Life After Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/60517-life-after-amazon.html <comment><USER2> It's not without hypocrisy, that a company in the educational book publishing industry can complain of unfair business practices, while knowing that the industry is responsible for $200 textbooks. Textbooks that are not only $200, but where publishers have given kickbacks to professors to ensure they require a new version every 2 - 4 years, so generations to come will continue to pay $200.

While this particular publisher, EDC, may only be publishing children's education books and not textbooks, it has to understand the absurdity of such a one-sided argument. I for one applaud Amazon, celebrate Amazon, for making it so I could afford to work myself through college buying cheap used textbooks rather than being forcefully impoverished by the publishing industry's duplicitous actions.

<comment><USER3> Without absolving the textbook industry (prices are nuts, have been for ages, dig up Supreme Court Justice Stephens' essay on the topic from the 1960s/1970s), this is in some ways a problem of the market-capitalist system. It's similar to the issues of equitable pay, automation, labor displacement, and business models for the arts, music, newspapers, and publishing in general. Oh, and this little thing called software.

In order to produce material, a certain amount of resources are necessary. The mechanism we've adopted for allocating those resources is the market. For much of present production, the fixed costs of production are high -- writing a book (particularly a textbook) is a large initial investment. Same goes for software. The _marginal_ costs of production are low -- hell, you can download a 400 page text off of Project Gutenberg or stream a movie in a few seconds with a decent broadband connection. Amortize the costs of your laptop (a few hundred dollars for a basic model, a grand or two for high end), less for tablets or eBook readers), and a broadband subscription, and it's still cheap.

Textbooks generally do have to be updated every so often, though annual revisions are pretty ridiculous, and much of the industry is a fat scam, especially where the professor teaches from his own text. Rental schemes, "authorization codes" (required to access other materials), and the like factor into this as well -- they're akin to various tack-on fees for air travel. And there's a whole burgeoning movement for producing DIY book scanners and the like (pretty fascinating, do a quick DDG search or hit up Fixyt.com for videos). One thing I've come to realize about many commercial opportunities is that they require a control and toll-taking point. Revision updates, exercise questions, registrations, rentals, and the like, all create an arbitrary tollgate. Great for the publisher, for the student, not so much.

And the model requires that for a new or continued revenue stream, new books have to be published. I'm beginning to strongly suspect this is a market failure -- of externalities (the educational value of those books benefits more than just the reader) and perverse incentives.

The question is: what's the better way? Online we've been experimenting with vastly democratized publishing, and the result is Upworthy, Buzzfeed, HuffPo, and numerous other viral sites, which with time are finding their way into my hosts file with '0.0.0.0' entries, and search-engine blocklists. It leads to what Clay Shirky recognizes as a problem, not of data overload, but of filter failure.

There's also the problem within the publishing world, including academic publishing, of so much material being produced that not only is it not possible to keep up with it, even within a discipline or sub-specialty, but that _good content is getting buried_. That's the real tragedy of broken filters -- not the crap spewing everywhere, but the gold nuggets that don't float up.

<comment><USER4> >Without absolving the textbook industry (prices are nuts, have been for ages, dig up Supreme Court Justice Stephens' essay on the topic from the 1960s/1970s), this is in some ways a problem of the market-capitalist system.

The textbook industry is different, even from other publishing, since the book is chosen by the teacher, who gets the book for free. Whether a professor teaches from his or her text is largely irrelevant.

<comment><USER5> >> Textbooks generally do have to be updated every so often, though annual revisions are pretty ridiculous, and much of the industry is a fat scam, especially where the professor teaches from his own text.

> Whether a professor teaches from his or her text is largely irrelevant.

If a college professor writes and teaches from a book, he's requiring people to buy it. That often gives him royalties, which is a perverse incentive. I wouldn't call this a fat scam, but it's probably relevant to the idea that the textbook industry has some issues.

It might be worth distinguishing between college and public schools, where the burden of cost is on either the student or the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This publisher was selling books at a high price point to schools and a low price point to Amazon. Then, when the school discovered this, they bought them through Amazon. Umm, duh?

Alternative title suggestion: Amazon made it hard for us to fleece schools.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that the pricing structure you describe is mentioned in the article. Maybe the books were the same retail price in both cases and the school chose Amazon because (for example) it made the accounting easier. Kind of weakens your argument, I think.

<comment><USER8> Not really. It's perfectly reasonable for the school to choose the better seller, whether the advantage is price, shipping speed, ease of accounting, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sam-mueller FTA: "But, for all intents and purposes, Amazon does not make money"

This is a very myopic view on Amazon's current business model. They are _choosing_ to break even/lose money in exchange for growth. They use profits to expand their business and break into new markets, which is evidenced by initiatives like Kindle Fire and Amazon Instant Video.

At any time, Amazon could change this growth strategy, and profits would flow like the Niagra. Investors understand, and that is why their valuation is sky high at over 150x future price to earnings.

</comment><comment><USER9> An interesting claim in the article is that Amazon isn't doing its fair share of helping people discover books. The primary source of the research doesn't appear to be public. An excerpt from a July 2013 Salon article:

        According to survey research by the Codex Group, roughly
        60 percent of book sales — print and digital — now occur
        online. But buyers first discover their books online only
        about 17 percent of the time. Internet booksellers
        specifically, including Amazon, account for just 6
        percent of discoveries. Where do readers learn about the
        titles they end up adding to the cart on Amazon? In many
        cases, at bookstores.

Why couldn't we be told what percentage of books are discovered in physical bookstores? The idea that 83% of books are not discovered online seems wild. Who did the Codex Group survey?

[http://www.salon.com/2013/07/19/amazon_could_be_a_victim_of_...](http://www.salon.com/2013/07/19/amazon_could_be_a_victim_of_its_own_success/)

<comment><USER10> Probably because that number is actually less or equivalent, otherwise I am guessing they would have published the number. I would posit that most people find books not through stores, online or physical, but through friends/family reccomendations or television (e.g. Oprah driving book sales).

<comment><USER11> I've discovered many interesting books by simply buying a large box of random used scifi books from ebay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It has always been an interesting discussion as to which was better, wide reach or focused sales. If you get an MBA you'll spend a few weeks talking about the pros and cons.

In the case of an established vendor, with an accessible set of target buyers, controlling the channel is generally considered the right choice, and when you can't easily talk to all of your potential customers, generally a wider sales channel is merited.

"baby books" (which is the market here) are actually mostly sold to pre- schools and other child care facilities so its pretty straight forward to sell them one on one. Contrast that with programming books where your choices are a programming class, or Amazon.

The other shoe is of course going to be tablet books. Which we'll have to see where those land. I've not seen them yet but I expect at some point one of these $39 tablet vendors is going to try a largely indestructible tablet which can be used to entertain/educate toddlers. Something with that plastic e-ink display technology which was show with a person slamming a shoe on it while it worked. Something like that is going to hurt Edubooks if they can survive longer than the paper/cardboard form for a lower net cost.

<comment><USER13> A market I have found very interesting is pen & paper role playing games. There has been an explosion of self-published content in the past three to five years. A good portion of it quite high quality, often coming from authors who previously had written titles for "big" publishers (Even in its glory days TSR was hardly a titan.)

The channels users are both finding out about these self published RPGs and purchasing them is not Amazon. Instead it starts with blogs, forums, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo, and is sold directly on the author's website, through Lulu, and Drivethrustuff (RPGNow etc.)

I was pleasantly surprised to see Wizards offering old Dungeons and Dragons books on RPGNow. Other "big" publishers have been doing the same.

As an unknown underdog, you want scale and recognition over paltry margins. Amazon does this for unknown authors by providing mass market distribution. The author still needs to get some initial traction, but the author never loses sales because the consumer couldn't find the book, or didn't have time to travel to the store while he or she was ready to turn over money in exchange for an unknown book.

Bookstores and publishers are the losers here. They are middlemen who do distribution and scaling using methods from the pre-Internet era.

As more content becomes digital only it is hard to see retail stores faring well. That may be an understatement, considering that this trend has been well underway for a decade. For now I'm positive on the prospects for retail clothing stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Our direct-selling division has recorded seven consecutive months of year- over-year growth, and new sales force hires are up 25% over last year as well. And, thanks to our loyal retail customers, we recorded the largest ever sales month in the history of that division in October—and we did it without Amazon!"

Huh? The direct sales division and retail division each increased sales after they stopped selling via Amazon. That's what you'd expect, as long as _some_ of your would-be Amazon sales turn into direct/retail sales.

It would be more interesting to know if their _overall_ sales have gone up.

</comment><comment><USER15> > ... because it had effectively become a "showroom" for Internet > retailers—people would see books in the store and then buy them online.

Which is what all the real-life stores are facing right now. I don't claim to have the solution, but I tend to buy in stores because I enjoy to have my product today, with better service in terms of refund policies, and that I can talk with a human being face-to-face if the thing is faulty.

I live in Denmark where we have pretty good consumer protection, I suspect the difference between Amazon and a store in the US might be a lot different.

<comment><USER16> > because it had effectively become a "showroom" for Internet retailers—people > would see books in the store and then buy them online.

I think there might be room for some retail outlets to embrace this. You could imagine a bookshop that was an amazon affiliate, stuck QR codes with their affiliate link to the book over all of the barcodes, had a nice cafe and environment for browsing the large numbers of books they have in stock, but don't actually sell any themselves. They could even arrange to be close to an amazon drop/warehouse so you could get things delivered super fast to the store itself for a small convenience fee.

<comment><USER17> Hmm, seems like this could be useful for more than just books. I bought some camping gear from amazon, and I recall that my biggest hesitation was not being able to evaluate the physical product, and therefore unsure of the construction quality. The Amazon reviews help a lot, but I was still left with some uncertainty.

Realistically, the amazon income is much too small for a business to be viable. I think the commissions are around 5-10%, whereas the traditional retail markup is around 50%. Seems like there is too big of a gap there to make things work, even if using this business model resulted in lower storage and stocking costs for the retail outfit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If what is relayed in this story is factual (most intent to purchase a book, discovery, happens offline), then surely bookshops still have a lot of power a should refuse to stock books distributed on Amazon.

It's not realistic, but would be an interesting controlled experiment.

<comment><USER19> I can't imagine the Big Six publishers are eager to cross Amazon after the last run-in with the DoJ

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> " But buyers first discover their books online only about 17% of the time."

Buying merchandise online is often far more convenient and less expensive than buying merchandise in the store. But discovering products is much more convenient when you can handle it, read the first chapter, etc.

Brick-and-mortar storefronts may become outlets for marketing. Instead of making their money by generating sales, they make their money by charging book owners to have a copy on the shelves. Customers get the convenience of discovery, bookstores stay in business, and authors get their material out into the world.

Online retail is probably going to change the way we consume goods over the next decade in larger ways than it already has.

</comment><comment><USER21> One interesting thing I learned from this article is that the US does not have a VAT, but a sales tax on a state level. It took me a while to understand this as most countries in Europe usually have only a VAT on the nation state level. I guess the US system does have some benefits but it seems shockingly insufficient in the face of online retailers.

Wikipedia also tells me that there have been pushes to introduce a national VAT in the US, but they have failed. To me that only seems to have benefits: less administration, less rules, less loopholes. Could someone outline the arguments against it?

<comment><USER22> One reason is that it taxes consumption, not income, so the poor and middle class are hit the hardest because they spend a larger percentage of their income on food, clothes, etc.

<comment><USER23> I think the question is why have state sales taxes instead of a national sales tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm willing to bet that bookstores would be willing to give more prominent placement to books which aren't available at Amazon, as well as steering customers towards those books when they ask for recommendations.

<comment><USER25> "to give more prominent placement to books which aren't available at Amazon"

Ask any "old timer" about how "stereos" used to be sold.

At the start there were specialized shops (and of course there still are but "back then" that was the channel) where you went to get a stereo and got knowledgeable advice and good service. Then mass retail came about and all those good brands (that could) just went mass retail and forgot about all those small fokesy sales channels. Once again, because they could and someone dangled the opportunity. This happened with Apple as well which (as all computers were) was originally offered through small computer stores.

My point is giving prominent placement is great but don't assume that if something becomes popular it won't automatically go where the money and opportunity is and quickly forget the people who first gave it an opportunity (mainly because new sales people get hired that aren't rewarded for the past loyalty).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's an interesting problem space, I actually quite like retail as I grew up around it and it's fascinating as it's constantly under threat so what do you do to push on. Beating Amazon prices is almost impossible, unless you like to work for free, but it does seem there's a push towards smaller independents that don't need to compete on price as they sell an experience. There will always be people willing to pay a little extra for a perceived value, and always people who'll try and find the best price possible.

I have nothing but respect for people willing to follow their principles, but Amazon is here to stay and contains a huge customer base so leaving is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Work out what you can do better than Amazon to earn your premium, there's plenty of places to go with it.

<comment><USER27> "so leaving is cutting your nose off to spite your face."

Well, according to the article.....

"It has been nearly two years since the Amazon decision and I can proudly report that our company is still alive, well, and prospering. Our direct- selling division has recorded seven consecutive months of year-over-year growth, and new sales force hires are up 25% over last year as well. And, thanks to our loyal retail customers, we recorded the largest ever sales month in the history of that division in October—and we did it without Amazon!"

.... clearly not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I also consider Amazon predatory and find my products elsewhere. Usually it is more convenient for me to shop locally (but I don't live in the sticks) and even when not, I try to get locally or else a smaller, specialized vendor. But I have friends who operate small businesses and use Amazon for fulfilment. Their shops appear integrated into Amazon, so this distinction is no longer clear.

With books, however, the distinction _is_ clear and so if I do recommend a book to someone I ask them not to buy it online but instead to get it from a small independent bookshop.

Amazon: a moment of convenience, but a lifetime of regret.</comment>


Trademark and Ethiopian coffee beans - score one for the little guy - <AUTHOR> http://tacticalip.com/2010/10/08/whats-in-a-name-a-starbucks-trademark-dilema/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Trademarking regional products is a big thing in Europe with its many centuries-old food traditions. Switzerland and the EU both have official recognition of protected designations of origin, for instance for Gruyere cheese. Proponents say it protects local tradition and ensures high-quality products, opponents say it's a veiled subsidy for over-expensive farming.

However, at least in Switzerland producers must do more than just be located in the right region, they also must adhere to quality criteria. That could be a way for Ethiopea to leverage their new trademark: officially ensure that this coffee is actually special, and check that.

<comment><USER3> The EU version also hinders making the same product in a different region. For instance, it is illegal to sell "Champagne imitation wine - made in Portugal" in the EU.

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

The US does not enforce the anti-consumer portions of this (which prevent consumers from learning that Wisconsin Brie-like cheese is similar to Brie), only the pro-consumer parts (you can't say "made in France" unless it really was).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status#U...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status#United_States)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, on the one hand, I agree. Starbucks should not be allowed to trademark the name of an Ethiopian region. On the other hand, I don't see why Ethiopia should be allowed to either. Just as the trademark test fails for Starbucks, it also fails for Ethiopia.

Sidamo seems to describe a certain product category, namely a particular style of coffee. The Ethiopian government should not control this term any more than the Belgian government should control the term "French Fries".

<comment><USER4> Champagne, anyone?

<comment><USER5> Champagne is not a trademark, it's a geographic distinction: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status>

<comment><USER4> What was it before 1992? I'd imagine it was still controlled somehow.

edit: Also, it says it covers:

> _These laws protect the names of wines, cheeses, hams, sausages, olives, > beers, Balsamic vinegar and even regional breads, fruits, and vegetables._

These are different from, say, a blacksmith's creations how, precisely? Or batteries? They're consumable too. Or a city-named drug, which would probably be able to claim more loose definitions than a patent could, blocking _far_ more competition? It seems an arbitrary distinction to be made around certain kinds of _foods_ , when you really can't define "food" in any hard-lined, legally-acceptable way, without endless bickering about what is and what isn't food. Which is kind of the point of the disapproval of protecting the words in the first place.

edit again: and that only covers the EU. How does the rest of the world see / enforce it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this was in the EU it would be a case for Protected Geographical Status - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Status>

</comment><comment><USER7> I am confused - how did the Trademark help raise the price of the beans? Had Starbucks been selling false beans before (non-Ethopian beans with an Ethopian label)?

<comment><USER8> Exclusivity.

<comment><USER7> I still don't understand? Doesn't the Ehtopian government automatically have exclusivity on Ethopian beans?

<comment><USER9> By preventing Starbucks from ever having the capability to sell "Sidamo" beans from Kenya or Vietnam, it strengthens the bargaining position of the farmers and allows the Ethiopian government to devise more creative means to control the sale of beans than simple price or export controls.

<comment><USER10> But then there's this bit:

 _Starbucks told Ethiopia that geographic certification, which certifies that a product is made in a certain place, was more appropriate. But, Ethiopia knew that certification would accomplish little, since Starbucks could still sell Ethiopian beans, as long as they were grown in the advertised region._

which seems to imply that the Ethiopian Government wouldn't have been happy with geographic certification which would nonetheless have prevented Starbucks (or anyone else) from selling "Sidamo" beans which weren't grown in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia.

It sounds like the Ethiopian Government wants a trademark on "Sidamo" so that it can step in between Sidama coffee farmers and Western coffee buyers in order to demand a cut. That doesn't sound like "score one for the little guy" at all, it sounds like "little guy gets screwed by government".

But the story is written confusingly, so I may be missing something.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"It's OK to Be White" Flyers Lead to Promise of "Severest Disciplinary Action" - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/2019/11/04/its-ok-to-be-white-flyers-lead-to-promise-of-severest-disciplinary-action-by-western-conn-state-u/ <comment><USER2> "It's not clear whether the "Islam is right about women" message is meant (or will likely be understood) literally,"

So are they admitting that Islam is inherently sexist against women? If not, then this isn't really hate speech.

What about all of the fliers saying Ben Shapiro is a termite that needs to be exterminated? Nobody cares, even though it's blatant anti-semitism.

The problem is that the left can be horribly racist and bigoted with impunity (and it will be explained away and ignored by the media) and when anyone on the other side says something they don't like (and may not even be that bad), it's considered 'hate speech'.</comment>


Glibc vulnerability was identified in uClibc and fixed 6 years ago - <AUTHOR> https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/6886 <comment><USER2> This doesn't look like the same thing at all (as the recently reported glibc resolver issue):

uClibc fix: [https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/toolchain/uClibc/patch...](https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/toolchain/uClibc/patches-0.9.30.1/902-Fix- use-after-free-bug-in-__dns_lookup.patch?rev=20384)

glibc fix: [https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=b995d95a...](https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;h=b995d95a5943785be3ab862b2d3276f3b4a22481)

It's totally different code.

<comment><USER3> From the uClibc commit message of the fix:

      For example, the following busybox commands are triggering a segmentation
      fault with uClibc 0.9.30.x

        - nslookup ipv6.google.com
        - ping ipv6.google.com
        - wget http//ipv6.google.com/

If this had been the glibc bug, you would have noticed it way earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, this is not at all the same vulnerability. _A_ segfault in uClibc was fixed 6 years ago. Wasn't the same segfault. Most production C code in the wild has more than one segfault waiting to be found.

The commit message starts out "Fix use-after-free bug in __dns_lookup." First, the glibc thing wasn't a use-after-free; it was all about buffers on the stack. Second, there's no function named __dns_lookup anywhere in glibc, nor any sign that similar code is anywhere to be found:

        titan:~/src/libc/glibc geofft$ git grep __dns_lookup
        titan:~/src/libc/glibc geofft$ git grep 'a->atype'
        titan:~/src/libc/glibc geofft$ git grep '>dotted'
        titan:~/src/libc/glibc geofft$

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone provide some context here? Is the OpenWRT libc derived from glibc? If so, why didn't this make it upstream? If not, why is this relevant if they didn't use the same code to start?

<comment><USER6> uClibc, which was what OpenWRT used as their libc, shared quite a lot of code with glibc. They don't use it anymore because the project is dead though (no releases since 2012, no commits since mid-2015) so they switched to musl, which is looking really nice.

uClibc was mainly trying to be a cut-down version of glibc, but musl aims for correctness (which can be difficult when a fair bit of software out there relies on glibc's quirks and bugs).

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip. For anyone else wondering, OpenWRT 15.05 (Chaos Calmer, the current stable release) is still based on uClibc, while the OpenWRT trunk is now based on musl. (AFAICT)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 14 upvotes as I'm typing, so I guess it is relevant, but I can't see how.

Could someone shine more light on this?

<comment><USER9> HN Search can: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=glibc&sort=byDate&prefix=false...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=glibc&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11109967).

<comment><USER8> Thanks :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is 1 World Trade Center Missing from Spider-Man? - <AUTHOR> https://www.stevenbuccini.com/why-1wtc-isnt-in-spiderman <comment><USER3> It seems absurd to me that buildings and things you can photograph in public are copyrightable/trademarkable.

You can't remove a building from your daily experience. Buildings have permanence. They seem cultural at a more fundamental level than movies or music.

How is this going to work with all the photogrammetry developments for games? I guess we're forbidden from the wholesale reuse of anything in public eye?

Has this been tested in court?

At some point the tech will mature to a point where it's _more work_ to remove things than to scan them and leave then as is. Can we argue that these laws are an unjust burden?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately that is the case. There are certain buildings in the US, or the Eifel Tower in Paris at night, you are not allowed to reproduce without obtaining a license from the according copyright/trademark holder.

Here is a comprehensive list with their restrictions: [https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known- image-r...](https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image- restrictions.html)

<comment><USER5> If I recall correctly the issue with the Eiffel Tower at night is that they claim (and I assume courts have agreed unfortunately) that the lighting fixtures are copyrightable?

<comment><USER6> IP is one of those areas where programmers like to imagine the law is a function definition which provides clear answers. And aside from obvious stuff like selling bootleg copies of a movie - it doesn't.

Whether the pattern of light hitting a building is copyrightable is likely to be an under-explored area of case law. E.g. in the UK it would probably have to be a work of 'artistic craftsmanship' which is not defined in the statute. But the Eiffel tower is in France. So now you have two slightly differing sets of copyright law.

In the end many IP cases come down to bluffing because the actual class of question has never been settled by a judge.

On the other hand you have other cases like Banksy today loosing a case on trademarking one of his paintings. Which was dumb because he'd have got further with copyright infringement.

<comment><USER7> I do feel like there are situations where you're creating artwork as a public good, and the artist should lose copyrights in exchange for the notoriety/impact/visibility associated with the project. Things like massive buildings, lighting the Eiffle tower, or creating Happy Birthday should fall under that.

It might sound unfair, but as an artist, creating a iconic piece of art that will be around for generations should really be worth more than money. Perhaps governments around the world could set up a fund to compensate/honor artists who achieve this.

<comment><USER8> This sounds like you're saying if you're an artist, and you do a really good job, you shouldn't get paid and should lose the rights to your work. That's quite a strange concept.

<comment><USER7> A) I literally mentioned compensation in my post.

B) Lots of people find the current rules to be unfair. An enterprising fellow could build a massive structure in NYC and claim royalty rights over any photograph which may contain it.

You might be a-okay with that, but I take it to the extreme and think about what would happen if every building owner in NYC asserted copyrights over images of their building. Then every photo taken in the city would be subject to royalty/licensing requirements. YouTube's content scanners would automatically flag any video with shots of the city, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a related note, it is illegal to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night but NOT during the day[0].

It's the lighting system and its 'likeness' that cannot be reproduced. A brief search and I don't think anyone has been prosecuted[1]. There are plenty of pictures everywhere that probably don't have proper licensing. Perhaps those who want to use it commercially can get permission relatively easily?

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM) [1] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photographs-of-eiffel- towe...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/photographs-of-eiffel-tower-at- night/)

<comment><USER10> You are of course allowed to take a picture of the Eiffel tower at any time, but publishing a picture of the lighting at night is limited by the copyright on the light installation.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if replacing a bulb grants a new copyright?

<comment><USER10> You mean like:

How many lightbulbs does it take to change the copyright?

<comment><USER12> It's the lighting system of Theseus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interestingly this is not the first time that the World trade centre was missing/removed from a Spiderman related media. The early rendition of Spiderman at the start of the century had the twin towers in and prior to release 9/11 happened, so a whole scene was removed. Which as you can see for yourself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozz8uxW733Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozz8uxW733Q) was no small budget scene either.

On a side note - is it Spiderman or Spider-man? I grew up with the believe that it was the former.

<comment><USER14> > _On a side note - is it Spiderman or Spider-man? I grew up with the believe > that it was the former._

Well, there's a Spider-man related subreddit called "respect the hyphen" so...

<comment><USER13> Interesting, does seem it's always kinda been hyphenated, yet the aspect that there is a discussion group over it does somewhat show my confusion is not alone, mad but will admit - it is hyphenated as the other comment says - <USER2> the comics - it's hyphenated, though a few with it upon two lines and maybe the source of confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also: tattoo artists wanted a cut of the video games that depicted NBA players with "their" art.

They lost.

[https://www.si.com/nba/2020/04/06/nba-2k-ruling-tattoo- artis...](https://www.si.com/nba/2020/04/06/nba-2k-ruling-tattoo-artists)

The concept of intellectual property is a blight on our society.

Did you know that Apple can notify you that they have revoked your iOS license at any time, without cause, and, under a strict interpretation of copyright law, make it illegal for you to then use or power on the phone that you own?

It's really crazy how the copyright cartel has consolidated the power over the software and songs and stories and art that belong to every member of our culture.

<comment><USER16> I don't think the concept is wrong: incentivize the creation of creative works. Why would someone bother writing a story if any publisher can just take it and not pay the author?

Modern copyright goes far beyond this original goal, dis-incentivizes or forbids creation sometimes and it used in all kinds of manners where it is a bad fit like software and hardware.

<comment><USER17> The _goal_ of incentivising work is nice. But the concept of copyright is busted even from the concept. The idea that you have a story that you wrote on your own dime and you're shopping around to publishers puts the authors in a tournament theory situation which is totally abusive.

The other issue of bringing a document to an independent publisher (akin to having a Chinese factory build your devices) who could steal the IP is a contractual and security matter.

<comment><USER16> It is independent of publishers. An author could have handwritten the books himself with no intermediaries before sale. Without copyright anyone who brought the book could replicate and sell it without restriction and sell it for cheaper, while the author doesn't get anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I work at Insomniac, and can confirm that the "architectural copyright" laws are indeed a limiting factor on getting specific landmark buildings into the game.

Further, the agreements we signed to license buildings for the first game do not necessarily hold true for sequels, so getting all of the cool buildings in New York City into the game is always, always going to be a hurdle, popularity of the first game be damned.

</comment><comment><USER19> To anyone as confused as I was reading this article:

Freedom Tower == One World Trade Center[1]

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

</comment><comment><USER20> There is another aspect as we go to more and more realistic worlds. In Google Maps I can ask to blur my house. As we go to more and more detailed worlds, can I ask Sony to blur my home too?

<comment><USER21> If the geometry is sourced from a service like google maps, it would probably be blurred. AFAIK, anything blurred in Bing maps is also blurred in Flight Simulator.

<comment><USER22> Did Google Earth get permission for all those buildings?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was surprised to learn that architecture was covered by copyright. I hadn't really looked at copyright law in depth since the 80s other than some organization around trying to get IP protection for type design in the 90s which never got anywhere. I remembered reading that architectural plans were specifically excluded from copyright protection but apparently in 1990 this changed. (Note that all of this applies specifically to US copyright law.)

</comment><comment><USER24> In some EU countries it is illegal to use photos of the European Parliament building.

[https://euobserver.com/justice/126375](https://euobserver.com/justice/126375)

</comment><comment><USER25> This may be a stretch, but could this be a clue into the upcoming movies featuring the MCU multiverse? Could the version of Spider-man in this game not be in our version of the universe?

</comment><comment><USER26> Presumably this means that it's illegal to paint these recent buildings as well. There's clearly something broken here.

<comment><USER27> No, Sec. 120 of the copyright law, at least in the US, says painting, photography, drawing, etc., are allowed. The general principle if 'right of panorama'\--what you can see from public areas is basically part of the public area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Slung" is the past-tense form of the "to sling". The "-ed" suffix is not needed.

</comment><comment><USER29> What does Microsoft Flight Simulator do?

<comment><USER21> It's mostly procedurally generated, so they might be making the case that it's just a rough representation of the terrain and not specifically a representation of the building. I could see a judge deciding that's bullshit, but it certainly would be a slippery slope to declare it illegal to provide accurate 3d maps of a city

<comment><USER30> I think for things like GCHQ, which the UK government is very touchy about having accurate records for, the right thing to do would be to replace it with a much cooler set of buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So can I just trademark my house if I don't want to be on Google Street View?

</comment><comment><USER32> TL;DR: ~copyright law~

Fixed as per PinguTS: trademark law. D'oh.

<comment><USER33> So much for "Freedom" tower.

<comment><USER34> So much for "free" country...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your best unused domain? - <AUTHOR>

I'll start with mine: SurpriseSexToy.com
Basically, the idea is a gift shop for sex toys aimed at "joke" gifts for parties etc...
What about you guys? <comment><USER2> I used to have methlab.com (though it seems to be a porn site now - woops).

I want to do something cool with sublim.nl but I am completely lost at this point...

</comment><comment><USER3> i can't tell if i love it because its an in-joke or if its because its actually a good one.

intellihancer.com

i've tried to do a few terrible things with it in an attempt to actually use it, but nothing's really worked out.

</comment><comment><USER4> bankruptyservice.com Could be a lead generation for people who are looking for this kind of service (more and more people are going bankrupt and need services for this).

<comment><USER5> _(more and more people are going bankrupt and need services for this)_

Yes, after all these people have already been demonstrated poor judgement when it comes to financial decisions, I can see how setting up a business to milk them further by extracting money for "services" could be quite profitable...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "fatebook.com" - yeah, the day I decide to use that one will probably be the day I give Facebook's lawyers all of my worldly possessions.

</comment><comment><USER6> RecoverCredit.com

If you wanna see some sweet domains, check out my friends site: datacube.com</comment>


Implementation of an Operating System in ML - PDF - <AUTHOR> http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/47545/40495469.pdf?sequence=1

<comment><USER2> If you find this interesting you may want to read about this more current research: <http://www.openmirage.org/>

To quote from the vision paper <http://anil.recoil.org/papers/2010-bcs- visions.pdf>

      Mirage is written in the spirit of vertical operating
      systems such as Nemesis [17] or Exokernel [10], but
      differs in certain aspects: (i) apart from a small runtime,
      the operating system and support code (e.g., threading)
      is entirely written in OCaml; and (ii) is statically
      specialised at compile-time by assembling only required
      components (e.g., a read-only file system which fits
      into memory will be directly linked in as an immutable
      data structure). These features mean that it provides
      a stronger basis for the practical application of formal
      methods such as model checking; and the removal of
      redundant safety system checks greatly improves the
      energy efficiency of the system.

<comment><USER3> Interesting background of the authors. From Xen (which itself was derived from the Nemesis exokernel, although not directly). XenSource is a heavy OCaml user. And from Cambridge University where Nemesis was developed.

<comment><USER4> XenSource was bought by Citrix in late 2007. But we are still using OCaml on XenServer. (XenClient started using Haskell.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is someone's master thesis from 1998

Here is an abstract for those who don't want to download the full PDF

In this paper I describe the design, implementation, and features of ML/OS, an operating system with an embedded ML compiler. ML/OS supports a continuation- based thread model of concurrency with non-blocking, interrupt-driven input/output. By embedding the ML compiler into the operating system, ML/OS attempts to eliminate levels of abstraction that are present in traditional interactions between compilers and operating systems. By using a continuation- based scheduler, I demonstrate the use of advanced programming language features such as continuations and type safety in system-level programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of SPIN ([http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.47.8...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.47.8338)) and Singularity ([http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6943...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=69431)) - putting a compiler in the kernel lets you control what runs on the system without using hardware protection barriers, as well as enables better optimization against the running system.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know Adobe are forever adding more bloat to Acrobat Reader, but an OS in a PDF? That's just too far!

<comment><USER8> PostScript was Turing complete. Imagine having a fractal-drawing program in a PDF, and you're not far off from what it can do:

<http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~andersr/fractal/PostScript.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> More system software in ML: <http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/HORUS/>

<comment><USER10> "By early in 1997, Ensemble will be an outstanding environment for building Java-based groupware applications that do multimedia conferencing on the Web."

Oh boy, sure brings back memories...</comment></comment>


Your UI Isn't a Disney Movie - ux-app https://medium.com/@sophie_paxtonUX/your-ui-isn-t-a-disney-movie-703f7fbd24d2?r=2 <comment><AUTHOR> The airplane is a terrible counterexample. The pilot does not need pretty animations, because the interface's actions are part of a de rigueur to the job. The pretties on a random app need animations, however, to help the user. The use cases are so far apart to make the comparison a bad one.

</comment><comment><USER2> > Unless you're hoping to get picked up by Pixar, you can probably steer clear > of animation easing like "Bounce" or "Ease-in-Out".

Bounce, sure, bounce is terrible, but...

> Avoid Linear animation easing.

Okay then, what would you use when you are moving a thing from point A to point B, both of which are on-screen? Ease in and ease out will look jumpy.</comment>


Recession Survival Strategies for Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.smallbiztrends.com/2008/06/recession-survival-strategies-business.html/ <comment><USER2> If you are a business, having an online presence is always important. Especially if you are able to incorporate ecommerce elements based on your business model.

<comment><USER2> In UK there is much evidence showing as the economy here slows down, people are spending less on the high-street and more online.

Hence even if you are a small shop, you should get online. You never know what can happen.</comment></comment>


FastoTV first native crossplatform open source IPTV player - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fastogt/fastotv <comment><USER2> I don't really understand why this is being voted up.

There's zero documentation on what formats this supports, how to use it in another project etc.

It feels a little like a voting ring here to be honest.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> * iOS: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastotv/id1486741808](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastotv/id1486741808)

* Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastotv](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastotv)

* Mac/Windows/Linux: from sources [https://github.com/fastogt/fastotv](https://github.com/fastogt/fastotv) or on Website

* iOS Offline: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastotvlite/id1496936356](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastotvlite/id1496936356)

* Android Offline: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastotv.li...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastotv.lite)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed when registering that it seems to try to verify my email address by sending itself an email from my account... is this a common practice?

\---- We have recorded an attempt to send an email from your alias email@example.com using <>.

Please note that sending from this alias only works from email@example.com.

Indeed, only you (or the mailbox that owns email@example.com) can send emails on behalf of this alias.

<comment> simple-login SimpleLogin team here, this is actually another error due to the bounce email (note the <>). Do you remember where you created this alias? Would be great if you can send us details to firstname.lastname@example.com or open up an issue on Github. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I'll take care of it tomorrow morning. What do you mean by "where" though... I have two aliases setup, one I've defined myself and another randomly generated. I've provided them the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Set it up using laptop and iphone...added VOD Spiderman, tried to play it, and it just sits here loading and never playing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Crossplatform but no support for PC or Mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please read README file</comment></comment>


How to Interview Your Interviewer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@_danfriedman/how-to-interview-your-interviewer-5875a6361ccd

<comment><USER2> A lot of young interviewees think it's not their place to ask these questions. At least from my own perspective as a founder/CEO, as long as it's not combative, I think much more highly of people I interview who show the maturity to think about these things.</comment>


Trump Promotes Thiel Capital's Michael Kratsios to US Chief Technology Officer - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/21/michael-kratsios-cto-trump-administration/ <comment><USER2> So, what are his qualifications? He's a political science and greek history/culture major, but somehow went to work at Barclays, as a principle at Thiel capital, and later CFO at Clarium. He doesn't have an MBA, nor financial or CPA experience, and doesn't have any tech experience.

This seems like a classic old boys network in action. Rich guy gets his son into Princeton by the backdoor, and then uses his connections to get him into Barclays, and later he meets Thiel, and Thiel at some point decides to use him to put an agent into the Whitehouse.

Former CTO, Megan Smith, at least had industry tech experience and a masters degree from MIT.

</comment><comment><USER3> Precise words were chosen for this article.</comment>


Del.icio.us alternative that actually has a revenue model - <AUTHOR> http://www.hoarde.rs

<comment><USER2> Their revenue model is: (A) one AdSense ad per page, and (B) rewriting URLs to append their own affiliate link (if an affiliate code does not currently exist).

For the record, Delicious alternative Pinboard also has a revenue model, whereby they charge each new user a certain amount, and then also have a premium offering whereby bookmarked links are archived.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the FAQ:

 _We want to be financially responsible and come up with some way to keep this site running. As you've likely noticed, relevent contextual ads from Google make an appearance on each of our pages._

 _Also, taking a page from the excellent StackOverflow's book, we also rewrite links to certain sites and append our affiliate ID. It's our hope that the combination of these two solutions will be the least intrusive way to cover the costs of providing this site as a resource for our users._

<http://www.hoarde.rs/about/>

</comment><comment><USER4> From the FAQ:

"hoarde.rs is based on Yahoo! Inc's del.icio.us a social bookmarking site that has recently been decommisioned."

This is not true. See -> <http://www.delicious.com/>

<comment><USER5> Not decommissioned, just planning to change owners: [http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for- delici...](http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for- delicious.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://pinboard.in>

<comment><USER7> Heh, yeah, I saw the title and thought this was a post about us.

I would strongly encourage all our competitors to adopt this elegant business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All of the links feel ridiculously huge. I thought we got past this whole Web 2.0 thing?

</comment><comment><USER9> Actually it looks very bad, feels clunky and the revenue model is idiotic with a passion.</comment>


Code Inflation (code grows exponentially) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting:

"Software too can grow exponentially fast, especially after an initial prototype is created. For example, each Mars lander that NASA launched in the past four de- cades used more code than all the missions before it combined. We can see the same effect in just about every other application domain."</comment>


Oracle NoSQL: Community Version 2.0  - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/nosqldb/documentation/datasheet-oracle-nosql-db-ce-1876735.pdf

<comment><USER2> I have to say I find this offering really puzzling. Is anyone actually going to choose to use this, or does this just exist to give PHBs something to shove down their employees' throats to get more executive street cred?

<comment><USER3> While, we all know and hate Oracle RDBMS this is actually a well engineered project IMHO. And if you need to provide "big" data to the RDBMS the external table space capability is really nice.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ever refuse to build something for moral reasons? - <AUTHOR> A lot of times we talk about what makes the internet good and free and what makes it bad (e.g. auto playing media in a page). As developers, we are often asked/demanded by managers, sales people, and CEOs to build things simply to make money. Have you ever actually said no to something you don't believe in? <comment><USER2> Yes, I was asked to create a missile guidage from an helicopter, and I refuse, I know somebody else made it now, but I didn't want to participate into that. In another subject, I refuse to develop a password rule : for log in, the password would be case insensitive, but will be case sensitive for unsubscribing. It was unfair and against all security.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. I refuse to install tracking social media button embeds on client websites and will push clients towards non-tracking equivalents instead, as well as refusing popups and adding people who haven't consented to join to mailing lists.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is why we work non stop. If you don't build it because morals, someone else will build it.

<comment><USER3> Keep telling yourself that. Often, the person asking you to build something immoral hasn't given it much thought. When you refuse and explain why you are morally opposed to doing such a thing, sometimes that makes them stop and think and realize that you're right. Not always—sometimes they will just get someone else to do it, but at least you tried and aren't involved.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Polymer or React? - <AUTHOR> I like the entire material design thing behind polymer. I was thinking of using it as a replacement for Bootstrap. But then it comes with all these other things that basically make it a competitor to React. If the primary purpose is to build a cards style interface, which is a better choice as of today? <comment><USER2> I think Polymer is a better software design but it may still not be performant or compatible enough. If its an internal or desktop app or you do perf and compat tests maybe you can use it.

As of today React is vastly more popular, but that doesn't mean its still technically the most relevant.

6-12 months from now I would say Polymer may be trendy in some circles.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're interested in Polymer just for its material design, you can use React just the same with something like Materialize. There are also projects like MaterialUI which might be worth looking at.

Forgetting the question about Material design, and just addressing which is better: I don't think its a one or the other deal. For the most atomic, cross- application, least state-full components, Web Components are a good choice. But if you're building an entire application that is component driven, does it make sense to have a Web Compoent <App />? At some point when you get to the point of using application level state across components, you can use React.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is a good write up on the trade offs between the two: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/237762](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/237762)

</comment><comment><USER5> For me the biggest difference is browser support. With React many libraries I have seen you can get pretty much running with IE9+ (often also IE8). In comparison Polymer: You need more or less the newest IE browser to get it working fully: [https://github.com/WebComponents/webcomponentsjs#browser- sup...](https://github.com/WebComponents/webcomponentsjs#browser-support)

At the moment I also see that React has the bigger community/ecosystem but this may change in the future?!

</comment><comment><USER6> If "fun" or "Developer Experience" is any sort of measure, nothing beats working with React + Flux.

</comment><comment><USER7> Elm (elm-lang.org)

</comment><comment><USER8> As mentioned, if you just go for the Material Design look, there's several options, Materialize, MaterialUI & the elements that are on the Polymer site (Please note, they are not part of Polymer, a distinction with which Google is having problems. They want you to see them as two seperate things). Materialize doesn't come nearly as close to the "fun" experience as Polymer/React, though it's easier to get started I guess.

Now, I cannot speak much about the differences between React and Polymer, I've never used React but as mentioned already, React has better browser support. React works great in all browsers right now, whereas with Polymer it is complicated. I'm saying complicated because the general impression is that Polymer after being 1.0 is not production ready or good yet. This is not true. It is production ready if you only use Polymer. However, it still has issues working together with other DOM manipulating frameworks such as Meteor, Angular, etc. ... This is due to the fact that Polymer heavily relies on polyfilling the shadow DOM specs that are currently only implemented in Chrome & Opera.

Their shadow DOM polyfill worked pretty good, but performance was horrible especially in Safari. Which is why with 1.0 they rewrote the polyfill from scratch, now called shady DOM. It emulates shadow DOM in a less strict way, which results in other frameworks not working properly with Polymer as of now. So, look out for a patch that's currently in the works for this issue.

Aside from that, Polymer works really well in my opinion. I think what's imporant to understand though is that React and Polymer fulfill different purposes. Polymer is a very bold undertaking of trying to bring web components right now to your browser. React has a similar approach afaik in the sense that you can easily create reusable components but it's just a different technological approach based on what's possible right now. That's also why React performs better because they don't try to polyfill stuff. If you look at the webcomponents and webcomponents-lite polyfills you might think "holy shit". That's some serious effort they put into that. So much polyfilling will hurt performance obviously.

React is eventually going to use webcomponents, just like Polymer. So what will be the difference of React and Polymer in the future? Hard to say. I'm guessing they will be very similar, in fact who knows maybe React will use Polymer, not for the polyfills (which technically isn't a part of the Polymer project ... anymore[?]) but rather for the webcomponents sugar coating on top that makes writing web components easier and more fun.

Now, your question was what should you use for Material design. If you just use Polymer go for it right now (some browsers will be a bit slower, namely Safari but whatever. Progressive enhancement FTW. It'll get better, they're working on implementations). If you need to couple it with another framework, carefully do some first tests. If you know you only ship in a few months from now then it's probably safe to go with it, since a patch will certainly be out by then.

If you want great performance and browser support right now, go for React.

If you don't care about supporting ancient browsers and want to support only evergreen browsers then choose whatever you like better.

As for me, I'm about to launch my startup's site with Polymer soon, hacking some of the issues that are still there when integrating it with meteor.

<comment><USER8> I have to add something:

[https://annevankesteren.nl/2015/07/shadow-dom-custom- element...](https://annevankesteren.nl/2015/07/shadow-dom-custom-elements- update)

Browser vendors finally agreed on how to implement shadow DOM! shadow DOM is the biggest bottleneck for the adoption of webcomponents, the other parts of webcomponents are fairly easy to polyfill. This is great news! With this news out I would say it's a lot safer to start using Polymer right now :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me the biggest difference is browser support. With React many libraries I have seen you can get pretty much running with IE9+ (often also IE8). In comparison Polymer: You need more or less the newest IE browser to get it working fully: [https://github.com/WebComponents/webcomponentsjs#browser- sup...](https://github.com/WebComponents/webcomponentsjs#browser-support)

At the moment I also see that React has the bigger community/ecosystem but this may change in the near future?!</comment>


DJ Zedd perma banned from entering China after liking tweet - <AUTHOR> https://nationalfile.com/dj-was-banned-from-china-after-liking-south-park-tweet/ <comment><USER2> Looking at another article on this site I don't trust it has any journalistic integrity.</comment>


Data WhiteOps collects - <AUTHOR> https://smitop.com/post/whiteops-data/ <comment><USER2> "WhiteOps" \- heh... If you have to tell that to yourself...

Seriously, we have a large problem with the ad/tracking industry. Here regulation would indeed be needed, not for content...

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23774394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23774394)

</comment><comment><USER4> haha jit go brrrrr</comment>


Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next? - <AUTHOR> I have been programming for almost 5 years. In this period I have learnt Python/Django, HTML/CSS/JS and have just started learning Node.js/Meteor as part of Stanford's Startup Engineering Course. During this time I have developed several non-trivial MVC web apps (mostly side projects) and taken many Coursera/Udacity programming courses. I also have a web design business although I am currently struggling to find clients who are not affected by my age.
Frankly, I feel lost in this world of technology and startups. I assumed that the more I knew, the easier it would become, but experience has proved that this isn't the case. I feel I need guidance in order to gain any traction/reputation in a particular field. It would be greatly appreciated if I could have some suggestions as to which direction I should take next.
Many thanks in advance. I have been following HN for almost half a year now and the community here is one of the strongest I have ever seen.
EDIT: Thanks everyone! The feedback has been incredibly helpful and I will take a look at the resources you have commented soon. Also, if you have anything else you want to add more personally, send me an email at: harry01a (at) gmail (dot) com <comment><USER4> You are very young and obviously talented so I'll suggest you something completely different: Don't burden yourself with web business yet. Forget startups, companies, investors, clients, etc... you honestly don't need that yet. Go instead and do everything that "adults" can't afford the time for: build your own stuff just to see if you can, learn more about things that you love, join some open-source projects that you find interesting, follow your passions and meet people with similar interests. That way you'll build both your skills and reputation...and don't worry, the money and business opportunities will follow, they always do... so take your time and try to enjoy your youth as much as you can. You will be an adult for the rest of your life, but being a smart kid is something that lasts only a few years, so make sure to use them fully...

</comment><comment><USER5> I started playing electric bass at the age of 15, and got an acoustic guitar about 6 months later. I decided to major in music in college since that was literally the only thing I ever felt like spending my time on (excluding girls, since you can't major in that). I picked the bass as a primary instrument and for the next 12 years never had a "real job". Traveled the world, met tons of interesting people, got treated like a rock star, got really good at the bass, gained a ton of "domain expertise" in the music business, and generally had a whole heck of a lot of fun. I didn't even think to start programming until I was 30.

There is an entire world out there, and you likely have a whole lot of other talents that you don't even know about yet. My advice would be to make sure you take time to discover them too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I do quite a lot of music as well. (I play the cello / electric cello!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You probably should not really use your full name and age in most cases on the internet. It's weird out there and people may wish to do you harm. At the very least, it's better to keep your digital history out of the public eye (for google has indexed this page already and will never forget) -- at least until you're ready.

As for finding clients put off by your age, one possible way is to enlist the aid of an older person to do talking? I knew someone in high school that did that when he ran a training service. Also, don't mention your age.

People are always telling me to find a problem and solve it; get to know some group of people. If I only knew a group of people, heh. Or people.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm much older than you and have been doing programming 'professionally' for several years, like, as a career an' everything, and I feel just as lost as you. 'Cept now I'm old, embittered, and am looking for ways to just not work, take a break and go back to doing things rather than spending time at work.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I have said in another comment, I normally meet my clients personally and so they normally do know my age/name. It would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of someone who could help me with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: I've edited my name out of the submission text

<comment><USER6> you've gotten good feedback on your site? Maybe you should do the same for your website URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Holy smokes. You're 14. Forget about "web design" and having a business. This isn't 2005. Don't set the bar for yourself so low. Aim high. You are the next generation in the greatest technological advance in the history of human kind. Do something hard. Find a language with a type system. Implement something meaningful in it. Russell and Norvig's "Artifical Intelligence" is full of great, inspirational stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ambitious words ;) I'll see what I can do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The case study really isn't compelling at all, it just doesn't look like a good site.

I doubt people will care much about your age and or just don't mention it.

Side note - "Design" is becoming more and more obsolete as the use of design frameworks becomes more ubiquitous. I started out doing design from scratch but now I just search for the best framework to use and cut my development time into a fraction.

Check out Twitter Bootstrap and Foundation (Zurb)

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned my age simply to help people understand my position. I generally find clients by meeting them personally so they do normally know my age.

I understand my design isn't great and I will try to focus on my development work. I have used both those design frameworks in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I assume you did all the work on the case study. Is that correct? Have you ever heard of PageSpeed? If you want to develop better webpages / apps, a good way to work on those skills is to try to get the best score possible in plugins like Pagespeed and YSlow. It will help you learn about different things such as minifying, concatenation and caching.

At least in the Case Study homepage, there is a lot of commented out markup in the source, and an entire section where it looks like it was done in an HTML generator - because you are not using the Cascade at all, and every link re declares the same font-family over and over.

Something else you should consider is looking into this course: [http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/](http://discover- devtools.codeschool.com/)

It will help you understand what is going on when debugging webpages.

I know it's hard to be doing stuff that likely few people your age can relate to. Adults will dismiss you because of your age, and there isn't much you can do about it aside from continue to develop your skills so when you _are_ taken seriously, they feel stupid for doubting you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I developed that case study for a client when I was 12 and so many of the techniques used were very immature. The site was done in the Joomla CMS.

Also, I have already taken the dev-tools course and it was very useful.

<comment><USER9> In that case, you should be reviewing whatever case study you feature on a periodic basis to make sure it's reflective of your current skill level.

Depending on how much time you sink into learning, you can progress at a very high rate. You want people to make the most informed decision possible when hiring you, so you want to be showing them the thing most likely to wow them.

Keep in mind that some companies with an IT Department may still outsource smaller projects to freelancers. In this case, your development practices may be evaluated by IT minded folks. You really do not want to lose out at a job because you are showing code 4 years old, and that's not even how you'd go about it if you were to start over.

Another poster did say something about traffic increase. But let's extend that. If you can prove that you not only redid the design, but you increased performance by X%, and traffic by Y% and so on, those are real numbers people who make decisions can base you on. So it may be worth your while to learn about metrics.

In School, I would really look into a course on statistics. You'd be surprised how often that comes in handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Like others said your case study is not bad but its not amazing. Realize that is OK and expected. Web design doesn't come to people overnight. Keep working at it. As for feeling lost, again it's to be expected. There's a lot out there. If your serious about programming , learn another language like Java or C#, then move to something like C++ or C. This will expose you to other languages and a different design flow from something like python or javascript. You can also read some books on program designs, data structures, and algorithms. A great place to start would be Code Complete. There's a lot out there to learn. Take your time and absorb it. Most of all, HAVE FUN DOING IT. Your fourteen, this should be a fun hobby for you. Computers are complex machines that are a lot of fun to play with. If you get frustrated put whatever your doing down and go do something for a while. Always happy to help out, let me know if you have any other questions or if I didn't answer your first one well

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really helpful feedback, thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd encourage you to think bigger than just tinkering with the next big framework as some are suggesting, whether that be a UI kit or Node or whatever. Instead try to understand why and how they work, and just keep programming. Focus on principles and languages over frameworks and toolkits.

Find an area of technology that you do care about. There are SO many areas to explore, and this is a great time of life to poke into them-- computer security, artificial intelligence, graphics, operating systems. Have you banged your head on a segfault in C? Can you explain HTTP? It is mind boggling how much is out there, but deep familiarity will make you a great engineer.

If it's design you're interested in, practice. Copy, "steal", and iterate.

I don't know your situation or how far along you are, but this is an amazing time to be learning. Do a breadth first search on technology--learn a little bit about a lot, and then dig into whatever piques your interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this advice. It's probably the best I've seen in these comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd suggest you to jump into Mobile boat. Since you already know HTML/CSS and JS, develop a simple application using Phonegap and sent it to Google Play and AppStore. I'd also try to make my website look more like my Curriculum(without removing the freelance stuff).

</comment><comment><USER13> Time will bring all the answers you need, but the harder you will try to get those answers, the faster they will escape you.

Continue to play with technology as you like. You seem to already know a lot for someone of your age. Perhaps you will tire of it at some point. Perhaps not.

Accept the mystery of life.

</comment><comment><USER14> I mean, design isn't development, it is so much more fickle than just programming or developing something. Companies hire designers because they have experience solving problems and can translate what the client is saying into a solution. I'm not saying you can't do this at 14 but yea, it's going to be hard.

Your best bet is to try and make a product that people will use and throw it on the various app stores, it doesn't matter who makes those as long as they are great. Once you make things go to meetups and do a show and tell, but don't let being 14 become your identity. If you just continue making things, everything else will fall into place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do understand the difference between design and development and I would be the first to admit that design isn't my strongest point. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The site looks good. Nice and clean, as well as intuitive.

What you've sort of got to do is wait for an idea to come along. It might take a long time, but it's worth waiting. Otherwise, reach out to other people interested in startups in your area. Get involved and see who you can meet. Some one might want to get you in on something they're working on. I've had this happen before, though I have declined such requests as I am working on my own projects.

I'm sixteen (so two years younger than you) and age hasn't been an issue yet, apart from when dealing with laws regarding banks and business. No doubters and no haters so far.

</comment><comment><USER16> It depends on your goals.

If you want to stick with startup stuff it seems like other successful young people go heavy into the programming side (the Stripe guy) or the design side (Mike Matas) or the PR side (the Summly guy). I think the main thing is to go more hardcore into one aspect of the business. I have a friend who got into web consulting very young and he's still doing almost the exact same thing now that he's old. You don't "level up" by default.

Personally, if I were to do it over again I'd choose design as you can meet more women that way.

</comment><comment><USER17> I recommend not mentioning your age to your clients until necessary. At least that's what I did. As timmm said, your case study isn't very compelling. If I were you, I'd try to build up a Github with some open source stuff and get more involved in the developer community. Clients will eventually come looking for you.

By the way, shoot me an email at zchlatta (at) gmail.com. I'm currently 15 and am always looking for other young developers to chat with. I'd be more than happy to talk to you about technology and other interesting pursuits.

<comment><USER18> I agree that rather than looking for work as a web developer, you might focus on building really useful components and libraries on GitHub, or just staring by forking projects there and making improvements or fixes.

I understand your desire to get paid work, but really building your skills and making things that people find useful is a great proving ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Socialize and extend your knowledge beyond the computer science. Software development is not about solving complex math or algorithmic problems, it's about doing good for the people. In most cases, it's about doing that in a team. You have to understand people's needs and behavior, to communicate well and to propose the solutions that, sometimes, cross the CS boundaries. Physics, genetics, geography, history - this is an incomplete list of disciplines that helped me in my career.

P.S. try Java. It's still damn good for web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice, I agree completely that it's important to look cross- discipline. Also, I find that generally Java for web development has a pretty bad image here on HN but maybe I'll take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I started a free software project at 12 and then got involved with startup at age 15 while still studying. I decided not to go to university and now I'm working full time on my startup. The only thing I regret is not having left school when I was clear what I was doing with my life. I wasted 2 years of my life in school while I could perfectly work full time on my projects.

Shoot me an email to me (AT) luisivan (DOT) net, I have an event to suggest you attending this September in London.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have you considered applying for a summer work placement at a startup? Might be a good way to get a better insight into the industry and network with some other developers.

(I am a developer at a digital publishing startup in Shoreditch - <USER2> mostly with Node.js - and we regularly take on short-term placements in our production and development teams. Do you have any code samples - <USER3> account, maybe? Shoot me an email if you're interested - gary [at] getcontentment [dot] com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to get an internship somewhere but I'm not sure I know the right people to find one that will accept me.

I don't normally upload my projects to Github as I'm never quite happy with them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I agree with timmm, the case study isn't compelling for me. I like the way the logo moves from the red to the white. Not a huge fan of centered text. How good are you at javascript? I might hire you for some freelance work if you know how to work with the prototype object.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the basics of JS but have never done a serious project with it. The advice was really helpful by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Erm, so can you legally be employed (even self-employed) in the UK at 14?

<comment><USER24> Yes, you just can't work full-time. For certain professions, you can earn money at any age.

<comment><USER25> > _you just can 't work full-time_

In the US, sans certain specified professions, federal and most state laws effectively exempt properly self-employed children or children working in their parents' business from most restrictions. Do such exemptions exist in the UK?

<comment><USER24> No, I don't think so. The basic rule is you can work part-time from 13, and then full-time from 16 (soon to be 18 - basically, the minimum school age). It doesn't matter what the form of employment is, they're generic rules, and largely about ensuring children attend school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I started programming around a time similar to you, and I also faced many of your challenges. I know this may not be the general opinion, but my opinion is to not worry about starting a web design business. This is a super competitive field, and your age WILL hurt you when it comes to finding clients.

That being said, I started working for a web development firm at age 15. I didn't have a portfolio and I didn't have an impressive interview; I simply knew the right people and was in the right place. I lucked into a great job. I was able to work after school and on weekends, and I'm still employed at this firm. Working for a firm allowed me to mask my age. I wasn't a person; I was a member of a team. I produced the results expected of that team, and clients never once asked my age. I'd continue networking with people and being active in the community. Eventually, you will find the right opportunity -- sometimes it just takes time. Connections will be your biggest asset as this age. See if you have any family friends who own businesses who might need a website.

I never viewed web development as a career, but rather as a job. My passion is computer science, and by working in web development for several years before going to college, I've had the opportunity to gain communication skills and work skills. I am currently studying computer science, and I love what I'm doing. I feel if I was focusing on both computer science and web design, I would be spreading myself too thin. I'd suggest picking a field of focus, and going full throttle.

I'd suggest spending more time learning and less time trying to start a business, especially if you're facing resistance with the business. Running a business is a huge time investment (if you do it right), and this time might better be spent learning at your age. You have the blessing of being at an age with minimal obligations. You should use your free time to learn everything you can. Watch TED talks, read Wikipedia, take online courses, etc. This will broaden your horizons and perhaps open doors for you.

Finally, I'd suggest changing your personal website -- both design and content. I'm not accusing you of copying (and I'm not sure who did it first), but your website looks like a direct copy of Macaw's sneak peek website -- [http://macaw.co/peek/sample](http://macaw.co/peek/sample). While a fraction of the design community might be the only people who recognize this, it still might give people the wrong idea. Considering you want to be a web designer and a website nearly identical to this was made in a matter of minutes as a demo, you might want to show something unique and reflective of your skills (your case study and your personal site do not look like they came from the same person). For your case study, I'd suggest explaining why having a site helped this client. Did he go from 0 traffic to 100 unique daily views? Did he go from 100 unique daily views to 1,000 unique daily views? Businesses and clients want to see results.

If you have any questions on web design/development at a young age, feel free to respond to this comment and I'll do my best to answer.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1) Startups/business. If you haven't, I would read all of Paul Grahams essays. I think startups are a great option ([http://www.collegeanswerz.com/risks-and- rewards-of-startups](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/risks-and-rewards-of- startups)), but even if you don't end up starting one, you should understand the business. I would also highly recommend reading Rework.

2) Your site. The top part (good design is good business) and the footer (contact me) are solid, but the rest could use a lot of work. The periods in the 'Hi there' paragraph are on the next line. Could just be my browser, but something you should look into. That paragraph definitely should be "nicer". Maybe something like this: [http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/2.3.2/examples/carousel.h...](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/2.3.2/examples/carousel.html). The design of the case study is solid.

The main problem with your site I think is the lack of information. Tell us more about yourself. What you do? What are your aspirations? Hobbies? Thoughts/opinions? Show us that you know design and programming by telling us your philosophies. Also, have a blog ([http://nathanmarz.com/blog/break-into- silicon-valley-with-a-...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/break-into-silicon- valley-with-a-blog-1.html)).

3) Design resources. I'm new to programming and design too (~ 1 year of on and off experience), but there are some resources that have helped me a lot. \- Definitely learn bootstrap ([http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.html](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.html)). \- Best resource on typography ([http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/)) \- Best resource on color ([https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of- color/](https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/)) \- Amazing ([http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk](http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk)) \- Fundamental concepts - [http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/it_just_doesnt_matter.php](http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/it_just_doesnt_matter.php) & [http://justinjackson.ca/words.html](http://justinjackson.ca/words.html) \- Adjacent in space vs. stacked in time - [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1128-learning-from-bad- ui](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1128-learning-from-bad-ui) \- solid resource - [http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/](http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/)

I think design is partly about understanding this stuff, which well help you develop "empathy for the consumer". But it's also partly about having "internal templates" that you can work with. I noticed that to start, I didn't have many inner templates, and my "tools" were limited. But after looking around and noticing some more things and stuff, I've expanded my inner templates, and my site reflects that ([http://www.collegeanswerz.com/](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/)).

Take a look at my essay/gathered content ([http://www.collegeanswerz.com/essays/](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/essays/)) for more info on design, startups, business, and other things you might be interested in.

I love the initiative, discipline and motivation you have as a 14 year old. Let me know if you have any other questions or anything, I'd love to help: firstname.lastname@example.com. Good luck!

<comment><USER26> I'd advise against a carousel. I don't have sources, but I've read that something like 90% of viewers never make it past the first slide of a carousel. They just aren't good UI. ++ for all your other links though.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like this [http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/..](http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/..). It was posted [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6018316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6018316) a few weeks ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "What should I do next?"

Become an enlightened developer by learning a functional programming language.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had a brief look at functional programming style before but it never stuck. Which language would you recommend to someone of my skill level?

<comment> peter-fogg I was going to recommend FP as well.

The Little Schemer is (in my opinion) the single best book on programming out there. It won't directly improve your MVC webapps or teach you enough of Scheme to write real software; be warned. What it _will_ do is give you a fantastic introduction to recursive computation and all the mind-expanding ideas that go along with it. It's also great fun to read -- how many books do you have with space reserved for jelly stains?

Also worth looking into is Learn You a Haskell, which is available for free online. Haskell teaches you to have some discipline in code organization, in a way enforced by the compiler, and will also help you to find more abstract patterns in your code.

Finally, Clojure is a functional language that has somewhat more of an emphasis on practical programming than the above books. There are some good libraries for web development such as Ring and Enlive; I'd recommend rewriting an app you've already completed in another language as a good way to learn. That way, you can concentrate on the language and the way you express concepts, rather than the particulars of the problem you're solving.

<comment><USER16> The Little Schemer is not the single best book on programming out there and I did not find it "fun to read."

<comment> peter-fogg Well, to each their own.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg liked HackerNews on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sidraqasim/status/351978663769690112 <comment><USER2> And now we have a HackerNews post about a Twitter post about a Facebook Like about HackerNews.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I guess the question is, does he comment under a pseudonym? Does he have any known ones?

<comment><USER4> Good for him HN does not have a real-names policy then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is it surprising? It's not a secret society. He is/was a hacker. I guess he likes news... ;)

<comment><USER3> It's not a secret society, but it does have the feeling of a community, at least to me. A lot more surprising than saying pg is on facebook, for example.</comment></comment>


Refusing to decrypt data for investigators gets student 6 months in jail - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/09/refusing-to-decrypt-data-6-months/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to think this wouldn't happen in the US with our 5th amendment & rights against self-incrimination. One can dream.</comment>


Review: Dungeon Keeper (iOS) - <AUTHOR> http://superlevel.de/spiele/review-dungeon-keeper-ios/

<comment><USER2> All i see is an animated gif of a kid throwing money out the window. Why is body overflow:hidden

</comment><comment><USER3> What a complete waste of my time. The only thing that's to be seen here is a gif of a baby throwing money out the window. The text that briefly flashes away is just placeholder text:

        <p>Ad nesciunt next level gastropub. Before they sold out pariatur fixie, small batch quinoa chillwave selfies actuall
        (...)

What's this doing in front page again?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anybody know of a game that is a worthy successor to dungeon keeper?

<comment><USER5> Hopefully War for the Overworld, which looks very promising.

[https://wftogame.com/](https://wftogame.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So true!

</comment><comment><USER7> direct link: [http://superlevel.de/spiele/review-dungeon-keeper- ios/](http://superlevel.de/spiele/review-dungeon-keeper-ios/)

The posted link is to the index which may turn people off because most of the articles are in German.

<comment><USER8> The article shows up briefly and then turns into a video of a baby throwing money. Guess it's some kind of paywall or required facebook registration?

<comment><USER9> My guess is that the baby is a background gif and the message is that you will basically be throwing your money away with this app.</comment></comment></comment>


Mark Cuban: "there is a huge bubble in the Valley for tech startups" - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15doqt/mark_cuban_this_is_my_ama/c7lkj4f

<comment><USER2>
      Finally somebody with the guts to actually say it.</comment>


Did Google push Schmidt aside over Facebook challenge? - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9205758/Did_Google_push_Schmidt_aside_over_Facebook_challenge_?taxonomyId=212&pageNumber=1

<comment><USER2> My money is on schmidt saying "Shit, i'm 65, i'm worth billions, time to have some fun"

<comment><USER3> Or: it's time to give back to the world. I wouldn't be surprised to see him pull a Gates.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you know to be true without caveat or qualification? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Humans will never understand more than a fraction of the the universe that we can perceive. Ignorance is infinite, and therefore so is discovery. Nifty :)

</comment><comment><USER3> That there are many truths, but plenty of falsities too.

</comment><comment><USER4> "I am what I am." \- Popeye

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing lasts forever.

</comment><comment><USER6> sic friatur crustulum

<comment><USER7> "It pastes powder"? (So says Google Translate.)

I presume that's not the meaning. But what is?</comment></comment>


We are better at detecting words with negative meaning than positive. - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=accentuating-the-negative

<comment><USER2> Years of training by news headlines.</comment>


Google in Talks to Pay Publishers for News - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-in-talks-to-pay-publishers-for-content-in-premium-news-product-11581689169 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/KUQ9W](http://archive.is/KUQ9W)</comment>