CleanFlicks - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks <comment><USER2> This is going to be controversial, but I would say this is the sort of thing HN would be in favour of if it wasn't Mormons doing it:

\- consumer-side voluntary filtering as an alternative to demanding censorship

\- elastic approach to copyright

\- technological solution to social problem that's also a neat hack ("customized DVD player with software running concurrently with the DVD playback to perform edits")

It does raise the question of how OK it is for people to construct a bubble from which they remove entire classes of people (I'm betting that queerness is very heavily edited, even in its least explicit forms).

<comment><USER3> > they remove entire classes of people

They remove themselves, voluntarily. I have a problem with censorship by Twitter or Facebook because of their near-monopoly status on social media, but I have no problem if some small company serves their small target audience with censorhip that they choose themselves.

<comment><USER4> It's two different things indeed. Still, I do have a problem if it is the religious sect censoring but I do not if it is a company offering that service to the religious, and customers choose to use it, but not because a religious leader said so. This is because religious leaders have too much power, easily becomes cultish, I'm really afraid of religions that are just ways to make money, I think it's unethical, and because religion can be like a drug, if you add censorship into the mix, it's too dangerous. Basically, don't put censorship into the hands of powerful entities, being it facebook, or religious leaders.

As a disclaimer, I'm a Christian, with a catholic upbringing. I like religions, I think it's an important part of human life, it's just that they can be very dangerous as well.

<comment><USER5> >don't put censorship into the hands of powerful entities, being it facebook, or religious leaders.

Umm, one of the core principles of religion is providing a framework for mortality. I'd say it's exactly within the scope of religion.

The practical implication of giving religious leaders "too much power" is a cost of religious freedom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a service you can pay for right now that does this on the fly for Netflix and other streaming services.

Edit 1: I just found this one: [https://www.vidangel.com/](https://www.vidangel.com/) but that's not the one I saw originally. Must be quite a popular service if there are competing providers.

Edit 2: It looks like vidangel got into trouble: [https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/vidangel-jury-verdict- dama...](https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/vidangel-jury-verdict- damages-1203245947/)

Edit 3: Here's another service: [https://clearplay.com/](https://clearplay.com/)

<comment><USER7> +1 for clearplay. My folks use it religiously (I don't mean it's literally because of religion, it's just an expression. But if I'm being honest, religion probably has to do with it) and I'm very grateful they do. My youngest siblings are adopted and have special needs, so while they're getting older and are really quite smart, they're extremely vulnerable to the influence of any media they consume, especially when they can't quite understand fiction vs nonfiction. Putting on clearplay 100% of the time when they watch a movie helps keep a lot of nasty surprises from doing so much damage.

<comment><USER8> I could see myself using this often if it was a built-in feature in netflix/primevideo.

Often I am trying to watch something of low importance on TV while kids are running in and out of the room and I'd rather not accidentally expose them to a pointlessly prolonged sex scene, which seem to be in every single tv show these days for no apparent plot reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've spent the first years of my life in Kuwait and that's how stuff you would see on TV was edited there.

It was actually pretty well done(at least from the perspective of a five year old).

Oddly, Baywatch went mostly uncensored.

</comment><comment><USER10> Growing up as a Mormon kid and seeing these DVDs around, I was always curious why it was legal, and none of the adults I asked had an answer, or even seemed to understand why it wouldn't be. It's funny to discover this article >10 years later and learn that the answer was "it's not."

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi, almost all the comments are missing the reason why copyright was infringed. To be fair, the Wikipedia article does not make that clear, and the rhetoric on both sides of the lawsuit tries to frame it as an issue of editing content and preserving the artist's wishes, which is not.

From a source article for the Wikipedia article ([https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4026743&itype=NGPS...](https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4026743&itype=NGPSID))

> CleanFlicks is a distributor that produces copies of Hollywood blockbusters > on DVD by burning a scrubbed version onto a blank disc.

They made copies of substantial portions of film without changing their essential creative expression. Today we'd recognize it as clear-cut copyright infringement.

On the other hand, as much as creatives and their publishers dislike it, the law is friendly toward those trying to subvert a work's creative expression; e.g. parody, remixes, etc. are protected by fair use.

If, for example, CleanFlicks restricted its operations to selectively scrubbing bought VHS tapes (without making copies), there wouldn't be a case.

<comment><USER12> What exactly is the difference between modifying copies produced by the manufacturer and creating new copies with unwanted content removed, provided the copyright holder still gets paid for each sale? Does it _really_ matter that they automated the process?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I saw the title I hoped this to be about a particular kerning issue ...

This is hypocritical at best.

If you don't want sexual content or profanity in your media then either create your own content or pay for the creation of such content.

Manipulating original content to suit your particular moral convictions not only truncates that content but also doesn't help with incentivising the production of original content you might rather want to see.

<comment><USER14> I see this reaction every time one of these services is discussed here. People with angry, even violent opposition to people fast-forwarding through parts of movies.

It's fascinating. I can't imagine an issue that could affect the parent's life less than this. And yet he and a couple other folks downstream are properly losing their soup over it.

As to the point in question, I tend to disagree that Disney will be disincentivised from making more Star Wars movies because of that time somebody skipped the "Luke's Parents On Fire" scene when showing Episode 4 to their kids the first time.

<comment><USER13> Fast-forwarding parts of movies for your own private use is entirely different from selling an unlicensed edited version of original content, which is precisely what CleanFlicks did.

Unless that content is licensed under a free licence that specifically permits you to remix content (e.g. some Creative Commons variants) selling an unauthorised edited version is unethical and probably illegal as well.

By arbitrarily removing parts of original content and publishing the changed versions CleanFlicks were altering it in ways the content creators didn't intend and it's perfectly understandably that those content creators don't want to be associated with these versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a legitimate idea executed the wrong way. If there is a genuine need in the market for such a service, surely the studios would cooperate (ideally with the director) in order to produce a clean cut?

Seems to me very similar to overdubbing with other languages. Definitely kills all the hard crafted work of sound design and nuance in actor's performance, something the director _should_ be the authority on - but deals are worked out and films are distributed with language tracks because there's huge global markets and it's ultimately a business decision.

<comment><USER12> Check out the VidAngel case where they tried to work with the studios to get a licensing agreement but were instead litigated against. They _wanted_ to work with the studios, but they wouldn't, so they found a way that they thought was technically legal.

There absolutely _is_ a sizable market for this type of content, but content producers don't want to budge. I think there are a lot of great films that have content I don't want my children watching, and my choices are either to find an edited copy or not consume the content. The problem is that the copyright holder's position is that I'm free to consume _other_ content, whereas my position is that I should be able to modify whatever content I purchase or pay to have access to.

Personally, I don't think copyright owners should have any standing to force consumers to consume content in the way the producer intended, they should only be able to offer the content or not. As long as there copyright owner is compensated for each sale, I see no problem with adding value, such as by editing the content or adding to it, provided the modifications are enumerated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this similar to what airlines used to do (maybe still do) when movies played on shared screens?

If it's opt-in I don't see a massive problem with such a service per se. Tricky to gauge how to move your kids to regular stuff though

<comment><USER17> The airlines don't do it. The company that owns the copyright creates edited versions for different venues.

<comment><USER16> thanks for that, I had assumed that it was the airlines but it makes sense that it's the copyright owners that do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hate this bullshit

</comment><comment><USER19> I would like to hear about the doublethink employed by the good mormon workers who compile these edit/skip timecode lists.

<comment><USER15> I'd imagine it's along the same lines as good police officers who sift through all the photographs, video, and audio recordings that conflict with their moral compass.</comment></comment>


Case study in how *not* to conduct a GDC demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/21/brain-controlled-gaming-system-falls-demo-hell

<comment><USER2> "You should come try it at our booth at the Game Developers Conference. Then you'll see it really works and we're not lying."

Ouch! I'm no PR expert, but I'd think that lying is one thing you neither admit nor deny. Best to just presume honesty, otherwise you'll wind up looking shifty either way.</comment>


I don't like what Facebook and Spotify are doing. - <AUTHOR> http://asselinpaul.calepin.co/i-dont-like-what-facebook-and-spotify-are-doing.html

<comment><USER2> The Washington Post reader has annoyed me to no end. I have to imagine they have generated a not insubstantial amount of ill-will from this app.</comment>


2009: Year of the hacker - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/12/25/2009-year-of-the-hacker/

<comment><USER2> Cool that the author keeps his eyes on Hacker News, but hard work is basically a pre-requisite to doing anything worthwhile. I mentioned in the referenced article that the guy has a higher calling in life. He needs to feel some purpose, and I think he gets easily tired of contract work (much like I do).

Nothing will change. Hard-working hackers will always get it right, and the slackers will always be weeded out of the system. What we're experiencing now is a massive weed out of people who chose to sit on salaries instead of innovation. Every year is the year of the hacker. We start companies on the dime and innovate faster than anyone else with almost no experience. We bring jobs and solutions at a pace that would make any Fortune 500 CEO's blood pressure rise to unsafe levels. We just don't get much news coverage. It's nice to see it when we do though.

</comment><comment><USER3> PG wrote an article a while back called "The Power of the Marginal" <http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html> the effect of the current crisis will create a multitude of people with marginal time whether because they'll be between jobs or because the jobs they have will be changed to part-time jobs to save costs, and the things we do with free time are nothing short of spectacular.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think 2009 is going to be the year of the hustler, which _isn't_ mutually exclusive with the term hacker.</comment>


Ask HN: Why did Google drop www.l.google.com CNAMES for standard A-records? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed Google switched away from CNAME-ing www.google.com and other www.google.tld domains (such as www.google.nl) to www.l.google.com. They now serve standard A-records, which strangely enough seem to be different for the .com domain compared to all others. For example from my location, querying the authoritative nameservers (ns1 to ns4.google.com for all domains I tried):

  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       220.127.116.11
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       22.214.171.124
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       188.8.131.52
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       22.214.171.124
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       220.127.116.11
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       188.8.131.52
 While I get the same IP for several countries:

  www.google.nl.          300     IN      A       220.127.116.11

  www.google.be.          300     IN      A       18.104.22.168

  www.google.de.          300     IN      A       22.214.171.124

  www.google.co.uk.       300     IN      A       188.8.131.52
 Also across continents:

  www.google.us.          300     IN      A       220.127.116.11

  www.google.com.br.      300     IN      A       18.104.22.168
 And:

  www.google.jp.          300     IN      A       22.214.171.124

  www.google.hk.          300     IN      A       220.127.116.11
 The single A-record returned for everything but the .com-version does change, but if it changes it changes for all TLDs at the same time and to the same new record. From another location (Germany instead of Netherlands) I observed the same thing, but with the same 3 A-records being returned each time instead of the single record as seen in the Netherlands.
Could anybody shed some more light on why they would switch from CNAME to A-records, and why the CNAME in the first place? And maybe in general more information on how their balancing/traffic-management seems to work? <comment><USER2> I thought Google only switched it from A-records to NSA-records...?

<comment><AUTHOR> The NSA does that for you when they carry out a MITM: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html)</comment></comment>


Sponsor My Time at a Startup Accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://mattluongo.com/post/sponsor-my-time-at-an-accelerator

<comment><USER2> Seems plausible. What about if you record a 15 minute video about their services, how great they are, why you are or are not using them, and why other people are using them. Then reach out to their pr + info@ + founder emails and give them your thoughts. Then perhaps they will look into what you can provide and take "the ball in their court" and come to help out.

If anything, it proves that you are serious about providing value and eyeballs to their services.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea! I'm definitely going to ping the companies I listed, but I hadn't thought about a video.

<comment><USER2> Of course! I took a quick look through meetup and found the following: <http://www.meetup.com/ProvEntrepreneurs/>

If you look on the left hand side of the page you'll see both sponsors and companies who give perks to those who attend the providence entrepreneurs meetup group. I would also call these people to see if they would be interested in your deal. Given that you are an entrepreneur in providence and they reached out to the organizer of a meetup group focused on entrepreneurs in providence, I'm sure you can make a super strong case.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should check out what this guy is doing: <http://www.iwearyourshirt.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's remarkable the difference I noticed in the comment's sentiment between your blog and HN. Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The things a poor founder will do...

<comment><USER5> I was going to downvote you for belittling the article, before I noticed that you're the submitter and author yourself.

Good luck with that idea. I have no clue if this can work, but I think there's nothing wrong trying it and I applaud the creative ideas (including the lasagna..).</comment></comment>


Yahoo data breach settlement claims - <AUTHOR> https://yahoodatabreachsettlement.com/ <comment><USER2> How do I get control back of an account that I lost control of years ago? During the compromise, changing my password did not remove the ability for others to use the account so I shut down the account. It was reactivated by not me and not my recovery info is currently on the account, still with access to all of my contacts and the ability to send emails as me. I have never been able to fix this. Yahoo is completely useless in this regard.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI - Appears any Yahoo (and Flickr and Tumblr) user is eligible for $100 + up to 5 hrs time at $25/hr (more if you provide documentation).

Deadline to file in mid 2020</comment>


UC Berkeley to remove public legacy libraries - <AUTHOR> http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-capture/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519761)

<comment><USER3> And 14 hours ago:

UCBerkeley Will Delete Online Content (insidehighered.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13803564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13803564)

72 points | 77 comments

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty sure this is almost entirely due to the fact that the videos must contain closed captioning and other accessibility options, which are too expensive to add.

It's a tough spot to be in. On the one hand, it's great to make all the content accessible to handicapped folks, but on the other hand, is society better off not having this material at all or having it without accessibility?

<comment><USER5> How do you judge which content then is released uncaptioned because it was impossibly expensive, and which because the creator prefers to keep their money? How many venues or historical buildings would have wheelchair ramps and lifts if they didn't have to or because it came down only to whether they could justify the cost?

<comment><USER6> The obvious answer is that you grandfather in existing content, and only require accessibility for content created after a certain date. That way, actual courses are accessible, and the roughly 7 billion human beings who don't go to Berkeley can still access the old content.

<comment><USER7> The ADA was passed in 1990. What's Berkeley's excuse here.

<comment><USER8> The content only exists because it's cheap to put online. If you require that someone transcribe it for closed captioning, it is like putting a tax on video uploads. They just won't be uploaded.

Barring some public funding to make it possible for institutions to caption videos, which would be the reasonable solution, the demand for captioning vastly raises the barriers towards putting content online.

<comment><USER9> _The content only exists because it 's cheap to put online. If you require that someone transcribe it for closed captioning, it is like putting a tax on video uploads. They just won't be uploaded._

Because it's prohibitively expensive, or because they can't be arsed?

I used to assume the prohibitively expensive angle, but DEF CON has had live closed captioning for 3 or 4 years now, and is done so the recorded material can be used in classrooms with accessibility requirements. If DT can afford it, I have little regard for people who pretend to be committed to educating the masses and still don't bother.

<comment><USER10> DEFCON also has a budget of millions of dollars to host a 4 day event, as well as a very loyal and dedicated team of volunteers. What value is there in comparing such a vastly different organization?

<comment><USER9> ...at $240 a head. That's what sticks out to me. If anyone is entitled to cut this corner on cost, certainly they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember reading about people years ago who went around suing various restaurants and businesses because they were not ADA compliant (ramps and a handicapped parking spot type of thing). So they would sue them and show they had standing (due to some disability they had) and most of the companies would make the modification and settle out of court for like 10-20k. Rinse and repeat. So I imagine that the UC system along with other online course providers realized that they were likely to get sued based upon the ADA violation. My thinking is that somebody should push for having a law that states something like this: "for content created for the public good such as educational material that is provided in an archival form without cost shall not be required to be ADA compliant".. So basically if you are willing to give the content away for free, then you should not be required to annotate it. If you want to charge for it, then you need to comply with the law.

<comment><USER12> FYI: the lawyer responsible for most of the ADA lawsuits is a scam artist (in my opinion). He was involved with Prenda law and disbarred for his conduct in those cases.

[http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/prenda_law_attorney_w...](http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/prenda_law_attorney_who_switched_to_ada_suits_is_suspended_says_hell_contin/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nowadays, people talk about _possible_ discrimination like it's _real_ discrimination and want it be punished. This should not be right. Possible wrongdoing is not real wrongdoing, and you cannot have people punished for it, and should not pass laws to prevent it.

I'm not American so I don't know a lot. With what I've heard, political correctness is more about possible discrimination.

There is an old Chinese story. A Chinese emperor once demanded all brewing tools to be confiscated because he didn't want people to drink when there was an ongoing war. One day when he was walking with one of his advisers, the adviser asked him to arrest a man as a rapist. "How do you know, it's a total stranger," the emperor asked. "He got the tools to rape," answered the adviser. The emperor laughed and revoked the absurd rule.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is an amazing opportunity for somebody "independently wealthy" to make a real difference: set up a fund that pays for close-captioning of any free content coming out of Berkeley.

<comment><USER15> Why some body rich? Why not start NGO like website for this? each of us,would contribute a little bit 1$. And that site would have investment to recurit people for subtitling.

Is this idea feasible?

P.s. Your idea completely makes sense. I wish google instead of wasting money in many different ways(for example starting cs education site , which of course will be not even close to what Berkeley offers) would do this. Anyone would do this ,would become my here, literally.

<comment><USER14> By all means, if crowdsourcing can work in this case, that would be a great positive example of community taking responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The letter from the DoJ is quite threatening, and it demands (literally on the bottom line) that UCB pay restitution to the "aggrieved" (I suppose this refers to the two individuals specifically named as complainants?). No amount is specified, but it seems like a form of extortion: 1) complain to the DoJ about something on the Internet freely available, 2) get a check in the mail (at the expense of California taxpayers, on the other side of the country), 3) profit?

However, it also states this:

> UC Berkeley is not, however, required to take any action that it can > demonstrate would result in a fundamental alteration in the nature of its > service, program or activity or in undue financial and administrative > burdens.

Given the obviously prohibitive costs of transcribing all of these freely shared lectures (including describing all charts, graphs, tables, and other visual aids), it seems clear that UCB should not be required to transcribe all of the videos, nor remove them from public access. This is a travesty of justice.

<comment><USER17> _No amount is specified, but it seems like a form of extortion_

It's a result of California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which states that private plaintiffs can receive monetary damages for discrimination. Most states don't have this provision, IIRC.

It does serve as a way to get the public to do the work for the State, rather than having to provide for ADA inspectors and such.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure? The letter was from the USDoJ, so shouldn't they only be concerned for federal law? They surely don't spend time and money enforcing state laws. (I don't feel like combing through it a second time to be absolutely sure that CA law wasn't mentioned.)

<comment><USER17> Nope, not sure, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems to be about time to apply youtube-dl and create a torrent of the result.

<comment><USER6> If the archive was available under an appropriate license[0] then it'd be trivial to scrape the site and stick the files on s3. It's even got a bittorrent tracker built in.

I suppose there's no chance of getting it relicensed?

[0] for example, [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How much does it cost to generate compliant closed-captions, e.g. per hour of video? Every article I see on this issue talk about how unaffordably expensive it would be, but no one provides a number to put things in perspective.

<comment><USER20> The ballpark I've heard is $1/minute. Auto-generated captions were considered not good enough by the courts.

<comment><USER21> This seems like a troubling precedent. It is entirely possible that the judgement was correct at the time but what about as technology advances? Are there other examples of prescriptive judgements like this which prevent new technology from being applied?

<comment><USER22> There's nothing preventing new technology from being applied.

In this specific case the court looked at the results of the technology and found a significant number of errors.

New technology that does't have that many errors is probably fine.

<comment><USER21> Well then I suppose that's the question. Did the court specifically say that software cannot be used or did the court provide a minimum standard of quality that can be applied to any method?

<comment><USER22> [https://news.berkeley.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...](https://news.berkeley.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08-30-UC-Berkeley-LOF.pdf)

> The Department found that of the 543 videos it could identify on the YouTube > channel, 75 had manually generated closed captions. Of the remainder, many > had automatic captioning generated by YouTube's speech recognition > technology. In March 2015, the Department selected 30 videos – 15 with > manually generated closed captions, 15 without – for review. The 6 lectures > were selected across a sample of subjects and based on popularity. Examples > of barriers to access on UC Berkeley YouTube channel content included the > following:

> 1\. Automatically generated captions were inaccurate and incomplete, making > the content inaccessible to individuals with hearing disabilities.

> 2\. Approximately half the videos did not provide audio description or any > other alternative format for the visual information (graphs, charts, > animations, or items on the chalkboard) contained in the videos. For > example, in one video lecture, a professor pointed to and talked about an > image and its structure without describing the image, making it inaccessible > to individuals with vision disabilities.

> 3\. Some visual content presented in the slide presentations had low color > contrast. For example, two video lectures referenced computer code on the > screen that had insufficient color contrast, making it difficult for an > individual with low vision to discern. Another video lecture used different > colored lines on a graph, but the colors could not be differentiated by an > individual with low vision.

It's not just old content created with old tech.

> In January of 2016, the Department reviewed ten new and archived courses > available on UC BerkeleyX. The Department observed some improvement in new > and archived courses, including the addition of closed captions on some > content, but in general, the new courses had most of the previously reported > accessibility issues and the archived courses were still inaccessible. > Specifically, the Department found that both new and archived courses are > inaccessible because many have incorrect alternative text, videos without > captions, undefined headings, a lack of color contrast, inaccessible PDFs, > and inaccessible keyboard links.

People seem to be focusing on captioning. That's part of the problem, and maybe the hardest to solve, but it's not the only problem. There also seems to be a focus on hearing impairment, but deaf people aren't the only people with disability that Berkeley chose, illegally, to exclude.

> Between March and April 2015, the Department reviewed the sixteen MOOCs then > available to the public on UC BerkeleyX. None of the courses reviewed were > entirely accessible. For each course reviewed, it would be difficult for an > individual with a hearing, vision, or manual disability to understand the > content conveyed to course participants. Examples of barriers to access > found across most course content included the following:

> 1\. Some videos did not have captions. As a result, the audio content in the > video was inaccessible to people with hearing disabilities.

> 2\. Some videos were inaccessible to people with vision disabilities for > several reasons. First, many videos did not provide an alternative way to > access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or > urls on slides), such as audio description, alternative text, PDF files, or > Word documents. Second, videos containing text sometimes had poor color > contrast, which made the text unreadable for those with low vision. Finally, > information was sometimes conveyed using color alone (for instance, a chart > or graph would differentiate information only by color), which is not > accessible to individuals with vision disabilities.

> 3\. Many documents were inaccessible to individuals with vision disabilities > who use screen readers because the document was not formatted properly. For > instance, headings were sometimes neither defined nor arranged in a logical > order; page structure was not always defined, contained empty elements or > was incorrectly defined; some tables did not have row and column headers > defined; math equations were not always defined in a comprehendible way. > Many PDFs either did not have a tag structure defined or the tag structure > was incorrect. Individuals with vision disabilities who use screen readers > would have a difficult time understanding and navigating the content.

> 4\. Some links were not keyboard accessible and did not indicate whether > they were expandable or collapsible, so individuals with vision disabilities > who use screen readers may not understand the purpose of the links and > individuals with manual disabilities would not be able to use the links.

> 5\. Websites and materials that were integrated into the course material > were not fully accessible

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a California taxpayer funding the UC system, I'd like to be able to access the new content. At the very least my California ID should be accepted as authentication for access

<comment><USER8> Ironically, it appears to be the laws specific to California that are putting Berkeley in a bind. In other states, they'd be able to cite administrative burden and tell the complainants to pound sand. But CA has a well-intentioned but terribly-used law that would still allow users to claim discrimination and force Berkeley to cut them a check for damages.

It is unfortunate that Berkeley couldn't transfer ownership of the archive to an institution located in a different jurisdiction.

The ultimate solution would appear to require a legislative change in CA, though, so perhaps by pulling everything down and creating some public concern, they are doing the right thing in the long run.

Good luck if you live in CA getting the law changed...

<comment><USER24> Release to public domain would solve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Something similar seems to have happened previously to MIT and Harvard. ([https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/education/harvard-and- mit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/education/harvard-and-mit-sued- over-failing-to-caption-online-courses.html)).

Has that impacted OCW availability? I was noticing a lack of newer OCW material, but I have no data to substantiate that perception.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm lost. why not just run the content through a modern voice to text API? They are pretty good and youtube has their own voice to text captions, right?

<comment><USER27> I actually think there is room for a "human-assisted collaborative captioning" effort. You'd start with the results of automated speech recognition, and then you'd add in Google Docs-style collaborative editing of the closed captioning / fan subs.

Imagine if you could save a video by watching it and correcting the typos in the existing transcript.

But there's no way it'd be a viable business. (That's Rev, and it costs $1/minute, and it doesn't even give you a .srt file that you can upload to YouTube.)

Plus, you'd have to deal with spam/abuse, and creative uses of captions (e.g. niconico).

I tried building a prototype of this in college, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work financially, so I had to take a paid summer internship at YouTube.

<comment><USER28> This has existed for years: [http://amara.org/](http://amara.org/)

<comment><USER27> To put it lightly, the Amara platform needs work. If you try to sign in with both Google and Facebook and the same e-mail address, you end up creating two separate accounts that are impossible to link/merge. Never mind that people have multiple email addresses and phone numbers and YouTube accounts in real life.

If it has existed for years, why wasn't it used to save the UC Berkeley library videos?

I'm thinking more of a Google Docs style interface, where you can make a lightweight edit (only one or two lines of captions) and someone else can _concurrently_ time and edit other lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can they do something like caption content only as requested instead of preemptively captioning _all_ of it? Is there some time limit on how quickly the content must be made available? Can they caption only the most commonly accessed content up to $x/yr up to whatever Berkeley can afford for accessibility?

<comment><USER8> A reasonable solution would be similar to what has traditionally (since the early 20th century) been done with books for the blind in the US via the Library of Congress.

See: [https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-167/](https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-167/)

The government, at public expense, provides Braille books and "talking books" to blind readers on demand. If someone requests a title that doesn't have a Braille edition, the (Federal) government will pay to have one made. They're distributed through the public library system and recovered after use to be lent out again.

A few years ago there were some articles around about the Braille and talking editions of the Harry Potter books, which were produced so that they could be released at the same time as the regular print editions for sighted readers. Quite cool. I think the government will also do periodicals (there are regularly Braille copies of national magazines at my local library, which they seem to get out within a few days of the regular edition).

Aside from the unwieldy size of Braille books, it seems like a pretty nice system. It's a trivial cost in government terms, and it serves a community that would otherwise not have a reliable source of content. I'm sure it's imperfect and could use improvement (though I think they now do talking books digitally), as most public programs could, but it's existed and been basically uncontroversial for generations.

What it does not do, of course, is it does NOT obligate traditional publishers to produce Braille editions. That would be ridiculous, and would vastly cut down on the number of books that could be published by increasing the cost, and would result in more Braille content than there's really a demand for anyway. It's a completely insane way to try to increase accessibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are there any particularly good courses that I should try to download ASAP?

</comment><comment><USER30> Bureaucracy and profit-maximization drive what was academia away from archivism and towards digital impermanence (linkrot).

Plus, the whole "old equals bad" consumerism rationalizations.

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems ripe for becoming an ominous pattern, e.g.:

"This ____ will also partially address recent findings by the Department of Justice which suggests that ____ meet higher ____ standards as a condition of ____."

And if ____ is not done, and the ____ does not meet the higher ____ standards, will the Department of Justice cause it to ____?

<comment><USER16> Interesting downvotes. Let us all hope that my observation is never validated, however I think enough examples exist already which could be considered to do so.</comment></comment>


Burt Rutan: An Engineer's Critique of Global Warming 'Science' - <AUTHOR> http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is quite possibly the worst anti-global warming document I have ever read in my life.

He's got a lot of really bad arguments. His "Modern Human-Extinction Scares" slide is an ad-hominem at best. The very next slide is a blatant appeal to authority (in himself). And the very slide after that basically says "Scientists are stupid and get to be wrong a lot". And then he goes into the "CO2 is good for plants, so nothing we do with it could possibly be bad" gripe.

And the "this chart is intended to _Inform_ , not _Scare_ "? I've seen less biased charts from James Inhofe. And apparently, the decrease in deaths from lightning in the US is proof global warming isn't causing an increase in disastrous weather.

I expected more from someone of his background. With opponents this stupid, it's no wonder climate change is generally accepted. I'm generally inclined to agree with the general premise that while the earth is warming, there's no strong evidence it is doing so catastrophically as a result of human interventions. But I'm ashamed to say such a thing in the face of such a dreadful slide deck.

<comment><USER3> If this is the worst, you must not have read very many :)

This is basically a nice collection of the arguments of the anti-global- warming crowd, not that well structured or anything but worth flipping through the slides at least.

I LOL'd at page 77, the trend-graph of seawater rise projections.

I doubt there is the evidence to support the twin claims that 1) a program of some sort could change the temperature trend and 2) humans would benefit from changing it.

I suspect that to the extent that humans have changed global trends, a large portion of it has to do with water vapor from our vast increase in agricultural irrigation and diversion. It is probably not possible to address that without starving a lot of people.

In fact, I think that inspite of any warming effect, we probably should be increasing the amount of water diversion and storage. If the water that is currently washing away whole towns in Australia could be stored somewhere or diverted into the desert, the payoff in world food prices and economy would be large. Those are the types of huge projects that typically can only be done by national or even international organizations, and if everyone is meeting in Copenhagen or whereever to discuss huge amounts of international money, that's what they should be talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At some point, all that carbon we're emitting was originally in the air.

The fossil fuels are from old plants, the plants took the CO2 out of the air and turned it into carbon-based biomass via photosynthesis.

A question I don't have the answer to - at that time when all that CO2 was still in the air, what was the CO2 concentration and what was the temperature? And if the two are causally related, would we be OK if the Earth reverted to that state?

A flippant point... would someone like Burt Rutan whose life's mission is to build innovative aircraft running on fossil fuels be OK with the notion that fossil fuels were messing up the planet?</comment>


'Guys ask for more money': why female-led startups underperform - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/08/guys-ask-for-more-money-why-female-led-startups-underperform <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who find papers linked in these articles [1]all fluffy and stretched out in presentation?

Why can't they just be text like other papers?

What purpose does putting a bunch of unrelated picture and different fonts everywhere fullfil?

1] [https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functio...](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/Delivering%20through%20diversity/Delivering- through-diversity_full-report.ashx)</comment>


A Chicago Newspaper That Bought a Bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.topic.com/the-story-behind-the-chicago-newspaper-that-bought-a-bar <comment><USER2> Newsrooms and bars are like twin brothers. You pick any newspaper, and there is always THE watering hole for it, usually the very nearest one.

For the Baltimore Sun, that was the "Midtown Yacht Club" and the joke was in its name, in that it was nowhere near the water. Anyhow, about a decade or so, the guy owning it decides to sell the bar and finds a buyer quickly. He starts liquidating some of the non-related assets and then finds a ream of papers in the basement he had forgotten about.

The managing editor, who was helping him close the bar that night (though not in a working capacity) asks him about the ream. Turns out, it was a block of UPC barcodes the barowner had purchased a decade prior, as a sort of investment, and forgotten about.

When he bought them, they were a moment's whim to a pushy salesman, and a few pennies. By the time he was selling the bar, the UPC barcode ecosystem had gone through a huge growth and the allocated numbers were used up. Prices and renewals shot up through the roof to where it was prohibitively expensive to add new products to the market. And he was sitting on a whole block of addresses.

He ended up selling that contiguous barcode block for far more than the bar was worth, and retired.

<comment><USER3> Source? I can't find a single mention of UPC codes and the Midtown Yacht Club online. [0]

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?dcr=0&q="Midtown+Yacht+Club"+u...](https://www.google.com/search?dcr=0&q="Midtown+Yacht+Club"+upc)

<comment><USER2> It never made it as a story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating, thanks for the share. For the interested, the full 25 part series in its original form is available as newspaper scans here: sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-zay-n-smith-chicago-sun- times

<comment><USER5> [http://sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman- za...](http://sites.dlib.nyu.edu/undercover/mirage-pamela-zekman-zay-n-smith- chicago-sun-times)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is absolutely brilliant. I hope the current fears over the demise of 'real journalism' are overblown, and that we never lose the news outlets who will back type of work no matter what it costs.

<comment><USER7> Sadly it's easy to do lots of things "no matter what it costs" when you're swimming in ad revenue.

The demise of journalism is largely tied to the deep pockets being gone. Gone are the days of being able to afford to have a reporter working on a single story for months or years.

If you want this kind of thing, you have to pay for it. Subscribe to newspapers you think are making a difference.

<comment><USER8> More so than swimming in ad revenue, said revenue was funneled first and foremost to cover journalistic expenses, not dividends for shareholders.

I have seen one too many newspapers be subject to a leveraged buyout, that then lead to the advertisement division spun off as its own company, and the rest left to rot.

<comment><USER5> David Simon's lecture, "The Audacity of Despair", addresses this.

Roughly mid-way through, I believe around 40 minutes or so.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I think one of the things that amazed us is that these inspectors sold out > public safety on the cheap. They were not taking huge amounts. We were told > to leave $10 for one inspector, and $25 for another inspector.

According to inflation, that's $40.25 and $100.62 in today's dollars. That's pretty much a joke!

[https://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=19770...](https://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25&year1=197707&year2=201708)

<comment><USER10> It seems like a joke, but the amounts make sense.

It can't be so expensive that all of the inspectors' combined bribes become too expensive for the least able institution to afford. You don't want the bribes to be such a burden that someone complains, either. When you're inspecting possibly multiple businesses in a day, 5 days a week, all those "cheap" bribes add up to a nice tax-free bonus paycheck on top of what the government is paying you to do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brehon Tap is a fave of mine. I like dropping in.

I have to give Kudos to Pam Zekman and her colleagues for having the massive courage to pull this off.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another interesting story about the bar (Brehon) - a guy started a successful pharma advertising agency out of that bar! They actually used the pay phone as their phone line. The business is still successful and located about a block away, called Closerlook.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now the bar is an Irish pub called the Brehon Pub. It doesn't look all that great inside. But it does have clean beer lines.

<comment><USER14> Their waffle fries aren't bad either.

<comment><USER13> You're right. Those are freaking great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting story. I'm also surprised by the $18,000 asking price. Seems cheap even with inflation.

<comment><USER9> It's $72,448 in today's dollars.

[https://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=18%2C000&year1...](https://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=18%2C000&year1=197707&year2=201708)

I suspect the business itself had issues and the owner just wanted out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _and whatever inspector we would have to deal with and we should leave an envelope with a certain amount of cash, and he told us what the cash amount should be for each inspector. And how to do it all!

Bill: He was one of those guys, after you shake his hand, you want to go wash._

</comment><comment><USER17> Systemd walks into a newspaper...</comment>


DuckDuckGo and Wolfram Alpha are now official partners - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/04/duckduckgo-and-wolframalpha-are-now-official-partners.html <comment><USER2> Here is the Wolfram|Alpha announcement: [http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2011/04/18/wolframalpha-and- duc...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2011/04/18/wolframalpha-and-duckduckgo- partner-on-api-binding-and-search-integration/)

<comment><USER3> Awesome job. Ignore the haters.

<comment><USER4> DDG has haters?

<comment><USER5> Scroll down. Or don't, your not really missing anything by skipping that thread.

<comment><USER6> There don't appear to be any DDG haters in the threads on this article. There are two people who seem to hate (or at least dislike) Stephen Wolfram, though.

(Disclaimers: I have showdead on, this is accurate as of 9:31 PM, GMT).

<comment><USER5> I read it as haters of the deal rather than haters of DDG. For example, thebooktocome made a comment saying that (s)he was done with DDG because of the deal. Sorry if it was confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is potentially really good news. I've always loved the concept of W|A but hated the implementation. While very good at answering specific queries, it's no good at incidental or exploratory knowledge discovery - it's kind of out of the way, a little on the slow side, but most importantly it doesn't link externally (or even internally). I get the vibe that the W|A crew have an excellent idea and are doing an excellent job, but don't really "get it" when it comes to everyday usability. As they admit in their subtitle, they've built an engine, not a whole machine.

On the other hand, usability is DDG's killer app as far as I'm concerned. The focus on ease of interpretation as well as interaction is really valuable.

Simply having W|A's answer on the same page as a bunch of direct links to alternative sources is valuable enough.

But if I get a bit excited, if the power of the vast knowledge & computational ability of W|A finds its human voice through DDG, it could start to bridge the gap between "search" and actual knowledge retrieval. It's one (good) thing to remove 1 click by showing a number relating to a simple query - it's another thing to remove 50 clicks and 45 minutes of research and assessment to establish the answer to a one-step-above-simple query.

What I'd love to see as a start is for W|A to provide facts & figures against results returned through DDG. Eg. Search the web for "most popular travel destinations in europe", and be able to summon demographics, exchange rates, even trip prices for each result.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great news, my suggestion: ditch the "time calculated" info on Wolfram results.

I personally don't care that something was "Computed by Wolfram|Alpha at Mon Apr 18 2011 19:31:47 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)"

Just "Computed by Wolfram|Alpha" would suffice

<comment><USER9> Yes, or use a much lighter font on the WA timestamp, now it is too prominent.

As an example, try to parse this result for "fathers day 2011":

"Sunday, June 19, 2011 Computed by Wolfram|Alpha at Tue Apr 19 2011 08:31:06 GMT+0300 (FLE Daylight Time)""

<comment><USER9> An improvement is already live regarding this, it used to have the same font size and color for the result and the timestamp. However I would personally make the WA date/time even lighter;

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=fathers+day+2011>

Looks like this now:

<http://www.webpagescreenshot.info/img/70578-420201195614AM>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haven't tried them in awhile - I must say the ui/results are much better than all my previous experiences - is it wrong that I really miss the estimated results at the top of searches?

Also, they need to disregard the Wolfram result when it's useless:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=population+of+nyc+in+2020>

<comment><USER2> Thx -- will do.

<comment><USER2> Update: fixed.

<comment><USER11> The founder of the 3rd or 4th biggest English search engine responding to and fixing issues from a HN thread. Awesome. _switches to DDG_

<comment><USER12> That is major motivator for using DDG. If you find something wrong, just tweet it (or somehow convey it to Gabriel), and he be on top of it in no time.

<comment><USER13> Just wait till it gets bigger and he's unable to answer them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Users of the up-and-coming search site DuckDuckGo know that the site is unique because it doesn't track history, contains less spam, features a cute bow tie-wearing duck, and provides zero-click information that immediately pops up under the search box.

\-- from Wolfram|Alpha announcement_

Do not underestimate the bow tie-wearing duck feature. I'm sure Bing and Yahoo knockoffs are around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there a name for the Duck Duck Go duck?

If not, I find "Newton" would be rather apt.

<comment><USER16> Is there a need to name him/her? I find myself saying "I'll ask The Duck" as the equivalent of "I'll google it". I don't feel I need to get more personal than that :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's pretty cool that you guys negotiated this and they were reasonable.

<comment><USER2> They seem to generally take a very long-term view of things and are very reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats! I remember when WolframAlpha tried getting DuckDuckGo's app off the app store for linking to them... Glad to see them playing nice, now.

<comment><USER2> That wasn't us actually :) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271580>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great news! I have just one request - please never sell out to Goog, Yahoo, or Bing. We need a clean independent alternative and DDG is it for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you look at the traffic stats for WolframAlpha, it has the highest rank in Nigeria: <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wolframalpha.com>

I find this interesting.

<comment><USER21> Third-party visitor statistics say nothing about the actual audience of a website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> DuckDuckWolf?

<comment><USER23> DuckWolfGo

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> very nice: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=x^2>

</comment><comment><USER25> There goes my support for DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER26> Err.. why?

<comment><USER27> Have you met Stephen Wolfram? He makes Donald Trump look humble.

<comment><USER28> A major corporation with an arrogant CEO? Imagine that.

<comment><USER29> A major corporation with an arrogant CEO who _received a Ph.D. in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology at age 20,joined the faculty there, and received one of the first MacArthur awards in 1981, at age 21_. Lets cut him some slack for being awesome.

\-- _from wikipedia_

<comment><USER30> He is, nonetheless, considered insufferably arrogant even by the standards of other geniuses (and CEOs).

Does any of this matter for his products? Naah. Mathematica and Alpha are good, and as for A New Kind Of Science... well, I doubt I'll ever bother to read enough of it to find out.

<comment><USER31> I spent two hours chatting with him at a conference recently. I did not experience any arrogance, insufferable or otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why America's Schools Have a Money Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem <comment><USER2> I find it tragic that we set federal standards for our public schools and yet place the majority of the financial burden on the local municipalities. That a (public) school's success is correlated so strongly with local property taxes is a real serious problem that should be addressed by federal intervention and better appropriation of funds.</comment>


Ask HN: How long did you stay in your first job? - <AUTHOR> Additional question: How much money did you make from your 1st job? For e.g. Yearly salary, bonus, equity etc. <comment><USER2> 2.5 months for an internship. Made $15/hr in Los Angeles (lived in Culver City)</comment>


Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/06/stripe-and-ab-testing-made-me-a-small-fortune/ <comment><USER2> At ConversionVoodoo we've found that the gains pulled out of cart-work are staggering vs. other areas in your funnel - 50%+ improvements to be had even on high volume / "well optimized" projects (10k+ sales/mo).

Three easy places to start:

a) Simplify the UI - Make it as simple as possible for people to enter their payment details - large fonts, cross-browser tested, minimal pages, optimized for the lowest screen resolution of your average user on up.

b) Reiterate TRUST messaging - testimonials or buying popular symbols (Verign /McAfee / etc) and even dialing in the PLACEMENT of those logos is high-value eg [http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper- placemen...](http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of- trust-logos-can-make-a-huge-difference-in-conversion-rate/)

e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" via email good for 24hrs to complete order, calling dropped carts, or hitting a pop-up of live help or similar is easy money.

Add to this all the usual - proper messaging on buttons, lightning fast response times, mobile optimized version too, etc and you instantly gain a massive advantage over your competitors.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I am not a target customer for modern e-commerce. I would never return to a store that had behaviors like this:

> e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" > via email good for 24hrs to complete order,

Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices

> calling dropped carts.

harassing people offline after they leave your store?

> or hitting a pop-up of live help

Does anyone believe in live help? All I ever see it do it block content I am trying to read, providing the equivalent of menu-driven CLI (the scripts agents follow) when I already have a powerful GUI in front of me.

<comment><USER4> patio11 and other wise people have said this much better than me, but here goes: you are not like most people. You are likely to be a hacker, engineer or at least a computer power user. Most people are not. These techniques will work and print money with these other people which are not like you, and _they are the majority_.

<comment><USER5> _patio11 and other wise people have said this much better than me, but here goes: you are not like most people._

After realizing this, one must then get over the idea that accepting money from such people is unethical.

<comment><USER6> Why is it unethical?

Many people are nervous - even scared - when purchasing online, because of the numerous stories of "having stuff hacked".

Live help lets them know there's a human being at the end of the line.

Abandoned carts are often a manifestation of that fear - so again, contacting them afterwards lets them know that there's a real person there.

And many people like the idea of something but when it comes to the actual commitment get cold feet - discounts can help in that case.

<comment><USER5> I didn't say it _is_ unethical, just implied that it's possible to have the _idea_ that it's unethical. Maybe accepting money from less technologically capable people feels like unfair manipulation to some. Maybe the idea was planted as unwitting sabotage by intimidated, less technologically capable people trying to counteract a feeling of inferiority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > This means that their credit card details never hit your server.

One thing I've been seeing recently is that some implementations using Stripe DO have the CC details hitting their server. The most common case being when Javascript is disabled the form posts to the website because the developer didn't design with graceful degradation, a dangerous mistake when mixed with credit card numbers.

It doesn't appear to be a problem for you (your payment page for CC info doesn't gracefully degrade with JS disabled and is impassible - you might want to fix that!) but I've seen it on other sites, and it's especially a problem when other sites don't use SSL as a fail safe for this sort of case which I have also seen. For Stripe it might perhaps be worth considering denying all payments from non HTTPS pages for this reason. It forces the merchants to have an SSL failsafe.

Also with CC info being entered on your site, it's presumably trivial for the site itself to record the CC numbers. Trust is the issue here, I'm not going to be entering my CC number on a site I've never heard of, with no reputation. Stripe doesn't solve this issue, Paypal does. Stripe looks wonderful, but it's not going to be suitable for everyone.

<comment><USER8> I worked on something with credit card processing a few years ago. As I remember, it doesn't really matter if the details hit your server, but the point is you absolutely can not _save_ them.

No putting them in a DB, no putting the in a log file (not even the last four or something like that), nothing. So if your form takes the numbers in, you make an API call, and then you blank them in memory you were OK.

If you put them in the user's session, you were in trouble.

It's all insanely complicated, and the only good solution is "don't do it." There's a good reason people use things like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net's CIM (where they store it and certify that they are PCI compliant).

<comment><USER9> To make sure there isn't confusion here, having card details go through your server, even if you aren't saving them, still can lead to certain PCI compliance burdens (e.g. you may need to get an audit from a PCI auditor verifying this).

Having the card never go to your server is the best way to make sure you are PCI compliant, as you mention.

<comment><USER10> One component is the transit security -is the data safe from interception in transit (on the network). The other component it security of the data at rest - is the data safe from interception if it comes to rest on your server (sessions, databases, etc.).

From data security standpoint is is easier to let somebody else do it, but end users tend to have a less satisfying checkout experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> God I hate posts about Stripe with a passion. It's like saying "You've had this pain in your back for the last five years? Well, I've got this miracle pill here that will not only make it go away, but it will also _taste great_. Oh, you're not in the US? Too bad then."

Stop reminding me I can't use Stripe all the time.

<comment><USER12> Stripe is beta testing internationally. I got an account in Canada about 2 weeks ago.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/stripe-square- international-e...](http://www.businessinsider.com/stripe-square- international-expansion-2012-7)

<comment><USER13> Great to hear, I'm just praying they remove the need for a social security number in the US.

One of the main reasons we chose the US to incorporate in was for access to business tools like this. But with neither founder having a SS number we can't use the service.

<comment><USER14> If you're signing up as a business, can't you provide an EIN instead of a SSN? I see the box for it in their account settings page, but since I'm using it as an individual, I haven't been able to test whether that works without an SSN.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately you need a SSN and EIN.

[https://answers.stripe.com/questions/if-i-have-an-ein-do- i-a...](https://answers.stripe.com/questions/if-i-have-an-ein-do-i-also-need- an-ssn-in-order-to-use-stripe)

<comment><USER15> I don't want to speak in Stripe's name but I suggest emailing Stripe and asking for an account based on EIN.

<comment><USER16> SSN shouldn't be published around since it is a key information to ones digital identity. I guess they do this for clients which are not companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stripe the service is fantastic. I just hope they can get the financial side together soon. They sent me a 1099 on April 14 this year (you know, one day before taxes are due). Fortunately I hadn't filed yet (I was literally typing everything in TurboTax as the postman came). Not only was that usually illegal (at least for traditional 1099's; I don't know if the same rules apply to 1099-K's...haven't looked), it was highly annoying as it was also the _second_ one they sent me (each with a different amount). Turns out they'd switched payment processors or something at one point and didn't bother to tell their customers to expect two 1099's.

Still using it. Great product. But I had to file an extension and crap to get it all sorted out, which was highly annoying.

<comment><USER18> Do payment processors even have to send you 1099?

If I'm not mistaken, Google Checkout and PayPal did not send me 1099 - I just had to report all the revenue received from them myself.

<comment><USER19> This is a good question and I would really like to see it answered.

<comment><USER20> They have to send you a 1099-K like all other payment processors... _if_ you made over $20,000 in gross sales in the year. I got one from PayPal in 2011.

[https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi- bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-c...](https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi- bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/IRS6050W)

<comment><USER21> I see, but I thought corporate tax was based off profit, not revenue?

<comment><USER20> How would PayPal know what your profit is? 1099s are informational forms. They inform you and the IRS how much someone else paid you. They are not directly used in computing your taxes. The purpose of the new 1099-K is to prevent you from receiving $x in credit card sales, then claiming you only had ($x / 2) in gross sales on your tax return.

<comment><USER21> Ah I see. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I work in the same co-working facility as an education-based startup that switched from using PayPal(where user gets redirected to PayPal) to Stripe (completely branded checkout) and their conversion rates increased 40% overnight and have stayed at those levels. After digging into their API, we're actually building our new company, MoonClerk, on top of Stripe's API. We'll basically be an abstraction layer on top of Stripe so that non-developers can use it and implement it on their site, with a focus on recurring payments (even though we do one-time payments). We really want to allow non-developers the ability to use Stripe.

<comment><USER23> How is this possible? Through Paypal customers can _also_ pay with credit cards, and even more. They can use checks, or bank transfers (very important in Europe where credit cards are not as popular), etc. Why would usage of Paypal decrease conversion compared to pure credit cards?

My guess is that a lot of customers don't know what Paypal is and don't realize they can just use their credit card.

<comment><USER24> And the PayPal flow is godawful - direct to a new page, get prompted to: 1\. Log in. 2\. Create Account. 3\. Enter payment deets. (Small text near bottom of page, not always available, depending on the merchant).

Even if you have an account, they don't consistently keep my default payment method - often switching back to my bank account even when I've made a CC my default.

This all adds up to a level of friction that I hate, hate, hate, hate as a user. I can understand people abandoning a purchase at that point.

<comment><USER22> In my experience with a nonprofit, on whose board I serve, this is exactly the case with PayPal. Even if you're very upfront before you send people to PayPal that yes, they can pay with a credit card, once they arrive at PayPal they get confused. I've even had PayPal show me a popup ad for a PayPal branded Mastercard when I was trying to checkout somewhere. Their UI isn't "branded" like the site that the customer was just on so that's confusing in and of itself. In addition, paying with credit card on a PayPal checkout page isn't the main action - you have to search for it. Combine all of those elements and you get a much lower conversion rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Stripe.js is a very well-implemented "or something", where JavaScript that they'll provide for you hooks into your credit card form with trivial work. (About ~6 lines for me.)_

If, like me, you don't like the idea of loading someone else's javascript into your own domain, the "web page" side of things can also be done by dropping a single <iframe> tag into your HTML.

</comment><comment><USER26> In case anyone is curious, here's Patrick's sales graph: <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month>

You can see the big jump in May-July (although the jump for July is 32%, not 53%)

<comment><USER27> Oopsie. Thanks for the correction.

<comment><USER28> Patrick, just noticed your Adwords spend went from $1000's to $0 suddenly. Looks like a disaster. What happened? Is Adwords no longer viable?

<comment><USER27> I got married. Lots of balls to juggle. "Send credit card statements to VA for entry into the bookkeeping software which automatically populates a few stats on the BCC website" wasn't very high on the list. My actual spend is probably as high as ever, but "Log into AdWords to check" also hasn't been high on the list.

<comment><USER3> VA?

<comment><USER4> Virtual assistant. Cheap off-shore outsourcing via the internet, a staple of lean startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _...I am not easily emotionally moved by git command lines..._

This is going on my "best of" list of HN-related excerpts

<comment><USER30> My feelings exactly. That line literally made me feel warm inside for a second.

 _I am not easily emotionally moved by git command lines, but this is clearly somebody who understands me and what I need in life_

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "(A customer had — I kid you not — a lightning strike hit her computer during checkout, and as a consequence the JS callback fired 36 times. This resulted in 36 transactions, which Stripe processed without complaint. Oops."

I can't believe the good old 'computer was hit by a lightning bolt' wasn't in one of your test cases, Patrick! I mean it's so obvious :P

More seriously, that is one of the wildest reasons for a bug I think I've ever heard.

</comment><comment><USER32> @patio11 Thanks a lot for mentioning me in your blog again. I was wondering why there was a spike in my visitor log.

I would love to do a redesign for Appointment Reminder if you're interested :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Patrick, I'm curious how you have been using Stripe as you are in Japan and it seems they only recently began expanding out of America. Is the business entity behind BCC registered in the US?

<comment><USER27> I signed up with my US address and banking information. "By registering for a Stripe Service Account, you are confirming to be either a legal resident of the United States, _a United States citizen_ or a business entity authorized to conduct business by the state in which it operates." (Though I finally got a DBA from Illinois, um, yesterday. Not related to Stripe -- a hospital wasn't thrilled with the notion of writing a particular flavor of check to a natural person.)

<comment><USER34> Could you elaborate more on this? What's a US address, and how did you get a bank account?

<comment><USER27> So let me answer the question behind the question first, which I take to be "I don't live in the US, but would like a US bank account":

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/08/15/banking-for-the-uisv/>

Now to answer the question you asked: I have lived in Japan for my entire adult life, but prior to that I grew up in the United States. I routinely use my former address, which my parents still live at, for business purposes. Even if it weren't trivial for me to open accounts online, I would still have accounts in good standing from e.g. my college student days, which are sufficient to bootstrap me into a customer relationship at any US bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> have to admit, that one of the reasons patio11 got Patrick (cofounder of Stripe) to help with customer support is because he's *the patio11

but great customer service is still great, no matter what.

<comment><USER36> Patrick is in the support rotation like most of us at Stripe. He'll answer your email too if you send it on the right day.

<comment><USER37> I would be very interested in how do you do ticket handoffs/tracking across multiple non-dedicated support people in your rotation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I currently use FastSpring to handle purchases of my software. What's the advantage to using Stripe instead of FastSpring?

<comment><USER13> Depending on your volume a lot of cash.

Fast Spring is 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order.

Stripe 2.9% + 30 cents.

<comment><USER39> Chase Paymentech - ~1.9% + $0.15 <\---- WINNER!

<comment><USER40> Stripe would end up costing an additional $20,000 a year or thereabouts for us.

Due to their instant sign-up and almost instant approval however, they were the only option for a quickfix while we await chase or braintree to approve our applications. :)

Love their UI & easy integration though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Just curious: are there any good options outside the US?

<comment><USER7> Basically, no. (I'm in the UK and am poised to jump to Stripe as soon as it becomes available).

<comment><USER42> There is the option of GoCardless (<https://gocardless.com/>) in the UK, however they use the Direct Debit system rather than card processing which does somewhat limit you geographically.

<comment><USER43> Aren't they really the "Anti-Stripe" more akin to Dwolla? Banish Credit Cards altogether? Also, I heard there were changes in European direct deposit/ACH laws (the approach Gocardless takes) that will allow them to be European, not just UK, very soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > "All three of these tests were null results. (i.e. No significant difference > in aggregate purchases between either of the two options" (for goog&payp vs > stripe, and several other combos)

This is a very interesting result. I would have thought that additional payment options would boost sales on the margin i.e. increase conversion by a couple of percent (not percentage points ;) for e.g. international customers, or people who already have accounts with GG/PP.

Patrick: Any chance you could elaborate a little more here? Would be very interesting to see some more detailed stats on this aspect.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for asking. So it turns out that two of them weren't null results, they were results against the change significant at 90% confidence. (Important difference for A/B testing practitioners, of only mild interest in context of the post.) I updated the post with the correction.

If you really like stats, well, here you go: <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/results> Rollover any conversion rate for raw stats.

"Offer Credit Cards As Sole Checkout Option" tested Stripe vs. the three checkout methods.

"Purchasing Page To Send People To"'s "Classic" is <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/purchasing.htm>, "Cc Checkout" was the hacky Boostrap CC form. (Not currently available online.)

"Offer Credit Cards As Checkout Option" was GC/PP/Stripe vs. GC/PP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can't wait to sign up for Stripe, as soon as they accept currencies besides the USD!

My bank account is in the states, but I need to be able to charge Europeans in euros, Brazilians in reais, Japanese in yen, etc...

</comment><comment><USER46> "Suffice it to say there is a) a customer group which needs between 8 and 15 cards and b) they really, really like pretty checkouts."

I think this is more "people who are on the margin where they MIGHT be interested in paying for more cards can be convinced when they hit the pretty checkout page". If you don't need more than 15 cards, you probably don't have a burning need for the paid version.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Is Stripe available outside of the US?"

"Currently Stripe is US only..."

</comment><comment><USER48> that's nice but you arn't US based because you live in japan so how did stripe let you in?

</comment><comment><USER49> could it just be his audience, I'm incredibly against adding my credit card on any site.

<comment><USER18> You are different from most of users buying on Internet. Most prefer entering credit card directly.

<comment><USER49> i find that really hard to believe in this day and age of cyber criminal and so much activity in terms of stolen identities.

<comment><USER50> Credit card fraud doesn't really affect the end user, except in time lost disputing fraudulent charged. Mostly the cost of fraud is born by the retailer who receives no money even though they have already shipped the goods.

That said, in 13 years of credit card use, I have been defrauded 0 times.

<comment><USER49> its still a huge pain in the a$$ , cancelling credit cards, changing any account associated with credit card, waiting for new one in mail, etc. Just the avoiding the potential headaches, is enough reason for me not to enter my credit card in sites. I really can't believe the sentiment of the avg user is that much different from mine

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Or spend a few hours, get a merchant account through a bank and authorize.net with much lower fees and a pretty standard API. Tons of classes to use authorize.net with and super simple... no point of adding ANOTHER layer... charging with a merchant account is trivial.

<comment><USER51> By hours, I assume you mean months. It took me just shy of two months to get my merchant account set up a couple years back.

In theory, you could do it in less time, but only if you already have your business licensed, registered and a business bank account set up in exactly the right way.

But since that's part of the list of things you need to do to get a traditional payment provider set up that Stripe doesn't require, it's a little disingenuous to pretend that setup times are in any way comparable.

I set up Stripe for two of my products recently. In both cases, it was a matter of minutes to get the account verified and processing real charges from real credit cards and having them sent to my bank account.

<comment><USER43> I think it's fair to say Stripe solved 4 problems. i) The time it takes to get a merchant account. It is only 24 - 72 hours unless something really goes wrong through other channels but with Stripe it's immediate. ii) The probability you'll get a merchant account (not a slam dunk for startups but 100% with Stripe?) Many developers hate dealing with financial institutions and then getting turned down is a bit humiliating. All of that's removed and iii) A great API/documentation that people love (although a few others have that) and iv) Pricing that is very simple and straight forward.

In return for doing all that work for you their fees aren't as competitive as other alternatives. That's fair given the work they do.

<comment><USER50> I'm going to add a 5th: Being really simple. The first time I tried to figure out what a merchant account was, and a payment gateway, and all the associated fees, etc, was just exhausting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've never heard of this service before but it looks quite interesting. I wonder though, how feasible is something like this for paying membership dues in a small club, for example? Is there some other service does this a lot better?

<comment><USER53> WePay makes that particular use-case very convenient IME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Stripe is a great service, but I get the feeling their PR company or marketing department promotes extensively here (Makes sense since its the target audience).

<comment><USER9> For what it's worth, we don't have a PR company or marketing department currently =).

We try not to post on HN unless we actually think people on HN will like the content (and we've argued internally before and decided not to post stuff to HN because it didn't seem useful enough).

<comment><USER54> Eh, I wasn't meant to be so cynical (It just came across that way because I suppose I am!)</comment></comment></comment>


TfL Kill Two of My Apps - <AUTHOR> http://mbarclay.net/?p=825 <comment><USER2> UPDATE 24/10/2010 @ 6pm: I have been informed that the change was part of a security update & that TfL are working on restoring the service immediately and are also fully committed to open data.

<comment><USER3> This should be at the top of the post, rather than right at the bottom... (Another case of malice or stupidity--stupidity wins a lot of the time.)

<comment><USER4> Yea, reminds me of malice vs stupidity <http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/stupidity-versus-malice/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TFL are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The blog poster should be able to get answers, documentation etc. through that.

If he really wants to scare the crap out of them he should also issue a subject access request for all data mentioning him, including emails and files. This type of thing sends a government funded agency into a complete tailspin.

<comment><USER6> Here in the States, the government knows full well how to deal with uppity citizens abusing our Freedom of Information Act.

We put them on hold for four years, then tell them it'll cost $1 million to get everything together.

[http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=157782&...](http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=157782&catid=346)

<comment><USER7> In the UK the max you can charge is £10 and I assume their is a time limit but not sure about that.

<comment><USER8> In law the authorities have 20 working days to respond, with a few defined exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The concept of "crown copyright" in the UK is stifling to innovation, backward, and shows no respect for those who pay tax.

We should ask our local MPs to do as the US have done, where government created IP is public domain.

<comment><USER10> > _We should ask our local MPs to do as the US have done, where government > created IP is public domain._

Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions but I'm thinking that even if the data were PD it wouldn't matter. They still need to get hold of it in the first place. The data is continuously refreshed, presumably, even caching the data returned by the API (for more than a short time) would be bad - trains|buses are delayed, break-down, there are strikes and closures, etc. and so transport services are in constant flux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Summary:

Developer's app depends on external API to function. He has sold thousands of apps and his customers are happy. Then, external API stops working. So, his app stops working. He wrote a long article complaining about the external API and its failure impacting his business.

</comment><comment><USER12> (Transport for London) disabled open journey planning API after supplier releases own commercial app.

<comment><USER13> I don't think you can say "after supplier releases own commercial app" without being a little dishonest:

 _I have been using this successfully for more than 6 months for both London Bus (now called London Travel Deluxe) and London Tube Deluxe Pro for iPad._

The blogger (and many commenters) jumped to conclusions way too quickly here.

<comment><USER12> > It's an uncomfortable coincidence that the XML API was closed down a week > after the removal of MDV's release of the 'My TfL' app.

I reworded the title based on my reading of the article where the above quotation is from. TfL was a meaningless acronym in the title, especially without any context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody else get confused by the title because of the British English practice of using the plural verb forms for (certain) collective nouns?

<comment><USER15> As a native British English speaker the title feels wrong to me, despite common practices.

Manchester United Win Football Game = fine

TfL Kill Puppies = ok, I suppose

TfL Kill My Apps = No, they _killed_ your app.

<comment><USER16> Why does it have to be _killed_ when Man U doesn't have to be _won_?

<comment><USER15> Without putting my linguist hat on (in the middle of a hack day) my gut feeling is the 'newspaper'ness of the title. "Entity Verbs Noun" is fine if it's an impartial style report, but "Entity Verbs My Noun" is only good if it is a continuous verb.

"TFL Kill All Hopes Of Timely Service", for example, would be OK.</comment></comment></comment></comment>