If A Driverless Car Crashes, Who's Liable? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/08/173766352/if-a-driverless-car-crashes-whos-liable <comment><USER2> The same entities who would be responsible if engines started randomly falling out of cars: automakers.

If driving becomes a feature of the car itself and that feature fails in a way that causes and accident, there's no other answer. Maybe they'll find some kind of loophole where the self-driving feature is only covered for X years under a warranty? I don't think it would be too far-fetched for them to argue that the sensors for automated driving can deteriorate over time, at which point the consumer's insurer would become responsible for damages caused by any failure.

That being said, it might be in our best interest (or Google's?) to shoulder some of the liability if this issue would otherwise be a major hurdle preventing the adoption of self-driving technology by automakers.

<comment><USER3> However engines falling out of cars do not injure other parties. Driver less cars have the possibility of injuring others. Currently the blame would reside with the operator, but I am pretty sure some certain Texas courts would let the creator of the car, the software, the electronics, and whomever else had big pockets, get sued and lose.

Unless they totally remove the ability for the driver to take over control of the car I do not see how you remove fault from the person in that seat.

<comment><USER4> I'd think an engine failure has a similar capacity to injure other parties.

The automation has to get to the stability where such failures happen about the same amount of time as engine failures (rarely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _In the 1980s, the rising threat of liability prompted vaccine manufacturers to pull out of the business. So Congress stepped in and created a new system for people who are injured by vaccines. Cases are handled in special hearings, and victims are paid out of a fund created by a special tax on vaccines._

That is interesting. I can't imagine the car manufacturers will be able to handle the costs of the liability by themselves (using our current model of car insurance), and you have to wonder if they should have to (how much is the "driver" responsible for? Is a "driver" in Manhattan riskier than one in Wyoming?)

It's also interesting that we might not even care if it weren't for the fact that we all have to pay for car insurance now. I mean, nobody wonders who's going to cover the liability of a subway system. Perhaps this will wind up a government service, out of reach of the personal injury lawyers. Or like guns, which enjoy some specific protections from lawsuits.

<comment><USER6> Vaccines don't compare to cars as much since the mere _exposure_ to cars don't really cause injury or death. Unless they're in motion or were in the car while running (carbon monoxide poisoning).

Although so many people drive, and there are so many accidents, it isn't an imminent threat to all people. The mere exposure to a disease is often all that's needed to for it to spread to an individual's family and their families/friends and so on until we have an exponential infection rate. This puts vaccines on the critically needed list so the government stepped in to mitigate the greater harm of lacking them altogether.

I still think it will be a case of shared blame for driverless cars, although my hope is that blame would be largely unnecessary. If driverless cars can reach the same reliability of autopilots in aircraft, this will save lives.

<comment><USER7> The mere exposure to cars can cause injury or death. How about getting run over on the street? How about getting poisoned by exhaust fumes? It is an imminent threat to all people. Driverless cars are likely to be safer, and hopefully eventually cleaner, but ask the people who had to breathe that crap back when there was lead in gas whether exposure to cars is dangerous or not.

<comment><USER6> Hence the... "Unless they're in motion or were in the car while running (carbon monoxide poisoning)."

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see what you mean now. That was an extremely confusing sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Liability would be determined by a court on a case by case basis. The Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill will be a good guide. Multiple manufacturers involved in a difficult court battle.

1) First, you would determine which vehicle malfunctioned. If a blowout of a tire is the malfunction rather than the automated driving system only, the court would need to assign damages to A) the tire manufacturer for the blowout and B) the automation creation company for not designing a system that detects the blowout and prevents the crash...

In this example, 100% of the blame may fall on the tire manufacturer if it is determined that there is no way for the automated system to do anything else. Like a near by cliff with an oncoming truck for example.

Most cases should assign damages based on percent of fault.

Overtime, legislators will probably set rules to make legal actions happen faster and with more efficiency.

This entire process will be lengthy, expensive and challenging. But, the overall net benefit of going through the process will be driverless cars and we call all agree that the benefits of driverless cars will be amazing.

Note: Google Chrome says the word "driverless" is misspelled, they should add it to their dictionary.

</comment><comment><USER9> In theory, self-driving cars should all perform equally within the same range and, probably, within the same manufacturer - you'd assume they'd put the same system into each car, and keep it updated to their latest best effort. In fact, this principle should perhaps be enshrined in law.

Therefore, individual owners do not need to be taken into account. Simply calculate the average cost of an accident and multiply it by the likelihood of that maker's system causing a crash, and send the owners a bill each year.

It doesn't even really need to be determined who "caused" the crash in each specific instance. It should be plainly obvious, statistically, which self- driving systems are more likely to be involved in accidents - premiums would be weighted to reflect that, and this would encourage a virtuous cycle of improvement incentivisation.

<comment><USER10> But some people will be on the road more often than others, so the likelihood of an incident will be different.

I think it would be much better to add a premium onto the fuel the car uses and all claims would go to a central organisation.

Self driving cars should level out risk we currently have in different driving demographics i.e. a teenager in car is as likely to crash as someone who has been on the road for 20 years. So it's not like you'd be paying more "liability coverage" than you should.

<comment><USER9> Ah yes that is a good point. Fuel use would be a reasonable start as a proxy for kilometers driven, but why not just go the whole way and measure the actual kilometers?

I agree about the central organisation. I don't believe private insurance companies add much value and with the removal of personal driver fault they add no value at all. There is no reason it can't be managed via a not-for- profit, competent central organisation similar to any other aspect of registration.

<comment><USER10> the reason I prefer measuring energy use rather than distance travelled is that it also taxes less efficient cars.

safe + efficient is the goal for transport in my view!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing the article didn't discuss: the massive amount of data that driverless cars will collect and store. The "automotive black boxes" will help us analyze and simulate accidents in ways we just can't now. As the responsibility for driving switches to the manufacturers, so will the liability. However, with fewer accidents and better data (when an accident does occur) the industry should be well positioned to bear the burden.

</comment><comment><USER12> Its hard for IT folks NOT to 'Download & Apply' the latest release to get 'that' feature. I have learned over period off time to wait for a stable release. Its possible that Car Maker releases a bug, which lets say " doesn't apply the brakes" in time. What happens say 100,000 ppl 'Download the latest automatically at night 3:00 AM " ? Who is responsible ?

<comment><USER13> Some obvious implementation details that spring to mind...

Whoever owns the code, owns the car's liability. It is in the best interests of the manufacturer to be able to detect a vehicle not running a signed release, and require an explicit liability acceptance from the owner. Doing so whenever registration changes hands is probably a requirement, too. Or disable the ability to change the code unless you ask for an individual key that requires you to accept liability when you use it.

No reason to roll out to all the 2017 Toyota AutoCorolla Xv examples at once -- after QA acceptance, do staged roll-outs to increasing group sizes. Best if the first few hundred were all Toyota employees.

Roll-back to the previous version or a "known good" release, should be simple and obvious.

<comment><USER14> "The first group that we'll roll out to is the cars that drive your children. Cheers!"

Interesting, if not very threatening

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually think that the entire problem is that currently cars have drivers. So the current situation is that drivers are forced to behave reasonable. But this is because there is a human in the loop, who will act due to distractions (or malice) less than optimal. On the other hand a driverless car always performs as designed and therefore there are a lot less possible failure modes involved, in fact I think essentially the only two failure modes are failures due to improper testing and design flaws ( the manufacturer is responsible) or due to neglected maintenance or actually unforeseeable conditions ( the owners insurance is liable). So I think that a driverless car should be viewed like a malfunctioning coffee machine instead of like a car that is involved in an accident.

</comment><comment><USER16> Auto makers and car insurance companies will not go quietly into the night when it comes to allowing drivers to shift liability. They both profit too dramatically from things as they are, to just let drivers suddenly not carry the coverage.

We might very well wake up to a comedy of drivers still having to carry their full insurance on their driverless cars (it'll be argued that it's part of the privilege and responsibility of owning a vehicle).

</comment><comment><USER17> this is not a problem because if other cars with the same program don't crash it's not the programmer's. The owner of the vehicle will pay. But if others also crash with similar situations, then the programmer/company will pay.

That said, I will never get a self driving car. I like automation in everything except cars. Driving should be a fun experience.

<comment> Tuna-Fish In a few short years, laws will prevent you from driving on the public roads without some level of automation.

There are something like >30k deaths on the highways per year these days. That's the equivalent of all American Vietnam war casualties every two years. The highways are more dangerous than any war the US has been in since the WW2. And a very large proportion of those deaths can be called "innocent" -- not at fault in their death in any way.

There really is only one reason this is accepted by the public. Because there is no alternative. There is no policy you can establish that would stop the deaths that would not also inconvenience everyone too much.

Once self-driving cars fall down in price enough to be a real possibility, every highway death where a non-automated car was involved turns from something sad, but inevitable into something that is squarely blamed on the existence of that traditional car. "This wouldn't have happened if Datsundere wouldn't have put his personal enjoyment above the safety of everyone else on the road."

Since car makers will be happy to lobby for this (why not, they get to sell everyone something new), since there will be enough relatives of dead people so the grassroots support is strong, since the federal government has control over roads, and since there are no strong lobbies to oppose it, this will pass as a law as soon as it's actually feasible to replace/refit all the cars on the road.

The best you can hope for is a car that will allow you to turn off the automation in situations the car deems safe, with the car automatically taking over if it feels like something is wrong.

Beyond that, the only place you will have a fun driving experience in the future is on the track.

<comment><USER18> I think you underestimate the extent to which people truly, honestly don't believe that it will happen to them, provided they are in control of the car. A self-driving car just doesn't give you that assurance. Besides, who would trust their adorable children, the lights of their very life, to a robot? A mindless, unthinking automaton, a heartless killing machine with no soul?

<comment><USER19> I think you underestimate how pervasive the demonstrated superiority of autonomous vehicles will be.

Right now, we just have some videos showing fancy parallel parking: [http://www.gizmag.com/just-how-good-will-autonomous- automobi...](http://www.gizmag.com/just-how-good-will-autonomous-automobiles- get-watch-this/15096/)

By the time legislation is being contemplated, everyone will have seen groups of autonomous vehicles moving in near perfect synchronization through lights, around obstacles, etc. The statistics will be overwhelming. The evidence will be all around us and only the last few hold-outs will need to be convinced with financial incentives (insurance rates) or legal ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The insurance company. How is this different than no fault insurance, or accidents caused by any other mechanical failure?

<comment><USER21> No fault only applies to personal injury.

If I'm driving along, over-correct on a turn and smash into your fence, it's my responsibility. If I do nothing wrong, but my tire blows out, I'm still responsible.

If my tire blows out because the repair shop over-inflated it, or because there is a material defect in the tire, that's where responsibility lands.

The question is, when my robot car overcorrects (ie. driver error), am I responsible, or is the manufacturer? And in what circumstances is the manufacturer negligent?

I'd dare say that once automated cars move out of California and Nevada and start showing up in Minnesota and New York, things will get complex quickly.

<comment><USER22> If you are not in control of the car at the moment of the accident, then the manufacturer is liable for providing faulty equipment.

Good intentions does not do away with liability.

For that matter, why would you even purchase insurance for a vehicle like that. It should be supplied by the manufacturer.

Possibly even the car should not be owned by you, since you are not 100% in control at all times. But that's debatable, since people are attached to car ownership.

<comment><USER23> _is liable for providing faulty equipment._

If a street racer modifies their car? If you didn't perform routine car washing so the sensors where unable to sense? The car was in a wreck last month and the repair shop didn't do as good a job as they should have? The car is 30 years old and stuff naturally wears out? There are so many variables that manufacturer pays maybe a first approximation to an answer but no where near the whole answer.

<comment><USER22> All of that is part of the reason why I will never own a robot car until they hammer out those details. Currently, when I buy a car, the manufacturer/dealer specifies what they are responsible for and how long. The rest is on me. So I have to purchase driver's insurance.

A robot car? I'm not the driver. The manufacturer is, by robot proxy. So, perhaps the manufacturer should be insuring the car. After all, at that point, I'm just a passenger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just like with human drivers: insurance companies. It's just the same as no fault auto insurance always is.

<comment><USER25> Yes. If self-driving cars significantly reduce accidents, insurance companies can use it as incentive to lower rates. The rates for cars that can only be driven manually might even skyrocket.

<comment><USER19> Just imagine once drivers of autonomous vehicles take manual drivers to court for causing fatal accidents "that could have been avoided by using a cheaply available autonomous vehicle". The word "negligence" will be thrown around. Some law suits will succeed in some states. Insurance rates for manual driving will rocket skyward, making buying that new autonomous car or kit for your current car cheaper than buying the insurance for 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it possible for a manufacturer to just provide a statement upfront when you buy the car that they can't guarantee that the car is 100% accident-proof, and you use the car at your own risk? That might put people off initially, but as people get more exposure and realize the cars are more or less safe, they'd be willing to use them and just get insurance like they currently do.

</comment><comment><USER27> Who cares? It will almost never happen, compared to how often humans crash cars.

There will be some convention and eventually laws about this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Joint and several liability = almost everyone.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's much more complex than that. We're in 2013 and there are _still_ major companies being breached within due to buffer-overflow based security exploits. Buffer overflows.

That's just one example: there are countless of zero days exploits and, if anything, security has only been getting worse and worse, with more and more insecure technologies that we rely upon daily.

What makes you think these cars are going to be secure? What makes you think the company providing the roadmap data is going to be secure? What makes you these cars are going to be running on a separate network and what makes you think that network would be secure?

Regarding liability and thinking that "automakers" are going to be the one liable is an over-simplification: just look at the latest Boeing. It's back an forth between at least three companies to determine who's liable.

Who is going to be reliable when there _shall_ be a human death involving a security exploit in the OS / software stack in one of these cars?

The question is not _if_ , it's _when_ btw.

<comment><USER30> There isn't just one OS in these cars running a monolithic instance of DRIVE.EXE.

If one sensor sees a person and another sensor does not, the car doesn't flip a coin before driving through that spot. It doesn't drive through that spot.

The real failure mode for automated cars will be how easy it is to make them stop in their tracks because someone fooled just one of the sensors into seeing a human.</comment></comment>


WHAT IS VERO, AND WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE DOWNLOADING IT? - <AUTHOR> https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/what-is-vero-app-social-media <comment><USER2> It would be great to see such a platform thrive. In my opinion Instagram is now ruined by its recent changes, and anecdotally, myself and those close to me have left it. Although I worry that paying even a token amount for software is enough to put most users off.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Spamming the only way to get users? - rush-tea

Last week we heard about how Path spams its users by contacting every single one of the users contact in the address book.  Even now FB is blocking Path API access to FB friends.
Previously, we heard the same thing about airbnb, that airbnb spams Craigslist by making fake ads and then ask users to go to airbnb.
So now at least we know 2 startups that made its way to glory by spamming. I mean, yeah, users acquisition is part of the game, but I wonder if to be succeed, you have to play 'dirty' and spam along the way. <comment><AUTHOR> User acquisition is probably the biggest challenge for an early-stage startup (<http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html>). Your definition of "spamming," is pretty broad.

"Spamming" by itself is not malicious. In the case of Path, the app is only as valuable as my network of friends who is on it, so you can be damn sure I'm going to invite them. In the case of AirBnB, people saw the ads, signed up and ostensibly got value out of AirBnB, so what was the harm?

Not sure what your problem with "spamming," is (even though you have provided two examples that are pretty different), but I imagine that yes, startups will continue to grow at all costs because they have to in order to survive.

<comment> rush-tea My definition spamming is by market your product to untargeted audience. for path example, it's clearly the contacts in your address book is untargeted people as they have no interests in Path.

As for airbnb, this is more like junk emails, where everything is automated, fake, and you just pray that you can get 1-2% hits. yes, it's kind of targeted audience since the users are clicking the ads, but the ads itself is a FAKE ads because it does nothing but directs you to another site, just like the nigerian million dollar spam. I mean airbnb is a real site, but the ads content is 100% fake. maybe phishing is a better word than spam.

<comment><USER2> Airbnb essentially just e-mailed people that listed rentals on Craigslist with a message that said "hey, you should list this on Airbnb.com too". You could call that spam, but there's nothing fake about the content of the message, nor is the linked website purporting to be anything it's not.

<comment><USER3> "... _there's nothing fake about the content of the message,_..."

It has been almost 2 years since this story broke, so I think it is beneficial to read the original article and the HN comments that appeared at the time: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603844>

I think nhagen - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2604918> \- summed up what is wrong with the emails best:

" _I don't hate that they did this, but I hate that they tried to pretend they were anonymous women that happened to really like AirBnB. Why be so shady about it and instead why not just be honest?_ "

I think it is clear that AirBnB also understood that the Craigslist messages were not above board, based on the apology that Christopher Lukezic, their spokesman, sent to several news publications.

" _We have since learned that some of these remote contract sales people were apparently aggressive with their outreach and may have used Craigslist to attract customers to our service who were not open to solicitation. This is not a tactic we condone or endorse, and it is our policy to forbid such actions._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2 startups is hardly enough evidence to say that's the only way of acquiring users.

Besides, if the "spam" is actually helpful and appropriate, what is spam to you may be a welcomed way to learn about a new product for another person.

That said, never trust a marketing messaged signed by the Prince of Nigeria. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Who did Instagram spam? Would you rather have been Instagram or Path?

<comment><USER6> Who did Facebook spam? Would you rather be Facebook or Instagram?

I don't have a strong opinion on this topic, just pointing out a flaw in your logic.

<comment><USER5> Who did Facebook spam?

<comment><USER7> I don't know the history, but the social network movie highlighted the spamming of his college network through email.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't inconvenienced by it, but I remember myself and everyone at Dartmouth receiving a single email inviting us to join Facebook at the same time somewhere in the early winter of 2004. It wasn't a viral action like "your friend has added you", but was instead a direct invitation to sign up. I remember my roommates and I all immediately signed up and wasted the first of many hours on there.

I think the email was from another Dartmouth student, so I assume they just paid someone to send the entire campus an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wait, I thought AirBnB called it 'growthhacking'.</comment>


Designing Social Systems Without Causing Depression and War - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-to-build/how-to-design-social-systems-without-causing-depression-and-war-3c3f8e0226d1 <comment><USER2> This article and this comment thread are prime examples of why the tech industry needs social science and humanities. There are literally centuries of human though and decades of experimentation that addresses this problem, and the constant throughout history is that it is is both hard and complicated.

<comment><USER3> Co-signed, especially the idea that studying the humanities is useful even though (in fact because) the conclusion they give is often that these problems are hard and complicated. The most common reason I find myself wishing people approaching these problems in tech formally studied humanities is not because the humanities have "the answer" but because if _you_ think you have an answer, it's almost certainly been thought of before, and analyzed for decades.

Not reading admittedly boring and often inane philosophical books and instead trying to build your philosophy from first principles... tends to lead to whatever philosophy was created 50 years ago and has now permeated culture. Like how for a while, every geek I knew trying to re-invent moral philosophy ended up at utilitarianism, only to find out that the good counter-arguments had been made a long time ago; these days, people thinking about the internet, social pressure, and the nature of reality seem to be slowly re-inventing Foucault and Baudrillard without daring to touch the confusing French texts.

<comment><USER4> "every geek I knew trying to re-invent moral philosophy ended up at utilitarianism, only to find out that the good counter-arguments had been made a long time ago"

And kudos for overall quality post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good and ethical behavior should be incentivized, both on short and long timescales. It is obviously not enough to punish the wrongdoers, because our laws don't prevent everyone from killing, discriminating, or exploiting their fellow people.

Currently so much rides on mere survival that the only effective objective function we have to consider our actions is that of money. Either the capitalist system needs to be diversified to encourage multi-objective optimization wrt quality of life across all lifeforms, or it needs to be dismantled and another form of cooperation that directly incentivizes helping your fellow human/animal survive should be installed.

Think about it like this: rather than writing some complicated optimization algorithm that sometimes climbs hills and sometimes descends them according to some arbitrary judgment scheme, we redesign the objective function so that all ethical behavior lies along stable manifolds. We can effectively hack human psychology by exploiting its predispositions to incentivize ultimately good behavior.

This "good behavior" doesn't even necessarily need to be complex or controversial: something as simple as the Golden Rule would likely be sufficient.

E: to add that I recently attended a contemporary art exhibition where one of the exhibits was the introduction of a new cryptocurrency called Kineticoin[1], which supposedly awards artistic contributions to society. How exactly to distribute this value is up for debate, but it is a sorely needed one, IMO.

[1] [https://kineticoin.weebly.com/](https://kineticoin.weebly.com/)

<comment><USER6> I have a few questions for you

Who gets to decide what is "Good" and "Ethical" behavior ?

What exactly would be the "incentive" "Good" and "Ethical" behavior. ? You say that capitalism can be dismantled in favor of another form cooperation that directly incentivizes helping your fellow human survive. Is this not in direct contradiction the base animal instinct of self survival. The incentive would have to be huge in order to override this base instinct.

You suggest Golden Rule as sufficient way to define "good behavior". But Golden Rule itself has shortcomings and criticism ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Criticism)). Do you have any sufficient argument against these criticism.

<comment><USER7> I like the Inverse Golden Rule - Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

<comment><USER8> That's the Silver Rule: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to others."

Sometimes reformulated as "An it harm none, do as ye list."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it boils down to 2 options:

1\. Persuade people to choose to be kind.

2\. Manipulate people so that they act in a kind way (or avoid acting in an unkind way), without necessarily wanting to be kind.

Option 1 means you need a good way to remove unkind people from your own experience ("free listening"). This is typically not popular with commercial social network services, because this lets you ignore adverts too.

Option 2 reduces this need, but leads to the problem of who is "allowed" to do the manipulation, and who decides this?

When communicating in person, most people have years of learned behaviour (learned from millennia of social norms) nudging them towards acting kindly (or at least not actively unkind), because in person there are immediate, unavoidable social consequences. These consequences are absent when communicating remotely, such as via the internet. I'll let you decide for yourself whether this counts as option 1 or option 2.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand your criticism of option 1. As a Facebook user, I can remove anyone I want from my feed either by "unfriending" them or simply unsubscribing from their feed. Ads are not people so Facebook doesn't provide a facility for unsubscribing from them (and I assume they do some kind of curation on them since they generally seem of decent enough quality for internet ads). Of course, I use an ad blocker to ignore them anyway, but that's beside my lack of understanding of your criticism.

To your criticism of option two, I think this is the fundamental flaw in the goal of engineered social systems. There are groups which have radically different ideas about what is "kind". Extreme religious fanatics would say it's unkind to let someone "live in sin", so extreme measures are considered kind for the spiritual well-being of the individual and the community. Secular western thought is more interested in material well-being, so it would say kindness is the promotion of the material well-being of others, generally without passing judgment on how they choose to live (except insofar as it violates others' material well-being).

So the decision of who decides what's kind can lead to completely different interpretations of what kindness is and how the social system behaves.

<comment><USER11> I think you're conflating "kind" with "moral" here. I've never heard of a religious person justifying censure of a sinner based on kindness

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually, I find it interesting how HN incentivizes good behavior with their karma system. Yes, HN discussions are most of the time not about social values, but nevertheless I found that it changed me a bit, so that I think more about how to write my comments.

So what I like about the system, is that (for experienced users) down voting is allowed and that a down voted comment is getting less attention (less karma damage, less reader damage) and that is getting faded out (so while reading comments you can quickly skip the bad comments).

That way, you don't have to be afraid of writing a bad comment accidentally, because the system takes care of it, but when you write one you can see that that less people are reading it compared to a good one. I just wish down voting would require writing an answer. Nothing is more frustrating than a down voted comment when you do not know why people didn't like it.

Over the past years, I found that other readers like comments which tell them something new and insightful about the topic. Links for further reading and as references for opinions are also appreciated.

<comment> aaron-lebo To be contrary, I find HN/Reddit point systems to be related to the degradation of discussion. It's a popularity contest. Good comments do not always get upvoted (in fact, they may be downvoted because people don't want to hear it). But salacious and ill-informed stuff gets upvoted a lot.

You very quickly get hive minded behavior: similar beliefs get upvoted, contrary ones get hidden, so soon enough you've got an echo chamber, powered by worthless Internet points.

It's a very basic hack on our psychology - we like points, but maybe it's not alltogether good. It works ok on HN because it's a decent community with moderation intended to keep the discussion good. But Twitter and most subreddits are horrible abuses of this and I'm not sure people would spend so much time arguing on the Internet if they simply weren't rewarded so directly for doing so.

<comment><USER13> I frequently see people describe HN and Reddit as 'fickle' or 'hypocritical'. But the underlying pattern seems to be a nasty consequence of point-based ordering: whatever comes first does best.

There are some great breakdowns of Reddit comment karma by time after post. The direction is obvious - earlier comments score better - but the exponential falloff is still a sight to behold. Any view that isn't outrageous enough to downvote heavily can win just by arriving first, being seen most, and being upvoted by commenters trying to increase their own engagement. (HN removes 'downvote' when people reply to you. I wonder if it should discount upvotes on comments you reply to?)

It's a less-trolled system than the open queue of a messageboard, and more conversational than the obscure branching pattern of Twitter or Tumblr. But it's not much good for comprehensive, noninflammatory discussion.

<comment><USER14> That is somewhat negated by the fact that dissenting users from a post with a 'skewed' comment section can often go make their own post in response. This happens rather more frequently on Reddit than here since HN discourages duplicate posting on a topic.

<comment><USER15> > _HN discourages duplicate posting on a topic_

I would grudgingly agree, but found it funny that the following example sat on the front page the same day as your comment, and the second post exceeded the original's points & comments!

It is possible to detect and block Chrome headless | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175646) (currently 146 points, 105 comments)

9 hours later: It is not possible to detect and block Chrome headless | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179181) (currently 341 points, 158 comments)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article doesn't dare touch on the idea that online communities may actually be detrimental to good social interaction. We evolved for face-to- face. In-person relationships are rich, rewarding and not as prone to miscommunication.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think it can be taken as an assumption that "social systems" in the digital space can exist as a net social positive. The most fundamental problem in all groups is that 'well received' messages are far different than 'good' messages. And the feedback and filtering mechanisms in all current digital social systems strongly incentivize the former over the latter. And I don't think there's any particularly good way to solve this. Even in real life large purposeless gatherings of mostly bored people rarely leads to desirable things.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is unnatural and inhuman ... hence any social system that root out this is bad. Accept what we are and deal with it squarely. Escape is not a solution.

<comment><USER19> Maybe this is one way/method to deal with it? Squarely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am convinced of the future existence of MOOPs - massive online open psychology - where we aggregate the daily actions of millions (arguing with children, discussions with the boss, food choices etc) and look for patterns and better choices for each of us at the upcoming moment (Siri, what is the best way to tell my wife her bum does look big in that, ... based on 500,000 similar conversations, the best 1% responses were when the phrase "xxx" was used)

This is feeling similar - that we need or want our virtual environment to help us - in practise sessions as he seems to say, or in advice

It seems we want science, but at the level of our personal, everyday, choices. we want to trust our computing environments have our best interests at heart.

and that kind of means no commercial interests can be involved.

<comment><USER21> I think a world in this scenario is pretty much a dystopia.

If every person chooses for the better response and action given the a situation how can a individual be unique?

If all husbands reply to a bum in the exactly same way why do you really need a husband? Failing is a big part of being human, sometimes that can cause harm but failing and learning is one of ours core functions.

I rather be good than be you?

(Sorry if i made my post a bit 'agressive', its not my intent, english is not my main language and i still have to learn how to write properly)

<comment><USER22> In your definition, being unique is being unlike others, so you are heavily shaped by others already, trying to squeeze in to a niche not yet claimed. I don't see how being forced to be unlike others is any better than being forced to be like others: you're being forced either way.

Also, I don't think that asking for advice removes agency. You still have to think if the advice is applicable to your unique situation, how can it be modified to fit better, and which of several conflicting pieces of advice has more merit. An advice from Siri on any life situation is nigh useless without a deeper understanding of the situation, a Siri can't have it unless she lived a big chunk of your life. So, armed with whatever advice, you still remain ultimately responsible.

<comment><USER21> I think that the uniqueness is not defined by being unlike others but by being on your on, when yourself process the sintuation and decide to follow it.

And for your second argument, it's just to easy to follow the computers "orders", a lot of people would just go for the order because it's already justified, something along the lines of "I would do different, but the machine told me that everyone that on in that way get something wrong".

I agree that this type of software would be good when one needs advices, but it would have to be complete trustworthy, giving wrong advices to a suicidal person by example can be devastating (and in this case not even thinking about the manipulation that would be possible by the corporation).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Keras-OCR is an end-to-end, trainable OCR pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/faustomorales/keras-ocr <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I made this because I wanted a toolkit for training custom OCR models that included both text detection and recognition along with the necessary tools to create synthetic data. Existing synthetic data generators had more dependencies and set-up than I felt was absolutely necessary so I took a different tack that limited dependencies to PIL only.

Some use cases for this package:

\- You can use the pretrained (trained by others!) models for OCR (see the README for an example) on English text. [0]

\- You can fine-tune a version of the detection and recognition models on a different alphabet / language (see the tutorial [1]).

\- You can just use the data generator with backgrounds and fonts (I provide a packaged set of both) to create images with character-level annotations for some other model [2].

I'd really like to continue improving the image generator to render more realistic images while retaining the existing mix of simplicity / flexibility. Ideas welcome!

[0] [https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/using_pr...](https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/using_pretrained_models.html)

[1] [https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/end_to_e...](https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/end_to_end_training.html)

[2] [https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/end_to_e...](https://keras- ocr.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/end_to_end_training.html#generating- synthetic-data)

<comment><USER2> You should market this more, there is a severe need for a Tesseract replacement, it has been falling behind current state of the art, especially compared to many cloud offerings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tesseract is a great solution for scanning books -- but agree that it doesn't work very well for most other use cases, especially when compared to cloud providers. FWIW, I have started trying to compare keras-ocr against the cloud options. [1]

[1] [https://github.com/faustomorales/keras-ocr#comparing- keras-o...](https://github.com/faustomorales/keras-ocr#comparing-keras-ocr- and-other-ocr-approaches)</comment></comment></comment>


FreeBSD Bhyve WiFi PCI Passthrough - <AUTHOR> https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/t480-bhyve-wifi-pci-passthrough <comment><USER2> That's interesting, but wouldn't it make more sense to have a compatibility system that would allow Linux drivers to be used? Apparently there's one for Windows drivers: [https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen&sektion=8](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen&sektion=8)</comment>


Is experience or skill more important when creating a web startup? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am interested to know what the people here think about this topic. I have added some context below to frame the discussion around something. It is a long. Apologies if you fall asleep before getting to the end ;)
I have been having a debate with some grad-students/MBAs at Oxford regarding a web startup they want to do and about the need for experience vs skill in the developer(s).
About them: "We are a group of postgrad students (Oxford) and we're currently loking into setting up a web 2.0 startup. It will be a social networking portal, focusing on a user base of about 20million in the EU plus about 20million in the USA, which has not been covered yet. The portal will also include a number of novel features and will be unique in its composition. We are about to finish the business plan and already acquired high-profile consultants for the board and established first VC/BA contacts.
Due to the central importance of the role (CTO) we require something along the lines of 3-5 years of experience in PHP/MySQL and scalable architectures."
I can't talk about what it is they will do or the novel features etc. so please don't ask :)
I thought I would play a counter argument just to see thier stand on this position with the experience!=skill approach stating for my $0.02 I'd go with someone who is passionate and interested in what they do and is able to learn fast and deliver rather than the fact they have a few years experience. Although experience is important in many respects (essentially because you know people will have "practised" what they preach and learnt from past mistakes and teachings), in the startup tech world it does not matter as much. Making things people want and having rapid develop cycles where you can prototype, learn, test, and implement features on a fast (day-build) basis and based on an easy to use architecture are more important. The top tech companies in the world have been started by people how had little experience (and were actually working with the latest tech at the time with which no-one had much experience over) and in many cases still are.
They replied: " I agree on your point w.r.t. experiencs!=skill, but I have to add that in an time-critical development process experience just adds thats extra advantage that might lead to your product reaching the market just before the competitors' does. Experience in a relevant field just means you can actually employ the knowledge gained from previous mistakes - particularily in the fast growing web 2.0 environment no project is like the other so there are many mistakes to be made.
Also, especially the understading (and subsequent realisation) of scalability is key in our project - we just can allow for our service to break down because of an inflexible and limited initial architecture...when it grows, it will grow exponentially! In the beginning you might be fine to run an immature architecture till, say 100k users, but as soon as the viral growth aspect of SNS kicks in you will have garanteed downtime and most likely you'll have to redesign your system and shut down your service for a limited time - giving your competitors a lead...
"
I agreed with this as time-critcaly kinda changed things and replied:
" Experience is advantageous but not a neccessity. --- Absolutely. If you do not learn from history you will repeat its mistakes. But... thankfully we are in 2nd/3rd cycle of internet app development and hence have many a case study, best-practice guide, design pattern, tried and tested toolkits and more to help us. We can now stand on the shoulders of giants.
But, just a thought, interestingly enough many a leading tech company still do not weigh experience too heavily when hiring/building. This seems especially true in recent high profile tech startups that are doing very well. The simplest solution (in those cases) seems to be to blend experience with inexperience to bring fresh thinking to problems and challenge assumptions. This seems to be a pattern to making disruptive technology?
Scalable Architecture = it goes without saying. --- Everyone has faced the same problem at one point or another, and whether you go with a .NET or J2EE or LAMP stack (or other) , there are common patterns that resolve many of these issues and are tried and tested by many a startup/company that went from 0-millions and beyond very fast. Only when you are doing something truly new, will you not find a comparable.
"
Although I was being devils advocate to an extent I have been thinking about this more deeply this morning and thought I would post here (albeit in a long-winnded way but-accurate-to-the-conversation way) to see what others in the same boat have to say.
Thanks,
Babul. <comment><USER2> Sounds like these guys have no experience in growing a social networking site/hiring programmers

1) A social networking site doesn't just grow on its own. Ask them how they intend to seed the userbase and what metrics they intend to monitor to optimize viral growth

2) You'll probably rewrite the thing anyway, so being fast and knowing what you are doing and why is more important.

3) What will these guys do when the product is being built. Ie how will they acquire users and what incentives do people have to invite more users.

Sound like these guys have no experience whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have already asked them all those questions and more explaining that the evolution of the product should be guided by its usage/userbase and will almost certainly involve _at least one_ complete/major rewrite (due to change of direction/platform) as it develops as it is hard/impossible to get it right straight away and _their_ perception of what people want and what people _actually_ do want may not be the same.

I have also suggested the stack/path to follow in alignment with thier goals and which scales well yet allows rapid dev. but honestly think until they start building seriously they won't appreciate these issues. This advice has been from my own experiences and that of others, many of whom have failed as well as succeeded, but is contrary to what some consultant friends are saying.

I am not an _expert_ in building large scale web apps by any means, but have worked on enough to know good practice/paths from bad, atleast at the early stages.

They do have software dev experience themselves (e.g. CEO, who is doing PhD at Oxford, has ~2yrs commercial software exp in electronics company) and have done some research into those areas (the MBA guy did most of it).

Anyway Sumon I will try and get them to attend the talk on Tuesday and ask you/panel questions during the Q&A as I am sure talking to more people who are _doing_ this will help them no end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It depends on what you define as skill. Some skills can only be obtained through experience. However, experience alone is meaningless.

These guys do sound like they don't know what they are doing, and them looking for someone with skills in specific technologies only might be a bad idea.

Instead of those specific skills only, for a CTO, they should perhaps look for someone with broad knowledge (or willingness to learn) of their problem/solution domain (web application development for instance), as well as solid technical ability.

<comment><USER4> _Instead of those specific skills only, for a CTO, they should perhaps look for someone with broad knowledge (or willingness to learn) of their problem/solution domain (web application development for instance), as well as solid technical ability._

Indeed... at the moment it seems like a case of the blind leading the blind. The fact is, all their VC links and grand plans will come to nothing at all unless they have execution ability. And they have no execution ability until they have a technology director - the kind whose back you can build a company on. Those are rare enough. The technology of choice or even the level of experience should be of no consequence. They need a 1 or 2 in this taxonomy: [http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the- tenfini...](http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity- factor/)

Daniel

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> False dichotomy. Ask yourself a slightly different question: can we hire someone with skill _and_ experience? And the answer to that is not "I know someone with wild skillz who does all these kewl demos but he hasn't worked on a big project yet." Learning to program for a big project is a skill in itself, so I think you need to get an excellent programmer who is also good at building large apps _and_ can prove it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I absolutely agree. It goes without saying, but in this case I was curious to see thoughts on the _vs_ issue i.e. if you had to go for one or the other what you would base it on.

<comment><USER5> Well, there are plenty of people with experience but no talent, and you'd want to avoid those at all costs. But talent with no experience _might_ work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Experience in a relevant field just means you can _actually employ the knowledge gained from previous mistakes_ \- particularily in the fast growing web 2.0 environment _no project is like the other_ so there are many mistakes to be made."

That seems nonsensical, saying experience is important and no project is like the other in the same sentence.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree and pointed out this and other contradictions during our conversations.

But, I think the general idea is you can derive patterns and rules from experience that can be applied to other fields to help prevent repeating mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Send your friends to [http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to- recognise-a-...](http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a- good-programmer/)

Also, Tip 11 might be of interest: [http://www.inter- sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creatin...](http://www.inter- sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creating-a-successful-new-online-product/)

Daniel

PS: However, to be honest, from the sound of it, your friends are pretty much doomed. I'd advise you not to invest your money in that startup, it's almost guaranteed to fail. See: <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links.I saw the latter on hacker news a few days ago but missed the former (made me smile because that sounds like me, er, yay!).

Anyway, I am not investing money but have been approached to (help) build it. I have declined the offer as although the guys are super smart etc. etc., we are not a good fit (atleast from my perspective) and I think their approach is wrong. I am a believer in organic growth strategies and agile dev practices.

I just want to help them out as I hate to see people fail for such reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"we just can allow for our service to break down because of an inflexible and limited initial architecture...when it grows, it will grow exponentially!"_

It's not when, but if. The vast majority of startups never have that problem. Start out with something capable of handling the traffic from a Techcrunch article (maybe one or two visitors per second for a few hours). Spend a couple of hours thinking about how you would scale up and have a plan, but no more than that. Scalability can be very expensive so investing on it without knowing that you will need it is a case of premature optimization.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but they do have some networks they can use to gain good intial traction and a decent user base. Some stacks allow you to scale fairly easily but the focus shoudl be really on the core product value/service initially.</comment></comment>


The Cashless Society Is a Creepy Fantasy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-14/the-cashless-society-is-a-creepy-fantasy <comment><USER2> Having no cash is the authoritarian's fantasy.

When every transaction is trackable, everything is taxable and able to be fed into big data.

"Sorry, sir, we can't sell you health insurance. Our records show that you've been purchasing too much alcohol."

"Excuse me sir, we're from the local police. We're concerned that you've recently bought 500 rounds of 22lr ammunition (and that's a perfectly reasonable amount). Mind coming down to the station and answering some questions?"

Edit:

And of course, the ever popular.

"Hey, we noticed you bought a used car. Based on your finances you shouldn't have been able to afford it, according to our calculations, unless you've been getting paid without notifying us. We already know what you spend and how you spend it, and how much money you make. You're going to prison for tax fraud."

<comment><USER3> It's incredible how ignorant some folks can be when it comes to why cash is still considered king today. For one, half of all small transactions (less than $50) are made in cash.

OH the other day in Palo Alto: "Cash will no longer be a thing in 5 years."

Sorry, we are still roughly 200 years away from achieving this authoritarian fantasy, if we are to consider the current rate of decline of payments made in cash. I wish folks would leave their suburban bubble for once and talk with real people across America, especially those living at the bottom of the pyramid.

<comment><USER4> Only if you consider cryptocurrency "cash". Otherwise, plenty of people are already living exclusively on bitcoin today with many benefits and few of the scare mongering issues. I can't imagine the masses are still 2 whole generations from catching up, I'd think about 10 years would be enough.

<comment><USER5> > _Otherwise, plenty of people are already living exclusively on bitcoin > today_

Citation needed? This seems hard to believe unless "plenty of people" is in the ballpark of maybe a dozen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not a fantasy. In Australia contactless payment using smart cards is now everywhere, even in the small news outlets, food stalls and coffee shops. I bought lunch at a small shop just a minute ago with one.

For things like buying second hand cards we also have a pretty good online direct deposit system where you can just transfer money online.

Cash is losing the war here, check out the graph in the following article showing the dwindling usage of cash.

[http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/why-our-looming- cashles...](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/why-our-looming-cashless- society-will-come-at-a-devastating-cost/news- story/132727caa08bb90dfba57cca68c2b578)

<comment><USER7> Fellow Australian here, basically completely cashless. Only withdraw cash if I have an immediate reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Having no cash is the authoritarian's fantasy."

That's a giant step in logic that I can't understand yet. How come more cashless societies seem less authoritarian then ones that societies that use cash? E.g. Britain compared to Russia. Sweden is one of the most cashless societies and they seem far from expressing authoritarian traits. I bought a greg's using a contactless card and I haven't felt this strange grip of authoritarian fear. I guess it is better to say

"Having no cash means you can speculate a authoritarian's fantasy easier"

<comment><USER9> > Sweden is one of the most cashless societies and they seem far from > expressing authoritarian traits.

I believe this is because of a critical fact about scandinavian countries:

People trust the government, and by exchange, the government makes themselves trustworthy to the people.

It seems to me that people in the US has a deep distrust for the government. This may be because the government there is less trustworthy to start with, but I think it also goes the other way around. It creates an "us vs them" mentality which makes politicians and government workers have less respect for the people they serve.

I do agree with some of the points of the OP though. We shouldn't need some bank AND credit card company to stand between us and payments to other people and the government. Before we make the switch to cashless, we should have some kind of cryptocurrency. I don't care if it's created by the government, and that new currency is injected by them according to their monetary policy. I don't care if the government can see how much I have in that currency, as long as only they can. All I care about is being able to settle payments without being dependent on a bunch of private, opaque bank and payment companies, and their opaque infrastructure.

<comment><USER10> You have a point but let me make a counter -- it's the subordinate who must prove their trustworthiness to the superior. Which in your view, seems to be the people and their government, respectively.

If you had said, "The government acts in a trustworthy manner, and the people, in turn, trust their government", then our viewpoints would be in alignment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The crime-fighting case against cash is overstated. Last year, a risk > assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing conducted by the U.K. > government found that regulated institutions such as banks (like HSBC) and > accountancy service providers (like the Panamanian tax-shelter specialist > Mossack Fonseca) posed the highest risk of facilitating the illicit storage > or movement of funds. Cash came in a close third, but if we're going to cite > unlawful transactions as a rationale for banning cash, it only makes sense > to ban banks and accounting firms first.

This is specious logic. Stricter regulations on banking and accounting _are_ being introduced, and even if they weren't, that wouldn't be an argument for doing nothing about cash.

And yeah, america-centric article is america-centric. The author should try living in a place with low cash use for a while. Their concerns are real, but unlikely to carry much weight with the public when held up against a) the inconvenience of cash and b) the reality that it's mainly used not by valiant freedom fighters but by common criminals.

</comment><comment><USER12> Currently Sweden is on a race to be first cashless society: many shops completely stopped accepting cash (many also started to use iZettle [1]), people usually simply don't carry cash with them, and if it happens that you need to send money to other person: Swish [2] is to the rescue, which is direct bank-to-bank money transfer system for small amounts.

On other hand everything is traceable, you can call tax office and ask who is get paid what, if you want to know where the person lives: just hitta.se them by name, you will also get avg income for household there.

\- [1] [https://www.izettle.com/](https://www.izettle.com/) \- [2] [https://www.getswish.se/](https://www.getswish.se/)

<comment><USER13> At flea-markets, i think about 90% of all transactions are non-cash in Sweden. It's nearly all Swish. Swish is amazing - it's mobile payments supported by all the banks with no transaction cost. You type in somebody's phone number, the amount to give them, then authenticate it with your pin code (using a cert issued by your bank - basically another app).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cash ever dissappears there will be other things of value that can be traded.

<comment><USER15> This already happens. On the estate I grew up the base currencies people traded with were sexual favours, soft drugs, and stolen bicycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cash sucks. One of the annoyances of having just moved from SV to Munich is that credit cards are often not accepted and you need to use cash. In the bay area, I used cash only very rarely, and it was glorious.

<comment><USER17> > One of the annoyances of having just moved from SV to Munich is that credit > cards are often not accepted and you need to use cash.

The benefit is lower prices. Credit cards have high transaction fees, and the contracts generally prohibit the merchant from adding those to the cost of the transaction. So everyone, regardless of payment method, pays higher prices if the store accepts credit cards.

<comment><USER16> Handling cash has its own logistical overhead, though, so this is debatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my opinion, a cashless society would make some cryptocurrencies like Monero, which enforces privacy, anonimity and fungibility, take off and start to spread its adoption more broadly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Keep in mind a completely trackable currency would require more creativity in funding political "dirty tricks" a la Nixon and his (spiritual) successors.

</comment><comment><USER19> In the UK. I never carry cash on me. Hell, you can't even USE cash anymore on public transport here in London.

</comment><comment><USER20> Clearly this guy hasn't heard of something called precious metals, art, diamonds, blah blah blah

</comment><comment><USER21> For reasons to tired too explain, I've been without a bank account (and therefore also credit/debit card) for a couple of months.

Nightmare. And scary as hell. And when it's not "official" c/d cards, its the shop points or the we're-not-a-bank-honest-guv quasi-debit-cards; it's impossible to catch a bus in London now without a tracking device^W^Woyster card.

Luckily for me I've only returned to this decadent backwater for a brief period before I head back to the glorious freedom (for once not a sarcasm in sight) of the ex-USSR. I feel disgusted that I had to write that.

Edit: And I think I'd like to add that despite the pain, I don't plan on getting any kind of card and may end up regaining a bank account but only as a _nother_ means of converting my bitcoin to whatever the locals call cash.

Edit 2: And another thing. I tried to book a driving test in the UK. Wasn't able to do it online, even to book and pay later, without using a ( _non- government_ ) bank account and ( _foreign_ ) clearing house. Apparently a postal method is available. Our governments themselves are starting to require banks and credit/debit in order to interact with them.

<comment><USER22> Everywhere else in the UK you can still pay cash on buses. I'm slightly taken aback that London bus thinks cash is no longer worthy as every time I've been on a bus everyone pays cash or has weekly pass.

I pay cash nearly everywhere, card is for online only. I'll be a long way towards the back of the cashless adoption!

<comment><USER16> > I'm slightly taken aback that London bus thinks cash is no longer worthy as > every time I've been on a bus everyone pays cash or has weekly pass.

Paying cash on the bus substantially slows down the bus. It makes sense to get rid of that transaction.

<comment><USER21> As a long-time passenger I'm OK with that, and I'd be even more OK with that if they remembered what customer fucking service was and brought back the conductors.

It's[+] my city and it can damn-well run the way I want it to. And that doesn't include 100% surveillance.

[+] Was, sadly. I like London. But it's shit.

Edit: Formatting.

Further edit: In fact I've lived in London most of my life and experience suggests a scenario which is distressingly common: Are you one of those cunts who tuts and sighs[ø] when a little old lady gets on the bus and takes (horror of horrors!) more than 10 seconds to pay her fare and find a seat? FUCK YOU. You don't deserve the air you breathe.

[ø] For those who live outside the M25, this is the London equivalent of a near-violent argument between strangers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


VW engineers have admitted manipulating CO2 emissions data-paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/08/volkswagen-emissions-idUSL8N1320KD20151108#FbBB3zEymfBBCWrs.97 <comment><USER2> So was it the rogue employee, or the conspiracy of the evil management to find a scapegoat for the cheating they decided to do? I always read about these 2 explanations. Both quite entertaining, and a little to much Hollywood-like to be completely true.

Management by objective is the true problem here.

Step 1: Management, moved by market, shareholder and/or own ambition, sets unrealistic goals - probably even unknown to it.

Step 2: Employee, perhaps several levels of goal setting below, realises it can't be done, and cheats to save his career.

I suspect this kind of systemic evil is involved in a lot of corporate misbehaviour. Todays organisations are not ruled by command, but by goals. And since the means to achieve that goal are not written anywhere, the management can't be accused of unlawfulness. And the employee who is bound by such goals finds himself in an awkward dilemma.

<comment><USER3> This could only be the case if the engineer doing the development was the same person as the engineer doing the QA.

<comment><USER4> And not just the QA at the lower level, at _all_ levels. The whole VW saga is an epic failure of process, the fact that any of these products could make it out the door without management knowing about it is so incredible that they're guilty simply because they let it happen _even_ if they didn't know about it. It's a company that is totally out of control from a quality and compliance viewpoint.

<comment><USER5> Right, if the QA didn't catch this on emissions, then all sorts of other aspects of the vehicle quality are in question too. Are the vehicles as safe as claimed for example?

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I'd hate to find out my airbags would not have passed inspection but some QA dude figured that since I'd never find out until it was too late that it didn't matter anyway and nobody caught that. Contrived example but you get where I'm coming from, if the process is this broken _anything_ could happen.

That's why I said before this will damage VW's brand on much more than just fuel consumption. So far (luckily) the other German brands seem to have escaped association by origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The bigger issue here is that agencies like the EPA, FCC, FDA no longer run their own tests but instead rely on the industry to do the test for them.

How many cell phones don't adhere to set radiation safety standards?

<comment><USER7> I have no idea. By your phrasing, it sounds like you might? I'd be interested in being enlightened as to the state of adherence to radiation safety standards by cell phones.

<comment><USER6> The point I am making is that we don't know if the phones we buy meet those standards or if just like in the VW case the tests are being manipulated.

<comment> nezza-_- Not an expert, but relatively sure that's not true. The verification of adherence to those standards is verified by the FCC, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What infuriates me about this is that the people who made that decision were responsible for _at least_ 50 deaths due to increased pollution, and probably even more.

If a serial killer murdered 50 people, there would be a public outcry - instead, the most we can expect is that a few directors might retire to 'pursue different opportunities' or 'spend more time with family' and they will lead a very comfortable life with the millions they made from their illgotten profits.

White collar crime that results in deaths should be treated just as seriously as any other act that results in deaths. The executives that approved or turned a blind eye to these results should be treated as serial murderers. Moreso, most of those people had the luxury of a very expensive education and a nice and well paid lifestyle. They cheated because their greed told them that the millions they made were not enough.

<comment><USER9> The trouble with that calculus is that the deaths are caused by the pollution rather than the faking of data. If you want to blame someone for those deaths, you need to blame every driver who contributes to that pollution.

<comment><USER8> No, those are the deaths cause by the _extra_ pollution due to the cheating.

In practice, as a society, we indirectly decide on pollution standards by voting in politicians who nominate people in regulatory roles. If we are unhappy with those standards, we can vote in other politicians who will alter them. The system is not perfectly responsive of course.

In this case, those 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the decisions made by a director that wanted a flashier career, a bigger bonus, or higher social status. Those 50 deaths are on his conscience, and I hope when he goes on to retire in his expensive villa paid by his ill-gotten bonuses his conscience reminds him of this every single instant. It's not likely to happen.. but hey, I can hope.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't really work that way with responsibility. Whether or not the number is 50 is moot, it could be 1 it could be 500. The fact is that driving causes deaths, directly _and_ indirectly and that we as a society have placed a cap on the number of deaths that we find acceptable. The total number of deaths we're ok with is staggeringly high, those 50 are a statistic derived with some math that I'm not comfortable with based on assumptions that I'm even less comfortable with.

If you want to have that discussion you'd have to look at the bigger picture of the toll of traffic in general. Because if it was ok for VW to kill let's say 50000 people per year but not 50050 then I'm not sure what the fuss is about but if the alternative is 0 or 50 then you _may_ have a point depending on how solid those numbers really are.

As it is that number is very handwavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know of folks that have gone to prison for illegally passing non-streetlegal cars with modifications for california's mandatory smog testing. I'm not a legal expert, but does this sort of thing allow them to get a new trial since - intent aside - there seem to be problems with the system?

</comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile, shifting context back to the bigger picture:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/climate- pl...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/climate-pledges-seen- holding-temperature-closer-to-2-degree-goal)

[http://climateactiontracker.org/](http://climateactiontracker.org/)

How's your country doing with regard to its greenhouse gas emission pledges? Consider hassling your political representatives in the lead up to the Paris talks. Hassle your friends to participate in political action.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know how putting diesel into the motor oil causes the engine to "[run] more smoothly and [use] less fuel"?

<comment><USER13> It thins the oil, so there are less frictional losses, at least until the bearing surfaces get damaged.

<comment><USER14> So why isn't oil like this normally? Are the downsides to doing this?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it shortens engine life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The whole auto industry needs a checkup.

<comment><USER16> They have, and the bodies responsible for that decided "It's cool guys, we'll just raise the emissions levels in our tests so you can 'meet' them". _Problem solved._

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/09/mercedes-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/09/mercedes- honda-mazda-mitsubishi-diesel-emissions-row)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To VW mgmt re setting unrealistic goals with huge consequences to employee careers/progression/etc: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

<comment><USER18> It's not just VW that set internal, unrealistic goals - it was the politicians setting said unrealistic goals as laws.

A 2-ton SUV will always gulp more fuel than a 800kg Smart, but it is NOT the job of the carmakers to get people to buy fuel efficient vehicles (as politicians intended to do by imposing "fleet CO2 limits"), it is the job of the politicians.

So instead of e.g. taxing cars with much CO2 emissions, which would be hated by the population because they want to drive SUVs, the politicians went to the carmakers instead and now everyone wonders how this could happen.

<comment><USER19> The car makers had the option not to offer 2 ton vehicles if they can't make them obey the emission laws. In fact, I think fleet emission standards are too weak and we should just put a steadily decreasing upper limit on the emissions.

<comment><USER18> How about politicians listen to and communicate properly with the population? If the target of the politicians is to reduce CO2 emissions, they should say so. If the target is to get rid of huge, ugly, oversized SUVs in cities, they should say so.

Secretly embedding stuff in unrelated other stuff is bad politics, yet the trend to do this is rising :/

<comment><USER20> I don't follow your arguments. Is there an actual move of trying to ban SUV's in cities or is this something you've concluded yourself?

Why shouldn't the industry be able to produce a huge oversized SUV if it can maintain emissions under the limits dictated by the law?

This discussion should not even touch the type of car. The emission hack was originally discovered in the smaller end of VW models like the Jetta and Golf with a small (<=2.0) TDi engine and now seems to span the entire range of models the concern produces. My guess is that the fuel consumption and CO2 emission manipulation also affects the entire range of models.

The problem here is that it seems to be _really_ hard to come up with a marketable engine that can meet the requirements. I guess that's why VW will be moving towards electric in the future. I hope the requirements for emission control will get stricter in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So much for engineers and their morals. People indirectly died because of their tampering.

Seems money can buy you all.

<comment><USER22> > People indirectly died because of their tampering.

How?

<comment><USER23> Air pollution leads to increases in various diseases of the respiratory tract (and other kinds too). Some of those are deadly. The difference is measured in thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people per year (unverified stat, but I think it's in the right ballpark).

<comment><USER24> So are people who work on huge V8 engines morally responsible for people dying due to air pollution?

<comment><USER23> If they declare that those V8 engines have been manufactured to meet emissions standards set by governments to try and reduce the health and environmental toll of emissions, and therefore allow those V8 engines to be mass- manufactured and included in hundreds of thousands of new cars that would otherwise have contained less polluting engines, then obviously yes?

It's not working on the V8 engines that's the problem, it's lying about their emissions.

I'm not sure how you don't see this? Based on your tone you seem to think you're making some sort of sarcastically clever point, but I'm not sure what it is? (or maybe I'm misreading this)

<comment><USER24> Your're saying that higher pollution causes more deaths and is therefore morally wrong, so have a look at Mercedes C-Class - you can have it with a relatively small 2.0L petrol(or even 1.8L if I remember correctly) or a massive 6.3L V8 petrol engine. The V8 will always pollute more. So why would it matter, if the V8 is "meeting emissions standards" \- it's still poluting more than the 2.0L engine. So my question is - if lying about emissions of the 2.0L engine is "being morally responsible for people dying due to pollution", how is that not true for their 6.3L V8 engines(which are fully compliant, but pollute more nevertheless)?

<comment><USER23> The difference is that the government has put in place systems to deal with these higher polluting vehicles. It taxes them more, to discourage people from owning them. By lying about the pollution levels, the engineers are encouraging people to own more polluting engines. Not only is this obviously unethical since it involves lying with the purpose of breaking a law, but this law also happens to be designed to try and reduce the deadly effects of pollution. So such behaviour is, I say again, obviously indirectly linked to more people dying.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


License Zero: Comments on "The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.licensezero.com/2020/08/03/truth-paywall.html <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to address the problem outlined in the original article. It seems to be arguing that people shouldn't be paid for lousy work, but that isn't at all what the original article was talking about.

Being rich inherently gives one a voice, being right does not. If the truth is inconvenient to the rich then it will face an uphill battle against the well funded lies.

<comment><USER3> Well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand what this is even about? They didn't bother to get the original author's name right ("Nathan Robinson"), and they seem to be arguing with some strawman that every piece of creative output _must_ be compensated? But there's no substance to that argument either, just a bald assertion that sometimes you don't get paid for things?

<comment><USER5> > I don't understand what this is even about?

Agreed. I read the whole thing twice and couldn't identify any thesis.

<comment><USER6> I think the author's point is inferable from these two observations.

> Creators needn't be compensated well just because they are creators.

> Neither must useful works of every kind cost nothing to everyone.

Obviously this author knows that if poor quality cheap information proliferates and high quality information remains costly then people will prefer the former to the later.

The author is effecting a denial of the implicit argument of the "post truth" panic, which is that it is important that the public have a high quality and cheap information source.

It's not utterly unreasonable to argue against an assumed premise such as this but it would've been nice if they had been a bit clearer about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's quite some hand-waving. If news organizations (like newspapers) give away their content for free, they lay off staff. We know this because we've seen it happen in newsrooms around the country as Craigslist dried up newspapers' primary source of revenue.

So this seems either false or completely irrelevant to the topic at hand: "I happen to believe that in most areas of creative work, and in most adjacent industries, giving more away for $0 online would improve outcomes for most players, overall."

</comment><comment><USER8> My view of work is that you can be paid in 4 ways:

1\. Paid in cash.

2\. Paid in power.

3\. Paid in social status.

4\. Paid in deferred career benefit.

Because of the reach of content with the internet, the pay in categories 2 and 4 has gone up. It depends on what you do, but pay in category 3 may also have increased. Unsurprisingly the cash pay is going to decline.

In my own case, I write a fair bit. I gain career benefits. I gain contacts from Hacker News as I write under my own name. There are friends who find it cool that I am published on Stack Overflow. I have a regular software engineering job, so the money now is not a priority.

Eventually most content creation is just going to be supported by people doing other things to earn a living. Only deep investigative journalism would require someone to earn a full time living doing it.

<comment><USER9> I think you might have missed a fifth: paid with passion.

Whether it nets as much long-term happiness or food in your mouth is free to debate, but I think a lot of people are just content with the idea of creating something they wanted.

I think you see this a lot in OSS (linux, git, gnu) as well as e.g. the video games industry.

I don't think it's a particularly sustainable way to get paid, but it can exit into the other 4 you mentioned.

<comment><USER8> Quite true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's annoying that the author takes the original article about paywalls by Nathan Robinson so literally at some points.

For example, the Robinson wrote "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them." To which the commenter replied "None of the above is true." Then explains that only some creators and some works should be compensated well. As if it wasn't clear that the Robinson was referring to creators and works that he felt was of value.

In rebuttal, he only provides his opinion that "I happen to believe that in most areas of creative work, and in most adjacent industries, giving more away for $0 online would improve outcomes for most players, overall." without any evidence that is the case for journalism (or even software for that matter). Not even a weak "logical" argument.

Perhaps he's right, perhaps he's not. I don't know, it it's annoying that this response has somehow hit #2 on HN. It's as weak as this post :-)

<comment><USER11> Picking quotes as I did does lend to an impression of nitpicking literalism. But to quote myself now, my point was at a higher level than refuting factual assertions:

> ... the problem here is evident: black-and-white, either-or thinking.

If you put the problem in terms of creators needing to be well paid, on the one hand, and their creations needing to be free and universally accessible, on the other, you've set yourself up a zero-sum cage match. The first quote I pulled from Nathan was more nuanced than that, lamenting paywalls but accepting them, because "it's complicated". The second quote I pulled, from the end of Nathan's piece, puts things more absolutely, leaving less hope.

If the problem is being stuck between the rock of creator comp and the hard place of free, universal access, the solution is recognizing that neither of those is absolute, immovable, or perfect. Not all creation requires or deserves compensation. Not all information needs be free and convenient to everyone.

If you stop thinking of open/closed and free/paid as toggle switches, and embrace that they're actually pretty fine-grained dials, it's no longer a war between creators and consumers, and there are lots of practical things to try. Find the optimum balance in the situation and over time. As I suggest:

> When the works we need or want come readily available at affordable costs > that we can pay, and paying is easy, there's no great harm to access or > progress or truth. That cost many not be great. But if a great many pay it, > the results can be.

To make that more concrete: I don't think I'd pay $10 a month for Current Affairs. But I'd darn sure pay $3. Or up to $10, scaling up with how many articles I read in a month. Perhaps on top of free access to an archive of articles more than a year old.

I'm not sure how this ended up on HN, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me or was this very confusing to read? In some spots I thought it was written by a bot or generated by a gpt3 script.

<comment><USER13> I think it may be a deliberate example of poor quality writing that should not be compensated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really can't tell what they're trying to say here.

> giving more away for $0 online would improve outcomes

> there is nothing inherently worse about paying a fee

Aren't these contradictory? Is the author taking any position?

<comment><USER8> The author is generally in favour of free content and argues that it is good for both the consumer (as there is no hassle) and the content creator as there are other avenues for earning money.

<comment><USER11> I'm just as in favor of paid content as free. But I also think creators tend to see the free-paid and open-closed questions too black-or-white, and therefore err on the side of closing things too tightly or giving too much away. There are many, perhaps happier, middle ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Powerful sentence.

</comment><comment><USER15> The author is so very close to realizing that intellectual property is incoherent in the fact of information theory, _and_ also that universal basic income is an essential component of a hyperwealthy neoliberal democracy. We could be a culture of creators, with every person having a relatively small but fluid audience who supplements their income and contributes to their work, but no starving artist dependent on their employer for their living wage.

As the slogan goes, "All of our grievances are connected: Eat the rich."

<comment><USER11> Intellectual property law is _only_ coherent in the face of information. It's the property law of intangibles.

Economics didn't run up to the industrial revolution and stop. The book I cited, Slauter's _Who Owns the News?_ , gives a great history of English law from before the Statute of Anne. For a view from the Internet era back, on an economics angle, Shapiro and Varian's _Information Rules_ is a great read. For a more nuanced view from those who lean open, James Boyle's books are all worthwhile.

The author is, as it happens, an open-leaning intellectual property lawyer.

<comment><USER15> The author is dangerously close to realizing that _all_ property rights are incoherent! Just take the contrapositive of your current position, and then keep going.

Economics still works fine. The funny thing, though, is that information doesn't behave like a typical good; it's only got marginal cost to duplicate, and is usually too cheap to meter, and every purchase adds a new seller to the market. Thus, it's kind of hard to even _justify_ applying the economic question to information. Indeed, our societies are so drenched in information that we put price tags on tooling which can _reduce_ , _filter_ , _aggregate_ , _summarize_ , and otherwise lower the total number of bits of information within our control.

Any pragmatic and ethical intellectual property law regime must account for the practical truth that artists and scientists can only receive a full education by participating in an underground copyright-infringement movement which consists of private libraries, ad-hoc study sessions, thumb drives full of art and philosophy, and most recently Bittorrent and Sci-Hub. Our current law regime is completely out of touch with this reality, and fixing it will require drastically shortening the length of copyright, ending works-for-hire, and taking other big actions to destroy the media cartels.

<comment><USER11> You've given me the tech-exceptionalist party line circa 1999. I could've given you the same, way back then. Lessig. Drahos. Braithwaite. With more nuance, Boyle. Have you done any reading from the _other_ side? I hadn't.

Valuable information that's easy to reproduce isn't a new phenomenon. See _Who Owns the News?_. Nor is it peculiar to digitally reproducible works today. See Rothman's _The Right of Publicity_. Both highly skeptical of many legal developments, but not doctrinaire or absolutist.

Digital technology didn't take the economic theory of property by surprise. See _Information Rules_ , or even Landes and Posner's _The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law_. The latter goes light on software and the Internet, but covers all the same dimensions of marginal cost, prior work, and so on, in analysis of other domains. Cost savings with digital technology didn't break the theories or policy justifications. They just made analysis of certain combinations more valuable.

If I've guessed right, here comes the part where you lump me in with Disney, the Copyright Office, the IP Watchdog people, and other "IP maximalists". They lump me in with the pirates.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't lump you with IP maximalists; I'd lump you with status-quo supporters. There is a way forward for our society, and your entire response is that I should read a book or two and think harder about my position. It's no different from when modern Democrats tell Democratic Socialists to shut up and eat doughnuts; I'm not going to mistake you for a Republican merely because you dislike socialism, but I _am_ going to point out how little distance there is between the Republican and Democratic positions!

We need to halt the abuse of artists in our society. It is common, it is automated, and it is cruel. Ensnaring them in ever-more-complicated licensing schemes is not a substitute for a living wage, nor does it recognize that art fundamentally needs to be shared between people in order to be effective.

Legal technology, like all technology, is not culturally neutral. We choose how the law develops by how we practice and observe it. We are obligated to construct societies whose laws are not just moral, but ethical, and which dole out a portion of justice to everybody under their ambit. Your attitude that supporting UBI and tearing down copyright is so "circa 1999" and thus somehow tired and outdated is ridiculous. What's so new that's replaced this position? You offer only compromise with the existing system, rather than a hope for an improvement.

<comment><USER11> You've retreated to generalities.

The working artists, designers, and other creators I know, and no few I've worked with, don't want to abolish the legal regime set up to ensure them compensation. They don't want to trade what leverage they have for the dole, or for "universal basic income", which is much the same when you'd qualify for either. I've heard and read much the same from their guilds and industry groups.

That doesn't mean the status quo. Many would reform or replace fair use and add orphan-work safe harbors. Others would make copyright protection entirely opt-in, as before Berne. Some would expand "moral rights", or implement them where they haven't been. Others want commonly negotiated terms, like portfolio rights for works made for hire, made defaults, under law. Views on term of protection vary.

There's nothing terribly tired about arguing for copyright abolition, other than that we've heard it for decades now, and political prospects might be worse now than they were then. What is tired is portraying intellectual property as standing on no firm policy foundation, especially no economic foundation. Activists have been making a straw man of economic theory, pretending it got as far as 19th century industrial considerations and stopped, since the nascent years of Internet exceptionalism. The idea that low or no marginal cost of reproduction totally confounds public policy underlying property protection is emblematic. Low marginal cost of reproduction didn't begin with the Internet. It occurred to economists discussing intellectual property, and was well integrated by them, generations before.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that I've really retreated; I had started on UBI and copyright in my very top post. But let's get specific! (Also, just as a side note, please grok that UBI does not have qualifications; that's rather the point of it.)

I went to music school. I copied CDs and sheet music from the school library. I also burned CDs and copied thumb drives from other musicians. My jazz class mandated listening to dozens of albums, didn't give us copies, and expected us to acquire them however. My professors taught us how to listen to the radio and reproduce what we heard. I played out of "The Great American Songbook," which is the tradition where you play what folks in the USA like to listen to, or you don't get paid for the gig. My compensation was per-gig and based on live performance, not based on royalties or licensing. Despite what amounted to a pretty good hourly wage, the actual number of hours per week was very low, and I had a day job. This was not atypical, but the intended route for the bulk of professional performers, and nothing has changed since I went to school other than that copyright infringement is cheaper and easier than ever.

Nothing is new under the sun. Making original music is incredibly difficult. We swim in such a massive sea of ambient art, and almost all of it is licensed in ways which forbid us from integrating that experience into our original artwork. The entire discipline of remixing exists as a proud affront to copyright, just like libraries once did and still do. And today's musicians are a product of a system which simultaneously requires them to continuously infringe in order to be productive, while using the law to punish them for infringing.

When I hear you talking about the folks that you know and work with, and imagine what kind of musician actually is lucky enough to receive royalties, I imagine a privileged few folks. They're not bad people, but they benefit from a system designed to compensate them at the expense of everybody else. And their actual benefit is relatively meager! Middlemen at the labels suck out nickel and dime, and even successful musicians find themselves flipping burgers. They're propping up a system which disenfranchises them.

And when I hear you talking about "their guilds and industry groups"! I personally believe that ASCAP is a plague upon practicing musicians, music venues, music lovers, and the entire tradition of making music. They have the audacity to take royalties on behalf of those great legends who are long since departed, and their entire justification is that it's a legal theft of the public domain, and why shouldn't they do what they're legally entitled to do? The RIAA's not any better, with multiple members committing acts upon their customers and artists that, in literally any other context, would be criminal. Imagine if I, an independent musician, published a CD with infectious malware on it, and used it to attack my listeners; I'd be convicted and thrown in prison!

The worst part of all of this is "political prospects". Yes, fascism is popular right now. No, we shouldn't abide by it. No, fascism isn't an excuse to avoid socialist reforms. No, we shouldn't just give up on what _we the people_ want just because it's inconvenient for the ruling classes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hulu Puts Gun To Own Head: May Require Proof of TV Subscription - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120430/09032418715/hulu-puts-gun-to-own-head-may-require-users-to-show-proof-pay-tv-subscription.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> Wow - every time we the media world take a few tentative steps into the modern age, they seem to immediately scramble back into the cave of ignorance. What is it going to take for these guys to understand new and relevant business models?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. This is pretty clear evidence that allowing monopolies to exist for cable service results in negative effects for the consumer.

Could you imagine if DHL came out and said "Listen. We will be happy to ship your packages but only if you show that you have used FedEx at least once in the past 6 months." Laughable, right? But couldn't you see it if they were required to use FedEx planes to do their air freight?

</comment><comment><USER4> To me, this is only a big deal if it applies to Hulu Plus subscribers. Otherwise, this doesn't matter at all, because cord cutters (like me) can get their TV for $7.99/mo instead of for free. That's still a hell of a lot better than $50+/mo with cable.

If this does indeed apply to Hulu Plus, then that REALLLLLLLLY sucks.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, Hulu's death came when they added subscriptions, but still forced subscribers to watch ads.

<comment><USER4> I'm a Hulu Plus subscriber and $7.99/mo with ads for TV is still way better than $50+/mo with ads for TV.

<comment><USER6> I tried out the Hulu Plus free trial, and I cancelled it within two days. Illegally downloading my tv shows onto a foreign seedbox, transfering them home, ripping out the audio and video from a matroska container, converting audio into xbox compatible format, repackaging into mp4 container, hosting a dhcp server, connecting my xbox to my laptop, then streaming video to it is actually far less stressful than trying to watch them on Hulu. However, if they're on Netflix, I would watch them on there.</comment></comment></comment>


How coddled young radicals got discomfort all wrong (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2015/10/28/i_wanted_to_be_a_supporter_of_survivors_on_campus_and_a_good_teacher_i_didnt_realize_just_how_impossible_this_would_be/ <comment><USER2> "The scene shows a young Sweetback (played by the director's son Melvin (sic) Van Peebles) having sex with a 30-year old woman."

The son is _Mario_ Van Peebles, and to call rape "having sex" is spin (even the Wikipedia article on the film calls it rape). This author later waters it down to "statutory" rape, but would he do the same if the genders were reversed?

To miss such an obvious name goof makes me wonder if Salon bothers with _any_ fact-checking anymore... or if anyone there reads their own content. This basic error remains in place after _2.5 years_.</comment>