPhone and go to google.com/nwshp. For whatever reason that magical incantation gives you the classic home page (with the sliders I mentioned in easy access/obvious places). I'll be really excited if someone knows how to just set that globally in settings. I haven't found it.

<comment><USER6> >You can weigh your news sources.

Neat site that does it for you: [https://www.allsides.com/](https://www.allsides.com/)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for this, hadn't run across a site as well presented as this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who runs a regional newspaper, I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. We are already thinking hard what to do with the Facebook monopoly, we would be crazy to voluntarily stick our neck into another one.

<comment><USER9> First, I'm the type of person that thinks the concentration of power from monopolies could be the most pressing issue facing the USA--

But can you explain how having another choice is dangerous? It seems like it'd be a gasp of air in the face of facebook's suffocating presence.

<comment><USER10> The hens in the hen-house can be forgiven for not being excited that there are two wolves outside now instead of one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> EDIT: It looks like there were 3 blog posts by Google announcing this initiative.

Blog posts announcing Google News Initative: [https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/announ...](https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/announcing-google-news-initiative/)

Subscription payments feature: [https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/introd...](https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/introducing-subscribe-google/)

Elevating quality journalism: [https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/elevat...](https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news- initiative/elevating-quality-journalism/)

Some news coverage on it: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142788/google- news-init...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142788/google-news- initiative-fake-news-journalist-subscriptions)

<comment><USER12> Based on the blog article, it seems like the main thing they're trying to solve is the payment system (use Google payment to easily subscribe). If that's true, it's a much different and less exciting offer than the OP's linked page which seemed like a much larger initiative.

<comment><USER13> The subscription system sounds like it's one part of this initiative. And if it is indeed the "main thing" then I think we should give Google some credit for being serious with this initiative. A payments system is a boring problem but it is the one most core to news organizations' current existential problems. It's not as sexy as using NLP to categorize news archives perhaps, but it's the most important to news orgs' survival.

<comment><USER14> I just wish they would bring back the old patron system, where I didn't see ads and some small amount of money went to the sites I visited, without a subscription. Because I want to support good journalism, wherever it is found, but there's no way I'm ever going to sign up for $3/mo for the Miami Herald to read three articles a year.

<comment><USER15> You're thinking of Google Contributor. It seems likely that these are teams working in different parts of Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, Google is also sitting on a HUGE amount of archival newspaper in a completely unsearchable state.

They've OCR'd thousands of historical papers but the search is completely broken.

[https://news.google.com/newspapers](https://news.google.com/newspapers)

It's a pretty incredible resource if you know the date/place of an event but if you wanted to research a little more broad it's a tool with incredibly untapped potential.

I wish they would spend more time providing tools for people to consume information in powerful ways rather than trying to 'tailor' experiences.

<comment><USER17> What specifically is broken? Basic keyword search seems to work.

<comment><USER18> keyword search is the very bare minimum for search

<comment><USER19> Any search at google is N mapreduce jobs away from a keyword search.

In theory, having a really nice search engine for this news would be rather easy for Google (/any Googler with a few weeks of time and access to this data).

This is essentially what every new employee at Google has to do in the orientation week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got fed up with Google News a year or so ago, over the echo chamber that the news site has become. It motivated me to create [https://statesreport.com](https://statesreport.com), with no ads and no tracking.

<comment><USER21> Are you open to creating an API for us to query for [https://www.chooseholly.com](https://www.chooseholly.com)? We currently pull data from Bings API for our Discover feature.

Happy to pay for usage :)

<comment><USER22> Just checked out your site - nice! Interesting to hear about your Discover feature. What does it do exactly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Given the bias inside of Google and the fact they have already demonstrated that they are not a neutral arbitrator, the last thing I want to have is them being the arbitrator of who or what news is seen. This is more of an attempt to consolidate their power, what you can and cannot see etc.. Hard pass.

<comment><USER3> Bias? Google is now paying the infrastructure cost for channels like Alex Jones as no advertisers to generate revenues for Google.

But in the name of free speech Google allows on YouTube and foots the bill. What could be more unbias?

<comment><USER24> Google has fact checked a claim that was not made in right leaning Daily Caller website : [http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/09/googles-new-fact-check- fea...](http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/09/googles-new-fact-check-feature- almost-exclusively-targets-conservative-sites/)

Although it may be bugs and not bias : [https://www.poynter.org/news/blame- bugs-not-partisanship-goo...](https://www.poynter.org/news/blame-bugs-not- partisanship-google-wrongly-appending-fact-check-daily-caller)

Google continuing to host Alex Jones may not be be 'in the name of free speech', they may not want people to go to other platforms to get their content. They can lead users to other videos from any video ( using the side bar ) and make money from those videos which does contain advertisements

<comment><USER3> There is really not competition for Google with YouTube plus they now have over 1.6 billion hours consumed a day. So getting rid of Alex Jones content do not think would hurt YT in any manner.

Google does not have to play the cost for more left leaning content like they have to do with alt right content.

<comment><USER24> > There is really not competition for Google with YouTube plus they now have > over 1.6 billion hours consumed a day. So getting rid of Alex Jones content > do not think would hurt YT in any manner.

Current dominance != future dominance. Read the concept behind innovators dilemma

Also youtube has stiff competition from Facebook : [https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/mashable.com/2017/12/05/how-f...](https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/mashable.com/2017/12/05/how- facebook-watch-will-overtake-youtube-as-biggest-video-platform.amp)

<comment><USER3> Have read innovators dilemma. There is little chance for YT to be distrubted at this point.

The problem for a competitor is YT was built during a period of time it was possible, barely, to do this. I say barely as in Google had a ton of engineering challenges.

Not sure if technical but serving over 1.6 billion hours of video a day is really hard.

But now with all the content in one place it is impossible to compete.

Wife and me talking about Marsha getting hit with a football. Just turn around and ask the Google Home to play it and it plays a video of the scene. Same with Mary laughing at clowns funeral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google and traditional media as well are in the business of selling advertisement. I feel that when your money comes from selling your readers attention to the highest ad bidder, one incentive becomes to sensationalize and do other tricks to increase viewership. This incentive can be at odds with the incentive to inform truthfully and completely, as some of the important information would invariably be boring, resulting in less sales. I've experienced this at Twitter as we optimized the product for engagement.

I hypothesize that this incentive to lock-in reader groups, has led to fragmentation of media and creating a lot of "info bubbles", or "interest based magazines". I think this is exacerbated by the dropping cost of information ( I have some thoughts on the process at [http://dimitarsimeonov.com/2017/10/27/the-shifting-sweet- spo...](http://dimitarsimeonov.com/2017/10/27/the-shifting-sweet-spot-for- media) )

I don't believe it is in Google's _strongest_ interest to provide truthful media, as Google doesn't make it's money from telling you truth.

I am optimist though.. and think in the future we'll have journalist's job be to aggregate a lot of that narrative and collect some micro-payments. And we'll have a lot fewer journalists, as there is less money in making these narratives.

<comment><USER26> A huge consequence of the prioritization of clicks is the loss of quality reporting. Those shuttered newspapers who went the way of the dinosaurs carried with them hundreds of years of journalistic experience. A lot of it didn't transfer to modern news sites. Now we're paying the price with young, inexperienced "journalists" pumping out junk articles with poor sourcing, missing or wrong facts, etc. I can't find it now but one of the better modern journalists (Glenn Greenwald or Bob Woodward maybe?) had a great piece on this. He lamented how mainstream media is failing to maintain their journalistic standards because they're too biased and they haven't been taught how to be good journalists.

I think Google should focus heavily on this, but their PR doesn't mention it much. Quality journalists first, then quality tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 'journalism' and 'news' are obsolete concepts.

A journalist was an employee of a large entity who wrote articles and made videos that complied with the reality and perspective the company they work for wanted to promote. (There are still a few of these employees left working for what's left of these entities)

'News' was selective packaged information to influence and inform the broadest reach, with a goal of selling accompanying advertising messaging based on that reach.

<comment><USER28> Newspapers existed long before advertising. The goal was to inform, and to have a public place of record accessible to all.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, because they were funded by the governments they ran under. "News" is a polite word for "propaganda," always was, always will be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All I want is a resource like "google" for all newspaper articles ever that we have stored anywhere.

Whenever I'm studying a topic, I'll often look up very old or contemporary newspaper writings to see how our perceptions and attitudes regarding the issue have changed over time.

I did this with the civil war and slavery at one point and recently with artificial intelligence. I would highly recommend it for comparing and contrasting your current perspective on a historical event or issue with that time's perspective of the same event or past times' perspectives on that same issue. Its really interesting too to see how the modern perspective is formed slowly over the years up to the current day.

<comment><USER31> Someone else pointed that this exists and, surprise, it's run by Google: [https://news.google.com/newspapers](https://news.google.com/newspapers)

There are other newspaper archive services though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "The future of journalism depends on all of us working together."

Translation:

"Your future as a new organization depends on you working well with us here at Google and finding ways for us to quietly tax part of your prior earnings"

</comment><comment><USER33> The real problem that Google doesn't want to talk about is its monopoly (with FB) of the digital ad market, to the tune of something like 85% of the total market. As a result, from big to small publishers, specialty publishers, regional publications, etc are all struggling. Here's a read: [https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom- publishing-...](https://www.medgadget.com/2018/03/google-serfdom-publishing- digital-age.html)

<comment><USER34> How exactly can two competing companies share a monopoly?

<comment><USER33> Duopoly, to be precise

<comment><USER34> Plus, of course, those other 15% of the market, to be even more precise. Not to mention that online advertisement to a certain degree is the same market as other forms of advertisement.

<comment><USER33> Look, there is a reason there are active investigations of Google's and FB's effects on the news media in U.K., Australia, Korea. They are duopoly and their effects reverberate through the entire internet, stifling creation of new websites and new media sources. There's a reason that VC investment in news media on the internet is nonexistent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I bet you they are going to push AMP plus their Newstand App which sucks. The Newstand app is great for finding news., but not great for reading cause AMP butchers the content so often I ended up clicking on "view in browser" all the time. and dare you try to copy and paste text!

</comment><comment><USER36> Why is Google putting $300 million of their own money into this?

Does anyone have greater than zero trust in what Google is trying to do in this space?

<comment><USER3> Can't think of anyone I would trust more. Can you? Who?

Google allowing video on YouTube they can't monetize kind of saids it all about Google and free speech.

<comment><USER37> > Google allowing video on YouTube they can't monetize kind of saids it all > about Google and free speech.

Huh? You mean video that doesn't contain ads? If those videos attract users to YouTube, then those users are more likely to start watching some videos that _do_ contain ads. Seems pretty straight forward, and says basically nothing about whether or not Google can be trusted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _" The future of journalism depends on all of us working together."_

Actually the future of journalism depends on media companies to stop working like tabloids trying to attract eyeballs to shiny controversial crap.

Seriously, I've had to turn off every Breaking News alert and e-mail that I have because 9 times out of 10 it's something stupid or scandalous relating to Trump. Scandal or "shocking political developments" are not breaking news, especially when they happen every day. It's not world news, it's not national news, it's not local news. It's gossip about a reality TV star.

This isn't journalism, this is the slow eroding of my sanity during time which I should be getting to know what the weather will be like tomorrow, whether an important referendum is coming up, actually important world events that impact real people, or significant changes to a local, national or global economic center, not to mention important scientific advances, and of course, sports news.

Real breaking news would be "a 7.5 earthquake leveled Mexico City today", "ethnic minorities in east asia continue to be massacred by their government who is denying the charges", "new tax laws will provide cuts to the richest", "the federal government is cracking down on states' push back to their anti- immigration and drug laws", etc. These are important things that are happening today that might affect me, my loved ones, my livelihood, etc. I don't give a shit what the special counsel has recently said about a person tangentially related to a controversy surrounding a political figure.

How about Google start an initiative to relay important, substantive, fact- based information to people that need it? Was that too much to put in their mission statement? I mean, they're only one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet employing the smartest engineers on the planet. Maybe they could get Google X to take a look at it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't have a problem with 'truth' per se, merely a problem with who gets to adjudicate what is true versus what is not, even if something is apparently non-true.

Rather than delete or abridge any legal content (as defined by a litany of 1st Amendment SCOTUS cases), at least in the USA, instead of deleting/modifying/filtering news content, we should do with news content what we've done with movies' rating labels for as long as we have - tag the content with a 'truth' label.

So Google News can develop a tagging system that labels news articles as "most likely" to "least likely" to be true, like a 1-10 rating. HuffPo can have its own truth ratings for the content they push. Breitbart or Infowars their own, etc.

I'll go for a system like this any day over Google or the SPLC or CNN or Snopes or whomever crowning themselves "truth" endorses, when in fact, they're mostly spinning the facts and telling a story from their own POV/context.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like Google News to browse, but their forced news-on-every-android-chrome- new-tab is the reason I've uninstalled Chrome and gone to Firefox. I was surprised, Android Firefox is actually a pretty competitive browser these days!

Hooray anti-competitive cross-subsidies.

(edit: I tend to block cookies on desktop so I guess they don't have too much profile to tailor news)

</comment><comment><USER41> While this is generally a positive step by Google it will fall short in revitalizing the news industry for a simple reason. In a world of near infinite content options, most people can no longer justify having any single news subscription.

A better solution is a fractional subscription model where subscriptions are tiered to one's reading needs. This is what my company [http://CivikOwl.com](http://CivikOwl.com) is working on. Hope to make a positive contribution to this important issue facing society.

<comment><USER15> I generally agree with the model; it's a model that's been independently struck on many times now. Most directly in the hunt are Google and Flattr.

I had the same idea some time ago, but silly me, got interested in solving the technical problems of tracking visits while preserving privacy. What I _should_ have been doing is fretting about the business side of things.

At least I got a patent out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The solution I wish for is one in which the knowledge graph generating users' news feeds is opened to users. Rather than hoping that an aggregator platform will pick what they need to read, a user ought to be able to ask questions like, "Show me articles arguing _", or, "Show me articles that contradict this one," or, "Show me articles about [topic] which users have labeled clarifying (or any synonym of clarifying)."

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there a page that actually explains what this is? The linked to page seems to be devoid of any actual content. Is Google going to be covering the crazy costs involved in sending journalists all over the world, keeping them safe, doing investigative journalism (very little of which is happening now anyway), etc. My cynicism aside, its nice to see a tech company atleast try to help find a way to fund journalism in the future.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think my issue with this is that google has all lots of special interests. I believe a true, functional solution most likely needs to come from a new company. A company that can build its reputation on surfacing "quality" news but without any particular bias or agenda. I'm not sure how any already large corporation would ever be able to win my confidence to act in this way.

</comment><comment><USER45> Meanwhile Google Now Italian version is full of garbage that I signal for a long time, and nobody cares about removing it...

</comment><comment><USER46> Part of this is a method to make subscribing easier. I would prefer if there were a ubiquitous and easy way to make micro-payments for news articles. I consume news from way more sources than I am willing to subscribe to.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ok, I guess I'll try to read this.

However, this comment won't wait:

If you were "with" the news, you wouldn't have done things like kill Google Reader, a primary vehicle power users used to process the news.

Stop prescribing. Start listening.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sigh, reading the headline, it wouldn't take a machine learning model to predict the sentiment of the responses.

HackerNews is pretty much turning into an echo chamber itself around news. Pretty much every announcement is greeted with intense negativity, less discussion of facts, or other solutions. And I'm not just talking about tech companies, even the release of a new language, framework, or tool is often accompanied by excessive negativity.

If you don't want news to make money via ads, and you don't like systems to encourage subscriptions, and you don't like paywalls, than pretty much you need public funding of news by the state like NPR/PBS/BBC to make news a non- profit.

So I propose the following: A national 3% tax on all internet connections: mobile phone bill, cable, etc. The revenue for this to be paid to PBS/NPR/VOA/other public news orgs.

</comment><comment><USER49> Not really related - but why does this page have a ton of these absolutely massive images? It's a 34.1MB monster of a page.

</comment><comment><USER50> What's the point of the withgoogle.com domain?

<comment><USER51> google.com is a valuable target for XSS attacks. Keeping content off this domain reduces the attack surface.

<comment><USER52> I too think this is the reason. It does, however, allow for cool domains like [https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> anyone else notice how all of the examples they chose are distinctly NOT current events, contentious issues, or anything where there might be a serious dispute over what constitutes the basic facts of the situation?

i'm going to join other commenters here and say hard pass.

google has too much power already, and they aren't particularly responsible stewards of the public trust. and it seems like they haven't even solved any problems with their new product...

</comment><comment><USER54> Is the css showing a 404 for anyone else?

<comment><USER55> CSS is showing 404 for me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> You know what would actually be welcome? Some way to tell real from fake news. Get to work on that, Google.

<comment><USER57> They're just working on solving the halting problem, then they'll get right on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> the real news is they forgot to optimize the images on that site!

</comment><comment><USER59> Why can't Google News be searched by date? It used to have that feature but they took it away. I wonder why!

</comment><comment><USER60> The SPLC is part of YouTube's "Trusted Flaggers" program, yet Google News supports Farrakhan's The Final Call, even though the SPLC lists Nation of Islam as a hate group.

I won't link the rant about the Jews controlling the FBI, but check out this "news" brought to me courtesy of Google:

"Did the Honorable Elijah Muhammad know of the mathematics in the writings of the scriptures before Doctor Khalifa, and others, did? Not only did he, but he demonstrated that he was brought into the understanding of far deeper mathematical truths, which produced, correlated and interlocked all aspects of reality—including all of the problems of humanity—by Almighty God Himself. He was taught the very root of all mathematics. This root is in the brain, or mind, of the human being. God taught and brought him into the very nature of the movement of the mind of Him, Who originally conceived of all of that which we call "universe" and Who produced the human mind. Allah taught him the root of mathematics—which ultimately resides in the core of the mind of God Himself."

[https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/%22There%20is%...](https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/%22There%20is%20no%20question%20that%20the%20use%20of%20the%20scriptures%2C%20by%20the%20Honorable%20Elijah%20Muhammad%2C%20is%20still%20very%20relevant%22/%22There%20is%20no%20question%20that%20the%20use%20of%20the%20scriptures%2C%20by%20the%20Honorable%20Elijah%20Muhammad%2C%20is%20still%20very%20relevant%22?hl=en&gl=US&ned=us)

<comment><USER61> Slpc still thinks Pepe is a hate symbol and juggalos are gangsters. You don't have to dig down into scripture interpretation to see they have bias issues. Remove refrences to islam, jews, and religion, and focus on why the group is unreliable if you want to engage with most people.</comment></comment>


6 reasons for bootstrapping before accepting VC money - <AUTHOR> http://gunniho.com/post/571517013/bootstrapping

<comment><USER2> One thing to consider is there is a danger of bootstrapping your way out of the nice little pigeon holes that VCs build to make decisions. They don't know what to do with you if you haven't been through the "normal" steps they are use to. Not only that but they can't get the kind of slice of the pie they normally get on the terms they have boilerplates for and get frustrated.

Not that it should discourage you from bootstrapping as it is still a valid way of doing things. I am sure there is ludacris amounts of investment out there that doesn't worry about the norm.</comment>


SnoPy – Snobol Pattern Matching Extension for Python - <AUTHOR> http://snopy.sourceforge.net/user-guide.html <comment><USER2> Needs uploading to pypi, lots of devs brought into python via django etc 'pip install' basically everything.

<comment><USER3> It depends upon both SWIG and Gnat (an Ada implementation, apparently), so even if it were pip installable, you'd need to install those two non-python dependencies via another mechanism.

<comment><USER4> Plenty of PyPI packages have external dependencies (e.g., anything that uses Cython will require a C compiler). SWIG isn't needed, since it is a source generator, and it's trivial to ship the generated source as part of the release process. GNAT is not commonly installed, but since it's part of GCC, it's packaged for every major OS and distribution. So there's one external dependency that is trivially installed, and many packages have similar requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a SPITBOL/SNOBOL thread recently. I thought: no need to use the language as we could probably do it in Python, LISP, or something similarly flexible. Just steal the good parts of the past language while having all the good parts of the current one. And BOOM. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Skimming this the impression I get is that you could reduce the dependencies and rewrite it on top of a more modern parser approach such as a PEG [Parsing Expression Grammar] or parser-combinator and in fact the SNOBOL pattern matching here is very PEG-like and you could get away with just renaming/aliasing some of the basic PEG combinators to do this pattern matching and learning the PEG library of choice's conventions and likely get the bonus of IDE autocomplete/intellisense.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with a manager who is not good at giving feedback? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would just discuss it with him/her. As a manager I'm sure they are looking for feedback as well to make themselves better.

Ask them to lunch and talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you give a specific example of the problem?</comment>


Show HN: SlackShare – Browser extension to quickly share links to slack - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slackshare/hpkbgdicfgfdaggdgmhiifpnjlfipbfi <comment><USER2> Interesting! Usually when I share links on slack, it goes like this: 1. Copy the website URL 2. Paste into slack 3. Go back to website and copy a relevant passage 4. Paste as code, so it's clear that it's a citation 5. Add my own comment 6. Post.

So if I could bring that down to 1. Select text 2. Open extension 3. Enter my own comment 4. Post, this could potentially save me some time

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I was surprised not to find a good extension to share to slack quickly (that also supports multiple workspaces), so we put together a simple extension for Chrome/Firefox for that. In future planning to add to Safari and some features like screenshots, text selection and so on. Any feedback is appreciated

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is what I was looking for!</comment>


Ask HN: I need an actual GOOD analytics tool - <AUTHOR>

So tired of crappy website analytics tools. GA is off the table. I using it, setting and up and wasting time trying to understand the new lingo around it.
Mixpanel is good, but it's more for events.
I need a good analytics tool that works in real time and shows me where my signups are coming from(exact urls, domains, etc). Confused at how GA does this and mixpanel cuts of the urls so I can't get the full link to visit it in the browser.
This is a simple thing to ask for. Wondering if anyone here can point me in the right direction.
Please HN! I'm depending on you. <comment><USER2> I created Improvely to meet that need. Might be what you're looking for? Some sample reports:

[https://www.improvely.com/demo](https://www.improvely.com/demo)

[http://demo.improvely.com/reports/mywebshop/organic](http://demo.improvely.com/reports/mywebshop/organic)

[http://demo.improvely.com/reports/mywebshop/person?id=nflbfl...](http://demo.improvely.com/reports/mywebshop/person?id=nflbfl_tblfnf%40zbhpp.com)

Hope you don't mind the self-promotion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I damn well don't mind the promotion if I find what I'm looking for :)

This looks like a big improvement over the above. I see sources, individual hits and events for all types of things.

One thing that gets on my nerves a lot is the need to change projects to view individual stats. Maybe this is still here but hopefully you have an API to pull those stats in another view? :D

Looks really good. Can you send me an email at clinton.d.skakun at gmail.com to tell me more about the paid plan? I'd like to know how many projects I can add and the views for projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd highly recommend that you integrate Segment.com. Paste it into your site once, then toggle on/off all the analytics tools you want. That's probably the easiest way for you to browse through the current tools that are available without actually having to manually integrate each one.

<comment><USER2> You'd probably want to integrate their analytics.js library rather than Segment.com itself when it comes to testing/playing. The hosted service segments what integrations you can use by what plan you're on; to try out Salesforce's $25/month service, for example, you have to pay Segment $350/month.

[https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js](https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js)

<comment><USER3> Ahhh, very nice option. Even better! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Analytics are not my forte, but back in the day Woopra had it's glory moment.

[https://www.woopra.com/](https://www.woopra.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks good as well. Wondering how many good tools there are out there that I've missed.</comment></comment>


Java zero-day flaw under active attack - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=6161

<comment><USER2> Links to <http://blog.cr0.org/2010/04/javacalypse.html>, which is much more informative.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to the advisory at <http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Apr/119>:

"All versions since Java SE 6 update 10 for Microsoft Windows are believed to be affected by this vulnerability. Disabling the java plugin is not sufficient to prevent exploitation, as the toolkit is installed independently."

Harmless demonstration at [http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/bb5eafbc6c6e67e11c4afc88b4e1dd22/t...](http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/bb5eafbc6c6e67e11c4afc88b4e1dd22/testcase.html)

<comment><USER4> "Harmless demonstration at <http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/bb5eafbc6c6e67e11c4afc88b4e1dd22/t...>

Firefox 3.6.3 on OSX says its missing a plug-in although java is installed.

<comment><USER5> <http://xkcd.com/272/>

Same experience on Gentoo here. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fixed in Java 1.6.0_20 released today. Go get it.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hm doesn't seem to work on my Opera although I have Java installed and I quite regularly use javawebstart (for example jabref)</comment>


Ask HN: How to help a 12 year kid with a passion for programming? - <AUTHOR>

I've a cousing who is very much interested in programming. He started with C++ and now moved into Python.
But there are some problems. Here is an example: He knows he can use pointers to get the memory address location of a variable. But when it returns something like 0x0123, he doesn't know about hexadecimal numbers!
He's currently in his 6th form, but his interest in programming is far beyond the kids his age. I would like to get suggestions to lead him in the right way. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I would have benifited from expertise in OpenGL. Answer questions, keep them culturally involved - which in many cases might mean giving a T-shirt.

</comment><comment> c-rack Buy him a copy of Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programmin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming)</comment>


GitHub's Large File Storage is no panacea for Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@megastep/github-s-large-file-storage-is-no-panacea-for-open-source-quite-the-opposite-12c0e16a9a91#.310ve89hz <comment><USER2> In the interest of not propagating this common misconception:

"The main problem with Git is that binary files are stored "as is" in the history of the project, so that every single revision of a new binary file (even if just a single byte has changed) is stored in full. [...] On the other hand, source files being mostly text, they are more intelligently handled and typically only differences between revisions are stored in the commits."

This is false. Git stores the full version of each file in "loose" format and uses compressed incremental diffs (originally based on xdiff) in packfiles (after "git gc") without distinguishing text vs binary in either case. The issue is that binary files are often compressed themselves (so a one-byte semantic change has nonlocal effect) or have positional references (like jump targets in an executable, causing small changes to cascade).

These factors explain the inefficient handling of binary files, but improving efficiency requires changing the semantics. LFS follows in the path of a few other tools (based on smudge/clean filters) that try to hide the semantic difference from the casual user, though that difference seems to bite people more frequently than we'd like.

<comment><USER3> This. Unlike many other systems, compression in git has nothing to do with commit order or file types or really anything VCS related. The way delta chains work in git are ingenious and transparent.

The problem is that "binaries" are large amounts of data with high entropy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How uncharitable can a single blog post be! The entire post is discredited by the author repeatedly projecting his unfounded opinions onto GitHub, such as

"My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as- a-bag-of-rocks pricing model."

"All the marketing material pimping GitHub's LFS support [...]. I do not believe this is unintentional."

"This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy pricing model is to [...]"

"I honestly couldn't believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could extract from some of their users".

Charitable explanation for forks not working: they haven't yet written the code to make this work with forks, and it's better to ship something working early, than to make it work in all cases.

Charitable explanation for charging for bandwith: bandwidth costs money. (I believe this is a real problem for Dropbox, which doesn't charge for bandwidth but must still pay for it). Also, all CDNs, and also AWS charge for bandwidth.

Overall, while GitHub may be able to support it's OSS folks better by changing the pricing on some parts of its product, this post is incredibly uncharitable. I hope the OP will consider removing the unfounded narrative that he's projecting onto GitHub (esp the "marketing dickwad" thing - wtf) and focus on the facts.

[Disclaimer: my company partners with GitHub on lots of stuff]

</comment><comment><USER3> > Case in point: if a very popular Github repository (such as the one for the > Linux kernel) decided to start using LFS for some of their files, they would > instantly alienate all of their users. They would no longer be able to > properly fork the project, or even clone it to get its binary files stored > via LFS. Nobody would be able to send a pull request to Linus as a result > without considerable effort.

Odd example. Linux doesn't use GitHub pull requests.

<comment><USER5> They still use pull requests, though, just in the form of email-based ones.

[https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull](https://git-scm.com/docs/git- request-pull)

<comment><USER6> Except that's not a "pull request".

<comment><USER7> Except it is. Just cause github does pull requests differently doesn't mean you can't do pull requests in pure git. Remember, git came before github.

<comment><USER6> > Remember, git came before github.

That's exactly my point. Using a "request-pull" instead of a "pull-request" will probably mean you can do this git-lfs thing with it. My understanding was that it was not working with "forked" repositories, which you need to have to make a "pull request". To make a "request pull" (or to just send a patch file), you don't need to "fork". ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a lot of assumptions here about GitHub being greedy. I've got no idea how much money it costs GitHub to support Open Source projects, but it must easily be in the millions. I think that by this point GitHub deserves the benefit of the doubt before launching into vicious accusations.

<comment><USER9> While I don't think github is deserving of "vicious accusations", I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomorrow.

SourceForge.net was once an excellent and trustworthy steward of Open Source software projects. It was predicted by some folks in the free software community that it would not always be the case, and alternatives like Savannah were maintained in order to act as a hedge against that concern. I believe it is more than reasonable to assume that github will change, and it would be downright dangerous to assume that we can rely on a profit-motivated corporation (even one as cool as github currently is) to remain a trustworthy repository forever.

So, sure, say nice things about github; I also think github is a good product, and I appreciate their free hosting for OSS projects. And, sure, you should use github if it provides value for you and you're willing to accept the price. But, don't ask me to trust they'll never change, because history indicates they will. It's probably also unfair to suggest that someone criticizing some valid concerns about github's current behavior, based on their own experience with Open Source projects hosted at github, are making "vicious accusations".

<comment><USER4> Really? These aren't vicious?

"My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as- a-bag-of-rocks pricing model."

"All the marketing material pimping GitHub's LFS support [...]. I do not believe this is unintentional."

"This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy pricing model is to [...]"

"I honestly couldn't believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could extract from some of their users"

<comment><USER9> OK, those are maybe a little vicious, and probably not entirely fair. Still, the implication of not being able to fork a whole project from github if you use LFS is a pretty big deal.

<comment><USER4> GitHub has added features, and made their product better for their customers, but have not yet made it possible to use from everywhere on their platform.

Perhaps that is a big deal (I don't use LFS and until recently neither did anyone else), but it's a far cry from what you said in your original comment, such as "I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of tomorrow."

They implement a feature in a restricted manner and all of a sudden they're evil?

<comment><USER9> No, of course not. I have nowhere said github is evil. I've said it would be foolish to believe they never will be, because we have seen on a number of occasions that good companies turn bad (with varying definitions of "good" and "bad") when given sufficient monetary motivation to do so.

SourceForge is the best past analog for github, and I think it's worth learning from history. SF.net didn't start out evil and untrustworthy; they started out good. Who's to say github won't do the same?

<comment><USER4> Its not that I believe good forever, but rather that I think it (it being your first comment) was a weird way to take the conversation. Like, why did that even occur to you in this context?

<comment><USER9> I left some of the early parts of my thought process out of the conversation.

My thought process went something like this: "This is a feature that is currently, probably accidentally, causing vendor lock-in for github users, as there is no easy way to take a project in its entirety back out of github, if it has enabled this feature. That kind of lock-in has been used in the past, by vendors across a wide spectrum, for evil purposes. Github, were it ever to become evil, would find this the kind of thing that would screw users and produce profit."

I don't believe github _today_ has evil intent (though the author of the article seemingly does believe that), but I reserve the right to be skeptical of what the company's intentions will be in the future. Just as I should have been more skeptical of the the future intentions of SourceForge in the past. I think my position on this is entirely fair to github (which is a company and product I like), but I'm also trying to not to be a total sucker and make the same mistakes over and over again.

<comment><USER4> I see. Yes, lock in has been used for evil in the past.

I thought the OP noted that MS also offers git+LFS (and for free)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most interesting takeaway for me was that Microsoft seems to privide the only(?) free git hosting that includes LFS?

Does anyone know if their repos supports forking in combination with LFS too?

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems like an odd problem, but I'm not as familiar with Git as I should be. Is there not a reasonable way to download only the most recent version of these large binary files on the initial request, and then download the historical versions only in the (likely very rare) case that the user actually wants to use them? This would seem more useful in this case than hoping that binary diffs the repository small enough.

<comment><USER12> If you're talking about binary files merged into Git itself (not Git LFS, which is a separate mechanism), you can use "git clone --depth <n>" to get only the latest <n> revisions of the tree, and then use "git pull --unshallow" if you need to fetch the rest of the history.

<comment><USER10> Can I do that automatically so that only binaries are fetched shallow, and text is fetched deep? Otherwise it's not very useful.

<comment><USER12> My best guess would be to keep the binaries in a submodule, then after fully cloning the main repo, you would fetch the binaries with "git submodule update --init --depth 1".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Edit: I was wrong, however I learned from the conversation so I am leaving it here! Thanks to those who corrected me.

> On the other hand, source files being mostly text, they are more > intelligently handled and typically only differences between revisions are > stored in the commits.

This is completely incorrect, git stores whole blobs from one commit to the other.

svn stored patches, but git does not. Every version of a file is stored in its entirety in your git tree since the beginning of the repository's existence. This is one of the reasons why git is so fast. You can go through your objects in your .git directory and verify this for yourself[0].

        $ find .git/objects -type f
          .git/objects/ff/a5d733354ae6f8bdc67764d58d87c9a3161f66
          .git/objects/ff/deb08f4856bd6eb5b31d7f800b3e480ae3e2e0
        $ git cat-file -p ffa5d733354ae6f8bdc67764d58d87c9a3161f66
        ...file contents appear...

[0] [https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects](https://git- scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects)

<comment><USER14> This is only true for recent commits: as you accumulate commits, garbage collections are performed of the loose blobs and the remaining generation is stored into a pack file, which has been carefully ordered by similarity and stored using a delta-encoding. For more information, this chapter from one of the popular online books about git might suffice.

[https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Packfiles](https://git- scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Packfiles)

(edit: After I started responding to your comment, you edited your comment to link to the same book! I recommend you continue reading the later chapters: "you'll never believe how it works" ;P.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect setting up the free LFS reference/test server[1] that GitHub provides would have taken less time than writing this post complaining that GitHub isn't free enough.

1: [https://github.com/github/lfs-test-server](https://github.com/github/lfs- test-server)

<comment><USER16> This being a test server implementation probably indicates that it is not meant to be run in production environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At GitLab we're working to support LFS. Initial support might or might not work with forks. As now with our Git Annex support storage will be free with a soft limit of 10GB of disk space per project (includes Git, Git Annex and Git LFS data) and there is no bandwidth limit. It will work with public and private projects (both are free).

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I understand why artifacts can't be stored in a different service - even an S3 bucket, if not a real repository service - and fetched dynamically via a build process.

Is there a reason why binary blobs need to be stored directly next to code in order to be versioned?

<comment><USER19> The way I understand it, it should be possible, though it's more complicated since they seem to infer the LFS URL from the repo URL by default. So if you wanted to say keep your repo on Github, and store your LFS files on S3, you'd need to explicitly tell git where to write the files. There are configuration values for that.

Also you'd need the necessary LFS server piece on Amazon's side.

<comment><USER18> I'm thinking that rather than using git for versioning the binary artifacts as well, you tag and version your git repo, then tag and name/label your artifacts in another storage service. You then allow a build tool to assemble from both locations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if Perforce Cloud will be able to fill this role at all. Probably not. Open Source isn't their target audience. But it could be a consideration.

Has anyone tried the new Perforce/Git stuff? Is it any good? We're still on an older pre-Helix version.

</comment><comment><USER21> The post seems hyperbolic. I'd love to hear GitHub's rebuttal.

<comment><USER19> I am the author and yes this was very much unapologetically hyperbolic. At least it got the conversation started.

<comment><USER22> I don't think you needed paragraphs like "My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks pricing model. He then directed the grunts to somehow implement his grand vision on GitHub's servers. That's when shit started to hit the fan." ... to get the conversation started. Your other points were sensible and lucid. This was a distraction and had the paradoxical effect of making me more sympathetic to github. The same looks to be true of other posters in this thread.

If you were consciously choosing to take a hyperbolic tone, can I ask if you might reconsider that decision in future posts? Or at least concretely test your idea that calling people "dickwads" and "grunts" gets you more traction.

I appreciated you raising the bandwidth question, and comparing it with other services. You made a good argument. Thank you!

<comment><USER23> It's his personal blog not some corporate blog or newspaper.

I'm not sure it's within your rights to ask him to change the way he writes within his own bubble because you don't like his word choice.

<comment><USER21> It's just as much within his rights to call someone out for it as it is for someone to write as he likes.

Clearly the post was written for an audience. Being needlessly inflammatory could certainly turn the audience off, and/or undercut the author's credibility. Ansiton's advice was both helpful and valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > I honestly couldn't believe that GitHub would be willing to do something > that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought > they could extract from some of their users.

They're a business. C'mon here.

<comment><USER19> My argument was that this was actually bad for their business. This is not a customer-friendly move.

<comment><USER25> People who make products make these sort of tradeoffs all the time and the tradeoff is rarely something thats permanent. For the fast majority of people who need this kind of functionality (LFS), breaking forking is a inconvenience compared to the value being added.

<comment><USER19> I would completely agree with you if that was the way GitHub presented that feature, being open about the consequences of adopting it. They haven't done that, and as a result their customers are not properly informed on the trade- offs they are making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shock and horror: commercial company has a paid value add.

GitHub is not a charity.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't necessarily describe a paid feature that breaks all forking for an entire repository a "value add".

<comment><USER19> Yes, my criticism was not that they're trying to make money from this, but rather that they are crippling their core product in an effort to monetize it some more.

<comment><USER25> No, they are trying to solve a problem for their customers - storing large files. They charge money for this feature. It's disingenuous to think that they are breaking their product on purpose to extract money from you.

<comment><USER19> It is not disingenuous if it is exactly what they are doing. The entire cause of this problem, and the reason it breaks so many things, is because they are trying to monetize bandwidth usage. This model is unsustainable because free users only get a paltry 1GB/month and their attempt to enforce that is what breaks forks.

If they would just stop trying to do that, then we would have nothing to talk about.

It is not at all uncalled for to criticize the way they are trying to do business, especially when it affects you as an existing customer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The teen who auctioned 10% of her income for a startup investment may not exist - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/19/sarah-hanson-the-19-year-old-teen-who-auctioned-10-of-her-income-for-a-125k-startup-investment-may-not-exist/#RE4HhFGZZuQ4YBlT.99

<comment><USER2> Sounds like VB did 10x more research for this article than their original. Preventative measures (i.e. real journalism) would have avoided the need for this awkward band-aid.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.</comment>


EFF Asks Supreme Court to Expand Fee Shifting in Patent Cases - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/eff-asks-supreme-court-expand-fee-shifting-patent-cases <comment><USER2> I'm all for patent reform, but this seems like the smallest possible reform.

When deciding whether to take on the massive time and cost of patent litigation, the prospect of repaid expenses some day in the distant future isn't going to make a lot of business owners swoon, especially considering the risk of losing for stupid reasons, or winning against some insolvent shell company.

And more "loser pays" rules in places like Marshall, TX might even make things worse.

I wouldn't be so critical if I didn't think there were great reform ideas out there. On EFF's legislative solutions page,[1] heightened pleading, expanded post-grant review, and functional claiming would each offer a lot of impact.

Mostly expanded post-grant review... I'd push it beyond even what EFF describes. The public should be able to point out when the patent office granted another patent that is vague, non-novel, or obvious and get patents revoked. If your patents are constantly revoked, there should be consequences. Maybe abuse of process, maybe anyone who signed a contract with you to license those patents has some kind of claim, maybe just to get their money back with interest...

[1] [https://www.eff.org/issues/legislative-solutions-patent- refo...](https://www.eff.org/issues/legislative-solutions-patent-reform)</comment>


Stuck at Home Because of Covid, the French Discover France - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-the-french-discover-france-travel-eiffel-tower-tourism-summer-europe-closures-coronavirus-reopen-11594312360 <comment><USER2> > _The French are venturing into unknown territory: France. Every summer > French vacationers snub their homeland in favor of far-flung destinations._

Except that 80% of French stay in France when they go on holiday (2018, see [1] in French).

It really sounds like the person who wrote that article did not bother with facts at all...

[1] [https://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2019/03/13/20010-20190313ARTFI...](https://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2019/03/13/20010-20190313ARTFIG00130-en-2018-66-des- francais-sont-partis-en-vacances-un-record.php)</comment>


NASA Will Pay You to Eat Astronaut Food for 4 Months - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/02/22/nasa-will-pay-you-to-eat-astronaut-food-for-4-months/ <comment><USER2> If you read the actual requirements[1], they're going to be hard for a lot of people to meet. For one, you have to be able to drop everything for about two weeks near the end of the year, then about a third of 2013. You have to have a bachelor's degree, plus 3 years of experience (grad school counts for this), have to pitch a personal research project to them & have experience doing field research, be in good physical shape, not mind being cooped up with five total strangers for four months eating astronaut food, do all kinds of strange tests, etc.

I'm guessing the graduate student exception to professional experience is because that's where they're most likely to find reasonable candidates for this, because they might be able to take a semester off and possibly even get academic credit for doing something like this. Most other people couldn't just leave their jobs for a four month gig with NASA, however cool it might be.

Anyhow, it sounds like one of their goals is to have people who could be trained as NASA mission specialists. So if you want to be an astronaut someday, this might be your chance.

[1] <http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hi-seas/>

<comment><USER3> Specifically, they seem to be looking for bachelor of science grads, not arts. Also, you have to carry your own insurance. I'm assuming the class 2 flight physical should pare it down to fairly healthy specimens anyway. Hard to believe people who qualify aren't already employed; they may need to up the ante.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Speaking of space food, I received a package from a company I didn't recognize at work. It contained space food for me to eat at work, along with an advertising pitch that if I used their services, I'd have time to go home instead of having to eat at work.

Here's a photo of the space food package and advertising pitch: <http://db.tt/bUDfgi48>

<comment><USER5> When I was in college I remember seeing a box of snacks sent by some device company (maybe for laser equipment?) in the lab somewhere. Cute (and I bet effective) marketing in a world where decisions for $5000 purchases are made by people who eat ramen and are swayed by a $10 box of granola bars and stuff.

<comment><USER4> Probably Lab Snacks from ThorLabs.

<comment><USER5> YES! That's it. Brings back memories from my senior design project looking through the ThorLabs catalog for the right laser components.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a great opportunity to get paid to contribute to open-source software.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a great opportunity for those qualified. They should film it as a reality series on the Science Channel -- "Real World" for aspiring astronauts.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was a joke; had to reread to be sure. just too bad there is little (to no) chance of actually going to mars. but hey, it's a foot in the door, eh? (riiiight)

</comment><comment><USER9> Send me to space and you have a deal.

</comment><comment><USER10> In 2003, NASA sent some people to check out supposed breatharians... just in case.</comment>


The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/09/26/seriously-samsung-sorry-european-roamers-but-the-new-galaxy-note-3-is-region-locked/ <comment><USER2> Disappointing, but not a surprise:

1\. Galaxy S 3 includes undeletable Pizza Hut bookmark [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1707047](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1707047)

2\. Galaxy custom web browser allows random web sites to make links that wipe and reset the phone: [http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/117422-samsung- galaxy-s-3-re...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/117422-samsung- galaxy-s-3-reset)

<comment><USER3> #1 is not a GS3 problem, it is a carrier problem specific to Vodafone, which had a marketing deal with Pizza Hut at the time of the GS3's release. Other carriers did not forcibly include undeletable Pizza Hut bookmarks.

<comment><USER4> No. It's a Samsung problem. You don't see crapware on iPhones do you?

<comment><USER5> I don't like it any more than you, but to Samsung and its investors, the undeletable Pizza Hut bookmark is a feature. Not only does it generate additional revenue with little additional design time, but it also indicates that Samsung has a healthy and attractive business in which other businesses would like to participate.

<comment><USER6> Somehow I find it hard to interpret an undeletable Pizza Hut bookmark as a sign of a healthy business.

It has the familiar smell of desperation to monetize everything. Unless of course Samsung is striving to be known as the Ryanair of consumer electronics.

<comment><USER7> We blame Samsung. Most users will just deal with it. Few and far between care enough about crapware to abandon a phone manufacturer over it (assuming they even blame Samsung for it at all).

Marketing people from major companies use a Samsung phone and sees the bookmark will think "I wish our brand was there. How do we reach out to the carrier or Samsung to put our brand there as well?"

a few weeks later in a meeting with a carrier or Samsung, "Yes, we can put a bookmark there for X dollars. However if you want it to be undeletable, you can pay 2X dollars" or "Pizza Hut is paying us 2X dollars for that and we don't want to put more than one there, so you need to outbid pizza hut for that spot."

next step.... money rolling in.

<comment><USER8> Next step: [http://i.imgur.com/Sptabbs.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Sptabbs.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My HP printer is region-locked. When I moved from Europe to the US it refused to accept ink cartridges bought in the US.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of my Brother Printer/Fax/Scanner. Once ANY of the 4 ink carts is empty, you can no longer do ANYTHING. No scanning to a SD card, no outbound faxes, etc, until you replace the ink. Of course, there is a simple "tape over the holes" hack to get around this, but it's still lame.

<comment><USER11> This is disappointing -- I really like my barebones brother laser printer, I thought they might be one of the few honest printer manufacturers.

<comment><USER12> I think inkjets and lasers are basically different companies. From every vendor. The laser products just work, the inkjet products just don't.

<comment><USER10> I could not agree more. I also have a Brother Laser, and it's been rock solid for years. Inkjets were always a waste of money, ink, and time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that this is a great opportunity to clarify laws. There are a few EU countries that require phones to be SIM-unlocked at the end of contracts. The question is - will this fall foul of those laws, as people can use the device with other carriers in Europe but not outside? There will presumably be a court case around this (as it's the first one) and the result will probably force even more openness for EU citizens based on Neelie Kroes' previous successes.

<comment><USER14> The problem is with bundling. Carriers should be forbidden to bundle phones and plans long time ago. It's antitrust issue and a big one. Microsoft faced trouble for bundling their browser with operating system which you could easily replace with any other one while carriers are forcing phone manufacturers to accept ridiculous terms (unless they are Apple or recently Google) and customers have no way uninstall all the crapware.

<comment><USER15> you're getting your terms wrong. The antitrust concept is called "tying" and what it means is using a lawfully-acquired monopoly (or dominant) position in one market to increase market share in another. Because no carrier has anything like a monopoly position in any market, and no phone manufacturer does either, is very far from an antitrust issue.

It may be scummy and short-sighted, but it doesn't implicate antitrust law.

<comment><USER14> In a sense cartel of carriers has a monopoly. That is even without any conscious wrong doing from their side they act like monopoly forcing prices and terms on manufacturers (breaking the cartel isn't in their interest so even if all of them want to do the best for themselves and don't collude the factual cartel won't be broken). I was expressing the sentiment and I don't doubt that as the law stands right now it's not formally "antitrust issue". It's however very similar in nature and should be treated as such.

It's close to impossible to introduce a phone without being tied to a carrier. That's exactly what monopoly looks like when dominant player (the one having a monopoly) controls one of the crucial parts of supply chain and can just cut you off if they wish (or if you don't comply).

Usual argument is that it's not a monopoly if you can shop around and choose different provider. Here you really can't without putting yourself in very unfavorable position comparing to players who do comply.

Back to bundling for a bit: it's a practice which is about always bad for a customer. Bonuses, paybacks, plans with phones, loyalty points at gas station. Every one of those reduces competition between providers/sellers by tying customers to them. If about every provider on the market uses the same bundling policy it becomes a monopoly from the point of view of manufacturers of bundled product - they will never be able to compete without bending backwards to meet the requirements of the monopoly owner(s). That was an idea behind lawsuit vs Microsoft (dominant player bundling their browser making competition (close to) impossible or even "unfair") and that's the exact same situation with carriers or cable providers. Them being a cartel of several instead of monolithic entity shouldn't cloud the issue here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Buy something else. Stat. It doesn't matter even if this is just a sticker put up by some product marketing idiot, it shows that they feel good about imposing these region-specific restrictions in a phone that operates according to a global standard.

The nexus devices are generally good about this sort of thing. Most of Samsung's other carrier-partnered phones are loaded with absolute crap anyway, this is another good reason not to buy them.

<comment><USER17> It shows that they are putting the interests of the carriers way above their customers'. Now, that's a business decision, they have their own priorities, and fiduciary duties to shareholders and all that, good for them. I'll just take my money elsewhere in the future (and I don't even care about being able to switch sim cards, really).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently went to the US for a few weeks. My Nexus 4 worked just fine with a US SIM from T-Mobile. $70 for a month for voice and data was worth it, and everything worked quite nicely. Big +1 for unlocked products!

<comment><USER19> I pay $30/month in the US for a t-mobile month-to-month sim with 5gb data (soft cap), unlimited texts and 100 minutes on my nexus 4

<comment><USER20> Do you have a contract? That maybe why price you pay is cheaper. Seems like parent was only in US for a short period of time, so he probably didn't wanted to sign a, say 12 months, contract.

<comment><USER21> It's a prepaid plan with T-Mobile. No contract. Every Nexus 4 owner loves to talk about it. Go look at the Nexus 4 subreddit, it's a circle jerk of people who are "beating the system" by using a low-end phone on a sub-par carrier and getting "unlimited data".

<comment><USER22> Nice troll. You can get the same plan with any GSM phone.

T-Mobile is about the same as Sprint and AT&T, and all are sub-par to Verizon. But what's nice about T-Mobile is that you get unlimited data, whereas with Verizon, you'd better cash in your fleet of 777s to afford your bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pure speculation here, but my guess is that this has to do with different models being certified by different bodies. IE, perhaps the model sold in Europe is subtly different and hasn't passed FCC or some other certification for use in the states, ergo, they lock them to where they HAVE been certified.

Doesn't change the fact that I wouldn't buy it, but I don't think it is something that is done for some evil reason as some will jump to.

<comment><USER24> If it was a certification issue it would affect every mobile device by every device manufacturer. My guess is that this may be an attempt by Samsung to crack down on grey market imports of their devices. The author suggests it might be a requirement buy carriers, but again that would affect more than just one manufacturer. At the moment we're all just speculating.

<comment><USER25> _My guess is that this may be an attempt by Samsung to crack down on grey market imports of their devices._

Why would they want to do this? I could understand it in the case of a low- priced device intended for poor regions of the world, but this is a high-end phone that is presumably a similar (high) price everywhere it's sold.

<comment><USER26> Not really. I can either buy phone from local distribution or pay 10-20% less and get an imported one (wouldn't be surprised if it were from richer region, such as NA). That is the shop is still making money after they moved it half a globe and paid import taxes on it.

Because of that local distributors make much less money - they have to price lower and they don't sell as much. And probably forced this onto Samsung, which couldn't care less I guess since they still sold the phone in the end.

<comment><USER25> It seems to me that Samsung should care because there's a significant correlation between people who engage in regular intercontinental travel and people who buy expensive smartphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If this is driven by carrier request, as the article speculates, then it is yet another example of how the mobile market is broken... Are phone manufacturers selling to consumers/end-users or are they selling to networks/providers? You can't do both, equally -- at least not at the moment -- because the carrier's interests and profit models generally directly conflict with the interests of consumers. Until the wireless industry works a bit harder to align themselves to the needs of their consumers, stuff like this is going to happen. The exception are models like Apple's where they've figured out how to consistently drive profits by focusing on the consumer and using the phone as a platform for selling other things (i.e.: apps and content like movies and music) -- the carriers are almost incidental in Apple's model. Almost.

<comment><USER28> Apple still works with the carriers quite a bit. For example, you can't turn on tethering unless the carrier allows it (often requiring you to pay more money), and most iPhones sold in the US are locked to a single carriers.

But who can blame them? Of the $650 cost of a new iPhone, the user only pays $200, while the carrier pays $450. Apple knows where their bread is buttered.

<comment><USER29> Don't worry, you're paying that entire $650 (and usually then some). It's just hidden in your contract price.

<comment><USER30> THIS is what I don't understand. Why do people call it "subsidized" when you're locked in to a 2 year contract with an early termination fee.

IT IS NOT SUBSIDIZED, PEOPLE.

You may say, well I'm paying the same per month whether I take a new phone or not from the carrier, so... it's subsidized right? Nope, they're just gouging you when you're on an old phone. Taking the new phone just _slightly_ reduces your disadvantage. Let's put it this way, if MVNOs can offer you piggybacked network rates at $X while traditional operators rates are $3X aren't you a bit surprised? It's not that the operators are going to sell to MVNOs for a loss, and not that MVNOs are going to sell to you for a loss.

<comment><USER31> It's subsidised in that they are fronting you the money.

My wife has about £100/month disposable income and pays about £30/month for her handset and contract. When her renewal comes around she can buy the handset for, say £400. Apart from to get that £400 she needs to go without beer and eating out and new shoes for 4 months (never going to happen). Or make do with less for, say, a year (very unlikely given she doesn't really care enough about handsets).

Her alternatives are to take the contract and handset bundle or to buy the handset on credit. Assuming she takes a SIM-only plan like mine (£13/month with limits I've never exceeded) that leaves her with £17/month to pay off the credit on £400. I've not done the figures but I'd say that probably works out at around two years - so it doesn't really give her any advantage beyond avoiding lock-in; which she'll only care about if we change country (remember she's not really bothered about handsets)

Which is all a long way of saying that many people's priorities aren't the same as ours (by which I mean frequenters of Hacker News) - which alters the equation and makes buying off-contract less appealing than getting everything up-front and paying for it over time.

Edit: typos

<comment><USER32> If you come up with detailed numbers you can call it below market rate credit. Not a subsidised phone, subsidised credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I own a Samsung Galaxy S4 - and had a similar message on my box - "This product is only compatible with a SIM-card issue from a mobile operator within the Americas (The North, South and Central Americas and the Caribbean)". However it works perfectly well with European SIM Cards (tested with both Spanish and UK SIMs).

<comment><USER22> I bought mine from Google Play and this message was not included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This (german) source says that the free of charge unlock by a Samsung service partner will make the device accept any SIM-Card. So it is not locked to the new region: [http://allaboutsamsung.de/2013/09/samsung-gibt-statement- gal...](http://allaboutsamsung.de/2013/09/samsung-gibt-statement-galaxy- note-3-galaxy-s-4-und-co-ab-sofort-mit-regionaler-sim-karten-sperre/)

But why Samsung? Why?

</comment><comment><USER35> I own a Galaxy Note 2 and decided quite soon after I would never buy Samsung again even though I think it is a great piece of hardware. The issue is they promised to release sources for certain drivers and never actually did, CyanogenMod said they would not officially support the device[1]. Samsung feel like an anti-consumer company, them pulling a stunt like this would not surprise me[2].

[1] Thankfully they did just recently release a stable version.

[2] I also made the same decision about Sony years ago when they released rootkits on their CD's.

</comment><comment><USER36> Time for someone to create the most advance and far reaching global communication network using satellites, towers and other methods and charge everyone a small base fee for unlimited, global use. No contracts, no need for text, data etc packages, no need for roaming fees. Just one simple payment a month. Unlimited roaming, calling, data, texts, multimedia messages, voicemail, call forwarding, etc. Big communication companies of the day will die, as they should. Easy communication for all, no bs.

<comment><USER37> I guess we could do a Kickstarter. I mean, launching a network of communications satellites can't be _that_ expensive, can it? Right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Looking at Twitter and at Google's first 50 results on Note 3, I can't help but wonder : is the marginal profit they expect from region-locking so high that it will pay for all the bad buzz?

At first sight, even though pricing differences exist between regions around the world, on this kind of products they are not that big, not to mention that that part of these price differences come from retailing alone...

So these differences must be big enough to justify alienating your early adopter userbase, thus endangering the whole adoption process, not to mention bad PR that will stick. When you try too hard to get every cent out of people and they start seeing it - and any locking of that kind screams "I'm going to get more juice out of this" \- they generally don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Guess I won't be buying a Note 3. Sorry Samsung I use my money to vote and I vote not to accept your terms.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's probably to stop people from importing cheaper devices from other regions. Samsung wants the flexibility to price devices differently by region/market and that doesn't work if the consumer can import the cheapest one instead. This will probably continue to escalate because the way the market is heading prices have to get lower in expanding/poorer markets while customers in established/wealthier markets are willing to pay more. This is a side effect of trying to win the race to the bottom on price.

</comment><comment><USER41> if true, unconscionable. The FCC should get on this immediately. I, for one, would never ever buy a Samsung product again. _if true_

</comment><comment><USER42> Yet another reason to only buy unlocked, developer friendly phones.

<comment><USER43> This impacts unlocked Samsung phones.

<comment><USER42> Yes. I mean developer friendly as in Nexus (hopefully stays that way), or Firefox OS right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> My SGS4 actually had a similar sticker ... "European model - this product is only compatible with a SIM-card from one of the following countries..."

<comment><USER34> Can you find out if this is true? Can you try a US SIM-card and see if it works?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Samsung Germany issued a statement on the issue. Apparently, more flagships will be regionally locked, but users will get to unlock the phones at Samsung's service centers.

[http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-note-3-region- lock-s...](http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-note-3-region-lock- statement-277346/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Different regions have different frequencies, so this might just be a warning that the Note 3 isn't penta-band.

<comment><USER43> It isn't. The Note 3 has a list of blacklisted cellular operators outside your region, if you try to use a sim card created by one of them you get an error on the screen and it refuses to connect.

The leaflet is just a leaflet, the issue here is that Samsung have added software intentionally designed to block cross-region usage.

<comment><USER47> This just sounds so anti-consumer, I'm surprised. Do you have a citation that identifies the blacklist?

If so, why would Samsung do something so blatantly anti-consumer? They're a major corporation, they don't get jollies off this, where do they profit?

<comment><USER43> XDA extracted and posted the XML file with a list of carriers to block in it.

[http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2457964&pag...](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2457964&page=17)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is a great business model from the standpoint of making profits (less so from the standpoint of ethics or consumer satisfaction).

Most people don't travel internationally very frequently, and region locking is not something that's marketed, so they only discover it when they actually travel, and then they're forced to buy another phone!

Forget region locking, can't they inflate their profits further at their customers' expense if they just use GPS or tower location to deactivate the phone when the user gets 200 miles from home? That would increase your market from international travelers to domestic travelers...

<comment><USER47> Most folks don't buy another phone and the carrier makes a bundle on $2/min calls from the foreign country.

The smarter folks buy a cheap $30 GSM/CDMA phone before the trip, the even smarter ones have a world phone and confirm it's capable of taking foreign sims (though having a fallback $30 GSM phone isn't a bad idea).

<comment><USER49> > having a fallback $30 GSM phone isn't a bad idea

Especially if you need to use SMS two-factor authentication on your normal home number. Trying to make a bank transfer when the code is sent to SIM A and the data plan is on SIM B is otherwise an interesting challenge. (That's the voice of experience.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've got a Note II and if you look on Wikipedia[1] you'll see there are 16 different models. Mine is one of the two designated as "International" and it was factory unlocked.

I think we need to hold judgement until all the facts are in. It's very possible that they will create an unlocked international version of the Note III as well. From the outcry, it sounds like it would sell well. Only question is if it will have the same limitation as the international Note II: no LTE.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Note_II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Note_II)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm guessing this an attempt at Price Discrimination: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

</comment><comment><USER52> This just goes to show that companies will put as many DRM restrictions as possible on their devices and content, if there's no backlash, just because they "think" it would be a good idea to do it. I wish the general public would fight more against DRM, instead of simply accepting it by saying stuff like "but that's the only way I can use X". It sends companies the wrong message.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is probably about pricing in different markets. They can't sell cheaply in China if those devices end up on ebay being shipped to the US.

<comment><USER54> But strangely the Asian models (e.g. Hong Kong) you'd think Samsung would worry most about in the grey market don't seem to have this restriction: [http://ausdroid.net/2013/09/26/galaxy-note-3-sim- restriction...](http://ausdroid.net/2013/09/26/galaxy-note-3-sim-restriction- asia-and-australia-stock/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a happy Galaxy Note 2 user, that's extremely disappointing. Unless they do an about-face shortly, they've just lost a customer.

</comment><comment><USER55> Haven't seen this mentioned. The phones are region locked only until activated with a SIM from that Region. This way phones have to be used in there home market. I suppose this is for controlling exports from UK or South America to US.

A side... Sprint Iphones SIM SLOT are technically unlockable by Sprint but only to regions/carriers not the US.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm eagerly awaiting some clarification on this. I was going to buy a note 3 the day it becomes available through my carrier. If there is no workaround to the region locking I'll stick with my blackberry 9900 until a better option comes along (perhaps the HTC One Max).

</comment><comment><USER57> Last time I asked a Canadian shop (staples and one other I think) for local sim card I had to explain the concept of a separate sim card in detail.

Are sim cards more common now (or is this the one place where Americans has an edge on Canadians? ;-)

<comment><USER58> Every phone of mine has had a Sim card for at least 10 years. But the plans are so expensive I imagine it's not very common for tourists to pick up sim card while they are visiting Canada.

<comment><USER42> That's why you get pre-paid SIM cards when travelling...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm still getting one but since I'm on sprint I never expected to use the phone outside my region.

Can't want to have it rooted and remove as much of touchwiz as I can while I wait for cyanogen to get ported.

</comment><comment><USER37> What possible reason have they got to do this? Do they really think that customers buying multiple phones will make up from the lost sales from people who wont?

</comment><comment><USER60> I bet Samsung was hoping to "quietly" trick customers and keep kickbacks from carriers.

Welcome to the real world!

<comment><USER61> How would this stay quiet? All it takes is for one blogger to go traveling for it to blow up.

<comment><USER60> Someone at Samsung apparently still lives in the past century.

Time to grab bag of popcorn and watch Samsung trying to save it's face ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> So Australian's won't be able to import them for the ~$100 saving.

(US price ~$740 in AUD, Aus ~$880)

</comment><comment><USER63> Some unlocked and more open alternatives: Nexus, Firefox OS

</comment><comment><USER64> Samsung has really bad support for their phones. Not a fan.

</comment><comment><USER65> The Samsung Galaxy S4 has the same sticker and works with every SIM.

It's just that Samsung lacks focus and is incompetent at communicating with its customers and non Korean employees.

Probably some idiot manager in Europe decided to put this sticker on the case and they don't know about it (or didn't understand this) in their headquarter.

<comment><USER43> According to Samsung only S4s made after July 2013 will be impacted. It has been well confirmed that it isn't just a threat, if you insert the wrong SIM you get an error.

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra It makes precisely zero sense in today's intreconnected world. If this is true they're going to fail hard.

</comment><comment><USER66> Thank goodness I went for the HTC One instead then. I've personally bought local SIM cards in Germany, Sweden, Spain, UK (where I got it from) and South Africa.</comment>


Japan's SoftBank Invests $1B in Satellite Startup OneWeb - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/satellite-startup-oneweb-raises-1-2-billion-in-funding-round-led-by-softbank-1482142137 <comment><USER2> There are currently 4 billion people on earth with no access to the internet whatsoever [1]. If that's not a massive problem that also represents a massive business opportunity, I don't know what is.

1: [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/4-billion-people- stil...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/4-billion-people-still-don-t- have-internet-access-here-s-how-to-connect-them)

<comment><USER3> If they don't have internet access, they probably don't have much disposable income. Also, those 4 billion people are spread across diverse legal jurisdictions, not to mention diverse geographic, linguistic, and economic regions.

I agree it's a massive problem, and I don't doubt there are business opportunities. I just question how massive are those opportunities.

It's like shale oil--there's tons of it, but it's only profitable to extract under the right circumstances.

<comment><USER4> There are also millions of wealthy people who go places (even not far from their homes) where there is no internet access. Remember that business is about filling the area under the demand curve. I'd say that "internet everywhere" is a massive opportunity.

<comment><USER3> A fair point. But there's a difference between a person not having internet access and a place not having internet access. You'd be surprised at the far flung locales that still have internet cafes and WiFi at hotels. The density and quality of internet access in poorer areas is already going to be a function of where wealthy people travel.

Also, you have to correctly judge the cost of service. Demand for internet access is much more elastic than, say, demand for a cure for cancer. The lesson from the Iridium constellation is that even wealthy people aren't necessarily willing to pay as much as needed, or as often as needed, to recoup investments. Iridium succeeded but the original company went bankrupt shortly after starting service.

<comment><USER4> But I want internet at my cabin in the woods - and I'm sure that I am not alone. Lots of things have improved since Iridium, but I agree that that is a warning to heed - you have to know the shape of that demand curve.

<comment><USER5> The entire world (even the most remote places) already has internet access (VSAT, BGAN, etc). OneWeb is just supposed to make rural satellite internet faster and cheaper.

<comment><USER6> Current internet via satellite is barely usable due to the extremely high latency. It's better than nothing but many services are de facto not usable. I've just been to Scotland and many places there have to rely on satellite internet, I'm sure the vast majority of them would be happy to switch to lower latency connections (and could pay well for it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I first read about OneWeb (2 years ago?) I figured it would be vaporware. However, things keep looking more and more promising.

I think these guys are finally going to open the door to having real mobile internet anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER8> I believe SpaceX is also gunning for a similar satellite constellation for internet service[1]. The more serious players in this space, the better (no pun intended).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1996[1] to 2016 which puts it 20 years before its time (maybe). Given solar cells and battery tech an airplane at 100K feet makes a lot more sense and seems to have much easier maintenance mechanisms (land the plane periodically).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic)

<comment><USER10>
      easier maintenance mechanisms

It might cost more to put into orbit than to put up in a plane, but once there, satellites don't tend to need maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment> irq-1 I suppose connection to this or the SpaceX satellite system will be the new short-wave radio -- borderless and uncontrollable by governments.

<comment><USER11> Uncontrollable by governments ? Why ? Easy to disrupt the frequency and if you're following the law you need a frequency license in the first place. If you don't get one, they have a good reason to disrupt you even if that's the only thing you're doing wrong.

<comment><USER12> That's all true. But isn't that all true of short-wave radio as well?</comment></comment></comment>


Broadcast TV Struggles to Stay Viable - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/business/media/28network.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> It seems that broadcast TV and the newspapers have the same problem: their business models were based on the once natural coupling of the generation, aggregation, and syndication of content. While the economies of scale of printing and delivery naturally coupled these roles, the 'net allowed for their disbanding.

When I have a spare hour, I want to take a couple of copies of my "local" paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and cut out each individual non-advertising piece of content. Then, I want to separate them into piles: (1) locally- generated content with a local perspective, (2) non-local content with local interest, and (3) non-local content.

#1 = Story on some local crime that doesn't affect people who aren't Clevelanders

#2 = Stories about KeyBank. Although they might be written by the AP, they are of special interest to Clevelanders. This probably doesn't include the local movie reviewer unless the film was shot in Cleveland or something like that.

#3 = The AP article about what Obama ate for breakfast today.

I'm pretty sure that the portion of the paper that falls into pile #1 and #2 is pretty small. I skip over #3 because I've already read a better article in The Times. The PD, like almost all local papers, relies on the artificial coupling of generation, aggregation, and syndication to justify its business model. Interestingly, the PD has a terrible internet presence (cleveland.com), but it at least seems to filter out the unique, local content.

How are the broadcast networks different? Youtube has proven that consumers prefer to consume the good content from the broadcast networks at their leisure even if the video quality is sub-standard. So, the big networks' broadcast/syndication capabilities are no longer the value they once were. The NetFlix Roku has proven that the internet is good enough to publish high- quality content cheaply, and it costs only slightly more than a digital TV converter box!

The network's role as aggregator of content has never been seen as a significant benefit -- Who chooses which shows to watch based on the network showing them?

So, what value is left for the networks? They are better than just about anyone else at identifying and producing top-tier content. No one has done an internet-based ER or Friends (yet). Is it the network's ability to use its large audience to market new shows that provides its remaining value? By knowing that they can get people interested in the next ER, they can afford to throw $5M at a pilot. Can alternative methods of producing and marketing high- quality content compete? In the short-term, perhaps. But, when mainstream, entertainment-related content providers (sites about TV, magazines about entertainment and celebrities, etc.) start to talk about the last episode of the new internet-only show right along with a summary of last night's Grey's Anatomy, the networks' last remaining source of power may decompose.

I was surprised that the NYTimes article didn't make a better comparison of the networks' fate with that of the newspapers as their plights are not so different.

Questions I have:

1\. How can a business be made of local news production? I'd be willing to pay for it, but I'm not sure that enough people would be.

2\. It seems that iTunes, etc. provide a good means of charging consumers for video content. How can the funding/publicity model be changed to allow an internet-only ER to happen? Am I wrong to presume that consumers want top production quality?

I almost pitched this post because I wasn't sure that I'd said anything that hasn't been said over the past few years, but I decided to keep in hopes of sparking some discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> The key is in switching to an actionable ad model. Let's say I'm watching TV, and I know I'm going to have to buy toothpaste anyways. Then an ad comes up that says: Try this new toothpaste, it tastes like pork mixed with vanilla, and it just so happens I like pork mixed with vanilla, I click a button and my order of toothpaste is in. Or I'm watching a TV show, and then a 10 second Ad about the new Lexus comes up. I'm interested, so I hit the interest button and when the show is over, a browsable website is available with more information.

But this will not work on the current broadcast system. It only works on the web, and that's why TV is going to have to merge with the Web. The infrastructure is almost all in place, it's just a matter of switching. This is the real shake-up that is about to come, not gradient borders on todo lists.

Some TV shows are good, but they are expensive. But people pay for entertainment. There will always be an audience for Battlestar Galactica, and if the networks cannot offer it, someone else will offer it by making it cheaper and make the profits.

<comment><USER4> Dish Network already does this, but I've only seen it during commericals for PPV content or (periodically) cars. It displays a little "Hit Select for more info" text/icon. It makes sense to do it for PPV, since the thing being advertised can be provided right there. For real-life goods, I've never wanted the show I'm watching to be interrupted so it's never made sense to me why they'd take you away from the reason you're watching TV to begin with. Your idea of showing it afterward, or adding it to a list of things you're interested in so that you can review them at your leisure is interesting though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something smells funny. We're supposed to believe that tiny, cable-only networks can afford to produce high-quality content (i.e. AMC could afford to create "Mad Men"), but that the major networks are so strapped that they would no longer attempt to pilot shows that are demonstrated to be cash cows (i.e. "Lost")?

I understand that cable providers gain extra revenue by charging for the delivery, but this explanation still sounds bogus. Could it be that the networks are simply _unwilling_ to pay for decent content, and are instead trapped in a cycle wherein they must settle for crappy "reality" TV that's cheap to make, but has the half-life (and revenue-generation potential) of dead fish? Advertisers like to have their name associated with brands like "Friends" and "ER" -- even in re-runs. I'm not sure they're as willing to pay to be associated with re-runs of "MILF Island".</comment>