AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism - <AUTHOR> We're Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie, the founders of Substack (YC W18), and Matt Taibbi, a journalist and author who has written four best-sellers and is a contributing editor to the Rolling Stone. Substack is a tool that makes it simple for a writer to start a paid newsletter – but we're also experimenting with other models for online publishing. For instance, Matt is using Substack to serialize a novel called The Business Secrets of Drug Dealing: Adventures of the Unidentified Black Male, which you can see here: https://taibbi.substack.com.
Matt has so far published six chapters in the book. The serial is an experiment for him, too, but even when it's done he intends to keep publishing his independent work through Substack. We thought it might be interesting to bring Matt into a Hacker News discussion about this model, other things that might be tried, and the state of online publishing generally.
Last time Substack was involved in a discussion here on HN, we got a ton of great feedback (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16326411). We'd love to hear your thoughts about online publishing and how tech can (or cannot) help journalism! <comment><USER2> I've been wondering about the "one man band" publishing outfits based on daily blog posts or newsletters or whatever. Some literally have one person behind them (Stratechery, Timmerman Report, as well as some of the examples on your website) while others have an editorial lead, an editorial assistant, and a small business team (Endpoints). Over the years I've seen founders of earlier blogs and vlogs burn out after nonstop, sustained effort to keep engagement up and churn down. What happens when founder fatigue hits the newsletters, and a mere week-long break won't cut it, and there is no editorial backup like in a traditional newsroom? How have the founders of your earliest paid newsletters handled this?

I also have an observation to share: Having attempted a paid newsletter before on the topic of industrial IoT using other tools (Mailchimp + Chargebee) I found that moving people from free to paid is a huge challenge. The cost to readers has several elements: the subscription cost and the time cost, because when people pay they are also making a commitment to read, which takes time out of their already extremely time-constrained days. What sort of advice do you give to newsletter creators about making this transition and convincing their free readers to sign up for the paid tiers?

Good luck with your experiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good questions.

To answer the burn-out point: I think this is something writers have to take into account when they're starting their publishing businesses. Running a publication is definitely a demanding exercise and it is often under- estimated. That said, I think Ben Thompson, for example, handles this problem well: he makes it clear to Stratechery's subscribers that he regularly takes some time off to recharge, and he lets them know well in advance when he's going to take a break.

This is one of the areas we hope Substack can be helpful in, actually. We are building up a knowledge base of best practices, informed by the people who are publishing with our tools, so we can help all kinds of writers succeed. Part of the advice we offer relates to content strategy, pricing, cadence, etc, and part of it relates to less tangible stuff, like how to manage your own time and expectations.

And yes, converting readers from free to paid is a huge and unending challenge! We focus a lot of our effort on solving this very problem. One small piece of advice we offer is for a writer who is contemplating going paid to clearly signal the transition in advance to their readers, then give them incentives to subscribe early – like a special charter price, for instance. More broadly, Neil Cybart from Above Avalon shared some useful thoughts on the subscriber model recently. This comment stood out:

"Going from a scenario in which all content was public to one in which only a fraction of content is public can be jarring. Most sites have handled this transition by keeping content free and instead giving paid subscribers a very marginal amount of exclusive content. In essence, sites are treating subscriptions and memberships like donations. This is not sustainable for or attractive to subscription-based models."

What Neil is saying there is that it is better to set the expectation that the bulk of your content be available only for paying subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Former magazine/newspaper editor here. (Disclosure: I briefly worked as a copy editor at a Rolling Stone sister publication, but never met Matt.)

One potential criticism of this sort of subscription business model is that it increases the echo-chamber effect, where people only subscribe to writers whose opinions they agree with. How do you answer that criticism?

<comment><USER4> I think the exact opposite is true. The problem with the "one click free" universe of tons of free content is that the reader naturally will search out - or be sought out, by algorithms - material he or she agrees with. That consumer takes less time to investigate alternative views and has less patience - something less mentally taxing is just a click away. When you pay, you're making a commitment, and I think people both have higher expectations and are making a more reasoned, careful choice. We'll see how it goes, but I think the subscription model is more likely to produce cool/experimental material than any model that tries to game Google/FB algorithms

<comment><USER5> One thing I'd add to this: the algorithm actually selects for stuff you agree with _or hate._ So sometimes instead of an echo chamber you get a war chamber, which I'm not sure is better.

We think that people should choose what they read. Stepping back and thinking about what you want to subscribe to -- instead of doing one more scroll -- helps.

<comment><USER6> >So sometimes instead of an echo chamber you get a war chamber, which I'm not sure is better.

I think the "war chamber" basically reinforces the echo chamber. You never see the reasonable people within the camps you hate, you only ever see the most ridiculous, most absurd shit the internet has to offer that inhabits that camp.

I noticed this a lot during the whole GamerGate thing. It's like those people had just been seeing endless streams of tweets and Tumblr posts from verbally abusive (or more often, satirical and sarcastic) feminists and strung them together to create a narrative about being "under siege." Never mind that what they were seeing was not at all a representative sample of the group they're talking about, it's their idea of what the group looks like and there's no way to recalibrate them once they dig in.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. This is an emergent consequence of 1) prioritizing "engagement" and 2) the mechanics of "retweet with comment"

This can happen on social media even if almost everybody would prefer that it didn't. The way to fix it is to change the rules :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Matt, What is your take on how Journalism might be some sort of Platform Cooperative ([https://platform.coop/](https://platform.coop/)), where leadership is subject to the user community - either subscribers, journalists, or both. Even non-profits can be a problem in this regard if the board of directors is locked. Should Journalism focus on maximizing investor return?

Would Substack think that perhaps they could get investor "exit" to a community of journalists or subscribers rather than to Google or Facebook buyout? For example, [https://www.stocksy.com/](https://www.stocksy.com/) In this model, investors might sell to a cooperative structure and get a note payable from a percentage of net revenue.

<comment><USER5> Chris from Substack here not Matt. The great thing about the Substack model is that it is a big financial opportunity. We help writers get paid, and we take a cut of that so that we're aligned.

What that means is that if we are successful, we get to build a sustainable company that does this important thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Have you been in contact with any of the independent publications that were dumped by Medium last month (see [https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/medium- publication.php](https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/medium- publication.php))? They really harmed a lot of indie publishers doing good work. Your product might be a good fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, we've given a lot of thought to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi Matt, thanks for taking questions. You've been around media since its "olden" days and have had success on a variety of traditional and online platforms. How does Substack -- or more generally, newsletters -- compare to other ways you've tried to self-publish, such as blogging? Both in terms of finding/engaging an audience, to the creation/production process.

<comment><USER4> So I started my career in "traditional" journalism, working for a nice little newspaper called the Moscow Times, but the problem there was they wouldn't let you write with humor or break certain formats. So I quit and ended up several times self-publishing by putting out newspapers, which is hilarious in context -- these days people just need to type something and upload it, but we used to have to painstakingly design every page, create huge metal plates, print off them, make giant stacks of newspapers, distribute them (I've even done the distribution on my own, in cars), just to be "self-published." Also I had to sell ads back in the day! With the internet came blogging, which is obviously much simpler but the problem, again, always comes back to representing a larger financial outlet, not wanting to clash with an editor or advertisers over material, having to haggle over what to write about and when. Substack is basically just the writer and the reader and it's very painless. I think in the future you'll see a lot of writers and media personalities breaking off and using this kind of format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi Matt, this is something that has interested me for personal and professional reasons. I've see a range of solutions from podcasting, youtube channels, self publishing, patreon, and independent companies (thinking TPM and their subscription model). It seems like a lot of the problem is the ad based revenue model, and the absolute bottom falling out text ad pricing combined with the unsuitability of video format to deeper/long form journalism. So I am happy for this. But as someone here noted, discoverability seems weak and - more generally - media benefits from networking effects. To not go on too long:

1\. Presuming you buy into the networking argument, is Substack going to do any curation to ensure that the "Matt Taibbi" brand isn't hurt by "random crank pushing chemtrail mind control" content on the same site? That may be a bit extreme, but the same general phenomenon as FBA 3rd party seller counterfeiting hurting all sellers there or how Forbes blogs have gone downhill.

2\. Is Substack going to enable cross-publishing to push content to other destinations/media? It's seems like it will be impossible to acquire the same number of eyeballs that is possible on ITunes, et al for audience acquisition.

<comment><USER10> (random HN commenter opinion)

"Networking" and "cross pollination discovery of authors and readers" == community.

Community and free speech works with balanced diversity, where no one group can overwhelm another's speech, especially during early childhood phases of a community's development, before norms have emerged for the community to defend itself against threats external or internal.

<comment><USER11> Diversity of what?

Opinions ? Facts ? Beliefs?

<comment><USER10> Anything

<comment><USER11> We can have diversity of hate speech. That would obviously be bad right?

In case I'm being overly obtuse - my point is that we are not allowed the generality of previous thinkers she. Discussing free speech and human communication.

Diversity is a great term, but it's too broad since all positions(intersect)contexts are not equal.

We do not have the ability to touch upon ideas in some Newtonian or conceptual space. We have to very much work on them with human brains and their limits and weaknesses.

So when we say diversity - what diversity do we mean? Otherwise it's the same as political speech where they want equality/growth/fairness and so on.

<comment><USER10> _Community_ means a limited, bounded context, by definition. Language, speech and norms are community specific. There are geographical and, thanks to the internet, non-geographical communitites.

To provide a contrived response to your contrived example, diversity of historical and fictional hate speech could be appropriate in an academic _community_ focused on those topics.

To connect the topic to this AMA, many communities will emerge among the writers and readers of Substack and they will change over time due to audience growth and feedback loops within and between Substack communities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. How scalable is the pivot to subscriptions and how does it effect democracy? 2\. Can the news-media organizations continue with the kind of pre- internet organization that they continue to do? What are the changes required? 3\. What does a news-media organization look like in the age of hyper connectivity and real time information exchange? How is it different from the pre-internet news organization? What is the new model that you're proposing?

<comment><USER5> I can give the Substack take on this.

1\. We think it's very scalable. The value of attention has flipped - you used to get bored and need to fill your time, now your time is the last scarce resource, so it makes sense to pay to use it more wisely. We see early adopters doing this happily now, but we think it will become the norm.

We also think it will be good for democracy. The incentives of ad supported social media encourage clickbait, cheap outrage, and hyper-partisanship. Subscriptions reward thoughtfulness and deep value.

The one thing I worry about is too much exclusivity. If we landed in a place with really high subscription prices and only the privileged few getting access to good information that wouldn't be ideal, but that is avoidable.

2\. Mostly they will have to change. Some will be successful.

3\. The new model is readers paying writers directly. The difference at internet scale is that you can reach everybody in the world, and therefore you can be more successful with a much more specific topic/audience. Also because of software, you can start doing it as an individual writer in an afternoon.

<comment><USER13> Can't readers just unsubscribe if they disagree with whatever the writer is saying? This just changes who pays the bills. Ultimately, I think the writer will cater to their audience with subscriptions being a far stronger signal than clicks. I don't see how this is better for Democracy, but I'd love to be proved wrong. We need better access to better news, not more paywalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Question: Why is the price of a subscription significantly higher than the price of a book? Serious question. I read the first chapter and found it quite interesting and I have been considering subscribing, but one of the main reasons that I did not subscribe was that it seemed like the price would end up being much higher than the price for a book. I do like the fact that most of the money goes to the author.

<comment><USER4> Well, you'll probably end up getting two books over the course of the year, or something on the order of it -- This book is likely to be finished by September, and then I'll be starting on something new (I have a couple of projects I'm working on now). So over the course of 12 months, it will work out to be quite a lot of stuff. Thanks in any case for taking a look.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate your response. I will think again about subscribing. I would love to get hooked on books the way that I seem to get hooked on mediocre television like Game of Thrones and Westworld. I think it would definitely be better than reading the news every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have you finished the whole novel already (and just publishing chapter by chapter) or are you writing and changing as you go?

Also, this might make more sense for non-fiction work but what are your thoughts on letting a book evolve over time? So the writer updates and changes the content as s/he learns new things (and obviously lets readers know when edited).

<comment><USER4> I would say we're more than half done. We still need to power through a big chunk of the story. It's kind of a high-wire act but we're both enjoying it.

I think letting a book evolve can have varying consequences. In reality you want it all to be stylistically consistent. But you can't publish 200 pages, see a problem, and change it on the fly. (Dostoyevsky appeared to do this in "The Possessed," changing from first to third person and back). On the other hand, the pressure of having to meet deadlines might make it more intense. So it could go either way. A lot of great, great books have been serialized and a lot of them had an hard-driving feel to them (In Cold Blood, I think, wss one, as were the Fear and Loathing books).

<comment><USER16> The Idiot is also famously muddled largely because it was written for serialization and he left himself a bunch of loose ends he could pick up if he didn't know what to do with the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey Matt, I've been a reader since the days of the Exile. Just digging into your new book on Substack thanks to this thread!

Chris and Hamish: do you plan to introduce a discovery option (like the App Store) for people to find who is on Substack, or are you expecting the writers to market their work independently?

<comment><USER5> Re discovery: Yes!

We want the writers to succeed, and while it's ultimately up to them to write something good enough that people want to subscribe, getting discovered is something we can help with.

Having a place to feature them will help with this (though it's less important right now than e.g. helping free posts get shared.)

In fact, we have a super basic version of this that we wrote in 20 minutes here: [https://www.substack.com/discover](https://www.substack.com/discover) but we have a ton of plans on how to make it better - most importantly by focusing on the author & publication as the key element rather than the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What business relationship, if any, exists between Mr. Taibbi and Substack?

<comment><USER5> Matt is a publisher on the Substack platform. We take a 10% cut of his subscription revenue.

Because he is an established author, and we're really excited about this new format of serialized fiction, we have also been putting extra product development and publicity effort behind his publication. We think of this as Doing a Thing that Doesn't scale, as in [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for answering! Does Substack compensate him in any other way besides tailoring features to his work?

<comment><USER5> On Substack, readers pay writers directly. The writers are independent. We take a cut of the subscription revenue, which is the same in this case as for others.

We think this aligns our interest with the writers interest, the same way that the subscription model aligns the writer with the reader.

<comment><USER18> Ok, so he's not a partner or advisor or anything like that? I guess I'm just curious about the level of the endorsement you're getting here. Thanks again for answering these questions!

<comment><USER5> Nope, just an awesome writer using our tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Follow up, how does Substack improve on what Patreon is doing?

<comment><USER5> We think Patreon is awesome. It's a great general purpose tool for supporting creators, and the fact that it is so successful shows that people are willing to pay for stuff they value.

Substack is focused on letting writers start their own publication - top to bottom - with subscriptions as an integral part.

<comment><AUTHOR> To add to Chris's point (this is Hamish), I think Substack is just really simple. As a writer, I like the idea of not having to think about building and designing my own site, or coming up with various payment and rewards tiers, so I can focus almost all of my time on writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who reads a lot of serialized content with a wide range of professionalism, what guards are in place to protect users from an author dropping a serialized work that is supposed to have a clear end prior to that end being reached?

That is, if I'm reading a book in serialized form from Matt Taibbi (as an example) that I feel invested in the outcome (in this case both figuratively and _literally_ ), and Matt decides he's got better things to do 80% the way through the book, what's to keep him or any other author from walking away at that point?

As a consumer, it's bad enough when I'm left in this situation when there's been no money exchanged (such as a series cancelled with the plot mostly unresolved). If I've actually been partially responsible for the funding to that point, I will not be a happy person if that happens.

In what says does Substack incentivize authors to complete serialized work like this, or at least leave it in a state that is somewhat appropriate?

<comment><USER5> The idea that getting substantial recurring revenue helps put the author in a position to deliver, and avoid the "popular thing gets canceled" effect.

The relationship is between the reader and the writer, and the writer puts their reputation behind what they're doing. We see our job as to give them options if unexpected issues come up - pausing subscriptions, partial refunds, or whatever is necessary.

<comment><USER20> Having seen a number of professional authors recently not quite fall into this, but something similar, in which they get a few books into a series and either lose interest or don't know how to continue, I'm very interested in specialized incentives that could be offered to provide assurance to consumers and keep authors aligned.

For example, an opt-in program where authors allow Substack to keep keep a portion of the monthly revenue until some criteria are hit or some time period passes, whichever is first. For example, if each month 50% of the author's cut is paid out to the author, and the other 50% is kept and paid out in installments based on the number of content posts delivered compared to the author's target. For example, it an author plans to release 4 content posts a month, and their cut is $100 each month, they would be paid $50 for the month, and $50/8 per post after that for that month, so within two months they should get the full amount. After two months there would be an equilibrium and the full amount would be coming in ($50 for current month, $25 for each of the two prior months).

Now, I'm not seriously proposing that exact system, but an _opt-in_ system such as that (with some variation on time frames, etc) which could be have a specific tag would go a long way towards making me feel like I'm investing in something that has a future when I pay, because let's be honest, some authors have been able to coast on a good reputation and some beloved prior works for a long time without needing to put out anything in the same vein. That's their prerogative, but at the same time I'm at the point in my life where time is at a premium, and money is less so than when I was younger, and if I'm going to invest the time and effort into a serialized work, I want to do as much as I can to make sure I'm doing so in something that will see an appropriate end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hi Matt, do you see any potential for serialization to make a comeback by utilizing a platform like Substack?

<comment><USER4> I hope so. Serialization was such a huge thing for writers once upon a time. In particular it was a medium that encouraged experimentation and allowed writers to be compensated better for unusual work. It's how a lot of American detective writing got its start -- the fast pace of work like Dashiell Hammett's "Continental Ops" stories was built around the immediacy of periodical publishing. If you're writing that kind of prose as a book, it has a different style. The periodical form helped create that unique, suspenseful, fast format. My hope is that in the internet age -- when people are reading more as a whole but maybe reading fewer books -- that a serial web formal will help create a literature for readers of this era, just like magazines like "Black Mask" helped make a literature for the twenties and thirties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What tools do you use to do your work? What tools/processes are essential to your workflow?

<comment><USER4> My father, who is also a reporter, used to have one important tool, a rolodex (for those too young to know, this used to be a rolling phone card file). Every night he came home and did a thing he called a "phone attack," where he randomly called all his sources -- not for stories, but just to touch base, chat, listen to what's going on in their lives. This is basically all you need to do to be a good reporter, maintain a lot of relationships with people in different walks of life. It's hard work but very rewarding. If you don't have people with their ears to the ground, you're lost. So like my father I try to regularly stay in touch with all sorts of people, and never to call a source for a favor if I haven't recently called socially, or just to check in. People hate feeling used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm guessing substack is a high volume email sender, do you guys use an API or in-house tech for that? Any interesting stories about keeping your mail out of spam filters/your IPs off blacklists/Nigerian princes from starting newsletters?

<comment><USER5> We are, and it is an interesting problem!

I don't want to get too deep into the details here other than to say at a product level we're focused on being respectful with the access we get to people's inboxes. We hate junk mail as much as everybody else, and being good citizens is necessary (but not sufficient) to deliver lots of email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Matt,

I have really enjoyed your books and all your articles over the years, especially about banking, corruption, and the financial crisis. i am curious if you have read the book 'The Chickenship Club) [[https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department- Prosecute...](https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute- Executives/dp/1501121367)] and your thoughts on it?

<comment><USER4> So I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't read that book, but I imagine I've read almost all of Jesse's articles from that time period, as we were both covering essentially the same story. Along with Gretchen Morgenson of the Times, Jesse was one of the first reporters to start asking the question of why no one from the crisis era went to jail. I gather from the title alone that he traversed a lot of the same area I did in "The Divide," which was significantly about the pusillanimous Justice Department not wanting to take on complex financial cases. Jesse is a great reporter so I will definitely check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting project! I'm wondering: does Substack have a proposal to put editors into this new workflow? Editing seems like an essential part of the process of good journalism or any kind of writing that would be missing in this model.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a writer who has worked with a number of great editors over the years: I agree. In the short-term, the best writers will recognize the value of having an editor and factor that expense into their business models. Ultimately, I'd love to see an ecosystem evolve where editors can sell their services to writers who want to improve their publications. I see that as a pretty exciting opportunity for a platform like Substack at some point in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hi,

Especially given Matt's recent experience getting caught up in a #metoo whirlwind, how do you think about creating a new business in publishing with two white cis male founders and a marquee journalist from the same background (doing a story that invokes the race of a non-white person in its title no less?) Do you think that the struggles of SV/VC culture to accomplish its stated goals in the area of diversity pose a particular challenge to a startup focused on publishing?

Thanks for your time, and best of luck! Forrest

<comment><USER27> Very not-white third founder from Substack checking in (North Indian, born and raised in Japan)

To address the question, one of the main benefits of our model (removing advertising from the equation) is that communities aren't incentivized to expose themselves to as many eyeballs as possible

From that lens, you can see how not trying to maximize eyeballs/clicks can be great for diversity. It's totally fine for them to find the people who care deeply about the community's purpose without being watered down by the outside majority. To me that allows all sorts of unique communities to emerge and be financially supported in a way that ensures their survival

<comment><USER26> Thank you for the answer, despite the sometimes chilly HN climate around pluralism. I hope you're right, that's definitely a plausible scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Guys,

Great idea. I would focus on specialty media. Think things like banking regulations, utility work, law reviews, etc. I think there is pretty strong willingness to pay in those markets and the credibility of the individual authors may carry more weight than magazine brands. Giving those writers a bigger cut might also attract them to the platform. Clearly you need to think about an advertising model here but those are the types of markets I would try to compete in - not serialized fiction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We agree that there is definitely a promising market in those fields, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thanks for doing this. So, why newsletters? Why not RSS?

Clearly Axios and others are showing that email is better. Why do you think this is? How do you think this will develop in future?

<comment><USER30> Not from Substack, but the answer is that people reliably look at their inboxes and open the emails.

<comment><USER5> Bingo.

That said we have (basic) RSS support as well for those that prefer it, and it's on our list of things to improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hi Matt, have you read Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory" yet? It has an interesting perspective on what drives the trend to minimize pay for writers.

</comment><comment><USER32> Have you considered integration with any of the voice control devices like Alexa? The text-to-speech interfaces aren't really quite good enough yet to handle arbitrary complex content without jarring breaks in the listening experience, but I think high-quality serialized content presented in audio form could be an interesting option, particularly given the recently improved payment support in Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER33> I make my living running ad-supported websites/newsletters. I always like the idea of getting away from ads, and relying on direct support from my audience. I am good at building email lists.

My business model currently depends on the predictability I've developed with the ads on my site. Do you have any advice for transitioning away from an ad based newsletter to a subscription service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Clear and honest messaging to your readers about why you're doing this and what the benefits will be for them. Also: let's talk? You can email us at hello at substack dot com

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Will Substack be strictly a written newsletter platform or will it allow a hybrid approach including picture, audio, video, comments, etc. ?

<comment><USER5> We'll definitely look for ways to make the product better for readers and writers.

You can already add pictures. We are testing comments for paid subscribers on a couple of publications (you heard it here first!) And that other stuff is definitely interesting.

What will not change is that the experience for the reader will stay really simple - Sign up, and everything you need shows up in your email. Also the model will stay focused on letting readers pay writers directly for high quality content, because that's the magic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why did Substack choose the subscription model? Have you considered the micropayment model instead? Personally, I would much rather pay a small fee for each article I read (provided you remove all the barriers to payment) rather than pay a monthly subscription. I'm curious about the pros and cons of each option

<comment><USER5> I think micropayments don't work.

Even if you make payment as completely frictionless as possible, there is still the mental overhead of deciding to pay. As the dollar amount gets smaller and smaller, the "pain of deciding to pay" becomes a higher fraction of the total pain, and the economics don't make sense. Plus, if you just charge for each click or whatever, you get the bad incentives of clickbait back.

Subscriptions are great because you only have to make one (big) decision. Subscribing to individual writers is great, because the thing you are deciding is do you like/trust/want to keep reading this writer, which is something that people actually do have strong feelings about.

As distribution has become free, the value of content has been driven to zero. But now the value of curation -- of reading somebody you trust -- gets higher. That's what people are willing to pay for.

<comment><USER36> Those are excellent arguments. That's how I read fiction. Whenever an author I like publishes a book, I buy it.

But that's not how I read journalism. Many years ago, I subscribed to the local paper, The NY Times, and a few magazines. Now I browse forums and Google stuff.

I like many writers. So many that I can't imagine committing $x per week to each of them. As you say, paying per article leads to clickbait. But somehow, I'd like more flexible access to multiple writers.

<comment><USER5> I buy that. I think some people will subscribe to an individual journalist that they really like, or covers something especially important to them, but others may need some kind of federation/bundling in the long run.

I'd prefer to see a world where that happens bottom up -- writers choose to band together with other writers they trust. But we'll see :)

<comment><USER36> > I'd prefer to see a world where that happens bottom up -- writers choose to > band together with other writers they trust.

I _love_ that idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What has it been like switching from non-fiction to (semi)fiction? How did it change your writing process?

<comment><USER4> It's completely different and fun. This is kind of an in-between change for me. Oddly enough working with my anonymous partner has been a real help -- my own natural voice is probably wordier and slower on the page, but he has a great natural narrative voice and gets to the point a lot more quickly. So trying to replicate his voice, I think, has made the material different and more fast-paced than I could have done on my own. It's been a blast, the most fun I've had writing in ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not a question, but feedback. I was intrigued at the concept of subscribing to a serialized deep-cover investigative story.

Then I saw that this is a novel, and my interest evaporated. Not because I don't read fiction, but because I don't want to read fiction that way.

<comment><USER5> Maybe read the first chapter and then decide? ;)

[https://taibbi.substack.com/p/chapters-one-and-two-the- busin...](https://taibbi.substack.com/p/chapters-one-and-two-the-business- secrets-of-drug-dealing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a writer who goes after very powerful people, how does that affect your work in terms of these financiers/banks trying to pressure you or your employers. Are tools like Substack designed to help writers stay independent?

<comment><USER4> I think that's definitely going to be a major motivation for journalists going forward. The media landscape is becoming more and more rigid and it is becoming harder to challenge certain points through the old networks and newspapers. So having reporters be financially independent would be huge for investigative reporting, which is one of the areas that has been cut the most in the new era of clickbait media.

Another thing -- what Substack is trying to do is to solve a problem that has existed in media forever. Writers of all types have always been compensated in an indirect, convoluted way, by publishers who get some or all of their revenue from ads. This forces writers to address audiences through layers of middlemen who may or may not want to meddle in the material. The Substack model could end both direct and indirect censorship.

<comment><USER5> This is definitely part of our motivation for making Substack. When readers pay writers directly, the writers are accountable to those readers, and not e.g. advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Should make [https://substack.com](https://substack.com) redirect to [https://www.substack.com](https://www.substack.com)

</comment><comment><USER40> Matt, What is your favorite investigative piece you've written?

<comment><USER4> Wow. I would say -- let me just back up and say that generally the job of investigative reporting is mostly about getting up to speed as quickly as possible about really complicated topics, and then communicating what you've learned in readable prose in as short a time period as possible. So the biggest challenge is when you have the hardest, most complex subjects. After the 2008 crash I was given a general assignment to explain what happened, and since I knew nothing about Wall Street, I basically had to learn about ten years' worth of financial practices in the space of maybe eight weeks. Those early stories about Goldman and AIG were both thrilling and terrifying because it was so much to digest.

Another fun one (in retrospect) - I don't know if this is investigative journalism exactly, but I was once involved with what in hindsight was a very crazy caper: a Russian newspaper called "Stringer," for whom I worked occasionally, had a contact who was willing to sell them a week of wiretapped phone calls from Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin. I ended up doing the writeup of that story. There were some minor improprieties exposed in the transcripts, but nothing world-shaking. Still, I was so terrified about publishing it that I left the country. And when I returned, I was detained at Sheremetyevo airport for hours. It turned out the problem was an unlamented passport page. I thought I was going to prison forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have you considered having a Kindle edition periodical? Frankly I find it much more comfortable to read long pieces on my Kindle than on my computer or on a phone or tablet.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's the best way to discover substack content? substack.com doesn't have search or browse functionality as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER5> We're working on this! Right now most people discover through the author's networks, and from people sharing free content.

We made a super basic discovery feature (that's just chronological free posts) here: [https://www.substack.com/discover](https://www.substack.com/discover) but we need to make that a lot better now that the home page is starting to get appreciable traffic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What genres currently are outperforming cryptocurrency newsletters?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, we are seeing a lot of strength in the crypto newsletters on Substack and we love them. There are plenty of genres that are out-performing some of them – from absurdist humor to bankruptcy industry coverage to foreign policy – but the truth is that the writer matters more than the subject. People subscribe to writers they trust. Those reader-writer relationships are key in this world.

<comment><USER42> Does Substack allow po - I mean, erotica? Asking for a friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Just posting to say I miss the TARFU report.

<comment><USER4> I miss it, too. Alex is one of my favorite people on earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Im a subscriber to Matt's book. I generally like this delivery model- and feel like for his case the model works. There are 2 chapters available for free as well as some additional information around the project. Payment was pretty low drag and so far he has delivered in a very timely manner.

My struggle with this model is with other folks who may not deliver with such professionalism or decide that their inner thoughts deserve a paywall and a fancy click bait hook. Are there any safeguards or thoughts put into this?

<comment><USER5> Thank you for subscribing!

The main protection is that it's really hard to get people to pay you money if you don't have evidence of substance. It's harder to make paybait than clickbait.

That said, it is definitely an issue we will have to navigate carefully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This isn't a new business model and plenty of people and organizations already charge money for newsletters or subscriptions for content.

There's been plenty of academic papers from economists focusing on journalism detailing the issues, but put simply: There's two ways to monetize, 1) Ads where businesses are the customer, 2) Pay per use (one time or subscriptions) where the reader is the customer.

The problem with subscriptions is that it disfavors the poor and massively reduces audience, which in the case of journalism and news the poor are arguably in most need and end up disenfranchised by editors and journalists because the need to write articles to please their upper and middle class customers (think the Economist for example).

The problem with ads on the Internet is that content can be copied and exfiltrated at no cost, so it's difficult to prevent syndication of the content elsewhere (why RSS is not more successful, for example)

Substack doesn't fundamentally fix anything with the problems of a subscription-based business model, even though it looks like a good product.

<comment><USER46> I like your analysis of the "problems" from an industry perspective. Here's the user perspective:

(1) The problem with subscriptions is that it's unfathomable to subscribe all over the place. I live in New Jersey, so I'm not going to subscribe to the LA Times even if they have some great coverage of a particular topic.

(2) The problem with ads is that they are INSANELY annoying to see all the time. Period.

My company, reallyread.it, is going to be uniquely positioned to make "pay per use" (aka just reading something) a reality. It's the Holy Grail for all of us: Spotify for News - one premium subscription that unlocks everything, everywhere. We're on it. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How did you guys settle on "Substack"? I only ask because Substack is a really well known handle for one of the most prolific Node ecosystem contributors, and I feel like you guys are going to run into a lot of SEO pain dealing with that.

<comment><USER5> We subscribe to the pg take on naming. We went through a couple of options we like, and Substack was the one we could get the .com for. It's a Stack for Subscription publishing. We didn't realize about the node developer with the Twitter handle; hopefully it's different enough that it's not a pain for either of us.

See [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

<comment><USER48> Or is it that you googled and decided you can just take over someone's identity because they haven't registered a .com. It's not like "substack" would be a thing outside of it.

<comment><USER49> They haven't taken over an identity. A simple disclaimer on the landing page is sufficient to explain the situation, which is that no company is responsible for every current or past or future naming conflict. There's something something about naming being hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is the first I've heard of Substack.

I thought I recognized that name and then I remembered....there's a developer[0] who has written many packages on npm[1] with the same name: substack

I'll have to check this out just because of the name :)

[0]: [https://github.com/substack](https://github.com/substack)

[1]: [https://www.npmjs.com/~substack](https://www.npmjs.com/~substack)

<comment><USER5> Just to avoid any confusion: we are not affiliated with James Halliday, the developer who uses the Github/Twitter handle substack.

(Though now that I look at it, I definitely respect his work, especially minimist)

<comment><USER48> Are you going to add this disclaimer to everything you do now, or is the idea to just take the name over with your capital? It's their name that they've established by being a prolific, well-respected developer; it was also the only search result for it before you appeared, because it's a unique name without an another established meaning. There's no explanation for why you'd choose it outside of not doing due dilligence or just lack of morals.

<comment><USER51> That's ridiculous. A new platform for journalism can't share a name with a popular Node developer? Even actual trademarks only apply across a category of similar products.

<comment><USER36> So, for example, "Ruby fibers" are not chromium-doped alumina abrasives. And indeed, one might see both on HN :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Not the kind of trash I want to see on HN: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f7...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f729e9e4b06acda25f4b8e/amp)

> On October 27, Aimee Levitt published a piece in The Chicago Reader with the > apt title "Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist > asshole—and possible worse." Taibbi and Mark Ames were co-editors of the the > English language gonzo, semi-satirical, semi-muckraking expat newspaper the > eXile, where they engaged in sophomoric pranks, non-stop partying, and, if > their own words are to believed, constant sexual harassment.

<comment><USER53> So moral purity is a requirement for notable achievement now?

<comment><USER52> Not being a misogynistic isn't "moral purity" it's the minimum standard of decency. And nobody is saying Taibbi hasn't had notable achievements. I'm saying I have no interest in seeing someone like him do an AMA on HN. And as an audience member, I certainly don't want my friends knowing I have an account and post to a site that'd let someone like Taibbi do an AMA. He can go be notable somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> [Deleted]

<comment><USER19> This was already debunked dumbass

<comment><USER54> The excerpts linked from reddit are stuff that was published in the Exile. Are you saying they're fake?

Can I get a link to the debunking?

Thanks.

<comment><USER55> His wiki[1] says "Women portrayed in the book have gone on record to defend Taibbi, stating that none of the sexual harassment portrayed in the book ever happened."[2]

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

[2] [https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the- destructi...](https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destruction- of-matt-taibbi.html)

<comment><USER54> Alright. The Paste Magazine piece is enough to raise doubts for me. I deleted my comment.

Thanks for the links, everybody.

<comment><USER56> "Raise doubts" is a bit stingy. Here is what one of the allegedly-harrassed women had to say (in the Paste article): _"These claims that Matt would do this stuff are ridiculous," she said. "I left The eXile because we started dating, and Matt was worried about impropriety. He didn't even ask me out at work! Matt is a fundamentally decent and kind person."_

The smear seems to me to have been completely refuted on the facts, and there's a second issue: if it hadn't been, there's no way those mainstream publications would have retracted it en masse (especially not given the social climate around that topic). When was the last time they all did that? It's practically a magic trick to get them to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Matt and substack, do you think privately-owned media platforms could be disintermediated by blockchain type solutions, linking producers to consumers without a middleman?

</comment><comment><USER58> Hello I am CEO of a Texas NPO and doing research for a nationwide initiative to advocate for parents to test their minor children without the child's knowledge for drug use. Would you consider donating a copy of this fine work in-kind and allowing us to quote it with citations on a national scale? Also, I love the business model! Steve Morrow MBA MA

<comment><USER59> > to advocate for parents to test their minor children without the child's > knowledge for drug use

This seems kind of overbearing. Why do think this is something important to advocate for?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: The HN Mind, can it it be gamed? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
ok, after some testing I found out that headlines are a joke on HN, not because they get re-edited by admins, or because you cannot edit it yourself afterwards. The real reason is that people hunt keywords!
The time you submit a headline is very important and often leads to higher ranking, because respecting peak times, when most people use HN actively will give you more surface to positive ratings. Landing on the frontpage becomes easier that way. There are already SaaS WebApps for Twitter and Facebook which do this type of thing, it's no different on HN.
The HN Mind, can actually be deconstructed more or less easily by mining stats/keywords and relations. And what I have found to be my truth is that the HN Mind chooses what it wants (everybody has it's own truth, but the collective follows the most popular spur, just like ants do). And Fronpage posts have one thing in common, there are headlines with similar topics, that reflect the current trend of interest.
Do you remember the fake MongoDB Post that hit the frontpage and made a lot of HN folks believe in it initially, until someone released that it was a hoax? This made the HN Mind perplex and more careful for some time. But this careful behavior faded when there weren't enough stimulants (hoax posts are rare).
What I'm saying here is that the HN Mind can be gamed and that popular headlines can put it into believing something specific as valuable. A potential attacker could benefit by this situation through systematically using posts to create false beliefs or valuations. Maybe that's not a weakness in HN alone, but the humand mind. Our decision making process can be manipulated [1]. We inveest the same way monkeys do [2]. Politicians actively use this weakness [3] by using a manipulative language and broad media coverage, they also hire "specialits" that help to lie for better outcomes/rankings. HN has no measure, policies to prevent Social Engineering.
As the HN user @unimpressive mentioned, it is possible to persuade people with weak arguments . . . [4] This case is something that many hackers and engineers out there have been through. Altough you had a good and strong argument, people didn't take you more serious, but accepted the case as closed. Yes this is a weak argument supporting the claim that weak arguments can be superior to strong arguments, but let's not get fooled by it and have a quick read of the references yourself.
[1] http://monkeybiz.stanford.edu/Rorie_1TICS.pdf
[2] http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monkey-business-primitive-wealth.html
[3] http://sablon.sdu.edu.tr/dergi/sosbilder/dosyalar/19_9.pdf
[4] http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/2013/09/13/persuading-with-weak-arguments-maybe/ <comment><USER2> Major news outlets have turned gaming social sites into a huge business - years ago it was revealed HuffPo A/B tested their headlines based on how much traffic they pull. These days I suspect that's entirely standard but even if the tech rags are still lagging behind you can see them desperately pandering for pageviews pretty transparently - like Ars syndicating StackOverflow, or the sheer volume of viral-hit-or-miss garbage that AOL's giant content farm spews out across their network (eg 39 x iPhone 5c/s articles between just TechCrunch and Engadget since being announced!).

Business Insider uses Optimizely to optimize the stream of pure shit they emit.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever thought about turning your anti-spam passion into a startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I'm working on a project, that I don't know the outcome of yet to be honest.

<comment><USER3> My question is addressed to benologist. He is something of an expert on this subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, HN can be gamed.

Evidence? This pointless post creeping up to the front page solely due to a controversial heading.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the way you critically assess articles and it's respected when there is no substance or evidence. You're reading the references, but cannot see an evidence. How does your claim of pointlessness have a proof?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can game it further with human actors in the comments.</comment>


Why getter and setter methods are evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html?page=1 <comment><USER2> What I find more insidious is the way accessor methods naturally encourage you to treat them as if they are performance-equivalent with member variables. People will reference them in loops, blithely unaware that they're building and rebuilding the same data structures in accessors that are only superficially similar to member variables.

<comment><USER3> What do you do to avoid this? I try to name my heavy-lifting methods so that they do not look like simple accessors, but sometimes it is inevitable.

For instance, a large dataset may have a method to get the length of the dataset. If the dataset does not maintain a member variable that has that value, then you have to calculate it. Later, for performance, you might implement an ivar that is updated whenever the dataset changes, thus making the method a simple accessor.

<comment><USER2> If something walks and quacks like a member variable, I'm happy to make it a member variable. Otherwise, it gets to be a function.

(Obviously this doesn't apply in languages like ObjC or C++ where accessors are often necessary for memory management)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jump to page 6 and read the summary : [http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbo...](http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html?page=6)

The rest of the article has some interesting points, but I found it too wordy.</comment>


Wikipedia's new look - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UsabilityInitiativePrefSwitch

<comment><USER2> It's a minor improvement--it's cleaner, it probably loads a little faster. Nothing drastic.

<comment><USER3> Could it be an elusive big-site redesign without a user backlash?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, mouse-hover on an internal link brings up a snippet view of the resulting page. What is really cool is, this works for links in the snippet view as well, so you can open nested snippet after snippet.

These had been available to logged in users as a Beta for quite a while now (~3 months? Can't remember when it started..)

<comment><USER5> It has to be enabled from the Gadgets preferneces for a logged in user:

> Navigation popups, article previews and editing functions popup when > hovering over links

for more info: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks better, but the new autosuggest search has a horrible race condition: type fast, hit enter quickly, and you end up with a truncated or blank search string. Not an improvement!

</comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping that this would fix my only issue, but alas I think my issue is with Chrome.

When I was a Safari user, I could call up Wikipedia and I knew that I just had to hit the TAB key once to get to the search field.

Now that I've been lured away by Chrome, I go to Wikipedia and hit tab about half a dozen times before I give up and use the mouse pointer to put focus in the search field. It's a frustrating detail that I think Safari got right.

<comment><USER8> With Vimium, press f-S-E and you're there. Not as good as one keystroke, but better than using the mouse!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only drawback for me is the navigation across the tops of pages. Fade effects might be a current fad but it doesn't quite work (I feel quite strained reading the nav)

</comment><comment><USER10> My biggest wish for Wikipedia UI: enable the "languages" feature in the mobile version. Having to switch to the standard layout on the iPhone really sucks.

<comment><USER11> I agree. This and access to categories are my 2 biggest wishes for the mobile version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks good. Line lengths can still get way too long when surfing full screen on a high res monitor. My browser window is at the moment only 970px wide and one line already has more than 100 characters – that's nearly too much.

Yeah, it sucks when you get wide empty margins but running away from the problem won't help.

</comment><comment><USER13> I stoppped editing Wikipedia when I realized the majority of my time was taken up by doing things that should have been automated by software. I was using the beta version at the time. I don't think this update will change things that much, although a good toolbar will help.

<comment><USER14> _I stopped editing Wikipedia when I realized the majority of my time was taken up by doing things that should have been automated by software._

What are some examples?

<comment><USER13> I think the automation is not the traditional kind of automation, but instead software that supports getting the same thing done in a fraction of the time.

Just the act of beginning an edit in WP is painful. I see where the article text is, then I have to click the edit button and wade through the editing text (this can be very difficult sometimes) to find it.

The workflow that involves collaborating with other people is completely tedious- the talk pages are awful because this is not what wiki's were designed for. I would suggest moving to a model similar to version controlled software where changes can be staged and reviewed before committing, and discussions can be made around those changesets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I really like the look of the sidebar I find it weird that the Discussion page is deemed more important than the History.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's clean, but losing left-side navigation hurts a bit, since that's my default on almost every website. I'm not going to need to change languages or contact Wikipedia very often.

<comment><USER17> For the people who do switch languages often it's very handy to be able to do so quickly. Wikipedia is in its way an excellent translation tool when you're looking for relatively specialized terms.</comment></comment>


Node.js Board Statement on TSC Action - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/board/issues/67 <comment><USER2> Instead of being overruled, the TSC could possibly hold the vote again as it'd probably go the other way now given public sentiment?

<comment><USER3> Maybe not since everyone who voted against it left?</comment></comment>


Cool Things in Perl 6 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/01/cool-things-in-perl-6.html <comment><USER2> I love Perl. Perl is my language of choice. So I promise that I am not trolling. Let's just stipulate that I'm slow or inexperienced or very confused.

What is the cool in that code? Can someone explain to me (apparently using small words) why this is exciting?

<comment><USER3> The example defines a subtype which represents a file on disk. Any parameter conforming to that subtype must name a file that is present on disk.

Think of this subtype as a named precondition -- it's a concise, intention- revealing way of reporting error conditions without cluttering the internals of the function with duplicate error-handling code.

<comment><USER2> Nicely explained. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This kind of posts just show how good the perl community is in terms of marketing. Not loud or shrill, just sharing a cup of fresh mint tea at an oasis.

</comment><comment><USER5> This title should be "cool thing in Perl 6." It's just a tiny blogpost about subsets. There are zero other new features mentioned.

And who uses Perl these days anyways? I can't think of a task I wouldn't rather script in Python.

I remember the glory days of web scraping when all a man had was LWP, Mechanize, and his own mastery of regex to work with. But those days are long gone!

<comment><USER6> Lots of us use Perl these days. For example those of us that care about speed, stability, and sane backwards compatibility. WWW::Mechanize is still a great tool when appropriate. Catalyst and Moose are pretty awesome to work with as well. I'm pretty happy with the state of Perl these days, there are lots of reasons to recommend it, but if Python works for you, that's cool too.

Slightly more on topic - when Ovid first posted this to his feed, Stevan Little pointed out that you could already do it in Perl 5 ( <http://gist.github.com/268717> ). Watching the give and take between the Perl 6 language and the Modern Perl movement is (I think) one of the more interesting and exciting areas of language development these days.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting Stevan's gist... I hadn't seen that elsewhere.

When I first saw Ovid's post I could see a MooseX::Declare lightbulb going off in my head ;-)

        use 5.010;
        use MooseX::Declare;

        class Foo {
            use MooseX::Types -declare => [ qw(Filename) ];
            use MooseX::Types::Moose qw(Str);

            BEGIN {
                subtype Filename, as Str, where { -x $_ };
            }

            method file ( Filename $name ) {
                say "Houston, we have a filename: $name";
            }
        }

        my $foo = Foo->new;
        my $perl = `which perl`; chomp $perl;

        $foo->file( $perl );
        $foo->file( 'no_such_file' );

Above throws the expected exeception on 'no_such_file'.

<comment><USER8> This reminds me that it would be nice if someone wrote a module that produced type constraints like:

       File[Exists]
       File[Readable, Executable]
       Dir[Empty]

as an extension to MooseX::Types::Path::Class.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ask and Tally - <AUTHOR> http://www.askandtally.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this for the UChicago hackathon this past weekend. I made it because I needed it for myself, and I wanted to make something useful that did not require users to sign up for another account. Hopefully other people find it useful too.

<comment><USER2> Really useful app, and so so simple. Who did you use to power your SMS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm using Nexmo.com.</comment></comment></comment>


Hachette Puts out Response to Amazon Statement - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/hachette-puts-out-response-to-amazon-statement-rejects-author-pool-before-agreement-is-reached/

<comment><USER2> It was pure evil genius for Amazon to offer a pool of funds to compensate authors, split 50-50 with Hachette.

      We've offered to Hachette to fund 50% of an author pool – to be
      allocated by Hachette – to mitigate the impact of this dispute
      on author royalties, if Hachette funds the other 50%.

Hachette's response isn't nearly so clever.

      Once we have reached such an agreement, we will be happy to
      discuss with Amazon its ideas about compensating authors for
      the damage its demand for improved terms may have done them,
      and to pass along any payments it considers appropriate.

<comment><USER3> It really feels like Amazon is the bad guy in this situation though. They've demanded terms from Hachette, then lashed out by slowing, then ceasing entirely, sales of Hachette's books. That doesn't seem like a mature way of dealing with things (at least, not without a little more communication rather than just cutting them off unannounced).

Hachette's response makes sense. 'We didn't agree to the terms you tried to dictate to us, and now you're saying it's half our fault that these authors lost revenues as a result of your retaliation?'

<comment><USER4> > It really feels like Amazon is the bad guy in this situation though. They've > demanded terms from Hachette, then lashed out by slowing, then ceasing > entirely, sales of Hachette's books

Aren't they doing a standard renegotiation of their contract? If they don't have a contract, Amazon is under no obligation to sell Hachette's products at all. Meanwhile, I wasn't in the room for their contract negotiation, but who's to say that Hachette isn't the one making unreasonable demands?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is kind of amusing how similar this is to the network neutrality debate -- i.e. comcast's dispute with netflix affecting comcast/netflix customer content delivery -- yet with decidedly old-fashioned media.

<comment><USER6> Except that there are a lot of alternatives to Amazon with low switching cost to consumers.

<comment><USER7> Unless you own a Kindle Paperwhite.

<comment><USER8> How do you figure that? Yes you might not have an ebook store built into your device but you are not locked into ONLY obtaining your ebooks from Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good read on the whole situation - [http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v- hache...](http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hachette- dont-believe-the-spin/)

Suggests Hachette may not be as innocent as they would have us believe

</comment><comment><USER10> >>> "Amazon indicates that it considers books to be like any other consumer good. They are not."

Unfortunately, from everything I've seen of people's book buying habits, especially online, books _are_ consumer goods.

<comment><USER11> The point is, you can't really substitute one book for a similar one in quite the same way you can substitute for a roll of toilet paper or a dinner plate or an umbrella or whatever.

<comment><USER12> I mean, they're not quite commodities. But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books. Books are subject to competition from other books, which causes price pressures, just like most goods.

<comment><USER13> "But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books"

When the next book in a series arrives, there is no substitute. I would love to have seen someone trying to tell a Harry Potter reader that this other book is a substitute.

<comment><USER12> So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE EXAMPLE is a rebuttal?

And again, books are absolutely not commodities. Nobody is saying there's no difference between the preference for Harry Potter versus Percy Jackson or what have you. But Percy Jackson is certainly a close substitute for Harry Potter, so if the price difference between them is great enough, some readers will choose to read Percy Jackson instead of Harry Potter, and the number of readers for which this is true grows as the price difference does. This is also true if the supply of Harry Potter books is restricted. (This is the principle that makes small airport bookstores work, incidentally -- given the constrained supply of books available for purchase, airport book stores stock the most popular titles they can and figure that people will substitute their most preferred book that's available for the book they would purchase if the store carried a larger selection. And often enough, they do.)

And this is true for most goods. Android phones and iPhones are close substitutes for each other -- if you want one, that's the one you want, but if the price difference gets high enough, you'll go to the close substitute, and people vary in their level of price sensitivity. If the price of corn tortillas gets high enough, you'll start eating flour tortillas. And so on and so forth. This is pretty basic economics here.

<comment><USER13> > So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is > true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE > EXAMPLE is a rebuttal?

I don't believe it is true much of the time. Maybe for technical books, but even then it is not because authors matter.

Picking between authors you like or have heard good things about is one thing, but they are not interchangeable. If I am waiting for the next in a series and I go to Amazon and they pull this crap then I will have to go elsewhere. The book is more important that a seller. If I want a certain painters art on my wall, I buy that print, not a "well Amazon didn't have that so I'll get a Fred".

<comment><USER12> Well, look, from Hachette's own statement:

"It is good to see Amazon acknowledge that its business decisions significantly affect authors' lives."

Because when people aren't finding these books available through Amazon, or are finding them at a higher markup than other books, some of them aren't going to Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million or to Actual Physical Bookstore to get them. Now, some of these missed purchase opportunities may simply be books that aren't sold at all, but some of them are going to be consumers buying other books. Because books are close substitutes for other books.

<comment><USER13> You read quite a lot into that sentence. Many of those people bought nothing because Amazon doesn't have what they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found the discussion, cited by the Amazon response, pretty insightful (and it shows some shades of grey - no not 50! - with regards to the issue at hand)

[http://www.thecockeyedpessimist.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos- af...](http://www.thecockeyedpessimist.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos-afraid-of- amazoncom.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Enough people are getting upset about this that I expect both sides to make apologetic noises and shuffle towards a resolution at an increased pace. As far as finding out what really went down, or what the resolution ends up being I am doubtful at best.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reuters published this recently [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/28/hachette- amazoncom...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/28/hachette-amazoncom- idUSL1N0OE1GZ20140528)

</comment><comment><USER17> Blogspam with no link to the original.

Also, that was a lot of words with basically no content:

"We publish books. We think books are special. We have not yet reached an agreement with Amazon to keep selling books to them, but we will eventually.

Also, we think this is all Amazon's fault and we're not going to consider their proposal to pay our authors in the meantime until after we resolve the contract dispute."

<comment><USER18> The French do indeed write like that. You get used to it.

<comment><USER19> See also Piketty. 1000 pages to say "les Anglo-Saxons, bof!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems there's no original online source? At least the current url includes the actual statement. We changed it from [http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2014/05/hachette- answ...](http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2014/05/hachette-answers-will- discuss-compensating-damage-amazons-demand-dispute-settled/), which weirdly inlines bits of it.

<comment><USER21> There actually seem to be quite a few "news outlets" that received a press release from Hachette, and yet their own press release page is horribly old: [http://www.hachette.com/en/press/press- releases](http://www.hachette.com/en/press/press-releases)</comment></comment>


Temple Run: The Rough Road to a Runaway Success Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/features/temple-run-the-rough-road-to-a-runaway-success-story-6368469/

<comment><USER2> An overnight success story that took only 4 years. :) Shorter than most.

These guys are the real deal in terms of inspiring indie "it could have been you" team. Keith decided to quit his day job, and become a game designer coming from a non-game design background. And now they've got zynga-like user numbers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Building successful games for iOS is such a crapshoot thanks to app store distribution mechanisms. The most successful games are the ones best ranked. Aside from having a good product, I bet a lot of publishers don't even know how or why they're doing well. But it ends up looking like 1% of the population controlling 99% of the wealth.

Or maybe that's just the nature of video games in general.

<comment><USER4> It's a hits-based industry, much like music and film, where no one really has any idea what will work and what won't. If anything, I'd argue that the video games industry is _less_ of a crapshoot than the other two, with indie shops regularly topping the charts...</comment></comment>


5 critical learnings they don't teach you in business school - <AUTHOR> http://www.evosoftware.com/email-marketing/5-critical-learnings-they-dont-teach-you-in-business-school <comment><USER2> "Learnings"? Seriously?

And the summary of the points seems to be "Work all the time and send lots of spam". And apparently foursquare cost millions of dollars to start.</comment>


The Planned Obsolescence of Consumer Technology - <AUTHOR> http://glipho.com/dave-cullen/the-planned-obsolescence-of-consumer-technology

<comment><USER2> Consider that a C64 ran GEOS GUI on 1MHz processor with 64K of RAM. Compare that to today's 1GHz with 4GB RAM -- 1,000 times faster processor and 62,000 times more memory. It boggles the mind that so much is still so slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, but this sounds like it should be on The Onion. Would the IBDI prefer that technology not advance?</comment>


Copying Lines, not killing - <AUTHOR> http://www.emacsblog.org/2009/05/18/copying-lines-not-killing/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't that just replace C-kC-y with C-cC-k? Given that C-cC-k is used by various major modes to do mode-specific killing this doesn't seem like a good trade.

<comment><USER3> I was just about to point out the same thing myself. This is just dumb -- you add keystrokes to save typing or to simplify a metaphor. This complicates the metaphor (decide between cut and copy), saves nothing (actually it's harder to type for those with ctrl bound properly -- K/Y can be done with two fingers of the same hand), and pollutes the space of key bindings to boot.

That said, it's a nice tutorial on how to set a global binding. They just should have worked harder on picking a useful example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had this same problem, and I solved it thusly:

      (defun duplicate-line ()
        "Duplicate the line the point is on, moving the point to the duplicate"
        (interactive)
        (save-excursion
          (kill-new (buffer-substring (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position)))
          (end-of-line)
          (newline)
          (yank)
          (rotate-yank-pointer 1))
        (next-line 1))

I'm sure there's a better way to do that (this is one of the first elisp things I ever wrote), but the general idea is that you duplicate the line the point is on, and then move the point down one line. It's surprisingly useful, more so than copying a line to the kill ring.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        (global-set-key "\M-w"  'copy-region-as-kill)

There's a core Emacs function that does this. It's confusingly called copy- region-as-kill, and it's bound to C-INSERT and f16 by default. I bind it to Meta-W.

<comment><USER6> This is one of many reasons I wish Emacs lisp had a reasonable namespace mechanism, rather than just a somewhat haphazardly applied verb-noun naming convention. Copy/kill/yank/etc. commands could be collected, movement commands together, etc. (Even if only aliases.)

Emacs periodically surprises me by already having some minor function I wanted, but half the time it's only surprising because it's named something unusual (compared to both other programming environments _and the rest of Emacs_ ). I can never remember what the commands are called for "get (point) for beginning / end of line", just that they're named something I can't find by searching apropos with anything that comes to mind, so I use something like

      (defun end-of-line-point ()
        (save-excursion (end-of-line) (point)))

instead.

While, on the one hand, it's nice to be able to extend the editor so easily, solving the underlying problem wouldn't detract from its extensibility in any way. Sticking everything in one namespace also leads to function-with- unnecessarily-cumbersome-name syndrome. (C has the same problem, though.)

Maybe one of these days I'll quit whining and just write another editor, but any real competition to Emacs has a lot of functionality to match, and most of the other historical cruft is easy enough to tolerate.

<comment><USER5> Imagine a 20-minute song that had to contain a riff from every musical fad from the end of the Carter era to the present. :)

I was going to post my thoughts on the impossibility of a (require 'sane- emacs) but then I found this document on "Emacs2010": <http://code.google.com/p/emacs2010/wiki/DeveloperIntro>

<comment><USER6> See, my biggest problem with Emacs is, why should adding all that functionality to the editor mean _rewriting all of it_? There are _existing_ programs that do most of those things already, and many of them are written in languages better-suited to those specific tasks. Seriously.

I have a strong suspicion that there are various subtle factors in the design of Emacs that encourage people to re-implement things in elisp, rather than just use existing programs. Elisp has external process calls, but it still seems like this blob that turns half of what it touches into something that will eventually be rewritten in elisp. (Perhaps part of it is that Emacs all runs in one thread, so background processes make it freeze.) I know many people love working in Lisp, but I'm pretty sure it's the last Lisp most people would choose under any other circumstances. (I'd rather use Scheme.)

There's a _lot_ of stuff that doesn't need to be running inside the editor. Its core could probably get by fine on undo/history management, file and buffer management, syntax highlighting, a keybinding system, a generic comint- like mode for shells and interpreters, other external process call functions, and ... what else? (Acme & Wily do all of the above except syntax highlighting. I'd use it, but I strongly dislike mouse-centric UIs.) I know that's a fair bit of work, but it's not like one would have to rewrite all of gnus and whatnot. Even something like query-regexp-replace or pabbrev could be an external process.

I've also been wondering if there's a good way to make the parser system used for syntax highlighting separate, but haven't settled on anything yet. (Parsing text that is changing as you parse it is a fundamentally different problem than parsing a static file or stream, and a relatively unexplored one, as this blog post notes ([http://www.codekana.com/blog/2009/04/02/on-the- speed-of-ligh...](http://www.codekana.com/blog/2009/04/02/on-the-speed-of- light-innovation-and-the-future-of-parsing/)).)

Finally, I think that Lua would be an _excellent_ choice for the customization language. A lot of Emacs's warts are ultimately issues with elisp, itself. (And, while Lua is my favorite language, and I'm admittedly biased, such use as an extension language is one of its major strong points.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, this was one of emacs' defaults that caused me to give it up and go back to vim. Also being forced to type out 'yes' completely to quit.

Vim is the kind of editor that never makes you type three characters where one would do. Or delete some text and then paste it back as the only means to 'copy.' It's about efficiency down to its bones.

Now, I'm well aware these things are customizable in emacs, but they're shipped as defaults. This implies the community thinks they're best, and belies a mentality that I just can't get with ("more keystrokes? no problem").

<comment><USER6> > This implies the community thinks they're best

In some cases, it just serves as a reminder about Stallman's incredible stubbornness. (transient-mark-mode, for one) The defaults are easy to change, at least.

Also, not to feed the trolls, but it seems like with Emacs vs. vim arguments, people are usually talking past each other. In general, it sounds like Emacs users are happy to have an easily extensible environment, and the vim users enjoy using such a terse and efficient text editor.

 _There's nothing contradictory there!_

An editor could do both, there just hasn't been a sufficiently popular synthesis of their strong points, yet. (Right?)

<comment><USER8> Well, there's VIPER...

But as a vim user, I like the way that vim works with minimal configuration. Yes, I could configure emacs to behave any way I'd like -- in fact, I generally like doing that sort of thing -- but as long as I'm really configuring my editor, I don't want to start with a horribly messy system like Emacs (and Elisp -- dynamic scoping?). Not to mention that I can't stand the default keybindings, and all sorts of extensions aren't _quite_ as friendly to set up once you've deviated from the defaults significantly (such as in VIPER).

Vim may be a "temporary" solution for me in that it's not as configurable as I'd like (I don't like Vimscript either, but I don't use it!). However, as "temporary" solutions go, it's very good at what it does (editing text, and that's it). I wouldn't dream of running an IRC client inside it, though.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you on pretty much all counts, actually. While one can use viper, most modes people have written follow the conventions for Emacs keybindings, so it's ultimately pretty futile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we are on emacs, check this out:

<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/key-chord.el>

It lets you bind commands to "chords." For example, I bind pressing U and I at the same time to 'other-window (typically, C-x o).

</comment><comment><USER10> Whats wrong with highlighting a region, and doing M-w on it, then yanking it back in?

<comment><USER11> C-space, C-e, M-w. Three freaking commands.</comment></comment>


Lisa Brennan-Jobs Recalls Memories of Her Famous Father - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/lisa-brennan-jobs-small-fry-steve-jobs-daughter <comment><USER2> All: please refrain from posting yet more comic-book-villain denunciations or superhero exultations. It's not interesting, and it's always the same.

Instead: find something curious and share it. (Hint: something that contains actual information and that hasn't been repeated a ton. On HN we're interested in the diffs.) Alternatively, you can always not post anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beautifully told anecdote about the Lisa. His reaction in denying her the Porsche seems to me to be about telling her she has to earn such trinkets. But who knows.

<comment><USER4>
      > "You're not getting anything," he said. "You understand?
      > Nothing. You're getting nothing." Did he mean about the
      > car, something else, bigger? I didn't know. His voice
      > hurt—sharp, in my chest.

Yep, a wise father imparting a valuable life lesson to his beloved daughter.

<comment><USER5> I'm hoping this is sarcasm.

<comment><USER4> _> I'm hoping this is sarcasm._

Is it really not obvious considering that the post to which I was replying said this?

 _> > His reaction in denying her the Porsche seems to me to be about telling her she has to earn such trinkets._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So interesting to read this first hand from Lisa. Her writing style really brings it alive and you really capture her age as her thoughts are projected.

Parenting and selflessness was apparently not Steve's forte.

If he worked on parenting as fervently as he worked at his job (heck, even 25% as much), this article would have a completely different tone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jobs was a real piece of work.

<comment><USER2> Maybe so (and maybe most of us are too), but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>


The Art of Engineering By David Kirkham - <AUTHOR> http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book-the-art-of-engineering-by-david-kirkham/

<comment><USER2> I've seen the prototype car they did a lot of development for Ellison's car. It's pretty impressive (this coming from a manufacturing engineer). Also, if you're in the Provo, UT area and like cars, think about dropping by for a visit. They seem quite open to visitors to come check out their facility and see what they're working on.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title of the book is perfectly suited for its benefactor's ego. As interesting as this is, it was certainly /not/ what it says on the tin.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you haven't seen this, it is also worth a look:

<http://www.zohoartforms.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a single download file/button somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are the chapters I recommend you read first...

* Introduction

* Chapter 3: Billet Chassis <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_03.pdf>

* Chapter 4: Main Frame Rails <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_04.pdf>

* Chapter 17: Testing <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_17.pdf>

* Chapter 18: Aluminum Body <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_18.pdf>

* Chapter 20: Photo Finish <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_20.pdf>

* Chapter 22: The Book <http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_22.pdf>

The craftsmanship of the body is mind boggling, realizing it was pounded _by hand_ out of flat sheet aluminum into a body that is entirely compound curves and then polished to a mirror finish.

The machining is also mind boggling, the time that went into programming all the tool paths so that the tool marks left after the machining operations were "right" (mentioned in Chapter 10: Machining) had to have been immense.

<comment><USER4> _the tool marks left after the machining operations were "right"_

I was wondering about that - why didn't they do a finishing pass to get rid of those?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tool marks add to the texture and thus can add to the beauty of a piece. They add interest and engage your eye and mind, drawing your eyes through and around the features of the piece, revealing the path of the tool.

A flat shiny piece is just a flat shiny piece.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824414>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, I didn't see that and the dupe catcher duped me. :-/ Should I delete the submission?

<comment><USER7> Leave it up. According to the current upvotes, at least 12 people haven't seen it before (like me) or think it's worth seeing again.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I hadn't see it and this is right up my alley.

I think once something is around a year old it really isn't a dup anymore, but rather a "classic" if it gets the votes. The classics I post in my Hacker Newsletter each week usually get a lot of clicks because of this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you been successful in getting your coinbase account recovered? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Recovered for/from what?

I've had my account disabled in the past (I created it while I was underage, with an adult representing me. Once they changed their terms to no longer allow this, they temporarily banned my account). But, once I turned 18, and was eligible again, all I did was send them one email and they immediately restored/recovered the account for me. So yes, I have been able to get my Coinbase account recovered before.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also i had a problem logging in from desktop but was able to complete transaction via mobile.

This should be carved in stone:

DO NOT RELY ON OR LEAVE YOUR PROPERTY ON A MERCY OF SOME PLATFORM.

Use any patform (financial, crypto, transactional, storage, social) for what it good at and have as much of your own resources and especially monetary instruments UNDER YOUR OWN FULL AND COMPLETE CONTROL!

I used crypto exchanges literally for 5 minutes:

\- transfer funds

\- do transaction

\- transfer funds away

\- done

</comment><comment><USER4> Recovered from a hack or a ban?</comment>