The Line of Death - <AUTHOR> https://textslashplain.com/2017/01/14/the-line-of-death/ <comment><USER3> I think the real issue is that everybody cares about usability but nobody actually cares about the users. Browsers, web apps, etc. try hard to make it easy to browse the web, but they don't try very hard to make it clear exactly what you're doing and what the risks are - in fact, everyone tries rather hard to downplay the risks and to hide how things actually work. How many users understand "the line of death", or the basic fact that different pixels are drawn by different programs, not to mention URL structure, or (gasp) Unicode and how it fits there, or how rnicrosoft.com isn't what they're looking for? What makes them understand this? Nothing. Software vendors are very happy with uninformed users (in fact these are the best users because they don't realize which of your programs and services can be replaced with an alternative and how), and users are very happy to stay uninformed, too.

Not saying I know how to fix this, just that in my experience non-tech people are so completely unaware of what's going on that this "line of death" thing is not even a thing for them.

<comment><USER4> To fix this the answer is to educate the users, and also oppose this style of UI that makes things opaque and hard to comprehend. (Maybe when users are better educated they will automatically find the problems with such UI and thus further oppose it.) Incidentally, if users customised their environments more, they would be far less likely to be fooled by fake dialogs and such, because they would look very obviously different. With the setup I have, it's almost hilarious to see all the adverts with fake dialogs and buttons that look nothing like the real ones on my system; the font, the colours, the controls, everything stands out as being different.

<comment><USER5> Back when it was still possible (Windows XP? Maybe Windows 7?) I would always turn off all the modern Windows chrome and animation and make it look like Windows 2000. Made for better responsiveness and as you say, you could spot fake dialog boxes in an instant.

Not a Windows user these days but I understand it's not possible to get the old Windows 2000 look anymore, though I'm sure you can still change color themes and appearance to some extent.

<comment><USER6> You can still do this as late as Win7. I think this was eliminated in Win8, but I've not used it myself.

If you do use Aero, you can change the window chrome colour to something custom, which should catch out sites trying to fake windows. I don't _think_ browsers provide any way to get the window chrome colour, though come to think of it, I'm fairly sure IE does/used to provide system colour names in CSS, so it might not be impossible... (If you recall the Win2000-era colour customization window, which IIRC you can still access in current versions of Windows, it's just hidden, you can set things like default window background colour, which traditionally in the Win2000 era was grey. So I guess the idea is that websites could use these system colours if you changed them to be consistent with the OS. Of course nobody really does this.)

<comment><USER7> Windows 10 lets you pick a "custom accent color," and it allows you to make a few other custom tweaks as well (should the titlebar be white or colored?).

Since this is part of the initial setup wizard, I think it would be pretty hard to fake a Windows 10 dialog from inside a web browser.

<comment><USER8> That problem is easily solved. In your malware, simply use the default settings for all of those things, and you will catch the 97% of users who never customize any of it.

You can afford to lose the remaining 3%.

<comment><USER7> The title bar thing, yes.

The accent color? If you buy a new Windows 10 machine off the shelf, after you enter your name, it asks what your favorite color is. I think blue is highlighted when that screen comes up, but you can't miss the opportunity, so 3% is a bit low for an estimate of how many people will change it.

<comment><USER9> Favourite colors don't follow a random distribution. IIRC with blue and green you already have two thirds of the population.

<comment><USER7> A browser ad that imitates a windows dialog can only guess one color per impression. Forcing Mallory to settle for 1/3 of the otherwise-vulnerable population is a definite improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the best UIs I've seen crossing over this line of death was the HTTP Basic Auth popdown in Opera 12. I've always wondered why that UI concept was never taken up by other browsers.

... will try and find a screenshot

Edit: Couldn't find one so just installed it myself: [https://pageshot.net/images/4af15a26-6eb8-45a2-b4d5-ed6ea19a...](https://pageshot.net/images/4af15a26-6eb8-45a2-b4d5-ed6ea19a1028.png)

Edit2: dom0 beat me to it below also

Edit3: reword

<comment><USER11> Both Chrome and Firefox are under the line of death too. Although for Firefox it is a bit trickier to replicate as it uses native components whereas Chrome uses its internal UI kit.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, perhaps my comment was unclear. I meant "breaking" in a positive way (hence "best") - the UI crossed the line in a very significant and impossible- not-to-notice way.

Still searching for a screenshot unfortunately... may just re-install it and take one myself.

<comment><USER12> [http://schubiserv.de/images/opera- benutzerauthentifizierung....](http://schubiserv.de/images/opera- benutzerauthentifizierung.png)

<comment><USER13> I still disagree with both lucideer's original and improved wording, but I agree with their message, which praises Opera's basic auth UI as making it clear with the borders and 3D foreground overlay effect that it's a part of the browser-produced "trusted zone", and not the pool of untrusted content behind.

Moreover, these kinds of UIs are still possible with the 'flat' look that's in vogue today, so there's little excuse why others choose not to do it. Perhaps one reason is that basic auth lost out early on to site-supplied login forms, so people got used to entering usernames and passwords into the page content anyway, instead of the browser UI.

For the most part, basic auth only tends to affect uses like intranet sites, router login pages, web services, remote management pages -- settings where phishing can still cause (serious) damage, so a harder-to-fake UI would be beneficial nonetheless.

<comment><USER10> On my wording, apologies (edited). I was thinking of "breaking" in terms of "breaking/crossing a line/barrier one does not typically cross". Probably not the best wording in retrospect.

On the comments on basic auth losing out, you might be right that that's a reason, but HTML5 APIs requiring some kind of UI confirmation from the user (like HTTP basic auth does) are far more proliferant than they once were (see [http://permission.site/](http://permission.site/) for many examples), so I don't think that excuse is really good enough for browser vendors.

Incidentally, it's worth noting that the UI for this kind of thing (user confirmation prompts) is pretty much a solved problem on mobile: these prompts tend to use the OS notification API, so always appear outside the browser chrome entirely.

<comment><USER13> Desktop platforms like OS X, most Linux desktop environments, and newer versions of Windows have similarly allowed applications to hook into the OS' own notification mechanism for a while, but for some reason this model never caught on. One can argue that it's much clunkier on these platforms than on mobile, but the capability is now there.

Unfortunately, with HTML5 notifications, the ship has probably sailed on this and it went from being an intriguing idea to a bad one, as now it's getting mainstream for individual websites to generate OS-level notifications. This made a previously privileged pool of messages full of untrusted content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking of zones of death, I was recently the (unsuccessful) target of a credit card gathering scam—on a Twitter ad, pretending to _be Twitter_.

[https://twitter.com/bcjordan/status/819894043870105602](https://twitter.com/bcjordan/status/819894043870105602)

Multiple users actually entered their CC #s, two canceled them after they saw my reply to the tweet warning users.

Incredibly, Twitter has still not notified the scammed users about it despite removing the ad after my report and multiple tweets to support requesting they notify the affected users.

The fact that they allowed that ad to get through (essentially _profiting_ from users identities and financial information being leaked?!) is just unbelievable, separate from their failure to protect/notify the users affected by the scam.

<comment><USER15> I don't know why you'd need to scam people on Twitter. There are plenty of people who just post photos of their cards:

[https://twitter.com/needadebitcard](https://twitter.com/needadebitcard)

<comment><USER16> I was pleasantly surprised when my grandmother showed me her new chip credit card and it didn't have the numbers stamped on the front. They're instead printed on the back. I suspect the bank was getting sick of issuing new numbers after people inadvertently posted their own card numbers online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From a few weeks ago:

[https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/812265182646927361](https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/812265182646927361)

This is a neat blog post that goes to show the extents of faking that can be done in the browser. More talks about this will hopefully lead to better "security UI" as the author puts it.

<comment><USER17> I have my browser default to non-standard zoom (150%). Assuming the fake attachments use a jpg instead of an SVG, they would look different. Not to mention miss the on-hover CSS. I wonder if I would notice it or not; something would probably feel off but not enough to fully register.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comment made about domain names not being trustworthy is why I like EV- certificates.

Some people (notably google) argue that EV-certificates add very little of value because the user can just as easily check the domain name. Thing is, I could probably get some paypal or google like domain. Even if I can't, I could use a data URI as in [1] to put [https://google.com](https://google.com) in the address bar.

Compare that to EV. To get a browser to display google (or googel, or paypal), I'd need to convince a CA to issue such an EV cert. Whilst that might not be impossible, it takes something close to a state-level actor. A lot of phishers operate below that level.

What EV gives over the domain name is a fully CA controlled part of the UI. Whilst the address bar is the 'zone of death by phisher' the EV bar is the 'zone of death by CIA/KGB'.

[1] [https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/01/gmail-phishing- data-u...](https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/01/gmail-phishing-data-uri/)

</comment><comment><USER9> An entirely different but similar issue is logs. If you aggregate logs in a simple, unstructed text file, then it becomes pretty easy to add faked log lines, or, if they're viewed in the terminal plain-and-easy, embed VT control characters in log lines that can hide other log lines. And with creative use of Unicode one can also often confuse readers.

<comment><USER19> I saw an example of that with shellscript files you're supposed to run with 'curl [http://example.com/script.sh](http://example.com/script.sh) | sh' or something, where if you pipe it to cat instead, it looks harmless enough, because it contains control characters that erase the dangerous parts. So you have to download the script, and load it up in an editor before you can see what it actually does.

...which of course is _so much work_ that noone does it.

<comment> stable-point Opening it in a text editor is not sufficient. With clever use of 'sleep' you can even have the server return a malicious payload only if it thinks its getting immediately piped to sh[0].

If you're opening it in a browser to check, you've also got to worry that the server may be looking at curl's user agent to decide whether to serve up a malicious payload[1].

[0] [https://www.idontplaydarts.com/2016/04/detecting-curl- pipe-b...](https://www.idontplaydarts.com/2016/04/detecting-curl-pipe-bash- server-side/) [1] [https://jordaneldredge.com/blog/one-way-curl-pipe-sh- install...](https://jordaneldredge.com/blog/one-way-curl-pipe-sh-install- scripts-can-be-dangerous/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my experience the ordinary user is no longer able to distinguish between a native binary that is running on their OS (example: the windows update feature of the win10 control panel) and data presented inside a browser window. witness the number of people who have fallen for the bsod scam sites and given away their CC info.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bsod+scam+site&num=100&prmd=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bsod+scam+site&num=100&prmd=inv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiw- ti_g8PRAhUP1WMKHQhiC9oQ_AUIBygB)

Even when people see a scam where the UI obviously doesn't match with the OS, ignorant non technical people fall for it. People get those scam sites in safari on OSX and still click and pay.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've never heard the term "line of death" used to describe this before, but this concept is exactly why I've sadly convinced myself that fully chromeless browsers are a bad idea. Unless there were some sort of spoofless hardware indicator that a given UI element was being displayed by the browser, I suppose... but that sort of defeats the purpose.

<comment><USER22> What's a chromeless browser?

<comment><USER4> Something like this: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/28/yandex-brwoser- concept/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/28/yandex-brwoser-concept/)

Discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8670503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8670503)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an interesting case where security and design are in direct collision. From a security perspective you'd want the demarcation between the application itself and the untrusted content area to be as clear and obvious as possible, which would mean drawing big borders between them so thick nobody could possibly miss them. But contemporary design is all about being "clean," part of which involves making borders razor thin and so lightly colored you can barely see them.

The example given of Chrome's line-of-death-crossing chevron is a good illustration of this tension. Say what you want to about it security-wise, but you can't say it's not clean!

<comment><USER10> I don't think I really agree with this. Making good visual design, or let's say in this case "clean" visual design, work is up to the designer.

Taking for example the Opera 12 example I mentioned in comments above[0]: while I don't think Opera's overall UI design in 2011 was particularly visually pleasing, and certainly not as clean as Chrome's today, if you consider the UI pattern in isolation there's nothing preventing it from being done cleanly. Facebook uses the same UI pattern for the active state of its status input today.

That's just one obvious example - I'm not suggesting it's the only one. Google's Material Design guidelines advocate a lot of context-crossing - <USER2> canonical example being the "Floating action button" attaching to sheets[1]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400645)

[1] [https://material.io/guidelines/components/buttons- floating-a...](https://material.io/guidelines/components/buttons-floating- action-button.html#buttons-floating-action-button-large-screens)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Occurs to me that counteracting this problem might be one of the strengths of 3D UIs, such as we might have to look forward to in AR systems, or with display advances. Untrusted content can literally be loaded up and restricted to exist only 'inside' a chrome box, making its provenance clear.

Of course, chances are that we'll get carried away with the possibilities of allowing AR web browsers to create arbitrary objects in the AR space long before we realize what a terrible idea that is...

</comment><comment><USER25> Something else to add, a Data URI can do this: [https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/812268998742118400](https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/812268998742118400)

</comment><comment><USER26> I have found a much worse case in mobile apps. I do not have Facebook App installed, so I get a prompt from some apps when I try to auth through facebook in-app to login into facebook, which could be totally fake.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a truly dark pattern. [https://textplain.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/image38.png?w=...](https://textplain.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/image38.png?w=287&h=164) Faking browser popups is evil, and unexpected for a high-profile site such as Tom's Hardware.

<comment><USER6> What exactly does it accomplish, though, in this instance? Since it's not real it can't actually authorize anything the site can't already do. It's a dubious approach, but it seems more misguided than actively malicious.

<comment><USER28> If they say no to the real thing, the site can't ask again. But of course they can present the fake one on every page as many times as they want until the user acquiesces. So once they click "yes" on the mini dialog, the page opens the real permissions dialog, because you can be much more certain that they'll allow it.

Good TC article on the practice: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/the-right- way-to-ask-users...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/the-right-way-to-ask- users-for-ios-permissions/)

<comment><USER29> On iOS I think it is correct to first ask in app and then trigger the real thing if the user agrees because in an app there is a context that the app usually needs the permission so it makes sense and I feel it's nicer to ask me first inside the app and usually to explain why they need it at the same time than to take me straight to the real thing without warning because that puts me outside of the app. On websites it might have been ok if they asked in a proper way but presenting something that is pretending to be part of the browser UI when it isn't -- that is, as parent commenter said, a dark pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Put the tab strip below the URL bar. This used to be the case in the past.

That'll leave plenty of room to have things drop down from the URL bar without much ambiguity.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was playing with picture-in-picture attacks on Chrome some time ago and even proposed a way for mitigation, but it was dismissed.

Here's the PoC I did: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oega6C5SF0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oega6C5SF0)

And the mitigation I proposed was from this: [http://i.imgur.com/8m6UdiC.png](http://i.imgur.com/8m6UdiC.png)

To this: [http://i.imgur.com/turRAdc.png](http://i.imgur.com/turRAdc.png)

</comment><comment><USER32> > _Unfortunately, on windowed operating systems, this is worse than it sounds, > because it creates the possibility of picture-in-picture attacks, where an > entire browser window, including its trusted pixels, can be faked [...]

They retorted "Well, we passed this screenshot around our entire information security department, and nobody could tell it's a picture-in-picture attack. Can you?"_

Maybe I'm naive, but shouldn't you be able to detect picture-in-picture attacks rather easily because _you never opened that window in the first place_?

Additionally, the "chrome" of the picture-in-picture would behave significantly than a real chrome.

I feel both of those points can't be assessed by showing people a screenshot, because people have significantly different expectations when looking at a screenshot of a website than when browsing a website by themselves.

<comment><USER33> A few websites I know will pop up a separate window for entering credit card credentials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can't thank this article enough for raising a stupidly simple yet very generic problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought Microsoft or somebody implemented a prototype for secure pop-ups where the windows had animated borders containing personal user information as a marquee? The idea was that this would be extremely difficult to fake (even if it looked a bit weird).

</comment><comment><USER36> How about we put a distinctive icon in the trusted zones, which the renderer won't allow under any circumstances in the untrusted area.

Also with a buffer so nothing too similar is allowed, or perhaps a warning comes up if something is close.

I vote for something like the chrome dinosaur.

<comment><USER37> Isn't this essentially the lock icon, today?

What is "trusted"? We get the lock icon if a valid TLS connection is formed; if you want a more secure connection, you can get EV certificates. We could do away with the lock icon and only show a broken lock if not on TLS, and only show something that looks secure on EV certs, (which seems to be where browsers are headed.)

A simple valid TLS connection getting the lock icon is problematic when people are using DNS names that are close-but-not-quite to things like paypal.com. And we _want_ TLS certs to be issued automagically ala Let's Encrypt and such, so it's easy, unfortunately, to get a cert for paypal-not-quite.com. Such is the difference in "secure connection" and "a secure connection to a party _you_ trust."

<comment><USER36> Pretty much - except the rending engine won't let that block of pixels allow to hit the framebuffer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone explain the risk of something like Mac OS Mail asking for your gmail password? There's no address bar so I've wondered if I can really trust that I'm not handing my password to a MITM.

<comment><USER39> Google usually suggests that users create app specific passwords for anything that requires you to enter your Google credentials inside another app. If we follow this religiously, then the risk will be quite low

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why can't browsers do image differencing to detect when the page contains something pretending to be the browser or OS chrome, and plaster warnings overtop?

<comment><USER41> Surely it would have an unacceptable performance impact. Probably you'd need to run the matching in the GPU to get anything remotely useful, and you would literally kill battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It would be helpful if this post included mentions or links to any best practices to help mitigate this. Does anyone have any they would like to share?

<comment><USER43> Here's one: don't use the default window manager theme. This is much easier on Linux and *BSD than in Windows or MacOS.

I've seen lots of picture-in-picture attacks. They usually simulate Windows title bars and controls. Hah. I once saw one on a Mac which adapted to the OS and tried to show a Mac window frame, but it was an outdated version.

That brings me to another point: send an incorrect User-Agent. Same browser on a different OS, perhaps.

<comment><USER4> It used to be pretty easy to customise appearance on Windows, but the latest versions seem to have mostly castrated that functionality.

<comment><USER44> Would you say that castrating window decorations was a misguided attempt by Microsoft to make Windows more like eunuchs?

(I'll let myself out)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> With HTML5 push state navigation, can we really trust the address bar? Or is the domain part protected from that?

<comment><USER10> The domain part is protected from that, though as shown in grenoire's link there are other reasons to distrust the address bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is there a line of death to begin with?

The picture-in-picture attacks seem serious enough to warrant a new kind of browser.

<comment><USER46> How could we eliminate the line of death? There has to be a part of the page that we hand control to the site, otherwise there wouldn't be any content, and the line of death is just the boundaries of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Oh my grandma what big teeth you have!</comment>


Radio stations that go all-Christmas in December - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jingle-bell-rock-lots-of-radio-stations-go-all-christmas-in-december-heres-why/2015/12/21/5b2a5836-a442-11e5-ad3f-991ce3374e23_story.html <comment><USER2> "Here's Why."

Aaaand close tab. You too, WaPo?

But yeah. It's vogue right now to show disinterest in Christmas (at least in these here elitist North Eastern cities), but I'm one of the seemingly few that just loves the holidays. I didn't come from money, and even though my parents ended up divorced after 25 years, "family" as the most important thing in the world bar none was drilled into our heads. Christmas was all the wonderful that came from and surrounded family. It was visiting, gifts, and food - putting the world aside for a minute and concentrating on just being together.

So yeah, I'm the guy that puts on Vince Guiraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas album at 12:01 am the day after Thanksgiving. I have a tree much too big for my apartment. I remain like Scrooge's nephew Fred - impossible to bring down during the season, even if you're a generally miserable person.

And I think that's part of it. Don't get me wrong - 24 hours of Christmas music a day for weeks or more has to be defined somewhere in UN definitions of torture. But for some people, this is the happiest time of year because it was, at one time, the happiest time of their year, and is associated with the happiest memories they may have from their lifetime. Music is strongly associated with this season, and I imagine with those memories.

And that sells, baby.

<comment><USER3> Music creates very strong connections like you've said, even showing it can help patients with dementia ([https://musicandmemory.org/](https://musicandmemory.org/)). I've sung and listened to Christmas music all month long.

I agree it is in vogue to be disinterested in Christmas. Not so much from advertisers but I've felt a lot less "happy" feelings this holiday season from the people in the stores I've visited. Like pulling teeth to hear a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah from anyone. No one seems to know what to do, what won't get them in trouble, or no one is celebrating any holiday at all. Do you have any ideas on why you think that is happening?

This is extreme, but I can't think of a milder way to say it. <rant>Why hate on Christmas? Do they hate on Hanukkah? Do they hate good will toward each other? Peace on Earth? How can you hate something that is generally a good message? Why not just let folks have their happy celebrations? Isn't that the idea behind tolerance for others? Must they hold someone else down to push themselves up?</rant> whew! Sorry about all that.

I'm reminded of The Offspring "It's cool to hate" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkRJzErnRmY)

<comment><USER4> The objection isn't about Christmas, but the saturation marketing that comes with it.

For many people, Christmas isn't a happy time. If you're lonely, it can be very painful to be bombarded with sentimentality. Bereaved people can be rudely reminded of their loss. It can be difficult to feel festive if you're struggling to make ends meet. Many households will spend the next few months repaying the debt they took on to give their children a decent Christmas.

It is increasingly difficult to escape from Christmas. As mentioned in the article, media outlets go on an all-out festive blitzkrieg. Christmas gets shoehorned into everything, for the whole month of December.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8)

<comment><USER5> Some decorations were up the day after Halloween where I live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it comforting that the local Wal-Mart is playing Christmas music 24/7 now.

The other 48 weeks of the year they're playing music that's been targeted at whatever demographic shops at a that certain time of the day.

At least Christmas can be a time of honest manipulation.

</comment><comment><USER7> _"There are really only 25 songs people really want to hear."_

Yes, and they've been the same 25 songs for 40 years.[1]

Of course, there's this one [2], which had advertisers angrily canceling ads when it came out. Very seldom, and never on chain radio, will you hear that one.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/988/](https://xkcd.com/988/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4)

</comment><comment><USER8> It is probably annoying, if you work in a shopping center or somewhere were you cannot control the loudspeakers.

I never listen to a radio stations. I do listen to MP3 in the car, and carry some playlists with me (smartphone).

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't realise this was a common thing in the US. I don't think any radio stations do it in Australia.

<comment><USER10> God bless y'all. I wish the American radio stations, malls, stores, etc. didn't feel the need to do so for five weeks.

<comment><USER11> It is what listeners, customers, etc want to hear. Welcome to the minority. I am from the Southern US, so I know exactly what you feel since I do not like country, gospel, or Bible sermons.

You won't hear me bitching though, because I know I am in the minority.

<comment><USER12> > _It is what listeners, customers, etc want to hear. Welcome to the > minority._

Is it? Or are they just spoon-fed with it to the point of being conditioned?

<comment><USER11> Does it matter? I say this as an atheist who enjoys Christmas. Wacky holidays are fun. Krampus is kinda strange though.

<comment><USER12> > _I say this as an atheist who enjoys Christmas._

Well, from the christmas tree to Santa Claus there's nothing much christian about christmas in the way it's celebrated in the US (and copied everywhere else too). It's mostly a shopping holiday with a Disney theme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related.

[http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/23/austrian- radio-...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/23/austrian-radio-dj- barricades-door-plays-last-christmas-24-times)

<comment><USER3> Ugh, you're link lead me to "Christmas celebrations banned in Somalia, Tajikistan and Brunei" [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/23/christmas- banne...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/23/christmas-banned- somalia-tajikistan-brunei)

Not sure what I'd have to do, but I'd never want _any_ religious celebration banned like that in the USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Growing up in a ultra-reformed Jewish-by-culture family, I have grown to truly hate Christmas music... the overt display of cultural dominance paired with the unapologetic consumerism irks me - I find it oppressive and evangelizing but totally un-inviting.

</comment><comment><USER15> That was an interesting read ... not a radio guy, but I do always wonder how the radio stations playing christmas music at the coffee shops I frequent manage it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Pandora Christmas station is decent but Spotify's are terrible. The formula is pretty straightforward as this article describes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Curious how many here still listen to fm radio in your car?

This is my modern yet crappy car stereo set up....

1\. iPhone

2\. Car stereo tape deck with tape deck adapter into iPhone

3\. Apple music

4\. Siri to control what plays

What's yours?

<comment><USER16> You're are in a tiny, tiny minority.

<comment><USER17> Tiny minority? In terms of using streaming apps in the car over FM radio?

If so, even here on Hacker News? I would fair to say the demo here consists of innovators, early to late adopters.</comment></comment></comment>


Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative - <AUTHOR> https://investors.sprint.com/news-and-events/press-releases/press-release-details/2019/ATT-Sprint-T-Mobile-and-Verizon-Form-Joint-Venture-to-Transform-Messaging-Experience/default.aspx <comment><USER2> If all the carriers are on-board, I suspect there are no checks and balances here.</comment>


Woman Gives Her Autistic 9-Year-Old Marijuana - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2251174/

<comment><USER2> My brother was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma a years back and was incredibly ill for most of his chemotherapy. Doctors shuffled anti-nausea medications regularly looking for something that could keep him out of the bathroom after each therapy, but the only relief he found was marijuana.

Eventually, he got into a trial of Marinol, synthetic cannabinoids that entirely cured him of the effects of chemotherapy. And, it made him feel nice.

The more these stories like this one in Slate are told, the sooner the rest of the country will adopt medical marijuana officially and people like my brother and this autistic kid stop suffering.

<comment><USER3> I used to be anti-illegal drugs until someone I knew went through cancer: <http://overcode.yak.net/3>

Marijuana gets a glowing review starting in the middle of the entries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting set of anecdotes. In the interest of considering whether anecdotes support medical interventions,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

I thought I should post a link to a discussion of the natural course of autism

<http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3908>

over the childhood of most autism patients, as that suggests why it will be important to do placebo-controlled, double-blind studies of any medical intervention proposed for autism. See

<http://www.skepticstoolbox.org/hall/>

for a detailed discussion by a science-oriented medical doctor on why variations in disease severity can confuse anecdotal accounts of what treatments work for what diseases.

I feel for the parents who have children with autistic behaviors, so I hope they get the benefit of sound science as they seek help for their children.

<comment><USER5> "it will be important to do placebo-controlled, double-blind studies of any medical intervention proposed for autism."

The author isn't proposing giving marijuana to all childhood autistics. She's just saying that it helps her son.

Besides, doing placebo-controlled, double-blind studies on whether marijuana is an effective medicine is like doing placebo-controlled, double-blind studies to figure out which is the best girlfriend. There are dozens of strains to choose from, and there's no reason to believe that a strain which is good for one person would be good for someone else, or even the best strain today would be ideal for tomorrow.

<comment><USER4> But, Alex, while I believe that no mother would actively harm her own child, the mother in question is not medically trained, and she has NO IDEA whether or not the long-term effects of marijuana are better for her child than the long-term effects of

a) doing nothing at all for his autism,

b) doing whatever is current standard practice for treating autism,

or

c) doing something that is bizarre and zany for autism.

She sees some behaviors change for the better, behaviors that might have changed for the better on their own. She has no way to sample the tissue of her child's brain to know what is happening to his brain. On the basis of her self-report, she doesn't appear to be doing him active short-term harm, but as a parent I try to validate what I do for my children with the observations of many other observers. She would be able to help her child with more likelihood of success if placebo-controlled, double-blind studies compare all the possible treatment approaches out there.

<comment><USER5> OK, on those grounds I agree that well-designed, long-term studies would be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One eyebrow went up at "...he made the heretofore unthinkable suggestion that I finally focus on my novel. I actually felt OK taking him up on the offer and spent a few weeks at the artists' colony Yaddo".

The other eyebrow went up, and the jaw dropped open, at "Salvation came in late October when Organic Guy managed to score some White Russian...Within two weeks, the number of times J was marked for behaving aggressively at school dropped back to the single digits, even zero on some days. This was all the scientific evidence we needed."

I'm very, very much in favor of medical cannabis. I don't doubt she saw some positive results...but her home sounds like it might itself be a bit 'dramatic' if not in fact 'volatile'. To say her story is even anecdotal evidence is a stretch -- in no way is it scientific.

Let's be scientific about coming to scientific conclusions, is what I'm suggesting. I'd love to see a valid, scientific study done on this topic, for I believe we would find benefit in cannabis. Stories like these, though well- intended, make it all seem like more of a Moonshine and Snake Oil movement.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that, writers and artists are not to be trusted?

Regarding "all the scientific evidence we needed", do you not think the bar should be a bit different for research papers, than for parenting a single child?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is "Part III", here's the HN discussion on Part II: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=864979>

</comment><comment><USER9> At a high level of abstraction, marijuana seems to make sense to treat autism. The various flavors of autism involve difficulty seeing patterns, and THC makes pattern detection fire more often. While frequent marijuana use can take the brain too far in the other direction (seeing patterns which aren't there, synesthesia, etc.), it seems like there might be promise, though certainly not without side effects.

The only way to be sure is further research, and it's unfortunate that the political and social stigma make it so taboo.

<comment><USER10> I didn't know that THC could induce synesthesia. I thought effects such as that were reserved for the "stronger" chemicals, like LSD.

<comment><USER9> It usually doesn't, and if it does, it's much milder than with hallucinogens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We'd have more research if it was legal to begin with.. Kind of sad that people are put in this position b/c of the taboo surrounding marijuana.

Given all the usual side effects, including death, caused by legal drugs you'd think this was a miracle drug by comparison.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol>

</comment><comment><USER12> We have a lot of "interesting" chemicals and plants available to us that can help resolve or reduce medical problems, and it's great that she lives in a country with a progressive medical system that can get those things into the hands of people who could benefit.

There are a lot of people who think the US has gone to pot (pun totally intended) in many ways but there are very few countries progressive enough to take similar steps (even in the UK, medicinal marijuana hasn't spread, legally, beyond trials).

<comment><USER13> Progressive? The US doesn't allow medical trials on marijuana. It doesn't allow research on marijuana.

This woman is a statistical outlier -- a person in one of a tiny handful of US states where it's even possible under state law to have it prescribed, and with a doctor who may well be putting his career on the line by prescribing marijuana. (Actual prescription is illegal under Federal law. They can "recommend", but I'm not sure if merely "recommended" pot is kosher with particular State laws)

Legally, the feds could walk into her house at any time, confiscate much of her property, jail her and her husband and send the child to child services.

It's great that some States are willing to press this issue, but the nation as a whole deserves no such credit and nothing but scorn.

The Federal government is the very reason that this mother is doing bad science personally to try and find out what works, rather than having trained experts doing it faster, more accurately and for the benefit of the nation.

<comment><USER4> _The US doesn't allow medical trials on marijuana. It doesn't allow research on marijuana._

Since I have found a contrary statement, in a publication that I would expect to tell me the truth on this issue,

<http://hightimes.com/news/ht_admin/295>

"DEA OKs MEDICAL-MARIJUANA TRIALS

"Tue, Jun 11, 2002 12:00 am

"Peter Gorman WASHINGTON After nearly 20 years of refusing to approve a single medical-marijuana human research trial, the Drug Enforcement Administration has simultaneously approved three individual trials. All three patient trials will involve the use of smoked marijuana, and be conducted at the University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR), at its San Diego and San Francisco campuses. The marijuana used will be supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) federally approved Hattiesburg, Mississippi pot farm."

I would expect you to back up that statement if you want us to believe it.

I see from the expected Google Scholar search

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=marijuana> trials

that marijuana clinical trials are going on somewhere, so if there is demonstrable medical benefit from taking marijuana that is not available from some other drug, the scientific community will eventually hear about it.

<comment><USER14> It's completely at the whim of the DEA, that's not legal permission it's selective enforcement. Any minute political shift could land the researchers in jail, all their assets personal or otherwise seized until trial.

This non action is the opposite of leadership, and the Department of Justice taking a slightly less conservative stance on the issue isn't progress.

<comment><USER14> Testing line feeds/n Line feeds!<br>

wtf line feeds

as;ldjfsa;jf

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not really in favor of legalizing marijuana, but I would like to see it moved from a schedule I drug to a schedule II drug. This would allow medical use and research.

For comparison cocaine is a schedule II drug because dentists use it.

<comment><USER16> > For comparison cocaine is a schedule II drug because dentists use it.

That would explain all the kleenexes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading this just reminds me of Temple Grandin lecturing on her experience with autism and treating autism. There are so many behavioral treatment options in addition to prescribed medicine that can help autistic children.

Video Here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wt1IY3ffoU#t=5m20s>

I'm not on the mother's side with this one. Try the treatments that have worked for others before you throw weed at the problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> wonderfully written.

</comment><comment><USER19> Happy 420 HN.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Medical" Marijuana has side effects obviously. So does risperdal, a strong anti-psychotic, which is the approved for anger & outbursts in autistic children.

Note: I have never tried Marijuana and nor do I intend to. Most people I know who do use Marijuana are the type of people aren't going far with their careers.</comment>


Programming Languages Criticisms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/saniv/text/tree/master/criticism

<comment><USER2> I once had a college professor say something like, "Don't criticize a language for what it can't do, rather look at what it does well."

He explained this by saying that most languages were designed for a specific purpose, and tradeoffs are always made that cause some parts of a language to be bad at certain tasks.

Not sure if this is universally true, but I felt it was sound reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER3> "PHP is Jewish language, developed by Israeli company with unclear agenda."

Stopped reading right there.

<comment><USER4> I even looked at the blame for that file, to see if it was added by saniv. It was, and it's stayed that way since initial commit in late 2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may take it as a satirical piece, and read it only for the fun. :-)

But otherwise there won't be anything useful or real to get from it, unfortunately :-(

</comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting actual constructive criticism, not rants.

Now, rants would be fine if they were true, but they aren't – lots of examples are just false.[0]

If they're not even rants, so then just satire remains, but when reading thru the repo it hits me that the satirical value, if any, is very small.

meh.

[0] e.g. it says that in Lua `nil + 1` is not allowed while `(not nil) + 1` is and yields 2. In reality, `(not nil) + 1` gives an "attempt to perform arithmetic on a boolean value" error.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks](https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks)

</comment><comment><USER8> It just have one criticism about Java. Bah. Can't trust this

</comment><comment><USER9> The six C++ expressions listed are not equivalent. They have different types (try using them in sizeof(), or assigning them to something...)</comment>


How to live to 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.executivehm.com/news/how-to-live-to-100/ <comment><USER2> Ok but to what level should I do those things? Should I "only" drink Green Tea?</comment>


Straight Talk About Grad School - <AUTHOR> http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2004/12/straight-talk-about-grad-school/

<comment><USER2> I've said this before: grad school is different for science and engineering than it is for the humanities.</comment>


A Crowdfunded, Open source satellite - <AUTHOR>

Privacy, now thats become a huge concern for many people recently. We can't do anything without corporations and governments nosing around.
What if we were to produce an open source communication satellite, ie. the satellite's blueprints the software that runs it should be shared freely under a license such as the GPL and then launch it into space, thereby enabling everyone to connect to them.
The idea is for the community to select an organization to build it and to have no one single "owner" once its launched into space. Perhaps the organization that built it and is composed of anyone and everyone willing to participate can "own" the satellite.
How much would something like this cost, in terms of time, people, money and other resources? Would you fund an idea such as this?
What are the legal implications of someone undertaking such a project?
I know, this does sound a little absurd, but I cannot help wonder what if this was the case, what if we could connect to a satellite anywhere anytime and communicate privately. I would definitely fund such a cause. <comment><USER2> I guess this was proposed some time back, but not sure if its going anywhere [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16367042](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16367042)</comment>


Heyzap [YC09] adds achievements to its mobile gaming platform - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/13/time-to-brag-heyzap-adds-achievements-to-its-mobile-gaming-platform/

<comment><USER2> I have always been curious with how well Heyzap was atually doing. Their founders are really smart, they have great VCs and they tend to be super influential on Angel List, and yet the data I could find on Heyzap are not as amazing as I would have thought (10K DAU on Facebook, 200K downloads on iOS, etc...). Maybe they are actually strong on Android or I am not knowledgeable enough about mobile games to understand how well they are doing...

<comment><USER3> Yeah we're much stronger on Android. This is before my time at Heyzap, but my understanding is that Heyzap on Android was initially more popular and more profitable to sell Cost-Per-Install ads for. Thus, there was a major focus on improving the Android app and the sales team was focused on selling CPI (and SDK integrations) for Android. Since we get alot of users from people who integrate our SDKs, that further boosted the Android app.

So basically, this created a feedback loop where Android had many more users than the iPhone app. Indeed, the iPhone app didn't get alot of attention until recently, but in the last couple of months it (and the iOS SDKs) reached feature/design parity with the Android app. We also recently added a sales team member whose focus is on iOS developers, so if things go well we'll add many more users to iOS.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your reply. I see. It's funny that you had this discrepency between iOS and Android since you could assume that many people on Android would want to play games with their friends on iPhones. Anyway....Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm kinda surprised that you can launch without achievements in any kind of gaming platform these days.</comment>


Show HN: Project ideas to do with your kids / students - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, not sure if there are any other parents / teachers out there, but I recently started collecting project ideas from around the web and decided to make a site so that other people could submit projects / project reports.
It's nothing special, just trying to find good projects to do with my kids. If you have any good ideas I'd certainly appreciate you adding them. And if you try any of them out, it would be helpful if you let everyone else know how it went.
It's called MakerParent (http://www.makerparent.com) <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link: [http://www.makerparent.com](http://www.makerparent.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> As a parent I think it's neat.

</comment><comment><USER3> really great idea!</comment>


Apple's iCloud runs on Microsoft and Amazon services - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/02/icloud_runs_on_microsoft_azure_and_amazon/

<comment><USER2> I believe it when I see it.</comment>


I want to solve the uploads problem - <AUTHOR> http://unfoldthat.com/2011/10/16/the-uploads-problem.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea.. and something I've been wanting to do for a while! The reason I didn't do it was because of a competitor that pretty nailed it. I've been trying to find the website.. it's done in node.js with "robots". Basically, it takes care of uploading your file and then you tell robots what to do with it (Compress it? Store it on Amazon, etc.)

Anyhow, great job doing it. Depending of the pricing, I'd surely use it.

I've seen that you make your widget code open source. I guess this handle the flash hack / html5 version for all different versions of browser? Hopefully so because that's the most annoying part of getting the ajax upload working. But then, if that's _free_ , I'd probably take these widgets and just manually code the amazon part.. The only reason I'd use the service is if the pricing is _a very little_ more than what amazon would cost me.

However, that's just for me. Other startups or bigger company might be willing to pay the big price it can save them hours of coding.

And, to everyone you've never done the ajax upload.. trust me that it's a _pain_. So many browsers and hack.. compressing the images, storing them, limiting the size, etc etc etc. It seems like a trivial task and the first thing you know is that it's been a week you're working on that and then, once you think everything is done, you receive weird message like it doesn't work on IE9 for some reasons, or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Are you referring to <http://transloadit.com>?

<comment><USER4> They have "the cloud" too! - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3117017>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally I'm waiting for Fabrice Bellard to port FFMPEG to javascript so we can do video transcoding client-side.

Shouldn't be long now.

<comment><USER6> The mind boggles. I know you said that tongue-in-cheek, and that would be an _incredibly cool_ project, but i feel that unless we put this to rest now someone might actually take you seriously.

A huge amount of work has gone into making FFMPEG and x264 as fast as they are today. Not only would you lose performance (and integer types) going from C -> JavaScript, but you also lose all the assembly, handwritten for tens of different architectures (including SIMD like SSE). I would expect at least a 100x slowdown.

For your users' sake, please don't do this ;_;

<comment> X-Istence Well, we have already have JavaScript Linux[1] ... lets just compile FFMPEG for that, and use it within the users browser.

[1]: <http://bellard.org/jslinux/>

<comment><USER5> Yes, in case it wasn't clear, Fabrice Bellard is the author of both FFMPEG and jslinux, and my comment was referring to his outrageous productivity/ability. As great as V8 may be, it isn't a great target for an ffmpeg port.

Still, I wouldn't put it past him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have just been writing something similar for <http://www.webpop.com>

Wrote a small service in Haskell to handle large uploads in preparation for a new feature. Does interleaved IO and streams the uploaded file directly to Cloudfiles while also saving a copy on the local disk to be able to extract some metadata and add them to our DB at the end.

Also did play with the idea of creating a general upload service based on this implementation, but for now I'm focusing on other things.

<comment><USER2> This is a great design and idea. I'm always perplexed about trusting a "CMS that will make your life _way_ easier". But, this one seems well done.

Let's say I use html/css from scratch; or integrate some coffeescript in it.. How clients are supposed to edit the text? I.e How the intuitive widgets works to change stuff?

<comment><USER7> You'll work with a template language to define what parts of the page the client should be able to edit.

Webpop lets you work with structured content, pull the content into your templates and define exactly the HTML used to present the content.

The system then automatically detects what part of your site is dynamic content that the client should be able to edit and what's design. The client then get a simple on-site editor for updating his contents.

There's a video of it all in action here:

[http://www.webpop.com/blog/videos/on-site-editing-the- easies...](http://www.webpop.com/blog/videos/on-site-editing-the-easiest-way- to-update-a-website)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> offtopic but submitter == author so here it goes:

Your site was nicely readable until the custom font got loaded. It is tiny and a colorful blurry mess (subpixel) on my monitor. The text right above the bottom image is almost unreadable.

<comment><AUTHOR> ouch, thank you very much. I'll definitely think about dropping it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just spent the last week implementing something very similar for a client project...most of the problems in that list of yours already have solutions... Nice idea to try and productize them, though. In the case of my client your product could have saved them a weeks worth of paying me so there is considerable value if you can make it super duper easy to integrate

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks very cool. I myself am working on a video service wherein users upload large videos.

For my particular application, I'm looking for something which can handle large files (500MB - 2GB), preferably giving file upload progress and being able to resume broken uploads. Could you talk more about those features?

Also, it seems like we would upload files to your servers, and then to integrate them with an app, I would then use your API to bring them over to my servers or storage. Are there plans to make the source of the uploading widgets/mechanisms themselves (not necessarily open-source) so that we can host our uploads ourselves?

Ooh, and how about something that is mountable?

Anyway, those are just a few of the things that immediately crossed my mind in terms of use-cases for my current project. I can see this being very nifty!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Our widgets are open source: <https://github.com/uploadcare/careful-uploaders>

To handle videos, I'd recommend you to check out <http://transloadit.com/> . They are something like our competitors, but I believe we have different targeted audience.

We've been thinking about splitting files in parts and everything, but not right now.

Thank you for your suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A worthy goal, I often shy away from accepting uploads if I can due to many of these issues. A couple questions though:

-When I upload files, are you serving them infinitely, or just caching them so I can fetch them from my server?

-Are there any x-domain issues here? Can it work over SSL?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I'm storing them on S3 infinitely. They're stored either on my (uploadcare) S3 account, or on yours, if you prefer it that way.

2\. We haven't tested it properly yet. But there are no rocket science; I believe, everything is going to be fine as soon as we get the SSL certificate

<comment><USER12> There's an aspect to "the uploading problem" you didn't name, which is the "uploading services rapidly turn into hosts for pirate and illegal content, and even if that doesn't bother me ethically it bothers me when I get the bills" problem. "Storing on S3 infinitely" only scales as far as your pocketbook.

(Also, by "illegal content", think "Feds literally busting down your door and hauling you away" sort of illegal content, and by "you", I mean, _you_ , va1en0k. This is _not_ necessarily a reason to stop right now, but don't get too far down this path without legal consultation about how you should protect yourself from this eventuality. There are things you can and should do, like make sure you qualify for DMCA safe harbor provisions.)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I've been thinking about it. thank you for suggestion! I'm going to contact a lawyer as soon as it becomes reasonable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds like a great idea. Sure there may be competition, but that isn't a reason not to do it.

You may want to take a look at how Twilio handles in-browser audio recording (even though they offer something different). Basically, you insert some JS into your page, then the audio is streamed to Twilio, and then Twilio does a callback to an endpoint you specify (with meta data, the URL to the file etc etc). What is also great about this is that I can serve the files right of their servers and not have to worry about it as a developer.

Best of luck with it!

</comment><comment><USER5> To get that "on-the-fly-thumbnails-from-urls" behaviour in ruby/rack, take a look at Dragonfly.

<http://markevans.github.com/dragonfly/>

</comment><comment><USER14> UploadCare fan mail from prospective beta tester <http://cl.ly/1L0I3e0T3l1m3h2d3g0I>

</comment><comment><USER15> For a second there I thought you meant Moravec-type uploads. (Not that there's a problem with those. No, nothing could possibly go wrong there.)

</comment><comment><USER16> the jab at PHP wasn't really necessary...

<comment><USER17> That's how you detect hipster articles ! More seriously, as a php developer all this told me was that I shouldn't use his product, because someone who thinks file uploading in php poses more of a threat than in other language probably doesn't know php much, yet he still finds himself competent enough to jab at it.

<comment><USER18> Why as a "php developer" do you restrict yourself to one language? Why not just be a "developer" who uses the right tool for the job? Then you won't have to use PHP all the time. And your feeling won't get hurt when people point out how horrible php is. That's just an objective fact. Don't assume that because he hates PHP he doesn't know it. When you learn other languages, you will find out that you have to know something well to truly hate it properly.

<comment><USER17> Who said I restricted myself ? Is a python (or whatever suit your boat) developer restricting himself to python ? I said of myself that I am a php developer because I actively use it on a weekly basis and it helps me make a fair amount of money on the side while others argue about which is worse between php and the devil. I also use quite a few other languages, mainly at my job.

> Why not just be a "developer" who uses the right tool for the job?

That's exactly what I do, and there are a few cases where php is the right tool. When someone tries to use php in other situations and complains that it sucks at it, it just shows how poorly he chose his tool.

> And your feeling won't get hurt when people point out how horrible php is

Where have you read anything like that ? My feeling aren't hurt at all, I'm just saying his remark is stupid, plain and simple. File uploading in php is no more (or no less) of a threat than in other languages, you just have to know what you are doing, that's what I posted about, not some "php is horrible" that you imagined reading.

> When you learn other languages, you will find out that you have to know > something well to truly hate it properly.

That is exactly my point that you missed, given his remark on file uploading (the only thing he mentioned and that I commented on), he doesn't know php well. Thus he should abstain from trying to take a shot at it in a product description page, especially since - given php popularity - a lot of his potential users are using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like <http://plupload.org/> does the uploading part of what you want to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it has several features similar to ours, but being a client side-only library it can't do everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will this do anything that <http://transloadit.com/> doesn't?

</comment><comment><USER21> Also check out <http://cdnimag.es/> for the auto-resizer stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> why can't we just fix the standards?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe all of these problems can be reasonably fixed without worries about security and stuff.

However, in my dream, the service becomes so awesome so it inspires new, better standards! :-)</comment></comment>


Ask YC: How you developed your first projects? - <AUTHOR>

source : Independant Scholar by Ronald Gross
The important thing about your first project is not that it is your first, but that it is "yours". Because it is your first piece of original research, you do not have to worry about whether or not it succeeds. One of the project's purpose is for you to begin to explore what success means to you in this kind of activity. It is real experiment that, while it should be enjoyable in itself' is designed for what you can learn from the way it goes.
The course of your project may be irregular, unpredicatble,serendipitious, but that is no problem whatever as you are not following a prescribed course of study. Unlike someone taking a course and following a road that has been laid out in advance, you are adventuring. Sometimes there is no way to plot out beforehand how you will proceed as your problem or subject unfolds before you.
my question now: I would like to know typical approaches by good programmers while attacking a problem for which there is very little information at hand or maybe you have this super idea and then you build whole pciture in mind. How you did something like this?
I myself did this while working on json 2 years back. I liked it so much that we changed whole api,implemented test automation, clientside tools for QA team and sort of polished the product on which I was working then. This was not difficult on technical level though but it was rather change in the way we relooked at everything and made it work as we thought (2-3 people)
What are your stories from simple ideas/problems to solution <comment><USER2> I am working currently on my first major project. It is still in the research phase. I've been reading over a lot of academic papers in the area of search improvement. The basis of the problem I am looking to solve is this: Search engines today provide more info than every before, but when it comes to providing quality results that are easily found, the search engines perform poorly. There is simply too much noise in the search results.

Many of the most recent academic papers on the topic of search results list the significant problems with today's search engines, and a very entrepreneurial team with the right research stands to make a fortune if the team could solve one of the problems posted among my data set.</comment>


Convince me to quit my day job - <AUTHOR>

For the past five months I have been spending nearly all of my free time outside of my day job creating my startup. It is now to the point where I believe I could launch it and begin making money from it within 5-6 months.
The product will be competing with my current employer's (no non-compete, no stolen trade secrets, most legal questions already answered), so for legal reasons I have to quit my day job before launching.  I am in a good enough financial situation that, even in the worst case scenario, I can go for a year before having to bail on my startup and start looking for a new job.
So HN, tell me your story of quitting your day job or otherwise convince me that leaving my well paying, comfortable job isn't horribly reckless. How do you know when the time is right to launch your product?  Should I have so much faith in my product that I would be alright with marching into my boss's office tomorrow and telling him I quit? <comment><USER2> If you need to be convinced, you probably shouldn't do it.

<comment><USER3> explain?

<comment><USER4> I think he means that quitting your day job is an extremely subjective decision and nobody here is likely to be in the same frame of mind as the OP. We can offer our own perspective, but the factors and weights that led to whatever decision we recomment are very likely to be different from the factors the OP is considering. The OP has likely already made up his mind, he just doesn't know it.

It's like saying "convince me to get married." There are good arguments both ways, but ultimately nobody here is likely to know you well enough to make a decision you'll agree with. Either you subconsciously want to get married, and you'll believe the naysayers simply don't understand why their arguments don't apply, or you subconsciously don't want to get married, and you'll believe that those telling you to pull the trigger don't understand the objections that you've built up in your own mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like what melling said, if you need convincing, you're probably not in the right state of mind.

Personal experience, I just fucking did it. No talk, no post on HN on whether I should or not. A little less conversation a little more action please.

<comment><USER6> If melling said it, maybe you should just upvote him and leave it at that?

<comment><USER5> I did and I like to talk?

<comment><USER6> That's very, very clear. Ironic given your first post.

<comment><USER5> touche

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lot of variables here. Assuming you've already vetted that its a great business idea (talked to vc's, peers in the space, domain experience, etc) and that you have the skills and potential team in place to make it work, fucking go for it. Make sure you are passionate about it and make sure you're comfortable raising your daily resting heartrate by about 10 bpm. A bit of my own path follows: [http://www.warandtheentrepreneur.com/uncategorized/stop- bash...](http://www.warandtheentrepreneur.com/uncategorized/stop-bashing- morgan-stanley)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just do it. I quited even when i had no product to launch next.

the motivation :

working on your own and with your nearest developer circle is the only thing that you won't ever get at Google, Yahoo or Microsoft (GYM).

You probably ain't quiting any one of the GYM, right ?

You probably ain't interested in competing with GYM, right ?

You are going to launch your startup, right ?

Just do it.

[edit : added some line]

</comment><comment><USER9> 5-6 months seems slightly too long, unless you need to work on it full-time for that whole duration.

If you're considering it then sooner or later you'll probably do it. But timing is crucial, so unless you can't continue working on it without quitting it's best to stall for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER10> While, as other people have said, if you need to be convinced you shouldn't do it, I would say that if you're seriously considering doing so (which you probably are, given how much thought your second paragraph shows that you've put into it), then you've already decided to do so. Now you're just trying to rationalize it, to convince yourself that it's a good idea.

So just do it. The worst that can happen is failure, and it's far better to regret trying and failing than it is to regret not taking a chance.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you quit your job, but fail and end up homeless & broke you can come here and start another thread like "You made me quit my job now please help me find another one".

This is a very helpful community, so I guess you'll probably do OK in the worst case scenario.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not change jobs and work for a company that is NOT in this field, and then launch the product?

</comment><comment><USER13> Do you want to be comfortable or happy?</comment>


AMC is succeeding by breaking the rules of legacy television - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/114483/amc-is-succeeding-by-breaking-the-rules-of-legacy-television/ <comment><USER3> With Mad Men and Breaking Bad winding down, I wonder if AMC can maintain it. They seem to have garnered the reputation of being hard on showrunners (Both Matthew Weiner and Vince Gilligan have had issues with the network). Walking Dead is on it's third showrunner.

Another network, FX, seems to be trying the HBO/AMC model in getting quality programming and is going out of their way to appear showrunner friendly. It'll be interesting to see if they can capitalize on some of AMC's missteps in nickel-and-diming their own shows.

<comment><USER4> You pretty much wrote what I was going to say.

AMC hit it's Golden Age of TV programming with that trio, but clearly have shown that they have issues with the handling of heavy creative talent, what with the issues that Weiner and Gilligan have publicly had, and the volatility of the showrunner position on the Walking Dead. (which subsequently also resulted in one of the actors leaving the show). On top of that, they expanded the number of episodes of S4 while reducing the budget per episode. And of course, milked the coverage of these shows with vacuous Talking Bad/Talking Dead.

I wouldn't be surprised if talented writers avoided that network like the plague.

<comment><USER5> AMC is also in a tough spot. They don't have the revenue to support the creative folks properly. The long lag between great content and an increase in the affiliate fee, makes the financials tricky. The death of DVD sales is not helping much either, as there is less to promise on the backend.

I think AMC gets $.35 per subscriber compared to ~$5 for ESPN. It is going take decades of hit shows before AMC is paid the $1-2 they actually deserve.

<comment><USER6> Hopefully eventually its a la carte. I'd pay $2/mo for AMC. I dont need the ESPN. The problem though is there sister channels. IFC is good but I could leave the rest.

<comment><USER7> My bet is that TV-over-IP eats the market before de-bundling occurs. In terms of cost, distribution, quality, and ease-of-use, digital downloads beat cable every time. The only piece of the puzzle networks still own is content production. With House Of Cards and Arrested Development, Netflix made a strong entry into the TV-making club, and struck the first blow against that monopoly.

In my view, we're two innovations away from internet tv for the masses: independent content production that can rival the networks for quality, and an easy-to-use streaming box to supply it. The latter is easily possible with technology on the market right now (Roku, Apple TV, etc.), and the former seems all but inevitable.

<comment><USER8> The tough part about that for the networks is building out the infrastructure and giving up all the free advertising that the cable companies give them.

By packaging their content as a standalone service, a la HBO Go, they've now given up being bundled in tiers with other networks. And they've got to build out their own delivery networks & apps. Or... they can join up with groups of other networks, create a service that advertises and bundles networks together and takes care of all the infrastructure.

Shit.

We just built cable again.

<comment><USER9> HBO Go is NOT effectively a standalone service. You have to subscribe to HBO before you can get HBO Go. It's just streaming of things you already paid for on cable.

Which sucks. I would pay for HBO Go if I could get it at a decent rate. But like hell I'm going to pay for cable and the crazy upcharge for HBO just to use HBO Go. As a result, Netflix and Amazon Prime get all my money, and HBO gets nothing.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, sorry, I meant similar to HBO Go in terms of standalone app + network built distribution. And the reason you can't buy HBO Go without cable are exactly what I outlined above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Pressing still further, AMC is giving new Breaking Bad episodes to Netflix viewers in the United Kingdom right after they air in the US, instead of the weeks-to-months delay that is typical for exporting top-flight US shows."

This. It blows my mind that in this era if your content doesn't require localization efforts why it isn't made universally available ASAP. Cult followers run off to news site and message boards and twitter and where ever else to talk about their favorite show and that gets more people interested. Not making it available spoils all of that momentum and waiting months is just shooting yourself in the foot.

I'm looking at you BBC/PBS-Masterpiece joints.

<comment><USER11> Really? AMC makes 33 cents per month per cable subscriber. As of December 2012 AMC was making $30 million dollars a month off of an 80 million subscriber base [1]. They get that money because their product is in such high demand the relatively small number of viewers demands their cable providers include AMC. If they suddenly start giving away their content for next to free those demands go away and so does the revenue stream.

It rarely makes sense to give away new content on Netflix for next to free. You see it happen, but only rarely and in very select circumstances.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men- econo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-economic- miracle.html)

<comment><USER12> Are you saying that netflix doesn't pay AMC per stream?

<comment><USER11> I'm saying that the number Netflix pays per stream is so small it might as well round down to zero. If just getting users to watch your show on Netflix was a great way to make money then everyone would be putting their new shows on Netflix. Almost no one does that. Instead everyone puts old seasons of their shows on Netflix in hopes that consumers will then watch the new season on subscription cable or buy the show direct off iTunes.

Content holders effectively give away old content so they can sell new content. If they give away new content there is nothing left to sell.

<comment><USER13> They're not avoiding Netflix only because it doesn't pay enough, they're avoiding it because the medium threatens pretty much everything about their current way of doing business. It's deeper than just money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the link points to the qz homepage and not the actual article?

[http://qz.com/114483/amc-is-succeeding-by-breaking-the- rules...](http://qz.com/114483/amc-is-succeeding-by-breaking-the-rules-of- legacy-television/)

<comment><USER15> The link points to the same as yours. That site points to the middle of a stream of articles, when you point to a single article.

<comment><USER14> Oh it must've been fixed then. It literally pointed to just [http://qz.com](http://qz.com) when I commented earlier

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I cut the cable about three years ago and I just subscribe to Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. I'm also happy to spend $1.87 per episode for Breaking Bad. I don't miss cable one bit.

<comment><USER17> _I 'm also happy to spend $1.87 per episode for Breaking Bad_

Compared to what they earn from regular viewers - subscription fees and commercials - that pricing is nuts.

<comment><USER16> I'm happy to pay for quality content while filtering out all the jibberish I would otherwise get by watching it on cable TV. And I don't have to pay the $100+ per month that Comcast jacked me up to with fees, equipment, and constantly increasing monthly subscription costs, which would always go up without explanation or warning.

<comment><USER18> +1

For those of us who are picky about our content choices -- and especially those of us who don't really give a crap about sports -- cutting cable makes a lot of sense. I wish cable providers offered a lower-cost option with no sports package, but sadly, that's the bread and butter of the entire cable TV business model. So I'm stuck paying largely for content I don't consume.

Bundling is a raw deal for those of us who don't care about the bulk of the bundle. (To say nothing of the silly equipment costs, etc.).

<comment><USER19> Cable companies do offer a low cost bare bones option. It is called "basic cable." It's a few bucks a month (around 10-15ish) and when I had it, it was about the first 15-20 or so channels.

[http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential- home/support/f...](http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/residential- home/support/faqs/faqs-tv/basictvservice/what-is-time-warner-cables-basic-tv- service.html)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, the problem with basic cable is that you get only the basic cable channels. There is no great way to sever, say, HBO and Showtime from ESPN-XYZ, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I will now have to find the time to watch these "quality" shows to see if in fact they are quality programming. It would be great to be able to tell TV networks that they should focus on creating quality programming, instead of just getting the best advertizement deal and that this would boost their ratings/revenue. While I cannot think of any great TV shows, there have definitely been exceptions, like The West Wing, which I didn't watch live, but I'm now watching on NetFlix and can certainly say that the show is of very high quality. The West Wing has set the bar for what I qualify as quality programming, so if AMC's programming is there, no wonder they are doing so well.

<comment><USER21> If the West Wing is your current high bar for high quality programming you're in for an absolute treat.

The West Wing was the last great show put out by the major broadcast networks before the rise of cable and the it pales in comparison to the output what has been dubbed "The Golden Age of Television". It's actually an embarrassment of riches right now on the television front.

<comment><USER20> Wow. I am stunned! Never been too much of a tv show watcher, but your comment really makes me think if I have chosen wisely. I don't have much time to waste ("spend").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So many really good points made here in the comments. My two cents, I really really hope that GOOD WRITING some how wins the day. AMC shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Hell on Wheels, etc. are really well written in my humble option, compared to the "reality shows" that are staged/sort of written ugh, whatever. I hope that other networks see what HBO and AMC are doing and realize there is a market for good writing. Quality story, quality production, I will watch, otherwise, I can just surf hackernews or do something else on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder when the movie industry will have a pioneer along these same lines.

It's an idea I've had for a while... produce movies on a moderate budget... with as many talented screenwriters as there are, there have to be good scripts that go unoptioned. Cast talented character and stage actors instead of big name (big $$) star talent, and quitely make a bunch of really good movies for not a ton of money (Think $15-20 million budgets).

The idea is to have a deep catalog that quitely does well, instead of trying for massive blockbusters that can be $200m losses if they bomb.

There are certainly some filmmakers that sort of take this approach (The Coen brothers, for instance), but I don't know of any studio that has taken the approach to heart. I'm not talking _indie_ studios here, but full AAA productions, just not with big VFX budgets or $50 million cast members.

<comment><USER24> This used to be the Hollywood model. In the 1970s, for example, studios made movies like you describe. Over time, they've found it's more profitable to release fewer movies that are surer bets, which is how you get this endless parade of formula movies with $250m budgets.

<comment><USER25> It's not just that it was discovered to be more profitable in the abstract. Technology changes are a big factor too. Since TV achieved widespread penetration, movies have had to promise something new: either visual spectacle, something deemed unacceptable for broadcast, or something too serious/subtle/obscure. The combination of cable and HD TV have more or less eliminated the latter two categories. HD TV can adequately deliver pretty much any non-"spectacular" content. So audiences are, in general, not as likely to visit a theater for this, i.e. pay the cash required.

<comment><USER23> Think of what I'm proposing as the "Shawshank Redemption" model. Don't focus on box office sales, focus on the complete picture, and focus on compelling storytelling.

Shawshank peaked at #9 at the box office, only making back about half it's budget.

In the home video market, it has just exploded, selling over 5 million copies in the UK alone. ([http://www.bva.org.uk/news-press-releases/members-press- rele...](http://www.bva.org.uk/news-press-releases/members-press-releases/itv- global-entertainment-makes-history-shawshank-redempti)). That's kind of mindblowing...about the same number of copies as Sgt Peppers has sold in the UK, and way more than any contemporary album - the closest comparison is probably Oasis's What's the Story? (Morning Glory) at 3.3m units sold.

<comment><USER26> There's no "Shawshank Redemption model". It's an outlier, a one-off, and it would be foolish to base your business model on the idea that you could replicate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In a world where network television has moved to unscripted reality shows filled with B actors trying to "make it" a good quality, well produced, well scripted show with talented actors is going to be a gold mine. The real issue is that network TV never really recovered from the writer's strike. AMC just came along and started offering the type of quality shows that were previously available on the network channels.

<comment><USER28> I think its simpler than that. Network TV can't show a boob on a football halftime show without 0.001% of the population howling like morons and the network and government of course caving into them. Its the culture everyone knows they're supposed to want, but don't actually want. They're pigeonholed into a sorta G-PG ish range no more or less.

HBO shows you can produce regular TV drama (Sopranos, etc) at an R rated level and be incredibly profitable, well, at least as long as there's practically no competition.

Hmmm. Whats between G/PG and R that could be popular... PG-13! So that's how you get gory zombie blood splatter and meth cooking on a TV show, and its a profitable sweet spot.

All this discussion about people really liking AMC because they put episodes on netflix is nonsense. They like AMC because "regular TV" isn't obscene enough and HBO is a bit too obscene. Or risque, or "adult" (I hate that characterization). They simply are better targeted to their audience.

Netflix has no shortage of goofy failed major network sitcoms / cop / lawyer / doctor dramas, and no shortage of gore and sex series/movies, so its not merely being on netflix that makes AMC beat the others.

<comment><USER29> Breaking Bad is laced with way more profanity and graphic violence than you could swing for a PG-13 rating. It's not True Blood, but then, The Matrix and Blade are two R-rated movies with vastly different severity of content.

<comment><USER30> The language is still oddly MPAA-centric. The writing is so outstanding it's hardly something to notice, yet the characters never say "fuck" apart from once or twice, where it was probably censored on basic cable (pretty sure the most recent instance I saw was even distorted on Netflix).

Contrast that with a motherfuckin' HBO show where you can't go a fuckin' minute without a few fucks thrown in for good fuckin' measure.

<comment><USER29> Oh, I'm not arguing that it's anywhere near as gratuitous as the content you'll find on HBO. I'm just saying that it's difficult to play it as "PG-13" material; it's more soft-R than HBO's hard-R.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sidenote: it looks like the people behind qz.com fixed the 'feature' whereby scrolling up past the top of an article would replace it with the previous article. This has made reading articles on that site less aggravating.

</comment><comment><USER32> $.35 ? Can AMC sell direct to the customer? I'd even pay double that, $.70.

<comment><USER29> Assuming that they have fixed costs, do you honestly think that they would retain half or more of their current subscriber base without being bundled with cable packages?

Until Breaking Bad and Mad Men, nobody - _nobody_ \- cared about AMC. They were that crappy high-40s channel that you flipped through on your way to interesting stuff. Take into consideration the fact that Mad Men and Breaking Bad - AMCs two crown jewels - are about to wrap up. Also consider that they're subsidized by the tens of millions of people who subscribe to basic cable but don't care about their content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ignore all qz articles because it's infuriating to read on a mobile device. How you break scrolling and alienate users should be an award.

</comment><comment><USER34> this strategy is starting to smell like double-dipping. the networks charge the cable company an increasing cost per subscriber that subscriber's can't opt out of. (cable bill just goes up), and on top of that, run ads.

either be like HBO and be an optional premium channel with no ads, or stop making my cable bill go up to subsidize crap i don't watch.

<comment><USER8> _> either be like HBO and be an optional premium channel with no ads, or stop making my cable bill go up to subsidize crap i don't watch_

Here's the thing. Your idea of "what I don't watch" and someone else's idea of "what I don't watch" are going to be vastly different. By eliminating bundling (the practice of forcing cable companies to carry secondary channels to get access to the primary ones) you'll force a race back to the bottom in terms of content. It will be like the old days of the OTA networks where you have to appeal to the most people to survive.

Things like Science and the Military channel almost certainly would not survive in an a la carte world. Without a subsidy the cost of programming will be too high and ratings too low to be fully supported by advertising.

<comment><USER35> > _Things like Science and the Military channel almost certainly would not > survive in an a la carte world._ //

This is kinda crazy; but I'm willing to suspend disbelief.

People who want to watch the station won't pay as much as the company can make from advertising to people (on that station) who primarily don't want to watch the station?

If I make shows on two channels, A and B. Then sell access to those channels forcing the carrier to take A+B when they only want A. Aren't I just charging more for A - which gets paid - but needlessly filling B with programming?

Is this just so cable companies can offer "100 stations" as a headline in their advertising?

<comment><USER8> _> Aren't I just charging more for A - which gets paid - but needlessly filling B with programming?_

The idea is that the subsidy takes B from losing money being profitable.

Truthfully, only the individual networks know whether the subsidy makes them additional profit or allows them to profitably air networks that they wouldn't otherwise be able to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's something fundamental that's changing in business.

        Profit = Revenue - <USER2>

(That's not what's changing, of course.) This admits two strategies: increase revenue, or cut cost.

What's changing? Traditional MBA-style business is about cost reduction. Provide some static service, drive costs to zero or as close as you can get it, and hope like hell you're better at this than any of the other players. That's rapidly becoming obsolete.

Everything becomes a commodity, under this view. "We need 24 hours of programming. Get it together." Excellence (which might increase revenue faster than cost, but goes against every principle of cost-cutting) gets killed off. It's not important. Also, excellence is a bitchy problem from an MBA (polymorphic management) viewpoint because you actually need to know something fairly deep about the work and the problem domain to achieve it; whereas executive-level cost-cutting is a skill that can be applied (if to mediocre results) anywhere.

AMC has been taking the other tack: a long-term revenue-oriented approach that seems to be working quite well. Why? If you're in an oligopoly providing a commodity product or service, cost reduction often spells the difference between survival and failure. However, in this "long tail" world where there are hundreds of players competing for visibility, what you have instead is a world where almost no one gets a large proportional "slice of the pie", but the pie's much bigger. The payoff curve (between investment/quality and results) becomes convex and that favors risk, but it also favors let's-do-this excellence instead of traditional MBA-style cost-cutting.

<comment><USER37> The problem with the excellence strategy is that cost is predictable but excellence is not.

AMC didn't invent the strategy of going for the high end, HBO did, and lots of networks have tried the same strategy since. AMC has done well by it, but others have not -- see Showtime and Starz for examples. This despite the quality of their programming; Showtime's _Dexter_ is well-regarded, for instance, but has failed to give a "halo" to the rest of the network. Starz has been trying to move up-market with shows like _Boss_ and _Magic City_ , but for whatever reason none of those shows ever really found an audience. (Even AMC's efforts have been fitful -- for every _Mad Men_ or _Breaking Bad_ there's a _Rubicon_ and _Hell on Wheels_.)

So betting on "excellence" is a tough thing to do, because you have to spend a ton of money without any guarantees that the public will like the results. But the results of cost-cutting are _very_ predictable, in the near term at least; it takes a long time for a run of really bad programming to tarnish a network so much that people stop tuning in. So for the bean-counters the "logical" choice is obvious.

<comment><USER38> When people tell the story of great content they tend to focus on the very high points. "Breaking Bad" is much better than "Dexter". Even "Mad Men" which isn't as good as "Breaking Bad" is much better than "Dexter", which is arguable the best show on Showtime. Aiming for decent content isn't as meaningful as actually getting that content. Starz and Showtime have failed to get anything approaching HBO or AMC.

You can change your approach but you can't change your taste and if whoever is making content decisions at Starz or Showtime continues to have their jobs then it will not get them very far.

You see it now with the results of Microsoft copying Apple's strategy. Microsoft is doing the same thing that Apple did but since they're out of their element it's not going well. They would have been better off just being a boring company that made a great Office product and an increasingly 3rd party hardware partner friendly operating system. In the same way it would have been better for Showtime to just show movies that no one wants to see but pay for the opportunity to not watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So they broke the rules by doing exactly what HBO did. It's a good plan but not a novel one.

<comment><USER40> Did you read the article? They're talking about how AMC releases their content on iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix sooner than other networks. It's hardly exactly what HBO does.

<comment><USER41> While we're doling out "Did you read the article" comments, the article also mentions that HBO is in a league of their own when it comes to distribution. They have their own streaming network (HBO GO) and new espidoes are released immediately.

I think HBO definitely had a strong hand in pioneering AMC's current model.

<comment><USER42> HBO seems to have a very different approach to online distribution though - HBO GO only works if you already have an HBO subscription through a traditional television provider, and if the last season of Game of Thrones is any indication they don't put their shows on iTunes and Amazon until long after they air.

<comment><USER37> It's a _riskier_ approach, because in order for it to work they have to get their app in all the same channels and devices that Netflix, Hulu, et al have already gotten into. And they have to train viewers to look there for HBO content instead of in their usual outlets. All of which is challenging.

But it's also potentially more lucrative as well, since if it works HBO won't have a middleman sitting between themselves and their viewers the way they currently do with cable companies and streaming services. And if HBO GO has enough compelling original content to get people to use it, they can then use that as leverage with movie studios for better deals on movies to distribute that way as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>