Facebook's dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior - <AUTHOR> https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/facebook-s-dominance-is-built-on-anti-competitive-behavior <comment><USER3> Thomas Philippon (NYU professor) has nice new book "The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets" [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237544)

Here is an interview with Philippon that has some of the main points: [https://promarket.org/2019/12/09/the-lack-of-competition- has...](https://promarket.org/2019/12/09/the-lack-of-competition-has-deprived- american-workers-of-1-25-trillion-of-income/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the very unhealthy dominance of Facebook will only start to properly recede when countries outside the USA start to block its use. This is a highly predatory company that takes away sovereignty in each nation's cyberspace and it really only makes sense for foreign countries to block it and either let their own national corporate replacements emerge (as China has done) _or_ foster the use of open social networks and protocols (my strong preference).

This doesn't solve the problem for people in the USA of course (well, other nations fostering open social networks will help some). The USA obviously needs to look at antitrust measures to fix the issue at home. But other countries can't afford to wait for that to happen.

<comment><USER5> Small countries can ban facebook from doing certain things. Ultimately, some sovereignty exists even in global commerce. If New Zealand made (eg) political advertising, targeted advertising, or such ilegal, Facebook would stop doing it in New Zealand.

That is treating the symptom, but it is not totally ineffective.

Treating the problem is dealing with the monopoly. The current state of antitrust laws, norms and regulatory pressure is entirely useless. It's entirely based around regulating 19th century monopolies, and tempered by 20th century failings.

Facebook, Amazon, & Google are not Bell. With the old infrastructure monopolies, regulators needed to break up the monopoly without losing the services & capital investments. They needed post-antitrust companies to still be viable.

Facebook doesn't have that problem. Facebook could disappear tomorrow and consumers would barely be inconvenienced. Social media is not in short supply and doesn't require much capital. Facebook didn't need to sink much capital into building it. Their competitors will not need much capital to replace it. All they need is for Facebook to move out of the way.

Antitrust action, at least in facebook's case, doesn't need to be precise. It just needs to be strong.

<comment><USER6> Maybe future generations will realize how shitty FB is and stop using it (one can hope!)

A bigger problem is FB owns much better products like WhatsApp - it is easy to quit FB than WhatsApp in my opinion

<comment><USER7> So you mean the solution to the FB "problem" is people using their own free will and it doesn't involve the Nanny State?

<comment><USER5> Nanny-state/libertarian arguments against antitrust are misguided.

I am against a nanny state. Deeply against it. It gets abused of power. is invariably useless and freedom is important for its own sake.

Monopolies extend these problems into the commercial realm. Nanny companies instead of Nanny State. Facebook is _worse_ than most state media monopolies.

It's like living in a company town and complaining about the nanny state. Just let the company rule us in peace.

<comment><USER7> Facebook doesn't have coercive power to force me to do anything. The government does.

It's not Libertarianism. It's a fundamental distrust of governments.

<comment><USER5> That's what I mean. Your distrust should extend to things that have the same qualities as "government." At the more monopolistic end of the spectrum, and in many real life examples, they're a type of government... in the sense that they govern. This can also be true of very powerful religious institutions.

Power, coercive or otherwise, is more complex than that.

If all media is state media, that's something to seriously distrust. If all media is FB, the church of england church... same problems. Whether or not media is "coercive" is uninteresting semantics.

Whether it's big tech or ccp "soft power" is a technicality. Abusable power is abusable power, and being nannied is a symptom.

Sure, you can still kinda hide from Facebook. Takes a little effort, but whatever. You can also get around the great firewall, if you really want to. A lot of chinese people do, some of the time. Most of the time though, most people read the state approved internet. Most of the time, most people are within the influence of the FB machine... and it's still gaining power.

<comment><USER7> Can Facebook have me arrested? Take my property via "civil forfeiture" or "imminent domain"? Can they force me to pay taxes? Do they employ police who can shoot me in the back to make me use their services? Can they hire people to choke me for nine minutes? Do their employees have military styled weapons who can be summoned to someone's house just by making a false report?

Comparing any modern private company's power to the government is like comparing a flea to the sun.

<comment><USER5> The only remedy to this is a history lesson. Do you know that the British Empire, and many of your colonies started as chartered monopolies? Not just history either.

Anyway, what do those things have to do with the nanny state? Treating "government" as a monolith is like treating "capitalism" as a monolith.

Comparing a police force to a media organisation is a bad comparison. You made it, not me.

<comment><USER7> You mean like the government that wants to outlaw end to end encryption, run by President who threaten to "shut down Twitter" because he said something they don't like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Antitrust laws were always based on supply side monopolies, while this is a demand side monopoly, and would be a tricky case for anti trust to prove.

If the mandate is to do what is best for customers, then the best solution I can think of is to let FB function as one entity but toughen the norms on data collection. The other thing is Facebook should not inhibit any other social network trying to grow using FB's graph. A good example is how Instagram grew with the import of Twitter social graph, and when it came to Facebook, it grew further because it could import the connections that Facebook already had access to. In the name of privacy, it is a good idea to block that, but that essentially inhibits any other social network growing and becoming big. If such an export is available and allowed (while satisfying the privacy concerns), this could enable competition in the social space. As a gatekeeper, Facebook has every intention not to allow any usage to the graph.

The idea about breaking up of social networks would not do any good. You would eventually have to solve multiple problems (and again and again) as the broken up entities either die or become dominant in a big enough niche. Even if you break up Instagram or Whatsapp from Facebook, they are still monopolies in their domains. Insta might not be able to survive since they used the Facebook's ad delivery intelligence, while Whatsapp would be a dominant monopoly in messaging nonetheless.

This is a landmark case if brought on, but needs to be dealt very smartly, if they want to actually solve problems and set the right precedents.

<comment><USER3> >Antitrust laws were always based on supply side monopolies

I don't think this is true. The idea that antitrust is only about supply and consumer benefit is extremely limited view. It came in flavor in the US late-1970's and it's known as "Chicago School of Antitrust Law". The defining book of that school is Robert Bork's 'The Antitrust Paradox' (1978).

<comment><USER9> I wonder were there any historical precidents of antitrust actions taken specifically when there wasn't control over suppply either horizontally or vertically resulting in the end of the chain being unable to compete.

Not taking this as evidence of "it never existed" but genuinely wondering if there was ever an obscure bit of precedence by "pure quality".

Microsoft's privileging of Internet explorer and its were a closer example of just anti-competitive but they also had the overwhelming computer market share sold.

I don't recall of any cases where so much as a patent was revoked just because it lead to far more market dominance than expected from the limited time. Even when it utterly devestated entire industries like what cloth mills did to the literal cottage industry weavers.

<comment><USER3> I don't think where this is coming from, but you seem to imply that there is case now with FB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Facebook obviously posses some interesting questions on various topics but framing the debate as Facebook collecting "monopoly rents" is ridiculous.

I haven't used Facebook since 2010 and I have never used Instagram.

If someone in my social network wants to send me some information they have my number and they can txt me. If someone wants to send me a picture they can do the same.

I don't use Facebook because ultimately for me it is completely redundant.

To call Facebook a monopoly is an analogy at best. You are not going to solve these problems through analogy though, these are uniquely new problems.

<comment><USER11> You are not the customer. Advertisers are.

Google and Facebook are the only games in town for online advertising these days; the fact both are making incredible amounts of money means either competitors aren't good enough, or are being priced out of the market, or squeezed out of it (due to network effects or anti-competitively).

For Google - the vast majority of whose income comes from search ads - <USER2> is no network effect. They are mostly much better (I try Bing every now and then, it's not even close; I set up ddg as my main search, but have to reach for google for about 1/3 of searches). However, they also employ tactics one could consider anticompetitive, e.g. paying Apple billions/year to be the default search engine on iPhones. YouTube does have a network-effect lock in, but AFAIK that's not really a revenue source for google. It does complete the advertising offering and keep newcomers out, though.

For Facebook - they are hardly doing anything better than competitors; it's all about the network effect. And they've been VERY busy making sure that every network which is big enough (or even growing quickly enough) to have its own network effect is either theirs (instagram, whatsapp) or sidelined (snapchat).

IIRC They paid $60M for Onavo - providing discounted bandwidth "safely encrypted" from the prying eyes of user's ISP but _totally_ visible to Facebook, which gave them a real-time sample of application and website use -- which gave them the insight needed to purchase rising stars Instagram and reigning king WhatsApp (and attack Snapchat after they refused a buyout offer).

You are not Facebook's customer. You are a user, Facebook's product, sold to Facebook's customers, the advertisers.

Facebook and Google have a duopoly on online advertising (which, especially now with lockdown, but even independently, is nowadays much of advertising). There are unique new problems with these new models, but Facebook is definitely one part of a duopoly, and likely a monopoly by any existing legal definition.

<comment><USER12> > YouTube does have a network-effect lock in, but AFAIK that's not really a > revenue source for google.

Just to clarify, YouTube revenue in 2019 was around $15 billion, which even for Google is not a small number.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the correction. I meant "profit", and wasn't even aware that YouTube revenue was disclosed this year for the first time (profit wasn't... and YouTube likely costs a lot more to run per $ earned than the search, but how you assign profits and costs is art rather than science).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only practice listed in the paper that could be construed as anti- competitive is acquiring other "social networks." However, it's a stretch to consider every website that a user can use a competitor to Facebook. It's not like Facebook acquired a MySpace or anything.

But why are acquisitions anti-competitive? Nothing forces the competitor to sell. Acquisitions prove people can compete.

It's a contradiction to say the network effect protects Facebook but at the same time say they had to buy Instagram because they were successfully competing despite the network effect. Facebook's network effect didn't stop Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc.

<comment><USER14> The paper lists five different things as anticompetitive, why do you disagree with their assessment? Allowing Vine to use your API and then blocking it after Twitter acquired it seems anticompetitive.

<comment><USER13> Because none of the things besides acquisition is anti-competitive in the context of anti-trust law.

Facebook doesn't owe competitors their data. It's _absurd_ to construe not actively helping competitors by giving them your data as "anti-competitive."

<comment><USER14> >Because none of the things besides acquisition is anti-competitive in the context of anti-trust law.

Have you read antitrust law? The Sherman Act is vague enough that anything that could be considered anticompetitive would violate the law. The "Rule of Reason."

> It's absurd to construe not actively helping competitors by giving them your > data as "anti-competitive."

Publicly agreeing to an agreement allowing something and then changing the terms to control how competitive they can be is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The actual paper is available for free download here: [https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/Roadmap%20for%20...](https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/Roadmap%20for%20an%20Antitrust%20Case%20Against%20Facebook.pdf)

On a related note, see also this work about Amazon on the Yale Law Journal: [https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust- parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)

Meanwhile, Google is already dealing with an antitrust lawsuit from 48 US states: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-antitrust- probe-48-u-s-s...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-antitrust-probe-48-u-s- states-launch-antitrust-investigation-of-google-dominance-in-search-ads-and- data/)

Regardless of one's view on the merits of all these accusations of anti- competitive behavior, it's clear that the 'political winds,' as it were, are blowing quite a bit more in a direction that goes against these three companies. It wouldn't surprise me if all three end up fighting in courts for the better part of a decade if not longer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Facebook always reminds me of a modern version of Compulink CIX - which spent a lot of its time keeping the rest of the Internet out of its internal bulletin board back in the early days of Internet access.

Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines and hidden behind a sign up "pay with your privacy"-wall are very equivalent.

CIX forums still exist, but they are nowhere near as influential as they once were. Perhaps Facebook will go the same way.

<comment><USER17> > Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines

I'm conflicted about this one. Personally, I _wish_ that Pinterest content would not show up in search engine results; I've yet to see one that was useful in any way to me. I could imagine that FB results would be similarly clogging up search results with little value.

<comment><USER18> That's more on Search Engines to keep up with the changing times. They could introduce exclude Social Media toggle easily for FB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We can imagine a social network market that worked more like the current phone system: a user of one social network could post and reach friends who were members of different social networks through interoperability protocols."

How about SMTP?

<comment><USER20> forcing interopariblity and one common social network protocol akin to railroad companies being forced to operate compatible networks would be one of the simplest and straight forward regulations to increase consumer choice and balance out market dominance.

<comment><USER21> Just for a laugh, have a read about train rail gauges. You think in Australia a small country, this would be a simple problem. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge_in_Australia)

<comment><USER22> Small compared to what? It's 80% the land mass of the USA, and the sixth largest country by land mass in the world.

<comment><USER4> I saw the Washington Post describe Victoria as a small state today (in its Covid-19 coverage of the outbreak there). I went and looked up its size to compare to US states - it's bigger than Minnesota and Utah and all but 11 US states. I doubt the WaPo would refer to Utah as a small state.

<comment><USER21> I think of us as a small country because whilst large in size. we only have 7 largish cities, and 25 million people packed into them. With Sydney and Melbourne having close to 10 million people between them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg in particular, ever really made a secret of being a ruthless anti-competitive asshole? I always thought that was his one redeeming trait - the fact that he was honest about it. True, he occasionally claimed in interviews to be about "bringing people together", but I always felt he went out of his way to make sure everyone listening knew he didn't mean it.

</comment><comment><USER24> >  by misleading users and buying potential rivals

As a Brit, I thought this was how Americans do business.

</comment><comment><USER25> Diaspora had the idea of decentralized social networks a while ago by having interoperability between social networks. It never really took off, but I think it would be a good way of limiting 1 social network from getting too powerful.

<comment><USER26> I assume you mean legislation requiring social networks to be interoperable.

This is a good idea and is common in other industries. The problem is that an interoperable social network effectively has an open API with no rate limit. It's tough to solve the technical side of that in a user-protecting way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Post from the same author on Google: [https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-antitrust-case- ag...](https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-antitrust-case-against- google)

</comment><comment><USER28> What about Twitter? Or Visa? Or anyone with network effects and audiences larger than 100 million users?

</comment><comment><USER29> Any firm will attempt to achieve as close to a monopoly as regulators allow, as that's how you maximize margins and thus value to shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER30> Most capitalist dominance is built on anti competitive behaviour

</comment><comment><USER7> The question is how does this "monopoly" hurt consumers? It's _social media_. I use FB, just like most of the rest of the world. But if it died tomorrow the world would go on.

Besides, anti trust in the US is focused on consumer harm. How does a Facebook's monopoly hurt consumers?

<comment><USER31> I'm not trolling but the same way _ALL_ monopolies hurt consumers and the fair market. It is not a hard thing to read on up monopolies across history. And it isn't just FB. We need to stop the M&A activity that is only good for the VCs and not the consumers. We need to start unrolling the ones that have already happened.

<comment><USER32> But the difference is that "ALL OTHER" monopolies are priced whereas facebook is a free product. Can it be called a monopoly if your product is free? Pretty sure, most lawyers won't have a hard time convincing a jury that it can't be.

Besides, if FB is a monopoly then so are Twitter, Google, Reddit, Quora, etc. Its an oligopoly of sorts with each player dominating a slightly differentiated product and all products are free of cost.

<comment><USER11> FB's users are not it's customers. It is free for users, in the same way that food is free for cows in a diary. Indeed, the cows did not choose to live that life, but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

FB's customers are the advertisers. And they pay very good money, or FB wouldn't have had the money pay for WhatsApp, Instagram and its tens of thousands of employees.

<comment><USER32> >> but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option.

but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

>> FB's customers are the advertisers.

Even if that's true for arguments sake, I don't see how FB becomes a "monopoly" in that case. There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

<comment><USER11> > but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a > zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the > end of the day.

Google Maps, Twitter and a zillion other services give me service without requiring an account, so it definitely is an option (I don't have a twitter account; I do have an old gmail account but I use Saerch, Maps and Youtube logged out and have for ~20 years).

I can hail taxis -- in fact, I'm now staying in a country where Uber is a regulated taxi, and there's no advantage (cost or otherwise) to using an Uber.

Linkedin is trying to force an account on me, but they haven't reached saturation anywhere that it impairs me that I don't have one.

Facebook events, however, and WhatsApp/Messenger, have become in my experience (and most people's by all account) the sole distribution point of a lot of timely and important information e.g. about kids school activities. So it's not just "another website".

> There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from > potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on > advertiser spending?

FB and Google have a duopoly due to user reach. It's really as simple as that. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, mind you, and some monopolies are "natural" (e.g., Google's search has classic[0] network effect, yet everyone I know who switched off it came back due to quality issues). But once you _do_ have a monopoly, some generally acceptable actions become illegal.

[0] The fact that Google's users give feedback to Google about the result quality (by virtue of notifying Google which link was actually selected) is a weak network effect - but it only makes the network value linear in the number of users, whereas FB has more of a metcalfe square-of-number-of-users value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Whatever. Why should companies help out their rivals? To this day, nobody is forced to use Facebook.

I am not against helping rivals, synergies, whatever. But to claim it is unfair not to help rivals seems silly.

Invariably, if somebody is successful, some people will emerge claiming it was all unfair gains.

Not that I liked Facebook's approach, especially in the early days they were harvesting address books. It's not really an uncommon practice, though. The key point is, again, that nobody is forced to use them.

It may be a bit more difficult to avoid their tracking on web sites, but then it is on those web sites not to use the Facebook scripts. And if you really care, you can install an AdBlocker.</comment>


Show HN: NumPop, a small mathematical puzzle game - <AUTHOR> https://petedeas.co.uk/numpop.html <comment><USER2> I scored 99 - not clear how the numbers that appear after a "pop" can be predicted, so there doesn't appear to be much strategy.

Even so, a fun few minutes. Did anyone beat 99?

 _Edit: OK, now I can see how the number changes work, and I scored 129. Anyone beat that?_

 _Edit 2: Now 147 - I should stop this and get back to work._

 _Edit 3: Now 152 ..._

 _Edit 4: OK, 178, now I 'm stopping._

<comment><USER3> 297.

<comment><USER4> Probably no one is checking results here anymore, but I got 486. Wish I knew how many total turns it took!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! I don't think I've ever got _close_ to that.

When I was first toying with the concept, I wrote a C implementation and tried a depth-first-search AI to see what kinds of scores were possible. As I remember it, it would get 400+ scores on good runs. The best it got was over 4000, but that must have been with an extremely lucky sequence of numbers.

<comment><USER5> 896 on my last one. Maybe the 4th game I played.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice and addictive. Would be nice with a personal scoreboard.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple super fun!</comment>


It's Never Really About Dropping Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.ihany.com/2011/10/its-never-really-about-dropping-out/ <comment><USER2> Spot on. I am a college dropout and founder of a YC-funded, venture-backed startup. Whenever I talk at my old university, I always tell people that dropping out is by no means a rite of passage or prerequisite to success. I have an acquaintance who was able to start a company with $1MM in revenue while staying in school.

There is no glory in dropping out. "Dropouts" are not some super-class of people who are destined to save America. It's just something I had to do in order to have the time to start the company I wanted to start.

Addendum: The best dropouts are those who would do well in school anyway. I've had people tell me "I'm barely passing in school because the stuff doesn't interest me. I'll drop out and I do what I want to do". There are 1001 things about running a company that are more boring than your school homework. If you can't do well when someone gives you a curriculum and is helping you, you don't stand a chance keeping yourself motivated enough to start a company.

<comment><USER3> I agree with almost all your points, especially on the idea that the best dropouts are the ones are the ones who would do well in school anyways. However, I am not sure that someone who can't follow a curriculum will translate into someone doing poorly when a curriculum is not given to them in the "real world". Some people thrive on not having rules to abide by. Curriculums, especially those created in the school system, are not a one size fits all, so you might occasionally get people who do really bad under them.

<comment><USER4> That's true. Sir Richard Branson probably didn't do well in school and probably wouldn't have had he continued that route.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently, I've been thinking very hard about dropping out of college. Here in Ireland, the education system is somewhat different to the way it is in the US and many other parts of the world. You pick a course, and then for the next three or four years, you attend only the classes that belong to that course. There's very little choice in the matter (though you can technically attend other classes, but not officially and at the lecturer's discretion).

I'm in my third year of a four year computer games development course. I absolutely love the course, the lecturers, and of course my friends at college.

I've been thinking about dropping out because I've been finding the course difficult recently and because I've got a skewed vision of myself, of my motivations and my abilities. It's so easy to think "I'll drop out and then I'll have the time to do this and this and this and this," and much harder to think "If I drop out I'll spend every day on the couch playing videogames and growing less and less as a person."

That's not the way it is for everyone, but it is the way it is for me. If you told me you were thinking about dropping out, I'd ask for the proof that you're not going to waste, because that's such an easy trap to fall into. Dropping out gives you a chance to do the best things you can do, but it gives you the chance to do nothing, too.

<comment><USER6> The reason college matters is because people take hard classes and have to fight through them to graduate. Hard is the point of it, not the problem! Now you just have to figure out how to do what the class asks you to do. Work harder. Study more. Make a schedule of when you have to study. Talk to the professor, to TAs, to tutors. Go to every office hour / study group / class you can. You can do it, but you will have to grow as a person to make it. That is the point. Good luck=).

<comment><USER7> what if the college does not offer hard classes. I am not talking about a scenario where I am brilliant and know everything, I am talking about a scenario where classes are not really hard. Everything is on a basic level and no advanced level stuff.

<comment><USER8> Then I'm afraid you applied to the wrong college. If it was me, I'd a) work out how to demonstrate you are top of the class and b) befriend someone in the faculty who will mentor you, with the probable aim of c) transferring to another, more challenging institution or at least course at the same institution. Fortune favours the bold.

<comment><USER7> a)check

b)check

c)my education system does not allow that

<comment><USER9> I'm curious about what education system doesn't allow you to eventually move on to harder studies.

I mean, I've been screwed by schools again and again by their promises of transfer credit and then not giving it to me after I've dropped out of my old school and have applied to their school (while going to a lower down college to fill out some course requirements), but despite that there is still the opportunity for me to fill out requirements and move onto a harder school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People drop out of school and out of university for all the wrong reasons. Laziness, unable to look past the next test to the larger picture of what being educated is all about.

The people that drop out for the right reasons may have such motivations as 'I can't learn faster or more here than elsewhere', 'the company I started needs me more than I need a degree' and so on.

Those people aren't really dropping out. They're taking a short-cut because they already accomplished what the people that stay in the program are still trying to achieve.

<comment><USER11> This is my position, I feel. I am debating whether to continue attending classes for my BS AND juggling my full-time well-paid development job AND single parenthood, or drop the former, since I'm pursuing the former to get the full-time well-paid development job.

For me it's all about opportunity cost. The time I'm spending on coursework is time I'm not spending doing self-enrichment stuff I actually enjoy, and is far more useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I went to a job fair a few weeks ago where a few of the engineers from a very hardcore coding company said "Why don't you drop out? I never really found a degree useful." That's the problem though. College isn't about the degree or the resume building. It's about meeting people, having fun, and spending late nights hacking on projects for the hell of it.

I could graduate in three years or less, but I would be missing out on an experience that will most likely be extremely beneficial.

<comment><USER13> Be extremely suspicions of advice that takes the form, "If you want to achieve the position that I have, don't behave like me".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The key is education, not schooling. The conflation of the two is unfortunate.

<comment><USER15> Agreed.

I know so many people who attended university but are less interested in lifelong learning than people who never attended.

University is an environment for those who benefit from such.

<comment> johnx123-up Brilliant. IOW, education is shortcut to knowledge; you can get knowledge _anywhere_ \--not just from college.

<comment><USER15> Employers love to see universities on resumes because it's a good bet the applicant seeks knowledge and is willing to put in hard work.

The only problem is that some people only go to make getting hired easier. This is especially prevalent in Japan with. Tokyo University grads are known for mostly goofing around in the university years, until they get hired by the big keiretsu companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel schools teaching and testing terribly boring and insignificant material has helped romanticize the concept of dropping out. After all, people will say, _why are you in school, if you're better than that?_

The sooner people stop expecting university to be a stepping stone rather than an experience, the sooner the dropouts-will-save-america notion will fade. University is _a lot_ of fun, and it's not just a passage to a job.

</comment><comment><USER17> For people who have the smarts, supportive family structure (have the ability and will help) and already know what they want to do, they can probably do well despite dropping out. For people who haven't figured things out or need the nurturing and or guidance and don't have anyone back home as safety-net dropping out is not going to help; I don't think.

So, yeah, for super smart people institutional education might prove redundant, but for many, that's where they are going to learn how to interface with the economy with improved effectiveness, make connections and build relationships (network).

</comment><comment><USER18> People get such different experiences at institutions of higher learning. I completed my BA at a small, teaching-focused college, and don't regret a minute of it. I felt like it was an excellent preparation for my subsequent career, even though I was in a completely different field than I majored in. I had passionate professors with high standards, who continually challenged me to up the ante. I came into college thinking I was pretty smart, and, like intellectual boot camp, they stripped away those egotistical veneers of self- congratulatory-smartdom and made me realize how impossibly huge the world is, and how many perspectives there can be, and how I exist in the world not as a calcified foundation of knowledge and opinions, but as an agent who navigates the world by learning, listening, and observing.

One moment that stands out is when I turned in what I felt was a nicely articulate paper, one that would have been an easy A, and it came back with a D and a "see me in my office." The professor dressed me down and had me write it again. Why? Because I was critiquing the subject material rather than respecting it.

I plunged right into start-up world after graduating, and it felt very familiar, in the sense that in a startup you're constantly confronting uncertainty and unknowing to the point where you have to become comfortable with those feelings. Once again, you become an agent of learning rather than an agent of knowing.

I hear about people from larger schools complaining about huge classes taught by processors with no interest in teaching, where they have no conversation happening, and no direct feedback--and I think I would be sufficiently frustrated in such a situation that I would have been more inclined to drop out if the opportunity were there. I even hear from people who went to my school who hated every minute of it--you just can't tell.

I also don't think college is a foundational requirement for success--I know plenty of people in the tech world who didn't complete their BA and who are doing just fine--I honestly can say it doesn't have much bearing to see someone's educational credentials on a resume unless I also can see their body of work.

It all comes down to what your own experience is. Which is why I'm throwing in my two-cents...I'd hate for someone who IS having a good experience think that they need to drop out because Steve Jobs did.

</comment><comment><USER19> Explain Steve Jobs please.

Sure he went and _sat_ in some courses but only for a limited time and only when he thought they taught something he liked, like calligraphy.

Doesn't that imply that school is but a matter of interest? So if your interest lies in building something great RIGHT NOW, wouldn't it be better for you to not waste time and money at school but rather go do something you so dearly want?

My intent here is not to discredit your post. Though I see the value in your post, I post this only to avoid you and your readers from clumping all dropouts into a category. My view is that school is not for everyone. Some people have this innate understanding of the world and thoughts so radical that school only serves to beat them into another brick in the wall. This is unfair to them and unfair of society to judge them.

Personally, I think that if YOU believe in it and if you believe in yourself, then right now is as best a time as ever. School or not. Everyone has to decide for themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> author of post here.

Steve Jobs might not have completed much college, but the company he created wouldn't have been successful without Woz who more closely resembles the model I wrote about.

Steve dropped out of college without any plan. That (miraculously) worked.

But it wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for Woz (and others)...Jobs really couldn't have done anything he ended up doing without others. Woz, like others, only left when it was clear something else would be a good option and that point only grudgingly.

<comment><USER19> Miraculous?

So what about NEXT and Pixar? Apple the second time? They were also just strokes of miraculous luck? I disagree.

Of course it takes technical talent to start a company but that doesn't mean you need it to make a big/good company. This points to the diversity of our personalities. Steve knew how to make it work. The focus, confidence, perseverance, risk-taking dedication, and whatever else it took, only he knows. Those of us who lack in any of these departments make up for it by getting degrees. The rest of us, like Woz, do it to for passion.

Doesn't mean degrees are the requirement.

At this point I want to make it clear that I'm also back in school. I didn't come back because I couldn't make it work. I came back because I LOVE engineering. I want to learn more and I want to build things. I don't have the resources of labs and funding to do it on my own so I came back - rest assured the piece of paper I get upon graduation had NOTHING to do with it.

<comment><USER9> Steve is an outlier, there is absolutely no doubt about it. There also can't be doubt that Steve did have a few strokes of luck that landed him at the right place in the right time, but I think you are also right in that the evidence of his skills are found in the fact that he was consistently successful.

I think being consistently successful in your ventures is a sign of true skill more so then being wildly successful, and it's safe to say that consistent success comes from experience or talent (if you are lucky).

EDIT: Technical talent is always important in a company that is based in technology. Steve's ability to design complemented the technical talents of the people he surrounded himself with, he knew that design and engineering are a nearly perfect couple with the right balance.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, no...an outlier that is also your dataset's most beautiful (valid) point? I don't think so. Either we are plotting him in the wrong graph or our initial hypothesis is incorrect.

Oh the Secret of Steve Jobs! One day there will be a person that outshines Steve. Rest assured somewhere out there they are sitting in their desks trying to figure out the meaning of life while struggling with the curveball life keeps throwing at them.

<comment><USER9> Outliers tend to be the most ugly or beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree with the article.

My story is not as romantic as most dropouts that have started a company / followed their dream. I have had to work for a living, and because I started working in what was the equivalent of a sweat shop with very inflexible hours and a lot of hard/boring work, I had to dropout since I couldn't do both. The time spent and the things learned in college, however, were invaluable and I regret not finishing it.

With that said, I do believe that the industry still places too much weight on college/masters degree. And I think this is what amazes people: that a couple of dropouts that wouldn't pass through their shitty filters are some of the richest / most innovative people in the world.

A college purpose should be to teach and enrich people's lives, but shouldn't be used for classifying people, unless you're talking about people with no work experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> I dropped out not once, not twice, but three times from three different courses; I now make more money than most of my high-school peers, and this only because I WAS DAMN LUCKY to end up in a fairly obscure niche of a very small but lucrative market.

I'll always regret not getting that damn degree, because now I simply couldn't get back "on the rails" if I wanted to: my CV will be dropped by 99.9% of standard employers, no matter how well I might be performing at my current job. My sons (now 2 and 0) _will_ get a university education, may that be the last thing I do.

At the same time, I know people who saw through their undergraduate course in 7 years (not uncommon, in Italy, for hard-science degrees) and that also was not good -- some of them are now damaged in psychological terms, clinically depressed and underemployed. That should not happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> While all the companies mentioned are the creation of dropouts, it still took hundreds (thousands in some cases) of people to bring all those companies to the point of maturity that they are at now with the help of extremely talented college degreed people.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. Dropping out is risky, but it can give you rewards. College always gives you great, though sometimes less great, rewards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dropping out and continuing on to be very successful is a sign that

1> you did not fit in with the college establishment or other students

and/or 2> you learn in a different way than others and were not benefiting from college

and/or 3> you had already obtained/saw the possibility of obtaining better opportunities in another way.

Does this fit all successful people? Is this sort of history distinctive to very successful people, or required of them? Of course not. Some very successful people have similar experiences, especially #2 - but going into the world without the college experience is not for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Smart people go to college but they don't know what they want yet. If they find out and make it before they graduate, they drop out, because it would be an incredible waste of time to do otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER25> This should be re-titled to "Lazy people drop-out, genius is doing something better before dropping out"

</comment><comment><USER4> "After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made."

Steve Jobs' reasoning was probably the main inspiration for me dropping out. And he makes a really good point. I also dropped out before I had any form of "success" (and it's also been one of the best decisions I've made). I'd like to think that if you'll succeed in life you'll do so whether or not you go to college. But the pressure to succeed becomes immense when you do something like drop out of college. That probably speeds things up.

But still, I agree completely that this Steve Jobs type dropping out should not be so readily encouraged. I only did it because I was absolutely sure about most of the things Jobs described in that quote above.

<comment><USER13> Steve Jobs was a (mildly) successful independent businessman before he dropped out. This is key.

<comment><USER4> "It was pretty scary at the time"

The point was that he made the decision in a time of general uncertainty, but certain that dropping out was the right decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Definitely.

The problem with the word "drop out" is that people are starting to use it as if every drop out has something special to offer. Most drop out for reasons that do not leave them in a state to be helpful to society as a whole. Some drop-out just because they signed up for the wrong course to start with (and, disillusioned, often don't return for another shot at something else), some because they get lazy, and so forth. I dropped out for personal reasons (I went properly metalist for a while, bipolar before it was trendy to be, and was medically signed-off) though luckily I'd made an impression on a local company the year before and got a part-time job with them while I sorted myself out (one day a week at first, then two, and so on until I ended up there full time) and I'm still there now.

It isn't dropping _out_ that is important. It is where you drop _in_ to, or push your way into, afterwards. Just dropping out is not an answer to anything. Dropping out to pursue a thought-out and potentially ground-breaking idea (or just a dream: it can be about personal growth more than career building or world changing) often is.

Most drop-outs make nothing of themselves and we shouldn't be encouraging it as a way forward (though I firmly believe that many people would be more successful building their career without University (the system is against me on this one!) but again dropping out isn't the answer on its own here: don't go, or if you go and find you've made the wrong decision have somewhere to move on to planned before you make another big decision that might be equally wrong). I was lucky. Mid-/long-term (short term was a slowish start, the first 6 months at least mainly spent "fixing" myself) I dropped into a better position then some of my friends graduated into and have built a healthy career. Many aren't so lucky, or are just perpetual drop-outs. Some are following an idea or dream and a few of those are destined to be game changers, but only a few.

</comment><comment><USER27> The problem is that a lot of people think that dropping out == stopping to learn, which is extremely wrong (at least in my case). I think that's what Michael Ellsberg is describing so well in his book.

Education is still important, people. But how you get it (formal, informal, practical, etc.) doesn't matter anymore.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's not simply about what's "boring" and "not boring", which is subjective anyway. It's about tangible vs. intangible. Most school coursework is intangible & lacking context; grades have little to no bearing on real-world performance and book knowledge very often doesn't translate into solving problems & generating solutions for paying customers.

There are plenty of people who love learning but who just aren't interested in academia, in being told what to learn, what to spit out on some trivial assessment etc. And the fact that these people can motivate themselves enough to blaze an autodidactic path as opposed to relying on dictation from other people ought to be proof enough that those are folks who have more than enough motivation to start a company.

<comment><USER29> If I see somebody who graduated summa from a decent school, I instantly know at least one thing about them: they're good at identify what the customer wants, and delivering it. You simply _can't_ graduate top of your class unless you find a way to give dozens of (sometimes unreasonable, often unclear) people what they wanted, when they wanted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would also say that many that attend College do not earn more because they went to college but they were capable of doing so, they were intelligent enough to do so.

Of course there is no glory in dropping out but there is no glory in working on a startup, whatever happens it'll be tough. If you can't imagine taking the risk of dropping out then the risk of starting a company is something much bigger to overcome.

College is for a lot of people, I don't think that dropping out makes you more successful in any way. But I think that time is money and if your time could be better spent then go for it.

You have nothing to lose that this age, once you've got all this debt and as you get older you have a lot more to lose.

</comment><comment><USER6> The worst part of this drop-out fad is people miss out on going to college- the-experience. As opposed to college-the-education. It turns out it is actually awesome to hang out, learn stuff, and meet people 24/7. Work can give you some of it, but not everyone is committed in the same way. Different ages, different motivations, it won't be the same. The experience is worth as much as the education.

</comment><comment> wh-uws What about Larry, Sergey, Jeff Bezos? Even Jerry Yang and David Filo.

None of them dropped out of or skipped undergrad college.

<comment><USER31> All but one of those dropped out of grad school though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thanks, in times when I'm really thinking about dropping out reading this really helps me not doing a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great men live for mastery and academia but modern universities have nothing to do with either therefore attending is a waste of precious years. University takes up your spare time that you could be learning things that you're passionate about, it also seeds poisonous ideas into your head.

This is mostly relevant to the tech community at the moment because we have had the tools to make our education open enabling the guys mentioned in the article to educate them self.

Once the other industries start openly publishing educational material then the true power of passionate self development will be known.

<comment><USER34> Funny, university helped me to find out the things I am passionate about. It also helped me to see the broader picture. Universities can help those passionate self developers immensely.</comment></comment>


And BitTorrent's Oscar Goes To... District 9 - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/and-bittorrents-oscar-goes-to-district-9-100307/ <comment><USER2> District 9 was a great movie I am glad it won the BitTorrent Oscar ;) I am surprised Avatar was downloaded so many times considering that it wasn't a very good movie aside from its visuals.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers._

So they counted a rather large number of votes multiple times?

<comment><USER4> and did not consider distribution time at all which makes the results largely meaningless.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I try to get squatted domain or use domain hack? - <AUTHOR>

I've got a name for a project I'm working on; projectna.me is available (and inexpensive), but projectname.com is just a parked page, and there's a hotmail address in the WHOIS. All the other gTLDs are available (.net, .org, etc). The name is two generic words strung together (11 chars), and is not in use by anyone.
The project is a SaaS product for customer service and technical support departments of SMBs (not to mention a few other segments that I haven't anticipated).
Should I:
a) Stick with the domain hack, and worry about the .com if/when my site gets big?
b) Contact the .com owner and try to buy it before launching. (If so, how should I approach him? In my previous dealings with squatters I've been asked for a "4-figure offer", which is out of my bootstrapped budget.)
c) Ignore the hack and .com, and go with a .net? <comment><USER3> I guess I fit into the "squatter" category here so I can possibly offer some advice from that side. I receive about an email a week asking if I want to sell xyz domain. They nearly never offer a price and I end up going back to them and saying that it is for sale, I haven't really thought about the price blah blah blah, but I paid a bit for the domain - make me an offer. And they tend not to come back.

My advice would firstly be to not use a hacked name for a business orientated product. Some comments here imply that your clients will be tech savvy - <USER2> in my experience the guy that is going to sign off the bill probably is not, and being too clever with a name wont help you there - stick to a simple .com name.

Secondly use a thesaurus and try and find different words for "project" and "name" that you might be able to string together and pay $9 for rather than buying off someone else. Whilst lots of domains are taken there are still billions of combinations available.

Thirdly, without going too obscure, see if you can find a 5-7 letter pronounceable generic domain. Know any kids, ask them to spell the word you come up with, that is always a good test. <http://domaintyper.com/> has a list of "web 2.0" names it generates, sometimes some good ones (generally not, but worth a click). Last time I did this exercise for my business I came up with about 30 usable names.

If you do want the squatted name, try sending an email directly to the person along the lines of "Hi, I have an idea for a small business and the domain name registered to you xyz.com would be quite a nice match. It is only in the early stages, I'm a student blah blah so have little budget and was wondering if you'd be interested in selling the domain for $200". If it was me I might come back to you wanting $400, but unlikely I'd ask for $1,000 or 10K unless it was really valuable, and if it is 11 characters it probably isn't. You've set the expectations of what you can afford and that is a good place to start. Bare in mind you can get a readable 4 letter domain for under $1,000 so don't go too high.

<comment><USER3> Sorry if this is bad form on HN (both replying to my own message and/or posting the following), but I thought this might be of interest to a lot of readers. Before you go and pay a bomb to a "squatter" or complain about how expensive domains are here is a list of some domains that I would consider reasonable names, that I have bid on (please note I didn't win most of them) at dropping domain auctions, that could have been purchased for a fairly modest amount (yes I know some people think $8.17 or whatever it is is the only amount anyone should pay):

clovo.com 65.00 axod.com 70.00 exod.us 100.00 forq.com 190.00 disc.us 200.00 wrax.com 201.00 flysafely.com 275.00 changethings.com 286.00 stockwidgets.com 294.00 given.org 300.00 conky.com 302.00 maxan.com 303.00 coret.com 325.00 pinex.com 331.00 surun.com 359.00 broadly.com 401.00 airlabs.com 403.00 onecolor.com 428.00 typically.com 450.00 exchangemedia.com 450.00

If this is not HN style then please let me know and I will delete the post (if that is possible). If you want more examples I could post a page somewhere. But my point is a bit of research and patience and you can nab some pretty good domains for a good price (I so wish I had bought changethings.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My advice would be to contact the owner of the .com before you launch. Once you have launched, the .com will have a higher perceived value and will give the owner more leverage to bargain a higher price.

Failing getting the .com at the right price, I would recommend going with the .net. Domain hacks are often regarded as harder to remember (is it projectna.me? projectn.ame? etc.) and it is much easier to switch from a .net to a .com than from a domain hack if you do get the .com later.

<comment><USER5> _Domain hacks are often regarded as harder to remember (is it projectna.me? projectn.ame? etc.)_

I agree...it's risky to go with the domain hack without the .com. If people can't remember the hacked name, they will probably go with .com before trying .net (think script.aculo.us and del.icio.us). On the other hand, if most people get to your site through search results and links, you might not have to worry about typos.

<comment><USER6> Do "people", and by people I mean not people who read HN, actually type in domain names any more? Most I see simply search for it, even if they end up searching for the domain name itself.

PageRank > Shiny domain name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Contact the owner, but don't seem too interested. Maybe go as far as mentioning that it's for a "personal project" rather than a business you're about to launch.

</comment><comment><USER8> Every week there is an article about how nobody uses the URL bar anymore; they just type in the company name and click the first Google result. In that case, projectna.me will do just fine.

If you are going to advertise on TV and billboards, then you need a .com. Otherwise, people will just be clicking links or getting the email from their address book, so you could just as easily be 293874djkhae98745jmdcf.com.net.org.lol. Google will save you.

OTOH, I bet "project name" has some pretty high-ranking results already, and you may never show up. Who knows.

(My personal page is apparently the second result for "jrock", which is a pretty popular subject that my website is completely unrelated to. So who knows.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Pick another name.

<comment><USER10> I agree that spending a little time trying to pick another name is good, but these days it's almost impossible to find a .com that makes a decent name.

To pick a name where you'll be able to get name.com, it has to be something really out there. Something foreign (Heroku), something fairly random (thesixtyone, Weebly, 280 North), some weird spelling (Disqus, Xobni (haven't seen too many backwards-word sites. could be some gems there), or something else strange.

I'm not saying that you _can't_ find a good name that's a little more direct, just that your odds are a lot worse, especially if you want a reasonably short domain name (which you do).

So I guess if I were looking for a project name soon, I would briefly try a few obvious things, then look for japanese words, try reversing a word, etc.

<comment><USER11> I would even bet that disqus.com didn't just go to namecheap.com and say "hi, I'd like to pay 9.95 on disqus.com, please". Most pronounceable 6-letter domains are already being squatted on.

In my experience, it really can't hurt to approach the seller and see what you can negotiate. Just make it clear that you have a plan B, and plan C, and so on, and tell them "I have a budget of $xxxx--are you willing to sell". Be willing to walk away, and make sure they understand that.

Finally, keep in mind that a domain for which you pay a premium is an asset that, at worst, you can take to squatting on and try to resell someday. So even if it appears to come with a steep price tag, you should recognize that it's part _investment_ along with the obvious expense part--just like a car or a house.

<comment><USER10> Oh, yeah, I should have mentioned that if you come up with a few domains you really like that are taken, you might as well contact the owner and see what happens. But if they want thousands of dollars that you aren't willing to part with just for a domain, looking for obscure ones is probably the way to go.

Also, while it is true that domains are an investment, I'd keep in mind that they're pretty risky and illiquid investments. Unless you negotiate well or get someone who doesn't know the market value of the domain, you're probably going to pay approximately what you'll get for it _if_ someone actually comes around wanting the domain. But that might not happen or might not happen for years. I guess there are probably domain squatting sites that would buy the domain from you, but probably for much less than what you paid, especially since you're approaching them, so they know you want to get rid of it and would probably do it for much less than what it's potentially worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it would be a pretty rare squatter who'd turn down say $300 free and clear for an obscure domain, provided you don't clue him in to your interest. As one of the other commenters said, just approach it casually and don't clue him into the fact that you want this domain badly enough to post on HN about it.

Being friendly always helps; don't seem annoyed by the fact that he's squatting, don't say stuff like, "well, you're not using it anyway", etc.

That's point #1. The second point is: why do you really need the .COM anyway? Do you anticipate a lot of people typing your domain in directly? Won't they use Google? The competitive advantage of .COM vs. .XYZ is nothing like it used to be IMO. Take 4chan.org and 4chan.com as a colorful example.

The bottom line is that if your product is useful and your website is indexed, people will find your site. They're not going to hit the parked page and think your site doesn't exist. I mean, if you were selling lolcats it would be one thing but for an SaaS product with tech-savvy users?

Also, don't go through the automated "make an offer on this domain" process that some registrars (eg Godaddy) have. In my experience that increases the perceived value of the domain, because the guy on the receiving end gets a nice colorful email, etc, "ooh! somebody's interested in your domain". Just send a short, boring three-liner to him directly.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love hacks!

SEO is making domain names less and less important and type in traffic becoming a thing of the past. Currently trends show that people will more than often use a search engine even if they frequent your site.

I run a business and we promote on television, radio, newspapers you name it. We get 80% more hits from people typing in our obscure business name into Google than we do typ-ins.

Hacks may have people wondering where the hell to put the dot! BUT it also adds to the uniqueness and a point of difference worth talking about from the get go.

My advice - if you are selling something FUN and for a young audience then run with the hack and implement a tonne of social media strategies.

As you said though, it's a customer service product aimed at SME's - so the less educating you need to do the better. Offer 10 times wholesale for the dot com, and register every single possible extension to protect your brand!

My 222 cents :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Domain registration is really only the half of it. Having just gone through a product naming, I was stunned how many available or squatted domain names are trademarked. I would really encourage you to search for any existing trademarks before you contact the owner of the domain you like. It's not going to help you to get X.com only to find out later that X is trade-marked to a company in your space (or even a company in a different space but serving the same target customer as you) via a previously registered XGroup.com or GoX.com or whatever. As a rule, ideas float to the top at the same time so the likelihood of a competitor using some variation of ProjectName.com for a similar service is higher than you think...

In addition, I would vote emphatically against creative spelling. At a previous start-up, we got a short pronounceable dot com that was a fusion of two words but it caused us nothing but grief and (probably) lost word of mouth.

</comment><comment><USER15> Paying money for a domain name is so 1998, go with the name hack or use another name entirely. Google will save you.

<comment><USER16> I agree, personally I like domain hacks, they are creative and are interesting from a creative perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can counter-offer. I offered a domain-squatter half what they asked, and they sold to me immediately... leaving me thinking that I could have offered much less.

Maybe choose a different name. "Project name" is probably hard to google for. That's another reason for making up words. It's easy to test for uniqueness by googling it yourself.

Choose a .com name. ".com" names are helpful because people expect it (and sometimes ponder a little over why it isn't a .com); and browsers try automatically complete to that first.

</comment><comment><USER18> Get the domain hack ... theprojectname.com or getprojectname.com works well ... and if you're actually successful you can eventually buy the domain.

If projectname.com doesn't work and thats all a user remembers, they'll search for you in google, so make sure you show up #1 for projectname.com with good SEO.

Worked for facebook and dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not a huge fan of domain hacks. I would definitely at least try for the .com. If the person hasn't really had much interest in the name, then maybe they'll sell it in the 3-figure price range.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't pay squatters a red cent. Be creative but also realistic. A crisp unique name is better for SaaS than an obvious phrase. The quality of your service will set you apart, and fwiw, Google is not called SearchEngine.com.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but people don't say "search engine", they say "google".

<comment><USER20> That's because Google established its brand via sheer quality. "Google" was not a generic layman's term for "search engine" until Google made it so. Hence, proving my point.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What ideas or problems are there for a science fair - <AUTHOR> I am a high school student, and I am wondering: does anyone know of any problems/ideas that are worth pursuing for a national science fair? <comment><USER2> Solving social problems with science/tech seems to be the way to go for maximum impact [https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/](https://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that seems to be so, wonder what sort of things need addressing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What are you interested in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty good at Math and Programming. As for topics, I really don't know...</comment></comment>


My Awful Life as the Internet's Janitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/story/my-awful-life-as-the-internets-janitor <comment><USER2> I thought this kind of job should be highly paid because of the evident risks on mental health... when your physical health is on risk your contract reflects that with additional money, benefits, therapy and earlier retirement... (not just in Europe right?)

I guess what would happen if this person becomes permanently burnout or suicides because of this long exposure; my understanding is that the employer is responsible for that unless the contract has some compensation and mitigation for the effects on the worker's health...

<comment><USER3> People's payment is never related to the mental or physical effects. A friend of mine pointed it out that it is about how replaceable a person is.

<comment><USER2> I guess you mean in USA, right? Because my experience in Germany and Spain was different.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I can only talk about what I know, so can you explain how you think Germany and Spain are different?

Are people there getting paid based on the risk they take instead of how replaceable they are?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is usually a group within the police who has to review this type of content. I couldn't find a reference to it but I'm fairly certain that the Swedish police places a hard limit, expressed in months, for how much time a person is allowed to do this type of work.

Perhaps Google should consider doing the same?

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems a lot of commenters missed that the time at Google described in the article was 10 years ago.

I'm not saying things are done any better in terms of psychological environment, but things run differently now.

> Google still felt like a scrappy company when I started working there in > 2007, but it basically already ruled the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> After reading this, I'm just wondering about two possibilities for the development of Internet culture:

Increased policing -- people fear repercussions for posting disturbing content. The darkest corners live on.

Increased exposure -- people share the psychological burden of knowing disturbing content exists, and develop meaningful discussions and coping mechanisms.

<comment><USER7> Talk to an actual law enforcement professional. They see shit too. This isn't a new problem. Their processes and techniques are open. The number of cops we need to maintain order is budget item that responsible experienced qualified people debate about publicly every year. What's new is silicon valleys private police force of the internet is all secret.

<comment><USER8> It's actually a pretty big problem–there's pretty clear evidence that policemen serving in majority-black neighbourhoods tend to drift towards prejudice from workday to workday, only to somewhat recover on off-days. That's obviously a problem for the communities, but it's actually noticeable to the affected person as well, which really isn't enjoyable either.

What helps is to have people work as police officers, and paramedic or firefighter in turn. That way, you get to experience the good side of humanity and don't lose faith. But of course that makes training somewhat more complicated.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a source for paragraph 1? It definitely jibes with what I've observed in real life, but it's always nice to have a source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's worth remembering this is why Google's AI will always be better than yours - annotation annotation annotation. Only they can afford to throw this much money at a problem

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's the weird thing about"policing the internet" narrative...youtube, twitter, facebook, reddit etc nobody in these companies talks about how the shadier parts of their networks are the main draw. We hear more about the great firewall of China and transparency needs of our police departments than how these companies are policing the net. If China needs hundreds of thousands of people to monitor it's content why should we believe YouTube and Facebook don't? I mean the content is so diverse the networks are global. How is some 20 year old kid going to know what vid is going to trigger a riot in Nigeria, or what tweet is promoting cannibalism in Uruguay.

These companies have just been hiding behind the free speech folk with their heads buried in the sand about the long term effects of all this content.

If we can figure out ways to get our govts to tell us know how many policemen we need and the process it takes to become one, there is no reason Silicon Valley should be doing this vital policing in secret.

<comment><USER8> The article isn't actually about any form of censorship. They weren't (primarily) policing search results, but the ad sense network.

There's just no theory of free speech that would require google to run ads on white supremacist websites. After all it's the advertisers that don't want it, and they don't want it because the backlash would end up hurting them, on balance.

All that means that this sort of content simply doesn't have any value as a vehicle for mainstream advertisement. It's actually quite democratic in a way, because the value originates with the broad public. If everyone starts only buying cars advertised on strangulation porn sites tomorrow, the money would follow.

Until then, I'm quite happy at current arrangement: There's a few Silos "policed" to different levels of sensibility, then there's the almost free- for-all web, and governments largely don't play a role. The big advantage of private companies doing this (even if intransparent), is that there are several of these companies, and that none of them have an army.

P. S/:Please let me know where these shadier parts of Facebook and Youtube are, because I don't think there's much there, beyond some vintage softporn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I watched a video of a man stomping on a dog's back, breaking it, and > listening to the dog's high-pitched whines as it died. I watched all of it.

I wonder if the job truly requires these contractors to watch these videos _in their entirety_. If so - why? Regarding the above, surely you'd only need to watch up until the moment the man broke the dog's back to determine that the video was not "advertiser-friendly".

<comment><USER12> In Google's case, maybe not.

When I worked with the police, yes. You needed every scrap of horrible information and context. Usually because it's much worse than you think initially. (Background voices tell you someone was forced to watch, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Compartmentalization. Learn it. I've always made sure my team got trained and mentally supervised to prevent this exact problem (we're in... hmm call it "CERT for hire". We see shit), it makes no sense to me that Google seems not to do this. Might be because you're "just a contractor" or because they get away with burning people by the law in that particular part of the world.

<comment><USER11> Isn't compartmentalization easier said than done, though? Is "just don't let it bother you" really useful advice, or even possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here some professionals talk about the issues (more focused on Child Pornography but the kind of trauma/wear is similar):

[https://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=2329/](https://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=2329/)

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of an issue of Dabiq magazine I read (ISIS propaganda). It was surprising that most of the arguments for their actions are cogent presuming all the ahadith (ie. oral traditions) that were considered authentic a millennium ago should still be practiced today. However their arguments for prophecies were stretched, with claims that the US is the Roman Empire and such.

The photos were stunning. Each one looked as if it ought to be a stock Windows wallpaper. And then I saw the photo of a beheading that I wish I could unsee. Now I'm quite happy to follow events using secondary sources, and I don't envy anyone who has the task of reading this shit.

</comment><comment><USER16> Moderators and professionals in this area, like police officers, are often the least psychologically prepared to cope with this, they also often receive the least support in quality and time to do so. Psychiatrists receive a lot more training to cope, and are monitored by other psychiatrists them selves to ensure that they get the help they need. Yet there are too few psychiatrists and psychologists for this job and they are too expensive, so we just burn out regular individuals.

</comment><comment><USER17> That job sounds horrifying -- surprised it doesn't come with some kind of a minimum therapy hours requirement.

Aside: After reading that article, henceforth every time Google drops a product or weirdly changes focus/direction, I am going to say "Google is shaking the bear again".</comment>


Yahoo Mobile Abandons Its Smartphone App To Focus On The iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/yahoo-mobile-abandons-its-blackberry-app-to-focus-on-the-iphone/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how to read this. Is this beinning of the end of blackberry?

<comment><USER3> Looking at the health of both companies if it's the beginning of the end for either of them I'd say it's Yahoo. On that note this seems short sighted. With the smartphone market just gearing up I think it's foolish to focus on any one platform unless you absolutely have to.

(For the record I don't think either one is going anywhere soon, I'm just saying Yahoo's closer to a fall than Blackberry)

<comment><USER2> I'm getting the vibe (e.g. [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/yahoo-mobile- abandons-i...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/yahoo-mobile-abandons-its- blackberry-app-to-focus-on-the-iphone/#comment-2754193) ) that BB apps sell less than 10% of the iPhone apps. If this is anywhere close to reality noone will develop apps for BB...</comment></comment></comment>


Quickly jot down your thoughts on the go with Evernote Keep - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/evernote-keep <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys!

Built this tool to fulfill a personal need, now I want to share it with you!

I'm an avid Evernote user, after using Google Keep I asked myself "Why doesn't Evernote have one so that I can quickly create notes on the go?". I decided to take charge and build one myself!

Value Propositions, here's why you should download our widget: \- Quickly jot down your thoughts to Evernote when on the go from your lockscreen. \- Note creation accessibility prioritized over existing notes selection on Evernote's widget. \- Save 'Today Screen' dashboard space for other widgets. \- Higher accessibility visibility score than existing Evernote products. \- Checklists option available on this widget ( not on Evernote's existing product. )</comment>


5 Things You Need To Know About The Future Of Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2014/07/24/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-future-of-math/

<comment><USER2> Some day Merkins might find that missing S ---> "maths"</comment>


The Origins of Trunk Based Development - <AUTHOR> http://paulhammant.com/2015/04/23/the-origins-of-trunk-based-development/ <comment><USER2> I think it would be useful if IDEs allowed a team to share when multiple people are editing the same file at the same time. And even get notified when such a change gets committed so you merge it right away. And I don't mean just watching the repo.

Sometimes two people are working separately on the same bug when they could be collaborating. Its also easier to merge changes one by one, instead of dealing with 10 at once. And if a change is completely incompatible, its best to deal with that when the code is committed, not a week later.

It would also be cool if there were chat integrated with that, with a history that gets linked when you commit so you can understand the context later.

<comment><USER3> Google docs for code. That's doable. Heck you could do it today using google docs, simply set that up as your editor. No code completion, syntax highlighting and other goodies but it might just work for some collaboration.

<comment><USER2> I don't mean working on the same piece of code at the same time in the same editor.

I mean working independently but being informed about the efforts of others working on the same piece of code. I think it might be potentially distracting to have other people deleting your code as you write it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked with a few different branching styles, including:

1\. Feature branches that get merged into master via PR in GitHub

2\. Sprint branch, bug fix branch, and master

3\. Developers push directly to master (or if they really need a code review, push to a branch)

So far I prefer 3 the most, then 1, and I hope I never have to do 2 again. 3 is fastest, and we write a lot of Go so many of the comments I would have made on a Python PR for example aren't necessary.

<comment><USER5> I've worked with all of these as well, and also like 3 the best. What level of manual testing, unit testing, etc do you use? And do commits to master automatically get deployed?

Currently at work, my team currently pushes directly to master, or sometimes to a branch that is merged depending on the size of the work. Code is autodeployed to a staging environment, and then manually promoted to production a few times a week after smoke testing.

<comment><USER4> We have lots of unit tests and a fair amount of integration tests. There is a staging environment as well, and I personally do a bit of manual testing whenever I push just to be sure nothing is catastrophically broken.

Commits to master don't get automatically deployed, and we deploy manually to staging then to production. I like the idea of automatically deploying to staging. It takes one more step out of the process.

When I worked at #2 there were 0 tests, which I believe is why management was often so afraid to deploy. Of course things are going to break if there are no tests. It took me a year to convince them to add unit tests, but we got there eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is completely silent on QA. You have to be able to commit code that isn't finished so it can be reviewed and tested (as well as for disaster recovery), yet you don't want other people building on it because it might have severe problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> As far as I can remember a lot of Google folk used Git on top of the 'mega- trunk'. Not sure though if this was or was not the majority.</comment>


Why A Good Memory Is Bad For You - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25283/

<comment><USER2> Couldn't foragers remember food sources perfectly well, but still not exclusively visit them? I don't see how these results necessarily implicate memory. Habit, sure, but not memory.

<comment><USER3> Quite agree, this paper (or at least the summary) is nonsense.

And this:

      Take as an example the question: if the ability to
      remember is such a good thing, why hasn't evolution
      given us photographic memories? The answer according to
      Boyer and Walsh's model is because we'd starve when the
      local supermarket went out of business.

Has to be the stupidest thing I can ever remember reading in a purportedly scientific article. If I have photographic memory why would I visit the supermarket more than once, after it closes? Just because I remember that there was food there doesn't mean I'm required to go there.

<comment><USER4> It may be nonsense when applied to _humans_ with our fancy pre-frontal cortices, but in lower animals there's no interdiction between memory and action—that is, animals always do "the first thing that comes to mind." To put it another way, every memory an animal has _is_ a habit. You would visit the supermarket after it has closed because it's hard to break that habit (disestablish a memory with a number of positive re-trainings), even when you "know" that it's no longer true (from a single negative re-training).

Consciousness is theorized to be precisely the brain experiencing indecision between two alternative motor programs (i.e. habits), and rationally picking one or the other. Animals don't do that.

<comment><USER5> > Animals don't do that.

I hope you don't really believe this. Animals are not automatons, they do think and they do plan.

<comment><USER4> I never said animals didn't _plan_ , and make decisions; I said they weren't _conscious_. There's a big difference.

 _Planning_ is the evaluation of alternative, _non-conflicting_ motor programs to determine the cumulative utility of a decision branch. (Basically, a decision-tree A* algorithm.) Animals do plan, but planning is not experienced _consciously_ —it simply happens.

Human planning happens on this pre-conscious level as well. If you've ever been in a "flow state" where you felt like you didn't actually have to think about anything, because you just "reacted" the right way to every problem—that's planning. That's how it feels to be an animal.

 _Thinking_ is, as far as neurology has figured, the resolution of problems that occur during planning by the use of the neocortex to classify features of the current environment into schema, and re-trigger the planning process with expectation programs, looked up from those schema, substituted for motor programs. The most common form of thinking involves verbal expectation programs (basically, saying things to ourselves, in our heads, and then reprocessing those words as if they were external sensory inputs.) This is experienced as consciousness, and as far as we know, only humans do it.

Without the ability to think consciously—to resolve motor-program conflicts—an animal can't "argue" with itself about which course of action to choose. Instead, it just has a best intuition about which one will work out, and goes with it. These intuitions rely greatly on habituation—in fact, without expectation programs (and thus without semantic knowledge), memory as a whole consists purely _of_ process knowledge—internal finite-state machines of habituated reactions.

<comment><USER2> And all that somehow implies they won't forage until they forget where they've found food before? Even if they've since struck out at those same locations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll have to remember this next time I'm foraging at Whole Foods.

Evolution probably hasn't given us a photographic memory, most likely, because doing so doesn't provide a benefit worth the expense. which is not the same as saying photographic memory would actually hurt us.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think its not only about memory, but about how rewarding it is to seek new opportunities than constantly sow the existing ones.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Metropolis light transport.</comment>


Ask HN: Advise for a self-taught budding programmer - <AUTHOR> I have been learning how to program on my own for sometime now. I have mostly been learning Java and Spring - I have some other reasons why I specifically chose these technologies. I have also been working on developing my own website that will be offering some services to clients in my home country.
On the front-end bit, I have identified Envato Market where, I think, I can find good and affordable designers. So, my first question, do we have alternatives to that?
Secondly, on hosting, what are the best practices bearing in mind the mentioned technologies above?
Thirdly, while I will not be able to afford an expert on security at this moment in time, what other options are available to me?
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> I host several spring webapps myself on a $10/month VPS running Ubuntu 14.04 (LTS)

Some notes:

\- Default MySQL install listens only on loopback interface, so isn't exposed to the network (and if it's not in your case, you can change that in my.cnf)

\- IPTables/NFTables can be used to whitelist allowed network traffic beyond HTTP/HTTPS

\- SSH should be limited to public-key auth, with root login disabled as well as password auth disabled (or you can use 2 step verification with Google Authenticator, which is pretty easy to set up)

One thing I'll note is that I don't have Tomcat exposed directly to the internet: it's only exposed through an NGINX reverse proxy.

Apache Tomcat is fairly easy to download and set up (you can download the .tar.gz from Apache's website, untar, and run the executable ./bin/startup.sh).

I'd be happy to answer any questions really re: Java/Spring

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your inputs and advice.

As yet, I haven't touched anything other than a Windows machine. I was thus wondering whether, while your suggestions are very good and that is where I would ultimately have to end up in, in the meantime, could I learn the basics in a few weeks just so as to set-up everything correctly and thereafter expend more time in learning the finer details of such a set-up? If that is not possible then I will be forced to just go with a hosting provider that handles some of these stuff - at least in the beginning as I learn "everything".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On front-end work:

Learn basic front-end skills. You can go a long way with just bootstrap, jquery and some nicely resized stock photographs. There's plenty of nice themes around for free or only an insignificant amount of money. Consider that you'll probably be competing on this front for the most part. This and your rate.

On hosting:

A $5/month VPS running Debian is cheap and can handle a decent amount of traffic.

On security:

You don't need a security expert unless you're dealing with highly sensitive information. Follow the best practices on: [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page) Remember to sanitize all user input. Remember to be extra careful when you are serving user input to other users.

<comment><USER4> Specifically regarding user input security:

• _Whitelist_ user input where possible, do not try to blacklist known dangerous characters. There are too many conflicting rendering ideologies for HTML between Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer for this to be feasible. For example, a language parameter's value in a POST request to change user settings should be whitelisted to things like "en" \- there is no reason to allow "%0aSet-Cookie:%20", which could cause HTTP Header Injection. Absolutely do not try to be clever and sanitize specific tags like "


Comparing the Unix and PowerShell pipelines - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/06/09/comparing-the-unix-and-powershell-pipelines/ <comment><USER2> Nothing more insightful than merely two factual but obvious definitions of the two. I was hoping for some actual interesting analysis.</comment>


Should I fire this technical co-founder? - <AUTHOR> https://startupsanonymous.com/question/fire-technical-co-founder/ <comment><USER2> Is work getting accomplished? Seems like there should be weekly milestones that can be tested. As for personal commitments versus the startup, your company should be your number one priority for 5-10 years. if you won't commit to it who will? Does that mean you can't take breaks/vacations sure once your responsibilities are completed.</comment>


Humble Bundle: Just because you use open software doesn't mean you're cheap  - <AUTHOR> http://danwin.com/2012/06/humble-bundle-payments-just-because-you-use-open-software-doesnt-mean-youre-cheap/

<comment><USER2> I was wondering about this myself when I bought my humble bundle. I think that saying linux users pay more on average is somewhat misleading without some sort of analysis on the actual data. For example, if linux counts for only $100,000 of sales, and the average is $10 dollars a buy. Then you would assume 10000 buyers. However, one person putting in 10k (such as notch) would skew the results dramatically. Then you really have only 9001 buyers and the average price is $11.1 per a user, but that really isn't a good predictor of average price. Same thing with some windows users being really cheap. I think if you removed all people paying more than $100 for the bundle and all people paying less than $2 for the bundle you would find the average price to be much closer. Just my thoughts.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an excellent point...and another reminder of why median is a better measure...Notch is one of a kind and his outlier effect is exaggerated given Linux's lower number of users. Of course, there's nothing stopping paragons in the Windows world to make massive donations either ;)</comment></comment>