Why Do Famous People Get Paid $250k to Give a Speech? - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/why-do-famous-people-get-paid-s250000-to-give-a/ <comment><USER2> While Hillary was Secretary of State, Bill's speaking fees from foreign interests dramatically skyrocketed.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bill-clinton-cashed- hillary-s...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bill-clinton-cashed-hillary- secretary-state/story?id=30522705)

One example of these appears to be related to the uranium deal with Russia, where he bagged $500K. Hillary changed direction and signed off on the deal.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to- clinton-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton- foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html)

This is not the only form of payola for corrupt elites. Hillary's new book, for which she received a record $14M advance, sold less that 3000 copyies its first week. We've seen this before.

<comment><USER3> Great to see partisan political commentary on HN.

There is no proof of quid pro quo in that Russia uranium deal: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jun/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/jun/30/donald-trump/donald-trump-inaccurately-suggests- clinton-got-pai/)

Also, Clinton sold a lot more than 3000 copies that first week; more like 85000 (still not as good as her prior best sellers):

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/18/what-do- hil...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/18/what-do-hillary-s-so- so-book-sales-portend-for-a-clinton-candidacy.html)

<comment><USER2> You're confused. It's less than 3000.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/us/politics/clinton- book-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/us/politics/clinton-book- stronger-together.html)

The larger number is for the disappointing sales of her previous book.

Nothing partisan about my comments. I'm not promoting any party. Just pointing out the sleaze.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I completely admit I had no idea she had a new book out this week. I'm assuming I'm not alone ><

<comment><USER2> No problem. There's more important stuff to keep up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _that's like asking why anyone would pay Beyoncé or the Beatles a million dollars just to play a few songs_ "

This almost feels like playing dumb. The fact that a legitimate public speaking economy exists and has a dynamic which is not based on payola does not mean that a dirtier side does not. Like other pieces of the money-in- politics puzzle there are legitimate, non-corrupt reasons to hand powerful people 6 figure checks for dropping by. The problem is that it also gives cover to the non-legitimate reasons.

<comment><USER5> > The rewards to attracting the right people in the corporate world can more > than justify a six-figure speech. Hedge funds often invite potential clients > to events featuring prominent speakers. As one hedge fund manager has > explained, if just one client "decides to invest $10 million… the firm will > snag a 2 percent management fee—which works out to $200,000" per year.

This on the other hand seems like a very legitimate explanation and parallels the logic behind paying speakers to attend large tech events (like one Salesforce might have, which is mentioned elsewhere in the article).

<comment><USER4> I guess I think that my point still stands. The existence of legitimate reasons does not rule out or make less likely illegitimate ones.

The main way I think this topic goes wrong is becoming a trial. In a trial you are looking for definite proof of unacceptable (and ideally illegal) misconduct. This is not a trial question, IMO. If you find out the girls have been in the boys room while at band camp, you can probably guess the reasons or at least the outcomes in a large enough portion of cases.

The system needs to be preventative. Elected officials in particular need to have no legal way of accepting this kind of money.

<comment><USER5> Occam's razor implies that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who worked at a company that hired HRC to speak, I can speak from experience. We were not buying influence. She was there to impress attendees (e.g., prospective and existing clients) with a speech and photo opps afterward -- same as the other speakers we brought in previously and after.

It's easy to see conspiracies from afar, but the reality -- at least our reality -- was mundane.

<comment><USER7> Unless you were the guy writing the check or were present for every phone call and closed door meeting, I'm not sure how you can claim this.

<comment><USER6> I can claim it because that's what my first-hand experience told me -- which is more experience than most. Even if I were in all meetings, you could say I wasn't inside the CEO's head.

<comment><USER7> Hiring a speaker for prestige and for influence are not mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Networking is one of the likliest reasons. A Clinton dinner at 10k per head will attract a certain kind of audience. The speech itself may not carry as much importance as the presence of other dignitaries, industrialists, upcomers, lobbyists and so forth.

<comment><USER9> \+ People get to say: 'I saw so and so' \+ It establishes the cred of the audience, i.e. all the bankers can talk to clients about how they say/met so and so. \+ It's an indirect way to contribute to campaigns without it technically being a campaign donation \+ It's a form of buying favour \+ And yes - it attracts other people whom you might be interested in meeting with etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody here ever had her/his mind changed by a great overpaid speaker? I've seen a lot of speeches in my professional life, and the ones that stuck the most were usually from non-famous low-paid speakers. The more famous and accomplished (and American, actually) the speaker is, the more the speech would steer toward a self-eulogy of the person's work achievements. And it's boring.

It's a bit sad that most of the time this kind of talks are nothing more than marketing stunts for both the speakers and the conference organizers.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about changing my mind _per se_ , but I definitely got a new perspective on financial regulation after attending a talk by Barney Frank (famous for the Dodd-Frank bill). I don't remember the exact details now, but hearing about how he designed the regulations was very interesting, even if it was a pretty high-level description. It colored my understanding of the regulation in a way that just reading a description on Wikipedia didn't.

<comment><USER12> Who paid the bill for that talk?

I bet it wasn't Goldman & Sachs.

<comment><USER13> Look at their list of speakers. Russel Simmons, Deepak Chopra, Shaq. They invite all kinds of people. These are usually in the big offices in NY or London so most of the attendees are likely to be liberals.

<comment><USER12> What are you talking about? I'm asking specifically about Barney Frank to the author of the comment above.

<comment><USER13> I took your comment to mean that could not imagine GS paying for a liberal who championed financial regulation to come speak. I'm countering that they invite a wide array of speakers on a a variety of topcis, many of whom are liberal. I'm not sure if they have ever invites Frank, but it seems like something they definitely would do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a legal way to baksheesh them! Nicolas Sarkozy then a random french president got payed over 200000 euros to give a 15mn speech at a Qatar based event. Qatar did really well in Business with the french since then. That's how it works!

<comment><USER15> Well this is exactly what fta is about. People also give this kind of money to famous non politicians.

<comment><USER16> > _Well this is exactly what fta is about_

No, tfa explicitly downplays this.

> _People also give this kind of money to famous non politicians._

Only famous non-politicians have interesting and specific things to say (e.g. someone like Malcom Gladwell, etc). Few care what a politician has to say, after all they hear what they have to say all the time, in interviews, public statements, campaign speeches, etc.

<comment><USER17> >Only famous non-politicians have interesting and specific things to say (e.g. someone like Malcom Gladwell, etc)

Malcolm Gladwell is paid to be a presentable face for the tobacco, banking and pharma industries:

[http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm- gladwell-2/](http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/)

<comment><USER16> AND also sells millions of books to people who just want to read what he says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > In the case of politicians like Hillary Clinton, many observers see a more > sinister explanation for how a speech can be worth $225,000: the speech is > buying political influence.

> It's impossible to say exactly how much the desire to influence politicians > inflates their speaking fees.

Goldman is, as with all their investments, expecting a positive return. I'm not sure why this is presented as some kind of alternative theory.

<comment><USER19> They already received their positive return. By paying Hillary for her speeches, they blocked her from credibly moving to the left on financial reform to fend off Sanders.

<comment><USER20> Do we know who canceled Glass–Steagall?

And after it was removed, how much tax payers paid to GS and such in '08, what was the rough figure?

<comment><USER21> The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed Glass-Steagall [1], in part to make a merger between Citicorp (a bank) and Travelers Group (an insurance company) legal.

Goldman Sachs did not win from it. They were on the "protected" side of Glass- Steagall's wall. Fees went down after JPMorgan and friends were allowed to throw their balance sheet around.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act)

<comment><USER20> The point is Clinton canceled it. ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legisla...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation#Decline_and_repeal) )

And the answer is: over $7 trillion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilizati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008)

So yeah, $200k.

<comment><USER21> > _And the answer is: over $7 trillion._

Only if you include monetary policy, directed by a Federal Reserve chairman appointed by George W. Bush, the same man who signed into law the bailout programme.

Goldman Sachs was far from the chief recipient of those funds and had to pay back the bail-out funds (at a profit to the U.S. government).

<comment><USER20> I gave a link with data that adds it up and how they added it up. You just gave your opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article is really about excusing Hillary Clinton isn't it?

By making absurd comparisons to pop-stars who can fill stadiums of paying concert goers.

America really needs to reign in its political class because it risks degenerating into a third-world country where corruption takes a big toll on the wealth of the whole society.

Selling off ambassador's posts for large sum political donations seems to be very well-documented. As is pay-to-play. And yet it seems like American media and populace are just accepting and/or ignoring this.

<comment><USER23> Do I think she bends the rules to make money/protect her ass? Yes.

Do I think she bends the rules less than the other guy? I don't know. Probally not?

On a side note, I will probally vote her. Why? Because I don't think Trump will raise tariffs, or can raise tariffs enough to "Make American great again."

That said, I remember, in the 90's, Hillary made close to $100,000 on a under $1000 futures contract. It was supposedly under the "guidance" of the head attorney for Tyson foods. I was in college at the fine, but remember being floored when I heard how much she made in one year. They were middle class Americans when she made that huge amount of money. It must have been a world record at the time?

We talked about it in class, and the instructor said, "I don't think I've ever met a successful investor that didn't get insider information. He said the wealthy/politicians are given preferential treatment. I remember he said Hillary should have been required to have an account of at least $12,000 in order to even play the future's contract she won on.

Anyways, I don't know a wealthy person who didn't cheat in their lives. The ones who claim it was luck/just hard work are in denial.

(I'm personally sick of wealthy people cheating the system. I can honestly state I have never met one that was completely honest. And then again, I most likely will vote for her. I don't want to go back to no insurance, and a bunch of conservative judges. Oh, yea, I remember reading a multiple studies where Supreme Court judges cannot be expected to vote line they did in the past once on that bench. Meaning--conservative judges sometimes ve one liberal ones. So, that isn't high on my radar.)

<comment><USER24> >Do I think she bends the rules less than the other guy? I don't know. Probally not?

Fool me once...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is how RMS has made a living for 2 decades. One advantage to attending these is being able to briefly talk to the speaker afterwards if they stick around, like asking RMS about his papers in the 1970s about propagation, dependencies and backtracking for building large-scale symbolic systems.

<comment><USER26> Unless it has changed recently, RMS asks for all his fees to be paid, and does not ask for a fee but makes it clear that one is appreciated and that if no speaking fee is paid, he's essentially given the speech for free. My experience is that organisations and people inviting him to speak do pay him, but in the thousands of dollars, similarly to what you'd pay a high end consultant to spend a day or two to travel and work ; not high tens of thousand and certainly not hundreds of thousands dollars!

<comment><USER26> I meant "asks for all his expenses to be paid", not fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the case of top politicians, it does look very much like a convenient legal way to pay them bribes and/or rewards for "good work".

This article does not really dispel that impression but rather strengthens it. It protests too much. Besides, there is a big difference between $225K for them and the $50K for the merely famous. Whereas $50K might well be the market rate for really inspirational and famous speakers, the additional $175K is for what exactly?

<comment><USER28> >>In the case of top politicians, it does look very much like a convenient legal way to pay them bribes and/or rewards for "good work".

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned it's the equivalent of paying someone $200,000 for a bag of rocks. Sure, it's a legal transaction, but everyone knows the real purpose behind it: as a way to trade favors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Barney Frank was on Bill Maher show the other day and he said he gets money from Wall Street on speaking engagements. And he is literally the author of Dodd Frank. The reason he gets invited because he knows more about the context of the regulation that anyone else and can answer complex question. A rather mundane reason. But if you omit that part, you can easily construct a more nefarious narrative on how a Senator is invited by Wall Street to influence regulations. Most times life is mundane and conspiracy theories are just that

</comment><comment><USER30> It attracts people to your event.

If you're paying $1,000/plate for some fundraiser, there's an expectation for something more than rubber chicken and a photo with representative so and so.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am neither a liberal nor a conservative. I'm a libertarian, so I really don't want any of the major U.S. presidential candidates to win.

But some of my political friends in both the right and left have a phrase I was reminded of while reading this article. It's "Vox-splaining"

The idea is that certain news outlets or articles exist based on the premise that those dumb voters! What they really just need is a patient voice to educate them on things. Then they would have correct political opinions. This can lead to really bad journalism where the author spends a lot of time trying to explain something that really doesn't need explaining -- all in an effort to correct misconceptions that nobody really ever had in the first place.

Why do famous people get paid a bazillion bucks to speak? Why, because they're famous, of course! I just plowed through 2,000 words that basically says this in various ways.

Yes, people pay lots of money to be near famous folks. They also pay money for access to famous folks. They pay money to influence famous folks to do things they want. There is no forced choice between these three options, and all can (and probably do) co-exist at the same time in many famous-person speaking engagements.

Every person in a 1,000 person audience probably has a different reason why an expensive speaker is worth it (or not).

My point has nothing directly to do with the Clinton campaign. I'm saying that _you can 't explain away an appearance of impropriety_. We don't need extra education to figure out that sometimes folks pay an Apollo 13 astronaut a lot of money to have him come hang out at their annual civic club meeting. And that education doesn't paint away the glaringly obvious conclusion that when the astronaut shows up, there are all sorts of things that happen with increased access. Even if nothing unethical or illegal happens, in some situations that access doesn't look so good.

So when Bernie asked why anybody would pay that much for a speaker, he was inviting people to come up with various reasons why they would pay that much. This is only logical because after all, the folks buying the speeches and listening to them are doing the same thing. They are asking themselves: how can I make my increased access to this famous person worth it to me? And they all have different answers.

The first rule of ethics is that if it looks bad, it is bad. The reason is because it opens up discussion to people speculating like this -- and this speculation harms the institutions that the famous people represent. I believe the principle is that you are supposed to put the institution you represent above your own desires.

<comment><USER32> Brazilian politicians have recently "discovered" the "benefits" of paid speeches too. A famous ex-president used to charge north of $200k USD saying that's what international speakers like Clinton charge, so he ought to be allowed to do the same. Evidence is mounting this was a venue for converting bribes into legal money, or to buy influence from the Brazilian state machine.

Funny anecdote: he was once paid such amount to speak to a audience of workers from a beer factory. After arriving, he basically drank a pint of beer in front of everyone, said some funny jokes and disappeared into the offices to discuss "business". That was a speech and he damn well charges what he wants for that, that was the explanation.

It amazes me that these people, having reached their peak in social influence and often in their bank accounts, can pretend to justify speeches as a revenue source. If they are so concerned with making the world a better place, they could charge just their expenses and maybe a modest fee to pay their bills. Hell, I'm sure most famous decent people would do it for free if it's really a good cause.

Completely agree, it feels bad, it smells bad... If you have any ethics, you know it's bad and you don't engage in such shenanigans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I watched a documentary called Clinton Cash[1] that provided some correlations to explore, pertaining the Clintons' speaking fees.

1\. [https://youtu.be/7LYRUOd_QoM](https://youtu.be/7LYRUOd_QoM)

<comment><USER34> Oh boy correlations, the lifeblood of the conspiracy theoriest

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> it's not what she/he speaks, it's that they become the honeypot for the event, so the event can get larger attention/influence(fame, money, publicity,etc).

</comment><comment><USER36> My first thought was that someone didn't tell Priceonomics about how attempting to be a policitical influencer runs counter to the goal of being seen as an intelligent source of independent thought... I had thought that was their brand. They really come off as dumb and naive here.

But then I thought, maybe they're interested in getting into the Think Tank game. This might be a sort of tryout.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like to look at these things from the other side. Say you're a high-level politician and/or civil servant and want to find a way for somebody to pay you off for granting them political favors. What would you do? Paid speeches sound great. Hire a speechwriter for a few thousand bucks, then you just go and give it to them and collect your fee. That fee can be whatever you want, because who can say what a speech is really worth? Beats the pants off of running a charity for your benefactors to donate to, where it has to at least look like a decent amount of the money is going to some worthy cause. You can do whatever you feel like with your speaking fees. Your benefactors don't get to write off their payoffs as charitable donations, but that's hardly your problem.

I can't prove that that's how it happened, of course. But isn't that part of the appeal of the scheme? Who could ever prove that it was or wasn't a payoff in disguise?

It's like the conflict of interest thing. It's best to just not do it, as least while you're active in government and have the ability to subtly grant favors. Even if it's completely fair, standard, and on the level, it still looks dirty, you can never satisfactorily prove that it isn't dirty, and you waste a ton of time arguing about it, which just serves to cement in peoples' minds the notion that you are dirty.

<comment><USER38> Some people go to great lengths to try to avoid something that would even appear to be a conflict of interest. Others couldn't even be bothered to cross the street if it inconvenienced them.

Here are some things that could be investigated, probably the same way one would use data science for fraud detection:

\- Compile a broad database of speakers, fees they received, when it happened

\- Find a way to rate speakers based on their public visibility. In other words, who attracts an audience more than someone else. Conceivably, the value of a "Speaker" is to get people to show up to your event and pay to be there.

\- Create a network database of relationships of speakers and family members.

\- Start looking for anomalies related to outsized speaking fees and changes when a family member is or is not holding a public office.

\- From that, investigators would need to start looking in to the details of who may have done what for who

Despite what is read in the press, Western countries are moving hard against public corruption and perceived corruption and have since the post-9/11 anti- money laundering changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Do they give a discount for speaking gigs in/around their hometown? It seems like 90+% of the "work" (and certainly the time) involved in most of the out- of-town speaking gigs would be traveling to and from them, rather than the actual speaking.

<comment><USER40> I give a lot of talks, and coming up with engaging content and organizing it, often with visual aids (though I realize many of these extremely highly paid people don't use those; but I will say that having engaging material without visuals is even harder....), is enormously time consuming. The time I spend traveling is meanwhile relatively meaningless. To compare: thing of a stand up comedian, and ask yourself if 90% of their "work" is driving to the venue.

<comment><USER41> The real question is how often you can give the same talk (possibly with slight variations) in different locations, because each performance of the same speech amortizes the time cost to prepare it initially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's kind of a shame that this article devolves into political discussion, as that is the least interesting aspect of the thing.

Public speaking is hard af, and being even _decent_ at it pays dividends.

</comment><comment><USER43> When the same person who gets 250'000 for a single gig regularly performs for free for other audiences, something is fishy.

</comment><comment><USER44> We are bound to our own ignorance and gullibility when we accept bribery as a cost that all free people can bear.

</comment><comment><USER45> They don't. They get paid to push a policy, the speech is just a legal way to compensate them.

</comment><comment><USER46> Because Americans worship celebrities and bribe their politicians.

</comment><comment><USER47> When a common man does it, it's called bribery. When a lobbyist does it, it's a great law.

<comment><USER48> Most of the people listed in this article aren't politicians, and so can't enact any laws. And even when they are politicians, it looks like they are almost always retired politicians, who can't enact any laws.

Some of them are even counter-establishment figures like satirists and even hackers (in the security sense).

Hillary Clinton is a prominent example, but the article's explanation is that she is invited as a retired secretary of state, as other retired secretaries of state have been, rather than as a current presidential candidate, which seems reasonable.

'it's a great law' doesn't even make sense in your sentence. What's a great law? Bribing people? Bribing people isn't lawful.

<comment><USER49> Only amateurs bribe any more. Professionals negatively bribe: They sponsor the whole show and just stop giving you money once you oppose.

<comment><USER16> You'd be surprised.

The distinction you make exists, but it's not about amateurs vs professionals, but obviously about those that can afford it (to "sponsor the whole show") and those who don't.

Smaller businesses and interest groups pay their way into laws the traditional bride way all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's called a bribe, folks.</comment>


Startup School – YC's Online Class - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/onlineclass/ <comment><USER2> I'm very optimistic about this program, but I also wonder how much of the success of the main program and the fellowship can be scaled into a MOOC.

I was part of YCF1 as AirPaper, and while I think it was an incredibly valuable experience, most of the things the YC partners told us we're things that we "knew." Most of the advice was available in one essay or another, but it still felt very, very different to have one of the partners tell us directly what we should be doing.

I actually think in a lot of ways the YC program felt a lot like therapy for our startup. We'd talk in group office hours about the other successes and problems other startups were facing. Individual office hours felt like one on one therapy where we got very specific direction out of the partners, but most of the time they were really helping my cofounder and I work out what the solution to our biggest problem was.

While I think the information in this class will certainly be valuable, I hope that the participants of this class really convince themselves that the advice applies to them, right now. To get the most out of this class, I think you need to abandon cynicism and let the message reach through the screen and grab you and your cofounders by the lapels.

<comment><USER3> >> "most of the things the YC partners told us we're things that we "knew." Most of the advice was available in one essay or another, but it still felt very, very different to have one of the partners tell us directly what we should be doing."

This is really what will make a difference, that is building a network of mentors that are doing one-on-one mentoring under the same process guided by the same culture. YC should really have a 3rd option, that being to sign-up to become a "certified" mentor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it quiet surprising that none of these startup classes teach how to do market research and market sizing. Yet when a new batch of startups demo every six weeks, the first thing they talk of is, size of opportunity. Market opportunity is one of the things to consider before deciding on a problem to work on. Please consider adding this info to your classes.

Also, None of them teach how Sam or any YC partner or any VC would approach or start thinking whether a startup is worth investing in or not. That would be hugely beneficial to some of us as it will help us in channeling our thoughts.

<comment><USER5> I am planning to cover both of those!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Build a community of entrepreneurs who can encourage and teach each other

Working towards the mentioned goal can start right here on HN by adding a navbar link titled "MOOC" like what YC did with "Apply HN". I am curious to know if YC considered involving the HN community directly like they did with the Fellowship. I remember the whole controversy involving pinboard and YC receiving a lot of flak for it, but I hope that experience did not deter YC from involving the HN community if they had considered involving the HN community. I imagine there are a lot of enthusiastic folks around here willing to give feedback to startups.

Sam Altman mentioned that somewhere (can't remember where) that they would experiment giving funding to a few startups taking part in the MOOC. I wonder why they pushed that to the next offering of the MOOC, why not start now?

Also, what happened to the Fellowship? I thought it was a great idea but I get the impression (from having read comments about the Fellowship written by YC partners) that YC felt it might not have been the best way to scale funding new startups and so the MOOC was born.

Suggestion : the Fellowship was a great idea and so is this MOOC, why not make the Fellowship a subset of the MOOC i.e fund a few startups taking part in the MOOC with $20,000 or so and please find a way to involve the HN community directly.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, that's a great suggestion and it does seem like there should be ways for the HN community to plug into this. It's probably also the case that we should let the new thing grow a bit before trying to extend it. But I'll talk with Sam about this the next time I see him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was laughed off of HN when I suggested a few years ago that YC was en route to becoming the world's first true 21st century university.

Applying pg's question of "What Microsoft Is this the Altair Basic of" to YC itself, the answer to me has always been a modern university. From the regular cohorts, to nascent investment in basic research, to residential component, to doing things that make a big impact on the world, to being highly profitable (yes, elite higher ed. is a fantastic business), always seemed to me that all the ingredients were there.

This is yet another small step in that direction.

<comment><USER9> You would be happy to know that in fact I believe PG has said as much himself :)

[https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/sam-altman-taking-over- as-...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/sam-altman-taking-over-as-president- of-y-combinator-replacing-paul-graham-at-the-helm/)

<comment><USER3> Related text from the above link:

>> At a fundamental level, though, Graham says that the YC experience for startups will largely be unchanged. "A big misconception is that Y Combinator is Paul Graham," he said. This change, he says, should finally dispel that public perception and build a bigger future for YC modeled in part after organizations that have stood the test of time.

>> "It's rare for a company to last 100 years, but for a university it's nothing. The reason for the difference, I think, is that product companies always have in their DNA some assumption about the kind of thing they're building, and about their market, and that eventually ends up becoming false. But a university is just a nexus of people...people go there because of the people that are there," he said. "Now, I'm not claiming that Y Combinator is going to last for centuries. But it could."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a smart move by YC. This gives them a platform to assess promising ideas and teams at no-cost. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point teams become required to graduate from the program before being able to apply to YC.

I am not trying to be cynical here or downplay the value of their contribution. I think that they will genuinely teach the best of what they know to people. And what I am actually saying is that this is a good example of healthy capitalism.

This is an example of the fact that it is possible to articulate your best interests in a way that also helps people.

But I have to say that also admire the strategy itself. This is the kind of things that get you thinking : "they should have done it a long time ago" after you see the solution. Never thought about it either to be fair, but this is how you recognize the best solutions : they shine through their simplicity.

Anyway, well found and wishing you the best with this, and hopefully this will help and inspire many people to make the world a more pleasant place.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Startup School logo is really cool - a bunch of Y Combinator 'Y's forming a tree. It fits what they seem to be going for with by calling the MOOC 'Startup School' and symbolizes the programming definition of Y Combinator. Whoever came up with that design does good work. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope that there is some kind of 1:1 they can do here. We're part of a startup in a non-techy city. We're a service business and although our immediate future is bright, I have major questions about how to scale our business outside of acquiring similar companies doing stuff close to what we're doing and changing their strategy. Sure, there are mentors here who have grown a business...but I want YC-enabled growth...

<comment><USER13> We hope to provide 1:1 and group office hours to as many companies as possible.

<comment><USER12> That's great. I will fly to SF just to get the quality time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any interesting insights learned from running the fellowship that contributed to the development of the MOOC?

I definitely think the community would love to hear them!

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice! I'm living in Vietnam and I'd love to learn from this program.

</comment><comment><USER16> As someone who lives in a regional city in Australia, Im very excited to have the opportunity to join the program.

Watching the lectures on Youtube offers a one way information transfer, which while its an amazing amount of information im hoping that this MOOC will allow a bit more of a two way communication.

So Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> _" 30-40% of these will be recorded advice sessions with startups—we've always heard from entrepreneurs that this is some of our most helpful content."_

Excellent. Learning online is best served by using video. Following the model of getting the best on tape, distributing to a mass audience. cf: MIT online 6.001 lectures. I'm thinking the Hal Abelson lectures from '85)

 _" We'll have an online community via Slack and email where you can connect with other entrepreneurs in the class."_

Expedience. Not a fan of slack. Is a YC discussion/mooc platform being planned?

 _" 4) At the end of the class, participants will have a chance to share what they've built with a wide audience."_

How is this happening? Slack?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great, however I don't believe it will make you a better entrepreneur.

To me at least the only thing I ever learned from was doing it and make my own experience which often would if not contradict what I read about then at least illustrate that nothing beats doing.

<comment><USER19> I guess the idea isn't to teach people how to be an awesome entrepreneur, but to point them in a good direction so they can earn the experience they need to be an awesome entrepreneur.

<comment><USER20> A friend of mine once said, "There are things in life that you can only learn through experience. There are also things that you should never learn through experience -- like how to pack a parachute. Knowing the difference between the two is key".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice, good to see that they also put 1on1, wondering how this can scale with the "few" startups that may apply.

</comment><comment><USER22> The test is whether the core YC aspects can scale?

* How can we motivate people to build on a weekly basis?

* Can we be a credible source of advice so people can save time by not second-guessing it?

* Can we identify which problems need resolving and intervene at depth?

* Can we connect the community through this shared experience?

Lots of assumptions to test.

</comment><comment><USER23> Will there be an in-person start up school this year like the conference last year?

</comment><comment><USER24> Dates of recording for the videos on the home page of startupschool.org? Would be helpful to prospective students.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> "All rights reserved."

Really, is this the best YC is able to do?

Truly interested in knowingly why the course is not released under something like one of the Creative Commons licenses:

[https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing- types-...](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types- examples/)

<comment><USER25> Apologies for that, we were still in the process of drafting a Terms of Use when we put up the site. That will be updated shortly to have more information. We plan on releasing our content under the Creative Commons license similar to Sam's previous Startup Class.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the update, glad to hear YC is going to address the issue and that a terms of service will be added too; adding privacy policy would also be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Unable to sign up at the moment, getting a 522 from CF after entering email.

<comment><USER13> Sorry about that. We're really getting hammered. If you try again it should work. We'll increase our capacity substantially before registration opens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tried to sign up for notifications, and just see an endless spinner.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for letting us know - we're working on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The registration form is not working. Click submit and it just spins

<comment><USER30> Just had a similar issue. Refresh the page.

<comment><USER29> fifth try's the charm :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> the conference site is timing out for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's more info: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/onlineclass/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/onlineclass/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Lots of analytics, advertising and tracking being used on the site: [https://builtwith.com/www.startupschool.org](https://builtwith.com/www.startupschool.org)

Expecting to see lots of ads for this appearing soon.

<comment><USER13> We are absolutely not going to be advertising on the site. I'm not sure where the tracking is coming from but am looking into it.

Also, I think that information is out of date. The Startup School Conference site has been moved to here: [http://conference.startupschool.org](http://conference.startupschool.org).

The new site is built with Ruby on Rails, React and Semantic UI.

<comment><USER33> I think GP meant advertising FOR the site, not ON it.

<comment><USER13> Ah. We're not going to be advertising FOR it either. I'm mostly just surprised as we haven't intentionally added any advertising tracking code to the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's a two-day in-person version of this on the East Coast on July 25-26, 2017 at Georgetown University called Startup Spectacular. Worth checking out if you want an in-person version: [http://www.startupspectacular.com](http://www.startupspectacular.com). Edit: yes, just noticed this is not the same idea / concept. I was posting based on the feedback that a MOOC doesn't seem to work for everyone for this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> To be clear, the above appears to have no affiliation with YC, but is just another startup course; one that does not appear to be a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), unlike the one referenced in the the post that's the subject of this thread.</comment></comment>


Tim Cook defends using Google as primary search engine on Apple devices - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/tim-cook-defends-using-google-as-primary-search-engine-on-apple-devices/ <comment><USER2> It may make sense but it definiteky seems hypocritical when he harps about users being the product at these evil adtech companies while selling the users to Google.</comment>


The Antonine Wall was the real final frontier of the Roman Empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190526-did-the-romans-really-reach-scotland <comment><USER2> Interestingly, the headline on the BBC page is more accurate than the one I see on HN. BBC says: "Did the Romans Really Reach Scotland?". And even though it's a headline, the answer is "yes, duh."

HN headline, "The Antonine Wall was the real final frontier of the Roman Empire" is misleading, and _final_ is doing strange work there. The Antonine wall was only briefly defended a couple of times, while the more famous Hadrian's wall was a fairly fixed frontier.

I find it interesting that the Antonine wall is entirely inside Scotland, while Hadrian's wall is entirely inside England. Somewhere between them lay the line where further imperial expansion became overreach.

<comment><USER3> > _...while the more famous Hadrian 's wall was a fairly fixed frontier._

Agreed. Hadrian's Wall has always been considered the last, defensible hard border of the Roman Empire. As even the article notes:

> _But the story of Rome's north-west frontier far from ends there, for it was > the Antonine Wall that, albeit briefly, held the title of the wildest edge > of the empire._

If the zone between the Antonine and Hadrian's would've been a buffered no- man's land, the likes of how international borders stand to this day, then the Antonine - if only the demarcation of the beginning of the no man's land - really wouldn't have been the final frontier.

I imagine the Roman Army, in all it's due dilligence, would've swept the area of around five to ten miles from the Antonine - to make sure they weren't going to get "surprise visitors" whilst they were building the Antonine.

Assuming this posit is true, then the "final frontier" of the Roman Army was actually much further north than one would assume (in the sense of frontiers being realms of exploration and not demarcated boundaries).

<comment><USER4> > then the "final frontier" of the Roman Army was actually much further north > than one would assume

In my backyard, Perthshire, it's difficult not to bump into the ruins of some fairly substantial Roman encampments. This is certainly a good bit north of the Antonine Wall. The Gask Ridge, just a couple of miles away from me, may contend as one of the earliest Roman "frontiers":

[http://www.theromangaskproject.org/](http://www.theromangaskproject.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The wall systems the Romans built in Britain get all of the attention, but that era of emperors were building walls all over the place, including a much longer and more extensive section between the Rhine and Danube[1], and yet more across the other far-flung borders, in every quarter of the empire.

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

<comment><USER4> I think it's maybe because of how remote, especially in Scotland, these wall systems were from the centre of power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was the last Roman Emperor who reached it -

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

Born in Libya, turned Rome into a military dictatorship then went north and ruled Rome from York and rebuilt Hadrian's Wall.

edit - This was after fortifying the Sahara. He was a busy guy.

<comment><USER7> Constantius I (father of the more famous Constantine) led an expedition into Scotland and probably made it North of the Antonine Wall, though Severus was the last Emperor to try and permanently fortify it.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that. Is often true that the quickest way to find out something correct on the internet is to write something incorrect, with conviction. :)

<comment><USER8> [Henrik] Ibsen's ploy, although he had to do it in person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Edward Luttwak's _The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire_ is interesting on the walls in Britain and elsewhere. I am no historian and can't say what one would think of the book.

</comment><comment><USER10> A wall in the north you say?

<comment><USER11> No, the south.</comment></comment>


Ask YC:how do you do Sessions on EC2? - <AUTHOR>

I have been thinking of implementing a replacement session handler for PHP you can see more here.
http://us3.php.net/session_set_save_handler
my custom version would be for ec2 s3 and or simpleDB so that I can do RRDyDNS and have session state stored between server instances for load balancing.
I was wondering what the crowd thought, and how some of you might be tackling the sessions problem on ec2?  DB? <comment><USER2> I'm thinking this might be a 'bad' idea unless you are also hosting the site on EC2. Having significant latency in your session handling will bring your site to a crawl due to IOWAIT on your web servers. Obviously making a request across the net for session data will be slow compared with a request across a local network.

Now, assuming you are also hosting your web servers on EC2, I would recommend using neither S3 or SimpleDB for hosting sessions. S3 is more appropriate for static data, and SimpleDB is still in early Beta (as in, the API is subject to change and you have no SLA).

Session data is largely meant to be ephemeral. Consider using a standard MySQL (or similar) session backend with a circular hash for distribution to different nodes. Unless you are doing a ton of traffic, you can get by with a single machine running the session backend. The MySQL backend scales to a lot of concurrent users.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a little more complicated/ costly then i care to implement on a new site. Yes the site is on ec2, but i think i am going to seriously avoid MySQL in aws. if a server crashes your log files are not valid, because the virtual machine hard drive gets disposed. Setting up MySQL on ec2 seems like it should have at least 4 servers running. I will wait till traffic demands it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a cool idea. How fast is simpleDB on EC2? I'd be interesting in contributing.

<comment><AUTHOR> thats what i would like to know. i am still waiting on access to the beta. are you up with doing an S3 version?

it looks like a cool path would be:

# support s3

# support some cache (memcache/ThruDB)

# support SimpleDB with cache

<comment><USER3> I'd like to make it as simple as possible, an S3 version sounds like a good start. Send me an email if you get a chance - firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> memcached

<comment><USER5> This might be what you mean, but a combination of memcached and a replicated database running on some ec2 boxes should work pretty well. The socialtext link implies that.

I haven't used simpledb yet, but as far as I understand it seems like it could be a good use case for replacing the replicated database piece.

<comment><USER4> All you need for your backing store is a dumb key/value dictionary. You want S3 for that. Even with replication, running a DBMS on EC2 is a dreadfully foolish idea. A lot of startups are going to immediately go under the moment that EC2 has its first system-wide crash, and I'm going to be laughing at their misery.

<comment><USER5> Here is the thing. What makes some other solution more immune to a system-wide crash than ec2? When that happens, what is the major difference between that solution and an ec2 based one? If you really want to play it safe and don't trust amazon, then what you want is a disaster recover site which is completely independent. However, wouldn't you also want the same for any isp/hosting solution?

<comment><USER4> It isn't a question of who you trust. It's a question of what classes of events that your system can withstand. EC2 is not durable. It isn't designed to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Covid-19 and the Lockdown Timeline of over 4.1B People Worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://datadna.io/blogs/world_population_under_quaratine_timeline <comment><AUTHOR> Interactive graph showing the lockdown timeline of different countries due to COVID-19 and the population size affected.</comment>


Cisco To Shut Down Flip Video Business; Will Give Pink Slips To 550 Employees - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/cisco-to-shut-down-flip-video-business-will-give-pink-slips-to-550-employees/

<comment><USER4> I really think the GoPro killed them. If I want good quality video, I need something better than a Flip. If I need a durable, small, device for getting some OK video, I'll get a goPro. If I need OK video quality and don't care about durability, I'll use my smart phone.

When I'm out skiing, I see half the teenagers with GoPro's mounted on their helmets, their ski poles, chest harnesses etc video taping each other hitting jumps to put it up on youtube. When I'm at a car race, half the guys have GoPro's mounted on their rollcage. Flip just kind of missed the niche.

<comment><USER5> Mmmm...I think it's more likely all the smartphones out there that now have decent enough video capabilities for most people.

<comment><USER6> For most people, yes. I think the all-in-one packages of phone, mp3 player and camera has put a dent in the bottom line of any low-end single-use device. I bought a Kodak Zi8 back in '09 and to be honest I've only really used it once. The camera on the iPhone can't compete with it, but for a multi-purpose device I'd much rather have a GoPro. I guess Flip failed to take notice that a niche was driving the market.

<comment><USER7> I have a Zi8 which I haven't used in a long time and didn't use that much when I had it. Now I take video with my iPhone4 all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Did the HD video capability of mobile phones (e.g. iPhone 4) kill the Flip? If so, this has happened before; Pure Digital's first product was a cheap point- and-shoot camera that you'd take in for processing, but it was also beaten by the rise of (equally poor quality) cellphone cameras.

Interesting take-away from a user experience perspective. A dedicated device that is famously easy to use, still loses out to more complicated devices that do everything.

History of Pure Digital and Flip:

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/19/flip-video-wrong-wrong- wron...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/19/flip-video-wrong-wrong-wrong-and- then-so-so-right/)

<comment><USER9> > _"A dedicated device that is famously easy to use, still loses out to more > complicated devices that do everything."_

There's something of a gadget axiom in there. Casual users are, by definition, not interested in the fiddly bits. Thus they value the results over the process, the tools or the craft. Thus they are most-willing to abandon a dedicated device for a good-enough multifunction, if for no other reason than to cut down on extra gadgets for endeavors they don't have a deep interest in.

I think you might be off on 'complicated' though. Note that Flip didn't have any real competition until the latest versions of modern pocket-OSes brought (comparative) simplicity to video. 'Feature-phones' were packing video capabilities for pretty much all of Flip's rise to prominence.

It's the two-tap "upload to youtube/vimeo/facebook" that did them in.

<comment><USER8> > It's the two-tap "upload to youtube/vimeo/facebook" that did them in.

Great point. For sharing, connecting to a computer via USB isn't nearly as nice as tapping a couple of buttons. (But Flip was easier to point and shoot. No hunting for the photo app, loading it, switching to video, etc.)

re: gadget axiom - I've also heard about the "pocket exception": Devices with many functions lose out to specialized devices - except when the device can fit in your pocket. (Sorry, can't find the source.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Imagine if they had bothered to put an ethernet jack on it, or wifi in it, or made it time-lapse capable out of the box. Or made the whole thing USB-stick- sized. There are so many things you can do with cheap cameras that you can't do with an expensive camera phone - the problem here is a total lack of vision.

(and yeah, I'm aware of IP cams, and their wretched ActiveX-only interfaces, and their price range, and they don't fill the spaces I'm talking about).

<comment><USER8> I agree, they could have gone in a lot of directions with an inexpensive camera. I guess the problem was that Cisco wanted the mainstream market - <USER2> they weren't going to go after the various niche markets like: timelapses, infrared, fast shutter cams (e.g. skateboarding tricks), sport cams (e.g. mountain biking, longboarding)...

Or maybe Cisco didn't want any competition for their line of rather plain, low-quality home security IP cameras.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad I got my flip before they shut it down! It's been a tremendous asset in catching all my daughter's big moments so far. The value for me is in how quickly it boots up and starts recording, the fact that it's on a completely separate battery to my phone, has a good picture, steady cam and plays nice with iPhoto. It also came with a nice little tripod that we set up at christmas/birthday to catch the opening of presents. Whilst one could certainly solve the problem with a smart phone I've enjoyed having a dedicated device for all this.

EDIT: accidentally submitted half finished last sentence then went through a train tunnel hence delay in completion :)

<comment><USER12> I'm glad I did too—I've had one since 2009, and it's been one of those delightful and unexpected gadgets. The video quality is still far higher than my iPhone.

This is particularly distressing because, even though phones might make Flip cameras irrelevant _in the future_ , they haven't yet. Buying Flip only to shut it down seems cruel and stupid.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I wonder if the executives who spent $590 million on Pure Digital will also get a pink slip?

<comment><USER13> Did that acquisition EVER make any sense?

<comment><USER14> The acquisition made sense if they wanted to diversify into the consumer space. What did NOT make sense was the astronomical pricetag of $590 million. How many flips + services would need to be sold to generate $590 mil in revenue?

<comment><USER15> So they acquire talent + brand for a large part of $590 million ? seems pretty expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really? We're surprised by this?

Camera phones with video recording capabilities are almost ubiquitous. More then that, they're cheaper and solve the primary usage case better then the portable Flip cameras do. Flip cameras provided better quality portable video and now that embedded mobile technology has caught up to that quality, justifying the price to carry around another device is difficult.

<comment><USER17> Camera phones probably made it inevitable. But Cisco certainly accelerated matters.

I got a Flip camera phone 3 or 4 years back for Christmas. Great impulse buy. I think there was only 1 model. Less than $100. Didn't use it that much but still loved it. Girlfriend, too. Great for trips.

Loved it so much that when it crapped out, we decided to get a new one this year, even though we both have good smartphones. Now there were 2 or 3 models of Flip. None less than $150. I just wanted what I had before. Simple, cheap, works.

I think I got a discounted one on Amazon for a little under $150. Get it in the mail. Doesn't work out of the box. Neither Linux nor Windows computer recognizes it. Won't charge. After an hour on the phone with a woman in the Philippines, we finally got it charging. First time we try to use it, it just shuts down. It was on the next flight back to Amazon.

There was still a market for the old Flip: me. Cisco screwed the pooch on this.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. We got one from our ISP when we signed up for fiber. Not sure I would actually buy one, given that my wife has an iPhone, but the Flip has been very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess Cisco realized that they couldn't sell licensing entitlements to consumers. "If you can afford it, it's not Cisco."

</comment><comment><USER20> The Flip's strength is it's simplicity. Sorry, but I don't buy the idea elsewhere on this thread that Camera phones (w/ video recording) or GoPro's have captured this market. Yes, they both cover some of it, but lets face it we're the geeks - we're likely to spend money on the latest gadget.

The use case I want to suggest is my parents (in their early 60's). They both have cell phones, but they are not smartphones (they're as likely to get an iphone/android device as they are to go base jumping). They got a Flip about 2 years ago and have recorded over 1,000 hours of their grandkids (my kids) on it so far! It's easy to keep in a pocket or a bag, there's an on/off switch and a big red button to record, and of course it easily plugs in to their laptop (mom) / PC (dad). It had made a massive difference to them, and I think they're more likely to record stuff on the Flip than to take a picture of it :-)

Sad to see the Flip go.

<comment><USER21> Smartphones don't have to be directly comparable to the specialist device in order to make them uneconomic. Even if they're only 50% as good, for people that own one, they're essentially free. So for a lot of folks who might have gotten a Flip but didn't really have a pressing need for one, they're now going to just limp along with the non-dedicated device and save $100. Suddenly your market is 25-50% smaller and you can't sell at as low a price any more... so you raise your price and make your market even smaller, or get out of that business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I own 2 flips and I love the simplicity, I share it with my kids and extended family for all occassions.

Cisco is positioning itself as enterprise networking company.

They should not kill the Flip business, selling it is a good option.

<comment><USER23> As the article says: "In a world where consumers can now record and stream video directly from their iPhone, Android or BlackBerry phone, Flip's video camera business is no longer novel or useful."

<comment><USER24> I would much rather record video with a Flip camera than my Android phone. The Flip is instantly ready to record when I turn it on, and it boots in at most 3 seconds. There is very little delay between stopping and starting, so I don't miss what's going on if I pause/restart to create a new file. My Epic takes several seconds just to load the camera app, several seconds more plus a stupid "MMS vs. normal" question to switch to video, and has an annoying UI.

<comment><USER25> I think the real issue is that the phone video experience will continue to improve, so the market for a dedicated video device is decidedly more about prosumer features than gee-why-not convenience.

i.e. the Flip still has a niche today, but it's clear that the story doesn't end well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Flip built an interesting product, but it just doesn't offer anything anymore.

I came close to buying one a number of times, but never pulled the trigger because it would have been another device to carry and I wasn't sure how much I'd really use it.

Now, both my phone and my iPod Touch offer everything the Flip did, and I'm already carrying them around with me.

</comment><comment><USER27> I got the Kodak video cameras:

Playsport - waterproof Playtouch - for non waterproof and editing video

Love them both - I have two smartphones and do take pics and record video too - but for taking video or pics of my babu, recreation, or just fun - <USER3> dedicated device is actually really useful. Sure, when I'm out and about I record on my smartphone and send the video up to Facebook, but for anything business related or just seriously good video quality and long recording times, I'm back to my Kodaks.

The Kodak's are far better than my Flip by the way, for quality and reliability. So I'll keep my Kodak cameras for those purposes and it's nice not having an incoming call interrupt my recording.

As you say - we are tech geeks. Krschultz is wrong, nobody but the small community of us geeks care about these cameras. It's the smartphone that killed the pocket video market.

<comment><USER28> mostly unrelated: why is your name green?

<comment><USER12> I believe new user accounts are now green.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, Cisco guys aren't really the toast of engineering hiring on HN? No,"If you are an affected,motivated Cisco employee,ping me" posts? Interesting...

</comment><comment><USER30> I use 3 Flip cameras to create a video podcast for my church each week. I'm not going for great quality, I'm going for good enough with a simple form factor and and ease of use. This is really disappointing and after what they did to Linksys I'll reconsider any product that I use or am looking at using after Cisco buys them ...

</comment><comment><USER31> Flips are a pretty great tool in an informal educational setting where you wanna just hand some one a dumb simple device with a record button. I understand that this was never a big enough market to sustain the product, but the ed. world will mourn the loss of these devices.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, flip appeared and disappeared fast. I wonder how the camcorder makers feel.

<comment><USER33> The product lasted 5 years (though with a name change).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Even when the Flip was hot (I got one for Christmas a few years ago), the thing felt like a cheap toy. Once smartphones with decent video capabilities came out, it REALLY felt like a cheap toy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Woah, couldn't they at least try to sell it?

<comment><USER36> You would imagine they would try to sell it off.

They may have already and failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> And they were so close. If only they could have worked out the missing piece...

HINT: SD Card support.

</comment><comment><USER38> Are there any alternatives that let you custom design the camera?

</comment><comment><USER39> i'm quite surprised about john chambers resolve and speed of execution here. too bad for the 550.</comment>


Virtual Leagues Fold, Forcing Gamers to Find Actual Jobs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/sports/othersports/02video.html <comment><USER2> "Actual Jobs"? Ironic that the NYT would gloat.

Next article in the series: Non-Virtual News Sources Fold, Forcing Journalists to Find Actual Jobs.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking that too. A bitter copy editor must've enjoyed writing that headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This isn't the end of professional video gaming. As the article points out, Major League Gaming is still going strong.

Also in other countries professional video gaming is even stronger than in the US. I was surprised when visiting Korea to see in airports big screen TVs showing video game championships. The big money's over there, someone recently signed a six-figure contract:

[http://www.sk- gaming.com/content/22880-FOX_officially_unveil...](http://www.sk- gaming.com/content/22880-FOX_officially_unveils_record_signing_Moon)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is also happening to leagues for fringe or 'extreme' sports, such as paintball.

<comment><USER5> and olympians <http://www.newsweek.com/id/189296>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a former pro-gamer (sponsored by Diamond Multimedia for Counter-Strike... remember them?) turned pro-hacker to pay the bills, the future for pro-gaming seems bright.

Quake-live is a great example of a game that could really become the next "basketball". It can run on almost any computer (10 years old) and the gameplay has stood the test of time which shows how incredibly balanced the game is.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't feel bad for these guys. Sure you can argue that playing video games well is a skill and if people are willing to pay for it, fine. It is essentially another form of entertainment, after all, similar to acting or sports. Still it feels cheap to me, as it doesn't even require the physical might that at least athletics demands. With so many people working so hard to make a living, it seems unfair for someone to do so playing video games.

Maybe this shitty economy will help weed out the lazy and force people to be useful again.

<comment><USER8> Read some of David Sirlin's stuff (like his book "Playing To Win" <http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/>) and see how lazy you think competitive gamers are.

<comment><USER9> Sirlin is terrific. I've been reading through his blog, and his insights into the gaming world are incredible. I'd recommend it to anybody who's designing anything, especially since to many people using web sites are similar to playing games. (Some of his tips on gameplay would really influence and change sites like Reddit and HN, I feel, especially his article about balanced gameplay.)</comment></comment></comment>


China, Number One Economic Power for Half Decade, Dashes On - <AUTHOR> https://www.unz.com/article/china-number-one-economic-power-for-half-decade-dashes-on/ <comment><USER2> It isn't china fault. Western countries contribute to china economy and they should blame themselves for creating such begemoth. But I guess short profit from bigger sale margin will continue to force west to produce in china.

<comment><USER3> > But I guess short profit from bigger sale margin will continue to force west > to produce in china.

According to the South China Morning Post, your guess is wrong:

[https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3045141/c...](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3045141/chinas-manufacturing-exodus-set-continue-2020-despite)</comment></comment>


Response to Alex Payne: In Defense of "Everything Buckets" - <AUTHOR> http://www.wonderwarp.com/blog/archives/107

<comment><USER2> I saw your comment in the original thread. Like you, I enjoyed reading Alex's thoughts on the subject, but his was a poorly thought out rant. Your diplomatic response actually brings a lot more to the table.

I'm also reminded of the proliferation of document-oriented DB technology. The relational model is powerful, and has a theoretical elegance that will not likely be replaced. Nevertheless, there are reasons no one's implemented a true RDBMS, and there are practical reasons (legitimate or not) that people fudge on the relational model, or decide to go direcly to the "Everything Hash" model.

</comment><comment><USER3> An early 'Everything Bucket'-like approach was called 'Lifestreams':

<http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html>

I still think the document-organization metaphors of the future will drift more towards a Lifestreams-like model over time, and away from traditional structured/hierarchical filesystems.

We have the cycles to spare, and convenience for the users ultimately trumps convenience to computers (or even programmers).</comment>


MacBook Air and MacBook Pro updated for back-to-school season - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/macbook-air-and-macbook-pro-updated-for-back-to-school-season/ <comment><USER2> A shame they've forced the TouchBar everywhere. Perhaps it is like Sega Dreamcast and the little plugin LCD unit that controllers optionally supported - none of the games really used it because they could never guarantee that it was there, so it was never integral to game.

In this instance perhaps Apple thinks that everyone having one will encourage developers to use it.

But for me, I completely ignore it and force it to behave like function keys, although it does this very badly because I have to look down to see where the "keys" are when debugging (eg F6, F7 in xcode) because I can't feel them, and also it is completely invisible in daylight, as others have stated.

I routinely use my old 2012 MacBook instead to actually get work done because the touchpad is so useless as a keyboard (and turns itself off after a while, unlike REAL keys that don't disappear if you don't give them attention for a minute or two).

A real crying shame.

<comment><USER3> Wonderful analogy @ Dreamcast VMU

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The new Macbook Air is now the go-to (Mac) laptop for developers. If I were to get a new Macbook today, I would get the Air. It's now the only laptop without the touchbar, it has a Retina display, and you can get it with 16 GB of RAM. I see no reason to get a Macbook Pro at this point. Its more expensive than the air, heavier, has the awful touchbar, and 2 unnecessary USB-C ports (I've never needed more than two).

<comment><USER5> For me, the much lower TDP of the air series really limits its power. If you want to do a decent amount of computation actually on the machine then the 15 inch pro is much more compelling.

<comment><USER6> 13-inch MBP now has quad cores!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like they are doubling down on the Touch Bar... still not convinced. There are times when it is quite neat but an equal amount of times where it is inferior to real keys. Using it outdoors is one example, can hardly read it if it's bright.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you skip the PR, you'll notice that they killed the non-TB Macbook Pro. Really a shame to see them double down on a failed design. I am still hopeful that the next generation will kill the TB off.</comment>


Experience Switching From Ruby 1.8 to Ruby 1.9 - <AUTHOR> http://extralogical.net/2009/07/ruby-one-niner/

<comment><USER2> `sudo make install`

AFAIK if you enter `sudo checkinstall` instead, it installs into your package manager so you can remove it more easily later.

<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CheckInstall>

<comment><USER3> Ugh, I am sick of seeing those 'sudo make install' howtos potentially messing with system :S

The one powerful feature of Linux distributions is the package management. Every file that you have installed on your filesystem is accounted for...

And now I'm left wondering how this guy updates to next (major) ruby version :P

<comment><USER4> This is fine if the package maintainers are relatively up-to-date with the software you require, but often they aren't. Ubuntu Hardy's version of Ruby 1.9 is pretty outdated and thus probably doesn't include, amongst other things, some rather vital security fixes.

Don't get me wrong—I'm all in favour of package managers. Sometimes, however, they aren't sufficient.

<comment><USER2> But checkinstall (rather than make install) still uses the up-to-date source files. It just allows your package manager to _remove_ the application when you're done with it (e.g. when you're ready to upgrade to a sill-newer version).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I switched to 1.9 for several greenfields projects. The postgresql gem builds cleanly, as does thin, which can be used in place of mongrel.

The biggest gotcha was having to modify my application to explicitly open text files in UTF8 mode. But the more than 100% execution speedup was a nice upside.

</comment><comment><USER6> I reverted to 1.8 because I could not find documentation for the Standard Library of 1.9. Generating it myself also proved impossible (out of memory errors and other issues).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, ruby-doc.org is pretty annoying in this regard, especially since they do actually have the stdlib documentation available, they just don't link to it. Have a look at this search, for example:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aruby- doc.org%2Fcore-1....](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aruby- doc.org%2Fcore-1.9%2Fclasses+array)

There's the documentation for the Array class, but you can't get to it from the 1.9 core documentation:

<http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9/index.html>

<comment><USER6> I think that is only core, though, not the standard lib. It started for me with hearing the rumor that JSON would be part of the standard lib of Ruby 1.9. I was unable to confirm that online. Eventually I peeked into the "Programming Ruby" book in a bookshop and thus was able to confirm that Ruby 1.9.1 indeed comes with JSON.

<comment><USER7> ruby-doc really should have this. Maybe if jamesbritt sees these comments he can let us know what's up.

Here's a decent source for ruby 1.9 docs, though:

<http://railsapi.com/doc/ruby-v1.9/></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'll get to your application in a minute - First, we need to build the framework - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/i-ll-get-to-your-application-in-a-minute-first-we-need-to-build-the-framework/

<comment><USER2> I don't think that framework building is necessarily a bad thing - it's no conceptually different from bottom-up programming. The problem occurs when no top-down programming occurs at the same time, so there are no actually working features until the framework/DSL is completed. This is mainly about a PM who didn't keep a grip on what the team were doing - just another reason that non- technical PMs are a bad idea.

<comment><USER3> I think this thinking is what got them into a mess. Sure it sounds like a great idea to create a framework, but for a one-off project it just doesn't make sense.

I think you would be much better off in that scenario trying to build great components that are well defined and contained. This would enable you to re- use them in future projects, or when you build your framework later at some point.

<comment><USER4> Building great components that are well defined and contained is not very different from building a great framework, and both approaches can get you in trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, I've myself built too many frameworks.

There are good frameworks available for ruby and python. For java and php the frameworks are too big and cumbersome so people build their own 'frankenstacks' to get away from the code bloat that comes from programming with a c style static language (talking about java here) for a generic problem, and focusing the framework for the current problem at hand. I'm not a good framework programmer so I'm perfectly happy using rails and trying to forget all crappy PHP based frameworks I've built myself in the past. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Right on. I'm working on a contract like that right now, and our "lead developer", so to speak, is doing exactly this (i.e., do BDUF, write the framework first, and I'll get to your application when I get to it). The money quote that really stood out to me:

      Frameworks are better harvested from several applications
      that ended up using similar patterns.

</comment><comment><USER7> New features every week? At that rate, you're bound to make yourself quite a mess. With almost every project I've worked on, the complexity becomes so unbearable, I end up refactoring everything into half of a framework. I would dare say that you'd need a lot more than that to get flexibility from a language like C#, which this particular blogger seems to be supporting.

<comment><USER8> New features every week doesn't mean the features are badly built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Jeff's off-base here -- but he makes good points.

The problem is that all programs _should_ involve some generalizations and framework-type activities. It's just that it's never the focus of the actual project. There are all kinds of interesting and complex situations to consider when considering how much of a framework to build and why, but he never gets into those nuances, instead opting out with the easy "customers pay us for software, not for frameworks"

Well gee -- that's pretty self-obvious. What's less self-obvious is how the right amount of framework activity can super-charge the entire bag of software features.

I felt like I got a slogan, not real advice.

</comment><comment><USER10> _There are so many assumptions that go into the framework that some of them are bound to be wrong._

For example...

<comment><USER11> 'There are so many assumptions that go into the framework that some of them are bound to be wrong...'

...but at least those assumptions will be documented in code.</comment></comment>


C Is Not Assembly - <AUTHOR> http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/04/c-is-not-assembly.html <comment><USER2> Their solution is not undefined. After casting to uintptr_t, the value is an unsigned integer which has well-defined overflow behavior. The casting itself is okay too because uintptr_t is guaranteed to be able to hold a pointer.

<comment> loup-vaillant The problem is that `buf+len` is still a `char*`. So it could still trigger undefined behaviour before it is converted to `uintPtr_t`. The real solution is to have `buf` declared as a `unitPtr_t` in the first place. Ugly, but standard.

<comment><USER2> No, (uintptr_t)buf + len is parenthesized like this: ((uintptr_t)buf) + len.

<comment> loup-vaillant Whoops, my mistake. Forget what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In short: don't add an integer to a pointer and expect reliable results.

Seriously? In 2010? We're still adding pointers to integers instead of working with actual data structures?

<comment><USER4> So your question is basically "Why are we still using C in 2010?".

C is just a mapping to a generic assembly language. The machine will be adding pointers and integers anyway so this is inevitably reflected in C in one way or another. There are different notations to adding pointers and integers, such as _& pointer[index]_ or casting and adding, but in C you still have to think in terms of pointers and integers.

Why C? The main reason is that it has lots of pragmatic bias for its use. It's simple (unlike C++), it's closeness to assembly makes it a nice candidate for writing low-level layers, and it's supported nearly everywhere (unlike C++). This is hugely important in getting things done even if there were a number of smarter but less pragmatic ways.

<comment><USER5> C++ can also be simple, if you define beforehand which constructs you will use from the language, and which not. For example, working with std::vector or std:string is usually much simpler than working with char* buff and pointer arithmetic.

<comment><USER6> But then you're essentially using C+std::string rather than C++. The reason it's simple is that you're ignoring most of the things that distinguish it from C — and even then it's actually quite a bit more complex in ways that you can't get around (e.g. extern "C").</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: IRCRelay - Hosted IRC Bouncer Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.ircrelay.com/

<comment><USER2> Making me enter payment info to try it out makes this a non-starter for me.

There's not enough information on the main page as to how it actually works or who is behind for me to be comfortable just plugging my credit card into a random site.

I like the concept, though, and would probably pay for something like this if there were more details on how it works. Right now, I have SSL/unlimited message archive/unlimited connections by using screen + irssi and a cheap (less than $12/mo) VPS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to hear that. Here is a page about us and who is behind it: <https://www.ircrelay.com/about>

A high level overview of how it works: When you sign up, we provision a private ZNC installation on EC2 for you. It is multi-tenant, but we leverage various mechanisms for security: passwords are one-way hashed, each ZNC process runs as a separate unix user for each IRCRelay user, file permissions are such that no other ZNC user can read another users config even if there was an exploit, etc.

As for the payment: We only wanted to sign up people who were serious about using the service, and asking for payment details up front is a way to do this. All payments are done through stripe, and we don't see the CC details, ever. Your card is not charged until after the 30 day trial, and we send a warning email a few days prior so you can cancel your account if you're not happy.

But thanks for checking it out!

<comment><USER3> Since you are using a separate ZNC instance for each user, what are prospects of allowing users to install (or choose from a pre-selected list of) third- party ZNC extensions? In my case, I wrote a service-agnostic push notification module for ZNC [1] that I think would be a decent additional feature for you to compete with services like IRCCloud or TapChat.

1: <https://github.com/jreese/znc-push>

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that people who are even aware of what ZNC is would be able to run their own instance on a server under their control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In general its a nice service, it seems to cover all the IRC bases.

I'm wondering though if there is a bigger offering here somewhere, something which would basically provide a termination point for all of your real time interactive communication sessions. Paired with a set of tools that let you connect to that termination point from a variety of devices might unify a bunch of services that are currently fragmented.

For example, the various chat clients that federated AIM/Yahoo/Jabber were a way to terminate all your chat context and then to attach or detach from it at will. They still didn't get the "Oh I left my gmail running at home so your gchat went there and now opening gmail at work I don't know that you're wondering why I'm not responding" problem.

Clearly federating IRC, Chat, Twitter, and SMS could have some interesting benefits, especially if you're able to re-connect, back up the timeline to the point where you disconnected, and play back to present.

Anyway, IRC is but one piece of that puzzle.

<comment><USER4> I think bitlbee will let you cram your various non-IRC instant messengers into an IRC-like interface. I've never used it, but it seems like an easy first step.

<comment><USER3> I actually use bitlbee with ZNC on a daily basis, and there are some rough edges, like seeing users as giant numbers (G+ ids) when connected to GTalk if they aren't in your buddy list, but it otherwise works really well, and I'm always happy to centralize all my "realtime" communications into my IRC client.

<comment><USER6> I think there is an option to make bitlbee extract the handle from some other field, like "full name", then 05327fykex6h5yvd457 becomes JohnConner or whatever. Have a look at a recent version of the docs.

<comment><USER3> Yep, I already use that, but it only works for people in your Gtalk "friends" list or somesuch, so I still see that for anyone who contacts me that I haven't talked to previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems like a great idea, but I am absolutely not going to give credit card info at the beginning of a trial. Shame, I would have liked to try it out.

<comment><USER8> Honest question:

If they had asked you to pay for the service up front without a trial would it have made a difference?

Would it be better marketing to call it a "free month" instead of a trial?

I think that most people who might use this have some idea what an IRC Proxy is. That makes me wonder if it isn't better to just call it a free month to avoid these "why am I paying for a trial" issues.

<comment><USER7> No, and no.

The issue here is: 1\. I have never used this kind of service before. 2\. I am not sure I would be willing to pay for it. 3\. I am exactly the kind of person who would pay $5 a month for the convenience factor. 4\. I am also the kind of person who would completely forget to cancel and then get billed, even if I didn't use it.

Basically, a free trial with credit card info attached, for me, isn't a free trial, it's a post-billing situation.

<comment><USER9> We will send you an email before billing your card. We're also very open to fixing issues around accidental billing - sometimes I forget to cancel in time as well.

<comment><USER10> I know if I saw something like that explanation on the page asking for CC details, I would be much more likely to acquiesce. If you, say, offered a refund if someone emailed requesting one within a week(?) of their paid term starting, it would go a long way.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I'm definitely going to add something around the fact that we'll a) remind them and b) be flexible in dire situations. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Me and @mitchellh built this as a side project.

Really appreciate any feedback, and we're happy to answer questions here. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> I love the idea of this, but the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost when I can get a VPS for less.

EDIT: that said, I do normally only use 2 networks, and I'm fine with the first tier cost. It's just those occasional times I need to connect to a third network. Also I'm not sure how much 10000 messages is, but I imagine idling in a freenode channel could tear through that pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Neat. However, installing ZNC on your own an Amazon EC2 micro instance is cheaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is certainly cheaper.

You're paying [a very small amount] to IRCRelay for convenience and not having to worry about it. At least for my close friends, they'd rather pay $5 a month than deal with setting up an EC2 instance or VPS to do this for them.

<comment><USER13> I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, I'm just illustrating the thought process that goes into something like this (at least, mine). To help you understand your market better.

\- screen and irssi is a far better experience than using a bouncer. Perhaps offer that? These services, back in the day, used to be "shell providers" for this reason.

\- Most developers I know run their own VPS and probably wouldn't consider a service like this.

\- I happily pay $20/month for my Linode wherein I do this, the big reason being I can also torrent, compile, host quick Internet stuff, do development work, receive mail, etc.

Administering a personal development machine is a gateway to becoming a better hacker these days, so I think you'll find that your market ends up being miscreants who have $5 to throw away on a throwaway bouncer to cause trouble.

<comment><USER12> I personally prefer a bouncer to screen+irssi because I like Textual for OS X so much :).

I definitely agree with your last point - the "irc types" also tend to the the "hacker types" these days.

I think my micro instance was $54/yr, and like you mention, I can do a lot more with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised Amazon allow IRC on EC2. A sizeable number of VPS providers prohibit IRC usage; it makes them dDoS magnets and just isn't worth the hassle

<comment><USER15> Who doesn't allow IRC usage? VPS/ssh/screen/IRC seems to be one of the more popular reasons for private individuals to use a VPS (well, at least most people on IRC where I hang out seem to use a VPS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd highly recommend checking out <http://www.irccloud.com/>

I've started using it as my full time IRC client with Nimbus <https://github.com/jnordberg/irccloudapp>

<comment><USER17> Not sure why you were downvoted. IRCCloud is a great service (though they've been experience trouble recently with a lot of disconnection issues randomly)

<comment><USER5> Downvoted possibly because of form, I've seen a number of down votes on comments to "Show HN:" posts that were essentially "This is better: competitive link." It doesn't help the person showing us their tool because the comment doesn't say _how_ its better. A better comment would be "I'm currently using a competitive service X, and I really like features A, B, and C, but don't like features P, Q,and R, your product seems to fix P and Q, but doesn't offer B or C." which is evaluative against a competitive product (no doubt the poster has done those evaluations as well but its useful to have actual customers and their feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the comments here I understand you provide a ZNC bouncer. You should advertise that, as your target audience is interested in those kind of technical details.

ZNC provides plugins as well, will I be able to use those?

I'd advise you to drop or heavily increase the 10,000 message limit. A moderately busy IRC channels would easily get 1,000 messages a day. Say I'd be on freenode's #ruby, #node.js and #python, I'd be able to use your service for 3-4 days at most with some luck.

<comment><USER9> The limit to what we store while you're not connected.- i.e, if you're on a trip for a weekend and you come back, you get all of your messages fed back to your client the next time you log in. This clears your limit back to 0, effectively.

On ZNC - definitely good feedback to have a "How it works" page or something of the sort for those who are interested.

<comment><USER18> I totally misinterpreted that. My apologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Speaking of IRC persistence. Subway IRC <https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway>

</comment><comment><USER20> If you're an Android user, also check out my app TapChat: <http://tapchatapp.com/>

<comment><USER21> I do love your app. Haven't used it in a month or so, but the one thing that bothered me was how I could click on a message that contained a link, and easily view the link, but I couldn't click on the topic to do the same thing.

Mostly curious if anyone has ever mentioned that to you before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Way too expensive. It's a damn bouncer heh.

</comment><comment><USER23> I took about one hour of my time and set up ZNC on my openwrt home router. Since then I never worried about that...

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone who got his start in SaaS (though we didn't call it that then) offering this exact service, Amazon is going to be very annoyed with you once they're handling DDoS attacks on your behalf.

Be selective of your clients and cut loose quickly. There are people who will sign up for your service just to go shit-talk on EFnet, and the wrong person will result in your entire service going down.</comment>