Ask HN: Estimating ad revenue for a business plan? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of good resources to use when writing a business plan to estimate revenue from advertising? I'm looking for updated information on how to go about estimating a CPM, what kind of revenue you can earn as you increase visitors, what a beginning CPM would be, that sort of thing. I'm in the "can this work?" phase, so I'm very interested in what a new site (not a blog) can charge, and what kind of revenue is possible based on visitor estimates. Revenue for feeds would be helpful too. <comment><USER3> I'm not a qualified expert, but it does somewhat depend on the market you are after, how integrated ads are in the site, etc.

For example (assuming standard banner ads), if you are talking about using adwords for content based ads, you are likely going to be looking at a $1-4CPM (is my understanding). However, if you are more of a social network tool, etc. it seems the CPM's are MUCH lower, in the 0.05 - 0.75 range. If you provide a solid branding opportunity for advertisers (likely targeting a very specific market), you could be looking at a $7-9CPM.

This is what i have gathered from my limited research and discussions with friends in marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case its a iPhone app review site, but I'm sure others would be interested in learning more general information as well. Just from initial thoughts, potential advertisers would be mainstream iPhone publishers, smaller iPhone developers, and companies looking to advertise towards those who own iPhone or iPod Touches. I haven't done too much research on iPhone owners yet, but it is also my understanding they are generally more affluent. So therefore, if you can't find advertisers to fill the categories above, you have a back-up market of companies who wish to advertise to affluent consumers.

<comment><USER3> I don't have an iphone, so haven't checked out the app store yet. But i assume Apple has built some iPhone review stuff into the store, seeing as they went to all the trouble of building the 'most popular app', 'most popular free app', etc.

I think you are building for a very small niche market and would have difficulty gaining significant advertising dollars and page views. I should have mentioned in the previous post that my understanding is that without a 20k+ views per day it is VERY difficult to get sponsors on your site.

The 'iPhone app review' portion could be a part of a larger service offering 'all things iPhone' (though I suspect this already exists too) - <USER2> cases/protectors, bluetooth headsets, etc. via Amazon and get affiliate commissions, maybe there are other revenue streams for you as well. My gut instinct tells me that you are in large company and will be fighting for a miniscule portion of a moderate pie.

But don't trust my gut, do your research, you may be on to something, or your research may lead you to even bigger fish.

Your thoughts on 'back-up market of companies who wish to advertise to affluent consumers' misses the targeted point of the value of the CPM is based on the ability to offer advertisers more than just a place to put an ad in front of affluent potential customers. I believe that if the advertising is off-target, your CPMs would be significantly lower.

Also, i doubt the app store will have the long-term success it has seen in the short term. When was the last time the average (non-geek) friend of yours bought an app for there computer? When was the last time YOU did? Look at Facebook apps. All the rage when facebook launched, then everybody got sick of them. Maybe do a comparison of how many facebook apps are launching now vs. a year ago. That should be a good indication of where the App store is going (in my opinion). There is very little that needs to be done natively on the device these days. We'll likely have a hybrid of web/native but I hope a few plugins will provide all the native code necessary to run most apps (I'm thinking about writting a plugin myself).

But lets do a bit of research anyway to get you moving further along. I google searched for iPhone apps and got a bunch of sites doing reviews - then put apprater.com & appsafari.com into compete.com to get a monthly page views estimate. AppSafari shows about 57k visits/month and apprater shows almost 18k/month. So reviewing the more successful site - that 57 views for 4.5 pages per user - about 8.5k page views per day X $7CPM = $60 per day.

HOWEVER, I'd say that is a VERY high estimate. Maybe you can do a MUCH better job than appsafari, but they are already in the market and have a surprisingly high number of eyeballs for what there site offers (personal opinion). You are also competing with sites such as CNET, etc which have iPhone app directories.

Having said all that. I've launched my start-up "HearWhere.com" into a market where there is already an incumbent, and more joining on a regular basis (even a YC supported competitor). I have a competitive advantage and felt the competitors offerings were weak. I'm hoping to launch a new version of the site into Beta late next week which will put even more distance between myself and competitors.

What I'm saying is that if you feel you have a true competitive advantage or opportunity to differentiate yourself in this space, then go for it. If you're not sure about separating yourself from the bunch, than you probably have more work to do.

An idea I read today through YC relating to Google (I can't remember exactly which article I read) - basically said don't go after revenue, serve the market first, then go for the revenue.

I like that you are planning ahead to make sure the revenue will be there, but I think that may be a bit premature unless you know that the market exists first. Don't just assume that because appsafari has 60k visits, that you'll get the same. Getting people to switch is going to be the biggest challenge for you, and appsafari isn't even the biggest fish to fry - CNET, Wired, etc I suspect are all in this space as well as it already feeds into there user base.

Hopefully somebody more experienced than myself will be able to give you further help and direction with this, and even refute what I've said.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey pedalpete, thanks for that great thought-out and detailed reply, thats really awesome.

I've been thinking about the idea for a while, because I've noticed a lot of dissatisfaction with the App Store's reviews, and I've identified a lot of advantages a website would have over the App Store.

One reason is that Apple's self-imposed design requirements limit the information that is available to people wanting to learn more about apps. The App Store is only available through iTunes, so it keeps the same look and feel as the music store and doesn't have all the functionality of a website. Reviews are limited, and currently, they can be left by anyone, vastly degrading their usefulness (not to mention it doesn't incorporate better review mechanisms, like upvoting or downvoting of reviews to eliminate annoying/useless ones). You can't compare two apps directly, and there is no objective editorial content on which apps might be better than others.

Finally, there are problems of categorization in the App Store. The categories are very static and broad. If a new series of apps come out, Apple will likely to be slow to respond and is very unlikely to further divide categories, even though that would be more useful. What I mean by that is best illustrated by an example from the iTunes Music Store. There is an electronic genre of music, but really "electronic" is too broad for someone looking for a specific type of electronic music. A website that further categorizes this large genre would be more useful than the iTunes Music Store to someone looking for a specific type. Just like an apps website could make more useful categories.

I haven't yet begun much research into competitors. I have noticed that many people complaining about the lack of good reviews in forums are not answered with "you should check out X website." So there isn't one website thats far out ahead and constantly on people's tongues. One the one hand, those two you mentioned are quite far ahead, but the App Store has also only been open a month. However, those two sites likely started some time ago by reviewing jailbreak apps.

I will disagree with you on the viability of the platform, but thats something that can't really be decided now, so its one thing I'll just have to believe in. But I am curious on what a "niche" site is. I'm having trouble determining the size of my potential market, but I'd like to think its larger than niche.

My reasoning is that people don't have to buy an app for their iPhone to want to know which one is better than another. So many applications are available for free that I'm confident people will want apps, and will want to get reviews for apps. I am having trouble trying to quantify the amount of potential users. I consider everyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch a potential user. There will be an estimate 10 million iPhones by 2009, so 10 million people will theoretically want to get more info on apps. At any time they can go download a free app, and presumably, might want to choose between two free apps.

A successful iPhone website can also be expanded to a "Android Apps" website, so the potential audience can be expanded later.

So I'm confident I could match those sites that you mentioned. What I can't figure out is what I would need to do to to make a living off of it. I'm going on the assumption there will be two principals. So, for example's sake, what would be required for each person to make $50,000 before expenses? I was looking to create a chart, starting at low CPM/high pageviews, up to a higher CPM with lower pageviews, just to see what it looks like. Using your example, I would need to have 5 times the visitors to earn over $100K. So around 285,000 visitors.

Basically, its preliminary work to see if it passes the sniff test. Even with generous estimates on how many visitors I think I can get and high CPM's, will it be enough?

<comment><USER3> a few things I'll have to disagree with you on.

1) I never questioned the viability of the platform - this is definitely something that can be made. I do question the viability of it as a business if you are relying ONLY on ad revenue. However, adding additional revenue streams will increase the value and possibly serve your market better than advertising. My initial reaction is not 'this is going to be a star', but you could have a viable business here, I'm not your target market, and can't relate to what you are doing. You probably don't read mtbr.com or pinkbike.com, I do, you might not have thought those to be viable businesses, but they are.

2) I'd suggest re-reading your paragraph which starts 'My reasoning...'. firstly, who reads reviews for something they aren't keenly interested in? and the only people I know who have iPhones have them, but use them just like any other phone, meaning they don't install apps, or read about iPhones etc.. I have a blackberry and don't install applications, I don't look at blackberry focused sites AT ALL, and I am a geek! secondly, you can't just take the total number of phones and say that is the potential market. Everybody uses toilet paper, but the market opportunity is not 9 billion people.

iPhone and Android are not the first players in this market. I'd take a closer look at sites that do what you are thinking of doing for Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian devices (even though you have identified differentiators, look at what has been done to help define opportunity size). These devices already have a larger user base with 118 million devices sold in '07 so 10 times larger than iPhone currently. Also, don't be fooled by Apple marketing/PR and the way the numbers read. 10 million devices sold is more like 7 million users. I had gone through 3 iPods before most people had bought their first one, fanboys buy the newest thing they can get. Also, the planned obsolescence of mobile devices is 18 months, so when they say '100 million sold in two years', that likely means 50 million users. It's not how many devices HAVE been sold that matters, it how many devices came onto the market in the year (or 1.5 years) that is the important figure in mobile (I've done some mobile consulting).

So i actually just tried this with Blackberry and Symbian, and interestingly, the largest sites I found (quick search) has about 40k montly visits. Similar to the size of the top iPhone reviews site. This suggests to me that opportunity size is in the 30-80k range.

Something to think about...are more people going to use read/write reviews BECAUSE your site is better? or are you going to be getting users from other sites because your site is better. It's an important difference, and will help estimate market size.

For my site, I postulate that finding live music and deciding to go see a concert is a poor experience, but that if people had a better way to find out who's playing, sample the music, etc. they would go see more shows. So for my site, I say 'with a better experience more people on a whole will use an online tool to accomplish this task'. Rather than saying 'I'll be able to grab x amount of users from other sites which do similar things, but don't offer as good an experience'.

You've defined the opportunity where current sites are missing the boat, so that's good. You've got a target you are aiming for. You'll find more opportunities as you dig into this I'm sure. You'll also find challenges to things like categorization and taxonomy - who knows, maybe you've already got a solution to these challenges. What I think is interesting is that I suspect that as you go down this road, you may find greater opportunities than you are originally planning. Categorization can be VERY challenging, it is something I am struggling with on my site (your electronic music example is perfect!). So if you have identified a method for managing categorization, maybe the app review site is just an opportunity to flush out managing categorization, and maybe that will be your long term business.

I can't answer your last question about 'will it be enough'? Only you and your partner can decide that. If you have the ability, I would suggest building something and getting it out there while hanging on to your day job. Building is often the easy part, the challenges can come in actually getting people to use your site.

If you build something great, maybe you can make a living, maybe you can get investors involved. If you don't build anything, you likely won't get either.

Costs of developing something like this should be very low (hopefully you will code it up yourself). This would probably be a good opportunity to try something like google app engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> People are jumping in and getting press as we speak: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/16/great-review-site- for-i...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/16/great-review-site-for-iphone- apps/)

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, its kind of encouraging that a site with exactly 33 reviews can get on TC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Hacker Wants $5M in Ransom From Pemex By End of November - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-13/a-hacker-wants-about-5-million-from-pemex-by-end-of-november <comment><USER2> I think Saudi Aramco was hacked a few years back too.

Having worked at a major oil company, it doesn't surprise me that these things happen. It's not that anybody is particularly unintelligent, moreso that large sometimes sleepy companies have lots of vulnerable points in IT.

I'm sure the same could be said for a host of other corporations, tech, finance, and defense aside.

<comment><USER3> Why do these companies not have dedicated red teams?

<comment><USER4> Because if you don't know tech, you can't hire for tech. Or won't, because "it's just a cost" (see: Sony).

And if the person you've hired to manage the tech doesn't really know tech...you get this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Daily reminder you need isolated, tested back-ups! Sure, you might not be able to recover all data but having no back-ups versus losing data in an x timeframe makes a big difference.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a job for Normal man: [https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ransomware-superhero-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ransomware- superhero-of-normal-illinois)

</comment><comment><USER7> Potential new revenue source for the cartels.

<comment><USER8> Hacking or running an oil company?

(both are basically black hat enterprises these days)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When life imitates art. Wasn't this literally the plot to the Hackers movie? Complete with the 5 million dollar ransom to an oil company...

<comment><USER10> In that movie the villain was also the tech-guru for the security company selling to the energy company.

Only Zero Cool can save us from The Plague! Hack the planet!!!

<comment><USER11> Hack The Planet!!!</comment></comment></comment>


My 400-Person Company Has a Great Work Culture, and We All Work Remotely - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40432244/my-400-person-company-has-a-great-work-culture-and-we-all-work-remotely <comment><USER2> A real virtual company, in the cloud. This just might be the future, just as infrastructure and services are hosted in the cloud.</comment>


ML algorithm quantifies gender bias in astronomy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/machine-learning-algorithm-quantifies-gender-bias-in-astronomy-1.20932 <comment><USER2> This may just be a poor summary of the paper, but it sounds very strange. First, it uses "machine learning / an algorithm" to estimate the number of citations. That suggests the system is to some extent a black box, which makes it hard to take the results seriously. Alternatively, if it is not a black box but is a detailed algorithm, then those details matter, but are not provided.

And the bigger question is - why is "machine learning / an algorithm" needed here, what does it do that normal statistical analysis tools cannot? That is, find the numbers, correct for various factors, calculate values, etc. Those tools are well-understood, and seem to be sufficient to answer the question proposed here, yet they weren't used, so there is a lot more to this story.</comment>


How to Fix The Comments Section of Your Site and Set Guidelines for Community - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/1063

<comment><USER2> The HN title is misleading-- is really more specifically about newspaper sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's specifically about newspaper sites but it applies to almost every site on the web. Its also written by a person who's thought a lot about online communities in general in Derek Powazek</comment></comment>


MIT creates tiny, 22nm transistor without silicon - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143024-mit-creates-tiny-22nm-transistor-without-silicon <comment><USER2> _"This tiny InGaAs transistor was mostly fashioned from normal semiconductor processes — molecular beam epitaxy, electron beam lithography, and so on."_

It's important to note that these are normal semiconductor processes for low volume manufacturing. These are not the high volume methods that, say, Intel would use. It remains to be seen whether the material will work well with common high volume ion implant and lithography technologies.

The reason Silicon is the dominant material isn't purely because of it's electrical characteristics. We've already got better material that's costly to manufacture. GaAs, for example. In addition to good electrical properties, Silicon wins because it's extremely to manufacture chips with in bulk.

To be fair, the article does touch on this.

<comment><USER3> Seconded; molecular beam epitaxy is certainly not an industrial technique! Here's a picture of some MBE equipment via Google:

[http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN06-16-00/images/beam_pix.jpe...](http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN06-16-00/images/beam_pix.jpeg)

It's large, complicated, expensive, difficult to optimise and run, and ultimately can only grow very small amounts of (admittedly high quality) material (relative to the size of equipment and the time it takes to do the growing). On a simple level, it works by creating a "beam" of atoms which you can deposit onto a surface to grow your crystal layer-by-layer: this most definitely _is not_ something that scales well to industrial sizes.

<comment><USER4> > _molecular beam epitaxy is certainly not an industrial technique!_

Of course MBE is an industrial technique: A fair fraction of the semiconductor lasers on the planet are made this way, and probably a decent fraction of the microwave power amps for cell phones.

The thing that is interesting here: There is an optimal stoichiometry for electron velocity in InGaAs, and it is hard to lattice match with a substrate for that composition. Usually there is magic in the buffer layers. (IIRC)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the correction; I had the article in mind, talking about it replacing Si transistors, and can't really imagine MBE being used to produce millions of chips, though I'd be happy to be wrong about that.

<comment><USER4> > _and can't really imagine MBE being used to produce millions of chips_

Cell phones are example application for millions of chips. There's really nothing that magic about it.

What _is_ difficult is the large-scale integration of transistors, which is why you don't see CPUs (for example). There's a number of reasons, mostly relating to the nature of III-V materials. One example is the lack of a decent oxide: SiO2 is god's gift to electronics.

However, Si is not a direct bandgap, so it is next to useless for devices involving light. It's why the bazillions of lasers on the planet are III-V.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, what's new except for the size? GaAs has been around for _quite_ a while.

Discrete high-frequency and low-noise transistors are made from GaAs for more than 15 years.

<comment><USER4> > _for more than 15 years._

Much longer than that. It was old news when I started grad school (1989).

As for what's new: The link to extreme tech is (as usual) useless. If you hit the linked original article: [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/tiny- compound-semiconduct...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/tiny-compound- semiconductor-transistor-could-challenge-silicons-dominance-1210.html)

you will find more info, but it's quite sketchy. The press-release say MOSFET, but I'd be quite surprised if they didn't really mean MODFET (oxides of III-V are a royal PITA). My guess is that this is a proof of concept for lateral 22nm devices, ie what would be state of the art litho for the silicon world.

Edit: Dear mods - it would make sense to repoint the OP to my link above. Extremetech confuses the PR and does not enhance the original info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, silicon is virtually everywhere. How would this affect manufacturing costs?

<comment><USER7> Yep, earth is a rocky planet - composed primarily of silicate rocks.</comment></comment>


All the News That's Fit to Plex - <AUTHOR> https://www.plex.tv/blog/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-plex/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who wants Plex to just be Plex, i.e. a media server for what I have stored locally? All of these new features make me think Plex is going in the direction of a cloud-only service and may drop local storage support down the line.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this what Kodi (formerly XBMC and source from which Plex forked) is all about?

[https://kodi.tv](https://kodi.tv)

<comment><USER4> AFAIK, Kodi is still client-based, and doesn't have the nice server component that Plex does. It's nice to have a single server handling transcoding, media management, etc. etc, and allowing the clients to be thin.

<comment><USER5> How "nice" do you want it to be? Kodi _can_ be told to act as a UPnP server, and any UPnP client should then be able to pick up on it.

Kodi also has an optional web interface, which is primarily used to act as a remote, but I've found it can also be a thin client receiver--any media within the library can be streamed to the browser tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I lost faith in Plex when I upgraded my server about a year ago and after testing, etc, I deleted the old container (run it in docker). I didn't find out until a few days later that FF/REW was broken. At that point I didn't have the old release around. Went to the forum and found I wasn't the only one. Problem was, they had just moved to 1.0 and they removed _all_ previous versions from their servers. I begged to get an older one, and after a week or two I got it from another forum user. During that 2 weeks, though, FF/REW was broken on my Roku.

Yeah, now I download the .deb and build my container from a local .deb file, rather than downloading in the container. It was stupid, but I had grabbed the container build script from someone and didn't think about it until it was too late.

I'm still on a pre-1.0 release, and when the Roku client doesn't work anymore, I'll switch to Emby, or whatever is free and hot at the time.

<comment><USER7> the Roku client works just fine now?

<comment><USER6> When I went back to my .9 version, yes. It took 2 weeks to run it down, with help from some kind soul on the tubes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using Emby only for a few months now and love it. I was considering switching to Plex (for its probably better looking interface) but the comments here have convinced me against it.

<comment><USER9> FWIW, I've used both and like Plex much more than Emby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Plex News. It's the perfect complement to your media library — video news from some of the most trusted sources on the planet,_

I always get nervous when companies start talking up the credibility of news outlets. To me, it indicates a lack critical thinking especially when the very next image on the page has logos from CNN (of "reading wikileaks is illegal if you're not a media outlet" fame) and TheBlaze (of Glenn Beck fame).

I suppose you could write it off as marketing fluff, but.. still. That little nagging feeling. So long as they give me the ability to ban specific sources from ever showing up in my feed, fine, otherwise this will just be another feature that has to be ignored to avoid consuming propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused why everyone (both regular users and plex pass users) gets ads.

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing that they are trying to find a way to get ongoing monetization out of lifetime plex pass customers.

<comment><USER11> honestly that's how they lose their plex pass lifetime customers. Not how they monetize them further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just want Plex integration with Google Home's voice command so it is on par with Netflix and YouTube.

I am a playing Plex subscriber because I want it to get better at its core functionality. I do not want news on Plex.</comment>


Perl 6 Pod - <AUTHOR> https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/day-10-perl-6-pod/ <comment><USER2> This looks pretty cool, but I'm left with all sorts of questions!

For example, will Perl 6 Pod be powerful enough to write a book in, without a sort of Pod Plus dialect (which O'Reilly used to use).

They show examples of actually grabbing the docs using Perl - that's neat! Would this be dead simple for an IDE to also do? Would it be realistic to highlight a method name, and have the docs for that one method pop up?

Another question - how does POD now relate to multiline comments? In Perl 5 there's really no such thing, but you may emulate them using POD =pod/=cut lines (although if you use a Linter, you'll get yelled at about this). I want to say Perl 6 allows something similar to be done, without complaint, but I'm not sure how that then ties into how POD is parsed for documentation.</comment>


Everything Is Going Wrong All at Once for U.S. Banks - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/everything-is-awful-all-at-once-for-u-s-banks-11583965710 <comment><USER2> [https://archive.is/ukuzS](https://archive.is/ukuzS)</comment>


Developers say Microsoft has "betrayed" them by changing Silverlight strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11673384 <comment><USER2> I've been working on a Silverlight app full time for the past 8 months. I was relieved when Microsoft made this announcement (even if they are now trying to back track on it a bit).

Silverlight isn't bad at all, really. In some ways it's just fantastic. And given another 3 or 4 years or so, it will mature to the point of being a great framework. It's a truly awesome framework for WP7 and if MS can gain some traction behind WP7, having Silverlight in their corner is going to be a boon for them.

But right now Silverlight is both mighty raw and almost pointless for webapps. There are so many bugs in Silverlight itself and its related tools that it can make working in Silverlight quite frustrating. When all this time I watch HTML5 blossom and take off and pretty much gain feature parity (and beyond) to Silverlight, I can't help but think to myself as I look at my app, "What's the point?"

Nothing is perfect, and of course HTML5 is going to have its warts, especially when dealing with every vendor's own implementation of JS and the new HTML5 components. But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not against it. There's a lot to be said for that.

<comment><USER3> > But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not > against it. There's a lot to be said for that.

Exactly. It's disappointing how much time and effort has been squandered on various abstractions primarily popularized because they gave developers excuses to avoid learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

When it comes to Silverlight, it's easy to see how so many devs were tempted to unnecessarily overuse it. Microsoft's PR efforts are often panned, but the Silverlight hype machine was incredibly persuasive. I even questioned my own focus on standards-based development[1] for a few brief moments during conferences like MIX.

[1] [http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new- webform...](http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webforms/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought this was a refreshing move. They've accepted the situation and adjusted their strategy accordingly. The only other option seems to be ignoring reality and continuing on their old course, which won't do anything to improve the success of Silverlight.

Even Adobe seems to have given up the fight and accepted html5 as the winner (given their demo's of html5 authoring tools recently).

<comment><USER5> I do wish MS would release a SL to HTML5 compiler though. That would mitigate a lot of the rancor.

<comment><USER6> That would be a hard cookie. In many ways, Silverlight has a lot more features than HTML5 and it is also compiled to binary. I guess it would be possible to compile the binary to some sort of JavaScript and emulate some of the Silverlight API, but I seriously doubt that it would yield very convincing results.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but in my mind it doesn't need to be perfect. Just good enough to get the bones to dance a little, and frankly, there isn't a lot you can do in SL that you can't do in javascript / HTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not exactly the pinnacle of BBC reporting there. No attribution, link or otherwise for the assertion that "Developers" say they've been "betrayed". Who are they, how many of them are there, how much actual investment have they made and how do they expect to lose out? Not saying the story's necessarily wrong or untruthful, just that as presented so far it can't be considered anything more than gossip.

<comment><USER4> The article talks about "many of the comments on Mr Muglia's blogpost", and links to that blog post a bit further up: [http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and- silverlight...](http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The gradual shift in strategy has actually been evident for a while. With Silverlight 3, they introduced the ability to run outside the browser as a desktop app, and with Silverlight 4, they placed a lot more emphasis on this scenario and less on in-browser scenarios.

The point of writing a Windows desktop app in Silverlight is that not only is your code more portable (relative to a native Win32 or full .NET/WPF app), but SL apps are like iOS apps in that they are isolated from each other, easy to update/service, etc. If Microsoft introduces a Windows app store soon as is strongly rumored, it will probably feature prominently.

I think what has most developers upset is not so much the substance of the message, which most of them already knew, but how it's being picked up in the media (for which Microsoft's delivery of the message is to blame). The media don't really care about development frameworks, so to them Silverlight-the- browser-plugin (the part they see) = Silverlight. Therefore if Silverlight is being de-emphasized as a browser plugin, it means Silverlight is dead, so that's going to be the headline, and CIOs etc. who only read headlines are going to see that and decide not to allow Silverlight development, even out- of-browser.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a developer in the Microsoft stack, this is par for the course. Choose your tech wisely.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, I'm going to play the "greater good" card here. Yes, it's a shame if/when your project gets canned. The important thing here is that the masses will not be stuck with proprietary crap.

<comment><USER11> I'm going to play the progress card here.

The web just jumped back a decade to crappy old html. XAML is infinitely superior. You can't even extend HTML server-side without writing code :( It's got loads of odd rules. It still thinks everything is an overflowable document when I want to write an application.

The web just jumped back to a kooky little language that's not grown for decades. Javashit.

Silverlight had support for static, dynamic and even functional languages! C#, VB.Net, IronPython, F#. And it's actually fast and compilable unlike javaslow.

(p.s. I don't actually mind javascript that much, but I do think it's pretty poor compared to C#, Python, Ruby, etc. I do actually detest html though.)

A lot of us don't need cross device compatibility. In fact cross device compatibility is pure laziness in many instances as a iPhone optimized web app _should_ look very different to a laptop/desktop browser optimized app.

I'm not really sure where I stand in all this, but I'm not dancing around with joy about HTML5, which I think is pretty basic and ridiculously behind the times. These are features they should have introduced a decade ago.

I also really wish they'd make some way I could use other programming languages in the browsers.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you're complaining about. You can still use SL, it's not going away, and it will continue to get new releases. If it meets your need, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't continue to use it. It won't work on every platform, but you say that's not a problem for you either. Go write some XAML. Personally, I find that it really is awesome for Windows Phone development.

As far as HTML / javascript goes, I'm beginning to get the impression that you don't like it. I understand, I actually hated touching javascript until I fell into JQuery. Even with it, I think developing javascript feels half-assed. But that's what the platform uses and modern browsers are generally fast enough. I tend to think of HTML as basically a display protocol though. It's ugly, but it works.

Take heart though, you can write the server side in whatever language you want, and your server-side can write your javascript for you.

<comment><USER11> I'm tired of the 'woo html5' and 'hate flash/silverlight' camps.

It feels as if the same people who talk about beating 'proprietary' with an open web, open standards and open source code seem to miss we have _no_ choice when it comes to web programming, it's html/javascript or bust.

And javascript is not fast enough. Not even vaguely close to being fast enough. You must have seen the semi-regular 'look what I did with HTML5' demos, yeah great, until you put them next to a flash or silverlight demo. Then suddenly it looks pathetic. It's not up to the job.

This is a step back, not a step forward. It's not for the 'greater good', html needs decent competition to keep it modern. Competition is healthy!

While it would never happen and will never happen, Microsoft releasing Silverlight as an update to Windows could have given the HTML standards the kick up the ass they need to start taking application development seriously.

For most of us the browser is the new defacto OS.

We're a community of entrepreneurs and developers for pete's sake. And yet we're cheering on a virtual quango creating HTML5.

Relying on committees to drive forward the web is absurd. When did meetings and committees ever actually solve a problem or produce amazing innovation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Developers complaining that a company with a history of treating people poorly betrays them? Cry me a river.

<comment><USER5> I see where you're coming from, but in regards to MS and developers I really can't disagree with you more. MS, more than most, bends over backwards to reach out to developers. You can still target COM and OLE, you can still write VB4. I have applications written for DOS and Windows 3.1 that still work on Windows 7.

In this case, I think it is more a failure in PR than anything else. Silverlight will continue to work on Windows and Mac, and it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone. MS has just publicly acknowledged that it's stupid to try to get the Silverlight VM to work on every stack of hardware / OS. They just did it in a very ham-fisted fashion.

That wasn't really news to anyone that's been paying attention anyway. We've been warning our developers away from writing any web apps with Flash or SL (except for video playback) for over a year now. You can write very capable, very pretty web apps using just javascript, CSS and HTML4. HTML5 just makes it that much easier.

<comment><USER13> > it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone.

This, right there. Silverlight isn't going away. It's still useful. They just aren't trying to compete in an area where it won't be as useful. However, Silverlight developers suddenly have this transferable skill that Flash developers don't have on the mobile side.

<comment><USER14> Yes, Silverlight will be used for WP7. But I doubt MS has any commitment to keep it for future releases of WP7.

<comment><USER13> Considering Silverlight and WPF also go together, I don't see Silverlight going away anytime soon. I see it changing direction, or at least, not being limited to just the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like just yesterday that developers were saying Microsoft betrayed them by breaking compatibility between VB6 and VB.Net.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Silverlight as a WP7 app framework was the right thing to do. The "R&D" team at my company has done alot of silverlight web apps, and most of them have resulting in very pretty but completely unintuitive messes.</comment>


Microsoft shafts HTC phone users - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1594077/microsoft-shafts-htc-phone-users

<comment><USER2> This shows Microsoft is really trying to follow Apple's playbook here and stick with very strict hardware specifications. Honestly it's probably a smart move, if you don't think the hardware is perfect for the device then don't let users run it on there. Because if they did upgrade and there were less than optimal things they would complain and blame MS.

<comment><USER3> > "Microsoft is really trying to follow Apple's playbook here and stick with > very strict hardware specifications."

FTA: "the HD2 meets many of the criteria laid down in Microsoft's 'Chassis 1' specifications. After all it has a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, a high-res capacitive touch display, a 5 megapixel camera and 3.5mm headphone jack. However it turns out that the phone has five buttons instead of the three blessed by the Vole's CEO Steve Ballmer."

The HD2 is more than capable of running WinMo 7. In fact, if you loved WinMo, the HD2 would be (and still is) the phone to buy. Microsoft is sticking it to the fans who really love their stuff here (I work with a lot of Windows professionals and they're the hardcore WinMo fans - most of whom control the messaging environment in their offices).

<comment><USER2> If you read this article [1] (which is where I think the other sites are getting their quotes) then it sounds like its more than just a couple buttons:

"There could be more to this than just the sin of having two buttons too many, however: Tony Wilkinson, Business Operations Director for Microsoft Australia, told APC that "there are some hardware components that the HD doesn't have"."

So there are apparently valid hardware reasons to not allow an upgrade.

1\. [http://apcmag.com/microsoft-no-windows-phone-7-upgrade- for-w...](http://apcmag.com/microsoft-no-windows-phone-7-upgrade-for-windows- mobile-6x-devices.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope it's still possible for them to upgrade to Android ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be nice if _soomeoone_ (am I being too subtle ;-) released a ROM to make that possible. Seemed to me the HD2 was the best-specced touch-screen/no- keyboard hardware released to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have previous Microsoft phones been upgradeable to more recent versions of the OS?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Microsoft has decided that users of Windows Mobile 6.X devices, including HTC's just-launched HD2, will not be allowed to upgrade to its Windows 7 Phone OS._

Ouch for the HD2 owners, who had read rumours to the contrary. Well, there's <http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Leo>

<comment><USER6> Also with too many buttons? Or is the photo just a pre-release version?

<comment><AUTHOR> HTC Leo _is_ the HD2 (Leo is a sort-of-unique codename, sometimes the same device is marketed under different names).

What I meant is that there are alternate ROMs "cooked" by other developers, which may allow for things like running Android ...

That may be an out for people who got an HD2 (nice hardware) in hopes of good evolution on the WinMobile front. Seems the HD2 was good enough to demo the new version, but is getting kicked to the kerb.</comment></comment></comment>


Hey Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.samonsoftware.com/?p=489

<comment><USER2> Google actually runs the world's largest micropayment service. It solves all of the classical problems with micropayments, and will probably ensure that no sub-$1 micropayment service ever gets developed:

1) Payments are aggregated at macro-scales so that the service can efficiently run on top of the legacy payments infrastructure without leaking double-digit percentages in interchange fees.

2) End users are never prompted for credentials or to authorize a payment. They get a frictionless experience which feels _exactly_ like clicking a regular link in their browser. In surveys, most don't understand they are not clicking a regular link in their browser, which is exactly the way Google likes it.

3) End users aren't actually charged money (they pay with attention), so there is no need to pay customer support drones to deal with disputes over 3 cent line-items, like there is if you e.g. have disputes between workers and clients on Amazon Turk.

4) Prices are computed by Google automatically in real time, which means vendors don't need to try to maintain revenue maximizing price points for Chilean visitors using Firefox to an article about dog washing.

5) Google's micropayment service solved the marketplace chicken-and-egg problem by Google using it on their own page first -- one of the most popular on the Internet, letting buyers sign up for Google, and then let other publishers use it on their pages and automatically tap into the buyers already signed up by Google.

This ridiculously successful service probably sucks all the life out of the market for sub-$1 micropayments. (I would never have expected $1 ~ $10 micropayments to work well, either, but Zynga et al have pretty decisively proven me wrong in the last few years.)

<comment><USER3> Too bad they require you to put ads on your site.

It'd be nice if they would make it possible to pay them a chunk of money that they'll distribute to places I visited in more or less the same way they do with ad money now, only I wouldn't have to see the ads.

Sort of what Flattr is doing, only automated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> site wouldn't load for me, tried a few refreshes. Couldn't find it cached on google, so I'm pasting the content here.

Hey Google

You used to be a toolmaker. You used to be all about organising information. What happened ?

Forget competing with Facebook and go make some amazing new tools.

Creating a successful social networking site is like starting a successful new nightclub, it isn't about solving problems it's about being cool, and being cool ain't what you're about.

You've got cash and smart people so go invent some bad-ass new tool to take on a really big problem.

Google PagePay

Micro-payments, so bloggers can charge half a cent (or pence if you roll that way) for someone to read a full post.

Mirco-payments would change the world, a whole bunch of stuff that isn't monetizable would become monetizable, a whole bunch of people would be able to get paid for doing what they love.

Solve the "I love to do it but I can't get paid for it problem".

Google Cred (ibility)

Use your mad data props and data mining skillz to record and assess predictions made by pundits and public 'experts'.

Google can tell me what I want to know it's time it helped me work out who was worth listening to.

"Won't added accountability cause people to be less likely to make public predictions ???" Good, if it causes people with back predictive powers to stop talking as if they were experts that's a win.

And how great is it going to be to find out that the most reliable economic predictor didn't go to standford, it's some guy who no one has ever heard of who runs a beans farm in some out of the way place.

Solve the "Who do I listen to" problem.

<comment><USER4> ("edit": site looks back up now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The guys at Flattr are trying something similar to "PagePay"

<http://flattr.com/>

<comment><USER6> I'm happy to see flattr succeeding than Google doing it.

<comment><USER7> When you said that, I just naturally assumed flattr succeeding and then Google imitating it.

Like Facebook Questions vs. Quora, Google Places vs. Yelp, etc. It's hard to compete with behemoths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish this guy had proofread his article. The typos were distracting.

</comment><comment><USER9> People can already "PagePay" by clicking ads. However most don't bother even though they are not paying with their own money. So there is definitely a problem to solve here and I don't think it's just general human stinginess.

A "like" button that transfers money to the content producer with minimal UI interference would be a nice thing to try and google is the ideal company to experiment with this.

<comment><USER10> Empty clicks with no intention of buying just make your site look like a bad source of leads. Not sure it's ideal as a way of "paying" somebody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a prediction by a pundit for you: When intelligence becomes cool, it will have no more time to work on it's hobbies. Solve that problem Google.

</comment><comment><USER12> >> Forget competing with Facebook and go make some amazing new tools.

I agree.

>> Micro-payments, so bloggers can charge half a cent (or pence if you roll that way) for someone to read a full post.

Micropayments dream, again? ;-) Didn't that failed every time it was tried?

</comment><comment><USER13> "Google Cred" sounds a lot like what Recorded Future is up to (a company which, it turns out, Google has invested in).

<https://www.recordedfuture.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Klout is solving the cred/influence problem already. They're growing remarkably fast.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish Google would turn on all it's dark fiber <[http://news.cnet.com/Google- wants-dark-fiber/2100-1034_3-553...](http://news.cnet.com/Google-wants-dark- fiber/2100-1034_3-5537392.html>). I'm tired of charter, the service is terrible...

</comment><comment><USER16> Predictions are hardly a problem. They are fun, we are wired to make them, we have foresight so why not use it. The point when making a prediction is not to be right, but to go through mental scenarios of possibilities based on the present and try and make a rational decision based on that.

And, if someone made a correct prediction in the past, it does not mean he will in the future. Life is great because amongst other things it can take you by complete surprise.

Anyway, that hardly would be on the list of "problems". And google is mainly a service provider than a tool maker. The main service which is search and advertising both of which have plenty of problems which would significantly improve people's life way above predictions. If they solve the many problems of search I would be way happier than if they told me in some sort of big brother way who said what when and why he was wrong and who is right and who should I believe and...

Just keep your feet to the ground google. The world is not yours to occupy, you know mighty empires have tried and failed. Just retain your focus if you may.

As for the micro payments, I was doing some data analysis yesterday and it does come to 0.5 cent per user from advertising revenue. So requesting micro payments might be an annoyance by requiring logging in at all times, etc. Even if the system was so as to not disturb me at all, I would rather not have to pay 0.5 cent. It seems nothing of course, but god knows how many articles I read a day. Especially since the web master hardly would gain much. It might be perhaps a good idea to be an alternative for the user to choose a non ad version of a site and pay 0.5c to do so. I doubt it would catch on though. The internet wants to and needs to be free. Its popularity and usefulness is dependent on the free consumption of information supported by advertising.

Now, google could of course lower the share it gets from ads on sites, I mean, they have a really high profit margin and it is a little bit selfish of them.</comment>


Amazon Names Finalists For $100,000 Startup Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/07/amazon-names-finalists-for-100000-startup-challenge/ <comment><USER2> "Last year's winner was Ooyala, which edged out Justin.TV"

Oops: [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ooyala.com+justin.tv/?metri...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ooyala.com+justin.tv/?metric=uv)

<comment><USER3> there is more to companies than traffic

<comment><USER2> Of course; the important thing in that graph is the traffic _trend._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad that companies from other countries could not participate.</comment>


In an area without cellphone reception, I was unable to open the car - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/zipcar-into-the-wilderness/597217/ <comment><USER2> A critical detail which was not mentioned in the title: the cars battery was apparently dead.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't wait for the days when my television won't work because Sony's servers go down.</comment>


Want to Be a Billionaire? Solve "I Want X but Y" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ChrisHerd/want-to-be-a-billionaire-solve-i-want-x-but-y-5bb963e9cb65 <comment><USER2> There are just over 2,100 billionaires in the world, says [https://www.forbes.com/billionaires](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires) .

There are far more than 2,000 people in the world who solved a "I want X but Y", and managed to solve X anyway.

I put that number as pretty much everyone in the world.

The advice isn't much more useful than "Want to be a Billionaire? Eat some food every once in a while."

> Uber is like other taxi companies but with an app.

That could also be "but losing billions of dollars."

</comment><comment><USER3> Step 1: Collect Problems

Step 2: ???

Step 3: PROFIT</comment>


How the world watched porn in 2013: Pornhub crunches the numbers - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2013/12/20/how-the-world-watched-porn-in-2013-pornhub-crunches-the-numbers/

<comment><AUTHOR> The pornhub.com URL results in an immediate dead link, so this pando.com summary will have to do (and it's how I found it in the first place).</comment>


The problem isn't that life is unfair, it's that you don't know the rules (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-problem-isnt-that-life-is-unfair-2015-11?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> Here is a link not hidden behind an ad-wall

[http://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-problem-isnt-that-life- is...](http://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-problem-isnt-that-life-is-unfair- its-your-broken-idea-of-fairness/)

</comment><comment><USER3> He's spot on about fairness but dead wrong about competition.

Life is not a zero-sum game.

Choose the path of abundance and create new value for others over the path of scarcity and competition.

<comment><USER4> >> Life is not a zero-sum game.

That might have been true in the past, but with 7.5 billion people on the planet we are aproaching the point when life becomes zero-sum.

What I mean is that in pre-historic era the caveman that didn't get along with his tribe could just leave them, go find some uncharted territory and make a living from what he could hunt and build with his own hands.

Even in Middle Ages, discovery of America was a game changer: suddenly the people that would otherwise had to live in poverty were given an opportunity to go to the New World and become rich with nothing but hard work.

Nowadays, we are using so much resources that we have to compete for them. You cannot easily increase yearly supply of oil, or gas, or food, at least not on global scale. Also, in developed economies unemployment does not really exist so to find employees for your startup you need to take them out from other companies. That's makes the life more and more competitive.

<comment><USER5> > in developed economies unemployment does not really exist

Tell that to the millions who are officially unemployed -- and that does not include everyone not working.

[http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/unemployment- ra...](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/unemployment-rate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article isn't as terrible as the click-bait title, but for completeness here's some obvious counter examples: some illnesses including cancer, being hit by a car running a red light, terrorist attacks. All of those are pretty unfair, and there's no rules behind them.

<comment><USER7> The article is concerned with unfairness in life in the sense of what people get (from society, other people, institutions, jobs, etc) not accidents or acts of nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Summary: Stop wishing the world was fair, and start understanding how it actually works.

</comment><comment><USER9> number of people you affect is true but it's multiplied by your impact/value over other offers. I can spam a billion people but that won't make me the next facebook.

judges and referees are import because the offer a 3 party opinion.

<comment><USER10> Judges and referees are important because in our system they represent our conflict resolution process.

But there are other conflict resolution processes, like flipping a coin, trial by ordeal, killing someone, or just walking away, that don't involve third parties. Historically those may have been just as prevalent.

Those alternative processes are often horribly inefficient, though, in terms of producing optimal outcomes. So more advanced societies employ experts to apply a complex system of rules designed to minimize losses when cooperation fails. And for the foreseeable future only expert humans are capable of applying those rules. Nonetheless, people are usually free to agree to follow simpler processes, like coin flipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hard work, being good does rarely equates with reward... those are worker-bee values. Gotta do those and assure minimizing getting screwed... that's capitalist values.</comment>


Democrats unveil legislation forcing the FCC to ban Internet fast lanes - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/17/this-new-bill-would-force-the-fcc-to-ban-internet-fast-lanes/ <comment><USER2> Instead of limiting my ability to enter contracts and chose the Internet/streaming service I want, I would much rather they devise a methodology for measuring and enforcing connection performance.

For example, "broadband internet" means at least 50Mbit. "50 Mbit" means that 90% percent of the time, there is a sustained throughput of at least 5MB/s for a TCP connection to a server in any data-center across the continental US (assuming the data-center link itself is not congested). "Unmetered" means that per month, the user can transfer a volume of data of at least 10% of the volume corresponding to a saturation of the connection 24/7 (1300 GB for a 50 Mbit connection as defined above).

Under such a rule, Comcast's connections could only be sold as "Dial-up+". And if broadband is not available in an area it's fair game for the municipal or state authorities to provision it with public funds as a basic need for a modern citizen; since the incumbent private provider obviously can't get a return on it's investment (what OTHER reason for not developing your infrastructure could there be, right ?)

<comment><USER3> I had to create this account just to correct this. "Broadband" means the data is modulated on to a wide spectrum signal, on the same copper as the POTS network. Anything from good old 512kbit/s upwards can be "broadband". I say "can be", because if it's not using a wide spectrum signal, e.g. fibre-optics, then that's not broadband.

<comment><USER4> "Broadband" is a well-defined technical term originating from physics. But "broadband internet" (what the OP was referring to) is a vaguely defined marketing term that is often used by ISPs to deceive consumers as to the speed of their connections. The OP is suggesting that that term be repurposed as a clearly (legally) defined one that improves internet access in America without introducing onerous regulations.

<comment><USER5> The FCC does have a definition of broadband: currently 4 Mbps, possibly to be redefined to 10 or 25 Mbps. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/05/30...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/05/30/the-fcc-may-consider-a-stricter-definition-of-broadband- in-the-netflix-age/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The trouble with all this is that it is reactive rather than proactive.

There is a simple solution that would put an end to all this BS, and this is to separate the last mile from the middle mile the same way that the old AT&T was broken up to split local from long distance service. (This is how they do it in the UK and UK people are very happy with their internet service.)

In this case you get a choice of different middle miles and different television services from different providers. If work got around that "the Verizon network is congested" people would just switch, and I think you would find network connectivity problems get fixed in days rather than years.

<comment><USER7> > There is a simple solution that would put an end to all this BS, and this is > to separate the last mile from the middle mile the same way that the old > AT&T was broken up to split local from long distance service

It would be extremely challenging, legally. If we're talking about cable rather than copper, the last mile was built by private companies with private money. BT, in contrast, started out as a government-owned corporation, and when it was privatized, the terms of the separation were written into the prospectus.

> (This is how they do it in the UK and UK people are very happy with their > internet service.)

Yet U.K. internet really isn't faster than U.S. internet in areas with comparable density. According to Ookla's Net Index, average broadband speeds in say Pennsylvania, a state with less than half the population density of the U.K. is about the same as in the U.K. (28.3 mbps versus 28.6 mbps). Akamai's data shows the U.S. ahead of the U.K. in average connection speeds.

<comment><USER8> Sure they can. It was done in the 1990's in the US. Regional Bell Operating Companies were forced to allow other telcos to provision service on their infrastructure. At one point, I had home phone, long distance, isdn and mobile on one bill from Sprint.

<comment><USER7> That infrastructure was all built while AT&T was a government-sanctioned monopoly with regulated rates and the whole deal. The vast majority of the cable infrastructure was built with private money, post-deregulation.

<comment><USER8> Maybe it varies by state then.

In Upstate NY, you can buy cable services from Time Warner, Earthlink or a couple of smaller carriers. In the past, this was a good deal, now the 3rd parties don't seem to have access to higher speed services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's spend a minute to think about political language. Do we want to "ban Internet fast lanes" or "ban Internet slow lanes?" I suspect that most would favor the latter.

<comment><USER10> It is indeed a poor term. I suggest calling it _" bandwidth racketeering"_ ("Nice streaming service you have here, it'd be shame if some traffic shaping happened to it...")

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I don't get is why the FCC can't simply tell ISPs to provide the service their customers pay them to. Seriously. By paying for internet access, the customer pays the ISP to deliver any packets sent from or to their machine. This is nothing less that a protection racket in order to get paid twice. "Dat's a nice video streamin' site you got there, be a real pity if you couldn' get any customers".

<comment><USER12> > What I don't get is why the FCC can't simply tell ISPs to provide the > service their customers pay them to.

Contract law already does that. The transparency provisions of the previous and proposed Open Internet orders aim to solve the main particular problem of that in the ISP world, which is ambiguity on what exactly the service being paid for _is_.

(The anti-blocking and anti-discrimination provisions, which are different in the old and new orders, go further and aim to _align_ what the service being paid for _is_ with a certain conception of what that service _should be_.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really think this is a bad idea. If you're a business and depend on a certain type of traffic (say Skype, or maybe email) why wouldn't you consider the option of trying to ensure faster and more reliable delivery of some type of data that is absolutely critical? Maybe as a business, you actually want something like Netflix throttled to some extent so that Skype chats that you depend on are 100% rock solid. Why restrict the possibility for new types of services to emerge from actual needs?

The real issue with this isn't the lack of network neutrality, but all kinds of local and other types of regulations that make it extremely difficult for all but a few connected big companies to take part in. This is why each region has maybe 1 or 2 really shitty ISPs rather than a decent array of choices.

<comment><USER14> What you're describing is QoS. Packet discrimination by _kind_. Bulk file transfer vs streaming video vs VoIP. Necessary because because the impact if your torrent downloads go a bit slow is your torrent downloads a bit slow. If video or VoIP get congested, the effect is the service becomes unusable.

Net Neutrality is about packet discrimination by _source and destination_.

It's not a problem if VoIP gets higher priority over web surfing and arbitrary file downloads. It's a huge problem if the ISP's VoIP service has higher priority than Skype, despite them being identical traffic.

<comment><USER15> _Net Neutrality is about packet discrimination by source and destination._

Net Neutrality seems to be a No True Scotsman where if you ask 10 people on HN what it _really_ means, you get a dozen different answers.

There are some kinds of NN I support, and some I don't. I would sign up for the definition in your comment.

<comment><USER16> It's not really confusing unless you ask the ISPs. NN is all about treating all traffic equally. No QoS on the ISP level.

<comment><USER14> ISP QoS is fine as long as it's by type and not by source/destination. It's perfectly reasonable to expect all those people torrenting the latest Game of Thrones shouldn't impact other people's Skype calls.

This isn't a value judgement on anything, mind, it's all about what the application needs in order to work. A torrent can still download on a congested network. A VoIP call will have great difficulty on same.

<comment><USER16> If the ISP can't pipe the advertised bandwidth that's not the user's fault. The torrenter's absolutely should be allowed to fill up the pipes. As for torrenting, there's also a uTP which is supposed to help mitigate some issues at the ISP level.

That all said, if you don't agree that QoS should not be allowed at the ISP level than you don't agree with NN. It's really not complicated.

<comment><USER14> Advertised bandwidth is always an "up to" number, not a dedicated pipe. If you want that, you want business class service at a significant price premium.

>The torrenter's absolutely should be allowed to fill up the pipes.

And the Skypers should absolutely be allowed to have their calls. QoS ensures that everyone has a minimum usable level of service.

QoS and net neutrality are two different things, as previously mentioned. If you'd like to argue otherwise, you'll have to do better than simply gain-say my definition.

<comment><USER16> If the network doesn't have the throughput, then QoS makes sense. However, QoS is by definition not NN

<comment><USER14> Again, you really fail to explain why you think packet prioritization based on type is the exact same thing as packet prioritization based on source and destination. The latter is always anticompetitive at the ISP level, the former can be, but _needs_ to exist to operate a network of any decent size.

<comment><USER16> Please explain why it needs to exist? All my packets, no matter what they are, should have equal access to another person's packets on the same network.

I myself will employ QoS so that my packets are arranged how I like them in the bandwidth provided by my ISP.

If my ISP cannot give me sustained bandwidth, then I don't receive proper internet service where anything but browsing and maybe streaming will be great.

In that case, I expect to pay less, not to have the ISP implement some technology to decide my traffic isn't as important as my neighbor's skype chat.

<comment><USER14> The why is simple. Bandwidth is limited on a given time scale and load is unpredictable. QoS ensures that all of your customers receive a minimum usable level of service. If a bunch of people run off to download a given torrent simultaneously, blowing well past average projected usage and you're not packet shaping, anything that relies on real time packet transfers on that network is hosed.

It's that simple. It's ensuring that a minority of customers can't fuck up the service for the majority.

Everything you've mentioned so far is a lot of statement with no backup. You want "sustained bandwidth" \- this is not a thing that most ISPs sell to normal customers at rates mere mortals can afford, and for good reason.

 _All my packets, no matter what they are, should have equal access to another person 's packets on the same network._

QoS's entire _raison d 'etre_ is ensuring this equal access by making sure sudden high load does not negatively impact the service for everyone else. Would you prefer your call quality/game/video not get shitty when the latest GoT episode comes out? Or would you prefer a complete wild-west free for all where the "bandwidth hogs" can quite literally ruin a service for everyone?

And don't say "expand capacity", either. Nobody in the world, not even Google, has the ability to deliver their max advertised bandwidth to all subscribers simultaneously.

Please, for your own sanity, learn the difference between average speed and max speed.

<comment><USER16> Sustained bandwidth is not out of the ordinary. I consistently get the same bandwidth day after day, but I realize at times it could have issues, because I don't have a dedicated line.

When I don't use QoS, I can't download a large file and skype at the same time. If I use QoS on my network, it's no problem. Clearly this means my ISP is not doing anything particularly special with my data, and I get on just fine.

I go through Midcontinent Communications, one of the better ISPs in the US.

<comment><USER14> I am very, very jealous of you. I've got a coworker who used to live in that part of the states who tells me leaving that particular ISP was one of the hardest parts of moving here :)

That said, I bet they got out in front of projected growth so they have a large surplus of capacity. Still, I'd be willing to bet you large and ridiculous amounts of cash that the right combination of growth + popular event would result in contention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So it sounds like this is less of a law restricting tiering and more of direction to have the FCC make regulations to restrict tiering. Also not having seen the bill I can't say for sure but the language "between the customer and ISP" is a little shaky since someone like Comcast is both a customer ISP and backhaul provider so can they claim they are operating as a backhaul company when they change money to Netflix .

<comment><USER18> To be fair, that is typically how it's done. Congress passes a law that directs the relevant agency to figure out the minutia of implementing it.

<comment><USER17> The issue I have with the model ( which is true across the board on issues ) is that with so many things by leaving it up to regulators you are putting governance in the hands of unelected career beurocrats with minimal oversight over what is actually being done. That is why the next phase in governance is always legal wrangling over regulations since the legislation has given such wiggle room to regulators to implement policy.

<comment><USER18> Do you have an example in mind when you talk about regulations that go against the intent of Congress? Not saying it doesn't happen, but it seems like the exception.

What's the alternative? Congress should rewrite FCC rules itself? How else would you bring them into compliance with the new law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >>"It wouldn't give the commission new powers, but the bill — known as the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act — would give the FCC crucial political cover to prohibit what consumer advocates say would harm startup companies and Internet services by requiring them to pay extra fees to ISPs."

The title seems a bit off. Wouldn't Congress only be the ones that could ban internet slow lanes? Not the FCC.

<comment><USER20> The debate is three part:

Part A) Whether the FCC should use the existing powers Congress granted it to push network neutrality

Part B) Whether Congress should force the FCC to use its existing powers to push for network neutrality

Part C) Whether Congress should grant the FCC new powers to push for network neutrality (the FCC reclassifying broadband as a utility probably falls in here as well, given its impact)

<comment><USER21> The Supreme Court has already weighed in on A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Leahy and Matsui's proposed ban on fast lanes would apply only to the connections between consumers and their ISPs"

I don't see how this will address the issue in a practical sense. When I'm having trouble streaming netflix on Verizon, my speed tests still return a solid 25mbps. The connection between Verizon and Netflix is the issue, not the connection between my house and Verizon.

<comment><USER23> this is why i find it strange people are basically saying netflix is sticking up for network neutrality, when in essence netflix is asking for special treatment because they are big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love how the very first paragraph implies that the problem is Netflix (as the example company) getting special, preferential treatment, when in fact, Netflix has been obviously punished for not paying ransom money, and has led the charge on the net neutrality movement that led to this bill.

But this is the Washington Post, the Pravda of the Beltway. What do you expect? Honesty?

</comment><comment><USER25> "will unveil a piece of bicameral legislation Tuesday"

Is the text of the actual bill up yet? I cannot find it.

<comment><USER25> I guess this is the text: [http://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Online%20Com...](http://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Online%20Competition%20and%20Consumer%20Choice%20Act.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> God Dangit. Don't make this a Red vs Blue Debate.

<comment><USER12> Its been a red vs. blue debate for a long time. Why is it surprising that significant issues of government policy in which the opposing sides represent conflicts between the deeply-held interests of different groups also turn out to be issues of division between political parties. I mean, isn't that exactly what you'd expect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What are these so-called "fast lanes"?

</comment><comment><USER28> That title looks like it was written by a Telco Lobbyist. Immediately it's made partisan (Democrats are regulating!), dire (unveils has a negative connotation), overbearing (forcing the FCC oh noes!), and incorrect (no such thing as an Internet "fast lane").

A better title could read: "Lawmakers Introduce bill to halt ISPs crippling Netflix-type Internet Services"

It's no wonder we can't get anything done for good in Washington.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone have a link to the legislation?

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder which lobbying group will kill this at the eleventh hour this time? Will it be the trial lawyers again? Hollywood? Hollywood lawyers? Will it be the NSA, who claim they can not comply with the directive?

Whatever the outcome, rest assured that this Congress is at its most creative when finding a reason to kill any bill that has the support of the American people.

<comment><USER31> _Whatever the outcome, rest assured that this Congress is at its most creative when finding a reason to kill any bill that has the support of the American people._

Phone call works, but we are too distracted to care or that we don't care in the first place.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Portal Cloud – VPN Service for Teams - <AUTHOR> https://portal.cloud/# <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, Co-founder of Portal Cloud VPN here.

Thanks for checking us out! We're about halfway through YC Startup School, and it's been an incredible experience so far (particularly getting to know/learn from our group). We just launched Portal Cloud VPN two weeks ago, and our goal is to enable teams to securely access private company resources (internal web apps/production servers etc..), and help remote employees or contractors secure their internet traffic.

We think all professionals & remote employees should be using a business- quality VPN, and would love to hear what you think (positive, or critical).

Thanks, email@example.com

<comment><USER2> What traffic do you inspect and log? If someone works in an industry like healthcare could you sign a BAA?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't inspect or log any customer traffic, and we treat your VPN server as private and confidential. We aren't currently able to sign a HIPAA BAA, but we're working on being able to do so in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems like when this talks about "enabl[ing] teams to access private company resources", it means "access 3rd party cloud services that support IP whitelisting"? For example, if I set up another service on the internet to only allow connections from the dedicated VPN server IP. But it wouldn't let a remote employee access a service running in the company's office LAN. Am I misreading that?

Additionally, what protections are in place to ensure Portal Cloud staff aren't monitoring the traffic or accessing a customer's "private company resources"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's right. We're referring to IP whitelisting there. We're also adding (very shortly) site-to-site VPN connections, so users can link their AWS/GCP VPC or even a traditional office/datacenter LAN.

Even with a VPN, any sensitive services should have their own auth and logging enabled. Requiring a VPN doesn't remove the need for other forms of security, but it does add a very effective layer of security. We also have a strong business incentive not to violate the trust of our customers. We're hoping to prove that we can be trusted over time, and to use technology to reduce the need for trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this tunnel all internet traffic through the VPN or has it the option to only tunnel traffic to certain addresses?

Our current OpenVPN set up involves whitelisting addresses for which traffic needs to go through the VPN. All other traffic goes around the VPN. Does Portal Cloud VPN support a set up this?

</comment><comment><USER5> You're offering a good service. Many dev and QA teams are looking for this kind of solutions.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see the point considering it takes about 5 minutes to setup OpenVPN on a server? Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this different from a regular VPN? I'm not getting it from the web site how "Team VPN" is different from a regular one.

<comment><AUTHOR> The biggest difference is that you really do get your own private server running the OpenVPN and WireGuard daemons. Your team members get accounts on your server but no else does. Your server has a dedicated IP address for whitelisting, auto-scales with usage, and has no artificial limits on number of users you can add (though we do have recommendations for performance).

We're also adding site-to-site links with AWS/GCP VPC very soon and have transparent pricing.

The consumer VPN providers are pretty good for what they're designed for but are generally lacking the features businesses need. And the business VPNs are generally much worse to buy and use. We're working to build a consumer-quality business VPN.

Thanks for the question!

<comment><USER7> Ok, so you're comparing the service to standard consumer "anonymizing" VPNs, which no real business would be using. You're probably better off (and need to address in your value proposition) comparing to VPNs provided by standard firewalls that would normally be used in a business, like Cisco AnyConnect, etc. That's what your real competition is.

<comment><USER8> Corporate VPNs are mostly used by old businesses thar have a lot of legacy infrastructure on the "internal network". That market may be hard to crack and it's an obsolete model, thus a shrinking market.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review my website (http://boardlite.com) - <AUTHOR>

Boardlite http://boardlite.com is basically a lightweight bulletin board website very similar to stackoverflow.com. The difference being, the aim of Boardlite is to handle discussions instead of questions and answers. You can also see a list of FAQs on this page: http://boardlite.com/faq/ <comment><USER2> For some reason, and I'm probably projecting, I thought hey, I'll be able to create my own bulletin board. I think there's still room for a good solution there since Y! Groups seems lost, Google Groups seems a bit abandoned and a ton of other people are in the groups space but trying for something complicated (Ning).

Once I figured out what it wasn't, I had a hard time figuring out what it was. What sort of discussions is this for? StackOverflow isn't just for any sort of questions, it has a very clear purpose.

I forget who told me this, but someone once gave me design advice along the lines of figure out what the number one thing people want to do and make that thing twice as big as everything else. I often remind myself of that once I've finished building cool tech that could be used for anything and everything. I think that advice would be a good starting place for this site.

Aside from lack of purpose I can see a lot of potential in this sort of software as a platform.

I hope that's helpful. I'm hoping to post a "Review My Site" here next week and I'm already nervous about putting myself out there. But early feedback is good to get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Tony. The site is useful for creating discussions in variety of categories and not limited to a single subject like stackoverflow is. This might look like a difficult aim to achieve. I am willing to take the risk. Later on I plan to set preferences for individual users so they get to see topics relevant to their own liking.

<comment><AUTHOR> btw..here is your new profile just in case you din't notice yet :-) <http://boardlite.com/user/tony/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link: <http://boardlite.com/>

I like the look, it is clean and simple.

One small glitch: it seems that on the page <http://boardlite.com/category/computers/list/> some vertical gray border is missing on the left side of "1 post" and "16 views", where the light blue headline becomes narrower and says "Tracking ID: 400000001" etc. Same problem on the FAQ page at <http://boardlite.com/faq/> ...

Page load speed: instead of <http://boardlite.com/media/js/lib/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js> you could use [http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js), see <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/> for details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Can you tell me which browser are you using. I am so upset that I couldn't see it before the launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> oh yes. Now I know what you are referring to. I guess the problem is on all browsers. I'll do the needful soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are a few comments about people liking the minimalist design, but for me, i find it a bit too pedestrian.

Also, on the homepage I get a 'welcome to boardlite', but I have to click on the message to find out what it's about.

Why not have a description on the homepage saying what boardlite is about. Also, why is the 'tracking ID' so prominent? Do you expect that to be something people will use?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have purposely kept the design pedestrian and thats what the website name signifies: board "LITE". Ever wondered why people prefer Gmail over Hotmail or Google over Yahoo, or for that matter Facebook over MySpace? Regarding the Welcome message, its just a starter topic. It will roll down when new topics are created. If your topics get lost and you are unable to find them, you can search for the IDs(if you remember of course) in the searchbar.

<comment><USER5> As a minimalist designer, I like to see the idea put in practice, but your design could be improved upon. Without any differentiation between areas like post, comments, voting, and sidebar. Your design become more difficult to read an navigate. Also, when you're using a fluid design like this, you need to consider what it will look like to users of all screen sizes. Just being fluid and filling a bigger screen doesn't mean it looks good on one. Keep up the good work!

(constructive criticism only, because my compliments won't make it a better website).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks. I had initially tried on 960 grid. But somehow couldn't fit in the sidebar in the whole design. So thought of making it widescreen. But yes I'll definitely look into the use case again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey Saurabh, that looks interesting.

Why don't you make a bulletin board on a topic which interests people here and link to that? Then you will get meaningful reviews because without any content, it's hard to see what's great about your site.

The minimal design is of course nice, but usability is no good without usefulness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here we got one: [http://boardlite.com/topic/how-can-one-manage-to-keep-the- go...](http://boardlite.com/topic/how-can-one-manage-to-keep-the-google- solitary/400000002/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dude, I must say that I am very impressed with its minimal design.

</comment><comment><USER8> Built with Django, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew this was coming. Not that difficult to guess :-)</comment></comment>


UX Developer is an Oxymoron - <AUTHOR> http://danieldelaney.net/ux-developer-is-an-oxymoron/ <comment><USER2> I'm a developer with a background in design. In my career I've built and maintained UI component frameworks in SCSS and React, built web apps, and collaborated with designers and product owners to improve the app's UI and UX. As the builder of these products, I'm usually the first one to actually experience the them, so I'm in the strongest position to notice problems and suggest improvements.

So, yes, there is such a thing as a UX/UI developer/engineer.</comment>


Poor people should get slower internet speeds, American ISPs tell FCC - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2018/12/11/poor_slower_internet/ <comment><USER2> The 1-number obsession is horrible.

As a baseline, how about just 400 kilobits/second, but: symmetric, under 60 ms latency to 48 states, packet loss of less than 1% for any size packet when not exceeding 400 kilobits/second (to 48 states), latency that doesn't increase under load, and less than 5 hours of downtime per customer per year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whats the alternative? That poor people should be forced to pay for the same plans as those who use Terabytes a month in streaming?

Why shouldn't someone who doesn't use Netflix religiously, stream video or torrent files endlessly get a cheaper plan?

<comment><USER4> I'm all for the availability of cheaper plans, but this seems to be about ISPs getting broadband subsidies to provide people with less than broadband speeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Literally pay to play.

</comment><comment> time-domain0 Bandwidth equivalent of Zuck's "free internet" (that's not the internet) for poor people in India.

Conclusion: nearly all ISP's are dicks too.</comment>


Ask HN: What newspapers / magazines do you pay for? - <AUTHOR> With an increasing use of paywalls by media companies, which digital subscriptions are you currently paying for? <comment><USER2> So far, only the newspaper I grew up with. There are lots that I would like to pay for but don't as it would be too expensive to pay for them all. I am close to paying for Pressreader, which offers a good selection off international papers for one monthly fee:

[http://www.pressreader.com](http://www.pressreader.com)

</comment><comment><USER3>
      The New York Times (paper + digital)
      The Wall Street Journal
      Financial Times
      The Information
      Stratechery

</comment><comment><USER4> Digital only? I still pay for a few dead-tree publications that come through my letterbox each month. Do they count?

</comment><comment><USER5>
      The New York Times
      The Wall Street Journal
      The Washington Post
      High Country News</comment>


Ask HN: What domain provider do you recommend for unlimited sub-domains? - <AUTHOR>

I currently use namecheap, but they have a limit of 50 or so subdomains..  I'm looking for a domain provider with an API that I can tie in w/ generating the sub-domain so when a company signs up for my service, they'll get a url like.. (http://customcompany.taskfort.com) <comment><USER2> You're looking for a DNS host. Amazon's route 53 is a good choice.

Alternatively, you could use wildcard DNS and programmatically determine the host header value to direct the user to the correct place. For example, in PHP that information would be available by using $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].

<comment><USER3> The latter is what you want here, most likely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, this is exactly what I needed. I did not know that you could do that until today. Thanks! Do you know if it's possible to exclude domains part of the wildcard in nginx (e.g. blog.mysite.com or forum.mysite.com):

[http://kbeezie.com/wildcard-subdomains-php/](http://kbeezie.com/wildcard- subdomains-php/)

<comment><USER4> Do you mean via DNS or via PHP/HTTP?

With DNS the wildcard is treated last. So if you define forums.* and blog.* to point to a specific server or CNAME, when those are requested that is the result which will be returned. Everything that has not been handled expressly will then hit the wildcard and be resolved as defined (explicit before implicit).

With the HTTP server you'd just define rules ahead of the wildcard. For example, forums.* and blog.* would be handled first and anything which hasn't been handled at all is defaulted to whatever your wildcard handling-site is.

This is pretty easy to do in at least Apache and IIS (just have your wildcard site as the default, and then define the hostname of everything else). The PHP code just reads in whatever is in the request header and handles it logically internally.

PS - I like Route53 but it is expensive. Also set up billing alerts(!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Our company ([http://www.postatic.com](http://www.postatic.com)) provides a tool to create online communities.

When a user creates a community, they automatically get a sub-domain.

We do this by wildcard sub-domain.

Then you pick it up in the Apache conf file.

If you are using Laravel, it provides a wildcard subdomain routing feature

[http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/routing#sub-domain- routing](http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/routing#sub-domain-routing)

It works really really well.

We also allow users to point their custom-domain name to the sub-domain they have been given ([http://www.mydomain.com](http://www.mydomain.com) -> [http://sub.postatic.com](http://sub.postatic.com))

All works well.

We use 1and1 for our main domain (postatic.com) and our DNS is handled by Linode.

Let me know if you have any further questions. Will gladly share knowledge! (firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record)</comment>